so it took some more documentation... but ahead of schedule, the visa people said it was enough. I feel so vulnerable without my passport, and I noticed today that I've been carrying around my old one... I needed to refer to it a few days back, to prove I had previously entered China (one sweltering summer night in 2010 drinking beers with a Norwegian oil rigger from my plane). I still carry it, even though it has holes in its cover and I do not look 19 years old anymore.
My passport is pretty sparse until about 2008-- then I filled pages and pages with visas, entry stamps, staples and stickers. It's a record of a very itinerant few years, where I crossed both of my country's ocean borders, and fundamentally changed as a person. I have always been more flight than fight, in the sense that I would rather keep space than resort to miserable hassles. But when I was younger, I think, I would just take all this inwardly and go mute. In my years of travel I learned that moody behavior like this isn't necessary-- a great expression of self is using disappointment to direct one's attention to new and amazing things.
Travel for the purpose of defense, I think, is called exile (Joyce); although exile is a nasty sounding word sometimes, just like I always used to cringe when I heard expatriate ("ex-patriot"). Exile really just means turning your back and walking. It can be forced or voluntary. I am turning my back, voluntarily, on no one as I prepare to go to China. I turn my back only on my climate, because life overseas has made me a different man and I need different things now. I do not need to be aware of everyone's expectations wherever I go. I do not need to understand everything I see, everything I hear. There's a thrill for me in walking down streets with bright lights in words I can't understand, and it's hard to explain this feeling. For me language has so many uses and abuses and connotations that when I do not understand it, I kind of feel more at ease.
Ahh, well... I could go on and on here. I care about language a lot, of course I do, that is what I study and teach. However my interest in language takes a skewed artistic dimension. I love murmurs, glossolalia, onomatopoeia, animal noises, free verse poetry... stuff that focuses more on expression than form. My tolerance for ambiguity is unconditional and this is my curse and my blessing. It is a curse because I can get comfortable with not knowing to the point that I neglect to learn.
Talking to Alex today (and I feel comfortable mentioning his name because he's the only person I mentioned directly in my book, and the only character based completely on himself) we talked about the point where you just begin to understand what you're hearing. At this point your fresh anonymity is lost. He lived in China and he's able to speak Chinese now. After my two years in Korea my Korean was decent but I was never great ... but like him I reached a point where I was just able to understand people around me. Suddenly the comfort of being a total outsider was lost, but it had a perk to it too, like I was spying on everyone in public simply for being able to listen to them.
I'm really rambling today.
I could write for hours but I won't, since I put my book down I'm missing the experience of writing every day but everything I say is public now. Ahh
some more later
justin
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