A Room in Shanghai

In Chinese cities a local foreigner is surrounded by millions of curious people in crowded living situations, a relic in a poorly maintained zoo. 

Animals are abused and neglected, but that’s beside the point of the doors on family compounds in big Chinese cities made of thick heavy metal. They close at night with a clang on old worn hinges. An adult voice is heard admonishing a child.  

“Get in, the night is here. It is late. You have to fold the clothes. You have your work for school. You have to clean up after dinner. You must study harder. Harder! If you fail your exams we will lose face. You will be an unemployed migrant child wandering lost cities looking for your future.”

The demanding accusatory tone of voice is always an admonishing attitude of voice in the way things exist. Shanghai commands are simple and direct. 

Outside the window heels strike cold hard pavement in darkness. The sharpness belongs to a girl escaping from family going out for the night. Muted voices of an old couple walking through narrow concrete canyons echo as her heels fade.

The elevator door opened on the 11th floor of a five—star business hotel in Shanghai. 

A beautiful young Chinese girl, maybe 20, in a white dress clutching a small black purse stared at a scuffed marble floor. Small puddles of rain water gathered around her shoes.

The American stopped talking to the Indian accountant and looked past him. 

She raised her face from the ground. 

Deep dark brown rings circled old, tired, fearful eyes hiding her heart's knowledge, revealing her soul. There was no place to hide, no magical cosmetic to conceal the truth of everything she knew. The woman and man instinctivily understood each other. She was passing toward another temporary hope, another ethereal reality.

She was on the wrong floor and pressed another number. Doors closed. She was going up. Up to the room of a foreign businessman who would take her through night into morning.

Everyone in town was making money. 

Billboards shouted, “Making Money in China is Glorious!”

She carefully folded hard earned hard currency into her black purse after a long hot shower and took the elevator back down. Gliding through a revolving glass and brass door, she passed a deserted dark empty Japanese restaurant and negotiated gray stained industrial steps to Nanjing Xi Lu.  

Serious adults in blue industrial clothing practiced Tai Chi with controlled balanced concentration. Every methodical movement had meaning. Dawn's collective breath formed a mist crashing around her well worn heels as she skipped over cracked city stones through their shadows. 

A neighbor cried out to a neighbor asking for something at high decibels.  

A motorcycle roared past followed by a bike bell ringing a sharp corner warning. Two old women wearing thick clothing talked about the price of vegetables, cool days and the fate of their children. Their words adjusted to musical volumes and surreptitious encounters in careful dark corners where sexual repressed couples groped for meaning. 

This is a small corner of the world. This is a small corner of the sky. This is all there is and it is enough for now.

Days, weeks and months later the foreigner finally exploded in anger and frustration. His bitterness understands locals don't know it's OK to lock the door. There are bars on his windows and he feels like a prisoner. 

Boredom, his enemy, has carved out a niche, a river in the soul.  

He declined offers to eat with the family. He needs distance. He is a dream they had, an intrusion on their language acquisition and their personal desire for growth caught up in unknown varieties of kindness. 

How many words will it take to explain this to them as anger grows from giving in? Listening to the wild wife talk on and on as her husband tries to wheel and deal. Nothing but endless questions. 

Interrogations during the Cultural Revolution.

His imagination engine kicks in. It's a ghost. A predator eating living beings, flesh. Tearing them apart as they sit and rest and doze off after playing cards. 

They shout at the deaf man in a small room with bars on the window.  Help us! they scream. 

His last week is the longest. The finest. 

Metta.

 

A $154 million dollar toilet

The space saga continues. As I reported in my last greasy message, I lost my tool kit while trying to fix a bad joint. Ze bag is (was) worth $100,000. I am offering a reward for it's return. No questions asked. It was last reported to be floating approximately 212 miles above Earth.

Meanwhile I have been installing a new urine convertor machine on the ISS

It cost a cool $154 million bucks. Now I know in these turbulent economic times when the average planetary inhabitant is living in a shack with an outhouse, riding a bike, using candles for light, eating baloney and afraid to get sick because they have absolutely ZERO heath care insurance the cost of my toilet may seem slightly extreme.

