At First Glance

No, not "what are you doing right now?", because who but a twit would want to know that about anybody who isn't themselves or, at least, someone connected by blood or love or deep belonging? (I know. Millions of people. I laugh, when I don't curse or sigh.)

I have such a remote and tentative connection with the Powers that make my words available to (random fractions of) the Universe. It has taken me weeks to get my floating head back into the blue heaven. It was a few of my more curious Chinese students pointing out that my site was suspended that informed me, among other things, how rarely I've been posting. So thanks, and hello.

And rest in peace, John Robert Wooden. I cannot stop reading about him. Among the things I'm sure of, his hoped-for greeting at the gauzy doors of the next kingdom was surely given, or none of this has sense: Well done, thou good and faithful servant. And apart from those Mighty Messengers Whose missions none of us can possibly be inspired to emulate, Coach Wooden has been my greatest and most abiding hero. And now I can let this go, too, for I'm not getting any closer to that galaxy, non plus...

I know, I know. Where are the rants on the Olympics from the sports-loving Canadian expatriate? They're in gestation. It has been a fun sort of oddness to watch Chinese sports television -- CCTV 5: All Skating, all the Time! -- from a Canuck mindset. For now, you might want to check out a recent non-Olympics post on an athletic passing, not quite so tragic or sudden as that of the Georgian luger, but still one that moved me. It's up and right, in the It's All About Sports! section. 

Okay, so what about those Better Read Than Never reviews? Don't you do any reading while you're in China? Well, you bet I do, and I'm even publishing some of my earlier rambles in a glossy but editorially questionable ex-pat magazine here called Focus Dalian. But to answer your question, here are a few recent alphabetical journeys: another re-reading of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, a spiritual butt-kicking for those "whose reach is beyond their grasp"; The Rebel Angels, a witty and erudite Robertson Davies novel, first of the Cornish trilogy; Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?, in which former hoopstar Charles Barkley wonders interestingly about race and power "and why everyone should buy my book" in conversation with a pre-Presidential Obama, a post-Presidential Clinton, Morgan Freeman, Ice Cube and other American notables; Mind, Heart, & Spirit: Educators Speak, a remarkable collection of testimonies and memoirs stitched together by Canadian poet Heather Cardin; Changing Planes, linked short stories by Ursula K. Leguin that acerbically explore alternate nearly-human realities (gosh, she's good -- I've also been reading her Earthsea Cycle as bedtime for a few young bonzos, deep and wondrous tales that an adult can also thrill to); Norman Bethune, my old boss Adrienne Clarkson's biography of the great Canadian hero of revolutionary China; Waiting, a fascinating and distinctive novel of a Cultural Revolution-era family, by the expatriate Chinese novelist Ha Jin; The Advent of Divine Justice, a powerful book which is really one long letter to the then-tiny North American Baha'i community by the Faith's Guardian, Shoghi Effendi, before the Second World War (a vision and a call just as awesome in 2010); Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's classic romance, glorious writing and funnier than I'd expected; and last, so that this listing paragraph might be righted (and written), Dreams of My Father, Obama's pre-Presidential and pre-Senatorial memoir, and how wonderful is it, if we must have individuals in such positions of power and fame, that the Number One Dude can think and really write? It's not easy to find English books in Dalian, but we brought plenty and (who knew?) our Thailand sojourn led us to a little Chiangmai hub of remarkably good used bookstores. We will survive.

Yeah, but we still remember a promise, hmm, last August (!), that "there will be details" of this Chinese experience? Justice is on your side, faithful readers, but the trouble is that I've been too busy experiencing. And justice is also on my side, because I didn't say when, now did I? Luckily, my bride is a more prompt, practical and pictorial reporter than I am, and so your lust for details on our lives in China can be satisfied with a trip to her LiveJournal record. It's fun and thoughtful stuff.

What about fasting? Yes, we've heard about my chronic slowness, but we've hit that sacred, spring is coming time of year and I'm fasting, fellow babies, I'm fasting for the 37th consecutive March. I hope to do it well, to go beyond syllables and sounds, beyond brainless fridge-prowling and absurd appetites, and beyond eat-drink to pray. I wish me luck, and I hope for sparks and progress, but I always love it. A cool blogger called Phil is writing his experience of fasting the Baha'i way, and I recommend him. He's always a good read.

