State Side

Andy and I have been talking about going back to the states in a while for a while and it's starting to get under my skin already. I'm not even there yet and I'm already getting tired of it. Watching “Californication” isn't helping either. Everyone cheats, everyone lies, everyone uses hip excuses to validate their runaway train of fucked up and delusional. We've watched maybe half a season and I”m starting to be able to smell it again, my memory is rushing back to me and my stomach is starting to turn.

I like watching Californication but that's due to the dialogue and acting. I think if you took those same writers, actors and director and threw them in Oregon, I'd still dig it.

The show itself is darkly funny with a good mix of high brow and vulgar humor and the acting is stellar.

It's California that's eating at me. I left that place with no intention of ever going back. Nearly ten years of looking California in the face got me to the point where I recognize and detest every pock marked inch of it. Its only saving grace is from those family members and friends that refuse to find a new location and keep calling LA home.

David raves about LA, and reminisces about how when he first got there most of the town was farms separated with a few dirt and gravel roads. Well things have changed gramps. I don't know if you've noticed or not, but LA's not exactly farm country anymore. I think he likes what it's become, really appreciates it for what it is. I get the whole “smell of the glove” romanticism he argues for LA if you've lived there long enough to want to defend the place you've dulled out so many of your years for, but it wreaks of shit. I guess he saw it grow up, slowly breaking away from it's innocent farmers daughter ways and into the slut he's become so accustomed to fucking him.

LA is a living creature, feasting on the lives of those who stay and live within it. When you come to LA, it wraps it's arms around you and tries to hold you in, showing you that nothing lives beyond it's streets, that it's the same everywhere; the whole world is LA, so you might as well just make yourself cozy and settle in. Put it any way you like; LA likes to hold people there, whether it's holding you up, back or down; it's got it's hands around your most valuables and it won't let go.

It sure has my most valuables. Except for Andy, all my family and the few remaining people I call friends are there to this day. I thought some of them would have moved on by now.

It's a weird phenomenon. When you're there, people talk about other places like it's on another planet. Traveling is for paid vacations, and permanently taking up residence in some other part of the world goes against common sense and sanity. Maybe people don't talk about it exactly in this way, but it gets through. According to people in LA, there's nowhere else to be, either because it's the cats ass, or the blood sucking vulture that's got you trapped, piggy banking your tips to roll over the late rent until that elusive day you can pack it all in and start fresh.

My clear affintiy for the place I think shows just how much I'm looking forward to it.

When we first started talking about it, I was excited. I miss my family and I'm looking forward to finding all the artistic people I can and surrounding myself with them so I can soak in some creativity for a while. I just want to feel inspiration and original thought bouncing back at me sometimes and not always coming from me and hitting shinny blunt doorknobs.

I still want that and I'm still excited about it, but the pit of my stomach has gone away and I'm dreading mixing with the crowd that invariably surfaces in LA.

We agreed to stay away from LA from the start of the idea, look for places an hour or so away, but we're starting to wonder how fanciful the notion of a one hour saftey wall is. It'll find it's way in, and I”m not sure if we can fight it back enough that it doesn't end up getting its mess all over our lives and soaking into my gray matter.

Am I too judgmental, have I been gone too long? Will I find the same things in Portland, Seattle or Phoenix? It can't be as strong as LA. You can't find a town free of assholes and idiots, but you can at least tip the scale in your favor.

I don't know. The advantages are working with people we love and whom we like to “palaver” with for a while. Making movies, painting with other artists, jamming with some of the many musician friends in every corner of the city, relaxing a little. We need it. We've worked really hard these last two years and stopped having fun with it a while ago. All that work and so much of it siphoned away from our own shit. It's a shame really, but we got what we wanted out of it and we're better off for it, but we're tired of the marathon and we want to chill out for a while. Doing that around friends is the best route, working on some projects we care about or don't, trying to have a good time and getting a reprieve from the race to.. I don't know what... the race perfectionists run themselves into the ground with.

But should we do that in California? Would it be worth it? Would we get to relax at all before it started tightening it's grip again?

Didn't I run away from you years ago? Do I really want to walk right back in? My brain tells me that it will be different this time. I've changed quite a bit since I was last in it's clutches and it might not have the same effect on me. I don't want the same things, need the same things or fear the same things anymore, so would it find it's way to me...or am I safe from it? Maybe it won't recognize me and decide I'm not it's type. Maybe it doesn't want to gulp down someone who it's already spit out.

Maybe I worry too much and really do need to take a fucking break and see what happens.

Fish Into Fish

It didn't take long to get used to the severed heads, piles of curled feet and three-piece-alligators.

I soon expected to see Sheep heads piled next to fresh meat at the outdoor markets but was still amazed every time I went into the major grocery chains and saw an alligator sitting next to the fish selection, cut into three or four large pieces, it's head very much intact. I even started trying to remember to bring a camera when shopping for groceries, but I invariably forgot. To this day, all I have pictures of are three lightly skinned Lamb head s with their eyes staring fixedly at me. Why is it that whenever I first catch sight of their heads, they're always positioned to be staring at me?

Food preparation and display remains one of the starkest differences here from back home. In America you can buy meat and walk away with the mystery of which animal you're holding: it's all nicely plastic wrapped and bleach white, or the color of your choice. In China, education is still low, and the last generation in the south are still having trouble understanding their own language. Fish head and Chicken feet are a common staple in the Chinese diet, but I've never seen anyone walk away with a sheep's head for dinner, so I've come to the conclusion that the head is there as a sign for the illiterate

"This is Lamb".

After two years of living here I've become quite accustomed to these oddities and am not squemish to see what is now the norm, but the other day Andy and I were stopped dead in our tracks.

We often feel lonely out here, with no one to talk to about ideas, politics, theology, theory, the world and even common understandings of electricity or government. It's worse too that the wide majority of people we meet lack a certain creativity so that conversations invariably fall short whenever broached with anything intangible or not easily known. I do not in any way feel superior; but I do feel alone out here and sometimes a bit frightened.

At the schools I taught at, I had to have two weeks focus on imagination just to get the kids to tell me what they wanted to be, and this was to Children. These kids couldn't make up dreams about flying, super powers or greatness beyond being businessmen and women. I used all the Chinese translations I could find: this wasn't a language barrior problem, it was the concept.

There are also major differences in skill, education and naivety, and I'm not talking about the kids anymore. Sometimes I can't help but see large portions of this country as very young children, who will fight information for fear of showing that they do not already know.
I only bring this up to help explain the expression that was associated with the thing that stopped Andy and I in our tracks.

I should also mention that animal care is not considered here. The other week I helped a stray cat find a home which is a story in itself, but while doing it I had to go through the run down with a grown women on why cats don't dig it when you pick them up by wrapping your hand around their neck (like strangling) and hold them up like a harvest chicken. In the end, she was very happy to see the cat's response with rubbing up against her, purring and being...well...cat like. She named him XiaoHei (small black) and carried him home with her with him cozy on her chest. I do think the cat has a better life now, but this women was not a rarity: people don't know how to handle animals here. Very very few people have pets and those that do usually treat them very much like that woman did, holding dogs up by their ears as way of affection, neglecting them and ignoring or hurting them. There is not much value on these animals and I feel that they don't believe that they feel pain, fear or love. If they do, then it makes the following scene even worse.

When walking up the first few steps of the market to go up to the vegetable and pork section, we looked down at a women on the fish floor who was entertaining a young boy of about nine. On the counter was a very large fish head that was still seemingly gasping for breath, little water bubbles trickling down the sides of it's huge bloody head. Behind the wooden table, the vender held up a large piece of that same fish and slowly slipped it into the mouth of the fish head who kept opening and closing it's mouth. She slowly slid it down until it touched bottom, smiled and quietly and excitedly said something to the boy. The boy watched fixidly, mouth open, eyes wide and slack. The woman had the same expression on her face, dull and amazed. The woman slowly pulled the fish's own meat back out and slid it back in again. They looked like zombies, dumb childlike things caught in rapture and awe at a new and amusing toy. If you set up a camera in front of her and darkened the background, this would be a scene for a horror movie where someone is trying to traumatize a small child or hostage.

