Shit, Money, Love

I step into the elevator today and it reeks of fecal matter. How it comes to smell of shit in an elevator is anybody's guess. But a little while ago I ducked into the stairwell for a cigarette, and discovered a lovely clump of excrement. What with the bathroom no longer being serviced, people have resorted to shitting in increasingly inventive locations. In short order, the mall has become deserted, abandoned, and now, utterly desecrated. Good times.

Here's a few things that have been going on with me recently:

1) I've been helping a student revise some essays and movie scripts for his college applications. His name is Eric and he wants to be a film producer. This ambitious young fellow has already gotten a "sensible" degree to satisfy his mother, but he isn't satisfied with that. I don't think any amount of pragmatism could crush his youthful idealism. Now his mother has permitted him to study film - if he goes to school in the United States. My heart goes out to him.

Eric

This has afforded me the opportunity to practice my writing in new and interesting ways. Plus, he pays quite well - on the order of $50 to $200 for each paper. As an avid reader, it has long been my aspiration to be a paid writer. This may be a minor gig, but I am grateful for anything that takes me closer to my dreams.

2) I am no longer single. I've gotten into a relationship with another foreigner here. Her name is Linda. She's 11 years older than me, and variously Israeli, Romanian and Canadian. It's quite a combination. She's a real spitfire, and odder than a three-footed pickle. I'm not sure what the attraction is - that itself is part of the attraction. After all, the one thing I cannot stand is being bored. With her, I never am. You may congratulate me if you want, but it's not necessary. After all, I haven't really "done" anything - except her.

Guess which one is Linda

I take consolation in being in a relationship that no one would understand. How could they, when I don't understand it myself! But that means I'm doing something right. You only live once, so you have to make damn sure you use your time well. Do something different. Do something special. Take on every challenge that comes your way. Because that's the only way to be sure you'll be remembered.

A final note. Whatever you feel, just feel it. If you feel mad, be mad. But don't be mad that you're mad. If you're glad, be glad. But don't be glad that you're glad. This may seem like a minor point, but it carries the greatest weight. The quickest way to get yourself nowhere is to start feeling about your feelings, or thinking about your thoughts. Ironically, the motive behind such movements is the desire for self-awareness. It is obvious how I feel. It is obvious what I think. I know these things, and cannot not know them. But why do I feel that way? Should I feel otherwise?

These things are less obvious. But this manner of introspection is incredibly dangerous. It results in an endless mirroring, where feeling is reflected back upon feeling, and thought upon thought. At the end, you nothing is learned, and all clarity in thought and feeling is lost. One's mind and heart become so clouded that it becomes nearly impossible to dig oneself out of recursion.

Just as with a hall of mirrors, a little light is lost with every degree of removal. Everything is brightest at the source, before any reflection has occurred. There is no greater clarity than feeling just what you feel, no more. If you must reflect, do so with a calm mind and a disinterested heart. If you cannot, don't torture yourself with emotional recursion. You'll regret it if you do.

Expect few updates

I have resolved to devote my creative energies toward completing the book of philosophy I have been working on intermittently for 6 years. For that reason, this blog will continue to be neglected. As a consolation, here are some pictures.

My dad came to Beijing for one week in October, so we saw some of the sights together.

The Beijing subway system gets pretty damn crowded. I have to deal with it on the daily.

Some pictures from the Halloween party at First Leap.

Some of the people I work with. On the right, Selina; on the left, Pippo.

Does Everyone Spit in China?

The real question is why don't people spit more elsewhere. Different places have different customs. What is considered rude in one country is just a matter of course in another. Yes, people spit in China. If you come from a country where it's considered rude to spit, it might seem to you that they spit “a lot”. Yes, occasionally I see someone spit. But it's not like everyone's hawking loogies left and right.

Everyday situations, like a person spitting on the street, may seem easy to understand, but everything has a huge amount of history to it. To oversimplify things, there has always been a lot of poverty in China. Historically, most people have always just scraped by. That long history of poverty translates into a culture that is largely devoid of certain pleasantries – because “high culture” (read: a snotty sense of superiority) is a luxury of the wealthy. Only they have the time to worry about whether or not someone is being polite. Everyone else has more important things to think about.

