clever boy, clever girl.

Proud grandfather of nine.

2009-08-17T01:10:00.002+08:00

William E. Clark

William E. Clark, 89, of Chicago passed away Aug. 14, 2009, beloved husband of the late Jean; dear father of Bill (Marie), Jim, Tom (Andrea), Mary (Peter) Demos, Mike (Patricia) and Patricia; proud grandfather of nine; great-grandfather of five.

Visitation Monday 4 to 9 p.m. at Nelson Funeral Home, 820 Talcott Rd. (at Cumberland), Park Ridge.

Funeral Tuesday 9 a.m. from the funeral home to Immaculate Conception Church. Mass 10 a.m. Interment Maryhill Cemetery.

Memorials to Immaculate Conception Church appreciated. Info: 847-823-5122 or www.nelsonfunerals.com

36 hours until the new adventure.

2009-08-01T11:20:00.001+08:00

the sun don't shine in your t.v.

2009-07-17T14:09:00.004+08:00

david's brother daniel & daniel's fiance emily made plans to come over tonight and make us baked rigatoni with homemade marinara sauce. (we are fortunate enough to have had them make dinner for us twice in the past week!) and the sauce: homemade! did i mention homemade? emily's italian. they do things more deliciously.

the sauce takes three hours and they weren't going to be here until five, which is how i found myself in the barefoot kitchen mixing and pinching and measuring and sauteing while david mowed the lawn. the instructions for the sauce were deliciously imprecise, which i really appreciate in a sauce. i like sauces. i felt comfortable being imprecise with sauce. so. we used red wine instead of water. and i put a little more basil in than was really necessary. and i couldn't find the garlic press, so i got the distinct joy of crushing a couplea-three cloves with the flat of the knife. they're juicy, and after a certain point they give in to pressure with a weird release, like, "well, all right, no need to be so pushy. we taste better this way anyway." also, the verb "crush" is so violently precise, you can't help but feel a little affectionate for the object being abused so. after the oregano and several glugs of olive oil, feeling like a mad scientist, i tasted and it was a little--acidic. the tomatoes were being a little ornery. so. i added a little butter. and then i added a little sugar. and then daniel got there and stirred and added more water and wine and told everyone to leave it alone and we went out into the backyard and emily and i killed the boys in beanbags TWICE and i had forgotten to eat anything all day but a bunch of coffee and a half a banana and one (1) fig newton, so i ate some pretzel twists and drank one beer.

the smell was terrible. intoxicating. everything in the house smelled like what people invented the word "aroma" for. the dogs were acting drunk. we let that pot sit there for a good three hours just simmering. after the boys were ceremoniously murdered in bags, we had to go back into the house and support each other as the smell hit our stomachs and hungry fatigue started to make us cavemen. i almost clubbed david over the head with a spatula i was so hungry. i almost fought the dogs for their bone right there in the living room. but then i remembered myself.

and of course the casserole and the special mozzarella and the baking, it was all lovely. we ate a whole pan of rigatoni between the four of us. but i have to say something else about the sauce: it was perfect. you taste it and it's wine-y and a little sweet, and then the basil hits you, followed by the garlic and onions, and it's tart. and i felt so good i licked the pot while cleaning up. like a real uncouth individual. and i felt really absurdly happy at this day that i was a part of, and the hand i had in making it what it was, and how sunny and then rainy it was in just the right measure and at just the right time, and then drinking a little more of the marvelous wine and trooper falling asleep in the living room and squeaking like a toy in his sleep. i am reading the "invisible man" for one of my classes, and i am preparing to leave very soon and i feel petrified and unprepared because i am supposed to be a writer and teacher and i have convinced some people i can do these things but i'm not sure i can. i have been basically doing nothing these past eight months. i'm not even really good at that, i worry too much. this sounds depressing, but i'm not depressed. i'm just scared. i am ready to move on to the new "productive member of society" me, i'm just doing that thing where i drag my heels a little. david is well aware of this stage of "change-on-the-horizon-katie." this katie is one of the lesserly pleasant models. (lesserly is not a word.)

i just wanted to tell you about the sauce and how happy we all felt, even the dogs. the dogs were anthropomorphically ecstatic. wyoming didn't have any bearing on that. and then emily and daniel left and david went to sleep curled up in a little ball and i had to put a kiss or two all over his face and touch his eyelids to remind myself of going to sleep next to the only person in the world and then waking up and doing a thing and another and another and going to sleep and then getting up and doing another thing and then what do you know, it's a life that keeps going.

winter dreams the same dream every time.

2009-06-18T05:07:00.002+08:00

Seraphine Louis de Senlis

2009-06-12T07:13:00.006+08:00

ladies & gentlemen: my boogeyman.

2009-06-10T04:52:00.007+08:00

Remember Twin Peaks, the David Lynch comedy/horror/detective show that was on in 1990? David and I got the first season from the Pontiac Public Library today so that A. we could watch it, because David loves David Lynch. (Lynch is credited with our introduction to the nearly perfect protein-in-a-grain quinoa...he's making it and eating it in a special feature on one of his films) and B. so that I could finally confront and conquer the man who haunted my childhood. He is pictured above.