I didn't have a camera with me, so I did a little watercolor of the image that won't quit.
It was their expression that made it so eerie. They did not react to anyone around them, they were in their own little world, fascinated by the giant fish head eating itself as it convulsed into what looked like hungry little bites.

Fish into Water

Life in China does not afford many opportunities to meet with Artists, in fact in all my time here, I have met too few to count for fear of depressing myself. Art school was once a dream of mine, and like many dreams, like dreams of a balanced media or dreams of an afterlife, I realized it was a fallacy. The face of art school appealed to me but the fact of art school repelled me. I don't think I actually need to explain the flaws of art school as any artist already knows them and any observer can see from a safe distance the pretentious hoax which drains many a hopeful artist's pockets.
There was one aspect of "art school" in any sense that attracted me, and that was the artists that I would be surrounded with while attending the school. I ended up having that anyway when I was in the states, in fact I had it for years before college became a road half traveled. Many of my friends were artists and when they were too busy, I had my art community in town. The most valuable lessons you can get from any art class, you usually find through one of the other artists in the class, bouncing ideas off each other and offering each other your trial and error experience. It was this way to such a degree in my college art class that I wondered why we artists pay to go to college at all rather than just meeting up in large groups and do as we would in class. I have learned more from other artists than I have ever begun to learn in any class or from any book, and when around artists, it compels you to paint more and to reach new heights. I had this opportunity many times with friends and with great groups like California Artists for Humanity. Drawing (or whatever your poison may be) with a fellow artist offers you something no book or teacher can get you. Perhaps this is why Van Gough and Gauguin spent so much time together. Other than them both being artists, they had next to nothing in common; one was an antisocial insecure catastrophe and the other an insatiable glutton for women and booze and was finally taken down by a hooker in France by way of syphilis (of course, Van Gough was pretty much vicariously taken down by the same: story has it he cut off his ear to give to the prostitute he had fallen in love with after his buddy Gauguin took her for a ride one Christmas which gave him that nasty infection that took him down).

I didn't know how much I missed being around artists. I haven't sat down and drawn with another artist since I moved here and rarely get an opportunity to talk art/concept/what have you, besides going through ideas with Andy. Last weekend I was asked to come draw with this photographer, Li Jiang, which if I have the right characters means "inside river" or "into river" which is hysterically fitting. A Chinese euphemism for sex is to say "fish into water", and from what I can see, Li Jiang isn't his given name but more likely his art name.
Li Jiang was apparently looking for an American artist and model to go on a three month tour around China in a mobile home, taking pictures of said model in various beautiful places around China. He also wanted to do some sort of art exhibit featuring beautiful nude Chinese women, which is kind of my area of expertise (most of my best art is female nudes). My friend, Sue, had shown him my art and he wanted to get a vibe for me, so I came on down. A few hours drawing sounded like a welcomed break anyway, so I packed up my little easel and headed down.
As it turns out, he's a big fan of primarily two kinds of art: traditional and nude. His favorite photographer is Spencer Tunic, whose known for his elaborate public nudes. While we waited for Sue to show up, he showed me all of his favorite art and some of his travels around the world and we talked about what we liked about the artists and paintings (mind you we did this almost entirely in Chinese which I was pretty amazed went as well as it did.. At this point, I can have a pretty long conversation in Chinese with a few clarifications to new words here and there.). Pretty early on, I got the gist for him. He's a moderately successful photographer with traditional art training who probably got into drawing so he could have a good excuse to have women take their clothes off for him, not that I'm criticizing the man, lord knows I took full advantage of my artist rights in my time, but his attention to nudity is a bit overwhelming at times which is why I think his chosen name is so fitting.
Li Jiang hasn't drawn in nine years due to being so busy but was very vocal about how I had no excuse to not draw every day of my life. I tried to show him the hypocritical nature of that statement, but he didn't seem to get it. He says artists should learn from Van Gough and forget about money or jobs and paint every day of their life. I told him that every artist wishes they could paint every day but few can because they have to live, eat and make enough money for the next canvas. I also pointed out that Van Gough sold a total of one painting in his entire life to his dentist and wasn't appreciated until after his death.
All in all, I had a great time. The Infamous Doc posed for us for an hour or so, and tried not to let his head fall too much when he kept falling asleep. I say infamous because Doc has received an ungodly amount of attention out here. Every time we meet with photographers, they just can't keep their hands off him. I'm sure it's great for his ego, but before all this, Doc was pretty well set there, and talks of being a king with dreams of people bowing to him. Well, he'll finally have a shrine in his honor to some degree. This month, there will be a billboard in Zhongshan, China bearing Doc's image. A freaking billboard.

In the studio, Li Jiang told me that we would draw Doc's upper body, so I got to work on my small sheet of paper on my portable easel that I swiped from the Canton fair two years ago, and he started on his giant piece of paper. He ended up only drawing doc's face and focused on the detail. Seeing his drawing showed me why all these people keep wanting to photograph Doc; they see a different man than I do. Maybe they see what Doc wants them to see, maybe they see what Doc wants to become. Either way, their view of him is not my own, and I think that shows.
























Next weekend, I'm planning on going back to the studio to draw my friend, Emilia with Li Jiang again. He also said he wants to draw and photograph me, which is kinda new to me. I've had plenty of models before but I haven't done a lot of modeling for another artist. He also keeps trying to convince his way into nude photographs of me but I'm just not doing that. Sue assures me that it doesn't have to be nude but being that it keeps being brought up I think I'll have to nip this in the but my own way. Sue is naive and far too nice with business people and she sees Li Jiang as business, so if I want anything really clarified, I have to do it myself. She sort of assumes people will just pay the deserved amount without talking about it, people will just be honest without questioning it and that people won't do harm; not Chinese people anyway. After the Zhanghe and GouYan sittuation, I don't know how she still believes that, but I know I'm not about to head off that problem again now. I've learned to not let her keep the reigns with these things. She's a great friend and we've become close, but you just don't mix Sue and business, because Sue has patterns she can't seem to break and I've lost enough friends at this point that I'm not giving her the chance to mess this one up again. Besides, I know her intentions are good, she's just misguided.
Here are some pictures of Li Jiang and I drawing.


I don't usually sloutch like this. That's better.

X Prize

The past century has been a blur of progress and development, toppling over the boundaries we had set before us using innovation, technology and creativity. Philosophers, psychologists and sociologists have stood back in awe and flooded our world with new terminology and expressions in an attempt to understand and commemorate this remarkable time in our history. Our progress has been astounding, building on itself with such ease that if you don't pay attention, in 10 years time, you could look around and not recognize your world.

For years I've been waiting for this same push to begin with Space Science and Exploration. I waited for a whisper of it, for a whiff of change that this field would be opened to the consumer and commercial market so that we could build upon our knowledge and exploration of Space as we have with computer sciences.

In 2004 it began and it began with great inspirational leaps. SpaceShip One's identity is not only in it's craft and in it's creators but in what it stands for and for what will follow it. SpaceShip One marked the beginning of consumer/commercial based space exploration and signifies the turning point in the future of Human space travel. We know the pattern well; if you put a field in the consumer/commercial market, it will boom and grow upon itself, daily striving to keep up with itself with new innovations and technology. It's simple; when you have that many people watching and pushing for improvement and pushing to see the future of it, it cannot resist excelling.

Computers evolved upon themselves trying to live up to the standards video games were demanding of them. Each time an individual developed a way to improve graphic design and display, the hardware had to improve with it. I'd have to say that 90% of computer science and technology's progress is due to consumer demand and commercial production.

Human desire is a force to be reckoned with.

