Out of the Way Back Machine

In the midst of working on tonight's stream of conciousness post, I came across a blast from the past.

This little (and by little i mean lengthy) gem was drafted on 1/19/2009, from the reaches of icy cold beijing, from the grips of a life consuming 24/7 personal tutor job.

For your nostalgic reading pleasure:

Alright lovelies, it's a little late and I'm a little tired, but just for all of you i thought i'd dash off a quick little love note before i tucked myself away for the night.

I'm still in Beijing, which means I'm still more distracted and less contemplative than i was when i was away from home. To me, this is both nice and a little irksome. In about 10 days though I'll be packing myself back off to the Southern reaches of China, so I think I'll enjoy this respite at 'home' while I can. I've just gotten myself a load of fantastic books from the tiny tiny book store up across the street from the Lama Temple, which is making work much easier to deal with. Sinking my teeth in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is helping me to relish all those hours that I'm sitting around CCTV amidst hectic preparations for their Spring Festival Extravaganza.

Had I not mentioned that yet? My current student is envolved with it, and as I go where she does I now spend a significant portion of my time holed up inside the claustrophobic, smoky interior of CCTV. They have some truly beautiful and amazing things lined up for this Spring Festival show, and some truly bizarre things as well. They have pandas on unicycles, panda contortionists, and even pandas on yoga balls. It's like Chinese stereotype land met the college of preforming arts and had a springtacular love baby.

To wrap this up, I've been doing a lot of reading lately and have been getting more solid information and facts about those things I believe in the most. Mainly, veganism, environmentalism, and eating/consuming/producing locally. To me they all tie into one another, and are things that i try my best to incorporate into my life as much as I can. A lot of the time, since I am living in Beijing currently, these things are ideals. A lot of the time, though, decisions I can make everyday keep me on the right track. Always taking my own bag to the grocery market, not purchasing any packaged foods, and sticking to my vegan diet are all things that help me get there. I had a close moment earlier today when i set my first foot into Jenny Lou's on the way home. For those of you unfamiliar, Jenny Lou's is a chain store in Beijing (maybe in all of China?) that specializes in imported goods and markets to those expats starving for a taste of home.

They have everything I thought I'd never find in Beijing and more- granolas, baguettes, jams, peanut butters, candy bars, the list goes on- and theyre all the same brands i'm used to seeing at home. I felt overwhelmed, excited, and dumbfounded. They even had all those ridiculous prepackaged cake mixes from brands like Duncan Hines and Sara Lee- ridiculous because not only is making up your own cake mix minus preservatives a cinch but because 99.9% of Chinese people do not (and I feel I can say this without being racist because I've had a number of Chinese people say it to me themselves) ever EVER bake things at home. ever. They also have the largest and most comprehensive cheese section in Beijing- I've often heard the Cheese section at Jenny Lou's discussed in reverent tones at parties when Beijing's culinary differences to Europe pop into the conversation. These things having been said, it was the granola that was my downfall. With no oven of my own, I cannot make my own- which makes me want to cry. I love granola. It's so beautiful, so versatile, such a perfect meal anytime of day. Cereal in and of itself...don't get me started.

I could spend an hour easy perusing the cereal aisle of almost any store, and a good 2 hours on the ones in health food stores. My love of cereal and granola I had put away until returning home...but then, in Jenny Lou's, I saw a spectrum unlike any i could have imagined in China. They even had (though I wouldn't buy it and do not prefer it) Honey Bunches of Oats. Insanity. And then, THEN, a box of Amaranth clusters on sale for a fifth the price of all the others. I grabbed it. I grabbed two. I would have grabbed three, but a third there was not. I was exhilarated. I imagined myself in bed, with a bowl, a spoon, fresh soy milk from around the corner and my darling sweet amaranthy goodness. Then i thought about the distance it had traveled to reach me. The processing. The workers. The ridiculousness of eating something whose source was so utterly unconnected to me when I could just as easily eat the unrefined oats with corner store dried fruits from inside China- not to mention that the latter would be much better for me. I waffled. I sulked. I put the cereal back, in a show of epic and unheard of self control for this granola loving beast. The environmentalist/locally dedicated being inside me lived to see another day.

When I started that paragraph, it had a totally different aim than where it ended up. Since I'm so tired, I'm neither going to split it up to edit it nor revisit my original target. And I'll leave you with that.

love!

Touchdown.

Coming to you live from sunny SoCal, these words are tinged slightly with nostalgia, motivation, raindrops, jetlag, hot tea, cool nights, reflection, longing, decisiveness, and indecision.

After quite the long trek across many seas, one ocean, and three continents (via one train ride and three flights), I find myself writing to all of you from the living room of my maternal home, sitting on a couch struggling to revel in solitude while all i am able to honestly manage is jostled. Every item, every room, every street, every vista in my current proximity is imbued with teeming memories, each flush against the next, slightly overlapped, individual moments reflecting from different pairs of my own eyes. It's so interesting to come back after such a long time, especially interesting after seeing something new everyday for so many day, for suddenly seeing so many familiar things is making me feel...claustrophobic? No, that's not quite right. I'm feeling the presence of myself quite acutely, tangibly- more acutely than i have in quite a while. The presence, that is, of the selves of many yesterdays. The presence of my past persons is palpable in the memories of the spaces around me. My couch remembers, the driveway remembers, the tangerine tree, the street signs, the clear air on the mountains at 6 after rain knows a me from each day of the last 15 years. Sitting or standing, walking down paths well worn by my own feet, I can't help but feel like a flip-book jessie, one single in a sequence forming a complete picture only when viewed in context and in motion.

This is the mindset that I'm coming to you from.

Surveying my audience from this mood, what can i possibly share with you? What kinds of reflections on India are possible at this juncture?

For an overview and in the neighborhood of brevity, India was a country to be reckoned with, an experience that lingers like 3am on my hands. Multitudinous experiences touching such a variety of nerves that eventually a system re-set of perceptions, emotions, and reactions was achieved. I shall not forget the role of China, who had a heavy hand in this as well- it's accurate to say that the process of re-assemblage completed by India was only possible after the disassembly artfully undertaken by China. Disassembly is a slow and painful process, the strip down of desires, impulses, and duality related attachments/concepts done more by force than choice; reassembly, on the other hand, was comparatively pleasant while equally momentous.

Today I am talking entirely about inner processes initiated and pushed to fruitation mostly by (what appeared at the time to be) outer forces. I better understand the myriad of ways people build up the experience of india; the skepticism and confusion previously admitted to have been, at least in some ways, relieved and sated. I leave you at this time with the previously revealed reflections, to return to you on a later date with more concrete relations of events and occurences, more clearly defined perceptions, more sensically wrought musings.

Sweet dreams.

love&light
jess

Mother India, as She is known.

It’s 6:11pm and the sound of prayer bells is sweeping in through my windows, from across the waters of the Ganges. The scent of firesmoke drifts in from a cooking fire made by the workers across the way, and voices are echoing off the hills. It’s gotten a bit chill, so I’m wrapped up the blanket/shawl that I’ve bought to replace my thinner one.

All in all, it’s a beautiful time to be in India.

One of the things that I’m trying to uncover is what I think of India, or even what I think of the city that I’ve been laid up in for the past two weeks, Rishikesh. Before you come to India you hear many things- that India is amazing, a country of sights, sounds and textures; that India is inexplicable, that you have to experience it; that India is a rollercoaster of emotional episodes, from deep deep love to horror and pain; that India will bring you closer to your real self than you ever were before; that India is a land defined by her people, who are defined by nothing. So many things, from friends, travelogues, books, from everywhere. So many people have said, in different ways, that India will tear away all that you thought was true and replace it with an idea that is closer to who you really are, and how you really perceive the world.

