Chachin Ain't Easy

New Spot

2010-09-16T01:42:00.002-07:00

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 ....

2010-06-18T22:21:00.002-07:00

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

Ain't got no Game

2010-04-25T23:38:00.004-07:00

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 ...

2010-04-12T23:01:00.001-07:00

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

2010-04-10T19:46:00.004-07:00

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

2010-04-09T18:18:00.004-07:00

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

2010-04-04T10:33:00.003-07:00

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

2010-03-29T06:26:00.001-07:00

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

2010-03-08T06:19:00.004-08:00

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

2010-02-21T06:35:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-13T04:22:00.006-08:00

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

2010-01-30T10:02:00.005-08:00

Some pics from this evening:

My man Fu Qiang

2010-01-28T03:07:00.003-08:00

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

2010-01-26T11:06:00.003-08:00

Yunnan Trip

2010-01-26T01:41:00.009-08:00

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.

I can't stop laughing at Western businessmen

2010-01-24T23:09:00.003-08:00

I don't even know where to start laughing and where to end. It doesn't matter. For years and years people like me (but with better jobs) have been saying that China has some issues and we need to help them along, but the money-men always trumped everything by drooling all over each other in attempts to get into the China market.

"Can't push the gov, nononono they might not let us cash in ..."

Now, only now, at the end, do they realize. And so I have to laugh at them.

The mainstream has caught on to the glaring reality: China's bureaucrats and businessmen always hated and despised you. They stole your stuff, smiled in your face and sold you shit and now they don't need you anymore. So Time Magazine whines. Big time China Hand and Businessman supreme, AllRoads, jumps on the band wagon: "Did we get suckered?"

Of course you did fool. Then again, I know a lot of people who made it rich here (me excluded, hence all of the Schadenfreude) and they basically took a good look at the China business scene, saw it for what it is and jumped in and swam in the feces with all of the other sharks, diving for doubloons.

And this guy here, Paul "I told ya so" Midler. I feel ya Paul. I told a lot of people too. You ain't the only one who saw the signs and such, that feeling. I know it. Hope yer book sells dawg.

I gotta laugh. Even though, now that the drooling suits are hating on this modern China and the Chinese netizens are hating on this modern China, the big bad bureaucrats and their brainless, soulless New Rich cronies might have to bring in their bigger, badder even more brainless PLA bully to keep this country from Gorbacheving. Or not.

I am headed out to take a walk in the sunshine (THAT'S RIGHT SUNSHINE IN THE DU!!).

Holla atchu.

redemption is just one way of saying

2010-01-21T23:24:00.004-08:00

my job is
to pull you back from the brink of darkness
protect you from the prince of shadows
show you the flower in all seasons
keep you fed, fat and giggling
give you a blanket when its cold
build a home for you to waltz in
shore up the foundation when it crumbles
so that i might be
the man i've always wanted to be

So, what now?

2010-01-21T08:14:00.003-08:00

I find myself asking this question after reading stories like this one by the late Michael Kreca. This information is not new to me -- the fact that FDR, Churchill and Stalin steered America into a war that did not need to be fought. The consequences reverberate today in the Empire that emerged from the rubble of WWII. So.

I know. I agree, disgusting piece of work. In fact, I see the parallels with today's wars. I catch myself (and ninjas are forced to listen to me) yapping about the WWI roots of the current War on Terrorism.

Its hard to stay De La Rocha, when Wu-Wei beckons smiling from the riverbank.

The Du

2010-01-20T22:02:00.001-08:00

Here is a little list of cool spots in Chengdu. This is actually a VERY incomplete list, but its a good start. holla.

Pig Fat

2010-01-18T04:05:00.005-08:00

I've been using a lot of pig fat in my cooking recently. Yushi's dad dropped by and left two big bowls of lard, a pile of Chinese herbs and a comment on my latest essay on China. The pig fat is for daily use, the herbs are for the month of rest Yushi will need (according to the entire China Granny Nation) after the birth and the comment ... well it was to let me know that he's got his eye on me.

I got this funk from Big Scott when I was in California. Just in case you don't know, I urge you to check out the following:

William DeVaughan
Betty Davis
The Brothers Johnson
Eddie Bo
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and just for good measure
The Decemberists

If you don't know Bill Withers, disregard the above and listen to him first, then you are allowed to proceed.

Man i love this music so much it makes me feel so good every day it makes my fingers move and my voice just lets go and i walk around in my snuggies singing and when i see Yushi round the corner in my old chupa i let out a laugh cuz she looks like a funky monk with that big belly and the faux fur sleeves rolled up so she can chop jiu cai up for jiaozi ...

"Can we pretend, that from now on, there is no yesterday ...
Paint a portrait of tomorrow, with no colors from today
There is a love that shines in your face sometimes
that takes my feelings and wraps them around your knees
but there is a shadow that is hanging in your heart sometimes
that makes my feelings turn back in on me ... "

Haiti

2010-01-15T22:52:00.005-08:00

here is a short essay on Haiti and Chengdu and some of the similarities and differences in the disasters that struck here and there.

Lu Guang's Photography: Pollution in China

2010-01-15T01:39:00.004-08:00

Makes me real nervous to see pics like this. I know that pollution is everywhere, but seeing it up close and personal like these pictures by Lu Guang is still disturbing.

For an English translation, go to ChinaHush's post here.

In related news, here is a small story about "grow houses," which are houses built quickly by farmers who believe their land might be taken soon. If they manage to register a building, the compensation they receive can be higher. Ignore most of the text and the comments, except this one here:

“The non-existence of truly legal private land in this great socialist motherland probably also complicates matters further.”

You hit the nail on the head. That’s not the complication, that’s the reason for the phenomenon reported above.

The fact that people don’t actually own their unincorporated (non-urban) land and can be dispossessed quite easily is the major reason to engage in such tactics as these. If the government is going to dispossess one anyway, that person is given incentive to maximize whatever payout the government is going to make. I suppose in a system with transparency in government development plans, as well as clear and private land title, private developers would buy up well placed land, the government would lay clear claim (and pay fair prices) on the land it actually needs for the infrastructure itself. The farmers would make money, the developers would make money (building concessions, etc.), the farmers might even make enough money to start businesses in private developed companies… on the flip side, the government’s costs would not be artificially low, and it wouldn’t make any money renting out concession properties it developed itself.

Its fair to say that the government can see a clear advantage for itself in the current system: Its only expense to maintain the status quo is money for chengguan and demolition equipment to knock down these “grown houses” every day."

by Dr. Jones, Jr.

The Ancients said:

2010-01-14T20:54:00.003-08:00

"And I wish that I were not any part
of the fifth generation
of men, but had died before it came
or had been born afterward.
For here now is the age of iron ...
when guest is no longer one with host
nor companion to companion
when your brother is no longer your friend
as he was in the old days."

"Don't be Evil" -- Tell that to Wall Street

2010-01-14T20:20:00.002-08:00

After Google announced that it might leave China, Wall Street and other stock exchanges around the world reacted in typical fashion, by buying Baidu stock and selling Google stock. Baidu's stock jumped by at least 12%, while Google's slid by about 1%.

For the money-men -- the same people, let us not forget, who caused the real estate bubble, the ensuing collapse and rise in unemployment, who received billions from the government and are now giving each other BJs and bonuses -- these men (and women) are the core of what allows China to censor with impunity and keeps companies here way passed the point of violating their own principles.

In the world of capital, evil is rewarded and Wall Street's "golf clap" for Baidu's unexpected "good fortune" is a perfect example of evil at work -- or perhaps better said, a perfect example of the unwillingness to do good.

Sock it to 'em Google!

Thinking about my brothers

2010-01-14T01:16:00.002-08:00

The army drums cut off human travel,
A lone goose sounds on the borderland in autumn.
Tonight we start the season of White Dew,
The moon is just as bright as in my homeland.
My brothers are spread all throughout the land,
No home to ask if they are living or dead.
The letters we send always go astray,
And still the fighting does not cease ...

Maybe one day I'll write something like this, when Facebook and Gmail and cell phones are dead and gone and only the moon knows what my people are doing.

Google unlocks the vault!!!!

2010-01-12T21:52:00.003-08:00

Everything the Chinese government has blocked is now available via Google, including pictures of Tiananmen, articles on Free Tibet and the Dalai Lama and everything else.

According to Google's own stats, the most searched for terms in the past 24 hours were Tiananmen and the Chinese for it 天安门

And this picture here says it all:

"Google is a Badass!"

This comment here says:

Facebook的原罪是它能让人认识想认识的人，Twitter的原罪是它能让人说出想说的话，Google的原罪是它能让人找到想找到的东西，Youtube的原罪是它能让人看到想看到的东西……所以它们都被干掉了……

"Facebook lets you connect with your people, Twitter lets you talk with your people, Google lets you read what you want to read, Youtube lets you see what you want to see ... so they have been banned!!!"

Bet those hackers didn't see this coming.

Stick it to 'em Google!

Google fed up with China

2010-01-12T21:18:00.002-08:00

You can check out the full article on Google and China here at Chengdu Living. Check it out and leave a comment.

Peace
S

China reacts to Avatar the Movie

2010-01-11T07:00:00.001-08:00

Avatar the movie opened up in China on January 4th, 2010. Lines stretched for blocks outside of most every theater in the nation for the next week as waves of Chinese went to see the next stage in movie evolution, 3D fantasy on a Hollywood scale. I went on the 6th and from the first few seconds, when water droplets from the crygenic sleep chamber floated right in front of my face, I sat agape and fascinated by the visual spectacle. All around me, I heard the elated gasps and shrieks of an enraptured audience.

What followed afterward, all across the world, was an analysis of the movie's visuals and message from dozens of perspectives. In the US, editorials criticized the movie for employing the same old "white guy saves the natives" guilt-fantasy that has been the theme of many a movie, from Dances with Wolves to a New World. In China, the reaction to the message was no less intense, but focused on a much more immediate, more Chinese problem. The problem of Home.

For the past 20 years, China has been playing catch up, economically, with the rest of the world. China as a nation is catching up with the big boys and is many ways surpassing them and an integral part of that success has been the real estate boom that has turned villages like Shenzhen into international powerhouses and forever transformed the skylines of every major (and minor) city in China. China is urbanizing very quickly and the long-sought after goal of turning farmers into factory workers and laborers is close at hand, but the sacrifices made by millions of Chinese in the name of their Motherland and Progress is starting to tear at the social fabric.

The theater fell silent near the middle of the movie when the Nav'i were forced to watch their home, the Mother Tree, be destroyed and razed to the ground. The silence was full and begged for expression. At the time, I thought it was the pain shared in a theater and did not realize how big the outpouring of comments and essays and blogposts would be the very next day. On popular blogs like Mop, hundreds of comments compared the destruction of the Navi'i home with the widespread demolition of homes across China. Other sites, like ChinaSmack and EastSouthWestNorth translated fragments of these posts for foreign consumption, but they could only give a small taste of what was really boiling underneath.

One essay in particular, posted on the wildly popular Douban.com, is an emotional and in depth response to the rampant demolition of peoples' homes. The essay does not deal with the old, cultural neighborhoods and their value as historical relics, but goes into the very emotional idea of one's home. The author questions whether or not Chinese today actually can call any place they live in a home, because in China one cannot "own" a piece of property, but only "rent" it for up to 70 years. Not only does one never actually own the home or the land one lives on, but the local government can at any moment change their plans and decide to build a road through your neighborhood. Even more galling is the fact that private developers and local officials often conspire to get rid of poor workers and farmers, then use the land to build (or not to build) high rises -- the government forces the people off of the land with minimum compensation then sells the land to the developer for a good price, after which the developer sells the land and any improvements to the growing affluent class of Chinese that are thoroughly enjoying China's economic miracle. The workers are left with inadequate compensation and the destruction of their community.

The comments on this essay are also revealing, in that the majority of them express the same disgust for developers and officials and fully half of the responses say "we are waiting for you to be erased," because essays like these, stories like these are suppressed by the government in order to maintain social stability.

A case in point is the recent tragic death of a woman in Chengdu, who climbed to the roof of her home in November 2009 and set herself on fire in full view of onlookers, police and the demolition crew poised to destroy her home. The woman, named Tang Fuzhen, has a very typical story: in 1996 she built her home here and lived for 10 years without any interference from the authorities. In August of 2007, the local government decided to build a waste management plant near her home. In October, they told her her home was illegal and she would have to leave.

This story, although one of thousands of similar tragic tales, swept through the web like wildfire. Netease quickly deleted their coverage of the story, but not before thousands of netizens left their often angry, but mostly hopeless remarks.

Avatar, or more specifically the spectacle of Mother Tree falling in flames, has brought the anger of the netizen and the tragedy of the common, poor laborer into everyone's living room. People who normally would not even think of such things, just go about their daily business in a fast paced growing economy that requires fast wits and daring, these people are suddenly talking about the pain of losing a home and the absurdity of "renting" a plot of land that cannot be passed on to children or grandchildren. This is a matter of great concern for Chinese parents. The family structure here is still very strong, even after years of being battered by wars, famines, revolutions and unfettered capitalism. For a Chinese to not help his children buy a home is still very rare, so with each demolition and accompanying tragedy, this very deep-rooted need -- to provide for one's children -- is threatened.

It is very revealing to see that many Westerners, especially Americans, choose to see the guilt/fantasy of the white man redeeming himself and saving the planet.

Crib finalized

2010-01-10T07:48:00.003-08:00

Contract signed. The crib is real nice, we is happy. I wish I could show you pics, but i have to wait till those greasy bastards at the Bad Monkey send me the battery I forgot at their bar. (Excuses ...)