Evolution at a visible speed is one that takes place in the mind, in will power, innovation, understanding and discovery. That may not seem like the common definition of evolution, but when it comes to mankind, that is where our next step lies. Our next step in evolution is not a physical one, but rather a mental one, one that lies in the realms and limits of our minds, abilities and discoveries. I have always believed this and have likewise believed that much of the key to our next step is in understanding and exploring our universe.

As long as History knew to record it, humans have been proving that anything is possible as long as enough people are behind it. Religion and faith are case in point; religion is the most successful organization in history and that is due to it's followers and to those who believed in pushing it forward. Without people's need to see is succeed, religion would become an out dated ceremony left to cave drawings and relics. Because of people's demand of it, religion is an intergral part of the common family and even modern government and law. Whether or not this is the way it should be, it is the way it is.

Take a look at successful businesses. Why is image, logo and name so important? So that more people can support it by using the name, logo and image in conversation and belief. "Google is the biggest search engine in the world" This is true, but one has to wonder whether or not it is true because it was said and because it was believed. If not, why care about your name and memorable image?

People are fuel for impossible endeavors and for too long people have been taken out of the equation in the realm of Space Research and Exploration.

Space has been given a restricted seal: For Government Eyes Only. Beyond that, it has been set on a lofty seat above the common people with the warning that dreams that involve space are ones left to the pipes. Space is just as accessible as the air, and the only thing that has kept us from it is the belief that we cannot do it because we are either not allowed or too common to succeed.

The X Prize has changed all that. This is what my dreams are made of, and we salute X prize and Google for their humanitarian efforts. This is the way to our future and finally it is in the hands of the innovative, creative public who have the real ability to push it to it's true potential.

"Google’s giving you 30 million reasons to join the space race.

The online giant is teaming with the X PRIZE Foundation in announcing the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize, a robotic race to the Moon.

The Google Lunar X PRIZE aims to challenge and inspire engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop low-cost methods of robotic space exploration. The X PRIZE Foundation, best known for the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private suborbital spaceflight, is an educational nonprofit prize organization whose goal is to bring about radical breakthroughs to solve some of the greatest challenges facing the world today."

“The Google Lunar X PRIZE calls on entrepreneurs, engineers and visionaries from around the world to return us to the lunar surface and explore this environment for the benefit of all humanity,” said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. “We are confident that teams from around the world will help develop new robotic and virtual presence technology, which will dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration.”"
- Reporter- Mazen Alkhamis of Science Mode
Interviewing Dr. Peter H. Diamandis
Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation

Quote from the X Prize website:
"We didn't just launch a spaceship, we launched a revolution.

Imagine a future where personal spaceflight is a reality, where super-efficient cars are affordable for everyone and medicines are personalized just for you...

The Foundation's strategy for fostering innovation is unique — we create high-profile competitions that attract and motivate radical breakthroughs for some of the most important challenges facing humanity."

We are joining the race.

Right now, we're going through the different design and launch plans, hashing out the problems and searching for all the best solutions. When we started, we just talked about it, asking questions to each other about each part of the mission and the machine, and when we faced a problem, we thought about it and suddenly, there was a solution, so easily in our grasp. In not long at all, we were looking at a workable plan and realized just how feasible the mission was. I shivered when I realized just how close within our reach it really is. Despite the race, if you decided to go to the moon, you could, with enough time, creativity, research and work; you can do it.

The 20 million dollar prize is fantastic and whoever wins it could use it to start a mission to Mars or a Space Station or a maned mission to the Moon etc. The real win here though is giving the people a win. Whoever wins the race will be winning for the public, proving that great things are within our reach and thus setting a course for our future. More and more people who have always wanted to research and explore space will come forward and lend their ideas to the table. It's the ideas and new perspectives that really get us going and that we really need. There's an unending stream of questions that the universe poses to us and what we need to even begin to understand it and navigate it is more minds on it on a constant basis. A private individual landing a rover on the moon is just what we need to realize just how much we can do.
There are a lot of groups out there right now with the funding, materials and expertise to win this race. Andy and I are two people with some very good ideas and plans. We plan on presenting our launch/rover plans and designs to someone who can fund us just enough to get us there for a cut of the win, and we plan on moving on it fast. Whether or not we make it for the race, and whether or not we win, we're going to try to launch a rocket and land a rover on the moon. This race is all about the future of Space Travel and Exploration, and you can't put a price on that. (Though 20 million would go really far to build a stable space station out there for consumer use, aimed at education to an open market).

I cannot express just how excited we are about this race, and I cannot begin to explain just how much we all need it.

I don't know if I'm allowed to post videos for the X Prize, if not, sorry guys, but I want everyone to know about this.

NEVER WAS A WHERE

I'm writing because if I do anything else, my brain will just continue to nag at me and kill whatever it is I'm trying to distract myself with. I don't know why these things bother me so much.My stomach feels cold and I'm fiddling with my computers trying to distract myself from this sudden unease.

It's ridiculous, but I feel this way because I just watched The Office. I like The Office; it's a funny show. I laugh while I watch it, but each time I finish an episode, my heart sinks and I get this weird depression where I can't stand the thought of seeing another one, while needing to see another one in the hopes that something will change and things will get better somehow. She'll quit and work on being an illustrator. Why is being an illustrator a pipe dream? It's just as possible as any other job. Why is being a therapist a pipe dream and a waste of time?

Sure, it's just another job, but it's something besides the cubicle coffin and corporate ladder that you hang yourself on, because your tie got stuck on a rung a while back and each time you take another step up you pull it a little tighter around your neck, but you don't even notice because the air's getting thinner so slowly that you just fall into it comatose, unaware that you've been killing yourself, eating away at yourself and now it's all gone and you're at the end of your rope and there's nothing but ladder and ceremony left.

It frightens me. You see, the mind is plastic, and allowing yourself to buy into it even for a moment will get you in that place long enough for your mind to bend around it and accept it, validate and defend it until it is you. It is death. There is nothing to be created there, nothing to be gained; you can live an eternity in a place like that and never have existed at all. In all that time you could have affected no one, created nothing, learned nothing and left no mark. You would become a non thing.

Every now and then I question myself and my life, and worry about the way I've done things. At any point when it gets to me too much and I beat on myself too hard, I take a look at the alternative and it all becomes clear to me again. Failing miserably while trying to do something great is worlds better than succeeding at what is expected. People don't really expect much, and if I did do things the usual way, it wouldn't be terribly difficult. Everything is already set up for you to succeed in that manner, but when you're done with it, what have you done?

You haven't tried to do anything really. It's difficult to set a new grain and to strive for things in an unusual way, in ways even your closest family can't comprehend, but it's the only thing worth doing. I'm not interested in having someone else's victory or success. I'm not interested in getting where other people have gone and I'm certainly not interested in doing it the way they have. I respect people who have succeeded and I'm smart enough to take a good look at it and try to understand it, but I don't want to walk in anyones footsteps; I want to make my own. I don't really care if anyone wants to follow in mine, but I'd like to set out and discover something, look at life in a different way, solve problems with my own fledgling mind, fight battles instead of avoiding them and wonder each step of the way if my decisions are right or not because there's no book to look in the back of for the answers and I wouldn't want one.

That makes life worth living. It's like living life for the first time, seeking out answers and wondering about the way of things as though someone else is not going to do it for you, because no one is. Most people don't take the time to wonder and even more fail to try to answer the questions that wondering leaves.

Taking the worlds answers for things is the lazy life; allowing the people before you and around you to navigate a lifetime removes all curiosity and knowledge from you. What can you have if you never look beyond what is given to you? Our minds are so very plastic, our manner so easily set into a comfortable mold where the roads are named and set in stone, but this is not the path to the future or to greatness or even to real life, but to repetition and a muddy death. These habits are the earmarks of failure on the grandest scale: doing so means handing off your life to an unnamed thing outside of you to rule and ruin at whim. There is no great and knowing person who knew to set our lives on a certain course and that we now follow because he was so right; there's the easy path that was made so easy by so many people doing it over and over again for no other reason then that it was laid out for them and therefore easy to follow. If a million people make the same mistake, it's still a mistake and not one others should follow because of it's normalcy.

