New Spot

I really love this little blog. But I had to move to a different format, so if you stumble upon this and dig what you read, please head over to

www.saschamatuszak.com

that site might not look as dark and COOL as htis one, but the potential is greater with Wordpress I believe. And i got Pages, so thats awesome.

Love any who read this ;)

Sascha

Oh Lord lets figure it out ....

The love I made this afternoon is thanks to the following:

Ain't got no Game

Sascha ain't got no game.

Today is a beautiful day. the tree in my backyard is drooping leaves down into my face and the sun pours threw them because they're young yet and let the light through like its natural. when the sun is out like this, the fish kick it near the surface of my pond and just huddle there, bathing, treading light.

the bullfrog tadpoles are getting sluggish and the transformation is nearing completion so they just lie half-lidded near the muddy banks of the pond dully aware of their legs protruding where yesterday skin was smooth.

Little Man is hitting up the milk fiercely because I guess a growth spurt happens at least once a month. its hard to tell really, because each week is different. This week he has been taking cat naps and sucking down milk, using his hands to try and grab stuff but missing and kicking the blankets off and laughing at anything i say or do.

Lao Ba is back in the crib and dropping fist sized dollops of pig fat into the spinach and tofu soup. He loves that pig fat. Just finished lunch and the birds are hovering around my back door, peeping in to see whats happening.

DofuPi the Puppy is comfortable with his surroundings finally and is off in the chicken coop messing with the hens. They pretend to be angry and flustered but i know those hussies love it.

I'm here rooting for the Sabres and the Celtics, reading Robert Jordan's last Wheel of Time book (fuck you, Robert) and trying to see through the illusion.

They're catching on ...

In this NYT story, the benfit of mushrooms is being researched by scientists and medical practitioners, one of which called it, "existential medicine."

Whatcha Learn

You know my family always used to make fun of my dad cuz he had like one or two homies. and even those guys he saw once or twice every 1-2 years. He was basically dad and thats pretty much it. All my life I had shitloads of friends. A million people knew my name and I knew probably the names of say 1/10 of em but they were still my friends. I would defend my deep friendship for them despite my pops saying things like: those guys aint yer friends.

You know, how much of that was just to spite pops? Now here I am, a pops, pretending like I am all mature all of a sudden and the weird thing is pretending is starting to imitate life and as the two threads converge from the distant points they started at i find a woven knot of bullshit and real shit makes up my life.

I was telling a cat the other day that his essays would be clean and smooth and nice to read if he just cut out the fat.

Lotsa fat people in my life. Lotsa toned steel-armed people too. I find myself shutting up a lot more. Unless of course I be doing a podcast for Chengdu Living and my colleagues ain't got shit to say. I have to pick up the slack so we don't sound like teenagers messing with their first microphone. That one goes out to Charles and Eli.

Feel me? I turn on my little hose in the morning so the water drips like a floating waterfall into my growing-less-stagnant pond. Thats a big deal for me. All morning I have been trying to figure out the best way to smash up corn for the chickens -- I don't have a proper mill. only concrete floors and a brick. so the corn goes flying, I have to sweep it up and give it to the chickens. Sloppy.

Advantage is, the sparrows swoop in and dive bomb my courtyard for kernels that i missed.

I played the sit-up game with dorian and we laughed our asses off. Lotsa fat in my life but he ain't it.

I still greet "friends" i aint seen in a while with hearty slaps on the back because I still believe in friendship as the source of all goodness. But back when my dad was trying to tell me about who it was I was hanging out with, I would run out the house and seek out the fat in the world and chew on it and wonder why it made my tummy hurt. Thats whats changed.

Dream within a dream

Last night for the first time that I can remember, someone asked me what I was dreaming about in my dream. I was so taken aback that I answered Battlestar Galactica at first ... for some reason i felt it was more appropriate to lie to the two men and two women at the baordroom table asking innocently about my dream. but then i did tell them, eventually, about dreaming of being a high school teacher in a Chinese school and coming late to school and not being able to find my classroom.

That part, not being able to find anything and being late for school and missing homework and failing is actually pretty standard for my dreams. I have an anxiety ridden dream every so often.

so thats not the important part. the important part is someone asked me a question in my dream that felt out of my consciousness. No matter how i answered, the deal is it felt like someone else entering my dream and talking to me. I have had a few of these and each time i remember it clearly, but the dream itself and the dreamscape is so slippery that any thought whatsoever derails any cool conversation I might have had.

As in the one last night, instead of talking with the dudes, I banished them both and took both women in a sexually taut threesome. Sigh. If i could get my mind offa sex for a second or three, I might learn something.

Today's Smiles

This is becoming a baby only blog now ... i don't really want that ... but for now its all i have to show ya'll ...

Little Man

Today has been a good day. above is a pic of lil man and his brother -- the other boy was born in the same room, Yushi and the mom knew each other and she gave birth a few hours before Yushi did.

A Full Month: Smooches and Poo

I have absolutely no time to write anything.

Little Man turned one month today and here is what's been happenin:

He empties breasts like they was ATM machines and he is growing. He already outgrew clothes that were too big for him in week 2. He can kick pretty strong and his arms are strong too. I am not sure what "normal" is for strength, but if I lightly hold the back of his head to keep from tipping over, he can stand for about 2-3 seconds. That seems strong to me, but hey, I also think he is the cutest lil punk I have ever seen.

He laughs a bit now and smiles a lot. He looks around at stuff and there are moments, which I described earlier I believe, when he really intently looks around him in quiet appreciation. Sometimes some thing that he saw that I didn't will make him pump both arms and both legs and yelp-laugh (yes, yelp-laugh) in excitement.

