Costner: Winter is coming

Coming back from my post this evening I was struck by how much more crisply sound seems to travel in cold evening air. Perhaps because the other townspeople have been chased inside, you can now hear everything: rustling of single leaves, three twigs breaking in rapid succession as a passerby steps through the gutter by the roadside. Or maybe, as mentioned before, it's because senses are heightened in cold air, and thinking becomes easier--or, rather, you cannot help but feel sharper, more alert. Certainly one is more tense, less languid, as your body twitches to keep itself warm against a penetrating wind. In the summer I could remember thinking how strange it will be to see this place cold once again. Seeing it now, I cannot believe it ever was warm in the first place.

Costner: Transition

I have been long in my post in the Orient. Before deployment, my expectation was for 5 years; I am now approaching 5 and one half years abroad. This place is still of great interest to me, I feel I still have a tremendous amount to learn from the people and about their language and customs. In many ways life here can be challenging. In other ways I have come to feel a great deal of comfort in my day to day existence, so much so that I could see another 5 years passing by me quickly as I move through current obligations, build other interests, and remain swept up in the dynamism of the shifting landscape of my obligations here.

Yet there is something in me that would not be content without a big move at some point in the near future. I see others here on the frontier who seem stuck; comfortable, with all their material needs met, basking in the exceptionalism afforded them by the fact that they are exotic, different, and in demand due to some luck of commerce. But there feels to be a float in the way some people move through their time here. Contentment leads to complacency.

One is inclined to think that great ideas come only so often--they are hard sought, and, once had, lead invariably to success. I have heard a lifetime of great ideas in my time here. What I have not seen is more than a handful of men or women willing to take their idea and see it all the way through to its fruition. Seeing an idea through takes more than that special gusto that comes after the second beer at the canteen. It takes discipline, organization, perseverance. I have read somewhere that greatness is a lonely travail. I believe seeing these ideas through also requires some degree of loneliness--traveling to a place that others will not go, that many do not understand. I am not sure if I am ready for that journey. Then again, I have not yet made a very good try at it.

Costner: Water pot

Nothing purchased in this place seems to last, excepting one possession I've kept since arriving here almost 5 years ago. I did not expect a hot water heating can bought from the corner grocery to make it through, alas here it is accompanying me with my coffee each morning. It is interesting, in the face of the loneliness we sometimes feel on the frontier, how things can take on the qualities of people--things you trust, things that make you take a moment and smile, a consistent friend. If I am to ever leave this place, I think I must take it with me, for there is no chance anyone else would want it.

Costner: Spring Festival

There's nothing quite like driving home to the sounds of high explosives after a good meal of pulled pork. Despite a generally quiet demeanor, it is incredible to see the interest people take in these parts to ear-shattering kabooms that accompany some of the rockets used during Spring Festival. For each of the past 10 or so nights, the explosions have been practically continuous, beginning early and the morning and continuing straight through until now, almost midnight. I am not sure where the tradition comes from, and what the bombs are intended to do--scare spirits away? Attract distant spirits closer? All I know is that the face of your average man on the street is changed during this season from a mask of general malaise, to a tinge of a smile, with a spring in his step and a ni hao for all passers-by. It is uncommon to see people grant strangers such consideration in public, holding doors and standing patiently in line, as they do during Spring Festival in Beijing.

Costner: P90X

I began the day with Tony Horton's P90X workout regimen. During our jump training time, he admonishes himself as "a merciless man." I believe him to be a fine man with a dedication to making us all better, to "do [our] best and forget the rest." Though he looks something like a gecko, I have never seen calves of such sculpture on a man his age. As active as my lifestyle is out here, I would not be able to match his physique. In hunkering down for the remainder of the winter, I feel warmed by the inspiration of Horton's drive and enthusiasm. Although sore today, I know this morning's exertions will strengthen me in the end.

Beijing pollution and financial crisis

It struck me today that the recent spate of gross pollution is doing to Beijinger's sense of the pollution scale what the global financial crisis did to our sense of the idea of billions versus trillions of dollars. A reading of over 500 pm2.5 (technically "beyond reading" on the US Embassy pollution monitor) has been crossed so much recently that it's been reduced somewhat--just as reports of Trillions of dollars lost in the CDO market and bailout funds of the past decade have reduced that once enormous amount of cash to the level we once associated psychologically with smaller amounts of money. Trillion is the new billion; 500+ pm2.5 is the new 150 pm2.5. Let's hope everyone's respiratory systems are able to keep up...

