"Oh, the Rising Sun"

By my foot is a dish with water and next to it a yellow towel, a bit worse for wear, with Pai Pai trying to snuggle deep into it. Water is scattered about the floor, the aftermath of trying to entice him (with splashes) to take a bath, an idea that was so strange and appalling to him that he took any lengths to avoid it. He even flew for the first time (image that—even today) eighteen inches up to his cage from my hand as I moved to place him there. I suppose he flew, that is he could not have jumped that distance, and he wasn’t thrown, so by inference, it must be ruled that he flew those eighteen inches. Although I have waited days for him to fly—watched him proudly as he reared his chest and beat his wings, making a current like a small helicopter, blowing tissues off tables and eliciting applause from the only other one in the room. “Good job, Pai Pai!” or “Li hai!” So all along my imagination was for something much more majestic, to see him running across the table launching off the edge like Wright at Kittyhawk. In any case, I think the day is over that I tease him as a “land lubberer,” which is rather mean of me I suppose, but in the end considering that it will be he that can fly, and not I, the joke is much more on me.

I was drinking tea at the table, which, if you can believe, I haven’t done in quite a bit, and so in a way, it was all new again. That’s something in the nature of the tea I think. You can have it a thousand times and then, again, one day, it’s all new again as if you’ve never before smelled it, as if the tea had never before waited as it was to be unfurled and draw its nectar out. And so, again I was seduced.

Samuel Johnson said, “Wonder is simply the effect of novelty upon ignorance;” luckily, I suppose ignorance is the chaotic entity of that equation. Today, I’m ignorant; novelty may be a well-worn coat, but I have never seen it before. So fortunately, today, again, Wonder.

Tea always panders creative energies. To every thought I had, it said, “yes,” as if clear sunshine fell upon the mind, and one could see again the mountains (one always knew were there) far in the distance, as well as those fallen long ago in the past. I enjoyed sitting upon that staircase of dominance like a child who, upon turning eight, hoists himself up upon that extra rung that puts his head over the top, now dizzy by the height but proud, anxious neither to ascend nor worried enough to turn around. At this moment, I enjoyed thinking about myself abstractly and where I might be in the futures. “I always wanted to sail,” I thought. Yes, the tea said. “I could translate Chinese poems.” Yes, again, the tea said. “I’ve always loved acting,” I thought. That’s right, said the tea.

I had put on George Harrison, his last CD before he passed away, and every once in a while I would catch a lyric or two, some that had always stayed with me and now rang with deeper meaning as though, as birth brothers, we had forged them together in a shared dark. To him I celebrate this day, I thought, pouring the hot water. He said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” A new brew of tea fell brilliantly hot into the pourer, the scent rising visible above the metal screen. It was an odd communion, I alive drinking tea, and him dead singing to me from my computer. He said, “Universe at play inside your DNA, you're a billion years old today—oh, the rising sun.” Then he sang to me “Pisces Fish.” I tipped the tumbler and the teacup upside down, the porcelain almost hot enough to burn my fingertips, as if warning me. He crooned to me, lovingly, mysteriously, “He was sending me a signal / that for so long I had ignored / but he held on to my umbilical cord / until the ghost of memory / trapped in my body mind / came out of hiding to become alive.” The tea touched my lips and then suddenly I disappeared.

Pai Pai, disturbed, woke from his easily bought slumber and poked his head from the yellow folds of fabric, gazed up at that large, strange creation—the chair—and saw… Well, I know not.

Pai Pai

I think I'm going with "Pai pai" for the bird's name, which means "clap, clap," or "slap, slap" or something like that, so it's more for the sound than the meaning. For a while, it was "xiao niao" which literally means "baby bird," or, more precisely, "small bird," but no matter how endearing it was to me, it has been a little bit difficult to say conveniently.

Thinking about the bird, specifically, today, I re-read passages from The Little Prince concerning the Rose and the Fox, both of which allegorize relationships for the Little Prince. The one about the fox is more excessible to me, which is rather poetic, and who, in the end, tells the Prince, "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed." I think about this when I feed the bird and hold it in my hand.

