Odd
dream. I needed to get to the 16th
floor. I would meet someone there. They would show me the town that was sprawled
out below. This, so I could get back to
the car, where people were waiting for me.
You have to get back within a certain amount of time and therein lies
the central tension that drives the narrative: you’re running late. It’s 10:15 and you need to get back by
10:35. And your mind offers up a picture
of a clock, a wrist watch.
I’m in the elevator but the buttons for sixteenth floor
won’t light up. None of these floors light
up. Other people want to get in. Other people get off. I will need to go to the 6th floor
where the staff will help me get to the 16th floor. They point me on my way down to the place
where a group of Turkish twenty-something’s are about to board a speed
boat. The building and the floors are no
longer relevant. They invite me to join
for a ride and I can’t say “no.”” We’re
off.
It’s a wonderful ride up the river that is really a
boulevard, with traffic just like a highway.
And as soon as we’re off it dawns on me that this was a mistake. I have no business taking this voyage. I must ask the driver many people up ahead, if
he can turn around. Though I’m enjoying
sitting next to this young Turk, talking about the buildings. But someone is waiting for me in the car and
the clock flashes again. Then someone on
board says we’re going to be read to, as we’re all on vacation and this is the
time to make time for reading. We’re
relaxing as the captain cuts, 逆水行舟[1], throttling,
turning and I don’t see how I can get back . . .
The morning light is pouring into my bedroom. A gaggle of birds with different, determined
songs are piping up, without any reason, outside. The dull blow of fireworks shot from a tube
into the air, like percussion, thud, thud, thud again, outside. Is there a holiday? This is the sound that can only invoke
Chinese New Year. Is someone getting
married? Is someone having fun? Is there a symbolism, a high Chinese holiday
I simply haven’t recalled. Further out a
plane is tearing through its jet fuel, making its ascent upwards and
upwards. How loud that must be to travel
here over the birds. How little heed I
pay it when I am sitting beside it on take off.
Tired early last night.
Slept, what was for me, late this morning. This is the time when dreams linger about
your bed longer than might otherwise happen with a strict, regular rise. Sleeping late you’d like to imagine the body
drinking up the rest. Taking on a charge
for all you put off with coffee and espresso.
Over in Taiwan, students have taken over the legislature. They are frustrated with the way that Ma
Ying-Jeou has fast-tracked free trade legislation with China through the
legislature. There is now an Occupy the
Legislature movement and students are releasing a plethora of Youtube videos
like this one to explain their position: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2XyhLbWKOw
I did a quick search for the words “occupy” and “Taiwan” in
English on Youku and was prepared to glibly pen that it’s all blocked in
China. So I’m glad I invested the extra
five minutes needed to search in Chinese: “反服貿國際聲援影片” It’s all over
Youku, as well. For now, China doesn’t
mind showing a restive, ill-governed province, restive and ill-governed.
We
have guests over. Old friends with two
young boys, my daughter’s age. Last
night I told them all to pile around the computer and watch. I told them that
these kids were brave. And of course I
reminded them, that this protest, in the proud tradition of the May 4th
movement that they learned about it school, would have lasted about eight
minutes in this town. It always feels
different when it is kids than it does when its taxi drivers or angry workers
of, say, the DPP protesting. Kids feel
naïve and pure.
I
haven’t been to Taiwan in over a year, and from this view, things have been
quiet during Ma Ying-jeou’s reign. But
reading up, I’ve come to learn that his approval rates are down around 9%. That would appear to be lynch-mob
territory. We’ll have to learn but it
sounds like the next election cycle will almost certainly send in a regime less
accommodating to Beijing.
Whoever
was having fun, or sweeping their ancestors grave, or revving up for a marriage
ceremony is going off in full force now, out there in the distance. They’re unloading their entire hoard. It’s enough to make someone want to write
“thud” seventeen times. Perhaps it is Independence
Day for some nation? Cat Power is
singing about our “American Flag” from the 1998 release "Moon Pix." But its too early for American Independence
Day and no one out in the distance celebrates that here.
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