Epiphany: Sight, Taste, Sound

I've had moments of clarity, moments of perfection, where my senses perceived the rightness of something and were overwhelmed by sheer beauty and balance of the thing itself that I was momentarily lost--and yet, somehow, more myself than other. You can call it a Zen experience, I suppose, but that doesn't quite cover it.

The first was a visual experience. I was at a friend's house for a bachelorette party: about 16 years ago something kept drawing me out of the room where we were blowing up naughty balloons into a quiet study. I was directed, as it were, while something in my chest went boing-boing-boing. On the wall, a simple print by Dali, a musician blowing a horn, sweet notes dangling mid-air. It was perfect: the notes seemed to swim and dance (as real as anything you'd see on TV, as I thought) and I was stunned. My friend mentioned casually they had bought it at auction and it was purported to be "real"---ie, a print made by Dali himself and not of the goon printing companies that mass produced his work.

The second experience was one of taste: ten years ago I was mid-relationship (or mid-break up) with an Old Friend Turned New Flame and it wasn't going well. I left him in the US and flew home to China to start a new job. My daughter was appearing in a TV show that week and I camped out at the hotel with her at night and went to the new job during the day. One morning at breakfast I was served a dish of green beans cooked Chinese style with soy sauce and strips of fatty bacon. The dish was perfectly cooked, perfectly seasoned: my mouth recognized immediately that I was in the presence of something without fault. Each bite was a revelation of perfect balance, and a wave of misery washed over me. This dish was without flaw, the real deal, simple but right, and my relationship--tortured, made-over, largely a thing of conversation and long-distance longing, was a sham. It was shite: it was false. This dish was what it should be, and that relationship could never hope to be anything but tawdry and shopworn at best. I knew then that it was over, and the misery was compounded by the thought that I had lost my friend in the process: a foodie like me, I knew I couldn't share the green beans, that moment of stillness and perfection, with him. He wouldn't want to hear it, all he wanted to hear was my declaration that he was nothing to me when indeed he was far too much...I have not eaten green beans since: even to look at them brings that wave of misery and sadness.

The third experience was auditory, and not as strong as the first two. In fact, I hesitate to put it into this category, except that it was a moment of delight if not perhaps perfection. Several weeks ago I went to a concert at the Forbidden City Concert Hall for a concert by the International Chorus Festival (or is it the International Festival Choir? I forget.) All I can say is this: I expected something very good, but I was blown away by the sweetness and perfection of the first piece. I was sitting next to a drunk who had been spitting over the edge of the balcony and shouting rude things about the conductor's sexuality, and even that asshole shut up. The first piece passed in what seemed like seconds. I detected no flaws (and wouldn't be able to anyway, except for the most obvious). But it's the first 30 or so bars that I remember clearly--so balanced, so in tune, so sweet. It was a lovely moment. 

Ironically, I bumped into the conductor last week at Jenny Lou's. I was wearing scruffy clothes and had wet hair and no make-up: he was shopping with his buttoned-down "don't approach me" look. (Ah, that look, appropriated by many a celebrity: for all his faults, The Rose does not have it.) I was tempted to walk up and say, "Nick, that concert was tremendous," but I hesitated. For one thing, turning down an aisle, I literally bumped into the man, and the look of shock and horror on his face was enough to keep me silent. We are acquainted, I sang under him for two years some time ago, and we were neighbors in the same compound--having spoken to one another using first names for quite some time, you'd think I felt comfortable giving this man honest praise. I was: but I was also aware that he did not want to hear anything from me (lipstick or no.) How sad is it when an artist doesn't want praise from anyone they consider unworthy. Worse, the more I attempted to avoid him in the shop, the more often I ran into him. I finally headed for the check out line and guess who was in front of me...I put my stuff on the check stand, stone-faced, and looked away.

So there they are: perfect visual, perfect taste (and smell, really, which is the largest part of taste) and perfect sound experience. If I'm lucky enough I suppose the next will be a perfect sense of touch:  silk? Cashmere? The touch of my godson's apple-like cheek? Have I ever created anything that was perfect, or gave anyone the sensation of perfection? Has anyone ever breathed in me and found something that resonated in their own soul? Has anyone else felt this--they must have, we must all have that experience, that Zen of recognizing rightness and feeling it call to your spirit.

