Asian Culture – TalkingGrid

Posted on January 15, 2015January 19, 2015 by Frau Kolb

Fly with Frau to Utopian Spaces!

The years have punched us, around a bit, but we learned to duck.

Together, “we fly like mandarin geese.” We dip. We dive. We fly past obstacles to Paris, France… Miami! Rome. New York. No problem. Hong Kong. Here we GO! Effortlessly, we transform from cocooned, invisible beings, into GRAND winged creatures. Image: WE wear ankle length, bat capes and fuzzy ears. Cute, huh?

Now, BACK OFF!!! WE are serious, deadly. Dangerous, ARTISTS! Visionaries… Seers.

Social critics?

WE STING! We spear chuck. We have outbursts. We are… INVISIBLE!!! Or not… we deflate, rapidly, like rubber sex dolls to be used as needed, and then put away for another day… no hard feelings.

Tears, drip down my face, from laughing at you, laughing at me in this ridiculous outfit, onstage. The audience, eats up our raw chemistry. We soar, creating jacked up rock-jazz-poetry, fresh with your hard chops and silver AXE and me, long legs akimbo, exploring the range of experimental accordion tactics, in a micro-mini. How refreshing! Talent springs forth. Together, we rock out. Your friendship empowers me. You get me out of the house, out of my books, and into the world. I appreciate that. Thank you. When we JAM, the sound is so good not only because you know music but because I didn’t until I bumped into my sixth grade music award… oh yeah, I’m a player, too… and I’m willing to make some righteous noise, just listen.

ROAR!

Now imagine: a zipping hornet of international black and pink polkadot WASPS! Unlike bees, WE stay ALIVE, after we sting. Honey, we don’t fight CANCER. Instead, we DANCE! Tango? Anyone? Buzzing. Social Butterflies. Diving into the pleasure of being here in ernest. Double dipping. Tax paying. Party Animals!

(Imagine it. Mix all the metaphors, in your head. Make a cocktail of images. Bees. Flowers. Birds. Painted rock stars in platform shoes performing before an eager and excited audience. Throw some gold in there, why don’t you? Diamonds, check! Feathers. Add, graceful dancers in tuxedos, sequins, (fake) furs. LIGHTS!!! Glamour. check. Frau Kolb. Check!)

Everyday, irrespective of what goes, “wrong,” or isn’t perfect in our lives, we have the option of seeing the GOOD that IS and digesting the FACT of our good fortune. We each have gifts. Perhaps you are a writer or seriously good looking. Perhaps you are a spirited salsa dancer. It doesn’t matter if you are short. IF you can salsa Hotties wearing elastic band dresses will follow you out on the dance floor. YOU know it… You have seen it. Remember Salsa Johnny? Shortest guy in Salsa-Land. The ladies don’t care. They just shimmy up and wiggle to his smooth moves. He leaves with the girl that twirls and looks BOMB in glittering spandex.

If you are the biggest NERD, well… everybody knows that the Nerds of the Eighties are the Tech Wizards of Today. Rich as Gates… We all have a purpose. Yet, it is easy to forget that everyone is special and worthy of love; so much is annoyingly WRONG, according to NEWS and Media. We are ALL OVERWEIGHT! People KILL people for no good reason. We are all VIOLENT, angry. History proves that humans are completely capable of hating themselves, and their brothers and sisters. The news confirms our worst fears and collective memories of HORROR. The flexing of power, which renders some into killers, soldiers, and officers… others into robots that follow orders to torture and maim or worse, design methods of “extracting information,” which are inhumane. Lest we forget, the fact that killing is central to the diets of billions, including myself, who cannot conceive a life in which not a single pig is grown for Sunday Bacon. Yet, do I want pigs to die senseless cruel deaths? No.

