Quitter

Quitting Facebook is cool, but, like popping your collar or wearing a fedora, you'll probably look ridiculous to all but a select group. ~ The Huffington Post

Read a great article here that pretty much sums up my reasons to leave Facebook. Like the author, I was all the way in, until I wasn't. (I've just never been a half-assed social-media user!) Look, it's hardly earth-shattering this (first-world) decision to leave Facebook; yet, oddly in many ways, quitting Facebook is not untrivial either -- in this modern age, when you consider that 75% of all adults are on it! There's a reason why they say quitting Facebook is akin to committing social suicide; you really do feel disconnected from the perceived everyone. Even so, untangling myself from it (and what a huge IT it is: the contact of real friends and not, the dopamine hit of "likes," the chance to show off a photo or a cleverly worded thought) is nothing short of liberating. Astonishingly so. I find myself going about my day now being more focused on my projects, my thoughts, my emotions. It's like the cobwebs of distractions have been swept aside, partly exposing the raw nub of being alone, casting a faint glow of authenticity, as pretentious as that sounds. I can't explain it well -- it's like I'm my only audience now, so I gotta make it count. There's no image crafting, no need to present only the light flippant side anymore. The ugly pained side of me gets nurtured too.

A character flaw perhaps, but I'm innately wired to be extremely extreme in my likes; it's all or nothing -- I commit or withdraw totalmente. So I've had a good 6-year run on Facebook, perhaps too actively sharing photos and posting updates, never really understanding people who don't offer up anything on their page, yet check in almost daily as just about everyone does. But I'd been noticing more and more that the image I'd crafted -- more truths than lies to be sure, but still -- had become a caricature, a fun, engaging one, but a caricature nevertheless. 

I have a big personality; I've always known that. But Facebook enabled it to be magnified (and oftentimes reeling out of control), so that I found myself (and my friends' responses to me) becoming, well, predictable. The disconnect between who I was, an introvert with an extremely dark side, and what I was putting out there, this snarky fun-loving person, bothered me and even came up in conversations several times with real-life friends, giving me pause. And I haven't unpaused since, determined as I am to get to the root of my incessant need for approval and adoration, admittedly not an uncommon trait among humans, yes? 

Anyway, I've been wanting another life change for a while now (I guess the empty nest thing wasn't a big enough shakeup -- hah). I'm looking to take my writing to another level, and the idea of a social-media* fast in 2014 sounds pretty radical and appealing. Sure, there are friends whose posts I'll miss, but I'm hoping that if they're true friends, we'll connect in other ways. Change is good. Some changes are even great.

* I don't consider blogging social media, as it was around before the coining of the term, and evokes a different reaction in me, feeling qualitatively different. As such, I'm using this blog as my writing platform. No audience expected though welcomed.

The Value of Silly

It's recurrent. I'm chased by the men with no-faces past whirring masses of grey trees, their gain ever increasing until right when I'm about to be grabbed, a mere fingertip away, I wake up heaving in sweat. Or is it tears? The last time I had such a lovely nighttime vision, I managed to pull myself out of its heaviness only by Googling photos of puppies and kittens. Yes, puppies and kittens. It's cliched, but I know with a passion why sites like LOL Cats beget such devotion. They are the balm to our terrorized psyche. And there are so many terrors out there, aren't there? Little ones and bigger ones, piling like everyday dust into our psyche until they're indistinguishable, leaving us with only a vague sense of not being whole. For me, it's the Khmer Rouge. For you, it may be the inability to feel something for your wife.

The Germans have a word Weltschmerz, which broadly translates to world sensitivity or sadness or more precisely, the psychological pain caused by sadness that can occur when realizing that someone's own weaknesses are caused by the inappropriateness and cruelty of the world and (physical and social) circumstances. I prefer the broad definition, broad strokes only please, for the melancholy I'm wallowing in, no need for pinpointing. On the rare occasion I am more motivated, I disentangle the root of my restlessness and see that my inability to wholly function -- the word wholly is relevant, as I think I can fake it with the best of them -- stems from my early childhood. It's like no matter how much I pretend to be gregariously "normal" at a social function, something in the deep recesses of my psyche screams, but you're different! You made it out of Phnom Penh a mere day and a half before the men with no-faces swept in and gunned down your family and entire country. So fake it if you must, but here's the truth. And then I'm left standing there, the gregarious smile fading, covered with only figurative sweat. Or is it tears?

So yes, today I am a silly person to an extent, the silliness being my balm, my own personal LOL Cats. Perhaps these little pastimes preoccupy me to a greater extent than they should any sane adult, but as such they've been successful at keeping the heaviness at bay. Instagram? Anti-fashion fashion? Selfies that re-form my identity? Yes, yes, yes. 

The Everyday Dust of Life

So it's been a few years since I updated this blog, for a multitude of reasons, none too interesting to note. I lied; I like to note everything, so see below reasoning. And wow, in the elapsed years since my last post, everyday tech has changed so much! I mean, Instagram wasn't even around then (and seems so passé even now) and I hadn't yet discovered the (ironically annoying) convenience of the DSLR-replaceable iPhone camera! Indeed if I had foreseen how my lazy self would banish the clunky Canon DSLR from daylight forever, I'd have saved major bucks splurging on various lenses. But I digress.

