Tag Archives: musing

rubble

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Gregory Bateson helped me learn to think about how human beings engage in (ultimately) self-destructive forms of competitive growth; Wendall Berry continues to inspire how I think about rural urbanization under capitalism.

Bateson provided a theory of schismogenesis or “vicious circle,” in which our behavior provokes a reaction in another, whose reaction, in turn, stimulates us to intensify our response. According to Bateson, schismogenesis comes in two flavors: symmetrical and complementary. Symmetrical relationships are those in which the two parties are equals, competitors, such as in sports. Complementary relationships feature an unequal balance, such as dominance-submission (parent-child), or exhibitionism-spectatorship (performer-audience). The point, of course, is that unless there is an agreed upon limit to the development of provocation and response, the relationship just keeps going until it hits a natural limit – collapse of the relationship because neither side can continue to meet and exceed the other’s call.

Berry teaches that one of the more deadly tendencies in capitalist urbanization in the United States is to turn all of us, eventually, into Native Americans. On Berry’s reading, the basic structure of American life was to eradicate the people and lifeways of Native Americans and then to replace those people and lifeways with settler capitalism. Importantly, this model of a settled community being replaced by the next, more intensive form of capitalist production both established the rhythm of American development and has become a powerful symbol of how generations of Americans have justified our destruction of people and lifeways in favor of more efficient and valuable forms of life. Importantly, efficient and valuable are defined in terms of profit. Thus, industrial, mass agriculture replace the settlers that had replaced the Native Americans; smart technologies and production are offered as the solution to problems of rustbelt withering.

How have Bateson and Berry shaped my understanding of Shenzhen?

Shenzhen all too clearly grows through an amazing range and diverse levels of complementary schismogenesis. Within Shenzhen, villages, neighborhoods, districts, and municipal ministries all engage in compete for competitive advantage; at the same time, Shenzhen as a city competes with all other cities in the PRD as well as internationally.  In this system, the function of urban planning is contradictory. On the one hand, the Municipal government needs to stimulate competition so that the city can respond to development in Guangdong, China, and the world. On the other hand, the Municipal government also needs to set limits – usually in the form of social goods, such as parks, schools, and hospitals – on how far development can encroach on the people’s quality of life.

Moreover, as Berry noted, the pattern of the first razing and replacement sets the rhythm and symbolic lexicon for understanding capitalist schismogenesis. The problem in Shenzhen is that eventually, we all become locals, our homes and lifeways replaced by more capitalist intensive forms of consumption (increasingly high maintenance housing) and production (higher value added production).

The result has been the ongoing production of rubble. Villages go. 80s housing goes. 90s residences are going. And as in the United States, postmodern nostalgia has become one of the forms that middle class resignation to this fate takes. The poor occupy the rubble until they are moved elsewhere. Images below.

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civilized departures

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The other day saw two friends off to Xiamen. I had been expecting crowds and unpleasant jostling, but instead found the bus station well organized and people departing without problem. Apparently, the Shenzhen version of the national “Civilized departure, peaceful spring movement (文明出行，平安春运)” campaign is going well.

To put Shenzhen’s estimated 10 million arrivals and departures in perspective, Guangdong province’s estimated spring movement is 141 million trips from Jan 19 to Feb 27. Halving that total means an estimated 75.5 million people will be moving in and around Guangdong.

Once again, I don’t know how to imagine this scale of movement. I don’t even know how one would go about counting heads. I think that numbers this large (75.5 million is 1/2 the population of Russia; Shenzhen’s measly 10 million halves to five million or more than the population of Houston) must be of world significance, but offhand I’m not sure exactly what that significance is.

All this to say that at many levels, the scale of the transformation I am witnessing from my perch in Shenzhen confounds me. I grew up thinking about population in terms of thousands; even NYC had less than 10 million when I was a young’un. I note increasing traffic jams, insufficient places for high school students, and the radical restructuring of Shenzhen Bay and associate it with increased stress, growing inequality, and environmental degradation. But. What does it mean if we do not choose to live otherwise?

Today, a friend and I spoke about what an intervention might look like. She said that according to Chinese understanding, the best time to intervene is when a mistake happens, branding the event into the person’s mind. “For example,” she offered, “the other day I was trying to get on the bus carrying my camera and supplies. I asked two teenager girls to let me through. I was trying to be polite because I didn’t want to bash them with my equipment. But one of them sniffed and said, ‘I’m not fat.’ Strange. She thought me asking her to move meant I thought she was fat. At the time I wanted to say something, but then thought, forget it. Let her learn from society.”

