NOVEL EXCERPT: Richard's first MAM:A meeting

The group leader was an officious turd whose name, Ronald, was actually his first middle name. Ronald was two minutes into a tiresome speech about Man and Man’s habits, Man’s desires in conflict with Man’s religion, Man’s Manness in conflict with Man’s Misunderstood Masculinity, and so on. After eight indulgently meandering sentences and 43 iterations of the word ‘Man’, even Richard, whose own gender-specific vernacular was exclusionary and unacceptable, was thinking something along the lines of shut up you arse, we’ve better things to talk about.

Before he could muster the words, Jenny stood up with enough force to knock her blue plastic chair over its hind legs and exclaimed:

‘Listen, Ronald, we’re here because we’re tired of wanking and punishing ourselves for it.’ Richard had never heard this said out loud. ‘At least I am.’ She glanced about the room.

‘Enjoying it and hating it at the same time, myself and it, hating and enjoying and spiralling into depression.’ It was true, all true. ‘I can’t remember what came before, because... Well, Because. But I know that it was in tatters long before I came here and I assume some of my colleagues feel the same way.’

I do! I do!

‘We would like to fix ourselves, women included. Your pontifications about Man and Man’s infernal Manness estrange half your assembly.’

She paused and cleared her throat. Richard danced a little, inside.

‘I am sat between two humans whose status is equal to mine.’ Richard and Jenny’s other neighbour, a weedy gentleman, turned and looked at her. ‘We would like to get started.’

Bravo! Should he applaud? Sitting down, Jenny looked round and winked surreptitiously at Richard, who just sweated.

Ronald grumbled something into his hand before gesturing to Jenny.

‘Well, Jennifer, please start us off.’ Specks of perspiration shone on his temples. He drew a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and dabbed at his forehead.

Richard watched him and shrunk satisfactorily into his seat, then focused on Jenny. She seemed wise beyond her years (mid-thirties at most, but she had a wizened elegance Richard found enchanting). Her hair hung gingerly over slim shoulders. A few wisps clung beneath her large Roman nose and pointed towards a triumvirate of moles on her left cheek, the largest of which boasted a modest fuzz. Hanging about her cat’s frame was a purple cardigan, thick-knit, tied like a dressing gown round her waist. Sandals protruded from beneath a maroon skirt and revealed crudely painted toenails, the smallest of which was barely a dot. Richard suspected the nail to be missing, the paint a diversion to the fact.

Folding his arms, his eyes met hers. He imagined their souls meeting in an ethereal playground, surrounded by swirling winds and eddying astral forces, shaking hands and sealing their mutual fates. He knew her little secret, her little toe secret, and nodded his recognition, with it forgiveness, understanding, admiration, all wrapped in ribbons of something like infatuation.

By now Jenny was midway into an anecdote and Richard had missed the whole first half.

‘Without, I think, this element of structure, thoughts of it permeate my everyday. I can’t think straight, I can’t work.’

Gosh, he knew how that felt.

‘Like I sit at my desk and, you know the classic, there’s a vibration somewhere nearby – a truck reversing outside, someone’s using the photocopier…’

Was she reading his mind?

‘So, without structure, thoughts of masturbation escape my control. The act itself becomes frantic. I rush it in order to somehow reduce the damage done to my conscience. It’s indulgent but in all the wrong ways.

‘And so this week I’m advocating Structure.’ She enunciated this word with a finality which brought Richard to a standing ovation. On his other side, Lara giggled. Ronald rolled his eyes at the newcomer. Tim, name yet unknown to Richard, weedy Tim, chin resting via hand, lower arm and elbow on bony knee, rent from his own oblivion by an uncontrollable guffaw, lost control of his limbs and slid polygonically into a prostrate mess of angles, jeans and Crocs.

NOVEL EXCERPT: Why Richard is called Richard

Richard's affliction first presented itself on his sixth birthday.

After a wonderful day at the playground with both of his friends, his parents took him home for apple pie. Apple pie was his favourite. Then, it was time for his bath.

Splashing about in the tub with his ducks and battleships, he was completely carefree. He liked to smother his lower face in bubbles and pretend he was Father Christmas, then wipe his chin clean and pretend he was Nietzsche. He had very mature reading habits.