It turns out, the scene that scared me into remembering this guy forever is actually in the first episode. And it's still scary. Laura's mom is halfway crazy with grief, and all of a sudden, she sees the above guy hiding like a creep behind her couch. His appearance is immediately preceded by scary, ominous sounding nearly-eighties music, and immediately followed by Laura's mother hysterically screaming her head off. And the guy doesn't do anything but what you see him doing in the above photo. BUT IT'S ENOUGH.

IMDB.com explains his appearance this way, "The character of Bob came about when David Lynch had a sudden image of set decorator Frank Silva hidden in Laura Palmer's room. Lynch filmed the infamous shot of Silva hiding behind Laura's bed without any idea of what he would use it for. Later, when filming a shot of Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) sitting up and screaming, Lynch noticed that Silva's reflection was visible in the shot, purely by accident. Lynch then came up with the idea of BOB as an other-worldly spirit, giving birth to the series mythology."

After I saw this scene (I would've been six years old when it aired, I think, or nearly six) I kept seeing him hiding behind my bed when I went to sleep. I called him "The Man." Not like, "The Man is really keeping me down," (har). But "The Man," as in, "Mommy, The Man is hiding like a creep behind my bed and its terrifying the living daylights out of me," or (shrieking) "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! AGHHHHHHHH," or "Mommy, I'm sleeping with you tonight, with the lights on," or "Mommy, I have seen The Man, and there is no God where such a man as he is allowed to exist, lurking in my bedshadows."

Thereafter, my intrepid mother invented Monster Spray and sprayed my room down for goblins and The Man every night before bed. Monster Spray was water in a spray bottle, but I felt confident in its exterminating properties. That doesn't mean that fear of The Man doesn't continue to haunt me to this day. And having viewed the first two episodes of "Twin Peaks," I can confidently say that David Lynch is brilliant and scary and hilarious, but also a total freak.

Some people are okay, mostly I just feel like poisoning everybody.

2009-06-02T00:20:00.010+08:00

I didn't acutally read the graphic novel until long after I'd seen the movie. The movie is one of those things I saw as a teenager and liked, and didn't realize how much I liked it until 7 years later or something when I watched it again and remembered it with pleasure. It's another example of a thing Scarlett Johansson did right, early in her career:

And who doesn't love Steve Buscemi? He's perfect as the lovable creep Seymour.

The dialogue is snappy and wonderful and hilarious and filthy, and I can't put any of it up here for fear of offending my audience. But it's just a lovely movie and I cry at the end every time.

Soda Customer: Hi, can I get a medium 7-Up?
Enid: ...Medium? Why sir, did you know that for a mere 25 cents more you can purchase a large beverage? And you know... I'm only telling you this because we're such good friends: Medium is really only for suckers who don't know the concept of value.

So, in summation: you should watch it. & read the graphic novel!

the punishment is loneliness.

2009-05-30T10:20:00.006+08:00

I used to think this was the image I most wanted (from this movie) to be hanging on my wall. But now, I'm not sure. This one might be better:

diving bells & butterflies

2009-04-30T12:22:00.000+08:00

tie up your horse and mosey on up to our place.

2009-04-23T00:01:00.002+08:00

Things are moving right along. We've found an apartment in downtown Laramie that's in our price range. It's in an old west hotel built in 1911. It's a popular place for University students and faculty to live, and the guy only agreed to rent to us remotely because I'm a graduate student at UW. I asked if he needed references, and he said that UW liking me was all the reference he needed. The place is tiny. Like, very tiny. On par with our Chicago apartment, which I hated. Only this one is a one bedroom, so it's even smaller! The thing that makes me think I'll like this place is that:

1. It has a view of the mountains, and there are lots and lots of windows and lots and lots of light. Our Chicago place was a cave with no direct sunlight. The lack of light, not the lack of space, was my main problem with it.

2. Character. It's an old place, and I love old buildings. There are 1.5 bathrooms in our apartment because it's actually made up of two old hotel rooms. Wood floors, a weird red bathtub. Strange carpeting. The lobby, by all accounts, looks like a dilapidated version of its former self. This place used to be the place to be in Laramie.

3. Coin-operated laundry. It's a must have for me, having lived in apartments my whole life and knowing the horrors of having to go off-site in the winter time to get a load of laundry done.

4. Location. Right downtown. Right above an Italian restaurant. Four blocks from campus.

5. Free parking spot. We just don't roll like that in Chicago. Lovely.

The revolution will not be televised.

2009-04-14T23:55:00.002+08:00

We're coming home tomorrow, friends. It will require a bus and two airplanes: all in all, 19 hours of travel. David and I now very likely possess the most giant carbon footprint ever, besides, of course, U2's carbon footprint which is larger than God's.

