Crossing the T

Ten Word Fiction: Ambrosia Gelati and a Haruspex

The ten words: (definitions follow the story)

1. Gravamen
2. White
3. Intimate
4. Signaling
5. Stale
6. Evaluation
7. Haruspex
8. Gelati
9. Ambrosia
10. Haruspex

The Story:

    My wedding reception was incredible - an intimate gathering in Santa Barbara, white orchids with a hint of pink on every table, and even I, the bride, enjoyed every little hidden blend of flavor inside that day.  It was a gathering of favorites – friends, family, food, music, and I had an absolute blast.  We opted out of the traditional boring wedding cake and served authentic Italian fare, and I especially remember the gelati.  One of the flavors was named ambrosia and I had several servings.  Little did I know that the delicious ambrosia was signaling me as I took it deep into my fibers, ambrosia was to become the grave of my marriage.

    My marriage never got stale. I never complained that it was dull nor that it was empty and never that the love was gone. I loved my half-American, half Italian/Swiss husband. With the connections of his family and brains to boot, he became a successful partner in a Wall Street investment firm. He grew up with summers on the Mediterranean coast, winters skiing in the alps and he was not so much as handsome as unbelievably talented, witty, and with enough drive in him to ensure me that my aspirations would be equaled to his.  I was a Manhattan trial lawyer, becoming the youngest partner in the firm – I had grown up blond, athletic, and accustomed to being stunning and somehow always knew how to lure, how to achieve and in my evaluation, you were meant to get what was yours, equal to yours.  Our love on that wedding day was more about looking in the mirror and realizing that we were not compromising or settling.  We were in love with rising to the top, again.

    But eight years later my Aunt Charette came to visit.  I never really knew my aunt – vague memories from childhood when she would come to our house on the California coast as the chubby aunt, who always seemed to be stepping off the normal rhythm of life.  When she tried to stay in touch with me, there was no point to have the time.  She had had a coarse life, I guess, although I had never bothered to know at that point.  Her husband, back in the 50’s had dumped her for a blond bathing beauty, leaving her alone with her arms full of Catholic children who became the ragged, loud cousins I barely knew and whose names I’d easily forget.

    That day she had spontaneously decided to come out to Connecticut to visit me, a detour on her way home from visiting a childhood friend.  My dad had died earlier that year and as his sister, she was going to check in on her niece.  Her arrival was announced only a few hours prior and was also the day of a big gathering that my husband I were hosting at our custom-built Connecticut home. The winter event was for my associates and my husband's, his bosses, my bosses, his employees and mine and the loads of people we called friends –people who were in our life for now and forever.  As Charette approached the house, as the event was well underway, she wore elastic wasted stretchy pants, and worn out shoes. She limped and sweated from her arthritis, even in the cold air, as she walked her way up the long driveway holding a glass dish with plastic wrap taped over the sides. I cringed – she had brought something to share.

    Charette came through the door, handing me the dish, giving me a bear slapping hug and a kiss and more love than I knew what to do with.  I looked at the dish and saw that it was that ambrosia salad I loved as a kid, cool whip, sour cream, marshmallows, canned pineapple, canned mandarins, maraschino cherries, pecans and whatever else that has nothing to do with a salad.  But I was mortified to serve it now.  I brought the dish into our gourmet kitchen, where caterers were going to and fro and I set it down on the marble top island in the center.  The caterers all ignored it, until one looked over at it as he was passing, then stopped, pulled it towards him, looked at it carefully, smiled, and said, “Is that ambrosia?” 

    “It is,” I said, as I haphazardly slid the bowl back into the middle of the island, “And it's not like we're gonna serve this crap,” I said, chuckling and mocking it, without knowing Charette had followed me into the kitchen to prepare it for serving to the guests.   I scooted her out, telling her the caterers had everything covered and there was no need for her in the kitchen. 

    Charette left the kitchen and walked into the crowded living room, turning to whoever she could find to start a conversation, hoping it could last.  She asked our guests a never ending string of questions, but struggled to track with conversations, names and places that they had been which she’d probably never be able to place on a map. She didn’t follow any of the talk about trends in the market and the discussions of issues and things that mattered. She stood out like thistles growing in a field of roses – anyone that came near, she seemed to cling to annoyingly. She did not belong and she knew it. 

    She stayed only a couple of hours, and seeing her getting ready to leave, I thanked God that my weird aunt was finally realizing that this was not worth the effort.  It was time to go.  I followed her to the door, where she pulled me aside. 

    “You have a beautiful home.  As a little girl, you were beautiful.  There was not a day you weren’t pretty.  You still are.  But, I’m a Catholic, and no haruspex.  But if I were and I could see the insides of your guts, I don’t care how pure and perfect all that goings on here and out there are, I would be able to tell ya that things are not as perfect as you would have us believe.  You can call ambrosia “crap”, that the pretty little girl I use to serve it to, did not deserve it tonight.  And apparently not even back then.  I should have served you salt wounds as a kid, then you might know how lucky you are.  I can say all this and more without a hint of concern that it will hurt you.  You know why?”

    I did not answer, I was just looking over my shoulder to make sure none of my guests were listening to her.

    She continued, as she put on her winter coat, “Because I watched you grow up.  And I know I can say whatever I want because you grew up to be a pachydermatous woman,” she said, but I interrupted.

    “A what?” I asked,

    “No worry,  you’ll live happily ever after.  I’m just glad your dad didn’t understand who you really are.  I’ll probably regret saying all that to you, but not for a few years at least.”  She walked out the door.  I started to open the door to say something to her as she stepped carefully down my front steps, but then my managing partner walked by the doorway and asked me a question, and I went back to doing what I do best, being head of the game.

    I saw out of the corner of my eye that she was hobbling, painfully down my icy, cobblestone driveway. As I was talking to my managing partner, I saw my husband on the other side of the room look out our big living room window at her, then excuse himself to walk outside to hold Charette’s arm as she struggled down the driveway.  I did not know at the time, but he stayed out there and spoke with her for over an hour.

    Late that night, the house cleared of guests and caterers, I saw my aunt’s bowl of ambrosia in the refrigerator, no one had touched it, because I had stuck in there, hidden.  My husband came up from behind me, grabbed the bowl out of the refrigerator, served himself a big bowl and was enjoying every bite.  Then he asked, “Did you even talk to Charette tonight?”

    “I don’t know why she bothered coming, it wasn’t worth the extra drive,” I said, “And how can you eat that junk?”

    He dumped another big spoon full of it into his bowl, then spoke in a long rambling spew of Italian and French that I did not understand.  When I asked what he was saying, he said, quietly, “You are one of the most beautiful women I know.” I smiled at him, loving his words, and moved towards him, undoing my tight dress. Before I got close, he added, “And one of the most profoundly cruel I have ever known.” Then he took his bowl of ambrosia to his office and shut the French doors behind him.  I do not like doors shut on me.  I opened the doors and asked what he meant.

    “I meant what I said. You really have no idea how much people don't like you," he said.  I was never near an artillery range. Never even saw a gun fired.  But I think the response that came flying out of my mouth that night apparently felt like I had.  My husband listened to me like he was staring at an evil he did not know lived inside his own home.  The problem was I did.  He responded, smiling like he wanted to defuse the battle in front of him, “That’s a great dress, you look incredible in it," then pointing to the belt on my dress, he said, "Is that an ammunition belt? It's amazing how a designer dress can load all those cartridges under there.”  I looked down at the belt on my dress having no idea what he was referring to.  He walked out and went into our media room and shut the doors again.  This time he locked them. 

