06.27.2007 Greetings,
We're singing a song traveling along, side by side.
Heading to Hong Kong this weekend and then northwest to a Silk Road Caravanserai joining a camel caravan next week heading through the desert to an invisible city.
Peace.
06.24.2007 Greetings,
No word from IEN in Dalian means they pass. You know how it goes. No news means "no thanks."
Great rains dancing water, thunder and lightning on display after days of heavy humid heat.
The publishing people sent their twenty page Editorial Evaluation of my book with solid suggestions regarding structure, characterization (too many characters!), narration, and shifting points of view. I'll be revising sections with a flexible deadline of July 6th. Or as they say in in the garbage business, "Take It Out!"
The publisher said:
1. Editorial Evaluations are a business of opinion.
2. The Editorial Evaluation is not a pass/fail process.
I wrote a quick note to my Publishing Service Associate saying I'll get it back by then although I may be in transit - aren't we all?
I'm giving away plants, winter clothing, pine cones, rocks, old attitudes, and F.U.D.
Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt.
Forty DVDs and assorted books will be gifted to English Majors this last week of classes. They will be shocked, awed and pleasantly surprised as we wrap up a great time together.
If you need a well used dirty black mountain bike drop me a line of letters in random numerical sequence.
Peace.
06.23.2007 
Greetings,
Ah, the vagaries - from Latin 'vagari' meaning to roam, wander.
New ESL job offers in and out of China are under consideration for potential new adventures as you know from blogs, images and podcasts.
My two years here on a fascinating minute part of Earth ends on 5 July or, using another quantifiable numeral, 730 odd days.
It's been delightful educational experience engaging senses. The students have been marvelous darling, simply mar-yell-ous. It's been a high process-product Time. Finished editing my book and it's now receiving editorial evaluation at a publishing concern; put 2700 miles on the Warrior bike, gathered new raw life material, gardened roses, traveled and learned a little.
True knowledge is knowing how much you will never know.
I'm considering an offer to teach writing at a public university in a nearby province offering new terrain - mountains, meditation zones, access to oceans and your standard swirling bureaucratic Red tape. Chop, chop. Maybe.
A Science and Technology university in Baotou, Inner Mongolia made an offer. Think yurts, wild grasslands, nomads and sterile drab gray Stalinist citified Chinese structures. Imagine classrooms filled with highly unmotivated passive students looking for answers without asking questions.
Thanks but no thanks.
Waiting to hear from IEN, an Australian based company teaching EAP and IELTS assessment courses to computer and accounting non-English majors at a university in the northern city of Dalian. It's a professional operation and excellent location.
Japan and Korea want young teachers. No dice.
Eat well and see what happens. Pay attention. So it goes.
Peace.
06.19.2007 Greetings,
Hello space travelers...we are experiencing minor technical difficulties uploading new images.
This is China, ha ha!
So it goes in the land of sleeping dragons, manipulative duplicity, lies and deceptions which doesn't say anything about truth, freedom and abstract conceptual or metaphorical meaningful actions like kindness and compassion where the sound of speech has no alpha bet your life.
Cultivate stillness.
“I have a strange and incredible Muse that, unseen, has engulfed me during my lifetime,” Ray Bradbury has written of himself, describing how he was inspired by a Frederick Seidel poem about “A Demon not afraid of happiness” : “That perfectly describes that Demon that sits now on one shoulder, now on the other, and whispers things no one else hears.”
Peace.
06.14.2007 Greetings,
Rolling gray clouds trace green hills bringing heavy rains.
Writing students do a 5 minute exercise on "My Favorite Possession."
They write, read and speak about:
Parents
Happiness
Memories
Friendship
A book
Love
Imaginary places
Dreams
Hope
Knowledge
Attitude
I suggest a clenched fist is empty, an open hand holds everything.
This appears on the green board in fragile white chalk dust:
“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” - Susan Sontag
Peace.
