clarahsu – Page 6

Wang Lun and O Lan

The Chinese couple came toward me. The man was tall and skinny. The woman, sturdy in her fifties, greeted me with a smile. They had gotten lost, walked up and down the wrong street looking for my house number.

The job interview was for the man, but the wife tagged along just in case. They were farmers in China.

“Wife and I used to work on ten acres of land, just the two of us,” said the man.

“He’s a good person. Has compassion. Will take care of your father well,” the woman chimed in. “I work two jobs, also taking care of old folks. We’ve been doing this for nine years.”

In Pearl Buck’s Good Earth, her characters, Wang Lun and O Lan, worked in the fields, just the two of them. They suddenly came to life, sitting across the table from me.

“How is life here?” I asked.

“Much better than China,” the man said.

They used to work all day in the fields. Now they work all day in houses. There is not much difference. Life, to them, is work.

The Golden Years

The illusion of the term is hardly big enough to cover up the reality. The years are not golden but dimming, confusing, difficult and lonely. My father’s doctor gave him a clean bill of health. “You have a good, strong pulse. As for the other complaints, I’ll do what I can to fix them, but most things are not fixable.”

The decline is sudden, noticeable, followed by a period of improvement, which brings hope, soon to be shattered. Unlike birth, which makes a clean break from the womb, the return is often filled with lingering and sadness.

“What to do?” Father asked me. He is forever purposeful.

We’ve always been chameleons

How is a person defined? By the person or by others? Most often what we see is skin deep. From the clothes we wear, the manner we speak, the actions we take, we are constantly being classified and typified. In time we come to believe in a particular image or style, whether we like it or not.

We all have aspects of ourselves that are not known to others. Most of the time they are not even known to us! How then shall we begin to explore these aspects?

By abandoning what is known!

Can we abandon what we know in the interest of what we don’t know? Will we lose ourselves in the process?

How can the self be lost when it is allowed to thrive in manifold? It must defy definition. There’s nothing more exciting and terrifying than watching a new limb growing out of an old stump. We have always been chameleons. Why do we think otherwise?

Social Chameleon by Blueisacolour

The Great Observer

Kayla, six, asked me why I have gray hair.

“Because I’m older than your mom.” That seemed like a good answer for my piano student.

But she persisted, “How come your veins are so big.” Then, “What’s that little bone on your wrist?”

We were no longer playing the piano but comparing the differences between a grown up (much older than her mom) and a child. Did Kayla think that some day she’ll have gray hair and large veins?

She was conscious of the protruding extra bone that grows out of her right thumb. There was one on the left too but the doctor had removed it.

“Why didn’t they remove this one too?” I asked. She said she didn’t know.

She went on to comment on my tattoo, told me my favorite color was green, and that I loved flowers. She was right.

I reminded her we needed to get back to playing the piano. She put her hands nicely on the keyboard and began the five-finger exercise.

Image comment: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore – piano lesson
Image credits: Moonbot Studios LA, LLC

The Art of Gift Giving

What shall I give to my daughter on her birthday? We’re a generation apart. I stopped buying clothes for her when she started middle school. In fact, I had gotten by without giving gifts to my children for holidays and birthdays until they were old enough to figure it out. I explained, “A gift cannot be a mere symbol. It has to come from the heart. Gift giving should be a pleasurable thing to do. We give when the gift makes you think of the other person, not when there is an expectation.”

But this birthday is different . She has moved to Oregon. I cannot hug and kiss her. Sending her a gift is much more meaningful to me now. It has to represent love.

And what materialistic things contain such power? Homemade goodies? Money? A poem? There is not one thing that can convey the wonder of her birth and the joy of seeing her growing every year. Perhaps the greatest gift is to call her up and say ” I love you”, and it is to be given always.

Best Friends

A friend is someone I like and don’t mind hanging out with. People come and go in the course of a lifetime. There have been a few instances when I became close to someone and considered the person my “best friend”. But circumstance changed. Time and distance took away the intimacy and often best friends became stranger than strangers.