    He never recovered from what I said that night.  I did not know that in his evaluation, our marriage was stale, I was boring, I was a pachydermatous woman, who loved him like paint likes a wall – it’s meant to cover up the imperfections underneath.  It was later that year when he told me, it was over.  I could keep the house.  Half all the other assets.  He just needed to go.  And that he did. 

    I asked him over and over again, “When did it all go wrong?  I thought we were happy. I thought you were happy.”  In front of a marriage therapist, after a long and silent pause, he said the turning point was that night, “When I was eating Charette’s ambrosia.” 

    “Marriages should not break up over one argument and a bowl of canned fruit,” I said.

    He responded, quietly, as he got up to leave never to return, “Lawyers never make one argument. And the problem is, in their own life, they never see their own gravamen.”

 

gra·va·men

[gruh-vey-muhn] 

noun, plural -vam·i·na  [-vam-uh-nuh] Law.

1. the part of an accusation that weighs most heavily against the accused; the substantial part of a charge or complaint.
2. a grievance.

white

[hwahyt, wahyt] adjective, whit·er, whit·est, noun, verb, whit·ed, whit·ing.

adjective

1. of the color of pure snow, of the margins of this page, etc.; reflecting nearly all the rays of sunlight or a similar light.
2. light or comparatively light in color.
3. (of human beings) marked by slight pigmentation of the skin, as of many Caucasoids.
4. for, limited to, or predominantly made up of persons whose racial heritage is caucasian; a white club; a white neighborhood.
5. pallid or pale, as from fear or other strong emotion: white with rage.

in·ti·mate

¹ [in-tuh-mit]

adjective

1. associated in close personal relations: an intimate friend.
2. characterized by or involving warm friendship or a personally close or familiar association or feeling: an intimate greeting.
3. very private; closely personal: one's intimate affairs.
4. characterized by or suggesting privacy or intimacy;  warmly cozy: an intimate little café.
5. (of an association, knowledge, understanding, etc.) arising from close personal connection or familiar experience.

sig·nal

[sig-nl] noun, adjective, verb, -naled, -nal·ing or ( especially British ) -nalled, -nal·ling.

noun

1. anything that serves to indicate, warn, direct, command, or the like, as a light, a gesture, an act, etc.: a traffic signal; a signal to leave.
2. anything agreed upon or understood as the occasion for concerted action.
3. an act, event, or the like that causes or incites some action: The unjust execution was the signal for revolt.
4. a token; indication.
5. Electronics . an electrical quantity or effect, as current, voltage, or electromagnetic waves, that can be varied in such a way as to convey information.

stale

¹ [steyl] adjective, stal·er, stal·est, verb, staled, stal·ing.

adjective

1. not fresh; vapid or flat, as beverages; dry or hardened, as bread.
2. musty; stagnant: stale air.
3. having lost novelty or interest; hackneyed; trite: a stale joke.
4. having lost freshness, vigor, quick intelligence, initiative, or the like, as from overstrain, boredom, or surfeit: He had grown stale on the job and needed a long vacation.
5. Law . having lost force or effectiveness through absence of action, as a claim.

e·val·u·a·tion

[ih-val-yoo-ey-shuhn] 

noun

1. an act or instance of evaluating or appraising.
2. (especially in medicine) a diagnosis or diagnostic study of a physical or mental condition.

ge·la·ti

[juh-lah-tee] Show IPA

noun Italian Cookery .

a rich ice cream, made with eggs and usually containing a relatively low percentage of butterfat.

am·bro·sia

[am-broh-zhuh]

noun

1. Classical Mythology . the food of the gods. 
2. something especially delcious to taste or smell.
3. a fruit dessert made of oranges and shredded coconut and sometimes pineapple.

ha·rus·pex

[huh-ruhs-peks, har-uh-speks] 

noun, plural ha·rus·pi·ces  [huh-ruhs-puh-seez]

1. (in ancient Rome) one of a class of minor priests who practiced divination, especially from the entrails of animals killed in sacrifice.

Definitions from Dictionary.com

Ten Word Fiction: Brouhaha and...

The Ten Words:  Definitions follow the story

1. brouhaha
2. a priori
3. mbaganga
4. deciduous
5. fajitas
6. science
7. cinema
8. posting
9. valve
10. sponsor

The Story

    Earlier that day, Wes had finished a philosophy mid-term exam, defining, writing, explaining a priori and a posteriori arguments.  He was pre-med at Stony Brook and told his girlfriend after finishing the exam, that he’d take one hundred science classes before suffering through that philosophy nonsense again.   In medicine, he said, people get better, they get worse, the live, they die. Doctors do not spend their life trapped inside a tormented brouhaha worrying about whether or not arguments can be decided by lying on a couch. 

    It was after midnight when he was headed back, climbing up and out of the subway. Still hungry for something, he walked into a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant and stuffed his face with fajitas.  As he was lopping on the salsa, a girl came in, about fourteen years old, her dad outside, talking on his cell phone while she was posting a colorful announcement on a message board that hung right in the little entrance to the restaurant.  The board held announcements for everything - from call girls to cleaning services, from hair stylists, to storage facilities. The papers were posted deep, one on top of the other, everyone scrambling to tell someone what it is that they need you to have.  She looked sad, lost, tired. Walking back out to her dad, he gave her no approval, just handed her another sheet to post at the next hole-in-the-wall at which they would stop. 

    Wes finished off the last of his late night snack, then walked up to the message board to read the posting.  It was for a foreign film at an unknown cinema, up in Washington Heights. He pulled off one of the little tabs at the bottom, as if taking interest mattered to the girl, who was nowhere in sight when he left the restaurant. 

     Walking around the corner to get home, he passed a small club. It was a warm night, late March, the door was open, and inside was mbaganga music, the lure of the rhythms pulled him in. He stepped into listen. Unexpectedly, at the back of the club, he saw that girl, her dad drinking heavily at the bar. Seeing Wes look at her, she stepped behind a post, just her eyeballs peeking around the side, like a lone wolf, waiting for a moment when strength would be on her side.  Wes walked back towards her, sat at a table next to the post, and saw her cower as he approached.

    Wes was from central Iowa, miles outside a tiny little town. When he had graduated from high school four years earlier, he had decided that he needed New York.  In that little club, mbaganga music playing, he looked like he fit right in. He was a mix of every color and race, born in a lobby of somewhere in New Orleans, his mother left and his father, never known. He was taken into the custody of a Baptist church, which, as his sponsor, eventually helped him land in the middle of Iowa, adopted by a farmer and his wife.  At which time, his last name changed from Pavajeau to Larswanisteski, the only family in the world with that last name – an amalgamation of sounds resulting from someone who crossed through Ellis Island and needing new roots and a new life.  Raised in a little farm house, surrounded by corn and soy beans deep inside Iowa, Manhattan was a change Wes thought he needed.  But he was not deciduous. Manhattan had asked him too many times to shed his colors, his guides and, more decidedly, his roots which he had thought, just a few years earlier, were to never take soil anywhere.  He was ready to leave.

