Random Moleskine notes...

After a long steady heavy rain a pregnant woman propped her mop made of strands of discarded rainbows as her solemn dispassionate husband shucked peas and removed garlic shells from their protective casing, after the sky finished crying to wash student street where parades of disenfranchised youth sought shelter from the storm and well after open windows released cello notes as a child practiced sitting upright tuning their eyes to black notes on white pages with a determination to master the instrument as another music student hammered piano keys behind locked doors, flies gathered around brown sticky paste slowly dripping off the edge of a cracked plate with their feelers extending their hope toward a thin white butterfly lifting off a green leaf.

A Delicious Lunch

He wrode his beautiful dirty black mountain bike over to "old" student street for a 60 cent dumpling lunch. Delicious.

He prefers the "old" to the boring "new" commercial student campus street. He enjoys mature green leafy trees filled with small wild sparrows darting down to feed in garden patches. He savors a wide blue sky and orphaned clouds.

He always sits outside swallowing sky, well removed from blaring omnipresent bland TV soap operas and cell phone addicted youth.

"Text me baby! Reveal your passion in 5,000 characters. Say things with electronic letters and symbols you'd never find the courage to speak outloud. Your silence is deafening! Hold my hand.

"Better yet, when we walk covered in our innocent adolescent shyness, slowly rub your elbow against my skin so I know you care, reveal your shy desire with deference and longing. Our skin pours hormonal activity into the possibility we may eventually dance. Text me baby!"

A boy approached the table.

"May I sit here?"
"Sure."
"May I talk with you?"
"Sure. You talk and I listen."
"I don't know what to say."
"You will think of something. You are developing an English mind."
"Yes, maybe."

"What's your name?"
"Francis."
"That's a great name."
"All the good English names were taken by my classmates. I found it in the dictionary."
"I see. It's a fine and strong name. My name is Nature."

"Oh. What's that for?" he said, gesturing at my worn Moleskine notebook.
"I am a writer. I make notes when I travel."
"Where are you going?"
"Here."
"I like to travel," he said. "I am a hunter of foreign teachers."

I smelled raw instinct. "Interesting. How do you hunt?"
"Do you know the gate near the teachers' apartments?"

This place was surrounded by walls, sleeping guards and gates.

"Yes."
"Well, I go there and wait. When a teacher comes out I talk to them while we walk. Then, when they say good-bye I return to the gate and wait for another teacher."
"You are a clever hunter."
"Maybe. But I don't know what to say."

"Talk about the weather."
"We don't talk about the weather here. We ask people if they have eaten."
"I know," I said, pointing at his noodles and sliced vegetables. "Your delicious food is getting cold."

Silence welcomed two hunters.

Let's Have a Meeting !

Let's have a meeting! Yes. English teachers unite!

Let's get dressed and gather our Moleskine notebook filled with poetry, drawings, dreams, stories and visions. Let's collect one fine fountain pen filled with green racing ink. Remember water. You've gotta have H2O where you go. It's gonna be a hot one. Seven inches from the mid-day sun.

Let's go to a classtomb on old campus surrounded by luscious green trees straining to light. They are a canopy of welcome relief. Rose petals wither on the ground.

Smile and greet your compatriots, your stalwart educational guides. Take a seat. Look around. Engage your senses.

Gaze out the window toward the lake. It is shimmering. You hear scraping. What is it? Local workers are building a wall. A new Great Wall. Exciting. History in the making. How do they do it?

It's simple. Materials and raw labor.

Ten local village men and women - who do most of the heavy lifting - bags of cement, trowels, shovels, a few plastic buckets, water, piles of gray bricks, empty drums for support, some boards, and a couple of wheelbarrows.

Step 1. Build rickety scaffolding using drums and boards. Remove the old steel fence. Discard to side.

Step 2. One team mixes cement and water. Shovel into buckets. Another team puts bricks into a wheelbarrow and pushes it to a dumping area.

Step 3. Men wait for women to hand them bricks and buckets of cement. They slather on the goop and align bricks. Brick by brick the wall goes up. It blocks the green sward, blue lake and wild flowers.
Only the sky is safe.

Step 4. Another team coats the exterior with a bland gray mixture. It's never going to be finished. Art is like that. It's so beautiful we feel like crying.

Someone steps to the podium and starts speaking - using exquisite language - about the value of education. Cost benefit analysis. Profit and loss statements. How we have a huge responsibility to our shareholders.

During a brief moment of silence you hear a shovel, a trowel and laughter. Another day dawns in paradise.

Chinese Kids & Meditation

After visiting Qinchengshan mountain where Taoism began 2,000 years ago he introduced meditation concepts to his Chinese junior high school students.

“Mediation is sitting quietly to develop a calm, quiet mind,” he wrote on the board.

He spoke quietly. “You sit tall with your hands either in front of you or on your knees, lower your eyes and focus on a single point, your breath, ‘in, out, in, out.’

“If your mind becomes distracted by past or future thoughts you bring it back to your breath, ‘in, out, in out.’ This is a single point of awareness.

“You do it for yourself; not your friends, parents or teachers. Meditation allows you feel a harmony and balance. You will feel more peaceful and happier than other people “busy” rushing around. Your goal today is just to sit for 5 minutes and to sit and practise for 5 minutes every day before school. Eventually you want to sit for 20 minutes every day, whenever and wherever you like.”

He wrote the Chinese words on the board: "Jing" - quiet, stillness, calm - and "Ding" - concentration and focus - so they'd see the linguistic connection.

“When you begin to sit in meditation at first, your mind will be very uncooperative. The ego or your “emotional mind” will fight against it’s extinction by the higher forces of spiritual awareness.

“The ego loves the day-to-day circus of sensory entertainment and emotional turmoil, even though this game depletes your energy, degenerates your body and exhausts your spirit. We call the ego the ‘monkey mind.’”

They laughed.

“When your mind is calm and focused in the present it is neither reacting to memories from the past or pre-occupied with future plans. These are two major sources of chronic or long term health problems.

“Do you want to try it?”

“Yes.”

“Ok. Good. No books, papers and pens. If you don’t want to try it, it’s ok. Please just sit quietly respecting others sitting in meditation. See how it feels. Let’s begin. Focus on your breath, ‘in, out, in, out.’ He dimmed the lights.

After five minutes he played small bells.

“How did it feel?”

“Beautiful,” whispered a girl.