ok, right now should be sleepy time after a 15 hour shift of driving plus working the two previous days, also ludicrous hours to make up for the slowdown locally here mostly due to the onset of cold winter weather about a month ago meaning sydney-siders do not want to go out.... speaking of australians, it is an absolute disgrace that 'sports officials' (frustrated/incapable athletes that take to burocracy and lording it over athletes) have taken to censuring some swim meet athletes for posing with high-powered rifles in america, ludicrous! that's what losers these pompous anglos are! they shoot themselves in the foot with their decrepit crap! can you imagine punishing your best swimming athletes for posing with high-powered rifles!!! how backward!!
once in paris in 2002, one of my students at total fina elf was asking me about australia and i told him it was a backward country, he said, well if you think australia is backwards, then you have to go to china........ and this must have been what francis bacon meant when he said that the french are wiser than they seem........... at the time he told me this i never thought i'd end up in china.... but that's what happened.... although technically, i already had been in china prior to that, coz of that visit to tibet........
used to listen to this song when driving a taxi in sydney in 1999 (smash mouth - all star.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_jWHffIx5E) that was b4 'smart phones' (arsehole phones)
it's worth mentioning, that after driving 20 hours straight, that's when your mind really enters shutdown, drawn out tough territory, and beethoven symphonies take on all new meaning (and moreso into hour 21 and 22 and 23)
ok, here goes: keeping it squarely inside 'china' (including tibet) -- 19 months together taken from august 2000 thru february 2006:
ice cold... snow and ice everywhere, bitter cold.... a long hose is left running over the snow, it smooths the snow into a bumpy ice rink.... skates on, it's hard, tired, unfit, smoker..... bump - fall, none of the 16 year old skater high school students laugh at the fall, it hurts, carry on... skate, skate tired
sit at yum-cha table: eat a cocoon, not bad, crunchy, eat another, and another....
people in beijing eat goat's testicles
girlfriend says her grandma had a baby girl and slayed it immediately after birthing it, placenta fresh and steaming, slayed it coz it was a girl and not a boy, 'do you think that's wrong?' i asked her... 'no, why?' she replied
friend made the mistake of drinking water from the tap without boiling it first, ouch, spends a day in agony bedridden, describes it as having a knife in his belly, you ask yourself, if you can drink that water after boiling it and be healthy (and you can and do everyday), how is it the boiling really fixes it so much
water coolers don't have cold water, chinese don't believe in drinking cold water, room temperature or warmer is normal -- tea is everywhere -- chinese love tea -- forget about buying cheese
16 year old students overworked, one falls pregnant from steamy foray with opposite sex, obliged to have abortion... another student suicides from school window.... too many hours at school and the bland uniformity of it all too taxing....
people buzz everywhere, massive shopping centres, malls, level after level of shopping, neverending masses of people everywhere, noise, red, firecrackers.... cranes building, the countryside peasants that sit jobless on the sidewalks.... the subways, the airports..... all those signs in chinese, what the hell do they say? almost nothing in english
eat with chopsticks....... the feel of the land in guangdong........ the spirit in the air, in the ether where people's thoughts are in guangdong.... guangzhou
rolling down hills of grass in yunnan, tumbing down the hill sideways........ neverending peace.... calmness... tranquility..... being
the calm whine of chinese music or the steady chanting buddhistic music... the occasional (post cultural revolution) sanctum set up to some old chinese man with a flowing beard and incense
the desperately poor tibetan kids in tibet that only know one english word: 'money, money' and say it desperately like they are really desperate for some money.... their peasant mothers living in outdoor tents - dirt poor
the sophisticates of beijing and shenzhen expensive niteclubs
the dirty air everywhere, the stories of poisoned countryside... the metallic dirty yellow dust of the deserts that rise and blow over to korea and japan poisoning the air there......... the completely flagrant example of thorough environmental degradation on every level........ poisoning a river water supply with heavy acids just to save a few dollars, leaving a village to die slowly and immensely painfully, without even bothering to tell them about it
the cultural revolution themed restaurant where everything is decked out according to cultural revolution layout/posters/etc/amazing.... the first time i stepped in front a group of little kids (to 'teach')
the black new mercedes benz of the communist elite, 100,000$ brand new black mercedes benz...always mercedes or bmw's and black -- riding in one of them with my boss, some bigshot in the commie party
the neverending parents with only one child (never two) --
the food that is unbeatable anywhere in the world, that changes from city to city
the famous tourist attraction 'paradise lake' that is just some dirty nasty pool of wretched water with stinking brown smog everywhere
the hot bitches -- foxy chinese women --- the lack of obese people... the old people doing tai chi in the mornings en masse in a park
the feeling of safety and freedom everywhere (my feeling - not someone else's), never lacking buddies to play sports with: table tennis, volleyball, soccer, basketball
the very very elderly, old bent stooped men and women in llasa turning prayer wheels as they walk around the massive tibetan monasteries....
