PRC - Still a closed place: careful travelers!

Fucking communists! I can't believe I was completely unable to access any blog or reach my own via Shanghai internet, p;rivate, public or otherwise.

Just a note, it may be full of big slick buildings, they may be making a lot of money, but this is still your grandfather's China, baby.

Pictures, impressions, thinking and loving to come!

MaeRenWu
"Beautiful people fish"
The Mermaid ~~

Taiwan

A playful dragon rolls over in the sea and so Formosa is born. A big fertile, steamy island and then the Manchurians come, with their rescued treasures of jade and ink, bronze and pottery; their ideas of freedom, their gods and their ancestors.

I arrive midweek on the last day of the Chinese New Year, the full moon, a lunar eclipse no less, the beginning of the year of the rat.

After meetings and negotiations, introductions and and presentations, we make our way back into the street for our dinner with the office staff, so excited, eager to entertain the forgien guest, the parent company management.

Right outside the building a crowd lights incense, chants a cheer for the new year while a middle aged man holds a dragon costume loosly in his hands. Firecrackers go off and suddenly the dragon comes alive, the chubby man below ducking and twirling, possessed by the spirit of prosperity and good fortune.

We stop for a moment before our taxis come, watching the festivities, grown women wear rat ears and smile at me, as the dragon approaches I walk closer, smiling, excited I touch him, as the others have done, for good luck. They laugh and nod and welcome my participation, the taxis come and we are off to the center of Taipei.


101 is one of the tallest buildings in the world. We gorge ourselves on course after course of Thai cuisine, soups, salads, rices, meats, curries, more flavors than a tongue can keep track of. An Irishman (who is married to a Hong Kong born woman) tells me "you have to just stop eating and push back or they keep brining food.". I taste only a bit of each dish, still, I am so full and my mouth is so full of wonderous flavors that when the whole catfish is brought out I am convinced he is laughing at me. The final course will go uneaten..... But no! There is dessert, custards and sherberts and fruit, sweet, glorious, exotic fruit.

Sated, stretched, filled with smiles and laughter we make our way to the fastest elevator on earth. Hundreds of meters per second we rise up on the smooth aero dynamic lift, gaze at the constellation of stars designed into the ceiling and in just moments find ourselves in a hall, darkened inthe evening marked with maps that explain the amazingly lit city below.

Buildings compete in shape and color to be recognized from far above. It is a carnival of lights, a field of neon that stretches for miles, it is a teeming, blinking, shining game board of life on the eve of the festival of lanterns. If there is a light to shine tonight she is lit.

Such luck I have already, such fortune, such blessings are mine to be here on this day, to witness this evening, to see the tiny lanterns buoyed by warm flames, lift into the night, carrying happy prayers.

The moon shines above, the highest happiest of lights on this night- my world has shifted, I am physically high, spiritually open and learning thinking this other way, I am lit from without I am lit from with in, I am turned around and upside down, on the other side of the earth, I am so delighted, so awed, after so many miles, after so many cities after so many moons, after so many years to be as a child again, to be as new as the year waiting in the open anticipation of life.

Shenshie-

Xmas Part-ay

25 years is a long time to run a business. He did it.  He founded it, he took it through IPO, and now he is going global.   Very impressive.  And he thanks us, he thanks the peeps. Very nice. A class act, this our boss.

The dance floor is heaving.  French interns everywhere.  Sexy boys.  Professional dancers try to keep the party going but they are fluff. We rock.  I am propositioned by a woman half my age. I fall off my shoes for the first time in 23 years.  A french intern saves me.  I dance more unabashed.  I'd like to bed him; note to self; His name is the same as famous restaurant. 

I'm alone again.  This time not just alone here on the dance floor, I'm alone when I come home.  Its ok.  Next year I will be with a man who can dance. Really dance.  I deserve it. I made the pros sweat, I made them wonder, I made them look like aerobics teachers.  I aint doin' routines.  This aint a gig for me. 

I can dance.  And when I dance, it looks like fun.

