An unfair comparison

"US troops shoot dead pregnant Iraqi". I don't know why this caught my attention. I'd been scanning the headlines on Google News, like I do everyday, and as far as I could tell, the part of my brain that responded to the word "Iraq" had gone numb a long time ago.

I imagine that in the three-plus years that the U.S. has been in Iraq, just about every manner of shooting has taken place. Neck, chest, groin, back. On the street, in a store, in someone's house. Women, children, the eldery, people with big ears, people with small ears. With nearly 3 000 coalition deaths (icasualties.org) and around 40 000 Iraqi civilian deaths (iraqbodycount.org), there certainly have been plenty of chances. Why should a pregnant woman be special?

It made me sad to read the details. She was being driven to the hospital. Her husband was waiting for her there. She was taking a taxi. The driver was not hurt. (Bad aim?)

But the most egregious part of the whole thing, and of all accidental killings in war, was the part about money. An accidental killing in Iraq yields the surviving family $2 500. By comparison, a U.S. military widow receives something called "indemnity compensation" currently set at $1 033 per month for a period of two years. That works out to just shy of $25 000.

To make things really unfair, I Googled "trophy fee." This is the amount a hunter pays out for the privilege of killing an animal, typically big game in a controlled environment, sometimes called a "kill fee." A caribou will run you $3 750 in Alaska. A cheetah in Namibia sets you back around $3 500. In Cameroon a female anything costs twice as much as the male, so a male lion costs you $2 500, a female $5 000.

I don't know how all this is connected, but I'm sure that on the Twister board of life, these two circles are close to each other. Somewhere in Iraq a family is receiving $2 500 in cash from the U.S. government. Maybe it should be receiving $5 000 instead, or maybe $7 500 if the fetus was a male, $10 000 if the fetus was female. But, no, it's probably just receiving $2 500, the same amount a game hunter in Cameroon is forking over for a lion. Egads, I think I just made myself sick.

Chinatown a.m.

This past weekend I was walking through one of this country's Chinatowns -- it doesn't matter which one -- and as I went down one unfamiliar street after another -- sometimes turning right, sometimes left -- I felt less like myself and more like someone watching a body float down a river that cuts through a canyon. There was nothing to do but watch:

Monday morning, just shy of nine a.m. Storefronts are mostly closed, but the bakeries are doing brisk business. I stop in front of one, look inside the window -- Chinese people are pointing to things inside glass deli cases, and attendant women in identical aprons are picking things out with tongs, wrapping them in paper and ringing up the bill -- it's like watching praying mantises at work. I step up to the counter, wait until I catch the eye of one attendant and point to one pastry, then another, then another -- now I'm hungry -- no, I don't want that "to stay" -- "to go, please". I pay out the two sixty-five and walk out of the store holding this paper bag like I'm a marsupial with a newborn in its pouch.

I turn down a side street, go about twenty feet until I'm out of eyeshot, and take the first wrapped pastry out of the bag: a piece of chicken, beaten flat, topped with a pickle, wedged into a bun of cake flour. Another look around, and I see I'm in front of a church. God, I'm eating this chicken sandwich, it's just after nine a.m., and I'm reading church announcements posted on a fence in a strange city. The English version is mounted next to the Chinese. "Pray for the sick" -- crumbs are going all over the sidewalk -- "Pray for the deceased" -- more crumbs fall, and now I'm done with the sandwich. I feel good. The thought crosses my mind that I should walk right into this church, sit on a pew, and pretend I'm a parishoner. The thought crosses my mind that seventy-five cents' worth of chicken in a cake flour bun has made me giddy.

But I'm too impatient to do the prank, so I keep walking. Grocers are the only other stores open -- some with long displays of fruits and vegetables angled up toward the sky, others with fish lain flat on crushed ice. I'd like to buy a fish and sling it as far as I could up a street. How far would it go? Old Chinese women walk in front of me, hunched over and looking small, and I try to pass as respectfully as possible. Mom and dad didn't raise a prig, but I'm in a hurry. No destination, just the vague motivation that I should cover as much ground as possible. Odors pass by, one after another -- this must be what it's like to be a dog with its head out the car.

