THE LAST WEEKEND OF MAY

It all started with an apple soaked mojito and Ennino Morricone playing on the speakers at an inspired lounge spot called WAITING FOR GODOT. Too ironic and too predictable that I would gravitate to a place named after a favorite Samuel Becket play. The Absurd follows me everywhere.

The above photograph is me waiting for Godot. The above photograph marks the beginning of the beginning of the whirlwind.

I could write a stream-of-consciousness, self-indulgent novel based on the last weekend, inspired by the joy and the chaos, my version of a Bret Easton Ellis novel.

For now, however, some adventures are best lived and best untold.

BIOLOGICAL BREAKDOWN

Warning: the following post is of a sensitive and melodramatic nature, but serves as a live portrait of a minor crisis. Something went wrong Thursday. A biological error. A strike from the inside. Our will is ultimately controlled by the status of our physical body. Our body can be unpredictable. Our body can muddle our will.

My throat is in real pain. My tongue is tight. Movement is restricted. Swallowing hurts. When I swallow, I force food and liquid over an invisible mountain in the back of my throat. I want to grab a spoon and start digging. Extract the poison. My jaw feels dull and exhausted. I am forced to chew in slow motion. Chewing makes me squint with discomfort. My mouth fills with saliva that no longer drains naturally. My forehead may or may not be hot. I rarely get sick, so I don't know what it feels like to be sick.

My throat and tongue were sensitive one week ago. I cut water out of my diet. Four days dripped by with no throat problems. Now, for the last several days, my throat and tongue burn with an escalated fury. On the cusp of a promising weekend, my mouth is breaking down. No legible medicine in sight.

Insert spinning paranoia. I'm allergic to cats. My brother has two kittens. That could be a problem. They're cute. We play. I never take medicine, but here I'm on Benadryl daily. I ate at a noodle place twice early last week and then went back yesterday afternoon. That could be the problem. I'm never going back. What are they feeding me? The meat looked strange floating in my noodle bowel.

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief. "There's too much confusion. I can't get no relief."

COMMUNICATION UNIVERSITY OF CHINA

Aileen, a China native, a regular character in this saga, attends the Communication University of China. She wants to be a reporter here, and, ironically, also wants to do a Masters in the States. I gave a convincing commercial selling the Ball State experience. Education redefined. She wanted to know Ball State’s ranking. I blinked. Twice. I looked her dead in the eyes. I paused. I gave her a ranking. NUMBER ONE.

I mentioned interest in visiting her college campus. She invited me to sit in on one of her classes. A guest professor from Syracuse University was visiting to give an all English lecture on media regulations in the States. Perfect. He wore a red tie. Subtle touch.


I was excited to get a glimpse at a Chinese perspective on communication studies. The glimpse was too brief and briefly insightful. (I will report on the few significant classroom observations this Fall when I give my presentation. Maybe. Be there.) I was particularly interested in how the class, not the American professor, would approach a discussion on regulation. China regulation in the media, across platforms, is quite evident and extensive.

As a recent, random example, I went to a Beijing theater to check out IRON MAN 2, a needed escape, and some choice dialogue sections were censored throughout. The audio would be distorted, sounding like a natural ‘glitch’ at first, but the ’glitch’ reoccurred in distinct scenes throughout, making this ’glitch’ more than accidental.


To get to the university, I decided to ditch the bicycle and tackle the subway system. It was time to taste the underground. As has become necessary, I put on my protective shell before leaving my brother’s place. My protective shell consists of an MP3 player, some headphones, and album after album of candy flavored, comfort music. Inside this shell, I can conquer the shifty unknown with some serious bravado in my step. Today’s highlights were Our Lady Peace’s “Clumsy”, Hot Hot Heat’s “Elevator”, and David Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust”. A dated, albeit solid mix.


Riding in the subway, my claustrophobia beeped and beeped. I wanted to swing my arms like a mental Orangutan gone totally berserk, clear some space. The subway swelled with busy people close enough to give me a kiss on the cheek. One particular girl almost did. I could see it in her eyes. My nostrils were invaded by the occasional fleet of rotten sweat. But, the hour long trip cost less than a dollar and I sat in air conditioning for the first time since arriving in Beijing. Artificial cold air hugged my face and I cherished its embrace.

