Wings Appear

Killing time before I get my grey locks trimmed.  There is a point that usually comes after six to eight weeks when, mid-way through the day, as the morning’s gravitational cream begins to loose its effect that wings appear in the mirror.  They can be dampened down but only for a time.  And with each passing day these flying buttresses on my head broaden their span.  And every time they evoke a very real and undeniable resemblance to the coiffed style of Bozo the Clown.  Now you know the look I mean.  Or at least I hope you do.  If you’re much younger than me, and most folks are these days, you may not know who exactly Bozo was.  Suffice to say, it’s not the look I’m courting. 

There are young people behind me at this café.  A blond girl with an Australian accent has offered an epiphany:  “this is my first summer in Beijing and it’s actually really nice.”  Just wait girly.  You’ll be looking to retract that statement in no time at all.  Stirring around in the heat the other morning, before we’d inaugurated this year’s aircon I thought of the legions of foreigners here in the 1920s who made their way over to the Western Hills for the summer to keep cool.  Or of the Qing Emperors who moved their court up to Chengde. 

An unfortunate article in the New York Times this morning had the photo of a young Indian lad sleeping beneath the spray of a fountain.  Temperatures in New Delhi had apparently reached 128 degrees Fahrenheit.  That’s hot.  No aircon there.  No hills to head to either.  I think we all realize these records will now be steadily broken and then broken again.

Not wishing to sample more of the first-year observations of my friend from down-under I’ve thrown on some morning music.  Miles “In a Silent Way” appropriately enough.  John McLaughlin and Chick Corea have ‘silently’ drowned out all but the most piercing, flat, Auz exclamations.   A young couple who surely must but who appear not to have a care in the world, have just sat down outside.  He is white.  She is Chinese. At the next table a man with pencil moustache, savoring a cigarette, is speaking with a heavily tattooed friend.   Chinese gents, they are all in black, save the skin that shows by their ankles where their socks should otherwise be.  It’s time to face the scissors.