Little is more inspiring than being nominated by students to be a judge at an English movie dubbing competition... and perhaps nothing more hilarious than Ice Age 3 clips rendered in heavily accented fumbling English... unless you count the Forest Gump clips... and the Titanic ones...
That was yesterday evening, totally unplanned.
When the votes were cast and the microphones blessedly turned off the ever too formal Mr. Wu rose to the occasion and invited me to join him and the other teachers to "enjoy shrimp" with them. Although the thought of eating shrimp in Lhasa, the single most landlocked place in all the world, gave my stomach visions of food poisoning I was loathe to refuse and so I hopped in the car instead and promptly complemented Mr. Wu on his dolphin dashboard ornament... a pleasant contrast to the Mao rear view mirror decoration.
We dodged the thousands of Tibetan faithful doing laps around the city for merit on this most sacred evening of the year and entered a restaurant crammed with Chinese customers. The waitress shuffled around handing out plastic gloves and wet naps and I knew I was in for something. So, when the bowls of spicy, boiling shrimp and pig foot soup came out I wasn't even surprised. Into the bowl went cucumbers, two kinds of tofu, potato noodles, and bamboo shoots. Into our stomach the like. And out of the red splattering mess came shrimp eyeballs, oil, and the most striking compliment I have ever received in this city... and straight from the mouth of the hapless one himself...
Mr. Wu: Really, you've been so short time... but you fit perfectly here.
And I looked at my oil saturated glove and into the bowl where fatty pig feet brushed up against shrimp antennas and around the room to conspicuously Asian clientèle spitting shrimp tails out onto the floor and my mind rewound through my day past the lunch of potatoes and rice washed down with butter tea and eaten while squatting on a foot tall filthy plastic stool speaking in a conversation of mixed languages and through the class where forty five minutes was spent entirely on the pronunciation of the 'th' sound back to the morning when the cool urine scented breeze floated through my window bearing the Chinese breakfast hawkers bullhorn which woke me once again to the highest mountains in the world...
Me: Do you really think so?
Mr. Wu: I think so.
And so I praised my Father and unpinned the two year old bright badge strapped to my chest labeling me "foreigner" and fished a pig foot out of the soup with my chopsticks.
Because, despite all of my misgivings... and probably because of the Holy One's zest for using the foolish to shame the wise, I fit perfectly here.
The harvest is here...
The kingdom is near...
Friday, May 28, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
A stick, some line, and a hook...
A stick, some line, and a hook... that's all I have. They don't even recognize my bait. But I live in an ocean of the most desperately hungry fish I've ever laid eyes on... if only I had a net.
She was the most troubled student in the whole class... she was also the most talented. Her face in class was as black as death, her participation was finessed by the most smart alack tone of voice she could muster, she searched to find ways to make the fact that she was clipping her turquoise painted fingernails the main attraction. Her eyes rolled so many times there was a real fear they might become stuck that way.
I sent her a text message: do you have free time? I want to have tea with only you.
It was the most ridiculous text message I'd ever sent. I nearly gave myself a bruise for doing it, because she was in fact free.
She was chatting on the phone, twirling her curled and dyed hair on her finger, and nonchalantly leaning on the wall near the school gate where I was supposed to meet her. Other students milled around, asked mild questions, parted, bought potatoes. The sun boiled. Prying herself from her cell phone she asked where I wanted to go. On a whim, I pointed to the bus trundling down the street.
We ended up at some random little tea house where you could blessedly buy tea by the cup and not the thermos. Thus my getaway plan if things got nasty: one cup and split.
As the tea arrived, I glanced at her face which was as deceptively calm as the eye of the hurricane. Before I could muster my courage to turn the talk away from the inane comments about weather which had populated our conversation thus far, the storm broke. Her hard as nails expression melted and she said: I know why you wanted to have tea with me.
Stunned. Really?
I know this term I have been a bad student. I missed your class. I don't study. I know my English has become worse. She looked down... and the rest of what issued forth was a story of friendships crushed, tensions high, hopes and confidence floating away like balloons from a clumsy child's grasp. I rushed to gather all the pieces I could as they scattered from her mouth to the table between us. Nearly an hour and a half later we got up to leave.
Ms. Kelly, do you have time? Come to my house. Now? Yes, it is very close.
And literally a block away from the random teahouse of my choosing was the small four bedroom first floor flat that her family shared. We spent the afternoon looking at all of her family's photo albums together, listening to her mother ramble about what Lhasa used to be like, looking at all of the idols in their household temple, eating rice mixed with fresh yogurt, and dashing to catch the next bus back to the school so that she wouldn't be late for the evening class.
What can I do but marvel at timing of such wonder that against all of my habits and desires would place me at a tea house with a troublesome girl turned dear student over two cups of tea less than a block from her house? What can I do but gasp knowing that there are one hundred and thirty one students in my classes combined, plus those whom I've formerly taught, who also have needs to be heard, valued, affirmed? What can I do but read and answer in some minute way the letters they write and hand discretely to me during the break with heartache? What can I do but correct their homework in which they share that all their hopes are in vain and make simple notes of encouragement vowing to find a time to speak to them later? What can I do but trust in One who is far more powerful and gracious than I to rise up in this rickety boat and throw out a net on behalf of such need?
