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From Friend to Friend – Cycling Through London

Man Oh Man…

It has been FOREVER since I have done a cycle trip. It has been forever since I have felt I have had any space and time to sit down and write. Not that I have fans sitting on the edge of their chairs, digging their age lengthened nails into browning upholstery, waiting for anything new, because if I did… I would feel a mixture of sick, sad and “FUCK, I AM AWESOME AND TOTALLY WORTH THE WAIT.”

I am a high school teacher now, which means a series of things, some of which I won’t reveal because your students, no matter how hard you hide your art, your writing, your anything, they will find it.

STUDENTS: If you are reading this – Mr. C has a life outside of being a teacher. In this life of his, he does things that do not fall under the realm of teacherly duties. This, in fact, makes him or her or they a much better teacher, as he/she/they can draw from their own, varied lives to infuse their lessons with guts, with soul. But context is everything… so out of context, my art, my life, could be used against me. This is really sad that teachers are held at such a higher standard than other professions that are paid oodles more than teachers. We are not paid for 24 hours of work and yet after this post, ON – MY – BREAK, I will be marking. Blarg! Long sidebar.

Anyways, I visited my friend Aslam in London over the Passover  break for a couple days. Straight from work, disassemble the bike much to the chagrin of Igor, the former high school ruffian, who became a police to continue his reign of petty bullying and then on a plain, assemble and to Aslam’s. The visit was faaar too short, but so so lovely. He and his partner are beautiful humans, funny, honest, present, lots of lovely, intimate, eye contact, conversations and a PHOTO SHOOT. Oh, and an adventure at Wetherspoons. If you don’t what it is… google it. Aslam and Katy have a lovely place, with a nice patch if tall-growing green, an urban sanctuary, for tea and reads. After our visit, I headed to the centre of London to catch a train to Manchester to visit my friend, Rae, in Manchester.

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a home away from home

The Third Weekend…

I have been in China just over a 2 and half weeks and am finally feeling like the place that they have put me in, this spacious apartment, on the second floor in a compound full of similar buildings in a city I had never heard of before this job offer, this random, but warming place, is starting feel like a home. I don’t think it will ever be home home. It’s too empty. There is only one person in it. And I guess that could be a home to someone who was okay with single occupancy. And that might have been alright when I was of the single occupancy mind. But I am not that now. So a home away from home will do and I will make the best of these rooms and their four walls. I will adorn, I will garden, I will masturbate in every crevice. Kidding. I just have to keep you on your toes, right?

Because sometimes your school gifts you big boxes of pomelos pomegranates

Because sometimes your school gifts you big boxes of pomelos pomegranates

Jiaxing is a lovely city of 7 million, which is considerably small for China and ridiculously big for most other parts of this weekend amusement park filled planet. Last weekend I walked around and explored the sites and by sites I refer to things I found via google maps that looked mildly historical and possibly entertaining. Being a smaller Chinese city means that it is more accessible by foot. I have set up my phone so that it can pay for the City Bikes…but just because a system is set up, does not mean I have any clue as to how to operate it. I tried a few times to set of the city’s two wheeled jalopies free, scanning the QR code from different angles, staring at the bicycle like a concerned parent, whispering a muted curse into it’s hypothetical ear and then moving on before a Westside Story-esque fight broke out. I ventured towards my destinations, the “sites” of Jiaxing, through through clusters of malls and overpasses, through glares and gawks, passed “waigerens and laowais”, through beeps and snot rockets and stenches and fragrances. The first on my list was a temple that shot up like a magnified wart near the side of one of the rivers, a cluster of smaller structures and towers, white and brown and moldy.

my office

my office

The temple was currently inaccessible due to a ceremony going on within. I leaned up against the ancient welcoming post and peered in as the monks within the first inner shrine chanted, played instruments that echoed generations long dead, encircled by thick tornadoes of fragrant and blooming incense. After the ceremony I entered. The pictures say what I have no words to say. So I exited. Another temple down the way. This one, with a large inner courtyard. It was dedicated to a fallen General who had saved the Song Dynasty and was poisoned. More pictures.

