more line breaks

[I added one more piece to my collection of student work]

8/25 - followup on my first weekend alone here: Lamma Island; Kung Fu Corner @ Tsim Sha Tsui, and various paint galleries

Chinese harmonica player playing a western blues by the mid-levels escalator, and making little profit from it:

harp of melted coin
finds its home below the bridge
far-off melody

A caricature artist at the Central Pier drew me as a Beijing pop star in shorts. The resemblance was not even remote, but I paid the petty cash and nodded my thanks anyway because of the obvious joy he took in this sideline job. This is proof of how difficult it is to be understood. $30 for a mirror of some other guy stuffed into my bag.

The little white boy Zachary with his Londoner family at the dock was another reflection. He hit his sister with a rolled-up tourist brochure (at that age, everything is either a sword or food) and made her cry. His apology was a sudden, forceful hug, but she planted her feet and pushed him to the ground like a real Taiji push-hands master. So Zachary hugged his father, who only pushed him back to complete his apology to the freckled girl. She cold-shouldered him and watched the waves. The boy's last resort by then was to start hitting poeple again. He, too, only wanted to be understood.

seasick
signs bobbing up and down:
Mind Your Heartd

Having spent time on both sides of the globe, I find myself less and les impressed by the cultural phenomenon of sex appeal. The media will turn this world into a renaissance of mannequins. Cheep, cheap.

Beauty is eye contact. Like the peach blossom, I am a captive of communication.

Meanwhile, the meals here are getting more and more lonely. Activity amidst a crowd is another illusion. How many names have I learned along the road in all this time?

across the view--
apartment lights blink off
like televisions


8/26
Morning. To live your life and act according to someone else's design, simply because they told you to do so, is acceptable on occasion. But if no one is watching and you are not doing this for survival, then your work sure as hell better have a meaning or significance equal to that of survival. Going through the motions is a necessary method only for the second-handers.


8/27
Tonight, coming home and glancing out the window at the phallic view of high-rises in Central, I had that moment of sharpening, of shifting clarities. For the first time in a while, I sort of realized where I am and how far I've traveled to get here.

I can see the flashing lights of televisions through windows half a mile from here. I can see shadows through curtains, people walking across small bedrooms and shutting off for the night. Lately, I have hardly even noticed the smoke; my lungs are full of this place, and I probably won't exhale the last remnants of it until after I die.

Along the mid-levels escalators where the wealthy and largely Caucasian go for drinks, one of the old Chinese men pasing out flyers and coupons was telling his partner, "Well, you go to school, ok, but even then you can't find a job..." I think I'll be alright, wherever I am, as long as I come home every night to a place with pen and paper and space for kata. I listened as I passed by, and I watched the uneven line between rich and poor, and then I continued ascending up the stairs with a bag full of fruit for which I don't know the name.

late weeknight
a man's private affair...
frozen delights


8/28
So much food today. I'll start with the snake soup.

Three generations ago,
your family learned to dry
tangerine peels and float them
like chrysanthemum petals along
this fragrant soup of lemon-
grass, brown mushrooms, shredded chicken,
and most of all the slips of snake
that made this restaurant famous.
But your grandfather is long gone
and now your father's passed. I have seen
the store in Sheung Wan where the snakes
are kept in cages, listless and crooked,
and suffocating in corridors' worth
of hand-carved boxes, and churning
at the bottom of wine bottles. I
know the insides of this meat.
Now, you sit behind the glass
of your restaurant, a woman
alone with an expensive legacy, watching
the lunch crowd passing by, counting
the coins expiring in their pockets.

After that, V showed me a little bakery famous for its "egg puffs," or sha yong. "Sand" something, the second word the same as lou yong, used in writing to name the elderly. But these single-coin desserts are only good for a couple hours, at which point they collapse and the oil leaks out, no longer held together.

She also pointed out the streetstand where, years ago, milk tea originated by the specific process of dual filtering. Besides these places where you can watch them make it, the best restaurant to order hot milk-tea is C-:d-:C-:. It's cheaper from 2-6pm: tea time, a concept inherited from the British.

The cooks wear hats now
and cover their mouths like bandits
or surgeons, but even the fluorescent lights
do not hide the roasted animals on hooks
and the bowl-curved cutting board of
older days. Even in this air-conditioned
generation and the fast-food lines,
a tea master exists
to inspect the temperature and flavor of a
simple drink. Even today, they safeguard
the sweetness of things.

