Parasite seeks host

I'm going through a period of frantic activity. Like everything about me, I organize life in this extreme way: a long period of complete hermit-like passivity where I hate the world and collapse in exhaustion of living in it, followed by self disgust and boredom, followed by frantic initiative and activity.

I think it's the passivity that unleashes self disgust. It's a most heineous crime like a) not voting in a democracy, b) staying in your hotel while on holiday and only eating English breakfasts c) being a starving lunatic at a buffet, staring at the food.

It makes all my relationships that of a parasite seeking a host.

I blame a lifetime of reading Charlotte Bronte, imagining Jane Eyre-esque rescues from the sordid reality. When you lose yourself early to a fantasy, it's hard to find yourself again.

But life is not Jane Eyre. It's more like a cruel audition in front of Simon Cowell, with time as the stage, and all the world blinking at you like spot lights.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, I'm a reformed parasite. I've tossed Bronte back into the 19th Century and taken control of my life.

I'm asking everyone and anyone for everything I've ever wanted. In a complete swing from one extreme to the other, I'm going to see if this works, if this causes unimaginable results. From what I know of the world, it probably will.

In a way, I wonder why I waited so long. All it takes is a phone call, a text, an email, a conversation, a request. It takes moving my fingers over a keyboard and opening my mouth, it's not like I'm staging a hunger strike and dodging bullets from some unnamed force that's holding my family as ransom.

There's really no barrier at all.

I wonder why we all wait so long.

I reckon this asking people for stuff experiment is even more explosive than the 'say yes' experiment. I shall keep a record.

Taking the higher ground

We have grown fat and lazy in the West. In China you realise, Westerners have forgotten how to compete - that crucial part of all of nature.

It may seem contradictory in a capitalist society. But the magic of capitalism is that it channels that most powerful humnan urge into constructive channels. And in the slick, developed worlds this channeling is so accomplished that competition has been completely relegated to business or sport. Strictly guarded by rules to sanitise and make it fair.

But in the great convulsing human mass of China you see it in its real form.

In China competition is in every sphere of life - particularly in the private sphere, because the public sphere is so undeveloped. In an autocratic, clan-based society competition is most fierce in sex and relationships. And in these spheres anything goes. The dirtiest, bitchiest, lowest underhand tactics are used. And they work.

It applies to both men and women. Ambitious men 'deal' in politics to get into the right factions, to back the right horses, to clamber on top of thousands and thousands of other candidates in the absence of meritocricy.

Either you trample others and take their place or you remain in mediocrity all your life.

Chinese women are even more machievellian. Chinese philosophy says that feminine energy is cold, malleable and soft. Like water. But just like water it is no less powerful and overwhelming.

Chinese women use their weakness and their softness to manipulate men. They threaten suicide, they threaten breakdown. All you learn in the West - that relationships are a preference not an obligation goes out the window. These women will not allow the men to go out, they will not introduce their female friends to the men to guard their property against competition. They offer sex as early as they need to to get the man hooked before the competition does. They control and change the men until they are eventually broken.

Pride and the higher ground is completely abandoned for shameless tactics.

I'm not being critical. The longer I'm here the more I understand. This is absolutely necessary to deal with a much tougher, competitive environment with thousands and thousands of women offering similar things.

There is not the luxury of taking the higher ground. And the crucial thing is, the higher ground doesn't work as well in comparison for the hard cold fact of getting what you want. It's not the real nature of competition, it's just an ideal that lazy, fat Westerners have the luxury of entertaining. It's time we stopped fooling ourselves.

I think I have a lot to learn from the dark side. I think it's time we learned to apply business ruthlessness to every part of life. I think we should look reality in the face and step up to the competition.

And here is the real addictiveness of China - the complexity in which humamn nature in all its forms can be found.

A king dreaming of a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of a king?

I have given up. I have turned away from men, and excitement and making an effort. I have succombed to the relentless grind of the wheel of fate. I have been manouevered by the morbid control of my Communist employers.

