Wednesday August 30, 2000

"The sprig [of plum blossoms], even when deprived of its blossoms, is beautiful because it lives, because it expresses a living impulse to grow. The outline of every tree expresses a rhythm resulting from certain organic impulses, the impulse to grow and reach out toward the sunshine, the impulse to maintain equilibrium, and the necessity of resisting the movement of the wind. Every tree is beautiful because it suggests these impulses, and particularly because it suggests a movement towards somewhere, a stretching toward something. It has not tried to be beautiful. It has only wanted to live."

- Li Yutang

**

Liu Laoshi asked me today about the books on my desk. and I tell her more than she wants to hear. I know because I see her body tighten, rather than loosen. Should I have only told her the little bits that she wanted to know? anais nin, and semantics, what I study in the States? It is so far removed from the ways studies are pursued here, I have not really met anyone who is studying what they want here - even Zhang Xin has problems because he is required to waste his time. When I told him about writing your own major in the States he was in a daze for the rest of my visit, head full of imaginings and not fully daring to hope they'd be true. oh the freedom to study.