GOING BEYOND THE FOURTH RING

I am not an expert, but I think this city is organized into rings encasing smaller rings. The higher the number, the larger the ring. I am somewhere buried inside the second ring. My 50 RMB map covers the entire second ring, the southern half of the third ring, and the southern half of the fourth ring. This week, I decided to take the bike beyond the fourth ring, beyond the map, into the uncharted lands of the northern rings. I ate some tomato and fried egg, picked a hot location, and drew an award winning map.


My homemade map of the land beyond the fourth ring can be seen in all it’s screaming glory above. The goal was to find the Bird’s Nest, the location of the 2008 Olympics. When I reached Tiananmen Square, I realized I’d been peddling south for thirty minutes. I turned up the Depeche Mode in my headphones and pulled off a practiced move, the U-Turn.

After crossing bridges and rivers … after battling heavy winds and madman traffic … after crashing into an old man … after peddling through Depeche Mode’s ‘Music for the Masses‘, Phil Collin’s ‘Face Value‘, and Al Green‘s ‘Greatest Hits’ … I finally found the Bird’s Nest.


China only creates sites on a man crumbling scale. Similar to the Forbidden City, the scale of this site seems to shrink man to a legless insect crawling on the back of the moon. There are several exciting pieces of architecture at the site of the flamboyant 2008 Olympics. Each piece wrestles for your attention, pulling off one another. The Bird’s Nest seems to garner the most attention. I try to buy tea at a booth here using my best Chinese and the women laugh at me. I revert back to speechless pointing and receive my bottled tea. A monkey could do what I do.


And for those of you that are questioning if my elementary map really got me to the Bird‘s Nest from Dongsishisitiao, the picture below is for your refrigerator.

A SELF-ANALYSIS OF DISCOMFORT

I’m sorry Beijing, but, perhaps in my own ignorance, I never thought I’d find a city dirtier than West Hollywood … until I met you. You don’t stink like waste because the homeless urinate all over your face, but because you have overused public restrooms every thirty yards. I’m not flattered. Dust attacks my lungs with every step. I cough every day on sporadic repeat. People shovel piles of trash into carts every day on sporadic repeat.

You can’t drink out of the facet. Boil. Boil. Boil. Your body itches faintly after a shower. Last week, my tongue was swollen and it hurt to swallow. I cut Beijing water out of my diet, and now I’m cured. Even the bottled jugs of water bought down the street are dangerous. My system is spoiled by manufactured, super-processed water. I restrict my diet. I drink bottled juice, bottled milk, bottled tea, and bottled beer. When my system needs sterilized, I drink ‘rice wine‘. I miss water.


I eat anything. I eat everything. I never know what it is unless it’s fruit. A banana is a banana. Everything drowns in some glistening atypical sauce. On the best occasion, the flavors are dynamic and rich, but are they nutritional? There are no readable nutritional facts. If I daringly pick up some random colorful package at the grocery, because I’m exhausted with buying every meal at a restaurant and want to cook, I don’t know how to cook it or if I should eat it cold. I eat it cold. All I do in the States is cook my own meals. I’ve been to more restaurants in the last two weeks than the last year in the States.

Chopsticks.


I miss my dog. I miss you all.

ABSOLUTES

Alcohol fills the streets and stores and restaurants of Beijing. Street drinking appears to be a favorite hobby in my neighborhood. Walking home in the middle of the morning or the thick of night or the slip of dawn, you can spot clusters of shirtless faces sucking on rice wine grinning from ear to nose. Every thirty steps, promising liquids promise all too familiar promises from behind distorting glass.

Chopsticks, chopsticks, chopsticks. Bent, contorted fingers. I needed to know if I could still use a fork. You never seem to appreciate the abundant. Over the weekend, this funny talking European recommended a place devoted to steak in my brother‘s area. He sketched a map in my notepad and wrote a name: Café le Post.

I needed to taste a bloody slab of medium rare steak. Maybe I was craving a familiar taste to counter the ongoing blast of unfamiliar to my palette.

I needed to build a small army of fellow degenerates. The brother was working late on some design work, so it was up to me to organize a team to tackle Café le Post. I pulled Aileen into the fold as well as two new characters to this blog, SOITH and GUS, two architects crashing fresh into Beijing from New York. Soith was an undergrad with my brother. Gus is allergic to alcohol.