And all the wholesellers of nests made from the saliva of swallows. These are collected from homes left behind in flight, then dried and packaged for $2k a plate. Women pay these prices and boil the nests in water for 45 minutes at home to eat for the softness of their skin, for the transulence of youth.

imagine
us
chasing
shadows
of free
r
birds

Tonight, at the base of the mid-levels escalator, I passed the man who lives on one of the benches, who has no personal belongings beyond the cloths wraped around his hands. He is dressed in a thick armor of rags, held together by needles and staples, glinting cheap silver in the darkness. I am unmoved to approach him and find out his story, afraid of the commitment saying hello would imply. For once, I am the have, and he is the have-not, and this space between us is a river of deep silence. From just the street above comes the sound of Soho: pulsing bass, posturing laughter. Men of old would carry birds with them in wooden cages, crossing bridges and passing under trees to sit in sweaty restaurants. The chirping bird from a distance would be at once a sign of great wealth and a telltale fear of lonelines. In modern times, the sound has changed but the song remains the same.

-

I've had Brubaker's Creative Curriculum Leadership on my bedside stand for a couple weeks but haven't touched it because it seemed too intellectual and tedious for a quick read, not immediate enough. Boy was I ever wrong. For two weeks, it has been nigh time to turn off the television. If I didn't have work in the morning, I would read until the sun came back in a fiery glow. This book is already changing the way I think.

I'm wondering now if there is anywhere else that could get me closer to the heart of human people and their interactions than in the literature and practice of education and all the substudies that revolve around it. This is the center of the social vehicle that drives the world today. All the contradictions and frustrations of the teaching profession need not be anything less than struggle towards hope and understanding.

Stealing books is something I have done on occasion and without qualm since I was nine. For once, though, there is a slew of books I own and which I would like to own, which I am leaving behind at this volatile company because I believe someone will read them and make positive, if not minor revolutionary, change for these kids and this boss while there is still time. What a wonder, that there is still time to change.


8/29
$16 near Lan Kwai Fong will get you a bowl of nodles with three prawn wontons. No napkins, no water, no backs to the chairs. Frugality is an end in itself sometimes, but other times the hunger will follow you all the way back home.

Michelle and I finished construction-papering the bulletin boards and posted our staff profiles/pictures in the style of the Visa ads [mine below]. The stigma of the old office and its politics is fading fast now. All this arts + crafts and the building/exploring of the new environment together has been key to the feeling of cohesion, of working towards something. I can begin to have faith in what this woman could accomplish with a team like this if she can just trust us. But I don't forgive so easily, and I will always look carefully at the provenance of simple behaviors.

My name: Henry W. Leung
childhood ambition: cartoonist
fondest memory: Bennington, Vermont, in the rain
literary read: Rachel Elizabeth Richardson
soundtrack: Little Wing
retreat: home in Palolo Valley, Hawaii
proudest moment: first martial arts medal, 1999
biggest challenge: simple gratitudes
alarm clock: 7:28
perfect day: every return home
first job: Creative Writing substitute in high school
indulgence: myself
last purchase: bread and water
favorite movie: Serenity
inspiration: the wind
My life: an epic poem
My passion: pineapple buns
My Life. My Passion. [signature and company logo]

poetry update

Done! The best of the poems I collected and stole from my students (no, I made copies, I wouldn't do that to them) are typed and uploaded. It was a hard decision whether or not to make grammar corrections for them as I went along, since they didn't get a chance to do revisions and the errors in their writing are not so reflective of the way they speak or think. But I ended up coming down on the plainest form of authenticity and typing it the way they wrote it.

Some are funny, some are beautiful, some are both, and some are neither. I look at this as a nonrevisionist exploration into language. These poems are at the heart of the muse.