Also, we have news:

we will be moving to Laramie, Wyoming, come August. Grad school, here I come. Antelope, here I come. Mountains, etc., etc. David and I talked a lot about it and we're excited and ready to do this new thing. Until then, we'll be haunting the greater Illinois area, coming to a Midwestern town near you.

Return to Yellow Mountain

2009-04-10T12:29:00.008+08:00

On Wednesday, we took a bus for four hours to Anhui Province to go climb Yellow Mountain (Huangshan). When we got there, we ate a large Chinese meal of stir-fried greens, ma po dofu (spicy tofu), gong bao ji dian (kung pao chicken...but the meat was WEIRD), and some pretty good chie ze (eggplant): moral of the story, we are ready to live in a place where there are sandwiches. Can you imagine a place where sandwiches don't exist? Please don't take your sandwich eating for granted. I hope you're eating a sandwich right now.

Then we climbed the mountain. Basically, it was three hours and a eleventy-billion steps in thin, thin air. The trade-off was that the scenery was deliriously lovely and looked like a Chinese classical painting. Also, my Dad brought some peanut butter and chocolate Oreos, so just when we imagined we couldn't go on, we ate some of those and felt better. I like my Dad a lot.

I think if you ever go to China you should go to Yellow Mountain. It is a fine thing to see.

We got to the top of the mountain and found our hotel. The room was typically Chinese: very cold, the tiniest beds you've ever seen, and free tea in the bedroom. The moon rose and no one could believe how big it was: it felt like we were at the end of the world on the top of a high peak and could almost touch it. It was big and yellow, like how a birthday cake looks to a one year old. We paid a lot of money to eat some sub-par Chinese buffet food (imagine a lot of foreign-looking vegetables swimming in disturbing-colored goo: you and your sandwich are staring lovingly into each other's eyes now, right?) and then squeezed into our hotel room and went to bed.

We left the window open by accident (we thought it was closed) and the wind started up at about 2 am. The wind sounded like the ocean: it was large and loud and trying to get in everywhere. It filled our tiny cabin and galloped over the highest peaks like a horse. We woke up at 4:30 feeling exceptionally unrefreshed, and ventured out into the dark to climb some peaks and see the sunrise. We climbed in pitch black under the stars. We just kept walking towards the high peaks, and then we were there.

Then the sun rose.

Then the sun rose the way I had never seen a sun rise: violent colors, wind basically attempting to murder us, high peaks, beauty evolving minute by minute.

Then my dad took SEVEN videos of birds chirping. (Six in the morning turns him into a nut.) Then we ate at the Chinese buffet for breakfast again (it was basically all the same food, but more emphasis on congee and corn). Then we took a nap, tired like we were all almost dead.

It was pretty good.

2009-03-30T12:28:00.003+08:00

Bangkok (village of wild plums) is not the real name of the city we're in. Like everything else that is named here (elephants) the true name exists under the common name. Bangkok's real name is actually Krung Thep (city of angels). Bangkok hasn't been the capital since 1782. But even "Krung Thep" isn't totally accurate, because that is an abbreviation. The true, full name of the city foreigners call "Bangkok" is actually:

Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit,

which roughly translates to:

The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the Emerald Buddha, the impregnable city (of Ayutthaya) of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarn.

It is the longest city name in the world. (source.)

-------------

First I have to tell you about how silly it feels to have a blog detailing our adventures in not-working: it feels pretty silly. Forgive me for writing about it.
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The island: Can I talk about getting drunk on a blog our families read? Yes. (Forgive me.) So, we have no tolerance for alcohol anymore. We haven't been drinking on this adventure very much at all, but then at the hotel on the island, something happened: we made friends. We made friends with two loud, garrulous British dudes on holiday. We're at our hotel, listening to a band of old British hippies who came to Thailand and never left. They were a cover band. We liked them, the idea of them, coming to the island and then never leaving, making a band out of two guitars and their laptop, recruiting this other truly amazing Thai guitar player (seriously, he was SO GOOD--but what was the thinking behind that? "We have two guitars! What we need to really flesh out the band is...another guitar player!") and setting up a regular Wednesday night gig. I mean, that takes chutzpah, and they were very charming and nice, and they just seemed so happy. (To love something, to love a place, and to find a way to be there, and live the life that you dream of living, takes a special kind of courage.) So we listened to them, and then it started to rain a little, so we moved to another table that wasn't exposed to the elements, and that was where we met Howard and Nick.

At first we didn't talk because the music was too loud, but then the band took a break and Howard looked at us and said, sotto voce, "Wow. These guys are terrible." And then he started dealing cards. So we played a game called Shithead (my apologies) and David won every time, and Howard kept buying drinks, and then we switched to poker (Thailand: the vacation where I learned how to play poker) and another Brit couple joined us (Edward and Lyssie)and then the band was done and the hotel bar gave us free shots of some anise-flavored liquor and suddenly it was one in the morning and we were putting on our swimsuits and Lyssie had won all the hands of poker and we were trouping out to the beach to do the very thing you're not supposed to do when drunk: swim.

