IF HOUSE, M.D., WAS CHINESE

If our consciousness does create the universe, it must have manifested my concept for Kung Fu Doc, a version of House, M.D. where M.D. means Ming Dynasty! My latest in an ongoing preoccupation with Hong Kong TVB series on DVD is  The Herbalist's Manual based more or less on a true story of Chinese medicine.  Since I always fail to tune in to House at the right time, and I don't like to watch commercial television (i.e., TV with commercial interruptions) anyway, this HK series will keep me entertained until I download or stream a few of the current season's House episodes (or more likely wait for the entire DVD set).

THM doesn't have much going on with kung fu, but there are wonderful scenes of wandering around in the idyllic Guilin countryside gathering herbs and fulfilling destinies.  The main character has a little struggle in the beginning -- his father, a doctor, wants him to sit for the civil service exams and become an official, not to continue the lowly family tradition of herb doctor. Not exactly a contemporary plot. Can you imagine anyone saying, "No med school for you, you must work for the DMV!"  But the young man prevails and manages some medical successes, with the assistance of a crazy old coot of a sifu/doctor with extremely bizarre two-toned eyebrows called Little Buddha (played*** by the flamboyantly operatic and charming character actor Power Chan, below, as eccentric and goofy as Hugh Laurie) and his daughter, who is thwarted in her own desire to become a doctor (because she's a woman--now that does sound more contemporary). There are hints though that Little Buddha isn't who everyone thinks he is anyway.  A staple of these dramas.

The plot is wild and crazy (and I'm not even half-way through): Little Buddha/Power Chan inspires the young doc by intervening in a flu pandemic with treatments that involve eating live field mice and humidifying and fumigating living quarters with steaming vinegar!  Strangely timely, the flu pandemic plot --probably reminiscent  and meaningful to Hong Kong audiences used to panicking about SARS, bird and swine flus -- features quarantine in the mountains, where the government doctor, favored by the Prince, avoids doing any actual work with the local medical establishment, but does manage to get funding for "expensive imperial medicines" to supplement the common folks' folk remedies (various herbs and the mice and vinegar).  I think the government doctor is destined to become romantically involved with the homeopath/sifu Power Chan's wanna-be doctor-daughter, who actually loves and is loved by the stubborn young doctor who reluctantly married his original arranged fiancee, the daughter of the local Prince, believing that the sifu's daughter was going to marry his own brother.  Got that?  Chinese opera style!  There is a lesson in all these tales: not being forthright about your romantic intentions invariably leads to mis-marriages and unhappiness.

I was quite charmed by Power Chan as the Tolkienish-thief/sifu/military strategist with a pipe in Lethal Weapons of Love and Passion, where I recognized him from the Master Of Tai Chi, there playing a character that was relatively modern if emotionally volatile, but a good guy in the end, and best of all, in a cast with Vincent Zhao.  I guess I have gone over some threshold where I not only am recognizing (maybe, see footnote below) all these Hong Kong actors, but have favorites and opinions!

***I THINK it's Power Chan...the make-up is pretty extreme, but the acting style is the same.  I only wonder, because Power makes another appearance as a drunken prince a few episodes later in the series.  I can't find any definitive information to confirm that the crazy doctor is him; no reason why he can't play both roles.  I keep going back and forth in the video to compare the ears of the two characters.  I'm pretty sure they're the same, but not ready to bet my life on it.

THEY CAN TAKE AWAY MY TREES...
but they can't steal my qi!

They're just doing their job, a scary one really.

And the Yellow Emperor doesn't seem to object.

And I can still paint, channeling the qi, to feel the dao.  It's a weeping willow.  I'll post the finished version over on the Yang TAO 61.

THE WAR CONTINUES
And as in most wars, it is the innocent who are the victims in a campaign waged in defense of some social principle (misguided or not).  I pretty much knew that when I came home after work today I would be pissed--the tree trimmers were at it again this morning, taking out more of the "dangerous" albizias.  Sure enough, I arrived home to find my lanai view "improved" with a much better view of the parking lot.  Here are the views I have been accustomed to:

Invisible Parking Lot

Tranquil Treetops

Here is the view I now must turn my back on when lighting my morning incense

Parking Lot in Paradise

I have a feeling that the remaining trees to the right and left of the gaping area will be gone by tonight: the tree trimmer trucks are still lurking.

Such irony after returning from a brief autumn visit to Portland where the tree is pretty much the dominant life form.  I was talking with our hotel desk clerk there who told me that Portland was built by timber barons, much like Hawaii was built by the pineapple and sugar industry.  But things do change.  Paradise keeps getting adjusted and paved over for parking lots and developments, much as my peaceful memory of the Portland Japanese Garden has been overwritten with the new "landscape" view from my lanai.  Somehow though, Portland has a social consciousness that has preserved the tree despite the timber industry.

Of course it isn't really war against the trees themselves (that's more the case with kudzu); the battle conducted with chain saws and wood chippers is waged to protect against liability in the case of a tree branch falling on one of the precious automobiles in the parking lot (which appears much bigger than I previously perceived from the 10th floor).  Oh, and of course to avoid tree limbs falling on precious children, who are probably more likely to be run over by the precious automobiles than to be injured by the trees.  We couldn't possibly park the cars somewhere else. And I spent a lot of time as a kid running around in untended dangerous woods and never got clobbered by anything (although I did walk into a tree and knock myself out after getting hit on the head with a softball at a church picnic.)

Still, nobody seems to be mourning the trees but me; I think everyone else is inside watching TV, hyped up on news and commercials about the the health and auto insurance everyone absolutely must have.  Has anyone considered that the Geico gecko lives in one of the albizias? I've seen his cousins there.

I'm just a little bitter because my lovely lanai is now not quite as conducive to the mood I like for meditation and painting.  I'll get used to it; I have no choice, and I'm sure many people will say it's not THAT bad.  In the larger scheme of things, what're a few trees?  A real war is bloody, claims human life, causes famine, loss of livelihood, and even worse environmental destruction.  But peace is peace, and I have lost just a little of mine. And still...who mourns for the trees?

I'M A BAD HOUSEKEEPER

Really, I am.  You can ask any of my friends, specifically the three or four who are willing to commune with me and my dust-jackrabbits.  I thought of this at the same time I remembered this sketch by David Foley of the Kids in the Hall, his "bad doctor" routine. (Amazing, this internet, I can recall a comedy piece from 20 years ago and find it in just about that many seconds on YouTube.)

I've already discussed here my failed efforts at clutter removal.  I do have a pretty clear mind, but my living quarters ... well, think Chinese peasant who stole all the artifacts from the landlord. Used bookstore-curio shop decor. I've always believed George Booth is channeling us in his cartoons of the old couple and all their cats and dogs.  (Although I note below, she IS wiping a dish.)

Once I ordered a lovely table lamp, the most costly lamp I ever bought, constructed of old mahjongg tiles.  A coworker who shares a taste for Chinoiserie, whom I know must be very tidy and clean -- she's always passing out soap and hand sanitzers as gifts -- said when I showed it to her, "Oh, you must have a lovely home."

Little does she know.

Once my faithful mechanic brought me home because he was going to keep my car overnight; he asked if he could come in for a glass of water (not being of the generation that, like desert nomads, goes nowhere without a bottle of water).  "Sure," I said, "but just to warn you, the place is really a mess."

When he entered, he said, "Oh...you weren't kidding."  Bear in mind my mechanic wears rubber gloves, like a surgeon or a dentist, when he works on cars.  And when he does dishes.