He is the fisher of men. If all he's given me are simple tools and the most precious bait in the world then I know it's sufficient for this ocean squirming with fish.
Today I was hug jumped from behind as I walked down the hall. One look at the turquoise fingernails and I knew exactly who it was.
She was the most troubled student in the whole class... she was also the most talented. Her face in class was as black as death, her participation was finessed by the most smart alack tone of voice she could muster, she searched to find ways to make the fact that she was clipping her turquoise painted fingernails the main attraction. Her eyes rolled so many times there was a real fear they might become stuck that way.
I sent her a text message: do you have free time? I want to have tea with only you.
It was the most ridiculous text message I'd ever sent. I nearly gave myself a bruise for doing it, because she was in fact free.
She was chatting on the phone, twirling her curled and dyed hair on her finger, and nonchalantly leaning on the wall near the school gate where I was supposed to meet her. Other students milled around, asked mild questions, parted, bought potatoes. The sun boiled. Prying herself from her cell phone she asked where I wanted to go. On a whim, I pointed to the bus trundling down the street.
We ended up at some random little tea house where you could blessedly buy tea by the cup and not the thermos. Thus my getaway plan if things got nasty: one cup and split.
As the tea arrived, I glanced at her face which was as deceptively calm as the eye of the hurricane. Before I could muster my courage to turn the talk away from the inane comments about weather which had populated our conversation thus far, the storm broke. Her hard as nails expression melted and she said: I know why you wanted to have tea with me.
Stunned. Really?
I know this term I have been a bad student. I missed your class. I don't study. I know my English has become worse. She looked down... and the rest of what issued forth was a story of friendships crushed, tensions high, hopes and confidence floating away like balloons from a clumsy child's grasp. I rushed to gather all the pieces I could as they scattered from her mouth to the table between us. Nearly an hour and a half later we got up to leave.
Ms. Kelly, do you have time? Come to my house. Now? Yes, it is very close.
And literally a block away from the random teahouse of my choosing was the small four bedroom first floor flat that her family shared. We spent the afternoon looking at all of her family's photo albums together, listening to her mother ramble about what Lhasa used to be like, looking at all of the idols in their household temple, eating rice mixed with fresh yogurt, and dashing to catch the next bus back to the school so that she wouldn't be late for the evening class.
What can I do but marvel at timing of such wonder that against all of my habits and desires would place me at a tea house with a troublesome girl turned dear student over two cups of tea less than a block from her house? What can I do but gasp knowing that there are one hundred and thirty one students in my classes combined, plus those whom I've formerly taught, who also have needs to be heard, valued, affirmed? What can I do but read and answer in some minute way the letters they write and hand discretely to me during the break with heartache? What can I do but correct their homework in which they share that all their hopes are in vain and make simple notes of encouragement vowing to find a time to speak to them later? What can I do but trust in One who is far more powerful and gracious than I to rise up in this rickety boat and throw out a net on behalf of such need?
He is the fisher of men. If all he's given me are simple tools and the most precious bait in the world then I know it's sufficient for this ocean squirming with fish.
Today I was hug jumped from behind as I walked down the hall. One look at the turquoise fingernails and I knew exactly who it was.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Stone soup: a trip out of Lhasa
The late morning was bright and now familiar mountains, streets, shops rumbled past the bus window making way for wasteland. The ingredients used to make this land would also make a nice, though dry, pot of stone soup.
Nothing. Only dirt. Dirty mountains and a smattering of dirt colored villages. Dirty people in dirty clothes making prostrations to Lhasa in the dirt. Dirty sheep scrawny from a diet of dirt.
Up, up, up we zigzagged. The roof top of the world is brown.
Then, like a jewel dropped from a careless prince's crown, a lake the shade of turquoise so deep and pure your eyes water looking at it. And wind, so windy you feel yourself coming apart at the seams and your already damaged hair whips and shreds around your face. Wind so fierce it rips your breath from you.
Back in the bus.
More dirt, made dirtier by the contrast of the lake.
A curve in the road and a valley too tempting to pass. A jump over the creek and climb slide up the ravine begins a hike up through the valley towards glaciers suspended from the tops of mountains like frostbite on meat left in the freezer too long... nearly as blue as the lake. Glacial runoff forms lakes left like treasures behind piles of rocks and mounds of dirt. Minuscule flowers prickle the ground like glitter after a parade. And frozen mist sweeps off the mountain like an icy cold slap on the already raw face. Lips chap instantly. A nomad woman selling jewelry initiates a scarf exchange... one buttery scarf of filth for that nice smelling one around your neck. Done.
Back on the bus.
One traffic light blinks lazily as a horse cart passes beneath it in a sleepy town. The surest sign of modernity is the fact that popsicles can be found there though only with significant effort. A ruined dusty fort stands guard for the residents, a tower with eight eyes watches over them greedily. Cobbled streets narrow and widen at their leisure and yak skulls and colored flags adorn roofs. A mannequin bearing an uncanny resemblance to Michael Jackson displays traditional wear. The food is good, the beggar children ask for pencils, the monks are chatty, and the view of the surrounding valleys is spectacular.
Back on the bus.