We were the only people on the beach. The beach was dark, no lights, and so it was even more spectacular when we noticed that every time we moved in the water, we illuminated clouds of sparkling phosphorescent green algae. There were a great number of spectacular stars. Howard, in between telling jokes, expressed a wish to see a shooting star, having never seen one. FLoating on my back not five minutes later, staring up at the stars, I saw the universe oblige him. A rapid shot of brilliant light. "Did you see that?" he said, disbelieving. From the middle of the dark dark water, it was easy to imagine you were swimming in the sky.

---

David wanted me to write about riding an elephant, but I spent all this time recounting the night swimming tale. We rode an elephant! Not just sitting on a chair, but sitting on the elephant's head, and our feet were flapped by his giant ears! Perhaps David will tell the story in more detail soon.

I salt and pepper my mango.

2009-03-15T16:34:00.002+08:00

It's funny how the nearly unbearable purgatory of trip-planning leads to the heaven of actually being on a trip. Like how you had to ford a river with your oxen and babies and medical supplies before you could actually get to the promised land of the lawless, gold-filled Wild West. Although, the oregon trail was much more full of hardship (and pestilence) than scheduling no less than four separate plane flights for one dang vacation. So really, I shouldn't complain. But four plane flights and multiple hostel bookings have led me to this online haven for whining, and alas, you all at one time had faith in this place for comical observations: but no more!

We leave for Thailand tomorrow: circle the wagons! pamper your babies! keep a wary eye on the horizon for marmots, three-toed sloths, bobcats and giant marauding north american hairy apes!

Nothing new.

2009-03-02T16:34:00.002+08:00

Nothing new to say except that it's been raining daily for the past ten days and I can't sleep very well for all the grad school decision nerves. We're going to Beijing on Thursday to do a Wall thing. It might look like this picture. And now back to my regularly scheduled nail-biting.

obligatory large underpants post.

2009-02-26T01:00:00.001+08:00

Please click to enlarge.

In business.

2009-02-21T14:24:00.005+08:00

It's Saturday and in keeping with our resolution to walk more, we got up and went on a walk. We went to a place called "Best Coffee In Town," because when you order coffee to-go there, it's really criminally cheap. It also has nice drawings on the walls and good music, and in general a nicer atmosphere than Costa Coffee or Starbucks, both of which tend to be insanely crowded on Saturday. We got our coffee and strolled around, trying to get lost but not too lost. It's 60 degrees out and sunny, so everyone's out.

On the last leg of our journey we passed by the lake. On one side of the street, the water show was going on, complete with music, and it looked like half the city was out watching it. On the other side of the street, inexplicably, the other half of the city was watching some cute young models posing in a sports car propped up on a platform while the song "Wonderwall" played. A few blocks down, all you could hear was arhu music and old people singing traditional chinese opera. (An "arhu" is a two stringed Chinese instrument you play with a bow--not sure if that's the correct Pinyin spelling or not, or even the correct definition, sorry.) Three old men were playing the arhu within a ten foot radius of each other, all playing different songs. An arhu-off. The lake is bananas on Saturdays.

We had a lovely time in Hong Kong. I wrote a long post about how we almost got taken by a con-man in a turban and giant mustache (hallmark of any good James Bondian villain) down at the pier, but it's really long and sort of boring. Hong Kong is large and warm and pretty, with an impeccable public transport system and lots of boats. We'll put pictures up someday. My grandparents travelled there several times in their life, it was nice to go on vacation and think they'd seen some of the same sights David and I did. My grandpa's been having some health problems, so he was on my mind a lot.

In other news: David's band's album has been mastered and sounds truly astonishing and beautiful. My favorite song changes every day. I am very excited for him, and for all of the members of Shadows on a River.

And now, without further ado, I think we're going to go drink some beers and play badminton on the roof. We miss you.
The End.

Update

2009-02-15T23:46:00.003+08:00

(not necessarily in chronological order)

1. One night in Hangzhou we went out to dinner with some of Katie's parents' friends. The night ended up at an 'Irish' bar. Katie went home but I stayed a little longer. The guy that I was hanging out with told the owner of the bar that I was a musician, introduced me, and I ended up making an informal date to play 2 hours at the bar the following week. I got a cab and wandered home and made Katie write down the date and time for me so I wouldn't forget. The next weekend I took Dotty's guitar to the bar, wrote down a list for 20 or so songs, and played for a solid hour. I had a cold so I decided not to try to play longer. It was also the first day that everyone had off for Chinese new year, so the bar was nearly deserted. But it seemed to go over well, and I had a good time.

2. My 25th birthday coincided with Chinese New Year this year. The clock struck midnight, I turned twenty five, and the whole city erupted with fireworks. And then the fireworks continued for two weeks afterward, waking us up around 3 or 4 every morning and littering the street with constant evidence of a new lunar year.