Do I wish for humans to hurt each other? Do I wish to harm? No. No. No. My mission is to remind you: BE GOOD. Write. Start your own blog. Above all, enjoy your life and respect the lives of others, no matter how tempting it is to think of some people as “Pigs.” It is wrong to demote humans into species traditionally farmed or hunted, hated… “rats,” the Nazi called the people they decided were not their brothers, sisters, and friends. Suddenly, the Jewish people, so civilized and entrenched in their German lives, were worse than enemies, they were pests. How we can transform into predators and others into prey is a mystery, if one forgets that not too long ago…

Die Entwicklung der Menschheit

Einst haben die Kerls auf den Bäumen gehockt,
behaart und mit böser Visage.
Dann hat man sie aus dem Urwald gelockt
und die Welt asphaltiert und aufgestockt,
bis zur dreißigsten Etage.
Da saßen sie nun, den Flöhen entflohn,
in zentralgeheizten Räumen.
Da sitzen sie nun am Telefon.
Und es herrscht noch genau derselbe Ton
wie seinerzeit auf den Bäumen.

Sie hören weit. Sie sehen fern.
Sie sind mit dem Weltall in Fühlung.
Sie putzen die Zähne. Sie atmen modern.
Die Erde ist ein gebildeter Stern
mit sehr viel Wasserspülung.

Sie schießen die Briefschaften durch ein Rohr.
Sie jagen und züchten Mikroben.
Sie versehn die Natur mit allem Komfort.
Sie fliegen steil in den Himmel empor
und bleiben zwei Wochen oben.

Was ihre Verdauung übrigläßt,
das verarbeiten sie zu Watte.
Sie spalten Atome. Sie heilen Inzest.
Und sie stellen durch Stiluntersuchungen fest,
daß Cäsar Plattfüße hatte.

So haben sie mit dem Kopf und dem Mund
Den Fortschritt der Menschheit geschaffen.
Doch davon mal abgesehen und
bei Lichte betrachtet sind sie im Grund
noch immer die alten Affen.

Erich Kästner

In other words, no matter how SPIRITUAL and LOFTY we like to think we are… we are merely, the same old apes that slipped down from the trees a second ago. We are working on becoming BETTER.

I work to remind myself that It is mostly on television, in movies, or in novels, that people shot people. I’ve never really had much attraction to guns and can’t image why one would ever want to shot anything, except of course for target practice or in the case of, “a brace of pheasant,” being secured for Christmas

"A Brace of Pheasant," © R.M. Hogan, 2014 — “A Brace of Pheasant,” © R.M. Hogan, 2014

dinner. Yet, some decide to go into “Law Enforcement,” which means they are paid by taxes “protect and serve.” We appreciate their valor. I couldn’t do it. Imagine going out and responding to the calls of the insane and abandoned, hurt and abused. You’d have to be very brave. It must be very scary!

The thought of serving the public as a police officer is overwhelming to me, but I appreciate that IF there is an emergency, we have the option of dailing 911. We are glad to have specially trained support, a social recourse, on call. That police officers work for our benefit is part of the story. That some have loss sight of the value of each human life or see some citizens as instant targets for investigation, intimidation, and worse is NO NEWS. (Yet, we can not come to accept evil. We must continue to demand reforms, amends, and justice for all those caught in the net of evil that is prejudiced or violent Law Enforcement. We must or we are part of the problem.)

In books, noir detective novels, sexy smoky films with women in clingy gowns and men in linen suits, that show up, armed, dangerous KILLING is COOL. Imagine the moment when the fedora wearing man felt, “a calling to work with guns,” on the streets, sorting out the cigarettes and the fabricated misery from the true distress call of the frail, the battered, helping heiresses sort out their complicated family history and teaching these wayward girls how to slip in and out of a martini before the gangsters arrive and…. It would take almost superhuman power to face the world with a gun, badge, and number. Image, your first murder case… I mean in novels, murder is the novelty, the spark which propels the action of the narrative forward. Undoubtedly, there is a THRILL of reading of the dark passages where assassins lurk, waiting until apprehended by cleverer detectives… Yet, in real Life, murder is no laughing matter, no passing fancy, no story backdrop.

