Saturday August 12, 2000 part 2

Tonite I went to see Shaanxi province opera, under a tent just inside the east gate. Jian Cun went with me, we rode our bikes along the wall, stopping at the various places, dancing outside to semi-pop, semi-traditional muic. But I knew he wouldn't dance, so we kept going. Finally we heard a woman's voice and parked our bikes, got some beers and found chair frames with striped cloth strung between the frames. beach chair comfort as I slung into mine and drank under that tent, full of comfort and awe, pleased to have a guest with me.

I know that foreigners frequently hear this traditional music and equate it with high pitched screaming, but I love it, immediately. Its different, and in it I sense the history, the long trekk through provincial town and lives. If you listen, fall into it you recognize its sensibilities, the richness of storytelling, communication. It is unlike the US, because its so old, unlike the West because it is so different, spawn and grown without our influence. Like a personality in isolation, allowed to mature with its own integrity. China now is so full of competition, of awareness beyond itself, what it should be, might have been, once was. It races to "catch up" and so it loses its integrity, its strength in itself, different from others. But how can it but bow to the west, with all its promises of security, stability.

And so I sat and listened and cleared my heart, humble with the awareness that I had found a piece of real china. no money, no fees, just singing because they love it, drinking tea and beer, the children jumping on the trampoline beside the stage, peeking through holes in the wall, pulling aside mauve velvet to watch the ladies in the lights. It's dark in the tent, eyes must fall on the bright informal stage, so comfortable to the singers. I felt my heart open fully, relax, love China. There is no underground, but there is history.

The casualness, comfortableness, one knows that it is their space, their stage, their low tables and slung back chairs in the dark. And I was grateful to find, to enjoy such a place.

It is at night that I find comfort in this summer heat, riding my bicycle, weaving through cars like a string bean amongst threads, slipping past the glances at the foreigner. It's at night that the dirt settles, unstirred by the blaze of sun, lack of rain. The wall is lit up in gaudiness, kitsch, and I don't mind. It's as if I never went to university, never learned to detest all that advertising touches. I can believe, enjoy, be human, not just a brain.

And how to explain, to touch that feeling of goodness, satisfaction, love and participation no matter what my outsiderness, as if washed over me again and again. Tonite was me in all my new glory, my new joy of living. Because the life I see isn't mine, not my pain, struggle, distraction. For me all this means tremendously different things and when encountering such fact, such reality, it's like first seeing a giraffe when never having seen a picture even. Perhaps a description, maybe a sketch. You behold all the magnificence of what actually is. What might have been your life, your relief, your evenings, your history, family, dreams. But wasn't. Its poetry because it's without attachments. It's waking up, aware. To be given eyes and then sent out to explore. When you are born you are given eyes but no memory, you become aware to all that you see, but once you leave home you can begin to be amazed at all the space you have to give to the newness, for it cannot be categorized yet.

I thought I was jaded, I am, by much of what travel, what China, India, Egypt used to be. But fuck myself because there is so much out there! It still blows my mind, my small profound lucky existence. There is a China which exists, which has enough existence to make me reevaluate all my pre-conceptions, structures, matrixes. The world is so much bigger than our minds, that's the glory of it. I intend to keep my interest intrigued. I cannot let it go, cannot accept mundane. I suffer under too much contemplation, it's best to simply be awed, be humbled, to fall in love because suddenly there are new promises filled, to be surprised with. This is where god lies for me. Let them tell me god is in the mundane and I'll agree as long as it isn't my mundane, my familiarity. Ritual is another matter. My rituals belong to me, they are my temples, my security, my holiness. But they don't come easily, tainted and robbed as I have been by advertising, exploited and tempted. Yet it's only a drive for my creativity, a stimulation to constantly seek out love, seek sources of love, sources to love, to abandon myself to, to believe in, to believe and know that I am smaller, that I belong, am a part of that tide of goodness and pain called your life.