Then there was the time I was bemoaning my 20-year-old, incontinent cat, when I discovered ...maggots... under a ripe pile of laundry.  (Life in the tropics.) One of my tolerant and good-natured friends still reminds me of that one.

I was thinking about my personal home economics nightmares after reading a recent New Yorker review of a book about the history of "scientific management": The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting it Wrong."  All about time motion studies and efficiency expertise and management consulting and home economics (management science for women of the 1930s), which the author concludes is not a science but a "party trick."

I thought motion efficiency was pretty cool one time when I had bushels of apples to peel after an unusually large harvest from our nine trees.  I developed a little "form" (as in certain martial arts practices), to accomplish this task very easily.  I've never had to do it again.

Now I find adding efficiency and metrics (I hate that term) to life just becomes an activity itself, and takes away from the time I have to read, write, and paint, and explore China and Chinatown.  As for the dirt and clutter, since they say "you can't take it with you," I just pass over it (unless it makes me stumble -- I am what the late Peg Bracken called a "random housekeeper.")  Ignorance is bliss.

You should be glad I'm not your doctor!

JET POWER

Ending the day about a third of the way through my latest 30-hour TVB (Shaw Brothers' televison) acquisition, "Lethal Weapons of Love and Passion," a wu xia-kung fu series, with Raymond Lam and another surprise, from "Master of Tai Chi", not, more's the pity, Vincent Zhao, but a guy whose identity I deduced from comparing the credits of both series, one Power Chan.  He played number two brother in the kung fu clan of Vincent's rival (Raymond) in Master of Tai Chi, but here he turns up as a career thief, junior sifu, clever guy and comic relief.  I suppose his "English" name is no stranger than Jet Li.  Power and Jet...good names for kung fu actors.

Power Chan 

The character, who now that I think of it has a Bilbo Baggins kind of quality, is usually carrying a long pipe with a bag of tobacco dangling from the bowl.  He occasionally employs it as a weapon.  It's the best tobacco prop I've seen since David Strathairn's cigarette in "Good Night, and Good Luck."

Stylish Pipe and Smoking Jacket

The series itself is lots of fun: no one is who you think they are, and in fact, no one is who THEY think they are.

Kinda like life in the real world.

VISUAL vs. VERBAL PRECISION
I just switched to the "new editor" here on Blogger, but I notice they seem to have forgotten the spell-check option.  (I see by searching "Help" there are some workarounds, none of which is as easy as the original spell-check.  And there is supposed to be a highlight incorrect spelling feature, but it seems to depend on your browser and OS.)

As a poor typist, I want my spell checker. But, as a copy editor, I have very mixed feelings: I never rely on or urge anyone else to use spell checking as the definitive, final edit.

The new editor does make loading images much easier (although the old one forced me to learn some html.)

Perhaps this oversight means eveyone is just loading photos now; no real writing is being done by the You-tube crowd? 

Next to be disabled: the CAPS key?

FANCY FOOTWORK

Riverdance

I was looking for a photograph of someone and came across this image of the Wizard and the someone, resting after we had just successfully navigated down from Pike's Peak in a Ford Explorer that had lost all its transmission fluid.  This occurred about 1,000 feet from the summit; we could see it, but we never made it to the top.  I suspect the trip was more memorable--has it been 5 years already?-- because of the mechanical failure.

But now what seems funny to me now is this image --were they about to break into some Celtic folk dance of manly celebration, having negotiated the mountain?  The Wizard says that at meetings men often mimic other men's gestures and poses -- if one clasps hands behind the nape of the neck, chances are good that another will follow suit, quite unconsciously. Now I have a reason to look forward to a meeting; I can test and verify this theory. I was probably sensitive to the foot positioning because I've been watching so many martial arts movies; footwork and stance is part of the quality of the kung fu.

Or did it seem funny to me because I was demolishing drinking a gift bottle of Japanese Scotch (yes, Kirin whisky) at the time, not my favorite, a little too Islay for my taste, but respectable and deserving of the "whisky" spelling. It was enhanced by the Hershey's Special Dark Kisses I was eating at the same time.  (Nicer than a cigar.) Wish I'd had it up on the mountain when we were waiting for the transmission to cool down!  Then I might have danced a little jig.

And speaking of strange footwork, check THIS out.  It gets interesting about 40 seconds in.

YIN PREVAILS!

I had doubts that I would be able to gaze at the moon last night; the day was cloudy, stormy, humid, and rainy. I monitored the sky through the evening and, disappointed, retired to bed with a Stephen Chow movie and Old Pu's book.

Later I awoke at 3 a.m. The light was bright, but not fully full moonish. Out on the lanai I watched the moon, moving like a lantern behind heavy brocade, peeping in and out of the trailing edge of the storm system that was passing. I contemplated that for a while, savoring the fragrance of wet earth and a soft damp breeze, before returning to bed, where my dreams were twisted with allusions from "Royal Tramp II" and the strange event we attended earlier in the day.

Splendor of China was...interesting. Lots of booths of Chinese vendors and organizations (along with the usual offerings of Tupperware and high-end cars; is anyone actually lured to buy a Jaguar, Porsche or Land-Rover at one of these exhibitions: the Chinese didn't seem to be buying ANYTHING except food). No one was visiting the display by the City promoting its rail transit plan. I picked up some brochures from the Confucius Institute at the University of Hawaii's Center for Chinese Studies. It is connected with Beijing Foreign Studies University, where the Wizard may have taught for a period in the year before Tiananmen (there are two BFSUs, not sure which one this is). I missed the actual Chinese dog show, but there were people wandering around with Shar Peis, Chow Chows, Pekingese, Pugs and Shih Tzus on leashes. Even the Wizard, not a dog fancier, was quite taken with a small grey Shar Pei bitch. I once cuddled one of these puppies in its too loose skin; like a baby in an oversized onesy, it snuggled into my neck and snuffled and cooed. If I'd had $500 in my pocket at the time, I would have bought it. The small Chinese dogs are as self possessed as their bigger compatriots. There was a Peke that owned the street in Wudang. It never was on a leash.

The Emperor of Wudangshan

After wandering around the hall for a while, we went to the stage area where the Narcissus girls were modeling "fashions" available at the show from the Chinese vendors. (They really should have staged the posing among the cars.) These very pretty, poised, polished, smiling young women I'm sure would never be caught off the stage in any of these demure, vaguely mandarin-styled garments (except possibly, one might hope, one stunning red sleeveless qipao cut to the thigh). The Wizard enjoyed the catwalking, but we both were more charmed by the dancing that followed, by the Phoenix Dance Chamber, a local Chinese troupe that we have been watching for a decade, both having friends who are involved as dancers and producers. Brightly rouged six-year-olds doing Mongolian horse dances will make you weep tears of joy!

The final stage piece was the qi gong/kung fu performance by the "undisputed master of penis qigong and iron crotch." (Why would anyone WANT to "lift 100 pounds with their privates" anyway?) The Master's daughter opened with an impressive wushu routine with a wooden pole (her own version of penis kung fu, perhaps). In contrast to the Narcissus princesses, she was a tough-looking girl with a rough haircut; she could be cast as a bad guy in any of the wuxia films I've been watching. But dad was even stranger, one of the curly headed Chinese--a qi gong master with a perm? "I think he's Filipino," the Wizard said, although he spoke Mandarin. Outfitted in a wife-beater tank and some sort of complicated cropped cargo pants and boots, the excessively buff master broke some plywood boards with his fingertips, and kicked some bricks into oblivion. Then he demonstrated some qi gong techniques. The Chinese in the audience stood to obediently, if awkwardly, try his healing tricks for their hearts, headaches and insomnia. They were all basic techniques I acquired in Wudang (8 brocades) and with another local teacher. Then Master told us, through his interpreter, we could learn more at his shows at some hotel in Waikiki. Or we could buy his DVDs (just $25) over at the booth in aisle three. It was all way too commercial-Shaolin-monk-stage-act for my taste (been there, done that in Beijing), and though I'm sure he's genuine, he certainly didn't have the stylish charm of Jet Li or the sex appeal (speaking of penis qi gong on this yin holiday) of the equally well developed Vincent Zhao.