The steak was not amazing, but the restaurant owner was eager to win my heart. As we were paying for our check, the awkward moving fellow hops over to our table with a translucent bottle glowing at the core. He cheerfully slams the bottle in front of our collective gazes. Some fruit swelling and sliding inside the bottle winks at my soul. The owner tells us: ‘drink up’. The owner tells us: ‘not to worry“. The owner tells us: ‘open late‘.


There was no discernible label on this ominous bottle, but Gus began to pour. The owner looked like someone I could trust. He had a sexy cover of “The Killing Moon” playing in his bar mix. The gesture felt like a challenge, the owner bounced with expectations, we had to empty the fire from this bottle.

After three of us cruised through half the bottle, we noticed a notable performance across the restaurant. One of the waiters was playing with an all too similar looking liquid to summon fireballs. I smiled and poured another three servings.

A SELF-ANALYSIS OF COMFORT

It rains in Beijing. Take a look out my brother’s apartment window.



In the States, I have bonded with the characters breathing in the works of Camus, Dostoevsky, Ellison, and Sartre. Across the years, we all became intimate, long term friends, sharing perceptions of our respective realities. But, now, spending many hours alone, fully immersed in a culture where I'm unable to speak to communicate or listen to comprehend, adrift at a permanent distance from concrete familiarity, restricted to primal exchanges, I connect to the characters of Camus et al. on a new level from a new angle.

For well over one week now, I’ve been bouncing around Beijing, brushing against the exposed underbelly of the eclectic culture. The streets eats holes into the soles of my shoes. When alone, I find comfort at a distance, exploring the city on my brother’s bicycle, buried under the endless movement, united with the endless movement. I find minimal comfort in brief, successful interactions that produce shared smiles. Most of my social interactions are limited to the trading of paper money for quick sustenance. 3 RMB for four boiled eggs. 4 RMB for yogurt and tea. 9 RMB for a collection of bananas. 11 RMB for some spicy noodles and beef. 14 RMB for twenty-four pork dumplings. All these exchanges are surface level exchanges with no depth. Generic connections.


When he’s not working, and can act as my intermediary, I find comfort in socializing with my brother and his wide network. He points to new doors he’s explored or wants to explore and we explore them together. He acts as a useful crutch and compass. When available, I find comfort in my brother’s lady friend, AILEEN, a local that speaks fluent Chinese and English. She graciously acts as a guiding voice, illuminating the beautiful unknown, making the inaccessible accessible. Translating. Storytelling. Touring.

Also, lately, I’ve found great comfort in the Temple of the Earth, a 500 year old park celebrating nature. I’ve visited several times. The park has become MY FORTRESS OF SOLACE. The word beautiful is polluted by uninspired overuse. The Temple of the Earth, however, is a genuine expression of natural, tangible beauty. It exists, literally and symbolically, in a bubble, a lush contrast to the city, a reprieve from the claustrophobic and dust flooded hub of endless movement. The Temple of the Earth is an escape for me, and, by all appearances, an escape for the locals. Across the park, people can be seen playing chess, observing chess matches, playing cards, observing card games, practicing instruments, flying kites, working out, socializing, reading, sleeping, and even playing some seriously intense croquet.


I go to the park to breathe untainted air and to relish the quiet. The above photograph was taken by Aileen on my first visit to the park. The park is a fifteen minute bike ride from my brother’s apartment, approximately.

HIRED GUNS

The above photo is from yesterday’s dinner with my brother’s work associates and friends from all across the planet. Belgium. Canada. Shanghai. Sir Lanka. San Francisco. Portland. Decatur. After eating some sort of orange flavored, boiled catfish stew and playing game after game of "gom bui" with some “Chinese wine” made from black rice, we transformed to a dance club of sorts. The bar was an imitation-Western-styled-electronica-thumping dance club in a part of Beijing devoted to luring in internationals.


The dance club was seething with cloaked prostitutes. Prostitutes surfing the scene for a payday, marketing sexual favors to any welcoming, lonely drunk. Prostitutes are a new phenomenon for me to see in the flesh. I had heard whispers of their existence and myths of their exploits. The profession that never dies.

One lucky lady grabbed my arm with her money hungry hand. Please, no touching. I pried her soft fingers off and made a threatened dash to the dance floor to do my best impression of Mick Jagger from the music video for “Dancing in the Street”.

LIVING IN HUTONG

The picture above is a look outside my apartment door. Please take note of the abandoned homemade Western style toilet. For this entry, I will attempt to paint a modest portrait of where I am currently living. It is called a ‘HUTONG'.


