Losing Things

Obviously the people that are more pathological in this field have not stepped up yet - or I really am an extreme case. This is the main reason why I find the fact that good accessories are one of the most important elements of a man's style to be especially grating.In the last five years, I have lost: two pairs of three-hundred dollar glassesmy favorite made in Sicily velvet flat capa camelhair Yves Saint Laurent sport coatat least two nice cashmere scarvesanother custom-made flat capa wool argyle sweaterbasically every pair of leather gloves I've owneda checked Paul Smith shirt - I think the dry cleaner must have made it into pocket squaresthe diamond stud from my platinum money clip (this can be blamed on the producer, I hope)My socks that still have their mate are a very limited breedSomehow all of my metal collar stays - I had over ten pairssurprisingly no ties come to mind, but I'm sure there was at least one. I always lose my keys, though I've amazingly never lost my credit card. I also just losted the black visor type thing from the front of my camera. I've gotten to the point where I just cannot bring myself to spend serious money on glasses, hats, gloves, scarves, or anything that doesn't attach pretty well to the body. I also try to avoid dry-cleaning things. I don't seem to lose pants and shoes. Needless to say I don't even bother with watches and I have to tell people to stop buying me cufflinks.So don't feel bad. When I buy something, I expect it to be gone soon. Everything in life seems utterly transitory.

Shichahai - The fading home of Marzipan Scarves

Marzipan scarves and other accessories are made by hand in the heart of Beijing's historic and lovely Shichahai area. Those seeking a glimpse of life in the old Beijing should come to Shichahai, stroll beyond the boring bars and noisy tour groups, and get lost in the winding hutongs with their water-stained walls and wind-beaten red doors. Some corners remain where life has changed little since the Qing Dynasty even as China as somersaulted wildly and brilliantly out of its past. These days, most Shichahai residents are senior citizens without regular employment.

Sometimes with glee, sometimes with remorse, they are watching the neighborhood fill with various beneficiaries of China's economic dynamism. First are the tourists, mainly in huge hoards from the provinces, usually wearing identical red or orange caps, though there are those pesky foreigners as well. Second are the magnates, military men, and moneyed mandarins - the plutocracy that develops and despoils the country. Along with some members of the global elite, they annex the crowded courtyards and renovate them into opulent and isolated castles. Third are the small business owners who provide the food and other goods for the tourists and plutocrats. The business owners are rarely residents of the area, and in their employ are a multitude of cheap laborers from Anhui and Gansu who also make their home here. A forth group might be the young outsiders, who recognize that this is the hippest and most beautiful part of the city. They recognize that this is the best and last moment to be living in Shichahai.

Tom Ford Style

The seventies are a despised decade but their influence on fashion refuses to vanish. It seems that every season a designer is attempting to reference or resuscitate the decade of extravagant lapels, flagrant hip hugging, and over-the-topness. Clearly many men aspire to some spirit brought out by this garish decade. Tom Ford clearly realizes this and updates the styles of the decade in lux fabrics and modern marketing.So who wears this sort of style or at least how does he fancy himself? Tom Ford has already given us a pretty good idea of what he wants his men to aspire to with his ads. I have a more virile and even futuristic vision of the sort of man that should be comfortable wearing this style. He is the disastrous scion of an Azerbaijiani oil princess and an Aborigine zinc baron. He can be found at a club with live inguanas carrying the drinks, snorting Bolivian marching powder from the fully scraped and polished, bare behind of a live Inca born on the shores of lake Titncock. Hopefully he lives off the rents from his fleet of chateaus and work is a laughable concept. This fellow doesn't care what the suit costs or whether it is made with a horsehair canvass or a poodle hair one.The obediant man of style is a different breed. He tends to work at a bank or law firm and relish nights with a brandy snifter basking in the erudition and wittiness of similarly well educated and attired individuals.