But that also means there isn't the kind of institutional anxiety that we have in the West. You're not constantly worried about offending someone, because the rules of etiquette are pretty straightforward. That is not to say that there is no etiquette in China. Etiquette does matter – but with friends, with family, with co-workers and business partners. Etiquette consists of specific rules of behavior in specific social situations. In the West, the moment you step outside your door, you're in society. It doesn't matter that you don't know anyone, nor that you're not doing anything special. There's still this imaginary force always watching you, always making sure that you're doing things right. “Does that person think I snubbed him? Oh god, I bumped into that girl. I hope she knew it was an accident. Why is he staring at me? What's his problem?” And so on.

There's this imaginary body called “society” and whenever we're in it, we're orienting ourselves by it. It doesn't matter if you're insecure or confident. Either way, you're omni-conscious of society to the point of obsession.

This deserves a brief caveat. I think a lot of this is true, though it may not sound right. The difficult part (for me) is to place exactly where it is true, and for what level of abstraction. I can't say for certain if this difference of societal awareness is essential to the West, or to America, or to Southern California, or to suburbia, or what. It's tough to place – my experience is too limited to know exactly where the difference lies. But it is undeniably there.

Maybe it's just me, and the fact that I want so dearly to be indifferent to capital-S Society. But since I've been in Beijing, the little anxieties that haunt me back home have altogether disappeared. People stare at me every single day. They shove past me on the subway, completely oblivious to whether or not I'm taking offense. People spit, and litter, and jaywalk with impunity. Thank god for all of it. However the little things might irritate me from time to time, it is a blessing to be around people who aren't constantly concerned about appearances, about impressing the invisible Other, about pretending to be something they're not. All that inspires me to do just the same. Maybe that's rude. Or maybe it's just real.

Inspiration: My Father's Influence

Ever since I can remember I have heard stories about my father's travels around the worold. I've looked up to him for my whole life, as a son is prone to do with his father. As time has passed, the desire to emulate him has never left me. The fire of my father-worship, coupled with his countless small words of encouragement, has left me today with an inferno burning in my chest to become as great as I have perceived him to be.
But though a father is always a man, the father itself is a myth. He is a Hercules fallen from heavens, a towering beast and bona fide force of nature. He cannot be stopped by any living force, but is instead moved, as though unmoved, from within. And throughout it all, he is a myth borne alone from the wonder of a child's eyes. As I grew older I had to learn that he did not really exist. I had a father, yes. But he was no god.

Despite all this, there is no undoing the motions instilled in us from the time we are children. Myths may be unsubstantiated by facts, but that makes them no less real. There is an undeniable power possessed by myths, and this power is not false even if the stories themselves are utter fabrications.

I know full well the depth and complexity of the person my father truly is. I know that while his stories of travel and adventure sound romantic, that they contain a dark underbelly. Every time he went off on another adventure, he left people behind. And every ounce of his spirit that he lent to the whimsical pursuit of pleasure was an ounce stolen from those he loved and cared for.

But he is my father, and nothing will ever topple the place he has in my heart and mind. No Titan can topple the god that is Father from Olympus, for the material of myth is not fact but hope. He may not have been the best man, but he will always be my greatest inspiration.

So here I am, out in the world, far, far from home. I console myself with the knowledge that I am not repeating his mistakes, but making my own. I have hurt no one by forging off on this new path of mine. Everything that he has done wrong, I have learned not to repeat.

Thus I am just the same as every other person on this earth. I want to have my cake and eat it too. For my father is a singular creature. Everything that has gone into him and come out again has, by way of the pressure-cooker of time, been tangled and bound up together into an inscrutable mass. To wish to take only from the good while discarding all of the bad is like trying to separate the white from the yolk of an egg once it has been scrambled.

But by the same token, it is just as impossible to separate the heart of man from his destiny. I can no sooner deny the influence of my father than I can sever off my own foot with indifference. Because I too am a singular creature, cooked into an indistinguishable molten mass through fires of time. I am the egg that has been scrambled beyond hope of separation.

And so I turn myself over to destiny, and pray that it makes me well. I can do nothing less.