But what the hell does that mean?

I’ve been pretty wary, after all of these 'sunshine and light' style comments, about deciding on anything that has been presented to me in India. I judge things pretty slowly anyway- and I think a lot of those statements have been made by people moving to India directly from a privileged, first world country- even the poorest of the poor in the states have many things that those in India can only dream of. When you move from your bubble into something so utterly and inconceivably different, it's only natural that you're going to rexamine your values and the very way you look at and interact with the world. Coming from China, and having been to some of her smallest villages, I think that I was spared this initial shock at the visceral nature of life in the thirld world. Yes, Indians live out their daily lives in full view of everyone else, yes their culture is in your face and unabashed, yes a lot of it is below standards considered safe or hygenic in the states, but for all intents and purposes, it is in many other places as well- southern China, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam…

Why then of all of these south asian countries is India singled out as this megalith of spiritual awakening and self realization? I still don’t know. It cannot be that the traveler to India is a different traveler all together- most travelers I have met here have also run the usual southeast asian gambit (Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia…). It might be that they are seeking different things, but I’ve met both the spiritual seeker who has gone only to Thailand and the average site seeing tourist come to India. What is it about this country that breeds this reaction, and breeds it so heavily across the board?

Anyone have any idea? I’m still considering the issue.

love&light
Jess

Lovely.

It's ok. Crisis averted. Passport located.

I know you were all terribly worried. Couldnt sleep. Hives. Nightsweats. I'm glad to be able to to soothe your worries and calm your fears.

but more to the point...you all totally dropped the ball. i mean, i leave an engaging conversation sparking topic, tell you that i'm giving away huge hugs for the first person to form and leave a thought out opinion, and what do i get? nothing. I mean, really people. Not one of you left something? What, you think this blog is a one way street? (for those of you who are answering either A) "yes, i do think it's a one way street. thats why its a blog and not a forum, jessie." OR B) "no, i dont think its a one way street. I think it's a webpage. Nothing to do with traffic or cars." you are both correct. but thats not the point.)

you may be curious about the advancements that I've made on uncovering traditional chinese philosophical views on female orgasm. you might not care. either way, you're going to learn. And youre going to learn in installments.

Fleshing out the Myth, Part One

From my perspective, this issue of avoiding orgasm is extremely interesting (and the issue of specifically avoiding female orgasm even more so). It comes to me, at this time, from the Chinese philosophical tradition of males avoiding orgasm to preserve their ‘jing’, their essence, an immutable and irreplaceable energy (one of three kinds: jing, qi, and shen). Built into this are the obvious complications that arise in applying the same practices prescribed for males to females, and the complications in considering spiritual or intellectual ramifications of such applications. The difficulty in truly exploring such an issue lies in separating the massive weight of cultural and social opinion from your rational mind, and considering the situation from a stance hindered by nothing more than common sense. In this global society, we are all so bombarded with opinions and ideals about sexuality from such early ages that coming to a place of clear minded un-blinkered consideration is extremely difficult, in fact, I’ve often argued that it’s impossible.

I’d like to start by saying that the reason that my exploration of this is so involved is that I don’t believe any one thing can exist without consideration of all the things that came before it- each concept and idea we hold today is shaped by the myriad of opinions and climates (social, political, environmental) that predate it. Those ideals of our parents, our respective cultures, those of conquering foreign lands and domineering religions play a large role in the perceptions that are subsequently formed by us as individuals. Hell, even the whispered utterances of the kid next door effect the opinions of the matured mind. All these influences leave an indelible mark on personal theories, whether it is realized it or not. In this way, pre-conceived notions contribute to the evolution of theories and the actions of the people those theories live within. This is why as I consider the concept of male orgasm as a release of non-renewable energy sources, a dilution of the seed, even, and the connotations of this theory on female orgasm, I insist on first acknowledging the primary influences on my own sexual knowledge.

You dig?

In re-reading this, I realize that one thing I like about blogging is that I can get away with the kind of rambling that no self-respecting professor or editor would allow into a term paper or article. Take that, sentence cutters! Hoho!

And that concludes our lecture for today. Stay tuned for more riveting forays into the deep, murky universe of withholding orgasm. To come or not to come, that is the question.

Haha, ha.

jess

My my.

Hello one, hello all. I know i've been away for a few days now, but what can i say? I'm just so busy, too busy to spend my time in front of a little screen.

Now, you may say to yourself , "what the hell. I thought she was unemployed. how is she so busy? She's a liar, that Jessie! a liar!!"

And my response is, you want to know what I have been so busy with? I'll tell you.

This month is Jessie-doesnt-eat-things-she-doesnt-cook-month. So i know what i'm eating. All the time. As a vegan, distrustfulness of eating establishments is part of my nature. Coming right down to it, as a person living in China distrustfulness of eating establishments is part of my nature. So now I'm taking matters into my own hands. And bowls. And spoons. Something I've tried to do before, but I'm commiting to now. In front of all you. And my roommates. And the stray cat we've taken in. You are all my witnesses! In this same vein, it is also Jessie-doesn't-spend-over-33-kuai(about 4.50 dollars)-a-day-month. You may think this helps your argument (because you, dear reader, are now engaged in an argument that you had NO IDEA you were entering into when you started reading this) that I'm lazy and have nothing to do, because what could someone possibly do on 33 kuai a day, but it in fact supports MY argument (hoho!) that i'm sick busy. Now I'm busy walking/subwaying/busing/bike riding it everywhere. And scampering around for the best deals. And scampering in general.

In addition to these things, I've started studying taijichuan with my roomie Scott. Now we go to Beihai park (largest, oldest imperial park in China) and get our asses kicked by taiji masters every other day. I forsee a few months of crippling thigh pain in the future. It's been less than a week and after my daily workout I can barely limp back to my room. Discipline! Thighs of steel, here i come. To add to the coolness factor, the master we study with is a direct, thats right, direct descendant of the original Chen family, and he's teaching me the pure Chen style. As though this makes him better than someone from a different country who was equally dedicated and possessed equal patience and wisdom. Which is doesnt. But it does make him sound cool.

Everyone go 'OooO'.

I've also started practicing Reiki. Everybody's doing it, right? No, in all honesty, I met a really awesome teacher who is getting me going on not only Reiki but Qigong as well. I'm excited to start Qigong. I'm just really happy in general. And I'm getting healthy and active and all kinds of fabulous things of that nature. So i'm busy. Busy utilizing all my time in productive ways. Studying. Taiqi-ing (you may have noticed various spellings of Taiqi/Taiji through this post. you may do your own research and pick the one that you like best when you want to start typing it out.). Reiki-ing. You know, the general awesome-ing that you can dependly expect from Jessie.

Oh, I forgot the naked tanning on our roof. Cause it's warm enough, unless the wind is blowing. It's important to ensure my poor, malnourished and mislead vegan body receives adequate nutrients. Serious!

And with that, I love you all and I'll talk to you soon.

Jess

Apostasy: Complete!

I'm a bad, bad blog owner. In my proverbial blog related stocking, there is nothing but coal. Being an environmentalist, I really should take more steps to prevent that from happening.

Maybe I can put together a movement to switch santa from coal to tiny solar panels. Or maybe I can just blog more and stop neglecting all of you out there in readership land.

