The death of a Lama: a little red dog on a little red street

People lined like so many ants around a dropped crumb

Chattering, crying, complaining, consoling...

A death stiffened corpse sitting upright with covered visage

Decaying, disrupting, deceiving, discouraging...

Buses rerouted, students sneak out, hours in the viewing line pass like
glaciers on an icy sea.

Delight for buzzards, disaster for pilgrims: a burial

Finishing, frustrating, forgetting, foreboding...

Chalked streets fade and mournful crowds disperse

Ruining, remaining, relaxing, returning...

The Lama died... evidence? a little red dog trots down a little red street.

Always take whatever is inside the kettle.

There are some weeks when remembering the reason for the hope that I
have is a little like searching for some item of necessity in the junk
stores overflowing with rubbish. Some weeks when I hear the strain in
Paul's voice as he constantly repeated, "rejoice always, I will say it
again, rejoice!" There are weeks which make me dizzy and nauseous, weeks
where I find myself calling out in a desperate plea to the carousel
operator, "stop the ride now, here is where I get off."

But He does not forget me. The problem is that I forget Him. And the
ways that He reminds me that He is in my very midst, that He seeks me
out in my own filth, that He carries me and covers me with His presence
and the power of His love... well those are really remarkable.

Maybe it was the voices of students from yesterday's class calling out
to me in the hallway "Do you feel better today Ms. Kelly?" or maybe it
was His. Perhaps my teammate wrapped a bag of crackers that actually
taste good, an anomaly in this city, to my door handle, or maybe His
Spirit did it. Maybe that box from some dear friends back home complete
with Autumn Wreath scented candles was delayed by the haphazard Chinese
postal service or maybe it was directed by His hand to arrive at the
perfect time.

And stranger things have happened.

Maybe, just maybe, the ancient, hunchbacked old Tibetan lady whom I've
never seen before wearing a dusty stained chuba and brightly colored
head scarf, who was slightly grinning as she half gummed half chewed a
salt boiled potato, blocking the entrance to my apartment building with
her crippled body and dented metal kettle filled with more boiled
potatoes, insisted that I take at least one. Maybe it was her wrinkled
and chapped hands that thrust the kettle towards me... but maybe they
were His. And maybe it was her eyes that glinted in the autumnal sun as
she disappeared around the corner, but maybe, just maybe, they were His.

Blessings in the voice of my students, a pack of crackers, scented
candles, and a kettle of boiled potatoes. He speaks, He provides, He
reminds, He offers. The moral of this story: always take whatever is
inside the kettle.

Persimmons and poinsettias and funny things all in a row...

*This one is dedicated to my teammate Jenn, who had the blessing of
witnessing all of this with me*

I had to dodge carts of persimmons so ripe that their skins threatened
to burst like slimy orange pupae from fleshy eggs on my way to the
flower market that balmy October afternoon. The time was a ripe as those
persimmons for the purchase of my poinsettia. Truly a more auspicious
moment than mid October could never have been to usher in the Christmas
season with such foliage.

It was as if the deep reds and dark greens of the poinsettia adorning my
trailer-park-at-Christmas cabinet (hailed from another story) gave the
universe some covert signal, a wink of the celestial eye, to unleash all
the fury of hilarity into my life. Maybe that or the randomly, though
appropriately, muttered word "asinine" floating through the room to
reach my ears already trembling with giggles.

Whatever the cause, the universe had indeed aligned itself in such a way
that the sticky sweet of the pineapple popsicle poignantly highlighted
the glimmer of mischief in the ancient Tibetan eye of the nearby
grandmother as she hobbled closer to the unsuspecting posterior of my
friend. Eyes clouded with age sparkling beneath a braided mass of gray
she rested her time wrinkled hands on the shoulders of my friend who's
shock registered pricelessly on her American face as she turned slightly
to peer into the brown lines of the visage of the personal space
invader. From her lips escaped a two syllable "oh...kay...." less a
remark of assent than confusion. The grandmother, with no intention of
finding a new resting place for her hands, mimicked the okay and
breathed a sigh heavy enough to be her last, as though there were
nothing more to be uttered on that subject or any. The rest of the
universe, and every fiber of my being, was overtaken by waves of
laughter like a flock of birds suddenly alighting from a power line and
even the popsicle chanced a smirk.

