Any Day Now It Will Begin

Conference call this morning.  People are on the call from California, Hong Kong, Singapore.  I ask about the weather at the outset, as one does.  Everyone it seems has rain.  There is a beautiful blue sky here in Beijing.  Not a cloud in site.  I always revel in any opportunity I have to brag about our weather.  The magnolia tree out front is getting ready to bloom, but there are no buds to be seen on the jacaranda tree out back.  Any day now it will begin. 

We don’t spring forward over here, so there is no dramatic pivot into longer nights.  But gradual nets you the same result in the end anyway.  It’s light out earlier.  So you get up earlier and you get more done.  It’s still light out when I pick the kids up from school, so you think you’ve plenty of time to make the dinner.   Back home the ‘fall back’ always feels like a theft or a shove into winter.  The ‘spring forward’ has a similarly dramatic impact.  Suddenly there is no question and you are in the midst of something totally new. 

I haven’t gone through a day lights saving are in years, I suppose.  I just adjust the time calculation as to when it is I make appointments with people in the U.S.   As of yesterday, I believe, New York is back to twelve hours difference from Beijing, which is easy enough to remember. 

I’m in a bit of a musical rut, lately.  I find myself reaching for the same old jazz artists every time I pull up Spotify.  They entreat me to consider the “related artists” of Blue Mitchell or Howard McGhee.  The present me with a selection of jazz luminaries, but there is nothing that I haven’t searched for before.  Youtube can help.  Firstly you can find some live jazz footage that is as compelling to the eyes as it is to the ears.  And then who knows where it will lead?  I have a salad, visit the bathroom and we’re deep into the “The Sound of Sonny” which I haven’t heard in years.  I adjust my chair pillow, turn up the volume and let it unfold.