A Hair Cut

To celebrate my seventh Saturday on the island and as a natural result of the rate at which hair grows, I decided to get my hair cut. I have been sick (am still sick) which involves an obnoxiously thick and sore head, uneven and inconsistent perceptual ability, and an intermittent but consistent dripping nose. Though I haven't pinpointed the cause of this sickness (I always find myself trying to pinpoint the cause of my sickness, as if every sickness is unnatural and therefore must have a specific cause), I think it has to do with the physiological/psychological response with being here, having finally established myself here in an apartment and job enough so the the initial adrenaline spent upon surviving here has fled, the stress that was always there is finally able to take its toll. This and a few lousy nights of sleep have angered my body and mind for disrupting the balance of a healthy life and making me now sleep fifteen hours a day and wander about like a zombie.

Originally, getting my hair cut was going to be one of those perfect days. I had picked the place specifically because it was right next door to my favorite milk tea shop, and so after a haircut I would march down to the park with a bubble tea mix in my hand and have a good old, relaxed way with it. (Bubble tea for those who don't know is a novelty drink that I haven't yet grown tired of. Mixed into a sweetened cup of milk tea, the "bubbles" are actually small balls between the size of pebbles and marbles made out of tapioca. Many people do not like bubble tea and it strikes me as very much like bubble gum, which I don't like. The tapioca is pleasantly indistinct in its taste. The real pleasure is afforded by their springy soft texture in the mouth and also the extra thick straw that is provided to suck them up with the tea. The first time I tried bubble tea I did not know that there were "bubbles" inside and somehow delighted by the absurdly thick straw took a big swig and the pressure induced by a ball in the pipe shot into my mouth like a bullet and sent me into fits of coughing. After that, I learned to befriend this relationship and have enjoyed the drink now and then ever since. However, an ever better mixture that is sold at such ubiquitous said tea shops is a sweet red tea with vanilla ice cream in it---oo-la-la, it's good.) But a planned day is just a good recipe for a bad day as it is for a good day, and, already a bit sick and definitely more than averagely woozy from all the sleep, I walked into the hair shop not really sure about anything--not really even sure if I needed a haircut or not. But I made some rather detached observations about the time I had been here and how long I had been without a hair cut and also recalling some comments my boss made about looking better with short hair, and so I was somewhat armed with certainty when I put my nose to the glass doors, somewhat bewildered and annoyed when I had to push closer and closer, standing there like an idiot, before they slid sideways by their automatic motion. No one was in that cool place except for the three ladies there sitting in the chairs, and they quickly got up and seemed to circle me and somehow I was in a chair and was being massaged and was being asked, "this is okay ma?" If I was somewhat armed with a certainty that I needed a hair cut, I was absolutely ill-prepared to speak any Chinese, which was really okay, I mean, what is there to say that you can't motion for with your hands? All I managed was to respond to one lady who, I finally gathered, was asking me if I knew how to speak Chinese. Again, no problem there, my look of complete bewilderment told her volumes more than I can yet articulate in her native tongue. It is indeed an experience to know all that can be done and more without a necessary understanding of anything.

As I sat there, being massaged, I couldn't help various thoughts and doubts flicker through my mind. I thought, where are the scissors? where are the gels? When I told Jeff that I was going to get a hair cut earlier that week and if he had any suggestions, he said only that basically every place was a modeling salon and that the only risk was that sometimes they were fronts for more lucrative employments that occurred in back rooms for more money and less clothing. But I let this pass because there was certainly no danger here. But I should say that there is something in the culture here of such services as salons that somewhat excuses me for thinking this, even in such an obviously innocent place as this. My exhibition through the salon was something of a series of being passed around by young, cooing women who were constantly touching my head, rubbing my shoulders, and saying the few endearments they knew in English: "so beautiful," as they ran their fingers through my hair. It's something akin to the beetlenut mamas, who wear small clothing and sit behind their desks wrapping the disgusting nut-chew mixtures, and for an extra few dollars they will allow costumers to touch their hands as they wrap the nut in spices and leaves. Are they prostitutes? Or is it innocent, suggestive pleasure? And where does the line fall?