It's so strange when you actually stop and look at the building blocks of your little world and realize that so many walls and rooms in your world were put up by people you never met. These weren't your decisions, you hardly even thought about it, but suddenly, your reality and life has been mapped out by a general consensus of unknowing, of fear, ease and inconsequence.

When did it become such a difficult task to think? People seem to actually fight against looking at life in any way other than the normal way, and this is in all fields: political, economical, biological, scientific, theological, personal. Why are we so afraid to see that we are wrong when knowing so could lead us in a direction where we could understand so much more and accomplish an unknowable amount?

I wonder how many discoveries and adventures have been sacrificed for comfort. I'm not talking about the comfort of an ikea couch, I'm talking about the comfort that you're a good person, that you're doing well and doing it right. I'm talking about the kind of comfort that means nothing to anyone but that everyone obsesses themselves with. The things that hold us back the most I believe is habitual, not wanting to break away from the common patterns of the every day for fear that you'll lose the floor beneath you and you'll be forced to create your own definitions for the world.

How much have you actually thought about? How much have you questioned? I'm not talking about conspiracy here; I'm talking about actually thinking about the reality you are subscribing to. It's your world now, why not look at it? Why not inspect it and confront it with it's flaws? What will you lose? For a moment, you might be lost, not knowing in which direction to turn, in which direction to believe, but that's the moment of real power and potential, because in that moment when you're not sure you know anything at all, you could know anything, you could understand a whole dimension of your reality you never cared to look at before.


The key, I think, to everything we don't yet know or understand is to be willing to look at it in all the ways that we are most afraid to look, most opposed to question and to give up on all the ways that make us comfortable. There's a universe of unknown and only a sliver we have mapped. How can we think that we are so great and knowing to really believe that our little sliver is true and correct?

That is why little worlds like that terrify me, because it's all part of an organism that pushes you to accept everything as law and as concrete and unchanging, and if you let it grab you in one asspect of your life, it can take down the whole game, and then you're left with nothing but what is given to you.

My world has to be my own. I'm not a genius, I'm not a world leader, but in my world and my reality, I cannot let another decide for me, and though I'm always ready to listen and learn, I cannot accept anything without inspecting and questioning and looking at it, because if I didn't, I could accept anything, and suddenly up is down and anything worth doing is beyond your reach up the path that was never yours that you have to slowly trudge to get anywhere...which in the end never was a where to begin with.

My world is full of questions now, and some make a pit in my stomach because I don't know what they mean, and even some of the theories send a shiver down my spine, but when I look at the alternative, I'm shaken to my core. In that life, I'm am nothing but a corpse waiting for someone to realize they need to get on with the ceremony and put me in the ground and I can't help my instinct to live. I wonder how so many people turn that part of themselves off.

House of Ma....

That last blog was a bit staggering. Sometimes these moments of wondering hits me, but I really shouldn't have let that one sit there for so long without a follow up. I believe a lot has happened since then, but I'm not going to get into a play by play.
Now is a good time to mention that I'm two timing Blogspot. It's true, I have a new blog now that I'm paying more attention to. I started a new job, teaching English to a 13 year old girl from Hong Kong while staying at their home, and I've decided to write about it. It's just that interesting. The new blog is called "In the House of Ma" and if you'd like to see where all my morsels of wisdom are dripping, you can click on the link to see it. houseofma.blogspot.com
That blog is all about my new job, but I'll probably continue to use this blog for theories, essays and ranting, so don't drop this blog like so many wasted rags just because there's two in my life now.

I have nothing to say for now, so I won't until I do.

Nipping at My Heels

I try to keep as much fear out of my life as possible. That's not to say that I'm such an evolved human being to have known at a distance how destructive fear can be; I know to keep it out of my life because my life already bares it's marks.
I say I try because I haven't succeeded. The truth is I am scared. Sometimes I'm downright terrified. Right now my heart is running on overdrive and if I looked I'm sure I could verify that my pupils were the size of quarters.
I'm 23 years old and I have the fear of failing nipping at my heels. It's been there for years. I can't remember the last day I didn't doubt myself, question if what I'm doing is right, question if...fuck it, screw trying to make myself look bigger than I am: questioning if I'm good enough. There it is in all it's insecure glory.
I've seen failure as we all have, but I haven't seen a lot of success, not up close and personal, and I often wonder if I missed out by not seeing someone succeed close to me. I don't know the motions, I'm simply making this up. It'd be easier if I was doing things simply, but I'm not. It's not to say that a degree from a university will necessarily make life any easier but it's generally not the decision that sets your life on a collision course with the bottomless cup of coffee at a 24 hour coffee shop, talking to random strangers about how you almost had it all, how great you were, how your whole life is a mix of near misses and that if you add them all up, there's got to be a big win in there somewhere.

It gives me chills.

You know that girl in the front of the class with her hand permanently raised, who always bent the curve against you, eager for tests and always pushing the standard of the class for more work and higher goals? That was me. Yeah, I'm a nerd, and I still have a great rack; I know, it's fucking astounding. I'm not looking for smart points here; I was in an LAUSD school, so any excellence I showed there should sit next to the side note detailing the substandard education of the Los Angeles School District, adding that probably every average student from most other developed countries in the world could beat out the creme de le crem of North Hollywood high school. Not to mention that I was thoroughly high throughout a lot of it. That goes to show just how difficult it must have been if someone still shaking off the drips of Acid can ace her way through it.

The point is that I've always had high standards for myself. I've always been competitive, and it wasn't my security in my intelligence that kept me raising my hand, but the eagerness to reach some kind of competency that I couldn't doubt at the end of the day, and the fear that I wouldn't ever get there.
I'm very competitive, but I'm not the kind of personality that comes out believing she's really the best and that the only people she has to prove it to are those on the outside looking in. I'm my biggest critic, in fact, I'm not sure if I've ever really believed in myself. I've believed that the person I want to become can do anything and is successful and intelligent and capable and talented, but I'm not yet that person, so how could I believe it? It'd be premature and being secure in my ability could possibly halt my progression. Maybe I'd get comfortable, maybe even cocky and arrogant, and then it'd all go to hell and I'd never even catch a glimpse of who I want to be.

I always intended to go to College; it wasn't even a question. I didn't just want to go to college, I wanted to drain every last drop I could get from it, I intended to push the capable professors to new degrees of ability in pushing me. I intended to stay longer than the purport of a degree; I wanted to stay until I felt I learned as much as I could from that institution. College was like a fantasy to me. It was a place where all you had to do was learn and you could do it as long as you like. Of course, I hadn't really considered the money side of it and my family isn't exactly basted in dough (not my immediate family anyway, and that's the only ones who really matter in the end anyway; they're the ones you live your life with and ever really know).

If I really pushed it, I'm sure I could have gotten scholarships and grants, but that only covers so much, and then of course, life decided it wasn't slowing down for college, and hell; it had a pretty persuasive argument, so I went along. Art school seemed pretty pathetic compared to how I had imagined it, proving itself as mere ego justification grounds rather than offering anything I was looking for, so I didn't want to go there anyway, but I still had interest in widening my focus at a more general university.

I've seen countless non-graduates succeed, and I've seen countless more graduates fail. It doesn't determine whether or not you succeed, but it's still a question that hangs over my head. Should I have? Did I miss the boat? I often wonder if that decision will play a bigger role in my life than I'd like it to.
I haven't' stopped learning though; if I did I'd go crazy. I've been learning in a field that was part of an alien tongue to me just three years ago. The magic of computers and all the little doo dads and splinkies it can do. I've learned design in 2d, 3d, animation, film, merging traditional art with 3d design, editing, special effects, 3d modeling, dozens of other software with application into dozens of different fields. If I were in college this whole time, I wouldn't have come as far as I have because of how I've dealt with the learning curve and that I've been working on it pretty much non stop for the past two years with Tabulanis guiding my path. I know this, I really do, but it's not good enough for me. I don't like comparing myself to the average populations performance. I like to compare myself to the competition, to the exceptional and outstanding, though this often leaves me constantly reaching forward and never grabbing a well deserved ego trophy to make nights like these go by smoother.

