Summary 100

Slow, sleepy, Sunday afternoon.  Kids working on homework.  The teacher’s here for the guzheng class.  “Plonk.  bend pling, pling, pluck.”  Looking over the paper for something to write about.  This is pleasant.  There is an entire village that was busted for Crystal Meth production in Guangdong, near Shantou.  No rest for the weary in that town.  How long does a village leader think he can get away with that, before the world crashes in?  Three tons of methamphetamines were seized.  How many other crank-towns are out there, across China, collectively focused on speed?

http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/police-raid-fortress-of-drug-production-in-south-china/?ref=asia

There is the story of a South Korean veteran who has cleared his name from the traitorous activity he was accused of and now wants recognition for being the man who divulged the critical information at the Pusan perimeter that may have saved the allied forces during the Korean War: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/04/world/asia/his-korean-war-treason-conviction-overturned-a-man-seeks-hero-status.html?ref=asia  What a shadow to live under for sixty years . . .

A long walk with a friend today.  A discussion about work with the poor.  Catholics view such work one way, Marxists view the challenge therein differently, and then there is the world of modern China which we live within, where the default is to disregard those in need beyond your family, your town, your immediate circle. To aid those beyond the inner circle is to weaken, besmirch your primary, familial, filial obligation.  Is that really so?  Westerners of course, can feel good about the rhetorical high ground of charity but really wind up no closer to really serving, engaging with the poor. China, having fried all sense of community service with the travesty of the Cultural Revolution, focuses now on the self and the immediate familial network.  How long is it, before this higher order impulse to help those beyond your immediate circle returns or is the correction in ascendency for decades more to come?  What does it mean for the rest of the developing world, this evolving view of charity in what will be the world’s largest economy, beyond the inner familial, inner Chinese circle, beyond China itself?

And I look it all over and consider what to write about today.  And then I notice that today is actually the 100^th posting on Dustybrine.  Today marks one hundred days in a row that these postings have been made.  That means I summarize, as I do every twenty posts, which I’m happy to do, as I’m a bit enervated today.  I’m amazed though that I didn’t even notice the threshold coming.  Prior to this I had been marking these twenty-day intervals with some degree of anticipation.  I think this is to say that it has by now been so thoroughly woven in to my routine, that I don’t even notice the number I’m up to.

Having reviewed the last twenty days I notice that there are some changes.  This time there were only eight jazz entries.  (Been enjoying returning to Harold Land and Pete La Roca, Mildred Bailey and absolutely to Memphis Minnie who’s playing now, as I write this.)  There were three contemporary pieces of music and at least two nineteenth century pieces, three female artists this time round, and roughly seven contributors who were not from the United States.   Pushing to ensure we don’t become formulaic, though an overwhelming number of “media” sources are still from NYT, Wiki, and interestingly “The Guardian”.  The push continues.

Have a look at what we covered these nineteen days, below.

Chengyu

1. 热血沸腾: rèxuèfèiténg:  to be burning with anger (idiom)

2. 似是而非: sìshì'érfēi:  apparently right but actually wrong; specious (idiom)

3.  面目一新:miànmùyīxīn:  complete change (idiom); facelift / We're in a wholly new situation.

4. 深恶痛绝: shēnwùtòngjué:  to detest bitterly (idiom) / implacable hatred / to abhor / anathema

5. 羞于启齿: xiūyúqǐchǐ:  to be too shy to speak one's mind (idiom)

6. 开天辟地:  kāitiānpìdì:  to split heaven and earth apart (idiom); refers to the Pangu creation myth

7. 集思广益:   jísīguǎngyì:  collecting opinions is of wide benefit (idiom); to pool wisdom for mutual benefit / to profit from widespread suggestions

8. 视死如归: shìsǐrúguī:  to view death as a return home / to not be afraid of dying / to face death with equanimity (idiom)

9. 人生如梦:  rénshēngrúmèng:  life is but a dream (idiom)

10.  鱼目混珠: yúmùhùnzhū：  to pass off fish eyes for pearls / to pass off fake products as genuine (idiom)

11.  乘风破浪:  chéngfēngpòlàng:  to brave the wind and the billows (idiom); to have high ambitions

12. 独立自主: dúlìzìzhǔ:  independent and autonomous (idiom); self-determination / to act independently / to maintain control over one's own affairs

13. 率由旧章:  shuàiyóujiùzhāng: act in accordance with the old rules (idiom) / to follow a proven formula

