The Price of Celestial Real Estate
Jul. 1st, 2011 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraSo we came across another word Balormaa doesn’t know: heaven. Used thusly in the YA book: “… not even the square we called Hopscotch heaven…”
“What means, ‘heaven’?” she asked.
“Well, here it means the ‘safe’ square in the game,” I said. “You know – where you can’t be tagged out. In general it means… You really don’t know what ‘Heaven’ is?”
Smiling, Balormaa shook her head.
“Well in Christianity it means the place where God lives. And where, presumably if you’re a good person, you’ll get to live after you die if you obey all the rules. It’s supposed to be in the sky.”
“God lives in the sky?” said Balormaa, her eyes growing very wide. And then she began to laugh. The issue of God’s celestial residence was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.
I try to talk to her for 45 minutes before we start reading the book so naturally we’ve grown quite intimate. It occurs to me that I have very intimate friendships with both Balormaa and Reuben because of all the highly personal information they’ve exchanged with me. But, of course, they’re structured friendships, highly contextual. We’ll never, say, hang out at a coffeehouse together.
Yesterday Balormaa told me about the three years she spent living at the Dalai Lama’s monastery in India.
“You know, I hardly speak Tibetan when I go there. I go to Chinese schools and I speak Chinese. And then at home, we speak – how you say it?”
“Dialect?”
“Yes. We speak dialect. And the other girls make fun of me but then the Dalai Lama says be nice to her, it is not her fault that she speak Chinese.”
Balormaa told me about her smuggling operation: Twice a month, she’d journey to Nepal, buy cheap wholesale clothes, resell them in India. The clothes were initially made in China. “Indians hate Chinese. So if they know the clothes are Chinese, they don’t buy. But they didn’t know the clothes were Chinese.” She smiled slyly.
“So you speak Nepalese?”
“Yes.”
“And Indian?”
“Hindi. Yes. “
“And Tibetan. And Chinese.”
“But I don’t speak English good.” She shot me a rueful smile.
“You’re getting better every day. You know, Balormaa, I can’t imagine doing what you’ve done. Coming to a place that’s so different from the one where you grew up. You’re so brave.”
Balormaa shrugged again. “You know there is monastery here, Tibetan monastery.”
“Yes, I’ve heard.”
“The monks say something terrible is happening in the world because people are –“ She frowned. “How you say? Before they work hard, they have no fun but they are good. And now they don’t work so hard and they are selfish. The monks say they bring bad karma on the world.” She looked at me long and hard for a moment. “I like to bring you to the monastery some time. It lifts your stress.”
That obvious, huh?
Sigh…
“What means, ‘heaven’?” she asked.
“Well, here it means the ‘safe’ square in the game,” I said. “You know – where you can’t be tagged out. In general it means… You really don’t know what ‘Heaven’ is?”
Smiling, Balormaa shook her head.
“Well in Christianity it means the place where God lives. And where, presumably if you’re a good person, you’ll get to live after you die if you obey all the rules. It’s supposed to be in the sky.”
“God lives in the sky?” said Balormaa, her eyes growing very wide. And then she began to laugh. The issue of God’s celestial residence was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.
I try to talk to her for 45 minutes before we start reading the book so naturally we’ve grown quite intimate. It occurs to me that I have very intimate friendships with both Balormaa and Reuben because of all the highly personal information they’ve exchanged with me. But, of course, they’re structured friendships, highly contextual. We’ll never, say, hang out at a coffeehouse together.
Yesterday Balormaa told me about the three years she spent living at the Dalai Lama’s monastery in India.
“You know, I hardly speak Tibetan when I go there. I go to Chinese schools and I speak Chinese. And then at home, we speak – how you say it?”
“Dialect?”
“Yes. We speak dialect. And the other girls make fun of me but then the Dalai Lama says be nice to her, it is not her fault that she speak Chinese.”
Balormaa told me about her smuggling operation: Twice a month, she’d journey to Nepal, buy cheap wholesale clothes, resell them in India. The clothes were initially made in China. “Indians hate Chinese. So if they know the clothes are Chinese, they don’t buy. But they didn’t know the clothes were Chinese.” She smiled slyly.
“So you speak Nepalese?”
“Yes.”
“And Indian?”
“Hindi. Yes. “
“And Tibetan. And Chinese.”
“But I don’t speak English good.” She shot me a rueful smile.
“You’re getting better every day. You know, Balormaa, I can’t imagine doing what you’ve done. Coming to a place that’s so different from the one where you grew up. You’re so brave.”
Balormaa shrugged again. “You know there is monastery here, Tibetan monastery.”
“Yes, I’ve heard.”
“The monks say something terrible is happening in the world because people are –“ She frowned. “How you say? Before they work hard, they have no fun but they are good. And now they don’t work so hard and they are selfish. The monks say they bring bad karma on the world.” She looked at me long and hard for a moment. “I like to bring you to the monastery some time. It lifts your stress.”
That obvious, huh?
Sigh…
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Date: 2011-07-01 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-01 05:30 pm (UTC)