3. We read some books.

4. We travelled to Hong Kong. We are staying in an 8 by 10 room in the Chungking Mansions (look it up on wikipedia) that have turned out to be very nice. We been offered a lot of tailored suits and hashish. We have taken two different kinds of cable cars, wandered through a nunnery, ridden a ferry, and seen a giant Buddha peaking out of a cloud. Those are the pertinent details. Please imagine the rest and know that we are having a good time.

A guide to recognizing your saints.

2009-02-11T00:00:00.004+08:00

More from the front. As usual, click to enlarge. We leave for Hong Kong tomorrow, and are desperately missing you all. 80 degrees and smoggy seems to be the forecast.

china comics.

2009-02-08T12:03:00.003+08:00

Please click to enlarge and view more clearly, if you like.

Xing Nian Kuai Le, friends.

2009-01-26T01:40:00.000+08:00

Vacation vacation.

2009-01-21T16:37:00.005+08:00

Our visas require that we leave the country every three months, so we have to be out before March 5th.

Round trip tickets for 2 people, Hangzhou to Shenzhen: $225 USD
Private room in clean hostel, 2 people, 7 nights: $212 USD

Taking a vacation from your vacation: Ridiculous(ly cheap).

We're spending Valentine's Day in Hong Kong!

Open Letter to Readers.

2009-01-18T22:59:00.006+08:00

It's almost David's birthday. I know he would love it (/possibly cry tears of joy) if you all could come to China for a weekend party. Listen, you should really do it. How often does the best guy you know turn 25? In China? We have an extra bed. Things you could bring with you:

Bring a pie and some clean underwear.

Bring a 1 lb. bag of original flavor Skittles.

Bring a set of perfumed, monogrammed handkerchiefs similar to those that my grandpa keeps in his pocket to blow his nose with.

Bring a pillow and a movie and stretchy pants, and I think we can arrange a living room sleepover in which we eat popcorn and sleep on a sleeping bag together like sardines in a can. Similar to: the time I watched "Gone with the Wind" with my friend Mary Yankova when I was in the sixth grade. There is a good chance I was actually wearing stretchy pants during the viewing, but then again, during that period of my life, there was a good chance that I was wearing stretchy pants ("leggings") during nearly every activity I engaged in.

Bring some gym shoes because the weather is not bad and there are a couple of badminton rackets and a couple of birdies in the coat closet and no one will play with me, and there are a ton of Chinese people who play it on the street, so it wouldn't be weird if we did it in the parking lot, I swear.

But let's be honest here: you all know David, and so you know that pie is the most important thing on this list. Often, he will stop whatever he is doing and, apropos of nothing, say "Mmm, pie," in a meditative Homer Simpson-esque manner. Sometimes in China, he goes to McDonald's and buys two fruit pies (poor, sad pie-substitutes, let's be honest) and he carries the two pies around in his pockets like good-luck charms or secret talismans until, fully hours after the buying of them, he pulls said pies out of his pockets triumphantly during coffee time at home and says, "Now we can have pie with our coffee!," a heavenly smile lighting up his face. Set aside, if you will, the oddity of carrying tiny pies around in your pocket like a rabbit's foot charm, and consider that this man loves pie more than most people alive today. (And I grew up in the Clark family, for whom major holiday feasts are just a gastronomical warm-up for 8 different kinds of pie, and so I'm not joking when I say that I know from pie.) He prefers it warmed up in the microwave and with vanilla ice cream on top, and I can provide all the things in that equation: microwave & ice cream, utensils, fine china...but dang if I can't provide the pie. So if you really are planning on coming here to Hangzhou in a super suave and secretive birthday China extravaganza, pie is the only important necessity to cram into your carry on. And maybe also the clean underwear, but that is none of my business.

I guess I'm saying that I miss you and wish you were here, with some pie in your pockets.

Very Sincerely,
Katie

jingle-jangle morning.

2009-01-14T23:18:00.007+08:00

(the internet hates to load my pictures, so you must be content with egon schiele's.)

Encounter
BY CZESLAW MILOSZ

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

Wilno, 1936

TRANSLATED BY CZESLAW MILOSZ AND LILLIAN VALLEE

--------------

This was the poetry foundation's poem of the day. I admire Milosz very much. He was Polish (is Polish? Do you retain heritage after death?), and he won the Nobel Prize. He was very old when he died.

Today on a hike, I saw a man in long underwear doing some very strange dance-y stretches. Dad and I watched him for a while, and then we called David over, but then long underwear guy got wise and we had to pretend like we were not interested in his extraordinary dance moves. At one point, he looked like he was imitating a cobra being lured out of a grass basket. You see a lot of nice things when you hike here. There is always something to look at.

Sometimes you see people walking up in the hills with a birdcage in each hand. People here sometimes take their birds out for a walk and let them hang out in a tree so they can hear the wild birds and learn how to sing. I am not making that up. It's pretty common. Today we saw a guy carrying two birdcages, and we heard one of his birds squawking. The bird sounded like a toad, so I figured he was getting in some remedial lessons.

