A quick update on the present moment may be in order here - Jane and I and the kids have been at home studying Chinese for the past two weeks, as part of a required (and welcome) independently-arranged summer language program sponsored by our organization. We've settled into a routine: Jane and I head of to a classroom with Wang Tong, our friend and tutor, while the kids have "Chinese School" at home with a rotating cast of friends and students. Lunch goes on for a while with everybody, after which it's naptime for Ysa and Zekey (and yes, often Mom and Dad). If we're feeling inspired, Jane and I fit in an hour or two of studying the material we've crammed before heading off to the university's pool in the late afternoon. Zekey has an official Best Friend, Yang Dong Qi, so they are often out and about together playing during the evening hours. Dinner is late and snack-like, followed by bedtime for the kids and then a mix of internet surfing and/or Chinese studying for Jane and me.
Oh, yeah, and today Jane is taking off to go grape picking all day with friends, and is expecting to come back with 50-60 pounds of fruit, enough to fill up to massive ceramic jugs that she bought for a year's supply of homemade wine. (Anyone who knows her will not be surprised in the least reading this..) I now know her well enough to simply sigh a bit, plan a day out with the kids by myself, and look forward to a nice glass or two (or three or six hundred) before going to bed this fall.
It should also come as no great surprise that I am spending more time at home comfortably puttering around. Because I've been lucky to have the time, this blog has become my minor obsession this month, and I am always thinking of things to write about and dump into the Ether for the pleasure of my family members and a few imaginary friends. If I follow through with every idea, you've got lots of reading ahead of you - more stories from our travels, some interesting links from here and there, a few things left over from last spring's media class, and even a rant about badminton.
Which brings up a problem that I've often faced in my artwork - an urge to make a work of art that Describes Everything in the Universe. (Or, more precisely, an interest in how attempts to Describe Everything in the Universe always fail, and why we keep trying to do so anyway...) So I'm warning you in advance (and telling myself as well) that you may not hear about a story or sixteen.
As I'm going through my notes and mapping out all of the things I'd like to describe about life in China, I'm reminded of this short snippet by the author Jorge Luis Borges, about a kingdom that took its map making very seriously...
On Exactitude in Science . . .
In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
Suarez Miranda,Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658
From Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, Translated by Andrew Hurley Copyright Penguin 1999
I really enjoy your writing, Dave. Thanks for sharing with us!
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