Courvoisier Car Cruncher

Early - or not so early - this morning I was bouncing from place to place in a canyon type environment that was near New York City. A thousand things happened before but only the end seems clear now. There was some apartment in Brooklyn where my parents were living and several friends were visiting. Perhaps Stella was there. I walked out in just my socks because I remembered that there was a pair of sneakers with my bike. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, my shoeless state started to seem ridiculous. I realized it would not do, red as my socks were. Somehow I had assumed that my bike was close, when it was really quite far away in the Lower East Side. With shoes on, I took a cab.

The event was Halla's birthday. I had forgot to buy a gift. The party was in a grubby and crowded apartment in the corner of what I later realized was a very high-end shopping center. There were a lot of bohemian types there getting drunk. Feeling utterly embarrassed about not having a gift, I called Milosz, who was apparently riding my bike over and asked him to pick up a bottle of vodka. His voice was very reassuring and he asked if he should get Stolichnya. I knew I should get Gray Goose, but was too cheap, so I told him to just get Absolut. I anxiously awaited his arrival, hoping Halla wouldn't be bothered by my giftlessness.

Then Joel arrived. He was wearing a gray suit from Senli and Frye - the same he wore at Justin's wedding. He stood by the entrance in a smug sort of way. I gave him a big hug and we chatted for a moment. Then Milosz arrived, but Milosz looked very nerdy. He was fat and had squinty eyes and glasses. He handed me the bottle of Absolut and then I walked over to give it to Halla, who was too drunk to think much of it.

When I got back Milosz and Joel were deep in conversation. Before I had a chance to interupt, a tall Japanese girl suddenly appeared on the scene. She was stylish but seemed to have a slight acne problem - or was it the usual crooked teeth? Either way, there were some serious imperfections, but I was immediately drawn in by the fact that she seemed to need my assistance. She was somewhat stylish or quirky, though I can't remember exactly what she was wearing. For some reason I kept expecting her to have bad breath, but she didn't. I kept sniffing for it, but it just wasn't coming out.

She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me around the high-end shopping complex that was outside the apartment. It was filled with artwork and she said that she was an artist. Her father was apparently someone important. Maybe he even owned the mall. She brought me to see her first creation. It was an antique lacquer box. I was very impressed at the time, but in retrospect it seemed more like a work of traditional handicraft than a radical piece of modern art, which was clearly what she intended for it to be. We saw her father with a group of business man coming around the corner and she briskly pulled me away.

Next up was her second piece of artwork. She was very happy to have her work on display in New York. This work of art was even more overwhelming. It was a big fish bowl with all sorts of very rare goldfish swimming around inside. I was starting to really like her. I was also impressed by her creativity and talent and commented that I liked what she was doing a lot more than the huge installation that was the centerpiece of the show.

The Courvoisier Car Cruncher had no connection to Cognac, except for the overwhelming likelihood that its creator was drunk when he came up with the plan. It was a project made with funding from the E.U. Such was what the huge gold label said. Clearly this was some mis-remembering of the Swiss architect and urban planner, Le Corbusier. As a work of art, perhaps it did offer some commentary on his ideas regarding the role of the automobile and energy saving in the modern city. The artwork was an installation almost the size of a house. It was a mini-factory made apparently for the purpose of destroying cars in the most dramatic way possible.

I didn't realize this at first because my comment upon seeing a Chrysler Minivan was that the installation was probably funded by Chrysler in a last ditch attempt to seem hip and relevant as its fortune fall through the floor. My Japanese friend lauged at my foolishness because a moment later the mechanical arms began slamming the sides of the minivan. Then I saw that other cars - even brand new bimmers and audis - were flowing into this assembly line of destruction.

The girl's father appeared to be right around the corner, though I'm not sure exactly why and he didn't seem inclined to do anything. He was with a group of businessman. Oblivious to his presence, she stroked my chest as I firmly held her arm. We were moving closer and I anxiously awaited the first kiss.

Tiring of watching this montrosity, we made for the exit, but then my phone began began vibrating. It was Sen Li calling to say that a client had underpaid him. He apologized for waking me up - embarassing in itself since it was already 10:30. I had not gone to sleep till around four the night before, after snorting a tablet of Ritalin, and researching connections between Barack Obama and Septemius Severus.

