bushido..

isn't it strange how you start off searching for something, and failing to find it you despair..but then realization comes that your search should have started inside yourself...

I think I am getting closer to identifying myself, a samurai lives with the constant knowledge of his own death, and constant acceptance of it.. every action is done from this perspective, I am not of this world, I have already passed..

I believe that at some point of time during the course of my life so far, I came to follow this code..

I regard the events in this world with a detachment that is uncommon among my peers, and for a long time I considered this to be some flaw within myself, but now I see that it is not a flaw, it is simply me trying to come to terms with who I am..

funny is it not? A follower of bushido, a samurai, one without a blade..

they say that the best samurai is the one with a rusted sword.. does that make me the greatest samurai, the one with no sword..

now do not get me wrong, I am not saying this in a light vein, I do not mean to say that I am a warrior like the great samurai of ancient japan..I simply state that I am a follower of bushido, and I am thus a samurai..

'tis interesting when I think about the battles I fight everyday, though I have won many and have managed to survive most of the others, the day of my defeat shall come..

and then shall I kneel among the imagined shadows of falling sakura, water will whisper in the distance and the wind might sing a mournful dirge..

an imagined wakizashi is drawn out of its ethereal sheath..

my honor is saved..

and I race upwards and onwards..

magus.

the nature of man..

in this post I shall take a deviation from my previous plan, the description hang zhou shall be in the next one..

i feel the need to put certain things down here..and now I shall proceed to  do so..

does anyone help anyone else anymore? well yea, your family will always be there to help you. That first circle of friends whom you can actually trust, they're gonna help you.. but other than that...not really..

I mean you can try and be a good guy, going around doing people favors...but just be careful in that never ever expect anything in return..

expectations are going to trip you up every single time..

I'm a dreamer I make no secret of this fact, when i meet a new person, and I feel like I wanna get to know them better, my stupid naive brain starts creating scenarios in my head about where things might lead.. be it in a friend sense or in a deeper sense..

this has never done me any good, I try to be a nice guy, i help people out when i can, and TRY not to expect anything in return, but i cant help it in a few cases I guess...

but recently most of those cases have been backfiring in my face real bad... and im starting to get real depressed...which is bad, since as it is I dont place much value in my existence..

at this moment I cna safely say that the following are the only two reasons why i continue to struggle on against life...

1. my family..

2. my faint, weak, pathetic hope that life might mean something more than hit after hit...punch after kick...

i need to become someone, and i need to make sure that my folks are cared for in the best possible manner, and i also want to ensure that my little brother grows up to become a much better man than I could ever hope to be....in fact, i firmly believe that as soon as I achieve these goals the raison d'etre, reason for existence for me...will dissolve into nothingness...

i wonder what i will do then..

without purpose without direction...

there used to be a time when every instinct in me would cry out against reality, telling me that there had to be something more than what my horizons were showing to me...but now, they are too tired to resist the press of reality anymore...

they sit silent and shackled in the prison which is my being..

their only source of light, my soul which burns slowly..

it is not in sorrow that I write these lines

i write this in grim acceptance of what life truly seems to be...

if there are any gods out there, hear my plea, save me please...help me live, help me breathe, because its getting too hard...

magus.

dinghai

this was a provincial city in the zhejiang province, i hope i spelt that right..

a tiny little city, i suppose in a way more of a town.., for those of you who drive or walk down the main road there and see the kfc....dont go "yay, this is so cool its got its own kfc", you could not be more wrong. Try going into the kfc, this is where you can truly comprehend the significance of the phrase "point and shoot".

The only way in which you can communicate your order to the kfc people is by pointing, be prepared to make chicken sounds, and swimming motions to indicate fish, because im telling you, english dont work there.

So you go ahead and tell me "shut up dude, im gonna look at the pictures and order stuff"

go right ahead man, you aint gonna get what ur thinkin...thats the thing bout the international joints in china..

once again dont get me wrong, if ur cool with eating the traditional chinese food then you're golden, you wont face any problems. We tried that, and while the food tasted amazing, the after effects on our digestive systems were horrendous.

