Onward, atheist soldier

I finally left a school that had caused me grief almost since I first started working there. My troubles began early on with persecutions of epic proportions that left me incredulous and feeling as though I were in a bad dream. Some of this was brought on by colleagues with a competitive and spiteful nature, and some by keeping company with a vocal and violent individual who became my first friend in China before I realized what such a friendship would entail. And, yet more of the trouble came from having superiors who were in way over their heads and had to act like the authority figures they felt they were supposed to be though if they had taken a less self-centered approach they could have made the world a better place for all of the people on the payroll.

Now, I'm looking for a new job or two. I want, ideally, to teach a light university schedule during the day, and do online teaching in my pajamas with a cup of tea in hand at night. More as things develop.

Garden, Suzhou, China

Garden, Suzhou, China
Originally uploaded by balzaraikin.

I can't remember the name of this garden. Can lang ting? Something like that. There's a really great story associated with my finding this garden that I'm not going to tell you.

My right leg is getting tired as I sit with it crossed over my left. I would plant both feet firmly ln the floor as I sit and type, as it's better for the body overall, were it not that my right ankle is broken and in no state to support any weight. I do have a stool off to the right of my chair that I use to support my leg, but that is only good for so long as much of my weight is then re-distributed to my left buttock, which then gets sore after a while. That's the funny bit about breaking a bit of yourself: other bits get sore as they struggle to compensate for the lack of cooperation on the part of the broken part.

This is the second bone I've broken since my arrival in China on July 5th, 2004, and I have told myself that that's about enough of that until I shuffle off this mortal coil. I broke my hand my first month here and broke my ankle last month. I thought I broke my coxyx in the winter of 2004-5, but merely gave it a jolly good bruising. Nonetheless, with that hospital visit included, during which I was shouting in the hospital, "I broke my ass! I broke my fuckin' ass!", I have built up quite a collection of x-rays. I have thought that if I kept it up with the injuries I would soon be able to assemble a complete x-ray collage of my corporal being, but decided it would not be worth the effort.

I've shifted my foot to the stool and the left portion of my gluteus maximus is starting to feel the effect, as will the inner two glutei after a few more minutes. Aside from the dull pains one suffers as one strives to keep a broken bone out of harms way-I really wish I had done more of that before it was broken-there is also the olfactory factor. Luckily I've got a molded plastic cast secured with velcro straps. While a wee bit inconvenient, it still allows me to bathe more normally than if I had kept my original plaster cast.

I know that one of the first complaints about worthless pages on the web is lack of content. I hope that I can manage to take a subject of no substance and elaborate on it so that it proves worthwhile to some. Pure content with no flair is data. Data is cool, if that's what you're looking for. But I have always appreciated the art of getting blood from a stone; of taking the ordinary and making it somehow extraordinary.

My brother once told me that a friend of his said, "Doing interesting things does not make people interesting." It was meant to console me at a time when I was smarting from rejection by one with whom I had been enthralled due to her myriad experiences. That having long receded into the dried seed-filled recesses of my pumpkin head, I still remember it when I talk to people who either bore me with their tales of world travel, or captivate me with their stories of sitting on their ass doing nothing.

Words, words, words...we all use them. But putting one here and another there makes all the difference. I'm going to practice putting them in the best places I can find and hope to come out on the right side of expression. Please assail or paraise what I write as you see fit. Or if it pleases you, ignore it all together and do something you find more worthwhile.