We’ll meet in a coffee
shop early. They’ll be room
upstairs. Sagafredo? These guys are great. I’ve still got a tattered frequent
caffeinater card from last year somewhere in this pile of cards in my wallet. Sagafredo have excellent espresso and
you can ask them all day and they’re not going to put it in a paper cup for
you. You must drink it there. They serve it with a little piece of
chocolate that is irresistible
Upstairs is a smoking room. One of our guys smokes. He’ll be happy. Get a seat by the window. How bad can it be? I live in Beijing. A public space for smoking. I notice my colleagues’ pack that has a
bold, bland warning label.
“Smoking kills humans” or some such thing. We talk China operation, talk Japan operation, talk about the
next meeting we’re heading to.
A public space where people come to
smoke is an anachronism. I know
what this is, I know what this smells like and it is no longer something most of the industrialized world
allows. The young woman smoking by
herself can’t but look sad. Some
people are here to work. Some are
occupying the space, outside of home following the ritual of salarymen commuting to a city where they
no longer have a job. Later
at the meeting I smell strongly of smoke.
It is everywhere on my clothes.
Out the window, west, there is an uninterrupted view straight over to
Mount Fuji. Within minutes it is
gone, smothered in clouds and haze.
Good meeting. Import that
it went well. Many, many things
could have fallen off, but they didn’t.
Lunch in a fine little restaurant by a canal in Naka-Meguro. Cherry blossoms lined the street and
though most had fallen, the transition I wrote about yesterday from fragile,
temporal pink that is pushed aside in every hour of sunshine and wind by the green
leaves that needn’t concern themselves with the tree’s reproduction. They just want to drink in the sun’s
energy.
Wrap it up. Bid folks en
route to the airport adieu. You,
we’ll meet in an hour at Tamachi Station, for the next meeting. While you and I can now debrief. Yes, I agree it went well. Send me this. I’ll get you that.
Later tonight then?
Cool. And then, alone on
the Yamanote line that rings the great city. Ads for contact lenses, ads for toothpaste that so
unquestionably seductive that you gape for a moment till the train begins to
slow and people move their way to the door and now you’re gaping at something
else.
During this daytime ride the atmosphere is unerringly quiet. I
wouldn’t know. I have the Philly
born pianist Bobby Timmons cut “Look Here” from the album that sounds like it
was titled by an A&R man from that magic year of 1960 “This Here is Bobby
Timmons. You know it’s him after a moment, because there is only one
guy who chops the keys that way on “Moanin,” which also appears on this album
and which Art Blakey helped to popularize. If you can’t imagine that song off the top of your head, I’m
almost certain you’d nod with affirmation if you could hear his leading it off
right now, with that punchy irresistible hook. He died at 38, flown back to the U.S. from a tour in Europe. He died of cirrhosis of the liver. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Timmons
I’m to rendez vous now with
someone at the Tamachi Station Starbucks.
Sure. I have no idea where
it is, but have every expectation of coming upon it quickly. I don’t. Down on the street level there are any number of Japanese
coffee house chains. Head back up,
over, down to the broad boulevard across the tracks. Gazing expectantly. Walk a hundred yards over there, on a
day that almost feels hot, in my suit, and turning to the left and gazing off,
hoping to the right, realize there is nothing here. I could walk a few hundred yards in either direction to
where more shops appear to be but he would never have suggested anything so
far, so casually.
Then, like a scene from a predictable movie, or an ironic one like
“the Holy Grail” the skies part and there is a shot up to a tower, with the
name of the company in question.
Ah. 豁然开朗[1] He could
only have chosen a place that lie between where he worked and the station. Back over the tracks. My feet hurt. Still, my leaves are out, drinking up the clear city's energy.
[1] huòránkāilǎng: suddenly opens up to a wide panorama
(idiom); to come to a wide clearing / fig. everything becomes clear at once /
to achieve speedy enlightenment
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