Best friends think of each other constantly. They share secrets and have the capacity of deep understanding. It is an emotional and spiritual connection. Although lovers are not always best friends; best friends are most definitely lovers.

While I move from one “best friend” to another, the ancients were more passionate about this very special relationship.

According to Qin Shi, Liezi said:

“Bo Ya was good at playing the qin (seven-stringed zither). Zhong Ziqi was good at to listening to the qin. When Bo Ya’s will was towards high mountains in his playing, Zhong Ziqi would say, ‘How towering like Tai Shan (mountain)!’ When Bo Ya’s will was towards flowing water in his playing, Zhong Ziqi would say, ‘How vast are the rivers and oceans!’ Whatever Bo Ya thought of Ziqi would never fail to understand. Bo Ya said, ‘Amazing! Your heart and mine are the same!’ When Ziqi died, Bo Ya broke the strings (of his qin) and vowed never to play again.”

Quoted passage taken from Wikipedia.

Image from: http://www.chinancient.com/guqin/guqin/

All the Sunny Leos

It used to be Gemini who were my friends. Now I am surrounded by Leos. As life took a different turn the people around me also changed. Leos—the sunny, passionate, positive thinking ones—seem to like the watery Pisces fine. Since the end of July I have been celebrating friends’ birthdays.

We celebrated Sacred Grounds reading host Dan Brady’s sixtieth (actual day is tomorrow) with cake and candle. His bubbly personality certainly livens up the reading. Tonight of all nights he read a poem on turd! For all the hard work he puts in by showing up on Wednesday week after week he gets this poem from me:

Dan Brady is arriving
at the big six-O and diving
into moments of insanity
with a tickle of profanity

The Edge of the Paper

What do you do when you reach the right margin? What to do if you don’t want to turn back to the page but keep going? Alas the limitation of a piece of paper!

Is the poetic expression controlled by the size of a piece of paper? Or should the paper find a way to accommodate the expression? If words fall off the edge of the paper (Is it allowed?) where will they go? Who will catch them?

“Beethoven wrote a sonata that was out of the piano’s range of his time.” Composer Henry Cowell said in an interview regarding Charles Ives, “Some composers write for instruments as they find them. Others insist that one be built for the music they hear in their mind.”

Tranquil Resonance Studio

Chinese instruments — Some of David’s collection at Tranquil Resonance Studio

The best Chinese restaurant that was famous for its porridge—gone. The one that served traditional “Gold Mountain” style dim sum, with their signature chicken roll wrapped with transparent noodles—closed. The bookstores? I had rejoiced in their opening and mourned their closing.

“The old stuff is disappearing,” chuckled David Wong, who grew up in San Francisco Chinatown. “And I’m trying to hold onto the ancient culture.”

David has turned part of his family house into a scholarly studio filled with potted plants, musical instruments and tea wares. We are preparing for an afternoon of “cultured gathering“, an event to be held on Sunday August 19. It will be “just like the old times”, when friends come together to share tea, music, poetry and art.

The elegance of the guqin (seven-stringed zither), the art of tea brewing, the subtlety of poetry breaking into song— the old is still among us, alive and thriving.

Whose Poem is it?

We come out of our mothers, propagating the intricate and long lines of genes that go back to the beginning of man. Society, community, environment, personal experiences contribute to the formation of our physical growth and characters. Parents, siblings, teachers, lovers, friends, affect our views in life. We keep changing and growing. We are never one thing. Who are we? Who am I? The proper time to define ourselves is after we’re dead.

Maybe that’s how we can look at a poem too. Sure it has a mother. But after it is born it might be quoted, cut up, or translated into another language. It might be edited and interpreted, with or without the poet’s knowledge.

In old China, a painting was considered more valuable if a respected poet put commentary on it. What about poems? Can one poem dialogue with another? Can they argue? Can they metamorphosize? At the end of the day, what’s important is the emergence of something new and exciting out of the ocean of literature. The poet has gifted the world with a poem. May it evolve.

image taken from http://thewritersalleys.blogspot.com