All names (I hope; I do make mistakes) have been protected, including the name of my boss, which is also the name of this company.

http://seedverse.blogspot.com/

reconstructions (8/18-23)

8/18 - my menu for the day
- leftover rice, chicken wings, bak sin fish, frog legs
- roast duck & bbq pork fast-food noodles @ C-: d-: C-:
- handfuls of free Snickers from the office
- Hello Kitty cup noodles


8/19
Dreamt I was Spider-Man, but in a more realistic world of goofy foul-ups and dusty walls of buildings which are not so easy to cling to. Also, I had a younger sister who was constantly in real danger because of my alter ego. I will not forget how scary it was taking such leaps, and the difficulty of acquiring the proper angle and momentum for web-slinging.

In the next episode of my heroic tale, I had evaded most of my nemeses and snuck into a train to a remote island near Hong Kong to hide with my (actual) older sister. SHe was too busy with work to join me in going undercover to a grand gala, so I met instead with H, who in my dream has a British accent and is the older brother of Justina from my SSAT clas. And before things can get stranger on the train, I wake up.

The thing about dream visits from people you don't know too well is that they linger about you the rest of the waking day. You feel closer and more intimate, but these feelings are figments which do not come from any real interaction, so it is also deeply dissatisfying. It becomes an ambivalent awakening.

-
Alvin's mom came in to ask about his progress and receive advice on how to improve his concentration and articulation in writing. Somehow along the way I had actually forgotten with this kid that something of import had to be learned, and it wasn't just about the call-and-answer of classroom behavior or being anarchists to the school system. Most parents who pay such high prices for our classes don't have the time to give a damn. But Alvin's mom was so earnest that it woke me up to my call and responsibility as a teacher.

There are many roles to consider. The teacher who is passionate about sharing a subject or craft; the teacher who wants to connect with kids in their lives; the teacher who needs to teach kids to survive in the tests of our standardized society; the kid who wants to do well and also have fun; the parents who have a genuine investment in their kid's future; the society that wants to use the kids fully.

Something tells me that all these questions and uncertainties I have about being a teacher will never go away, but they can only lessen and cause fewer hauntings if I follow the path fully. I don't really want to. I'd rather loaf a while.

"What is the point of any art?" still haunts me. Martial arts, writing, painting, teaching. I think now that any pursuit in life is meant to be an exercise. This might be about presence, or detail, or charisma, or great passion, or all or some at the same time. And what is the point of attaining these temporary, transient qualities? To perform better in life; to appreciate and enjoy it as a creator and not a victim. But what is the point of that, in the long run? What is at the end of the lawns we keep crossing just to say that it's greener on the other side?

It could be that the answer is merely in the answering. We accomplish more to find out how much more there is to accomplish; we live to find out how to live. Like Sir Edmund Hillary said, once you get to a certain point on Mount Everest, continuing to go up will take just as much effort as going back down. If we can choose between growing and dying, we might as well find out how much steeper the view can get. It seems to me that the heart of practice is just practice.

If nobody is watching and you do what you need--in your heart--to do, great things may begin blazing.


8/20 - Pizza Milano Roof Top Beer Garden
One customer, two mosquitoes
and dim bar lighting that blocks
out the sun. The course of
daydreams, uninterrupted. Slow
sound of dish washing.
Metal fork against a china plate:
a tap, a toll. Notes on the wall
like a dry erase board. Answers.
Service; a building; passage, leadup
for one more goodbye unheard.


8/22 - typhoon 9 and massive illness
no desire--
rainwater, forever sounding
down the drain


8/23 - sick day from work
While still gagging and resisting throwing up in my sleep, I dreamt myself into a virtual Chinatown with a bunch of students and a big riddle before us. For the sake of not retching, I gave away most of the answers. A few just took the answer and left. Others, though, stayed behind with me to solve the problem themselves. Some did it for my sake, in deep concern; and some did it for themselves, for the sake of earnestness. Even admist my nightmares I have faith in the goodness of people.

Waiting
For a slanted rain
To fall straight again,
Hands at our chests,
We mushroom ourselves
Into the bright backs of our umbrellas,
Feet sticking out underneath
And traveling forward. Everywhere,
More umbrellas, broken at the spine,
Bent, turning like tassels
Along street gutters.
The signal hoisted,
Streetsigns blowing
Apart at the seams.
And all of us, all of us leaning
Backwards, waiting to be
Picked up like angels
Or debris in the wind.

poetry update

http://seedverse.blogspot.com/

Typhoon 8 on the way. If the boss doesn't force me to go to work, more poems to come tomorrow.

ill (8/14-16)

8/14 - sick with a cold, and therefore alive
What a day of sweat and snot, all over town.

