yawn!

Hello All!

So, I've been very very internet-less in Southern China for the better part of the last week. The period of blog-silence that precedes that week I have no excuse for, except to say that i was reveling in being at home in Beijing and as such was loathe to surrender my time to sitting in front of the little glowing square that is my laptop monitor.

This is going to be a very short post, cause its cold in this computer room the hotel is lending me and i need to go get some sleep- running a couple miles everyday is making me love and cherish sleep in ways that, well, i never thought i could. this coming from the girl who was, as an infant, infamous for catnaps is quite the statement.

i love you all and when i hit hong kong next week i will not only post, but send emails and reply to things on facebook. imagine that!

love
jessie

新年快乐！

It's New years in china, there are fireworks and firecrackers everywhere.

And this is stuck in my head:



Love you guys, more posts when i'm in Southern China. I leave tomorrow!

Videolovenote

Quick Note

This is what is going through my head, most of the day.

Love/luz
Jess

It's 11pm and...

Sometimes the nightsky in Beijing is red. Dull, post-apocaplyptic red. It's really rather unsettling.

Also, it's so cold here that in preparation for the vanilla ice cream i plan on making tomorrow, I put a banana outside to freeze. Outside. To freeze.

Sigh. What else is going on in this Great Big Communist Capitalist Capital?

A lot of interesting things. Spring Festival is coming (Chinese New Year, that is), and the police came by yesterday to tell us to make sure and lock up because it's the largest theivery holiday in China. Also, little stickers warning not to let off firecrackers in the hutong went up a few days ago. I'm still spending every other day ensconced in CCTV headquarters, watching all kinds of super fantastic preparations and rehearsals for Spring Festival Extravanganza (SFE), watching, that is, through the omnipresent haze of cigarette smoke. Gross.

I'm going to go curl up in bed. Sorry this is so short and lacking in real content, but i'm exhausted.

<3

jess

Ache

Today, I'm back in Beijing after oh so long spent in Southern China.
This means that I have more access to the intertubes, but also that I have more things in my schedule than work/sleep/work/sleep/work/sleep/shower. Which means I have more time to post, but less will to. Hmm.

Since I'm at the end of a second day of detoxing, I'm sleepy and a little crabby. To cut through this, I've put up some pictures for you all to look at of the Hutong and some roomies. Huzzah!

OMG PICS

lovelove
jess

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.