So it happens that I've returned to Asia. Not China at this point, grant you, but Asia nonetheless (I will note that my husband insists that we are not in fact on the Asian continent given the close proximity to Africa, however a convincing majority of maps support my assertion).
There are similarities in being here to being there. Most notably to me, a pervasive sense of simultaneous oldness and newness - an almost stubborn and indignant anchoring in an ancient mindset, complete with disregard to anything deemed otherness or anything not mentioned or not yet existent in the ancient texts or myths or spiritual guidance, coupled with an arrogant if haphazard integration of a technologically advanced globalization, in moments or Pollack-like splashes across a desert otherwise littered with bottles and paper wrappers and entitlement. All in all, lots of similarities so far, though my current view from the safety of a compound guarded with guns and barbed wire and intentional ignorance, is somewhat limited. We shall see how this adventure progresses.