“So we intervene one by one?” I asked.

She sighed and explained, “If more people were well-intentioned, it would be a beautiful world.”

In fact, one by one is how we do it. And maybe the point isn’t to finish, but to keep trying.

more thoughts on education

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Having published on the zhongkao and with Hu Jintao’s visit to the US, my father and I have been discussing education. Here is an excerpt from the dialogue.

Dad: China is in the news as Hu Jintao bops around the states. Since China is our banker, he is being received with open arms. Send more money please Mr. Banker! The news has also been focusing on education, and naturally we (US) suck in comparison. We are now 17th in the world and falling. South East Asia is leading the pack and putting distance between themselves and the US. Due to failing state budgets, (we are in tough economic times), we will be laying off at least 25% of our teachers! Unlike the federal govt., states are required to balance their budgets. In Moore County this means 600 teachers. No school district in the state [North Carolina] is hiring. Who would have thunk?

MA: As for education, I’m not sure we can talk about ahead and behind when both systems reproduce conditions of inequality. Both systems need not only to produce underpaid workers, but also “acceptable” reasons to legitimate inequality. Clearly, the US system is getting really good at it; can’t do math go into service. China is also very good at it, when you keep in mind that they have five times our population; can’t pass the zhongkao go to a factory; can’t pass the gaokao be an underpaid clerk. Consequently, in China the cream that is rising is proportionately much, much smaller than in the US. So maybe what’s actually happening is that China is setting what Marx would have called “acceptable living wage” for the world. Importantly, the acceptable living wage in China is much lower than in the US, so our wages are shrinking because we need to lower our national acceptable living wage in order to compete globally. I think at Harvard business, the unsinkable call this “economic adjustment” and then go out for a Michelin starred meal.

Please join the conversation. How we educate is the expression of why we teach children; clearly, all of us everywhere need fresh inspiration.

as the city empties,

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i rest more easily, i feel less hassled by long bus trips, i notice more friendly gestures between strangers, i appreciate the happy jumping of toddlers overdressed in variations of pink bunnywear.

yes, i enjoy spring festival in shenzhen because the mass exodus of folks to homes elsewhere makes the city more livable.

i am not sure how we might establish an index for overpopulation because (a) we are not rats and (b) acceptable (indeed desirable) density does vary from culture to culture, nevertheless, yesterday, as i wandered through streets that were relatively empty, i felt more at ease. in other words, i experience shenzhen’s population viscerally and need quiet spaces.

and yet, the american solution of moving folks out of cities into suburbs didn’t work for me either – i grew up wanting new york and all that global energy.

and there’s the rub. i want today’s shenzhen infrastructure with a 1990s population and i don’t know if that is possible because so many people are needed to sustain this level of development. so new thought for 2011, is this what unsustainable development lives like? and if so, why does even crowded shenzhen appeal more then neidi? and how to unmake my desire for urban life?

public intellectual moi

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Last night had a pleasant if strange experience as a guest on a live talk show on Shenzhen’s traffic radio station. The station usually plays music and gives traffic updates. They also collaborate with the Municipality to organize discussions relevant to folks stuck in traffic. Indeed, as one of the other guests said, “If Beijing is 首堵 (都) [“the first in congestion” (puns “the capitol”)], then Shenzhen is deeply, deeply congested [深深堵].” Last night’s topic was “宜居城市 (Livable City),” but focused on how to ameliorate Shenzhen’s traffic jams as if the problem wasn’t our addiction to oil, but organizing highways. My favorite comment – Shenzhen needs to initiate “vehicle family planning (汽车计划生育)”.

I was invited to give a foreign perspective on Shenzhen’s worsening traffic problems. Uncanny moment this invitation. I was born in L.A., Mother of all Traffic Jams and once out of the Jersey ‘burbs, I have tried to live in cities where I don’t need to drive. My advise to Chinese urban planners? See what L.A. and Houston have done and do the opposite. If you’re looking for a positive urban role model – Amsterdam and Copenhagen have much to teach the world about healthy, sustainable traffic planning. But the US? We dismantled our nascent public transportation system, use 1/4 of the world’s energy resources, and won’t consider even gutted treaties to limit greenhouse gas emissions. No no and no.

