The Third Day, Beijing, or Rest and Realization

The first title of this entry somehow translated my holiday into a sentencing, as if at the end of it there were nothing but the inevitable state of things, the quotidian, and the present in its shadow as a mere comedy brought of will and force and held up unnaturally, as if I managed by some dark magic to suspend the requirements of long-term life in the momentary rush of this new world. Holiday is, however, in no way carefree, as Mom and I learned in Italy. It requires a great deal of energy not only for the management of travel logistics but also for the assimilation of the novel, to which nearly everything applies. So the inevitability of the routine becomes a promise of the familiar that, at the moment, offers the promise of a certain relief.

This is how I feel about Beijing, though a resident protects me. I’m frightened to go outside alone without the ability to navigate the city or read the names of stores, streets, and landmarks. I may imagine a solo expedition into the city, though, and on these fictive sallies I find the odd and old fact of adaptation. Where I can’t read the name of a store, the merchandise sitting in its window betrays the secret hidden in the signs. That is, the products in a store function as the store’s signifier instead of as its signified. In this sense the value of the product itself overwhelms the quality and attraction of its branding, and what I see through the store windows becomes the name of the store itself: I see aisles of food, I think market; I see clothes, I think clothier; I see gadgets, I think electronics. But how to choose products, or how to pay, or even how to look at the attendant?

I took some lessons from Adam, a master of the art of negotiation on any continent, oriental or occidental. Successful negotiation—especially where big outdoor and indoor markets are made up of innumerable small entrepreneurs—is not just a matter of indifference, feigned or otherwise, toward the product, but instead is a function of love for the process itself. It is then, when the artificial smile, the dismissive hand gesture, the scowl and the whine, the affected aggravation, the red herring, the dodge and wheedle, the flattering word and, of course, the indifference, authentic or otherwise, that acquisition of the product itself becomes extraneous to the success of the effort. For the love of the game, art for art’s sake, lift up your eyes and rejoice, for the prodigal son has returned, suntanned, penniless, and full of stories.

So I rely on Adam, whose language and experience and nineteenth-storey apartment buffer me from the hostility of this foreignness and allow these two weeks to reconcile rest and bewilderment. No maps, no tickets, no tourists, no plotting, no worrying, no feelings of superfluity. Though I still feel stupidity when I can’t even greet someone to whom Adam introduces me, can’t say hello. So I smile a lot and nod, though such gestures belong in Japan, and I imbue the tone of my voice with cheerfulness and sincerity and complicity.

Such as at the massage parlor tonight, where a young woman shampooed my hair, massaged pressure points on my face and neck, kneaded my shoulders and arms, rubbed my hands and fingers, and pounded my upper back with her hands cupped one inside the other to deflect the full force of her short-armed swings. She was a small woman, a young woman, capable of a great deal of force that left my upper body, and by association my legs, loose and pliant. I wanted to carry on a conversation with her as Adam did with his masseuse, but I could only gesture, and at that only subtly, out of embarrassment. When she asked me to take off my glasses I just nodded and looked away. I thought she’d asked if I wanted Pantene. She repeated the request with a gesture indicating my glasses, and I smiled and looked away, embarrassed. The repeated gesture, the repeated emotion.

2006.08.09