Yixing, China - November 12 and 13

Shanjuan Caves in Yixing

The Lovely Snail Woman

Bride Beautiful... groom too

Hangzhou November 6-8, 2011

A rainy mist embraced West Lake spreading its flat, gray light over the causeways and pagodas. Live jazz, a flightless kite, and big brain conversations blended splashes of color into an ashy autumn landscape!

Beautiful: Biutiful

Visualizing Perfection

The misspelling of the word beautiful in the title of the film Biutiful is the unrealized potential of an ideal nuclear family- husband, wife, son and daughter- split bipolar and divorced at the seams. The soft spot in the heart of the main character, Uxbal, represents Everyman navigating through a world that elevates money and profit above human welfare and relationships. Uxbal is in the middle of a business venture that both employs and exploits illegal Chinese and Senegalese immigrants in Spain. His weakness and his strength is that he forms relationships with the immigrants, caring about the quality of their food, shelter and clothing or lack thereof.

Eyes wide open listening to the storm outside, while thinking about the messages in the film, I wonder why the human mind can envision perfection if we can never reach it.

Maid Service

This cleaning woman stands on the shelf in my mother's living room, although my mother was born into the generation of American women who considered the tidiness of their homes an extension of their identity and self-esteem.

Identity Thieves

mom

Are you closer for the tears? Or has the weight of all the years made you hollow?

Ray Lamontagne, Like Rock & Roll and Radio

Identity is on my mind tonight in ALL CAPS like that repetitive kindergarten song about a farmer’s dog.

Bingo was his name-o.

Hollow-void-vacant-worthless-empty… abstract blue

B-I-N-G-O was a five-lettered creature, identity broken apart, each sound articulated individually, and then formed into an entire living being. Children sing and sculpt the dog’s presence into sound and fury because that was his name-o!

Who am I? Who are you? I know my name, just like that damn dog, but did Bingo have any clue what he was doing on planet earth? Why was he puppy number one (birth order) in litter two billion and seven since when (the beginning of time)? Did that purebred want-to-be come when he was called like so many humans I know? Or did he really consider the origin of his existence eventually driving himself to doggy insanity?

I asked myself what my purpose was in the scheme of things while raking leaves in the backyard today. And does it matter? Be careful with those particular questions I told myself because they spur me to consider if it’s better to feel nothing at all or to let the pain massage my limbs and subconscious with its masochistic show-of-force.

Two weeks ago I was a teacher. Today I am a daughter answering every need of a mother who directs me to the kitchen for a glass of green tea with ice of course. I am pulled home by her need for a strong arm and a memory that recalls the name of her favorite family pet- a sleek grey cat we called Sullivan Grey- when she can't. Before washing her blankets, I squirt Spray and Wash on each stain ground into the dark raspberry quilted comforter in the silent cool basement. A basement is a good place to ask yourself: Who am I? I would hop on a plane and spend any amount of money for the airplane ticket to reassure myself that my mother was still breathing, speaking, chain smoking her Salem cancer sticks, and rattling in her lungs.

Leaving her again will be the hard part.

And Bingo was his name-o.

image source: abstract blue