Whats the title all about? Well, I've left my job. No more five star hotels, no more weekly jet setting all over China. No more 18 hour stints on movie sets, no more ganbei with government leaders, no more languishing in private restaurant rooms through the cigarette smoke of movie directors. No more sacrificing pretty much everything i believe in to work for a machine that I utterly loathe, in the name of saving for tomorrow. I've got to say, I'm glad to be out of the game. Now I can finally back up my constant assertion that I'd rather be poor and happy than rich and so-so. I can also back up my idea that sacrificing today for tomorrow is not the road for me. Things are as i suspected- I need little to make me happy, but the simple needs I do have are imperative. Things like reliable time for myself. Things like feeling as though the work that I do helps someone, makes a difference in this huge, complex, indifferent world. I'll figure out how to get where I want to go, but I'm going to make sure I get there doing something I enjoy and believe in. It might take longer, but I'm cool with that. Unflinching dedication to enjoying every part of my life, undying devotion to only doing things I believe in.

Oh, the writings of an idealist.

How's unemployment treating me? I'm taking time to really get back to focusing on myself and my health. And I'm feeling fabulous. It's just too bad that I don't have the money or time to get over here and regale you all with tales and updates.

In a little more general, Beijing related news, spring is palpably here. It was a little hard listening to all of the spring festival business when I still had to wrap myself in 4 layers of wool and a plastic sheet just to leave the house. But now, now it is a different story. Now, as previously mentioned, I can lounge on my rooftop patio and read a book in the sun. Now I can do things in the kitchen without worrying that, because my hands are numb with cold, I'm accidentally going to chop a fingertip in my salad without noticing. Now I can hold underwear dance parties in the courtyard. Can you tell how excited I am about these underwear dance parties?

How is everyone out there?

Love

医生, take one.

well hello, lovelies.
what can this be, but two updates in as many days? my goodness. jessie must have too much time on her hands.

what insights will be unfurled in this post? what secrets of the universe probed? more pointedly, have these probes been sanitized?

I have to admit that I have nothing off the top of my head to post about, save that today I went to the doctor. I guess that works.

Attention! This post is now aimed towards sharing the experience of visiting a traditional chinese medicine doctor in china. I'm also going to mention that if Earth Wind and Fire had been smitten with the 24th night of September instead of the 21st night, I wouldn't have reminded everytime it plays that it narrowly misses my birthday. Man, how cool would it be to have that song coincide with your birthday? I have these thoughts EVERYTIME the song comes on. It kind of ruins it. Just a little.

That is so, so beside my point.

Today I headed over to the doctor for a little check up. My roommate Scott has an awesome doctor situated over by the JingSong subway stop, a hop skip and cab ride from the GuoMao stop in CBD. I mention the GuoMao stop cause it also happens to be beside my favorite of favorite vegan restaurants in Beijing, run by my friend Li. We swung by the Vegan Cafe and nabbed some delicacies of the cruelty free persuasion.

When you pull up to this clinic, it's in the bottom floor of a building around the corner from one of the largest libraries in Beijing (a whole floor of English language books! Goody!!). Walk straight down the corridor and you hit double doors leading into a very herb-y smelling waiting room. The lovely bit about this particular doctor is that his English is very good, and the clinic serves the Japanese speaking community as well as the Chinese and English. My particular visit was comprised of two main sections- first diagnosis and then treatment. I went into a cool back room where my doctor first asked some preliminary questions- medical history, whyd you come in today, hows your diet, any appendages burst into flame lately, etc etc. Then, to continue the diagnosis section of our visit, i had my tongue examined and lay (lied? layed?) down on a low examining table from which position the doctor took my pulse, felt my glands, and felt various assorted important places on my stomache and calves. Then he did a very interested and at this point unexplained chain reaction type thing where he had an assistant hold my hand while he grasped the arm of the assistant, and (supposedly) at some unintentional change in my hand her arm would twitch and then his arm would jump. i really have no idea what this was about. i need to ask.

maybe she just wanted to hold my hand.

anyway. this was the end of my diagnosis section. at this point i was handed over to the herbalist (the doctor who did my diagnosis was a muscoskeletal specialist), who was briefed by my other doctor and did her own short diagnosis using the meridian points in my hands a feet. Chinese Medicine is concerned, in large part, with the energies flowing through your body. Meridians are the main channels that these energies flow through, and main Meridian channels cane be found in your hands a feet. The way a Meridian check goes is, you supply your hands and feet (one at a time)to the doctor, who uses and electrical gauge (which is slowly pressed into each meridian's main point) to see how strong or weak the electrical charge is coming out of each point. This machine is hooked up to the computer which registers the electrical reactions as figures that then relate to your physical wellness (or illness) and even your family's medical history.

What, you want to know what mine said? Sigh. Well, she identified that my family has a history of hormone problems (such things as breast cancer, uterine cancer, etc), which is true of not only me, but i also think of most women at this point in time. The diagnosis also identified energy deficiency that relate to organs i've had trouble with in the past, and a few choice tidbits that I didn't entirely agree with. Apparently I have emotional problems. I'm really not sure I trust that particular diagnosis farther than I could throw the machine. Anyway.

After these things, she started treatments. this included but was not limited to some slight acupuncture and a little moxibustion. i'm sure most of us are familiar with acupuncture, but moxibustion is where small herbal compresses that very much resemble mini marshmellows are lit on fire and placed on the end of your acupuncture needles. you will feel like some kind of flesh/herb/steel specialty dessert while this occurs. the smoke from the herbs affects the energies that are being furthered stimulated by the needles, and also fills the room in some kind of smoke tastic cleansing type lung related thing.

I also got a bag full of herbs to be prepared as a tea every morning and taken morning and night for the next week. then i go back next week.

hopefully i'll be in beijing, but i think i'll probably be in shanghai. sigh.

any questions?

love you all,
jessie

Le Home.

I wrote the following entry while sitting in my room, chilling out to the grooving sounds of pre-molestation charges michael jackson. here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Well, whats been going on lately? A whole lot. Theres been a lot of travel, a lot of sickness, and a whole lot of positivity to round the whole lot out. Was in Shanghai for about a week, before that (if we recall) was Guangzhou. Now I’m back in lovely lovely Beijing until Sunday. I really wish I could stay longer. It's starting to warm up and the Hutong is turning absolutely lovely. Not that it wasn’t lovely to begin with, but now I can walk around without my face freezing, peeling off, and shattering on the floor within moments of stepping into the courtyard. it’s a rather pleasant change.

Whats it like around the hutong? Well…

In addition to the weather, my roommates are extremely lovely. I’m very blessed to live with extremely good friends who are sweet, considerate, intelligent, and challenging. Scottie, my Australian roomie, is a musician (saxophone, drums, kazoo, young lady’s heartstrings), and a fabulously intelligent motivated guy. He’s our resident tai qi master, having just started the intermediate courses from the world famous masters at Bei Hai Park. He’s been studying for just over a year now, and is getting the whole hutong on the bandwagon. And he’s on a wicked health binge with no drinking and no animal products- yay! It’s nice to have someone else around who is not into drinking, and even nicer to have another resident vegan. I love living with vegans. Ohad, my Israeli roomie, is as sweet as sweet can be, and is slowly being convinced to go vegan! Slowly but surely, he’s making the change, and turning his formidable culinary skills to the task. This man has given me some seriously amazing Israeli rock and folk music, not to mention pleased my belly with some insane veganized Israeli grub. I’m just waiting for the day that we turn into a crazy vegan cook-tastic tai qi household- it’s going to be beautiful.