14.  目迷五色: mùmíwǔsè:  the eye is bewildered by five colors (idiom); a dazzling riot of colors

15.  尝尽心酸: chángjìnxīnsuān:  to experience one's full share of sorrows (idiom)

16.  独具匠心: dújùjiàngxīn:  original and ingenious (idiom) / to show great creativity

17. 精神焕发: jīngshénhuànfā:  in high spirits (idiom); glowing with health and vigor

18.  亚洲一体:  Yàzhōu yītǐ:  Asia is an integral whole / all concerned / everybody  “Asia is one”

19.   轻车熟路:  qīngchēshúlù:  lit. to drive a lightweight chariot on a familiar road (idiom) / fig. to do sth routinely and with ease / a walk in the park

Music Introduced

The Dead Kennedys “Government Flu” from the album “Plastic Surgery Disasters”, 1982

Harold Land’s album “Harold in the Land of Jazz”,  1958

Kishore Kumar song “Dekha Na Haay Re” from movie “Bombay to Goa”, 1972

Duke Ellington with Charles Mingus and Max Roach “Very Nice” from the album “Money Jungle”, 1962

Tina Brooks “The Waiting Game”, 1961

General Elektriks: “La Nuit Des Ephémères” from the album “Good City for Dreamers”, 2009

Franz Gruber and Joseph Mohr  “Stille Nacht”, 1818

Pete La Roca “Basra”, 1965

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky “Nut Cracker Suite”, 1892

Mildred Bailey, “Wham! (Be-Bop-Boom-Bam)”, 1940

Roy Eldridge, “Wham! (Be-Bop-Boom-Bam)”, 1940

Memphis Minnie, “Drunken Barrel House Blues”, 1934

Jon Hopkins “Cold Out There”, 2001

Pussy Riot “Punk Prayer”, 2012

Jean-Baptiste Illinois Jacquet, “Desert Winds”, 1964

Duke Jordon, on the album “True Blue”, 1960

T Viswananthan and T. Ranganathan, Carnatic music masters, flute and mrdangam

Dizzy Reece, “Sands”, 1960

Media Introduced

Jonathan Franzen article in ‘The Guardian’

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/13/jonathan-franzen-wrong-modern-world

Jonathan Franzen “The Corrections”, 2001

New York Times Obituary for Harold Land:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/30/arts/harold-land-73-saxophonist-who-made-a-splash-in-the-bop-era.html

“Bombay to Goa” 1972 film starring Amitabh Bachchan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amitabh_Bachchan 

Video clip of “Dekha Na Haay Re” from “Bombay to Goa” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAJpRg5lcYo 

Mohammed Rafi on Wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Rafi

Kishore Kumar on Wiki  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishore_Kumar

New York Times article on Max Baucus  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/us/politics/obama-said-to-pick-montana-democrat-as-china-envoy.html?hp

Chinua Achebe “Things Fall Apart”, 1958

The Nigerian Civil War on Wiki:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Civil_War  

Tina Brooks on Wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Brooks

Jack Chambers blog on Tina Brooks: http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~chambers/tinabrooks.html

C. S. Lewis “The Magician’s Nephew”, 1955

C.S. Lewis on Wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis

General Elektriks on Wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Elektriks   

New York Times article on Jessie Webster:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/us/a-dealer-serving-life-without-having-taken-one.html?hpw&rref=us

Malcolm Brown:  “The Morality of the Market” in The Guardian, via Hacker News:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/21/morality-capitalism-missing-link-marketplace

Anti Aging Human Trials, in The Guardian, via Hacker News:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/20/anti-ageing-human-trials?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

Pete La Roca on Wiki:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_La_Roca  

Mildred Bailey on Wiki: http://go.standard.net/story/jazz-singer-mildred-bailey-returning-to-tribal-roots

Rap Genius interviewed on Tech Crunch:  http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/25/google-rap-genius/

Roy Eldridge on Wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Eldridge

New York Times on Abe’s visit to Yasakuni Shrine http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/27/world/asia/japanese-premier-visits-contentious-war-shrine.html?hp&_r=0

Memphis Minnie blog:  http://hobemianrecords.com/memphisminniehomepage.html

New York Times on Chinese banking:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/business/international/china-in-push-to-rein-in-lending-practices.html?hp

New York Times on Okinawa, U.S. military compromise:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/world/asia/deal-to-move-okinawa-base-wins-approval.html?hp

History of Bristol on Wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bristol

Yongle Emperor on Wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yongle_Emperor

New York Times on Pussy Riot film banned in Russia:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/world/europe/russia-screening-of-pussy-riot-film-is-blocked.html

Pussy Riot, “Punk Prayer” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALS92big4TY

Interview with directors of Pussy Riot film:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH4hjg83Mt8.