The 1.5 hour event was held at the Central Book City, South Building Bleachers, where many of the City’s public culture events are held. The Bleachers are used for reading, resting, and hanging out. In fact, the Bleachers are one of the few spaces in the Central Book City Mall where people can sit and rest without purchasing a refreshment. The Book City Bleachers has become an interesting space in Shenzhen’s public sphere because it is (literally) situated between the City [government] and high culture consumption [Book City]. Consequently, events held there have a certain public intellectual cache, linking official approval to intellectual life and cultural performance. However, lest we forget the importance of [positive] audience reception, last night, the Bleachers are cordoned off and access regulated by strategically placed organizers. We performed for about thirty, red vested members of Shenzhen Volunteers and invited guests, including the parents of first or second graders who read a pledge to be more traffic conscious.

Inquiring minds want to know, “Who was there?” and “What does this tell us about how Shenzheners represent themselves to themselves?” In other words, “Who do Shenzheners think they are?”

Well.

Of the six guests, I was the only woman. I’m not sure if this means that my foreign status compensates for ovaries or if they couldn’t find a suitable female urban planner (although off hand, I can think of several women who would have added interesting commentary). Gender aside, guests included: a public intellectual, the head of an urban planning think tank, a member of the Livable City subcommittee of the SPPCC (Shenzhen People’s Political Consultative Committee), an editor from an online community of home owners, the radio station commentator, and a foreigner. Importantly, guests shared “representative” status. In other words, organized selected a guest because he (and moi) represented a constituency of Shenzheners. Moreover, this representative status meant that the guests could “speak for” (all) Shenzheners.”

Thus described, the right to speak in Shenzhen’s public sphere is dominated by intellectuals, officials, homeowners, and what white America thinks.

Now, it’s possible we knew this. It’s also possible some of us said something slightly beyond the script and inspired a new thought somewhere – because yes, there was a script. Before the talk, we were contacted and asked what we wanted to say about making the city livable. Our comments were then edited into a basic outline of how the discussion would go. Moreover, the moderators kept us more or less on task, talking about how to ameliorate traffic jams (better urban planning and more driving civility). And maybe it’s possible that modeling public discussion in this way (town meetings with Chinese characteristics) will prompt the creation of alternative and equally influential public spaces. For example, yesterday afternoon, The Southern Daily held it’s first Neighborhood Heroes Finals (家园英雄) in Meilin. Clearly, a source of other perspectives on traffic jams.

But I think it’s also possible that we’re missing something more fundamental – foundational, if you will: how we organize our events may be why problems deepen, our good intentions notwithstanding.

why text messages?

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As the Christmas decorations have been quickly swept away, Shenzhen has entered Chinese New Year mode. Rabbits are popping up everywhere and every type of text message from year in review to greetings are already circulating. On this blog, I have translated text messages because they provide insight into what my Chinese friends feel is worthwhile (funny, insightful, urgent) commentary on society. Indeed, text message culture (短信文化) has been an important factor in many recent social movements (2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009). Indeed, many speculated that the 2010 crackdown on text-porn was a not-so-subtle attempt to tighten censorship controls.

However, simply describing the effects of texting in Chinese cities overlooks an important question: why is texting so popular? Walk down a Shenzhen street and look into hair salons and dress shops, restaurants and convenience stores, any beautician, salesgirl, waiter, and clerk who is not serving a customer is reading or sending a text. On buses and the subway, in cars and yes, in classrooms and business meetings, movie theaters and restrooms, people are texting. Every Chinese New Year the country sets another world record for texts sent for a holiday.

I don’t understand the allure of texting. In part it’s generational; in high school, our thing were three-hour telephone calls. I still enjoy telephone conversations and really enjoy watching the antics of my nieces and nephews when we skype. In part, it’s skill; I do talk faster then I type in English or Chinese. But that’s not all of it. Chinese friends my age have readily adopted texting and regularly send me all sorts of messages. Indeed, setting up a date may involve a series of texts, rather than a phone call. And although part of the allure may be cost – it’s cheap cheap cheap to text – price doesn’t explain why many Chinese not only text, but also purchase services that allow them to text internationally. In other words, folks in Shenzhen are choosing to text more frequently and regularly than I would; indeed, they text in situations that I would either phone, or, frankly not bother. Indeed, in situations where I find texting intrusive, my friends cheerfully read and respond to a text.