Rock of Love

China is a place full of contradictions: for example, Facebook is blocked, but you can watch free porn on R#$ Tube (name slightly scrambled so no one googling it will be directed here.) In fact, if you are, like me, a parent concerned with exactly what sort of crap your child can expose herself to through the internet, you may well be horrified to learn that you can access ALL of R#$ Tube through the local internet even though your computer is turned on to "safe search." Even in China.

Not being that familiar with porn in this progressive age, I decided to look at the content of "amateur" porn, figuring it would be badly-shot home camera images of faintly unattractive people humping on sad-looking bedspreads. Oh, sadly, that was right to a tiny percentage, but what I found was far, far worse.

First of all, the sort of porn on R^& Tube is often violent and very abusive. The majority of the titles of the flicks were of the "Stupid Whore Gets Damaged Severely in Highly Sensitive Area" genre, eg, Bitch Gets Wrecked in Three Holes. That's a mild example: most followed the pattern of  (Bad name for Women or for Women's Genitalia) Gets (Receives the Abusive Action of Some Thing or Some Other Person) in  (Name of Body Part). Categories include Asian, Big Titted, Lesbian, Gay, MILF, Granny, Japanese (isn't that a subgenre of Asian?) Hentai (ugh, Japanese animated) and Barely 18 and Wrecked. I kid you not. Note: in not one of the categories save Gay were the MEN referred to--and even then it had the honorific of "Gay" as opposed to, say, "Fudge Packing Faggots."

Second, production values varied. Some of the German porn, for example, was indeed the grainy hand-held camera with bad lighting and might I add extremely unattractive lumpy-looking people, usually two chubby men and a woman who looked less than happy to be there. Some of the videos on offer featured very lovely people, beautifully made up and with exquisite lighting and camera work. Most were fairly standard, an ok set, ok lighting.  As for the people--the American porn tended to use male actors who were clearly recruits off a freshly docked Naval ship ready to earn some cash while on shore leave (and definitely not of the officer class.) Most had tattoos, were pierced, and had enormous members made preternaturally stiff with the use of pharmaceutical  enhancements--trust me, no lover that bad lasts that long (although it may seem like it at the time.) As for the women---the lower the quality of the video overall, the less attractive the woman. As the Rose put it, "The longer the nails, the bigger the skank." Fake nails of the talon variety seemed to be the lower-middle class version of "classy" and I watched in horror as skanks sank their  Lee Press-On Nails into one another's most tender bits. Ouch. Plus--and this is the former nurse in me--the HYGIENE, people! Many of the women were in real pain, which is no turn on. In fact, most of the "grunts of pleasure" I recognized as signs of extreme discomfort and real anguish, particularly in the younger women. The louder they yelled, the more bruises on their bodies, an indication perhaps of what was really going on behind the scenes. I will comment on couple of girl-on-girl sequences which featured tasteful French manicures and overall excellent hygiene, but they were few and far between.

I won't comment on the "sex slave" stuff--I was horrified beyond belief to see one of the sweetest-looking young girls I have ever seen dressed in chain performing miserably on her "boyfriend" in what was clearly their house, one that was painfully clean and tidy, furnished with the most basic of cheap goods. What was she running from, I thought, that made THIS a viable alternative? Many of the "slave" scenarios were carefully scripted and clearly part of a larger pay-per-view but a few seemed to be homemade by stupid jerks who had no idea of normalcy.

As for the plots---people, I have said it time and time again. For women, Sperm is The Enemy. Bukkake is a male fantasy. Shooting your wad on your partner is yucky and not sexy. Women do NOT like to use it as face cream. I have never sat by a pool playing with three dildos and wishing I had a REAL man. I have never had a friend over and confessed that I've never had a Lesbian Love Fest and could she help me out. As for the anal stuff--I can't believe how standard this seems to be. In fact, the money guru I read on MSN once wrote casually about how she had a boyfriend who wanted to try it and "so she added anal to her repertoire." Oh God--talk about your dirty money. I cannot read her financial advice now without thinking, "Yeah, but you take it up the a##." This is hardly empowering all the women struggling to get ahead in business now, is it?

