Back
into the routine here in Beijing.
Up early, before anyone to secure some quiet time. Off then, to the gym. It was hot in there. I tried to operate the air con but it
seemed futile. So I flipped open
all the windows. I haven’t had my
iPod for three weeks and it was great to have all my old friends, like The Who
and Hendrix and the MC5 get things in full gear there on the lonely morning stair
master. For three weeks or so I’ve
told myself I was “too busy” to hit the exercise routine and doing sit-ups this
morning, on an incline, with a weight behind my head, I felt every one of those
twenty one days.
Walking home, I picked a Plane tree en route and grabbed two
branches and did a pull up or two.
This gym of ours doesn’t have anywhere to do pull-ups or chin-ups. They’re always a pretty elemental
gravitational challenge. You
imagine yourself with only your hands to hold you on a cliff. Would you have what it takes to save
yourself? Perhaps a snapping
dinosaur down below would provide the necessary impetus to pull your fat ass up
and over. I think I’m going to
make this Plane tree part of my routine, determined, once again, to 发奋图强[1]. Down
below at the edge of the sidewalk, a few hundred ants were slowly removing
everything except the cartilage from a small frog that had been stepped on.
I had been hopeful about the three albums I found of the
drummer Idris Muhammad. Two of
them were early enough where they should be safely anchored in the tradition. But the latter two were so soft and
post-everything fuzak R&B that just didn’t merit a second listening. His drumming on the Reuben Willams
album I mentioned yesterday is just extraordinary. It all seemed plowed under and subdued by rows and rows of
cocaine on these discs from five years later. A practicing Muslim
I can’t say whether he used or not, but whoever produced the mix certainly sounded
blissed-out and content.
A recommended artist positioned besides Mr. Muhammad, from
that fascinating, risky period of musical transition in jazz history, the early
seventies, was the one Gary Bartz from Baltimore Maryland. I’ve his live 1973 album “Rivers I Have
Known” taken from the Langston Hughes poem, on now. And where as I looked in vain for this hard driving post-pop
sound, that I know is out there from Idris Muhamad, this Gary Bartz album,
nails it. The first song “Sifa
Zote” is hard driving but anchored, nonetheless in its time. Hence it’s funky. And pleasantly, like a lot of these
guys who blew up in the 70s, he is still alive and kicking at 73. Anyone who has “known dusty rivers” is
welcome here. : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Bartz
North Korea is launching more missiles, two ballistic
missiles, to be precise. The
article points out that Xi Jinping intends to visit Seoul, before any meetings
with North Korea and that this will be a first. North Korea, ever more painfully aware of its growing
dependence on China is apparently making renewed outreach to Russia, who are
also in need of buttressing international alliances. Kim Jong En, they speculate, must consolidate his power,
before worrying about state visits.
From China’s perspective they must be actively considering how they
might peel South Korea away from alliance with the US. A China that more proactively pressures
the North may be able to affect some heretofore-immutable change. China may also be told to shove-off only to see the young Kim sign a pipeline deal with Russia for fuel instead. The path that South Korea takes though, may ultimately be
much more consequential. What
would it take for South Korea to one day decisively cast its future as under China’s
protectorateship?
[1] Fāfèntúqiáng: to make an effort to become strong
(idiom); determined to do better / to pull one's socks up
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