2009

 

Welkin = My Sky

Quoting Shakespeare:

But shall we make the welkin dance indeed? (Twelfth Night II.3.58)

Quoting myself:

I’m thinking of where I’ll rest
I’m holding my full hands
Out to the sky

The Pinoy (Retro) To-Do List

As fellow teacher, Autumn, and I discovered: when in the Philippines, it is a much better approach to compile a retro list than to have any prior expectations. (Note: second person voice does necessarily indicate which or both of us participated in the following activities): 

1. Make a midnight run on Christmas, in Manila, solo, in the rain, for bottled water after the hotel lobby sells you an unsealed bottle.

2. Then tell your travel mate she can kill the cockroach that flies out of your bath towel as you go to dry off after showering.

3. Crawl beneath the bed to find your roll-away malaria pill.

4. Order a hard-boiled egg to-go for the van ride to an underground river, only to discover (in the van) that
it's soft boiled.

5. Arrive to the best restaurant in town only to discover they are solidly reserved for the night. Return the next day and find that the floors are gone; they are renovating. The roof’s next.

6. Under threat of monkeys and vampires, pee in the jungle in the pitch dark night on the drive to El Nido.

7. Redefine the 9 to 5. Go beach hopping with a rule: must finish the 375ml bottle of Tanguy Rum when the boat returns at five p.m.

8. Order your entire New Year’s Eve dinner off-menu and ask the waiter, Dodong, to show you how to extract crab brains.

9. Hire a catamaran to drop you on a deserted beach for the afternoon. Collect hermit crabs and create a race track for them in the sand. Find this immensely entertaining.

10. Start a street party on the cardboard remains of firecrackers to the music of Marley.

Beneath Me

Usually it’s the roof at sunrise, my shoes at school, the beach sand afterward. 

But recently, what’s beneath me is water. I talked myself into taking SCUBA lessons. I'm only doing this because it’s on the James Bond syllabus, inspired by a Swedish friend’s pursuit of such 007 skills.

On Sunday, just a foot below the surface—where air was, air—I wondered, did I really care to see what’s beneath me? I’m pretty sure I didn’t. At least not when I practiced letting the regulator drift behind me before reining it back. I like my air supply accessible when I open my mouth.

If I remembered birth, would the worry be reversed? "Oh, no, I’m leaving the water. I’ll have to breathe air!"

Are our lives a continual reversal of fears and inclinations? Once afraid of public speaking, now a teacher. Once inclined to cool climates, now living in the equatorial pacific. Once afraid of diving, now paying to learn.

Beneath me? I have no idea. It’s dark down there.

But that’s why I’m adding a few weights to my belt, cinching it in, and remembering not to hold my breath.

All the Tea in China

The Great Wall, dumplings (steamed and boiled), tea balls that open to floral sculpture in boiling water, old women with mandarin collars smiling from centurian doorways, public toilets, tiny apples on skewers dipped in caramel, red lanterns, technicolor Mao, Tienanmen in the smog, toddlers swaddled in padded clothing, coal carts peddled down alleys, The Forbidden City, sound-barrier-breaking spitting, cobalt eaves, silk measured with an abacus,Peking duck with plum sauce.

China.

The conference, titled: "The Interconnected World", was grand. Grander still, the city it was held in. Beijing was synesthesia: you could taste color, smell the sky, and touch the language.

I spent most of my free time in the little Hutongs, the alleys of the old city. Here, laundry hung on hangers in front of windows. Greens dried on door stoops. Donut makers set their vats of oil at intersections in the early morning chill.

A friend, who had spent Christmas there a couple of years ago, gave me the name of a tea shop I "had to visit." I was curious about finding a small alley in a warren of such places. I'd printed off a sheet of practical words with their Chinese characters: taxi, tea, beer, toilet. Somehow, with lots of smiles and nods, I found Alice's shop. The owner uses an English name for such foreigners as myself incapable of capturing the tones of the language (my "thank you" and "hello" sounded like "purple" and "fountain pen" for all I know). I spent hours with her and tiny cups of tea. And I returned again and again. She and her husband and only daughter live in the tiny hall behind her shop. I came back home with enough tea to keep our island's water purification plant in business indefinitely.