Failure

In his new book "Life Itself" Roger Ebert recalls some advice he received from an editor: "Don't wait for inspiration. Just start the damn thing." As anyone who has ever given a real chance to themselves as a writer knows, the expletive is damned necessary. Writers write because they've been inspired by something they've read, and therefore wish to inspire others themselves. "If you're not writing something fantastic, then you're doing a disservice to the medium." So the reasoning goes.

Of course, it's bullshit. "Just start the damn thing." Listen, we've all got a thousand little voices in our heads. If you've got even half a brain, you're wise enough to be conflicted. That's good. That's smart. What's stupid is that many of us stop at "conflicted" and get no further.

We live in a difficult world. There's rarely, if ever, a sure course of action. It's tough. I get it. But it's tough for everyone. Difficulty is a poor excuse. To say "I can't" is either to admit of a personal failing or attest to a practical impossibility. That is, either what you wish is possible and you lack the courage for it (in which case you deserve not pity but contempt) or it is truly impossible, in which case you've been foolishly clinging to a delusion.

For me, the latter possibility is particularly unnerving. What if that one thing that I've always wanted but never made the slightest headway on, what if it had never been possible? What if my highest ambitions are complete and utter fictions? I don't know if others think about this, but I do. I think most people can't bear considering, even for a moment, that what they want most may never happen.

To seriously meditate on failure can be terribly disheartening. It saps the blood from your veins, drains your vitality, and tears the ground out from under your feet. Here, courage is meaningless, for no amount of bravery can prepare you for failure. What is needful is not courage but strength. The real question is: Are you strong enough to endure defeat?

Though success is difficult to attain, it is easy to bear. Defeat, on the other hand, is infinitely more difficult. When you win, you're on top of the world. But when you lose, the world is on top of you. We'd like to think that the winners are the real movers and shakers. But that's a fantasy. If you're looking for inspiration, look to the losers. Find someone who has lost everything, and ask yourself, how do they keep going?

In the Great Depression, stocks plummeted, and investors followed suit, casting themselves out of windows and off bridges. That kind of image sticks with a nation. It's dramatic, tragic, and captures our imagination. But what about those who lost everything, and somehow managed to find a way, and a reason, to keep on living? How did they bear it? Where did they find the strength? These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves. Americans love a good rags-to-riches story. But I think that things are changing. More and more, people are finding hope in the hopeless. More and more, artists are culling the depths of pain to find new sources of meaning. Perhaps soon, we will each find a way to look up to those who have hit rock bottom.

Whatever you've been putting off in your life, I implore you: "Just start the damn thing". I can tell you from experience that doing is easier than thinking. And if you're going to fail... well, you'd better get busy failing. Or would you rather cling to your delusions?

Teaching at First Leap

ello everyone! Sorry that it has taken so long for me to get this out to you; doubly sorry if you've actually been checking this regularly, eagerly awaiting word from me! I've been in China for two weeks now. It has been really interesting. As I've noticed, when you start in on something radically new, time passes simultaneously faster and slower than usual. I'm still not sure how that's possible, but that's how it goes. Time being an artificial construct and all that, I suppose.

 

I've really lucked out. There are a lot of horror stories about people teaching English abroad. Schools taking your passport in order to help with your visa, then holding it hostage so that you're stuck teaching for them. Teachers not being paid on time. Being stuck in classes without adequate materials or preparation time. All sorts of variously horrible and annoying circumstances. I chalk it up partly to my own preparation and partly to luck that I've found myself with First Leap.

 

This has been as close to an ideal situation as I could reasonbly hope for. Two people from my placement agency met me right at the airport and drove me to my temporary housing. I am presently housed with several other new teachers, both Americans. The school is fabulously well-equipped. Every class has an interactive white board, and the entire syllabus is planned out beforehand. You work with a Chinese teacher, in classes of no more than 10 students. Just imagine that ratio. If you know anything about education, you should be surprised. At worst, there is one teacher for every five students. Sometimes the ratio is as high as one to two! It's a dream come true.

 

Well, unfortunately that's all I have time to write for now. I'm still having a bitch of a time figuring out how to access the internet here, so it might be a little while until the next update. Until then - stay thirsty, my friends!