At last, though, with a water kettle and some tea for my throat, I can sit and tou yut ha. The Chinese idioms are so poignant sometimes. To mean "take a break" you'd say, "breathe a while." Take care or take it easy is man man lei: "get here slowly."

I'm reading more of these books on education we have in the library. I believe so much in teaching and making chane in the way we raise our future. But the reality of being a teacher within the system is so overwhelming and overpowering. I don't think I could ever get past it. I can't continue to be brave for these kids and muster up energy while the boss is making swift judgments behind my back, while so much money is being exchanged and worried over. I can't pretend to just be teaching kids, when clearly that is not even remotely the point of the enterprise of schools. I see now how tremendous a difference ACLC was, so far beyond the petty bureaucracy of other systems. It had nothing to do with its philosophy or its structure; the timing and the teachers were just right. I wonder what it might be like to go back and work under Lora, to teach and learn from people I actually admire.

I know in my spare time at work now I miss the vibrancy of the classroom interaction, even if it was failing miserably. Like I told L today about getting the kids to at least imitate poems rather than sit there and get nowhere with it, it's always better to have bad material to work with than to have nothing at all. And I think I'd rather not take some high-paying job that lets me work alone and have time to work on my art, because I'd get so sick of myself so soon. I am interested in stories not my own, stories that tell me about myself and keep me far away at the same time.

remnants
of a family tree:
Frog Poopopo

C, H, W, and I had dinner today. It felt good to be honest with people.

H is still in some trouble with his family, but it sounds like he has been for some time. C is looking for a new job; the bus driver idea is out since it's illegal to have her friends come along and chat while she drives, and the interview she had today to be a recruiter was more disillusion (for me at least) about the sketchiness of people in power. W's working from home now and only coming in for classes because her mom's out of the hospital now. What this means, though, is that the doctors can't do any more for her cancer.

I want to ask why we can't just stay young, why we can't not work with such disappointment and such shackles, why we can't just paint and learn. But I understand this scheme of life. My only hope is that I continue to grow and hange, to never get trapped by anyone including myself, because stuckness could be the scariest thing of all.

steaming tea
with a clear reflection--
soon


8/15 - "moon / brush / restless night"
Unable to either close my eyes or keep them open. My meditation suffers from my calculations of time and the relationships which have transgressed these 8 weeks (or 4 class sessions). This is one long Pinsky-style poem waiting to be read aloud.

Bryan, SAT: I BSed with your mother on the phone awhile because she wants to set up private lessons with me. "You're doing very well for yourself," she said after finding out I'm still an undergrad. An hour lesson with me, discounted, is $1500. She must think I receive that in full. I get paid about $160 a day. This is all part of the system, and what your mom doesn't know is that I'm trying to teach you to escape the system in order to become a person.

Alvin, Inter-CW: You asked for my email today. Please don't send me pictures of Hitler or mutilated Elmos. If you do, I'll get very upset and also nostalgic for the folly of youth, and wonder when it was that properness and correction began to cage my own ideas. It is not so important to me that you continue to write, but that you write out loud and speak without fear. This is an investment in your grin.

Cordelia, Inter-CW: It is very important to me that you continue to write, perhaps because I know you will do so anyway. The only thing I've been able to teach you in this time is the function of the line break. This is a magic you will appreciate more with age.

Gina, Grammar: You complain I don't give you treats like a whole list of former teachers that were fired. Bless your sweet endurance. You applied and were accepted to our fall journalism class, to be editing and submitting to our Idea Burger Times. For your enthusiasm and young faith, I believe in K [...].

Jenny, Intro-CW: "I believe in K [...] if it makes me better at creative writing," went your Creed. And I never saw you again. But your stories carry on and as you live you write. This is one author's thesis.

Jonathan, Intro-CW: After the disappointment of being misled to think I'm teaching again this fall, you'll remember me and the work I put into drawing out your ideas. Great writers steal, so start pocketing memories now while nobody is watching.

Carol, Grammar: I see you playing Mario in the hall with excellent posture, and I miss teaching you English grammar from a Chinese point of view. I might have some sort of crush on you now for your eagerness to be a helpful part of this world, for the way your brother Hugo looks up to you. You'll wait together for the world to be ready for such goodness, just as you wait for each other's classes to end. You are both already full of ungrammatical grace.

