Undone.

I love the paradoxical nature of humanity. I love the rare find of a man or a woman who--in one life--can represent such excruciatingly conflicting natures of the human race. A soul which has sung with the choirs as well as danced with the covens. A soul which understands the heights--and the depths--to which humanity can aspire.

I recently became reacquainted with one such soul

from seventeenth-century England.

John Donne wrote everything from sex to God. He lived, he loved, he lost, he questioned, he cried, he taught, he lusted, he prayed, he pleaded, he taunted, he crafted, he dove, he climbed.

He felt.

I have the ability to be moved by literature, but rarely do I sob shamelessly at words on a page. Sunday evening was one such rare occasion, courtesy of John Donne.



Some know him as "Doctor"; others prefer the wicked musings of "Jack." To me, it's all John.

Can a heart be half broken?

Yes, I believe it can.

Formosa

Alone in her native Denmark, an aged woman speaks to her memory. "I had a farm in Africa," she begins. "I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up; near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold." Karen Blixen gives three hours of memories. Her time in Kenya, her love for the people, her love for the culture, the land, the scents, the flowers, the rains, the wildlife. Her love for Africa. This is Out of Africa. This is one of my favorite films.

Eight months ago, I returned from Taiwan; for the sixteen months prior, I lived on the island to China's east as a missionary. I spent those months learning a language which will take my entire life to master, comprehending a culture so drastically different from that in which I was raised, and eating elements of animals which would induce a gag reflux to any healthy Westerner. I loved every moment.

I remember seeing my home for the first time. On August 4, 2008, I flew into Kaohsiung International Airport. I watched the colored, mismatched tin roofs of the cramped industrial city and knew I was home. (This feeling of home was confirmed with the first gust of humidity.) I spent my time first in Fengshan 鳯山, then Pingtung 屏東, Tainan 台南, and finally Taiping 太平. On December 12, 2009, I boarded another plane. This time in Taipei. This time crying. This time leaving.

I miss Taiwan. Some days I miss it more than others. I miss it today, to say the least. I miss the humid mornings, the humid afternoons, and the humid evenings. I miss nodding a polite 早安 zao an to my neighbors as I go for a morning run. I miss the fish markets in the middle of the street, displaying fresh fish corpses across giant slabs of ice. I miss their smell. I miss the smell of stinky tofu. The first time I smelled it, I nearly vomited and only later did I learn to drink it in. I want to drink it in now. I miss the mangoes, I miss the lychee. I want to cry just thinking about the mangoes. I miss being stared at by old grandmothers and grandfathers. I miss them speaking to me in Taiwanese, which I can't understand and haven't a prayer to ever learn. I miss the incense always burning the air. I miss the temples. Buddhist temples. Taoist temples. Confucian temples. Any temples. The chimes, the gongs, the ceremonial chants and sacrifices. I miss them. I miss the old men doing tai chi in the morning. I miss the music others dance to. I miss the wild dogs who roam the streets and sometimes try to eat me. I miss people staring at me because I don't fit in, blue eyes among a sea of dark almonds, blonde hair among black. I miss the pollution which conceals the mountains, and my surprise at discovering them on clear mornings. I miss the buzz of vespas that usurp the streets. I miss the masks of the vespa riders. I miss that the masks are worn long after the vespas stop as a protective measure against cancer, virus, the plague, and other destructive bodily ills. I miss the mosquitoes. They loved to drink me and wake me and make me itch. I do not miss the mosquitoes. I miss the initial shock on people's faces when I speak Chinese. They always look surprised. I miss talking to them about their families, finding out what matters most to them, hearing of their love for their parents, their grandparents, their children, their hopes for the future, their honor of the past.

I miss Taiwan.

It's nights like these that I find my mind turning to Karen. I lived a time in Taiwan, to the east of the China Sea. I have returned to America, and on nights where I feel it most, I relive the moments I had on my island. I like to think of it as my island. It helps it feel real again.

Perhaps that is why my mind returns again and again to Karen. She wanted it to feel real. After she had left, after Africa was no more to her than a memory, she needed whatever clarity she could claim: "If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?"

I hope that I left some print on my island. It has left mark upon mark on me. It changed me and it taught me. It altered me beyond repair and I will always thank it for that. I will lay awake a bit longer tonight and search for the marks which still remain. Time fades many things, but some marks refuse to wear. I hope Taiwan refuses to wear.

Tomorrow will be spent in America, but tonight I will stay in Formosa.

Understanding nothing, Feeling everything else

I've acquired a taste for French music. No, I do not speak French.