In terms of the hutong itself, it’s set off from the incredibly major and busy DongZhiMen Street, tucked back in the winding myriad alleyways that Beijingers traditionally live in. It’s about a ten minute walk from the street through alleyways that house other similar courtyard homes and various assorted open air markets and small (think really small. now cut that in half, and stick in your pocket.) restaurants. The hustle and bustle of the Hutong has an extremely different feel from that of the rest of the city. It’s a neighborhood, it’s small, intimate and for the most part peaceful. The hutongs are one of the very few places in the city that you can’t hear the honk of car horns, where neon advertisement’s don’t dog your every step, and where you forget for a while that you’re in the capital of an extremely populous and consumer driven country. One of the nicest things about the hutong is that every building is one story- you can see the sky and the leaves in the trees and the sun and the moon every step home.

Have I sung the Hutong’s praises long enough? I could go on for a while, but I think you get the picture. The thing is, the city’s Hutong’s are disappearing fast. They are being torn down to build new developments, high rises and shops and streamlined apartments. A few, maybe 40 or 50 of the city’s thousands, are bound (in my opinion) to be saved, gutted and renovated, for rent to foreigners and rich beijingers in the future. Hutongs are traditionally passed down through the generations, so for a lot of Beijingers this means losing a large piece of their family culture, and it means the dissaperance of neighborhoods that are rife with life and lore.

It’s not cool, and I’m extremely thankful that I’m getting to experience the hutong lifestyle before it disappears. I wake up, look out my ground story room window at the leaves in the trees, walk out my door across the open courtyard, and make my way across a few alleys to the market. It’s just so lovely, and such a rare mode of life in modern day beijing. I'm extremely grateful to live on the ground and shop at a local un-plastic laden open air market. Sigh. So lucky.

Peace
Jessie

Well isn't this a long post?

Sometimes my world travel exploration is really nothing more than sitting in a coffee shop in a new city, ordering a pot of tea and a plate of fries, and hanging out with my laptop. Really what I'm doing right now i could be doing from any city (well, any city with internet, tea, and fries)and indeed is something that i've done in most cities i've visited. So where is all the exlporation? Is it really travel if i stay within the confines of a familiar bubble, and upon moving, simple pick up the entire thing and shift it?

Ok ok, in all fairness i rarely do what i'm doing right now and the only reason I'm indulging is that I'm only in this city for about 8 hours, I have a heavy bag, and I need to stay in the vicinity of the bus station. But still, these ideas are something to consider, and things that I do often.

I've been thinking a lot about travelling and learning, exploring and discovering and what it all means. Right before i left Hawaii this last time i began to flirt with the ideas of exploring and travelling at home, delving deeper into the essences of everyday events as opposed to seeking the (sometimes) superficial knowledge of 'exciting' 'exotic' things. To say it another way, I've been contemplating the differences between knowing a lot about a little instead of a little about a lot. Now that I'm travelling more and more, indeed more than I ever thought I would, I find myself revisiting this topic more and more,and as I ponder my actions and their incentives I have been rolling three quotes over in my head. The first one is by Proust, something that lodged itself in my head incorrectly and, thanks to a conversation with a friend, i recently revisited and corrected my memory of. it goes like this:

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees. -Marcel Proust

This is the first quote that I encountered along the lines re-discovering the old, and though it does not quite get to the roots of what i've been mulling over, i still think it is worth comment and it is something that I've thought about at different stages in my life. It's not only about rediscovering your daily life but also about acknowledging that we all see the world around us through certain filters, be they related to culture, age, sex, orientation, or something as simple as the differences between a right handed person's experiences and left handed person's. It is about not only becoming more familiar with your own reality but giving space to and exploring the realities of those around you. Very interesting.

The next quote also skirts around the edges of my main issue a bit, but is definately relevant to the way that i've been living my life the past few months. Those of you've that I've been talking to regularly know that in this particular branch of the tree that is my life (aha, i'm so poetic.) I've encountered something entirely foreign and rather challenging- i want to go home. I find myself pining for and lusting after a place that I've already been. Novel. For someone who has always been sniffing around the next plane ticket, it's an interesting and, blessedly, welcome change. It is a development that comes at a rather ironic and also quite challenging time, considering the fact that I've finally gotten myself into a lucrative and comfortable groove and indeed will not be returning home for a matter of months. Some of you may scoff at 'months' and advise me that it is but a blip in the saga of my far reaching life, but when a person hasnt lived in one place for more than 3 months in over two years time she begins to relate to time in different ways that most people. A month or two here or there is a very different concept in the world of Jessie than it is in the world of most people. Thusly, this interesting dilemma I find myself in is rather ironic, and though irksome and irritating, i must admit it is a predicament i find myself glad to be in. I look forward to arriving home and finally living without the constant itch of wanderlust invading my thoughts and senses. This next quote plays upon this theme,revolves around ideas of what exactly it is to use the time you have at your discretion in a truly useful manner. I know that I have been guilty of looking past the present in attempts to grasp at the future. It is something that though I am aware of, and was aware of while living in Hawaii, I find extremely difficult to stop- especially now that I feel I've found what I really truly want (to return home). I identify very strongly with this quote, and find that it is a rather good example of the way that I have not only been abusing my travel experiences recently but is also analogous to the way I misused a lot of my last respite period at home. It is from the book Siddartha, and was written as follows:

“Are you not also a seeker of the right path?”
There was a smile in Siddhartha’s old eyes as he said: “Do you call yourself a seeker, 0' venerable one, you who are already advanced in years and wear the robe of Gotama’s monks.”
“I am indeed old,” said Govinda, “but I have never ceased seeking. I will never cease seeking. That seems to be my destiny. It seems to me that you also have sought. Will you talk to me a little about it, friend?”
Siddhartha said: “What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.”
“How is that?” asked Govinda.
“When someone is seeking,” said Siddhartha, “it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, un­able to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, be­cause he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, 0' worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Very poignant, that quote. I mull over it quite a bit.

The third quote speaks directly to the concepts that have been most recently on my mind, and is by TS Eliot, a man whose writing i have never really taken the time to read. Interestingly enough, I just learned from Wikipedia that his birthday is 100 years and two days after my own. Odd. Anyway, onto the quote that I'm trying to introduce. In addition to chastising myself for wasting my time traveling being preoccupied with thoughts of home (a mirror of the time I spent at home fantasizing about travelling) I've been consdering where it is (spiritually speaking) all of this travelling is going to drop me off. I'll leave it at that for now and let you go ahead and read the quote.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot, "Little Gidding" (from the last of his Four Quartets)

On a similar, or unrelated note (depending on how you look at it) a song that was popular when i was in high is for some reason all of the sudden all the rage in southern china. and its playing in the coffee shop over my fries, tea, and L word. Sigh.

This post was written to the strains of Move On Up by Curtis Mayfield, a song that finds itself of late on constant repeat in the life of one Jessie Marie.