the dancefloors full of african traders, africans all over it bumping away with one commie cop in full uniform on a little dais above it, his face rock solid stoney, unblinking
the tv channels and society that shows such an utter, non-contemptuous, utter indifference to american or european culture... probably the only place in the world where you can completely and utterly escape europe and america and everything 'western', without being forced to, but merely because the locals are utterly uninterested in any kind of american or european culture (movies, etc) -- the movies are all a massive backlog of kung-fu movies, which, even during the communist times of the 60s and 50s, still kicked arse
the big budget, modern chinese action movies made for the massive cinemas sprouting everywhere
the fact that 1.3 billion people all speak the same language, and don't give a shit about democracy - astounding.... and everyone gets along just swell
the ridiculous traffic jams.... people chewing bamboo... the cheap hotels.... scaffolding made of bamboo solely, old-school... energy spent is energy lost
the museums
the maturity of the people.... the lack of ridiculously gratuitous sexualized media, but we cannot say that the chinese are prudish........
the neverending rush of people, the neverending apartments, the neverending streets, the enormity of it...... the bicycle rides
the fact that trees still exist there, and grass
the unlikelihood you would be safe drinking any kind of water from a river or lake anywhere in china... the utter lack of anyone that isn't chinese - the fact that they all speak mandarin
the number four in everything (people dressed as the number four like in sesame street pop out of every corner offering you beer - they work for the govt.)... the squareness.... the body movement and body language -- the genes
the same music, in every high school from one side to another of the giant place: playing eye-rubbing music at the same time every day, all over china, and the students rubbing their eyes, uniformly, wearing uniform and the great majority having short hair, so that the kids do not get sore eyes
the student in icy jilin that was 1/4 japanese a bastard child of a japanese rape of china circa ww2, the classmates that despised him for it
the complete (and tonically refreshing) lack of christianity, from top to bottom, left to right, everywhere
the drinky drinks
lying on a patch of well-kept grass with my buddy nichole in the sun, looking at eachother and then me humping the grass a little -- hearing her laugh -- a male and female police officers walk by
here we see a typical tibetan image -- one of few used by tibetan monks -- others include plain images of boddhisatvas (sometimes with many arms) and occasionally bordered with images of couples engaged in sexual intercourse (but in such a way that it never seems gratutous and sleazy pornography and more like a depiction of natural law)........ however this common tibetan image is essentially monster man - with his crown of skeletons, he appears to be something akin to hindu-ism's shiva, the destroyer, however his meaning must be plenty different as, as mentioned above, the tibetans have very very few images and very few gods..... destroyer God looks like he's ready to kick some arse and not take prisoners........ this brings up an interesting notion of God: you would have noticed that God seems basically unknowable, intangible, and that you are indeed stuck with humans, for better or worse and they are, in fact, your God... then you get some sunlight and rain, a little moonlight and starlight and the earth and atmosphere and some animals and that's about it.... a little hope, a little Faith, dreams to dream and you're on your own........ this begs the question, perhaps, are we just some kind of sophisticated toys that God has dreamt up...... we cannot imagine how God can be, only contemplate some old Tibetan manuscripts from thousands of years ago that mention vague abstractions like: wet and dry are combined and this begins creation (similar stories in china also)....... this doesn't answer much does it?
Tibetan monks are expected to visualize their various Thangka images, the boddhisattvas, etc
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