During this bath, as it was his sixth birthday, his mother made it extra special.

“Would you like one last present?” She touched his nose with her finger.

“Oh, yes!” Richard was overjoyed. He loved surprises.

Karen left, leaving the door open behind her. She returned a minute later, and when she did a strange aroma filled the room. She held a round object, covered by a tea towel. Richard marvelled at the strange object.

“Can you guess what it is?”

“Umm…” He couldn't.

“I thought, because you like apples so much, you might like to try a new fruit.”

“OK!” That did nothing to explain the peculiar whiff which drifted up Richard's nose.

“This is called a durian. It's from south-east Asia. Would you like to try it?”

“Mm-hm,” said Richard. He was cautious because of the smell, but nothing could ruin his sixth birthday.

Karen unveiled the fruit. It was a greenish yellow, and covered in spikes. It had a split down the centre, and emitted an odour incomparable to anything Richard had ever smelled. The smell intensified as the cover was lifted, and grew stronger and stronger. It wafted about the room and tingled in his nostrils. When Karen wrenched the fruit open, the smell became unbearable.

At once he felt his innards contract—he thought he needed to sneeze, then to be sick, then… His bowels reacted in the most formidable way. A rush of gas built up in his colon and burst through his anal canal, carrying with it all the diluted, unprocessed brown fluid which was being held in his intestine.

In an instant, the bathwater turned a murky ochre. Richard squealed as soft pulps of shit floated up to the surface. 

Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, Karen ushered him out of the bath. Then, when he started to drip the soiled water on the tiled floor, she panicked and pushed him back in.

“Oh, Richard!”

“Sorry, mummy,” Richard said. He didn't know what else he could say. It was all his fault!

“Oh darling it’s not your fault.” He felt sure that it was. “Stand up and let me hose you down,” Karen stifled a giggle. “That's it. Now, one foot up.” Masterfully, Karen ensured that no more poo drops made it onto the floor. She wrapped him in a towel and gave him a big hug. He began to cry. Karen drained the tub and rinsed it down while Richard went to the kitchen and stared at the fridge, shaking occasionally with a sob.

A cup of hot chocolate cheered him up, and his sniffles subsided. Karen sat with him and watched him drink it, wondering what had occurred within him to prompt such a violent outburst of faecal matter. Could it have been an allergic reaction? She’d never known that to happen, and so suddenly too. Something to do with bad smells? It was a mystery. She resolved to ask her friend Elisa the next day; he knew lots about these kinds of things! Then, Richard surprised her with a question.

“Mum, why am I called Richard?” 

“What? Oh, your name? That's a good question. How long have you been thinking about that?”

“Um, a few days. Everyone at school’s been talking about it. Frank was named after a boxer, and Isabelle was named after an explorer.”

“And what do you think you were named after?”

“Well, everyone says I was named after one of the instruments used when I was made,” Richard looked up, and Karen saw that he was puzzled. “But I told them you and dad don't play any musical instruments.”

“Mmmm.”

“And then they laughed so I went away.”

“Oh, darling!” Karen’s parental urge kicked in, and she squeezed her son’s little cheek.

“But can you tell me who I'm named after, so I can tell them?”

“I’d be glad to. You were named after a man called Richard Sterling. He's a travel writer! He writes about all kinds of things. He’s how your dad and I found out about durian fruits.” Richard’s stomach lurched at the thought. Seeing his skin turn a shade paler, Karen decided to veer away from the subject.

“His writings will shake the earth, they really will. He leant us some of his notes and they are, well, extraordinary.” Richard swilled the end of the hot chocolate in his mug. Tea, chocolate, Mum and Dad’s coffee. Some of humanity’s favourite beverages are brown, he thought. Why did it have to be so?

“What do you think?”

“Um, so I was named after a writer?”

“Yes. So now you can turn around to your friends and say I wasn't named after a boxer, or an explorer, I was named after—well, I suppose he is something of an explorer. So, you can say, I was named after an explorer too. That's much more interesting than someone who fights for a living. Don't you think? Richard?”

But he was lost, once more, in the dregs of his mug. He put it back on the table and saw the image printed on the side: Winnie the Pooh sitting merrily in a field of orange flowers. Richard didn't feel so merry, but he did like knowing why he was called Richard.