The house has two big courtyards, a lily pond, a chicken area, two floors, three pear trees, four peach trees, two tangerine trees, a host of bushes and herbs and stuff that I don't even know about and I think there is some sort of fig tree too.

So its all good.

If you are interested in China matters, check out Sisci's new essay on Atimes.

Chengdu Living

2010-01-09T19:16:00.004-08:00

Spent all day yesterday cooking up various meals and eating them on the spot. I've been brewing the soup for two days (into the third) now and its got sausage and taters and pork and garlic and ginger and all sorts of other random stuff in it. I keep imagining an inn back in the day with some unnaturally rotund innkeep's wife with huge moles on her nose and a shawl shuffling back and forth, dropping things into a bubbling cauldron. Big bearded refugees dip in and sip from cracked bowls and grumble, cuz its the first warm thing they've had.

that's my soup.

We also made wontons and sweet mushroom porridge and this weird corn meal thing and fried up some greens.

Today I go to sign the contract on my place out in San Sheng Xiang -- the flower town i lived in in 2007-08. These guys who own the spot are really amazing. They are the ones manufacturing fake eggs and trying desperately to hoard more money whatever the cost -- they are on the low end of the totem pole and the jealousy of small town small village cash competition seems to drive them nuts. I get to sign a contract with one of these fine individuals today. His God is money and it sometimes feels like i am talking to a different species. My man Zhuang helped me haggle and watching Zhuang and Yushi talk with this guy really tired me out.

Nevertheless, I should be getting everything together today.

You all should check out Chengduliving.com -- its where some of these fine stories will come out in time. We juststarted this site, but its coming along nicely and we'll be doing this for some time. So stop by and holla.

A new leaf

2010-01-05T04:14:00.002-08:00

As you can see, I have changed a few colors on the blog. let me know what you think.

I have been writing for Antiwar.com again, have a regular column coming out, not yet sure exactly which days, but I will let you know. The first one I wrote in a while got me called an asshole and a racist. *yawn* happens all the time.

Things are good on the home front. Yushi is hating the way pregnancy is treating her body right now. she is a huge pumpkin. her hips are moving in weird positions and what hasn't grown is sagging. takes a lot of hugs to make a woman feel better.

No surprises anymore

2009-12-24T22:57:00.003-08:00

Almost a year ago today, I posted a link to China's Charter 08 and mused about a possible "transition" led by China to a more ethical and just governance ...

Well the architect of the Charter is in jail and was sentenced recently, according to BBC reports, but that is just a small indication of the pipe-dream of an "ethical China."

Folks, it is not going to happen. Even taking into account the real national security reasons for China's scuttling of the Copenhagen talks, as reported by the Guardian, what we can look forward to is a China confident and arrogant enough to do whatever it pleases.

My friend Zhuang once pointed at a nouveau rich Chinese guy we saw at a restaurant and said:

"When China gets powerful enough, that's exactly how they will act."

Needless to say, the guy was arrogant, brutal, venal and self-serving at the expense of anyone who stood in his path. Superpowers come, superpowers go but the corrupting influence of power is immortal and universal. War between China & Co. and US & Co. in 2012 as the catalyst for the mystic Mayan prophecy? Not outside the realm of possibility.

The American Dream and the Written Word

2009-12-22T20:58:00.006-08:00

So I am reading Daniel Boorstin, The Seekers, which is the third in a series that begins with The Creators and continues with The Discoverers. Boorstin is one of my favorite historians.

So in Seekers, Boorstin explores the philosophers and "idea-men" that helped to establish the foundations for Western political and social systems. What I found most interesting was the disdain the ancient Greeks had for the written word.

For Socrates, especially, the flame of understanding can only be passed through direct eye to eye mouth to ear contact between individuals. And have you ever noticed that the conversations you have with your brothers and sisters lead you to the Truth, but to write those conversations down is futile and silly? I have. It makes sense. Writing, for Socrates, impaired the memory, excluded dialogue and basically provided an inaccurate sketch of what it actually feels like when you make a breakthrough sitting around the fire with some friends, looking at the stars.

Socrates used the title "Poet" as an insult. I suppose he wasn't thinking about us, when he did all of his deep thinking about the Sage-King, Wisdom and Ignorance. If Plato and Aristotle hadn't written the "useless poetry" that survived the centuries, then Socrates' contributions would have drifted as far as the borders of ancient Greece and no farther.

Ironically, Islam's problems can be traced back to a related problem: Tyranny of the Written Word. Truly, Islam focuses the most upon the written word (Quran=Word of God=Law), but their great prophet Muhammad spoke to his people in Medina about Good and God. When he died, he did not leave written instructions as to how to lead the Ummah/Community. Only the Koran survived, along with an ever increasing collection of hadith, or lessons and interpretations. The wrangling over the written word led to the dissolution of the Community and wars between the factions and eventually war with anyone they met, including their cousins, the Bible worshipers.

**************************************************************************************

So, while I was listening to Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings yesterday morning, I heard her rendition of "This Land is My Land" (awesome version btw) and It reminded me of a rambling post here about where America is headed and also about a conversation I had with a Chinese friend of mine the other day.

He asked me why Americans, who come from all sorts of different backgrounds, are willing to raise the red, white and blue and fight for a country they have no blood ties to. He said this in the context of the Mainland's view of all people of Chinese descent: that they are Chinese first and forever. For him, it was self-evident that any Chinese in the USA would betray the USA if it came to a conflict with China. This is a very typical sentiment in today's China. Now, I know plenty of Asian Americans who have a hard time when they go back to seek their roots and meet the ethnic nationalism of China, Korea and Japan. Its a weird place to be in, I am sure.

Anyway, my response to his "question" was, that being American is a state of mind, not a bloodline or an obligation. It is as close to a "choice" as one can get in terms of nationality. I tried to explain the Manifest Destiny as an example of this state of mind. Unfortunately, he wasn't trying to talk about being American as much as he wanted to assert his idea of being Chinese. So I have to carry on this thread of thought with ya'll.

The Mainland Chinese have a VERY hard time with non-Mainland Chinese who consider themselves American, French, Thai or whatever. These weird creatures are deluded at best, outright traitors at worst.

Good Morning

2009-12-21T18:52:00.003-08:00

Whatchyallknowbout Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings?

Just finished Natural Born Lover and moving on to Stranded in yo' Love

And this album makes me jig my way around this living room in my chupa, wrapped up and ready for this cup of coffee i got infused with anti-viral honey from Andrea Shanti's store, check it out and get you some.

Good Morning Ya'll

Free to Post

2009-12-21T02:22:00.002-08:00

I wrote an essay a while back about censorship in China, for Antiwar.com, and I basically said that within the parameters of black and white, all life transpires.

Well i am now, thanks to Freedur, safely within the gray. Freedur is a VPN protocol that allows me to surf through a proxy and avoid sneaky, evil Chinese censors. If you have problems with haters or just wanna be anonymous, check it out.

If you are interested in buying the service ($60 for one year), type in "chengduliving" and you will get 10% off. chengduliving.com is a website I am working on with my friend Charlie and it should be going live in a few days. Check it out when you have the chance.

So it is a trip to be back. The sky is always gray, which makes me feel completely isolated from the world, like the movie Dark City. I feel enveloped by the grayness and the thing about gray fog is it stretches on forever and has no borders, no shapes, no delineating lines -- it just is. So that can get kinda old.

And walking around is one of those things I forgot about. You have to get into a "China state of mind" to handle the throngs and swarms of people and vehicles passing in and out of your path with missions and dreams and plans and fears of their own. I miss being inconspicuous and part of the scenery.

Bean is plump and healthy. We brew up warm milk with anti-viral honey and sleep in late. The apartment we are in now is just a two-minute walk from the hospital. Tomorrow I will go to Dujiangyan house hunting.

to all the beauty in your life

2009-12-07T03:27:00.003-08:00

back in Shanghai, listening to Christmas music. i had a small panic attack in the vancouver airport as i watched asian people be asian and realized that my ass was headed back to China to live for a while and be a father and all that. started trrrrriping. in my own head of course. was waiting for the whole world to shimmer and disappear. probably had something to do with the fact that i was still drunk and loopy after a night at Beckett's with my man Big Scott. It was a rough morning. but as soon as i was on the flight it was all good and now that i am back in the old familiar hallways of China, all is good and as it should be.

i watched the movie Public Enemies and that was a good one. Special Agent WInstead's message to Billy at the end really got me. busted out in tears, but no one saw me do it.

also watched 9 and that was enjoyable. I couldn't help myself and watched the Time Traveler's Wife (Aliya really wanted to watch that one) and it is sweet and lovable and emotional too. got a little teary there too. i am a sensitive guy you know.

GUA

2009-12-05T00:55:00.000-08:00

Ni zai kan ma??

Ni GUADEBUDELIAO! dajia dou xiaode.

Farts in the wind

2009-12-04T13:36:00.002-08:00

I like to categorize my friends, even if those categories only last till the end of my breath and the beginning of an action on their part to make my cubby-holing a vain useless attempt to get a laugh.

So anywayz, i like to kick it with Tenz cuz he's all heart and Johnny cuz he's all balls and Scott cuz we get all intellectual on each other. So today me and big scott were talking about Obama and we basically came to the conclusion that, hey, we love the guy and he speaks like a messiah and sure we hate the hating-ass republicans who jump on him and will continue to jump on him till 2012, but you know, the truth is, we should have known better.

The whole idea that an elected representative in America can do any good or put through an idea or really make a change is dead and gone. On the national level. On the state, county and municipal level, maybe. I still reserve the right to scoff at any political debate.

We got to talking about States' rights. And this led us into a discussion that brings this question into light -- the legalities of marijuana. In each state, the laws governing the cultivation, sale and possession of marijuana are different. And these laws almost always come into conflict with the federal government's War on Drugs. So we have the DEA swooping in on a legal operation, according to State/County law, and cutting down plants, taking bins of weed out of a dispensary and so on. And never pressing charges.

Now i learned in history class that the battle between States and Federals is eternal (princes and kings, vassals and warlords etc) and the weakness of one will result in the victory of the other.

So this discussion led to a broad appraisal of America as a nation and its health and the condition of its psyche. I quoted this:

"A nation long united must divide, long divided must unite."

So we talked about where in the grand scheme of things was the US: long divided? or long united?

Interestingly enough, we found the debate to switch places according to what kind of division and unity we spoke of. Racially? Culturally? Politically? Economically? It seems to be a little confusing. Politically, one could argue that the US has been "long united" based on the acceleration of history in the 20th century. By Acceleration, we mean here that things move quicker: the Holy Roman Empire lasting 800 years vs. the American Empire lasting 80 years is a function of epoch, not strength.

Culturally and Socially, we are slowly working towards a "unification" or are we?

I remember looking at a map of Blue and Red regions (Democrat and Republican) and saw that the divisions were spread out across the US and it could be said of anywhere in the nation that "over the hill" were idiots who knew nothing about the "right way to live."

All of these topics are linked and I Know it:

Obama's rise and subsequent failure (so far) to be what we believed him to be (not his fault, but so what) and the battle over marijuana legislation in California and the divisions in a unified society ultimately will decide if we are a society "long divided" or "long united" because we, in essence, are one or the other and we are reaching a point where we will swerve in the opposite direction.

Why do I say we are reaching a point in which a change must happen? Well, because so many things (war, banking, Obama, weed, energy, climate, hippy mysticism, discontent) are, well, coming to head. Its a feeling i guess. And its one of those things that the stats back up, but no one at the coffee house really bothers to look at the stats cuz the coffee house guy just kinda feels it. (again, the never ending debate: didn't those guys FEEL something in late summer 1929? or late summer 1939? or even way back in 1529? and look. we are still here dammit, like roaches. AHA! good analogy. Roaches. How many times has a kitchen straight GOTTEN IT from a can of raid and all the roaches experienced the Apocalypse and for them, that was it? many many times. Still we have roaches. And still, many times a day, roach colonies all over the world are convinced that they FEEL something about to change their lives forever. Hence their skittering.)

Back to the tangent:

If, as is most likely, the US as a nation of people is both (divided yet united in division), then what chaos would emerge out of a nationwide about-face? Or, what is just as possible, what ennui would result out of this about-face, a switching of modes and modalities that is so widespread and involves so many people moving in opposite directions to each other that, in effect, (in math, so to say) no one is moving at all ... well ... that would be nothing to see now wouldn't it?

It would become cliche before it could have any impact because all those who turned left would ridicule those who turned right who would ridicule those who turned left and in the end Fox';s ratings would go up and the Daily Show would make jokes about it.

So i say, hit up the strip club, grab some numbers, tell jokes to your friends, eat good at the Ethiopian spot and flirt with the waitress, call yer lady up and make her giggle, read a good book, think deep and say something almost wise in front of someone you don't know that well, come up with another nickname for yer homie, check facebook again (imagine this rant slowly fading out so i can stop typing.)

They roundin up Hobos!

2009-12-01T00:52:00.003-08:00

Bout to watch the Return of the King. Again. And the only reason I want to do it now is to get the full account of Gandalf the White's battle with the Balrog.

I feel quite comfortable with my fractal personality that involves serious nerdocity, hobo tendencies, sleazy charm, demagoguery and half-ass intellectualism. Add a pinch of poetic sensibility and a few shakes and splurts mystic hippy-ism and rebellious isolationism and confront it all with Ego and the terrible certainty that I have to be shattered and re-Made into One come the Rapture, or face the fate of the Father in the novel, The Road, and wander a desolate landscape estranged from the Truth and Love of God.

My boy Tenz reminds me of this race of giants called Titans in a fantasy novel. They had simple spells, but they bellowed those spells out repeatedly and loudly enough to crush any sputtering, gesturing, long sleeved wizard.