I tried to sleep but then I remembered that it was impossible to return to the world of the Courvoisier Car Cruncher and the Japanese artist who had excited me so much. My first thought was that there must be some way to spend all of the good parts of life in dreams. If dreams could be so good, so eternally fresh, perhaps they could seriously outweigh the tedium of life and even make me more industrious in the real world, knowing that I could always return to the better life once I went to sleep. It is appropriate that at the moment I am listening to my new favorite singer, Yamaguchi Momoe.

Nothing in Life is Easy

Maybe the problem is that I expected it to be easy and learned too late that is extremely challenging. The difficulty of life combined with the disapointment brought by major experience (love, work, friendship) keeps me up or makes me bury my head under the pillow. Either others find the benefits and pleasures of life to strongly outweigh the negative side or they are so well-disciplined that they find it natural to persist in working their hardest to improve their lives. The source of all of this hope and perseverence always evades me. All of the brilliant meritocrats as well as diligent laborers - the honorable people who create all of the comforts, ideas and gadgets - do not make any sense to me. Drug addicts, suicides and lunatics are more comprehensible.

That is perhaps an exaggeration. I understand that the creators and makers do their good deeds with the backing of strong work habits and societies with an appropriate environment for entreneurship. From relatively early on, they have the right attitude and the mental artillery essential for backing up that attitude. The pressure of society and family might also have real meaning for them. Though some reflection might reveal that it is not worthwhile to do well, they can't very well escape the demands to be on a level with peers and to bring the bread home for their wives and children.

I am blessed with no discipline or feeling of responsibility and I do not care to improve my life, which is already comfortable enough, though I am not wealthy by any means. At the same time, all major avenues of endeavor seem far too challenging. Any possible field that I might pursue demands more dedication and focus than I can possibly offer. I have tried, though clearly not hard enough. I have had jobs in some of the thinking industries that America is so excellent at creating. They just don't inspire me with the same passion for advancement, happiness and success that they do with my peers.

Going it on my own is even more difficult and the rewards, though potentially greater, are harder to reap. Of course I do a variety of little things that keep me going, but the future is bleak. The fancy education and decent jobs also didn't give me any real skills. Oh, I probably could go back and interview and do all of that and make the skills I have seem like real skills, but the reality is that there is very little I can do while uncumbered with my frustrated and defeatist attitude. The amount of effort required to do anything well is so immense. It's made even more immense by the reality that all these things are not things that I care to do well.

The vast majority of people have their depressive moments and self-doubt, but they are able to pretty much jump on the track at some point. They forge into an industry or into academia and know they must work hard and play some games in order to make sure that their life can be assured. It is laughably late in the game for me, and I still haven't strapped myself into some wholesome track. Immature ideas and misconceptions about life still cloud my vision. Learning about the realities has come far too late.

The question of why others are so able to happily succeed continues to plague me. This may be one of the few questions in life that I find truly interesting. Why do all of these other people fight so hard to get over the challenges? I live in China, so one obvious answer would be that as a rich world citizen, I have never felt the extreme pressure that comes from being economically deprived and the resulting drive to better my position. This standard argument has some merit seems facile since plenty of my peers come from superior backgrounds to mine, economically at least, but they have shown a good deal more drive to surmount the brutal challenges of life.

My question struggle so much when the rewards are so mediocre? The answer is always that the feeling of having done something well is greater than any other. Religion and absolute truth may be lies created to comfort man and enable the powerful to control him. Death may really be a fading of our body into the dirt and nothing more. Sex becomes a tedious routine wiht any lover more rapidly each time. Marriage may be a wasteland (or as they say: who wouldn't try to escape from an institution?). The body and looks may fade with unforgiving speed. Travel and other fun always exist under the shadow of the 8 to 9 workday. Food and alcohol are mainly a source of gut and guilt. But work will always set you free.

The First Wiff of China

It's hard to determine the exact point at the airport when one enters China, but things start seeming more and more Chinese very fast. The check-in line already has the men in ill-fitting suits and young women with LV bags. They seem to have a fragile cockiness. These young nouveau-riche disappear into the crowd of plastic-clad middle aged and elderly peasants by the line for passport control. They are still a thin group at that point - their mass is only fifty percent of the crowd. The Duty Free shops really do feel like Chinese soil. The Chinese are buying up all of these high status gifts that will bring them points on the guanxi front when they have really made it back home.