     He saw the girl watch her father order another gin, and Wes felt somehow he had the same blood as her.  He moved closer to the girl and asked her name. Uncharacteristically, he handed this hardened girl a card with his name, Wes Larswanisteski,  and his email address, “If you need some help,” but before he could finish, she grabbed it, ran out the back and out the door. Her father, lost in music and Lenten libations, did not notice her dart out the back.  Wes followed to see where she had gone but as it is with New Yorkers, they evaporate around corners, through unnoticed doors, onto buses, down into subways. He remembered the argument he had written in his philosophy exam earlier that day, the Occam's razor, when you have two competing philosophies, the simpler one is probably better.  Or maybe not.    What is so simple about a girl with no name, a father not known, in a city crawling with humans too many of which act like cockroaches creeping and crawling through the crevices of life, in the darkest of hours.  Maybe arguments weren’t so simply won.

     For a few days after that, he walked by that club on his way home, and each time looked in to see if he saw her again.  A few weeks later, he was accepted into a summer internship at a research institute, then graduated with honors, and chose which of the top schools for cardiac medicine he would attend; he was bound for San Francisco.  As with the many people we see but pass in life, the girl’s face, easily and soon forgotten, blended deep into the recesses of his soul.

    Well over a decade later, he had become a specialist in new heart valve technologies, controlling the pulsing of one’s heart.  When he saw on a surgical monitor the blood rushing through someone’s arteries, he knew, sometimes, the deep wounds of the person whose life hung in the balance of his hands, reaching forward, to keep their heart pulsating. He would remember those days back in college, back when he thought arguments were so simply won.

    One afternoon, in his private practice, he went into the next patient’s room - a new patient, a woman who looked worn. Right as he shook her hand to introduce himself, one of his nurses knocked. He stepped back out of the patient’s room for a few minutes.  He came back in, apologizing to the new patient, “I’m sorry for that interruption.” Not seeing anything in her folder, he started to ask, “You are here for?” She interrupted.  From her purse, she pulled out a tattered card and pushed it towards him. It had his name and email address from years before in New York City, “It’s a heart problem I have, and you said you could help.”   

 

brou·ha·ha

[broo-hah-hah]

noun

1. excited public interest, discussion, or the like, as the clamor attending some sensational event; hullabaloo: The brouhaha followed disclosures of graft at City Hall.
2. an episode involving excitement, confusion, turmoil, etc., especially a broil over a minor or ridiculous cause: A brouhaha by the baseball players resulted in three black eyes.

a pri·o·ri

[ey prahy-awr-ahy, -ohr-ahy, ey pree-awr-ee, -ohr-ee, ah pree-awr-ee, -ohr-ee] Show IPA

adjective

1. from a general law to a particular instance; valid independently of observation. Compare a posteriori ( def. 1 ) .
2. existing in the mind prior to and independent of experience, as a faculty or character trait. Compare a posteriori ( def. 2 ) .
3. not based on prior study or examination; nonanalytic: an a priori judgment.

fa·ji·ta

[fah-hee-tuh, fuh‐]

noun

1. a thin strip of marinated and grilled meat..
2. Usually, fajitas . ( used with a singular or plural verb ) a Tex-Mex dish of these strips, served with tortillas, salsa, etc.

mbaqanga

 ( ^ə mbɑːˈkæŋɡə)   — n a style of Black popular music of urban South Africa   [C20: perhaps from Zulu umbaqanga  mixture]

 

de·cid·u·ous

[dih-sij-oo-uhs]

adjective

1. shedding the leaves annually, as certain trees and shrubs.
2. falling off or shed at a particular season, stage of growth, etc., as leaves, horns, or teeth.
3. not permanent; transitory.

spon·sor

[spon-ser]

noun

1. a person who vouches or is responsible for a person or thing.
2. a person, firm, organization, etc., that finances and buys the time to broadcast a radio or television program so as to advertise a product, a political party, etc.
3. a person who makes a pledge or promise on behalf of another.
4. a person who answers for an infant at baptism, making the required professions and assuming responsibility for the child's religious upbringing; godfather or godmother.

valve

[valv]
noun, verb, valved, valv·ing.

1. any device for halting or controlling the flow of a liquid, gas, or other material through a passage, pipe, inlet, outlet, etc.
2. a hinged lid or other movable part that closes or modifies the passage in such a device.
3. Anatomy . a membranous fold or other structure that controls the flow of a fluid, as one that permits blood to flow in one direction only.
4. (in musical wind instruments of the trumpet class) a device for changing the length of the air column to alter the pitch of a tone.

post·ing

¹ [poh-sting]

verb (used with object)

1. to affix (a notice, bulletin, etc.) to a post, wall, or the like.
2. to bring to public notice by or as by a poster or bill: to post a reward.
3. to denounce by a public notice or declaration: They were posted as spies.
4. to publish the names of in a list: to post a student on the dean's list.
5. to publish the name of (a ship) as missing or lost.

cin·e·ma

[sin-uh-muh]

noun

1. Chiefly British . motion picture
2. the cinema, motion pictures collectively, as an art.
3. Chiefly British . a motion-picture theater.

sci·ence

[sahy-uhns]

noun

1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
2. systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
3. any of the branches of natural or physical science systematized knowledge in general. 
4. knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.

 

Ten Word Fiction: My First Try

The Ten Words:  Definitions follow the story

1. Katzenjammer
2. Delta
3. Decorous
4. Temerarious
5. Capacious
6. Coming
7. Rice
8. Geta
9. Variant
10. Shelter

The Story

The waves crashing, a cool breeze - the kind of Sunday morning meant for curling up next to the one you adore. But I hated that dawn breaking into a low and reddish sunrise. I hated the breeze that kept blowing the white window blinds back and forth, clicking them against the window, like a drum, pounding the pain deep into my heart, and the waves crashing a mist of salt that sent me running, vomiting into the marble Malibu bathroom.   With the taste of bile in my throat, a Katzenjammer of all Katzenjammers thundering through my skull, I collapsed onto the lone couch in the capacious coastal Malibu home.  I tried to remember the name of who had taken me there, who had romanced me for who knows how long, or short.  He was gone. 

Nothing in the condo to steal, and a door that locked resolutely behind itself, whoever he was, he probably felt leaving a little Japanese Pepperdine student alone in a vacant home was not going to be a risk for anything or anyone.  I slipped into my tight black dress, looked around for my stilettos, and rinsed my mouth in the sink, listened for who might be awake anywhere, and shuffled back out the front gate.  I checked the GPS on my phone to figure out where I was and called my friend to pick me up, then waited in the punishing sun.  

My friend pulled her car up to the luxurious coastal home. She was rested, perky, showered, wearing  a cute sundress fresh for the beautiful Sunday morning, “OH. MY. GOD.,” she said, looking at the Malibu beach home.  “You always get the hot guys. And now. THAT HOUSE.  What is THAT like inside?!.”

“Unbelievable. Incredible. The view is totally amazing,” I said convincingly.

She added, “And he was sooooo amazing.”

“Yea. He was. Amazing,” I said.

“I could never get a guy like that. Cute little Asian girls get guys like that. Not me. You get all the guys,”  she said.

“What time did you get home?” I asked.

“Two or something like that. You left with him way before us.  He was so into you.  Wasn’t he a student at USC?” she asked.