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzY0OTI0ODA4.html

China Daily on Abe’s visit to Yasukuni:  http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-12/31/content_17206164.htm

New York Times on text book revisions in Okinawa:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/world/asia/japan-fights-a-political-battle-using-history-texts.html?hpw&rref=world&_r=0

The Guardian on Stanley Turrentine:  http://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/sep/15/guardianobituaries.johnfordham

Ray Huang:  “1587, A Year of No Significance”

Chinese New Year’s celebration on the Bund on youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR9rhbqV6W4

Duke Jordan on Wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Jordan

Breathing on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathing

Barat Natyam on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharata_Natyam

T. Viswanatan:  http://dpnelson.web.wesleyan.edu/viswanathan.html

T. Ranganathan: http://dpnelson.web.wesleyan.edu/ranganathan.html

Tanjore Balasaraswati on Wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balasaraswati

R. K. Narayan’s “The Guide” on Wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guide 

New York Times on Chinese Consulate bombing in San Francisco:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/us/attacker-sets-fire-at-chinese-consulate-in-san-francisco.html 

Bulk Cloth Saturday

Riding down along the airport expressway into the city.  Miraculously, it isn’t particularly crowded, mid afternoon on a Saturday.  Touring along as I have for two decades now it is surely a 轻车熟路[1] of familiarity.  And usually every individual with a car, of whom there are now fifteen million or so, take their drive out on the weekend, making it rush-hour all day.

Packed or fluid, it is quite a scene.  We’ve gone from the days, twenty years ago when there were “mian bao” bread box min vans for taxis and state cars called “red flags” that were refitted Audis occupying most of this road, to now, a whose-who of luxury vehicles to match the piercing envy of Highway 101 south from San Francisco to “Larry Land”.  Maserati’s, and Jaguars make the myriad BMW and Benz drivers jealous.  Plenty of family vehicles as well, Honda mini vans and Hyundai SUVs and the big popular Buick: the mini van that seats the nuclear family, both sets of grandparents then some. No cars are old.  No cars are "vintage."

I’d love to tell you it's a bright, clear Mediterranean-like day, zipping along the ring roads now, but it isn’t.  There’s a dull haze over the city.  I’m not on line or I could confirm what is invariably a dismal air quality rating.  We’re heading down to the southern part of the city, which is always a bit of a throw back, developmentally.  My wife needs to pick up some fabric and my daughter has her friend along for the ride.  Something new:  Dizzy Reece the Jamaican born trumpeter on a 1960 Blue Note set and the tune, "Sands" is so aggressive and compelling it makes me miss New York City like it hurts.  

We just passed a four car “accident.”   Each one, it appeared, had ever so slightly grazed the other and so everyone must necessarily stop, argue, take photos and await the cop who will adjudicate, irrespective of the impact to regular traffic.  I remember accidentally tapping the car in front of me on Mission St. in San Francisco when I had a Chinese guest with me.  The victim got out, looked confirmed that it was nothing and waved me off, saying “forget it.”  My Chinese guest said: “Oh my, that is something that would never happen in China.”  It’s the sort of thing that makes you ever so proud of America. 

Moments that flash and disappear.  Now, now what’s going on in San Francisco, now?  Someone decided to flame the entrance to Chinese Consulate, there across the road from the Japantown mall on Laguna St.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/us/attacker-sets-fire-at-chinese-consulate-in-san-francisco.html  I’ve walked through that door myself a few dozen times.  That doesn’t make me feel especially proud.  The conservative “Global Times” here in China suggested it was a result of all the anti Chinese rhetoric in the U.S. media.  My initial reaction was that this was nonsense and simply a mirroring of what U.S. press says about anti Americanism in China; that it is state sponsored.  But what do I know of the mood back home these days.  Perhaps the xenophobic sentiment has waxed louder than I know.  