I can justify it. Watch and listen closely. It is a miracle of technology. 

It converts urine into drinking water!

Yes, that's correct. It turns urine into H2O (when it's working)...Astonishing! Amazing! Delicious! Urine on the rocks, straight up.

Why is this necessary? The ISS currently can support three living creatures. Brains on the ground would like to increase the population by three to six, requiring, according to their math genius, the necessity of having a $154 million dollar bathroom to expedite the conversion of urine into drinking water. Kinda like reverse osmosis.  

Their rationale is that, with six homo sapiens on board, it will be too expensive in the long haul to transport drinking water to the ISS, so they concocted this elaborate urine-water machine. Wow!

To support their never ending research and development NASAL will be offering, for a limited time only, just in time for the holiday season, a heavily discounted stripped down modified version of their urine-water convertor to JQ public. Initial design mockups with corresponding price categories will be available by Thanksgiving.

Metta.

 

The Three Baboons

Speaking of 40,000 year old primates, then, one day he saw three baboons. They were part of a Russian tribe living in his Ankara neighborhood. This is how it happened around dawn. 

A blond corn-plaited hairy one stuck her head out of a 5th story window and spit. She watched the spittle fly past trees and SPLAT! on the pavement. 

She looked around and they saw each other. She smiled. Her upper teeth were small and sharp. She started jabbering in her strange language. Her sounds, her words were questions. She wanted to know something.

Here is a rough translation.
“Where do you come from?”
“Are you alone?”

"Do you have money?"
“Do you want sex?”
She made many sounds but that’s the essence. Baboon language is simple and direct.

He just stared at her and smiled. She smiled. They smiled at each other.

She disappeared. A moment later she returned with two friends. One had dark hair, very hard eyes and big floppy breasts. She shook them side to side while speaking to him. 

“Look at these watermelons,” she said.
They were heavy fruit.

Another baboon joined them. She was blond with sapphire eyes and straight hair with short spiked bangs. Her oval face smiled and she stuck out her tongue. A shiny silver post glistened from the middle. Laughing like a child, she rolled her tongue around, up and out like a little snake. Every now and then a snake needs to find a cave.  

She appeared to be the most playful one in the group. 

All three stared at him and jabbered again, making suggestions and questions with their inarticulate yet clearly understood sounds.

“Where are you from?”
Blah, blah, blah.
“How old are you?”
"Do you have money?"
“Do you want sex?”

The plaited hair one got halfway out on the narrow balcony and crouched down, opening her legs. She started riding an imaginary wild mustang. Her eyes and face assumed a state of ecstasy. 

The one with hard eyes started gesturing with her hand, massaging empty space. He stared at this spectacle and smiled.

They laughed. The power of suggestion. 

The silver posted one kept smiling and flicking her tongue in and out, like breathing.

They were full of energy and wanted some action. Such amazing, funny and strange wild baboons!

Metta.

  

A Little Letter

(Editor's note: A version of this recently went out to friends and strangers.)

I've shifted into a new peaceful space after sharing another house with a very sad young teacher, a father of a young girl who lives with her mother in Mongolia. His favorite expression was, "Let's Eat!"

I mentioned choices and consequences but he didn't hear or listen. I've seen this reality before, mind you. He must have figured it was worth the emotional cost to come here. As someone along the rocky road whispered, "Any fool can have a kid. It takes courage to raise them." You gotta pay your dues someplace.

I've been planting amazing flowers, including thirty from the old space, trees, shrubs, a delicious herb garden and multiple seeds; cleaning and refocusing my healing energies.  

I am west of Jakarta, about an hour plus toll trolls by taxi depending on the traffic, which can be a real nightmare due to poor urban highway planning ten years ago. The city pollution is real killer. You can feel it in your throat and eyes. Ghastly. All east-west traffic must pass through the city center. No ring roads. Duh.

The air quality out here is very good and the area, while consisting of 20-30 flower named walled clusters with guards at the entrance, has plenty of trees and tropical flora. Beautiful butterflies, song birds, cockroaches, big brown beady eyed rats, contemplative speckled frogs and many little humans. It's all about evolution, adjusting and adaptation.

