THE BEAUTY OF INVISIBLE INK - Bathhouses

Yesterday, I cut and pasted into my blog from an e-mail, something I'm usually against on principle. None of it showed up, just my editorialized comments at the beginning.

I thought that because I was having formatting problems with the "create post" font function that the reason I had this long omission was because Blogger had some positive privacy issue about cut and paste from e-mail. Bravo, I thought, despite the inconvenience.

Later, Mr. F. had his AOL screen open to news, where they were scrolling (whatever the appropriate term) through images of couples breaking up. Notably, there was a story of one rocker and his wife posting their problems publically through myspace.com. Okay. This gave me the idea that airing my real dialog with my mother might benefit from reconsidering.

Part of me was "go with the moment, don't hold back, this is truth, forget about what anyone thinks, let the outrageousness speak for itself." And another part of me was saying, "this demeans me, as if to repeat or respond to my mother's engagement in character assassination made me look immature.

Now, these considerations are not unique to me, and particularly, having investigated the gendered silences of women. There is a thesis of over 100 pages with a "lit review" that I am not going to sum up here. I'm tired, I slept less than I wanted.

But the reason that these comments did not appear was no high road on the part of Blogger, nor what Mr. F. thought, "cut and paste" issues in Firefox -- that only happens to me in our www.excite.com account, and they warn you.

Mr. F. is my one subscriber, I signed him up when I showed him how I had started to reconstruct the site with tools from www.feedburner.comI highly recommend that anyone with a blog use their services, I'm a fan of their tools, their tone and their speedy customer service.

I used some html script to build a subscriber sign up box which you can see. It works and I had to do so little! When I went into the e-mail delivered to me when I post, there was all the text from the e-mails that didn't show on the web site screen. "That's because what you pasted was black." Meaning the font. !!! (Need icon for electric light bulb.) My template background is black (not as a statement or aesthetic preference of the moment but because changing templates is a drag), and I'd cut and pasted from e-mail typed in black.

I think I will repost, but I have to go for post combat therapy. This means going to a bath palace, a phenomena here in China that is widespread and wonderful, but only comparable as high-end day spas in the U.S. I discovered one in Dalian. I had no bathtub that year, and I thought they would have one. They didn't but after a lot of staring and laughing at my Putongua (Mandarin) I agreed to have a massage. This was a turning point in my life here. They used a white towel and scrubbed the dead skin off, and for an extra $2.50 equivalent, gave me a deep tissue massage.

I looked everywhere in my neighborhood in Shanghai for a place that would do the same, but it took over six months before a colleague told me about a place that did the scrub. (This involved many frustrating communications at many places. It also involved us finding what we thought to be the spa sign, a sign with a water themed graphic, like a beach, and followed the arrows. There, we knew something was awry when the guard who opened the door seemed unnerved. The brusque attendant announced that women were not welcome.)

The place I go to has a few foreigners, but most Expatistanis go to the Western upscale places that offer far less and they do not know what they are missing. Chinese people come in groups. You can get private room, spa treatments, meals, a gym, a pool. You can even pay a few RMB more to stay over night in the resting rooms. !

You enter the building, behind the restaurant of the same name. It has a large lobby where you can look up and see several floors offering different services. An automatic player piano plays constantly. When you walk in there is a staff to take your shoes. When you go to the locker room, there is a woman whose only job it seems is to lift a panel of fabric to let you pass. Many attendants are in the locker room, in the shower and sauna/jacuzzi rooms. Many attendants. When I go it is usually not crowded and I wonder what it is they think about or talk about, standing, waiting to offer a towel or a cup of cold water. Many service places are like this in China. A lot of people standing around, employed, underemployed. Oh, if you want to leave the first floor, everyone gets floral pajamas and paper underpants to walk around in. There are women whose job it is to give you this as you emerge from the sauna and jacuzzi area.

On the first floor, one can use a sauna with an LCD screen, individual jacuzzi, group jacuzzi, scented water soaking pool, outside water pool. AND GET DEAD SKIN SCRUBBED OFF, you can see these sheddings when you turn over. If you want they'll also give you warm milk to rub in afterwards, salt scrubs and the like. I wish I could bring in a mini camera because of modesty issues. Actually, maybe now is the time for the upscale phone I spoke of in a prior entry last week. People can either shower standing up, but some people prefer to make their ablutions on a stool with a hand held shower head. Okay, I have to go, I'm losing my connection to Blogger.

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP. MY ONLY ADVICE. I am buoyed today by the quick reply from my dear long-time friend that I emailed yesterday with my plight and distress. The best. I count my blessings and he is one. And by the encouragement and response to "Am I ever going to be joyous again?" by Mr. F. who said, "Don't speak in absolutes." So much of day to day life can dissolve into mundane banter that too often I take for granted and forget what a sharp cat Mr. F. is! "Go to Xiao Nan Guo if you can't go back to sleep by 8:00.

And never underestimate the power of grooming. My grandmother and her sister seemed to take an extraordinary interest in their long painted fingernails. I guess if you're in your eighties, as they were at the time, this is something in being well put together that offers gratification.

I'm off to Xiao Nan Guo, the palace. If I told you the value of the services and the prices, you might understand why I am not in a hurry to leave this place.