Up till this point, the Chinese have usually only made me feel a certain happiness of homecoming. I feel an odd kinship mixed with amusement at how provincial the people from the place I live feel. There is a certain embarassment that I've chosen to live in a place with people so charmingly peasent-like, but at the same time I feel a bit protective. Of course concurrently I realize that no matter how long I live in their country, they will never feel much of a familial feeling toward me.

At the gate any kind of kindness in my heart quickly transforms to disgust with the Chinese and with myself for having condemned myself, mainly through laziness, to life with them. Returned are the old feelings of bafflement with my self for allowing my life to be wasted in a country that fits me so badly. Also returned is the feeling that I am facing a wall of identical people all with the most base and uncomplicated worldviews. Around me are conversations of so practical and boring a nature that using the word "bourgeois" would be adding a respectability and heritage that does not exist. There is just this low buzz of competitiveness and boringness. People really don't have anything to do but compare the schools where their kids are studying in the West or the salaries they are making. I can't tell if middle aged Chinese people are more boring or more competitive. There are plenty of charitable readings on this but they all take the form of excuses for the tedious behavior. The other thing they always talk about is food. If they aren't talking about food, they are probably eating some kind of cheap snack or feeding their children. Stop eating and start doing drugs!

Anyway, loaded down with perfumes and made-in-China clothing that is less expensive abroad, this mass of proud plebians is on its way back to the mother land. On this last flight, I was especially cursed. The triumph of getting an exit row seat was immediately canceled out by the two crying babies to my left. The parents and grandparents - all along - were tiresomely loath to do anything to discipline the little kids. This was too our detriment. Of course airlines should have a special cabin for families with babies. But there is no expense put into making the experience of people in economy class any better.

Reaching the airport in Beijing, I feel a short repreive mixed with intensified confusion. The moderness of the airport is comforting. It feels that I belong there more than the peasants with whom I just traversed the Pacific. The trendy people start appearing again, though they appear to be a very shoddy immitation of the ones in the West.

Once I am out on the streets and on the way back home, the fact that China is largely in black in white becomes very apparent.

Almost Killed by a Volcano

I was with Jeremiah Jenne camping on a hill outside of Beijing. We hadn't brought a tent and were just in sleeping bags. Suddenly a weird taste came into my mouth and little bits of ash started falling around me. Then I heard a rumbling in the distance. Dismissing it as the omnopresent sound of construction, we continued with our conversation. Soon we noticed that rocks were falling to the ground around us. Looking up it, I saw that the mountain on which we were lying was starting to move and orange fires were visible.

Confirming that my wallet was in my pocket, I booked down the hill. Jeremiah left everything. More and more rocks were falling around us. The little town at the bottom of the hill was in a state of panic. People around us were running in every which way, but the police were also beginning to hurd people into shelters. I didn't see how the shelters would save us and was thinking that the best thing at this point would be to run all the way back to Beijing. The police were already hearding us into a building where the parking lot on the ground floor was being used as a shelter. The risk seemed obvious as the building was at least ten stories high. It was aleady starting to sway under the assault of magma rocks being hurled from the volcano.

We were in a large crowd of villagers and ordinary people. None of us were being allowed to leave and the mood of the crowd was becoming more and more frantic. I tried to get out right as the ceiling began to cave in. I realized it was too late. The building was going to collapse long before the magma flows arrived. Then I woke up.

Mame: The Most Representative Movie I have Seen

One always feels blessed when a novel, song, painting, or movie speaks to one's own experience. This is perhaps the way immature or selfish people view art. Still, it is how the vast majority of people see things. It would be better to empathize and many poeple clearly do make it to that point. For smaller people, it is always seeing bits of one's own self that make a work of art attractive or at least seeing things that speak to one's own journey. Such was the case when I saw Mame. It was a moment when art really did represent my own life and the struggles and difficulties I have had. More than that, it summed up the life that I have always sought.

