Too Far From the Ground

This week I’ve the morning free and I teach in the afternoon.  But free becomes encumbered with remarkable rapidity.  “Remember, we’d rescheduled the call for five minutes from now.”  Another person reminds me that I was supposed to speak with him yesterday morning, which I’d pushed back to today.   We do the call.  But it takes a while and I’m not clear at the end of it, that we’ve really made any progress, across languages. 

Soon, I’ll be on the line to deliver something completely different.  I consider all that I could review and reread and fortunately for this theme it really isn’t necessary.  I know what I want to say.  It will be a good day.  As I told these young people this is my favorite material of all. 

I’ve more than sixty of these quizzes yet to grade.  The answers are a pattern that ceases to have discrete meaning.  I find myself routing for people and assuming one thing or another about the person’s relative preparedness or a lack there of.  I’m tired and I’ve noticed I’ve said ‘wrong” to something that is actually right.  It’s time to go to bed. 

High up above the city, I enjoy a view that is presumably what I’d covet were I to be buying something here, or in Manhattan.  I’ve seen it so many times over the last fifteen years that I’m not particularly enamored any longer.  It’s just too far from the ground to take anything very seriously.  Good night, Shanghai. 

Wednesday, 5/22/19