A storefront opens just as I pass it -- the door rolls up on its spindle -- and I walk through a cloud of incense. I'm next to people speaking a tongue vaguely familiar to my ears which are powerless to stop the recognizable phonemes from reaching my brain. For a moment I'm totally out of place -- I'm back at my dad's house in the Taiwan countryside, in the pharmacy that they run out of the front, sitting on a wooden stool as motorcycles pass. Like a thunderclap, I'm suddenly fully cognizant of the fact that the place my parents call home and the place I call home are not the same, will never be the same. Suddenly I don't want to be here -- I want to be home -- heimweh hits -- but where is that?

I'm dizzy like someone's sucked the air out of my head, but I keep walking two, three blocks. And now I'm outside a park with a baseball field, holding myself up on the top row of concrete bleachers. A man is sitting opposite me on the bottom bleacher. He's got his head in his hands and his shopping cart full of black plastic bags next to him. The sun comes out from behind the clouds.

My life in snack habits

Over the last couple of months I've developed a ritual before I head out for the day: toast two slices of bread; spread peanut butter on one slice, jelly on the other; align and mash. That's right, I make myself a PB & J sandwich. At first I'd use whatever I had on-hand, but it wasn't long before I started tweaking the ingredients. (Going through a jar of peanut butter and a jar of jelly every two weeks gives you lots of opportunities.) Currently I'm using a low-fat peanut butter (Better'n Peanut Butter), a low-sugar jelly (Trader Joe's Reduced Sugar Strawberry Preserves), and a high-fiber bread (either Natural Ovens' Hunger Filler or Aunt Millie's Healthy Goodness Honey Wheat). Fie on the naysayers! It's my daily three minutes when I get to play alchemist!

But it was during today's PB & J-making that I realized that these three minutes have become a sort of silent meditation on the day ahead. Sometimes I use a little more peanut butter than usual, spreading it all the way to the edges of the slice -- on these days I'm a little bolder, willing to risk the peanut butter going over the bread edges and onto my fingers later. Other times I use a little less peanut butter, spreading it just in the middle of the slice -- on these days I'm a little more cautious, playing my cards a little closer to my chest and suspicious of those around me, less likely to make eye contact and more likely to be eyeing people. I don't care too much about where the jelly goes -- jelly goes where it wants, and trying to control it is like trying to reign in a feral animal.

A couple of lines from the Tao Te Ching seem relevant. From the Feng-English translation: "Better stop short than fill to the brim. Oversharpen the blade, and the edge will soon blunt." (Ch. 9) "Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it? I do not believe it can be done. The universe is sacred. You cannot improve it. If you try to change it, you will ruin it. If you try to hold it, you will lose it." (Ch. 29)

Just another day on earth

In times of trouble I have found two thoughts to be of reliable succor. First is the thought that someday I will be dirt. Literally. I, along with everyone else, will one day be dirt, just plain old plant food. This thought reoccurred to me today as I was listening to more Brian Eno:

"One day, we will put it all behind,
We'll say, that was just another time,
We'll say, that was just another day on earth."

Throughout history people have stated this idea in different ways. The Pentateuch reminds us, "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return." Edvard Munch said, "From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity". Even Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have told himself, "This too shall pass". Entropy wants to scatter us, both in body and in the memories of man, and someday soon enough it will get its way, but for today, at least for today, we carry on.

The second thought that creeps its way into my gray is the thought that each of us is smaller than we think. The ground on which I stand spins with the earth; the earth itself spins around the solar system; the solar system spins in one arm of the Milky Way; and the Milky Way flies outward from some center that we'll never fully comprehend. And if the Hindus are right, at some point this will all come collapsing inward and start over again, each of us with it, my samsara and yours being just a pocketed bauble in the samsara of the universe.

I've always liked the "powers of ten"-sort of diagrams that show up in introductory astronomy books. There's even a nice Java applet of the idea. Seeing this idea in motion is like traveling down the pant leg of a beast within a beast, and at the end -- at the tip of the toetip -- there are we.

Guster: "Gonna write you a letter"

This morning I awoke to the news that the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had written a letter to President Bush. Being a man of letters myself (at least, so says the description of my alma mater), I was touched. Here we have a man well-known for being crazy, and he pulls a Robert Browning. It's downright Jerry Maguire even.