Obama: A Foreign Man Running a Western Power

Everyone has there historical predessors for Obama. For some, it is Kennedy, because he was young, idealistic and represented a burst of new energy for the counrty. Martin Luther King Jr. has been brought up frequently. Like Obama, he has great symbolic value in terms of the fight for civil rights for blacks. Since the US is depicted now as a country facing gigantic crises, Obama is also being compared to Lincolin and FDR, who had to meet the challenges of the Civil War and the Depression, respectively. There are even people who compare Obama to bad old Hitler, because of his ability to rouse the crowds. Hitler may have been mediocre if he can attract so many comparisons to people who clearly won't have so great impact on history.

All of these comparisons are quite flawed and mine will be as well. However, it does not seem to have been made yet. For me, Obama's historical parrells are Joseph Stalin, Benjamin Disraeli, Septimus Severus (he was actually an African) and Obama is should have no trouble matching Stalin and Severus in greatness. Disraeli was a multi-talented genius, but we would expect no less from a Jew. Would Napoleon or Kennedy count? They don't seem quite different enough in race though there cultural background may just as different from the ruling elites in the countries they wen ton to rule. I am thinking more about people who came from a completely different cultural background.

The major significance of Obama is that he is a person from a foreign culture (or at least half from a foreign culture) who has truly immersed himself in Western culture and quickly risen to the top place. Obama might really be the most dramatic example of this in history. His father seems to have been a real tribesman and he has risen to being the top man in the modenr equivalent of the Roman empire, an empire that is even more powerful than Rome in its global scope and the influence of its culture and ideals. The US is the empire that is the apogee of Western civilization. Though this clearly aided by the US being the most truly multi-racial, purely philosophy based, nation in history. Obama's election shows the US has succeeded in being based on philosophy and not race or nationality.

The point might have been made that after years of Bush trying to spread our values by force, we got a president that is an example of how those values spread through soft power.

Perhaps I should go back to my conservative, Western triumphalist, publications to look for publishers of this piece in praise of the significance of Obama? The right needs to have its own angle on praising Obama. What I am saying is exactly what the Criterion would have said about it. My point boils down to: Obama's success is not about [the petty matter] of race relations in the US but in fact shows the success of Western civilization. Even as the eternal night of Eastern dominance, which we have feared since the days of Herodotus, seemed to have arrived, we showed in electing Obama that we could still co-opt the barbarians. We showed that Bush may have failed in imposing our values through force, but we can still succeed because the values are both the best and the most inclusive.

This is one of the two reasons why the Chinese government hates Obama, even though their people have a 70-80% rate of favoring him. The reason they want to think of any justication possible to show that the US could not elect a minority is that they want to show that Wetern values do not have the ability to both attract and include non-western peoples. Of course, they also don't like the idea that another major power can give its minorities such an important position in society.

The other reason for their not liking the democrats is that they attempt not to be an oligarchy representing the interests of the rich, which is essentially what the communists are. Their cynical storyline of American politics is that both parties are essentially the same corrupt group that serves the rich. They know that the republicans are even more this way. Everybody knows that China is actually the extreme version of the Republicans. Here the party actually is business.

Blacks Leading the States

Somebody put a rather incomprehensible comment under your picture. I guess he is implying that it is bad that we have a black president. It's unbelievable that somebody would be saying that now. In my opinion, the point isn't even that he is black. It is more that there is a non-Western (by blood) person in charge of the country that is the high point of "western values" or the western political system. This shows how all-embracing our system really is. Of course I think blacks are of sub-human intelligence. But at least they aren't as sub-human as I am. If we let the people on a normal human level run the show, we would be talking about balance sheets, strategy, and confidence all day. Let left brain humanity burn.

I guess that a bit of militancy comes out here. I do dislike people who aren't happy about Obama running the show. This is a wonderful event and you can go screw yourself if you don't appreciate it.

Music Taste

A cold day in hell passed in a slow festival of music downloading. The question of what my taste in music is perplexes. Somehow I have come to determine that it is not far from that of David and Tally. That means that my tastes run from gay lounge, to gay club to New York socialite. Should one's tastes in music and fashion match? I think both radiate out from the mid-seventies for me. Those discussions about which decade best matches each person were always fun.