Fortunately, I did not become a police officer. I am not sure I would have ever qualified. I am fit but in a funky spirited art waif, way. As it is, I live a much safer life, than I image is that of either criminals or law enforcement. Really, I spend most of my time and energy, hiding out, in study, and cultivating peace. I invest my time in observing and encouraging goodness, prosperity, and harmony. People call to ask for advice because they know I’m pretty good at navigating through this sea of possibility we call, “LIFE.” Yet, I’m not one to shy away from discord in music or my private life…. In other words, HERE hiding in the comfort of my womblike abode, I am brave, I am willing. I protest by forwarding some news stories and commenting, however obliquely, on current events. I feel outrage mingled with great joy at being here in this world, now. Sure, I’ve had moments of intense confusion, RAGE beyond control, induced by… you don’t care to know… yet, I’m mostly about peace and cultivating global acceptance and mutual understanding. REMEMBER: FRAU KOLB is not Perfect. I know… I know… you don’t believe me. Unless, of course, you have read this blog for long enough to know that I am indeed, far from perfect… perhaps… I am like YOU, divinely flawed!

One thing I know: we are but shades of each other, each a little more, a little less and identical, the same. We try as we might to differentiate but we must all eat, shit, and die. Therefore, we are left with this instant in which to decide for what we stand. Or are we with the BIG BAD WOLF howling and gorging himself on fear? Do we binge on BAD NEWS? Do we cultivate DRAMA in our lives? How, precisely, are we investing our days, spending our lives? Are we designing with our actions a Romantic Comedy or a Horror Flick? Let’s forget about pointing fingers. Let’s LOOK at our own actions in the mirror and forget about a perfect people, perfect race, perfect blog. FUCK perfection. Let’s LOVE what is. Let’s love each other, flawed, ugly. Fat. Poor. White. Trash. Priceless princess. Devoted servant. Teacher. Scholar. Voluntary Sex Slave. Let’s collectively forgive our employers, parents, neighbors, therapists, siblings, and friends for all the harm they have caused us and let’s LET GO of the anger, pain, entitlement that allows us to make victims of ourselves and others on a global scale and let’s KEEP DANCING!

(You can tell that I just finished reading a fabulous work of fiction by Los Angeles resident, author, Lisa See, “China Dolls.” This book was a light, fun, sexy romp into the dark crevices of HORROR which history, World War II era, Asian American DRAMA, a classic love story following the tried and true boy meets girls… has sex with both, marries the nice respectable lovable predictable SHOW girl…YET enchanting pattern… I loved it, because sometimes we all need a little stability in a story line to keep us turning pages.)

Lately, I’ve been tortured that my writing is not to par. How dare I keep writing this awful blog? I mean, my best friends tell me how horrible the BAD grammar in the earlier stages (remember when I went through that ass for as, phase, when I couldn’t resist playing with my butt and my buts in public…) listen, forgive me… I was just getting words OUT. OUT. OUT. Some people may be able to wait, I can’t or couldn’t. I had to get the words OUT. I’ve been writing in diaries, journals, most of my life. I read and read and read some more… I’ve so many books, ideas, and art images in my head. I’m bursting.

The BLOG, this blog, is an extension of three strong urges. One: have FUN! Two: Get WORDS OUT! Three: connect with my kind, my friends, my people.

YOU that read my words, regularly, observe that I’ve distinguished myself as someone that has a message. Moreover, let’s not forget that I am a Columbia University graduate… I know grammar rules… let’s not forget that it is easy to criticize and much more of a challenge to build an audience, a rapport with the public. For those of you that know me well, it will come as no surprise, that I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I’ve approached it in a myriad of ways. Yet it is here, on-line that I’ve found my voice, my outlet. (I’ve started novels and nearly three hundred pages of drivel to prove it. I painted, participate in art events, and I draw daily… yet, there is a part of me that knows I don’t have the stamina to become a full time fine art painter. It seems, to me that a person would have to be made of nails to want to do that. You have to be very tough, maybe as tough as a cop… maybe not.) Anyway, I’m an artist, for sure… I write. I dance. My dance is impromptu, a jazz I fashion from the shock others experience when they witness me shake it. Now, the fact remains. I write. I write right here. Now. I publish. Miraculously, you read my words. Thank you.

