Sharp Spring Cuts

I started the day this morning with a bike ride.  I wish I did this every day.  A teenager, a twenty-something, a thirty something, this was my routine.  My calves were still mashed potatoes from my weekend mountain climbing.  But riding over this morning, listening to a crazy mix of things, I felt the rear of my thighs swelling, surprised at being summoned.  And then I was at school, where my wife had left the car and I folded up my bike and threw it in the trunk and drove off home, so I could pick up the girls with the auto retrieved, and drive them back here.

Later we progressed down into the city on the airport express way at the rate of a horse and carriage.  Two different fender benders made the ride a glacial affair, for the first ten miles down.  The full hour I’d allotted for the thirty-minute ride proved short by five minutes.   Once we were passed the last light, we hopped out of the car and walked our way up to the Yashao pedestrian bridge amidst the sharpest spring sun.  I was glad to let it cut me.

Young couples bouncing down the bridge as we climbed our way up.  Thoughts are back with Taishan.  More steps. Steps in measures of twenty or thirty are less daunting than twenty thousand.  Atop the bridge the blind erhu player is stroking the simple two stringed instrument.  He isn’t exactly playing a song, but the call of the instrument is poignant nonetheless.  Further on another man who isn’t blind and has no obvious issue besides the fact that he is sitting on the bridge in a blanket, and is weather beaten and smiling tries to get our attention, as well. 

“Why don’t we make this a lunch meeting?”  Our appointment agrees this is a sound idea.  “What do you recommend?”  “Why don’t we head over to Element Fresh and sit outside?”  We haven’t nearly time, but then again, we do.  And even though I had my doubts, we secure an outdoor table up above the maddening mass and order up a working lunch.  “The usual” is their Greek Salad with confrontational cubes of feta and the extra portion of lamb. 

As happened the last time I dined outdoors with this host, everyone but one person has been served.  So we wait.  And he, who is without, says: “Go ahead.  Eat.”  But we don’t.   One of us who is Chinese but lives in Japan says, “Wow.  I hadn’t realized China was playing at this level.”   Sharp spring cuts then into normalcy and asserts itself.  This moment.  Everyone else has something to offer as a rejoinder.  The fourth plate is here and I mix olive and feta in an inaugural bite.