On the way out of the hall, I picked up three cheap Andy Lau DVDs from an organization that assists Chinese studying in Hawaii (probably with visa and green card applications). The representative was surprised that, on the cover of "The Warlords" I recognized Takeshi Kaneshiro, right, (who seems to me the Orlando Bloom, left, of Chinese film-- see John Woo's Red Cliff movies and compare with Kingdom of Heaven).

"Wow. You can tell all these guys apart," he said to this old haole woman. "Yeah, and you know, you look a lot like Anthony Wong," I said. He was oddly flattered. Turns out since the Wizard is an academic, we all had some mutual acquaintances. It was an amusing conclusion to the Moon Festival afternoon.

HAPPY ZHONGQIU JIE!

I will be thinking of all my friends, especially those of the female persuasion, tonight, as I engage in some gazing at the moon on the 15th day of the 8th moon, the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival. It looks like it will be a lovely one. In preparation, I am going to an exhibition of Chinese things this afternoon where I expect to see qigong and kung fu demos, a Lion Dance, a fashion show with the contestants for the Hawaii Miss Narcissus pageant (well, that's mostly incentive for the Wizard to join me), a Chinese dog show, and perhaps a little shopping at booths of Chinese vendors of Hawaii. (The event is after all sponsored by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.) I will look for some mooncakes to enjoy with my Wudang Tao tea -- or wine --while looking at the moon from my lanai.

Moon Festival is when yin is about to overcome yang (in a very TAO 61 way) and has a lot of interesting legends and meanings associated with it.

I offer for your pleasure this Tang Dynasty poem by Li Bo (701-762), from Summertime Splendor:

Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon

A pot of wine among the flowers:

I drink alone, no kith or kin near.

I raise my cup to invite the moon to join me;

It and my shadow make a party of three.

Alas, the moon is unconcerned about drinking,

And my shadow merely follows me around.

Briefly I cavort with the moon and my shadow;

Pleasure must be sought while it is spring.

I sing and the moon goes back and forth,

I dance and my shadow falls at random.

While sober we seek pleasure in fellowship;

When drunk we go each our own way.

Then let us pledge a friendship without human ties

And meet again at the far end of the Milky Way.

(Translated by Irving Y. Lo)

20 YEARS OF SCHOOLING

and they put you on the day shift.

Obama says we should have more.

Hawaii State teachers' union is content with less.

This is the first time I have ever felt that private--probably Catholic--schools may be the best choice.

COMPARE & CONTRAST :
The Sword and the Scalpel
(Morning after Autumnal Equinox)

Now I remember why I gave up on network television. Watching an interesting program with commercial interruptions is like walking through a gallery that assaults you with advertising billboards between the fine art. Distracting and shameless.

While watching the season opener of House, I began to have a wild feeling, like Chu Zhaonan (Vincent Zhao Wen Zhou), caressing the hilt of his sword and trying to restrain himself from unleashing its power:

I'm going to have to figure out where to download House sans advertising, or wait until the DVDs come out.

So House is in and out of the institution, where he confronts the concept of compromise with the system to get his own life in order. And don't we all.

It's the same conflict in Seven Swordsmen: Chu/ZWZ kills all the people he was trying to save from the evil establishment and destroys his own self in the process. It's hubris, stuff of tragedy. House and Chu are both trying to overcome it. I have yet to see who really succeeds. (I think we already know hardly anyone really does, as seen in Greek tragedy,the Bible and Shakespeare.)

Last night I left Chu at the Buddhist Temple where he is trying to come to grips with what he did (while the girl whose love for him was unrequited is arriving with a sword to avenge her father, who was accidentally killed when Dad fell on Chu's blade. But of course in these things -- soap operas, really --no one learns the truth until too late, if ever.) I have a feeling House will be back at Mayfield at some point; it seemed too simple last night (or it was the commercial interruptions). I have yet two more commercial free episodes with the Swordsmen; I'll watch them tonight; unfortunately I know what happens. There is more hope, for House.

And yes, there was blood spurting out of mouths in both shows.

GAINED IN TRANSLATION?

One of the advantages in watching subtitled videos is learning a little something about a foreign language, so I have been engaging in a wuxia extravaganza, partly to train my ear and pick up a few useful phrases in Mandarin. By relying on subtitles, I can catch lots of ways to say hello, thanks, goodbye, all right, not all right, some counting, an occasional obscenity and so on.

But subtitles themselves can be quite entertaining. A few months ago, I enjoyed an old Chow Yun-Fat movie, where he was being advised as an American CIA operative not used to peasant fare, that he needn't eat the unsavory food being offered; he said, in the subtitle, "I'm not worried. I've eaten a lot of INEVITABLE food." Needless to say, he was puking in the next scene.

Which brings me to my most recent amusement, the 39-episode TV series of Seven Swordsmen, produced by Tsui Hark, and probably what he really had in mind for "Seven Swords (Chat Gim)," his elegant but choppy movie that was cut down from four hours to two-and-a half. Unless you know the book it's based on, the plot and the character development seem a little sketchy.

In the more developed, if less extravagant, TV series, Vincent Zhao Wen Zhou (Man-Cheuk Chiu, his Cantonese name, which means I think, Man Chicks Drool Over), playing Donnie Yen's character from the movie, goes on a search for food for his hobbity band of swordsmen, becoming a little distracted in the inn by an exotic dancer after all those ascetic years in the mountains. He orders take-out: a jug of wine and some GLUTTONOUS rice. His hungry buddies from Mount Heaven are delighted. Sticky rice is certainly far from inedible!

Vincent continues to be charmed by the dancer and later rescues her from a slave sale. In the movie, she was Green Pearl, Donnie Yen's counterpart Korean exile. In the TV series, Green Pearl appears to be a Kashmiri expat. I guess I'll have to read the book to find out what's really going on. I'm expecting inevitable gluttony.

THE REALITY OF TV

Reviewing the current "line-up" of available "Standard Service" channels in the updated brochure that came with my new cable converter, I see that in addition to the usual networks, shopping channels, news channels, sports channels, weather channels, science channels, soap channels, and history channels (all Hitler, all the time), we have The Pentagon Channel. What could that possibly be? Maybe something IS on.

No CIA, NSA, or NRO channel, though. Now there's a premium package that might be worth it! Think of the potential for reality TV.

You can learn a lot about American values by reviewing a list of available television. No CCTV though. But I sorta wish. They probably have a kung fu/wu xia channel. Now that I think of it, every time I turned on the TV in China the past couple years--all of four or five times in Hong Kong, Beijing or Xian hotels--there was some swordplay drama in progress, with commercials advertising TCM --and I don't mean Turner Classic Movies. Or the bizarre Chinese Idol program called "Dancing With Wolves." And a morning business news program about capitalism with socialist characteristics with reports about environmentally responsible packaging of mooncakes, scandals in the quantity labeling of instant noodles, and new

universal zoning regulations (land reform, again?). The commentator closed with the ambiguous remark to viewers, "Thank you for your company."