No one has yet to claim responsibility.  There are no shortage of people angry with China Inc.  Thoughts turn immediately to the FaLunGong protestors who usually camp out across the embassy and the various Chinese Consulates, exercising their rights to protest every day for years now.  Perhaps someone snapped and decided to go from full-lotus meditation to full-on conflagration.  Tibetans and Uighurs have plenty to be upset about and again, every group has its’ extremist element, which wring their hands and say non-violence just isn’t working.  No one, I believe, thinks this has anything to do with the arch state-enemy, Japan.  For now we must speculate.

We’ll learn more, certainly in the days to come.  I suppose this means that, not unlike the aftermath of the U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Sarajevo which killed three Chinese staff, and resulted in state supported protests, with rock throwing at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, and ultimately the relocation of the U.S. embassy to a more fortress like compound across town . . . that the little white building there off Geary Boulevard will now have armed guards and barricades.  People who want to go to either country for business or tourism will feel increasingly, from the start, as if they’re preparing to visit some enemy territory.  That is the purpose of any terrorist, of course to breed fear and suspicion, amplify nerves.  Create a climate where miscalculation is more likely where rhetoric is flush, and overreaction is legitimized. 

We’re in the south of the city now.  There are far more of the old six-story walk up brick apartments built en masse in the 80s.  These haven’t been targeted yet for demolition like their northern cousins.  It looks quite a bit more, for better or worse, like the only Beijing there was, fifteen years ago.  Let’s get out and take a few photos and see what the state of bulk fabric sales are like in the Beijing of today.  

By the way, where do you suppose all the vendors are from?  I asked in every shop we visited.  Everyone, it appears, is from Wenzhou in southern Zhejiang.  This, the fabled mercantile, powerhouse that always punches so far above its weight.  I'd venture to guess there are some nice cars in Wenzhou cross-town traffic, as well. 

---

[1]   qīngchēshúlù:  lit. to drive a lightweight chariot on a familiar road (idiom) / fig. to do sth routinely and with ease / a walk in the park

Lambodara

Just back from my daughter’s school dance performance and, it was wonderful.  Like any daddy I’m thrilled to watch her and feel proud at how compelling her particular performance was.  And this is a show I’ve wanted to see for a while, because it may be one of the only examples in China of young, middle school kids studying South Indian, classical Bharata Natyam:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharata_Natyam

I am often concerned by how demanding the program is at my daughters’ school.  Regular readers may have known me to kvetch.  But this was a flat-out Dustybrine winner and I really have to hand it to the vision of this school for supporting this effort.  I’m an international oddball who thinks Carnatic music sounds extraordinary and I would have pushed, indeed shoved for my kid to be part of such a class.  But here was an auditorium full of middle class Beijing, Chinese parents who not only supported the idea of their daughters (no lads, I’m afraid) studying this art form, but cared enough to come out and see it performed.  Maybe I’m a simpleton, but this gives me great hope for the future of Asian international relations.  I mean it. 

I think the default for Chinese aspirational parents, certainly the stereotype for them, let alone for the vast majority of everyone else in the country would be for a bland, begrudging respect for India as a “great civilization” (lower case)  but that India certainly had little to teach China and its children about preparing for or competing within, the “modern” world of technology and finance.  Look to Silicon Valley, or Japan if you must and increasingly, don’t bother, just bend over and smell the wonder of Chinese a flatulent for a sense of what the future has in store.  India?  Certainly India is merely playing catch up and offers China nothing worthy of serious consideration.  (Stereotype.  Perhaps I should bold it for emphasis) 

And here is Ms. Jin, a Chinese teacher, who lived for five years in Delhi studying with Bharata Natyam master for five years who brings the tradition to my daughter’s school.  I asked her what brought her to India in the first place and she replied:  “I simply loved the dance.”  And indeed, it is, like the musical tradition that accompanies the classical dance, a remarkable treasure unto the world.  Here was a room in Beijing with thirty young ladies, all dancing to Indian rhythmic sophistication, stomping their feet and moving their eyes in choreographed wonder.  Sorry, but I’m pressed to consider how it gets much cooler. 

I’m a sap.  When I worked at my last company and had a chance to visit the Indian office I had a piece of Chinese calligraphy prepared by a well-known calligrapher here in Beijing.  But the four character set I had produced: “亚洲一体”[1]  was penned, not by a Chinese but by a Japanese scholar, Okakura Kakuzo in 1904.  Normally I make you, tender reader, look down to the one lonely footnote that this blog always has, to discern what it is that I have written in Chinese.  (This, unless you are a Chinese reader and no doubt chuckle at my wanna-be references.)  But hey, today I’ll tell you what亚洲一体, means, because I believe it and it is pivotal for all of our futures.  It means:  “Asia is one.” 