One could also just describe my tastes as tremendously pop or diva-obsessed. This means that I have listening to Peggy Lee, Eartha Kitt, Shirley Bassey, Ann Margret, Edith Piaf, Patricia Kaas and Dalida, to name a few, for the last few years. As I mentioned before, I predictably like Pink Martini. I also continue to like some Chinese equivelants like Deng Lijun and Cai Qin. My favorite song of all time is Mary Hopkins' version of Those were the Days my Friend, which as it turns out, Adler also has on his ipod.

When it comes to rock, I have been listening to Aztec Camera, and 80s band, and the Yachts, definitely poppy. I just discovered a band called Curved Air from the 70s that is quite progressive and unrocky. I still listen to Bowie though only the album Station to Station and the song Life on Mars. Chinagirl never stops being a fitting soundtrack though I certainly didn't end up with a little one in the end, which I don't if it is yet. Sometimes I do wish that she was the end.

In terms of classical music, I am rarely in the mood to try to discover anything new, but I guess I listen to whatever is already in the collection without paying attention to what it is. There are the usual Mozart and Beethoven symphonies, the passions from Bach, and Wagner overtures. The only thing I particularly like in this field are Scarlotti harsichord sonatas.

I recently tried to experiment with 50 cent in honor of the reunion of Jeremiah, my childhood friend, my childhood friend whose career-driven sister appears in dreams of a more sexual nature (I wish she would just take care of me).. It makes me feel pretty cool to listen to it, especially when walking down 42nd street (or perhaps it redeems 42nd street). P.I.M.P. is a good song, mostly for the way that he raps "she liked me 'cause I was from New York" in the first fifty seconds. Listening to some other works like "Straight to Da Bank" drives in the point that this music is really middle class - probably not the correct term but I don't study intellectual history. It is all about money, objects and a base kind of ambition. There is nothing romantic about it, which makes it foreign. Still the arrangements are definitely very good and the words are clever, despite the unfortunate subject matter. I can at feel the feeling that makes people like this kind of music.

Anyway, I am eager to find new music. My main requirements are that it involves neither extensive use of electric guitar, especially hard or bouncey in any way, nor is especially "electronic" though I like pop music from the eighties that is kind of like that.

No Marketing

Ha! Inevitably a hundred-million people, bloggers and readers alike, have already realized what I just realized. The reason personal blogs are worthless is that they can't really say anything if others are reading it. Of course a genuine diary would be interesting. But how could it really be published? Whether it has three readers or three-hundred thousand, any sort of honesty would be impossible. Those most interested in reading would be the ones most likely to be offended and saddened.

I must choose to either write an interesting record or write a record that is actually read. If this blog ever does gain popularity, I will have to delete all of the entries that were of a personal nature. For now, this one will just stay anonymouse. Time will determine the fate of the blog. If the majority of entries are interesting, I will have to just leave the entries that would bother lovers and others unpublished. There will be a fun little "unpublished edition" that would jeopardize my whole life if it were ever come to life.

My girlfriend is most likely to be bothered - or angered - by many of my revelations. But there are things I would mention here that would probably hurt or at least bother my parents as well. There is also the tiresome issue of professionalism - not that I in any way pretend to be a professional.

Nels' Contribution to the Narcissistic Racket

No name comes to mind. For now it will receive this magical title. Sometimes it is best to be descriptive.

With Stylites, I follow the rule that a blog can only succeed with minimal relation on its author's life and by focusing on a topic sure to interest others. Those blogs that merely record the author's thoughts and experiences are trash, because, well, we're all too busy to read about some nonentity's life. So, this time, it is fine that no one will be viewing this page.

I wouldn't dare bore netizens with my musings, but given my exhibitionism, my daily record would never exist without the impetus others reading it. I cannot write without the hope that my writings are already achieving some kind of immortality.

But let us not reflect on that too much. I can only assume there are six-million other blogs that begin with virtually this same self-deprecating post. My contribution to the internet's narcissistic racket.