Ramble ramble

i spent a few days in chengdu last week for work. was put up in a 5 star hotel, had a great string of breakfast foods, went to the lazy pug (2 breakfast plates in one brunch session), the shamrock, the leg and whistle. Needless to say, stepping off the train in chongqing on Sunday immediately returned me to the funk I thought I’d left. I should have known better than to think it would just disappear. you know it’s bad if you don’t go out for a drink on st. patrick’s day.

what a difference a 2 hour train ride makes—how far you can stray from culture and friendliness and a sense of community and other such “luxuries”. But let’s not wax melodramatic, particularly with verbs like “wax.”

Week 3 of distance DELTA is underway. It isn’t exactly kicking my ass yet, but there is a part of me that wishes I were doing this NOT distance (foreground?), but I guess the whole reason distance is appealing is because in the flesh was out of the question. I just like the idea of a whole community of professionals existing in the ether out there who have the same values as me, academically speaking. Thinking of the opportunities available to me should I actually complete this thing is also a bit of a mind-fuck (hyphenated? dunno…).

China feels like a wasteland as far as professional development goes, one of many black sheep in the ELT family of asia, despite the saturation here (same as korea); higher demand=lower quality of those who call themselves “teachers”. That definitely applies to the ELT pool here. I might sound like a total cunt (said in a singsong voice, out loud, to myself, in my apartment), but hey, it’s my forum to do just that.

Anyhoo, it’s been fun to nerd out with terminology, grammar and phonology. Granted, I could be a little more diligent—let’s be honest, writing this blog here is clearly an “avoidance strategy”—but I’ve always been a marginally successful procrastinator. The good thing is that with my job right now, I have the free time to take 3 times as long as I’m supposed to to finish tasks. It just gives me more time to absorb it all. That’s what I’m telling myself. Have another beer, Jimmy!

Been meeting lately with an associate? (what do I even call this dude? I could call him my friend, but that’s not entirely accurate, either. There’s clearly some sort of business-y exchange going on). He wants to open a new kind of language school in chongqing and is seeking my advice, which I’m usually all-too-happy to give. But I had to explicitly say today “I have no desire to be a DoS anytime again in the near or distant future. The idea is, frankly, terrifying.”

Trying to communicate, via translation, the veritable hell-scape of the past year of your life in someone else’s hometown, due largely in part to the training center his child attends and to the general lack of any apparent cultural evolution on the part of his fellow locals isn’t something that necessarily goes over well. but ultimately he said, “I appreciate your honesty.” So I suppose it was refreshing for us both. We’ll see what happens, but the flight aspect of “fight or flight” is coloring my relationship with chongqing. The only thing keeping me here is the money. Which sounds shallow as hell, but when you’ve never had more than you’ve needed, it’s not something to be taken lightly. For serious, yo.

So chengdu really drove home this idea of community that I’ve been barfing up ad nauseum (heh heh). But what chonqging makes me think about all too much is my sense of identity, or my sense(s) of identity. with my students, sometimes we make lists—top 5s if you will. Then students compare and discuss their top 5s on a given topic—similarities, differences, surprises, etc.

Identity is an interesting idea to me, because it all depends on who is doing the identifying. How do I identify myself, or place myself in the world, and how do those around me identify me? This ties into the community aspect by the sheer fact that I am consistently identified as alien. No matter what I do every day—what achievements or failures, how I look, what I say (either in Chinese or English)—I am an alien first and foremost. This is pervasive. This is constant. This is observed—verbally or non. This is every fucking minute of my existence here. This is not an exaggeration. It is also significantly less-than-charming.

The idea that I have so easily been “identified”/reduced/boiled down/diminished/broken down (emphasis on “broken”), is not something I don’t dwell upon. Ha. That much is fucking obvious.

Human. foreigner. Female. Caucasian. American. English-speaker. Sister. daughter. judgmental fucking cunt. Moderate drinker. Hopeless romantic. Shitty guitar player. Shitty poet. Pessimist. Realist. Idealist. Contradictor (holy shit! That’s a word!). Over-analyzer. Cynic. Masochist. chick who doesn’t know how to deal with physical contact (someone give me a concise, 1-word synonym, please). Control freak. Syllable counter. Brunette with more and more gray daily. Music fan. Person who wants to seem more interesting than she actually is by coming up with this list.

So it’s not a comprehensive list, but what’s important is that the rank of these changes hourly (sometimes more frequently). And they change depending on who I’m with, where I am, what time of day it is, what form of transportation, blah blah blah. All the other variables change, and so does my sense of identity. But now I’m labeling myself. Sorry, “identifying” myself. This isn’t something I used to do. is there value in it? if so, what is that value? Does changing identity correlate to changing reality? I don’t even really know what I mean by that, but shit, it sounds profound.

how many of these identities are totally conventional, how many are significant, and how shitty is it that mere “outside country person” doesn’t encompass any of these? remember, I called chongqing people a bunch of hillbillies last week. Hypocrite? Throw it on the list.

Anyhoo, the root cause of all this over-analyzing is, I think, my generally negative impression of men in the past few months, mostly in my observations of their dealings with other women, but quite frequently in situations involving me. I will opt out of going into detail here. After the badness of my first year here, how the fuck did I think I was going to think about men, Chinese or otherwise? Perhaps it was unrealistic of me to think I’d ever get over that, or that I wouldn’t hold it against every other man. Sorry, dudes.

My femininity, or arguable lack thereof, had never been so apparent until china.

The respect for women, or arguable lack thereof, had never been so apparent until china.