Yes, this weekend, I am being sent to Hangzhou for the third time in three months. I have to wring some stories from that damn rich city where nothing happens. I have to turn water into wine, and geese into gold.

It's going to take two whole days of my life. 48 hours of my precious mid-twenties when I could have been looking for a man.

Or writing my great, unwritten novel.

I know my drivelling complaints are pathetic. But my whole life I have been passive, backing away from the effort it would take to engage.

Life is like a window of opportunity that you didn't ask for. Worst of all it's only open for a limited time - a period that is both excruciatingly long and excruciatingly short.

One day we'll wake up old, like my grandparents, and ignored. And our time for doing something in this life will be over.

You know that state between waking and sleeping, when you become aware that you need to go to the toilet but can't because you're asleep? I had this last week. I dreamt five times that I had gone to the toilet, only to find I was still asleep. I tried and tried so hard to will my eyes open, and my arm to reach for the clock. But I could only command dream eyes, and dream arms.

This life of passivity I am in now is like that dream I couldn't wake from. And I'm reminded of that old philosophical puzzle, are we dreaming of something, or is something dreaming of us?

lists

I haven't been blogging because I haven't found any solutions. I'm at a shitty place where I love nothing and want nothing. Though I have moved halfway across the world, and have changed life completely more than once - what difference does it all make? I'm disgusted with myself.

So I made a list.

A list of wacky things I've always wanted to do, but was too scared to do. I can't reveal all, but part of it includes: getting plastic surgery (just a small procedure), ask interviewees to lunch (and maybe seduce them), and finally write that short story (but my demon perfectionism gets in the way).

Once they're written down however, they don't seem that daunting at all. In fact, there's a strange, irresistible compulsion to do each and every one of those things.

This is the mystery, and the lure of writing. Somehow, it's almost like you make things come to life.

Maybe if you write down in black and white a list of all the people you ever wanted to ask out, you'll find yourself reaching for the phone, punching in the numbers and blurting out the words.

Anyway, I also made a list of things that I-Wanted-To-Do-But-Is-Also-Realistic-And-Achievable. And this list was so fucking boring in comparison that I wondered why I bothered.

Sigh. Life goes on. One step in front of the other.

..that thing is love

"I'm not frightened, not of anything. The more I suffer the more I love. Danger would only increase my love, sharpen it, give it spice.

I will be the only angel you need. You will leave life even more beautiful than when you entered it."

- The Reader

I've been thinking about love in a relationship, and desire. It struck me these are quite different things. A long term relationship, by definition, has to be practical and maintainable. It's like finding a joint venture partner. It's about the practicalities of how you want to live and where you want to end up. But desire is a totally different beast.

Desire ignores appropriateness because it worships different laws.

It is that door at the end of that corridor one flight up and at the back of your house.

It answers the siren call of black holes that were never filled.
Things lost and paths not taken.

Why would any of these things coincide with practicality?

They say in this sex obsessed society, that you can have one night stands, but it won't make up for a real relationship. What about the things real relationships can't possibly cover? It's far more than sex.

The French knew the lost art of the 'Affair' - and the difference between an affair and a one night stand is like the difference between a French Arthouse film and a porn film.

A haunting book I read once about love was titled simply, "Open the Door!"

White Tiger

Time for more quotes from memorable reading. For a book that won the Man Booker prize there's surprisingly few things in Whtie Tiger that really moved me. I get the idea - that slavery always starts with mentality - and as always it's interesting, but I don't think it's a new idea and he hasn't really said anything new about it either.

The only interesting thing is the mixing of good and bad, black and white, to show the complexity of morality.

This was best done in his few passages about the Black Fort. Interesting that it's the one point of beauty he holds onto in his otherwise terrible existence as an Indian peasant, in what he calls The Darkness,

"Slaves remain slaves because they can't see what's beautiful in the world."