He be giggling in my ear like an ogre. And he smells like artichokes and mayonaisse. And he bought me cottage cheese for Thanksgiving, but we forgot to consume it. So now i have been gnawing on his leftover pork for days.

Johnny and me gave up World of Warcraft. If i decide to pick up the pipe again, i'll let ya'll know and feel free to harass me.

It sho aint easy, but it sho nuff necessary.

this could have been anyone of us

2009-11-29T03:07:00.001-08:00

In this story right here, I find a very familiar young man:

went to evergreen and became slightly radicalized. got a girlfriend and did what he thought was best -- take action instead of talk. got caught and ran for his life to Dali, a place i know well. ran around the town and got into the drug trade there, got caught up in the dragnet last year that we all knew about when it went down. none of my people got got, except for this kid right here, whom i never met.

good luck kid.

i got brothers

2009-11-28T04:08:00.004-08:00

i have been many things in my life, some good, some bad and some ugly. i have seen my brothers be those as well. what i have learned is that only through the fire can the secrets of these ancient bonds be learned and earned. i also believe that time heals all and everything works the way it should. so when my brothers and me find ourselves estranged, back in the day or right now, i feel it and it hurts because no matter what i have been, i have always loved deeper than i myself know and this in me and in you keeps the flame burning forever. ya'll know what i mean. don't trip. when i am alone i look at me and find whats black and toy with it. do the same. then go and break bread.

i'll keep keepin on till i earn what i have been given.

One.

This shit really happens

2009-11-24T19:55:00.003-08:00

In the Sanctuary in Oakland with my main men Big Scott and Johnny Frizzle. Today we tore the house up to try and find my passport. We all had different vague recollections of having stowed it away somewhere in the house, but it turns out I left it at a completely different sanctuary up north a bit. My mind is playing tricks on me.

I find myself feeling quite sad about a homie of mine, real old school. We had big issues earlier this year. He stabbed me in the back for a string of flimsy reasons and my crew made moves to reconcile the whole thing and it ended up that we met again and forgave each other. I suppose i had to forgive a lot more than he did. My brothers came through for me and no real damage was done to me. But now my old school homie is floating about and none of my crew wants anything really to do with him -- because he stabbed me, but also because he is a wild card. Leaves me in a weird space. I feel responsible and sad. Responsible because I made my brothers deal with this shit and sad because the shit involved an old school brother. I had hoped to merge crews and see a unification of minds. But in the end i stand alone at the bridge and I got to turn my way and do my thing. So thats that.

I had a dream last night that left me shaken. I went into a brothel to visit a girl I knew. She was in love with me and treated my visits like bright shining lights of hope in her sordid life of Johns and Pimps and otherwise bad men. In my dream, I took advantage of her love just so I could get some. We had sex and she told me it wasn't about my dick, that it went so much deeper than that. Her sadness was the old stale sorrow of a love and a life almost snuffed. I observed and catalogued this face of hers, just because it was a human experience i knew i could recall and perhaps insert into a story of mine. Three black men came into the brothel and demanded her. They wanted to inflict physical pain on this defenseless woman and at first I tried to defend her. But this was one of those dreams in which my blows glanced harmlessly off of them and they laughed at me and threw me aside.

This is where it gets brutal and horrifying. So don't read any more if you don't want to hear what really happens in brothels like these.

They took a stick and started shoving it in her anus, slamming it and jerking it and breaking it off. She started screaming in pain. I heard the screams and they were so real, so raw, so dumb and drunk with pain that it no longer was a dream, but a dimension in which Sascha the man in this world was awake and subjected to his own cowardice and his own complicity in the act. She screamed and i ran out of the brothel and i felt the stick in my chest and the screams became my own and they said

this shit really happens this shit really happens this shit really happens

to women all over the world.

I read once about a prostitute in China who had been murdered by some pimp, He killed her by ramming a toothbrush up her nose. Once, as a courier for a travel agency in Frankfurt, I delivered tickets and cash to a brothel and saw a big German beat a little Thai woman because she didn't want to work anymore. I once saw a young prostitute in China shed one big tear and whisper just inside of ear shot that she didn't want to lead this life.

Wo bu yao zhezhong shenghuo. I dont want this life.

This shit really happens.

Sigh

2009-11-22T22:23:00.003-08:00

Headed back Here

And just to make it even more lovely, i read more about Chinese products ONCE AGAIN making consumers sick and otherwise doing everything they should not be doing.

My lady wants to stay just one year or so, because in 2011 a chemical plant will be built just a an hour or so down river from us. And it makes her feel nauseous to have me buy baby stuff here in the US -- although the same stuff is available in China -- because she does not dare buy stuff over there.

there is, of course, a silver lining. Its called Dujiangyan, Qing Cheng Shan and the Min River. I keep that in my head along with the courtyard enclosed home i dream of -- it can still be all good, even in the very belly of the belching beast.

My Rainy Poem

2009-11-22T19:21:00.003-08:00

Zhang Yushi -- Yu means rain, Shi mean poem or poetry or poet ... depending.

i met her for the first time back in the days when i was a real rake and rastabout. tenzin my man and i were playing chess in the ole cafe in Fanghua Gai in Yulin. I remember two giggling girls watching us play the fools for them. that was about 7 years ago. a little over one year ago, we bumped into each other again. i didn't remember it, but you know when you get that feeling, like something is about to change forever? well i had that feeling but i didn't really know it, i just thought it was a chance for me to -- for one time -- not seduce a girl and just be her friend and brother and confidante. so for a time, Yushi came to my rundown country house and hung out. she brought her stanky dog around, stole tenzin's steak, frowned at the weird shit i was cooking, listened to me preach, became my Shifu's favorite, impressed my sage homie Zhuang with her quick mind and ability to pierce through the bullshit.

she helped take care of my kitties, rolled with me into the earthquake spot, helped me mend fences with my neighbors, took walks with me at night in the last days of the village i lived in. she became friends with Andreas and Julia the photographers and one by one my friends wondered aloud to her and me, what plans did we have? where was this going? I loudly proclaimed that i was her protector and brother and teacher and friend and all that. she just kinda looked at me.

i made her lose her job at the newspaper, when i asked her to help me with a story i am working on and she decided to come with me rather then to her job. i never heard her mother's voice, she died in february, but i spoke to her just minutes before she did and i can feel her. her pops came up with a name for my tea house Ma Bang Cha Yi, which means ... Horse Camp Tea Tent. He feels me. He once told Bean (her nickname, which she got on a ride through the mtns to my Shifu's school) "nide ba de zhongguo wenhua xvyao liangge ren zai bi de shang!" which means ... your pops got game!

She tells me about myself in way that hurts because its all true. its like looking at a painting and seeing a red woman and then tilting your head and seeing the house and hills behind her and maybe the expression on her face if you tilt another way. i can only see red, at best, she points out all the other stuff.

at one point, i rolled to beijing for the olympics and before i did i asked my boy how did he know about his girl and he said, when you roll somewhere, she's the one you think about. i thought about her all the time. Still do.

we gonna write books together, raise a god together and grow shrooms and bud in china and spread the Word together.

I'm done with work and in a week i fly out.

Well well well

2009-11-09T14:01:00.002-08:00

What Providence, What Divine Intelligence ...

so i am leaving the Wagon today and headed to a different brighter spot up the road a bit. I am looking forward to it very much and i believe its the best way to get my thing going before i head to China and begin life as a family man. Holy Jesus.

I haven't dropped any of that story on here until now, for whatever reasons i may have had, they remain mine alone and now they have become irrelevant and so it is time to letchaya'll know the deal:

Zhang Yushi is 6 months pregnant with my son and the due date is in February. It came as a surprise and it was definitely unplanned -- in a manner of speaking -- but its something i have wanted for a long time and I am excited to get this thing going.

So, sure it was unplanned. I did not want to put the cart before the horse and I assumed i would be hit by lightning before i settled down with a woman, but at the same time i have been willing this for so long -- the entire time i was in China as a matter of fact. I was given multiple chances to be a father but each one was cast aside by fear and doubt and simple fact that the future held too much suffering for me to contemplate. This time, I can see a beautiful future ahead of me and it seems so damn ordained that for me to run this time would be the end of me as a man and the completion of the devil's plan for me. I would become the demon that I have feared for so long and end up sucking the souls of others for sustenance till my ass got got by a man with morals somewhere sometime.

Thankg God that didn't happen. Instead I made the right choice and in a few short months I'll post pics of my son (or daughter, still ain't 100% yet) and then I guess this blog will be filled with those words and those inspirations ... for some time to come.

mazeltov.

A Photo Project and a Photographer's ish:

2009-11-05T13:58:00.002-08:00

the ABC's of photography

and peep the Yosemite B&W's here ....

Chirp Out Day

2009-11-05T13:39:00.002-08:00

Chirp Out is the day of freedom and joy for my Tribe. Its the day when we hit the road again after a season of trimming and farting and smoking and such. we hold councils on the daily and estimate the exact date of the final chirp chirp. we figure less than 10 days. maybe one week. after all of this, i might walk with around 6k. its not what i was hoping, but its good money in a good spot with good people and eachtime i come here i get stronger (and maybe weaker?) in some way or another.

So i have this homeboy SUPABOY in brzil right now and he is a shaman. we all knew this and to hear it from the horse's mouth is just confirmation of long held beliefs. the questions i ask myslef these days basically revolve around my increasingly tenuous hold on this reality coupled with the fact that i am going to be a father in about four months. so i have a family to take care of and a seed to nurture and at the same time my own individual experience tells me that the time is nigh. i know hippies and such talk about 2012 in whispers and loud proclamations. i believe in some of what they say even as i deride hippies for being the shades that they are. why should i sneer at a hippy goddess when she is just giving voice to what is in my head anywayz? perhaps because i feel that my path is more righteous in some way.

and getting into that, there is a dude at the ranch that judges all paths according to his particular experience and he does a lot of sneering. i find myslef laughing at him too. so i just bide my time and do battle with doubts. in the end, life has taught me that my free will brings me to where i need to be ... the path might be straight, but i needs be wandering off into the underbrush before i am reminded that the way is laid out. its what the universe wants anyway. complexity -- because the universe in the beginning was lonely and continues to be so until every single atom and molecule sings along with the one voice.

these thoughts collide with the very present needs of baby formula, nice house, clothes and the proximity of me to them and them to me (my family here is what i speak of) and the merging of all this into one clear train of action and thought is, i guess, what it all is.

i am with my crew and our energies crackle out loud and i can feel that even as we grow closer and stronger something holds us all back into our own perceptions. it is only me and my and I that will face the truth alone. and it is only with my crew and family and brothers that i can face the truth alone. the dichotomy of it all makes me sit and watch and observe, because any action is fraught with its twin: inaction.

safety and sanity vs. the unknown and the only thing we should know.

i feel ready to shatter and impervious to all weapons at the same time.

a sentence that hit me while i was on break from dry trim smoking one on the wagon's porch:

"sunlight through the scrub oak, a sparrow flies between them on wings of gold."

thats what it looked like to me. and even my homie hans had a halo when he stood before the oak below the nest and chuckled to himself about something as low low low as the deuce he just dropped in an overflowing outhouse. only by writing these things down can i keep the threads of my reality together just long enough to be there for all my family and people when they need me. I used to worry (and sometimes i still do) that all this writing is just for me and myself but every now and then a brother or sister will read it and feel it and laugh with me and say in a low whisper by a rain spattered window above the street that

i was thinking the same thing just now.

The Wagon Part Deux

2009-11-02T10:00:00.002-08:00

in darkness and in light

even as alli said in the last post is true, so is the sweetness of the old lady and the steady drifting of the old man in from the cold. she wants to be our grandmother and it takes time for her to manage the movement from skeksi to mystic, but if you have seen the movie dark crystal, then you know they are one.

the gorging of the skeksi sustains the mystic sheperd during the trek through the valley of death.

what i learned is that although the sheperd does his duty and brings them all through, the pain and suffering that cascades down the black valley walls does not ebb or dissipate or go away. no, the mystic takes it upon himself and drinks from the vile rivers so the weak may walk as children do.

i learned this during the penultimate phase of the moon on a veranda bathed in white light and the scatterings of tribal factions mimicing the protonic movements of free radicals searching searching ...

so the wagon is both. abode of demons and hearth for the lost.

The Wagon

2009-10-29T14:43:00.004-07:00

I have a day off today so i am in a cafe catching up on things and trying to get into contact with people. somehow i racked up a $234 phone bill even though i lost my phone 2 weeks ago. that hurts. AT&T really takes it out of my ass. thats 234 i did not think i would have to pay ...

speaking of pay.

i worked the past two weeks on a weed ranch in the hills north of San Francisco. We spent the first 10 days or so cutting down massive weed plants in the corn garden and pond garden (all outdoor weed) and wet trimming them into manageable chunks. What that means is, we take the plant and cut it up and remove all of the big leaves and useless scrapple weed and then take the buds and classify them according to a "hanger" and "tray" system. Hangers are large buds -- often the colas or tops of the plant -- and they can be hung from metal cages or hooks in the drying room. Tray bud are smaller buds that need to be placed in trays with screens to dry. So we took all these plants and brought them into a room and 6-8 of us trim them down and slowly move them to the dry room.

At the same time, it seems that the couple running the farm are in need of cash (yeah right, i'll get to that in a sec) and so they have a few guys dry trimming as well. Dry trimming is the trim process that happens just before the bud gets (hopefully cured) and packaged for sale.