All this worry will probably shorten my life span which could put a few kinks in my success plans, so I should really cut it out; that and I'm really not into dying at all, let alone early.

I've written here before about how having so many endeavors and interests sometimes keeps my time thin and keeps me on my toes, always rushing myself. It's hard not to feel like there's no time in a day when you have a dozen projects on your list and the clock keeps on ticking. Sometimes the projects you love get lost in the shuffle, and then you start to wonder if doing it on your own is worth it if your losing time on your real goals.
Above all else, I want to write. There's no pride beyond having readers fall into my books as I have with so many others. I'll know success when I have readers who feel that small strange loss when you finish a great book; satisfied from the story, but so connected to the characters and invested in the story that you feel you'd do anything to see it never end. That's my idea of real accomplishment; I only hope I'll have enough time to get there.
I know how far I have to go. Being that I haven't written in months doesn't help with this at all, as it slows me down and keeps me farther from my goal, and has kept my mind almost completely out of writing. I need to immerse myself in it so that I'm always pushing myself to perform as a writer and then maybe I can get there. I have potential as a writer and maybe even a little talent, but I'm not there yet, and I wouldn't want to "chop wood in front of a master" before I'm ready (A Chinese proverb meaning not to embarrass yourself showing off mediocre skill in front of a master).

I don't have a day job, so I have no excuse not to be working. This means that if I'm not working, I feel guilty, and the whole time I'm sitting there watching a TV show or hanging out at the bar, my mind is on my work and somehow my anxiety is ticking off the hours I've waisted and adding it to my list. There's nothing wrong with having high standards, but even I know this is ridiculous. I should be able to relax and do things like this from time to time; to do anything I want and not just what I feel I have to. Luckily I'm invested in my work, so it's not loveless for me, but it has a strong hold on me and sometimes I really do need to be able to walk away from it and let it be. It won't fade away, my future isn't balancing on the edge and isn't contingent on me spending my every waking moment on work. I need to breathe.

I wonder if I'll recognize success when I get there. Maybe I'll just run past it and keep working myself right into a wall.
I suppose there's really no point in wondering whether or not I'm good enough at any of this; it'll all come down eventually without me asking whether I like it or not, and none of it will matter.

Just pushing myself to write these little blogs takes a lot of convincing for me to do. These blogs don't accomplish anything and aren't a part of a bigger project. The only validation I have for it is that at least I'm writing, though I always end up doing it late into the night when my brain is dull (It's 8:30 am and I've yet to sleep), so even then, the writing is pretty shoddy anyway. So my only excuse is that I need it, that if I don't stop sometimes and force myself to relax and ease my brain, my anxiety about success will keep me from ever reaching it.

Hoe Down

I'm exhausted and need a shower. I had two shows last night (and have yet to be paid...grrr) and I have two more today. Those shows were...well, it's like doing a hoe down actually. It's weird, I think our partners are trying to "learn us a lesson" again. I hate when they do that. They'll get on our ass and stop getting us jobs because they think our cola consumption is too high but keep holding off keeping up their end of getting us the equipment our contract entails or...well most of the contract they haven't held up.
Business in China is like sword fighting on a tight rope, and you're never sure if the swords are real or whether or not there's a net below you.
Last night's hoe down was really odd because they always put me in these sleazy flashy clubs their friends own or poorly put together events (where I get to sing with midgets and kung fu kids in training - it's like being a side show at the circus), so this was a little weird as I usually follow sexy dancers and play to rich audiences (though I think I had the most fun at the hoe down) .
I really do think they were trying to pull a power play, and I can't tell you how old that gets. They've not very subtle. They didn't like our spending, so one time they refused to pay us for three weeks so that we could "learn how to live Chinese". We're artists; we've got that starving artist bit covered. We've all lived off of ramen noodles at points in our life and scrounged for money between the cushions and found crazy ways to get through. We certainly didn't need our partners trying to enlighten us with a little more 'god this really sucks' experience. Let alone the fact that you can't learn anything about living "cheap" when you have NO MONEY. They left us high and dry and then turned around talking about how we're fucking family. I don't want to be a family with them; I want us to fulfill our side of the contract and them to fulfill theirs, then we can all make lots of money and we'll go get a house in New Zealand where we can finally build a lab and they can bugger off using their money for god knows what and I couldn't' care less.

It was clear they were doing this again. They came over, yelled and screamed about water usage, stormed out and told our friend Sue to inform us that we were moving to a farm house out in the boons because we used too much water and power. They did this without confronting us or asking us about anything or ever mentioning anything beforehand. I do NOT get off on being treated like a child, and I don't care what they do, they have absolutely no right to control our lives or make our choices for us, and I'm not their fucking subordinate whose just going to go along with unreasonable control freak issues. No,I'm not moving to the farm that has no internet or AC and that is so far away from town I have to ride a bike to get to town where I might find a cab. While there's cool shit to all of that, and part of it sounds nice to me, it's not doable with what we're trying to do. More than anything, I couldn't do it because it was done to show they can control us, and therefore I cannot abide by it. Had the farm hose been presented as an option and they had talked to us like reasonable people, who knows, maybe I'd have a garden and a nice big yard.
They already make work nearly impossible as it is, refusing to give us the equipment we need or time to complete work in, so we're stuck trying to run the gauntlet, doing ridiculous quality work in a fraction of the time it would take a large studio to produce, with substandard equipment! You really can't get any worse than that...unless of course you decided to move this innovative little group who lack the resources they need into a small farm house miles from town where they might be able to "commune" with the technology they need to produce the stuff they're being asked to produce!
I think I need a cigarette after that.

Anyway, the same night, they told me these were my last singing gigs (trying to say I've fucked up) and then I see that my last shows are the bottom of the barrel. They were trying to be insulting and it's really frustrating that I have to deal with such childish behavior with people I'm actually trying to do business with. I know these aren't' my last shows. I know that next week I'll have three more, and that they'll try to give them to me as little freaking gifts. They just wanted to do a power play and try to remind us that they have power over our lives.
ooooohhhh..it tempts me so much to act in ways that could......well it could end all that bullshit, but I won't...I'll be patient.

We're not moving to the farm. Like reasonable people, we found out what the real problem was and fixed it. We're now paying for the water bill (even though there are 7 people here using water and our contract states that they pay our living expenses. Of course that's just one more off the list of things they're supposed to do but don't). The answer to the fact that the water bill is too high is not freaking out and running to the farm; you simply tell the people who are using the water that too much is being used, and then they start using less and contribute to the bill. That's what a reasonable person does. Of course the wife makes all these knee jerk money decisions and frankly she's one of those women who runs things into the ground just to prove she can run anything at all.

So yes, it is MEGA frustrating to me, but we've made our decisions and we know who we're dealing with and so we deal with it. I'm just venting right now, as I'm still kinda ticked about the whole thing. Andy's plants are all dying with too much sun and not enough water now, and that I can't really fix that because people are being unreasonable about little things bothers me.
I've made my bed and I've made my decisions so really, I should stop complaining because I knew this is who we're dealing with and I knew we'd have to deal with this kind of behavior, I'm just always surprised to the extent it goes with them. I wonder sometimes if they're trying to test us, to see how much the gueiles will take before it's too much. The fact of the matter is we can work with anything. We can work ridiculous hours with substandard equipment and next to no money to do what we want to do. We're determined people and we don't often let things get in our way. No matter the problem, we will figure out a solution and we are genuinely invested in this group and we intend on reaching our goals. I'd hate it if they really did find a way to push us too far because I'd really like to see where this can go, and when we make decision we make them both with a good deal of forethought and planning, and once we decide it's done; it's done. I hope it doesn't go that way.
We've had a really bumpy start and I know we weren't what they expected so I'm sure they have their greivences too, but it's all worth it and all Meiwen fucking ti if we get somewhere with it and get to the next level.