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More walking. The city’s greenness, almost obnoxious, with its abundance, but so welcoming and so unexpected. I walked through several of the touristy, made to look as if they were ancient sections of a long forgotten and abandoned Chinese water town, that lined one of the canals. Historical Disneyfication and commodification. Though, we do the same thing to actual history. The BC version of it, Barkerville, cashes in on that every summer. And why not? You learn a little, an impression is made and context is given to faded words and histories. It makes the past tangible and kinetic. I guess, in this particular instant, you learn nothing if you cannot read the Chinese signs. All I can surmise from areas such as these is that at some point something like this might have existed somewhere around here. I read that last sentence. Trust me, I got this.

shrimp pork dumplings from my local RT Market

shrimp pork dumplings from my local RT Market

I walk through a park lined with beautiful trees that rise like Tolken spires or war spears, their tips piercing the blue vastness that expands to horizons on all sides. The path ends at a wooden pagoda at the Beijing to Hangzhou Grand Canal. I have seen this canal in both Suzhou and Hangzhou. It felt as if I was reconnected with a cousin that my mother had told me about and who I had met at I point in my life where I didn’t tie anything down to memories. There wasn’t much to say, but still I felt I had a duty to stop and view it with wonderment and curiosity. It definitely was and is a technical marvel, the longest man made canal in the world and it was created over 700 years ago.

sounds interesting. tastes boring.

sounds interesting. tastes boring.

Before leaving the extensive greenway, I stop on a small island, accessible by a gate to have a glimpse over South West Lake. I peer down on it from an ancient bridge. Jiaxing is beautiful. I needed this. Having left things and people I didn’t want to leave behind, nature was a comfort to the barren feels inside.

At the edge of the park, old men, dressed like the Chinese version of Grumpy Old Men play polo on two, official looking polo courts. I stop, watch and snap a few pictures. People really take leisure time seriously and really do spend it with their friends, families and loved ones. It’s really quite nice.

Fishing on the canal

Fishing on the canal

I stop into the house of a local resident who was one of the first people to translate Shakespeare into Chinese. He is long gone, but his house still stands, amongst modern constructions, byways and shlubbly dressed guards who wander aimlessly too and fro like poorly programmed baddies in an old school PC Shoot ‘Em Up . Today was a lot of walking. I peer through a small breach of a large, corroding fence that surrounds the Catholic Church that was partially destroyed by the Red Guard. It’s a beautiful structure is haunting; partially in part due to it’s dilapidated state. Renovations are on the table, right beside gay rights ;). Durian milk shake. Not sure about that. Kind of tastes like what, I imagine, an onion milkshake would taste like.

Delicious hot pot

Delicious hot pot

Marking, marking, marking, teaching, teaching, teaching. Planning, planning. Dinners with bosses. Presents for teacher day. Pillow of my face. Originally I was like, this is so strange to own a pillow with my own image on it. It’s grown on me. I’ve had more than a few naps on it. I fear I am going to wake up from a nice slumber and feeling a bit disoriented, come face to face, eye to eye, with pillow Ira, his facial expression slightly altered from what I remember it to have been. In that regard, pillow Ira is not to be trusted.

Mark, mark, buy some stuff on Taobao. BOX comes from Canada! Only took a month. Coffee from Canada. Candies. Break bodum. DAMN. Order another off Taobao. To explain, Taobao is the place to get anything ever online in China. It’s better than Amazon and doesn’t generally charge for shipping and it usually shows up in a few days, unless it’s ginormous. I am obsessed.

big box of treats

big box of treats

Yesterday night, I went to see Planet of the War of the World of the City of the Planet Again of the Apes. It was fun and it was great to hang out with my new teacher friends. Went to Moon River after and my bike lock key broke. Nevermind. Had some drinks, 45 minute walk home. Rinse, repeat and return. Today I went to museums. Words. Sometimes no. Pictures. Yes. Those. More soon. Right after I get through this Tower of Babel of papers.

Mooncake full of meat. Yum!

Mooncake full of meat. Yum!

