Always Fearing Their Return

35J for the next few hours then.  The poor stewardesses are running around with small pieces of paper and a pens identifying Mr. Liu or Mr. Shen to tell them how excited they are to have them on board as they are all Phoenix Miles Members.  It all appears rather robotic and uninspired.  Perhaps I have sour grapes because my partner-platinum status doesn’t afford me a heartfelt inquiry as to whether or not I’d like an extra newspaper.  The obvious “I’m a cop” guy responsible for the airplane’s security, just walked by with is regulation, tucked-in black shirt and I’ll-kick-you-should-I-need-to ebony oxfords. 

I have a latter-day released Hendrix jam on called “Easy Blues ”that is gorgeous, familiar, new, somehow.  So-Cal’s on fire.  That must be horrid.  I’ve more than a few friends based in L.A.  What a twisted thing to consider: an approaching wall of fire that consumes all in its path.  The clips of those poor people confronting their homes that were.  I’ll take two feet of snow and a shovel any day. 

Air China is flexing their soft power muscle with an adaptation of the Air China theme song that has Rat Pack-like big band frills to the standard jingle melody.  I’d long held out that you couldn’t mandate cool as state policy. Cool is ineffable, right?  But it is always a rather dutiful loadstone behind the path of commerce.  Commerce aerated the fish tank in New Orleans and Harlem and Detroit and there is no reason to assume it couldn’t happily migrate to some new economic vortex.  Then again, without the genius of African civilization it will likely remain a weak facsimile.  And will African genius be pulled toward the Chinese sphere by the power of commerce over time?  I suspect that will be a rather glacial and imperfect migration. 

Got to work on some writing today.  Ahh so happy to have this time.  I don’t have this time.  I made this time.  And then it takes on a life of its own.  Reading’s the other indulgence.  I’m reading and the plane ride yields this remarkable passage from “The Empire of Russia” by John Abbott, written in 1859.

"One the evening of the 23d of August, 1382, the Tartars appeared before the gates of (Moscow).  Some of the chiefs rode slowly around the ramparts examining he ditch, the walls, the height of the towers and selected the most favorable spot for commencing he assault.  The Tartars did not appear in such overwhelming number as report had taught the Russians to expect and they felt quite sanguine that they should be able to defend the city.  But the ensuring morning dispelled all these hopes.  It then appeared that these Tartars were but the advance guard of the great army.   When the earliest dawn, as far as the eye could reach the inundation of the warriors came rolling on, and terror vanquished all hearts.  This army was under the command of a Tartar chieftain called Toktamonish.  The assault was instantly commenced and continued without cessation for four days and nights. 

At length, the city fell . . . "

It’s safe to say that, at least for now, we have it rather quite a bit better than the Muscovites did in 1382.  To have an entire city laid siege to, it is difficult to imagine a resolution other than the collective erasing of a consciousness.  What does a people do who are time and again completely vanquished?  The popular quip often suggests that the Russians were ‘different’ because they understood the “Asian” mind set more deeply than anyone else in Western Europe ever could.  Proximity to the Mongols certainly taught them, if nothing else, how to pay tribute and survive in an eastern despotism:  living under the yolk of the Mongols, negotiating their survival with the Mongols, ultimately expelling them but always fearing their return . . . the Russians have a unique perspective among peoples of Eurasia.  Perhaps the same way the Portuguese and the Spanish have a unique understanding of and relationship to Moorish, Islamic civilization, which they expelled and kept chasing beyond their boarders, and around the world and, and whom they still try to keep at bay till this day.

Friday, 12/08/17