 

Snowman

The midwest storm blew through and the white stuff is everywhere.  This morning the triangle park is graced with a snowman complete with carrot nose and twig arms. 

I wonder who built it and am surprised to find out - the young family two doors down from me.  He is a recovering drug addict/dealer who hasn't married the mother of his children yet.  She was 16 when the big one was born three years ago. His brother is 18 months old.

But they built the snowman. And he is  perfect in his imperfection.  I  want to give him a hat.

There is hope.

Snow storm

Walked a mile into Chelsea to eat Basque cheese, truffle cheese, and drink three different wines with the wild entrepeneur D, accompanied by a Fabulous friend.  She puts up with fits of adventurous trekking, not only in remarkable weather, but remarkably in adventurous weather.

The boy locked himself out, shoveled the walks and wrote LOG in script in the snow.

The Dog leapt like a deer, the lights shine so bright surrounded by the white and the sparkle and the quiet.

I realize my voice has been muted. Time to write.

I like vistors in my aloneness, lovers, friends, supporting cast but the essence needs be alone. The quiet of a city after a storm. The muted tones of chaos at rest for a moment, the waiting white. Potential.

Alone I can be visited, consoled, pinged, approached, consulted, seduced, invited.

 Potential is precious. 

LHR to MIA

Traffic is abysmal.  Solid lanes of cars crawling towards London impede progress through the roundabouts towards Heathrow, the overcast day is mild, the cab's radio is too loud, my friend isn't answering the phone, my Blackberry has no new mail, I'd hate to miss my flight.

The news is hammering away at Gordon Brown, improper contributons to the labour party from a billionaire. My driver cleverly rips through traffic where he can as Madonna croons and wails; Slow, fast, slow.  We get to Terminal 4 - I'm out.

Bloody Hell! Terminal Fahking THREE for Miami?!?

The polite, calm BA lady tells me to take the lift, if you hurry you're alright, then the free train 4 minutes to the next terminal....
Security checks delay the train, queuing for lifts, queuing for train, running to the terminal, checked in! Whew!

 Queuing for security of course, laptop out, liquids out, 'you want my shoes off?' No.  Pass through, beep beep beep, get felt up head to toe by big firm security lady.  Into the hall, another layer of security, shoes off now and through the new machine!  Bloody hell!

Two items I must buy: then through another random security check without the groping.  Line up with the other passengers to find out the wheels are being changed on the aircraft. One hour delay.

Blackberries out, we all tap away, queue up, stall, wait, and finally, finally, finally I stow my stuff and sit down. 

For the first time ever, and I have flown hundreds of times, I slept through take off.

8 hours later, Miami, what a mess! Big bilingual airport where no one seems to speak either English or Spanish properly.  Immigration doesn't even have posts and ropes to guide the crowd to the officers; people jostle and line up and cut in line and generally make more mayhem than needs be there.

I usually go to BOS or JFK but this time I'm headed to Florida to spend time with my recently widowed octagenerian mother. Tiny, loving, sad and lost we find ourselves sharing our burdens in a strange pair of mirrored lives. She is tinier and more loving and sadder.  But she has had more practice.

I'm home.


 

London

Arrived Saturday night, blew through immigration on the IRIS line (spooky eye scan/reading technology that eliminates need for passport control). Mine was the first bag off the plane (it helps being the last one on). Text messaged my cousins who were right there waiting at arrivals; I made it from airplane to auto in under 20 minutes and that included a stop for a tinkle in the very clean Heathrow lavatory, Terminal 4.

Cousins, Chateau de Grave claret, home cooked meal and a lovely guest bed I know and love.

I dreamt of a train ride and a lover kissing me while another man touched my hand.

Sunday filled with Christmas craft fairs and lunch and walks around town.

 Dark now the rain splatters the taxi window. Alone through the dark I travel the short distance to the hotel near work, where I put out my armor, my costume, my uniform. Tomorrow I become something else, a cautious diplomat, a calculating mover, a smiling shaker. 

And the next day? I have a date the next day, a date with a temptation, a date with a dare, a date with a friend and a stranger.

Rain and dark welcome me here and here I feel welcomed.