Stained Glass

I'm a newbie to 3D graphics and animation but I'm learning quickly....I think. I've learned some animation, a lot of design and building, some lighting and what not and some other shit that would be boring to anyone who wasn't doing it themselves. One of the reasons I'm learning so fast (actually probably the whole reason) is that I have Tabulanis right at hand. I'd give my left foot for a direct connection into his brain. Screw tutorials, help files and learning curves; plug me into Tab and I got it all worked out. (If you don't know who Tab is, you can see what he does at www.frogfaith.com/tabulanis )
Usually when I work on a project, he likes to let me go on my own until I hit a brick wall and then he'll come in, but he likes to let me see if I can figure it all out first, though my stuff wouldn't look half as good if he weren't around.
So I feel kinda good about my half win today. Tab was out all day working (modeling as an old man if you believe it), so I was on my own.
I made a pretty cool looking room (the ball is just there for...well for now), but I wanted to make stained glass windows for it. This will all be used for a music video where I paint this world into existence and then things are animated in it(so we're also talking green screen). The point was to show off my art too, but I kinda forgot about that because final renderer made everything look so good anyway, my brain no longer thought it needed a bunch of arty stuff all over it. To fix that, I decided to start by making the windows at the back of the room stained glass versions of three of my Chinese zodiac tarot card series...but I've never done stained glass before. This isn't brilliant stuff, but I looked at no help file, tutorial or forum for this...which is probably also why it's just a half win.
It's pretty simple. I did a new layer in photoshop, tracing my painting to create the in between lines, used it as my bump layer and minussed the fuck out of it (cause it's black and not white), and then tried to make the painting look as glassy as possible.If you can't tell, there's a pyramid, a sphere and something else like a donut behind the glass...though because you can't tell goes to show how "glass like" it isn't.
Tab tells me that it was a nifty idea but I have brought it to the farthest point it can go with this technique, and that I can't actually get the light to go through the glass and project on the floor....oh! that's it! I need to project the image with a light onto the window and then it will spill through perfectly, and I'll just throw on the bump layer...and bam! I think that will work!
I could be wrong, but it's so much nicer trying to figure things out without a tutorial...I seem to be slowly working past that.

After asking him:
He tells me that would work but there is a better way.

The Hermit's Fellow

I don't have many friends, and of those I do have, I have chosen to keep in my life for good reasons. This might be why I don't have many friends. I'm picky about the people I have around me. I like them honest and courageous, intelligent(level headed) and honorable, and of course humorous and loving. I might hang out with people who I don't trust at social get-togethers, but I'll never really bring them into my life. Gossip, lies, smalltalk and validating insecurities with a like wise guilty friend doesn't do it for me and has no place in my life. I like to help people and I'll never push anyone away who needs or wants help until they are a threat to me or mine, but I won't bring you in to our close group either until I can trust you or if you just happen to interest me that much. Basically, if you're my friend, you're in my group, our little family, and I want to know I can trust you when the shit hits the fan.
I'm critical of people and waring of their motives and honesty. I wasn't born with a critical eye, I grew it over time. I'm critical of people because at one time I was naive and trusting and I saw what happens when you take someone at face value. It hurts, it sucks, but to a degree, it's avoidable. This means that I'm also not so open to new people. I'm not one to turn you away if I don't know you, but the whole time, I'll be trying to figure you out and will be careful of my decisions with you. I don't bring you in, I don't let you in, and though I wish it weren't true, most of the time I'm not excited about the people I meet and I don't have the interest in bringing them into my life anyway. I'd love to build our group up with cool, down to earth, strong willed people from all walks of life, but we're all picky, and generally the picking is slim.
So it's strange to me that I met SW and that I'm so interested in talking with her now. I don't know if she'd be cool with me putting her name up online, so for now she's a mysterious acronym...oooohh.

I met SW by accident. I was trying to send an email to a friend of mine out here, and instead sent one to her. It happens to be that she has the same name. Instead of just deleting the email, she looked me up and found this blog (Hi), and to my amazement, not only found it interesting, but agreed with my post about women. I'll drop the eloquence for a while here to properly address the oddity of this. Holly fucking shit.
When I wrote that post I expected that the only response I'd get from it (if any at all) would be angry women yelling at me for not fully appreciating the role we've played in blah blah blah, and why it's okay to do less or how the solution is making it easier for women in the workplace rather than women simply working harder to get there. I did not however, expect to hear another woman tell me it could have been written by her. This greatly increases my hopes for the future, of not only for womankind, but for my life in particular in that maybe our group won't have to be so lonely forever.
We enjoy our conversations and endeavors on theory, philosophy (if you could call it that) and self improvement and throwing insecurities and excuses to the side, but sometimes it does get lonely, and I know we've all daydreamed of being able to relate with others on these things. I'm not even talking about her relating on a philosophical level or jumping on board with one of our more out there ideas. This is actually a pretty simple subject, it's just not seen that way by the general public.
I guess I'm lonelier than the guys in this group if you think about it. The chances of finding a like minded man is far greater than finding a like minded woman and I've conceded to not having any female friends in my life, but it doesn't mean I haven't' wanted it. I remember the advantages to female friends in the past, how we can sympathize and support each other, but after a while so much other shit got in the way. I believe there can be something equally (but differently) powerful in a female friendship on that level, but I generally don't hold my breath.

I generally don't jive well with my generation or my gender, and often my species, but more so with the first two. I've given up on it, but I still have that seed of hope in there, because there are a lot of women out there and a lot of people from my generation, and wouldn't it be great if all those people woke up and pushed a little harder? That'd be a whole lot of push.

Of course, SW isn't from my generation, but that wouldn't' be likely, now would it? I do know some pretty stellar people from my generation, but take a wild guess how many of them are female?.....slim pickings.
She has her own company with her husband and from the looks of it works her ass off doing environmental work, she's a dork (always a plus), she's 55 but still in great shape, so that means she didn't take the chick excuse or the age excuse to take the easy American path of degeneration, she's intelligent, opinionated and I haven't seen any crazy yet. (Not that I don't have my portion of crazy) Not too shabby for a stray email meeting. It's very very strange to me that I'm talking with her and that I'm interested in talking with her. It's indefinably strange to me that when I've been looking and scoring for potential like-minded people, I find nothing in my line of site, but I accidentally stumble upon one while trying to send an email about canvas sizing.
I just posed a question to her that might stumble things onto a bad way with her, but I don't get that vibe from her. I don't praise her as the answer to all my questions, because that would be crazy, I've only had a few conversations with her over email and seen what her website has to say, and I'm just not that psychic, but I do find it incredibly interesting. That I've had so much fun talking with her this long has upped my hope for the future with womankind relations and possibly even made me a little less critical......nah....probably not, but I don't see anything wrong with that.
It's probably a bad thing that talking to a like minded woman is a remarkable event, though you could say it is a bad sign on both sides of that fence; negative for womankind or negative for me and my version of being social. eh.

---Sienna of TAO-SA

Drugs in the Grass

Usually our lives are centered around work, and we're either sitting at the computer or, well sitting at the computer. I get to toss it up a bit, but then I'm just sitting at the easel, which is kind of a change of scenery, but I'm still sitting. The funny thing is that we're all adventurous people. We like to venture into unknown territory, climb all over things, poke around, play with Shanai, and we like to do it well. We'd like nothing else than to have a rock wall in our home with an obstacle course and sections devoted to boxing and martial arts training and gymnastics, but we don't have it and that makes it difficult because then we have to go out into the world to get it.
When we work we really devote ourselves; we're talking days without sleep and nonstop around the clock work where you forget to pee for 6 hours because you're just too wrapped up in it. And we always work. This doesn't lend too well to being active people.