As an aside here, I share my view of the big new CCTV headquarters, the strange yin/yang engineering marvel/disaster as it was going up in Beijing in '07 (at right), completed just after the '08 Olympics.

I'm old enough to remember TV when we got only two channels (a yin and a yang), colloquially referred to not by their call letters, the number on the dial, or their network affiliation. One, the CBS outlet, was known by the name of the local bourgeois dynasty that owned it, "Gable's," the family who also owned a radio station and the local department store (and perhaps today, Gable's Cable). Probably just as well: the call letters, WFBG (the initials of the dynasty's patriarch), were interpreted by juvenile delinquents as an obscene acronym which I won't explain here. (Needless to say, WFBG radio was not the one that played rock and roll.) The other channel, an NBC station (WJAC), was identified by its city of origin, Johnstown (of flood infamy), but you needed more than rabbit ears to get that one from my hometown. Deprivation was knowing that the Saturday cartoons you really wanted to watch were on Johnstown, not Gable's, but they came in fuzzy and Dad was still sleeping so couldn't fiddle with the antenna. It was a really revolutionary thing, in so many ways, even more than color, when we finally had access to a third channel, the "educational" station out of State College/Penn State University.

Now you just have to pay a cable bill or install a satellite dish to extend your television viewing options. I see reading the finer print it's not completely clear that I actually get the Pentagon Channel. I'll have to tune in just to find out. And, I really do want to see exactly who the sponsors are!

TV OR NOT TV?

Is that a question?

In a quandary corollary to my uninstalled car radio, yesterday I returned a broken converter to our cable TV provider. For some weeks it hasn't been working right, and as a consequence, the TV hasn't been used. But, since we are paying for the service, and I have a burning desire to see the first episode of House, M.D. on the 21st, I collected the box, having untangled it from a mess of cables and wires that are evidence that the shoemaker's family goes shoeless. I usually depend on my in-house IT expert to do these things. The tangled pile of cables and wires included odd wall warts that related to no existing device, attached to an unplugged-in power strip. Clearing the mess didn't make the cable box work. It is broken, possibly fried in the last big power outage we suffered.

Anyway, that's what I told the cable folks when they asked what was wrong. "How should I know? It doesn't work."

While at the headquarters, I was enchanted by a huge HD screen that was playing lovely video postcards of Hawaii flora and beach scenes, interspersed with satellite images of Mexico and Finland. "Is that a promo or a channel," I asked. "I could watch that all day long," forgetting of course, that I can look at images like that with my own eyes off my own lanai any time.

"It's Digital 1000," the customer service rep told me. "You can get it if you have HD." Which I don't. I have a $250 19-inch color set in the bedroom and an even smaller one in the living room. Channel 1000 made it look worthwhile to spend all that money, thousands of dollars, on one of those big displays that assault you on entering Costco. I could get several more MacBook Pros for the price of one of them. The first time I saw one of those screens in action, all I noticed was how clumpy the newscaster's mascara was.

We reconnected the new cable box and it works just fine, does all the things my basic service says it should. I turned on CNN for about 10 minutes this morning and then turned it back off. So much inanity. Stories about murdered school coaches, flu vaccines, health care/insurance debates, a successful teen tennis star turning pro. I suspect the TV will go untouched again until the House movie.

The Wizard of IT NEVER turns on the TV, not that he doesn't spend a lot of time looking at screens. He surfs the web as much as any couch potato with a TV remote control. But I have come to understand that he will do that because he exercises internal control, picking and choosing on the net. Theatre movies (he won't go, too loud) and broadcast TV are too passive for him. It doesn't quite explain how he tolerates the opera. I suppose because it is broken up into acts, allowing him to jump on his Blackberry in the intermissions. The individual acts are just non-virtual sites he chooses to visit for a while.

Anyway, I'm regarding the TV now a little like a recovered Vicodin addict might regard a vial of pills. If I turn it on, I'll get hooked again. It will be a challenge. Gotta watch out for the TV God. Gotta watch House.

COMPARE and CONTRAST

Rather than doing anything really important or productive over the Labor Day weekend, I indulged excessively in video entertainment. I had the complete Season 5 of House, M.D, to finish (can you watch just one episode at a time? I like to watch ALL the DVD episodes, the whole season, pretty much back-to-back, once a year, commercial free) and a number of wuxia/kung fu movies, featuring Vincent Zhao Wen Zhou and Tiny Tony Leung.

How they compare and contrast:

1. They all feature a lot of blood spurting out of mouths, frequently, but as a result in House you're more likely to end up with a lumbar puncture, not quite so severe as impalement on a sword.
2. In wuxia, medicine is usually some gooey paste, a foul tasting herbal concoction, or swift jerking of limbs back in place. No MRIs and diagnoses of Cushing's, Wegner's, amyloidosis or lupus.
3. I actually worked for a guy once who looked exactly like House, but he was not so...hyper-rational (or as Season 6 hints, mentally ill; I will try to remember to tune in to the 2-hour Season Premiere of the only TV program I watch anymore, but not usually on TV); and I still work with some guys who look not unlike Tony and Vincent. Still, none of them are diagnosticians or kung fu masters...that I know of.

But now I have a new idea to integrate wu xia and Western medicine. (If CCTV hasn't already thought of it. ) A TV Series, Kung Fu Doc. (Or at least an interesting House storyline.) In Wudang, I had a hard time taking seriously the TCM prescriptions of this guy who looked exactly like Jackie Chan. He can star in the series! Here is his hospital. Enter at your own risk.

And it came to me as I awoke this morning (9/10, after reviewing House's hallucinatory end-of-season episode last night) that there is a fourth compare and contrast. Both genres explore the distinctions and connections between body and spirit, the material and the non-material, to say nothing of plots involving opioids. I would love to see House be cured of his pain and doubt by a Taoist master (preferably played by Vincent Zhao) projecting qi (energy). Or maybe Wilson could take up qigong; he seems most open to these things.

FULL MOON FEVER

Early Evening Full Moon at My Door

Not only did I count five kolea this morning on my way out of my complex, rushing to a dentist appointment (I mean to say, I was going to the dentist, birds don't have teeth), but I was most cheered by having received in the mail last night a magazine with the announcement of a wonderful tour to Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Wudang, focusing not only on qigong and Taoism, but Chinese art and culture. In May 2010. Sign me up! Something to plan. And to places I have not been before, except Wudang (to which I will happily return).

Could it be the full moon? My rock fever is diminishing. Sometimes one fever cures another. That sounds like something House, M.D., would suggest.

And the thing that makes this post kind of yin is having spent two hours in a dentist's chair this morning. Well, there should be no toothaches to expect while in China. My dentist is the most wonderful, but like several of his species I have observed, he has a second life, something he would really rather be doing. My dentist is a performing stage magician. Really. I sometimes think he might, with a great flourish, pull a rabbit out of my mouth, or a lot of silk scarves from my throat. He put his way through dental school with magic gigs. I know this because I first heard of him in Pittsburgh (the Pitt dental school produces the great dentists when it comes to chairside manner). I had a reference when I came to Hawaii and he has been taking care of my teeth for decades now. Needless to say, you never see needles or scary things going in your mouth. Sleight of hand goes a long way in dentistry.

On another note, as one of my readers points out, "Nature always wins." There are interesting sprouts on the vandalized shrubs. Since yet another reader is observing this regrowth with me, here is the current state of affairs. Although, the regrowth is kind of weird, really.