“Much cooler,” he said. And then he went to bed. Thankfully, he didn't dream of the durian. It never even crossed his mind, until one October morning, six years later.

SIGUNIANGSHAN

We emerge like squirrels from the plane, toes dragging. A nutty minefield awaits. Its claws lose no time in seeking our haunches. They find purchase. We're flat on our arses, legs akimbo, caution to the wind and we don't mind. It's here, it's all around us -- winter is coming.

As a brand ambassador for Game of Thrones™, it's my duty - and I consider it a filial one, because GoT is my daddy - to sing the song of hot stuff and cold stuff till thither the wild wind drops. 

Siguniangshan translates to Four Sisters Mountains, and honey, these are most cantankerous sisters I ever saw. Proud to humble myself at their feet.

This is a Tibetan villageship, as you can tell by the Holy Shell of Shentaka, gifted to the first Bodhisattva upon her arrival on the golden sands of the Balearics, specifically Ibiza, where she did party hard.

The Four Sisters Mountains are big and beautiful. As Kristin writes in her 46-times commented piece for Be My Travel Muse dot com, 'the sky became blue and the vistas so impressive that almost everyone in the bus crowded around the windows as the bus navigated the winding roads, clamoring for a photo opportunity'. Thanks Kristin, I couldn't have put it better myself.

It was only a six hour bus journey from Chengdu but you can really tell that we're not in the city any more. There are absolutely no marks of civilisation in this 30km long valley, except the 6km long LED-lit boardwalk leading to the Hilton Plaza at the end which overlooks a set of lustrous infinity pools and artificial rockpools. But like nothing else - escape to the country R Us!

These gals in blue struck a charming contrast to the red trees.

There was this like really great glade thing at the end which was like such a refreshing like change from the kinda monotonous like woods and that, so we like sat down and talked about how much we like liked it.

What can you see, Kristoff? Bolt! Ye old scalawag. Drink ye water and turn ye round, legs and fists and hearts abound!

This bloke's so bamboozled by the viewzle that he can't bear to look.

Here's some real news. We arrived at Rilong, at our hostel, on Friday evening. Early the next morning there was a landslide in Xinmo, a village not a great distance from us, which reportedly flattened 40 homes and killed 100 people. Figures have changed since the weekend but it was definitely a ting. Heavy rains and atmospheric tumult. We were discouraged from entering mountainous areas but unfortunately were already in a mountains area, so we didn't leave out of fear of tempting fate, or something.

Instead, we went into Shuangqiao Valley, left the path, went where passing for the passengers was forbidden, and arguably behaved churlishly. But we were safe and fine until Elaine dislocated her knee bone and we heard a rumble on the other side of the pass. Oh shucks! Down we go, ey.

Proper mountains dig on snow.

You shouldn't anthropomorphise stones, they don't like it.

Yakkety yakkety yak / cow.

Didn't see it, myself. But dancing trees.

Here we are, all successfully alive and newly nicknamed - hello Bilbo.

If everybody winded full of tenderness like the water, maybe Steve Bannon would be out of the job, and Friedman would roll in his grave. Go out and read The Man Who Planted Trees, by Jean Giono. It'll fill you will mushy love, maybe.

Hey anyway I'm back from China now but still have some photos and of course writing is my passion so I'll write again. P&L.

EMEISHAN

It is or is not a coincidence that Emeishan (pronounced UH-MAY-SHAHN, kind of) is pronounced in a way similar to 'amazing', so you can say them both quickly in quick succession and succeed in muddling them up, muxing them ip, so to speak. Welcome back to blogworld, writer of BS (sure is better than PF, anyway) -- and there's plenty more where that came from!

Emeishan, or Emei Mountain, is significant for various reasons, all of which are available for your perusal at Wikipedia.org, a fantastic new resource brought to you by the May Administration - String and Stabbel, forever and ever. 

It's one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains of China, and is therefore teeming, and incredibly well infrastructured. Perhaps disconcertingly so. Stairs, dozens of thousands of stairs, carry tourists by the mill to a heavily built-up peak, whereupon a gilt Buddha light fountain waves to a tumult of clouds. And oh yes there are hotels and restrooms, cookies and all the rest, shucks. 