And so here’s some cross-cultural speculation du jour: texting has enabled Chinese people to intensify a cultural preference to be in contact with people they care about and it is that moment of contact that is the true message. This desire to be together explains why it is socially necessary to apologize for not seeing a text message and responding immediately. Moreover, I suspect that text messages can grow into social movements precisely because they carry this underlying desire to be [stand] together. In this sense, text messages function as a constant assurance that a relationship is important. Chinese texters confirm this highly desired and desirable sense of solidarity by responding properly to a message. Sometimes that response is texting a smile, sometimes it is going to the restaurant, sometimes it is taking to the street to protest.

As with all speculation about how technology makes, unmakes, and restructures social relationships, the next question is how much quality time is necessary to keep the emotive message of texts resonant. What happens when relationships dissolve into nothing more than text messages? And how much text message-span really is enough to prompt some kind of counter apps? In the meantime, I’m reviewing lists of possible New Year’s messages to choose my contribution to the deluge.

新春佳节不送礼，发条短信祝福你，健康快乐常伴你，好运和你不分离，财神已经跟随你，财源滚滚进袋里，好处全都送给你！(I’m not sending a gift for Spring Festival, I’m sending a text to bless you. May you be healthy and happy. May luck stay with you. May the God of Wealth already accompany you and wealth roll into your pockets. May all good things be given to you!)

What’s love got to do with it? Speculations about what it means to say 我爱你 (in Shenzhen)

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I am an American woman married to a Chinese man. I have lived in Shenzhen for many, many years. Consequently, I have heard many, many stories about cross-cultural romance – some successful, some not, others vaguely disturbing.

The other day, a good friend – Euro-American man because these labels mark the site of negotiation – told me that Chinese women say, “I love you,” way too soon. Creepy soon. So, I asked another good friend, Chinese woman, why it might be that my friend would go out on one or two dates with a woman and she was already willing to confess her love. My Chinese woman friend countered with her own question, “I thought that foreigners [meaning Westerners] were open about their feelings. Isn’t that true?” I then asked a Canadian born Hong Kong women what she thought it meant to say 爱 and she replied that she usually meant something leaning towards appreciation and gratitude.

Given that I like, respect, and trust these three people, I started thinking that the romantic cultural gap was even further than I had once thought (and yes, pangs of what was I actually doing when I fell in love ringing in my ears). I knew my Chinese friends often had different understandings of their place in a family because they have different understandings of what a family is. I knew that my Chinese women friends were more likely to start dating with an eye to marriage than my Western women friends.

And yet. I hadn’t stopped to think about what it might mean to say, “I love you,” in Shenzhen because that feeling has been so fundamental to how I have defined myself. Nor am I alone because one of the define features of modernity in the West has been the way that individual passion for god or a person or an ideal defines a fully human life. Consequently, I have assumed that love was not only a universal feeling, but universally important without stopping to consider that (1) it may not be universal even in the West or that (2) even if it is universal, forms of expression are certainly not.

After these conversations, I began listening to the use of 爱 in conversations and media broadcasts. I now think that 爱 means something closer to “appreciate” or “enjoy” or “desire” or “am grateful for”. More interestingly, I think 爱 allows Shenzhen Mandarin speakers to establish a site of individuality or personality. Who and what they love allows them to have something that is personal. Importantly, I also think 爱 is a much less socially important emotion (possibly because of its individualizing function) than are other sentiments, such as loyalty and trust and long-term commitment.

All this to say, I think that Shenzhen Mandarin speakers say I love you in order to create an individualized self. This self is recognized as being distinct from and often in opposition to the more important social and/or collective self. Anecdotal evidence follows.

(1) Accomplished children generally thank (in order) – their parents, teachers, classmates, and audience for supporting them to succeed, after which they add the line, “I love you all.” （我想感谢爸爸妈妈，感谢我的老师，感谢我的同学，感谢观众朋友；我都爱你们!) Given that that gratitude is hierarchically ranked and explicitly differentiated while爱 is general, this use of 爱 seems to signal that all the support excites or makes the speaker happy.

(2) One of the main ice-breaker conversations that Shenzheners enjoy is about hobbies or 爱好 – literally love-like (好 is a fourth tone noun in this phrase).

