It winds to the sea

These days, passing swiftly, bring changes, I know.
And time marches on, from this place we must go...

That's from "The Road To Drumleman"--the folk song from which I "borrowed" the theme of the whole shebang. I remember my last ballet class--I'd developed a real relationship with Teacher Sandy--we were kind of like chums. After hugging her goodbye and realizing that she was actually crying a little bit, I felt weird. I didn't really talk to anyone walking home.

It was a dark, rainy night. I remember it well. I was swinging the backpack in which were my ballet supplies. And The Blackest Crow. See, Teacher Sandy was one for trying out stuff to freedance to, and she let us bring music. I didn't really like what she was trying, so I brought a good dose of Atwater-Donnelly along. Wish I could've brought Ms. Atwater and Mr. Donnelly along, too, so she could've had the full live experience--alas, they wouldn't have fit in my ballet bag (that's not an insult. Their CDs barely fit in).

Crying a little bit, adding tears to the water on my face, I began to sing. Softly, of course, as so not to be heard. I sang those lines. I added, of course, the next two.

But I'll ever remember, as the heart beats in me
The road to Drumleman, that winds to the sea.

Great lines. I wish I had written them, but, of course, that's the nice thing about folk songs. If they're true folk songs--sort of just "thunk up and did", nobody gets jealous of whoever's writing ability. Just the way they do them...

It's memories like these that have suddenly started pouring in and out of me recently. Since I started this weblog, it seems like I've been a lot more homesick--and yet looked at this place more with a writer's eye.

Lone Valley is beautiful. Outside our window, and I mean right outside our window, there is a rice paddy that is slowly being demolished. It is fallow now, and of course that makes me want to sing, every morning:

The morn upon the fallow field...

Sometimes you can see water buffalo grazing in it. It's hard to ignore the dark splotch of construction going on, though. Far to the back, though not quite at the river, there is a new road (and this is one I don't like) going in. And at the end of that, close to where Qi Shan starts going up, are a bunch of shacks and some activity. But the doomed areas close by are not such, and that makes it interesting--I think. There is a sort of a pond there, though, excepting the river, it is the biggest body of water around here that I can see. So I call it a "lake". On clear days, you can see Qi Shan in it.

When you're up in the hills, you look down at Lone Valley. One nice thing about living in China; the buildings are not so bad to look upon. They're so white. This, unfortunately is outside and in; while it's lovely outside, in it gets a bit annoying. So I have tons of pictures up.

Looking down at Lone Valley is an experience. Often enough, I'm up in the morning in the middle of Qi Shan somewhere and it is shrouded in mist and sun and early-morning light. So it bears an air of cleanliness that it does not have. I mean! Lone Valley is relatively clean--there is a lot of garbage, but it's not as bad as some things I've seen pictures of--like Calcutta. But anything bathed in such golden, perfect light looks like heaven or something.

Up in the hills I am perfectly at home. I like the pine grove at Ba Shan, and the little gorge there. The irrigation trail just after sunrise in Qi Shan is okay, too. I'll tell you what happened on the plane to Lone Valley. I was just watching out the window at clouds, and all of a sudden they stopped being, and there, just there was a hill--not Qi Shan, but some hill just there. It was beautiful! With the light hitting it just right and the early-morning glow and I don't know what else. So I gasped (in English, I don't know much Chinese), "Oh, it's so pretty!"

Mum says that though the people on the plane might not have understood the words, they must've understood the tone.

I don't know what possesed me to tell Hugh that story one night after English Corner--English Corner? Oh, that's a free-for-all sort of English class, and it's extra-curricular. Anyway, he asked me if I liked the scenery, and I told the story to illustrate the fact that I did, I did.

Ah, now I feel better. Sometimes I don't know if I'm posting for you or for me.

Saro