So here's my question: is there anything else you'd like to know? Hit the Write Me! button, upper left. I'm also told that it's easy -- hey, I'm the god-king of this little electronic pasture, so I've never actually subscribed to it -- to get JH.com hand-delivered to your Inbox by hitting the little FEED button down there on the right, beneath my stale-dated "He Said/She Said" quote-box. Let me know how that goes. Thanks, as always, for reading. 

I ran this morning, and it was surprisingly good. After a November that was sickly and often rather blue, I’ve begun to re-establish a (physical) fitness routine, which includes a half-hour run every other day. It’s been going fairly well, considering the draggy condition of my posterior during that sorry excuse for a month, but today I didn’t feel at all like running – until I was five minutes in.

Prayer is like that. The disciplines of prayer and meditation have rarely felt easy or natural for me. Although I grew up in a faithful, churchgoing family, I didn’t learn to pray, and certainly not with any system to it; there were only the odd rapid-fire mutterings of grace before a special meal. Though a Baha’i seeks moderation, this one has always been fond of extremes in temperature, immoderate efforts in sport and elsewhere, and those edges of life that “proved”, however uselessly or painfully, that I was no average Jay. Throw in a little melancholy perfectionism, and I found the pathway to prayer free and open only when I felt especially good (read “worthy to approach the sacred threshold”) or remarkably bad (read “emotional free-fall”, “worthy to approach the rocky bottom”). Spirit feast or soul famine. Yet I’ve discovered – and it has felt lovely and fresh every uncountable time – that, mainly, I only really feel like praying once I’m praying. I found that out this morning. (Again!) 

In the four months I’ve been heading toward or living in China, the walls to writing have seemed similarly high. For awhile, though I had a very fuzzy imagination of myself being set free to make new word-things here, I was paying attention to the thousand things that a newbie  needs and wants to do. How do we enrol our son in school? Buy groceries? Find this? Understand that? And then I started to think about writing, about creating the psychological and physical space in our modest apartment, about how hard it is here, about the books/time/energy/order I wish I had, and the disappointment of being so far behind writerly young men that I once tutored in the art.

And then I started to write, hesitantly. And it’s early days, yet, but I think I’m remembering that the way in to writing is to write. (As if I hadn’t taught that, not least to myself, for centuries.) It’s such an old and stubborn error: we imagine an existential order in which we have values, and then realize them outwardly; in which we have a recognizable emotion or intellectual impulse and then act upon it. But all the artists who have “gone pro” (as one hard-bitten writing coach put it), all the great Sages, and all the top jock gurus know that it’s often the other way ‘round.

Inspiration comes to those who show up at their workbench, expecting it.

Certitude comes to those who practise, though uncertain.

Guys who can run can run ‘cause they run, so run!

I sit down to think, but instead I listen to the loud male voice next door. I lean toward the wall, waiting for the climax, the blow, the upended table and chair. Sometimes I can hear a softer voice, the mortar between the sharp red bricks, and sometimes nothing seems to interrupt the harangue. Is he talking on the phone? Does he ever run out of breath? Why is he so angry? What is his point?

Of course, it’s all Chinese to me, and this wouldn't be the first time that this canadien errant has proven himself deaf to the culture, as every billboard and storefront proclaims my blindness, or at least my ignorance. Each time we drag a local friend into my son’s school to mediate between us and the unilingual administrator, I ask, Is she angry? She sounds bitter, and spits out those alien syllables in a way that would spell barely controlled rage on my street. I'm told, no, she may be a little tense, but not angry. Cellphone shouting, a bus driver's emergence from silence, bartering in the market, so often I hear resentment and irritation that seems out of place. (Maybe it's me.) It’s disorienting – so many ways to be muddled in Dalian! – to not be surely able to recognize anger in the voices of others.

The shoe of violence didn’t drop next door. I had finally slapped the wall a few times, just to sound a kind of warning if it was male rage I was hearing. Or to suggest they turn down the TV, who knows? Which makes me wonder what our neighbours make of our ex-pat noise-making?   

...and Friendly Neighbourhood Writerman, yes, it's me, trying again, seeking the magic way and Key Organizational Construct that will open the gates of amusedom and wisment and get me producing again...

This adventure in China (and the preparation for it last summer) gives me superb writing fuel but not (yet) the order and settled mind to regularly get it down. But here I go again. And let me remind you of the "He Said/She Said" part of this site, third block down on the right, which is where I'll start. It's just a place for me to post a wise or funny or provocative thing that I've read, Jay's little box of quotes. At the very least, I'll be throwing an idea there on Fridays, a day where I don't have any classes to teach. 

Good Friday.