choice

watching the election results yesterday morning over a HUGE breakfast and coffee at malone's here in shanghai, i forgot for a moment that i was in china. surrounded by 100+ americans and interested and enthusiastic non-americans, all eyes glued to the TV screen as CNN showed the ever-changing blues and reds and the numbers rolled in, it was impossible not to get caught up in the electricity and excitement of history being made. it wasn't until i ran into the chinese cleaning lady in the restroom that it suddenly struck me that i was still in china, that i was celebrating democracy and the freedom to vote in a country where the people's voice is often muffled and subdued.

i am proud to be an american, i really am, even with the ridiculous things we often do as a nation and as a people. freedom doesn't come without cost, of course, and there are constant sacrifices to be made. and freedom without wisdom may result in detrimental consequences. but to have choice, to let your voice be heard even if it seems a whisper among the masses, to know that you can participate in change and progress...what a glorious privilege.

i have never been really into politics and living in china often makes me feel further removed from issues at home, but yesterday's experience was a great reminder of the gift of choice.

cups of coffee: 1 1/2

mood: hopeful

day in the life

"so...what exactly would you say you do here?"
it's hard to explain what a 'normal day' for me is like. i suppose today would be a good example...

8:00 am - breakfast with chelsea at wagas. catching up after her quick trip to hong kong, talking a bit about work, but mostly just sharing about life.

10:00 am - open up the gallery, check email, answer a bunch of emails. watch the gallery floor as a group of 20+ university students tour our current exhibit.

11:00 am - interview candidate for a full-time office manager position. first of several interviews i'm conducting this week.

11:30 am - work on some logistics for our halloween jazz concert tomorrow night. more emails.
look over chelsea's final design for the invitation to our upcoming exhibit. great job, chels!

12:30 pm - lunch with a friend who works as a curator for an art collectors' society. he brings along his friend who runs timezone 8, a bookstore/cafe/artspace.

2:00 pm - interview another candidate for the office manager position. this girl seems to be a better fit for the job, but there are four more candidates to interview before we'll make a decision.

2:30 pm - work on updates to send to our website designer. more emails. start working on our winter calendar of events/exhibits.

4:00 pm - welcome a group of 15 artists and art-lovers we met a couple of weeks ago in jingdezhen. these artists are mostly from the states, with a few from europe, and have been on a three-week tour of china.

4:30 pm - sales, sales, sales! sell a necklace to a woman from new york and two ceramic pieces to a couple from switzerland. sell a ceramic cup to a monk visiting from indonesia.

5:00 pm - chat with the german woman and her husband who are exhibiting in the gallery upstairs.

5:15 pm - reps from an event planning company come to check out our space. they're renting the gallery next month for a day to hold an all-day lecture/presentation for 80 designers from a design association.

6:00 pm - reps are still measuring the space and discussing layout logistics for the event. i package some artworks that were purchased last week for shipment to the states.

6:30 pm - reps finally leave. i close up the gallery and order a taxi.

7:00 pm - head to metro, our version of sam's club here.

7:45 pm - buy LOADS of candy for our halloween jazz concert tomorrow night. hail another taxi and lugging my bags, head home.

that's a typical day. gotta say, i can't complain. :)

cups of coffee: 2

mood: unwinding...

quiet, quiet

in this city, one month can feel like a year. heck, sometimes one week can feel like a year. it's the breakneck pace of life, the overload of stimuli and information, the constant whirl of activities that stuffs a schedule so full, it feels like it's going to bust at the seams. that's how life often feels here.

i have a horrible habit of not resting. rest usually comes right at the verge of a meltdown, when both body and spirit are gearing up to go on strike. and even then there are the logistics of arranging time to rest. i actually need to make an appointment for myself to relax. oh, the irony.

that's why last weekend came as a surprise when my colleague and i went on a business trip (begrudgingly on my part, i must admit), and i ended up resting more in those three days than i have all month. a well-known international chinese ceramics artist is currently exhibiting his works at our gallery. he is based in jingdezhen, the porcelain capital of china (of the world, really) and invited us as his guests for the international ceramics expo that was taking place last week.

