Green Grass Dichotomies

Friends,

Well, the fall semester has begun. Here in Taipei, it’s back to in person, though it’s looking like that may change in the near future: Delta has arrived in Taipei, officially announced a few minutes before I began writing this. Taiwan previously contained one Delta outbreak ; let’s hope for a repeat success.

For me, this is a very unusual fall. Between grad school and teaching, it’s the first fall in ten years where I’m neither a teacher nor a student. Even way back in 2011 I was still working at a university, just not as a teacher. It’s an odd feeling to not be in that chaos, to not have a clearly defined nine months ahead of me, but change is a constant. I’ve been using my time to do a little tutoring, a little college advising, a little writing, a little cooking, a little walking (this month’s picture is from my usual walking path) a lot of reading, and a lot of video gaming.

On her Instagram, Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote : “Nothing is perfect. Most things aren’t even qualified good. But life is about making the best of it, no matter what ‘it’ is. This is still the life I chose and every single day it is the life I would choose all over again. Fall on a college campus feels like possibility and new beginnings, even when you’re contending with history or calamity. Isn’t that the very thing about pragmatic hope? Showing up even when you could not because you believe in works not yet seen?”

I think this is one of the beautiful things about being in education: every semester you have the opportunity to really adjust, really reset, really think about how to make things better. And that kind of mindset can leak over into other areas of your life in a good way as well, with the summer breaks giving you a space where your routine HAS to change. Being in education made it convenient for me to move to Taiwan in terms of finding a job, but I think being in education also helped me with the attitude or emotional aspect of such a change just as much.

We’ve now been in Taiwan for almost 2.5 years. That fact, combined with the aforementioned new semester, has me thinking a lot about what a next step should be. Right now, we really love our location in the city. We’re a ten minute walk from the MRT in one direction and a fifteen minute walk to a silent, woodsy hill that feels almost removed from civilization. But our apartment is small, to the point where I have put considerable energy into thinking about how I could use our bathtub to store some additional kitchen appliances. (Yogurt maker: yes. Food processor: might rust.) And so I’ve started having thoughts, as one does, about living a little further out, with a little cheaper rent, a little bigger place. Maybe a little more dog friendly.

But then I think about the cost. Right now we can very easily walk to dozens of restaurants, multiple groceries, a hospital, two traditional markets, one night market, two libraries, two bus lines, the MRT station. It’s not much more of a walk from here even to Taipei 101, Elephant Mountain, or several malls. If we moved further out, I might have to *gasp* start driving again. At least a scooter. If we moved further out, it would be more difficult to see our friends when we wanted. If we moved further out, I might not have seventeen coffee shops to escape to.

I think if I let it, choices like this can consume me. Rural comfort versus urban convenience. Living in Taiwan versus the US. Spending our money/energy on travel/experiences versus daily life.

But I think this is a lot like the choice my students are having to make about which university to go to. Yes, those choices might lead to wildly different lives (though, even that is unlikely). However, that doesn’t mean there are wrong choices. I’m very happy to realize that I’d be happy continuing to live right where we are. I’d be happy living a little further out. I’d be happy living in the US, or Taiwan. I hated how living in Round Rock, Texas meant having most of the problems and few of the benefits of both sides of the rural and urban divide. Our neighbors were still on top of us, our neighborhood was soulless, we still had to drive to the grocery even though it was not far away.

But you know what? I was happy in Round Rock too.

Of course, each path has its unique problems and benefits, having these choices at all is a privilege, and just because each choice can lead to happiness doesn’t necessarily mean making choices is any easier. But hey, maybe a little less stressful?

Further reading:

• THE OLYMPICS, follow-up: Linda Holmes of PCHH had a goal of watching every single sport and her breakdown of them is a delight. It also led me to watch Mary Carillo’s badminton rant for the first time, which made me realize my life had been incomplete before hearing it. Finally, N+1 published a very long, thoughtful essay about Japan’s relationship to both the Olympics and to the work of Yu Miri (repeated plug, check out Tokyo Ueno Station translated by fellow Kentucky nerd camp participant Morgan Giles).
• TAIWAN: NYTMagazine had a giant article using people leaving Hong Kong to compare Hong Kong and Taipei. Such a subject is impossible to fully cover in a single article, but this one does a good job of being digestible while not trying to hand wave any aspect of it. Definitely worth checking out. This article from The Anime Herald helped me better understand why so little of the massive amount of anime Taiwan consumes is actually created in Taiwan. I loved loved loved this fifteen minute story of a game called Taipei Metro Quest . Even if you don’t check it out, definitely check out the song it uses . Speaking of music, Golden Melody Awards new artist winner ?te’s album A Bedroom of One’s Own is SO GOOD. Finally, one of my favorite Twitter follows is Min Chao, @wordsfromtaiwan , from Ghost Island Media . She regularly tweets out archived photos from Taiwan’s history.
• The best interview I read this month was with Jason Isbell about vaccines .
• Back in 2014, I was writing book reviews, wanting to write video game reviews, and wrote an article about what the two genres could learn from each other . Since then, I’ve stopped trying to publish reviews and only read reviews of books I’ve already read and want to think about more. In large part, the reasons for both of those things are explored in this N+1 article about book criticism . The very conspicuous use of gendered pronouns in the article is weird, as is the “literary sky is falling” attitude, but the overall message is one that resonated strongly for me.
• I have not done a great job at choosing books lately, but I have played some really good video games. A Short Hike , Finding Paradise , and Inside are all really different, but they’re each very short and beautiful experiences. Something to be said for a game you can finish in an hour. I’d also recommend Taiwan’s award-winning film Little Big Women , which is on Netflix. The setup will feel pretty familiar, but the moment to moment of it is quite beautiful.

A friend recently saw in the news that China was flying military planes near Taiwan with increasing frequency and asked me if I was scared, and I answered quite truthfully that I worried about my safety here a lot less often than I thought about my safety in the US driving on I-35 alone. Which is to say that we we are used to can adjust so rapidly, can’t it?

I am getting very adjusted to waking up at 9:30 instead of 6:15. Maybe a little too adjusted.

What are you getting too adjusted to?

-g