Deep Breath and Go!

There is an existential dread that comes with getting out the front door. I know this was true for me in Brooklyn, but it's even truer here, with the still-constant gloom, the seemingly impenetrable language barrier, the unknown world I've chosen to come to. It takes a while to really get myself together: I look up what subway station I need, where I'm aiming to go, look for tips in all the articles for expats in China on-line, check the weather, make sure a million times I have the money I need, the right keycards. Umbrella? Gloves? And then, deep breath and off I go, out in these new neighborhoods again.

Always, there is the tension between how much you keep to yourself and how much you share. Often subconscious, this tension comes to the surface for me now. As I'm walking down each sidewalk that's new to me, peering into shop windows--this one selling sea cucumbers in glass cases, this one electronics, this one fancy clothes in shades and patterns that feel both familiar and utterly strange, so many banks I don't recognize, so many more banks than home--wonder if my boyfriend, my mom, my sister, others I think of often who are far away would like this place, how it would feel to experience it like this, for the first time, with them. I know my dad, the bookworm, would be tickled by the book vending machine and want to go inside the cafe it fronts that's full of books, even though none of them are in English.

As I figure out that the temple I thought I'd go into costs more than lunch will and besides I haven't the time, find out that the Mao museum I read about in the guidebook is closed and tiny anyway, I wonder, for a minute, what to do with myself--but then I walk this way, cross the street, look up, there, follow my nose, walk into this slightly open gate into this hidden, empty garden that some one has taken a lot of care with. I consider taking out my phone, to use Google Translate to figure out what this or that says, take a picture that I might post for you or maybe delete. Sometimes I can lose myself and really be here, and sometimes I'm recording to remember, living outside myself and this experience. Sometimes I notice many of the photos I took while enjoying my Thursday walk were of reflective surfaces, and I'm there in the frame, however flimsy my likeness, I am here somewhere, I must be.