I couldn't help comparing this to the last haircut I received in Malaysia. For five ringgit (that's less than two dollars) I had an Indian man cut my hair with nothing but hair-clippers and a comb, and it only took something like a minute and a half. It was a worthy haircut too, I might add, and these women where taking just milimeters with tentative snips, and using feathering scissors, too, and I knew the longer a haircut lasts the more money one is able to demand. First the massage, then the hair cut, then they took me to the back of the room and laid me down in a large leather chair and I couldn't help smiling as they laid my head back into a washing basin--a sensation that never fails to please. The original of such sensation is the one we learn from childhood where we are still able to stretch completely out in the tube and are able to dip our head back until the warm water encompasses our brow. Then after this I was taken again to another chair, with pink towels in a loose turban about my head, and again I was massaged and my hair was combed and blown dry, and all the time I was thinking how much it would be. My general philosophy succumbed to thinking 'whatever will come will come;' this line of thought was somewhat aided by the subduing nature massage has I think. But I was pleased when I finally left, a US ten dollars less the richer, but so much more happier and clean and healthy. A massage was probably exactly what I needed, anyway. As for my haircut, it really isn't so good. The Taiwan aesthetic considering hair cuts or anything else is an appreciation and striving toward softness. I recently had a photo taken for my work visa at a professional photo-taking place (persuaded to do so by my boss) and what arrived was a series of head shots so photoshop-ed that I found myself ridiculously new looking, with toy-soldier red cheeks, an utter and complete softness to my eyes and lips, and the entire photo glowing from the presence of the use of a soft lense. So, today my hair is so feathered it disappears seamlessly into the phenomena about it, as if charged by the electricity inherent in everything. But in several days my hair, as well as my sickness, is sure to subside and return anew to that balance and efficiency of life that continuously shapes the naked shingles of this world.

Thunder and Operatic Pottery

Written in my apartment as if began to rain, Sunday August 10th, transfered to school computer the next day
It began to thunder as I rode home, even though the sky to one side was only partially cloudy, but the thunder was so great and present I trembled to wait for the red light in what seemed like the middle of the intersection, and I found myself looking at the buildings taller than I was. But were they tall enough? Lightning flashed making me jump and again it thundered, and it was very impressive. It made my spine tingle with a divinizing energy that made me involuntarily afraid. I peddled home quickly on my bike newly worked on, much improved by the addition of air to my tires, oil to my chains, and alignment to my front tire. While waiting, I had the boy put a touch of oil to my bike lock that I had to jiggle and jerk to get loose and now I happily only turn the key and the thing swings magically open all by itself. Outside the elevator in the hall to my apartment, it thundered again, and it was like thunder in a movie theatre. I wonder if you know the story they tell of two rival theatre houses in England, each trying to out do the other with their fantastic stage effects. For a particular storm scene in one of its shows, one house would use these large sheets of metal that stage hands shook for the effect of thunder, and this was so well contrived and anticipated that one night the rival theatre company stole these sheets, thus depriving the night’s performance of its success and effectively creating the expression we are all now familiar with: “stealing one’s thunder.”

I discovered new excitement around the city today, which is good for my spirit, as I look toward the next week of school starting tomorrow morning. School isn’t a burden to me—I wouldn’t say that. Much of it is joyful work—but there are moments of great doubt and feelings of inadequacy which I think are probably very natural feelings in this situation, given the task and responsibility of not only teaching small students but also instilling in these students the love and happiness of learning. In such cases, it is very easy to be angry with one’s self for not being greater, quicker, more creative, and so on. And so, nights like tonight, where the shadow of tomorrow already looms or stands in the corner like a man with folded hands—it is quite something to know that there are other things to depend and rely on if school turn out completely successful. With this peace of mind, one is able to accept that tomorrow will come and with it new trouble. One turns their mind to it, and once the acceptance is clean—the sails are made bold, the map consulted—the work becomes something beyond one’s self and turns a better shade of thought.

I biked to the north end of the city to the Chiayi cultural center, which is basically a compound of some museums, music halls, parks with very absurd pieces of art scattered about, and so on. I wandered through some very impressive galleries (and others not so impressive). I was particularly taken with their collection of Kofi (Kopi?) pottery. I’m not very versed on Kofi pottery, but it uses a certain style of glazing that makes everything very bright and glassy—to western sensibilities perhaps too gaudy. But in the right context it is very rich, expressive medium, and more often than not, beautiful shapes are created with it, whether derived from mythology, nature, or traditional Chinese tales. The story scenes depicted with the Kofi style pottery were what startled me. The complexity, intricacy, and business of the scenes matched those same qualities of a Hogarth print, but the gaudiness, the three-dimensionality, and the frequency of mythological creatures and characters was evocative of Grecian friezes in the way they might of looked. Yet on top of this, they held the attention and fascination of the miniature and still-life, like puppetry or a doll’s house. Some scenes were inspired and based upon traditional tales of filiality, emphasizing the balance and harmony between various relationships (father to son, father to wife, son to mother, friend to friend, and so on, the only relationship of equanimity being the latter, and all others relying upon a dynamic of appropriate deference). I am endlessly intrigued by stories told visually in practically all forms in which this occurs (and they occur everywhere whether it is a comic book, eighteenth century English prints, and monastic and traditional murals of any tradition). The richness of narrative and perspective is fascinating to me. (To be honest, it’s sometimes why I think I enjoy the medium of cinema and theatre so well because of how entirely they have consumed this aspect of artifice. It begins with Charlie Chaplin and leads on the whole way out in acting and mise en scene to this day. Hitchcock is another truly great example of purely visual entertainment.)

