XXIX (Freedoms: Part 3)

Back in August I wrote about starting to feel somewhat at home here in China. Not exactly settled, but no longer feeling like everything was new. This semester I taught the same class for the first time and witnessed a doubling of new faculty and quintupling (5X...I had to look that word up to be sure) of students. I'm comfortable getting a cab or a Didi, to aggressively stand in line to pick up a ticket for the train, and generally can speak enough Chinese such that I can find my way around without too much trouble. At home I am the proud owner of two space heaters, two air filters, and have learned how to acquire sufficient amounts of nuts, dried fruit, and bread to make breakfast the way I'm used to making it (though I also really like eating 包子, bāozi in the morning). At any rate, I've gotten comfortable to the point where I don't need to stress the everyday bits and pieces that consciously or unconscious push all the little buttons that make me feel I'm getting what I need. Yet, because this struggle to adapt is no longer front and center, I've begun to get a little bored and restless. What this has meant has been a return to, or at least, a craving for, cigarettes, my old friend. And though I've been varied forms of quit for the last five years, more off than on for periods of a year or longer, my default method to treat existential anxiety is still to smoke.

In this broader discussion then I want to turn to another variety of freedom, that is, deliberately seeking out varied forms of repression in order to stay out of trouble; a personal freedom, "idle hands are the devil's playthings." Another way to put it is the difference between submitting to an internal discipline vs. welcoming an external authority to exert the kinds of discipline one is rarely/sometimes/often/never unable to exert on their own. A simple example of this might be not buying sweet things such that I won't have to deal with the urge to control myself around said sweet things. The fact they they are not in my cupboard is a kind of material control over my behavior, a disciplining force. A more complicated and relevant example in relation to being here in China and smoking is that moving to a new place means that I inevitably will, at least temporarily, be forced into new habits. And in fact, that is one of the many reasons I wanted to come here, that is, to make my choice not to smoke easier to execute. Upon initially arriving here, I did not know where to find cigarettes, much less how to ask for them, or even what kind of cigarette to ask for since Chinese cigarettes are entirely different than the American kinds. I was also too shy to bum one from the random guy walking down the street and certainly didn't know the polite way to do that. All this, and maybe more importantly, I didn't want to be known as a smoker at work. Now however, asides from the work thing, none of these constraints still apply.

My foreignness then served, and still can serve, as a kind of amulet to ward off these old habit patterns. Not to be overly dramatic about it. My experiences with addiction pale in comparison to what others go through, and frankly, no matter how unhealthy smoking is for me, I doubt that I will ever really completely let go of it, even if it's just the idea of it (it it it it it). At any rate, the larger point here not being freedom but its opposite. It is actually easier for me to fall back into old habits and the old challenges for overcoming these habits (quitting, starting, quitting, starting) than it is to seek new frontiers. Maybe this is the ebb and flow of foreignness? A kind of forgetting and remembering of past selves qua habits? If this is true, than foreignness can be had in one's own country, and in one's own mind(/body complex). I think of the now old Smog song, "River Guard," where Bill Callahan sings of the prisoners enjoying the delay of their sentencing. i.e. the trial that precedes the judgment, a kind of freedom in itself. Or the more recent Jeff Tweedy song, "Having Been Is No Way To Be," where he sings about the freedom one finds in dreams and the costs of those  dreams for others. Note how the question of language disappears when these discussions turn political. Ok. That's it. I'm going to go outside now and mail a Christmas package to my brother. Happy New Year.