It stands at 3,099m / It is 3,099m tall / Its height is 3,099m / Its highest point is 3,099m above sea level / Elevation = 3,099m. So many ways to say the same thing, it's no wonder people lose sleep over where they'll be in six months, or what colour the decking ought to be.

A common occurrence:
(in Chinese)
hey, you lot are foreign! guys, I found a bunch of foreigners!!
(chiming in)
oh wwaaaaw foreigners!!! hey, go and stand next to them while I take a photo.
(giddy)
hey hey hey HEHEEYYYY WWOAW YEAH
etc
etc
etc

So I photograph the photographers in a trite, meta-theatrical effigy to the act of retaining pictorial dignity, or some such bogus.

Ram got a chilli shirt (name has been spoonerised to preserve nominal anonymity).

Tibetan macaques make a living by pick-pocketing unwary passers-by and undercutting the human vendors (that is, vendors which are human, not vendors of humans) with their stolen wares. Poor Sophie got assaulted by one and was forced to surrender a flagon of flavoured water, bless. We saw the bottle in question being exchanged for intimate favours by a shrewd social media magnate the following morning.

This (picture below) reminds me of that mediocre Stereophonics song A Thousand Trees, of which the op-fejwafewnv;----- but it's slightly too boring to talk about here. I had a trivia point but it's not worth it. I mean I like the Stereophonics, or at least I used to, it's just that quite a lot of their music is, how to put it - bland// Like they're not trying to invent, or innovate, in the way some other musicians or bands are.
Who's original then, B?
Well, I'm glad you asked. Tony Allen - Losun, is groovy. Obviously Gambino, and Ryo Fukui was back in 1976. Also, you could listen to Treece, and I will forever love Dizraeli, whose lyrics are bottomless. Childsplay, Kieren Hebden, PBU, Quantic, Aphex and the PSS. Caps duly doffed.

Had a bit of a scare as the cable car (from near-summit to tru apex) collapsed under the weight of so many years of service, leaving 98 of us dangling from a shoestring five sixths of the way up. Silver lining - spectacular views as we slid to the bottom, landing on our various bottoms in a bruised and bloodied pile.

It being China, there must be people, so here they are in force (though actually it was quieter than it could have been, truly).

The last few weeks here have been fab. I hope yours have too. In 11 and a half hours I will turn 23, and thereby be 11 and a half hours closer to the next large-scale event, the significance of which is overwhelming, understudied, overbearing, undeniable, overdone, well done, blue.

Here's to the fools.

NOVEL EXCERPT: Richard, Jenny and a pair of Antediluvians

Eight minutes later, Richard returned. Jenny was etching something pornographic into the tabletop, scratching at the surface with a house key. She looked up, her gaze holding something devilish, almost diabolic. Richard grinned.

“Two Antediluvians, shaken and stirred.”

“Champion. Tell me, what goes into an Antediluvian? Does it require a sprinkling of arched nose and too-thick reading glasses? An artificial grey patch and stupid wizened curl?”

“Cherimoya, or custard apple. It's one of the only tropical fruits I can handle,” he said, gleaming.

“What do you mean? You don't like mangoes, papayas, pineapples?”

“Yes yes, of course they're fine. But anyway they've been normalised. They're no more tropical than palm trees, which are scattered round Torquay harbour like breadcrumbs, leading nowhere. But there are others, real fruits of the tropics which haven't been integrated into the British palette.”

“For example?”

“For example,” he leaned back. “Well. I'll tell you, but first, to your health.”

“To ours.” They clinked, drank, winced. There was an uncomfortable silence during which their eyes met.

“Richard?” Jenny's face had coiled into a mutated spring, darkening in three areas.

“Oh, dear,” he said, letting the brownish yellow liquid flow back into his glass. “This cherimoya's rotten. That's rotten luck.”

“It's awful, Richard. Awful. Don't take me back there, I won't allow it.” Her face was still distorted. He passed her a serviette to mop her chin, then went back to the bar. His thick wrists slid along the top, feeling the rough matte wood for signs of wear.

They were given lime daiquiris, a platter of carbohydrate-based snacks and half a dozen cans of Diet Coke as compensation. Reimbursement was impossible.