Love
J

lovely day

So I'm sitting again in the business center of this hotel, staring out the curtains at the dreary sky and writing a small love note to all you out there in readerland.

the weather, beauteous though it may be, is apparently not condusive for shooting a movie. the fog won't lift off the mountains and the droplets won't stay in the clouds. i mean, i love it, but the film crew is less thrilled. i'm still trying to book my flight to hong kong, which is proving to be difficult. we're in a rather secluded area in southern china and apparently the only two airports with international flights are equidistant from our current location- about a three hour drive. and, with the rain, no one is sure if we're going to stay and wait it out or opt to move to the next location (a beach!) and then return here in a week or so to wrap up. so i don't know where we'll be and which airport to fly out of. but enough of my griping, cause i'm sure i'll figure it out. or, i might get kicked out of country and banned from returning for overstaying my visa. those are both options.

what else? like i said, when i get to hong kong i'll send out a few more emails and replies- with 12-18 hour days it's a little hard to drag myself to the business center to sit in front of the monitor. lately it's sleep vs. send emails, run vs. send emails, or buy fruit vs. send emails. i think you guys can all guess what wins out in most of those battles. and if you cant, you can use your collective inboxs as a clue.

unless youre my mom. she still gets emails. right mom? right.

anywho, its beautiful outside, so im going to go frolic next to the lake in the fog. fog fog. i love fog. mist! mist is better. this is mist, not fog. mmm, mist.

love
jessie

A little Me for some of You

I don’t usually do lists and questionnaires, but this one is more of an exercise. An exercise, at that, that I think everyone should take a little time and do. It’s taken from The Televisionary Oracle by Rob Breszny, a book that I also think everyone should read. Please? I put it up here not cause I think you care, but cause I hope you’ll do it too.

"Now it's time, beauty and truth fans, to test how receptive you are to further immersion in the Drivetime.Please answer as many of the following questions as you can. Work with ferocious intensity and/or gentle reflection. Don't push on till you're exhausted, but try to come as close to total combustion as you can.Be innocently truthful and spontaneously thoughtful, or else gratuitously sarcastic and recklessly flippant. If you find yourself responding with ideas that you used to believe but don't any more, abandon them and start over.Take advantage of this rare opportunity to be creative and authentic for no reason. Don't save yourself for "something better.""

1. What did you dream last night?I dreamt that…that I was in love with an astronaut that I was also acquaintances with, who was alive simultaneously in the 70s and the present. He helped me to hijack a shuttle and wait to send it into outer space for about half a month, so that we could expose the heresies of those in control. But I think in the end it turned out he had a lady.

2. What image or symbol represents the absolute of your desires?I’m not sure I believe in an absolute of my desires. Plus, if I did and if it had a symbol, it would be far too easy to lose.

3. In what ways has your fate been affected by invisible forces you don't understand or are barely aware of?My fate is always affected by those invisible forces. For instance, me right now sitting in this hotel room in southern china working as I do and living like I do…who knows what exactly it was that made me buy that plane ticket that Sunday in Hawaii? Something hit me, and I did it. Why did I apply to that specific ad on the Beijinger that put me in contact with the woman who happened to know about this job? Everyday I live is affected by those forces. Take today for example- I ate an unusually starchy breakfast and as a result didn’t get carsick on the drive I didn’t know we’d take into the mountains. I call that the influence of inexplicable forces. I love those forces, and I hope to sync with them in more and more luscious ways.

4. Tell a good lie.Good? I am a fire breathing snake monster of the deep come to exorcise you and me of all the insecurity that holds us back from being vigorously alive, every millisecond.

5. What were the circumstances in which you were most dangerously alive?Living with my best friend, running around in her beat up car blasting fat beats, scaring ducks all day and dancing all night.

6. Are you a good listener? If so, describe how you listen. If not, explain why not.I am a good listener- I listen sensitively, compassionately, and also rationally. I’m going to tell you precisely what I think when you’re done talking, except I won’t judge you while I do it. I realize that inside your story, there is a lesson- one for you, and one for me.

7. Compose an exciting prayer in which you ask for something you're not supposed to. I’m not supposed to ask again to go back to Beijing, but I want to! Please please please boss woman who pays me make the decision to take me back to Beijing before the 5th so I can see Sophie and treat her to dinner.

8. What's the difference between right and wrong?There isn’t one, there is only a difference in perspective.

9. Name something you've done to undo, subvert, or neutralize the Battle of the Sexes.I live everyday not as a woman, not as a man, but as myself. I reject the idea that any person needs to act anyway because they happen to have one kind of reproductive part or another in their pants. And I fall in love with people, not with characteristics, tendencies, or habits. I strive to be beautiful because I’m true, not because I’m good at disguising my faults with accessories. And I love the faults I find in others, passionately and without limit.

10. Have you ever witnessed a child being born? If so, describe how it changed you.I witnessed myself being born, does that count? I haven’t been able to pull up the memories yet though, so I can’t describe it to you at the moment.

11. Compose a beautiful blasphemy that makes you feel like crying.I’m going to take this opportunity to exercise my right to not feel like doing something, and instead peel an orange.

12. What do you do to make people like you?I used to flirt with everyone, but I’m trying to move away from that. Now I listen to people and try to think of everyone I encounter as my brother or my sister.

13. If you're not familiar with the Jungian concept of the "shadow," find out about it. If you are, good. In either case, give a description of the nature of your personal shadow.The nature of my shadow is confused and indecisive. She relies too heavily on others, and can make no decisions of her own. She only creates after regurgitating other’s work.

14. Talk about three of your most interesting personalities. Give each one a name and a power animal.A. Dolores- Dolores loves running up hills. She loves being playful and skipping down the street on every other stone- the way you did when you were a kid. Her power animal is an otter. She likes to mismatch striped patterns.Gretchen- Gretchen is a power lesbian, androgynous though leaning towards the feminine. Her power animal is a great, hulking black bear who also pirouettes through the woods like a prima ballerina.Hilda- Hilda is a witch who lives in the forest, knows exactly what is wrong with you but doesn’t really care. If you go and ask really nicely Hilda’ll put on an act to scare you and then give you exactly the herbs you need to be cured. All of Hilda’s herbs are a mixture of potent forest plants and reverse psychology. Hilda’s power animal is a tyrannosaurus rex, and Hilda prefers to be referred to as a male. The last lover to know for sure if Hilda has male bits or female bits flew away on the wind a century ago, so no one today is really knows.

15. Make up a dream in which you lose control and thereby attract a crowd of worshipers.I’m in China, on the set we’re currently shooting at. Far away into the mountains, an hours drive out of the city, next to a clear and bustling stream. One day, on set, I do precisely what it is I’ve been yearning to do for the past weeks. I shed all of my clothes and dive into the river naked, luxuriating in the icy cold purification. People on set are at first controlled by their conditioning, and horrified…then they come around and set about shedding their insecurities and hopping into the water. I never have to spend another day on set standing around, but am allowed to explore to my hearts content so long as I return at meal time.

16. Name your greatest unnecessary taboo and how you would violate it if it didn't hurt anyone.I’d be naked more of the time. If no one was plunged into inner turmoil because they’ve been conditioned by society to sexualize the body, I’d be naked around pretty much everyone I know. Unfortunately, people these days think that nakedness = some form of sexual attraction or implication, so I can’t do it around everyone with out stirring up trouble. As of right now, only my best friend, lovers, and mother are so lucky as to have a completely comfortable Jessie in their presence.

17. Give an example of how smart you are in the way you love. How smart I am doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m particularly smart, right? Cause I need to start this off by mentioning that I don’t find myself overly intelligent in that area. But I am passionate- I guess I’ll chalk that up to smartness. I’m smart enough to (most of the time) not let trivializations get in the way of how passionate I feel for anyone, even myself. And I don’t play games.

18. What ignorance do you deserve to be forgiven for? None! I’ll own all of them and their consequences. On the other hand- All. How can I be held accountable for something I didn’t know?

19. What was the pain that healed you the most?I would have to say the pain that came right before I came to China the first time…It made me face all the other pains, which were more epic in scale than that one. It spiraled me into myself and made me realize that above all, the only one that hurts me is me.

20. Make a prediction about yourself.I’m coming into myself and will not give up on any project until I’ve learned everything I need to learn or until it becomes counter productive to continue with it. I’ll learn how to say “I” so strongly that I can truly be the “I that Loves to Say I Love You”, and I’ll stop trying to get others to make my decisions for me.

