Up with time, a little
time, before driving my older one to school.
I’ve some odd Boards of Canada humming away that fits the slow still
morning tempo. I enjoyed trying to push
my effort a little further yesterday.
Build an argument and thoughtfully try to buttress it. But it is not the sort of project to do
within a day’s parameter, especially within a busy day. There is a delicate balance in trying to do
the calisthenics of writing each day with all the other aspects of life. My friend commented that in criticizing
Franzen’s crankiness I had adopted a cranky tone.
That’s about right. Anger is a
seductive swamp. Very challenging to handle
artfully in a blog-a-day cadence.
I’m going out now to drive my older daughter to school now. Last night I got a great shot of the full, or
damn-near-full moon, when I picked my daughter up around 9:20PM. She was rising behind the new apartment buildings:
The night before last was a blanket of smog and there was nothing celestial to be seen. I hope she ‘s
up there and I get some decent photos on the 6:20AM ride back. She'll be on the opposite side of the parking lot . . .
She was there. I
drove into an empty parking lot and saw a rumpled blanket that turned out to be a German Shepard. Then, off to the side
was, the gent I presume was his master doing Tai Chi. I’m sure I ruined the vibe with my bright
lights and inexplicable arrival. I
popped out to take a snap or two and imagined Fido coming over to attack, even
though I was fifty yards away. But he
stayed where he was, sack-like.
And even though it was dark and my back was turned I wasn’t worried,
because dogs announce any attack with a lot of loud yelping. A panther might have leapt up on me quietly but I’d
have time to return to the car before any dog came close.
I experienced a different moment of fright and excitement yesterday. My wife called and asked if there was any big
news on North Korea. I was walking
across a plaza en route to a meeting so I couldn’t go on line easily. She said she was seeing we-chats that Kim
Jong-un had been overthrown. I imagined
the young thirty year-old caught up in something way beyond his control, the walls
falling in around him, after the assassination of his uncle.
I rushed to a place where I could get on line and fired up
my computer, assuming to see the worst splashed all over the news. I didn’t have a VPN so that meant I couldn’t
go to The New York Times. Default to The
Washington Post. Nothing. Over to
England and The Guardian? Nothing. Perhaps the Chinese had some information that
the rest of the world hadn’t got their hands on yet. Over to Baidu. Nothing.
I was glad there was no drama. And I had a nagging sense of anticlimax. I checked a few times during the day to see
if perhaps the Chinese netizens hadn’t somehow figured something out before
everyone else had. No. There were no such updates. I was one more person caught up in a nonsense
game of telephone. ‘War of the Worlds.’ ‘Aliens invading.’ Who
was the origin of this 似是而非[1]?
The moonlight’s clarity guaranteed it would be a lovely
clear day, and it is. Kim’s granddad was
firmly in power and my father-in-law was on his last year of service in North
Korea as a Chinese volunteer, when tenor player Harold Land rolled up into a
studio in Los Angeles and recorded his first date as a leader, in September of
1958. It’s a lovely straight bop
set. His playing is seems soft and
studied. Perhaps a vibe garnered from
playing along side Clifford Brown, in front of Max Roach for as long as he
did. Apparently he used to play all the
time there in Marina Del Rey where my dear friend who noted my crankiness lives and where Stan Getz
ashes were once scattered in the sea.
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