Also today, we made friends with a very good looking dog. The dog was really only friends for as long as he wanted to sniff my sneaker, but I did get to pat his head. The dog lives on the path to Baochu pagoda, said this one Chinese dude. The dog seemed to enjoy hopping on the rocks and pausing briefly, staring out to a point unknown. It was like he knew his good side. We agreed, he did cut a rather majestic figure there on the rocks. The Chinese dude yelled at the dog when he ran away from us, he yelled at him like the dog was a person, he said: "hey dog, where are you going? where are you going?" Probably to pose on some more rocks, although he did not deign to answer.

We babysat the Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor's son yesterday. David would like to make the doctor our friend. On his advice, we have stopped drinking cold beverages, and now we drink a lot of hot water. It's better for your body, he says, and your circulation. I have to tell you, I do drink more water when the water is warm. He cured dad of his migraines, so I am sort of converted. He's an American, originally, but he speaks and writes Chinese and he lives here now with his family. There are a few Westerners who go to him here, and he has a large Chinese clientele. If he writes you a prescription, it's always of herbs, not pills. You take the prescription to the pharmacy and they cook the herbs together for you and package the goo in plastic, sealed containers. It is almost always brown. Then you drink it, for however long. Weeks. You can get straight herbs and cook it yourself, but it's unpleasant, we hear. The pharmacy is cool here...the Chinese one, I mean. The building has been a pharmacy for a few hundred years, and they give out free tea for everyone. The doctor said we wouldn't have to take any strange brown concoctions if we take care of ourselves now, but the Eastern idea of well being and maintenance is significantly different than Western, so I am afraid I'll still end up in need of herbs someday, having no good notions about what's good and bad for me. His admonishments are enough to make me look sideways at a donut though.

everybody wants ju zi.

2008-12-31T10:51:00.001+08:00

It's hard to type coherently because a music video from the band "The Verve" just came on and I am astonished to find that they're still a band.

2008-12-28T20:24:00.005+08:00

This is what we look like when we're in Nanjing.

We're in Nanjing, the old capital of China.

I attempted to buy some ju zi (tiny oranges) yesterday at a fruit market. When I pointed to the oranges I wanted, the proprieteress (is that a word?) shook her head no and pointed to another basket of far smaller oranges. I mean, really really small oranges. Like, the size of a kumquat. The size of a large buckeye. And when I said, no, I want these bigger ones, she insisted that I have a taste test of the tinier ones. I began to peel the proffered tiny orange. Dad came over and asked what was happening. I told him. The lady shoved a tiny orange at him too. We peeled and ate. The lady got right in my face and rather sassily said, "Hao bu hao?," which basically means, "Good or no good?," but in this case can be taken as, "So did I tell you or what?," and she was right. I mean, they were good. They were bite-sized and sweet like candy. I bought 20 of them, and they cost me a grand total of 5 RMB. Less than a dollar. We ate them in a 24 hour period, they were that good. At one point we were all on the streetcorner, laughing and scarfing down oranges like we were squirrels.

Today, after a long Indian dinner at a local hotel, we went in search of some more ju zi to replenish our severely depleted reserves. We went down a side street and found a whole other world of shops. It was dark and kind of rainy and the street was tiny, and the lamps were lit. We bought our oranges from a guy in his tiny fruit hut. He was talking on a cell phone. Then we watched a guy at a Muslim eatery pulling and making noodles. I don't know the technical term for noodle making. It looked like he was pulling soft taffy. We watched for a while. When we left, the noodles he had made looked perfect, but he started over and kneaded them together in a big dough ball again.

I wish I could explain to you how nice it was today, after walking around the Nanjing Massacre Museum for two hours, to come onto the street and walk along the tree-lined canal at dusk. I can't really say it without sounding sentimental and girly, but the lamps were on and people were biking home, it was drizzling and everyone was quiet and David had my hand warm in his pocket. We stopped at one point at looked at each other and I said, "Do you smell that?" and he said, "Yeah, it smells like trees!" because it did...it smelled all green and wet and kind of delicious.

Imagine Christmas wishes shooting out of your eyessss!

2008-12-23T20:12:00.004+08:00

Merry Christmas, you guys. Consider this picture to be our Christmas card picture. We have wireless in the house now (Dotty got it hooked up for work) and this network seems happy to let us load pictures.

I am slightly ill and slightly homesick. Today David and I mostly stayed inside, me being whiny and sick, etc. Then we went out and changed some money at the bank, felt pretty swank walking around with a few thousand RMB. We're rich! (not really.) We decided to walk down Hefong Street, the walking street with a bunch of shops, to see if we could find something to buy for each other for Christmas. We didn't find anything, but we did go into the pharmacy, a real old Chinese pharmacy where they give out free tea. The place is hundreds of years old. We drank some free tea and speculated as to what was in the hundreds of brown drawers behind the counter.

Me: Eye of newt, I think.

David: No way.

Me: Yeah, that's probably not true.

David: (considering) Actually, that might be true.

Me: Yeah. I think so too.