Maybe truth is the ultimate weapon to empower ourselves. Maybe these people who are setting up their home cameras and recording themselves are just trying to capture a moment for posterity. Well, let them. Screw it. I don't have to watch. As for the professional film makers, they're out to made a buck. So what' s the harm?

Well, as a woman, there was little there I found uplifting, gratifying, or educational. I felt dirty, disliking to see my gender as a whole reduced to--well, a hole. (Or even three.) Second, the basic biological facts were ignored--women do not continue to have orgasms once the stimulus is taken away. You stop, they stop: they don't continue  to writhe shouting "MMMMM, yeah, baby" for half a minute while being flipped into but yet another silly but camera-friendly position. Third, I have never fantasized about ANY of the content I found there. I've never, ever used a dildo, much less pulled it out and licked one. A gay friend of mine confided that what turned her off about lesbian porn the most was the emphasis placed on two women licking a dildo at the same time. "As if!" she huffed, and couldn't understand why I laughed in agreement.

The real harm in pornography, I think is two fold: first of all, a lot of teenagers or sexually inexperienced people access porn for information, and they're shown an unrealistic and graphic depiction of something far more akin to rape than lovemaking. It's not exactly conveying the mystery and beauty of intercourse as communication, as love, or even as a biological function. It's violent image of women as holes, whores, hos, and bitches is as unacceptable to me as referring to our current political leader as a --well, you know, the N word.  Second, it's far too easy to access, and yet  impossible to control. Part of the advertising on this particular site has some of the most disturbing visuals I have ever seen, pornographic images of cartoon characters (Family Guy, Shrek, the Flintstones) actively engaged in intercourse complete with monster-sized genitalia. One of the first things I learned in Psych is that a child being groomed by a pedophile is often shown this type of material in an effort to convince the child that this is normal--if Shrek does it, so can s/he. Here's my thought: by looking at the site which advertises this link, do I somehow encourage the site to keep this link up? (Under no circumstances would I ever click on it.)

However, did I learn anything? Yes; there are a few "pornographic" videos which I found interesting and educational and not offensive. They may have been explicit in content but they focused on communication, love, trust, technique. I'm not particularly offended by anyone's genitalia on the screen but I prefer not to have terms thrown around like the C-word unless I'm using it to describe my sister-in-law. A video of a man performing a Tantric Yoni Massage with Oil on his partner, while extremely explicit, does not offend me. God knows I wish some of the men I've known had bothered to model themselves on this, rather than the "Give it to me you stupid bitch" school of love. I adore my godson and I hope he never has to turn to the internet for information or stimulation but given the prevalence of the Net in our lives, if he DOES look there, I hope he finds something natural, kind, and loving: yoni massage, rather than GlassA#$ dot com.

Beijing Calzone

Do yourself a favor: run down to  Carrefour or Wu Mei or whatever big-ass store is in your area, and get one of their slow-cookers, or what Yanks call "Crock Pots." Get the local version--about 200 kuai--that features a terra-cotta bowl and cover that can be lifted out for washing.

You now have a clay oven for baking cake, bread, tandoori chicken, and killer calzone.

If you turn that little thing up to the maximum temperature and let it heat for an hour, you produce a clay oven of about 450 degrees F, perfect for calzone. Preheated, a slow cooker can cook a calzone in about 15 minutes. If you start out cold, it's going to take at least an hour.

Calzone is dead easy to make: if you don't feel like messing around with making a simple yeast dough, you can sometimes buy pre-made pate brise at Carrefour or Jenny Lou's. Fill with whatever you like--we like chopped fresh tomatoes, feta cheese, and olives, but will settle for pizza sauce (tomato paste, herbs, and a bit of wine vinegar) and fresh mozarella, plus whatever cooked veggies we have on hand. Pie dough will do in a pinch. Throw on a piece of baking parchment if you like, or rub a bit of olive oil on it and place in the Crock Pot. Cover, and do not peek, for at least 12 minutes, or until it smells delicious and the scent of baking bread fills your home. Remove cautiously. I once dropped a finished calzone on the floor and we ate it anyway, scooping up the top and the filling with spoons. Sadly, with two doggies in the house, I doubt I'd have time to squat down before they pounced on it and polished it off.