***EXTRA CREDIT***In the ancient Greek epic, Odysseus and his men become stranded on an island belonging to the sorceress Circe. In a famous scene, Circe uses magic to turn the men into pigs. Later, though, in an episode that's often underemphasized by casual readers, she changes them back into men--only they're stronger, braver, and more beautiful than before they were pigs. Tell an analogous story from your own life

Brave New World

I've had little access to the intertubes lately, and as such the silence that you've all been witness to has ensued in blog land. Even though I've had no way to post, I've been in a particularly creative mood. A lot of the writing i do goes into various journals and documents that are never seen by anyone but myself. I have a lot of things to say, but a lot of them only really need saying to myself. I'm going to crack open a few of these documents and share here, and I'm also going to breach some topics that do not usually grace this blog. This slew of postings is the accumulated fodder from the past week or so, from a variety of my outlets.

On my days off, I like to go on long walks, I like to write, and I like to eat only fruit. On days that i do work, I work long hours and wrap up the day with only enough productive energy for personal reflection. Today I had the day off, and I took the opportunity to pull together a few things that I’ve been ruminating on the past week or so. It is thusly that you find the rash of postings below. I’m starting it all with this little disclaimer because I know that I do not usually talk about my veganism (even though it is right up there in the address to my blog). I have been writing this blog mostly about my travels in China and my feelings/reactions to what I see here. That is going to start altering. I am vegan, I am proud, and I am going to start letting the combination of these two things color more of my interactions with the world. If one person reads this and is interested in these things even the smallest way, that’s enough for me. In addition to my veganism, my liberal socialist queer change-worshiping philosophies might make an appearance or two. Lovely.

Onward ho, I suppose.

Poisoned Beauty

I think Chinese markets are a glorious revelation, their herb, fruit, and vegetable sections intrigue and arouse me as nothing else in the world can- and it is fitting, I think, that my greatest love, awash with vivid colors, variety, and the honest faces of farmers, in one aspect so beautiful is in another aspect so horrible. To me these markets are the perfect example of all the rest of the world. On one hand, a brilliant and riotous showcase of all the blessings the earth has to offer. On the other hand, a poignant and true representation of the cruelest possibilities of human culture. Before I enter the alleyways of any such market, I have to steel myself.
One, steel myself for the revelation of rows upon rows of dirt encrusted vegetables that make me weak in the knees. The delectable existence of kimchi vendors- old women hunched amoung all manner of pickled vegetables, wares spread upon rickety wooden tables. Piles of jubilant citrus fruits, cool green leaves laying against gleaming orange rind. Tables piled high with bananas- heaping piles 5 feet across and 2 feet high. The little old men who spread carpets on the dusty ground and upend bags of peanuts, creating peanutty pyramids of delectable goodness to be weighed and distributed by the luscious pound. These things, the bustle of buyers and the multitude of fresh wares, arouse and delight me the way no lover can. So much variety, so much color, so much food! I die every time.
Two, I steel myself for the flesh trade. There is a curious habit of all the butchers that I’ve seen, and I’ve seen quite a few in Southern China, of taking a pig’s face and nailing it, through the nostril, to the front of their butchering block. Not the skull, just the facial skin. Most thighs and flanks still have the hoof attached at the bottom. Skulls with eyeballs intact usually line the left side a block, intestines and organs the front, and slabs of flesh the interior and right sides. Rib cages usually hang from hooks on the right side. And, when I say butchering blocks I mean it in the most medieval sense of the phrase- large wooden blocks line the coursing open air market, individuals wielding cleavers part bone from flesh and flesh from fat as you order. The only animals kept alive in the market are ducks, chickens, roosters, geese and ganders, fish, frogs and turtles. Cows, pigs, dogs, rats, gophers, ferrets, pheasants, and other small fowl are all killed and plied at market as corpses. I’m going to leave off here, as the subsequent posts get into my more visceral reactions.
Suffice to say, this is the dichotomy I encounter at the market. Delight and wonder lines one side, horrid suffering the other.

What I've Seen

There is a definition of veganism that is particularly poignant to me, and makes up one aspect of my multi-faceted choice to abstain from all animal products; it is known as ‘bearing witness’. It is the idea that at each meal a vegan sits down to, particularly those meals that include omnivorous and ovo-lacto vegetarian dishes, the vegan is acting as a silent witness for those animals slaughtered and abused to create the delicacies laid out. I am fond of this take on the issue. I like to think that each meal I eat, even those where I do not say a word concerning the tidbits comprising my companion's meals (which is most meals), or even those meals I eat alone or with other vegans, that by refusing to consume torture and debasement I am acting as a reminder of those things. In my early vegetarian days and even early vegan days, I sought to make it clear that I did not want anyone to feel uncomfortable eating meat or dairy products in my presence. I have since reversed that. I want you to feel uncomfortable. I want my presence to make it so that you cannot block out the cruelties inflicted on the hunk of steaming flesh adorning your plate, I want you to be pushed closer to consciously examining the actions you take part in. Consciously examine the ways that you have previously blocked this out, and I want you to be one step nearer to conscious liberation from the cooing and coddling of the meat and dairy industry, the cooing and coddling that made it possible for you to ignore the feelings of what you've been eating for so long. Past that, I want you to think about the global impact of what you eat. I want you to research it yourself, to become a blazing beacon of passionate curiosity about how each decision you make affects the planet. If I can do this by making you uncomfortable meal after meal, so be it. Let the uncomfortableness begin.

I want to supplement this with two excerpts, unedited, from my journal. I don’t usually put raw emotional reactions up here, cause those are private. These I think can be shared.

1/1/09 Lucid
The mornings haul: 5 mandarin oranges, 3 blood oranges, 2 apples, 2 lilikoi, 4 dried persimmons, 2 roasted sweet potatoes
Total: Somewhere around one American Dollar
Other acquirements: Smells of slaughter and torture, fresh pure vegetables line one side and cold cramped cages stuffed to capacity the other. Light on leaves of light green lettuce and feet on blood, shit, piss of disregarded creatures. Cries go unheard through the barter of the flesh trade. Woman torches hair off dog carcass (one of 3) while daughter (about 3) plays nearby. Small wizened old woman tips garbage pail into cart, tipping still warm organs into the refuse of hooves, hair, intestine. Toads bulge inside net bags, a similarly enmeshed turtle paws the side of a shining white Styrofoam cage.
You are no different, America.
Cattle farms, chicken coops.
Pet your dog while you eat your steak.
Hypocrite.

1/2/09 Lucid
Today’s market run yielded: 5 apples, 6 bananas, 3 large 1 small roasted sweet potato
Total: About 10 kuai
Saw more small dogs today, the butchered kind.
Also saw rats both roasted and laid out freshly killed, two gophers, something that was either a ferret or a large kitten. A shop with extraordinarily painful looking metal traps in various sizes outside. Bowls filled with glistening hearts grace the cage tops of their corresponding animals. Conical wicker cages the last housing for dirty, cramped fowl. Shops are two tiered. In the front, lining the street, iron cages cage birds 20 to every 4 square feet. Animals, feet bound still alive, are weighed while eyes roll and throats cry. Behind, inside three walls and a roof, the holding pens. Flocks huddle, waiting to be chosen for death and de-feathering. Women sit inside with the flocks, over bowls of dingy water plucking down from wings and breast. A motorbike, two breathing ducks strapped to the back, rumbles past.
The Nazis, at least, never ate their victims.