So why has it taken me so long to get back? For starters, I think I fell into a serious detour with Facebook, using it as the pensieve for my "artistic" (loosely used) output. Being a creative type, I've always found it necessary (for my mental state) to relentlessly produce -- crap or not, I was seized with thoughts in various permutations (photos not the least of which) -- and FB just made it so easy to dump the excess reflexes of my musings. For a while it worked; I liked having an instant audience for -- to steal from Beauvoir's* biographer -- the "everyday dust of life." But it's an empty sort of receptacle, isn't it? A shallow feeding bowl, lacking in thoughtful sustenance, so that again and again I came up starving, creatively malnourished.

Enough. This staycation has shown me that left to my own devices, given ample blocks of time, I still have it, whatever that is. So I've returned to my memoir project, and I'll keep returning to this blog to deposit the first and last vestiges of my everyday dust. It feels good to write again.  

* I'm currently reading "Letters to Sartre" by Simone de Beauvoir and reminded again of how much I love peeking into other people's relationships through their personal letters. Almost as good as Ted Hughes' "Birthday Letters" to Sylvia Plath.

Pregnant "Barbie"

So I was strolling along the Silk Market minding my mental shopping list when lo and behold, there she was in her hot pink polyester dress, barefoot no less, with a noticeable belly bump. I breathlessly asked the seller lady (who must have thought me a retard), "Is that doll really pregnant?" (Yes, I said those exact words.)

The seller lady, sensing a freshly minted sucker, humored me by placing the Happily Family box into my hands. She pointed to the picture on the bottom corner--the one where Fake Barbie's belly was popped open and a proportionally giant spawn could be seen nestling in the crevice! "It's a girl," the seller lady helpfully pointed out. LIKE IT MATTERED. Ignoring the twitches of my decade-plus-old C-section scars, I nodded and grinned like Fake Ken must have done when he planted his seed into the fake hole, and bargained down to a price that wouldn't leave me thoroughly wanting to kill myself for doing this in the first place. And off I went with my Happily Family box.

So here are the pictures. Of course I googled "pregnant Barbie" to see if the real one ever did get knocked up. Those fucking cowards at Mattel. Yes, they did release a pregnant doll but noooo, it wasn't Barbie herself but her slightly less attractive friend Midge (Midge!), who at times could be bought in a single pack--without being a Happily Family item! What, Ken didn't have a slightly less attractive friend to be the baby daddy? The funnest part was reading the outraged reviews of some grown women on Amazon (whine, whine, whine, why couldn't pregnant Midge have come with a wedding ring?).

It was such a good day. I was happily.

giggle, giggle, tee hee!

When I get utterly bored, I make the baby breech. Yeah, I'm bitchy like that.

Foot Play and the N-Bomb

The World Cup is a big deal here in Beijing, as it is in every other world capital, I'm sure. But in Asia, the Chinese take this obsession to a funny length at times. You can see all sorts of exhibits and signs and odes to this competition, accompanied by copious photographing of people next to such exhibits and signs and odes.

I remember watching the 2006 World Cup. I was just a month away from beginning a new life south of the hemisphere, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to be exact. So I was caught up in the fever, wisely preparing myself for the worship that would surround me in my new home.

In China, the games are of course narrated in Mandarin, which can be interesting if you know anything at all about the language. There is a word here, nega (sometimes it's spelled nigga), which means "this one" or "that one" (I forget) but sounds very much like the unmentionable N-word that no one in their right mind would say these days. The thing with the nega word is that I've never heard it used all by its lonesome (I'm not sure why since in English we don't typically say, "that, that, that") but rather multiplied like cells gone awry.* Anyhow, it's rather jarring to hear the N-bomb cast about wily nilly while watching the men of Ghana play, for example. More disturbing than the vuvuzelas? You betcha.

* Ahh, mystery solved. According to the interweb, nega can be used to stall in speech when you are searching for something to say. Bet you're glad you learned this Mandarin lesson, eh? You nega nega nega whatever you.

Even Google is confused!

Slack

My motivation to blog becomes smaller and smaller. I'm not sure why; maybe the novelty of living overseas and being a stranger has worn off. Or maybe it's because I'm surrounded daily by things I could blog about--Chinglish, pregnant Barbies, funky foods--that it anesthetizes me a bit. Or, there could be the very practical explanation of having to work full-on at a demanding school. Whatever. I'm not sweating it.

I think I will take it easy on my expectations for blogging and just post random pictures I take in the city. So a picture a day (give or take a few weeks) until I am inspired to quip some more.

Enjoy your first Chinglish sign. Many more to come.

Hotpot in the City

Running Wild and Looking Pretty

Yesterday, I took my mom downtown to the Shin Kong Plaza, where my favorite hotpot joint, aptly called Hotpot Paradise, sits on the 6th floor next to the world-famous Din Tai Fung, soon to be another post.

I love the hotpot life! It is seriously such a gastronomic routine in China, or at least Beijing, that the word is compounded--i.e., we say hotpot, not hot pot. (Not Hot Pot should be the name of every other restaurant!)

Hotpot Paradise gets my repeat business because each customer gets her own bubbling cauldron. (After all, sharing is for chumps.) You have a choice of broth--mushroom, pork tea, Thai hot and sour, etc. And what you toss inside said broth is found on the pages of a hardcover menu: every meat imaginable (ranging wildly in prices), exotic veggies, tofu, etc. The sine qua non is the dipping sauce, a pungent, thick sesame paste into which you add scallions or chili oil depending on your pleasure. Mom tweaked it with lemon juice, ignoring the bemused looks of waiters everywhere.

Hard to get wrong, easy to make right. When I asked my young student Howard earlier this year why hotpots were his favorite thing to eat, he eloquently answered: Well, you just boil everything and then put it in your mouth.

Amen