And yet it's a 'black' fort full of screaming monkeys. Having scrambled part of the way up the social ladder, he symbolically makes his way up to the Fort. There he sees the beauty of the countryside spread out below as a cruel joke by god.

"Up in the blue skies God spreads His palm over the plains below, showing this little man Laxmangarh, and its little tributary of the Ganga, and all that lies beyond: a million such villages, a billion such people. And God asks this little man:

Isn't it all wonderful? Isn't it all grand? Aren't you grateful to be my servant?

And then...he starts to shake, as if he's gone mad with anger, before delivering to the Almighty a gesture of thanks for having created the world in this particular way instead of all the other ways it could have been created."

It's like a parting in the clouds to a rare glimpse of profound philosophising, the rest of the book sticks relentlessly to the nitty gritty of everyday realities. But not sure if I like this style, it's a type of pretentiousness too. I like the sweeping prose, and more of these profound moments.

When I can find it, I want to record a great Times article I read about the US stimulus package. Infinately dry topic, but done so simply and with wry, almost childish humour. One sentence I remember, "Asking district governments to spend money is like asking the cookie monster to eat."

If I can just find it in the piles on my desk...

China's new bohemians

Journalist's lives can be so unpredictable, one day you're interviewing a sleazy millionaire playboy, and the next you're talking to young Chinese bohemians turned entrepreneurs.

Both happened to me this week. The millionaire playboy was not as glamorous as it sounds. He was nearly 70 and drove us to his private estate in the middle of nowhere. There he insisted on telling rude jokes, holding my arm and taking photos of me. Thank god I brought our photographer.

But then I got to do a series of really nice interviews. It was for an article about youth hostels and the spread of backpacking in China. Sometimes Asian societies can be such oppressive societies. Kids are required to justify the investment the parents have made in them and everyone is watching to see if they succeed or fail, pushing them to be uber conventional.

But things are changing, and there is a new generation of bohemians. The new hostel I checked out was opened by a group of young designers. They had built a ramshackle backpack retreat in Zhejiang to escape the stress of their white collar lives. They let more and more of their friends stay and it turned into a money making venture. One day they were eating sunflower seeds and one person suggested they quit their jobs to open hostels full time, and all the others were thinking the same thing.

So that's exactly what they did.

The girl I interviewed was only 25, fresh out of college and brought into the group by her boyfriend. She had simple dreams - she didn't want too much either money or achievement, she didn't want anything too big, she just wanted love, and a fun, peaceful life in relationship with other people.

And that's exactly what she's got.

The hostel they own is an informal affair, small and cute, the walls are painted with their own paintings and those of guests and interns who volunteer. Guests hang out and make friends with them, that's the idea, it's a big party. The founders are all good friends or university classmates, and she says it's just like being in a student club. They don't make a lot, but there's potential and they have two hostels already in relaxed places like Xiamen.

On the side they have other odd design jobs, and her boyfriend teaches art for free just cos he wants to.

I envied her so much. We all want the same things really, I want those things too, did I ever ask for too much? Why did she get it and not me? Why does this simple not too bright, or too pretty girl deserve more happiness?

I also thought about that millionaire. Even though all he does now, apparently, is write calligraphy on naked girls bodies, fly between countries to go to events and parties, and hang out at his insanely expensive private estate, I feel some sense of emptiness from him. The guy spent his whole life opening all kinds of grim industrial businesses, like a hunter relentlessly chasing down money.

No doubt he has achieved a lot, but is it enough to ward off futility? When the obvious goals are ticked off - money, achievement - what is left? It forces him to think about the real meaning of life, and I get the feeling he's come up with no answers.

But why do we have to wait until those neverending goals are ticked off before we think about that meaning?

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, I want to be a bohemian.

And I'm gonna look for some of these artists compounds to move into. But here's another worry - I think pursuing individuality will only take me further from happiness (but that's for another post).