January 28, 2009

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  I wake up and get ready for work.  At 5 am the sky is still dark.  Last night I heard that it was going to snow.  I look out from my bedroom window.  The roof of my garage is white.  Snow texture is smooth.  It snows and is snowing still.  I change my mind, decide to call in and take today off.  It is going to snow all day and I do not want to negotiate with any hassles from the streets and parking lot and commuting.  I can’t navigate my hilly and slippery street anyway.  Happily to be snowed in I will have some fun such as do some writing and update Xanga.  The ground is so bright while darkness still envelops the house.  You have to live in an area that has snow to see what I am talking about.  Snow on the ground in darkness seems to have light in itself.  It radiates and suffuses so subtly and makes the surrounding more mystic.

   

  I have not updated Xanga frequently.  It is not that I do not have anything to say.  To the contrary I just have too many things to talk about and too many thoughts running in my head.  I can’t decide what I want to put down in the white sheet on the screen in the little amount of time I have.  And after awhile I start to wonder if they are worthy to take up my time and your time.

   

  First, it was Tết.  I did not cook anything extraordinary.  My love bought a whole salted chicken from Chinese supermarket and asked me to cook some sweet rice with mungbean so called cơm nếp đậu xanh.  He cooked sweet mungbean dessert or chè đậu xanh in Vietnamese.  While I went to work, he stayed home to put food we had cooked on the altar; to serve food means to worship ancestors and to celebrate Tết.  I had wanted to post some Vietnamese music and poetry to celebrate the first day of the year but I got distracted by a DVD that I borrowed from the library: “Wild China” made by BBC.  It is a very good documentary and travel program.  If you have not seen it, I recommend it.  The DVD comes in a set of two disks, take about 6 hours to watch.  I have to watch the DVD part by part.  Each time, I stop watching with reluctance.  Even deep in my heart I resent the government that has invaded Vietnam territory, I still have to mavel the beauty, mystery, and extraordinary diversity of China.  You will see birds, monkeys, rivers, mountains, Great Wall, and many wondrous things.  Things such as 18000 kinds of flowers in China’s jungle and 3000 species are not anywhere in the world.  You will see fishermen dance and chant while sending birds to hunt fish for them.  You will see some moutainous people go to the market with mules and nice white dress and children go to school daily.  The remarkable thing is that they cross from mountain to mountain by hanging on a hook that hooks onto a cable and sliding across the mountains without a basket.  Sometimes they sit on a pig that was put in a bag to be sold at market and off they, human and pig, go sliding, the way you could believe that only Wonder Woman, Zorro, or Harrison Ford in those action movies could have gone.  In this DVD you can only see landscape and the wild nature.  I guess BBC has to do another set about architectures and culture of China.  I would love to see all the temples on all the steep mountains hanging to a cliff.

   

  I got hooked on listening to novels.  After “The Abortionist’s Daughter” I borrowed from the library “The Life of Pi” and “Water for Elephants.”  Knowing “The Life of Pi” is an award winning book, but I did not expect that the book is so philosophical about religions and way of life, packed in thorough observation about animal life.  The book has about 100 chapters and I am up to chapter 54.  It seems I cannot stop listening.  It draws me in.  At this moment Pi is drifting on a life boat with a tiger.  The narrator voice at times pondering, sometimes witty, and sometimes is wisecrack funny.  

   

  There are a few things I want to do.  Write a book review of The Abortionist’s Daughter for a publisher in Vietnam.  I already got the book.  It now sits squarely on my table.  I bought a book about Western Civilazation, I need to supply myself some knowledge that I lacked off.  I want to read a little bit about Hinduism and Khmer civilization to prepare for my travel in August.  I already finished two books about Andy Wyeth and I had wanted to write a short piece about this famous artist on the realism paintings.  Oh yeah, I promise Da Mau magazine to translate an article about the passing of John Updike, the great writer who just passed away yesterday.  I just remember that I promise another editor an write an analytical piece about the characters in another book. 

  I just plan too many things and do not know if I can get through.  And I think I get a cold because I am sneezing and my eyes water and I have a headache.

   

  • 8:49 am
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