art of photo taking

There is this photo of mine:  blond girl-child maybe three or four years old in a field with a chocolate brown colt, her fingers stretched out to its muzzle, sun haloing her crazy curls. It's an old photo, 25-years-old, taken in a time when photographs were less common than sneezes.

I'm older now. My curls are brown, and the colt is a gelding turning grey-at-the-edges. To me, that photo represents something---a precious feeling of wonder. I recently asked my mother, "Remember when..." and we talked about the setting of my earliest memories. It was as if we had opened a book, the more pages we turned, the more details we thought about, the more emotions we remembered. A portrait of our life started to reform--my mother loved her horses. She loved me, too. She was young, younger than I am today, and she was adjusting to life and love and family and the animals that were a part of it. And I don't believe there is a copy of that photo left in existence.

I felt a little sad when my mother mentioned that the photo was gone. Ironically sad. Because photos,  to me, are over-taken and over-shared and over-needed to make a situation legitimately real.

Have we lost our ability to record memories in our brains, and access them later?

Granted, I've had more practice than most. When young, our family lost our photographs and papers and memorabilia. I was forced to transfer my feelings and emotions away from things I could one day lose, and put them in my built-in data-base--my own memory.

I may over-do my enthusiasm for NOT taking pictures, at times. As a missionary, I once spent 18 months amongst a Hispanic community that I served and loved, in a culture that I readopted as my own, only to take just one roll and a half of dispensable photos. (Even then, I left the half roll behind.) Another time,  I was on the Great Wall of China and noticed my camera lens was cracked. I put it away and didn't bring it out again the entire trip. I bet there are a few memories somewhere in my head that could be sparked with a visual that could have been recorded on film.

I am known to be perplexed by our propensity as digital-age divas to document anything and everything we experience. From blogs (yes) to FB to TWTR to Snapshot to Text-Talk to Post-a-Lot to whatever we will think of next:

Cute pink nails--Par-TAY! Cool fashion, girl!

Grocery shopping--95c/lb broccoli!!!

OMG!  Talk talk talk talk twitter twitter tweet.

And whether we have this insatiable obsession to feel famous amongst an internet crowd of famousness, or to decode vibrations of speculation on our outer strands of a world wide cobweb, we self-document and self-publish and self-contribute, both the big and small of our lives--I wonder, is it working? Do we feel more connected with our friends on OverShare.Com; does following Kutcher's tweets mean we actually know him?

I am annoying to my peers, the ones that I see face-to-face, and maybe the ones that I used to see, too. They hear me repeatedly pleading for them to put down the camera, or the phone, or the camera phone, and be present in the conversation. Or to not take a picture, for goodness sake. Or please don't post that on the internet, I'm hiding from the Law (jk. clean-as-a-whistle).

You see, I know there is more I can remember, and record for someone who will care--later. Maybe a granddaughter, or some historian documenting obscure American lives--but I only have so much of me to give. I can't waste it on the 2500 pics taken while in Tahiti (not me). Give me one or two photos to represent something I want to remember, and let my brain do the rest.

Maybe there is an argument that boils down to the saying "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." Didn't I just tell you that our family lost everything and now has no items of nostalgia left? Yeah, maybe that's true.

But my mother and I just had an entire conversation based on a photo that neither one of us has seen in years. Maybe there's something to be said about that, too.

art of self diagnosis

Not recommended. But in my defense, I was the one who was there--

 

It happened when I wasn’t paying attention. It snuck up on me, bound and gagged me, and threw me in the backseat of my brain, and suddenly I wasn’t the one driving--it was something other, something not me, something alien that now had control.

I had never been hijacked before. Not in real life, or even as a joke, and never in my brain. Perhaps the euphoria of making it home for Christmas masked the takeover, so it wasn’t until five, six months later I noticed anything unusual anyway. I had been effectively locked up, and put on autopilot, and all my desire and connection to life around me had been severed and hidden in the trunk. It was locked away, and I couldn’t hear it kicking and screaming to be let out, and I couldn’t even care it was gone. I just looked out the window as images flashed past.

 The alien driver made sure I got to work on time—every day.  I worked; I came home: lather, rinse, repeat. It drove me to church, and to ballgames. It got me to everything I was supposed to get to, everything I was obligated to do. But I was detached and cold, watching from a distance, left with no desire to participate in the world that flowed around me, the world that had seemed so natural and normal previously and that now had little claim on any thought or care that I had.

