I checked their website and decided to submit. It took me a year to stop fiddling with a word here and a word there. And to forget the comments from an agent, "I can't sell this."
Anyway, it's off and perhaps that bit of momentum will result in further submissions of work that has been waiting and waiting.
Here is one of the short reflections from my manuscript, One Foot on the Ground: Wandering, Collecting, Arriving, Savoring, Waiting, Transforming, Returning
Off Itinerary: Saying “Yes”
Destination no longer ruled. My
only map was that of free association: I
would follow each street only as long as it interested me and then, on a whim,
choose a new direction.
Alice Steinbach
I said “Yes” to an early morning
walk around Xuanwu Lake Park with Christopher and Kate. We met at 6 am and Christopher asked me if I
was hungry. What’s the right answer to
this? I sensed it was “Yes” and I was
right. They wanted to take me for street
food breakfast. We walked toward the
university until we came upon a woman who was setting up her cart. She was pulling small snowball sized lumps of
dough off a large bucket full of dough in the lower part of her cart. She set out various containers of filings and
checked the fire under her wide flat pan.
We watched for a minute or two and then Kate spoke to her. Nodding seemed to indicate that she was ready
to begin. She spread the dough over the pan and then cracked an egg over the
dough. With a broad spatula she spread the egg over the dough. As these set and became a crepe of sorts, she
spread the vegetables Kate indicated over the egg. Finally, she folded this tortilla into a roll
and placed it in a thin plastic bag for holding. By the time she had made one each for the
three of us, a second and third cart had arrived on the scene and quickly set
up for business. Each was a slightly different variety of the same thing. I could imagine that a worker or student
might have a favorite cart for breakfast every day—one and only favorite out of
these three and the dozens more we saw as we rode in a taxi to the lake. The top few bites were crepe only, but below
that it was a crunchy, soft, wrap around oily veggies for a very satisfying
finger-licking good breakfast if you can let go of dry toast as a standard. 2 RMB each, about 30 cents.
The taxi dropped us off at one
entrance gate to the lake park. A group
of adults were doing tai chi with red flags just outside the arched opening in
the old city wall. We entered and made a
plan to walk the forest route and then the island route. There are broad wooden
walkways through the forest and people are doing morning exercise routines
alone and together. They move to the
same principles, if not the same rhythm/drummer, in harmony and community, yet
each may be doing something individual.
A man plays his trumpet to a tree.
A woman stretches at a bench, couples walk briskly, small groups move
through different forms of tai chi or chi gong.
A man uses tree branches to do pull ups over a small water feature. It is 6:20 am. Someone plays a flute; someone else is doing
primal screams, and a sole woman is singing opera to the lake. She has a beautiful voice, and I think the
beauty of the lake owes something to the vibrations she infuses.
The care and artistry of setting is
stunning here and almost everywhere else we went. There is not just simply a row of bushes
along the highway—there is usually an array with depth and texture. Lower plantings in front, with medium thick
hedges framing shaped trees or contrasting hedges of medium height and then one
or two rows of trees standing taller behind.
This would be along the highway.
This level of quality in a park would be arrayed in groupings rather
than along a road. The difference in the
park is the inclusion of height and stone.
Beautiful “scholar rocks” are cultivated near Lake Xuanwu
by putting “seed” stones into cracks in the rock and then allowing the agitating action of the water to shape a variety of openings in the rock. The result is a three-dimensional stone lace. Nature and artistry, one and the same.
China, 2012
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