If you don't feel like doing Calzone, throw some herbs and olive oil into the Crock Pot. throw on one of those pizza bases (thick, white, flabby) available at Jenny Lou's, toss on the toppings, then close the lid. Open when it smells delicious. The oil will brown the bottom of the crust and make the whole thing taste ten times better than if you simple nuked it until the cheese melted. If you can't wait for the Crock Pot to heat up then throw your pizza base into a skillet with good olive oil and some herbs and fry crispy-golden on both sides--slide onto a microwaveable plate, put your toppings on, and nuke until the cheese bubbles. It takes the curse off, but it's just not quite as tasty as the Calzone.

I actually had curry for dinner tonight but I am dreaming of Calzone. My other ayi--not the one who looks like Oprah--broke the lid to my Crock Pot and other lids just aren't quite the same. I may break down and buy a whole new Crock Pot but my heart objects (as does my wallet.) I'm also messing around with a good recipe for Poutine, one with local ingredients, but using mozzarella instead of curds just isn't quite the same. Haloumi? And what about the gravy? Plus, how many of you wanna mess around with home-make French fries? Perhaps my recipe will begin with, "Get one big bag of fries at McDonalds..."

One-bowl Microwave Cake: Totally Do-able in Beijing

Well, here is it, one of the famous cake recipes. This is not THE four-ingredient cake I've been talking about--I'm still messing about with the proportions--but this is simple enough, and no, you don't need anything special like an egg beater, or Pam cooking spray, or much of anything to make this simple and satisfying cake. It's moist, it's tasty, it tends to be solid but not dry and horrible. I don't care much for frosting on cakes, so I like to make this up in any of the flavors listed below, and eat it hot out of the oven, or toast slices for tea.

  Recipe: Take that microwave rice cooker that came with your microwave and use the bowl. If you don't have one, any good-sized microwaveable plastic bowl will do. Melt 1/2 cup butter in the microwave under low power.  After it has melted, let it cool FOR AT LEAST THREE MINUTES before dumping in other ingredients. If you don't wait for it to cook, your cake will be heavy and dry. Ugh. When it's fairly cool, slosh it around the inside of the bowl. Voila, you have just eliminated the need to grease and flour a pan. Stir in one cup of sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla (or brandy, or Kirsch, or what have you) and beat for a minute or two by hand. Stir in two raw eggs (white and yolks) and mix well. Now add 1/2 cup milk, mixing in very well. Add about 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 cups flour, and 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder. Mix gently. If you want to add flaked coconut, or chocolate chips, or nuts, stir them in very gently. Don't over mix. Once you stop sampling the batter, shove into the microwave, reset the power for "high" and nuke for five minutes. The top will be not-quite-done in one or two small places (about the size of a nickel) if you're using the usual cheap Chinese microwave. That's ok. It finishes cooking for a few minutes after coming out of the microwave, and if there are any gummy spots on the top, you can wipe them off with a knife. Try to let it cool a bit before tucking in. I can mix this up in five minutes flat--including the mandatory three-minute cooling period--and when the scent of the cooking cake wafts through the house, the dogs come running and wait expectantly by the kitchen floor, desperate for their share.

You can add so many things to this to change the flavor: for example, use the locally produced Red Sugar with Ginger (brown sugar with ginger to us) to make a simple Gingerbread (I'd add some cinnamon and cloves, too, and maybe some of those Cointreau-soaked raisins I keep in the fridge, but that's just me.)

Melt two squares of chocolate with the butter for a lovely chocolate cake, or replace three tablespoons of the flour with cocoa. You can make this a Coca-Cola cake by using the cocoa as directed above and also replacing the milk with an equal amount (1/2 cup) of Coke. I'm not fond of Coca-Cola Cake, which usually has marshmallows strewn across the top before baking, but I have a friend who likes it and who so far hasn't noticed that I spike the batter with a bit of cold coffee and Kahlua to give it a bit of oomph. Yesterday's cake (I make only one a month, thank you) featured genuine Angel Flake coconut from US. It was lovely, moist, dense, flavorful, and not a bit stale or "off" 36 hours after it was made. It  makes a great little cake for someone's birthday and if you keep it in the microwaveable bowl, it's easy to transport too.

