It happened again today
As I turned the corner
That pulling up from the deep
Kind of feeling
As the view opened
And there were the Olympics
In their cold, lofty solitude
Calling me to breathe deeper
To listen to the silence
To acknowledge the ancient wisdom
Flowing within and without
The present
Where heaven meets earth
Is all I have
I need to recognize it
And make my home there
© 2012 Julie Clark
Time plays a part in one of those funny memories I have of our early years in Northwest China. China is a big country. There is only one official time – Beijing Time. That is the time anything official, such as government offices, airports, trains, etc., runs on. That is all good and well, except if you live far and away to the west of Beijing, or if you are a local who grew up far and away west of Beijing. It just doesn’t jive with what the sun is telling you. So anytime there was an event we had to pay attention to who was telling us about it. Was it an official or a local person? Or we just had to ask directly: “Is that Beijing time or Xinjiang time?” Being somewhat rebellious children of the 60’s and 70’s we kept local Xinjiang time along with most of our local friends.
Now that doesn’t seem too complicated, but there are a couple more issues involved. Daylight savings was introduced somewhere along the line while we were living there and then later abandoned. Some folks just flat-out refused to pay attention to that. So now we had Beijing Time, Summer Beijing Time, Xinjiang Time, or Summer Xinjiang time. If that wasn’t complicated enough we always had to keep in mind that events never started when they were stated to start. Weddings, parties, most social events always started a couple of hours later than posted. It took us awhile but we did get used to that. The only problem was that some of our friends, knowing that we were foreigners and clueless at times, would tell us to show up at a certain time for an event and they meant that time. You can only imagine how often we showed up too early or on occasion too late for an event.
I look back on the “time” issue with a smile. Time just wasn’t that big of a deal like it is to us here in the West. The important thing was just to show up at some point and join in the festivities. We were always welcome and never lacked for food or fellowship. In fact it was often difficult to leave as our hosts would pull long faces and say things like, “Oh you don’t like the food.” Or “You are bored and haven’t had a good time.” They would say those things after we had been there for at least four hours and stuffed ourselves so full we could hardly move to the door!
Have you ever been in a real fix?
Once traveling in China with three kids and way too many suitcases
We could not get our things to the train on time
Just impossible
All of a sudden a man comes up and says
“Here let me help you!”
And he did
And we got on our train
And then we wondered
Where did he come from?
Or
I love it when I get to be someone’s angel
This morning a dad and his young son
Out looking for breakfast
No one opens for breakfast around here until nine
I gave them some extra yogurt and bananas
The boy gave me a big smile
Sometimes we get real angels
When we are in dire straights
And there is no one else close enough to pull in for the job
Or listening to that little nudge inside
I know I saw one once
He even was playing a flute to prove it
© 2011 Julie Clark
Walking the narrow path
A knife’s edge from the abyss
Every one of us has been there
At one time or another
Truly
Only a miracle
Keeps us going
One perilous step following the other
Our eyes steady ahead
Our hearts racing
Until the danger passes
And the path widens again
Green pastures on one side
A stream of cool water on the other
Not everyone makes it
And I don’t know why
© 2011 Julie Clark
I.
I am reacquainting with the land of my birth.
At first the brightness is a bit much for me.
I squint like a subterranean mammal.
My sunglasses aren’t even enough.
Later, up on the trails of Griffith Park
I am astounded by the view.
I can see the ocean.
II.
Growing up in the suburbs I never really knew this city.
It was just the city to drive through, catch a plane or to make short, infrequent forays into.
I once was intimidated by its size.
Now, I want to explore its streets and neighborhoods.
I want to find where my parents grew up.
Where is that hill my grandmother described to me where she lived? The one the heavy doctor couldn’t make it up to deliver her first child?
Where did my mother catch the streetcar to take her to work everyday during World War II?
Where did my father first learn to drive? The office he worked in where he fell in love with my mother?
The biggest change I notice since I grew up and went away is how clear the air is.
I remember smog alert days at school with achy lungs, stingy eyes and staying inside to play.
The destruction of man subsides and the earth renews itself.
III.
Coming and going over the years, change is the constant.
There is always movement in some direction.
I think of the earth again, spinning on its journey around a sun that is on a journey of its own.
I miss, I mourn what I have lost, what I have missed.
The children growing, they don’t always remember who I am.