After about 10 or 12 days of this, we moved into the greenhouse to wet trim that bud.

but first

the owner is a 60+ year old man who drives around on a four-wheeler from 5am to about 2am doing all sorts of stuff. moving piles of metal from here to there. digging holes over here and filling others over there. stacking bikes. erecting roofs and digging new outhouses. running pipes and installing septic systems. all sorts of shit. he has barrels and barrels filled with every type of screw and nail you can think of. He hammers out bent nails and stores them, feel me? he can't stop moving and i firmly believe the day that all the work is done on that farm is the day he drops and dies.

but it goes so much deeper and weirder than that. it twists and turns around a history of secretive scandalous behavior that ropes in young meth addicts turned indentured serf asking tentatively over a walkie talkie if he can have some cereal.

"No" crackles the gruff old geezer.

meth and porn in a Spartan Mansion spray painted on the outside (Pikey Camp) and oozing with cigarette butts and stiff yellowing tissues inside. armless Hulk dolls with big black dildos stuffed deep inside and lubes and douches and boxes of Ramen and 12 packs strewn about in the aftermath of a drug hazed rage session involving binding oneself and bonding a shred of a soul to the ranch and its horrors and insanities. he was alone with all of that stuff and only a small candle or a dying fire was there.

A girl's voice haunts us sometimes and some of us think we heard it down in the valley between the trailers and the horse barn. others in the house next door, empty save for boxes of the mistress's cloth. Or in the barn itself, the horses twitch strangely in the dusk as if ghostly hands stroke them. she argues with someone.

the old man braves the darkness of his land to be with his little girl but he is not really with her so he keeps the tasks coming. when all is silent his chest implodes and he is ripped apart by deeds farmhands whisper about. all we really know is that the engines are still running when sleep catches up to us.

The woman of the ranch is a skeksi. she sucks the blood of the farmhands and her face, sweet and old and haggard and dripping out of the corner of a farmhand's eye becomes a howl of fury and poisonous festering vengeance the undead dying hold for the undying life that can withstand any bombardment as long as the pay comes in -- even if the skeksi bitch takes her 10% tithe of hatred and gurgling mucus covered greed. her eyes bulge when our backs are turned and her clawed old bones grasp at my neck. i turn and she smiles with an old cookie in her hand and unsalted lentils raised up from a dripping spoon i swear i saw black shit drip but i slurp anyway cuz the paycheck the paycheck the paycheck is freedom in a satchel.

you think i'm playin dontchu. She brought in a rabbi to exorcise the ranch. some farmhands saw her standing above the old man shaking a finger and screaming in old Hebrew. She wants the ghosts to finally stay dead, but the old man would have to stop moving. If he stops moving she has no funds to support her grasping clan and her trips abroad. they find a way to live together.

so we swerve in and out of the work and waves of resentment content with "hey, she is really being sweet" and "i see the good in him" cuz we have to believe that no matter what anyone can be turned. anyone.

A 51 year old father of seven handyman with fingers missing and a heart of gold takes the place of the runaway meth addict porn hound chain smoking delusional and now he spits and screams when anyone is watching and bows and scrapes when the old man's four wheeler comes wheeling into pikey camp or when his voice says

"Dave where are you?"

"where do you want me to be?"

This compulsive old workaholic and his skeksi wife with their secrets and hatreds and schemings neglected the greenhouse so we humble farmhands had to cut the branches of diseased no flayed weed plants as little white carcasses drifted down like god's dandruff into our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, shirts. Worms dug deep into the bud and became something else. aphids marched and sucked and bled the plants brown. earwigs lurked and scattered. mold infested to boot.

So we took these fetid sores and broke them down in an isolated quarantine spot and atomized each branch with water to wash the filth and neglect and rot off of each bud. hung them to dry. we wait to trim them down so this old man and his womanthing can sell it off and bury their loot and tilt their dishonest scales further in favor of a life here, in hell, rather than face the demons of the night and the voice of the girl and the lonely torture of the serfs that get caught in the web and the boiling resentment and determination of a crew of farmhands who have always managed to escape.

A new day rising?

2009-10-09T22:24:00.002-07:00

chillin with my patna 10z taking care of a money crop bumping Nas's new album, which if you haven't heard is another classic. check it out asap.

here is a little post inspired by what I have been thinking about recently and Obama's surprise Peace Prize. I was inspired by my main man Q to include a few words about WHY exactly Oslo decided to award this at this time. At first, I thought premature and linked to American domestic politics, but now after speaking with Q i believe it might have everything to do with the possible destructive fallout of America's domestic woes spilling out into international arenas and Oslo's not so subtle attempt to manipulate opinion. It def. seems like a calculated move as opposed to a decision based on merit. Oslo did this before with Willy Brandt, as described in teh NYT story about the Nobel ...

That Kauai story for the Oregonian

2009-10-07T14:36:00.002-07:00

Here is that story -- a little truncated and bland, but hey, its a paycheck.

The Weed Game

2009-10-07T14:23:00.004-07:00

I watched the CNBC documentary on weed in Cali, Marijuana, INC. and it was a straight War on Drugs propagan(ja) piece. Trish Regan interviewd weed farmers and the look in her eye said: "this is so crazy, these people are not like (look into the camera with a Palinesque wink) US!"

So that was too bad. They focused on the money and the problems, not the money problems that bring this about.

Shall we discuss Medical Marijuana? Shall we talk about the dangers of Alcohol vs. the dangers of Weed?

I think it might be more interesting to note that the people in Cali are running after the American Dream that for some only a fat crop can help them attain. Think about this: You can work a job thats legit for 10-15 an hour and make maybe 1500USD a month after taxes and do that all your life, thinking to yourself that, yeah, sure if I do this for 20 years I can have a mortgage on my crib and save enough for my kids to go to college. Maybe. Or I can grow a crop that is legal in California and make 100K in one year selling weed legally over the counter to weed heads and cancer patients that want this product cuz it makes them feel better.

What it is is the meeting of two cultures: the weed culture of the 1990s and our parents, who consider it all to be Drug-Related. Its young families with ideas about 2012, holistic lives, multiculturalism and a new "back to the Land" vision sitting down and thinking to themselves: the contract I signed with the society (go to college and get a job) seems sour to me and I dont want it. What can I do? How can i live happily? what can i do to support my people my wife my kids and still adhere to my code of honor and living? how do i not sell out like all those before me but still get enough money to live a life that doesn't make me a slave to the sell outs?

For many, its the weed game. Search for a job that pays a young creative or be young and creative ... is that the question?

How do YOU feel about the weed game??

(I'm back)

Bumpin Raekwon & Drinking Dew

2009-09-21T15:21:00.002-07:00

My sister is in Paris alone ... hoping that my old friend will visit and show her around, listen to her and give her a word or two of advice that she can carry back.

I am in Northern Cali in the midst of the harvest season. Billions of dollars of green gold erupting out of the earth and spilling out as far as NYC and Hawaii. Everyone is in on it on some level or another and it seems to be the oil that greases, eases or helps one carry on a separate legit biz that momz can know about and wifey can be proud of.

gotta go and get some supplies right now, there is a tab can of trichomes sitting next to my screen i rub it and its greasy and brown and its worth a new car.

now that thats out of the way

2009-09-18T20:29:00.004-07:00

I went to kauai with my man Q in January and it was one of the highlights of 2009. A great way to begin the year. I will always remember our gestures to the moon that last night ... we were blessed. One of those trips if u know what i mean.

So when i got back i wrote about the trip and submitted to the Oregonian. They will publish it this Sunday so thats a bit of bright news amidst all this personal stuff that will take a while to wash off.

so i will try and get a pdf from them and post it here for me and you ;)

last night with a frozen bottle

2009-08-07T13:43:00.002-07:00

after all that lonely lashing out ended, i dreamt of a castle i was in, under attack from buffoons shooting dynamite into the air. it was my castle, in the sense that i lived there, but i still wanted to show them my secret passageway in the wall and the stone staircase that led down to the village below. but it was only me that peered through the fake boulder into the village. a dog ambled passed me and then a mountain lion creeped up and at first i was scared but then i looked into its eyes and saw curiousity. it came close and its fur started to stretch and pull like a hairstyle and it said look what i can do, and slowly turned into a woman, first the leg -- i stroked it to make sure, and yes it was skin -- then her back and arms and then her head. we both were desperate to have sex and we were doing it when i awoke.

My Oasis

2009-08-02T13:35:00.003-07:00

A brown hen named Gary gives a flapping sqawk and makes a dash for the cherry tree in my backyard. Her two speckled girlfriends shoot their heads up and cock suspicious eyes, until they see Gary begin painting her beak black with cherry juice. They jump and run, coming to a calm hesitant stop near Gary as she pecks the ground madly. All three settle into that funky circling step the Meters call the Chicken Strut.

I watch from the steps on my back porch smoking a Top rollie and sipping on a glass of Maofeng Green. I laugh hard every time I see a chicken run. I check my phone real quick, yeah, I still have some time. Hip Hop bumps from the houses behind the cherry tree and I hear the unmistakable cadence of a Southern Black Woman. I can't see her because there is a fence between us, but I listen for a second.I get up and stretch real long. I let my grunt turn into a jungle yell and then cut it all off with a sigh and walk to the edge of my awning to inspect the browning grass. Its alive with ants and honeybees diligently doing their thing. My eyes can only take the movement from a certain angle, because if I look directly into the grass the entire lawn becomes a writhing sea of blades and tiny brown bodies and my mind reels. But I don't have that much time right now, so I play it cautious like.

I step along the path a dog named Libberz has beaten into the grass with her daily jaunts through the lawn, heading for the chicken coop area just to see what's going on, when i feel a shift in the air. I glance left and the hammock strung between the cherry tree and the awning watches me watching her. The breeze touching the hammock is the inviting whisper of a carefree lover. My demeanor turns goofy, as if this were the real thing. I face determinedly forward and walk barefoot on the spiky grass toward the back of my yard. What time is it? Do i have enough time? Sigh.

I pass under the dark shade of the Douglas Fir, taking care not to step on any cones and I look into the wild areas I left in the yard when I mowed it the first time way back in spring. I have been planning on planting a white sign with "where the wild things are" scrawled in black, but I haven't yet. A rodent rustles the weeds and is gone. The neighbor's cat tries to will itself through the chainlink fence with its glare. I see this as I walk to the coop. When I am there, I stand between the herb garden and the vegetable garden and just stand there. Take the last puffs of my rollie; wonder why I left my glass on the steps; feel the sun discover my neck for the first time. Its almost time. But I got a little time left.

I know what basil looks like and carrots. There are some cornstalks and I finger the rosemary as I walk on by, passed the coop, to my favorite spot, hidden in the back. I can't stay long, but I come for a minute or two anyway, every day. To smile upon the gnarled apple tree and the waves of wild grass lapping at its roots. I hear the creaking door of the playhouse in the wind and the brambles seem to grow and grow as the heat becomes almost unbearable. I feel sweat forming, the first beads penetrating my virgin pores. My head starts itching and i turn back. There is a small Buddha shrine in the corner between the vegetable garden and the front of the playhouse. I have to look at it as I pass, anything else might invite trouble. Today, I go as far as the Thai people do and place my palms together and give a slight bow. It can't hurt. But its about that time. Thoughts that have been banging at the door all afternoon have now kicked their way through and i walk passed where the wild things are and only hear the rustles. They remind me of childhood friends ringing my mom's doorbell and I feel the same way I did then when my mom said,"We're eating dinner now."

Head down I feel the change of the day as I pass in and then out of Papa Fir's shadow. I better hurry. I feel the breeze again. I know I shouldn't, its a bad idea, but show me the man who passes by an oasis in the desert and I'll show you a fool. She is just a white cord now, seen from a distance, but I know and she knows that all I have to do is go over there and she will spread herself wide for me, hold me in her arms like a pea in a pod and rock me all day long. I pretend not to see her and just pick up my glass for those last two sips. This green tea is glorious and I almost moan as the honey dew waterfall green-ness cleanses my mouth and throat and I feel the skin in my eyes shift back several years, as if the glass were spiked with Gelfling. She heard my moan over there, and I glance over to see what the reaction might be. The wind picks up.

Does the hammock really care? Or is my mind willing her to? Is this really happening?

The strong breeze passes over the entire backyard and the chickens feel it and flap a bit, cherries drop, needles hum, the wild places sing as the wave goes from one note to the next till it vanishes behind the chicken coop and I know I heard the creak of the door way back there and if I am not mistaken the sodden plop of an apple. It was decided a long time ago, with that first carefree whisper. In a trance I go to her. The whole backyard laughs the way friends do when two lovers publicly peel away. Its Ok. I still have a little time.

Wine

2009-07-27T18:00:00.002-07:00

The past two nights i have been drinking Yellow Tail Shiraz with my old high school buddy Maximillian. He was one of my first and best friends back when i was 16 and getting my bearings in Germany.

I had a friend walk with me in a dream last night, a walk i can barely remember because I was busy drinking wine and laying down by the fire in my back yard, he said he could smell my sweat and aftershave but i was like:

"That wasn't aftershave. it was the last hints of the wine bottle i finished off in honor of all my friends late late early early as the sun hinted hinted but i fell before the hint became a word"

off work early

2009-07-25T23:26:00.002-07:00

i am better in group situations, then one on one
cuz in one on one I am too eager to reveal
I like to pass around planets
and laugh at jokes
or drift away
or just sit there and smile
i remember a show about a moment taken randomly
and how it could in a moment be divine
any second of the day i'll slip away
never to return
i love those groups so, i'll never take the final plunge
hold it off untill the day I die
the sweet rhapsody of simply doing nothing
or the laughter of a barbecue
or in the moment locking eyes and telling all

Workin at Pok Pok

2009-07-25T01:29:00.005-07:00

So for the past few weeks I have been working in the shack at the famous Thai spot called Pok Pok in Portland, on 32nd and Division. It was supposedly ranked one of the best spots in the nation in Food and Wine. All I can say is the food is excellent, the kitchen is the most badass I have been in ever and the morale of the staff is very high. We kick ass every night. We get SLAMMED every damn night. I am talking thousands of dollars every day in revenue. Its out of control. I work from 3pm till about 1130pm and every night when i bike (or sometimes get driven/drive) home I spend at least 2-3 hours winding down from the hectic ness of kicking so much ass. I have Khao Soi dreams and visions of roast game hen gettin chopped to pieces just in time. I move fast and keep movin all night.