I want to make it clear that my opinion of these Southern Chinese markets is not any lower than my opinion of the meat and dairy industry in America. In fact, quite the opposite. At least the people here deal directly with their food. Go to the market, see the conditions with their eyes, handle the still warm and struggling creatures (or, rather, ‘food’) with their own hands and hearts and psyches. Most Americans, most large city dwellers in fact, are so utterly removed from this process that the closest they come to their food is plastic wrapped hunks of once warm flesh cooling in the local deli section. I would also like to clarify the fact that I made mention of the dogs and other small creatures more than I do the pigs, cows, pheasants, chickens, ducks, and fish because I am unused to seeing them. Not because I find their slaughter and consumption anymore cruel. I know some readers will be more upset to hear about these animals being treated in such a way, and I want those of you this feel that way to consider why some animals are OK to abuse and kill and eat, and others are not. If you realize that you feel that way because that is the way you were raised, because that is what big daddy culture told you, you are one step closer to living and consuming consciously. The next step is to plumb within yourself, and decide if you agree or disagree with what you've been told.

If anybody would like links to more information about veganism, or about ways that you can make a healthy transition in your life, here are some to peruse:

Nutrition

Vegan.org

Non-edibles

In addition to those information pages, I myself read (these are only a few of my addictions...)

Food Snobbery is My Hobbery

Get Sconed!

Vegan Crunk

Oh yes.

It is Christmas time in the Jing, complete with a decking of the halls and more than a few jingling bells. Ironic, isnt it, that the most 'traditional' Christmas I'll be having will be in the capital of a Communist country?

The bite of winter wind and settling of snow somehow makes all of the carols more palatable for me. These things, these trappings of festive-ness, were difficult for me to handle growing up in Los Angeles...a city even farther removed from the homeland of these traditions than early colonies like Plymouth or New York. At least in New York the felling of pine trees and songs about 'dashing through the snow' are pertinent- in Los Angeles they seem down right silly. Forget all of the other issues i have with Christmas (Christmas being a commercialized Christian holiday- and commercialization and Christianity being two of the things i agree with the least), but celebrating reindeer and snowmen in a desert climate has always been despicable to me. I mean...couldn't the holiday have been tweaked to at least fit the local community celebrating it? Yea, I know, i've heard of the whole palm tree in place of a pine tree thing, but who really does that? I can understand that people living all over the nation want to celebrate the holiday, but I think that if we look to the deeper meaning of the season it becomes apparent that we don't need the exact same decorations and songs everywhere. What is being celebrated is the birth of a savior, not a fat old guy in a fur trimmed suit or the first snow of the season. I mean, moving Christmas back and into winter was originally done to sync it up to Winter Solstice, no? As a way to make it more palatable to pagans? I mean, I feel like we could have at least kept up with the theme of adapting the holiday to suit it's new celebrants- right? Or is that just too hopeful?

Anyway, it is thus that i find myself tolerating rather than despising the Merry Christmas signs and songs that bedeck Beijing at this time of year- at least songs about snow and sleds are relevant in Northern China. That is until I remember that I'm in China, and this is a Christian holiday, and all the Santas are Caucasian, and the only reason Christmas exists here is as a consumerism extravaganza. Then I cry a little on the inside.

And on that note, I'm going to get going. I have to fly down to sunny, warm Southern China in a few hours and there are some Buddhist confection shops that need hitting up for inflight snacks. I'll be in Guangxi for a few days, the southern province that borders Canton, Hunan, and Vietnam. It's purported to be mountainous and beautiful, full of wild expanses and ancient culture. Hopefully, hopefully hopefully i won't be stuck in a city the whole but will have the nature break that i so desperately need. Then again with a projected temperature of 72 degrees farenheit, I'll be happy to just stand in the street. I'll give you the scoop and let you guys know how it is once I'm home.

love&luz
Jessie

Mrrr.

I'm listening right now to a few tracks off the new John Legend CD. How thatll affect the tone of the post, I dont know. If, in the middle of reading this, you feel the urge to push away all the worries of the day and admit that you love me, and only me, will love me for the rest of our lives and want to spend everynight slow dancing in the middle of our apartment in candlelight, chalk it up to John and not to my writing skills. And put the roses away, I'm not into that romantic stuff.

If, on the contrary, you feel the urge to make banana pancakes and pretend like it's the weekend now (we could pretend it all the time!), I'm down for that. Cause, we all know things fall apart and tend to shatter, but I'm like that shit dont matter.

Ok, enough of this tomfoolery. No more song quotes. I'm not perfect, but I'm this that and this.

So Beijing is a beautiful city. Beautiful in the way that everything is beautiful, so long as you push yourself to see it. I'm becoming masterful at this. I thought that i was before, but 'before' i lived in Hawaii...not hard to see beauty in everything you see there. Beijing in the winter when you miss your family, miss not freezing, miss sunsets and sunrises and clear skies and clean air and beach runs with your friends...this can test even the most seasoned beauty seeker. It can seem a little, *gasp*, bleak. Luckily there are things that like hot sweet potatoes roasted fresh and whole over burning coals in little concrete drums on wagons in the streets. There are similarly roasted chestnuts in shops set up against the dower buildings, warm sweet finger thawing. There are fresh mandarin oranges in the mornings, peeled under a warm comforter in a cozy room, hiding from the hazy sunny gnawing frost. There are the dolled up girls, prancing in high heels short skirts thick leggings and fat fat waist length winter coats. They spit in the streets, the subways, and they make me stare when they walk past. Me in my knit hat, thick scarf, and long baggy dark blue coat. I make no one stare, save for the color of my skin and texture of my hair.

There is a crescent moon, pale orange through the haze, gracing the sky tonight. I look at it and i remember all the places i've looked at it before. LA streets lined up in the cold, Frisco pavement on the way home, Oahu park with a blanket and a bottle, Big Island beaches chilly and desolate. So beautiful, all. When I add to that list my current dark beijing hutong, icy dark and bustling, nothing seems quite so bad.

Tally for today:
2 kaui 3 mao for a bag of 6 mandarin oranges.
I think that puts me at 95.6 kuai spent so far.
Not bad.

love&luz

A little rest, A little movement.

So, as i mentioned in the last post, things have not been the easiest in China. I've been sick since I arrived and experiencing the kind of shock only someone who was raised in a LA and made their home in Hawaii can experience upon their first introduction to a real winter. Much to my dismay, the changing of the seasons involves something more than a 20 degree shift in temperature...

But all that aside, all that in stride, I've had things pretty easy. I have somewhere to stay, I have good friends who I am fortunate enough to also live with, and I have food to eat. My health may not be the best, but its still much better than it could be. I've got electricity and I've got internet access (though both are a little tempermental...). Right now is just about shifting my proverbial weight until i hit the comfy spot on the couch that is Beijing. It'll come. At the moment I'm looking to move into a different spot, something a little less expensive than what I have right now. In addition to being a tad pricey, my current locale has me speaking English, and lots of it, on a daily basis- as such my Mandarin is rapidly deteriorating. I also need to get over the BeiHai park and enroll in their Taiji Chuan courses- 2400 rmb for the first 76 postures, as many classes for as long you want until you get them all down. I am stoked on this. I also need to either get a private tutor or enroll in some Mandarin courses. Since I can get a visa extension through a school, I'm leaning towards taking that path, but depending on price and convenience we'll see. I might have to take a jaunt down to Hong Kong come February to sort out visa business.

Still, Beijing is lovely. I've got a fresh produce market right around the corner, and a nut hut a few yards beyond that. I love the nut hut. Partially because when i see it i think 'Nut hut!' and partially because, well, i can get lots of raw nuts and seeds for cheap. Yay cheap!