Margaux, Intro-CW and Critical Reasoning: This crush you have on me is untimely. BUt my heart belongs to you all. I believe that one day we will all look up at smoky skies across the world and make wishes on one and the same star. Should it fall, we might recall each other and I'll wish again that we can meet again.

Frederick, Early Readers: Your brother and sister are but falling stars themselves. Keep sitting on people's laps and listening eagerly for stories: one day when it's too late you'll realize the meaning of youth.

Daniel, Intro-CW: You were so shy the first day of class when I began to lose my voice controlling the others. Is this what I was like, too, how I grew to tell whole tales from the depths of my lungs? If so, kudos, and suerte.

Anabel, Grammar: I found an Edgar Allen Poe poem this morning entitled "Annabel Lee." Maybe this was part of the gathering of your name. Maybe it is a part of mine as well. When I emailed your mother with a progress check of you and your sister, she said, "The girls haven't told me much about their classes, but I'm sure they learned something." I'm less sure. But I know I've learned a lot, and I thank you for it.

Many, many more. There's not enough night tonight for full remembrance.

What happens to the flapping sheets of paper my kids write poems on? Into which cosmic musical score go their pencil lines and my blue notes along the margins?


8/16 - visits to the elderly, with Gu Ma
We're all looking for some sot of addiction that will give this reality meaning.
[then I fell asleep]


8/17 - Portraits
While the four of us curdle
in the sun at Mos Burger, sketching
the details of this balcony
only artists could care about,

a brusque architect back in Central
has already unfolded his chair
before the building whose portrait
he will now try again.

Downstairs, boys wrestle
and giggle all the way
to the concrete: communication
by touch. Just like the women

in the MTR with burns
along their arms, or the Muslims
who picnic along the dry
sky bridges only on Sundays;

what straight lines give shape
to their balcony-window daydreams,
what great furnishings can show
their being disillusioned with their disillusions?

The toddler from Taiwan squeezes
his head between the bars
home, hoping for a
mouthful of chicken wings. Somewhere

later tonight, an old friend relieves his alcohol
poisoning in the backseat of a red taxi
and perhaps kneels along the floormats
again; more relatives buy

medicine, carrying on. But we
are not there yet, the four of us,
forging pencil marks in the sun, shading
as fast as we can before

things change again. The subject
has moved, the wind switches direction,
yet we make do with opened eyes
and imagine more color into these lines we've made.

touche, touche (8/10-13)

8/10 - just back from Macau
Not until I heard, "Oh no, tell me that wasn't tempered glass" and the others came into the room did I realize I was still holding the metal door handle in both hands and that my arms were maps of blood. We had replaced the glass double doors in the new office, and I was helping one of David's people move the old ones. The sheet must have twisted as we picked it up; there's no other explanation for its sudden explosion and the shower of shards which thankfully left us both handsome. Like with all things, the hurting didn't come until later, after the echoing silence and the scrambling to understand that meager moment.

There was K, though, and her husband S, to the rescue. Suddenly 热情 like never before. The judgments I've made of her in the past still stand and showed clearly in the way she got upset at the wrong people and put the blame on little, unrelated things (I think this was my fault, if you want to call this something other than an amazing freak accident). But the difference now is that I know more than ever I had and have no right to be making judgments in the first place. Whatever she does right or wrong, her concern came through when it mattered, and that tells me her intentions are true. As the first premise of NLP goes, every single human actions is performed with the idea that it is the right or necessary or best thing that can be done. If her intentions are true in her heart, on some level part of that echoes true in my heart too.

I am alive and safe, which I easily could also not be given any number of factors. And I feel deep gratitude for that, and that is enough. If there is any one thign I flew across the world to discover, it is gratitude and grace, two lessons which I relearn constantly, which remind me of the true meaning of human existence and that this meaning is never all too far from home.

Later that night on the way to Macau, sitting with my ineffective hands in my lap, I was the child again, innocent (and not so innocent) and ready to understand the world a day at a time. There's nobody else I would like to be.

haiku
as a transition--
look out!

