Strivers Row

Oh, I’m real glad I don’t have to drive along the east second ring road at rush hour as part of my day to day.  It’s packed and we’re inching along.  There’s a light snow falling outside, again.  I’m thinking of the late nineties when this road was a “strivers row” of ridiculous buildings that some official or other had been sold on as “modern.”  They made you sad for China and its big dreams and middling execution.  Now we have forty-foot television screens before confident glass towers and serpentine swirls to buildings that continue to strive like new-money must.

I just noticed I started the last paragraph with the word “Oh.”  Does anyone use the word “Oh” at the beginning of sentences any more, unless their being sarcastic?  Thinking about it, yes; of course we do.  “Oh sure, I’ll get it.”  “Oh boy.”  “Oh my God.” “Oh.  Alright.” I was affecting an “Oh shucks” tone and it didn’t feel genuine.  Tone aside the word itself is nearly limitless. 

A friend sent a link to me in the middle of my morning, “The Jam:  The Making of ‘All Mod Cons.’” I was hopelessly busy.  I opened it and could only but dive in.  Paul I’ve checked in on over years and he looked characteristically cool, self- possessed.   I was very happy to see that Rick and Paul also came off strong.  The questions, the topics were all softballs, but there were no rotten eggs.  I’d read a co-authored book of theirs twenty years ago that was bitter and spiteful towards Mr. Weller.  This seemed plain and unadorned and therefore plausible and easy to embrace. 

I ask my cabby if he thinks we’ll be there in fifteen minutes.  He agrees.  That’s probably the case.  Just up ahead we’ll duck off to the side road.  It should be faster. I hope he takes a back road rather than inching along Chang An Jie.  I think its safe to say that Hendrix never made it to Beijing.  Cutting east to west from Jian Guo Men, to Chang An Jie, moving slower than the pedestrians surely Jimi would have noted the difficulty of cross-town traffic such as ours.