And then the Wall. My calves just stopped aching from that up-and-down, 10k hike along the spine of mountains. History and stone. Rise and fall. Time.

Back here on Saipan, I am getting ready to visit my Chinese tailor. She is tiny and sweet and speaks just a few words of English. We communicate well with sign language, but I probably won't be able to explain that the pant hem she'll fix was ripped in her homeland, a world--internconnect--away.

Carefree

Last year's honors class just before Christmas break

First Week

Did you hear it? Neither I. The power’s out, so the school bell didn’t ring. Nevertheless, we’re in session. (And my battery-operated fan attached to a spray bottle has become my new best friend.)

The seniors’ first project of the year was to create coats of arms to decorate the cover of their journals. We had mottos: “Live hard and die,” “Be all you can be,” “Family and love.” We had symbolic charges: crossing palms, the island’s monolithic latte stones, 670s—Saipan’s area code used on island like a graffiti artist’s tag. We had supporters made of rosary beads and flame tree fronds.

As the students presented, I realized my face was aching from smiling all the time. It was so lovely to see them share themselves. I was loving it. I’m sure it helped that the power actually stayed on all day—a first that week. Still, I am surprised at this sneaking-up-on-me feeling that I do care about this.

My first year of teaching, caring was a matter of getting the basics done without burning out. An oh-my-gosh-I-need-to-make-480-copies-&-grade-second-period’s-quizzes-&-eat-lunch-in-50-minutes kind of way. This year, an odd thing is happening. I am starting to be overwhelmed by what I can only describe as profound caring for these students.

This summer, I took the art Praxis test in case I was able to teach art this year. Afterwards, I went to reward myself with brunch at my favorite café in Ashland, Oregon. It was a weekend morning, so the place was packed. There were only two seats left at the counter, and another woman and I found ourselves no longer strangers as we read sections of the menu aloud:

“Oatmeal pancakes with maple butter?”

“Oooh, blueberry streusel.”

“Or linguisa-spinach scramble . . . .”

Once we ordered (oh, those oatmeal pancakes) we started talking. I discovered she has been teaching various grade levels and subjects for almost twenty years. I asked what her greatest piece of advice was. She looked above the head of a chef in the kitchen and then back to me.

“Be nice.” She nodded. “If I can teach them to be nice, I’ve been successful.”

If I were to create a motto for my own journal, it wouldn’t be too different. “Be kind.” Caring then comes, free of charge.

The Duke of Kanat

We arrived to sounds of ukulele and sightings of big hair. Our friends had come to pick us up at the airport after attending a 70s-themed benefit. Ah, island arrivals with friends are the best.

They drove us up to our Kanat Tabla apartment. When we pulled into our parking lot, I saw my “new” car . . . propped up on cinder blocks, courtesy of our Chinese landlords who had spotted the flat tire.

I should mention I bought a very used car from my next-door colleague at the high school. Though Manny the Mechanic (who doesn’t advertise, instead shrugging “People with good karma, they find me”) said my car is the Lexus of Fords, I had my doubts after cataloguing the repairs: back brake light sloshing with water, passenger window duct-taped closed, stray cords snaking around the floor mats, a mysterious clanking sound in the front wheel, a very flat tire, radio . . . radio?

Still, Anna has a car! The Duke of Kanat. As in The Duke of Can Not Fall Any Further Apart. After a few days, dollars, and Manny’s stamp of approval, I hope not.

The Kanat part of the car’s name is our mountain (read: hillock). The Duke part was inspired by one of the car’s bumper stickers, which I was told is Japanese for crazy (clearly the state I was in when buying the car) and which, if pronounced correctly by someone else sounds like it has the word “duke” in it.

I’ve never been a fan of those stickers, both because they are a pain to remove and because a college friend once postulated that the number of bumper stickers on a car is inversely proportionate to the IQ of the car’s owner. Well. I now have sympathy for those who buy used cars with stickers that have welded to the paint after years of sun and salt.

Wecome home, me. I’d honk if my horn worked. (Yes, Dad, I’ll get it fixed pronto).