things I learned reading student essays

Society is changing every day.

In this modern time, the government have come up with the idea of marriage, in China.

But it's too difficult to find such a person. So women always ask where's the Mr. Write; then they wait and wait.

Now, most of family only have one child for each family. "The new people" who was born after 1880.

People can plus some.

the infinite

Bus to Baravoye

The giants walked here
On the road and left the fields pristine
Except for the occasional pool of a footstep
In the distance,
Occasioned by black storks.
Yesterday we littered
Snickers bar wrappers
In the grass while
The boys peed on the shoulder and
The girls, behind a line of plain trees.
They said that one day's journey from here
You would find the seat where Ablai Khan
Ruled, from the base of the mountain
But I didn't believe them then
Because we came after the men, who
Left behind the remains of car jacks and pulleys
Tired of resurrecting life from buses.


Outside

Spider star lights along the diverted river
Concrete bank, the same place where children swim
When it's too hot to do anything else.
When it's too hot for dogs, usually impatient
With the silent tread of strangers outside the gate
And when the trees darken with roosts
Marking their spots in drops.
Where men spread blankets
And sleep in the laps of women
While the sun becomes invisible.
It's only the gypsy children awake
In the shade of the Heroes monument
Soldiers bursting out of rock,
Star studded light silhouetted heads
Moving about.
Here, here lie the heads.
Here, here lie the hands.
Here, here...

that first summer

I was out of university first year and on my own. A Toronto summer. How could I forget those April mornings after exams were all done the skies still pulsed blue in the cool morning? It was then I took the liberty of engaging myself in useful work with a publishing company. I liked books. They wanted to publish. It seemed like a good fit until I realized that I would be selling the books they published. Well, it was a bit of a disappointment to know that I wouldn't be with the books, but still, selling, what a deal! But then on the first day of training - my first job that had me sitting in a swivel chair - realizing that selling was simply a mask for what could be termed attempting to sell, telemarketing.

There I was, suckered, I suppose of my own accord and fancy after having dreamt up that I would be there with the smell and splash of ink on my hands and forearms. A summer of, perhaps, accidents with the press, paper being jammed, a print with a libellous error, or perhaps even an accidental death. My penchant for the slightly morbid has abated some since then.

I held on to those dreams until the first day of work, hoping that somewhere in the basement of the building, or perhaps even another floor, that machines would be printing copies of masterpieces, Austen, Eliot, Homer. I must have dreamed my way through the training where they, as I later found out, told us about selling email and fax directories. The idea sounded good the first time you said it, as if someone would use something of that nature to look up an address, but once you explained your job a second time and what exactly you were selling you realized the futility of it all. Couldn't someone just filter your emails and if all else failed simply change their address?

Still, I called Coca-Cola, Ford, peanut butter factories, a monastery. I pulled lead sheets of phone numbers and talked to people who got to the office at seven in the morning, or in the case of the monastery, who were there all the time.

We were a motley bunch on the eighth floor of that building on Peter Street and there wasn't much holding us together except for the view. From our swivel chairs and particleboard cubicles we'd gaze out the floor ceiling windows looking out over the downtown. The old bank towers hidden among the new skyscrapers, the shadows of the buildings moving like the slow folds of a bed sheet on a Saturday morning. The shadows growing longer, deeper shades of grey-black, casting complete darkness on the street below, a midday eclipse.

It was that beauty that kept us there, but even that beauty was not enough. I sold nothing and was bored. I quit and at home sat out on the roof watching the pigeons make circles in the evening sky remembering the labyrinth of downtown, there to my right, there growing dark with each moment, marching slowly into the night.

Shanghai

It was not death
For I stood up
And all the dead lie down

-E. Dickinson

Crossing the street is an exercise is navigation. This is not the navigation required by the pilot of a boat or the pedestrian in the market. No, this is an entirely different field. From the approach you relax yourself knowing that if you're going to be hit you'd rather be hit so that the impact will cause as little damage to yourself as possible. Have you ever come across those mini-articles in the Toronto Star where a baby opens a car window and bounces across the highway unhurt? It is by these that I am inspired. And you can't help but think that this is how you must be inspired. Here's why.

Every morning I cross Zhangyang Rd, an eight lane affair. Now, it's quite normal to, while accepting the green signal, walk across with a modicum of caution. You must, I dare say, do that everywhere. Here you must do it with a dose of optimism. Optimism that this time you'll make it to the other side of the road, unskimmed, whole, alive. Come, walk with me. It's Monday morning and we've just left the apartment, down the four flights of stairs, past the old bicycles in the stairway and out the metal gate. The date palms wave just a little in the breeze. At the corner I turn to you.

"Be careful when you're crossing the street".
I say it because first, I'm looking out for myself.