Casinos are crazy with people and their handfuls of chips and their dreams and disillusions of what it means to live better than they do now. I lost $220 HK in the slots and the dice games, and never plan to gamble again--I am one who owns very little and thus has a lot to lose. I sat for half an hour at the Blackjack table watching a lady put down 10k for every single hand. I might never comprehend the trappings here.

And my lungs have never been more full of smoke. The cigarettes curled all around me and there was nothing for me to do but breathe deep, letting this part of the world sink into my throat like black sand.

The best part of all my trips so far have been family. I saw Guk Goh for less than five minutes after almost a decade now, but seeing his changes and recognizing maybe bits of myself (or who I'd like to be) in that is a real kindness and blessing. The aunt and uncle and Ah Bun, too, were crucial to this gathering of my name, this charting of my roots. Their apartment is a crowded little thing, with bugs on the toilet and wood-solid beds. But Ah Bun, a few years younger than me maybe, works at McDonald's (Muk da nou) and says so with a smile. His father is an excellent cook. And their shower--the hole in the ground in the bathroom, more or less--is colored with brand names like Darlie and Pantene Pro-V. This is modern China, more real to me than any other place. Their bellies and their feet tell me a lot about honest life. The cars are craziest in Macau.

We went to Gongbuk 拱北 (a two-hour line on the way back through immigration because of the Olympics) to buy some stuff. Oh, how I wish I knew how to flirt with the girl I bought some Dragonball DVDs from, who gave an embarrassed smile when I tried to barter down from $10 to 5, and who wouldn't budge, but then gave me back $1 when I gave in for the $10. I'll never know her name, but I'll know that smile and I'll check for it again, years from now, when I come back and things have changed again.

I should be commenting on student work for classes in the morning, but as always I'm much more interested in writing for myself, and also in sleeping. They'll see my scars though, and I'll make up a great story, and they'll forgive me.

exchanging chips
for the money, but also
human contact


8/11 - first day teaching at the new office
Ate a cinnamon & peanut butter-stuffed waffle from a street vendor for dinner today, and walked a bit through a poet's kind of rain. Flipped through and organized our books. Worked out with some hard katas and soft Taiji. Called my mom. Went to bed below the black-and-white photo of me and my sister with our three cousins in Zhongsan. Unbandaged my hands, and noticed the healing now begun.


8/13 - K left for Beijing for the rest of the week!
I found all sorts of masks and toys in our storage today and walked around for a while wearing a chicken hat. The beginners' creative writing class calls me Chickenhead now, which was all sorts of fun until one of the parents heard and scolded her kid for being rude. The last thing young people need is to be punished without first being understood.

The triplets really like me, too, for whatever reason. They wanted me to teach them instead of M, but I'm no better at controlling them than she is. (For the record, I have never bribed them with candy; that seems to be a problem across the board with our younger students) I've been reading this book we have, How To Talk So Kids Will Listen And How to Listen So Kids Will Talk, and I turned their daily water-cup spillathon into a fun cleanup fest. And then they started playing with the lights, so I left them off and we told ghost stories. When it was time to go home, Natasha said, "I want to have you in my house."

They have glimpses of non-naughtiness. We wrote a story together on the board, but they kept writing about poop. Frog Poopopo in Popo Land. It wasn't until the end, when we were out of time and I told Natasha to finish the last sentence, that we came out with: "Sometimes he visits he's famlys."

We called the triplets' mother to tell her the situation and find out if it would be alright to separate them. She said, "I don't care what you do with them as long as you don't hit them. Unless they hit you first."

My intermediate creative writing (10-12) kids today each chose a character from their favorite story and embodied that character for collaborative dialogues. At one point, Wedgie Woman says to Captain Underpants: "Will u marry me?" and Captain Underpants responds, "Touche." So I explained how touche is supposed to be used, and one of the hunters coming for the wolf in Three Little Pigs says, "The wolf is too fatishly chubby, so it shall die." Naruto responds: "Touche."

And that's more or less what it's like to be teaching here, plus some policing of inappropriate things (the boys like to talk about raping people because it's game terminology, but they don't actually know the meaning of the word). The SAT class asked me to grade their essays today and be really strict about it. I haven't had to do any grading before this, and that changes just about everything.

