Never Say to Him

These trips on-the-road can really knock you off your daily schedule of things you've promised to do..  I’ve had a fasting regimen and an exercise routine, a Chinese language reading routine and a daily practice of meditation.  Somehow, the moment you hop on a plane or check into a hotel, all these things become rather negotiable.  

I think it starts, upon waking.   I don’t think I’m up any later or earlier but I’m waking alone.  If I wake up next to my wife, at home, I think I get up and get out of bed, as a curtesy.  I don’t want to flop around vexing on this or that when I could get up and be productive.  And once I’m up at home I know how much time I have to do this portion and that before I must head off to the gym that will be closed later in the day.   On the road, even if there is a gym and even if the first meeting isn’t till 10:00AM, it doesn’t matter, I lay around in bed longer, and dispose of any such commitments one after the other because suddenly I've become busy.

Flying home, as was the case on the flight out I had three seats to myself.  There is certainly no need for business class, when you have that much room.  And the ninety-nine dollar charger I’d bought in the airport, after I’d lost another the night before, miraculously worked.  On the flight out, in one of the brand new Dreamliner planes I was forced to physically press the plug into the charger so that I could continue to work. 

On this flight, the Wifi worked, and the plugs worked and about four hours in I decided to put all peripherals aside and lay down for proper rest.  I woke up somewhere over Karbarosvsk, with both the devices and myself recharged.  No excuses not to get back to work, other than my remarkable “Cairo Trilogy” by Mafouz.  Kamal, whom I can’t help but assuming is a young Mafouz himself, meditation about his father, wherein he says all the things he says all the things he will never say to him directly but which we must here and consider, before the man himself the patriarch of the epic, goes out for just one more night on the town, where he allows himself to descend into drunkenness until he has a stroke and nearly dies. 

Now, in “Sugar Street” ten years have passed.  Kamal has grown.  So has Yasin’s son.  And I allow myself a bit of time to acquaint myself with all that has transpired as I prepare to take on the final book. 

Saturday, 03/02/19