In a community email loop I hear from home constantly – the latest rumble is concern over a convenience store entering the spot where the Circle K was pre-Katrina that has been sitting vacant since the storm. There are those who are concerned about the element these places attract, then those who claim those claims are racist, and then there are the persistent NIMBY’s and the persistent “why can’t we all get along?” – but…
Whereever I have been – Istanbul, Shanghai – nothing compares to the noise that bubbles up from the streets of New York – it’s the sound of taxis – in Rome, it’s a moped, in Shangai, it’s the buzz, in Istanbul, it’s constant chatter – but New York noise is taxi noise.
As the driver pulled away from D’s apartment in old Shanghai we made our way across town and my mind began to wander – through a veil of sadness and anticipation I watched the cyclists maneuvering through the cars, the garishness of signs everywhere in Chinese characters, the tall tall tall buildings sprouting from the ground and going up and up and up, and a sea of faces and my mind wandered and through the…
I keep thinking about what the I Ching master said to me – that I’m like a boy but I’m a girl – a complaint I have heard throughout my life. It vexes me somewhat – but reminds me of the first fortune I received when I moved to San Francisco: Confucious say a woman who tries to equal man, lacks ambition.
I bought a big dragon kite for Jake, and Mao bags (so cheap) for mom and me, and two tea cups with Chinese landscapes, puppets for Steve and I, a jade ring for my middle finger (to stop the spending!), one jade ring for me and one for Fatmalicious to wear on her thumb as she is want to do with her rose gold band, and I could have kept on shopping – I wanted…
I went to see Ms. Pearl yesterday with Dimitri and bought pearls for myself that are so lustrous and beautiful I don’t want to ever take them off. I purchased pearl bracelets for my friends.
Went to a housing project of sorts with Ling-Yi, my translator of the past several days, a young woman of uncanny language ability, and yet, always a woman with her own agenda, which is never transparent but always apparent, and so we went into this old building which felt like an institution – we met late, I was one hour late to be exact – and we entered the almost hospital-like building where the old…
And so we went to meet Al, at the fabulous restaurant, where Tom Cruise dined in the little minuret tower, and the executive chef was a friend, and so it was all great, and in the Turkish via Austrailian way, it was all glamourous, and yet, the view is what made it all fabulous – sitting atop this antique building and looking at the bay of Shanghai, and the born is young and old, hip…
What can you cram into a day when you got home at 3 AM and had four hours sleep? Well, let’s see, there was an errand to a $6000 a month apartment to drop off something, then there was a breakfast in an historic restaurant known throughout not just Shanghai, but Asia, for its dumplings, and a bridge there that is crooked and purposefully so, so that ghosts can’t cross it, because ghost can’t negotiate…
A friend tells of her Pakistani lover – a tale of friction and lust – he has another in Pakistan who calls him at each elected prayer hour – she has graveyard love for him – when he told her he was leaving, she tried to take her life – he feels responsible.