Sprout Sprouting

Not Completely Aesthetic

THINGS WEARING OUT

We recently had to get a new refrigerator. The old one failed (the freezer worked but the regular part wouldn't chill). My husband noted that it was new. I pointed out it was 15 years old. We could have fixed it, but all its various internal elements were in disrepair, and it was REALLY dirty.

So off to Sears, land of immortal tools and home appliances, where the vast choices baffled me. I didn't know you could spend $7,000 on a home refrigerator. Contemplating that monstrosity, I recalled seeing young couples in Beijing in 1988 bicycling home, balancing their coveted new refrigerators, the size of ones we might have as personal coolers in an office.

I didn't spend $7,000, and the Sears delivery team brought me (delivery free with rebate) a nice trendy platinum-finish one with a freezer drawer on the bottom and on top, French doors, something I would usually expect to open to garden parties, not leftovers and bottles of condiments. This is a more convenient arrangement: the food you usually are looking for is at hand and eye level. The bending over is reserved for less frequent digging around in the freezer. And I expect the new arrangement will prevent small animals from entering the refrigerator surreptitiously and providing surprises on opening, like this:

I've been getting by with a lot of old things. For example, I consider my 20-year-old car, reasonably fuel and emission efficient, to be (in addition to satisfaction of my lust for fast sporty driving), a statement against unnecessary consumption (although it probably is also a resistance to aging on my part). But I must say, that with the top up, exiting the roadster is beginning to feel like crawling out of a hole, with some difficulty. In her 70s, my mother-in-law complained about how hard it was to get in and out of. I'm beginning to see her point.

Which brings me to my body, which I am compelled to realize is moving in an aging direction. I note that I have recently read a number of anti-depressant books about aging and death; they are accumulating over in the corner next to the books on how to clear clutter. Starting with Nora Ephron's meditations about her crepey neck, I moved on to titles like Life After Death (Deepak Chopra); The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll Be Dead (David Shields); How We Die, by some practical House-like physician; How to Live, (Henry Alford). Still on my to-read pile are The Book of Dead Philosophers, and the always curious Tibetan Book of the Dead, a translation approved by the Dalai Lama, so it MUST be true, although I read an abridged version once and it seemed a little like Pilgrim's Progress. ("Hey, Noble One...")

We leading-edge baby boomers are so preoccupied with the controlled progression of life we consult manuals on EVERYTHING. I read piles of books on pregnancy, childbirth and child rearing (after reading all I could about women's sex and orgasms); then books on gardening and cooking and homemaking, keeping bees and raising chickens. Then the ambiguously encouraging books on menopause, reassuring me that the worst time in my physical life would be the best. (Although I think there is something to that "post-menopausal zest" thing; it just doesn't come as quickly as you expect.) And now all these books on body decline and wisdom. All this stuff that a century ago people just DID, no book learning required.

But none of them tells me where I can get a new body with French doors and a more efficient ice-maker. For that kind of overhaul, I need to get back to my Taoist cultivation and meditation -- nothing that can be achieved by reading books. I need a Wudang tune-up.

LIFE GOES ON

(updated August 28, 2009)

After a period of intense lethargy, probably due to the failed hurricane and subsequent tropical depression, things are recovering. Yang is rising.

I was delighted to see the return of one of my favorite bloggers. Despite notices of last post "3 days ago...3 weeks ago...3 months ago...", I am glad I did not despair and remove him from my blog list. I missed his strange pictures and interesting music and movie links .My speculations were not all correct: he's not French, but English, and he was a patient, not a doctor. I wish him well and a good recovery.

----

I had been worried because for a week I hadn't seen the returned kolea I spotted earlier this month; I thought perhaps she left like a too-early arrival to a party, hanging out in the bar until the event really started rocking or just waiting in the parking lot to make a less obvious entrance with a group. Maybe she was disgusted by the dry lawns where the community exercises their dogs. But this morning, and several since, I spotted her and others in other locations, so they really are back. I drive slowly out of my complex looking for them, but I have a feeling birdwatching may be more dangerous than the hands-on cell-phone use that has been banned. I almost ran smack into a dumpster that was parked unexpectedly right in the middle of the street.

Once I got safely to work, at Starbuck's someone sprung for my latte, a nice gesture.

The cup had a message:

"YOU. Bought 228 million pounds of responsibly grown, ethically traded coffee last year."

(Then why am I not more alert?)

It goes on to point out that 65 percent of Starbucks coffee is bought in this manner, suggesting that 35 percent is NOT responsibly grown or ethically traded. Strange message. I need to start drinking tea again.

VANDALS TOOK THE HANDLES

After watching the daily progress of the sprouts from the drastically pruned shrubs near my parking space, I was disturbed to see that someone snapped off half a dozen of the new shoots. I find it hard to believe that this was part of the ongoing horticultural maintenance. There are missing shoots from two out of three of these plants; I suspect kids, "youths," who have no respect for common property, to say nothing of nature. Perhaps the same ones who scratch at new paint in the elevators and leave their signs here and there with permanent markers and spray paint.

I will be watching the scarred spots closely to see if new shoots pop out. The plant is not harmed, but the peace of the garden is.

HOW STRANGE, WHAT SYNCHRONICITY, WHAT SERENDIPITY

Almost at the very moment I was lamenting the apparent disappearance (that's a funny phrase) of a beloved blogger, I get a friend request on Facebook from someone in New England (far from that little island in the South China Sea) and discover a compelling blog that goes right to my heart. A Buddhist Mason who loves his Karmann Ghia, I love it. But then I think of myself as a Taoist Episcopalian whose most meditative moments come top down in my Miata. This guy is some kind of yang version of myself.

As Bob says, "Friends will arrive, friends will disappear."

WHERE DO ALL THE BLOGGERS GO?

I've been a little concerned of late because one of my favorite blogs I follow, over on the Yang side, hasn't been updated for a couple of months. I am reluctant to de-link it, partly because I still go there to look at his photos, and I enjoy his music links. He never writes much --pictures being worth a thousand words, to someone somewhere. This guy has a photographic style that is unusual, like you are really looking out of his head, and over time you get a sense of who he might be. (A French socialist with great taste in music, possibly a doctor, but more likely a patient? A lot of photos from pharmacy and outpatient departments. His last photos include a hospital room. Not encouraging. If anyone knows his condition, I would love to know.)

Another blog I find interesting is so sporadic I wonder if he even tries anymore, but once a month or so, he pops up with something. I feel an affinity for him because his blog started just about the time mine did; I discovered his in a mutual link. He is surprising and sensitive and honest, but not very regular. (I suspect he is a very busy man with a family and a demanding job.) Not that I am so daily, but it is a habit you must cultivate just by doing. On the other hand, if you're not COMPELLED to blog, then you're not a blogger.

I recently* read Stephen King's ambiguously* encouraging On Writing book, and have been thinking about someone else's comment --writing isn't about having something interesting to say, it's about making anything you say interesting. A friend once told me in college when I was the school paper's editor, that I "could write with my mind tied behind my back." That's a backhanded compliment, but he thought what I wrote was interesting anyway.

There are a few things about Stephen King's style that bother me, but I've never read one of his books without pretty much barreling through it in just one or two sittings. And I just learned that Anthony Trollope wrote ALL THE TIME with daily quotas. (Stephen King does the same thing.) Not only did Trollope invent the English letterbox, which at the time was a revolution like having email--providing efficient private and direct correspondence--but he also might be credited with an early paradigm of the laptop computer. He built a little portable writing desk that he carried everywhere. He wrote on commuter trains or wherever he had spare time. It was all by hand, and on the road he used a pencil so he didn't have to worry about running out of ink, the equivalent of a battery failure.