i really wasn't sure what to expect. this artist is a small, wiry man with a constant scowl on his face. he is also a skilled artisan with an eye for beauty and a penchant for perfection. he has some absolutely brilliant ideas (of his own accord, and actually, i agree as well) that he proselytizes persistently. spending three days with him....hmmmm.

i pictured the trip being a constant schmooze-fest: talking up art with who-knows-who and who-knows-what, rubbing elbows and dropping names, handing out business cards until my fingers cramped....well, i suppose that was worst-case scenario. thankfully, it was nothing like that. from being picked up by the airport by the artist's driver to flying back with an inner mongolia band who plays american bluegrass (with band members named 'tom' and 'jerry)---that's a whole other story in itself---the trip was refreshing in so many ways. though the artist did keep us hopping with a pretty busy schedule of meeting people and visiting various sites, there was also a lot of downtime and flexibility in our schedule.

we stayed at the artist's own "village": an area he founded for ceramic artists from around the world to come and study, create art, exchange ideas, etc. the area is absolutely gorgeous, set in the hills of the countryside, surrounded by trees and bamboo. the inn, restaurant and ceramic studio were housed in old farm houses that the artist had purchased and renovated, still keeping intact the original architecture with all its beautiful nooks and crannies. i think the artist even 'feng shui' the place, and whether that stuff is all malarkey or not, there was definitely a sense of tranquility as soon as one stepped onto the property. and the food--oh, the food!--my mouth salivates just remembering it. fresh fish, tons of veggies, little oil and salt but bursting flavors....yummmmm.






we stayed at the artist's inn and i slept so much and so well....that really deep, restorative kind of sleep from which you awake like you were reborn. we also spent a lot of time with other artists, some of whom we work with, and that was refreshing to me on many levels as well. it's so easy to get caught up with the business side of running a gallery, where artists and their works become commodities. to really know the artists as people, to understand their philosophy of life, their passions and inspirations, to see their studios and meet their friends....at the end of the day, these sort of human interactions and connections are what really matters.

the trip wasn't just refreshing, it was rehumanizing. it took the parts of me that were being mechanized and reinvigorated them with flesh and blood. i was able to just be.

now's the tough part...how to make this a discipline and consistency in the frenetic life i lead in shanghai....


cups of coffee: 1

mood: rested

fu za

the chinese word for complicated is fu za. i love the way it sounds and what it implies, how it captures what i mean so much more than english. the way the 'z' rolls off the tongue, this image of knots and frays and tangledness, the way the words spit out as if in a breath of exasperation...fu za! indeed.

life seems fu za lately. perhaps life is always fu za, complications quietly bubbling beneath a surface of seeming serenity, occasionally erupting and disrupting the calm. perhaps it's when those eruptions are big that we feel the rippling effects more so than other times. i don't know.

i've been saying, "i don't know" a lot lately. almost as if the older i get, the less i know. life and faith seemed so much simpler as a child. love was free, open and generous. when i got hurt, i cried. when i got angry, i threw a tantrum. friendships were clear, and i could make new friends, fight and makeup all within the span of an hour or two on the playground. when i slept at night, i fell asleep in comfort and security, with few fears and worries.

i imagine life and faith will be simpler when i am old and a breath away from heaven. it's this space in between that's complicated.

been thinking a lot lately about how to love people, really love people. what does it mean to be a true friend, without letting my selfish motives and preferences get in the way? what does it mean to do the right thing when i know what it is but refuse to do so anyway? what does it mean to try and make the right decisions about my life when everything seems so gray and a million possibilities seem to converge? i don't know.

i'm not sure how life works anymore. and i never know how God works even though i know He does.


cups of coffee: 1, so far....