More amazing: you are not alone in reading ALL THESE WORDS. You have waded through this long text. You have clicked and dug around and spent… hours of your life here, reading. Lots of readers frequent this site. Maybe they LIKE BAD GRAMMAR. I mean… there is so much good grammar out there… so many people writing scholarly reviews on Yelp…. yet SOME of YOU are even generous and supportive enough to DONATE to the Talkinggrid, which really means the world to me, to us. Now:

Let’s be grateful IF we have fingers, with which to type of LIFE as a JOY, a pleasure to be shared! Let’s remember that not everybody is so lucky as to be able to see, touch, smell, type, read, write, and/or tell the difference between right and wrong. Nope. You can, sometimes. So can I, until I can’t, but I don’t let myself forget my good fortune in being able to address these issues and share with you my perspective, my joy, my gratitude.

At the end of the day, it is my experience that goodness rules. Most people want to be and are mostly good. Sure we cheat, lie, and fail to live up to our ideals, but we have ideals and we will continue to improve. We may lose sight of this fact that most humans simply want to live, love, and grow old, when we watch children arm themselves and attack with weapons meant for military combat on our multiple screens and many NEWS (Horror) sources. We may eat meat, but we aren’t here to steal the life of another over political cartoons and we aren’t planning on wearing a cartoon hero suit and gunning down movie goers or drawing ourselves up to be warriors in video games, avenging High School Slights, paternal permissiveness, by gunning down our neighbor children. Daily, all over the world, humans exchange so many little supportive gestures, courtesies, which are the food that nourishes our collective spirit and allows us to continue despite the exceptional misery and astounding crimes that we know to be part of this endless narrative of sorrow and suffering, celebration and birth, called, “Life.”

Here we are! Dip. Rumba! Soft shoe. Flip! Dancing? Finding romance in the eyes of the partner we picked long ago, in our reproductive prime… finding the strength in ourselves to leave the abusive parent, the over taxing best friend (like the protagonist, Grace, in Lisa See’s stunning little novel of Asian American Show Girls shaking their cans into the retirement home lounge show circuit). On must learn to let GO, swing it, shake it UP, roll around like a clown and find BALANCE in the midst of the madness by being honest about one’s true and unique position as a STAR in the introverted and meandering, luxurious, and unpredictable, fun and carefree world of Frau Kolb & Talkinggrid.

Posted on November 15, 2014December 8, 2014 by Frau Kolb

An Asian Bookstore Encounter with Homelessness

Udon! Mituswa, a Japanese Grocery and Plaza offers comfort in a bowl, a favorite for Frau Kolb when she visits the used book store, nearby.

I’ve developed a ravenous appetite for Asian Studies. I hunger for understanding. Reading is my way of coming to grips with reality. Yet, I recently found that books may not be the magic bullet for every problem. Yet… Books beckon. Today, I went again to my absolute favorite business location in San Diego. There is an Asian area of town, I gravitate toward the Asian quarters, of any town that offers the cosmopolitan luxury of Asian markets, spas, and bookstores. I enjoy trying to make sense of the Japanese writing, Korean Letters, and Chinese Massage Parlor offerings. The bookstore I go to more often than any other, a passionate love of books and reading is my OPEN secret, I will not name because, then EVERYBODY might become obsessed with collecting used books on Asian Studies, as I am. Then, where would I be? Locked out of a spiking market for intellectually rewarding reading. Hah! The bookstore is where I sneak off to replenish myself and my stash of life enhancing reading material. After a delicious trip to Mitsuwa Market, where I always pick up two rice balls with salmon for my offspring and a big bowl of UDON for Frau Kolb, I hit the books!

This is a great book. It offers beautiful translations of central Chinese literary works.

There is one creepy element, at the used book store… the place I dig, so ardently! My favorite used bookstore in San Diego, is haunted by a homeless woman. She looks to me to be a North African woman, perhaps Ethiopian or Egyptian, she looks like she was once very pretty. She wears a handwoven dirty plastic gown of garbage bags, twisted with shopping bags, and ingeniously fastened together with rubber bands. Day after day, she hide, lurks in the safety of the bookstore with its timid staff of international bookworms, mostly Japanese.

