Simian Farmer

Palaver with Providence

God: Frustrated?

Si: Yeah!  All to hell these days since... hey!  Shouldn't I be the one starting these conversations?

God:  Didn't know there was a pre-determined structure to these things.  I'll, uh, just wait over here until you're ready.

The China Diary (5 of 10)

This fifth and middle entry into my China diary evinces my increasing contempt, sexual astuteness, hypocrisy and adolescence... in that order.

Oh, for the wonderful ignorance of being 14 again.  You couldn't pay me to go back there.

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Wednesday, 22nd March 1989
Hua Ting Guest House
Shanghai

Today was a little below average.  We had to get up really early and get packed so we could eat and run for the train.  The train was the most uncomfortable I've been on yet.  After we got to Shanghai, we got on a bus and took off for lunch.  It seems the farther we travel the worse the food gets.  After lunch we got back on the bus and had a small tour of the city.  I personally think our guide is gay, but that's just my opinion.  After the tour we went to the hotel and got settled and then took off again for some touring, dinner, then we went to see some Chinese acrobats who put on a great show.  After the show we came back to the hotel for the night.  I took my suitcase up to my room I share with Mike, who's from Kennelworth, and then went up to visit John and Stan.  I then came back down and Mike and I got the bright idea to fill up a shopping bag full of water and drop it out of our window.  It made a huge bang.  Then I brushed my pearly yellows and started to write this.  So this is it for tonight.
'Night.

---

Here's a real blast from the past for me.  Sandra.  The blonde chick in the middle is the one who round-housed me outside the elevator doors somewhere in Beijing.  (So at this point, it hadn't happened yet.)  And the gal on the right is Trish, the one who composed the heartfelt letter telling me how she wished our burgeoning friendship could blossom into something more upon our return to Edmonton.  And about which I did absolutely nothing.  (An alarming trend in what few things I could hazard to call 'relationships' right up to my mid-20s.)

The reason (I'm almost certain) that nobody's smiling in this shot is because it was pissing rain outside, all the windows in the restaurant were open, there were puddles of water on the floor as we were eating and it was bloody freezing.  Plus, we all decided that we didn't like tofu.

I still have this habit of taking self-portraits with my camera by holding it out at arm's reach.  I don't normally hold my mouth open that wide any more while doing so.

Trust

One of my favourite times with my son is after he's waking from sleep.

I pick him up and he flops comfortably on my chest, his legs dangling, his head nuzzled into the crook of my neck and his arms wrapped languidly around my own neck.

After getting comfortable, he'll withdraw each arm and let them both drop down by his side, sometimes tucking them between his belly and my chest.  I have never in my entire life been given such an ultimate sign of trust.

"I don't need to hang on to you, Dad.  I trust you.  You won't let me go."  I wish I could sit in that moment for far longer than it lasts.

Shortly after, he'll stir from his somnolence and get his bearings.

An impish grin will find itself in familiar territory on his face.  He reaches one hand down the neck of my shirt as far down as his armpit will allow.  Extracting it as quickly as he pushed it in, he pulls out a huge handful of pretend food and stuffs it into his mouth, alternating between massive pretend bites and hysterical giggles.

It's then that I know he's just as unbalanced as his dad, and I love him a little bit more.

I love her eyes

More than anything else, I really do love her eyes.

I am entranced by the dappled hazel that dances around the bottomless black well.  That dance courts the edge, but somehow evades the lure that has drawn me inexorably since the day I first met her.

I am engaged by the game whose commencement is always signalled by the arch raising of a single eyebrow.  Guess what I'm thinking.  You ought to know.  And you ought to tell me.  And it ought be done right now.

I abhor the pain that has been mirrored (mercifully few times) in those eyes.  To know that I have in any way been the cause of that pain should make me pluck out my own.  Small recompense for the ability to allow that hazel to resume its dance.

There are times when a smile adorns her lips and is quickly transported via routes unknown to be magnified a thousand fold in her eyes.  Then am I happy to languish under her thrall and bask beneath that gaze.

A sultry glance beneath coy lashes in the merest flicker of an instant is often enough to set my heart to racing.

I am overjoyed to look into my son's eyes and see some hint of my wife's fire reflected back at me.  He will be well served by being so imbued.

From a distance across a span of other souls or an empty space broken only by a pane of glass, I cherish receiving that one glance, freely given, both coming and going, that I know is reserved only and forever for me.