My boy Wrisley, a known food critic, says he has heard of the spot and actually chums around with the owners buddy in Bangkok. Go figure.

But i have a decision I need to make. Come December, I will be moving back to China it looks like, and I have to figure out if I am going to continue at this spot or head south to Cali for the Fall and work on a farm. Usually, the money is better on the farm. From what I hear there is free room and board and enough work to walk away with maybe 7K over three months. If I stayed at Pok Pok I would be working 5 days a week, 40 hours a week for about 1500k a month. So it looks like there is more money in the farm than in the spot. But i find myself becoming loyal to the spot. So it is actually a tough decision. I am leaning toward the farm. But if any of you homeboys and homegirls have some insight, holler and let a brother know.

She was my affair with Portland

2009-07-24T07:21:00.002-07:00

and even though the morning afternoon and evening held sunshine sweet sunshine
oh lord the nights were demons in my belly
and i walked on creaky wooden floors
in my footsnuggies and sweatpants
wondering
wondering
where is my mind
where
is
my
mind

Obama in Africa

2009-07-13T18:28:00.001-07:00

A lil sumpin sumpin here from another blog i post on:

Obama's sayz: Get your poo together!

Rape is the Consort of War

2009-07-13T11:00:00.003-07:00

That just kind of came to me earlier today while reading this story here about Somalis in Minneapolis becoming "radicalized" and then heading back to Somalia to be warriors.

I was envisioning the journalist interviewing one of the young boys who went back to fight and having the young boy go into a tirade about

"how sick he is of the media and the images the terms the media has placed into the minds of Westerners whenever they think of Islam, Jihad, Arabs, the Middle East, Somalia etc. and how furious it makes him that he has to convince this journalist not of the validity of his story but of his own sanity. He has to convince the West first that he is not a crazy men hellbent on self-annihilation in the name of an oppressive, backward religion. He has to convince everyone first, by saying things like: my home is on fire, and you in the West not only accuse me of inciting violence when i trry and put the fire out, but yu pour gas on my house as it burns!! but this does nothing either because all it is is a metaphor for a feeling that in the West is brushed away as impossible, just like all of the rapes that go on in war. Impossible, not by oour troops or our allies,. There must be a reason. We are Americans. We are the force for good."

I dont know if i believe all of this, but for a minute there i was sunk into a Somalis head as i can imagine it and there was a lot more but basically the above paragraph summarizes it.

BTW all that took place in my old neighborhood, the West Bank and if you read the story they say the place is called the Towers, but it aint, thats only what they told the NYT its actually called the Crackstacks and we all know it.

Anyway that story linked above got me thinking as did a movie i sat through yesterday called Four Fingers with Ryan Phillipe and Laurence Fishburne. Oh Lord that movie was wak as all hell. The ending though, was somewhat provocative, Thank God. Phillipe tries to do a Dutch accent in this movie and he fails so utterly that his entire character is reduced to a blubbering clown.

i dreamt of babies laughing in my arms yesterday or i guess this morning. That was a giddy dream.

Moses in the NYT

2009-07-09T10:24:00.005-07:00

Dr. Russell Leigh, that is. My old Professor at the U of M was on CNN last year during the Olympics and now he has an Op-Ed in the NYT clearly and coldly explaining what is really going down.

Check it out.

In my last post i said that the Han arguments of "ingratitude" are laughably weak -- and they are -- but not the force that supports and enforces these arguments. In that same post, in the last paragraph, I share the sentiment that Moses clearly states in his Op Ed: Uighers and Tibetans are doomed.

Here, a relevant quote from Wendell Berry:

"A community, especially a rural community, is understood by its public servants as provincial, backward and benighted, unmodern, unprogressive, unlike 'us,' and therefore in need of whatever changes are proposed for it by outside interests (to the profit of the outside interests). Anyone who thinks of himself or herself as a member of such a community will sooner or later see that the community is under attack morally as well as economically. And this attack masquerades invariably as altruism: the community must be plundered, expropriated, or morally offended for its own good -- but its good is invariably defined by the interest of the invader. The community is not asked whether or not it wishes to be changed, or how it wishes to be changed, or what it wishes to change into. The community is deemed to be backward and provincial, it is taught to believe and to regret that it is backward and provincial, and it is thereby taught to welcome the purposes of its invaders."

When i wake up i think to myself:

2009-07-08T23:27:00.002-07:00

Ever notice how the convolution of simple tasks is at the core of many a dream?

Repeating myself.

Xinjiang protests continue

2009-07-07T12:46:00.002-07:00

Here is the BBC on the protests ... there is some decent video here showing a large group of Han thugs headed to the Uigher part of town for revenge and also a crowd of Uigher women demanding to know where their men were taken.

The NYT has a repeat of yesterday's story with a little more from today added in ... not much different than the BBC version, but check out the slideshow, there is a great pic of the Han thugs as they march. You can see that for many of these guys, this is a show, some fun, something to take the monotony out of the day. Sure, they might hate Uighers because they're Uighers, but this whole gang thing is just a bit o the old ultra violence for them.

Whereas for the Uigher this is life and death. What does it take to take to the streets as a protester in a country where such acts result in life in jail, death and a heavier hand on all those left behind? How do you escape the futility that fills you up?

In this article in the Asia Times, Dr. Jian Junbo gives a sober rundown of the situation and blames the unrest on a variety of factors that are basically breaking down the Marxist-era policy of making all ethnic groups within China "members of one great Chinese family" of laborers, with Capitalists and landowners as the common enemy.

He goes into Han grievances, which seem to revolve around the one-child policy and affirmative action in the universities and in some economic sectors. I find these arguments laughably weak.

First off, the Han are the overwhelming majority in China and the one-child policy is a function of over-population, not ethnic preference. Second, the minorities tend to live in rural, poor and/or remote areas like: the Himalayas, around the Taklamaklan and Gobi deserts, in the mountains of Guizhou, southern Sichuan and Yunnan. These are "underpopulated areas" (relatively speaking, this is China after all). Han far outnumber all the minorities put together, 1.3 billion to 123 million.

And affirmative action is also a very weak premise for Han anger, because the very very small number of minorities who benefit from affirmative action is absolutely insignificant compared to the advantages shared by all those who call themselves Han in China.

The real reason for bringing up these arguments is simple tactics. Did Rebiya Kadeer cause these riots? Or were they cause by one man posting rumors? or were they caused by simmering ethnic hatred? or were they caused by a failing Marxist system, as Dr. Jian proposes? For the majority of Han and the current Chinese leadership, the simpler the answer, the better. China wants their people to remain sheep -- money spending sheep -- but still sheep.

The most important thing to understand about this is that Uighers are actually X and Han are actually Y and these variables and the relationship between them can be superimposed upon any values (i.e. ethnic groups) across the globe.

If seen in this light, then we find a common mistake: one value is "heavier" than the other, resulting in imbalance and dis-harmony and then, eventually, violence. So far, across the globe, the common solution has been to increase the weight of the heavy value and hope that through an even larger imbalance, the problem will solve itself, perhaps with the elimination of the lighter value. All we have seen this approach produce is prolonged violence and suffering.

The real solution is to find a balanced, sustainable relationship. This invariably requires the heavy value (Han, Whites, Israelis,) to step back and allow the lighter value (Tibetans, Uighers, Blacks, Hispanics, Palestinians) to gain weight. "Gaining weight" can mean: gaining control of their religion, gaining control of their economic future, gaining control of their political future. These things will immediately remove the need for violence. People with jobs, a place to worship freely and a choice in who their leaders are will be content.

The rub is, of course, that the heavier values FEAR this above all things. Because this is an existential thing. To dominate and crush the weaker value ensures not only survival but sustained survival for whomever is doing the crushing. To step back and allow your "rival" for resources to grow sounds like suicide.

Sigh.

Sometimes, i feel i talk myself into circles and in the end all of this is quite meaningless. What i really believe? In this new world there is no place for Uighers or Tibetans or Native Americans or even Palestinians as they were. There is only one type of person who can and will make it and that is the person who believes wholeheartedly that the way we are moving is the one and only true faith. Progress, Modernity, Capitalism. All other faiths WILL die. The rest of us who don't believe better pretend or find a place to hide or be converted.

Violence in Xinjiang

2009-07-06T21:46:00.003-07:00

Uighers in Urumqi rioted over the past 24 hours, destroying property, killing people and fighting the police. The immediate cause for the riots was a brawl in Shaoguan, Canton Province that began after some fool posted a note on QQ saying that 6 Uigher boys had raped 2 Han women. Han workers then rampaged through the Uigher worker dormitory and killed an unknown number of people.

Seems a lot like LA after the Rodney King verdict right? Well the similarities do not end there. The conflict between the Uigher minority and the Han majority is racial, cultural, economic and political. It spans the entire community. It is one community vs. another and the battle is very uneven. On one side is the state, and on the other is a minority incorporated into the state through force.

After the Communists liberated China in 1949, they went about pacifying and unifying the nation. That included invading and occupying Tibet and invading and occupying Xinjiang. Throughout history, "Uigherstan" and Tibet have been under the control of either local strongmen/religious leaders or split along local tribal/power lines or subjugated to erratic and temporary Imperial rule. Only after 1950, when the Uigher leadership -- on its way to Beijing for a conference with Mao -- all were killed in a "plane crash" and the Tibetan leadership escaped into exile in India, only after the leaders were disposed with did the regions of Tibet and Xinjiang come under Imperial/Communist rule.

This is nothing new in the history of these areas. The only thing different is that it is happening now, in front of our eyes, in a globalized world with the media there to project images and words.

Yes, the Han are absolutely oppressing both the Tibetans and the Uigher. In this old column here, I wrote about the Cultural Revolution-era techniques still being employed in Tibet and Xinjiang and the religious oppression that is a focal point of discontent.

There are other points of contention that add to the anger:

1) Han immigration: Han now represent the majority in both Xinjiang and Tibet. This is a recent development -- since 1950 -- and represents, for Tibetans and Uighers, the inevitable destruction of their identity and their way of life. There is nothing one can do when waves of "the Other" set up shop and start having kids. It is a peacful and highly effective tool of ethnic cleansing.

2) Han economic domination: Han Chinese dominate the government in both these regions. In both, the governor and/or spokesman is a native Tibetan or Uigher who is either completely brainwashed or completely venal. These "traitors" are in place to respond to crises such as these in the strongest manner, to give the rest of the nation and the world the idea that rioters and protesters are "inhuman", as opposed to demanding humanity.

Government domination by one ethnic group over another has another, more important effect: the unequal distribution of income and of justice. Funds reach Tibet and Xinjiang directly from Beijing and are then distributed "as needed" by the central authorities in Lhasa and Urumqi. No one needs to go into the corruption that hampers China's development as a modern nation. Now imagine that corruption in an area where domination and oppression of "troublesome" minorities is encouraged.

So in both Tibet and Xinjiang we have the following situation:

a leaderless, highly religious people ruled by a centralized, motivated non-religious people. The rulers have the economic and political power. The ruled find themselves with the choice: become Han in nature or die.

It is a soul crushing battle -- like between a boa and a small deer. Aimless dead-eyed young men watch their women choose stability and wealth over ethnicity and religion, watch their friends turn their backs on Uigher-ness in favor of a good job in some factory, watch their fathers retreat into the back room to pray and wait for death.

That is why they take to the streets, because making a Han face bleed, even for a moment and at great consequence, makes up for everything.

If you can feel the hate for the Han, then step back from this narrow view of life and feel the hatred and anguish of all the other peoples of the world that have faced this same dilemma and have already died, already forgotten their language, already retreated to the most remote outposts of what was once their home to slowly go through the motions.

When i traveled through Xinjiang I noticed that if the Han did not fear the Uigher as much, did not dread "splittists" as much as they do, there wouldn't be any.

It is the need to dominate that creates these conflicts, not the need to be Uigher, or be Black or be Palestinian.

What it is

2009-07-06T12:15:00.004-07:00

Drinking my favorite Honey Dew tea in the dungeon thinking about home births and bike rides. yesterday i biked aimlessly and ended up near Powell Butte. The path seems to lead straight to snow capped mount hood .. i waved and stared until the sky turned that shade of purple streaked with fading white and light blue that heralds the death of another day and the onset of a starry night. Portland is indeed a very beautiful city. right by the entrance to the butte I saw a small group of goats chewing on stuff. Three horses swished their tails nearby and rabbits chased each other in the tall grass. a tiny salamander wiggled its way cautiously across the bike path toward me. It held real still as i crouched a few feet away and we both listened to the birds calling each other out to dinner ... or whatever birds call that last meal before the sun sets and cats come out to play.

In the back yard the fading scent of raccoon keeps libberz the akita-sheperd pacing back and forth. She licks her chops and tried to look bored, but she places herself right between the cherry tree and the doug fir in the back yard. thats where the weak link is for tree-climbing rodents. The branches of the two trees reach toward each other but there is a good ten foot gap for libberz to exploit when squirrels try and make the dangerous run from conifer to berry.

One of these days, i'll be sitting out in the backyard pretending not to be eyeing up a squirrel and when he makes the dash, me and libberz will sprint to the base of the cherry tree and catch the little bastard just before he makes it. We'll get his ass.

its time to go camping again with someone who knows when to keep quiet so i can sit somewhere and spread all my senses out and try and melt into the forest never to return as a human, but as a wolf slowly unremembering days on two feet.

