Life update

So, I don't know if anyone fucking reads this anymore, but it's time for a life update. Lindsay and I have been chatting on Facebook, and tonight's response to her is probably the easiest descrption of how my life's been lately. So here it is (edited, to take out the bits that aren't interesting...):

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Lindsay Miller

2:12pm Apr 23rd

[Repsonce to question asked in first message. Then:] How is life in your part of the world?

Timothy Wilfong

2:21pm Apr 23rd

Hot, as of today. I'm doing well, overall. I feel like I've crossed another personal hurdle recently, so that's good. How about you?

Lindsay Miller

2:27pm Apr 23rd

[Responds with amusing personal anecdote.]

What was your personal hurdle?

p.s. I don't think I told you, I really like your Alice Walkers! Thank you for posting them.

Timothy Wilfong

Today at 11:32pm

Hey, sorry that took so long. Oh, the personal hurdle was, to put it in Buddhist terms, letting go of my ignorance and realizing the truth about several situations. I was really holding on to several friendships that a part of me knew was dying, and I had to realize the truth, which is that they really have changed, and that's ok, and it's OK for me to not be so close with these particular people. What it also meant is that I suddenly felt very alone and friendless. But in another way I feel very liberated, like I'm not bogged down hanging out with people with whom I have little in common with, or more importantly have little interest in. Not like I suddenly hate these people and are never going to talk to them again, just that we're not "BFF giggle giggle giggle like an anime girl*."

My roommate and I were talking about it, and what we decided is that we don't have enough words in the English language to adequately describe different levels of friendship. We kind of have friend and acquaintance, and I guess we have best friend too, but that's a hard concept to really understand for me, as I've never really felt like I’ve had one "best friend." So, we reworked the structure to a fairly simple three-tier structure: you have your inner circle of friends, your outer circle of friends, and then your acquaintances, who you just haven't known long enough to really place in either category based on observation.

So, to boil down a few weeks of craziness in my life into this system, I felt like there were all these people in my life who were part of my inner circle who no longer belonged there. So, I kicked them out to the outer circle. The problem here is that I didn't really tell them I was doing so, and some of them are still not really aware that that happened, and for those that are starting to figure it out, it's kind of awkward. But I feel much better. I also feel like there are now vacancies on that inner circle bench, which makes me feel almost empowered in my life. It's really quite nice.

I'm also struggling to know what I want to do (in an immediate sense) after I graduate next year. I know that I want to take some time off before grad school, but the question is, what do I want to do with that time? Do I want to move back to Denver, do I want to stay here, or go somewhere else all together? Who do I want to study with? Do I want to get a job, or maybe go to massage school? Do I want to join the Peace Corps? No, scratch that, of course I fucking want to join the PC, I've always wanted to join the PC, but will that ruin my musical aspirations? You know, a shitload of questions. Luckily, I don't have to answer them yet. But I feel like I need to have really considered everything so that I have a plan that I'm actually happy with, so that when I actually get to that moment in my life, I'll actually be happy with the decision I've made.

And, how are you? OK, I'm going to bed. Peace!

Tim

Summer Walkers

I need to get in touch with my roots right now. As I was walking to the coffee shop where I'm sitting right now, I had the inspiration for a couple of poems. I hope you enjoy them.

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2 Alice Walkers

Boston has begun to smell like summer.

Crossing at the crosswalk,

I walk along a red Corolla

and mixed with the heat

            rising from the pavement,

my nose tastes cinnamon.

Upon walking out my door,

I notice the hedges,

bare yesterday,

have grown leaves.

This year, we decided to skip spring.

Tibet: Old and New

Letter from Friend:

Hi Timothy,
I am writing for your thoughts, because you seem to be up on the Tibet issue.
Now, I have always opposed the Chinese gov't's way of doing things. They are wrong and their invasion of Tibet was wrong, BUT I feel conflicted by Tibet's previous system. They were seriously behind the times. It was de facto feudalism. (I don't agree that everyone was starving and slaves, but they certainly had no social mobility outside the state-religion.)
As late as the 1930s, Tibet seemed to most vistiors to be a strict society ruled by the educated monk class, much like England before 1688 or France before 1788. This is a system that continued up until 1959, when China invaded and brought in a whole new (and worse) system of oppression.
Just as I hated apartheid (I remember it), so do I hate communism. The Chinese have an evil, racist government.
But my question is this: why would anyone want Tibet to go back to the way it was?
And why did the current Lama make all of his democratic reforms only in exile? (I'm sure if the Romanovs made it to exile they would have also made some serious reforms!)
I liken Tibet to the former East Germany: there were bad things going on and the wrong guys got there first.
Am I way off here or what?! 
**** and I are moving back to Boston, so you might have to come over and explain this all to me. I admire your dedication and I would never question the current spiritual message of the Dalai Lama. I am a recovering Catholic, ie "ecumenical agnostic." I hope I have not offended. I am only seeking to broaden my own understanding.
My sincere best wishes,
*Friend's Name*

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Long-ass Responce from me:

Hey *friend's name*,

I apologize for how long this message has become. I want to really answer your questions as thoroughly as I can. I’m really excited that you two are moving back to Boston. I had a lot of fun hanging out around you before you moved away last year, it’ll be nice to have a couple of “sane” gay guys back in Boston. As a recovering Catholic myself, I understand the background well.