However, these clay vignettes added to what is usually done in two dimensions such a new intrigue of three dimensionality that you could spent a good long time looking at them from every angle, not wishing to move them a centimeter, designed perfectly to fit the space. Like the Chinese painting, the empty space, the white paper that shines through as part of the painting, is the most defining aspect. Although several were large complex scenes of figures, there were several Kofi scenes that were very simple and yet very evocative. They reminded me of the Dutch painters, Vermeer in particular—a woman rising out of bed caught in the light. Some, slightly between the large scene and the portraits, were scenes that reminded me of the set and action of a Chinese, or western, opera, as if all that noise and confusion were hushed and framed and boxed into these brilliantly colored and imagined scenes. As I said, they also had the fascination a doll’s house has, and so I found myself as much taken with the relationships between the actors in the scene as I was with the growing, flowering plants in equal miniature or the well executed horse’s saddle, and so on.

Along a walk outside, they had various other amusements. Kids were making their own Kofi on a long table. Teenagers were practicing some dance moves to some electronic music. I walked down further to the long line of booths selling orchids and ferns and cactus. The orchids were orchids, and the cacti were cacti, but the ferns were not ferns. They were great, strange, terrible things; some were mounted aloft on square pieces of blackened earth, and they grew, as if on tree bark, and let flow down great antlers of green, or else they curled and toiled themselves outward and inward in odd, yet simple, shapes like pale, oddly colored ears. Some ferns were growing out of pots, some in full spread, others in long searching tendrils, their tongues, like those of butterflies, still tightly curled, pondering their nearing execution of perfection. And yet others hadn’t pushed forth their green stems at all, and what sat in the black soil was a hairy stump, something ugly and soft that would eventually sprout the great spindly fern when conditions were hopeful.

In the last stall I was pleased to smell something familiar. A woman was serving some oolong in a very neat stall with various shelves with tea sets (as well as random tea cups and pictures and pots). Her name was Carol and she spoke English very well, although she denied this when I told her. We talked about the pottery (she collected it and didn’t make it) and the different glazes, the Kofi pottery that I had just seen; but more we talked about the cups in her shop and tea. She was impressed that I liked “Chinese tea,” that all her other western friends didn’t like it. We finished drinking the Ali Shan and she brewed me some organic tea (I didn’t quite understand this, but the “organic” part of it had to do with some worm that ate some part of the leaf) from a place I think she said was Shi Tou, an hour north of Chiayi. She very innocently asked if I liked this tea better or Ali Shan better, but it was something like a test with a very obvious answer. I told her I liked the latter (Shi Tou) better, and it was true. It was better, and much more fragrant, and she smiled and we went on talking. She again—innocently—asked me if I liked tea or coffee. I said I liked them both quite well. Again, here she was in agreement with me and told me that every morning she had to have some black coffee. After every subsequent meal she always made tea—this kind of tea, in this fashion, not just a bottle of tea you buy at the store, she told me. She told me that a true delight on a very hot day was a liter bottle filled with cool water let sit in the fridge with a scoop of rolled oolong for about 8 hours, until the tea completely unraveled. After that—she had no English word to describe it—but it was obviously a very fine thing to drink. It was a very pleasant conversation, and all the while the wind would blow, or I would wander about her shop again, looking at the pieces, and then sit back down again. Another lady sat down to drink with us and we had something of a Chinese lesson; indeed, I have my best lessons over tea, it seems. And at some point, much later, I excused myself. Rain looked very imminent and, as I wheeled home, I found that at least thunder and lightening was imminent, and also that I had a flat tire. But this was happiness I tell you, and somehow or other, I am here again typing, with thoughts of school, thoughts of dinner, thoughts of an hour train ride north to Shi Tou when I next can fix it and so on

If at first you don't succeed...

Written at home on computer Wednesday August 6th, transfered next day in the evening to Imagine Children's School's office computer in the evening time.

