Month: May 2011

A place to pray my way in Shanghai

On By cjx07sterIn Sunday Posts, TravelLeave a comment

I travelled to China a bit – lately haven’t been..  I had work in Shanghai and got to know Hen Shan Lu pretty well as well as Urumqui Lu and beyond out to Cao Bao Lu.

Shanghai Sunday was a good chance to see how people are, in the park, they do dancing in groups, or Tai Chi, or exercises or in peoples park, they sit and watch other people walking by, or peg up scrap paper notices with texta writing on lines in peoples park, looking for and interviewing prospective spouses for their kids.

A catholic mass was held in the Cathedral in Shanghai each Sunday, you could hear it in mandarin or russian.  I used to choose mandarin mass, cos they had the words up in Chinese on overhead projectors, and I used to try to at least read some of the characters.  I got to know the one for Lord at least. The beauty really is that regardless of the language, the catholic mass is the same worldwide, so you really feel at home no matter where you end up.  I get the feeling having been to probably hundreds of churches worldwide that it’s the same for many travelers.  I would meet people from everywhere, everyone praying but without a common earthly language. The weird part was that the music was often the same old hymn tunes from colonial times, but different words. How God and people of all languages get together on Sunday. You can pray when you realise its not about the words, when all the words are different for all the people sitting there.

There was a coffee shop in Shanghai, called May Coffee, run by May, and I liked going there.  It’s no longer there, and who knows where May went.  It was good coffee, and a place to relax on the way back to the hotel.  May and her friends used to meet and chat in Shanghainese.  I really had no idea what was being said, but it was quiet and peaceful there on Henshan Lu on a sunday morning.

Coltrane – Cotton Club – Ni Hao – Miles Away

On By cjx07sterIn TravelLeave a comment

Two men walk into a bar, it’s Shanghai, the cotton club, few years back.  The songs could have been like My O

ne and Only Love, or Soul Eyes.  Apart from the live house band, the place was full, but quiet and attentive,

listening….a lone trumpeter on stage, playing the harmon like Miles did, I went there with Tom, it was summer time, and hot, humid in the Shanghai days, down Hua Hai Lu. W

e got drinks, Tom knew the owner, which was good, and we got a table at the back, thats all that was left.  A soul black lady got up on stage, and sang soul/blues like the trumpeter, only really black cool, loved it. The drinks arrived, we sat back and commented on the way Shanghai had got cool, and was probably one of the really great happening places around at the time, the tallest building in the world competition was on, and Shanghai was in it to win with the tall building up in their river clouds floating up there. Cool with music and people and the girls were getting much better at the english language.  Coltrane for lovers was the mood, and Miles was the groove, Shanghai style… like imagine a bunch of expat musicians, who like Shanghai who come from countries distant to stay and form a band for a club in Shanghai.  Ni Hao Shanghai..Gan Bei !.

Immediate the lights went out, the sound of the airconditioners stopped, and we were all in a silent surprise, with no music flowing over, we were like dragged back to the new new world where blackouts really did happen occasionally… and this one.. well .. here we were sitting in the dark… one by one candles came out, more drinks, and the place took on a different flavor, like somehow candles everywhere make it shift left in the mind, and music seems more amplified already.. the guitar became acoustic, the singer, the trumpeter, more amplified by the dark and candles and lack of power.. now that is the way to drink scotch… but then the groove was good and the temperature rose,, eventually it just got too hot in there and no air.. just dark and music and the oxygen consumed by candles, untill such time as we left.  I mean it was great, but two men walked out of a bar and said.  How about a beer mate !. Ni Hao !

Loons and Booms and Smooby Tunes for Lizard Planets

On By cjx07sterIn TravelLeave a comment

The sky is dark quiet for a while.  This morning the four planets, Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter are lining up for the kookaburra’s to have a laugh at them.  Saturn apparently off on the other side of the solar system right now, so just the four today. The humans will look on in wonder, and think things astrological, but the ‘burras will be laughing mate, looking for that snake, or lizard for breakfast.  Loons keep coming back in my memory, another spooky bird I encountered on lakes up North on the outer side of our planet.  Loons have nothing to laugh about, they seem to want to fill up the space with sound, and leave quiet to rush back in and make you wonder whether you ever heard it.  I heard it, really, was that a Loon ? ever seen one ?  Nup, not like the Kookaburra that just sits there like a king on a throne, on that telegraph wire, out the front, looking not looning, looking and waiting for the early rays of the sun, to sneek past all the planets lined up, and warm up that rock over there, that rock of sandy color, darkened by leaves, on which a lizard will attempt to get warm… very soon now.  So, you just know what a kookaburra is thinking, until of course it opens its mouth and just laughs about the situation, about mars lining up, pretending to be like Jupiter for a while, maybe just flirting with Venus since she’s out there early in the morning looking for love.

A long kind of enveloping smooby boom which goes right through you makes the loon, like the only sound in the place, in the cold, near the lake.  So many lakes in New England, but they freeze solid hard and thick.  Like that one Australia Day in January a few years back, after playing cricket in the snow in Franklin, we drove up to a lake where we could walk out.  Out on the lake and it was clear and icepick hard as a wrock, with no Loons, but the same boomy sound where the ice would crack as it warmed up for the day.  And those cracks would rocket through the ice at the speed of sound and shoot right under your feet in an instant.  But those cracks just created wonder and awe in a clear sheet looking right down into the lake below. How slowly and carefully that ice must have frozen, to be so devoid of white, to be so clear and blue looking down into the depths below – frozen in time too, the fish, little guys stuck in the ice – like small things, all color and silver, but not moving – not swimming – just frozen.  Still the boomy sound went on heralding in air the crack in the ice below, as it warmed.  No one was out there, only us aussies, who had never seen anything like that before.  So real and cold and hard and soundy.  Something you could touch and skate on and look through, like a looking glazz into the cold watery lake world below.

So much of the world is a sound escape, where you can go and hear a laugh, or a boom, or a smooby tune for a swooning loon.

Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing : Chapter 1

On By cjx07sterIn TravelLeave a comment

I like the ‘strations.. Hat, Sunnies, Smoke, Coat, Invisible guy, Mermaid on a string, Bag of money, Beach [obviously not Bondi, or Coogee], palm tree, and a massive alligator looking with something to say. …well it was all about the money in the end wasn’t it ?

So it turns out the 10 rules are all about the ‘cloak of invisibility’ surely something writers really want.. no..? Yes, the story is the important bit. Anyway this is the first of EL books I have ever read, so that makes me an amateur book reader of this genre.
Never minde….

Rule 1. Never open a book with Weather…

I guess most conversations start out on the weather, so that means you dont start a story conversationally right ?

But of course, the next great drawing has a guy on a phone, in some kind of conversation with a dame of some kind talking about ceilings and some kind of action.  There is a window, but weather is crossed out.. but not about the weather… so point taken there Mr EL.  So I guess it is along the lines of ‘once upon a time there were 3 bears, as opposed to ‘it was raining in Sherwood Forest that day as I went walking.. etc..