If this goes through, it’s gonna blow my blogwad for the rest of the trip prolly. Say La Vee, the links are time sensitive (thanks for them to DmS).

Buddy Tate and Claude Hopkins -- What Is This Thing Called Love? (March-October 1960)King Curtis -- What Is This Thing Called Love? (April 1960)Cannonball Adderley -- What Is This Thing Called Love? (November 1960)George Shearing -- What Is This Thing Called Love? (June 1962)Carmell Jones -- What Is This Thing Called Love? (1965)Freddie Hubbard & Jimmy Heath -- What Is This Thing Called Love? (1965)Chris Connor -- Love Medley: What Is This Thing Called Love? / You Don't Know What Love Is (Aug 1986)Jessica Williams -- What Is This Thing Called Love? (Oct. 1986)Mel Powell -- What Is This Thing Called Love? (October 21, 1987)

Top Ten Feelings:

1. Things are weird. Everything. People. Life on Earth. That I am. That I won’t be. That I’ll worry that my tits are too small in between being and not being. All of it. All of it all the time.
2. My list of expectations is empty-either I’ve fulfilled them or I ain’t gonna.
3. My list of hopes, same thing.
4. Sad, about 2&3.
5. Oddly thrilled, about 2&3, new lists! I love lists.
6. Missing most of whom I love.
7. Madame Theory blew a gasket (i.e. clueless).
8. Adroit (cz I dunno what that means really so I think of it as having good muscle tone and being clever while also clueless and despite intermittent terrible health choices—what is that? It’s the daisy in the snow thing--Is there a proper word for that?)
9. Far flung (see 1. and 6., dashes of 2. & 3. & 5., + big dollop of what the hell am I doing here? + What the hell is here doing here anyway?)
10. Fine Whatever When in Rome Just Go With It Pray and Do My Best Try to be Good

When I am standing in my own kitchen, these feelings are largely not well matched to the environment and probably indicate at least some measure of distress, off and on. But in Shenzhen China, what else could I possibly be feeling than most of that? So, weirdly of course, I had to go half way around the world for my emotional life to make sense to me, commensurate with the context. If it weren’t for 6., I’d just stay here until this was home and I’d be shit outa luck all over again. The girls could fly to visit. But there are boys. Heavy on my mind.

Other thoughts—random order:

I’m “crispy” which is something like “skinny”. (I was lightly pinched on the upper arm in wonder 3 times.) My guestimation is that they’re surprised to find an English speaking westerner in a Chinese size. Well, think about it. Would you not find a 6’2” 220 lbs Chinese guy walking around a little unexpected?

S. says, Tony will find us. We’re in a 6 story mall. We didn’t call him. How could he possibly . . . and then there he is, “hello!”

A haircut is a hairs cut, as in one at a time. S. wasn’t kidding about that either. Now the best haircut I’ll ever get will be 16000 kilometers away. That’ll be like my haircut went off to war and I never get to see him. [Figures.]

I cannot imagine what this place smells like in August. It’s like the urban dictionary. I so do not want to know. There is never ever not a smell. [And if only my tits were the size of my nose per, I’d be a knock out. I can smell like I can smell my kid’s dandruff from here kinda smeller.] Sometimes it’s good, like jasmine spritz. Sometimes it’s just the china smell (like an accent you don’t know you have but you do, same thing with the smell you don’t know you have but you totally do). A lot of the time it’s like a lab retriever with nasty gas, sorry to say.

The degree to which a person’s expectations can be anticipated—this cannot be over described. Like for instance during the hairs cut. If I have to look up, they dim the lights. Every time. He dropped a comb and apologized. (an FPH really would blow a gasket) It gets to be like you eat a french fry and they put another one on your plate and you’re not surprised. S. has the Get Offa Me thing down, wow. She walks like 50 mph and says NO! hahahah I think on my own I’d get into apologizing contests that would last all damn day. Hence how I wound up 6 flights up and god knows how many hallways deep buying a stupid purse for at least 5x its worth, and no not in the mall.

Later, I take that last thing back about apologizing. You get over it. GET THE MOTHER F’N HELL OFFA ME! You have no choice: We leave the shopping-thingy, it’s not really a mall and I dunno what to call it, place filled with shit both good and bad and ranging from massages to chloe dresses to dancing bears, everything anything. Outside, a woman tries to give us a baby. S. gives her a fairly large stuffed pig. S. had the pig because it came with her cocktail at dinner. The woman wants a dollar. S. says, I gave you a pig get offa me. 20 ft. further on, another woman another baby and this one chases us. We’re already running because someone else in between had a monkey to throw and that finally freaked S. out. The baby thing happens all the time. What happens if you take the baby? S. doesn’t know. I kind of want to play catch the baby just to check it out. But this is no place to let Lil’ Ridiculous off leash. (If I can help it.)

Later still, upon reflection it occurs to me that I just don’t want much in the way of material goods if it means I’d have to be assertive at all about it. I like to shop, but that’s a process of wandering around alone touching the colors of things. The acquisitions are a by-product merely, most of the time. Here, if you want it you have to step back up to their desire to sell it, and all bullshit otherwise is absent completely. It takes the “do I really?” question to its core, right away. And for the most part the answer is Nope. And when it’s yes, then it’s Yes. Period.

The one-child policy is kinda total bullshit. There are like a billion more people here than are accounted for. No, seriously.

People are not allowed to sell stuff on the street. Everyone sells stuff on the street. So the cops go by and she pulls out of ball of yarn and knits, like O don’t mind me I’m just standing around knitting. What she was selling depends on what you want to buy. A television, and car, what?

The Chinese people are various and beautiful and sometimes not so much. The Westerners are hideously ugly almost always. Like hurt your eyes fugly. They come here hoping the Chinese people won’t really know or something so that they can get laid. (??) Dunno.