Not that I had many cares. But, was I worried that foreign governments had bugged my bedroom? Yes. Was I on high alert to flee at any sign of suspicious behavior? Yes, again. Did I boil into a rage if anyone touched me, critiqued me, or sometimes, dared ask me a question?—Yes.

 None of this mattered, not to me. I was still tied up in the backseat just looking, just browsing, no help needed, thanks. Not even when I stopped making plans, not even when I forgot how to pee, not even when I realized how easy it would be for me to die, did I care that I was being driven past field upon field of blood red flags, billowing in the wind.

 It was the flashback that saved me. A random email jolted my memory like an electric current zipping through me, and while one moment I was at my desk, the next moment I was on the busy sidewalk, people, smog, bicycles, cars, lights, buildings, noise, noise, noise, pounding in my ears with each pump of my heart. Terror squeezed my chest, and I couldn’t breathe.

 And then I was back at my desk.

 For one instant, my desire to connect kicked out the taillights in the trunk and frantically waved down a passerby. For the first time in a long time, I looked at myself with a detached interest.  I knew that something was wrong with me, and I knew that I couldn’t control myself. The brain had taken over my body; I wasn’t master of my own brain, and that flashback? It couldn't be explained away.

 

I printed off a page of symptoms and took it home to my mother.

 Can someone be certain something is wrong without being diagnosed? If a tree falls with no one around, is there a sound?

 

What if a tree falls and there is no lumberjack to chainsaw it into logs and haul it down the mountain? The log becomes part of the forest, rot into nutrients into foliage.  Or maybe it becomes fodder for wildfire. Either way, it's change; it's a natural passage from one state to another.

 

And so I'm back in the driver's seat. More aware, more wary. Also more compassionate to others in distress. If my alien could hide in the open, so could another person's demons. We aren't built to go through that alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

art of shopping

 Or, in other words, Confessions of a Shop-o-Phobic

If any of you out there in this blogging-void know me, (which you should, since you're family, or friends), you may have noticed at one point or another that I'm not overly fond of shopping. Maybe it's my aversion to spending money, maybe it's all the people in the stores, or wandering around looking at things that I have no interest or no need for...who knows, but I don't particularly like to shop.

In fact, I think the only lies my mother has ever told in her life have been trying to get me to spend a day on the town with her.

"Where are we going, Mommy?" says Little Me, trusting eyes looking up innocently.

"We're just going to stop at one place, then go home," Mother assures her.

Five department stores later, when Little Me realizes she has been duped, and she turns into a snarling, stormy-faced 22 year-old woman, who waves her fists in the air in Wal-Mart parking lots, her mother remembers that the least fun person to take shopping might just be her oldest offspring. (True Story)

A similar conversation may have happened between me and Heidi occasionally in China. Heidi, like all normal, healthy women, likes to shop, and China is just the perfect avenue for her commercial interests. For me, however, it's like a horror flick...
 
Imagine my delight, then, when I realize that the only way to get a few presents for my fellow MeiGuo-rens, is to go to the famous bargain booths in Beijing's city center. (As if things couldn't get any worse, why don't you throw a store in there where price tags don't exist...)

The story of the week should start with me walking into the YaShow building in Beijing, a 6 story building packed with vendors. Or maybe it should start with JJ, who took me to there; she was an expert at spending her ex-pat husband's money and finding deals you didn't know you needed. Or maybe it should start with descriptions of all the stuff available, the shirts, shoes, bags, red drums, painted fans, carved chess sets, samurai-like swords, or strings of white pearls, swaths of red and violet and yellow silk, and traditional parasols.

But no, my story starts when my dazed eyes cleared briefly, and I found myself already sitting down on a stool in the aisle, my feet shed with a pair Pumas.

What just happened? I thought.

 

I stared stupidly at the Chinese woman, who explained to me, in English, why this pair of Pumas is the best quality of knock-offs and why she will sell them to me for 460 RMB.

 

I jerked up. No way!--No way am I going to spend 70 US Dollars on a pair of shoes. Not even in MeiGuo (USA) will I do that! I didn't even know that Pumas weren't just jungle cats until I sat down at her ruddy booth. How did I get here?

 

I felt some accusatory feelings toward Heidi and Mrs. J, who had led me on the path of what I considered hell, and as I stood to leave, sliding off the shoes, the vendor called out the famous, most common words in the bargain markets: "Okay, okay, okay. Name your price."

 

And, so it began. I don't know how it happened, but I was playing the game--getting the best deal, buyer and seller locked in this infinite struggle against profit and bargain--400 RMB, 350 RMB, 200 RMB...

