Cars and Bars, and then Here We Go Again

Now that it's this weekend... here we have last weekend part 2, plus Monday. I'm going to get caught up... REALLY I am. But slowly, slowly.

I had arranged to go to hear live music with the Lama on last Saturday night. This was definitely a peculiar thing for me to do. Pocket of Bolts does not like live music. I've been largely disappointed with it myself, on the few occasions when I've given it a try. So the two of us just more or less agree to give it a miss. But here is the Lama saying over e-mail that he'd sure like to, and here is me agreeing. Why? Because it'd be different from moping in my apartment all evening.

Yeah, I'm kind of at the moping stage of my year abroad. Even a hard-core introvert like me has a limit, and I've hit the limit.

So I find myself going out on a Saturday night to hear a band called the Carsick Cars, at a bar near Wudaokou, not too far from where I live. Since the Lama and I had both agreed that we should have talked longer on Thursday we met a bit early for dinner. Then in one of those silly reversals, we suddenly kind of felt like there was nothing much to say. I had been (silly me) sort of tense and anxious all day about the occasion. Why? why? I have no earthly idea. I'm not sure what was going through his mind, except maybe just shyness. In any case, we sat eating spicy Hunan food and talking about inane things related to academia. But you know? it works. At least there are those inane things to talk about. And after a while, I hit a little more of a groove. We talked shop, and I got a little excited talking about a Pu Songling story.

We wandered over to the bar, D-22. It was pretty full already. We both kind of wanted to sit a bit rather than just stand around waiting for the band to arrive. So walked about awkwardly peering around looking for seats. Then one of the guys who worked there suggested trying the upstairs. Thanks guy! That was awesome. The upstairs had much more of a coffee-shop feel... a really run-down expat type coffee-shop with big orange couches: comfortable. So we sat up there and drank beers. When the band played, we wandered over to the rail and looked down on them. That was cool. The band was--well, not great. But kind of fun to listen to in that they were very loud and energetic, and I had already had two full beers in the bar in addition to the one at dinner. The railing vibrated, they were that loud. I was a little worried about hearing loss, but I was grooving in the Dionysiac moment. It was all good.

Between sets, we talked for real. The Lama told me about how he had become a philosopher. I told him about how I had once caught a shark. He asked me how I'd met Pocket of Bolts, and I ended up explaining to him in addition a philosophical theory of perversion PoB and I had come up with together when we were first dating. It was this kind of conversation, mellow and fun. Sometime in there the band played again, and we wandered over to listen to them from above. The second set was different, more technical, with a lot of the sound being produced by little knobs and short term recordings and replayings. Also a girl using a keg for a drum. I was less into the second set, but the Lama said he liked it better. He smoked a lot and I felt obscurely guilty. It was... just that kind of conversation.

Eventually he said he was losing his voice (I was starting to as well) and we realized it was 2 AM. Ha! Staying out until 2 AM was pretty unusual for both of us! A cab was waiting right outside the bar, and given that there weren't too many on the streets at that hour, we waved a quick goodbye without much comment. Which was fine.

The streets were so empty when I biked home, and cold, unaccustomed moisture in the air. It was truly the feeling of early spring. But--surreal and a little sad coming home drunk, passing the security guard in the lobby asleep with his head on his arm, riding an empty elevator up to an empty room. In Chinese fiction commentary they would describe it as the contrast of dong 动 (motion) and jing 静 (stillness), i.e., renao 热闹 (warmth/liveliness) and lengluo 冷落 (cold/loneliness), an explicitly admired narrative technique, but not much comfort when it's real life. It was REALLY good to talk to Pocket of Bolts, who was all dressed for work and in his office, fresh and alert and bright.

Sunday I was a bit hung over. In fact, I didn't do much the whole darned day. I can barely remember it. My tasks log reveals that I spent one hour and 46 minutes on "Dissertation Thoughts" and one hour and seven minutes on e-mail. I guess I wrote my obligatory two pages and then caught up on e-mail. I also did some (unlogged) work on Pocket of Bolts' birthday present. Mostly I just lay around being torpid. Drinking is not all that good for my work energy.

I was a little confused about whether classes were starting on Monday. I packed up for working at the library. On the way over, I stopped by the department. Yep, people lined up for the schedule of courses!

And all of a sudden, it was the first day of classes feeling. The campus was bustling, come back to life. Here was a guy trimming trees. There were people dashing about, standing in line, laughing, chattering. Bicycles careened about with a jaunty recklessness. My spirits began to lift magnificently and inexorably, a hot air balloon slowly filling and ready to attain great heights. Everything just as it was in September, except that I had no freshman misery of knowing nothing and no one, being bewildered about the whole system.

The course schedules I had managed to get hold of again seemed like a conquest to be treasured and gloated over. But it was a conquest I made without pain or difficulty this time. And inside--whole new worlds! My resolve to attend no classes by my adviser's, this semester, evaporated completely. Suddenly the prospect of attending class every day again made me feel totally elated: it's like having a date whenever you want--every day a date with learning. I know! I sound like a total dork. But I felt like I'd found something I hadn't realized I'd lost. My mental health improved immediately and noticeably. I felt really jolly.

So I spent a few minutes in the morning planning which classes I would go to. I didn't have an misconceptions about the times. I knew where to look for notices about room changes. I had a sense of which professors did what, and the naming conventions--what sorts of courses were likely to have what sorts of content. There was one building I didn't know, so at lunch-time I went to the bookstore and bought a map. I knew just where to go. This sort of thing. It was just like a replay of my first semester, but the contrast was a huge confidence boost.

Speaking of lunch, I was so shocked by how much yummy food there suddenly was in the cafeterias again. This is when I realized that they'd been slowly reducing the variety and quality of food all through the break. No wonder I'd been getting gloomy. Maybe melancholy always begins from one's stomach... Here is a picture of the Yannan cafeteria, taken from the balcony seating area.

I only actually went to two classes. The first was an MA class called "Philological Research." It seemed like it had the potential to be painfully painfully boring. I dozed off, despite my general enthusiasm for resuming the professional student's life. After I mentally slapped myself back to alertness, I let my mind wander instead and started designing a graduate seminar I'd like to teach someday in the distant future. This was good thinking to be doing, and I made notes in my notebook while pretending to be attentive. But I don't think I'll be going back to "Philological Research" class, since it promises to be that weird Chinese version of "discussion class." Useless for me.

The other class was taught by a prof I had really liked last semester, ZM. It was a class exclusively focused on Su Dongpo, who is definitely a research interest of mine (for someday...), and I was exceedingly excited to be in the class. I hung on every word. After outlining what he was going to talk about in the course overall, ZM did a little introduction by discoursing on (the famous poet) Su Dongpo and his relationship to drinking and drunkenness. This was hilarious and fun. What a great first day lecture for college students. But only if you want to attract them rather than chase them away!

So that was the beginning of classes, and the true beginning of the second half of my time here (though because vacation is so long I am really more than halfway through). Leaving me there on a gloriously optimistic note, I am going to have to finish this catch-up post tomorrow since it is past midnight and I'm beat!