Books of Revelation

During my second semester of Senior year in College, back when I wore glasses, I joined the Klaremont Krew on a largely improvised weekend trip to Vegas. At the time, I was fairly uncertain about the year after college. I didn't quite know what I wanted to do, and I was still rolling the idea of teaching in China, an idea suggested by my Uncle Frank over lunch at a Chinese restaurant along with numerous other friends and relations, over my tongue.

The trip was fun, I didn't sleep the entire night, and Wes defied the odds up and down the block by repeatedly betting on black or red and walking away the victor. Early on I could tell he was on a capital-h Hot Streak. So I made a deal with myself and anyone who would listen. I put 20 dollars on Red. If I walked away with 40, then I would hesitate no more: I was destined to go teach English in China. If it came up black, I would spend a little while longer considering my options.

Over the rest of that evening I blew that 40 losing at blackjack, but I hardly cared. Fate had chosen for me - China was in my immediate future. And so, I got a job with Peihua, and came to Xi'an. Over the past 40 (!) blog posts thus far, I've been somewhere between complaining (read: a whiny punk) and grimly aware of the benefits that this experience would have for my Career, whatever that might be. Today, however, I had a revelation.

Since I've come to China, I've been reading more, I've taken up Piano again (I can play Greensleeves without having to look up the chords but G7 is a 4 note monstrosity that continues to bugger me up), I'm pursuing a side job writing articles for a local expat rag (a process which has taken weeks but hey, I'm trying), I'm writing seriously for the first time since sophomore year, I've been less dependent on the company of others... Yes, China will (hopefully) do good things for my job prospects, but I think the real value of this experience is in how I've come to view my free time. Lets not kid ourselves here, I still waste hours (upon hours) watching TV on the Internet and playing video games, but it feels better having these things a little less central to how i spend my personal time. Hell, even in playing games, i at least have a little more dedication to finishing the story. It's a small thing, but I feel better.

Today, I made up for waking up late by randomly wandering into a bookstore and finding a copy of Don Quixote in English, and reading the first few chapters in a Starbucks (loathe as I am to admit it with my Pitzer education, but I'll forgive multinational corporations for providing me with cheap coffee in this remote corner of the earth). This, of course, broke my writers block, and i spent the rest of the afternoon writing a little fiction. Now I'm blogging about it. Over the past few months (!) A day like today would probably have involved a lot more battlestar galactica and a lot more final fantasy tactics, and a healthy dose of ennui. But I'm growing out of that, I think.

Or at least, I like to hope.

The first semester is over halfway over. My Christmas is coming up, which I'm pretty jazzed about. In the next couple of days I'll know if its viable to spend my generous winter break in Georgia with Lexi, which hopefully will work out without a hitch. And, after that, well, I'm gonna need to start saving my money for my glorious return, phoenix-like, to the United States. It's kind of nice, being able to see how the rest of my year is likely to go, in broad strokes. I'll admit, I didn't expect it to take this long to hit my stride with China, but what can you do?

Hell, maybe I haven't hit my stride yet. Maybe in a few weeks I'll be like "okay, NOW I've hit it." Maybe I'll be doing that all year. But I have the illusion of knowledge, and it warms the cockles of my pitch black, icy heart.

Oh, before I forget. I made a lot of gestures earlier about some kind of deformed Postal Service style musical production with me putting up some kind of keyboard riff and asking people to put something over it. A lot of people have sworn fealty to such a project. Anyone still interested? I'm not sure how I'll get a recording on the computer, and how to post it, but I'd be willing to come up with a simple riff, lets say a minute's worth, and see if we can come up with some kind of infectious Daft-Punkian simple rhythm? Worst case scenario, its horrid so we put sci-fi samples over it!

In closing, I leave you with this: Rhythm is the hardest word in the world to spell from memory. Thank god for firefox's ingrained spell checker which I will continue to otherwise ignore.