At least one of you got on my case today about the fact that I haven't
written anything in a while, and now the guilt is keeping me from
thinking about much other than putting something in the blog (though I
admit there were a couple of funny moments in the Chinese dubbed version
of the Karate Kid I, not the least of which was that when Daniel Laruso
was screaming out "WOOHOO!!" at the end of the movie, apparently that
didn't translate as well as the other things they just left alone in
English like "Hey" and "Do it" that seemed to have slipped by unscathed).
I arrived tonight in Changsha in the Hunan province, fairly close to the
birthplace of Mao, much as the plane ticket indicated that I would. On
the plane trip I spent a little time brainstorming about the events of
Chengdu, the place I was for the last week, and found myself stuck on
one or two of the days that magically "disappeared" in the recollection,
promising myself to try cross indexing the notes with the text messages
in my cell when the plane was on the ground. Most of the events were
recalled, so I figured it would be fairly easy to write up the mess, but
something went wrong every time I tried to start the write up.
The events of last night kept creeping up on my mind.
Well, I don't have an editor, so when I spend long enough staring at a
blank text document and nothing starts to materialize, I usually let it
slide and figure that the few readers out there won't particularly mind
a minor setback in the press release time table regularity, and promise
myself to pick it up again later with a fresh mind and let the ideas
roll. Sometimes picking it back up is more like forcing a square peg
into a round hole, but the job usually ends up getting done sooner or later.
I managed to mostly expunge the events of last night from creeping back,
and set myself anew to composing the tales. Then after a long stream of
one focused though after another, I realized that I really wasn't going
to get anywhere. I had a growing feeling of connectedness and sadness
to the world as my range of recollection ran beyond my focus of one
week, and the comments that had been eating away from those outside of
China, those in the US, and those of the new people met tonight and the
ones remet from not long ago began to add up. The walks between the
places we were tonight weighed heavier than they should have, as my mind
wandered to a disembodied third person point of view looking back at me
with the group of few men keeping the honor guard of showing the
entirely too hyped up guitarist one place after another around the
campus of the polytechnic university in Changsha, while the pretty girls
hinted of such wonders as may soon be seen in the city environs and
worried after my comfort with the new confusing surroundings. I kept a
mind to what they were seeing, the energy clear and the curiosity peaked
in this entourage about me, while keeping my thoughts to the sheer
unreality of the whole experience, reminding myself it was all real.
And then we were saying our goodbyes and I was back at the comfortable
hotel. Plans made to somehow wake me up at an absurdly early hour
tomorrow morning.
Leaving me here, with all of you.
It's a heavy feeling, this one I want to show you and yet struggle for
words as to how to describe. I'm getting a lot of flashbacks, small
bits of memories, some good, more not so good, and perfect fidelity in
the mistakes made and the visions of the people missed. It's a feeling
you get when you have something lying in front of you to do on the bed,
but your head is sorta stuck upside and sideways over a misaligned
pillow, and you just can't seem to summon the will to pick up a hand and
begin the process of taking up to do whatever it is that you were going
to do when you put whatever it was on your bed in the first place to be
done. I can hear the notes of the songs I sang coming back to me with
all of the vivid nature as they were actually played in the memories I
recall, complete with the soft scratch of my hand sliding along the neck
of the guitar and the twang when I didn't quite pluck the string at
entirely the right angle with the perfect bit of force. The rich
imperfection of nature, without it's synthesized sounding exactitude,
every single time you play the same note.
I had thoughts of a girl (don't worry, you'll read about Shannon soon
enough), twisted with the comments Enny and Chris left me with when they
listened to the lyrics of my song about wandering. The half formed
image of Phil and Harrison slapping my hand in goodbye sunk into my
deeply sleep filled state, reversely echoing the loud thumping techno
bass beats from Club 7 that left me wanting sleep so badly. A text from
Susie complemented another from Fletcher, with the call to come play
guitar by the Chengdu bar owner icing the cake. When all of these small
little things added up, they added to complete inaction, as I found I
couldn't reach forward and pick up the keyboard to type about any of the
events of last week.
I will, I just wanted to ramble for a little while. Thanks for humoring me.
Greetings from Changsha! So long Chengdu...
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