“The system doesn't allow it,” he told her.

“Bloody typical. What do you call these?”

“Mini Cheddars, only they're not. They're posher.” He threw two into his mouth, only one making its target. The other collided with his unshapely chin and made him blink.

“They're pretty good. Crunchy. And these?”

“Thins. Cheese thins, I suppose.”

“Anything that's called a Thin is bound to be disappointing.”

“You're right.”

“I know,” she said. “You were going to tell me about tropical fruits.”

“I was. There's one I can't handle, though I can't recall—” He stopped short. Was he about to recall? His mind had been washed clean of childhood remembrances and adult guilt, was untarnished by all the shame of a human life. He thought of tropical fruits.

“Richard?”

“Durian. Oh, my.” His eyes began to trickle. “I remember. I can't stand it. But how did I know I couldn't?” Some shred of long-term memory wedged deep in his cranium, jogged by the fact of a dodgy cherimoya? Was it so fundamental, so formative as to survive hibernation, to be roused by the sudden sensory reference?

“Durian?” she said. “I've heard of it. I heard a story about a kid.” Richard groaned. “My father used to work at a secondary school, before he died. He's dead now.”

“Secondary school.” His mouth opened and a spindle of saliva fell, hung an inch long from the corner of his mouth.

“Not far from here. They used to celebrate Ivory Day.” The words made Richard's stomach twist. “It was really archaic. They all dressed up in robes and hung chandeliers and draped insignias on sheets in the Great Hall, the Ivory Hall. Talk about bloody antediluvian.”

“Elizabeth,” he said.

“That's it. That was her first name. Christ, to think, all those wars. That's what constituted a hero. Can you believe it?”

“Unbelievable.”

“Yeah, well, what happened went down in the annals. They split the fruit in some creepy, pseudo-masonic ritual. Elder and a Minor, textbook weird. Poor soul chosen at random, gallumphs onto stage with his tail between his legs, two thousand eyes trained on him begging for a false move. Fucking kids. Kids love failure. So do adults, mind. We're barbaric. Richard?”

“Barbaric. You're right.”

“I know. So the kid gets up there and he's got this problem with his bowels. Nobody knows about it but him, maybe his parents. Actually I bet they do know but they've not let on that they know, leave him in the dark, neglect the sucker. Barbaric.” Jenny slurps the last of her daiquiri and instinctively cracks a can of Coke, cruising into the present tense. Her palette dries easily so she likes to have a drink to hand. She sips the fizzy drink, immediately regrets ridding her mouth of lime tang. Picks up the coupe and drains the dregs, craving citrus. Wonders if a daiquiri should even be served in a coupe. She's sure it isn't. What an establishment, mouldy fruit and misaligned glass/cocktail combinations. Muses on its origin – glass, not cocktail – remembers a classmate years ago telling her of Marie Antoinette's breast, sliding into glass in conical perfection. Perfection? She imagines her own breasts being cast into silicone, handled by masters of ergonomics wearing white gloves and marvelling at her body. Artful hands playing her like an instrument. Future generations drinking from her shapely bosom. Indirectly but still. The prissiness of it all. Buxom, delightful.

“Richard? Are you with me?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because it's just getting to the good bit.”

“The good bit? What happens next?” Richard reclined sideways to nearly horizontal, world spinning about him, his weight propped under one elbow. Drool formed an eel-like bridge between the left corner of his mouth and his forearm, slid like a snail-trail onto the table. Jenny barely noticed, she was thunder and lightning.

“Kid goes up there, knees trembling. He's heard of the durian, knows how bloody dangerous it is. How fucking stinky it is. And he's got this problem with his bowel whereby all is let loose if too pongy a pong strikes his nasal cavity. This really is a recipe for disaster, you appreciate.” Jenny slurped at her Coke.

“So the leader, elder, whatever masonic bogus he goes by, slices the fruit in fitting with tradition. Tradition, that's who's to blame here.” A car horn carried into the room via the open door. “He cuts it right in half, its scent wafts kidward. Kid balks, freaks, doesn't know what to do. What can he do? He's at rock bottom, there's nowhere he can go.”

“What happens?” Richard almost shouted, somehow counting on Jenny to rewrite this memory for him, as it flashed past his eyes in a foray of fleeting images. Dreadful, haunted images.