“Yea, he is, he is sooo cool,” I said, trying to not vomit as she drove the winding corners of the coastal highway.

“When are you going to see him again?” she asked.

“I need to get out of the car,” I said.

“Huh?” she asked.

“Like now. Stop the car. I gotta get out,” and I ran out of the car again and got sick.

As a Junior at Pepperdine, majoring in business, I had somehow managed to keep reasonable grades despite many repeated days of all night clubbing in Los Angeles. I was convinced that being temerarious in my stilettos proved that I had broken free from the decorous nonsense upon which I had been raised.  I was proud, sure, confident that as a variant Granddaughter I had broken free of the bondage of tradition, ritual, conformity.  It was my Grandma who shuffled in getas, bowing and acquiescing, obeying and agreeing – rice here,  rice there, everywhere all the little bits of frailty that I hated. I never agreed. I didn’t bow. I didn’t acquiesce. I chose. I never took shelter under the safety of things that were handed to me as guidance.  

My friend dropped me off at my apartment, still wanting to know what it was like to have such a stud want every inch of you. I walked right past my curious roommates and flopped down on my bed, and lay there as my blood struggled with the vodka shots running through my veins.  My cell phone rang and I saw on my phone that my Grandma was calling, again.  When I saw her number, I tossed the phone on the floor.  I was too good for slow conversations.

Grandma lived in a small town deep inside Japan, she was born on a river delta that flowed into the ocean. But as life moved forward, she moved upstream and into the mountains. It was winter back home, snow was dusting the path to her little apartment. Had I answered my Grandma’s call, she would have been shuffling in her old lady slippers as she spoke to me, getas somewhere in that little place of hers, a teapot on the tiny stove. If I had been there she would have prepared tea, made me something to eat that was laboriously small and would take too long to make, in a pace that was so ridiculously backward.  Why could not old people see the future coming?

There was that one 10 Sen coin which always sat on a tiny table next to her bed. The coin was handed to her by her dad, my great grandfather, when she was just a little girl, as the fire bombs fell all around them.  It was her lucky coin. But I never answered the call. Just like my dad I was. Drunk. Not home. Not answering the call of someone who needs you.  Grandma needed me that day.  She died, a tea cup broken on the floor, the phone by her side, and my number the last number dialed.

 

Definitions:

katz·en·jam·mer

noun

1. the discomfort and illness experienced as the aftereffects of excessive drinking; hangover.
2. uneasiness; anguish; distress.
3. uproar; clamor: His speech produced a public katzenjammer.

ge·ta

[get-uh; Japn. ge-tah]

noun, plural -ta, -tas.

1. a traditional Japanese wooden clog that is worn outdoors, with a thong that passes between the first two toes and with two transverse supports on the bottom of the sole.

dec·o·rous

[dek-er-uhs, dih-kawr-uhs, -kohr-] Show IPA

adjective

1. characterized by dignified propriety in conduct, manners, appearance, character, etc.

 

tem·er·ar·i·ous

[tem-uh-rair-ee-uhs] Show IPA

adjective

1. reckless; rash.

ca·pa·cious

[kuh-pey-shuhs]

adjective

1. capable of holding much; spacious or roomy: a capacious storage bin

rice

[rahys]

noun

1. the starchy seeds or grain of an annual marsh grass, Oryza sativa,  cultivated in warm climates and used for food.
2. the grass itself.

del·ta

[del-tuh]  noun

1. the fourth letter of the greek alphabet (Δ, δ).
2. the consonant sound represented by this letter.
3. the fourth in a series of items.
4. anything triangular, like the Greek capital delta (Δ).
5. Mathematics . an incremental change in a variable, as Δ or δ.

var·i·ant

[vair-ee-uhnt] adjective

1. tending to change or alter; exhibiting variety or diversity; varying: variant shades of color.
2. not agreeing or conforming; differing, especially from something of the same general kind.
3. not definitive, as a version of part of a text; different; alternative: a variant reading.
4. not universally accepted.

 

shel·ter

[shel-ter] noun

1. something beneath, behind, or within which a person, animal, or thing is protected from storms, missiles, adverse conditions, etc.; refuge.
2. the protection or refuge afforded by such a thing: He took shelter in a nearby barn.
3. protection from blame, incrimination, etc.
4. a dwelling place or home considered as a refuge from the elements: Everyone's basic needs are food, clothing, and shelter.
5. a building serving as a temporary refuge or residence for homeless persons, abandoned animals, etc.

come

[kuhm] verb, came, come, com·ing, noun

verb (used without object)

1. to approach or move toward a particular person or place: Come here. Don't come any closer!
2. to arrive by movement or in the course of progress: The train from Boston is coming.
3. to approach or arrive in time, in succession, etc.: Christmas comes once a year. I'll come to your question next.
4. to move into view; appear.
5. to extend; reach: The dress comes to her knees.

 

 

A new project: 10 word fiction

I'm working two jobs, continuing a life of many transitions, readjustments, resets, reboots and... not writing enough.  So I decided to start a writing project to get my creative juices going again.  But simply too exhausted to launch or restart the big projects.  So I decided to revive a project I did about ten years ago, which I called Moving Forward: Four Word fiction.  But four words was way too easy.  So this time I decided it would be ten words.  I pick ten random words out of the dictionary (from online random word generators) and write a short story with those ten words in it.  Can't be long. Can't spend time editing. Just write and publish.

The rules are:

1. I click on each of the below two websites, five times each, for a total of ten words.(If you know of a better random word generator, let me know. I could only find these two.)
   
   1. Random Word Generator
   2. Random Word Generator
2. I can't throw out a word.
3. I have to use all ten words in the story. 
4. It must be written in one day which in my life means I have about an hour to finish. 
5. I can print it and make edits, but only once.
6. It can't impinge on my ever-present goal to get enough sleep. In other words, if I know I can't complete it in a day, then I won't pull the ten words.  
7. Don't quit my day job. 
8. Don't quit my night job. 
9. If someone wants to be pay me to do this, I will gladly quit my other two jobs. So in other words, the rules of 8 and 9 still, strongly, apply.  
10. If some English major, professor, language hobbyist, editor somehow finds my little ol' website and writes in and convincingly tells me that I used one of the ten words incorrectly, and also gives me some examples of how I am supposed to use the word, I will be required to reuse that word in the next story, for a total of eleven words.
11. Related to number 10, the English language is losing an exorbitant number of words per year due to lack of use.  There is a reasonable chance that the word I got on the random word generator is on the docket for extinction, so my new use of the word might be called the evolution of language.  I can apply this logic at random to eliminate rule number 10. 

Readers' Rules

1. Excuse typos, grammatical errors and omissions. They are caused by rules 7 and 8 above.

Doing the insane

Just a blast out to the internet via this silly blog of mine that I am sooo much happier than I was last year at this time when I was working for a really messed up group.  Last Spring, to disassociate myself from their willing and compliant mess, I just walked in and said, basically, "Enough, I want no part of this, I am walking out for good." That was an insane thing to do in bad and precarious economic times, but there are days when those quiet, lonely moments of prayer give you get that undeniable momentum to do something that others would never dare to do.  I am soooo glad I did!  It is a Merry Christmas.

