beijing huan ying ni part 2

Fucking china fucking blocked fucking facebook.

fuck fuck fuck.

Damn country. I go out for dinner and come back and within an hour facebook is just gone!

So scared that your citizens will revolt then just ban the whole damn internet la!

fuck fuck fuckety fuck fuck.

it showed me the place where the sidewalk cracks

Something about the end of semester flurry made me realise it.

I may not have as strong a base here in beijing as I perhaps would have liked, and maybe that’s my fault — ever aware of the possibility of loss I pushed everything and everyone away who did not make it a point to claw their way back in. I’ve built barriers so high I could rival the great wall.

But the thing is, roughly five months ago there was a night when I walked from wudaokou back to the dorms in the freezing dark, tears streaming down my face, absolutely terrified and unable to feel my toes. Today the sun is shining (although you can’t really see it through the smog of beijing) and I can feel all ten of my toes, wiggle them even. I am no longer afraid of beijing. This city challenges me, frustrates me and makes me laugh sometimes — but it no longer fills me with fear. It is no longer an unknown entity.

It’s a city, just a city like any other that can be cracked. And maybe progress isn’t measured by how well you can navigate the subway system or how many place names in the guide book are no longer just names — but that’s how I choose to measure it.

I may not have done anything great or awesome in the past few months, but I have come a long way from that sobbing wreck of emotions walking a lonely beijing road.

don’t lose any sleep tonight, i’m sure everything will end up alright

I have an exam in eight and a half hours that I haven’t prepared for and somehow, tonight, something doesn’t feel right.

When did my own thoughts become such bad company?

Is this why it’s so hard for me to be happy?

Tonight I don’t feel like framing my feelings into words. It all feels like such an effort, to wrestle down the ephemeral and solidify it. Tonight I can’t pin down exactly what is bothering me.

And I can’t shake off the feeling that my life here is not quite real.

in which i compare being in an ldr with being a vegetarian

I don’t understand people sometimes.

I don’t understand the people who say ‘Long distance relationships can work’ and then go on to cite their own on-going ldrs as examples. I don’t mean to put these people down because they must be doing something right if their still keeping long distance fires alive. God knows that I’ve tried that route and believe me when I say, being in a long distance relationship is somewhat like starving slowly to death. Or being a vegetarian. Or a vampire who only drinks animal blood.

It’s a half-life, one that never fully satisfies you because you never get enough of what you crave — which is time with the beloved. Unmeasured time during which there is no need to count how many precious minutes there are left. Time without the shade of an imminent goodbye, time which doesn’t need to be precious, that can be squandered and spent carelessly because you know you have all that you need of it.

So it’s not that I’m putting these people down. I know how hard it is and I commend the endurance and faith needed to keep on loving someone who simply isn’t there.

But arguing that ldrs can work simply on the basis that you are in an on-going one is a premature conclusion. It is, furthermore, a premature conclusion on a matter that is highly subjective. It’s tantamount to me buying a stick of grilled lamb testicles from a street-side vendor and declaring confidently that no one is going to get sick from eating street food. First of all, I don’t know yet if I’m going to get sick from it — I am still enjoying the gastronomical delights offered by grilled lamb testicles, unaware of any possible, impending toilet-related agony. Secondly, getting sick from street food is subject to various factors that differ from person to person such as toughness of digestive tract and prior exposure (local beijingers seem to be able to eat anything off the street-vendors with impunity).

The truth is, this sort of argument is weak at best and at worst, utterly vacuous. A complete cynic would say that a belief in ldrs is nothing more than a happy delusion. Fortunately, I am not yet a complete cynic. I believe that some relationships work and some don’t but like most things in life, they are half-chance. The most we can do is fight for control over the other half, to do whatever you can within the sphere of your power as far as you believe it is worth it.

But don’t argue that long distance works because you’re still in one. Chances are, a couple of failed ldrs down the road, you’ll be singing a wholly different tune.

But grilled lamb testicles are actually pretty tasty.

some dance to remember, some dance to forget

There are nights when waiyou delivery and cheap dvds are enough, more than enough. When french fries eaten hungrily on an orange beach towel is comfort beyond reckoning and no words need to be said. Nights in the dark, talking, just talking.