US Soldiers Dissenting

2009-07-02T00:34:00.001-07:00

Read this and tell me what ya think about US soldiers and President "I'ma bring 'em home ya'll" Obama.

Tea Tasting last Sunday

2009-07-01T22:58:00.006-07:00

Last Sunday I invited a group of friends over to Paul Rosenberg's tea temple for a tasting. Paul runs Sacred Teas, a service for those who want to learn more about tea, its properties and how to appreciate the brew for all of the good things it can bring you.

In attendance were John and Louisa, Qusai and Roopa, Nicole and Emily, Bonnie and her daughter Donna and Willow.

We drank the following teas, in order:

Qing Cheng Bitter:
A tea that actually comes from the leaves of trees that grow wild on Qing Cheng Mountain. Qing Cheng Mountain is a Daoist refuge and for some the birthplace of Daoism. It is a very beautiful and magical place set in the Qingling Mountain Range, alongside the Min River. a very strong bitter taste with an even stronger sweet and smoky aftertaste. good for digestion!

Mengding Maofeng:
A classic green from Mengding Mountain in the Longmen Mountain Range not far from Ya'An. Tea has been in cultivation here for more than 2000 years.

Mengding Gan Lu:
A very high quality green tea from the same mountain (and grower)

Osmanthus oolong:
A very tasty Tie Guan Yin oolong infused with osmanthus flowers, from Fujian.

Da Hong Pao:
a very smoky, earthy Wuyi oolong also from Fujian. The quality and duration of this tea was especially surprising.

Aged Tie Guan Yin:
a treat to drink and pour. a 1991 oolong aged to perfection ... a very complex tea with different shades of earth and water and fire depending on brewing method and most likely also pot material. I used glass for all of these teas.

Mengding Huang Ya:
another feat of craftsmanship. This is a rare yellow tea made from an old Tang Dynasty recipe. This tea was "tribute tea" to the Emperor from the Tang to the Late Qing Dynasty.

Wellforth Rose:
Still the belle of the ball. A delightfully aromatic, sweet and somehow refreshingly cool rose hip tea from Gansu Province. A winner.

I had a great time and really understand the amount of energy and mental strength it takes to do a good pouring. It might seem far-fetched, but each of these teas demands respect and adoration -- its very palpable and if you ignore it, they will taste it.

Mad Love!

Politics and asteroids

2009-07-01T12:20:00.002-07:00

Yesterday i was talking with a geology student and she said her last big paper was about an asteroid that is scheduled to hit the earth in 2012. I was like, girl, you sure you haven't been youtubing or something?

and she said the information is only really available in universities and on lexisnexis and the media (and google) are actually very poor sources of information. good argument. so i was intrigued and decided to keep looking. All i can do for now is look at wak media sites and such, but I found nothing. Nothing about 2012 and asteroids except this dubious site right here which is a mish-mash of "we all gonna DIE" ish.

The i found this site, NASA's Near Earth Object Program and the most dangerous 'roid they have on there merits a 1 on the Torino Risk scale (if you look through the site, its easy to understand the basics) and a 1 does basically nothing. No talk about a bad-ass rock coming to get us.

The closest I could get were these two sites, one about a Japanese experiment with collisions and Stephen Hawkings telling us the obvious ...

The circumstantial social and cultural evidence is there. We as a species have some serious angst and it is evident in our literature, film and politics. But is this enough to sign up with that dubious site above and become a member of the Quack Brigade?

No not yet. I would have to see some science and numbers (like this girl was telling me she had yesterday) before I would change anything. And would I really change anything? her deal (the girl from yesterday) is that the media and the government would rather stab themselves in a soft sensitive area then let any of us plebes know that something is going down. I agree. But an asteroid collision in 2012? That might be hard to hide. Unless of course all those who spoke about it were Quacks, then most people would react just like i did.

Anwayz, in related news, ignorance reigns as usual in the White House, no matter who we got in there, as Iran spins along divided on what the REAL ISLAM is and Obama and Congress try hard to figure out what exactly is going on and how to react to it.

Again, i suggested to all and sundry to read Reza Aslan's book "No god but God" in order to get a little knowledge about Islam's origins and trajectory as a world religion.

Obama ain't peeping this site, though he should.

And even more related news, I am blogging periodically for this site here, "Who will win the 2012 election" (Coincidence? I think not.) Feel free to drop by and take a look. Its just a lil baby blog right now, though it looks good, but i expect it to be more robust in the coming months.

Holla.

What sammy said last night

2009-06-27T13:21:00.004-07:00

I need to record this fool, kinda like my Native-Black-Polack-Commie homeboy Charlie.

Last night Sammy came back from the mini mart and said:

"dude, mini-marts are like bugzappers for lunatics. And in our neighborhood, there be lotsa lunatics."

its true. If you hang out all day at the minimarts you'll see people surviving/thriving offa deep fried garbage and snacks. In fact, i am guilty. i am a lunatic. i get zapped. i be eatin $1.49 packs of tortillas with the eggs i steal from Nicole's chicken coop. but recently i have been bleesed cuz Nikki and Sammy decided to bury the hatchet with quiche and salad. two days in a row. so now i eat good. if they keep fighting and making up, i'll keep moderating and fillin my belly.

I like that "feelin it" style

2009-06-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

thats what my boy grant said to me a long time ago while we were in his dj dungeon listening to a little known dj named Fresh who was juggling some funk. man i started gettin up and groovin. at the time (and even now) djs were into that technically ridiculous style.

but i've always loved that feelin it style

and i am feelin portland these days. i been out and about the past few days checkin out sites for the tea house and doing other things and i have seen a lot of beautiful women, which is nice, and a lot of friendly peeps, which is also nice. but there are also a whole legion of bums ranging from drunk crackers to tattooed outcasts to colorful crazy women to the black and indian nation. i give smokes when i got em, flash coins if they jinglin and i always stop and bullshit for a while to let me and them know we're all still human.

its as much as i can do. preaching all of this "one love" here in the blog i have to pull it into my lifestyle or all goes wrong.

as for the tea biz, the "first transport is away" as geeks would say. The loan application is in and i now await word from the duplicitous stingy bankers who once threw cash around (when rates were high) but now say its too tough (cuz rates is low) and that is basically how it is done. Wish me luck, all 6 of you cats out there who read this.

feelin it
yeahyeah
feelin it
in the mornin when libberz comes to wake me up
feelin it
in the noontime with a smoke and a cup
still feelin it
i got my music wherever i go
i keep feelin it
no matter how low it gets
how dark it gets
its so easy to keep
feelin it
yeahyeah
feelin it
i betchu ya'll feel it too
cuz i be feelin it

Tea with Amy

2009-06-21T10:12:00.003-07:00

My senses
jostle for pole position in my brain
various species of dew
brimstone, lilacs and porcelain
i look up at a sunny Portland sky
and it smells like rain
i envy my senses
as they compete in vain
then i close my eyes
and see everything

Two books that I urge you to read:

2009-06-15T17:22:00.003-07:00

The first deals with Islam

No god but God, the origins, evolution and future of Islam

This book (FINALLY) traces the roots of Islam back to the socialist hippy rebel Muhammad and his community of passionate young revolutionaries. All prophets are socialist rebels ... have you noticed? and their message eventually falls prey to the wealthy, nervous, manipulative men of their time and becomes oppressive, exclusive, aggressive and, ultimately, corrupted.

Take heed.

The next book is:

Sex, economy, freedom and community

This book (FINALLY) traces the roots of the global economy and calls for a healthy return to local and regional economic ties that destroy less and enrich more through webs of community, rather than invisible logistics chains in which locals play a two-bit part as cog.

Take heed.

Summer in Portland

2009-06-12T09:49:00.005-07:00

is almost perfect. its not too hot and when it does get hot the rains come politely like butlers in the morning to dress up the day in dew making sure i dont know it even happened till i stretch yawn put my slippers on and walk out. a faint whiff of brimstone and stains on the concrete.

I took a trip north from Chengdu to a place called Wudu, in Gansu, with my friend and mentor Ivan. He's an engineer specializing in roads and highways and bridges and tunnels. He keeps quite busy in China. Below is a map of the area. We drove north from Chengdu to a place called Guangyuan (the birthplace of Wu Zi Tian the only Chinese Empress and also the site of Jian Men Guan -- the Sword Gate -- for years the fortress that protected Shu/Sichuan from northern invaders).

From there we headed deep into the wild mountains that blur the borders between Sichuan, Shanxi and Gansu Provinces. This region of brown dirt waterfalls and soaring cliffs is also the rocky heartbeat of the west. When properly connected, development in the western half of China can proceed as envisioned. We stayed one night between Guangyuan and Wudu in a small town called Luo Shui, I believe. I find it hard to believe that this town is real. Rock rises up on all sides and constricts the town into one or two lanes. They seemed nonchalant about our presence and one woman said they had a foreigner here for three months. Engineer. or maybe an oil guy.

In the morning kids straggled into school in ones, twos and threes. The girls held hands.

So remote yet so full of the smell of man.

It is also the area hit hardest by the earthquake ... a strip of mountain ranges that ebb out of Tibet like rings, straddling the boundaries between Han China and Tibetan China ...

there is not one inch of this road that is not under construction. we passed through tight gorges with tent cities nestled in the folds above the river. men and machines hauled stone and silt and sand from the river bed up to the road to pave another section, raise another column, wall in another home.

We headed back on a different route, along the outskirts of Aba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and the valley of Jiu Zhai Gou. We passed through the county seat and saw the plunder that pours out of the tourists pockets. The seat is as glorious as Beijing's Tiananmen .. government buildings rise up proudly. Hotels serene next to a snowy peak. Lights flashing in calm acceptance of their own irresistible power. Down the road, where the valley actually dives into the range, where azure lakes blush and fade like young girls in different seasons of love, Tibetans smile and wave and cook yak meat over yak shit coals in adobe houses. Some don't smile anymore.

In the brothels of Chengdu, pimps boast Aba girls ...

In the wilds of China, doozers cause muddy traffic jams deep into the night.

The Hand of Death is no match for a Sweaty Human

2009-06-11T12:49:00.003-07:00

So when yer friend is wallowing in the dark night of his/her soul, at 2am, hating him/herself, wondering if there is any meaning whatsoever, then suggest a healthy sweat.

God loves sweat. really. he loves funky humans. When we sweat, God sweats, Creation sweats and the whole universe sweats with us. When the Hand of Death rests upon a shoulder and says: its all bad. you aint shit. give it up. then you are hating self, hating God, hating Creation, Hating the Universe.

The devil's entire plot is to get us to hate ourselves and create a dualistic, walled-off, remote connection between Man and God. That's the whole schtick. He's a hater. he's trying to drive a wedge twixt the Universe and Man. hatin ass hater.

So sweat. Let God and the whole glittering thing know you got love for em and at the same time enjoy the sweet feeling of kickin the devil to the curb.

Chillin at the Shiraz in Shanghai

2009-06-11T12:41:00.001-07:00

My Persian homie Amir took me and Said to Ali Baba's spot in Shanghai. Ali Baba is a true Perisan Pimp and he got us faded offa his homemade brew, fed us yogurt with sweet raisins and took a pic of me puffin on that yummy yummy shisha. Peep my clean dome.

Mengding Mountain Tea

2009-06-11T12:24:00.005-07:00

I took a trip last month while i was in china to my main homegirl's tea spot. here are some pics:

From Left to Right: Guan Da Ge, Xiao Bai, Chen Shui Yuan and Chen's employees. Xiao Bai run's the plant, Chen is my logistics, tea ware and oolong guy and Guan is my right hand man.

Sniffin tea.

Chengdu Tea Feature

2009-06-09T12:58:00.002-07:00

This is a feature I wrote about tea in Chengdu for the SCMP.

A long hiatus makes for a rambling post

2009-05-23T23:36:00.003-07:00

So i will begin with an introduction:

hi, this has been inaccessible for me for some time, but now i have hotpost shield so its all good (addendum: not all good). I am still in Chengdu and fly out of here on the 30th to Shanghai and then back to SFO for a while.

Now straight to the business. this blog is vital to me and my spiritual and mental well being. it has replaced pen and paper as my muse and medium and dumping grounds for all that i see and hear and think every day. so i have a bout 10 days of thoughts locked up in my domicile and they are starting to cause a ruckus. breaking shit. throwin chairs and bottles.

(This is a continuation of a post that got lost in the ether due to Chinese censors. Fuck a censor)

So I am backtracking through my brain to get to a spot that will result in its own post/story so I might as well start from just a few minutes ago:

Sat and watched a couple of guys play chess and I learned three new openings. First move, push the right side inner pawn. Next move, bring the cannon to the center. Third move, push the right side horse up. Fourth move, bring the left side cannon right up next to the center cannon. Last move, bring the left side horse to the left side. Then, put your tank into play. right side tank.

The key to that opening is to push the pawn first and bring the cannons together.

This morning, i talked with my man in Chiang Mai and he told me about a kiwi porn star he met that had gotten into a car accident and scarred her face up so bad, now she has other things to do besides freak on film for cash money. The reality of her face laid him down flat and he woke up on the floor in the morning wondering wondering.

this morning i slept in cuz I haven't been sleeping well so I "watched" the nuggets play the lakers on espn play by play. fell back asleep. the nuggets were up when i fell asleep, but then i dreamt that they lost 103-97. check the score. That type of ether-knowledge seeping into my brain as i lightly sleep used to be remarkable.

then i sent bean the last 20 pages of this book i am working on called 8 years in china. i want it to be a collection of blogs, antiwar.com essays, my thoughts AND words and pics from my peoples. i think its doable .. to have like a really rounded out picture of what the hell i was doing out there. big project, when you think about ALL of the possible content. anyway, there is one passage where i describe my first impressions of her -- we met in a weird way. that, of course, was all she saw and it pissed her off. she cant see yet that a story, just like a relationship, DEVELOPS over time and towards the end attempts to RESOLVE certain things. and plus i am leaving in a week so its getting to crunch time. my funk is all up in her apartment -- i smell really strong for those of you who dont know -- and this ... well ... its a girl-boy thing man.