Going nuclear at the mall

I try avoid this at all cost near the holidays, but unfortunately, I couldn't. I entered malls today, strip malls, next to a big shopping mall.  Just getting near the gravitational force of a mall at Christmas, drained me of all my available energy reserves -- malls deflate the core of everything near them.  Then it dawned on me, I discovered something from which our national security team might take valuable note. Now that Kim Jung Il is dead, I know what do with all the nuclear power he has. Or that Iran has.  Put it in a Dodge Ram, a mini-cooper, a Lexus SUV, a taurus, a basket on a bicycle, a Timbukt2 messenger bag - put in anything, then park it in a mall during Christmas, and watch it lose all power and be drained of all useful energy.

 

Kim Jung-il. Dead.

Kim Jung-il meets his maker.  Wonder what that's like.

Over hill, over dale, As we hit the dusty trail....

Sometimes a life change seems insurmountable, you wish for a break, a turn that just comes, a chance that someone gives you, a current that takes you along to the place you are intended to be. Yet sometimes that place you are intended to be is actually the fight that you find yourself in. We cannot flee the fight for goodness into which Faith places us. So over hill, over dale, As we hit the dusty trail....

Cyrano's Christmas Letter

A new writing venture perhaps....my friend, closing out an exhausting year, with unrelenting schedule, an absentee extended family, and the demands of a house full of kids, hired me to write her Christmas letter. Unsure of how a Cyrano-style Christmas letter would work, she read the draft to a friend, who proceeded to cry.  I'm not sure if it's good to make people cry at the happiest time of the year.  But the reality is, Christmas, while full of excitement and joy, is also the time where sorrows can run like a slow hidden stream, buried.  The letter goes out soon. We'll hear the reaction soon!   

break time?

I'm learning the lesson that when you work for yourself, you work all the time. Break time and bed time merge to be the same thing.  Exhausted, I crash, wondering who demands such insane work hours? I mean, really, this is getting crazy, who is the boss around here!?! Oh yea, me.

Revival

Haven't written here in a million years. But I'm happy to report that my goal to finish a screenplay and enter in a contest has been completed!  I don't know that it is good enough, but it feels really good to have completed the goal. I nearly didn't make it - I will admit this year has been a trying one. But I tried my darndest during a dash of long days and late nights while at the same trying to start a business - a dual track I wouldn't recommend repeating. Out of fatigue, I nearly gave-up and threw in the towel with a dramatic flash of indifference to a forever nagging dream. Despite the sorrows of days gone by, you can never let the devil's indifference weigh on your inspiration. This weekend, in Thanksgiving, I've started writing another project. I just keep praying that if the story is meant to be told that I have the focus and tenacity to tell it.

Sweet dreams

Important meetings. We all have them. Whatever the purpose, they can give us trepidation and even indigestion. Mine tomorrow provides worry, a tummy ache, and confused thoughts. Not enough sleep, nor enough time, to prepare, to relax, to feel a breeze of confidence and mojo. So I close tonight with a wish for my head to clear, for my gut to know which direction to go during what hopefully won't be a blurry eyed, blubbering spew but instead a conversation with authentic, intended words. All going towards one of those muddy but purposeful destinations. In the meantime, I shutter my eyes for the night with sweet dreams.

Blessed with time for words

I am soooo glad to have a couple of hours free to write today. These characters tumble through my head constantly and fervently and wish I could tell their story more quickly.  I will need help with two things before I'm done (which at this rate remains a long way off)- a USMC person who fought in Iraq to review one character for its authenticity and I need a white collar crime lawyer.  I'm quite sure I can track down the former, but the latter is going to be a challenge.  At this rate, I'm still embarassed to show the disjointed, hobbled, ganobbled spew of writing that it is to anyone. Even in the end, I'll probably feel that way.  Nonetheless, I do need that lawyer. Hmmm...where to get one!?

No idea where I'm going...

I ran across this when tossing old files -- not sure why I have it in some old papers. Don't remember who gave it to me, or how it landed there.  It is written by Thomas Merton who I know nothing about, other than he was a Priest. But I like it...

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do see the road ahead of me. I cannot for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, thought I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I amy seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils along.

Writing tally for today: Zippo.  Except for a million rewrites at work.  And that's not fiction, although the statistic of a million is. It felt like a million rewrites.  But who follows statistics really? Definitely not Congress or they'd realize they realize they are just about to slam and lie their way into the biggest fib ever written - their 2,700 some pages of destructive fabrication of reality. The biggest fib ever written.  Admittedly that's a fib writing that.  But at least I admit when I exaggerate to the point of conscious lying. That legislation isn't the biggest fib ever.  Because there's always that King of Lies, that guy whose head I'd lop off with my digital camera, whose whole government is a lie, a deadly one. But the central planners of Pelosi, Reid and Obama must make Kimmie J. Il proud; he's smiling right now, thinking, "My it's always nice to finally see my philosophical seeds taking root where and when you need I it the most. Finally those sweet savory seedlings of my Image are in D.C."

barely back....

Criminy, but it's impossible to keep up with everything...Writing is progressing, barely. Barely....I feel like I need to do what those bikers do. Log their mileage. Or get me a drill sergeant to scream in my ear at night and keep that dream alive. 

Writer's Block

I'm back.  It's been a long hiatus, and yes, I'm still writing that silly book. Up to 67,000 some words-- but it totally needs to be rearranged and reworked.  It has many characters as the D's - Dickens and Dostoyevsky -- but reads as chaotic as a Jackson Pollack painting; it will feel like a crime and punishment to read it!  Work unfortunately has been terribly demanding and exhausting.  Now they've added travel every week, so I'm in the sky every week, getting to work at odd hours.  I don't really have such a thing as writer's block. Except my job, it blocks me from everything except paying my bills.  I just want to be home writing my book, but in this economy I should be careful what I wish for. So I keep working like crazy, trying to crush that stupid dream since I don't think anyone will ever read my book anyway.  We all have our dreams.  It's tempting to crush them.  I wish I could some times.  But alas, that's why they are dreams; they just don't die. Just like love. The real kind.  But my o' my, but the world is full of distractions and fakes. You have to stay grounded to not be tripped up by it all. And even then, sometimes the fools knock you flat on your face. For a bit, anyway, before you get back up and take them out for the ride of their life. Then head out on your own, to make your dreams come true. The real kind.

When you've got the blues...

When you've got the blues, play it as beautifully as this. 'Cause when you do, the worlds blues fade away, far away. 

George Lewis, your Burgundy Street Blues still years later, takes the blues way far away.
Burgundy Street Blues- George Lewis 1959
Uploaded by boberwig. - Explore more music videos.

With gratitude...

Their words are better than mine could ever be....I only say I do not forget, and many of us remember today with tears, with hope, with gratitude, with a flag flying as our deep-in-the-heart symbol of our debt to you.

http://fearless1stmarines.vox.com/library/post/mnf-w-commanding-generals-memorial-day-message.html

http://fearless1stmarines.vox.com/library/post/rct-1-hq-co-commander-letter-to-friends.html

A million flags, each holding one's heart for you....

Posing and Pausing...

Ok, I know I know, I'm a hypocrite. I complain of bloggers, yet I blog. ;-)  But the blogosphere is swamped with foul people who pose as writers, but are revealed to be liars -- like Michael Moore who steals other people's work and writes what is aptly termed war porn.  It's the many beautiful, inspiring stories of our troops, heroes and freedom that are left untold or less frequently told, which spurred me to write in the first place. I'm not sure I've done much good (but glad to have made some new friends which is always worth it!!)   