Some homes are McMansions with Greek and Roman columns featuring Ironic, Corinthian fax paux decorations screaming "Yes, look at my huge monster home! I made it." I imagine many palatial rooms are empty, collecting dust, but hey, like in China, it's all about external appearances. Goes to show ya. Others are more tastefully done in the one-two story cookie-cutter style. 

Everyone has a maid from somewhere in Java, some being barely old enough to take care of spoiled pampered offspring. They wash two cars, sweep and water stone passages, cook, wash clothes, clean and feed the kids while both parents are out busy making money. It's a job. 

It's an opportunity to make money to support their families in a village memory. Most, if not all, returned home for a brief holiday. Some may return, others will take their place. It's the never ending human supply system on one of 17,000 islands with 220 million people.

It's interesting to see moms and dads washing cars doing laundry and preparing meals these days. Learn by doing.

Food is cheap here. Medicine and education is expensive. Favorite sports are: 

1) driving huge 4x4s where gas costs $2.40 a gallon, sitting in endless long traffic jams, paying parking fees to para-military type uniformed men blowing stainless steel whistles...  

2) wandering around enormous numerous (say it fast three times) shopping centers. Like a huge playground for young and old kids. Where out-of-control rascals can expend their pent-up energy. Where families can enjoy the A/C and stuff behind glass. Museum quality of life. Diversionary influences.

3) whining. My students know and understand this behavior is boring and useless.

The private school has 1,800 students from kindergarden through high school. It's existed since 1993 and was started by a Catholic priest from Bandung who joined with community leaders to promote education. We have native English teachers in K-12 to complement the friendly local teachers. They've seen us folks come and go after completing a two-year contract. The school administration is very professional in all aspects. 

My supervisor, the Director of English, is a anthropologist from New Hamster. She was formerly a tenured professor at a stateside east coast university and threw it all off (the job, big house, marriage, mortgage, cars and airplanes) for the overseas life. She has extensive international teaching experience and focuses on curriculum development. I've learned a great deal from her in a short time. We are kindred spirits. 

I'm teaching 4th grade (where I act like a big nine) and really enjoying the opportunity to make a positive contribution. My kids are amazing and we have fun in/out of class. There is more prep-time and lesson planning here compared to the Wall Street Institute system (0 prep = loads of free time) but it's a fine exchange, all things considered.

I have three classes of 30 kids and see each class four times a week for 70 minutes each class. This allows us to fully explore Socratic academic text-based material, (speaking, listening, reading comprehension and writing) personal creative journal writing, art, and teamwork projects. 

We focus on developing character, sharing, good manners, soft eyes, relaxation, meditation, making mind maps, accepting personal responsibility and exploring the learning process. I assist them in developing critical thinking skills and thinking out of the box. 

I tell them, "I am here to help you make mistakes." Shock reality therapy.

I accompany each class to the fine library once a week. They are improving their research skills. To get to the paper library we meander through the eco-library where we also spend a lot of time exploring, discovering and finding cool things. 

I'm also mentoring an English club of 18 students culled from 4th-6th grade for their speaking ability. They practice improving their public speaking skills and having fun. I'm also assisting the editor of a biweekly "Flash" newsletter which goes out to parents. Performing copy and proofreading stuff.

I use a Cosmic mountain bike and it's all flat land. I do miss the rolling wild nature near the Chinese university and quality of bike life there. Still, it's fun and necessary. I play tennis at the sports center 2-3 times a week in a drop-in doubles format with local businessmen and swim in the beautiful Olympic size pool which is often deserted. 

Next door is a Balinese Spa where I enjoy a 1.5 hour traditional full body massage weekly for $12. I alternate between the traditional - relaxation, aroma therapy - and the hot rock massage which is a strange deep tissue feeling after warm oil coats you and then the oval volcanic rocks blend into your epidermis. After a week of teaching, riding, tennis and laughing the massage is a welcome therapeutic relaxation zone. Bliss. 

Metta.