In a Funk

I’m in a funk recently, too much drinking and not enough doing. A dark time where anything beyond moving is a chore. A time where a weakness is taking hold of my inner voice and the call to action is hardly audible. Frankly it’s disgusting, but I imagine unavoidable in many ways or a at the very least a necessary evil. Feeling good all the time detaches you from everyone else who fells like shit. Hopefully I’ll find a better balance of all this and use it to my advantage rather than letting it use me until I’m disadvantaged.
Only a few more weeks before I fly off to China and live a lifestyle that feeds my ego and softens me up at the same time. Something about not understanding most of what’s being said around you and struggling to work out sentences like a full grown preschooler with facial hair that punches you in the face with humbleness. Then you have the 2 hour massage and the advantage of being taller than most people and it all seems to work out…
This trip should be a strange one with some very dramatic ups and downs. My wife and I will be starting in Shanghai visiting family, always a great time. My Chinese family are great people they will all come over for lunch and dinner and we’ll get drunk and gamble and they’ll tell jokes and pour me a few more. My father in-law has done nothing but support and encourage us to live happy and reach for greater things. My Chinese mom is a beautiful women who would and does do everything in her power to make life for her family better even at her own expense (you just want to give her a big hug.) We’ll eat some fruit fresh from the trees surrounding their land, some fish from the pond out back and of course fresh fava beans and bok choy from the garden.
After a break from all the family stuff we need to squeeze in some business and hit the city in the center to visit with friends, give some gifts (gift giving is an art form to the Chinese and having realized it’s importance a work in progress for myself.) I blew $320 bucks of perfume yesterday, what the fuck! It’s still gravy baby cause I have made up my mind that financial success is something I will achieve among other things. (Henry David Thoreau once said that some men went off to India as a trading man so they may have become rich and might live the life of a poet. He insisted that to succeed in this business it would take no less than 10 years and by that time the soul would be lost…and that they should just go straight to the life of a poet…how bout if I do it in 5 years Henry? Will I still have the soul?) The business stuff appeals to me, when someone treats you to a grand lunch and goes out of their way to make you feel important, you can’t help but fell important!
After all the role playing it will be time to strap on the backpack and head west to Yunnan province of China. Hands down one of my favorite places on earth, it is a mix of the purest country side in China and small towns with cobblestone streets, outdoor cafes and small waterways running through. The head high marijuana plants growing along the side of the road are good fun to go as well. Then its down to south east Asia, I’m hoping for 2 out of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos (any suggestions) needless to say this should be otherworldly and with just my wife and I we are bound to roll between getting lost violent anger and totally content blissful love…Bangkok scares me a bit as I’ve never been and were I to go with mates it would be a beer after beer scuba dive into the underworld of western money and eastern exploitation excess. Truth be told I have far too guilty a concience for all that mess and with my wife around it will be more an observation of a relatively conservative Chinese woman handles a city like Bangkok.
Anyway none of that is here yet, it won’t even be started for a few more weeks and in normal fashion I start to overindulge leading up to a trip. It’s like I can push things further, over do them because I think they can’t keep hold of me. As if one day all my demons will wake up and say “Oh, shit! He’s gone again.” So I say give it to me while I’m here cause if there is one thing I’ve started to figure out it’s that you don’t know what you can do until you’ve done it.