With regards to my blogging, I'm going to have to pause, take a hiatus until I finish my book.  And find a new job.  I can't promise that either the book or the next job will be worth writing home about.  In fact they probably won't be.  But they both need to be completed.  Quickly.

In the meantime, if I write here, it will be under duress -- about some topic that is causing me to lose sleep until I write about it.  :-) 

Fearless First...

It pays to be fearless.  I suppose none of us really are.  But I think our troops do qualify. Despite fear, they do put themselves in harms way.  Or more accurately, as I wrote before, they put harm on the run.   

Here's the Fearless First Marines, who write of progress, of good news, of dedication, of tough news, of sorrow, or hope, of people they have come to know, and some I'm sure they wish they hadn't. These guys have put together a great site -- and it's worth the read. I check in often.  It's good writing and informative. 

I have to admit, even though I write this blog, I'm not really a big fan of blogs. So many seem to rant unproductively. Or degrade into some sort of brain-dead sophomoric, adolescent stupor, as even Powerline's John Hinderaker does.

But the Fearless First site is well done, solid, accurate....consistently...

My next "vacation", North Korea Resort Life

I wouldn't mind going here for my next vacation, a resort in North Korea.  Just to help flood that crazy country with people who know freedom.  They can't stop the flood forever...

Here's a video of getting to the resort.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid86195573/bclid132209461/bctid1556110335

And a link to the article about the visit. The article shares the fact that you can take a picture of an image of North Korea's psycho leader, but the "authorities" will inspect it to make sure you didn't chop off his head. As the reporter writes, "One day, I saw a remarkable mosaic, a portrait of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung composed of 250,000 tiny colored stones. Just as I snapped a photo, a whistle blew. Two hotel employees came over and asked for my camera. Later, a Hyundai Asan staffer explained my potential offense: Chopping off the leaders' heads. Fortunately, I had captured the whole mosaic and was allowed to keep the shot." 

It reveals rampant killers are paranoid that others will do to them, what they have done to so many.

Maybe I can sneak in some tricky little camera and take a picture of that mosaic with Kimmie Jong Il's head chopped off.  Then I'd post it here.

Not enough time...except for Mom

I have too little time this evening to write enough about all that I have felt, read, seen, heard in the last week.

The stories are dense and there is just not enough time to share it all. In these limits of fatigue, I am reminded that too many stories, so poignant, are often left untold. So although I wish I could write more, I have to settle for what little I can write. 

So tonight I write briefly, to hope for a friend whose boyfriend's affections are distracted, his fading tenderness I hope won't leave a hurtful ending. Another friend whose ex-boyfriend is calling with hurtful, abusive words -- why he wants to punch her in the gut even more I'll never know.  I heard stories last week to remind me that sorrows of broken affections sting deep - like jelly fish, broken loves can sneak up invisible, then paralyze you. Like I said before, we come with strings attached, gratefully.

Yesterday, I felt someone close to me whose life is fading, saw a wave goodbye even when the arm's muscles couldn't offer one. I saw so much frailty yesterday, and in seeing frailty, it makes me feel frail. Reminds me how fragile we all really are.  How life's journey goes too fast.  Yesterday I also heard the heart of an older woman, still in love with a man who caused her pain. Who, in all life's bitter struggles with rejection and loss had come to know forgiveness. In our frailty, it seems, God offers us our redemption. Yet, then, yesterday too, I felt a daughter's heart whose mother's forlorn and abandoned journey leaves a sting, even on a sunny day - and I wonder where is that mother's redemption when the evil of apathy and lies has come to roost to solidly?

In all this last week, I got a call from a number far away. A voice mail, telling me to call back. When I talk to this person, I get lambasted for still being single. For not visiting enough. For not calling back fast enough. Half the time, I can't even understand what this person is saying. But she always asks why I'm not dating, never taking the time to hear my story. This time I didn't answer. I ignored it. I couldn't muster the time, the energy. I couldn't take the time, wondered if I ever should. 

But today, Mother's Day, I took the time, I ate some waffles smothered in raspberries, syrup, whipped cream, with my Mom, my dad, my family, my adorable nephews. I am blessed to have a great family, to have parents whose love did mean love forever. A Mom who is a great Mom.  As a kid my friends often said to me they were jealous of me -- I had a cool Mom, nice parents.  I heard this from more than one friend, "Your Mom remembers more about my life than my own."  And today she proved again, why. My mom today came with flowers for me. I'm not even a Mom.  She knows my life has taken some unexpected turns in life and love, and she came with flowers for me. On Mother's Day.

Oh my word...

My last post was about my words when they go right, at least somewhat right for one person.

But tonight, I was reminded of when my words were all wrong.   

I have prayers for understanding...but I think on this particular story, I may never really understand.

Sometimes before life's story has all panned out we want our canvas painted with all the shadows revealed, all the inner secrets exposed, with the intertwined plots of our particular story played out in moving color. But instead, sometimes we are left with an ending and none of the chapters in between ever written. We're left with unsolved mysteries. A friendship lost. A goodbye we didn't think needed to be said. And no sure reason why. We beg, we pray, we plead to know the missing chapters. Instead, I think sometimes life can feel like a cover without a book, an ending without the middle.

It is that very mystery that inspired the fiction piece I'm working on --  lives and hearts crash together sometimes for reasons we may never even realize or know. But it is also that ending-without-the-middle that choked my creativity earlier this year.  Stopped the story in its tracks.

It is why we need, even in all life's victories and sorrows, the family and friends who, when the clock strikes twelve, push us forward. Help us write more and better chapters in our love and friendships, even when the pages previous seem snatched from our hearts.

Midnight Strikes Twelve (o' 2)...

Last August, I was in trouble.

By October, even bigger trouble.

When Midnight Stuck Twelve on December 31, 2007 -- I came up short of words in 2007.  I only had 35,848 words of the 90,000 target I had. I was way short. That's like thinking you successfully landed on an aircraft carrier because you only were a half a mile off when you tried to touch down.

But I sent it off to my "reader" -- the person who has encouraged me to write this novel. Who cornered me. Who triggered my start. He's not the man who fires the starting gun on the Olympic 100 meter dash, but the one that gives you the courage to get down on the starting block and take off running at times when you feel like you just don't have the guts, when you know everyone is already off and running, when so many have a head start on you, when some already sped across the finish line and are relishing the cheers.

My reader is a distant uncle. An Australian. A former professor.  An avid reader. A poignant speaker. With trepidation, I kept my bet and sent him what I did write, the 35,484 words. I knew I'd get positive thoughts (because he's just an encouraging man), but also a good solid dose of professorial grading reality, even the bad stuff.  He just left a message today that he thought it was STUPENDOUS.  That my writing put him in tears in a couple of places. 

He put me in tears. But I was bouncing off the walls too.

I had given up really.  I didn't make my goal in December and then was hit with the distractions of broken dreams earlier this year, and I stopped writing. Pursuing another dream when one dream is broken is tough. I didn't.  But that was stupid of me.

But today, he insisted, he wants the ending. He's hooked.

I'm sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo HAPPY!!!!

Of course, he is going to hit on the professorial critique too. I got home too late to call back, and hear a good dose of what needs to better than it is.  But I realized it was stupid to shut my word faucet off. Broken dreams are no excuse. Someone is asking me to write. I simply must.