Three days of teaching under the belt, as we say. An odd expression, but it feels like to me that I have indeed experienced and kept these days—strapped them—very close to me. They have not been fond for me, rather, difficult. But the emotional experience has been of immediacy and importance. It is very important to me that I make something of teaching small children, not simply for the unselfish reasons that the kids may learn something or that I may delight in their success. There are mundane reasons plenty that keep me at my task. Would I do this if I could walk away tomorrow, I wonder? I don’t know. But there are reasons I do not walk away, and I think it is also good to stick with it. The first adjustment is always the hardest. But that’s maybe a lie. If you’ve ever read the children’s book Holes, perhaps you remember when the protagonist lies down, dusty and worn from his first day digging a hole. Another child tries to cheer him up and says, “the first hole is always the hardest.” But the boy finds out, the next day, when he is again assigned to dig a hole, that it is even more difficult than before. He is still tired from the first day and his hands are covered with blisters that easily break. Again, the third day the trial is worse, and so on until, at some point, though digging the hole each day remains difficult, he finds an ease to it. He finds his body turned lithe and strong, his hands rough and thick, and his method better calculated.

My three morning classes are for kindergarten classes with kids ranging from 2.5 years old to seven years old. The kids in my afternoon class are seven and eight and this is where all my energy is directed. They seem to have abilities below the morning class of six and seven year olds, yet class material and expectations are a lot more advanced. Some are very quick and some are not. I spend a good part of the time splashing about, trying to find firm ground to place stones of knowledge that I let gently into the water only to watch them vanish into he depths of un-understanding. As a result, their attention wanes, they speak Chinese (which in this class is not allowed), they fidget and fight, and so on. My classes often devolve into exercises of classroom management, which I am not happy with. The children spend their time testing my edges, and I spend time myself learning the power I have and do not have over them.

The most important aspect of these past few days have been my attempts between 5 o’clock when I leave the school and eleven at night when I go to sleep (not counting the time that I spend lesson-planning or worrying about my classes) to remove myself emotional, intellectually, and physically from school and find things to do in the city or by myself that are interesting and rejuvenating in their own merits. Although I have not found many people to talk to (the only westerners I have met outside my school were two boys, one from Utah and one from Las Vegas, named Elder Jack and Elder Johnson who sported matching dress-shirts and ties and mandarin translated books of mormon—unfortunately, and as expected, our chance meeting and conversation was singularly directed), I have found things to do.

I have enjoyed wandering about my part of the city, which is a little quieter and quainter than Chiayi central. There is nothing big like shopping malls or movie theatres, but there is a park where old men smoke cigarettes and play checkers or where young mothers go to exercise. I’m recognized everywhere I go but more particularly at several specific restaurants and shops, and at several restaurants I am occasionally pampered with an odd unexpected, free dish, most recently being a red bean popsicle at one place and an Japanese-style onion salad at another (delicious!). There is one teashop quite near by but I find it slightly uninviting and moody, the only time I went, I felt like I was coming into a living room and soon left. I sometimes walk about the residential areas and have even visited some garden stores for plants and flowers to grow. I have not made any friends yet with the local people in my rambles but there is certainly a friendliness, an expectation of certain smiles and nods in my usual haunts. There is not enough language yet to have friends, and so this pushes me on to learn more.

I continue to learn Chinese. This endeavor is supported whenever I go outside, listening to the many conversations that I hear, finding some people who can speak a little English and the attempt to clear up the empty spaces between. I also have a Rosetta Stone program that I work on every night. I have made a chart where I check off certain exercises and though I’m persistent, I am not in the habit yet of rewarding myself with stickers! I also have some flash cards and a very small phrase book. Other than this, it is live and learn.

Of course, there is tea to enjoy and escape to, and though I have not bought any local tea since I did some Ali Shan, I have plenty of puerh tea from Malaysia that I drink often enough in the evenings. I compliment this by listening to opera, and occasionally I also have little snacks I have purchased at local bakeries. One bakery near by has this delicious buttery sesame coated crust cookie that is so flakey. And inside is a red bean paste, some fiber, and a bit of yellow saltiness in the center (a bit of a duck egg, I don’t know). The first bite is wonderful because the middle collapses together and all the sweet and salty flavor is released.

It has been very nice to receive post and I am surprised every day when I get a letter from my sister so far away. I think I have gotten three letters from her, and it is magical to hear her words and dreams and thoughts. Today she even slipped into the envelope some mule braid and snake skin, emblems of another world they seemed! Reading letters is such sustenance to me. It is so tangible that you can lift it in your hands, a preciousness that you can see and count.

There is yet more to do here. I sometimes think that it is loneliness that affects me. Indeed, there is not a lot of conventional friendship or support. But I have my family. I do have my friends still. I have many people that I interact with everyday, too. But I think it is true that it is hard to feel like I am sharing in an experience with somebody; in such cases it is much easier to find meaning and wisdom and support in the things that you do. But it also feels nice to do it alone, like swimming out far into the waves. There is meaning and wisdom and support all around or, as we say, in your self! So it’s something of a process, blistered hands but a gradual unlayering, an eye toward tomorrow when not confounded by the day, a charge to engage, persist, and let go.