She is to be seen snatching at books and muttering to herself, wedged in the long skinny isles, there is no way to get around her and her filthy baggage. I try to avoid her. She looks feral. She might bite. Poverty is no stranger to most of us. Yet, what is really scary is raving mental illness which distinguishes this specific homeless woman, it is thick like a nimbus around a medieval saint. To see a person engaged in a violent argument, snapping and hissing, against THIN AIR… is rattling. We may have homes but seeing people that are clearly in desperate need of psychiatric assistance, wandering urban areas, muttering ancient curses and twisted mantras, protestations to alien courts, accounts of villainous murders committed in outer space, in the isle of benign bookstores, makes me THINK about how flimsy the social safety net of our great nation is.

Yet, all over the world, an untold number of people are without shelter, without homes. (Or, labor under unacceptable conditions, it is only recently that workers had rights to defend.) In Europe, where the social net is stronger, homeless humans crowd train stations and sleep on urban streets. Every book, I’ve ever read on Asia features human suffering on a colossal scale. What is it that makes it so that so many humans are without homes, alone?

I was recently accused of being, “out of touch,” with the plight, the struggle for survival, of a particular individual— perpetually—struggling to make ends meet. I am keenly aware of the cost of privation, poverty is the ultimate luxury lifestyle, because if TIME is MONEY, those without money often lavish inordinate amounts of time on agonizing over it. Yet the homeless seem to be a class above or outside this equation of money and time. The homeless seem to have ETERNITY on their hands… day after day of nearly dying… until, their end is like all others, final. Most “working stiffs,” one encounters are not too far from being destitute, yet as long as health holds out, most of the people can continue their struggle with money for a lifetime. What is interesting to me is that the poor, with access to public libraries, never become interested in the nature of compound interest or the fluctuations of the stock market, topics everyone should study. Money is for the financially struggling an utter mystery. Yet, via books, anyone can learn to GO WITH THE FLOW, invest wisely, and live within a budget. Therefore, it seems to me that in a lack of desire to confront a topic they find thorny, CASH FLOW, every accuser is pushing away viable opportunities, actively seeking, to live outside the flow of currency. Yet, I know my perspective is that of a hot house flower, sheltered and unreal to those that do not share it.

The relationship between indoor and outdoor aesthetics is the glorious topic of this work!

A book about how to really get clean, inside and out.

We ALL experience suffering in our lives. Pain is the absolute confirmation that one is ALIVE! In recent memory, health concerns, and financial struggles, squeeze the life out of some. Yet, The Glorious Present, when anxiety is at bay and memory is not strangling it, is always blissful. However, the wall between having and not having is thin…feeling safe and being in danger is separated by a flimsy membrane, don’t look at the potential danger, stay here with me… in the NOW, which is where the decision to keep looking for obscure printed words on Asian Cultural Studies, while deftly ignoring the mental illness of others, may be the way of keeping one’s own equilibrium.

The perspective of a superior artist, world renown, Geisha and last of a dying world of traditional Japanese artists. — The perspective of a superior artist, world renown, Geisha and last of a dying world of traditional Japanese traditional arts.

What do I know? The homeless African woman, creeping about my favorite bookstore, may be perfectly happy. She may live under the most sheltering bridge. Her days may be better than those of the frustrated office workers or Walmart employees. Yes, she looks feral. She looks like she might bite. Yet, she is in a book store, a center of civility, learning! What a paradox! So, I don’t leave. I studiously avoid her. Yet, I’ve made up my mind to find that book, “Cheerful Money,” a memoir by Tad Friend on the passing of the WASP age of cultural dominance in America. At the check out, I tactfully mention her presence to the employees up front and they looked frightened. “She’s still here?” asked the sweet woman with the loose orange curls. I nod and keep moving.

Propoganda writing is a lot like celebrity magazine writing, totally insubstantial and dull.

Public Libraries… in California… in Santa Monica and in New York can be like train stations and other, “points of mass transit,” where mentally ill people are “allowed,” to perch with their filthy packed baggage and without being charged with loitering. Bookstores often serve as refuges for me and other readers, spending time in them is one of my favorite means of relaxation, education, and of preparing myself to live in grace and gratitude, but how can one relax with a living zombie muttering to themselves in the corner isle? She serves as a reminder, that no matter how much I want to avoid DEATH, I too am just a person seeking the shelter of the bookstore’s apparent security. Moreover, I ask myself, “how does that woman, wearing a garbage bag gown FEEL about being without home, alone, abandoned inside a portable hell? How different is her day than the day of a Wall Street broker after a series of monumental declines and crashing after snorting a mountain of lines, lies, chopped on a hand held mirror? What does it say about our society that this woman would seek shelter in a public place, day after day, and that somehow no one stops or aids her? Is this good? Bad? Beyond judgment?