A distance of about a dozen songs of praise and truth plus an hour puts us in the next town. Achey travlers nearly as dusty as the streets walk through the market selling a remarkable amount of animal skin and take pictures of the dried sheep carcasses sitting obediently in rows. An evening walk around the local monastery and footprints mingle in the dust with other pilgrims spinning wheels. Women selling green salty paste line the path and a grandmother grabs a foriegners butt to exclaim how fat it is. The city, though tree dotted and quiant, becomes a blur of buildings and temples and long braids and butter.
The next morning we are back on the bus.
Nothing. Only rocks. Roads cut into the mountains revealing rocks so deep and thick into the dirt it seems like a bad joke to see a yak and a skinny grandfather at the plow. The bus stops for a rest and we pile out of the bus onto the rocks, we kick rocks, throw rocks, climb rocks... then back on the bus. We stop again and behold the strangest thing: water rushing over the rocks from some mountain peak. Water splashing rocks, making rocks dark from the damp. Water blessing the rocks with a stripe of green, the first such color in miles. Water pouring, gurling, singing, shouting over rocks content to take it all in.
Back on the bus.
Nothing. Dirt. Rocks. Lhasa. Back.
A weekend spent sipping this stone soup of land. Stone soup not being a very good cure for lonlieness.
Nothing. Only dirt. Dirty mountains and a smattering of dirt colored villages. Dirty people in dirty clothes making prostrations to Lhasa in the dirt. Dirty sheep scrawny from a diet of dirt.
Up, up, up we zigzagged. The roof top of the world is brown.
Then, like a jewel dropped from a careless prince's crown, a lake the shade of turquoise so deep and pure your eyes water looking at it. And wind, so windy you feel yourself coming apart at the seams and your already damaged hair whips and shreds around your face. Wind so fierce it rips your breath from you.
Back in the bus.
More dirt, made dirtier by the contrast of the lake.
A curve in the road and a valley too tempting to pass. A jump over the creek and climb slide up the ravine begins a hike up through the valley towards glaciers suspended from the tops of mountains like frostbite on meat left in the freezer too long... nearly as blue as the lake. Glacial runoff forms lakes left like treasures behind piles of rocks and mounds of dirt. Minuscule flowers prickle the ground like glitter after a parade. And frozen mist sweeps off the mountain like an icy cold slap on the already raw face. Lips chap instantly. A nomad woman selling jewelry initiates a scarf exchange... one buttery scarf of filth for that nice smelling one around your neck. Done.
Back on the bus.
One traffic light blinks lazily as a horse cart passes beneath it in a sleepy town. The surest sign of modernity is the fact that popsicles can be found there though only with significant effort. A ruined dusty fort stands guard for the residents, a tower with eight eyes watches over them greedily. Cobbled streets narrow and widen at their leisure and yak skulls and colored flags adorn roofs. A mannequin bearing an uncanny resemblance to Michael Jackson displays traditional wear. The food is good, the beggar children ask for pencils, the monks are chatty, and the view of the surrounding valleys is spectacular.
Back on the bus.
A distance of about a dozen songs of praise and truth plus an hour puts us in the next town. Achey travlers nearly as dusty as the streets walk through the market selling a remarkable amount of animal skin and take pictures of the dried sheep carcasses sitting obediently in rows. An evening walk around the local monastery and footprints mingle in the dust with other pilgrims spinning wheels. Women selling green salty paste line the path and a grandmother grabs a foriegners butt to exclaim how fat it is. The city, though tree dotted and quiant, becomes a blur of buildings and temples and long braids and butter.
The next morning we are back on the bus.
Nothing. Only rocks. Roads cut into the mountains revealing rocks so deep and thick into the dirt it seems like a bad joke to see a yak and a skinny grandfather at the plow. The bus stops for a rest and we pile out of the bus onto the rocks, we kick rocks, throw rocks, climb rocks... then back on the bus. We stop again and behold the strangest thing: water rushing over the rocks from some mountain peak. Water splashing rocks, making rocks dark from the damp. Water blessing the rocks with a stripe of green, the first such color in miles. Water pouring, gurling, singing, shouting over rocks content to take it all in.
Back on the bus.
Nothing. Dirt. Rocks. Lhasa. Back.
A weekend spent sipping this stone soup of land. Stone soup not being a very good cure for lonlieness.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
From the overflow of the heart...
He didn't have any idea what he was saying. With his busted leg propped up on a pillow and a small kitty mewing pitifully as it tumbled around on his mat in the corner of his tidy but obviously dilapidated cell, he leaned back in the most casual way, pointed behind his head to the mountains of Buddhist scripture stacked there, and said "I don't believe it".
Then he went on to say "but I have spent a long time studying it, and it's like I've built a house, even I don't want to live there anymore I can't just leave it and start building a whole new one... it's too much work. I'm tired."
Something inside me twinged with pain. Even I could resonate with such exhaustion.
But my student, the mindful though quiet observer to the entire exchange, twinged also.
It was hot when we left. The sun scorched the green leaves on the spindly trees; the coolness of the room had been deceptive and as trudged back to the school gate and plopped down in a nearly deserted teahouse what seemed like a world dribbled gushed forth from lips to shy to speak to anyone else:
The mouth spoke.
And he wipes his eyes now wide with emphasis now watery with honesty and sighs from the effort of so much English and doesn't fight too hard and so I pay for the tea. And I thank him for telling me and his eyes widen and water again in disbelief.