(3) 爱 is used to describe foods and activities that people enjoy – he loves to eat sweets (他很爱吃甜品); she loves to play tennis (她很爱打网球). Interestingly, this use of爱 seems in contrast to fear or 怕 as in the expression – he’s afraid to eat spicy food (他很怕吃辣的); she’s afraid to get sun tanned (她很怕晒太阳). In this context, it’s easy to see that this is not fear of boogeymen fear, but rather fear as dislike or something that challenges a sense of self.

(4) Once when my husband and I were having difficulties, I complained to a friend and told her how I intended to handle the situation. My friend responded, “It’s great that you dare to love and dare to hate (你敢爱敢恨多好).” In retrospect this use of 敢 seems to indicate the personal and marginalized aspect of爱.

(5) Likewise, I have been repeatedly told that Chinese women do not “become obsessed with passion (痴情),” but are loyal (忠) and faithful (贤).

(6) Indeed, a true friend is someone who is revealed over a long time (日久见人心), the person who is still by your side when those who love to eat and carouse with you (酒肉朋友) have gone their merry way.

To return to the question of what’s love got to do with it, clearly not as much as one such as I – western, feminist, using love to establish a life – would like to think. Hence, the “creepiness” of Chinese women who declare their “love” after several dates, when in fact all they might be saying is “I like you” and “Given the fact that I’m dating, it means I’m looking for husband material and I think you’ll due.” That said, once married, “I will be faithful and due my duty to you, my parents, your parents, my friends and yours – in short, I’ll live a socially responsible, respectable, and meaningful life.”

Now it may be that part of reform and opening China will be the increasing importance of 爱 in defining, constituting, and giving meaning to individual lives. But maybe not. And I don’t think matters because there are so many, many ways to be fully human and I’m learning to love – rather than fear – the diversity.

ungodly creations

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i have been thinking about the phrase “and god created the world in his own image.” i’ve also been wondering about how worlds get made and unmade in everyday life. a weekend of arts festivals prompted this speculation, which is necessarily permeated by the ongoing re- de- construction of shenzhen.

god’s gender provides a useful point of departure for thinking about what it means to create in one’s own image because, of course, there are (at least) two possible interpretations of “image”. image could refer simply to god’s face, snowy white beard and amazingly grecian and white toga. obvious and understandable target of feminist outrage. more interestingly and less exclusionary, image could also mean whatever happens to be going on in god’s head, which opens us to discussions that veer into dream interpretation. if we are every part of our dream, by analogy, god would be every part of the world as it was in the beginning, is now and every shall be…, begging the question: which part of god am i? and oh my god. you, too?

the play between image as what is visible and image as what we think was central to the subtlemob performance piece, as if it were the last time, which i saw saturday evening as part of the microwave new media arts festival.

the title of the piece itself, as if it were the last time is in the subjunctive, the tense where we suspend our disbelief and live the story as truth. the piece was created through the interaction of audience members with each other, a small commercial area of tsuen wan, and the other people in the area. the audience was divided into two groups, “lost” and “found”. both groups were given an mp3 with a mix of music, story, and instructions. throughout the 30-minute piece, the members of the two groups variously performed, watched each other, listened to the music and story creating a cinematic experience in the space.

last time played with both senses of image. on the one hand, none of the performers looked like an actor. on the other hand, in order for the piece to work, audience members needed enough familiarity with audiovisual conventions in order to appreciate what was happening. indeed, one of the more moving effects of this process was how the performance opened me more fully to those around me as if we were part of the same story and therefore the same world.

this spirit of creative exploration continued on sunday, when i enjoyed an afternoon with friends at the shenzhen bay fringe, including fun mime by the trip of mime, a group from hong kong and then participated in the fifth shenzhen pecha kucha night, showing twenty images of the transformation of houhai since 2002. uncanny moment that. the slides were projected onto a screen in the middle of a decorative pond where once was coastal water now a coastal mall. indeed, it was the sense of displacement that foregrounded for me the slippage between images as what appears and images in the mind’s eye. houhai has been razed and reconstructed so many times that there is no there on which to hang a history. the place crumbles away only to re-emerge as another version of modernity from someone else’s sketchbook.