Last night i aint got nuthin to say cuz i was just staring at a computer.

Day before, well the night before i went to the panda club and inhaled the old dirty du scene., aint nuthin changed for real. same bitches same foolz same homies on the decks providing good tunes and train wrecks to remind me that this is a shadow world.

day before that i was in Qingcheng with my tea people checking out this yummy bittersweet local tea and a locally produced jiaogulan ... very good teas and the man in charge, peng qi, is a good man and i think we can def. work together. my long time tea homie chen shui yuan told me of his dreams and let me play with his silly lil 4 year old daughter. he also brought his father in law with him and i was reminded that a lot of east coast older men are quite elegant and composed.

before that i was in qingcheng again and that trip deserves its own post with pics and thoughts.

stay tuned.

mad love

Three Mountain Teas

2009-05-05T21:33:00.002-07:00

I went to Mengding Mountain yesterday and took a LONG trek to find my Honey Dew Green supplier Bai Ting Ting (Xiao Bai) just so I could be there again. It a beautiful spot. Tea bushes as far as the eye can see and as clear a sky as the Sichuan fog allows.

Its real country out here. Peasants scream up and down the no-lane roads in their three-wheel go carts, ducks waddle around pigs nuzzle roadside refuse a cow hides in the reeds by the river that flows down from the peak.

Xiao Bai's processing plant sits right on the river just a few feet from the old bridge. Behind her building is the local school. Dirty kids screeched in glee when i rolled up on their classroom and took eyes-closed foul shots with their flat basketball. One rowdy lil punk through a paper plane at me so i chased hm down and threw him over my shoulder. An eye-opening experience for him for sure.

I drank the local Honey Dew and some Maofeng and it was crystal clear with hints of yellowish green and the buds stood erect int he bottom of the square glass. I swished it around my mouth and felt the cleansing. I could sit there all day and compose verse for cock-eyed peasants.

Later int eh week I will visit the second mountain and my other supplier Lao Li up in Qing Cheng Mountain. I might try and get there on the 8th, the anniversary of the quake. And then, at some point, maybe after the full moon, I trek up Emei Mountain.

Qing Cheng Daoism infused Piao Xue Green, Meng Ding's hallowed Honey Dew, Emei's Buddha chant fed Zhu Ye Qing. These are the teas from Sichuan that I bringing to the states.

Charlie took pics, so I'll have them soon.

Work is the Enemy of Doubt

2009-05-01T23:08:00.003-07:00

Fortuitous fortuitous this is the word of the day.

I spent the last two days meeting my old tea suppliers Bai Ting Ting who provides me with the Honey Dew Tea that I love so much and my man Chen Su Yuan who has tea ware for sale and twin brothers Xiao Song and Da Song who are acknowledged tea gurus. Drank so much tea my bladder couldn't take it. Wore myself out taking trips to the john.

I found some amazing Qing Cheng Mountain tea that comes from the same people that rolled with Charlie in this story right here. Its a bitter tea with a very sweet aftertaste with an amazing green color like natural neon lights in a glass.

But i suppose the topic of the day should be the huge music festival going on right now here in Chengdu. It is an outdoor fest with a pretty big lineup. Goes for three days on the outskirts of the town and everybody and they mama is showing up. The fest is the kick off bash for an all-Chinese MTV channel -- so goes the rumor -- and in true MTV fashion the place is crawling with TV crews and streaks of light from huge screens onthe maiin stage. It is quite a show, I must say. I saw Brain Failure as soon as I walked in and the SJ Family (wak dudes, amazing girl) took it to town with some serious singing from their female lead.

Peep Chengdoo here for more info on that fest.

My boy Josh of Proximity Butterfly was there with his wife Heather and their child Aetheria Hope Love.

This one here is for you lil girl:

First time I saw you
You were passed out in a tent with red splotches on your face
Two young Chinese girls cute as could be
stood guard outside the tent flap.
They kept checkin to see if you were awake
Cuz they wanted to coo and coo and coo
Yer daddy said:

"She's gonna walk before she crawls ... she ain't down with crawlin."

After that me and yer dad sang the blues, the funk, the soul, the lament of love and cracked pitchers of beer together under the lights of Chengdu's biggest outdoor fest.

When you woke up, girls materialized out of the muck of the field
and gathered round you,
fingering your curls and fat cheeks and looking deep deep deep into
your mama's blue eyes.

I told you what i thought about the whole thing,
but you had Shrek-like earplugs in yer ears.

So instead I talked about Giving Voice to Others
And Daniel Boorstin with yer dad.

Love ya.

The Du

2009-04-29T08:18:00.002-07:00

MM-MM something about the Du makes me feel all homey. its easy as pie out here. the sky looks like dishwater and i aint seen the sun yet but instead i got down on some Pickled Pepper Beef and some of the tastiest gong pao chick en this fool has ever scarfed down. Got with my man rippey and smoked two and then geeked out with charlie talkin bout Warcraft.

Did you know that the world video game olympiad will be held in Chengdu this november?

Chinese girls are silly

2009-04-28T20:57:00.002-07:00

My man told me earlier i the week that he would never marry a Chinese girl, even though he has been here for several years and chases them down like the bunnies they are.

I remember thinking the same thing for a while, but it only hit home when .. i went home (or Portland). After chilling with american girls, i realized that here in China we purposely slim our brains down, chop our personalities in half and become lesser men in the pursuit of sex. its like going back to high school with these girls. I guess i always knew that, but it never seemed so blatant and front and center.

It also has a lot to do with who I am hanging out with. My man Zhuang once told me that all of the good girls (good being intelligent, charismatic, ambitious, cool, etc) would never date a foreigner.

So i see a vicious cycle here and if you enjoy lotsa random sex with no commitments, then china is heaven. but i have been infected by the brains of Lacey and Mika and Nico and Susan and so on and now i can't have this. I get really fed up with the bullshit these chinese girls (well my man's girls here in Shanghai) try to pull.

I find it moronic and repulsive. And i am most angry not at what they do, but at what I made myself do and become while I was here. Its a sick mindset. Beanmilk helped me turn the tide of shallowness while i was in the Du. I suppose we met because it was her job to prepare me for the Return to the US and my job to help her defend herself against the silly behavior of SOME Chinese girls.

But its not the girls, like i said, that make the cycle. Its the combination of silly, but innocent and hopeful young girls & opportunistic and jaded hopeful young men.

Heartbreak is rampant.

I have a reputation to uphold, but I think i'll be doing it with my words rather than my penis.

Shanghai

2009-04-28T00:58:00.003-07:00

I miss the quiet of my dungeon and the wind through Oregon's trees. Its sunny here and i am about to be in the Du with all my friends again and its gonna be hard to leave. I am trying to stay for one month but i can feel the pull of oblivion on the road. Its going to be hard not to just disappear again. but i won't. don't worry nico ...

i love shanghai, the city usually treats me very well, but i am reminded every time I come here why i could never live here. my best times here are either drunken madness or yapping with old shanghainese ... i love making old people laugh here. they don't really get my Sichuan hua ... and the cabbies aren't pimps like in the Du ... so many damn buildings.

I am reading Wendell Berry's book, Sex, Economy, Community and Freedom. i highly recommend this book. It is right up our US alley (me and the Tribe) and it informs my summer project that I am doing with ole Lace-dawg.

Go out and get it. (mad love to Jen for the hook-up)

Back in China

2009-04-27T01:59:00.004-07:00

Shanghai is a sea of skyscrapers as far as my eye can see. There are pockets of two-story blocks of old school homes with laundry hanging from lines strung between houses. The glow of the sun is like that of a streetlamp through fog. When i see the orange orb in the sky it looks as if its shining through the aftermath of the apocalypse.

Two or three days chillin with Ferchak, Mario and Amir then I am off to the Dirty Du, my third home.

Vision of a Man

2009-04-23T14:59:00.004-07:00

I wish i had a better keyboard cuz there is something i need to work out and for me keyboards are ... key.

I notice a lot of bad ass women out there. women who have been in the trenches of love in their twenties, been hurt, been disregarded, been underestimated. In response, i find a lot of women taking their lives out of the hands of "their men" and going it alone. How many women resign themselves to raising a child alone?

its become almost acceptable to have baby-mamas all over the place with absent fathers. There is nothing good about this. I saw a quote from Mother Teresa, concerning abortion, that applies here i think:

"It is a sin that a child must die in order for you to live as you please."

I am not thinking about abortion and death in literal terms, but an absent father and therefore the absence of a vision of manhood for legions of kids. This is the death of something.

I made mistakes as a kid and i wish i knew then what i know now. All i can say is that i have learned and if i ever father a child that woman will be my wife. Got no choice.

I am going to have to come back to this topic later in the day.

**********************************************************************,

I am in the Bay chillin with my boy 10z, the weather is magnificent and I am headed to China in three days to buy tea and chill with my China peoples.

Happy Easter ya'll

2009-04-12T00:34:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all my peeps who commented on that digital vagabond proposal.

Here is a piece I wrote about the Mexican War on Drugs about a month ago. Never got published, so I figure I'll drop it right here:

Crystal meth used to be a homegrown, domestically manufactured good ole American drug until the War on Drugs shut it all down and sent the business packing. Now 80% of the meth in the US comes from organized, ruthless Mexican cartels. Meth, one of the nastiest drugs out there, is a globalized product just like any other these days and it is part of the scourge of drug-related violence and corruption that is bringing the Mexican government to its knees.

For years the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ran Mexico and worked together with Colombian cocaine manufacturers and Mexican smuggler to make a killing off of the American addict and “recreationary user”. The PRI and the Colombians lost power in the 1990s and a collection of Mexican cartels has arisen to take their place and deal with the government of the day, President Felipe Calderon’s muscular pro-American administration. Calderon took office in January of 2007 and vowed to root out and destroy the cartels and the corrupt police and government officials that help them rule entire provinces.

His efforts – the mobilization of more than 25,000 Federal troops – has led to thousands of deaths, wars between rival cartels over shrinking territory, attacks on police officials and civilians and widespread intimidation, kidnapping and extortion as the crime bosses fight to maintain control over their billion dollar empires.

The cartels export marijuana, heroine and cocaine as well as meth. They have also branched out into an array of cover industries including shipping, finance and people smuggling. Another lucrative business that helps to fuel the violence is the cross-border trade in guns and ammunition. US authorities estimate that 90% of the weapons confiscated from drug cartels originate in the US. More than 2000 legal gun dealerships have set up shop in the border states of California, Arizona and Texas to take supply the demand.

A vast web of cash, drugs and weapons is strangling Mexico’s economy and making fools out of its leaders even as the current economic crisis forces immigrants (legal and otherwise) to re-consider making a run to the US. General labor jobs, especially in the construction sector, are dwindling and Mexicans who normally rely on the US to pay the bills are looking elsewhere. Some of them become mules for the cartels and others take up jobs as “straw buyers” of weapons and equipment in the US for the cartels to use in their wars against each other and the government.

The situation is exacerbated by brazen corruption in Mexico and not-so-brazen corruption in the US. US Border Patrol agents have been indicted on smuggling and protection charges for the cartels and thousands of Mexican police officers and soldiers defect each year to the cartels. The drug kingpins pay better and the chances of getting killed by police are much lower than getting popped by drug militias like Los Zetas, the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel made up largely of ex-special forces personnel.

Mexico has endured almost 10,000 confirmed drug-related deaths since December 2006 including at least 500 government officials and prosecutors. The crisis is at the center of debates over who should lead the nation come lections later this year. The PRI is advocating a mixed bag of solutions that aim to rub out the problem at its source: demand. Calderon hopes to receive the mandate of the people to continue his war on the cartels and kill them by focusing on supply networks.

Calderon has extradited several big time capos to the US for trial – most notably Gulf Cartel boss Oziel Cardenas – but the arrests have only led to more intense conflict as lower echelon bosses fight for the top spot and targeted cartels, like the shattered Tijuana cartel, make alliances with former enemies and fight up and coming cartels just to stay alive. Calderon also purged almost 300 police and government officials in 2007. His replacement have fared no better. Some are dead, others have gone corrupt and the few remaining find themselves hamstrung by depleted and/or fearful manpower, public mistrust and ruthless well-armed cartels. It’s a bad situation.

Drug cartels control at least seven of Mexico’s 31 states and they routinely reach into the US, neighboring Central American states like Guatemala and as far south as Colombia and Peru. There is also a proven link between the Italian Mafia and the Mexican cartels. US authorities believe they are dealing with one of the most powerful drug organizations ever.

The true power behind the cartels is, of course, American demand. The Government Accountability Office and the National Drug Intelligence Center have estimated that Mexico's cartels earn upwards of $23 billion in illicit drug proceeds from the United States. In response to Mexican pressure and insistence that this is a “shared problem,” the US Congress devised the Merida Initiative, which proved $1.6billion in technical advice and equipment to Mexico and Guatemala to help fight the War on Drugs. A huge chunk of the money will actually stay in the US and goes into the hands of US defense contractors providing the equipment and training. No cash or weapons will actually flow from the US government into the hands of the Mexican or Guatemalan authorities. The Initiative also makes Mexico accountable for human rights abuses by police, judges and military personnel during the execution of the War on Drugs.