In these days rifts in the time space continuum appear big enough for
the bus to lurch to a stop and make an allowance for the unsuspecting
student to leap on, into the the presence of both of her foreign
teachers. The majesty, or perhaps horror, of seeing both of us at this
moment, on this bus, on this street, in this city, is enough for her
entire body to register: eyes as big as the moon, mouth wide in a barely
prevented scream, arms in the air and body rigid. A few inches of
difference and this poor girl would surly have been backwards off the
bus and onto the unforgiving pavement. The split second of
quintessential surprise before the girl regained control of her bodily
functions was enough to make me double over with laughter and tremble
with amusement I could no longer distinguish from the shudders of the bus.

The profound conclusion to be reached is this: Life is funny people and
as long as we're living, with or without persimmons and poinsettias,
somebody is laughing.

Limericks: the challenge

We did a lesson on limericks, I challenged my students to write some of
their own... though I'm not sure how much of the lesson they understood,
the results were hilarious and here are some of my favorites:

There once was a girl from Tibet
All she ate every day was some yogurt
She want eat with a chicken
So we'll see her real soon
Because I have stolen his fruit.
-Qiangjiuzhouma

There once was a girl from Shannan
A boy from Shigatse she met
The boy took a flower
But the girl haven't received
He feel shy and went home.
-Cirendunzhu

There once was a boy from Shigatse
And he usually went to a tea house
But he one day drunk so many
Then prepared to pay money
Later he forgot take money and ran at once.
-Pubuciren

There once was a girl who you know
Everyday she at shamomo
She wanted some more
But the girl at the door
fell down so she felt shy immediately go
-Denzengqujia

There once a man who is a thief
He want have many knife in his life
One day he stole a knife
Look at very good
But got home he found is a wood!
-Baimadeji

There once was a man who you know
He want go to restaurant eating noodle
Although he are not money he had better enter eat
The landlord shout he pay the bill when he said take money forget
Landlord said you are leave here immediately now.
-Cirendeji

There once was a man named Tsering
And one day his teacher let me sing
But he stood up then cried
We didn't know what was reasoned
As result he lost one yuan this morning.
-Yuden

There once was an English student
Everyday to school went
He met a crazy driver
The man wants carry him
But he say "I have foot".
-Danzengqudeng

The sun sets on October first... and it rises.

I awoke to the live television streaming of the largest military parade
in this history of modern China and subsequently had the Chinese
national anthem stuck like a broken record in my head for the rest of
the day.

It was all I could do after such a display to curb my impulses to march
like a nutcracker down the street as I trailed after my friend to some
fairly quiet park where we could study Tibetan writing. Highlights of
the lesson include a devastating amount of sub and superscripts as well
as the largest spider I have ever seen mistake my friend's trousers for
a bench as it sunbathed. He was a welcome distraction from the
absolutely humiliating prospect of learning such a complicated language.

That afternoon I wrote some letters home with four Tibetan sisters
pouring over every word written, leaning onto my arm and shoulder,
spilling onto my lap. I left for fear of turning into a couch or bowl
for humanity. As I made dinner I watched a recorded vision of the
Beijing Civilian parade complete with a float for everything that China
is proud of and one for each of the thirty some odd provinces
complimented by the unending soundtrack of the national anthem. The
environmental achievement float had long been dismissed by the time that
the thousands of red latex balloons were released into the atmosphere.

I washed the dinner dishes in a red plastic bowl of warm soapy water and
couldn't help but feel that something had been wasted, perhaps my whole
day.