From the overflow of hearts come truth, doubt, things done, pain, joy, anxiety, horror, and thrill...
From the overflow of hearts come words: echos of dreams, glimpses of souls.
From the overflow of hearts mouths speak.
They have spoken.
Then he went on to say "but I have spent a long time studying it, and it's like I've built a house, even I don't want to live there anymore I can't just leave it and start building a whole new one... it's too much work. I'm tired."
Something inside me twinged with pain. Even I could resonate with such exhaustion.
But my student, the mindful though quiet observer to the entire exchange, twinged also.
***************************************************
It was hot when we left. The sun scorched the green leaves on the spindly trees; the coolness of the room had been deceptive and as trudged back to the school gate and plopped down in a nearly deserted teahouse what seemed like a world dribbled gushed forth from lips to shy to speak to anyone else:
When you go back to America? maybe I will cry so much. I am selfish even you only stay one more year it's okay because I only in Lhasa one more year but you can't stay then who is my teacher? Why you didn't tell me your heart is sick for home? Even you can say these things. You know I want to tell you many times send you a message but I don't. This monk. He doesn't believe. I am the same to him. Only he is so bad because he is monk and should believe this. You know I on internet watch this video about Yesu, so much blood Miss Kelly. I don't understand this is a so sad story... but I think can have new life, this new life so good. What can I do? You know you don't know. I will tell you. My life, my hometown people so poor. When I am home we never eat three meals a day. Only one, and only potatoes. Even my father working in field all day he only has potatoes. When I go home see him dirty water comes from his face... I... I know I must study hard. There is no other food in my hometown. I would never complain to my mother but I know I am lucky in Lhasa, so much delicious food, anything I want. And my hometown people, maybe in one year they only have one clothes. Where can they buy new clothes? Where do they have money? You don't know. And in the summer if comes heavy rain hard like rocks all the crops are broken and then nothing to eat... maybe one family only one bag of tsampa and they can only eat very little. You don't know. Maybe if you come there you will cry. But my mother she knows you, I always say about you something. Now I will go to class.
The mouth spoke.
And he wipes his eyes now wide with emphasis now watery with honesty and sighs from the effort of so much English and doesn't fight too hard and so I pay for the tea. And I thank him for telling me and his eyes widen and water again in disbelief.
From the overflow of hearts come truth, doubt, things done, pain, joy, anxiety, horror, and thrill...
From the overflow of hearts come words: echos of dreams, glimpses of souls.
From the overflow of hearts mouths speak.
They have spoken.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiir Ball sans polite applause
The middle school sized gym turned school's spare bedding storage room had a smattering of students lining the dusty peeling walls and a few too many whistles when I entered with my student to watch an interdepartmental basketball tournament, day two.
It was the Lakers versus the Rockets until I witnessed at least three steals due to the ball rolling on the floor within the first five minutes and I realized that the jerseys were fakes.
It was the Lakers versus the Rockets until I witnessed at least three steals due to the ball rolling on the floor within the first five minutes and I realized that the jerseys were fakes.
I've been realizing things about this place recently... namely that there are a lot of fakes... really good fakes. This not being an example of one of the really good ones. Unlike the Ray Ban shades you can get from the hobo on the street selling them out of his back pants attached on only two sides pocket. Quality.
In class that morning I had been teaching a lesson about syllable variation in simple past tense. It was funny because the word syllable in English sounds like the word sunluobu in Tibetan which means pickled radish. For all the students could figure out I was teaching a very strange lesson about lunch.
I kinda wish I had been teaching about that instead.
Then Kobe Bryant dribbled the ball under his legs and did one of those fake out moves where he looks one direction but throws the ball in the opposite direction... unfortunately for him, there was no one in the direction in which he threw the ball. It bounce rolled off the sidelines and went to the other team.
The day before when I dashed down into Lhasa on a random errand I was trailed by a Tibetan pre-teen asking for money. When I started to speak to him in Tibetan he was so elated he forgot everything about the money, and couldn't stop giggling every time I made a correct answer. Glad to make somebody's day.
At which point a boy in an unlabeled Rockets jersey practically body slammed Kobe in an attempt to make the thousandth interception of the game. The refs were more content to blow their whistles rythmically to some Tibetan pop song than call the obvious foul, they were pretty slack about calling all the traveling that went on that day too. You'd have thought these students had diplomatic passports they way that traveled up and down the court.
For the past three days I have slept enough to make Rip Van Winkle lose his legendary sleepers status. Picture a full ten to eleven hours every night and then at least a two hour midday nap. Lazy? No, just beat.
Finally somebody on the Lakers team did something so heinous as to actually draw the refs attention away from the cute time keeper and call a foul. There they were... lined up... there he was Yao Ming himself at the free throw line... there went the ball... not even close to the backboard. As I prepared to let out my most insulting 'air ball' I froze... due to the most unusual sound... not boos and catcalls... but polite applause and murmers of 'good try' from the audience. Creepy.
Today I walked into my afternoon class, typically the piercing characteristic in my headaches, and all the students were there. All forty of them. A calendar worthy moment for sure since it is the first time all semester that such a phenomenon had occured. Even the boy who the last time I saw him he was slightly drunk outside a bar, even the boy who was told by his other teachers he didn't need to waste his time coming to class because he would fail anyway. It was more beautiful to me than auroa borealis, really.
