Really Anything

Cutting across town to return a Christmas gift for my nephew.  I thought I was slick and refreshed my memory on how to say “silk.”  Right, there it is: sichou, 丝绸.  Stepping in the cab I used the word to insist I head to the “sichou shichang.”  After a bit of confusion he asked if I didn’t mean xiushui  秀水.  I’ve been through this routine probably a dozen times over the last two decades.  I know how to say “primogeniture” in Chinese and that, for some reason, always sticks, but the fact that Beijing’s silk market is the one word, rather than the other, is something I’m doomed to relearn in perpetuity. 

The city is cold, but walk-able on this, the last day of 2015.  Stuck at another light.  With a laptop and Wi-Fi, it is easy not to be upset about traffic.  The place I’m going, it is waiting for me there.  I’ll get there.  I’ll get what I need.  I’ll head home.  No rush.  Perhaps we’ll even make it through this light up ahead.  That would be bold.  Indeed we have.  I think I’ve got to get out, up ahead, so computer, back in the bag. 

My goodness, listen to Bill Evans solo on this unimaginatively titled album: “The Bill Evans Album.”  I’ve got the song “Sugar Plum” on.  He’s just switched from piano to electric as Eddie Gomez solos.  It’s turned my humdrum ride home along the airport expressway into something majestic.  

Even when I was in the prime years for somehow being festive on New Years Eve, I don’t think I was ever particularly interested in it.  Now with kids, living in the burbs, living in a country that already has it’s own, paramount “New Year’s” celebration in accordance with the moon, New Year’s Eve amounts to a rather dull, obligatory event.

I’ve never spent this day in Japan.  But I understand that the Japanese take it seriously.  And not just the twenty-somethings who want to party all night.  In the Meiji period the Emperor cut the chord with Chinese lunar tradition and, as I understand it, all the importance of that holiday, which remains primary in China and Korea, was moderinized and shifted to this Western rendering of the year’s turning as part of Japan’s industrialization.  Presumably then, Japanese families all get together and eat tonight, though I can only imagine that Tokyo is well attuned to the needs of twenty something revelers, nonetheless.   

I can't believe how many messages I've already received asking if I'm "celebrating" tonight.  "No.  I'm a parent.  I'll be at home."  Is this really anything to celebrate?