I was raised with a father who was famous for his liberal selection of music. I would climb into the car to be greeted by Native American wooden flutes, traditional Chinese folk melodies, Scottish bagpipes, Italian opera--any branch of music from any region of earth. I loved it. I loved the places the music would take me. I loved the sense of adventure my ignorance seemed to excite. I would listen to the music unaware of literal meaning; I did not comprehend the lyrics but counted it as no great loss.


I am finding myself in the same boat as a matter of personal choice. It began with Carla Bruni and "Quelqu'un M'a Dit." Innocently, I listened again and again and again to the easiness of the guitar, the whispering quality of the voice, the almost conversation-like exchange between the two. The lyrics are purely French and convey absolutely no meaning to me whatsoever. But that's what I love about it. No literary message; no boxed-in meaning; no complacent, categorical, stereotypical forum from whence a calculated measure of opinion finds voice. No solid meaning for me whatsoever. The song becomes what I want it to be; the song adapts with me. Everything becomes less fixed, less determined. With fluidity, it holds my fickle flavors in a day: hope, melancholy, reminiscence, acceptance, easiness, excitement, anticipation, unease, determination . . . .


Sometimes words seem to only get in the way. More French music it is.

ah, look at all the lonely people

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Eleanor Rigby, Beatles





Tonight I came home in an interesting mood. I usually am not one for online chatting and all that business, but tonight was different; I had some indescribable desire to talk to anyone. Loneliness? Not so much, just a desire to reach out, I suppose. I turned to my computer and started powering up all the modes we beings have found to communicate. I was not online for more than a minute before a friend found me and strung up a conversation with: allison, why does life suck sometimes? and yes i know this is weird. sorry. I responded to this friend of mine, started a entirely unexpected conversation. Fate was tempted, I can hardly blame her.

From across the country, he started talking. Mostly confused over a girl, he was looking for a listener, I suppose, and found me. I listened, and offered what few suggestions I had, honest compliments I hoped could help. Throughout this exchange, however, I was only frustrated by a single thought: I do not remember him at all. He had said in passing that we hadn't spoken since 7th grade, an easy lifetime in dog years, but I couldn't place him. Pictures looked faintly familiar, but jogged no memories. I spent the next hour talking to a man I have no recollection of, as he opened up the contents of his soul.

It's easier, somehow, to turn to someone completely disconnected from the issues wearing you, who can offer new perspective, new light, or can just as easily remain in the dark entirely. Loneliness can invite day-long friendships, simple friendships which can sometimes offer the simplest moments of peace. Why is it that sometimes all we want, all we really need, is a stranger?

Seeing Avatar

I originally saw the film Avatar in theaters months ago. January, I believe. 3-D, excellent effects, but not a story to write home about. Predictable story lines happen to be an issue for personal soap-box agenda, so my ability to accurately predict the film in its entirety left me rather unimpressed, to say the least. I walked out of the theater willing to praise its effects and directing, but the film on the whole? Good thing I'm not a formal critic.

Without going into the whole story of it, I saw it again this evening. For myself, it was practically a dare. I sat and watched and dared the film to dazzle me as it has so many others. I was terrifically skeptical, but decided to play fair; I conceded my qualms with predictability and looked beyond the plot.

I lost my own dare. I could write pages on what I saw.

There is only one thought that I want to record: the contrast of life and death. I am very visually-oriented; I feel meaning through my eyes. In visual orientation alone the cultural interpretations on life and death were presented in a beautiful contrast. First, 'civilized man.' Kept in a manufactured world of steel and guns, he sees change as death. Those individuals who adopt Avatars, who undergo transformation, who face change must do so in a coffin. Look a the device they lay in, entomb their bodies in. No warmth, no life. Only a steel box.

The 'natives' do not build steel worlds. Instead of living under ego, they live under deity. This difference proves colossal. In the briefest of moments, the camera pans over a funeral scene. No steel boxes. Only a small, round hole in the soft dirt. Inside, the body curled as a fetus in a new womb. There lies the difference. Change is not death, even death is not death. It is life.

It reminds me of the title of a book I once read: The Birth That We Call Death. I think I've started to understand.

Fasten Your Seat Belts. I Mean It.

I am a seat belt advocate. I sit in a car, and by compulsion, strap in immediately. I get nervous when others around me don't do so. I suppose it's slightly obsessive--the wearing of seat belts has become agenda for my personal soapbox-- but I can imagine worse things to obsess over. It's such a tiny device that has the capacity to save so much life. I stumbled across this commercial, and, of course, instantly loved it.