In defiance of a Rand study published during the Clinton years that advocated more money for abusers and less for soldiers, not one cent of the money goes to prevention or treatment of drug abuse in the US.

The rise of the Mexican cartels is just the next phase of the War that began with Panama and Colombia, reverberated through the streets of all major American cities and is now killing Mexico and reaching into small town USA. The needs of the sick and/or bored American leads to deaths across the Americas as vicious groups of businessmen try to fill that need. A possible solution, touted by groups in the US as well as Mexico, is legalization of some drugs and localization of their production.

Americans could also consider leaving the powders alone and sticking to home-grown marijuana and mushrooms. Responsibility for the waves of bloody conflict that have paralyzed the Americas and enriched corrupt politicians and law enforcement officials and destroyed poor (and not so poor) communities lies with us as much as it does with US Border Control and Mexican Federales. Kick coke and meth to the curb and smoke a local pipeful. It will be the least you can do and you might save a life or three.

Reconciliation

2009-04-11T17:14:00.003-07:00

So let me try and explain whats going on here:

My main woman Nicole went through several years of servitude and now, finally, the work she has wanted all her life has fallen like manna from the sky. She wants to be a freelance journalist on the move and that's what is happening to her. I saw what she was like as a slave, what it was like when those bastards let her go and her frantic weeks looking for a master to replace Fox News. Finally, she gave up and let Fate do what it will. And then manna began to fall.

So this inspired me. Because I am happiest on the road.

BUT, i am also aware that me and my Tribe are trying to build something and me traipsing off into the dusk might not help. I might not pull my share if i do take off for the summer writing about small town America ...

The tea business is more complicated then I imagined and I am coming up against both wisdom and obstacles. I am learning a lot. Basically it looks as if this type of thing cannot be rushed and my impatience to have a tea house by this summer might end up hurting me. My pops and a few other wise men cautioned me to write. Make some cash. Spend a year in the US. And work long and hard on a business plan. Then see if the tea house is what it is. This is wisdom.

I want them both ya'll. I want to write books AND have a tea house. And i am stuck in a limbo of waiting for one to facilitate the other.

So what i do is this: i apply for a scholarship (see Post below) and attend a seminar on Quickbooks and basic accounting principles. I pursue both and let Fate do what it will.

The pen is probably what I do best and the irony might be that me running off to write will be the greatest contribution I could ever give my Tribe. Cuz this is what drives me more than anything. Even if you can't see it, that's what motivates me to get up and do what i do. cuz i feel a duty to do so. If i didn't have tribe i'd probably be in a field staring at the sun waiting to get old.

So if it seems like madness dont worry, its just the madness of my method.

CALLING OUT TO ALL MY PEOPLE

2009-04-10T21:20:00.002-07:00

You know i don't ask much of you all, but i need anyone who peeps this blog to go here:

Chachie's Proposal!

read my proposal and drop yer words on it.

Mad love.

If Babylon falls in my lifetime

2009-04-10T11:53:00.004-07:00

Nicole be twitterin with Questlove these days cuz he is in P-town freezin his ass off ... i mean it aint that cold up here but for him ... used to the sun and all ...

Is the Apocalypse nigh? I met a dude in Eugene who saw 7 of the 13? crystal skulls and he and his believe deeply in the beam of light that will strike the earth in December 2012 and carry some of us away, leaving others to fend for themselves in a soulless apparition world wailing under the yoke of being "not good enough to ascend."

I feel a constricting going on. Like we're being squeezed together by galactic arms. Twitter and Facebook are the farts emitted when we get pressed nose to nose ... so if the Apocalypse is nigh, is it proceeded by a consolidation of the human race down to a single? point in space/time so when the beam hits, everyone knows, from those guys who ran from the tsunami on the Andaman Islands to a yak jerky chompin nomad to a been drunk old Russian stumblin outta his pub to a fat German woman gettin her hair cut shorter than usual to a French waif-princess with delicate features and a penchant for wild romances with the wrong man ... to Spanish Fascists sipping wine in plazas down to Moroccan sages sipping mint tea and puffin shisha in the afternoon shade through the core life force blackness of Africa where our collective heart thumps.

I don't know what will happen when the beam penetrates the broad leaves of the Congo jungle and hits a walking soul between his eyes.

I'd like to be on Twitter with that fool so when it goes down maybe he can squeeze out a few lines to warn the rest of us here in the New World about what the answers to the test might be ... noone wants to be the fool held back while his crew keeps on to the next grade. The kid who failed is forgotten unless children needs be warned bout what not to do. Then that guy gets pulled out like a Brother's Grimm tale of woe.

I am mentally ready, but my soul ... although not dogshit ... aint ready to be with God. I have been close enough reaching my fingers through the sheeting that protects my unsound mind from the realm of God and I stood right there at the precipice of the whirlpool whose galactic arms are squeezing, twisting, melting and coming for us all. I stood there and pulled my self away like waking from a bad dream ... it oozed away from me and i got it on my mind as I plot on shady deals and tea houses.

What if my family aint my Tribe and I have to walk away from them when the beam hits? Is that possible?

What if my Tribe aint my family and they have to walk away from me when the beam hits?

And if the beam does not hit. then the decision we have collectively -- and i mean my Tribe here -- made will have to sustain us. I mean, wouldn't it be too much for this generation of humanity to WILL instant gratification upon the entire planet via a beam of light prophesied by crystal skulls? It just sounds like something we would want to have happen because the alternative:

struggling through Babylon and building a temple of light from out the muck

just aint quick enough.

I come to the same conclusions daily. If Babylon falls within my lifetime, I am holding hands with everyone I won't walk away from anyone. And i'll do the same if it don't. If you know me on a personal basis, test these words daily.

I gotta go and hustle in the shade and build a house for my teas. Holla at me when the beam hits.

the Cali sun

2009-04-01T15:01:00.004-07:00

is hard to locate not because the clouds are there, but because they're absent.

I haven't seen a sky like this one in I don't even know when. Ate a power breakfast of Inca berries, Goji berries, chicken broth infused brown rice, pineapples and bananas and a huge dollop of yogurt.

Did Big Scott's pushup exercise and found a new appreciation for the toad.

I know why women trip

2009-04-01T02:04:00.000-07:00

Motherhood.

Its motherhood ya'll. Before being a mother, girls trip on the intense biological forces that take over all thought and emotion and drive girls to be moms, or at the very least create the conditions under which momhood can best be realized (house, man, dog, fence). Fellaz: consider the intense drive we have to chase down all women and impregnate them and then run off skipping into the woods. We're just built that way right? So.

Have you ever seen a mom at the grocery store, airport, coffee house on the damn bus? Dude. Being a mother drives women insane. How many times has yer mom stayed up all night waiting for you? How many times does she call and be like: You're dead aren't you? (Thanks Anna) Ya know. Moms freak the fuck out several times daily AND cook, clean, do the laundry, deal with pops, make appointments, drive here and there and and and ... insanity is the only logical result.

Then. Oh Lord then then then just as the kids are all gone and pops starts getting fat and can't get it up anymore, motherhood leaves forever. Just like that. The angel/demon on the back of all women is gone forever and leaves ... (i need more work in the lab to know what exactly is left behind) but I do know that cougars and rose tea and flower arrangements and a Cause are the stars revolving around the black hole ever closer ever faster around the hole left behind by motherhood.

Why I don't write for Antiwar.com anymore

2009-03-29T17:03:00.002-07:00

I wrote about China for Antiwar.com for about 8 years. If you check the columns out, you'll see I wrote in spurts. There was often a month or more between any one column. It was basically geopolitical stuff but it also served as my forum for the things that inspired, infuriated or interested me about China. I have some great memories:

The Chinese Beats column that got translated all over. The Beautiful Morning for a War column that poured out of me in twenty minutes. The WTO protests columns, the last one inspired by a few days in jail with the other protesters. And some duds, like the Revering the Big Men column that (I stand by still to this day) incurred a LOT of hate mail.

We parted ways for a couple of reasons. I stopped being interested in political columns. I evolved from my earlier columns and became a more nuanced observer. I moved away from journalism period ... Antiwar.com became much more stringent about keeping their content libertarian in nature. I am not a full fledged libertarian and i tend to be all over the map in terms of ideology. Because I came to believe that situations determine ideology and policy. We basically grew apart.

The only thing I regret about not writing for them anymore are the few readers out there (like the brother who commented on the previous post) that wonder why I left. And who consistently urge me to take it up again and make it my career. I can't really find words for how much readers' comments mean to me. I live and die by the interaction that a column or a blog can generate.

If any of you brothers and sisters can make the switch from Antiwar.com to this blog, that would truly be ideal. This is a much more interactive platform and the content here ranges from bawdy tales to acid trips to comments on current affairs. It suits my brain a lot better than a weekly (or monthly) column constrained to a certain theme and ideology. I guess I am growing as a writer and want to experiment with a variety of styles and ideas. I hope you all can find time during your days to holler at me about things that are on your minds, because it inspires me to respond and think deeper.

Ask me about China. Or Portland. Or acid. Or tea. I promise I'll get back to you here at Chachin Aint Easy.

throw a stone or move

2009-03-20T22:59:00.002-07:00

Sigh. How many times do we read something like this over coffee/tea in the mornring, imagine charging or throwing a stone at a rich man's house and then ... just go about doin yer thang?

The Sack of Long Beach

2009-03-17T13:29:00.003-07:00

I am working on this chapter right now and i am finding it quite difficult. i want to convey the deep desire of the pirates to be acknowledged for their adventures while at the same time showing them to be the pillaging bastards that they really are. basically, they wanted to be loved, when they found that the people of Long Beach didn't really give a fuck and were more interested in the sunset, the drinks, the flirtations with sunnyside dudes who preach to high heaven about their 10 day meditation retreat, etc, anger and resentment forced these guys into a liquor and debauch frenzy that was ... basically the catharsis of warriors after battle returned home to a peaceful and blissfully unaware homeland.

So it was a sack that could have been prevented. Like Nanjing. Some people say the Japanese went berserk because the Chinese army defended Shanghai for two months and that infuriated the arrogant "liberators" so they took it out on the capital. It is interesting to note that Chiang Kai Shek supposedly sacrificed his army in order to convince the Allies that the Chinese were capable of fighting the Japanese, thereby garnering support, cash and Gen. Stillwell. Or the sack of Constantinople when the Crusaders arrived and realized they did not have their shit together for an assault on the Holy Land and so they took it out on their "hosts" the Byzantines who were rich, decadent and standing in opposition to the Roman Pope. The Byzantines asked the Crusaders to help with those dastardly Turks, and ended up getting raped and pillaged by their "saviors."

So i am trying to get the mindset of the pillager down. How does one go from wanting to be loved by a group of people to wanting to destroy them? Its a feeling of inferiority in a way, that makes the pillager resort to pillaging. It i also interesting to realize that the Japanese must have felt conflicted about destroying China because China was once the beacon of light for an island of semi-civilized immigrants. How must it have felt for the student to look upon a fallen master, groveling and weak before hairy barbarians? It drove them to destroy. To wipe out their own shame.

And writing that is kinda painful. Cuz i was one of the pirates.

watch out now

2009-03-16T01:25:00.002-07:00

funny funny, i talk about the beatnuts, pop open Itunes and

my song's on.

howz that yo?
its hard for you to swalla
whatcha gonna do?

you was in jail wearin kneepads ...

cuz for real

there aint nothin but crooks in here ...

watch out now.

me and the devil sluggin it out

2009-03-15T15:16:00.003-07:00

so yo, I have been dwelling daily on a tea business. I started out thinking that I was going to get a van, pimp it out Thai style and then roll around Portland dishin out love. It doesn't work like that for a variety of reasons. So then I looked at my plans and numbers and realized that my ORIGINAL idea, which was to open a shop and have a van that I could cruise around in when the opportunity presents itself, was a much wiser course of action.

So then I looked at what it would take to get a retail shop going. All of the permits, regulations and Food Handler Card tests that I found necessary for a van, also apply to a retail spot.

And also a retail requires a much more substantial investment of capital. I got rent, re-modeling, health inspections, a kitchen, inventory, tables and chairs, etc. So this began to daunt me. I started wondering: Oh Lord, what if this idea is too much for me to handle and I can't get any of this done. I am just running after a shadow dream that sounds great to the people that don't have to invest, but for me and mine, the ones who have to shoulder rent and such, its a pit that might just break me and send me running for the hills again.

So I slugged it out with the devil all weekend. He said, fool, you can't do this. My spirit rebelled and we went toe to toe. This morning, we sat down over a plate of one-eyed jacks and a cup of jasmine tea and talked it over.

he was like: sasch, my man, I don't really mean you any harm. I am just the harm within.
I was like: I feel you, devil, in more ways than colloquial speech.

And we agreed that he ain't going anywhere and I ain't either. Ain't nothing easy. he was silent while a sang a little ditty to myself, then I went down to the Space Monkey and sold two ounces of Buddha Palm Honey Dew Green tea and my peeps were like:

We are down with Buddha Palm. It helps us get through.

And that's pretty much all I needed to hear. I have a duty to do this tea thing. Just like I have a duty to write and holler at my friends and smile at pretty girls. Its just one of those things.

whats goin down

2009-03-12T12:23:00.000-07:00

this is what i'm reading and i am thankful for a bucket of blessed mobility.

because this is why i aint been writing on here recently.

Buddha Palm Teas ya'll.

I got emeralds in my cup

2009-03-09T13:16:00.003-07:00

When o when will the weather cease to drive me down into my dungeon? Its hailing outside right now. And its got that dank and dreary grey vibe that just warns ya: "if u go out, the sky can see you. and it will MAKE U PAY!"

In the News?

Phish is back. Long live the parking lot.