sun-warmed M&Ms

Sun-warmed M&Ms are a treat.

I don’t share with my roommates for fear.

they might know how much I spend or guess.

of all these weaknesses I repent.

for sin, though, the chocolate was not.

just individual packaging it was.

how easily I fear and I forget.

how to spend a Saturday

Ultimate Frisbee!

Blueberry cheesecake!

And then all these good people at the office.

Mmmm.

in the end we fried them

Five layers on top and two on the bottom. Winter is here. Unpeeling to pee is a surreal sense of digging to uncover one's lost self. There are two big fish in a red plastic basin on the bathroom floor, with a rusty bottle cap at the bottom. One is dead, one breathes carefully. Poor TS. His gifts went unappreciated. The girl at the yoga place screwed up her face, gave the exact reply we had. You're giving me a live fish? I don't know how to fry fish!

Just make a soup with some tofu, he said.

We went to his house for lunch Sunday. I sat in the sun - on a pillow on the wood floor - and tried to read self-help books in Chinese while almost everybody else hovered in the small kitchen. The lunch that resulted was incredible. Sweet, sour, spicy, salty - dishes to fit anyone's taste. Fish ball soup with mushrooms and cabbage and then we walked to the nearest park with a blanket and a pomelo. A perfect Sunday afternoon.

My roommates had decided to try to set TS up with another counselor. (He's 28, and already has a house; how could he not be ready for marriage?) They hadn't told me, and I didn't get it for a long time. I kept laughing at HY's, "No really, what kind of girl are you interested in?" and "Since you've bought an apartment in Nanjing you must want to marry a Nanjing girl!" and changing the subject, trying to protect the poor guy. In the end he was unruffled and maintained an enigmatic near-silence on the subject.

fishing boats on liangzi lake

Fishing Boats on Liangzi Lake

October 30, 2007

At 7:30 am the seascape is littered.

Funny crooked silhouettes are

wooden fishing boats and their

fishermen – two in each and sometimes

a motor. Like this one humming up from behind.

Maybe he had to have that last coffee,

or maybe these early winter mornings

are difficult for him, too, to

rise out of warm cotton quilts, inner

dampness burned away in the night.

How is it that these boats set out together -

like geese, on a southern course, pulled by

instinct more than weather? Who decided

the time and does it change with the summer light

growing, receding into fall, into winter?

Do they call out to each other, make the

rough jokes of rough men, their

tongues as calloused as the old hands

pulling on the wooden oars? Or do they sing?

on mornings less damp, when the steel water shines?

How is it they all turn at once, as a fleet,

sharing fishing waters, who decides

when and where? I wonder. And when I

wonder aloud to the old woman beside me,

on the porch after breakfast, she says,

"They’re fishing.

They go out in the morning to fish,

and bring the fish back here to sell,”

points to the dock to explain, to show

the simple-minded American.