Way of Life
Monday, March 22, 2004
Beautiful Homework
Another big news is that I’ve officially signed up to get an MFA in graphic design from Nanjing Arts Institute (where I happen to be writing this evening). My dream is write my own stories and illustrate them. As it is, I’ve been drawing pictures of my story ideas for years and years, but I never really thought that I could make a living at it. Anyway, I think I can have a chance at it if I get the skills I need to make it happen. And with the skills I do on the road to this goal, maybe I’ll be able to do some professional photography and other art as well! (The photograph associated with tonight’s post was an experiment in how close I can get to the flame without burning my camera—Thank God I still don’t know. Imagine how lucky I would be, though, if someone actually paid me for this!)
Today I just talked to my professor here, and I got my first real homework assignment! I am to work on a logo for a student of mine, and also design a new introduction to myself on this website. I need to try to use style as much as content to give you the kind of impression of me that I would like you to have.
For a long time, I always thought that a web page that was just about me would be a “vanity page,” a fruit of my own self-love and an attempt to show the world how great I was. But now, my professor has helped me understand it as something like an expanded electronic business card on the web. It’s as much a service to all of you out there as it is to myself, in that it helps you to understand what this particular person is all about as he offers his writings and photos to you in this manner.
Not only that, but it’s homework, too! How wonderful art school is!
Photos • Wuxi • Way of Life • Religion • (61) Trackbacks • Permalink
Friday, March 19, 2004
Back in Business
I haven’t written for Brightwind for over a month. In the meantime, a group of American students from my old high school came for a school-sponsored trip to China. The school here where I teach hosted them for a while, and during that time, they met with Chinese students here, danced, played and talked with them, and also visited nearby cities in the daytime. After about five days there, I took them on another adventure to Beijing. We saw the Great Wall, the Forbidden City (which is hardly forbidden anymore), the Ming Tombs, the Summer Palace, the Beijing Opera, and some Chinese Acrobatics.
I was lucky that the two teachers, husband and wife, that came with the students to China both happened to be artists. The man was my art teacher when I went to school there almost 10 years ago. Both of them gave me lots of really neat tips on my photography, and I feel much inspired from meeting them.
The students also proved to be fascinating people. They were very mature, and they embraced their new experiences with open-minded enthusiasm. I’m very proud to have attended the same school as them.
I have much more news to share, but I will save it for my next entry, which, now that I have a bit more time, will be coming much faster than this one has.
Photos • Beijing • Way of Life • Religion • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Walking
All you have to be is what you are—not the you that you were in that present moment which has just escaped and fallen into the past, nor the you that will be a long time from now. Very soon, you will have a chance to be the you that you can become just now. That is all you have to be.
The human being is a walking creature. We walk into times of joy and then walk out of them again, but if we keep our feet moving as straightly and we can, each small inch of time brings us a little bit closer to infinity.
Photos • Yunnan • Way of Life • Optimism • (41) Trackbacks • Permalink
Monday, February 16, 2004
Your Wings
During the vacation I just spent with my mother, so many of the veils over my understanding have disappeared, and the eyes of my soul feel as if they can see more clearly. Of course, every advance in one’s own understanding reveals more clearly that vast oceans of mysteries lie beyond one’s grasp, but there are moments of joy that come with it as well, which somehow make things seem as if all is right with the world. It lasts this way for a while, until the time comes for you to pass some major new test, and acquire powers and knowledge you didn’t know you wanted. Confusion is a necessary ingredient in the stew of spiritual growth, but you never know that until the spiritual meal of the day is finished and ready to enjoy.
Anyway, one day I was talking with my mother about a number of things, many related to my early childhood, and I realized that I had gone through a large part of my life always wishing to serve others on the quest that they had rather than to take up my own. I had a feeling that I was destined to be the father of someone important, remembered as something like a footnote, treated only in the introduction of that person, as a background to their lives.
Today I can put that notion at ease more easily than before. Whatever or whoever my children, or friends, or anyone else in my heart will choose to be is very much up to them. But my choice is the one which is up to me. Each of us has only our own life to live, and a major part of that life is to take up the challenge of making one’s own special contribution to the world. No one else would ever think to do the things you can do, in the way you can do them, simply because they are not you, and they have other tasks of their own to fulfill, other potential they must unfold.
As beautiful as others are, whether they fly high above you or below, there’s no one else with those wings at your side, and there’s no one else who can fly with them.
David's Life • Photos • Yunnan • Way of Life • Permalink
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
One Month, Two New Years
The fireworks burst all around, rising up between the apartment buildings and all around them, firecrackers booming into the earliest hours of the morning. The land where fireworks were invented has little fear of using them to full effect when the occasion calls for it, and for centuries, there has been no greater occasion than that of the Spring Festival.
For Chinese, the Spring Festival actually comes in the winter, but it signalizes that spring is coming. Moreover, according to the traditional Chinese Lunar calendar, the new year starts today. So Chinese first celebrate the international new year, wishing all their friends a happy new year, lots of good luck, all the best things in life, happiness everyday, and so on, and then about a month later, they wish everyone the same thing again for the more important Chinese version of the same holiday.
As I begin writing this, it’s already 1:30 in the morning, and the fireworks are still going. They’re much less than the cacophony of the midnight hour, but it’s not unlikely that if you were sitting here at this moment, looking out of any given window in a Chinese city, you might be able to see more fireworks too.
But maybe this is almost the last of it. Maybe Shanghai is ready to sleep now, and begin living the new year it has just celebrated. There are just a few drunken fireworks now, as if straggling home from a big party, totally unwilling to let it end for real, still singing on the road when everyone else has gone to sleep.
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