In the face of the ugly truth that some people live with close to nothing and they find a different kind of refuge indoors in public spaces where staff are not quick to shoo them away… away to where? That is a question we don’t want to ask. Yet, that stale question lingers in the air around my favorite hobby, book hunting, amassing, collecting information!

Totally moving book by Adeline Yen Mah, an award winning book for young adult.

Books for Learning Chinese — Learning Chinese is Frau Kolb’s Idea of a GOOD TIME!

Now, before you start thinking I’m some kind of spoiled brat… I might be, actually but not really, my parents were not rich, by an means, except perhaps in their cultural heritage. I left home at seventeen and I was HOMELESS, for the first three (summer) months. I squatted with the PUNK KIDS and other street people at 3BC’s (A legendary Punk Squat House) on the Alphabet Streets of The Lower Eastside in Manhattan. Later, I had a Drunk boyfriend, twenty years my senior, and desperately handsome, that with his suave sound and big green eyes led me into the thick of poverty, no money I earned was enough to keep up with his drinking habits. After that break-up, I decided to AVOID such company, no matter how fetching and started making conscious choices to align myself with the abundance that is New York. Since my early twenties, based on reading all kinds of books on finance and experience of moving into different circles, where FLOW called, I have managed my reality via deliberate measures aimed at creating well being, establishing a status quo, I care to maintain.

My father, a direct descendant of literate house slaves from the isle of St. Croix, always encouraged me to carry a book with me, everywhere, every day. In his understanding, books were salvation. Literacy was the key to gaining power, acceptance, and recognition. Thus, I am forever reading. I had a wealth of books in my room, to chose from as a child. I read them all before entering Kindergarten. So… spacey as I always looked, I always had a lot to think about.

This book is a great introduction to Chinese Characters.

Dad would visit famous used bookstores in New York, like The Strand. Having trained as an attorney, with his eye on political power, dreaming of prestige, in the government of our island nation, my father, in actuality, worked successfully as a furniture salesman in New York City for decades. Yet, father aspired to BIG WEALTH, so by his standards, we were, “poor.” (It took years for me to understand that my father just had distorted ambitions, which prevented him from savoring his achievements.) Therefore, we always felt rather pinched by his big dreams, and dissatisfaction with his level of attainment, sort of like the characters in a D.H. Lawrence’s novel, about The Rich. Father married Mother in a vain attempt to secure for himself a bride from a prominent Dominican family. How shallow! Yet, don’t we all make such cosmic miscalculations when we put materialistic considerations is the seat of primacy? My parents immigrated to the United States via Dominican Republic, which is the verdant half of the isle of Hispaniola… blah, blah, blah… I don’t want to bore you. I’m sure I’ve already lost the less determined visitors to this… yes, very personal… intimate meandering artist’s blog.

This sweeping history carries me away. — This sweeping history carries Frau Kolb away.

Bloody Murderess or Cunning Leader? History can not decide how to judge this singular female on the Chinese throne.