Our signal turns green and you step off the kerb. A scooter whizzes past, turning right. It becomes a school of fish to navigate, then it's the buses roaring wide around them, puffing grey-black. Now you've got to consider the scooters and bicycles turning left, into the same lanes as the cars turning right. In this game you're no one and the buses don't stop. Well, no one does, but they come roaring across the huge intersections at perilous angles. If they weren't about to hit you you might be concerned that they'd topple over, first. We stop, dodge right, dash ahead to the median and we're clear until we realize the walking signal is about to change so we make our sprint to the other side where I pull on your arm one lane before the sidewalk and as the light turns red a stream of cars brushes our shirts. We cross in peace and just as we step on to the other kerb a bicycle clips the back of your shoe.

I've gotten so used to the morning course that I've become bus blind. Last night death marked himself and I realized that had he pushed me an inch I would be with him - swept, crushed, pushed, pinned, broken, headless, dead.

I thought back to my first days in Shanghai. In the early morning sun the police had stopped before a beige Toyota and behind a cyclist laying on the pavement, chalk outlined. I stared.

I watched tv that night wondering whether the news would report the dead cyclist. She didn't appear, but this is, after all, a city of thirteen million people. Why should she appear? The news went on and on, an economic report, military exercise, classical music, and scenes from the Zhejiang province.

Actually, there were no reported deaths in the PRC. Not one. No murders, infanticides, rampages, suicides. Neither were there car crashes, train derailments, or planes sliding off runways. And were it not for the typhoon that made landfall south of here in Zhejiang province on Monday you'd have to believe that we weren't in for that storm either, the worst, they say, in fifty years.

So too, that brush last night would have gone unmarked save for a clip in a foreign paper of a citizen stepping rashly before a bus. You can be certain it wouldn't make the news here.

sale

Qiamen Gate, Beijing

What's the policy on opening umbrellas indoors, or on the subway? I haven't figured it out, and to be honest, here, no one seems to care. There's the poof-poof of fabric catching the air and a crowd watching the umbrella telescope itself into a microscopic object.

I cringe every time it happens, not because I'm superstitious but because the umbrella flares out centimetres from your nose. You might expect it to close quickly but the ever intrepid salesman must twirl it before your eyes. Now look at the inside, don't you see the quality? Oh it's quality alright. Made in Korea. Look right here sir. Now touch that fabric. Not China made. No siree, and he scoffs a little. China? He closes the umbrella in a flash. Whadda ya say? Two thousand won. No? And he turns with a flourish. Now test here and see... His voice fades a little as he turns leaving the umbrella in my hand, perhaps hoping I'll change my mind after I feel it and open it myself.

keep your head up

In light of things, particularly - Dan - your leaving on this trip. Let Ted Hawkins keep you company this time.

Put a candle in the window
Cause I feel I gotta move
Though I'm going going
I'll be coming home soon
As long as I can see the light

Pack my bags and let's get moving
Cause I'm bound to drift a while
Though I'm gone, I'm gone
You don't have to worry about me
No, as long as I can see the light

Guess I've got that old travelling bone
But I'm feelin' I'm leaving alone
But I won't won't be losing my way
As long as I can see the light
Won't you play that thing for me right now?

Cause I'm going going

-Ted Hawkins

scheduling

I met her in the bookstore near the subway station. I was sitting there by the window, on the second floor, overlooking the bustle of people below, on a Sunday morning. Somehow three days later we ended up at an stylish cafe, late. Lights glittered on the lake and the shadows of people, full bodied passed us at a distance.

I admit I was hesitant with her waiting there for me, her car black, swank, plush just outside the gate but I'd promised to help her along with some material. I didn't expect it to be this. She flipped on the interior light and opened up her book, one page filled scribbled in and the other plain. What exactly was I supposed to be doing?

Do you mind if we park?

The line reminded me of Back to the Future. I stuttered the same way.

Um. Sure. Actually do you mind if we go to some place with a bit more light?
Ok.

She revved the car and drove down the long drive to the lake. We pulled into the parking lot and she tossed the keys to the valet. We flipped open the menu. Ten dollar coffee. She crossed and uncrossed her legs. God what was I doing?

I uncapped the pen and drew idly on her notebook. I walked her through her lesson plan, she was being interviewed for a job and wanted syllabus help. On Sunday we talked about her plans over noodles. Tonight it was in an out of the way cafe. Things were moving fast. I'm sure her husband would be less than thrilled. I had met him on Monday, by mistake. He came in the door and Jo scrambled to introduce me. He grunted.

Why I met her on Wednesday was beyond me. She was attractive enough, though I didn't notice until the light glinted off her pearl pendant and I saw the neckline of her dress riffle slightly in the August night breeze.

She drove back, past the guardhouse, asking one last question before letting me go.

What is the right word for...

I didn't hear the rest. I opened the door and looked up at the blue grey night clouds.

She called again, two weeks later.

My first thought when I saw her name on the phone was that I was moving towards either a venial or mortal sin. Or was it cardinal. I had no idea. I picked up the phone.