The game went on... and on. Until I decided that based on my nationality I was the most qualified to be the school's new head basketball coach.
The basketball game was reflective of the way that I've felt about this place the past few days. I mean, I'm amused and all, it's good fun, but truthfully that mess wears me out. Still, I learned a thing or two... and could do to learn a thing or two more.
After my student and I squeezed past what had become a crowd of students in the gym to enter the infintely fresher cool breeze of the outdoors I got a phone call from a friend asking if I needed anything. Like what? Like food, do you need any food? Remember I am your Tibetan mother.
Oh yes. How could I forget?
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
shiver me timbers
Today I met a pirate.
Cause when you hop on the slowest bus imaginable in the middle of a Lhasa afternoon and the driver is wearing a sleeveless mesh t-shirt, has a shaved head, a disintegrating cigarette in his left hand, a gold earring in his right ear and is singing along in mildly fluent English to the Bob Marley dvd playing in the bus' windshield visor... and when he turns around to the amused foreigner in the front seat and says "you like this man? you know he's my brother" you know you've met a pirate.
His name is Cidandunju and he spits a little when he talks.
I can't be sure but I could have sworn when I got off I noticed a parrot sitting on his shoulder.
Cause when you hop on the slowest bus imaginable in the middle of a Lhasa afternoon and the driver is wearing a sleeveless mesh t-shirt, has a shaved head, a disintegrating cigarette in his left hand, a gold earring in his right ear and is singing along in mildly fluent English to the Bob Marley dvd playing in the bus' windshield visor... and when he turns around to the amused foreigner in the front seat and says "you like this man? you know he's my brother" you know you've met a pirate.
His name is Cidandunju and he spits a little when he talks.
I can't be sure but I could have sworn when I got off I noticed a parrot sitting on his shoulder.
Monday, May 3, 2010
A nun, a midget, and a foriegner walk into a tea house...
Actually, the nun was waiting for me at the door and the midget just invited himself to the stained bench with a piece of plastic tacked on which served as our table. Though I never figured out where he came from or who he was, his English was better than my nun friend's and so I was content to let him stay. Maybe I imagined him.
We made three unlikely study partners to say the least.
The situation was attracting so much attention that my nun friend decided she had had enough of the midget and the melee and marched me up the crumbling, greasy concrete steps into the locked sliver of a room that served as a bedroom for four nuns working at the tea house. There was literally room enough for only four beds and a tangka of some series of buddhas hanging precariously on the dirty wall.
We sat close together on the towel covered wooden boards that were their beds and I wrote English words and translated them into Tibetan for her. I threw my arm around her shoulder as she tried to sound out the words. I grinned when she did it correctly. I was lost entirely when I realized that though she had been a nun for the majority of her life she struggled with spelling and writing in her own language. When I corrected mistakes she made in her Tibetan spelling it dawned on me that she couldn't read.
I glanced into her sparkling eyes blinking in the dim grungy light and her shaved head with a small towel thrown over it to protect from the flies and was filled with total fury at the injustice of such overwhelming poverty. This woman was condemned to live in extreme simplicity and impovershiment bordering on squalor since her childhood by a family that expected that her presence in the nunnery would earn them heaps and heaps of merit. She is beautiful and intelligent and hardworking and kind and generous... and forgotten.
Silencing what was mentally becoming a roaring lecture on the mounting evils of such a belief system that would encourage such a fate to a totally oblivious and absent audience I slid closer to her on the bed and encouraged her to practice writing every day. We chatted for a bit longer and as I stood to leave she said to me: nga ranla gaboyu, onea ran nea rogborisha.
I like you, really you are my friend.
She walked me out of the tea house and I gave her a hug to the shock of everyone on the street whom it is getting dull shocking so frequently.
A nun, a midget, and a foriegner walked into a tea house... the midget disappeared and two friends walked out... one of whom had been granted a more acurate vision of reality than she had ever had before, the other who had learned the meaning of the English word 'pee'. And the sun set. Another day.
We made three unlikely study partners to say the least.
The situation was attracting so much attention that my nun friend decided she had had enough of the midget and the melee and marched me up the crumbling, greasy concrete steps into the locked sliver of a room that served as a bedroom for four nuns working at the tea house. There was literally room enough for only four beds and a tangka of some series of buddhas hanging precariously on the dirty wall.
We sat close together on the towel covered wooden boards that were their beds and I wrote English words and translated them into Tibetan for her. I threw my arm around her shoulder as she tried to sound out the words. I grinned when she did it correctly. I was lost entirely when I realized that though she had been a nun for the majority of her life she struggled with spelling and writing in her own language. When I corrected mistakes she made in her Tibetan spelling it dawned on me that she couldn't read.
I glanced into her sparkling eyes blinking in the dim grungy light and her shaved head with a small towel thrown over it to protect from the flies and was filled with total fury at the injustice of such overwhelming poverty. This woman was condemned to live in extreme simplicity and impovershiment bordering on squalor since her childhood by a family that expected that her presence in the nunnery would earn them heaps and heaps of merit. She is beautiful and intelligent and hardworking and kind and generous... and forgotten.
