Where are we

It rained today.  A mild downpour in my Taiwan-written books, but an exception for North Carolina, according to mommy.  I went to lunch with her today, originally to the new (for me) Ethiopian restaurant in Timberlyne.  It was closed so we went to Sage, the Persian vegetarian restaurant.  Sage is mushy and mediocre and reminds me of how much more explosively flavorful the dishes in the Little Indias of Penang and Singapore were.
I still call my mother mommy, a childhood holdover.  It seemed artificial growing up to one day start calling her "mom" or even worse, "Mother."  So my address to her remains embarrassingly childish, but I do it out of habit.
I felt almost a peer to her today, like I was taking a friend to lunch (she paid though).  We had similar experiences leaving a job; she was starting school again in something new; we had parts of us still staked in Taiwan (although her stakes are much older and the links negligible in everyday life).
After lunch she was restless and wanted to "just drive."  Down any country road.  She was set free, rounding a new turn in life, a second youth.  I suggested we pick up Ping and Su Hsuan to take them somewhere.  She seemed to balk at including my friends.  Her agent called about a manager requesting a resume.  We had to come home so she could work on that.  Our shared moment of youth ended.

I can't sleep

I'm back from Taiwan.  It's 5:25 AM and still dark out.  I wish I was back there.

North Carolina by comparison is staid, green and yellow.  Wide roads wind slowly through verdant country that is dust-muted to a sandy tone, sleepy in neat monotony.  This is a home.  Not my only one now.

It's a striking difference from the kinetic buzzing traffic, organic growths of buildings, mixed directly into near-vertical slopes that nonetheless accommodate a thick carpet of dark green foliage.  Taiwan is also my home now.

I have a heart in two different places.

A Lake in the Beartooths

I strip to my underwear and walk on warm rock to the edge of the lake.  My bare feet feel sandy and uncomfortable, embedded with small stones from the trail.  I step off the rock, into the lake.  Rocks are under my feet.  They are not smooth - relatively young rock not yet worn down to an eggshell surface by eons of water moving over them.  Perhaps they have simply sat at the edge of this lake for all of their life after tumbling brand-new from their mother, one of the mountains around us.
The water is cold.  I walk forward and deeper.  Shiver, as it reaches my groin and then I plunge completely in.  The water is clear, but tinged with brown, like weak tea.  I swim the freestyle towards the center of the lake and watch the floor drop quickly, then I am floating in space with nothing below me.  The sunlight penetrates the water in planes of light that reach down into the darkness of the depths of the lake, like they are reaching into infinity, swallowed by a void.  There is nothing beneath me.  Then my mind inverts, and suddenly it is as if the light is coming upwards from beneath me from forsaken depths, like angels from the eternity, like the Lady of the Lake, come to bestow me with Excalibur, Glamdring.  I turn my head to look away, because the light is maddening, but it is everywhere in the water, shining from some unknown point far below, always towards me no matter where I look.
I lift my head up above water and the quiet mountains and forest surround me, solid and impassive, a completely different world from the swirling nebula of light below.  I am caught between two worlds.  The air moves my wet hair and little waves lap my chin, but the chill of the light of the void wraps around my toes and ankles and reaches for my core.  It is invisible with my head out of water, but now that I've seen it, I can feel it as an emptiness below me.  An emptiness made of light, sitting below the surface of this lake.

Buses and rumbas

The long distance buses in Taiwan wake up their sleepy passengers by putting on chirpy elevator music on arrival.  Nowadays I wake up in bed with a particular rumba tune running through my head.

Today

I started to bike home from the zoo but it started pouring.  Oh, there's a little roadside shelter.  With a dog!  He wanted to get out of the rain too.  I think you'd describe this dog as rufous colored and knee high.  He regarded me skeptically.  I talked to him a little and tried to give him a piece of guava.  Dogs don't eat fruits.

It started raining harder and the rain was splashing into our shelter in a fine spray from the drops hitting the ground so hard and I guess the dog was getting wet because he crept a little closer to me, when I wasn't looking.  By now he was comfortable enough to devote himself fully to licking his own crotch.  After the rain let up a little, said goodbye to the dog and was on my way.  That was a pretty chill dog.

Today I started Wing Chun classes.  It cost 3000 NT, plus 4000 for two heavy black cotton shirts.  I spent over two hours doing the same two sets of movements.
1. Cross arms at about belly-button level, recross at face level.
2. Punch towards the center, open fist palm side up, rotate wrist inward in a full circle, retract, repeat with other arm.
I hope I learn something.  The teacher is Lo Man Kam and he's 70+ years old and a student of Yip Man.  The story goes that he introduced Bruce Lee to Wing Chun.  He's pretty active for a 70-year old.

There are termites on my (metal) desk.  They are crawling between the glass pane and the desktop, so I can see them, but I can't get them.  I pressed the glass enough to squash a couple, but they're stuck in there forever now.

Running around in the backwoods of Taipei

Today I climbed a small mountain and walked around its stone-paved paths.  I found a narrow set of stairs carved into the rock that led to a rusting makeshift gate barring way to more steps in living stone, up a steep jungle path.  A peek at a checkered window.  What's there?  I walked back down the narrow mossy steps, each one only big enough to accommodate my foot, sideways.  It was a small spirit's home.


I saw a small child climb up a rock perched over a drop off.  He made explosive noises, vague expressions of violence that I guess was his sense of conquest manifesting itself.  He climbed down.  Then he climbed up again and told his grandma that she had to see this.  There were mossy little steps carved out of the rock itself, worn down by people's feet.  I climbed up afterwards.  On top an indentation was carved to allow standing, and nothing more, no railings or safety nets.  As I gingerly made my way back down the smooth green steps, I wondered about children falling off the rock, down to the steps 3 meters below.  But it wasn't a real conquest without risk.

Before I forget

I must write things down before I do...  It seems to me a life unwritten is only preserved in its entirety solely by the fading memories of the person who lived it.  Also in bits and pieces scattered with all the people he has met along the way.  Families and friends.  Strangers, dogs, cats, trees, rocks... the sky, the ocean.