now, i don’t know if our creative conflation of what is and what the mind’s eye sees makes us divine. it would be nice to think so, but my experience in last time has me thinking otherwise. the success of the experience hinged on collaboration, more on the idea that we are all part of god’s unfolding, so to speak and less on the imposition of individual images onto that world. more explicitly, the history of reclaiming houhai teaches that when we impose one image onto the diversity of life, we end up with less life and more pollution, not to mention fewer refuges for spoonbills to nest and mangroves to flourish.

and there’s the ethical rub. it is so difficult to understand myself not as a source of world transformation, but rather as an expression of the world itself and the role i am assigned.

wedding high…

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yesterday evening i enjoyed myself at a chinese wedding, really enjoyed myself in an almost american let’s dance and party at the reception kind of way. why is this worth noting?

other shenzhen weddings that i have attended have been more formal, staging important relationships through explicit ritual. for example, the last wedding i attended included two sets of tables (bride and groom’s sides) for parents and elders, brothers and sisters and their families, including in-laws, bosses and colleagues, business associates, friends of parents and elders, friends of bride and groom. in short, a crystallization of the relationships – formal and emotional – that had made up the lives of the bride and groom. toasting (who went to which table to drink with whom) allowed guests to formally acknowledge these relationships even as they deepened the affection both for the couple and between guests. importantly, monetary gifts to the bride and groom were correspondingly classified with the closer and higher ranking guests giving more and the more distant and lower-ranking giving less.

(so yes, i always ask a knowledgeable friend how much i should put in a red envelop before i go to wedding. and yes, i am as frequently told, “put in what you feel.” to which i reply, “i don’t know what i’m supposed to feel.” my ignorance about the monetary expression of my feeling occurs because giving either too much or not enough means i have misinterpretted the nature of my relationship with either the bride or groom and thus can lead to awkwardness, misunderstanding, and even hurt feelings. sigh.)

slight detour through my anxieties aside, the point is that yesterday’s wedding had a much stronger emphasis on being happy than on making social relationships explicit. yes, parents and grandparents came and yes, bosses and colleagues showed, but the majority of the guests were friends of the bride and groom, who as generation 80 kids were only children (thus no siblings and all those relationships), as under-30 years of age not very well established socially (thus not many business associates), and also most had grown up in Shenzhen with party habits. moreover, the bride is young, almost generation 80 young and so many of her friends did come to party.

perhaps more importantly to the general high high high of the evening, the bride and groom were theatre people. this meant that when a guest stood up to congratulate the couple, it was a performance and not the usual blah blah of more formal weddings. there were solo songs, chair dances, a cross-talk routine, a magic show, humorous impromptu speeches, and videos that spoofed the happy couple in a good natured way. indeed, even throwing the bouquet became a chance for telling jokes and performing; the group was on in the most satisfying way.

wonderful.

thoughts on the culture of commerce

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information about the shenzhen bay fringe festival is now online. the dates are december 4-12, 2010. there will be events everyday at the nanshan culture center, which is in fact the string of malls that run from baoli in the east through coastal city over houhai road to nanshan book city. and yes, the conflation of “culture” with “commerce” is both strategic and unfortunate. strategic because commerce is the way shenzhen artists step around politically sensitive questions. unfortunate because most shenzhen residents do not see interesting frissions between commerce and culture.

the hopeful aspect of commerce as culture is that what starts out as a strategy to introduce shenzhen residents to a wider variety of cultural forms may pry open an alternative space within the relentless commercialism of the area. the more distressing aspect, of course, is that the commercialism is relentless and, for many, an unquestioned good precisely because of its alliance with culture, especially, education. after all, commercialized shenzhen art remains primarily a means of earning additional gaokao points, even when a student actually enjoys music or painting or the ballet. for adults, art is a hobby.

the shenzhen conflation of commerce and culture is not unlike the american confusion of freedom to purchase with human emancipation. we buy sniper dolls for our daughters and do not question the principles organizing our toy stores (why dolls? why plastic bullets? why do we differentiate between children based on what their parents can and cannot afford?) and yes, this confusion annoys me; on bad days, i end up snapping at mothers who have done nothing more than ask if their daughters can earn alot of money if they go to the right colleges. (i haven’t recently taken out my frustration on americans because i left the country. next trip home i’m sure i’ll be snapping with the best of the turtles. sigh.)

come anyway. be the fissure that cracks open our hearts.