“He shits his pants, Richard. The whole room hears it. There's a deathly silence, you understand. The sound of knife through durian husk is practically amplified by the reverence in the room. It's a palpable silence broken only or at least first by the sound of knife through husk, then second and louder and more dreadfully by the sound of this kid passing gas, sludge, brown matter filling the space between his behind and the cloth of his pants. It's pathetic and tremendous and unbelievably tragic. I almost couldn't believe it.”

“I don't believe it.”

“It's true.”

“I don't believe you. You are telling me this.” His faced drained of all colour and he lost consciousness. He slumped further in the booth, his chin inching closer to the table until it rested grubbily on the off-black lacquer. He was out for a minute, like a light, like a candle.

It's going to be alright

Isabella and I enjoyed a braai, or barbecue. Non-Chinese, possibly Pakistani. Watermelon and seeded flatbreads, stuffed things and poor hogs hanging from their feet, stripped of their gonads. Gonads were laid out in shining baubles on tabletops, almost glistening in the purple sun.

We visited a contemporary art gallery in the south of the city. Are contemporary art galleries always works of contemporary art in themselves? This seems to be the case. I have not encountered one which runs contra to the rule. GOMA, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Tate Modern, that little one in Venice, the Guggenheim (haven't been, but from the outside!!), etc. I even took a couple of very contemporary photos of the contemporary art space, so as to accentuate and so on. The ceiling looked like stairs to me. The building had none.

Barely even altered the contrast. Look at her, glued to her nothingness in this expansive black-white-grey monolith myth of a hall, art in herself.

Something clicked recently, a sort of phenomenon which has come to light in my head in the last week or two. It's about the relationship between the old and new, those who do and those who document, the rugged and the pristine. There is a rift in so many ways - behavioural, habitual, maybe even ideological - and the natural response of the present generation, who perch on the edge of a thousands of years-old series of dynasties and handwritten histories and instead look upwards to the stars through a pixelated lens, is to ogle. Ogle and boggle. Because people doing things with their hands - that's fascinating, really. It is, especially if the current vogue is to cover up as much skin as possible so as to avoid getting any darker, play LOL (League of Legends) on your iPhone in order to pass the time, and go to the canteen three times a day for your sustenance. One student of mine said her boyfriend was ugly because he was too dark. They used to call him Blackie. How does one approach that?

So Sophie and I went to stay with one of my students in her hometown. We were invited and we accepted and it was a joyous thing. Her town (they call it a town because it has fewer than two million people or something, tower-blocks galore) is called Zhongjiang and is terrific, relatively calm, colourful and inhabited by fine people. We did some very Chinese things, which I will recount here.

First, Mathilda's favourite cafe, complete with school friends and even a sun, which appeared out of nowhere. Guess how much taller I am than them. Shots which better illustrate this to follow.

We were treated SO well that we almost felt guilty. One big family dinner (big like eight on one table and eight on another) was tofu, beans, chillies, ribs, two soups, hot aubergine with veg and other gubbins, cold aubergine with spicy gubbins, pickled cabbage, fatty meat on mauve kindling (unidentifiable & I didn't ask), and the pièce de résistance, a ginormous bowl of seafood, incl. crab, mussel, clam, prawn, other & other.

Family meal #2 (similar crowd) was traditional Sichuanese hot-pot with ingredients incl. taro, potato, see-you-tomorrow mushrooms (und I did), cow stomach, various meats, chunks o' fish, big green leaves like pak choi or similar, and more. Everyone has a small bowl with their own bespoke combination of oils, parsley, spring onion and chilli. It is great fun, and we had our own private room!

It left us feeling bloated and squishy-faced.

But merry, and that's the important thing, ey chaps?

Meals at home were similar, though marginally less opulent. Green beans and mapo doufu, egg and tomato soup, so on so on. M's mum is a qulinary queen and made us feel tremendously welcome. She even facilitated the making of dumplings (jiăo ze), which were boiled and steamed and let off a lustrous honk when they were done. Here we are in a dumpling frenzy. Frenz in a friendsy.