The greatest discovery today has been the hidden backroads behind the mid-levels escalator to my place, full of streetside restaurants under tents and fresh fruit or poultry like Chinatown to the extreme. If only I had an actual pot for this kitchen, I'd be mad pro at cooking out here.

Edgar & friends
missing from the stairs now
the sun's back

Re: the severe wealth of these children. Without a parking garage for the new office, and with our fantastic new views, we can see the kids' personal drivers circling the block together while class goes on until they find a spot on the street. When class ends, they parade out together like a mafia of silver Mercedes and BMWs.

The Olympics on TV has been a nice distraction these few days, and so have the Dragonball DVDs I bought in Gongbei. But I am not interested in distractions. Today, in the stillness of this empty room, I found myself singing old church songs. If there is a God, I hope we can all take some time at some point in our lives to find out. Whether it's gospel or blues or The Pizza Song, we learn to speak and to share slowly, and somewhere along the way a common language is heard.

when the world
fades away, where
are you?

a poem

8/5
In my dream, I take
my grammar class out for
an eavesdropping exercise,
taking notes on people
as they speak.
But by the time
we find a city
full of souls we
have gotten old and we,
by now, are the outspoken
and overheard. We tell
poems from the champagne
lightbeams to the shadows
on tiny roofs.
And we are listened to:
people gather round us
like old lemon trees to hear
old stories resonating
within fresh ribcages.

After waking, we go
nowhere and I teach nothing
of relevance: we merely
speak, and learn from it.


8/6 - called to work during typhoon 8
I very much like the idea of a society in which two coins in your back pocket ($10 HK each) can buy you a basic meal. During the typhoon, though, only the expensive restaurants are open. That and McDonald's. Those workers are the unfortunate saps like me who must work. Aside from us, the only fools left on the wily streets are the tourists who don't know what is happening and who, also like me, revel in the wind and the rain.

In McDonald's, a little Chinese girl blows into the straw of her smoothie--"Wa!" she exclaims as it bubbles over the cover and spills onto the table, as if she never saw it coming, as if it were a natural disaster: both fun and frightening to anybody not cleaning up the mess.

shy white girl:
do you feel at home here
among food?

I am grateful for this weather as a distraction from my growing city ennui. I am grateful for my aunt here: we are both lonely survivors.

suspended escalator:
Edgar Stairmaster's lounge...
city ennui

8/7 - visit to the embassy
Taught the triplets today. Frederick's great, but because of that Natasha and Sylvester team up against him. These are some nasty kids who could be so much better if they weren't spoiled and neglected. They were the catalyst for H being fired and C being suspended and quitting. And they know it. And they think it's a game.

But all this changes as soon as I stop trying to have them write and get out a book to read aloud. They knew a good number of the words in the book, but they wanted me to read. During Curious George, they become silent and ready. I have never done so many readings of poems and short stories as in these classes. It occurs to me that when we hold poetry readings as adults, it is only and exactly that: a reading. Not a listening, not really a sharing--it is just storytime. An ancient practice dating back to the beginnings of our lives.

Dear George:
your books tell us curiosity
is trouble. No.

My uncle tells me I need to stop dressing so cheesy, like an old person or an uncle. It's the reason I keep getting stopped by police officers for an ID check: with my bag, I look like zhong gok zhai, a mainland kid. I love it.

ABC
tourist in the crowd
looking Chinese

Went to Gum Ji Ging, the Forever Blooming Bauhinia, in Wan Chai after dealing with some visa stuff. A remarkable piece of recent history and a memento of the intentions for freedom of the HKSAR. But anything can be seen through rosy lenses in this post-typhoon dusk and cool. If I could be anywhere in the world for the rest of my life, I would be in the wind.

eager fishermen
hop over the wharf's railing;
temporary shade

8/8
After the rush hour, Hong Kong's workers give the pavement a rest for once. The Olympics began at 8:08:08. This is also 7/14 on the lunar calendar, an auspicious day. After the fireworks, my aunt asked what was so great about watching this. I pincered another prawn(?) with my chopsticks and remained quiet, waiting for the martial arts. "Chamga zhong gok yan, ah!" my uncle exclaimed. To celebrate the Chinese people, duh!

the world connected by TV screens--tonight

I took the Rodin's contemplative pose on the subway today. And time passed. I am so exhausted by this city's unlyrical speed.