The idea of what it means to be female or notions of some sort of generic “femininity” had never crossed my mind as much as it/they has/have recently. Maybe it had to do with Audrey hepburn’s face being plastered all over ads for a local plastic surgery hospital. Something tells me it goes deeper than that.

So this one huge aspect of my identity that I had never thoroughly considered made me start thinking of the other ways in which I identify. How many of these other identities are disrespected or misjudged or oversimplified on a regular basis?

The syllable counter in me is thoroughly disgusted everyday. In japan, I’m sure it would be a different story.

i know these labels—whether given by others or by individuals themselves—aren’t unique to china, but being here is what made me start thinking about it. I don’t really have a point by rambling on here, it’s just been on my mind lately, usually with a thought of “wow, this feels kind of shitty to the human part of me that I can identify. If I look really hard. surely I shouldn’t have to look this hard.”

I guess I just got to my point there (assuming I had one). it’s all very dehumanizing. That the context of my daily life draws these sort of things out of me to scrutinize and feel obligated to expunge. Do other people feel the same way? Hmmmm.

I’ll end what is altogether a weird read with another Jason Molina jam. I remember writing a long time ago about having an actual vinyl copy of his music delivered to the miracle library in suncheon, korea. that was a distinct and funny experience.

Anyway,

http://www.xiami.com/song/2417387. Division Street Girl

sad to read this...

RIP Jason Molina

if you're unfamiliar, take a listen...
Captain badass

This was on my mind

i don't know why this popped into my brain, but I'm very happy it did.

Last thoughts on woody guthrie

something nice. why not...

reading and furiously underlining choice quotations is nice, but i like like the idea of projecting things i like in a very passive way. people deserve a little poetry in their lives, but it's not something to broach in casual conversation.  if it is, then those are some conversations i want in on...

from “Her Becoming” by Theodore roethke:

“There are times when reality comes closer:

In a field, in the actual air,

I stepped carefully, like a new-shod horse,

A raw, tumultuous girl

Making my way over wet stones. 

And then I ran—

Ran ahead of myself,

Across a field, into a little wood. 

And there I stayed until the day burned down….

What lover keeps his song?

I sigh before I sing.

I love because I am

A rapt thing with a name.”

"Make my funk the p-funk..."

it’s been a week of not feeling so hot about china.  this happens periodically.  It used to happen a lot more often, but this is my first bout of these issues since I quit the old job.  I need to find some tangible reasons to overanalyze my current funk.  Because this is what I do. 

There are the banal daily offenses—the spitting, the staring, the squatting (pissing AND shitting in public, thank you very much), the noise, the lack of space, getting on/off public transportation or elevators, “parenting”, etc. etc.  I think the “current funk” has more to do with the fact that another good friend left last week. 

I’d hung out with asha pretty much non-stop since I got back from my Christmas vacation.  I have always found it hard to relate to other chicks, probably due to the fact that the closest person to me (and also the most intelligent, rational, powerful, and goal-oriented person in my life) is my twin sister.  That hasn’t left a lot of room for error in my relationships with other women, which my track record of female friendships will support.  The fact that asha’s female is a real anomaly to me (not that her gender’s debate-able, but that I consider her a friend. a female friend).  I find it easy to befriend men, in meaningful or cursory capacities.  I’m not as forgiving of women as I am of men.  Again, I’m sure there are many reasons for this, but I’ll save that over-analysis for a different day.

Anyway, asha is the first actual friend I’ve had since the days of jake, carrie and Jesse in hangzhou.  And I’m such a good friend and communicator that I’ve only maintained contact with 33% of the hangzhou contingent.  

asha is, like Julie, intelligent, rational, powerful and goal-oriented.  And she was so willing to open herself up to new experiences and to allow herself to be vulnerable around the right people.  that’s something that china has sort of killed in me.  It hardens you from the inside out, while simultaneously destroying you emotionally.  But you can’t really show that, because you have to be “strong” to survive here as a foreign female.  all that upkeep and presentation is an exhausting and vicious cycle. 

So another strong female influence has left and I’m back to curling up into a little ball of myself (figuratively-speaking. Haven’t been stretching enough lately).  And that sucks.  It felt great to give and to trust and to be honest with someone.  that should happen far more often than it does.  One of the many shortcomings of human relationships--posturing adulthood without ever actualizing it.  Which I guess is also a pretty adult skill. 

I had never in my life considered gender and femininity as much as I did in the first week I was in china.  Korea had some real gender inequalities, too, but nothing to the degree I’ve experienced here.  I guess at this point I’ve more than doubled the time I spent in korea.  anyhoo…

I’ve been dwelling a lot on two things lately—the notions of identity and community. 

Community is one I think about every day, when the reality of being alien confronts you in every face you pass on the street.  You can see the words forming as soon as the people around you recognize that you’re not chinese.  For every instance of eye contact, the seconds that follow invariably include a whispered, or usually less-tactful arm slap, point and incredulous burst of two or three syllables--“laowai” or “waiguoren.” 

Then comes “she doesn’t understand” even though at this point no one has actually said anything that requires understanding, beyond what generally equates to pointing and screaming at someone.  yes, actually, I DO understand that. 

How many people do you pass on the street in a day?  How many people do you pass on the street in a day in the one of the most heavily-populated cities in china?  It’s insane when you try to process that.  And it never stops.  And it fucking beats you down.  But I make a lot of money for not a lot of work.  That’s my singular justification.  Really.  That’s it. 

The novelty of living in a city of a lot of chinese hillbillies wore off a long time ago.  The novelty of my existence, however, is unrelenting.   Shanghai is starting to sound pretty good.

I’ll save the identity talk for a later date.  Still need to process the theme.   also, nothing wrong with [attempted] brevity.