Okakura was writing “The Awakening of Japan” in 1904 during Japanese ascendancy for sure.  Japan had defeated China in the Sino-Japanese war nine years earlier, and this was just as Japan was about to become the first East Asian power since the Mongols to defeat a European power, Russia, the following year.  But Okakura’s vision of Buddhism that spawns in India and flows through China to transform Japan is one of humility and one of unity.  Chinese friends tell me the four characters sound a bit stentorian, something like a militarist leader might yell.  Sigh.  OK.  To me, as long as no one is necessarily imposing this on someone else, it sounds like all the profound civilizations in the neighborhood must be humble and look for that which binds them so that all the parties, the entire continent, is stronger for it. 

I had the good fortune to attend undergraduate university at Wesleyan University back in Middletown Connecticut.  When I first got there, I didn’t know much about what I was getting in to.  I didn’t know, but my roommate quickly hipped me to the fact that the place I was in residence had arguably the country’s finest World Music program.  This was a turning point for me and my all-important views on music.  There was, suddenly, a world beyond hardcore punk, which had completely dominated my teens until that time.  Suddenly, all any music that wasn’t overtly commercial was worthy of exploration.  Anything.  And that first year, as I stared down the remarkable catalogue, I chose, among other things, “South Indian Vocal”, probably because it just seemed so extraordinarily out-there. 

I learned, in time, that I was studying with a Carnatic master of vocal and flute from Madras, Mr. T. Viswanathan, whom I’m learning now passed, in 2002.  I can still recall learning the words to a song that went something like: “ Lam-bo-da-ra” which translated into a peon to Ganesh “Oh rotund lord.”  It was a hard class, it was very early in the morning, and I probably didn’t inspire Professor Viswanathan to think he was doing much of the Lord’s work there in Middletown, but certainly, sitting there with the shruti box humming, I was touched, forever, by this music, which seemed and was so remarkably other and deliberate. http://dpnelson.web.wesleyan.edu/viswanathan.html

Viswa’s brother was someone whom a few of my friends studied with.  Mr. T. Ranganathan was a world famous mrdangam player who was a master musician, like his brother, long before he played with John McLaughlin on the Shakti recordings.  http://dpnelson.web.wesleyan.edu/ranganathan.html

Viswa and Ranga’s sister was T. Balasaraswati (1918-1984) was considered the apogee of the Barat Natyam dance tradition, in her lifetime.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balasaraswati  Later as an adult trying to learn as much about India as I could, I read R. K. Narayan’s “The Guide” which profiles the hapless resident of the fairy tale Malgudi city, who falls in love and marries a Barat Natyam dancer.  And I remembered the shadows that I peered through and wondered what Viswa and his family thought of this novel, and this author, that they surely must have known. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guide  But it was too late to speak to them.  That generation had passed. 

When I was a suburban New York eighteen year old encountering this august family, on a whim, I frankly had no idea the majesty I was engaging with.  I could only claim a naïve but important sense of curiosity.  And this is the same tradition that my little girl somehow wound up encountering this semester in suburban Beijing. 

The teacher today, Ms. Jin, had her daughter, who is thirteen, perform when the younger girls were done.  Smashing!  She was dressed in costume and looked lovely. Her performance was utterly convincing.  I particularly noted the stomping of feet.  This in a culture where women had their feet systematically broken for 1000 years or so.  Stomping is beautiful.  You don't’ get much more empowered than that.  And me from a western tradition of ballet where lithe leaping and pirouette on toes is the apogee of feminine grace tipped my hat to thousands of years of heel and ball stomping.  I for one, was real glad to see my girl up there stomping her feet into the ground, loudly, in unison with complex Carnatic beats.  I’m sure there is probably some other feminist critique of Barat Natyam I should familiarize myself with.  But for me, sitting there in Beijing seeing all these Chinese kids stomp and spin and drop flowers on the gymnasium floor, it was just a perfect Friday afternoon. 

May Asia find the power, slowly, gracefully, to be one.  “Lambodara.” 

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[1] Yàzhōu yītǐ:  Asia is an integral whole / all concerned / everybody  “Asia is one”

What Can You Feel?