The years the dear ones aged and died.
I was never enough by their side.
Accepting my limitation is the challenge.
I will never do and be all that I hope.
I must learn to be content with the confines of one human life.
© 2010 Julie Clark
I’m glad our neighbors cut down their dead trees. One was perilously close to our house. The wind is whipping the branches around the rest of the trees and blowing the fall colors to the ground. It will take a few more of these windy days to knock all the color out of fall. We still have a little more time to go out and enjoy this season here in the Northwest. In other parts of the world people are seeing winter knocking with its suitcases at the door, looking like it will move in for a long spell.
Bill teases me about my love for weather. It’s one of the first sections I look in the newspaper every morning. (I showed him how to read the tide charts and now he checks that too.) I have always been fascinated by weather. As a child, books about extreme weather always caught my eye. Maybe it was because I was from LA and our weather was so boring.
The typhoons of Southeast Asia were exciting to experience. I was amazed when we landed in the middle of one in Hong Kong. Our plane shuttered and dipped with tall buildings on each side, but landed undamaged to the relief of all aboard. Once in Taiwan we decided to go to the movie theatre during a typhoon. The theatre was pretty empty. I guess most people found it safer to stay home rather than risk something flying from one of the tall buildings onto their heads. I see their point now in retrospect. During the big ones we stayed home and watched from our 4th story windows as the debris flew by and our building was buffeted by the winds.
I was not prepared for the harsh winters of Northwest China. How could I be, having only seen snow fall once in my life? Before moving there to start our English teaching jobs, we did some research and bought our winter gear through an LL Bean catalog. One thing we forgot to do was check the winter fashion info for our destination. So when we showed up in our Maine hunting boots that first winter we made quite the impression. You know the kind with the thick felt lining, rubber soles and leather sides. I was grateful that my feet were warm and dry, but I couldn’t walk down the street without all eyes (and there were a lot of them) focused on my feet. Most people never lifted their eyes to see the rest of me as they passed by in their sleek leather boots. For the women 3 inch heals was the norm. I finally could take it no longer and broke down and bought a pair of the high healed version of boots. There were two problems with this approach. 1.) I, at 5’ 8”, was already towering over most women and had never really learned to walk in high heels. 2.) Learning how to walk on ice was already tricky for me. As soon as we got out to Hong Kong for our winter break I ditched those boots and found some more stylish flat ones. Not an easy feat with my biggish feet for Hong Kong sizes.
Along with winter weather comes the challenge of keeping warm. Southeast China can get pretty chilly and damp for a few weeks in the winter. The places we lived never had any heating. So we quickly learned the art of layering and understood better the need for padded clothing. If all else failed we headed to bed under our thick cotton comforter. When we lived in the Northwest there was always a certain date that the central heating via steam radiators came on. That date more often than not was after the first snowfall. We usually had a couple of weeks on each end of the season that we were pretty miserable.
In Kazakhstan there were other problems of staying warm. In the early years during the coldest weeks the gas was low in the city. This meant very chilly conditions in our homes. Later, we moved to a home that was heated mainly by a wood stove. Simple enough except that dry seasoned wood was not always available or we just didn’t know where to find it. Following are a couple of poems that help capture my feelings during that period.
Entombed in winter
White, ice, cold
Slip sliding away
Crash, fall, trouble.
Let me stay home
By my fire.
For others joy
Ride, slide, ski.
I feel trapped
Waiting for spring thaw.
Wood is almost gone
It’s snowing outside
I’m hiding from my rascal cats
In my electric-space heater heated room.
© 2010 Julie Clark
In our family this has never been an easy thing to do. I imagine the Kazakhs moving peacefully from their high summer pasture lands to their winter homes down below. I see them rolling up all their felt walls and rugs as they take down their yurts, piling these along with their treasures stored in metal and wooden chests onto horses and carts. The children and elders lastly finding seats among their belongings.
For us leaving home, no matter if we are going east or west or how many time zones we had to travel through, is never an easy task. Usually it measures on the far side of stress. There are always sad good-byes to family and friends or friends who are like family. There are all the decisions of what to take and what to leave behind. This complicated by the fact we never seem to know for sure when we will be returning. Often we are packing for more than one season. So heavy coats and boots need to be in our luggage or carried on. When the children were young, growing like blackberry vines in the Northwest, we needed to take shoes for growing into as well as for wearing in the present. Then for large-footed teenager boys playing various sports we almost needed one supersized suitcase for their shoes.