The picture above is a walkway inside a walkway inside a walkway inside an alley. Please take note of my brother’s lady friend’s bicycle propped against the wall. This particular walkway inside a walkway inside a walkway inside an alley leads to my brother’s apartment, where I sleep, shower, and sweat. As I have been told by a savvy local, the Hutong was once a beautiful set of minimal apartments surrounding and facing a scenic, spacious courtyard. When communism dropped, mass amounts of people flooded these open courtyards and began, essentially, building apartments inside of these apartments. The maze-like slums were born and authentic courtyards have become rare and expensive. A commodity. A luxury.


The picture above is an aerial shot looking down into my brother’s ‘neighborhood’. Everything crams together in conflict for territory. No splash of grass. No hint of a backyard with sprawling deck and porch. No space to soak inside and breathe. I grew up happily spoiled with a heroic backyard plump with greens surrounded by unspoiled nature. I miss romping with the serene, naked earth.

The interior of my brother’s apartment harshly contrasts the beaten, clustered exterior. If I remember, in a future post, I will give you a look inside.

In random news, last night, a Chinese man approached our group of obvious foreigners and began reading our palms. When he snatched my hands, he spoke rapidly in Chinese with glowing, saucer sized eyes. I have no idea what he said. He told my brother that he would sleep with three important women.

BEIJING SIGHTSEEING: A HAIKU

The public toilet:
Men squat on postmodern holes
Kids squat on sidewalks

TOUCHING A SPECTACLE

My navigation skills are infamous. I excel at being lost. Living in Los Angeles increased my sense of direction to a moderate flicker, but kicking around in a foreign playpen, these dim skills fade exponentially.

I took my bike to the dilapidated streets of Beijing with map jammed in jean pocket. For this particular adventure, the first on the bicycle, my objective was the Forbidden City. The map proved useless for the first hour. I peddled and peddled in search of clues, but struggled to put my blue dot on my map. The names on the signs were not matching the names on my map. Eventually, through magical intervention, names started syncing up. It may have taken me an hour longer than planned, but, with a splash of tenacity and street dust, I made it to the FORBIDDEN CITY.


That’s a picture for those of you that missed the top half of my face. You can spot a small chunk of the epic Forbidden City in the background. The Forbidden City is vast. I spent hours shuffling from space to space. There were moments, drinking in a courtyard or the Imperial Garden or the Hall of Supreme Harmony, where chills trickled down my neck and into my fingertips. The motive of these chills is hard to identify. Soaking in these sights through multiple senses, images flicker in the imagination. You feel faintly connected to ambiguous moments in a rich, stretching history.

BICYCLE BICYCLE BICYCLE I WANT TO RIDE

Taxi drivers are omnipresent in Beijing, malnourished and cruising for bleeding meat. Some don’t like foreigners. Some love deceptively milking the ignorant foreigner teat. Most of them are efficient. All of them honk like rabbits jump. None understand me. The language barrier balloons, refusing to dissipate. So, by welcomed default, I explore Beijing via a bicycle my brother purchased at a pawn shop (seen below) and a city map I purchased at an all English bookstore (seen above). The bike cost around fifteen American dollars. At this all English bookstore, I noticed an Ayn Rand collection, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, for 300 RMB. It is beautiful to see these two books buried in Beijing, waiting for a home. By exhaustive design, both books are passionately anti-communist. I want to buy the set and send it to Mao as a gift for his hospitality.

I enjoy riding this raw bicycle around Beijing. I’m sucking in the Eastern air. I feel less passive. I feel like an active wheel spinning inside Beijing’s relentless forward motion. I feel like a participant.

Riding a bicycle here presents high risk for collision. The streets are very crowded and every open space is a commodity to be seized, a free for all. The pace is disciplined madness. You must be tuned into your surroundings. Cars will smash you. You must cling to the sides of the roads. People will crash you. You must ring your warning bell. Ting. Ting.

SUCCULENT

The area I am staying, DONG SI SHI SI TAO, overflows with fresh produce. Vibrant. Bright. Eclectic. Before I left, several suggested I take advantage, and I promise you, I am beginning to take advantage. Slowly. A few days have past, and my confidence in "point and nod" communication has grown. Slightly. Also, over the weekend, an English speaking native demonstrated 'playing the markets' for me. These two factors have allowed me to timidly explore more corners and cultural specific luxuries without the harness of my brother or his friends.