The thing im going to remember most about dinghai is the buddhist temple we went to. This was a small temple perched atop a small hill. We had to hike uphill in near freezing temperatures, with a hint of rain in the air. Surrounded by lush greenery on all sides, it was easy to forget our actual locations. When one is surrounded by a setting such as I have described above, it becomes easy for one to forget all the bonds and chains tying them to their everyday avatars. You become more attuned to a purer version of yourself, it is easy to see how people might be able to meditate in these settings. The temple itself was beautiful, pristine in a natural way. It had been built for the sole purpose of being a place of worship, and it was doing its job splendidly through the decades. We bought incense sticks and prayed to buddha, language and way of thought somehow becomes irrelevant when one tries to commune with the gods.

In the almost ethereal silence of the hills, with tendrils of mist snaking in through cracks in the doors, every thump of our hearts seemed to communicate to the world above. Desires both hidden and plain for all to see became encompassed in each breath we released.

As the white smoke escaped from our mouths it was almost obvious to think of it as a part of our souls racing up to realms above.

 As we were walking down the hill, me and my little brother played around with the one chinese kanji I knew, the one signifying fung, or wind. We pretended we could inscribe the kanji in the air, thereby summoning wind. It was pure plain simple fun.

I loved this experience and will treasure this for the rest of my days on this earth.

On our way back to our apt we visited this little park which was run by the town i think. Even something like a small park was so beautifully done. With miniature ponds inside, and sculptures. A miniature pier like structure with paddle boats. The lighting was amazing, soft and soothing.

There is something unique about evenfall, wherever you are, that time of day has to be my favorite.

After all of this we trudged home, tired but happy at having seen china for what it truly was once.

Next up is Zhoushan.

magus.

sojourn 1

this series of blogs shall deal with my vacation in china, they shall be divided into three parts, one for each city I visited.. Shanghai, Dinghai and Hang Zhou.. (What did zhou do to deserve this?? NOOOO!! sorry, couldnt resist..)

Shanghai..:

This is truly a magnificent city, one of the major kingdoms of man if I am to fall back onto an earlier form of the language. The sky above is never dark, not even at night, the stars have a hard time competing with the lights from below. The buildings, even the residential ones are collosi, reaching up to the heavens with blatant impunity, attempting to grasp celestial ground. Every major clothing brand, fast food joint, night club and what not have found a presence in this city and give to it its unique flavour. 

One does not truly grasp the meaning of population untill one visits one of these major chinese cities, true, India too has an extremely significant population, but our people tend to be spread out over the country not really congregating in any one area. The chinese are not like Indians in this regard, according to what my dad told me, and what I saw..they dislike living in the provinces and the rural areas, as soon as they can stand on their own feet they flock to the big cities. Mind you, the chinese provinces are beautiful, simply too charming and in tune with nature, why would these people ever wanna leave? no idea. 

So the resultant migration from the provinces to the cities results in huge population densities there.

Coming to Shanghai was a bit of a relief since we finally got to see some non chinese people and even a couple of Indians here and there. Whenever a foreigner came to my hometown of cochin, he/she would always become the center of attention, and not in a good way, every single person would be staring at him/her almost as if the location of the grey havens had become unmasked and the eldar had returned to the mainland (lord of the rings reference). Till my chinese experience I never knew how that felt, oh my god!! it is so darn weird, you are walkin down the street tryin to carry on a conversation with your family, and every single bloke and blokette is staring at you like you've bloody sprouted horns. A few times I actually yelled out "Sorry, I left mine at home..come by later will show you" and "yea, im brown imagine that..!!" but mostly I just stared back untill they averted their eyes.

Just wait till i tell you bout what happened in dinghai, Shanghai was much better when compared to that. I guess its just weird for me to think about the fact that even though we Indians have gone to almost every place on the globe, we could still be seen as something of a novelty in a country.

Most of our time in Shanghai was spent walking on the streets, window shopping, and stuff like that. Tried chinese cuisine, tastes great, looks scary. When you go to a restaurant and you ask for chicken, they give you chicken, no dude!! seriously, they give you the entire damn chicken with head and claws included. I have no clue what variety of retard would eat those appendages however I suppose I will leave that topic for another day when I am bored.

I had a phenomenal time with my lil brother, it was amazing reconnecting with him after 4.5 months apart, and it was great to see how we just picked up where we left off. He left back for India along with my mom today mornin, and I am leaving back to gainesville tomorrow mornin, preparing myself for another semester.

Folks, one of the places which you have to see, Shanghai, simply magical, and you know how they say that the chinese are amazing with electronics and stuff....when you come here, you can see what these guys can do with light...!! omg..!! illumination never looked so damn good..

catch up on the next post about dinghai..

latero

Magus.