Silencing what was mentally becoming a roaring lecture on the mounting evils of such a belief system that would encourage such a fate to a totally oblivious and absent audience I slid closer to her on the bed and encouraged her to practice writing every day. We chatted for a bit longer and as I stood to leave she said to me: nga ranla gaboyu, onea ran nea rogborisha.
I like you, really you are my friend.
She walked me out of the tea house and I gave her a hug to the shock of everyone on the street whom it is getting dull shocking so frequently.
A nun, a midget, and a foriegner walked into a tea house... the midget disappeared and two friends walked out... one of whom had been granted a more acurate vision of reality than she had ever had before, the other who had learned the meaning of the English word 'pee'. And the sun set. Another day.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
I have seen the world end.
It was dark when I piled into a taxi with three of my former students this morning. Pre-sunrise Lhasa is a different city. The only sound is the scritch scratch of the stick brooms of the street sweepers in orange reflective coveralls. Pre-sunrise Lhasa reminds you of a sleeping child. It's deceptive of course. Lhasa is really just a hungry beast.
It was cold when our bus filled with an assortment of pilgrims bumbled and shuddered over the dirt path up the mountain to Tsupu Monastery. Icy blasts of wind slicing through cracks in the old bus. When the bus stopped everyone on it had the same idea: make a beeline for the small tea house at the foot of the monastery. Inviting only because yak dung smoke seeped forth promising warmth.
It was uncomfortable when we found ourselves in the midst of the most active monastery I have ever visited. In every room monks bustled about, mumbling, pouring pale butter tea, making statues of tsampa, rearranging the butter melting in the lamps, banging drums, ringing bells, coming up with long and barely intelligible explanations, making change for pilgrims. And intertwined with that melee was the endless circling, spinning, whispering, offering, line of pilgrims ranging in age from birth to as close to death as you can be and still moving. Head ache indusive and repetitive to the extreme I counted over two dozen pictures of the same monk and at least three over two story high metal statues. Just frame someone wearing burgundy or prop something gold up and these people will worship.
It was unsettling to see the expression on the honored child monk's face as he sat on a bench and lifted a wrapped book to lightly pat the heads and backs of each of the pilgrims stood waiting in a snaking, panting, sunflower seed spitting line at the peak of a mountain. Total unrelieved boredom. He accepted kadas and cash, and only registered mild surprise at a glimpse of the foreigner standing politely off to the side out of range of the dropping book. Outside it began to sleet.
Then the world ended. It ended the same way it had done countless times that day already. Only this time I distinctly recognized it.
Another room in another temple. It was crowded enough to be warm already in addition to the flickering butter lamps. We had to ask where to go and were directed to the place. Its walls were covered in the standard oil painting of Buddhist mythology, moldy tangkas hung from the ceiling, and cases of golden statues could be made out in the shadowy dankness of the room. People began to circle clockwise and stick the equivalent of dimes and nickels in any crevice they could find. A monk in burgundy garb and a yellow north face jacket languished against a pole in the center of the room.
Then he spoke. And it ended. The whole world stopped moving. People stopped breathing, stopped chanting, stopped offering, stopped circling and just pooled up in the room in a circle around this young man. Eyes glazed over and the only thing that assured me that they were still alive was their nods and moans of assent every time he paused to take a breath. As long as he spoke in his gravely chanting distorted voice, the world, the whole world, stood still. Perhaps it ended.
My leg fell asleep.
Then he stopped, he resumed fiddling with the butter lamp wicks. People groggily shook themselves back into their spinning, circling, mumbling, offering. Nobody even so much as thought a question for the monk in regards to what he had said. They just accepted whatever had come out of his mouth... after all, he had in a single breath caused their whole world to stop. I rolled my eyes.
The world ended many times today.
It was getting dark again when we got back to Lhasa. An evening spent resting out in a field amidst some mountains and a small village home to a handful of rowdy children in dirty clothes provided a pleasant detour thanks to our bus driver with one gold tooth and a black stain on his shirt. When the bus stopped in Lhasa, I and my students immediately went to eat our fill of fried potatoes and sweet tea. I fell asleep on my student's shoulder once we had caught another bus back to our school.
I have seen the world end... and it was so frustrating I would have ended it myself if I had the ability to. Luckily I don't. Thankfully it didn't really. But you would never have known that looking into their beautiful faces.
It was cold when our bus filled with an assortment of pilgrims bumbled and shuddered over the dirt path up the mountain to Tsupu Monastery. Icy blasts of wind slicing through cracks in the old bus. When the bus stopped everyone on it had the same idea: make a beeline for the small tea house at the foot of the monastery. Inviting only because yak dung smoke seeped forth promising warmth.
It was uncomfortable when we found ourselves in the midst of the most active monastery I have ever visited. In every room monks bustled about, mumbling, pouring pale butter tea, making statues of tsampa, rearranging the butter melting in the lamps, banging drums, ringing bells, coming up with long and barely intelligible explanations, making change for pilgrims. And intertwined with that melee was the endless circling, spinning, whispering, offering, line of pilgrims ranging in age from birth to as close to death as you can be and still moving. Head ache indusive and repetitive to the extreme I counted over two dozen pictures of the same monk and at least three over two story high metal statues. Just frame someone wearing burgundy or prop something gold up and these people will worship.