I was reflecting on my students today--distinctly those in my afternoon class. And the class itself, as well, how, in the beginning, after they left and I began picking up and tidying, it felt like I was cleaning up after a war. A month later, it felt like picking up after a battle, then a mild skirmish, and so on. Today, it felt like picking up after a class of elementary school kids and in the negative connotation of the phrase, which means it wasn't the best class of the week, but that in not being the best class this week it's still miles above what we were when we started.

Perseverance, even when it's blind, lost, and led only by the dumb hand of time--that's to say almost, "even if it's not perseverance"--always overthrows any obstacle. It makes you give credence to the sentiment (to the record) in the dear old Bible, that faith can move mountains. That's to say concerted, diligent perseverance. Doubly true in Buddhism, where, they say, mountains don't even exist so of course you can move 'em. In any case, the world has shifted again, rolled over to its side to gaze longingly at the sky.

I was also just thinking of the portraits that my students make, singly or in montage. John who, for a week, would only enter the classroom on all fours barking like a dog, and who, even when not a dog, tries to eat anything, or at least put it in his mouth. One day he was eating his triangular ruler, and I said, "John, what are you doing?!" He said, "It's chicken!" There's Judy who everyone says is very pretty. Today she finished the writing assignment while Steven, the slowest writer EVER!, was still finishing the writing assignment from the day before. Judy lay her head on her arm and looked out the window. I was sitting next to Steven so that I could remind him to keep writing, for, at any second and for any reason, he will spontaneously stand upon his chair, or climb unto the bookshelf up to the air-con unit right near his desk, to stick his head into the rush of cold air, and sing a phrase of a song.

He is a very slow writer because of the care he takes with each letter (unlike John, for example, who chomps down on his extra eraser, and writes right through the asignment in large, messy, thick lines), and he was writing the word "around," again and again. For some reason, this made me feel really peaceful. All the letter's seemed to have the same circular movement starting from the nape of the "a," circling down and around, to execute in a tail. Then the "o," but with no tail. The "u," with a tail but with an abbreviated skull, the "n," slightly different, but still as thoughtful as any of the others. The "d," which is just an "a," with a very long spine... He actually was practicing this one incorrectly, beginning at the top of the letter, and executing the rest in the same movement as one would do to make an "h," on the other side. I didn't bother to stop him.

On the other side of the room sat his twin sibling, a sister, Ruby, who, just as in intelligent, does half as well due to things people would call, "behavior" issues, and many days she is uncooperative. She does do well with writing, though, I thought. She sits next to Andy who is very smart and has no class room decorum, so sometimes he loves what we are doing a little too much. If you ask him anything about Teletubbies or something called Yoyoman, or Spongbob Square Pants, he will know the answer--in English. After class, sometimes he even teaches me Chinese.

Last weekend, I took a trip to Fo Guang Shan, the buddhist temple that I stayed four weeks in two and a half years ago. It seems like ancient history now, almost like another world. Indeed it is another world, another world altogether even from Taiwan. It's quite large, the complex, with several musuems, two English colleges (men's and women's), art galleries, many temples with their accompanying courtyards and landscaping, lodges, giftshops, bookstores, and a huge 5,000 people dining complex, all of which is built upon several hills, an hour North from one of the largest (I think) port cities in the world, Khaosiung.

Here, it's incredible, but everyone is very happy--old people, young people, lay people, monastics. It's like the rule, or at least the myth, all over Taiwan, that here it's very happy and peaceful and, indeed, it is. In fact, it would be rather creepy except for the fact that, once you get used to it, you realize how rich and undeniable the happiness is.

I said it was ancient history for me but that made me all the more startled to remember things I had lost, or had never bothered to translate into my other world. I remembered the smells, even before I got there, the smells of their halls, their air-conditioning, their incense, and even the smell of their shrubs outside. I found almost every place we had meditated--the place outside where bees and flies had buzzed lazily from one neck to the next. The time we meditated in the men's college temple and the fan that blew in the window, the light that changed across the floor. In the early morning, outside the giant golden, standing Buddha statue, where the courtyard wasn't quite big enough and the neat rows of mats twisted oddly at the end.

Perhaps when you're letting your thoughts go, the ones that remain--those arrogant that stand up and claim substance--are those that fall so hard, once, and so distinctly that the impression they leave is left waiting like a fossil in your mind, like a cicada that waits in the ground, for that odd year to come around, when they summon brown casing, and rise from the earth.