So it's been a while. Months, as it seems. After my re-entry into full-time evil, I've been busy.
But I'm not going to write about that. I can guess that the details of establishing a cell line to manufacture TAQ polymerase in-house, or the best way to utilize cheap labor while still conforming to US environmental regulations, (because we must be pre-emptive when we consider what are sure to be drastic pollution lawsuits) that doesn't really interest most of you. The real rub is that I've been living in hotels for going on two months now. I've seen more of China during this time than in the past two years put together.
Let me rephrase that, I've seen more factories and hotels and bars in the last two months than in the last two years put together.
Actually, my thoughts turn to my first days here in China, where I was way back then:
I guess what I am getting at is this;
i have realized something pretty significant. I don't think I'm going to come back to America for a long time...I might never come back for more than a visit. I am happy here, I am more productive, healthy, and successfull.
I kind of discovered this tendency while I was in Africa, there is something about me that makes me function better outside of the US. I don't know exactly what it is, perhaps it all goes back to when I was in elementary school and I felt like a failure constantly, i never "lived up to my potential" as my teachers used to write on my report cards. And that self image really followed me into my adult life.
Even at times when I was doing really well (there are two, IMHO)I always felt inadequate, and I think I have often self-sabatouged in order to validate that self image.
However, when I am in a foreign country, all that self-doubt seems to vanish, I feel really free. Like I can start over again and do things right this time. And it is more than just a feeling, it is true.
When you get onto the airplane that will carry you to your new home in another hemisphere, you are the complete sum of your life. Your acheivements, your failings, your memories, your attitudes and assumptions, they are all up there with you. And you will visit them all over the course of your flight.
I have found that there is no greater progenetor of introspection than 16 hours on an airplane with no return-ticket.
Somewhere between the end of the first in-flight movie and your 4th $6 cocktail you begin to catalogue your life with the perspective of a condemned man. The pain and anger of once so desperate trials and tribulations receeds along with the view of the California coastline. And
during that seemingly endless crossing of the Pacific, an everlasting night as you flee the rising of the sun, so many of the things you carried fall unseen into the great Ocean, dissipating like breadcrumbs dropped in water.
You start to ignore the pilots gentle reminders to adjust your watch as you pass through countless fleeting timezones,you have learned how insignificant things like that really are.
Finally you begin to see the lights of those old colonial ports, these exotic harbors with fairy-tale names, names that conjure images of continents unknown,adventures to be had. And when you finally touch down, take that first step off the transom and onto the ground of another world, you are reborn.
When you move to a new country you start from scratch, everything is new to you and you are new to everything, you re-build your life from the ground up, but only with the things you kept. You have chosen what to carry, and what to leave behind.
It is that freedom from yourself that really makes me at peace here. I accept myself, perhaps for the first time in my life....I can accept myself, and so many other things beyond what I ever imagined.