So for the past two weeks or so, I've been trying to get into the habit of getting off my ass and doing anything but sitting. There's a park a few blocks away, so that helps. Of course, our last apartment was across from the stadium with free tennis courts and a full gym, but we never had a chance to go. Now that I am going, our current park is a little lacking. There's no tennis courts, so we play together against a wall which is good enough really because none of us are really all that good. There's a "gym" of sorts outside, but it's just a bunch of rusty metal toys really and I can't see ever using it. They don't even have a bar so I can attempt a pull over.

But the park is beautiful. I don't have great pictures yet, but I will soon. There's a large river that winds through it, with island pagodas and a fishing hole where you can fish for shrimp for 10 yuan an hour. The last time we went, we didn't actually do much. I wanted to take pictures of a statue so that I could make a 3D version of him and animate him in the music video we're doing right now, but by the time we got there the sun was already set. I tried to draw the statue and the lily pad filled river (complete with thousands of croaking jumping frogs) but after 5 minutes, my legs were covered in mosquito bites, so we packed in the drawing pad and went over to our trusty wall to just play some badminton before going home. (I'd never played badminton before China, but it's incredibly popular here. At any time and anywhere, you can spot someone playing. I personally only get into if there's a bit of competition to it, but most people just practice volleying).
This turned out to be a pretty cool night for me.
In our last apartment, every night the stadium would blast the same music and we could see clouds of people down there doing something, but I couldn't tell what. It turns out what they were doing was dance Tai Chi. A little while after we started playing badminton, someone turned on that same music and suddenly people started to gather, line themselves up and started all coordinated dancing to the music (in a relaxed aerobics kind of way). We moved over a little to give them room, but little by little, the whole area was soon filled with over 200 people lining up to do this so we put our rackets down and just watched for a while.
"Do they know each other?" I asked my Chinese friend Sue who answers most of my Chinese related questions. She looked at me confused.
"No."
"How do they know when to come?"
"It's the same at every park. Everyone just knows."
"How do they all know the dance moves?" (there were dozens of different songs and dances they did).
"They do it everyday."



Here's the interesting part. Apparently after SARS, the Chinese people were told that they needed to be healthy and somewhere somehow, someone said this park Tai Chi was the good way. Suddenly the whole country got into it and this is just what they do to stay healthy. It's mostly women, and mostly 30s and up, but there were also quite a few young people, children and men of all ages joining in. I'm not sure how to explain why this seemed interesting to me. There was this old woman close to me who looked like she could be my grandmother if my grandmother was a bit smaller and Chinese, and there she was, often leading the people around her by starting off the appropriate dance to the new song, and then jiving to the song (one song said shake that booty), and all around her, everyone was doing the same thing, all straight faced, none of them knowing each other, with no celebration to it. No one clapped after a particularly well done song, no one really smiled (accept for the teenage girl on a cellphone). They were just doing their thing; organized and strange. There are a lot of things I don't like about China and you can get frustrated arguing with people about superstitions and out of date medical/political/historical/artistic/technological topics, but this is one of those things I dig about China. Hundreds of people all over China line up at the same time to practice Tai Chi with strangers to be healthy. There's something to that. There's no teachers, just people who've been doing it longer. (Andy has just told me that this didn't in fact start after SARS, and that he saw it when he was in Guangzhou before SARS. Maybe it just got more organized and popular after SARS....damn)

That same night Sue told me something that made me love China a little bit more. I've noticed before that most of the parks don't have grass, instead they have this short dark leafy stuff. They also plant this at the hospitals. Apparently it's medicine, used for coughs and small colds and illnesses. The government plants it at the hospitals and parks so that people who can't afford medicine can still get well. It's in these ways that you can respect that China's crazy rules and laws are put there in a desperate effort to take care of all of it's people at once and is intent on not leaving anyone behind. Of course many are left behind and I have horror stories too, but who doesn't? Planting medicine for the public; that's just genius, and it's something America would never do because it'd rather have a sic country whose paying out their nose for medicine than give cheap or free health care.

It's nice being able to see China without a jaundiced or rose colored eye. I have the benefit of neither having the predisposition of thinking China is the villain and also not idolizing China for it's western sold philosophy or ancient secrets. From this position, I can almost see clearly, though being an outsider, I can only see so much.

It's amazing the things you can see if you get away from the computer sometimes, and hell, I've even dropped a few pounds. Of course I'm sitting here again, compelled to write from talking to a woman in Hawaii from this same sitting spot. Hmm.

Why I don't like Women

I know we're all used to the fact that most women don't like each other, but usually it's because they’re either jealous, territorial, competitive or simply bitchy, which is often the case.
As many of you know, my dislike of womankind goes much deeper than that. I should say this now before the mobs come with the pitchforks; this is Sienna, not Andy. I am indeed a woman, and so have more authority on the subject of what's wrong with womenfolk. Firstly, just to get it out of the way, men have their slew of problems as well, and people as a whole are a good deal fucked in the head, but I have specific problems with woman, and me being one, I feel I have the right to bitch about it for a while.
I'm not proud of women. I'm sure I'll get burnt at the stake for saying that, but it's true. I respect the women who took great pains to exact change in government and sociology on woman subjects, but that doesn't mean I feel any different about women as a whole. Besides, woman's achievements have been selfish so far; all centered on woman rights, which, I'm grateful for, but what have we done since then? Women have as much responsibility for humankind as men do, and they seriously haven't done an equal amount of work.

Women will fight any man who argues that a woman can't do a mans job, stating that a woman can do anything a man can, and I agree, if you train (we're not pre-built for a lot of the manual and fighting stuff, but we can if we work at it), if we study and if we work hard, there's no reason why we can't do what men do. So why don’t' we? I can't fathom the fact that these women get so up in arms when men say these things because these women have no follow through. Okay, now you have the right to do anything you want; what have you done with that right? Squat.

Look in any industry and you'll see a severe gender imbalance and it's not because women aren’t' allowed to get involved, it's because they simply don't. There are more male astronauts, pilots, scientists, surgeons, policemen, firemen, politicians, philosophers, When it comes to the arenas of great change, I see so few women and I wonder why, why aren't women playing their part?
There are a few problems from the start.
One; women have been accustomed to things being done for them, and are not used to being independent creatures. And don't give me that shit about not needing someone to hold open a door for you or pull out a chair; that is simply a guy being a gentleman and has nothing to do with your competency as a woman. I realize there are women out there who are independent and strong willed and working their ass off, and I don't mean to piss them off with that comment, but regardless of recent work to pull ourselves out of our passive lifestyles, we're talking about thousands of years of habit we're changing here. At this point we have engrained genetic, social and political memory that says we are taken care of, and that we shouldn't have to manage our own lives. This is a problem that we have to work past, but it is doable.

The second problem is a little more difficult to get past.

This is going to piss you off, so I give you fair warning.

Women do not think the same way men do. I'm not saying we're any less intelligent. We're simply less logical. On the average, women are far more ruled by instinct and emotion and rely very little on logic to get them through. (You can even track this difference in the brain with nifty visuals, but I don't have those visuals on me right now, so if you don't believe me; research it).
This being true, women are not familiar enough with logic processes in the mind and are often left behind in many fields because of this deficiency. Being well versed in logic isn't just a problem-oriented function that you only use and develop in the workplace; it's something you cultivate over time on a daily basis. The daily lives of women are ruled by emotion, drama and assumption, leaving very little room for a logical mind to grow. To change this, you have to work on it every day, watch your emotional reactions, calm down the deductive leaps and try to see life as clearly and plainly as possible. This sounds very simple, but it's something many women lack.

The third problem is the MOM factor. Unfortunately, this is not something that can be cleanly cut because it's obviously a necessity, but it doesn't need to be such a life definer as it is to women today. I can't tell you how many women I have known in their late 20s who feel their lives are coming to an end because they're almost 30 and haven't married and popped one out yet.
Childbearing is NOT the most defining part of your life. Yes, it's great to reproduce, this is why I have the ability to bitch so plainly now, but it's not magical: it's the simplest facet of our lives. Every living thing must procreate, and so as living beings, we do so, but it should not be the pinnacle of our achievements, and is certainly not something we should use as a crutch, telling ourselves that while we didn't participate in the great achievements of man, at least we raised a good kid. That's bullshit, and you know it.