But I digress.

I worry about my missing or absent bloggers. In the blogosphere (what a creepy word), we exist only in our posts. To be sure, on the positive yang side, assuming the servers keep working, there's a kind of immortality there. But in the end, we don't even know who cares.

*Mr. King would really like me to edit out these adverbs, feeling they are unnecessary. But I like adverbs, and the passive voice, too, where appropriate. But I think I know how to use them effectively. (Ooops.)

HOT DIGGITY DOG DIGGITY

I have been one to congratulate the Outdoor Circle for defending trees and keeping Hawaii from looking like Florida, where grotesque billboards often block the most gorgeous views, but this protest is downright silly. Big weiner causes big heartburn, I guess.

I am cravin' a hot dog! I know I have a Weinermobile Matchbox Car somewhere, and I think I also have an Oscar Mayer weiner-whistle from 1956 (a choking hazard, to be sure). And now I'm thinking this might be a possible next vehicle after TAO 61 reaches Nirvana.

HOME SICK, HOMESICK

Called in sick today, not something I do very often, and with new presumably more liberal leave policies -- PTO -- which combine sick and vacation time, I must consider if it's real sick or mental health leave I'm requiring.

The trouble with being home sick is that you never (except for those now obsolete mental health days) get to enjoy it. Because you're sick. Mostly I've been sleeping, my malaise punctuated with very odd dreams. On an ordinary well day, you sometimes think, "If only I could stay home today and ... read, paint, cook, clean, create clever ring tones for the cell phone, maybe even sleep." But home sick, and all you can do is sleep. And read maybe, a couple of pages at a time. And I have been reading, Stephen King's On Writing, not a bad memoir and inspiring as I embark on trying to write a whole book. That's probably why my dreams were so odd though, channeling Stephen, I dreamed I was keeping the ashes of two of my friend's children in shoeboxes --this all seemed very necessary. I was taking care of them for her. But they kept falling out and getting mingled with dust bunnies, cat litter, and other floorsweepings, and each other, the horror. King would probably go somewhere with this, and I guess I am, here, in a way.

Sickabed makes me think of childhood. My own memories of such times are illustrated like Jesse Wilcox Smith's image, above, and the one accompanying Robert Louis Stevenson's poem about the little boy and his toy soldiers, below. I would play with bucolic little cows and horses and ballerina dolls in among the bed linens.

When sick, I was well indulged by my parents. My mother would regularly check on me, bringing tea and thermometers and wet rags for the forehead. When he arrived home from work, in that hour that separated day and evening for the family, my father would treat me to a new coloring book, maybe a fat 25 cent comic book "Special." One particular flu was made more bearable when he discovered a forgotten Christmas present in his desk drawer: a crystal radio. (He always treated me a bit like a boy. Who gives a girl a crystal radio kit?) He strung the antenna wire all over my bedroom and I listened to the outside world on a little plastic box that didn't need to be plugged in, with an earphone not so different than the one I use with my cell phone today.

I don't remember my parents ever actually calling in sick, although I'm sure my father must have. Everyone gets the flu sometime, and he was prone to sick headaches. I inherited his tendency to migraine, which used to incapacitate me from working for a day or so every six months. And of course until she returned to the work world when I was 13, my mother could have been sick every day, but she was always home. It is a problem for a housewife and mother; how do you call in sick?

So now, I long to be pampered when I'm under the weather. But my partner's response to illness is "Just leave me alone." Since we tend to treat others in the ways we like to be treated, this causes some issues. I have to demand the cool wet washrags; he has to tell me to stop fussing over him. Not a difference of the sexes, I think it has to do with how we were raised. He was a boy with an older and younger sister; my mother called me her "one and lonely." (I think she was the lonely one.) My mother was not so busy; his was.

Fortunately as adults, we learn how to take care of ourselves. Still, today, I'm just a little homesick.

RE-SETTING GOALS

It may not be obvious to my reader that I am not returning to Wudang, or any other place in China this fall. Circumstances bizarre enough for a novel have caused me to change my plans. So, in a sudden rush of yang, possibly instigated by TAO 61 (the car) reaching 200,000 miles, last night at 3 a.m. I wrote the first chapter of my novel and roughly plotted out what is to follow, something that's been kicking around in my head for quite some time, usually at 3 a.m. So, if I can't go to Wudang, I can at least imagine it! And the fun part about fiction: you can make things up, you can throw all your experiences into a pot, simmer and season, and they come out as a whole new reality. It's also the hard part: things have to work, there has to be continuity, we have to avoid libel, there's supposed to be a theme. How I dreaded that in high school, being required to articulate the theme of a book I was reading. I never believed the authors did when they wrote anyway. It just develops in the outpouring. But I already recognize the theme that I have established. (Not unlike my blogs). I'll leave it to my future reader to articulate it.

I must say, I have been inspired by Ken Follett and that Eat-Pray-Love thing...if they can write such commercially successful drivel, why not me? Now I have lots to do when I wake up in the middle of the night. I have choices! I can meditate. I can read, I can write. (I will not do housework; I know some people who use such sleepless periods to catch up on laundry or cleaning.)

Speaking of Ken Follett and his goofy Gothic-cathedral novels, I spent some time Friday night and yesterday (between Chinese painting class and writing) watching the 7 episodes of "The Barchester Chronicles", BBC's 1982 adaptation of Anthony Trollope's The Warden and Barchester Towers. Newsweek recently named a Trollope novel as number one in the list of must-read timely fiction for the summer. Victorian lit was never my interest in school, but I am compelled by the Brits' ability to translate the stuff to TV. What dialogue, I laughed out loud and wept. It's great fun to watch these things back-to-back on a sultry lazy afternoon, not having to wait a week between installments.

And Alan Rickman as Obadiah Slope! He's right up there with the Tony Leungs (Tiny and Tall), Johnny Depp and Al Pacino. Guys with eyes! In Barchester, Rickman seems to foreshadow his portrayal of Snape in Harry Potter. He is the only reason I have watched those movies; he's my contemporary, and I only hope I have perfected myself as much since 1982. He was perfect then, and (as in the language of the Declaration of Independence) is more perfect now.

If my "to read" pile wasn't so towering, I would add some Trollope to it. But now I am content to enjoy the DVDs I picked up at Costco. Next up: The Way We Live Now, the story Newsweek recommended. Something about its relevance to Bernie Madoff! Time to get my car radio installed for some audio books.

AH, THE IRONY

I was just reading an item in the June 18 Newsweek about a reviewer's conflicted purchase of a Blu-ray player in order to fully enjoy Neil Young's recently released Archives, 10 discs of music, video and extras. Thinking of my rant yesterday about hands-free cell phone paraphernalia, I was amused that not only paying $300 for the discs, but an additional $350 for the player was thought to be worth it. (If you go to that Newsweek link above, note how very much Neil Young resembles House M.D., or the other way around, if you will.)

As I recall it was Neil Young who famously and adamantly whined (or was he singing?) when the CD began to take over recorded music in place of traditional vinyl. It was something about the extra noise you get from the record, missing from the CD. (More likely it was the clarity of the CD which made Neil Young sound even worse than he does...good song writer, but I really can't stand to hear him sing.)

Of course, if it was Bob Dylan (whose voice I know offends lots of people) I would probably pony up for a Blu-ray in a minute.

WE'RE ALL TREKKIES NOW!

