There
is a wonderful scene in Monty Python’s “Holy Grail” in which John Cleese as
Lancelot is responding to a plea for help. Two guards are surveying the field in front of the castle. There off in the distance, Lancelot
begins to charge the castle. The guards
can’t quite make out what it is.
The scene then cuts to Lancelot who covers precisely the same
ground. The shot of the guards
again has them squinting, unsure of what they see. Then, the same scene of Lancelot covering precisely the same
ground with a triumphant musical accompaniment. This continues three or four times with no discernable
progress whatsoever, till finally, suddenly, he arrives, kills the guards and
storms the castle.
I think of that scene often and it's a fine simulation for
what happens when we fixate on something off in the future that never seems to
draw any closer, out there, about to happen, and then, finally, it
befalls. I’d been working on a
large deal for many months. Months
ago we knew where we stood and what we needed to and roughly when it would
end. And as always the work
involved in actually settling things took time, more time than expected. Eventually we’d take the castle. You knew the moment would come. But life was on infinite repeat, until
suddenly, yesterday, it was done.
Enjoying the waning hours of Americana exotica today. There is the magic period during your
first twenty-four, forty-eight hours back in America, when your home country is
as exotic as any other “foreign” port of call. I’m marvelling at the foliage outside. New York in the summer always grows to
moist excess, like a jungle, until the seasons strip it all away, every
year. And right now the foliage
along the otherwise, rather urbanized, Bronx River Parkway could be a pathway
down the Orinoco River. Alto
player Leo Wright born in Wichita Falls, Texas in 1933 is providing the Metro
North soundtrack for me this morning.
The tune, is “State Trooper” from his 1963 set “Soultalk.” The state remains nameless. He passed in 1991 from heart failure,
far from Texas in magisterial Vienna.
In the morning my little one and I were characteristically
up early. She’s starting a new
school with her sister in the fall and she’s understandably nervous. I tried to calm her fears and reinforce
why it would be exciting. But even
though it is right across the road, it will certainly be a completely different
environment with not only new people, but new civilizational norms and rules as
well. She asked me if I’d heard
the bird outside earlier in the morning.
Intrigued I asked her to tell me what it sounded like and she
approximated the call. “I’m not
sure about that one honey.” Then,
as if on cue, out there in the 5:00AM dawn he sang out loudly. I told her these were the all the birds
I grew up with. I didn’t care much
about them then, but they sound like home when I hear them today.
Yesterday out the back yard there was a family of wild
turkeys that walked by. The mom,
four babies and a big old Tom of a dad.
We call came running out to the back porch to take a look.
I wished I’d thought to snap a picture. They seemed so vulnerable as
big, obvious ground birds, but they were walking along rather unconcerned by it
all. Then the Tom, cocked back his head spread out his wings and stretched to
the fullness of plumage, like some stock Thanksgiving photo of a Turkey waxed
to it’s fullest. A mature turkey
is one big, black bird.
My wife was catching up on the news after a few days without
the internet. “The Campaign
against Zhou Yong Kang is on.” I
can remember when the story broke in the New York Times that they were going to
go after the former Standing Committee member. This must have been some eight
months ago. Now it is finally
being profiled for the nation to consider. Look at all his ill-gotten
wealth. Look at all the nefarious
things his family and extended family have done with all their
connections. Look at this picture
of him scowling and here another with him sweating. Does any educated Chinese person really wonder for a minute
whether or not the same case couldn’t be built against anyone in office, with
guilt a forgone conclusion?
This is a show trial.
Now the Chinese population is being bombarded with information telling
them how it is they are supposed to understand this. And as in the days of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, in the “Dream
of the Red Chamber” guilt is not the concern of one individual. It won’t be over until his entire
family and his familiy’s family are all wiped out, stripped of their wealth,
erased, 翦草除根[1]. Modern China has so much to be proud of
and China is certainly entitled to its own “dream.” But this kind of medieval purging remains well beneath any
educated person’s criteria for credibility. Perhaps we need a Chinese John Cleese to draw attention to
the repeated absurdity of it all. Some time comedians have to be very, very brave.
[1] jiǎncǎochúgēn: lit. cut grass and pull out roots
(idiom); fig. to destroy root and branch / to eradicate
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