the moon won't stretch itself out across the surface

when there's no fish in the water
men fly kites in the sky -
some sink,
some float,
some merely wait to die.
when the clouds lay calm,
when the waters sit still -
the bones are numb
of the men who can feel

yet
(in the darkest alley of pitch and echoes
they still see stars)

I don't get it.

As I find myself yet again hunched over my laptop in the "little vomit dog cafe" (so named because a little dog vomited on me the first time I sat here) , I am reminded by what's playing in my peripheral hearing how much I don't get jazz music.
I just don't get it.
Where are the aesthetics? I don't necessarily need all my music to be melodic. I sit up and pay close attention to anything experimental, I am a rule-bender from way back myself. What's more, I like all kinds of music that the majority of people would categorize as 'an acquired taste'.

I can handle chaos, sometimes even revel in it. I don't have a problem with music that doesn't follow any particular direction, but it should at least sound like eventually it will lead to somewhere pleasant! Instead, it sounds like a surly bunch of brass instruments engaged in a heated altercation on Jerry Springer. My imagination conjures a scene in which a stage is filled with musicians constantly clambering for the spotlight, using their saxophone or trumpet or piano or whatever means necessary, to be heard over the top of everyone else. The sound that is emulated from such a melee is audial terrorism! At the very least, an affront to the aural senses.

In but not of...

China...
What can I say? I could ramble on for pages, recounting my experiences from the past year and you wouldn't get any closer to understanding what China is like unless you had actually been here yourself. Then you would knowingly smile as you empathised.

China is like an exotic fruit: you can stand from a distance and look at it and describe it superficially, but until you've actually taken a bite you don't know what it tastes like. And it's just beginning to ripen...

Oddly enough, my life synched up with the Chinese calendar before I even got here. I saw the year of the rat in (2008 for those who aren't aware) being held up at an ATM in Soho, London. Year of the rat, indeed. The other traumatic, rat-like related incidents to follow included: discovering I'd lost my passport AS I was boarding my flight back to London from Dublin airport, severely injuring my ankle in an embarrassing jogging accident, eviction in a foreign country which was theft and deception inclusive, losing years worth of valuable notes after a computer crash, a knife attack, a break-up, and a freakish mice plague that destroyed my car and all the sentimental possessions I had been storing inside it.

There's more, but it's already too late not to sound like I'm whining. Besides, it was undoubtedly 'Year of the Rat' on a global scale, and many suffered much more than I. And after all, I did see the controversial Bjork concert in Hong Kong, which exceeded all hopes I ever had of seeing Bjork in concert. I traveled to two new countries I had never been to, driving a car for the first time in 3 years in one of them. And nearing ever closer to 30 years, it has been a very successful year of self-growth and inching closer to deciphering the riddle of who I am. Being one of those 'blowing whichever way the wind blows' types, I have lived a vague existence somewhere in the in-between.

But now it is the year of the ox. Consciously in synch with the Chinese calendar this time, I could FEEL 2009 begin as I stood laughing on a hutong house roof-top, surrounded by a deafening and joyfully chaotic skyline of exploding pyrotechnic mayhem. It made absolutely everything I had endured in the previous year worthwhile, that one cacophonic, sparkling and completely unforgettable moment. It wasn't the regular, run-of-the-mill clicking over of numbers that happens each time one year ends and another begins. This year I know I will find myself yet again asking 'How the hell did I get here? WHAT the hell am I doing here?' And it's life-affirming not to know the answers. It's also a hell of a lot of fun.

So I raise a toast to charging forward. Not necessarily without heed, but boldly and bravely. Here's to finishing the things we start, and perhaps breaking one or two of them along the way and only temporarily looking back to say 'Oops! Sorry!'