I suppose, in life, in everything, there are those who got it and those who don't got it. In this, in the construction of dumplings, I currently don't. There are artists, dough-deft and unimaginably suave thereabouts, popping out twirls like nobody's business. I, by contrast, am a rookie, newbie, fuddle-handed loser. But, I say, do they all taste the same? Yes I believe they do.

Much taller. A head and maybe shoulders taller.

It actually becomes a hindrance in social interaction. Kids look up at me with horror in their eyes, stricken as if by a demon or monstrous spectre. They scurry to their parents with tears wetting their irises. What am I to do?

The citytown of Zhongjiang is watched over by a North Tower in the north, and a South Tower. In the south. Must I spell everything out?

Ascent of the former made us giddy with altitude, or just excited to be alive. For what is one day but a continuation of the last? And what is life but a sequence of graduating days? Blessed are those who have foregone Chronos in favour of Kairos.

The shaoyaohua, or peony flowers, bloom annually and with notable gusto. Fields awash with white and pink specks, wonderful, resplendent, beauti-- and trampled by keen photographers, eager to make their mark in the cyberverse.

I, for one, think they could be a band. Wistful, lackadaisical, either carefree or careless (we love that in a band, don't we, isn't it cool).

This was taken at the top of I think the South Tower but I may have got them confused. Tradition here is to take a red ribbon (different ribbons have different inscriptions which in turn signify different things and in turn mean different consequences for those for whom you do the thing), write upon it a message, dedicate it to a person or persons, walk to the top of the wee mountain, up all the steps, sweat as you go, walk three times around the actual tower clockwise, then three times anti-clockwise, and finally tie the ribbon around any low-hanging branch of any tree available. The trees are quite replete with red ribbons, let me tell you.

I took, I wrote, I dedicated, I walked, I sweated, I orbited thrice one way and thrice the other, I tied. I sent positive thoughts and wavy vibrations. Did you receive them? Perhaps you know who you are.

Then, at night, we played ninja under neon lights.

And later, mahjang with a swish electronic table.

There's another thing which clicked a while ago but which hasn't come up naturally in relation to any of the pictures. But I guess I shouldn't be bound by pictorial representations of things: words can paint pictures, though inefficiently (1000 vs. 1, I'll take the 1). This has to do with the Chinese way of utilising the land. It is different, or 'ours' is. Ours? Who are we? What is us?

As there are 1.3 billion people here, pragmatism and utility are first priorities in a lot of processes. Canteens are enormous and churn out vast quantities of food, very cheap, for hoards of hungry hippos. Wastage is wastage, but the children are fed. Everything is made in order to accommodate hundreds or thousands or millions of people. The subway carriages are bigger than London's; the roads are wider, have more lanes; local small-time bakeries are constantly constantly constantly producing loaves, and constantly constantly constantly have queues; towerblocks are in perpetual construction, popping up like Lego tenements; in the outskirts of the city, gigantic roads are mid-way through being built, and jut out at the sky 15 floors up in order to one day ferry people upon people upon people.

And the land: if it can be changed to better suit its purpose, it is. Whereas in England or France or for that matter most of Europe, you'll nip around and see mostly large flat or hillside fields either growing maize or sunflowers or hemp or lying fallow or being pastoral with grazing animals etc etc., the actual lay of the land existing in its own way, in Sichuan much of the land is shaped and sculpted in order to suit the needs of the country, the people of the country. The terrain is constantly being redesigned, reshaped, remoulded, in a bizarre and at times saddening demonstration of power of machine over nature. Seeing this process mid-way is the most strange: the land sits bare like a big brown pudding being carved up. Gradient is no good, so hills become steps, and vehicles need access, so mudded highways are scraped into the soil, laid over so that the system is practicable. 

I don't know. I guess it's completely normal. And it fits with the unabashed nature of social interactions - there are no political or societal reservations (as a whole, anyway) about redesigning the land they inhabit, if it thereby becomes more effective, more productive, more utilisable. It is a triumph of change, progression or something, in a country heavily preoccupied with its own ancient history. I find it interesting.

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Coming for you

squeaky faced

Every day

cut and paste

Weighing up

less speed more haste

London town 

where I was graced.

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Big love goes out to my main gal on this day, entering a new gorgeous year and taking off in more dimensions than can be articulated. ♡