 

"No," she said, laughing at me, fakely. "These are Pumas. They are such good quality. 200 is Lowest Price."

 

I shook my head in unbelief. I needed to get out of there.

 

"Okay, Deal." She said suddenly. "I give you "friend price." Friend price, 100 RMB."

 

 I think she could sense that I wasn't in love with the idea of buying a pair of shoes.  Truthfully, I wasn't even in love with the idea of being there, but maybe that's the best mindset to be in when bargaining.--And as fast as you can say " China is now the world's second largest economy," I was on my feet, a bag of Puma shoes in my hand.

 

"It's not a big deal," said Heidi, reminding me. "You needed a pair of tennis shoes for hiking the Great Wall anyway."

 

Easy for you to say. I thought. You know what Pumas are...

 

So I went around every floor of Ya Show terrified that I was going to be putty in people's hands and buy the whole store. (I did find some very China-y things, though, and made off with a few bags full of presents. Folks at home would have killed me, otherwise.) 

 

I'm glad that I didn't have much money with me though (on purpose) cause I am horribly bad at bargaining. I don't think that is one of the gifts that God has given me. Unlike some of the vendors, who have been especially trained in secret academies, I'm convinced, to haggle, exclaim, twist, and argue up any price for any thing sold in China.

 

Ironically, this happened in Beijing on Monday. And on Tuesday, the Chinese Central Bank declared a interest rate rise, and a lot of other economic lingo, which basically means that the world was in shock for a few days for some reason, but also that China is only behind America in large economies, and now I can see how, as I am partly to blame.

 

It's because Me and My Fellow MeiGuo-rens buy all of China's knock-off Pumas.

 

arte de arroz con pollo

I got the wedding invitation today, the one from one of my favorite missionary companions, who is half Hispanic herself, who cajoled our investigators into teaching us recipes from their paises. I opened the mail at lunchtime, and examined her engagement picture while eating arroz con pollo, a dish that I had made for my family last night--the dish, coincidentally, that I always associate with her anyway. 

She and I developed a taste for Peruvian food while assigned together in the outskirts of D. C. We learned how to make the dish of green rice and chicken from Mari, a woman in her sixties, who was holed up 25 flights of stairs in a high-rise apartment complex. Limited by a language barrier, and a transportation deficiency, Mari loved to host las hermanas and tell them stories about her family and her businesses back in Peru. My companion and I received quite a few cooking lessons out of our visits as well, since the women were always showing us the proper way to cook or clean something, fulfilling their age-old duties of preparing the next generation to be wives and mothers.

When I came home, released from service, I brought home a few pictures, but more cravings for the homemade Hispanic foods that you can't find in any U.S. restaurant. So my companion and I practiced, on her family or hers, for friends or neighbors, together or separate, trying to remember how they did it, how they got things to taste so good with the limited ingredients the States offer, and I developed a knack for arroz con pollo, a simple Peruvian food of rice and chicken. It was as if a little part of my mission stayed with me, amongst all the rigors and strains of normal life.

She has been on my mind lately. Missionaries leave their assigned areas and disperse across the whole of the world, back to the places from where they came, back into the job market, back into the marriage market, back into life. We lose track of each other and the people that we grew to love and serve. Sometimes the nostalgia is overwhelming, and heartbreaking; it's a sense that you can never return to the way it was exactly, so every attempt at recreation just turns out to be a sad parody. The most you can hope for is contacting the ones you love and forging new relationships out of the old camaraderie. This week, while pureeing the cilantro and peppers, I thought about her, and the hours that we served together, traipsing through neighborhoods, teaching and helping the immigrant communities. 

Half of this batch was going to service, too. It was easy to make, and cheap, and I have found that most people like it, or at least tolerate it. So this time I split the pot and bundled up one half to go to a family whose baby just had kidney failure. I thought how lucky I was to be able to make something and give it away--I was grateful for the ingredients, the know-how, and that companion, who was ready to remind me of the ingredients when I forgot them again and again those first years that we were back. And now, here she was, fiancée smiling beside her. And I thought of how lucky we were, we all are, to go through the experiences that will teach us to be better, how part of her makeup came out of being a missionary, of walking through D.C. neighborhoods, and of learning authentic dishes at the hands of immigrant women.

art of guitar buying

I remember having a slight crush on my guitar salesman, maybe just because he was a really, really good guitar player, maybe because he was the cool sort of hippie, witty, environmentally conscious, but still a march-to-the-beat-of-your-own-drum kind of man (or is it play-to-the-riffs-of-your-own-guitar??).