But there are the nights when you need something else. Sometimes you need to be in a place that’s so crammed with people that you can’t tell where your limbs leave off and theirs begin. When sweaty bodies threaten to crush you and the music that is hardly music at all but just a beat that echoes through your heart and booms its way from your feet up. To dance until your contact lenses are seared into your eyeballs and you’ve sweat clean through your shirt and your skinny jeans feel as if they’ve been plastered on and you wonder how you will ever be able to take them off again. When your heels are killing your feet and you can’t see in the dark except for a hand holding yours, leading you through the ever moving bodies, lust and desperation and music making the air palpably hot.

And then to stumble out into the night air, half-dead from exhaustion. Waiting in line for twenty kuai hotdogs with all the laowai milling around while the blonde guy behind you teases his chinese companion (”c’mon drunky, let’s get you home”). You wonder why there’s always something slightly seedy about a beijing nightclub, no matter how expensive it’s cover charge.

But then you soon forget because the cab is here and your teeth are sinking into the hotdog and it is good.

what the walls told me last night

They say that being a grown-up means being accountable to people other than yourself. They say that it’s about responsibility and being sensible. That’s why children are allowed to make more mistakes than we are — they don’t know any better.

We do. Maybe not much better, but still better.

And so at a certain point, people expect you to be able to justify your actions, explain them and then take responsibility for them.

‘You’re not a child anymore,’ the judge says before sending you to maximum security prison. Your actions are accountable to the state, to society, to god, to the freaking stars in the deep black sky. Society hangs criminals, condemns evil and indemnifies the innocent wronged, in the name of accountability. You are responsible for your actions and you’d better damn well have a good explanation for them.

It’s not a bad thing, accountability. So why do I resent it?

visibility: public

Hello, I have writer’s block.

the luxury of colliding landscapes

I spent the last few hours writing chinese characters and now I am seeing double. I swear, the price of learning chinese is ruined eyesight. A lot of frustration. Tearing out of hair. Random bursts of violent temper.

Someone went back to brazil and brought back a suitcase of havaianas, just as mine are dying. Thank the shoe-gods.

I find it hilarious and ironic that on the streets of beijing, you can buy bertrand russell’s history of western philosophy for less than five aussie dollars. For the price of a chocolate bar, you receive an entire compendium of knowledge, food for thought that will last you a lifetime. I think it’s a great deal. I am slowly, painstakingly plowing through it, pencil in hand. It’s been a long time.

I have all these words ripe inside me, dying to burst forth in a warm rush of blood and feeling but for some reason they don’t translate. I owe updates and phone calls and I miss hearing so many voices that I’m used to hearing. I miss the luxury of having the landscapes of our daily lives collide in a blur that makes no distinction between you and me. I miss hearing what has happened to you in the few hours between gloria jeans coffees or sushi from the goodlooking people in union house. I miss sharing nicotine and tar and secrets. I miss late nights at readings, walking back past the people eating pasta and drinking wine, wondering if I would ever feel as grown-up as they look.

Most of all, I miss the bits of me that are laying dormant here in beijing, waiting to leap forth again at the call of a malaysian accent or the glittering green of an abc shot.

And all of a sudden, I can’t wait for summer.

i hope the days come easy and the moments pass slow

courtesy of galadarling.com

Just what I needed to see. =)

fools rush in where angels fear to tread

A grace-in-the-small-things-post.

1. Nice cab drivers.

2. Cheap beer.

3. Clean sheets

4. Maid service, even if they do wake me up at 9 am.

5. Room 423, even if the bed is crap.

6. Thirty ringgit full body massages.

7. Random conversations in dark corridors about freud and the unconscious.

8. Being amused at how terribly hungover he is right now.

9. Sitting at a table over indian food, listening to six different languages being thrown back and forth.

10. Trying to learn how to live without certainty and yet not be paralysed by fear or hesitation.

Oh and also, internet access in china is erratic at best (30,000 internet police!) so if I suddenly stop posting, it just means I haven’t found another working proxy server yet.