This past week I’ve been mostly offline.
The reason isn’t because I had no Internet access. I was mobile most of the week – often in rural areas with limited facilities, true. But there were chances for me to go online.
Just the same, I chose not to check my various email boxes and blogs, except for one hotline.
The reason for this is not because I wanted some quiet time alone.
The reason is not because I wanted to hide my presence in silent obscurity.
No, the reason is that I wanted to immerse myself
In the clatter and clangor of a new social space:
In magical yet starkly real surroundings,
Among alien yet strangely familiar people,
Through an inscrutable yet alluring musical language.
In metaphor, the reason is that I want to be a rice seedling,
Transplanted green, craving paddy mud and native water.
I want to loll, with no cares at all, under the jovial sun of spring,
And give a gracious farewell nod to the north wind’s flight.
I want to thrive and bear grain noiselessly in a field of gold,
Answering to no one but the cosmic farmer’s harvest scythe.
Are you spellbound yet by the vivid imagery of my watercolor brush?
In other words, did you truly understand and believe the unbridled shit I told you just now?
You fell for my word tricks again, oh perennial prankstee. LOL.
Forget all that I said so far.
The real reason for my silence is this:
I freely allowed my chopsticks and rice bowl to run wild
Sampling a rich banquet of culinary delights, left and right.
I wallowed in a thousand stories – happy and sad, gentle and mad,
Laughing and grieving with a dozen friends, the old and the new.
And afterwards, I indulged a mandarin’s daily luxury
Of boundless sleep and slothful play on a jasmine bed,
And later ride, with arrogant pride, my silky sedan chair
Across my realm: the clean-swept courtyard of hill and sky,
Watching cherry blossoms leap into the warming wind.
Sheesh.
I’m hopeless.
I try to explain a routine week spent offline,
And I fall one more time into yet another
long-winded, pseudo-poetic explanation.
Ok, I’ll try again.
Bluntly this time.
The past entire week, I pigged out
Like a shameless indolent swine.
With no exercise and lots of sleep,
I gained nothing but 10 disgraceful pounds.
But I deserve this idle time, I think,
Though I'm really a monkey and not a pig.
I remind myself of the year of the ox, and
When this interlude ends, my cheerful choice
Is to return to the soil, a water buffalo
Yoked to his fate of endless toil.
So for now, please allow this wild man to act
Like a churlish boar for a few days more.
Let his idle offline thoughts flow freely like a flood,
Splashing everybody with his warm happy mud.
((big smile))