There are several markets of all shapes and sizes in walking distance, spilling fruit and more out of their doors. I bought several bananas, a bag of peaches, a bag of strawberries, dragon fruit, and a few yogurts, all for less than 60 RMB (Yuan). Those mix together like intimate friends birthing a blend of cheap and tasty.

DRAGON FRUIT is one of those blessed entities with such an electric name and look that you gravitate towards it immediately without mercy... much like Ziggy Stardust.

DRAGON FRUIT is somewhat anticlimactic, but I'll probably keep buying it.


ON THE NEXT INSTALLMENT: RALPH ELLISON'S INVISIBLE MAN BIKES UP AND DOWN DONGZHI MEN BEI XIAO JIE WITH A CITY MAP AND A DREAM

QUACK QUACK SNACK

Eating the exotic in a familiar fashion eliminates discomfort from an anxious exploration into the previously unknown. The dive into new is made somewhat more manageable, grounded to previous experiences.

My brother and I, with several of his South American friends, went to a duck roast. The duck is purportedly difficult to cook to delicious, but our duck, as far as my pallete could judge, was cooked to delicious. The outter layer melted in my mouth. All the accompanying available ingredients spread before me in tiny little dishes were ambiguous, but the way I was instructed to stuff them into a soft dumpling shell and fold for one bite consumption screamed miniature fajita. I was making some type of tiny "Chinese-Mexican-Fajita-Hybrid".

After cramming down many of these little delights, my eyes fell on the duck head. The Shanghai native sitting next to me encouraged me to split the head with her. The brain was absolute mush, but I have heard, in another life, that eating brain will give you superpowers. Maybe the duck brain will give me the ability to breathe under water for extended periods of time. Cross your fingers. Time will tell.

No pictures of THE GREAT DUCK FEAST. I forgot the camera. Never again.

PLAYING WITH SCISSORS BLIND

I am a little behind on my BLOG updates already, but I hope you'll forgive me. Flashback to DAY ONE.

DAY ONE in Beijing was humbling. The most trembling aspect of being submerged in another reality are the severe communication limitations.

My brother was at work, so it was up to me to explore without the comfort of a seasoned foreigner. I wandered the neighborhood shops and markets with untamed eyes.

Never have I felt more isolated. English does not exist across these alleys and on these streets and in these markets. To establish some semblance of shared meaning I point and nod. Social interactions are fragile. Primal.

When approached by a peddler of white pears, I freeze. Streams of sounds fly out of his mouth and stick to the air around me before falling flat at my feet. I stare and smile. More streams of sounds smack my clueless expression. Down and up. Right to left. I assume he wants me to buy his produce, but he could just as well be begging me to take off my clothes and clap like a monkey.

I slowly shuffle back. A mute in a new world. A lumpy mass floating in the unfamiliar. I shuffle into a color heavy shop where I buy crackers, juice, and tea for lunch. I promise myself that I'll get better at playing the game.

WELCOME TO ANOTHER LANGUAGE

For four hours, I roam an airport in Tokyo looking for robots. Surrounded by strings of seamless noises and foreign scratches meaningless to me. I communicate with nods. I say Beijing on loop. I tell ten different faces "Beijing" twenty different ways.

I board a two story aircraft. First class is escorted upstairs. Separated from the lesser beings. I'm encased in a middle aisle. Again. I'm squeezed inside multiple strings of more seamless noise creating meaning I can't begin to grasp.

If you were worried about me, I don't know how I got here, but here I am ... and I'm scared. And I've tasted Chinese liquor. It burns like fire.

NOTE: These posts are being uploaded by a trusted entity in the States. Access to BLOGSPOT is blocked in Beijing.

CITY TO CITY TO CITY TO BEIJING

Ten socks of various lengths and colors. Two pairs of formal pants. Two pairs of informal pants. Eight tops of various lengths and colors. Running shorts. Two hiking shoes. One silver ring.

One copy of The System of Objects by Jean Baudrillard. Brand new. One copy of Love + Sex with Robots by David Levy. Slightly used. One copy of Ronin by Frank Miller. Used.

Primed for acrobatics. Built to climb mountains. I'm leaving the States. I've never left the States. Next we speak. I'll be on the other side: Beijing with the brother and two cats.

Commence culture shock.