Honolulu's "cell phone ban" went into effect yesterday, meaning that you can no longer use a cell phone in your car unless it is totally "hands-free," leaving those hands free to do other things like tune the radio, rummage in the glove box or smack the rambunctious kids in the back seat who should be buckled in anyway. (There's a fine for being unbuckled too.)

There was a booming business in Bluetooth headsets at my cell provider's retail store yesterday where I dropped a hundred bucks just to look like Uhura, the communications officer of the Starship Enterprise; not much of a fashion accessory, I must decorate it with Swarovski crystals or invent an earring that does the same job --THAT'S MY IDEA!

So now I have this thing that no self-respecting baby boomer would wear if it were a hearing aid and am not sure I will ever really use it --top-down in my Miata is pretty noisy for phone calls, although the savvy young sales clerk assures me my earpiece has the best noise reduction technology, although he didn't really say what kind of noise. I mean, most phone calls are noise. I guess I'll get used to the thing, although it means I have to set myself up before I start driving: insert the earpiece, make sure it's connected, become well-practiced in voice-activated dialing and answering. I don't even have a radio in my car; it's become a sanctuary for solitary thinking, and maybe I'll make an effort to keep it that way. I only ever make and receive calls in the car on a sort of emergency basis anyway: to announce how late I will be for work because I'm stuck in a traffic jam caused by the street sweepers on the interstate cleaning the potholes, or to answer my husband's "I'm at the grocery store, do you need anything?" queries.

I've never been an early adopter of new technology (not that this is new, but the REQUIREMENT is) so this seems like an imposition, something new to learn and get used to, against my will. Not that I think banning texting and video games while driving is a bad thing. (It just shows that common sense doesn't always prevail; a Honolulu bus driver was caught texting while driving a bus!) Ah, for the days of being tethered to black Bakelite telephones with cords you could play with while talking to a friend, no call-waiting, no caller ID (well, that IS an improvement).

I saw one animated young woman in a car today, apparently talking wildly to herself, gesturing madly with the hand in which she would ordinarily have been holding her phone. I had the impression she was not paying any more attention to driving -- possibly less --than she would have two days ago.

To be really safe, I should have got the "beam me up" version. I think they were all out.

ONE FINGER POINTING AT THE MOON

Last night I was a grateful guest at a fundraiser for the nature education non-profit with which I have some history of affiliation. At the outset I must say it was a lovely event, catching up with folks I hadn't seen since last year, nice food, wine and margaritas under the stars, and it probably raised more money than was expected in these times.

I was seated as usual with a table of academics, a nice variation from my usual social life with defense contractors. A younger couple was demonstrating the bazillion clever apps on their iPhones: a finger painting program, an easy way to view real estate listings with pictures of bathrooms and kitchens, YouTube searching for a '70s era video of David Bowie and Bing Crosby, ambient sound programs to help you sleep, light sabres, a flashlight! And you can make phone calls! Like a digital Swiss army knife.

At one point I tapped the shoulder of my dinner conversation partner whose eyes had begun to glaze over. I pointed up to the trees where the 98.5 percent waxing gibbous moon had just made its appearance over Diamond Head. It seemed like a Zen moment, because we had been talking about my Wudang meditation retreats and her travel to Ireland and, perhaps, a walking tour in Japan.

I was struck that this event, designed to support nature awareness through education, was going on a little oblivious to the spectacle unfolding above and beyond. The noise of the live auction and the preoccupation with virtual technology seemed alienated from the purpose. And I believe our preoccupation with technology --which I am using right now of course --tends to increase this alienation from nature.

I paid my way at the event; I bid high for a piece of art at the silent auction. But I think more importantly, I pointed my finger at the moon. At least one person noticed.

HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW

I was having a lunchtime chat with the girls the other day when the topic of underarm hair came up. "Who doesn't shave?" was the question, because someone was curious about the visible hair of a friend she had seen. Is it a European thing? An immigrant thing? What? "Gross!" was the general conclusion.

Mostly I was keeping my mouth shut; I have gone through frequent lengthy periods in my life when for ostensibly feminist political reasons (but that I see now as just plain laziness and conveniently living with a man that actually likes hairy women) that I abandoned the blade. And was happier for it.

I had just read an article in Tricycle, the Buddhist journal, about a renegade Roman Catholic priestess (really, that's another topic) who was assisting a Theravada nun in her final vows, which of course included the shaving of her head. The nun received the long black symbols of impermanence, spa-like, in a large lotus leaf. The priestess, I must note had, like me, very short gray hair, which I have been quite content with over the past 20 years. But honestly, I have sometimes entertained the notion of asking my hairdresser to just take it off, take it all off...even though I prefer the Taoist topknots to the Shaolin-style bald heads. (Although that pixie Pema Chodron is pretty cute.)

Funny this preoccupation with hair. I thought the musical had addressed all that. I was at that show in 1970, amidst a lot of tuxedoed folks in the audience feeling underdressed and out of place in my Army field jacket bedecked with bells and my partner in leather pants and a flowered calico shirt. Then I saw some other folks like us wandering in the aisles-- turned out they were in the cast.

What I didn't say at lunch the other day was that I thought shaving of pits and limbs was just a less violent body modification akin to footbinding and female circumcision (FGM), things women have sadly endured to distinguish themselves from the masculine. In some Song Dynasty erotic art, the only way you can tell the males from the females is that the females' feet are bound. (Penises seem to have a life of their own, like third parties in the encounter.) And FGM is said to be practiced to rid the female body of parts that are suggestive of the male's. You can make a case in both instances that these are to restrain women, the feminist case, but there is something to the artifice argument as well (like makeup and fragrance, which I genuinely enjoy as ways to channel my mother and Cleopatra.) Think about this the next time you are having an expensive laser hair removal, a painful wax job, or struggling with a dull and dangerous blade in the shower. (No double entendre intended.)

But again, for me the shaving always seemed to be just a nuisance; though stubble is repulsive, fully grown-out leg or pit hair is not unattractive or dirty. We've just been taught to see it that way. I shaved my legs for the first time at 13; it was such a weird feeling, like a neurological symptom, my truly naked legs against the bed sheets. Two days later I realized I was going to have to maintain this thing endlessly with a scary razor (they have improved). My mother gave me a little pink Schick electric model with a side reserved for each body area; it was never very effective. Then I discovered dark tights. And later, like the rest of us, suffered the messy trials of waxing (not a great DIY exercise) or that electric thing that ripped out your hair by the roots. (Applied to a non-consenting person, could that be considered torture?) Effective, but really, what are we doing? And I'm not even talking about bikini lines!

Today, the only hairs I really make an effort to remove (leg and pit hair diminish with age), are from the follicles that seem to have migrated from above my brow to my chin. They just don't belong there.

In the meantime we might all just step back and think what is so troubling about a little body hair. Kate Winslet looked great in The Reader's sex scenes with hairy pits, but then again maybe not the most convincing example: she was playing an illiterate prison guard. But we don't know that when we first see her. It didn't stop her young lover!

ADDENDUM: I just read that Kate Winslet had a hard time with the grow-out and maintenance phases of the body hair, especially in the bikini area. Somehow given her prediliction for full-frontal displays, I would have thought this was nothing.

MORE TREE WOES

It's not just me who gets upset about tree removal.
http://ilind.net/2009/05/12/tuesday-2an-urgent-plea-on-behalf-of-historic-kailua-trees/

Seems to me judicious pruning is called for. And why can't people just pay attention to avoid tripping over a tree root? My mother-in-law would have a thing or two to say.

HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY

Well, not exactly.  After some months of steady decline into very old age, my wonderful Druid-ish mother-in-law died last Tuesday at 89 in a hospice setting, attended by her husband, son, and daughters.  In a very normal series of events, her last days included one "hallucination," perceiving she was on a train.  In a way she was.  She was probably recalling the long rail trip that was one of the big events of her early life, as a young woman, traveling  with her first daughter and pregnant with my husband to meet her own who was off on an Army training mission in Texas. It must have been early 1945. Not long after reliving the train trip, she told the nurse she knew she was dying and ceased asking to go home, understanding her destination was elsewhere.  In the Anglican prayer book there is a prayer for a "happy death." She was happy on that train, I think.

In this situation, having lost my own mother to cancer nearly 40 years ago, I was caught up thinking about Mothers' Day while having  dialogue with a friend who is having a likely unreconcilable conflict with her own mom.  She has generated many pages of what amounts to testimony to this unfortunate relationship, love lost.  

I took the opportunity to help another friend, incapacitated in Kentucky, whose mother is afflicted with Alzheimer's and resident in a facility just a few minutes from my home.  I took her flowers and a card, on behalf of her daughter, playing surrogate daughter but really paying tribute to all Mothers. Perhaps I am coming under the influence of the Wizard's Marianist colleagues.

The moon is 100 percent full this early morning, 3 o'clock, May 10, which to my surprise is also the so-called "Optional Memorial" day of the already Blessed Father Damien, to be canonized this coming October as Hawaii's first Roman Catholic Saint.  

Ironically, the good Father became a Saint by doing 

the work of a good Mother. His life of dedication and selfless service is the subject of an excellent 1999 film. The effect of Christianity in Hawaii is not limited to those New England Protestant missionaries who invented the mu'umu'u for the sake of the natives' modesty, or more accurately, their own discomfort with the naked body.  Father Damien cared for lepers in a colony on Molokai, in a setting that looks not unlike the place shown here where I spent the afternoon after taking flowers to my friend's mother. I had a little solitary picnic of sushi and chocolate cream puffs near the Century plants in bloom -- those are really the tall flowers of a large kind of agave.  It was a good day for flowers; I appreciated the digital photos my own son sent me of wildflowers in Oregon.  They last, and didn't cost him too much,  and will serve as references for my pathetic Chinese painting efforts.  A good son, he makes me feel like a good mother.

TOO MANY MILESTONES

Nearly a month of milestones just flew by! The colonoscopy must have depleted my energy to have missed commenting on the calendar events surrounding Easter....all those mixed up solar/lunar Hebraic/Christian dates. Work just got in the way. Then I realized last weekend included Day 108, a mystical numerological moment in Taoist, and other spiritual traditions, marking among other things, the conclusion of three cycles of 36; it seemed like an auspicous time to get a haircut, rid myself of accumulated negative energy transferred by stressed running of hands through hair. I feel renewed.

And tomorrow is a new moon. The kolea will have to fly in the dark.

BALANCED?

Well, a little bit off maybe.  The delightful "sedative" I had "just to relax you" before the endoscopy left me just somewhat physically wobbly.  It was great.  After being fully prepped stem-to-stern, with a painless IV inserted by a very beautiful young blonde, the ubiquitous oxygen tube up my nose and draped around the ears, a funny bite pacifier thing in my mouth, the sedator announced she would just give me a little "good medicine to relax you."

 "Ahhhhhhhh..." If I had to swear in court that I actually had this upper GI procedure, I couldn't.  I wanted to say, "Ahhhhhhhh...okay, you can just hold it right there for a few hours," enjoying the feeling that we think we are trying to achieve during deep meditation or possibly after drinking a gallon of actual mai tais in a Waikiki beach bar.  I didn't make it past the third or fourth "h" in "Ahhhhhhhh."  Then I came back like a bodhisattva from my induced nirvana to be confronted with the already-in-progress visual journey through my colon on a high-def screen much much bigger than my laptop's, and with a background commentary that mostly involved the staff comparing notes about their teenaged sons' bad behavior.   (I kept wanting to say that they are all hopeless, but I couldn't do anything but laugh.  I'm not sure they heard me.)

I had been watching a DVD the night before while sloshing down 8-ounce faux mai tais every time the kitchen timer went off, like a really desparate happy hour.  Wong Kar Wai's "Fallen Angels" had more plot, but the visuals of my colon's twists and turns were just as interesting as Chris Doyle's cinematography. (It only lacked a Tony Leung.)  When I had finished drinking (yang?), the action was getting good for the evacuation (yin?) portion of the prep.  Being a little too distracted to follow another subtitled Hong Kong film, I watched "Moonstruck," an old favorite.  The DVD's extra feature about Italian cooking explains why I was craving spaghetti and a meatball on my release from the Endoscopy Unit.

So, speaking after the quick announcement from the doctor, "No polyps, no cancer, no problems from your GERD, just keep doing what you're doing," I must say that if you are of a certain age (50+), and have health insurance (shouldn't everyone?), there is no reason to avoid having a colonoscopy.  If Katie Couric can have it done on TV and Dave Barry can make it sound hilarious even in its apparent horror, you can ENJOY this.  Much in the way we reference root canals, now I can honestly say, when I am in a mind-numbing meeting or during some other tedious waste of my precious time, "I'd rather be having a colonoscopy." Really, I would.

GETTING IN BALANCE

Had a pleasant equinox last weekend (3/21), when everything felt very balanced, warm, dry and sunny, but I am dreading the new moon tomorrow a bit. My TCM* source says spring is a good time for cleansing to unblock stagnant liver qi, but I don't think what they intended was quickly drinking a gallon of salty pineapple-flavored electrolytic fluid until my gut runs as clear and vigorous as a mountain spring. Tomorrow is colonoscopy day! And since I will be all prepared, and have occasionally complained of heartburn (who hasn't?) I get a complimentary endoscopy too. I've never done this before, and it is time. All my friends are saying, "It's horrible, and you won't remember a thing." I hope. Dave Barry's colo-column at least gives me honest encouragement.

So I started this day-before with black coffee, have a can of chicken broth set aside for lunch, and will probably get through a busy day with Monk's tea. Then home to the large faux mai-tai. I can't believe some people do this high-colonic cleansing stuff on purpose, and possibly for fun. On the other hand, I wish we had senior health spas where, while one is getting probed, one might also get a mani-pedicure, maybe a waxing, a facial, even a teeth cleaning, while listening to a nice Hawaiian quartet, with attractive buff attendants in lava lavas and sarongs. At Ka'anapali. That might make it fun, especially if my health plan covered it. Then I could truly face the rising yang of spring as a whole new person.

Why can't they make a gin and-tonic-flavored cleansing solution?

*TCM=traditional Chinese medicine

DUCK ALARM
Some ducks have moved in under the bridge outside our parking lot, having found safe refuge from people, traffic, dogs and whatever else threatens ducks. In this rainy winter, the woodland stream is full and flowing, good duck conditions. But some of our human tenants are complaining about the ducks' morning quacking, a new note in our usual dawn chorus of birds, frogs, a couple roosters and an occasional horny Siamese cat. I like to hear them, the noises of nature waking up. I used to have a telephone shaped like a decoy that quacked instead of rang. It was weird, but less alarming than an ordinary phone ringer. There's something goofy about quacking that just makes me smile.

I'm betting that the complainers are also the same people who have big noisy cars and trucks with car alarms that go off at 2:30 a.m., stereo systems with excessive bass response and loud conversations in public spaces. Give me a duck any day. In fact, I might like a car alarm that quacked.