We are scintillating conversationalists. After that, we came home and googled the phrase, "Mekka lekka hi, mekka hiney ho," because we were arguing about its origins. Pee Wee Herman, if you were wondering. Do you not know who Pee Wee Herman is? Well, then you should watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrzqBwuxHV8

We sure do miss you all. Especially since no one in my family (including me) can stop making corny "that's what she said" jokes and now it feels less funny and more like we are all suffering from the same inevitable, fatal disease, and we'll all perish together covered in our own funny.

...that's what...

Merry Christmas!

Snow day

2008-12-22T09:51:00.002+08:00

Monday morning.

A rare snow in Hangzhou.

Sitting in the coffeeshop, we can see our breath, and our fingers are too cold to work properly.

I bought a little red journal at the foreign language bookstore to write down my foreign language.

We went on a mini-tour of bars a couple days ago. At the last bar some Australians convinced us to go to a club with them. There was an elevator on the street that took you took the sixth floor. I won't even attempt to describe the spectacle inside. When you tried to find the bathrooms you ended up in a labyrinth that took you outside the building on your way. We did some dancing until the wee hours of the morning.

On Saturday we took a cab to a tea village. We walked past nine creeks and ended up at a restaurant that was really just a few tables in front of someone's house. The tea grown in the village is famous all over the world. They used to sell it at the tea shop that Katie worked at. It's called Dragon Well.

My hands are too cold to type anymore.

Merry Christmas. I wish you warmth and the company of loved ones.

blogging about blogging.

2008-12-17T10:53:00.001+08:00

Sorry, I know it's kind of gross to blog about blogging, but we are having trouble loading pictures onto our blog here. The internet here breaks frequently. You know who can load pictures onto their blog? My dad and stepmom. Here's their blog. It is arguably more interesting, because there is less writing and more pictures:

http://shawnndot2005trip.spaces.live.com/

National Lampoon's China Vacation

2008-12-15T10:53:00.002+08:00

It feels nothing like Christmas although everywhere we go there are versions of Christmas songs that sound like they have been sped up 25%, or We Three Kings duets between a recorder and bells. Except at the Hyatt when we went for lunch, where they played Christmas hymns sung by choirs and we ate sushi and blueberry sherbet and seafood macaroni.

And there are shiny Christmas decorations everywhere, lights strung along the outside walls of the mall and a life-size Santa Claus holding a saxophone at the grocery store. But there isn't a Christmas tree in the apartment, and it's 65 degrees everyday, and no one wishes you a Merry Christmas when you buy something from them.

I'm not sad about it though. This year my Christmas present is climbing to a pagoda on the top of a hill looking out over an entire city in China.

And you loved the world you lived in, and it loved you back.

2008-12-15T10:43:00.004+08:00

We are at Costa Coffee at Xihu Tiandi. (Xihu means "West Lake"--one of the 1,000 things you're supposed to see before you die, and who could disagree? With the fog rising off the hills and the lake like a brown tongue, and the fishermen moving to and fro--) And I have just eaten everything but the heart of a pan au raisin and David is eating something he calls a "doughnut sandwich" and complaining that ever since I told him instant coffee would give him rotgut that he has been feeling like he has rotgut even though he doesn't know what it is. You have to be careful when you tease hypochondriacs. Even slight hypochondriacs.

It is cold here today: a high of 50 degrees. The old people are still out along the lake doing tai chi. There is a place in the hills along the way to Chunhua Pavilion where the elderly gather in droves to drink tea and play mah jjong or cards and I think they do this everyday, up in the hills, next to the temples where big iron pots of incense have been burning since the song dynasty, or sometime as equally remote.

History is everywhere here, even if someone tried to scrape it off the face of the earth a while ago. Chiang Kai-Shek's vacation home is still here along the lake. On the way to Baochu Pagoda, there are some Buddhas carved into the rock, a testament to someone's devotion hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Those same Buddhas have missing heads, they look as though their heads were violently scraped off the rock--a testament to someone else's devotion. I told Josh this week that I have been longing for god for the past few months, but the evidence of violent devotion is everywhere here, and it scares me to think about what violence I may be called to do if I figure out what kind of god my heart is singing to.

Last week we went to a vegetarian restaurant where all the food is prepared by monks. It was delicious, and the menu was full of faux meat, just like we half-lapsed vegetarians like it. There were a few anachronisms on there: a dish that included something called "rot clothing" and another dish simply named "flesh cocktail." But there was fresh juice, and some good chie zi (eggplant). You go to monks for vegetarian food, and Muslims for la mien (noodles, or shaved noodles). And the la mien is so cheap! Only 7 yuan, which is roughly one American dollar. My favorite place to eat has three dishes I could eat all day: spicy cabbage, cucumbers in cilantro and sesame oil, and udon noodles with seafood. This place is not affiliated with a religion, but it's cheap and they understand when I haltingly and apologetically say, "pi jio ma?" and blushing, order two beers for David and I.

