This is a week of departures and new beginnings. My brother just arrived home from college, my steadfast Kel has left for other climes. I am going to Asia in seven days. At this point, I'm calm about it.
Though I'm seeing many, many places for the first time, I still recall familiar places across the six years that it's been since I last crossed the Pacific. The way some people feel about Paris, I feel about smoggy, dear Beijing. It reminds me of younger, more carefree days, when I was totally overwhelmed by a language that still astounds me with its variety and essentialism. Overcoming the daily indignities of stairs and old plumbing offered priceless rewards: views of some of the ancient wonders of the world, four-syllabled poetry recited along the lakeside, tai qi practice with an old lady made of iron. I felt then that I was connected to so much more than I'd imagined. Many of the people I knew once in Beijing are no longer there. Some have scattered around Asia and the U.S. Some have left this world. The city itself will not be as I remembered it, having gone through the Olympics and the accompanying renovations. It's a city full of nostalgia. My Chinese language buddy at Beiyu gave me a copy of My Memories of Old Beijing, an classic black-and-white film about Beijing in its hutong days. Change is part of the capital's make-up. But I hope to find in Beijing some of that old joie-de-vivre that made my days there some of the happiest in my life. It is a city where anything can happen.
Beforehand, I will be stopping by other places that are entirely new to me. Singapore is first, and I hardly know what to expect from it, except lots of heat.
For now, I'm just waiting in between. There's stuff to resolve beforehand. I also have to sleep earlier. :P
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