Final Days

The end is near! Or is it just the beginning?

Today I picked up my passport from the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles. It now proudly bears a large sticker permitting me access to the PRC (People's Republic of China). You know how your passport has profound, inspirational, patriotic quotations on each page? Well, the sticker of my Chinese visa is taped directly over the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence. It's like they're trying to tell me something. "Say farewell to your freedom, silly American. You're coming to red China."

Of course I kid. I'm very excited to be doing this. Just yesterday, I was saying farewell to my friend Amanda (to whom I credit the closing phrase of my last post). She thankfully brought up a vital concern. "Can you use Facebook in China? And Google? How will you stay in contact with everyone?" After all, almost everything I do on the internet is mediated by either Facebook or Google. This very blog is hosted by Google. It would kinda defeat the whole purpose if I couldn't actually update it in Beijing.

So I've been doing some research on The Great Firewall of China. Turns out censorship is a big deal over there. Who knew? Of course, as an American, I take my freedoms for granted. "Of course I'll be able to use the internet just as I always have. It's a big city after all." And sure, they have the internet. But it's not the same.

I'm thinking that I'll have to use what's known as a VPN (Virtual Private Network). Basically, rather than directly accessing the web through the local service provider and having to deal with radical censorship, you connect through the local ISP to a foreign server. That way, I'll be able to use Facebook and Gmail and everything else that's blocked by The Great Firewall. A few kinks still need to be ironed out, but if everything goes according to plan, there won't be anything stopping me from regularly updating this blog. So don't worry! I'm on it.

In other, non-tech news: this is my last week at work. I only get to work with my peeps a few more times before I go. Maybe it sounds silly, but I'm really going to miss working at Peet's Coffee. I've forged some really great relationships with my coworkers and customers, things I know I'll think about in the weeks to come and remember fondly. But, as a number of people have assured me, "This is the right time for this, Kelly." I don't want to spend the rest of my twenties working in retail, earning minimum wage. When I'm on my deathbed, I won't regret that I didn't serve more coffee. Sure, I love coffee (and tea!), but ultimately, it's just coffee. It's not the end of the world if someone's cappuccino isn't dry enough, or if you rip the coffee filter and have to re-brew. It might seem like a big deal at the time, especially when there's a lot of customers waiting to be served, but there's a bigger picture to keep in mind.

As another of my friends has told me time and again, and always emphatically: "This is life." There's no do-overs, and this isn't a test. Life matters. For all the stress and suffering we're forced to endure, shouldn't we strive for something bigger? Something to redeem our own suffering, and that of others? On this point, I remain staunchly existential. We are here to give life meaning. Stop asking yourself what it all means, because a meaningful life isn't just going to drop in your lap. You've got to fight for it. So what are you waiting for?

Ships at Sea

Listen. "You have nothing to lose." I would say it; I would mean it. But it's not really true. There's always something to lose, something to gain, something at stake. But that's not the point. The point is that you should let go, and anything that you have to tell yourself, anything you must believe or disbelieve in order to finally and fully let go, that's something you've got to do, and it's fine.

What do we hold onto? More than anything else, ourselves. But we're human, and damned stupid. We jealously guard a chest, knowing nothing of its contents. We're so possessive of ourselves - but what are we? Who are you - really? When you start really looking into your constitution, you discover nothing but a bunch of contingencies. "Well I happen to be like this because of this and that." Can that really suffice for self-knowledge? It's too flimsy.

And the most annoying thing of all is finding out that all those things that aren't that great about you, well, those are contingent too. You can do something about them - you can become a better person. Really! But it's such a bitch to do. Your whole life, you're building a ship while lost out in sea. It's really amazing that we have selves at all, except for the fact that most of our selves are so shoddily built. Can you blame us? You work with what you've got, and each of us is hard-wired to keep going, keep building, keep patching leaks and fashioning makeshift sails from soiled underwear. We're wet, we're cold, we're despondent - but we're still going.

So you've got some nice things about yourself on one hand, and some not-so-nice things on the other. You know which is which - you can't help but know. We get plopped down into the ocean of the world and spend years of our lives just trying to survive. Finally a moment of respite comes and we step back to look at what we've built. And what a surprise! Not only is there the ocean and the sailor, but also a ship! At first we're pretty impressed at how the ship all fits together, almost as if it were built on purpose.