My feelings for him are solidifying, but basically, I do what needs to be done. That's what it feels like and there is no complex way to describe it. I work so I can have the cheddar to buy him diapers; I scrub the walls and paint them in my new crib so he can live phat; and i take care of him and my lady with hugs and squeezes so they are emotionally chilled out. That's pretty much the deal.

My lady is doing ok, considering that her nipples are sore, she had a recent breast infection which caused her to have a fever and her body is still a full size (or more) bigger than her normal svelte self. She is handling shit like a soldier and I knew that she would from day 1, when I didn't know anything about what would happen between us. I had a vision then of us together, but I ignored it cuz there are just too many ladies out there that I need to love. Whatever. When it comes to Mommy-hood, she's handlin it.

So on to the issue of the week:

Poo.

Little Man is having poo issues. This is supposedly normal, but it is stressful, as he learns how to poo, as his movements get regular and as the gas gets slowly emitted ...

basically, he has stopped pooing for 2 days and the buildup is hurting. I guess 1-2 months this happens ... of course, me and Yushi are tripping, but then again, we trip on everything every week.

And here are some pics from a lil cutie smoochin my boy up:

From Now On

Dorian turns two weeks in a little less than an hour. The following is an altered message I wrote to a friend and is the post I was trying to write all week but never really had the time or the energy to put it all down. So thanks, Melissa, for getting me to spit it out ...

there is so much to tell. first off, he is doing good. he eats regularly and A LOT and he poos yellowish green. so that's supposedly good. he sleeps pretty decently, maybe 2 hours or so between suckles and at night he gets in a good 3-5 hours. He has these little pimples, little white heads, on his forehead right between his eyes that drive me berserk. i use this salve on them and it works, they are much less than in the beginning, but they aren't gone. i know today is his second week and things go slowly, but it bothers me.

he chokes on the breastmilk sometimes and i have to burp the hell out of him, takes a while, but it usually works well and he ends up passing out on my shoulder.

he has about periods every day, just at dusk or after his bath or maybe when the noonday sun reaches in, when he is super curious and he stares about 2 inches above my head as if there were sprites teasing him there. he looks at everything and has a whole series of expressions.

his arms and legs are (abnormally?) strong, he can bust through most swaddling and i have to hold him down when he gets angry, when he wants out, when he wants to eat and when he otherwise want to kick and squirm his way into/out of something that I haven't really figured out yet.

every time he sneezes I think he has a cold. he sneezes a lot. stresses me out.

Yesterday he tried to kiss me. he leaned in real close and we looked at each other and i could feel his recognition, his appreciation his love and his inability to express it all and i felt his animalness and also the chaos beneath as all of these emotions were washed away suddenly by the flickering of lights on the wall.

my feelings for him are very simple, but hard for me to express or fathom. He is a part of it all, from now on, and that's basically it. It doesn't feel like the lightning flash some people talked about, or the One Consciousness Hippy Love that others gushed over. He just is and therefore I am ... a Father and Guardian.

There were two lil poems I wrote in the past couple of weeks and both of them were mystic and lofty. I wonder if they were the watershed moments of emotion that surround the daily burping, pooing, suckling, half-smiling, blurry-eyed reality of a two week old whose existence depends utterly on my ability to take care of him.

Beginning to feel the 安

安 means peace and is represented by a woman under a roof. I always figured this character was a bit patriarchal ... but now that i have a mama and a lil one under my roof ... i know what them old sages were talking about.

Its the 30th according to the Chinese Lunar calender, so its a new year, out with the OX in with the Tiger. All is good. here are some pics from the last few days ... from contractions to today's chill session ... Holla:


It all started with a game of Risk ...


... then the contractions started.


Got worse.


Next thing I know, me and Pops are peeping through windows.


Josh and Heather showed up with Aixi and we checked up on mama ...


Then Lil Bean aka Lil Man aka Ninja aka the Boy aka Dorian aka aka aka was in our arms




and now he's a part of everything we do ... what a trip ...

Bean's Belly

Some pics from this evening:

My man Fu Qiang

Has just opened up a shop selling his CDs (compilations of music he digs) and art. He takes pictures and uses software to make his own impressions. pretty interesting stuff. You can check his site out right here.

Here is a picture of Fu that he manipulated into an oil painting-type image:



Here is a picture that he put together of his shop:



And here is my lady and Chen Lin, chillin in the tea foyer of Fu's shop:

Hafiz is my man

Yunnan Trip

So i finally got my camera battery from the Bad Monkey. I left it there on the last day of me and Bean's trip to Yunnan, so I haven't been able to access my pics since then. So here are some pics and descriptions of the trip we took 12/27 to 1/2 ...


This is my friend Huang Jun, a Kunming native, and his lady Thearanee, from Thailand. They came up from Thailand to celebrate his father's 60th birthday and before the festivities we had some local 挂桥面 Cross the Bridge Noodles.


Story goes, a loving wife brought her man noodles on the daily. He worked a little bit away from home, and she had to cross a bridge to get there. When she showed up, the noodles were always cold. This angered them both. He didn't say anything, being a good man and all, but she wasn't about to have her man eating cold noodles. So she thought about it and came up with a plan: she would cut up all the ingredients and put them in the bowl and bring a pot of boiling hot water along with her. So when she got to his place of work, she placed the bowl in front of him, poured in the hot water and mixed it up. Worked just fine.

That night, they made passionate love.










Me and Bean went to the 翠湖 Cuihu Lake in the middle of Kunming and walked around it three times. Siberian black-headed gulls migrate through here every winter and everybody loves it. The gulls eat good, the kids squeal in the winter sun and i get to take pics with my lady.

I got a bit more, put them up in a day or two.