I'll be picking up and finishing to the initial 90,000 goal. The book is about crashing destinies, that's all I'll say. The devil's in the details. And the details aren't for sharing, yet.

Butterfly Lovers

Jet lag stinks. It's 3 a.m. and I can't sleep, NOT AT ALL.

So I'm writing emails to friends, writing blog posts, reading...blah blah. Brain please turn off!

Anyway...

While in Beijing, during lunch, I asked my Chinese colleagues for a music recommendation. I love music, and that was the souvenir I wanted.

They discussed in Chinese what to recommend. There was a CD store across the street from the restaurant we were eating at. One programmer took me to the store, and picked out the two they most recommended.  One has Western tones, the other traditional Chinese instruments.

One is titled Butterfly Lovers.

The story, the programmer told me, is "...more sad than Romeo and Juliet. Much more sad."

So I had to look it up on Wikopedia when I got home (which I thus cannot guarantee is correct). But I find it interesting my new friends picked beautiful music for me that was once suppressed, and has now been set free:

The story is set in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.

A young woman named Zhu Yingtai from Shangyu, Zhejiang, disguises herself as a man traveling to Hangzhou to study. During her journey, she meets and joins Liang Shanbo, a companion schoolmate from Kuaiji (Kuàijī, now known as Shaoxing) in the same province. They study together for three years, during which their relationship strengthens. When the two part, Zhu offers to arrange for Liang to marry her 16 year-old fictitious sister. When Liang travels to Zhu's home, he discovers her true gender. Although they are devoted and passionate about each other at that point, Zhu is already engaged with Ma Wencai (Mǎ Wéncái), a man her parents had arranged for her to be married to. Depressed, Liang dies in office as a county magistrate. On the day Zhu is to be married to Ma, whirlwinds prevent the wedding procession from escorting Zhu beyond Liang's tomb. Zhu leaves the procession to pay her respects for Liang. Liang's tomb splits apart, and Zhu dives into it to join him. A pair of butterflies emerges from the tomb and fly away.

The Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto is one of the most famous works of Chinese music and certainly one of the most famous outside of China. It is an orchestral adaptation of an ancient legend, the Butterfly Lovers. Written for the western style orchestra, it features a solo violin played using some Chinese techniques.

Traditional Chinese composers often write in a different tonal system than western classical music. As a result, this can make the music sound constantly out of tune to some Western ears. The Butterfly Lover's Violin Concerto is written in the familiar western tonal system, but it utilizes many Chinese melodies, chord structures and patterns.

The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto was written by two Chinese composers, Chen Gang and He Zhanhao in 1959 while they were students at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. The music did not acquire popularity before the late 1970s, when China loosened its restrictions after the Cultural Revolution. Once released from censorship, it became an embodiment of China in transition. Today it is popular and is slated as part of the Olympics celebrations in 2008.

Here is one song from the CD, performed to ballet. A truly beautiful melody, and some incredible gymnastics to adjoin this version.

A fool were tempted...

To see the infinite pity of this place,
The mangled limb, the devastated face,
The innocent sufferers smiling at the rod,
A fool were tempted to deny his God.

He sees, he shrinks, but if he look again,
Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!--
He marks the sisters on the painful shores,
And even a fool is silent and adores.

Robert Louis Stevenson, 1889, after visiting the quarantined leprosy settlement in Kaluapapa, Hawaii

Picks of the Pics

The pics to go with the stories...

The modern Chinese, very hospitable, bright, talented, I look forward to working with them...

 

And the previous generation, a man with a mountain of memories.

An old woman from far off lands whose face showed her walk in life knew many sorrows, yet her feet decorated, hand embroidered with care...I didn't want to be obnoxious and get up close for a picture of her face -- would make me an obnoxious gawking tourist.  So I took these pictures without aiming, from my hip, camera slung over my neck. Her face, told of a thousand tragedies, perhaps her feet even more so. I followed she and her friends along, noticing that a few of them held their husbands hand, loosely, tenderly, as though love alone had pulled them through, together, through the passage of life, and burden.

The ever present troops.

Tian'an Men Square and the woman who ran up to me, put her arm around me for a picture, holding on to her hat in fierce wind.

The school girls before they saw me.

The girls after they saw me and screamed and came running. I am actually in this picture. Center. Also in orange. Maybe my orange shirt was the attraction? 

The Great Wall -- or the part that could be reached before road construction blocked our passage to the entry further down.

These next pictures show the climb, whereby everyone got sore knees and feet, as we had to race up for lack of time (but were later told that the discomfort was from liver failure or stomach ailments, requiring herbs)...the Japanese girl on the right wore Mickey Mouse shoes, and her toes were bleeding by the end. The Hong Kong woman (on the left above, middle below), who I'll stay in touch with. She and her husband were great, and very funny.

And the challenges of language:  (I certainly could never learn Chinese. How they read that script, I'll never understand!  If I tried, I can't imagine what errors I would come up with!!)

This was at Chinese Tea House, which includes performances of Chinese poetry, puppets, acrobatics, etc. Including a performance whereby a man dressed up to symbolize a bad monkey told a story. The bad monkey apparently made a MESS of Heaven, not a MASS.  But the Pope would be proud of the Chinese monkey.

I had some absolutely DELICIOUS food when in Beijing. Minus the Fido.  Most of it was incredibly, wonderfully good, presented so carefully. So this one is an unfortunate error...

 

All in all, excepting the Mad TV version of Great Wall tour guide and Chinese Medicine, the Chinese were so hospitable, caring, I made new friends, had delicious food, learned some history...a great visit. Now I gotta get rid of some jet lag!!

Random Musings Part Deux

The books I brought for my long flights were addictive, but both had horribly depressing endings. Depressing is different than tragic. Tragic doesn't have to be depressing. In fact, in tragedy there can remain the triumph of love and hope. An author who does not choose to convey hope is merely using fiction to dump their angst on the rest of us. Basically, when I finished the two books I wanted to chuck the best sellers in the trash.

But here is a quote that was quoted in one of the books, which I did like:

                      I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known--cites of men 
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,-- 
And drunk delight of battle with my peers, 
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met; 
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravel'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

All of China on the Wall

I think the entire country of China was on the Great Wall today. Seriously.  It wasn't peaceful, at least half the country of China was on it, and the entire world of tourists. Then every 20 feet, there is some middle aged man who thinks having a smoke is going to help his climb. So fresh air isn't even a plus. Claustrophobia on the wall is a very real possibility. Especially, when they close the main Great Wall section because of road construction, and cram all of us onto a tiny part. (In fact, most of Beijing in under construction -- Olympics.)

And somehow, my Great Wll tour ended up including a visit to some Beijing Chinese Medicine center, for a foot massage and a plug to buy Chinese herbs. None of us on the tour, including the Chinese people, knew we were getting a foot massage included in the price. In fact, it wasn't in the price. All 15-20 of us load on the small bus, got surrounded by Chinese foot massagers and had to shell out 20 RMB (a little over $2). In fact, there was so many other things packed into this tour, we had to run up the Wall and run back down for lack of time.

