"Your Jetlag is so Bad I Could Drive My Hummer Through It"
--The Governator
Sacramento, California, Empire Americana

I spent three days with my best friend and his wife just outside of Sacramento. We were cross-country companions in the summer of 2002 before I decided to try out China instead of Mexico.

My friend picked me up in the San Francisco airport. On the 11-hour flight (not bad, really) I sat next to a Chinese businessman and a girl with a green card. Neither spoke English, even though the girl had lived in San Fran's Chinatown for two years. One of my students had been the same way. Six months in Australia, couldn't speak more than "hello" and came back to China to learn English. I never could cut through his fear or understand how someone could allow themselves to be so closed off.

The Police State in--Action!

When I got off the plane, two Asian Americans handled the passport checks. The girl who’d been next to me started talking to one of them and the police officer said in that over-enunciated American policeman style, "ma’am, I do not understand what you are saying to me." I turned around to assist when a commotion stopped me: a man had broken from the line and was off in a sprint down the corridor. The guards ran after him, tried to tackle him, failed, and returned to the fragmenting line of Chinese (who are not known to wait in line, you know). The officers called for backup and got the line back in order, waving the girl with the green card on to the luggage claim.

My two seatmates and I strolled next to the broken moving sidewalks as pair after pair of cop huffed to detain the ill-fated Chinaman. He must have somehow gotten on my flight without a passport, or without a visa, or with something to hide. Poor devil. I'm sure he’s back in his motherland by now.

A New World, Much Like the Old World

My girl (the guqin, "sparkle") survived her time in the cargo hold unscathed. And before she knew it she was toppling off my luggage cart as my friend I embraced. Luckily, a woman in front of us caught her. To have her survive everything but my own carelessness...

Qin in hand, embrace cooled, we loaded into my friend's Geo Metro and we were off to Rancho Cordova, where they inhabit a New Age world of psychics, healing stones, and Christ Consciousness that I don’t fully grasp but don't outright dismiss either.

My friends both work at a bookstore called EastWest. There I wandered sleepless and dead after the long flight. Before I knew it, I had learned more than I needed to know about Indigos, this supposed generation of psychic children, as they were showing a movie about them at the bookstore. Yet I couldn't ask enough questions about the history of the Catholic Church or the Governator of California or the apparent beginning of the end of the American standard of living.

Impressions of my Homecoming

The first thing that caught my attention was the mix of people in that most racially of diverse cities in America. In Shanghai only about one in every 200 people is non-ethnic Han Chinese.

Likewise, I was ill prepared for the friendly greetings I got from strangers as I passed on the sidewalk. Chinese don't usually nod, smile or acknowledge another's presence. When I smile at them, I hear them say behind my knowing ears, "har har, he smiled. Foreigners! Har! Why did he smile? Har har."

Highlights

Perhaps the highlights of my time were eating Mexican food, being with people I didn't need to hold anything back from, and playing guqin along the American River while my best friend played his fiddle.

Before I knew it, the time had come to visit my father in Virginia and we were up early to brave the traffic. May that world of Bay Area commuter traffic rest in peace the only way I know it can--outside my consciousness.

A Secret Guqin Meeting:
Or Just a Stuffy Room on "Long Happiness" Rd.?

Seeing as guqin culture was nearly destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, it's amazing to be part of its revival. Last weekend there was a small meeting of fifty or so guqin cognoscente. Here are some pictures of me and one of my closest comrades playing on an old qin


This bearded fellow is your narrator. Look at those Irish phenotypes in that light! Never have my hues looked redder!


This virtuoso is more than a little bit of inspiration to your narrator.

Thanks to a little old Chinese lady from Boston for taking these pictures.

In CtoC-CC news today, two articles reported in the China Daily to bring to your attention.

The first reports on a new study hypothesizing the exact date of the "the point of no return" with regards to global warming: About ten years.

"The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics."

...

"In the report, the task force calls not only on G8 countries but also on all of the world's large economies, including China and India, to take drastic action to reduce climate change."

...

"The report says the danger point will be signalled when temperatures rise by 2 degrees centigrade above the average world temperature prevailing in 1750.

But it points out that global average temperature has already risen by 0.8 degrees since then, with more rises already in the pipeline - so the world has little more than a single degree of temperature latitude before the crucial point is reached, the paper said.

The consequences of such a rise could include widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests.

The researchers calculated the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere after which the 2-degree rise will become inevitable, and say it will be 400 parts per million by volume (ppm) of CO2. The current level is 379ppm, and rising by more than 2ppm annually - so it is likely that the 400ppm threshold will be crossed in just 10 years."

Have a look see at the article here.

The second article reports that climate change was responsible for mass extinctions that killed 75% of land species.

"Global warming was to blame for the mass extinction of species 250 million years ago and not an asteroid impact, an international team of researchers reports in the latest issue of Science magazine.

Paleontologists concluded that the disappearance of 90 per cent of all marine species and 75 per cent of land plants and animals at the boundary between the Permian and Triasic periods was caused by atmospheric warming because of greenhouse gases triggered by erupting volcanoes.