I have a friend that constantly tells me that having children is the most important thing one can possibly do. I see the merit in conceiving and I respect a person who can do a good job in rearing honest courageous curious people and do their best despite adversity, but I do not believe it's the best thing you can do as a woman or a man. There is so much out there to achieve. You can cure a disease, navigate the stars or build a machine capable of at least more accurately seeing the stars and their orbital planets, you could be an influential writer that sways the masses into political movement, you can theorize past current scientific pitfalls, you can invent, question, build; the list is genuinely infinite. So why should we allow ourselves to settle for the minimum our bodies allow us to achieve?

The majority of man loves their children and are proud of their efforts as parents, but most of them do not feel that they have reached their true potential by raising a kid, and are not satisfied with their life's accomplishments because of it. Man doesn’t reproduce and then stop moving forward, so why should women? Whether or not it's a conscious or stated thing; women seem to center their worlds around the family and their biological clock. While I'm in no way bashing procreation (though I want no part in it), I do not see why in this day and age any woman could use childrearing as an alternative to success elsewhere. It's time to find more meaning in the life of woman than just mothering.

Clearly, there are many hard working women out there who also have children, and so it's not as though being a mother necessarily stops you from succeeding at other things, but at the same time, so many women stop there and take their MOM status as an equivalent to any other achievements they might have made beyond mothering.

As a race, women need to evolve at this point. We don't live in feudal times, so being mom doesn't cut it anymore. There's a lot to be done for humanity. We're behind where we should be at this point as a people, so we need as much help as possible, and there's simply no reason why women should be sitting it out. It's easy to do just what's expected, but that doesn't mean we should. The path of least resistance has been carved deep and is laid out clear and plain for every woman. If you like, people will help validate that your minimalistic life was good enough because you are a mom, but it's not really true, and I think we all know at this point that there is so much more to life than making another life possible. It's time we own up and move it up a notch. I'd really love to be proud of women, and the only way that is going ot happen is if we all change a bit and stop doing it the easy way, stop using the easy excuses and hiding behind the old insecurities.
You can give me no good reason not to.

Change

Tonight I have made a decision. There have been few times in my life when I have made decisions of this kind, and they have always been powerful and have always brought about great change in my life. I've felt it creeping in these past weeks, the decision slowly crawling into my mind. I just hadn't realized I wanted to do it.
It's time again for a change. My changes are like tidal waves for me, hurricanes, typhoons, tornados, smashing against the old and bringing about the new. I love these changes. I relish in them. It is my most defining feature; the ability to change.

It will be something worth writing about, I assure you.

Zero

We don't know her name yet, so for now we call her Zero. I forget why it's clever, but it's become her. That name fits her now not because of what it means but because as we got to know her, that is what we called her and now no other name will do.

I don't enjoy the company of children. Usually if presented with a child, you can see me going the opposite direction. Ryana, my niece, has been the one exception. I love that little girl. I'm sure it's because she's connected to me, but I like to think it's also because she' s going to turn out to be a stellar chick, and that it's showing already. Most children are an annoyance, but she's not just a child; she's my Ryana, my niece, and because she is, she can never just be a child to me.

This new found love of Ryana (who happens to be a child who happens to be wearing a superman shirt- so cool) has not colored my view of the rest of the small people the world over. I still find children to be annoying and opt to stay as far from them as possible. I suppose if Mariah continued to have more children, there might possibly be more children I like, but I like to think Ryana is special.

Zero rarely speaks, and when she does, it's in Chinese, so it's not as though we've had many palavers. That's not it at all. Zero comes from "Mecca" which is the name we've given to the Muslim restaurant down the street from us. There's another Mecca restaurant over by the ZhuYuan market that we used to go to all the time when we still lived near the stadium. We fell in love with that place. They serve great lamb, awesome lamb noodle soup and chopped fried bread called Chong Yo Bing. All over the walls are pictures of Mecca, hence the name. The family that owns it and works it are all Muslim Chinese, and yes, they are all family. It was a great experience going there and just watching them make the noodles. They make the noodles fresh and by hand, first throwing down a huge mound of the stuff and then punching it rolling it and punching and rolling it until it's workable enough to start taking it in portions and making noodles out of it by holding it at both ends and spinning it to thin the ropes of noodles, bending it in half, spinning it again and so on until they have one long thin noodle. These guys have serious muscle on them and it's clearly hard work. They're not bulky; they’re just strong.

When you order your food, you usually have to wait for them to actually make the noodles before they make the lamb noodle soup, but it was never something I wanted to rush. I loved watching them make the noodles. At the first Mecca two brothers would work at the noodles together, kneading it, punching it, rolling it, both working together in perfect balance with each other. They were never in each other's way...none of them were. They were a working machine.

When we moved over to HongjixiLu, we were happy to find that just down the block there was another Mecca run by another smaller Muslim Chinese family. I've come to respect this family. We live right down the street, so we're either eating there or walking past them to go somewhere else, so I generally see them every day, and they're always there, night and day. You can even be sure to see Zero despite the hour. Yesterday she was out running with her older brothers picking fresh mangoes from the street mango trees at 3 in the morning.

I'm not sure why I admire this family, but I do. Maybe it's because they always seem to be happy. Even when they don't notice me walking by, I can see the father laughing as he plays Chinese chess with some of the other vendors on the street. I see the little girl running about trying on all her new faces; first stern, walking with a serious gait, her hand on her hip, shooting you the evil eye over her shoulder, then the curious smile, then she sticks her tongue out at you and then it's all cartoonishly large smiles and strange faces from there on out. The mother is usually smiling, though sometimes I see her give a watchful almost cautious eye at her children, and the son (who is probably in his early 20s) is usually simply beaming. He's the noodle maker at this shop and he has the same strong arms.
It's a simple life they have, and I know it's nothing I would want, but I admire it. They live above the restaurant, though there's never a time when you see them all up there; only one or two at a time with the rest still tending to the shop. They're wonderful people, extremely kind, very patient with Andy's and Doc's poor Chinese and very supportive and patient with my developing Chinese.

Last week they asked if they could take these pictures with me, which was a really nice moment for me. (they're camera date seems to be a little off, but I assure you it was just last week). I've had lots of people ask to take pictures with me here but it's usually when they first met me, making it a very "Look at me with the GuiMei"picture. This was different. It felt like they wanted to remember me, and I was happy to help.

In return, I gave Zero the puppy purse in the first picture, which she still hasn't given a name to despite my insistence to (but I'm happy to say is already well loved with dirty little paws and a wrinkled strap). I put a box of crayons inside the purse for her, and tonight she promised me that she'd draw me a picture and give it to me tomorrow. (I can speak enough Chinese to get Children to draw for me)

Zero comes from this family, from this wonderfully happy, hard working respectable family, and she's the center of it because she's the newest member, and they're all working to make sure she continues the trend of a happy hardworking respectable family. I think this is why Zero has hit my number two. It's very stange for me, and worth writing down. I'm picky about the people I have around me and have very few friends because of how I value and weigh a good friendship. That this family with their little crazy daughter, Zero, has entered my circle, is a rare and interesting turn of events.

I promise tomorrow I'll get all their names. I'm learning but it's hard to remember Chinese names. It's surprising that I even remember KaoJunHai's, but I'll talk about him later.

No, mom, I haven't changed; I still have a strict "no procreating" policy for myself. Sorry, I'm sure this blog gave you hope, but just because I've found a couple of children I like, doesn't mean I want to start making my own.

Mecca dad, son and Zero outside of Mecca. You can't tell how strong the sons arms are in this picture, but I swear to it, they're lean and strong.

Mecca dad, me and Zero with one of her crazy
smiles.