I should preface what I’m about to say with two things. First, I am in no way offended by your message. Second, if you’d like an interesting documentary to watch (if a few years outdated), check out “Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion.” It is obvious that the film makers side with the Tibetan cause, but they do their best not to leave out anything relevant in Tibet’s history, including addressing the “feudal” issues you mentioned. It’s pretty moving, but it’s also rather informative about the history of the people and the society. They manage to interview everyone from the Prime Minister of the Tibetan Government in Exile to the Chinese Ambassador to the United States. I highly recommend it.

Tibet was pretty cut off from the world until the Chinese invaded in ’49, and even now the majority that we know about it is from Tibetans living in exile. It was a country isolated by mountains on all sides. It started off a monarchy, which eventually gave way to the Dalai Lama leadership (I can explain that one in better detail if you’re interested). I’m sure you know that the Chinese claims that Tibet has always been a part of China and that they simply sought to reclaim what was rightfully theirs are ridiculous.

Yes, Tibet had its own social problems. As in any government structure, there were plenty of corrupt politicians (in this case, monks). There were assassinations and betrayals, but overall the society was functioning well, if a bit old-fashioned. It was a theocracy. It was slow to catch up with modern conveniences because of its isolation and lack of industrialization. Therefore, the infrastructure that could have progressed their society into the twentieth century was only just beginning to be explored by the current Dalai Lama (who has a real fascination with science and technology) when the Chinese invaded. Would the Dalai Lama have moved forward with democracy for the country had he stayed in Tibet? Who knows. It’s impossible to predict alternate futures. Personally, I believe he would have, because he has been so forward thinking in so many other ways that it seems entirely plausible to me. Before the modern age, though, a democracy could not have worked in Tibet. Tibet is a majority rural country made up of nomads and yak farmers many of whom never learned to read or write, let alone follow any kind of national politics. With no access to oceanic or river transportation, without major iron deposits for developing factories or a railway, communication was (and really still is) intensely difficult. We see these as necessary to modern life, but many Tibetans still see little use for them.

See, Tibetans were vastly happy with their life. It’s a vast difference in thinking. Tibetan communities are much tighter knit. In the old days, they existed without any kind of police force and hardly any murder or theft. Crops grew plentiful and there were no problems with hunger, as harvest yields were shared almost communally. Hunger only set in after the Chinese army burned the barly crop on their way through in 1949 and then forced the Tibetans to plant rice, which requires far more water than Tibet has, and therefore failed to grow. (They still do this to this day.)

Since the Chinese invaded, crime has appeared where it was never a problem before. The homeless in Lhasa are all Tibetan, though there is now a Han Chinese majority in the region. Food is scarce for the farmers due to being forced to grow Chinese products that can’t survive Tibet’s harsh climate.

Beyond that, the Chinese are systematically repressing Tibetans racially while trying to convert them to the Chinese culture and way of thinking. While education is “free” in China, schools in Tibet charge close to $2000 a year and students are forced to learn to speak, read, and write in Chinese. (The teaching of the Tibetan language is forbidden outside of monasteries.) The Chinese have changed the librettos to the traditional lhamo (opera) tradition to make them pro-Communist ideals and forced the singers to adopt principals of Eastern Chinese music.

Moreover, Tibetans do not receive the same human rights as ethnic Han Chinese, which, for the average person, are not very good to begin with. Since the Dalai Lama fled in 1959, over a million Tibetans have been killed by Chinese officials. Tibetans are arrested for having the Tibetan flag or pictures of the Dalai Lama or the real Panchen Lama, who has been in Chinese prisons since he was 5 years old. (He turns 19 later this month. The Chinese, who took responsibility initially for his disappearance, later denied any involvement and appointed their own Chinese-born child the official Panchen Lama.) Speaking out against the Chinese government either finds you shot or, worse, in prison, where the Chinese have been known to torture ruthlessly. People have been held for years without trials and escape with stories of being raped by Chinese prison guards who shove electric cattle prods into women’s vaginas, cane people, starve them (sometimes to death), and other such terrible things. Human rights groups caught on and stationed themselves around the country to monitor the situation, but were eventually asked to leave by the Chinese. Other people are dragged publically into the square where their children are forced to shoot them in front of the village or else face being shot by the Chinese.

I say all this to drive home to points. First, Tibetan society was flawed before the Chinese invaded, but existed peacefully with fewer problems than western society. We have such a hard time grasping their pace for living, expectations of what a lifetime should bring, and a religious fervor for peace and compassion that we have never experienced in the west. (I should also note that while the government and the majority of the people were Buddhist, there is also a great population of ethnically Tibetan Muslims that lived peacefully in the country and were afforded the same rights as Buddhist Tibetans by the Dalai Lama.) The Western drive for success is something that Tibetans by-and-large don’t understand, as material possessions are of such little importance in the society. So it might seem old fashioned to us, but they argue that it was just a different way of living, and from my own experience living with Tibetans, I think that’s entirely correct. Having lived in Germany, I know you understand that the American model is not universal, but it is especially different from traditional Asian ideals, of which Tibet itself is a-typical.