Plans erased, delayed, vanished like a dream upon awakening. Plans like
a ball of yarn unraveled on the floor. Plans transient, ephemeral like a
mist. Phantom plans, dazed plans, lost and forgotten plans.

I went for a walk in frustration. I walked around our school's nearly
deserted track. I walked for an hour.

Every lap around, in spite of my frustration, I witnessed the clouds
change hue in the setting of the sun on this wasted day. White like
cotton, now pink like lemonade, now orange like a flame streaking across
the sky, now blue gray like the tears of a whale, now hardened into the
color of slate... now only a shadow on the moon.

And so the sun set on October first.... this morning I awoke to the play
of light dancing merrily across the tips of the mountains and the cool
breeze sneaking through my window and wondered at this world where one
day is wasted and we are so freely and generously just given another,
and another, and another until He returns.

This is my difficult to forget day

I rushed back with news from the teachers office that this Sunday was
actually Wednesday and thus, in a way only made possible by the Chinese,
we would be having classes. With the sheer drizzle of the
uncharacteristically gray sky and my mind a swirl of confusion over the
days and recently learned Tibetan food items including "monk cake" I
nearly missed the shy student who I had in classes last year who was
waiting at my house fifteen minutes before our scheduled tea time.

I nearly missed her, but I had not forgotten her.

It was providence which had allowed such a time to be set up, it was a
random trip to buy three potatoes which allowed me to run into her, it
was a years worth of insistence that we have tea that accumulated to
this moment, it was her shy giggles and sweet notes and question asked
with lowered eyes "do you want to know my story?" which provoked such
insistence for a tea time. And now, it was happening.

In the damp cool of the morning we dodged the freshmen doing military
training in distracted clumps outside my building, we scampered out
through the school gate and started the hike over to Sera Monastery
because "tea houses near school have many students, I am shy." We
predictably decided on sweet tea and made our way over to some unsteady
benches under a tree heavy with wet. Our conversation, vaguely
reminiscent of a trip round the world, touched on many things: how she
was the first in her family to go to college, how her best friend
studies in inland China, how she often feels lonely, how I am so nice,
how she wonders if her decisions are correct or if she is a fool, how
potatoes are her favorite vegetable, how she thinks she is too young for
a boyfriend, how she is saddened by the pressure from other students to
have one, how Beijing is the capital of China and potatoes, bu shi, the
Potala is the capital of Lhasa, how it is her dream to talk to a
foreigner and now her dream has come true.

The salty spice of the potatoes washed down with the milky sweet of the
tea and the low clouds rolling overhead shaking drops of rain from the
overhanging tree. The staggering mountains and crumbling buildings seem
to converge and how many times did she say 'Teacher this is my difficult
to forget day'?

Why?

'Because teacher, today I am with you.'
How many difficult to forget days does one need before one recognizes
the One who never forgets? Will her next difficult to forget day have
the same sweet tea and potatoes that she eats everyday? When she meets
Him, because He is obviously very close to her, will she also find Him
difficult to forget? Once she has long forgotten me and all the English
she has ever learned will she find the Spirit which makes me so
memorable difficult to forget?

May He be impossible to forget.

The lake in the sky: a trip to Namtso

I have seen:

A Tibetan man as old as time with Aviator sunglasses

The freckles on an egg like stars in the sky

Herds of livestock like ants dotting lime green hills

Roads so high one drives through the clouds

Four ducks traverse a wilderness

A lake so blue and wide one mistakes it for the sky with the dizzying
feeling of walking upside down

Bread escape into the waves like a renegade lifeboat

A woman in a long wool coat standing before a frozen carcass in the low
light of dawn

As many shades of green as the human eye can process

Three filthy siblings who do not know where they are from but only that
they are hungry

Chinese people have entire conversations with bits of bread and cakes
barely clinging to the inside of their mouths

Stones and caves that appear to be rigid versions of a child's mound of
pockmarked play dough

Villages mistaken for postcards a blink and then gone

I must have seen a thousand yaks.