Monday, March 10, 2014

Fit to Print




This is a new genre.  The waiting for someone who is 30 minutes late for a meeting, and composing an entry, affected-style of blogging prose.  What do you do?  I texted, I called, I emailed, but after that you wait.  I was looking forward to this meal at this Vietnamese place I haven’t been to in years.  Lord Guan is guarding the door.  I’m not sure how Lord Guan, Liu Bei’s most loyal, accomplished general from the Yellow River at the end of the Han Dynasty, plays down in fiercely independent Vietnam, by the Red River.  But there he is, in a confrontational green coat and full beard flowing, a trans-civilizational icon.

I have been staying up late and getting up early with jet lag.  You find the productivity whenever you can get it, once you’re unmoored from the routines.  I’m in this lovely waiting area for this restaurant with deep, low couches and polished wooden tables.  There is free internet.  And it is a stupid place to write from because you can’t help but turn and stare at every person that comes through.  This gent told me what he’d be wearing.  Interestingly he predicted this a few days in advance.  Everyone has one item wrong, but I look nonetheless.  If lunch is on me, I think I’m going to head out to one of the taco places nearby and get more food I can’t get in China.  I spoke with my wife and daughters last night and they were eating dumplings, which looked very tasty from afar. 

They had walk in service at the bar.  I had the papaya salad.  It’s better than the one at my local family style place in Shunyi, but not twice as good per the price point.  My friend whose apartment I’m staying in convinced me to hop on the Muni.  I couldn’t remember if they take cash or how they check the tickets.  Cool, coins, bills, no problem.  Standing room, a problem.  Shuffle down.  Who’s feeling my bag?  Oh, it’s a kid playing video games.  Well, it will be a short ride.  You’d think it would be faster than traffic, going underground and having right of ways, but with all the waiting for the train to arrive, it ends up being longer.  I was about 13 minutes late for my rendez vous.  So I’ve a nagging thought as to whether or not this appointment of mine, stormed off in a huff at minute twelve, his phone out of power, no access to emails.



Riding down under Market Street I had a nice random mix of things:  Sly and the Family Stone, “You Can Make It If You Try.”  My favorite part of that song is the vamp at the end where he yells out “Don’t Stop, Make It.” Sly is rightfully confident.  He’s young.  All the mental sandstorms that would descend and leave  him vacant had yet to hit.  I looked around at all the young people on board and wondered if they care the least about this youth music from the time of my birth.  Later we had “The Gift” from the same titled Jam album of 1982.  I remember buying that album with so much excitement when it first hit.  I saw them on that tour, somewhere out in Long Island.  But this was their last album as a band.  There were some fabulous singles that followed, but by this time Paul Weller had out grown his band mates.  They were a bridge, as I recall, between caring solely about a band’s politics and considering their musical direction.  I remember asking Paul Weller not long after that tour, what he thought of Crass, my other heroes.  He hated them musically.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_(The_Jam_album)

The sun is so bright.  The sky is so clear.  Glass to the north.  Glass to the south.  Outside the Bay is sloshing around.   People have come and gone and come again while I’ve been writing here.  I’m probably not the target customer with only a papaya salad ordered and at least two shifts of lunch occupied by my writing presence.  I confess I also had a glass of wine.  They had a Gruner Veltliner, which you almost never see in China, from the Wachau Valley where Paddy Fermor was walking about in my reading mind, not long ago.  It’s such a lovely dry white that only seems to come from Austria.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%BCner_Veltliner



There is something gratuitous about the way the New York Times, starved for content for people like me, has taken to reporting on the frustration of loved ones from the missing Malaysian Airlines flight.  We get dry accounts of the bereaved's verbal abusing and physical tossing water bottles at the hapless Malaysian Airlines execs who have been assigned the task of explaining why they have nothing to explain, at present.  How is it they are allowing reporters into these sort of meetings?  I'd throw a fire extinguisher at someone trying to photograph me in private moment of anguish.  It is casts Chinese people, coping at their most vulnerable as somehow uncouth.  Prying, framing because 同病相怜[1].  Better you use the words “fuck” and “shit” and call that “fit to print” than turn people’s misery into some off-beat, snarky look at how different it is, and yet somehow vaguely familiar when Chinese people suffer the unendurable and melt down when confronted with unexpected death. 






[1] tóngbìngxiānglián:  fellow sufferers empathize with each other (idiom); misery loves company

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