My story begins at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was staring at a chinese style teapots behind glass thinking about current hermits in China on their quest for enlightenment and drinking tea. For those who do not know I managed to be lucky enough to get into two programs in China for this summer. First, Woodenfish, a Buddhist monastic program that will last 15 days, and second, a job teaching at an international school running a summer camp for two weeks. As part of getting credit for these opportunities my advisor assigned me readings on Chinese Buddhism. He also suggested a documentary called Amongst White Clouds, which was very good, with excellent hermit buddhists, and a rather annoying melodramatic narrator/main character.
The movie was actually inspired by a book that I am also reading called Road to Heaven, Encounters with Chinese Hermits. It's a fascinating book following Bill Porter in the 80's through rural China on a quest to find buddhist hermits. Amongst White Clouds occurred in 2005 and was the same exact quest. As I read this book on the bus ride down I looked out the window. The bus was passing through the town of Prattsville, which last August was under five feet of water. The hight of the water was still evident on most of the house as they were missing shingles, siding, and usually much more. There was no grass at all, only raw earth and large rocks, most of the houses were boarded up, red x's from the military where still painted across the front door of every home. It was the apocalypse -in a way, only a few towns south of Oneonta where I reside.
Halfway to New York City a very strange man sat next to me on the bus. Our conversation happened like this:
Strange man, staring at the floor definitely not talking to me or anybody else:
"Nobody knows who I am, but that's okay, I don't them to know. They don't know my past. If anybody wants to know how old I am I'll tell them I'm 28." (He looked roughly anywhere between 28-35.)
"I will not hurt others, I will not hurt others, I will not hurt others, I do not want to hurt others, I do not want to hurt myself, others do not want to hurt me."
I am pretending to read my book about chinese monks, and remember I cannot move as he has cornered me next to the window. He looks up at me, then at my book.
"Chinese monks, I like it. By the way, I'm not crazy or anything, I just narrate my life." He then continues to go back to his rants.
"I am going to the beach. I am going to the beach with the rest of the monks. I am going to build sandcastles all day."
He proceeded for about an hour and a half to pick out clouds he liked that were a message from a secret female deity that only he knew of.
"She makes everything, she takes so much time, thousands of hours, to make all these faces. WOW! There's an eye, there's another, the nose.... WHOA, that one looks like a puppy."
"Oh blue pyramids! Perfectly balanced they fly! HAHA! They have cloud machines, to hide them, but only she can see them."
"So many communication towers (I assume he is referring to telephone poles,) she communicates so much but nobody notices, but I do."
When I finally arrived at Port Authority, Zoë was waiting for me, and happened to also have had an "interesting" conversation with another stranger while waiting for me, my impression was there was a smaller risk in her conversation.
We went to Soho and got Vietnamese sandwiches, which were cheap and delicious. We then took the 1 train all the way home to Barnard, watched Amongst White Clouds, read, made tea, and probably kept Flo up longer than she wanted to.
The next morning when we woke, we headed directly to a cafe, then went down town to get some Indian food and go to the MET. Along the way we stopped at a Yarn shop and looked at Zoë's favorite genre of magazines: Japanese Fiber Arts. After a Mysore Masala Dosa at a restaurant close to the yarn shop I went to the MET and Zoë went to an academically related meeting to discuss Tamil.
I spent several hours in the MET and took well over a hundred photos to satisfy requirements for my current ceramics class. Most of the art I wanted to see was being moved around and either not on display or on display without information in newly constructed exhibits. I spent hours just on the second floor between the Middle Eastern art exhibit and the Asian art exhibits.
The second half of my story begins again with staring at a Chinese teapot in the MET. After thinking about Monk in China drinking tea and surviving off of dandelions, I realized NYC was an especially good spot with great memories to acquire one. My hunt for a teapot began. When I had not seen enough pottery, specifically teapots to get ideas for my own, I asked an employee of the museum where I could find more ceramics. Rather than suggesting another location within the building, she sent me three blocks away to a gallery of Japanese ceramics called Mirviss. I went to the gallery, but it was not quite what I was looking for, it was contemporary non-functional pieces of art with the exception of a few bowls that ran at $800.
That evening we rounded up five other Barnard girls (friends of Zoë,) and went to Chinatown (in Manhattan,) and met up with Isaac High and his friend Jake. The restaurant was incredibly Chinese, with the gigantic lazy susan in the middle of the table to share all the food. We ordered too much.
The next morning when we woke, we headed directly to a cafe, then took an hour long 7 train to Flushing, which I kept calling Flushings because that's what it is in the UK. When Zoë and I got off the train we were no longer in the US, we were in some strange Chinese city. I found Flushing to be incredibly authentic to a China like experience, only the smells are much stronger, the roads are no where close to the condition they were in, and no children pissing/defecating in the middle of the sidewalk. My impression of Flushing was it was mostly Chinese and Korean with a strong Indian, Tibetan, and Hispanic presence. Simply put, culturally vibrant and wonderful. Zoë and I decided we want to live there at some point, with a pug (I added that.)
After stuffing ourselves with an incredible South Indian Thali at the temple, circled Gnesh three times, then painting a (Bindi?) on each others forehead, we wandered China town looking for a teapot. Due to lack of time, we had no luck, but managed to stumble into Hong Kong Grocer which was exactly like a corporate grocery store in China without the Chinglish or live animals.
On the way back we stopped at Muji near Time Square where I found a nice Japanese teapot for $20. I got two accompanying matching cups. I inspire to be able to make teapots of this skill by the end of next semester in ceramics with clay I have made from the lake I live on.
We scurried from Muji back to Barnard to get my bag, I forgot my cellphone charger, and managed to make it to my bus in 14 minutes from Zoë dorm -a new record, without a second to spare either.
And all I can say as I write this on this semi-empty bus ride back is that it is much quieter.