It was unsettling to see the expression on the honored child monk's face as he sat on a bench and lifted a wrapped book to lightly pat the heads and backs of each of the pilgrims stood waiting in a snaking, panting, sunflower seed spitting line at the peak of a mountain. Total unrelieved boredom. He accepted kadas and cash, and only registered mild surprise at a glimpse of the foreigner standing politely off to the side out of range of the dropping book. Outside it began to sleet.
Then the world ended. It ended the same way it had done countless times that day already. Only this time I distinctly recognized it.
Another room in another temple. It was crowded enough to be warm already in addition to the flickering butter lamps. We had to ask where to go and were directed to the place. Its walls were covered in the standard oil painting of Buddhist mythology, moldy tangkas hung from the ceiling, and cases of golden statues could be made out in the shadowy dankness of the room. People began to circle clockwise and stick the equivalent of dimes and nickels in any crevice they could find. A monk in burgundy garb and a yellow north face jacket languished against a pole in the center of the room.
Then he spoke. And it ended. The whole world stopped moving. People stopped breathing, stopped chanting, stopped offering, stopped circling and just pooled up in the room in a circle around this young man. Eyes glazed over and the only thing that assured me that they were still alive was their nods and moans of assent every time he paused to take a breath. As long as he spoke in his gravely chanting distorted voice, the world, the whole world, stood still. Perhaps it ended.
My leg fell asleep.
Then he stopped, he resumed fiddling with the butter lamp wicks. People groggily shook themselves back into their spinning, circling, mumbling, offering. Nobody even so much as thought a question for the monk in regards to what he had said. They just accepted whatever had come out of his mouth... after all, he had in a single breath caused their whole world to stop. I rolled my eyes.
The world ended many times today.
It was getting dark again when we got back to Lhasa. An evening spent resting out in a field amidst some mountains and a small village home to a handful of rowdy children in dirty clothes provided a pleasant detour thanks to our bus driver with one gold tooth and a black stain on his shirt. When the bus stopped in Lhasa, I and my students immediately went to eat our fill of fried potatoes and sweet tea. I fell asleep on my student's shoulder once we had caught another bus back to our school.
I have seen the world end... and it was so frustrating I would have ended it myself if I had the ability to. Luckily I don't. Thankfully it didn't really. But you would never have known that looking into their beautiful faces.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
take a little picture put it in my pocket
I want to remember things.
I want to take a little picture of everything. I want to carry the picture around in my pocket so I can take it out and look at it and remember.
I want a picture that captures an entire evening spent with a dorm room full of boys wandering around the room that serves as my apartment as they go about the laborious task of making Tibetan meat dumplings. One kneads dough until his arms become visibly sore, two dash out to reappear with the largest thermos of butter tea they can carry, one vanishes into the kitchen to grind meat for an hour periodically peeking around the corner with bloody knife in hand and sideways baseball cap, two sit and make conversation and do what they can to appear to be part of the process, another washes bowls, another finds some good music to listen to. The dumplings finished, the light dim, the stomachs bulging, the butter tea thermos dry: a snapshot of eight boys around a table straining to understand their foreign teacher.
I want a picture of the cigarette burned backseat of the bus where two ten year old Chinese girls sit giggling and translating every English word they know to the neighboring foreigner. Then the small girl with short hair and high heels reaches into her bag and pulls out a camera to take pictures of the foreigner so as not to miss such a unique opportunity: a snapshot of a moment with a stranger.
I want a picture of my Tibetan friend's face when the creepy old butter smelling grandfather picked up our dented, stained thermos of sweet tea the second time and poured our drinks before hobbling back to his busted wooden seat to resume his career of watching us. A snapshot capturing the exact instant before a face as black as death burst into the uncontrollable laughter reflecting the giggles which I had desperately been trying to stuff back into my mouth and labeled with the rebuke "don't smile so loudly or he will come back!"
I want a picture of the monk with his foot propped up on a pillow and wrapped in gauze as he beams proudly knowing that the entire monastery is now at his beck and call. An old man paces back and forth, cleaning things, filling cups with revoltingly bland tea, humming. A monk leaning on burgundy pillows amidst burgundy sheets and a cool breeze blowing through the cracks in the wall. A foreign teacher and a student and a bag full of food and medicine squat in various positions on the rough floor. A snapshot of unusual friendship and a quasi king with a broken leg.
I want a picture of the straight bangs and long curly hair framing the dimpled face of a Chinese student who uses 'ok' to mean 'I think so too' as she knocks on my door to hand me a crocheted handbag made by her mother and shipped in from mainland complete with large pink flowers. A snapshot of hospitality at its most endearing.
I want a picture of my small Tibetan friend as she haggles for a cheaper price for the cushions as I stand conspicuously silent and shy off to the side and the stacks of bedding sway from the intensity of the argument. It would necessarily contain the shops full of miscellaneous junk watching us battle the stumble drag of the awkwardly shaped cushions to the back of the taxi, and the lid of the green tea bottle which promises us a free one to our disproportional excitement. A snapshot of a relationship cemented by home improvement projects.
I want a picture of my student as he sweats through his midterm exam after not having come to a single day of class the entire semester yet. The bench groaning as he shifts his weight in a struggle to remember things he's never really been taught. My own surprise and relief as he manages somehow to pass and his expression of confusion and something entirely different as he hears a teacher beg him, in his own language, to come to class because she is so proud of him. Something it's obvious he's never heard before. A snapshot of the exact moment when a boy decides he's going to change his life.