Now let us return to the cave, with the products of our book hunt. What do you have? What did you find? You plop down with aplomb and begin to sink into a thick paperback on China, a New History. You wake up in Japan, Land of the Rising Sun! The martial aspects of culture are not so interesting to me. I love the stories of Geishas, an artistic elite, trained to listen, to serve, and entertain. Reading, I lose all constrains and wander from nation to nation, crossing oceans of time. Fired up, Frau Kolb settles into a pattern of voracious learning. The questions propelling Frau Kolb, deeper into the green tea, are “Who is Asian? Am I Asian?” an appreciation of calligraphic letters as pictographic conduits of layered meaning, the personal knowledge of pure silk’s transcendent quality, a historical interest in everlasting jade, and its healing properties, with a momentary flickering thought on the power of embroidery, the monumental tombs, ancient bronzes, the overriding centrality of the Emperor(s) and the, at first, hidden power of Empress Wu, who ruled during the late Tang (my favorite) dynasty. And the concubines, sheltered possession of rich men by Mandate of Heaven. Divinity in the person of an all powerful ruler. How does one become Asian? The founders of the Wei Dynasty were actually Turkish, they adopted Han, Chinese ways. Studying Asian Cultures one can legitimately ask, “Who are the quintessential Asians?” I could ask similar questions about “Blacks…” Who are they? I’ve heard that I am, “A Black Girl.” Does this render me the same as every other, “Black Girl?” Perhaps. I am happy to agree, but what does that mean, exactly…when Spanish is my first language, your are reading my English, and German is my third language conquered, mastering it, via daily self motivated study, the same personally effective method I am now applying to the learning of French. What if I told you I feel most at ease in Europe? It appears to be like there is a push to lump people into these big racial categories, which often obscure the individual’s personal identity. I understand what Euro-Asian means. Do you understand what “Waspy Afro-Latin,” means?

Books by Chinese American Authors, Gish Jen and Gus Lee

Fraud! Fortune! Famine! Oh! What romance… Lost in the history of China, Japan, Korea… I find myself reading up on India, you can understand Asian without having a grasp, however slippery, on Buddhism… I get lost, trying to figure out how these locations, cultures, and peoples relate to each other. Monks. Monasteries. Rebellions. I see that this is a lot like European history, a complex story of nuanced WAR in which brothers fight for crumbing empires, and frail wives, while the universe wails, singing, its eternal and infinite abundance of budding universes.

Thank goodness I've secured a source of good reading material. — Thank goodness I’ve secured a source of good reading material.

I have departed, entranced by my readings, my sacred books. I am FAR OUT! I LOOK toward the East and what do I see? I see me. I see myself, my values… the appreciation of rice as a source of life. My need for incense and meditation. Yoga. In order to flesh out the dry bones of history, I read novels, and recently I read, “The Good Earth,” by Pearl S. Buck, a book that puts poverty, firmly in the cycle of Fortuna’s cruel whims. I went through an intensive phase of reading “Judge Dee, ” highly stylized novels by Robert Van Gulik, a Dutch diplomat and “Authority on Chinese Culture,” and have recently invested many an hour into the contemplation of bound feet in the historically appealing novels of Lisa See.

The homeless woman, finding temporary shelter in the bookstore is no different than me. We both know where to go to find shelter. We are both free to roam! Imagine having your feet broken by your mother as a child, in order to make you into a virtually crippled sex object, unable to run, unable to flee? Or the fact that until recently in China and elsewhere, literacy was a luxury few enjoyed. We can be certain that LIFE has never been easier, that it is here and NOW.

By Jung Chang (and John Halliday, on "Mao," — By Jung Chang
(and John Halliday, on “Mao,”)

A fascinating person, Empress Cixi brought China into the modern age.

This is just a small part of the collection of Asian books I have at the ready. — This is just a small part of the collection of Asian books I have at the ready and waiting!

Great Book by Yu Hua. You get the feeling of what it was like to grow up in Revolutionary China. The dry, terse, style of the author is reminiscent of Hemingway.

I have a enough reading to last me a few weeks! Hah!

Posted on November 4, 2014November 15, 2014 by Frau Kolb — 3 Comments

Nude Women in Hot Water

You walk down a long hall, that until recently was decorated with small golden lacquer plates sporting swirling calligraphy on scrolls, on which Chinese characters proclaim: LOVE, Friendship, and Happiness. Yesterday, the plates were not up on the long narrow hall. The wall was freshly painted, but not wet, with tape indicating that a transformation is in progress.

At the Olympic Spa, they are forever improving the facilities, expanding and refining their vision yet retaining the same staff, the same treatments, and best-of-all the same affordable pricing. I have visited this Spa for over five years, almost six… The first time I visited, I had a small lump in my breast, which I did not yet know was cancer. As I discovered that I had a serious medical obstacle before me, the nurturing, meditative bathing, and social silence of the spa became a haven for my battered body.

The location was less sleek, smaller, just the core rooms of wet tubs, treatments. No big salt sauna, or fancy bathrooms… just a little restaurant that looked like communist era, in a far away land… it was a trip, from the first dip, to another world.