My second point, which is perhaps easier to justify, is that Tibet is so much worse off now than it was in 1940 that the Chinese insistence to the contrary would be laughable if it weren’t so disgusting. I mean, since the last three weeks of protests (which have not halted in Tibet), all foreigners, including the media, have been removed from the country, and Chinese officials have arrested anyone who publically uses a cell phone because people have been texting pictures from camera phones out of the country to document the extreme brutality coming from the Chinese in the over 50 different cities which have erupted in protest.

I should also remind you that Tibet could never go back to what it was before. Even if Tibet became its own country, which even the Dalai Lama no longer requests, technology has created an entirely new way of living that it will never be quite as isolated as it was before. Whether as its own country or as a truly autonomous region as the Dalai Lama asks, it would function as a democracy that would afford a high level of human rights to all its citizens. I think the sincerity of this can be measured by how the Dalai Lama, his sister, the Tibetan Government in Exile, and indeed the Tibetan communities both inside Tibet and abroad (mostly India, though in Australia, the US, Belgium, and other places) have turned their efforts towards really taking care of each other. Read up about the Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV), the school system for Tibetan children in India which gives all Tibetan children a better education than the Indian school system and pays for their education as far as they wish, all the way to a PhD if that were their desire. The school is organized in an ingenious fashion, where children, many of whom left their parents in Tibet to brave a trek across the Himalayas and are essentially orphans, are nurtured and given some semblance of a family in their dormitories. They’re taught Tibetan, English, and Hindi, and consistently test higher than students in the Indian schools and land themselves in good Universities.

All in all, Tibet may continue to breed yak herders, nomads, and monks, but they’ll do so with a level of almost unknown to the West. It may not ever be structured exactly like the West. But I think that’s for the best, and that the Tibetans ought to make that decision for themselves.

Woh, I’m majorly tired. I should sleep. This turned into a bit of a rant, but I took your message as a challenge to really be able to explain the situation. I hope this isn’t as incoherent as it seems right now. Let’s talk more about this.

Tim

Tibet Action

2 poems

A poem from last year and a poem from this year. Tell me what you think. You may have read the first one. (Or the second one, if you're a creative writing alum and you just checked your e-mail...)

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Thoughts on Attachment (from India)

I was in love

with the idea

of loving you.

Your body left imprints on my dreams

as if you lay face down in cement on my retinas.

Your smile sliced me open,

cleaving ravenous, white-washed teeth

to rip the muscle apart between my ribs

en route through my chest.

I had fantasies of us,

of your soul opening like a flower,

spreading petals of unlocked wisdom

layer by layer

until I danced in a sea of perfume,

finished at last with solitary meditation.

I had fantasies of dying every second

and being reborn in the womb

of every embrace

until

(eventually)

we both escaped together,

knowledge flowing like blood

from my self

to your self.

And I had to remember that your world

– parched as a beached fish in Utah salt –

is nine-and-a-half hours,

two vast deserts, two oceans

and a flat expanse of religion from mine.

You wear ideals like chains,

I dress myself in them

like the robe of a monk,

regal and functional,

my perception and my reality.

I am dancing across mountainsides

and you are dragging your feet

across the sun-cracked sand,

hating every moment,

smiling only to keep me watching you,

slicing through my illusion,

my mirage of your existence.

You are my attachment,

and you are strong as leaches,

unbreakable as elevator cable,

fallow like the draughts

we both got used to during Western summers.

But I am learning to let go,

to open my arms

and release.

And should you ever hit the ground,

you can find me where I’ve always been,

waiting for the man

for which I mistook your face.

July 10, 2007, Dharamsala, India

Revised December 18, 2007, Boston, Massachusetts

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Circle of Silence

I ward off quiet

with sword-sharp words

            … must keep myself safe,

            hide

            or it just might find me …

            … vulnerable …

my voice is my instrument

of war

my weapon of choice

to slay all thoughts of tranquility

or, I suppose,

of complacency

I brandish words like a child

pretending to be a knight,

with gangling limbs and inexact movements

and in my wake are left my companions

strewn about my feet

and as victory rises in my chest

I realize how alone I’ve made myself

if only I could put down words

disassemble their letters like parts of a gun

clean them with a familiar cloth

and retire them forever

but matter is not destroyed

I could sell them to someone

            as ignorant as I when I first took them up

I could bury them in the forest,

            but the knowledge that,

            some day,

            someone

            could dig them up

            would

            stop

            my sleep

            interrupt my new found,

            short lived

            silence

            as the circle,

            the circle of noise

            the circle that words make

            is once again made whole

words keep silence at bay

because I’m not yet able to conceive

of its beauty

or accept its grace

February 27, 2008 12:20 am

many thanks to Jana Clark for the inspiration