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A Lone Journey to China

The long, halogen lights hang at odd angles like the miscellaneous items in a horder’s house. A child in red plaid screams about “APPLES!” and attempts a jump kick. My face feels like it has cried forever. My eyes are currently dry. My head feels like the lights, without order. It’s been an hour since I have seen Ruby. An hour since I held her in my arms and she held me in her arms. An hour into ten plus months away from her, from my family, from everything I know.

I feel empty. I don’t want to leave. “Are you excited?” “No.”

To clarify what is going on, for those in the not know, my partner and I had planned to go to China, to teach, to live together in Jiaxing, a city with a lego factory, some famous candy and 30 minutes from Shanghai. But my partner, Ruby, realized that teaching isn’t her passion. Why waste a year doing something that doesn’t fulfill you? Working towards where don’t necessarily want to be, doing something that doesn’t ignite your soul? And so, with a lot of thought put into it, as she always does, she decided not to come. I am happy for her. I am so happy she has found a great job. A place to live. I do not resent her decision at all. She is so brave, in her actions and her words. Meticulous in constructing her thoughts into sentences. She is so strong. She inspires and teaches me and tells me, to take an extra second, think.

I am in constant, unfiltered awe of her. I could go on, but that is a different, more personal (and infinitely more smooshy) letter.

So I am here, alone, at the Vancouver Airport awaiting a flight to Hong Kong, then Shanghai and then a car ride to Jiaxing. My reasoning for going is because, well, it was too late not to go. I am a certified teacher who landed a great job at British Columbian Offshore High School. Kids who graduate from this school graduate with a Dogwood Diploma, a B.C. recognized secondary degree. If I didn’t show up, they wouldn’t be able to replace me. They tried. They really tried. B.C. is having a teacher renaissance and there are numerous positions opening up in Vancouver and beyond. So why go to China to teach? Why suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Visa stipulations and being stared at and photographed without your permission, when you can teach in beautiful B.C., with sit down toilets aplenty and foods from all over the planet. Oh yeah, and the whole nature and clean air thing. So yeah, no one able to fill my vacancy.

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I could still have just not gone. Sorry folks, but I can’t come. Here’s a lesson for you kiddies, it’s called abandonment. Like I have just done, the world will do to you time and time again. Get use to it. It will be the greatest lesson you could ever learn and this is the best way to teach you it…. So I could have bit my thumb and jumped ship. That means 4 classes full of English students do not graduate on time. As an educator, as a human, as a creature with a beating heart, I could not do that. I could not leave them hanging. I could not abandon them. They need me. And if it’s bad, I leave. If it’s bad, I come home. If this feeling of ache, of internal avalanches and a mind full of doom and gloom and Charlie Brown adult voices accompanied by the mournful, humming of Tom Wait doesn’t pass, I don’t ask, I don’t plead, I leave. My sanity is more important than any job. My emotional well-being is essential to my teaching, to my personal hygiene and to my will power that forces me every morning to put on pants and not slip into a rat onesie. If I am not stable, am not a rock, do not eat three meals a day and drink the right amount of liquids, I am sporadic, I am despicable, I am sputtering and rambling, I am climbing unsafe ladders and eating unrefrigerated meats.

Where is the rhyme and reason behind all this? Behind this journey? Behind a piece of luggage that is a few kilograms over? Behind these random tubes of light? I hope to find out or at least convince myself of some form of divine reason, which would involve first convincing myself that there is a divine anything.

I am now in Hong Kong airport, the random bulbs have been replaced with a domed ceiling comprised of grey, nacho chip, shaped tiles. I am hungry. I have an hour until I board my final flight to Shanghai. None of my items are lost yet. My only travel damage is a cracked computer that seems to still be functioning. Superficial damage. I have superficial damages and I still function as well. My CPU is overheating and could use some more RAM, but it’s still puttering onwards. The setting sun through Hong Kong’s haze looks like the helicopter scene in Apocalypse Now. Instead of war machines, 747s and mountains.

 

My new, Ruby designed, art.

My new, Ruby designed, art. Oh and my Tinea Versicolor.

I love you all. I will keep you updated with words.

Thank you to all of you who saw me before I left. You are all so special to me.

If you are ever in the neighborhood, don’t be shy, come on by!

Love, appreciating moments, your China bound friend/lover/family member…

Ira J Cooper