Have a look see at the article here.

Best not to make any long-term plans for life as we known.

 

Someone Important Dies

Article posted on a friend's blog.

Mindfulness:
What One Can Get From Meditation

Here's an article that succinctly describes the benefits of mindfulness meditation. By the man who maintains this website.

My Impending Return to the Empire
Or, A Brief Outline of My "Political Paranoia"

As I prepare to visit America next weekend, here are some thoughts...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

--W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

This morning, as I walked to the Shanghai public library from where I write you, I noticed, as always, the fresh-faced Chinese guards outside the gate of the US consulate. Like every other day, I smiled at them and they smiled back. In contrast to my usual strides, I slowed at the gate and peered in the room of personnel staring at banks of security apparatus. Then to the locked gate itself. Then inside to the retractable rampart, erect and ugly. Then to the triple row of foot-long spikes at the peak of the three yard high wall. In the train of the mounted video cameras, I passed the always-tense patrolling guard by the wall inside his yellow line. Unliked the gate guards, he didn't smile back. His sense of duty precluded niceties.

What might all this be protecting, I wondered, when American citizens' consular services are now conducted on the other side of town--from a shopping mall?

Directly across the street, the low wall of the French consulate, picturesque and unflanked by video cameras or a crown of thorns, stood in welcome contrast to my nation's manifest paranoia.

To the Empire

At the end of the week, with any small cooperation from the fates, I will sit through 14 hours on a jet to return to that world of spikes and cameras. I go with a heart full of love to greet an estranged friend, possibly to seek reconciliation, possibly only to deepen the sense that I best retreat further into study and prepare for (avoid, escape?) the inevitable.

I fear, not as many, that America is spiraling out of control, but marching--ever blindly--into control. The falcon hears the falconer, and responds.

A Sketch of My Itinerary

Concretely, plans for my three-week stay in the US include a three-day stop in San Fransisco/Sacramento. Then on to visit my father in Virginia. From there I return to the Great Lakes state of Michigan, the heart of a most blessed bioregion, which I longed for in Autumn and only now get to visit in Winter.

When I told my employer of my plans, he said, "Well, we'd prefer you take only 15 days off, but since you haven't seen your home in 14 months, you must think me quite an ogre for saying that."

I smiled and stuck to my guns. He wished me a pleasant journey.

If only my nation--all nations, all peoples--would smile and put down the guns.

Salvia Survey Results
Read What Others Think About an Old Friend of Mine

This Mexican salvia's recent popularity has saved it from extinction. But now it's on the US DEA's watch list, and therefore in danger. Read the Salvia Divinorum Survey on Erowid to learn more about this little understood psychoactive. Includes a nice summary of new insights into brain chemistry from recent studies of the plant, information about its pschoactive effects, and a user survey. This article is a nice antidote to alarmist media reports of late.

Long live nature!

Stay at Home Activism:
Take this!

One of my favorite cultural commentators takes it out on inactive activism with his "Not One More Damn Dime Day" Rant.

Make Soup Lest Ye Be Judging

I dropped by the guqin shop yesterday to consult an expert on some difficult fingerings. Questins resolved, some regulars dropped by. Non-unipolar conversation--as always--got too difficult for me to follow. My eyes dropped tableward and my brain curdled.

A few minutes later I remembered the pot of peas I'd left soaking on the stove and announced my intentions to "return home and make soup," (hui jia he zuo tang). Everyone at the table started laughing.

Maybe they think it's strange that someone who's only 24 years old knows how to make soup?

No, I must have used the wrong tone.

Thinking, thinking. Oh, yes, "tang" was the problem. I had used a rising tone instead of a flat tone. I had said I was going home to make sugar.

Laughing, I said, "no, I'm not going home to make candy. I will make soup."

The aforementioned expert spoke up.

"You didn't say you were going home to make soup. You said you were going home to make judgements."

This Explains My Anxiety
US Congress Considers Classifying Political Dissent as "Political Paranoia"

Link to the post.

"When the 109th Congress convenes in Washington in January, Senator Bill Frist, the first practicing physician elected to the Senate since 1928, plans to file a bill that would define 'political paranoia' as a mental disorder, paving the way for individuals who suffer from paranoid delusions regarding voter fraud, political persecution and FBI surveillance to receive Medicare reimbursement for any psychiatric treatment they receive," writes Hermione Slatkin, Medical Correspondent for the Swift Report. "Rick Smith, a spokesman for Senator Frist, says that the measure has a good chance of passing - something that can only help a portion of the population that is suffering significant distress."

"If you're still convinced that President Bush won the election because Republicans figured out a way to hack into electronic voting machines, you've obviously got a problem," says Smith. "If we can figure out a way to ease your suffering by getting you into therapy and onto medication, that's something that we hope the entire 109th Congress will support."

Characterizing political dissent as a form of mental illness is the hallmark of authoritarian government.

Link to the post.