I want a picture able to capture the intonation of Mr. Wu as he teaches about parking tickets to a glassy eyed class of freshmen in a Mr. Rodgers meets Eeore spoken English to the unending amusement of the foreign teacher observing him. The dust swirls on the chalkboard around his childish drawing of a police officer and the pale yellow curtains turning the gray room a shade of dingy never before imagined. And his expression of utter joy and slight surprise upon recieving a slip of paper containing a list of praises she had written during the observation. A snapshot of gaps bridged.
I want to take a little picture which has every cup of tea, every minute of every conversation, every expression, every molding bench, every crumbling wall, every sweetly scented bush with small flowers, every sunrise, every crystal clear night, every soupy oily bowl of squirming noodles, every sticky grain of rice, every mildly revolting bus seat, every tiny oddly pink hued bird, every gift, every person, every wrinkle on every face, every line of dirt under every fingernail, every glimpse of every life of joy and pain, struggle and success, mundane and miraculous...
and I want to put it in my pocket.
and I want to remember.
I want to take a little picture of everything. I want to carry the picture around in my pocket so I can take it out and look at it and remember.
I want a picture that captures an entire evening spent with a dorm room full of boys wandering around the room that serves as my apartment as they go about the laborious task of making Tibetan meat dumplings. One kneads dough until his arms become visibly sore, two dash out to reappear with the largest thermos of butter tea they can carry, one vanishes into the kitchen to grind meat for an hour periodically peeking around the corner with bloody knife in hand and sideways baseball cap, two sit and make conversation and do what they can to appear to be part of the process, another washes bowls, another finds some good music to listen to. The dumplings finished, the light dim, the stomachs bulging, the butter tea thermos dry: a snapshot of eight boys around a table straining to understand their foreign teacher.
I want a picture of the cigarette burned backseat of the bus where two ten year old Chinese girls sit giggling and translating every English word they know to the neighboring foreigner. Then the small girl with short hair and high heels reaches into her bag and pulls out a camera to take pictures of the foreigner so as not to miss such a unique opportunity: a snapshot of a moment with a stranger.
I want a picture of my Tibetan friend's face when the creepy old butter smelling grandfather picked up our dented, stained thermos of sweet tea the second time and poured our drinks before hobbling back to his busted wooden seat to resume his career of watching us. A snapshot capturing the exact instant before a face as black as death burst into the uncontrollable laughter reflecting the giggles which I had desperately been trying to stuff back into my mouth and labeled with the rebuke "don't smile so loudly or he will come back!"
I want a picture of the monk with his foot propped up on a pillow and wrapped in gauze as he beams proudly knowing that the entire monastery is now at his beck and call. An old man paces back and forth, cleaning things, filling cups with revoltingly bland tea, humming. A monk leaning on burgundy pillows amidst burgundy sheets and a cool breeze blowing through the cracks in the wall. A foreign teacher and a student and a bag full of food and medicine squat in various positions on the rough floor. A snapshot of unusual friendship and a quasi king with a broken leg.
I want a picture of the straight bangs and long curly hair framing the dimpled face of a Chinese student who uses 'ok' to mean 'I think so too' as she knocks on my door to hand me a crocheted handbag made by her mother and shipped in from mainland complete with large pink flowers. A snapshot of hospitality at its most endearing.
I want a picture of my small Tibetan friend as she haggles for a cheaper price for the cushions as I stand conspicuously silent and shy off to the side and the stacks of bedding sway from the intensity of the argument. It would necessarily contain the shops full of miscellaneous junk watching us battle the stumble drag of the awkwardly shaped cushions to the back of the taxi, and the lid of the green tea bottle which promises us a free one to our disproportional excitement. A snapshot of a relationship cemented by home improvement projects.
I want a picture of my student as he sweats through his midterm exam after not having come to a single day of class the entire semester yet. The bench groaning as he shifts his weight in a struggle to remember things he's never really been taught. My own surprise and relief as he manages somehow to pass and his expression of confusion and something entirely different as he hears a teacher beg him, in his own language, to come to class because she is so proud of him. Something it's obvious he's never heard before. A snapshot of the exact moment when a boy decides he's going to change his life.
I want a picture able to capture the intonation of Mr. Wu as he teaches about parking tickets to a glassy eyed class of freshmen in a Mr. Rodgers meets Eeore spoken English to the unending amusement of the foreign teacher observing him. The dust swirls on the chalkboard around his childish drawing of a police officer and the pale yellow curtains turning the gray room a shade of dingy never before imagined. And his expression of utter joy and slight surprise upon recieving a slip of paper containing a list of praises she had written during the observation. A snapshot of gaps bridged.
I want to take a little picture which has every cup of tea, every minute of every conversation, every expression, every molding bench, every crumbling wall, every sweetly scented bush with small flowers, every sunrise, every crystal clear night, every soupy oily bowl of squirming noodles, every sticky grain of rice, every mildly revolting bus seat, every tiny oddly pink hued bird, every gift, every person, every wrinkle on every face, every line of dirt under every fingernail, every glimpse of every life of joy and pain, struggle and success, mundane and miraculous...
and I want to put it in my pocket.
and I want to remember.
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Are they looking out or in?