OK, I admit it. When David Letterman said, "Sarah Palin is an avid hunter. A vice president who likes guns — what could go wrong there?" I laughed pretty hard. When my mother sent me videos about McCain, I watched them. I even cut Mike Smith's Las Vegas Sun cartoon out of the newspaper for my refrigerator, the one where a woman is saying, "If I can't have Hillary, then I'll just vote for McCain." Then she's saying, "If I can't have coffee, then I'll just drink this mud." Followed by, "If I can't have a mattress, then I'll just sleep on this bed of nails." And finally, "If I can't have toenail clippers, then I'll just use this chainsaw."
I'm trying not to use The Daily Show as my nightly news source, but it's hard because Jon Stewart is just, I don't know, Jon Stewart-y. Entertaining in the extreme, with a surprising amount of education thrown in for free. I spend hours reading the election-related articles on Crosscut.
The political season is already exhausting. It's already mean. We have months yet to go. We'll need breaks. I know I'll need lots of them. And places of refuge that will let us take them. Our gardens might work, but what about that hour or half hour we have for lunch? Or that hour at the end of a work day when it would be good to put our personal melodramas on pause before we head into the evening hours? My vote: head for a mini-park. There is nothing like sitting next to an urban waterfall surrounded by plants smack in the middle of Seattle to clear the head. Having said this, for mini-breaks in the city, the Classical Chinese Garden in Portland wins for this brain-whipped puppy. When I allow myself time to sip a cup of tea in its tea house, I always leave feeling deeply refreshed. The world has settled, and I'm ready to head back into the world of Palin and Obama.
It took years for me to believe that the garden is worth its price of admission. Northwest Third and Everett is a gritty section of downrown Portland, one that is filled with single room occupancy housing units, parking structures, and what look like abandoned buildings. With an entry price close to ten dollars, a couple slices of pizza seemed the better buy.
This is no longer true. A couple of months ago, I was in Portland for a day for a class on bamboo and, as is my want, I made it into the city two hours early. Without meaning to, I headed for the Chinese Garden, took a deep breath, paid the bloody admission, and went through the gate.
Instant enchantment.
A year-round park, open every day from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. (I recommend Sunday mornings), the Classical Chinese Garden has as its mission "to cultivate an oasis of tranquil beauty and harmony." It does just that. The garden is a collaboration between Portland and its sister city, Suzhou, one of China's oldest cities. The whole place revolves around five elements — plants, stone, water, architecture, and poetry — in its effort to please the senses. There are spots to meditate, to paint, to write, to quietly converse, to stare down into the pond, and to sit and listen to the waterfall. Various courtyards, from The courtyard of Tranquility to The Celestial Hall of Permeating Fragrance, break the garden up in a way that makes it feel much bigger than it really is.
Everywhere there are plants, mostly "the three friends," pine, plum, and bamboo. A hundred-year-old osmanthus tree perfumes the entire block when it blossoms in the fall and keeps company with mock orange, honeysuckle, gardenia, wintersweet, and jasmine, each blossoming at different times of the year. The two plum trees that grow against an outside wall in The Scholar's Compound promise late winter blossoms.
Each visit is a new experience, with different colors, smells, sounds, and feelings. Each visit, for me, has offered a complete break, a "time-out" for grown-ups.
It is the nature of things to be impermanent. Like all others, this election will have its end. When it does other issues and worries are sure to take up its brainspace: how to pay our bills, the struggles of our families, health concerns, an environment struggling for its life. Small parks like the Chinese garden help me to stay upright in the face of all of it, always leaving its beauty slightly more compassionate and wise, with my sense of humor intact.
The lotus flowers are red, the lotus leaves are green;
Standing in the breeze she relishes the gentle waves
— the pleasure lasts, the sentiment endures.
Wa Yamu, 1999, Couplet in the Hall of Brocade Clouds