If you're one of those people that can only "make" canned frosting, quit reading now. Send me your recipes, and let me see if I can come up with a Beijing solution.

Funny Sign

I was walking past a classroom where a Canadian teacher was giving her students a midterm and almost passed out when I saw this instruction written on the black board in big clear letters:

Put nothing on desk

(penis okay)

Um, did she mean, "A pen is okay"?

I asked in passing if there was a bias against female genitalia in general or if ANY penis would do and she glanced at me, at the sign, and then said, "Huh?" After a moment or two she laughed, and added a bit more space between the "pen" and "is." 

I probably wouldn't have corrected it, but she's a far nicer women than I am.

New Man In My Life

Sadly, it's a dog. It's a delightful little Pekinese, a breed I heartily disliked prior to owning one. The problem with being an expat--one of many problems--is the issue of dog ownership. Some countries have quarantine periods of up to six months for pets, such as dogs, which is just too long for the pooch from my point of view. (Speaking emotionally--not in terms of epidemiology, of course.) The Little Emperor's owners had to repatriate, The Little Emperor needed a home, my  doggie  Princess needed a companion, and that was that.

He is a chubby happy little soul, fiercely protective, appreciative of my cooking, and demanding little but some cuddling and three good walks a day. He is content to sleep under the bed, at the foot of the bed, or doing a stretch of time when my apartment building was being burgled A LOT, sleeping literally on the doorstep. Sure, he snores, and he has attacks of flatulence which, though comparatively mild, are still damned unpleasant: sure, he barks SO LOUDLY at the sound of approaching footsteps that he once caused my drunken neighbor to wet his pants in fear (shouldn't have been fumbling at the wrong door, Idiot) and sure, he likes my ayi (the one that looks like Oprah) far more than he likes me, but he's here, he's mine, and I can rest my feet on him when I sit on the sofa and he'll still pretend to like it.

He'll never "forget" my birthday and then send me a text message ten days later asking for favors of the darkest sexual nature: those who do so--and you know who you are--don't deserve to be called "dogs." I have so many other names for you,  none of them having to do with canines.

Cajun Meatloaf Deux

Basically, folks, take your favorite frickin' meat loaf recipe, but instead of the usual spices or whatever (my mother adds nothing, claiming she doesn't like to "spoil the taste of good meat") add a whapping dollop of  Cajun seasoning (recipe to follow) and top with barbecue sauce, ketchup, or brown sugar and cider vinegar. A good splash of Tabasco in the 'loaf and on top also help. If you're microwaving it, add extra liquid until it's mildly soupy, so that it doesn't dry out.

This is based on Robert St. John's recipe for Creole seasoning, found in his delightful tome Deep South Parties, but I have adapted it slightly by taking out the paprika, which for some reason doesn't enjoy the microwave process very much, as well as the Lawry's seasoned salt, which is hell to find over here. Perhaps the paprika I find here is at fault: it's fine dusted over the tops of eggs, or in goulash, but not so good in this dish. I also have changed the proportions slightly on Chef St. John's recipe.  If you love me, send me his OTHER delightful tome, Deep South Staples, as I need to know how to survive in a southern kitchen over here.

My Cajun Seasoning: 1/3 cup garlic salt, 2 T onion powder, 1 T  each cayenne pepper,  black pepper, AND white pepper, and 1 tsp each dry mustard, oregano, and thyme (dried, not fresh.)  I always add a few shots of Tabasco when I use this seasoning.

Since my daughter is violently allergic to garlic, I have a garlic-free version I use for her, which replaces the garlic salt with sea salt.

Also delightful: top the meatloaf with a bit of brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, and bacon. Yum Yum. Especially good if you can manage to bake it in an oven, as opposed to largely steaming it in a microwave.