mood: thinking, thinking, thinking too much

celebrate

it didn't hit me until a full two days after my birthday that this was a pretty big one. i will never be a twenty something year-old again. i may even have to check the next age bracket now when i'm filling out forms. i've been on this planet for almost THREE WHOLE decades. i suppose compared to a tortoise or a sequoia, thirty years isn't much to brag about, but it just seems so old when i still feel like an awkward, moody teenager on the inside most of the time. :)

getting old, though, is definitely more fun when you have good friends to celebrate with! and celebrate we did. viv, a september sister, and i decided to co-host a big birthday bash together with theme "shanghai glam." we held it at a fabulous wine bar (JWOW) and felt the love from about 70 of our friends.

the birthday girls

celebrations are always wonderful. but i suppose if i've learned anything from these three decades on earth, it is to be thankful in feast or famine. to fully savor and enjoy each day as it is given, to enter the disappointments as well as the joys with a constant heart. to remember past goodness and always hope in future grace. may it ever be so this year, let my heart be constant...

from one of my favorite hymns, the lyrics that best sum up my current state of heart and mind:

Haste thee on from grace to glory,
Armed by faith, and winged by prayer.
Heaven’s eternal days before thee,
God’s own hand shall guide us there.
Soon shall close thy earthly mission,
Soon shall pass thy pilgrim days,
Hope shall change to glad fruition,
Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.

thankful, ever thankful.


cups of coffee: 2 1/2

mood: blissful

my-o-pia

we have such a propensity to be myopic. easily entangled in the trappings of daily life, our vision often extends only as far as the here-and-now, our focus constantly shifting back to the narrow field right before us, barely past the tip of our nose, and we plod forward earnestly with blinders on. how the i's, me's and my's resound louder than any other inclinations or pleas in our life. utterly absorbed.

i wish rising above circumstances were somehow easier. like in 'charlie and the chocolate factory' when charlie and his uncle sneak sips from willy wonka's fizzy concoction, discovering the carbonation enabled them to rise up effortlessly. what a delight....well, until they got dangerously close to the fans above.

i am happy. i can say those three words with a healthy serving of surety. i am happy with my work, my life in shanghai, my friends and sense of community....the list goes on.
yet.
i am always looking for more, riding bouts of ennui and dissatisfaction, wanting and wishing for the intangible and indescribable.

i suppose that's the tension of life, isn't it? caught between the rooted and the nomadic lives, feeling both satisfied and insatiable. the cries of "my cup overrunneth" juxtaposed with "how long, o Lord?"
the here but not yet.

sigh. a little perspective, please.....

cups of coffee: 3

mood: floaty

restoration

i've always wondered what patients who awake from long comas must feel....the disorientation, the strangeness of time lost and the simultaneous feeling of time standing still. the newness of a different world than what one's eyes last laid upon. echoes of a familiar life. perhaps the desire to disconnect and re-engage at the same time.

all speculation on my part, of course.

i returned to shanghai a week and a half ago after a one-month absence. still readjusting to the changes that have occurred in what i believed to be a short period of time...

meditating on the theme of restoration lately. working out the definition and reality of restoration, what it means to be truly restored in mind, body and spirit. to be living in wholeness even as we experience the brokenness of a fallen world daily.

i purchased a compilation of prayers from augustine's confessions over the summer and it's been a daily source of fodder for my mind and soul. his prayers are so heartfelt and articulate, straight to the substance without the fluff. i love it. here's one of my favorites:

be not vain, my soul,
and take care that the ear of your heart
be not deafened by the din of your vanity.
you too must listen to the selfsame Word who calls you back,
and there find a place of imperturbable quiet,
where love is never forsaken unless it chooses to forsake.
see, those things go their way that others may succeed them,
and that whole may exist comprised of all its parts,
though a lowly whole indeed.
"but I," says the Word of God,
"shall I depart to any place?"
fix your dwelling there, my soul,
lay up there for safe-keeping whatever you have thence received,
if only because you are weary of deceits.
entrust to Truth whatever of truth is in you, and you will lose nothing;
your rotten flesh will flower anew,
all your diseases will be healed,
all your labile elements will be restored and bound fast to you;
they will not drag you with them in their own collapse,
but will stand firm with you and abide,
binding you to the ever-stable, abiding God.

cups of coffee: 3

mood: quiet, quiet