Almost Certainly

Watching people.  Back at the outdoor perch at Element Fresh in San Li Tun.  I always remember this as a great people-watching place but there isn’t much of anything to watch just now.  Two women from the U.K. are sitting in the booth opposite me.  I’d guess the one with her back to me is in her forties and the one facing me in her fifties.  I look at her and her disheveled red hair and her sagging face.  She bears the look of someone who was almost certainly arresting when she was younger.   Now, aided by her accent, she has matured into someone who is rather almost certainly an interesting person to talk to.

A city is just a place to live in.  I live here and imagine that I’ve had enough of this urban dynamic.  There isn’t much of any fresh to consider as I stare out from Element Fresh. Such a long arc of familiarity.  This was familiar when it was a ramshackle collection of two story eateries that served rare items like pizza.   This was familiar during the Olympic build up when one bothered to visit outdoor clubs on the roofs of these buildings.  It was fresh when I first met one, two, three different people in this restaurant whom I now think of as “old” friends. 

San Francisco or New York can easily feel more dynamic because you know you wont be there for long.  And it’s been a while so the old places excite rather than press upon one’s mind.  This is possible.  This isn’t fate.  This would be very different . . . from the last time. 

You can’t say much about Lucky Thomspon before you need to state that his life wasn’t a particularly lucky one.  He died near Seattle or was it Portland, (the prior) destitute and broke, largely under appreciated.  I saw a clip of Miles where he mentioned his appreciation of that lost, warm sax tone.  “Who plays that way now?  That way that Lucky Thomposon did.” I paraphrase.  I’ve a live recoding on from the early sixties with a song called “The World Awakes” playing now, Lucky on soprano sax .  When he speaks between songs he sounds thoughtful, weary, as if he already knows what awaits him.

I’ve moved over to an indoor window seat.  But things haven’t gotten any fresher.  More of the same.  I’m staring at a restaurant across the courtyard and predictably I’m on to:  “I remember the first time I want to that place with that guy, in a different part of town.”  I remember sitting in this precise booth when I dined here with my old friend in Beijing who has long since moved to Bangkok. It takes more than a visit downtown to make downtown much of anything fresh.