While at the unexpected visit to the Chinese Medicine Center we learn from the Chinese doctor, that apparently if your feet hurt, it's a sign you need herbs. Chinese herbs.  I think my sore feet had more to do with climbing the Great Wall steps for two hours straight, than a problem with my liver.  Half of us refused the Chinese doctor diagnosis (which was going to be a hard core plug to spend money on unknown chemicals.)  But the Italians, Europeans fell for it. The Chinese couple I befriended refused. The Japanese girl I befriended refused. The Westerners fell hook line and sinker.

At their diagnosis, I couldn't stop laughing. The Brits (who also refused) and I were exchanging glances -- the whole thing was quite funny.

I was listening to the half a dozen people getting a diagnosis.  They all got the same thing, at the same time. So they probably didn't here the chorus of Chinese medicine doctors saying the same thing to the weary hikers...here is the sample:

Chinese doctor (of which there were 12 or so):  Do you have back pain today?
Out-of-shape Italian Great Wall Tourist Climber: Yes!
Chinese doctor:  Are your bones sore?
Italian:  Yes! 
Chinese doctor: Do you get tired, are you tired?
Italian: Yes!
Chinese doctor: Let me see your tongue.
Italian: (sticks out tongue)
Chinese doctor: I think you have the early onset of liver failure.  I recommend this treatment. 
Italian: (Hands over credit card. Receives large bottles of pills.)

More on the Great Wall visit later. The best part was making new friends with a super nice couple from Hong Kong.  We exchanged addresses, and will probably stay in touch.  The humor today was NON-STOP, the three of us were laughing because of the goofiness of the tour, and the uselessly bad tour guide -- the husband of the couple from Hong Kong was hilarious about it.  The wife was amazing -- in her college years, she traveled by herself deep into rural China.  Truly amazing tales.

I have to wake up in 3 1/2 hours, so gotta log off.  Just wanted to type stuff in before I forget!

Just one closing question:  Has anyone else noticed, you can't walk down the streets of Beijing without hearing a Chinese men spit dramatically. A gutteral spit. Spit. Spit. Spit. Tonight, I saw a little boy spit into the alley.  They must learn young. 

Mobbed (by sweetness) on Tian'an Men Square

Yesterday, I toured The Forbidden City, with bird dung on my head (see prior post).  Then I went to Tian'an Men Square.

There are quite a few tourists on Tian'an Men. I wasn't the only Westerner; it's a touristy spot these days.

As soon as I got on Tian'an Men, I took a picture of the BIG MONSTROUS CHAIRMAN image. Why I took that picture, I don't know. It's not like I respect him, he's no Lincoln Memorial that's for dern sure. So I was just standing there looking around aimlessly, wondering why we gather to take pictures of that man. Then all of a sudden this woman gets all excited and comes running up to me, stands next to me, all excited, asks for a picture. Her husband takes the picture of her with me and she runs back to him all excited. 

Now, in Spain or Italy, someone scooting up to you is a sign you're about to get scammed for something bad.  She was so excited to take her picture with me, put her arm around me, and while her husband was taking a picture, she's treating me like a movie star and I'm thinking to myself, "What scam am I falling for here? Is there any one with their hand in my purse? Did I remember to zip it, yea I did. Is she really just taking a picture??...etc."  I looked around the square wondering, "Am I the only Westerner here?"  No.  "Are the other Westerners taking pictures with strangers?"  No.  Her husband took the picture, and she thanked me profusely, and ran off excited.  So I took a picture of she and her husband, at which point they looked at me like I was crazy  for wanting their picture. But who the heck are they?  And who was I to them?  Lord knows I don't look like Paris, nor Angelina, I wasn't accompanied by Kobe, nor Brad Pitt, and although one person on this planet thinks I look like Tina Fey, no one else will.

I dismissed it as encounter with quirky Chinese woman but then. . .

The wind was absolutely whipping that day.  When I say strong, I mean insanely strong.  You could hardly get through the tunnel archways in the Forbidden City -- I'm not kidding when I say, the wind pushed us all forward. It was so strong, this Chinese woman and I just had to stop in the middle, hoping it would abate, covering our eyes, she cowered against the wall. But it didn't abate, with our backs to the wind,  our weight leaning backward, she and I just started laughing. Other people were staying in the tunnels and playing against the wind, getting launched forward, etc.

So on Tian'an Men, the big RED China flags were absolutely whipping, straight out, so hard it felt as though they'd fly off like kites. There was a pack of teenage girls in their orange uniforms, under the red flags. The color contrast was quite cool, so I snapped an image. Then one of the girls saw me, and I took a picture of a few of them facing me. Then all of a sudden, they all went squirrelly. I'm not kidding when I say they went crazy about me. They ran over from every direction, crowded around me, squealing. They wanted their picture with me. A few screamed, and then all twenty or so of them came running. They squished against me for a picture.  Their teacher took a picture, and they were yelping in excitement.  Again, in Italy, packs of kids that squish up against you usually results in you having absolutely no worldly  possessions after except your underwear.  These girls were so excited, so sweet really.

I managed to get their teacher to take a picture with my camera -- as I figured no one is going to believe me that I got mobbed by teenage girls on Tian'an Men.  In rural Thailand years ago when I was there, the students would get similarly excited, but I was the only Westerner they'd ever seen.  But Tian'an Men isn't short of dazed white woman tourists with cameras.

Who the heck am I when I'm on Tian'an Men square?

But as my little notebook reminds me, Love will follow you wherever you go, To the sky, to the universe...

These girls had so much sweetness, excitement, anticipation...I don't think it was me per se, but their love for opportunity, for something new. They were a pack of smiles and hope, something China didn't have for a long time. To see hope and the extended hand of friendship beautifully alive on Tian'an Men was amazingly sweet, hopeful. It makes me have prayers that no one boycotts the Olympics -- there is a generation ready to Spring forward in China. . .

How much is that doggy in the window

Oh the jet lag. Here I am very early, wide awake.

On this trip, I have several coworkers with me, and on Thursday we went out to lunch with about 12-15 of our Chinese partner colleagues. They ordered many dishes.  The best English speaker was at the other table, with two of my colleagues. I was with the programmers and developers from Guangzhou.

Our meeting got out early on Friday -- way cool, as then I had more tourist time! But last night, I met up with my coworkers for Duck, where we sat next to a table of extremely drunk Chinese men. At one point, they nearly got in a fight -- three were trying to hold back big angry guy...I thought I was about to have a very  large Chinese man land on my plate of duck. 

While out for duck, my colleagues ask me with trepidation if during the previous day's lunch, I had tried any meat from the small bowl with the tiny bits of meat and peanuts?  I said that although I was a litle suspicious of the tiny bits of meat, but I took a small bite, mostly peanuts.

I apparently took a bite of Fido. My colleagues at the other table were apparently informed by the English speakers of the various meat types at the other table.  My table didn't provide the info session.

What Fido did I eat? How much is a doggy in the window in Beijing?

The next day I proposed an implementation solution to a technical problem we were facing, based on late night phone calls back home. My suggestion caused a ruckus of conversation in Chinese.  There was one programmer, very quiet. I had the feeling he was the brains of it all. He had an intriguingly quiet manner about him, but I think he's extremely perceptive.

While they were discussing, I said to my colleague, "I think they think we're crazy."

The quiet programmer, who was looking away from me towards the technical Chinese discussion, turned his head to me because he heard every word I said and chuckled, I think he was holding back an outburst. Probably laughing, because I was right.