Costner times and places

I reserve the right to write as First Lieutenant John J. Dunbar as if he's living across a number of different times and places, including the following:

• Present-day Beijing/China
• Present-day Great Plans
• Olden-days Beijing/China
• Olden-days Great Plains

Costner: Lincoln

After reading a piece of the published account of the life of our President Lincoln, I am impressed by the man's character in the face of an impoverished upbringing and an ugly visage. Not each and all of us can be pretty, and not all of us know how to develop alternate methods of attraction. I am most interested in the role storytelling played in his life and career. Until I came to the plains, the value of a good story and a good teller was unclear to me; there's no time for such things while adrift in the entertainments of city life back east. I see in my tribal friends, Stand With Fist and Lips That Move, both experts at the art of weaving a yarn, that stories are not just for passing time, not just for fun, but for history, for politics, for persuasion, for making meaning out of all the vicissitudes of life. One can see in Lincoln's gift his rearing in a place not unlike my current locale. He would fit in well with my community here.

Costner: Pollution

I awoke today to an acrid odor stinging my nostrils and eyes. The sky outside was the color of volcanic ash. There was a tasteable difference in the quality of the air here, something metallic, beyond simply the taste of dust one sometimes gets from the windstorms that pass through this area. In the distance a factory that provides us with hot water continuously belched out clouds of white vapor. Whether or not this was steam, or steam and other hazardous things, I do not know. The overwhelming feeling one received from the whole scene was that of impending, or recently arrived apocalypse. The end of the world. What kind of people would let this type of destruction occur? What horrific behavior, what continuous abuse of the land and the air could eventuate a scene like this? Perhaps these are not questions for a foreigner to ask, but after such time here, after making my life here for some years, I am also invested. It is enough to make one reconsider the entire endeavor of career-making in this country.

Costner: Andre Agassi

One cannot abide a man with no hair and such sass. He reads to me as if he is a grumpy man, unfulfilled but trying to convince others of his completeness. Suffering at the hands of his father, a horrific taskmaster that forced him to hit thousands of balls fired at him by a machine they called "the dragon," he could only know he was experiencing just a level of agony on a myriad scale. Has he ever tried to stay warm on a cold winter's night outside Pierre, South Dakota? Has he ever had to pull the shaft of an arrow shaft out through his calf? These are the problems that populate days on the plains. Family? Hah!

Costner: Inertia

It occurred to me today as I was walking across the flats in town center that folks just float through here. I will be charging hard down the street when a Chinese man will make eye contact with me, there standing right in front of my path of movement. He's moving slow and is moving in such a way that we will collide in just a moment. I slightly alter course and charge by, him looking at me, mostly expressionless but maybe grinning very slightly, content that he has ceded nothing and I have moved to make way for him. I am not sure whether this float, this kind of inertia toward which bodies in motion tend to stay in motion in China, I am not sure from where it comes from. I do know that the woo shoo arts of martial combat that in which I see the young men partake involves not so much the use of force, but the use of your opponent's force against them. Using the force from the system to beat the system: this does not seem unlike what happened with the man today.

Costner: Company food

A long ride through a harsh Chinese winter day had us hard up for some chow come lunchtime at noon today. Once again the cook made off like a Sioux bandit at our expense: some type of soya sauce-flavored dou fu, no meat to speak of and some cold vegetables. When there is meat to be had, from the texture of it one might think it is either the dou fu or one of the tabby cats that sometimes wanders through our yard. Cookie is a kind man, quick to laugh, but I am not reassured about his personal hygiene and subsequently the carry-over there may be to the makeup of our meals. I cannot complain, as cold, bad, free chow is better than no chow at all. I can only imagine the people in this land who pass their days with much less on their table than I.

Costner: Pond skating in China

The people in the more ancient parts of this city are hospitable and accepting. I am yet to fully comprehend their manners, but they regard my incredible foreignness with smiles and well-wishes. At no other time has this been more apparent than in putting on my pair of metal-heeled boots to move around on the frozen pond in the area I hear them refer to as the Ho-Hi. As I glide around, grinning and occasionally falling, the smiles sometimes turn to outright guffaws. I cannot begrudge them that; me in the steel boots on the frozen water is sight I wish I could capture with one of the new image capture machines from France. How I wish them to be here for purchase or barter in the Orient! After a long morning of perspiration and achievement with friends, we moved into the thin alleyways of the surrounding courtyard terraces for Italian bread and cheese as well as some lager beers. The afternoon will no doubt prove to be a slow and pleasant one.