Originally I thought I might do one of these Kaavya Viswanathan-type deconstructions that have become popular in recent days. But after skimming even one of Robert Browning's letters, I realized that finding every overlap was going to be way too much work. Sorry, Mahmoud. ("Do you I mind if I call you Mahmy? No? How about this: Who's your daddy, Mahmy? No? Not funny? Sorry, it's much funnier in English.")

So, instead I just let my mind wander while watching the clouds pass above. I thought, if this works out for Mahmy, do you think he might start texting George? Here's how I imagine that might go:

"b - y u h8n? whtev. l8r."

That, in essence, is a 14-character synopsis of today's letter anyway, so why waste time making out a whole letter, Mahmy? I know you put a lot of time and effort into that letter, and, no, you're probably not going to get a reply. I know what that's like, believe me, and it sucks. But it's all a part of growing up and realizing your friends aren't who you made them out to be. Take heart, though; you're still a snappy dresser.

Hasty Dum-Dum

This evening as I was leaving Hiller's Market, I stepped over a Dum-Dum on the sidewalk. It hadn't been eaten -- the wrapper was still loosely on it -- but it had been crushed and reduced to a pile of crystalline slivers. Hiller's gives these away at the customer service desk, so the origin wasn't in question. But what had happened in the twenty feet from there to here, the spot beneath my feet?

(A) Had a child taken one without her mother's permission and had the mother been angered to find out, pulverizing it beneath the heel of her boot? (B) Had a careless teen grabbed one without looking at the flavor and discarded it after seeing it wasn't the flavor he wanted? (C) Had someone grabbed a handful of Dum-Dums and carelessly dropped one making a hasty getaway? (D) .... Well, you get the idea.

The point is, I've taken this probably harmless scene and cast all my worst pessimisms about human nature on it. The abusive parent, the careless teen, the cheat, and many others were responsible in my mind. But then again so could the innocent, the kind, the hopeful.... And if I could have this reaction to a Dum-Dum which means nothing (and which literally is worth nothing), could I just as easily have this reaction to a person who is (or should be) worth a lot more than a lollipop?

Foray into fiction, chapter two

Positive feedback from SHB has led me to devote more time to the piece of work started in the last posting, much to the detriment of the part of me that wants to graduate soon. (That same part of me could only look on with envy as a friend of mine received his PhD this past weekend and his parents treated us to a lavish dinner.) But we all have to find our happiness, right? So here goes nothing:

By 10:35 Mr. Yamada had checked his watch twice more and began to wonder whether there had been some mistake. Perhaps Mrs. Ito had meant for him to come by next weekend? Or perhaps she meant 10:30 tomorrow morning? A frown passed over Mr. Yamada’s face. He had found this kind of thinking useful while he was still working, but now that he was retired he considered such fretting over detail to be annoying. In fact he was sure it was shortening his life.

In any case a walk to the back of the house seemed warranted, just in case the back door had been implied. Mr. Yamada stepped off the porch and turned to his left to take the path through Mrs. Ito’s garden. The gardenia bushes had started to bloom and the scent hung softly in the night air. Halfway down the side of the house, Mr. Yamada’s foot met something hard. He reached down, probing the dark space at his feet. His hand traced a trowel that lay stuck in the ground. That’s odd, he thought; not at all like Mrs. Ito to leave her tools out.

As Craig Bliss sped down the winding streets of San Francisco, he thought about how he was due a vacation. Even his legitimate job as a cook at the Hai Na Dumpling House, a job he usually enjoyed, was starting to wear on him. Being the only white cook in the kitchen afforded him a certain amount of autonomy: as long as he churned out tasty renditions of items C1 through C8 on the menu, no one bothered him. And he liked making those items too, pressing the balls of minced meat into potsticker wrappers and frying them in a bit of sesame oil. In a way it was too bad that he was good at doing other things as well and that those things not only paid better but gave him a rush to the head, even if they kept him up all hours.

When he finally arrived at the warehouse on the outskirts of the city, he was sure Mistress Chen was going to be waiting for him. He looked at his watch; he was running a few minutes behind but not enough to cost him. Sunlight grazed the tops of the buildings and hit him in the eyes as he got out of the car and knocked on the garage door. A flurry of Cantonese sounded from within, and the door opened.