And I love going to bed to see her eyes closed, and warming myself against her.  Then do I sometimes see one eye crack open to reveal its yawning chasm and am drawn briefly into its depth while I close my own.  A faint smile, having made the return journey via that same incorporeal path, playing across her lips the last thing I see.

More than anything else, I really do love her eyes.

The China Diary (4 of 10)

Again, I really seem hell bent on being snarky in my diary entries.  Sorry about that.  In lieu of quality text, I'll give you two pictures today.  How's that?

In the entry below I make reference to nearly blowing my colon as the result of a delicate gastrointestinal tract and bad timing.  I actually took a photo of the receptacle of the end result of that combination, which I will spare the rest of the world and keep confined to my basement.  At least I can say I've pooped in a latrine.

---

Tuesday, 21st March 1989
Jinling Hotel
Nanjing

Today was an okay day.  We had to get up at 7:00 and have shit for food.  After breakfast we got ready and left for our morning tour.  We went to Dr. Sun Yat Sen's mausoleum and then the museum.  Then we went for lunch at a little place on the outskirts of the city.  For once I didn't take the chopsticks.  We then went back into the city and stopped off at the south gates of Nanjing.  I nearly dumped in my pants and found the "bathroom" which was a trough in the wall.  Then we stopped off at a little shopping complex and I bought some ink for my chop as you'll see on the next page.  After shopping, we trundled on back to the hotel, put our stuff back in our rooms, and went back downstairs for dinner.  I got some more chopsticks from there, but John, (idiot that he is), broke one on me so now I only have 5.  After dinner we all came upstairs and kept running into each other's rooms 'till 10:00 PM.  We were then forced to go back to our rooms and hit the hay.  So this is the end for today.  Chow babes.

---

The chop referenced above is a small jade stamp that has my name on it written in both Chinese and English.  Mine is adorned with a tiger on top since I was born in the year of the tiger according to Chinese astrology.  Of course, I'm taking the word of the craftsman that the Chinese characters really do translate to something roughly like 'Simon'.  They could read 'idiot caucasian' for all I know.

And though I have no idea who these two strapping lads are, they are made entirely of copper (or bronze?) and the tour guide there is pointing out their rippling obliques.  Or something.

Attention Getters Anonymous

According to the delightfully diminutive Sheryl of Paper Napkin, this is now Delurking Week.  The second annual.

With that in mind, if you regularly frequent this site, and even if you irregularly infrequent this site, please take 30 seconds to post a salutory comment just below.  I'd greatly appreciate it and would cherish the opportunity to get to know who reads this tripe.

If you don't, I'll pinch my son until he cries and post a photo of the cutest crying baby the world has ever known.  Nobody wants that, now, do they?  Great big crocodile tears blazing a path through the remnants of dried oatmeal clinging to my son's cheeks until, finally, the tears trickle into the corners of his mouth where the salty residue triggers latent memories of his time in his mother's womb; his subsequent pining will spur on a whole new round of blubbering, further propogating the emotional fiasco to the point where he will require counselling until he reaches the age of majority.

How could you be so cruel?  Really!!

Putting the 'idiot' back in idiosyncracy

People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.

~Dan Quayle

Saturday is haircut day!!

Avast, ye land-lubbin', bilge-swabbin', one-eyed, peg-legged varmints!!

Thar be what some might be callin' gratuitous photy-graphs of me first born boy child ahead.  If'n I come to hear, be it todee or be it 30 years from todee, that any o' you, or your'n or yer filthly ilk have cast yer eyes (or your one good eye) on the visage o' me son and, thereupon, chose to cast aspersions on his likeness...

...well then, ye'd best git to composin' a poetical eulogy fer yourself.  And I say 'poetical' for thar ain't a gonna be nuthin' in the leastwise artful about your untimely demise.  It'll most likely involve a rusty cutlass, a fathom or two of anchor chain, several shots o' me best whiskey and a great deal of bleedin'.  Yar!  (The whiskey fer me and the bleedin' fer you, what ho!)

That er, um, uh... caveat, outta the way, avert thine eyes -- or squint up the one you don't wanna be wearin' a patch over fer the rest o' yer days -- and behold me freshly shorn spawn!!  (He does 'is daddy right proud, that 'e does!)

The China Diary (3 of 10)

Many of my memories of China today relate to travel. 

There was the inordinately long flight there and back -- made longer by having to avoid Soviet airspace.  There was a gleefully panicked sprint through the Tokyo airport where we had to catch our connection from Vancouver to Hong Kong: two chaperones, nine students and a surfeit of carry-on luggage must have made for quite the spectacle as we stampeded from one gate to another. 