I had surprised myself when I walked into the shop that day. I planned on buying a discount guitar in the mall (I had only been playing for 2 months), but suddenly found myself in the part of town that the mall was not--the momNpop part of town, where all sorts of hidee-hole shops existed--where I found this store of wonders masquerading as a wood shop for handcrafted guitars.

And I had no idea how to buy a guitar. I wanted one that sounded good. And that was easy to play. And that was beautiful. And low cost. Kind of like all the best choices in life should be.

My guitar guy patiently tried to talk me through it. What do you want it to sound like? Do you like this sound? Close your eyes, how about this? Or this, or this, or this...and I began to feel that panic you feel when you are standing on the brink of the most important decision in your life and asked to jump off the cliff at the precise moment that won't kill you on impact...and finally, finally, he played an instrument with the best sound, clear and low and full. It reminded me of brown sugar and butter, and I was pleased.

And while he went to the workbench to make a few adjustments, I saw my guitar. No, not the one my guitar guy propped on the work bench, but my real guitar. The one on the opposite wall. It was blue, and it was better.

Now I could make this a social commentary about how apt we are to judge things by appearance, even though we pretend like it doesn't matter, or on the flip-side, how just because something (or someone) can be momentarily pleasing, it doesn't mean it's the one that will bring cosmic alignment to your soul.

I don't know what applies here. I do know that I was embarrased to change my mind on him (again), but when he got back I pointed out my blue baby--How silly that we didn't see it sooner! He got props for not looking too long suffering.

So I made him play this one. Again, and again. And luckily, it sounded the same as my first choice.

"You have to play this, too, you know," he said, finally handing me the guitar. I played softly, a little afraid of making a mistake in front of him. I sat in the recording room, playing softly and deliberating, asking him questions--did I really want to buy a guitar right now? How did I take care of it? Is the weather too dry for guitars? Could I travel with it? Will it treat me right?
"You are getting a guitar, not choosing a husband," he finally said to me. In retrospect, he was probably felt like I was stringing him along--was she going to buy this guitar or not? Funnily enough, that clinched it, and I bought my blue guitar.

 He threw in a free case. I thought that was appropriate, after all the work I put him through.

art of asking questions

Sometimes, whether you are in another culture, or if you just are in the dark, it pays to finally blurt out the questions that have been bubbling up inside your heart.

Think of it as the "asking" reflux, if you will, of curiosity. If you don't ask, you won't know what's going on--and ignorance is not bliss, my friends. Not always.

At least that's how Heidi and I felt in China.

We had been wondering why all the babies have crazy split pants on--pants with no seam between the legs-open from front to back. And the babies don't wear diapers.

We were a little horrified to observe the many tiny bums everywhere, on the bus, in their parents' arms, in shopping carts, on slides,...in our arms as parents take our pictures holding their little cargo.

I was slightly embarrassed for the children. (Even though, for some reason, our culture seems to think that children have no dignity. Maybe that's what pure innocence is: no need whatsoever to be dignified...)

Anyway, I was also worried about the sanitation. And then I saw a mother holding her child in the middle of the sidewalk so the child could pee, and I felt justified.

Well, I finally just asked. I tried not to be too judgemental, as a guest in another country that doesn't understand the underlying cultural bases, but I couldn't come up with any reliable explanation: so an ExPat fluent in Chinese gave us the scoop--the children are potty trained. By whistle.

When a newborn starts to pee, the mother whistles. Soon, the child is trained to pee on command. And since the Chinese use squatter toilets, the parents want the slit pants to...I don't know actually. Train them to squat?? That in itself isn't bad, but the split pants thing doesn't seem to help with people peeing in the streets, or babies in the grocery aisle, or perhaps on the subway. It happens.

Now that we knew, we felt, well, more informed. Maybe ignorance is a little bit bliss. But now, "whistling a happy tune" on the streets had just become funnier..

art of good citizenship...

...on the stairs to Mordor.

I've determined that the Chinese are very protective over us.

At least, I'm assuming they have mainly innocent intentions, like protection; I don't know if it's a Western thing, but I tend to be suspicious of strangers we meet in random places, that seem to "adopt" us and want to see us safely home. And trust me, it's happened.

On Monday, Heidi and I finally went to the famous park in our host city, the one with all the trees and the lake and the crappy carny rides that weren't in use, but on which I secretly wanted to ride. We walked over the stone bridge, over the cement, zigzag walkway (without a railing) to the island in the center of the lake, laughed over the signs that said "No Fishing, this Water is Toxic Sludge" in Chinese, and then laughed even harder at the men fishing next to them. We walked around the lake in little secluded paths to the stone walls and around to see, on the hill in the distance, the temple-like thing at the top.