When we lived in China in the early years I was always baffled by how people could travel so light. No one seemed to travel with more than one small bag the size of a brief case. And this could be for a month-long trip! And here we were with our luggage filled with clothes, books (many of those!), children’s favorite toys and various essentials.
Once we were moving back to China for the summer after two years away. Bill had started a doctoral program. We needed to get back there to stay connected and not lose our language. At that time Michael was 9, Suzie 5, and Nathan not yet one. You can imagine we had a lot of “essentials”. For example our dear friend escorting us to the airport found that Michael was having trouble carrying his backpack. He had packed it himself. She gave it a quick once over and found that he had not only stuffed his basketball in there but also “The Complete Works of Beatrice Potter.” One of those had to go. He could not be parted from the basketball.
Bill remembers at the airport that he caught a glimpse of the NBA playoffs on a far-off TV screen. He started edging that direction. I surrounded by the 3 children calmly told him if he went over there to watch the game I was not going to get on the plane. He got the message and decided to keep hanging out with us. Somehow, after 12 hours of flying and a 3-day train trip, we managed to get to our summer quarters.
If you asked me what one outstanding characteristic of Central Asian culture is I would tell you: Hospitality.
This doe not mean they always spend huge amounts of money to serve their guests the finest of meals or have elaborately decorated homes with expensive furniture or carpets. They do that sometimes. What I have found everywhere I have gone in these lands are people with open doors to friends and strangers alike. Whether they are poor or rich or in between they always offer the best of what they have after graciously inviting you into their homes.
I remember a surprise visit to my language tutors simple apartment. She quickly invited me in and sat me in the honored seat. That is with my back to the wall, facing the door. Next she reached under the coffee table and pulled out little plates of walnuts, raisins and other tasty nibbles. She left me for a few minutes and prepared tea. Then she disappeared again, only to return to refresh my small bowl of tea. She never asked why I had come or what she could do for me. She just continually served me food and drink until it was time to go. Time to go meant after I had eaten a large bowl of homemade pasta she prepared for me after she served the tea! I was there for over an hour before she sat down with me to hear the reason why I had come. I think it was just to arrange our class hours that week.
This scene replayed many times over whenever we visited friends, neighbors and co-workers. These were the 1980’s before phones were common and people popped in to each other’s home regularly unannounced. We were told that it was an honor to be visited. Guests were sent from God, especially if they arrived at meal times. Now most people have phones and cell phones, but this kind of hospitality is still very common.
I tried to match this hospitality, but found it impossible. I did my best to invite friends and strangers in when they came. Never to stand at the door until they told me why they had come. I would put out little plates of goodies, but sometimes realized I was out of them! My attempts at making homemade pasta failed miserably. The noodles were meant to be long and thin like spaghetti. We affectionately called my noodles “fat noodles”. Definitely not for consumption by guests! After awhile I tended to serve rice based dishes. One time I, feeling quite noble, gave the best to the guest in the form of Jell-O. My mother had sent it to us in a package all the way from home. It took several months to reach us. Our guests pushed it around their plates for a while. One of them bravely asked: “What exactly is this?” We couldn’t exactly tell them. That was enough to let them know it was not really safe for eating, perhaps just a decoration.
Now we find it very difficult to leave anyone standing at the door. More than once I have found my husband inviting strangers in and offering them a hot cup of tea to warm them up before they moved on to the next house. I am a bit more cautious then that, but I need to usher friends and neighbors in to sit down and at least have something to drink. Then I will rummage around the pantry and find some little yummy bits to put in dishes for them to sample.
I have learned from my Central Asian neighbors and friends that hospitality is not about having the house be in perfect order, or having the best tasting foods. It is about making people feel comfortable and welcome in my home. It is about honoring them with my time and attention and receiving their visit as a gift and honor to me.
Living for parts of three decades in the borderlands of Central Asia, has a unique transforming effect on one’s life. The hospitable, generous and nomadic cultures around stamped me with indelible imprints. There is another force at work shaping and marking me as well. That borderland of heaven meeting earth is a powerful meeting place. The following poems and prose blogged on this site will be an attempt to describe some of these events and impressions.
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