Travelling in China was markedly different from what we were accustomed to in the West.  Hong Kong, given its Benevolent British Overlords at the time, was a gentle initiation into a new continent and country.  Once we left that small island of relative familiarity (surely an intentional first stop for young Western travellers), our education in the realities and stark contrasts of a foreign culture began.

The tour buses were cramped, seemingly made for the generally more diminutive Chinese than us relative behemoths; the trains were utilitarian at best, I vividly recall several hours spent sitting on two plywood boards nailed together at right angles and covered with vestigial snot-green linen while staring out the window at the endless rice paddies rolling by.

One afternoon I sat on the bus and composed a poem I entitled Away in a Tour Bus, sung to the tune of Away in a Manger.  I still have the original copy of it, scribbled on two folded sheets of Xian Hotel (Shaanxi Province) stationery.  It is, overall, a little less than complimentary.  I seem to have been seeking rhyming words rather than those emotively indicative of the experiences.  (I'll post most of it  at the end of this series -- most, for some of the verses are rather more lewd than what I'd prefer to admit to today.)

I seem to have assumed a rather contemptuous attitude in much of my communication, which is at odds with the memories I still have of the two-week trip -- it being one of my life's most fabulous experiences. 

Apparently, I was a 14 year-old poseur in China.

---

Monday, 20th March 1989
Jinling Hotel
Nanjing

We finally left Hong Kong today.  We had to get up at 5:00 AM because we had an early train to catch and still had to eat.  So we ate, got our jackets and took off for the train station.  So we took the train to Cantong and toured the city for a couple hours.  We then left for the airport and caught a plane for Nanjing.  About 20 minutes before we landed, it seemed that the pilot got majorly pissed.  We started wobbling from side to side as if the pilot wanted to have a little fun with us.  We then landed (obviously) and took a bus to the Jinling Hotel (real nice too) and then we had dinner, a meeting (boring), and then had to do this.
Goodnight.

---

This picture was taken at Tiger Balm Gardens while still in Hong Kong.  Though the gardens were nice, I recall being totally surrounded by apartment buildings, most of which were accoutred in countless thousands of poles of bamboo scaffolding, tied together seemingly rather tenuously by bamboo strips.  It is, apparently, even stronger than steel scaffolding.

I'm the chubby little pecker on the far right.

The China Diary (2 of 10)

Looking at the remainder of the entries in my diary, I'm now, years later, a little sad to see that I didn't keep up with my writing as assiduously as I should have.  I'll cut myself some slack since I was only 14 at the time, but it would be nice now to be able to read back to that time and capture some of the emotion I was feeling.

Oh well.  At least from here on in I'll be able to provide at least one picture with each post.  (Of questionable quality since each is just a digital picture of my paper photos.  Beggars can't be choosers.)

Any monetary values I express in the posts are in Hong Kong dollars.  It was interesting once we finally left that city since any and all proprietors were more than willing to accept Hong Kong dollars in inland China, but would always try to give return change in the older, local, currency.  I couldn't help but associate the bills with Monopoly money since they were of very similar size and made of much flimsier paper than the Canadian currency I was accustomed to.

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Sunday, 19th March 1989
Regal Riverside Hotel
Hong Kong

Today I got up and again had breakfast in the Boulevard Cafe.  I then got ready and we all took off in a comfortable bus this time on another tour of the city.  We stopped off in the countryside just outside of Hong Kong.  We walked up a very steep hill to a place where you could buy souvenirs and get some pretty good camera shots.  I found a nice set of coins there for Aaron, so I don't have to get him anything else.  After about 45 minutes there, we took off back to the city.  We were again dropped off before we reached the hotel.  We took the Star Ferry across the harbour.  Then we took a bus to the Stanley Market.  I looked for a walkman there but didn't find didly squat.  After a couple hours there, we left back across the harbour and wandered the streets.  John and I split from the group into a little mall and I finally got a Sony walkman for $720.00.  John and I went to a nearby arcade and played a few games.  We then left for the YMCA because a shuttle bus stopped there bound for the hotel.  I then came up here and started writing this.

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There were nine from my school that went on the trip, but in all of the group shots, John seemed to be mysteriously absent.  This is the only time in my life I have ever hugged a camel.  Rest assured that, regardless of what else may be inferred, I am ONLY hugging the camel.

The Canadian flag I sewed BY MYSELF on the back of my jean jacket was cause for many laudatory comments and frequent back-pats from total strangers.  Dontcha just love the memory of acid-wash jeans?  Aren't you glad it's just a memory?