What do you do in China when you are unemployed? Read a lot of books and feel guilty. The ex-pat community is so small here. Everyone knows everyone else, and everyone speaks at least two languages. Last Saturday we went out to dinner with a young french couple who are just 2-3 years older than David and I. "What are you doing in China, while you're here?" they asked, smiling.

David and I looked at each other and shrugged. "We don't know."

They looked alarmed. She is pregnant, and they both are ridiculously successful. He speaks English, Mandarin, and French. They are from Paris. They are going to have a baby. They passed another foreigner on the street, "Ca va?" and I felt a strange sort of jealousy. I have always wanted to learn French. For me, it is the most beautiful language. My efforts to learn it have been marred by my conversational Spanish, which prevents me from ever accurately learning the French accent. Everything becomes Spanish when I try to speak it.

We went to a jazz club with the French couple and a brilliant jazz trio played. The piano player (he calls himself "the golden buddha") is from Beijing. The bass player is from Mauritius. The drummer is from Portugal. They played for a while, and then an old old lounge singer from California named Danny Woody got up and proceeded to cheese his way through a few songs. It was awful. It was lonely...or something? David and I wondered how much he was getting paid, and then we left. I smelled of smoke when I got home. I forgot you can smoke everywhere, but everywhere, here.

We are making plans to go to Thailand and visit my uncle. Bangkok is electing a new prime minister, we'll see how that goes. We could always go to Mukdahan, where my uncle is, instead of Bangkok. In Mukdahan, there is little to do, he says, but eat good food and relax. From Thailand, my uncle says we can get to Laos for $30. What's in Laos? I don't know. Anyway. There you have it.

In other news: I hear that President Bush had some shoes thrown at him in Iraq.

There is a very tiny picture in this blog post.

2008-12-10T09:42:00.008+08:00

David and I have a few ideological differences about what we think blogging entails. David feels the burden of truth: if he's going to blog, he wants to tell you what actually happened, when it happened and why. Paradoxically, he feels that this kind of narrative is boring, and so: he'd rather say nothing atall. I try to tell him that he should know his audience (you, kind blog readers, are mostly friends and family, right?) and that his audience, consisting of his mom, my mom, and stephanie williams, always want to know what is happening in his life, so he shouldn't worry overly much.

Yesterday, we were standing on the sidewalk waiting for my Dad to do something, and I took off my coat because I was hot. It was 65 degrees in Hangzhou yesterday: comparable to a warm spring morning in Chicago. No fewer than three Chinese people stopped in front of me and had a conversation with each other (and me) about why I was not covered up more. The characters in the following brief play were an old man wearing a sweater and a winter coat, a young woman, and a middle aged woman. All wore winter wear. They only spoke Mandarin, so this is an approximation of their conversation.

Middle aged woman (hereafter, MAW): Good lord, that young foreigner has bare arms!

Young woman (YW): I know right? Madness! It's freezing!

Old man (OM): Young people today, I tell you. (speaking to me, and showing me his layers of clothing) Do you see this, you crazy chick? I am wearing no less than seven sweaters! You will die in this extreme cold! Please, cover up immediately.

I tried to explain that I was hot. They all laughed at me. So I put on a sweater. Everyone seemed satisfied, and went on their way.

Immediately after that, I tried to buy some oranges with my limited Mandarin in order to impress David. I asked the lady selling the ju zi (tiny delicious oranges) how much they cost, feeling very satisfied with myself and my command of the only complete Chinese sentence I know. Then I said, still in Chinese, "Four please!" And instead of four oranges, I got four POUNDS of oranges.

Which is ok, really, since that entire four pound bag cost me a dollar. Still, David was not really all that impressed.

Anyway, now I've written too much. But really, I just drank an absolute vat of coffee, and I am so buzzed that I might jitter off into the sunset, so I can't be held responsible for this very boring narrative, ok? Just please forgive me. I tried to delete it, but David protested, so really, blame him.

CAFFEINE!

David makes his post-flight, post-shanghai post

2008-12-10T09:36:00.002+08:00

We made it to our new temporary home in Hangzhou by way of Shanghai.

Yesterday we climbed to what I assume must be one of the tallest points in the city and looked out over our new grounds of stomping. We'll put pictures somewhere soon, as soon as Katie tells me how. The jetlag is almost over, but we still can't seem to stay awake past 10. Yesterday during dinner my hands were too shaky to properly pick up eggplant from the plate so I just stabbed it.

We'll try to figure out a way to convey what we're doing here without just typing out a boring list of things we've seen and done.

We already miss you.

goodbye 'ole chi!

2008-12-04T10:29:00.002+08:00

Today at our old bank on Armitage and California in Chicago, the woman in front of me in line was casually talking to her bud when she very silently attempted to kill me with the noxious odor coming out of her behind. I was standing kind of close to her in line (practicing for China), so it was almost as if she not only farted near me, but on me.

Goodbye Chicago! You sure sent me out in style.

Katie is trying to learn how to sing so David will let her be in the one-man Chinese band.

2008-11-28T12:58:00.002+08:00

He says I can't join until I learn how to whistle Yankee Doodle while standing on my head.