Mates for life. We could learn from fowl. Shenzhen, PRC, October 17, 2007.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Mother, Grandmother, Children walking into the sun.

My community is a young one, 12 years old and gated. Young families with wee children live behind the gates. There’s more than a few high schoolers thrown into the mix, but for the most part rugrats and ankle-biters rule the day.

Families in china are the extended type. Parents, their children, and the children’s children, live under one roof. While the parents are competing in the rat race, the grandparents tend to the children. The Bible says something about honoring thy parents. That was the custom in China before The Bible was written. Your parents raised you: When you’re old enough (the male children) look after their parents.  Retirement homes are new and not popular.

Everyone has a job, and does it.  Maybe there’s something to that: A closeness not generally seen in the west.  I’m a fan of my own space. When the family visits Chateau Shoebox Stevo I wish there was another room to hide in. I’m not as bad as I used t be. I’m changing, slowly.

School has started and Stevo offers you something from the archives (until his time management skills improves).

When a young man’s fancy turns to the opposite sex does he imagine he will spend his spare time washing her dirty clothes?

No.

In those heady pubescent days of hand-holding, walks in the parks, and graceless backseat ϋber-romantic fumblings, laundry and its immortal presence is far, far away. Getting a troublesome bra hook successfully unlatched is the main thought, not washing the bra and hanging it on the line.

Perhaps we are under-educating the young men of North America. I can remember a lesson on healthy relationships in high school health class (taught by a misogynistic, mustachioed, muscle-headed gym teacher). I don’t think he mentioned washing the clothes of your sweetie. That fact that all male gym teachers are biologically engineered in a secret facility is a matter for another post. Another reason to have a home gym.

This isn’t an image seen in romantic movies. Maybe that’s why most of them end just after the wedding. Does the audience want to see its hero lose face, washing his beloved’s delicates in the sink? Maybe women do. Not the men, it strikes too close to home. With images like that in the collective unconscious, co-habitation and marriage rates would plummet. Men, most of whom will draw upon the dodgiest of reasons to avoid commitment, would avoid the opposite sex like children avoid a bath.

Seeing too-cool Paul Varjak washing Holly Golightly’s unmentionables would be the kiss of death for box office tallies, unless you count the small yet vocal fetish community. Rick Blaine, with a cigarette in one corner of his mouth and a clothes pin in the other, hanging Ilsa Lund’s lingerie on the line would make a disturbing figure. Maybe it’s best that Ilsa left Casablanca. Can you imagine the sequel if they had stayed together?

“I’m going to fight the Germans with the Free French,” Rick would say, lighting a cigarette and loading his pistol.

“Did you get the béarnaise stain out of my blouse?” Ilsa would ask.

Rick, wincing as the verbal flogging in français from the rag-tag garrison began, would mutter, “Yes, dear.”

I’m not complaining. Nor am I hung up on 50s-style gender roles. I didn’t expect June Cleaver to be my wife, vacuuming in a crisp and spotless dress, pearls adorning her shapely neck. I’m only reflecting that I was never told (or imagined) I’d spend hung-over Saturday mornings waiting for the spin cycle to end.

Relationships are a partnership, or the good ones are. I wash and hang, and my ai ren fluffs, folds and puts away. Since she can’t reach the clothesline without a step ladder, and I hate balling socks, it’s a good compromise.

Every day a new challenge presents itself, to be faced with diligence and vigor. After I’ve finished the laundry.

Balls, balls and more balls. More balls than you can shake a stick at. Hopefully, these students have some talent, unlike the Chinese Olympic Soccer team.

Captured: November 18, 2008, Shenzhen, China.

We all have to suffer for beauty, no? At least it’s not footbinding. Who knew that Halloween, even Halloween in China, could be so painful?

Captured: October 29, 2008.

You can take the boy out of the Chinese village…

Even in multi-million dollar (correction: Yuan) condos, old habits die hard in China. The fact these fish were outside an office begs a question or two:

1. Do people routinely take large fish to work with the purpose of drying them?
2. How is this written up on your performance evaluations. Motivated self-starter. Occasionally distracted by outside influences of a culinary nature. ?

I’ve spent an afternoon or two watching fish dry from my balcony. It’s not as bad as watching paint dry, but close. That begs further questions but I’ll leave them be.