Lucky Number 23, photo ©Frau Kolb, 2012, at Olympic Spa in Los Angeles

The front desk is manned by two or three pretty Korean women. They smile as you approach and inquire if it is your first time. If you nod, “yes.” They will explain to you what is to be expected and walk you through the basic etiquette, which ensures that Olympic Spa is a pleasure for everyone that visits. Unless, perhaps, you are Frau Kolb, they know YOU from a half decade of faithfully enthusiastic patronage of the well run business. You pay your fee, sign the liability waiver, and you can come in and use all of the facility for a mere $15.00, that is an outstanding value. Sure the outside of the building is beat-up, the neighborhood is ethnic funky, which I LOVE, and it is NOT Santa Monica. Nope.

You enter, past the thick double doors which represent the outside world of stress, obligations, and competition, into a structured world of self care, reflection, wet meditation, sweat therapy, and enforced gentle voices… AH! You put your street shoes in a locker and then proceed in your socks or bare feet to the larger lockers for clothing. You put away your things and put on a green Olympic Spa robe and then you walk over to the big scale, take your weight, maybe… or you get yourself a cup of barely tea from the urn, and eye the Korean women laying languidly on the jade floor, next to the equally lovely Scandinavian Blonds that speak gently among themselves. Now it is time for the baths!

Selfie in The Mirror at the Olympic Spa in Los Angeles.

Pull open the door and take off your robe. No robes are worn in the bath. Now you must clean your body before you get into any of the pools, steams, or saunas. YOU wash. I like to squat on the little plastic seats and douce myself with water from the traditional long tub of hot water. I use the little mitts, I purchased for a couple dollars at at the front desk and scrub myself. Around me women are quietly letting go of burdens, pain, anger… negativity is scrubbed off and washed down the drain. Others shower, before going into the bubbling warm tub, or the healing medicinal Mug Wort Tea, bath in which up to four or five women, quietly group.

Frau Kolb after a super hot soak and scrub! — Frau Kolb, feeling rejuvenated, after a super hot soak and scrub!

I always get the same treatment, The Milk and Honey Smoothie, which begins with having milk, which exfoliates the skin, poured onto one’s horizontal body on a padded table made specially for SPLASH and SCRUBBING. The treatment includes a fresh cucumber face mask and peppermint hair shampoo. Toward the end honey, which nourishes the skin is applied and rinsed off with bails of hot HOT water. The scrubbing is intense and when I first experienced it, I was overwhelmed and surprised, never having been scrubbed so fiercely or felt so babied since… well… EVER!

I always request this head to toe, Milk and Honey Treatment from the same woman, one among perhaps twenty that work giving bath treatments, she is my favorite. We connect. She cares for me, and was/is part of my self care routine and even though she speaks little English I know she has an adult son of whom she is very proud and that she has worked at the Olympic Spa for almost thirty years. She looks so young, fit, and content in her black bra and panty set, which is the uniform of the women that work, scrubbing and massaging tired mothers, sisters, wives, waitresses, lawyers, and doctors… all the women require nurturing and carving out time to take care of the self is essential to preserving mental equilibrium and personal power.

Once, I went alone to the spa, and my Korean friend was there on her day off, bathing. We scrubbed each other’s backs, like old friends, laughing. Another time, I visited with The Muse. As usual I had the Milk and Honey Treatment and we soaked together in the Mug Wort tea pool, which is the smallest of the three in ground pools which are at the heart of the complex. The Muse, quickly found her own favorite treatment, she swears by the facials given at the spa. After our treatments we lounged on the heated jade floor, whispering to each other… before we roused ourselves to lunch, the restaurant being pretty delicious! Look here:

The Olympic Spa is traditional in the best sense of the word in that it upholds the tradition of Asian communal bathing and presents it in a way that is accessible to the savvy women of Los Angeles. The Olympic spa is for women only. You are welcome to come and relax and women of all types, ages, shapes, and sizes share space and bathe, together. One avoids starring at others but it is comforting to see the variety of physical forms femininity manifests itself. Women are universally beautiful if you look at them through a cloud of steam and from the vantage of your own unclothed vulnerability.