It's Sunday night of the first weekend that I've been home for the last four weeks. Last weekend I went to a conference in Nanjing about writing and teaching writing. I was one of five foreigners among maybe 400 Chinese writing teachers. Before that I was at a conference in Tennessee about rhetoric and religion. I was one of four people presenting on work not related to Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Before that I was in Indiana visiting my girlfriend. I was one of one person visiting my girlfriend. Now I'm home. This weekend I went to Metro, the big grocery store that carries a good variety of foreign food, where I bought some German sausages, some micro-brews, some salsa, and refried beans. I went to the local store and got some vegetables, fruit, fizzy water, and some tissue. I spent about an hour on Saturday dusting the surfaces in my apartment which had accumulated a thin layer of black dust that wafts in through the windows and even when the windows are closed. Last night I slept from 11 PM to 9 AM this morning and didn't wake except for once to go pee, and I think I'm finally over jet lag. The last four weeks have meant four different presentations and two writing deadlines. Up until now, from the beginning of August, there has been much to do, from orientation to teaching to writing deadlines to avoiding embarrassing myself while speaking publicly. I've been successful in some of what I set out to do and some not, but now however, the most urgent things have passed and I can relax a little.
Over a year ago I set out to write about being foreign, the experience of. In the previous 24 posts there was a kind of newness where, I guess, the novelty of this experience peeked through and propelled me to write. These days however, though I still feel "foreign," I don't have a firm grasp on the nature of this experience. To be sure, I am foreign in colloquial sense, a foreigner; but I am no longer as interested in what this experience is like. Maybe that's because I've gotten used to things, or maybe that's because I've become interested in other things. For the last two months, for example, I've been listening to podcasts on the way to school and feel like my ability to understand Chinese has increased exponentially. Not that I can really understand Chinese, but that my ability to listen; the time that I can pay attention, has been extended. This is enabled by knowing more vocabulary and set phrases, but also by growing that muscle in my ears that can hear things. The cognitive load, in other words, is a little bit smaller than had been, and that makes everything easier. Oddly, I've been listening to these podcasts outside of my routine, randomly playing one on my way to get groceries, for example. Dare I say that I'm becoming a little bit interested in the Chinese language, which is a first for me in that language learning has never been a "subject" I've taken to. Maybe being foreign is an implicit assumption in the act of language learning, or even a necessary condition.
Outside of my window, the 12th floor of Times Central Garden building #3, pulsates the Kunshan Opera House. I write "pulsates" because when it gets dark its lights turn on and the thin vertical strips of LEDs that wrap around its body change color from green to blue to purple to orange to yellow to green again, and all the shades in-between. It changes not like a strobe or neon sign switched on, but like a gradient sloping from one tincture to the next. And so in between the green there is a lime green and further, an ocean blue, a pink, and a canary yellow. There are two layers to the building like a wedding cake; a wide round base supporting its smaller tier. Both are curved at unpredictable intervals and so its shape, heightened by the changing colors, vibes pleasantly outward as varied waves of light illuminate the evening's darkness. I wouldn't say its beautiful, or even really that impressive, but it's something, and peaceful, and it's always there and glowing. At night my living room floods with its optimism and only on a rare occasion, maybe a national holiday, does it not do its thing. In the daytime however, it sits unremarkably; a uniform white blob that appears water stained and mildewed in spots. From my vantage I can see the green AstroTurf roof on top the lower tier and the fenced off air-conditioning and solar panel units that disappear in the night. In the sun's light the Opera House resembles something more human, that is, something more familiar: a thing that gets older by the day. The experience of change then, in this classical sense of time, is terminal.