But this ship which protects us from the elements is also our prison. The world, and our experiences of it, is filtered through our self. We draw conclusions, make inferences, establish arguments. But our self is our prison. Where are our loyalties? Over and over, we side with ourselves and against the world. What cowardice!

Our flaws are caught up in the web of our self; their excision is not easy, cannot be surgical, and necessarily entails radical transformations in areas previously thought unrelated. And so it doesn't surprise me that few have the courage to undertake a radical restructuring of themselves, and most who begin rebuilding ultimately give up, afterwards discrediting the whole enterprise as futile.

"You have nothing to lose." No, you have everything to lose. I think of it as a game. You put something of yours at stake, in hopes of gaining something better. But the stake of the game is nothing short of the game itself, that is to say, life. Probably, your life isn't going to amount to anything. If you make a lot of money, you'll eventually die and that wealth will mean nothing. If you raise a family, in three generations that family will forget you. Statistically, we're all irrelevant.

So what really matters? What is at stake in life? What is worth striving toward? What victories confer real honor? Each of us will answer this differently. For me, I am possessed by certain unshakeable drives. Honesty. Truth. Virtue. These are the things that are worth something to me, these are the things which make everything worth something. Perhaps it is my ultimate stubbornness, that I should pursue these things alone, at the cost of all else. But ambitious men have always been called stubborn and arrogant by those who could not understand their motives.

So let them sneer and jeer, and judge me odd or dangerous. A good friend of mine said it best. You can dis me - just don't dismiss me.

Disposal

By the time I leave for China (less than 3 weeks!), I will have practically no possessions. I don't know what to say about monastic existence, except to note that I have fantasized about it quite a bit. After all, it's easy to say "less is more", but to live it? That's a real challenge. I started learning the skill of living with less when I was a teenager. I lived with my mom and sister in a small apartment, and space was at a premium. It was a choice between having a cluttered, cramped home, or having to throw stuff away. So I got used to getting rid of things.

I'm getting rid of a lot of junk right now. Last year when I went to Costa Rica I rented out a storage unit, just so I would have one less thing to worry about. Now I'm throwing out everything.

Okay, I am exaggerating a little. There are still a few things I can't part with. Philosophy books, margins crammed with notes; old records of Led Zeppelin and Creedence Clearwater; a bookcase I built with my father when I was a child. All told, aside from the bookcase I have maybe 10 boxes. Can you imagine fitting everything that you own in 10 boxes? It is almost unthinkable.

I wish I could literally live out of a suitcase. But, in all practicality, that's what I will be doing. After all, those ten boxes aren't coming with me - and I don't really even need them. I just like them. All that's coming with me is two suitcases, a backpack and a gym bag. There are others who live with even less, but for me this is an achievement. The road to minimalism is long and arduous, but the goal is quite simple: self-sufficiency, self-reliance, independence.

But while you're on that road, just make sure not to get caught throwing your junk away into someone else's dumpster. People get real moody about that.

Welcome!

Welcome to my China blog! On August 31st, I'm heading off to Beijing to teach little Chinese children how to speak Engrish for a year at a school called First Leap. It's a private school that works as a supplement to the public education system, so it operates after normal school hours, and on the weekends. My schedule is going to be 4pm-8pm Wednesday through Friday, 9am-6pm Saturday and Sunday, with Monday/Tuesday serving as my "weekend".

I'm really excited to dive into this new experience! I've never lived in a big city before, let alone one populated by 20 million people speaking Mandarin. I don't know any Chinese, but whatever. I'll learn! After all, I didn't know any Spanish when I went to Costa Rica last year, and I survived. (Actually, the only Spanish you really need is the phrase "uno mas". Comes handy in all sorts of situations - especially when you're trying to get drunk.)

That's it for now. I'll be periodically posting updates about my experience, along with pictures! Stay tuned, and make sure to "subscribe" so you don't miss anything. In the meanwhile, you can peruse my pictures from Costa Rica and Panama, or read my philosophy blog. Peace!