I noticed suddenly to my right that we had disturbed a man siting peacefully on a little secluded hill. At least, I assume we disturbed him, when we passed he immediately got up and walked on. His path was higher than ours, and I didn't pay much attention, till our paths combined and I saw that he was waiting off to the side.

I also noticed when he started again, about 20 yards behind us. We took one path, then another; he still followed us.

"Let's pretend to sit down," I said softly to Heidi as we come to an area with more audience.

"Why do you want to pretend to sit down?" she asked. "Should we just actually sit down?"

Well put, Heidi.

I looked back to see if I've started to make it a bigger deal than it was. My mystery person quickly jumped to a higher path and disappeared. I explained what I saw, but since he wasn't there anymore, we just kept moving, and I started to wonder if he spoke English and overheard us. As we were rounding the corner of a building we had just inspected, there he was again, waiting in the shade under the trees.

"Hey, do you speak English?" asked Heidi, a little too boldly, I thought. I was standing to one side of him, she to the other.

"Uhhhh, Yes!" he said, clearly lying.

"Are you following us?"

I started coughing (or laughing) at her interrogation, wondering how much he could understand.

"Uhhh. Yes."

"Did you know in America, that's rude??" she stated. We started walking, I have no idea why, he walked with us, my hand was on my purse the whole time...

I couldn't see how to get rid of him, so I asked (I have no idea why), "Are you a student?" to keep up the interrogation. Really I wanted to know if he would be so kind as to go away and leave us alone.

No, not a student.

Do you work?

No

"Are you a conman?" Heidi asked outright.

"Uhhh. Yes?" said our man. We had moved away from areas with audiences, and I was starting to get nervous.

Who did we remind me of? I wondered, as Heidi kept talking to him. We were moving up strange, secluded paths, no one else around, with a potential enemy as our guide, and I still had no idea why.

"I'm Samwise Gamgee!!" I exclaimed suddenly. Which made sense, since I was so suspicious, and since Heidi was clearly not the bad guy, that could only mean one thing.....

"What's your name, Smeagol--I mean, Sir?" I asked him.

"John."

"Very nice to meet you, John. Now if you don't mind, we are going onto paths that have more of a population. So..." I tried my best "significant look" at Heidi, but since she was obviously Frodo in this senario, I'm not sure she got it.

I led the party down to the other side of the lake, in view of several, several people. Coincidentally, that side of the lake happened to be the Modor side. It was very rocky incline, past a tunnel of jutting cliff. And lookey here, rickety, rockity stairs!

"Is that even a path?" I said nervously. It was vaguely steep. And there was a channel of toxic agua below, smiling a welcoming smile.

"Uhh. Yes!" said John. And he gestured for me to go ahead and climb up.

No Friggin' Way will I climb up there with Smeagol behind me, I thought to myself. But I looked up and Frodo had already started climbing.

"You go," I said VERY DECISIVELY to John. "I'll watch." And keep an eye on you, you creeper.

So in the constant guise of me being nervous to climb, when actually I was nervous to trust the crazy man following us, Heidi and I (and John) climbed up the stone cliff stairway, literally stepped from the cliff across the channel 50 feet below, to other rocks and crags of Mordor Island and then climbed our way to the temple with John as our guide. I Have No Idea Why.

And as soon as I had my back turned, John was being invited on more and more of our journey.

"Do you know of where we can get Chinese medicine balls?" Heidi asked. Two blocks south?

Smeagol showed us the way.

How about English books? Across the street?

Smeagol showed us the way.

Oh, great, I thought. He'll probably want to show us how to get to our house, too...

"AJ," said Heidi. "He wants us to go to his house, so he can show us his medicine balls.'

No. Friggin'. Way. I said in my head, in my heart, softly out loud to Heidi.

And it took some maneuvering. He was very insistent. Gentleman? Maybe. Kind? Maybe. Generous? Maybe. Suspicious? Very much so.

When he followed us to the bus stop, I boldly told him he could not come home with us. (He did ask.) I also told him I didn't know where my house was on the map. (I lied.) Heidi gave him her number, though. She'll have to deal with the consequences of that.

"Bye, Smeagol," I said in relief as he walked away. I watched him leave for a while.

"Oh, man! I wanted to be Sam," Heidi said to me, later, as we laughed at our story.

"No," I said. "I'm Sam...I am Sam."