How is the 200 kuai per week going, you ask? Heres a break down of the past two days.

Bag Oatmeal, bag each dried apricots, dried dates, dried something-tangy: 40 kuai
Bag Carrots, Spinach, Cucumber, Parsely, Oranges, Bananas; 9 kuai
Bag Raw Walnuts, Roasted Peanuts: 43 Kuai

So far I'm at 92 kuai. Not too bad, as the oatmeal will be food for at least the whole week. I'll keep you guys posted.

Jess

Mmm, sleep.

I need to update, and thusly, I am updating.

See, I do this thing whenever a thought occurs to me that I want to blog about, or whenever I see something that I want to make mention of- I make up a little outline in my head of how the blog post is going to go. The problem with this is it makes me feel as though I've already blogged for the day. And I haven't. But I think i have. It's a vicious cycle, especially when I start to do little blog outlines in my head that detail how I haven't been blogging lately. I've done this for the past two days.

In the past week or so since I've blogged I've gotten better (Sicksies no more!) And gotten a little more work. A lot of things that I've wanted to comment on have also happened (like Transgender Victims of Violence Day, Thanksgiving, and finding out that I make more in a month than the Chinese girls i work with make in a year), and I haven't commented on any of them. But I'm going to. At least, the last one. And there is a new J.Filth Challenge. By new, I also mean first.

I just wrote a long paragraph talking about why it is that I'm doing the challenge I'm doing, but then i read it over and realized that I'm too tired right now to write it in the proper, analytical way it needs to written. If you don't believe me, read over that sentence I just wrote and then imagine an entire explanative paragraph full of ones just like it. No good. So I'm going to settle for telling you the challenge and then giving you one sentence on why, with more to come tomorrow or the next day. Probably the next day. I have a lot of classes to teach tomorrow.

I'm going to be living, for the next month at least, on 200 kaui per week. Relatively speaking it should be easy, since every trip to the market costs between 4 and 7 kuai (for a bag full of veggies) and the oatmeal i make every morning (including the dried fruit i buy to go into it) costs about 40 kuai per supermarket trip. It's easy to get into this habit on converting prices to dollars in your head, but thats no good. I want to start counting a kuai as a kuai and not as a fraction of a dollar. This also means little (or at least price concious) going out, no frivolous taxi rides, and no spending anything without thinking about it. I'm going to update on here, everyday, about what got spent on what.

Why? Cause I know it's possible and i'm looking to both simplify and be more concious of exactly what it is i need to get by (i have a sneaking suspicion it's not much, and much less than what I currently consume). I want to cut back my consumption to things I actually need.

Now I'm going to do something else I actually need, like sleep. I'll be cool and analytical on my next post. Swear!

love&luz

tiredjessie

sicksies

It's bloody cold.

It's nice to know, from things like the comments on the last post, that there are people out there in reader land. I assume that some of you are lurkers, but commenting to say hi makes me want to keep on posting to say hi back :)

This post is going to be short and sweet cause it's rather late here and i'm rather sickly and tired. My fingers are in the process of defrosting. For those of you who have never lived in a cold climate (those of you like myself, spoiled and privileged to have only ever lived in sweet sweet seasonless bliss), let me give you a small window into the trials and tribulations of an LA bred, Honolulu relocated winter-that-is-actually-cold newb like me.

I washed my clothes today. In China, people have come to realize that if you wash your clothes and then you hang them or lay them outside, they will dry. Because of this, people in China do not use clothing driers (people in places like America would do well to take note of this Eastern ingenuity). Now, sloven and lazy being that i am i only washed my clothes because of a lack of both clean underwear and clean second pants ('second pants' being what the norwegian has got us what in the States we call 'thermals'). As such, tonight at 1:30am on my way to bed, I realized that tomorow i would be hard up indeed if my clothes were not dry by daybreak. This is how the 1:30am freezing cold hanging up of freezing cold wet clothing in the freezing cold courtyard came about. My fingers have never been so cold. You cannot wear mittens or gloves to hang up wet clothing. You can only use your poor, warm blood, unprotected fingers. They will never forgive you. You will type funny for a few days.

I feel like now that my readership has blossomed (kind of, sort of, a little) i should do things like follow through on my promises, go over my posts before i post them, and maybe hit spellcheck.

Instead I'm going to do things like say 'trials and tribulations' and then only give you one story, not look over my post at all with sincere conviction that i am always flawless, and shrug off spellcheck just cause i can.

love you.
jess

Brrr.

Fatigued.
I'm tired.

So, a lot of people on the vegan blogsphere are making posts about their 'go to' foods, or their comfort foods. I thought i'd go ahead and share mine with you all, since i've been eating it rather often of late.

Now, let me preface this by stating that I am an 80 year old woman, and you cannot judge little old ladies on the things they eat. Not many of you know it, but deep down inside i'm that little old lady who cringes at roller coasters and microwaves, the one who rinses out ziplock bags to use again. I'm rather proud of this, and I think it's rather sexy (just cause theres snow on the roof doesn't mean theres no fire in the oven, eh? eh?).In this same vein, my Oma (another small, old lady) has two sets of things she cooks- one set for other people, and one set for her. She constantly claims that the things she likes to eat no one else likes- they represent the strange and unmarketable culinary misfits that she deems good enough for her but not good enough for anyone else. I can sympathize with her, because i feel this way about a number of the foods i like to eat. This is why i do not offer them to people. I, like my Oma, know that i can cook 'better', but 'better' is not necessarily what i prefer. Case in point, my comfort food.

Boiled Sweet Potatoe.

Unseasoned, rather mushy, still in tuber form, boiled sweet potatoe.
Lately the one's i buy from market fit perfectly, cut in half, in the rice cooker pot i throw on the table top burner in the kitchen. I boil these suckers, shucking peanuts while watching the pot in my below the knee cashmere coat (the kitchen is inhumane amounts of cold), and then retire to my room with two plain halves of a boiled sweet potatoe in a bowl.
It's sweet potatoe heaven.

Then i take out my dentures for the night and crawl into bed.
But seriously, what can match the pure unadulterated delight that is warm, mushy, boiled sweet potatoe? Skin all soft though still adding that toothsome edge to counteract the soft and yielding sunset hued flesh? Okay, maybe i do enjoy them too much. Fuck it.

What else has been up lately? More job searching, bearing little though some fruit for my labors. The roomies and i have hauled a concrete block onto the rooftop patio above my room for a makeshift fireplace. We fill it with logs and huddle around it under the darkening, pollution tinged winter sky. We roast things in it. We are hunting for a cast iron so we can make baked goods. We shall be triumphant beijing gods of winter.

On a side note, while i wait for scottie to boil us some tea, i'll tell you what happened between the last paragraph and this line.

Scottie came home, hollered ahoy across the courtyard and shambled off to his room. Shrugging on my coat I went after and stole some of his ever so potent (it's got the taste and consistency of congealed jager) chinese herbal throat medicine stuff. Then we shambled over to the kitchen and did what two sick room mates suffering the Beijinger pre-winter weather do: downed raw cloves of garlic. Ohad, le Israeli roomie, insists this will make us better. I took mine, like a little 80 year old lady, unadulterated and pure. Scottie had to do his in glasses of water. Pansy.
Now what we refer to as "the garlic shivers" are descending, so i'm going to go to sleep. For those of you who have never munched your way through a handful of raw garlic cloves, the stuff makes you feel really, really weird.
l
ove&luz

jess