I had written about the hapless tenor player Tina Brooks last month and I shared one of his discs with my brother who enjoyed it.  It got me listening to his album “True Blue” again this morning.  Who is that piano player?  It sounds just like Horace Silver.  Check the notes:  Duke Jordan.  I see.  Who is that?  Born in Brooklyn in 1922, died in Denmark eighty-four years later, he played with Bird during 1947 in the “classic quintet” and has about 10 albums that Rdio has for my consideration.  Wonderful.  This is like getting a visa to a new country, every day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Jordan

Meditation works better when you aren’t exhausted, hung over, or distracted.  I like doing it early, before dawn.  And I try, as a friend suggested, to do the body check during the process.  It’s a bit silly but then again, not silly at all to try to actually consider each of your senses and feel the fullness of your body.  Sense your fat, wet brain sitting there in your head and its ability to see, even though your eyes are closed, and hear even though its comparatively silent outside and all the countless nerve endings that allow you to consider corporality and the faint taste of grapefruit juice that still lingers on your tongue.  The anchor is the breathing through your nose, that brings you back to smell, of which there is little to note. 

Breathing gets you down into your lungs.  Trying to imagine the inconceivable alchemy wherein oxygen is withdrawn from the air converted to energy and CO2 is then passed back out. How does this possibly happen?  I can look on line later and remind myself that I move my diaphragm to allow air in and then flatten it out, opening a space between the thorax and the abdomen for the spent air to pass back out.  Breathe in and breathe out yourself.  Now do it again and try to feel such a thing.  It doesn’t feel like that’s what’s happening.   Somehow the air is continuously harvested.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathing

I try to imagine the wash of grapefruit juice in my gut, sloshing around with the digestive juices that break it down elementally so that the useful bits can be withdrawn as it makes its way along my large and then small intestine.  I recently saw a friend who’d had an operation on his large intestine.  He needed a second operation and, for now, the intestine emptied in into a bag, which he showed me.  There it was.  It isn’t hard to imagine that coil and coil and coil that would stretch out for some twenty-five feet.  The grapefruit juice is in there sloshing along, till its ready to collect, depleted of what’s useful, reduced to urine that fills and presses at my bladder, right around the time I finish with my sitting.   

The heart is easier to imagine.  I can actually feel the big fella beating.  And the miraculous thrusts of blood that rush throughout my body providing all the myriad processes the fuel they need to continue.  With a bit of imagination I can approximately feel where my kidney is, because I know where a “kidney punch” would hit.  And I know it is doing some filtering, but the liver is doing that as well.  I’m not really sure I feel either of them, nor the pancreas, whatever it does, but I know they’re all in there.  Perhaps it is best that we can’t feel all these vital bits.

The spine is rather easier to feel, of course.  Sit up straight!  Feel the architecture that holds you up and can sense its fragile majesty, linking up your legs there in your hips and your arms up there in your shoulders.  I breathe out and imagine the sensation pushing out to my toes and then, out to my fingers.  If I try I can sense the big thigh muscle and then the calf, relaxed, latent, sprawled, and repeat the muscular examination for my arms.  And I would be disingenuous and something other than a man, I suppose, if I didn’t pause and allow myself to feel that incessantly demanding organ, waiting there between my legs, as always, for attention. 

I know that Hindu mystics and Buddhist monks have these pieces all mapped out from time immemorial.  I could revisit just how it is that “shakras” are supposed to work and consider all the sentient points on the body that the Daoists have mapped out.  And I can dust off my biology chops, and go organ by organ on Wiki and reacquaint myself with what, scientifically at least, is actually at work there inside me.  But sitting quietly without gurus or professors, or doctors, with only myself and my awareness, in the quiet, it is fascinating to simply try to feel.  What can you feel?  What can you sense?

I took the time to relate this, this morning because I’m awfully thankful for the fact that here, for one more day, knock-on-wood, it all works.  So many infinite pieces that could break down sputter out, submit to attack.  And someday they will.  But today I can go to the bathroom, tie my sneakers, go to the gym.  It all works. 

Friends have shared health news that shakes me.  A family member feels ill and we visit the doctor over at the clinic nearby, next to my local Shunyi Starbucks.   Everything is all right.  Everything’s fine.  Sitting there quietly, I marvel at this complicated, hard working body that I take for granted.  How grand and mutual reinforcing it is to enjoy 精神焕发[1] for another day. 

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[1] jīngshénhuànfā:  in high spirits (idiom); glowing with health and vigor