Still thinking about China, which was light years ago, before I was teaching four jobs, before I even knew I’d be teaching at the extra two jobs, before I’d begun thinking about how to explain to young good people how to organize the world on a page, wondering how to sing that song I can’t quite recall and never really learned.
Today is my awful mother’s birthday, though she is long gone from this plane.
A good song, sure. But that is another matter. Two months have passed since my return, exactly, and today was the day that my China piece was supposed to run. Happy birthday, awful mother. However, advertisers have pulled out and the poor article is on hold indefinitely and I am on hold too, since I haven’t had time to write another piece for another magazine and since I am busy busy busy and wondering all the time. But in between thinking about how to tell these bright and shiny faces how to arrange their narratives, which is life, I do keep thinking about China, wondering about China and worrying what else, aside from the one article, I could possibly write about it.
Today on the women’s travel writing forums a woman wrote in for advice. Sort of a sweet hail for help. She wrote that she loved to travel and she loved to write but how did we–presumably her audience, her fellow group members–how did we know what to write about.
A painful question to see and a painful question to ask. But most painful of all is not to know the answer.
When asked about China I tell the story of the “hard-sleeper” train that had row after row of three stacked bunks, six to a room, all down the car. My sheet had little blood stains on it at one end, so I turned the sheet around so that was at my feet. Kept my socks on for the ride. And when we arrived to Xi’an, an ancient founding city of the Chinese empire, I discovered that my right leg had a bright red rash across it. Bright red rash! Sort of a children’s primary red! On the leg!
I didn’t worry really, but I showed it to everyone to gain sympathy as we got on the bus to see the Terracotta Warriors. They were nearby, the famous clay army built for the king who really founded the Chinese Empire and who also happened to have directed the beginning of the work on the Great Wall.
When asked about China I think of excellent food not entirely different from the food I’ve had in New York’s Chinatown. That was sort of a wild surprise. I tell the story of the stationary store where I bought a half dozen inexpensive pens, and how surprised I’ve been as, one by one, they’ve erupted in my purses and broken.
When asked about China it’s the wall, and the mad song that it is to make a wall dividing good guys from bad, civilized from barbarian, settled from nomads, han from mongol. Because I have seen the empty ruins of it now, and the way they stretch. (Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!) And the wind on the grass, and the cracked carbon and limestone of the wall going on and on and on.
About enemies: If you wait long enough, you don’t have to do a thing.
ab chaos iter: you get educated by traveling 