Lacerating My Right Profile

Awful nice up here.  This morning I was driving back down there, beneath some clouds and an old, late sixties version of Bob Marley’s “Kaya” came on.  I visualized for a moment his lyric: “I feel so high, I almost touch the sky above the falling rain.”  ‘Above the falling rain’ is a pleasant vantage to consider, especially when it’s manifest.  It matches his other lyric to the sun: “I know you’re out there somewhere, having fun.”  Apollonian Rasta. It isn’t raining but I’m above the clouds now and there is nothing but sun, and blue skies and cloud cover off out there, below me.  It’s a bit boring, I suppose if that’s all you had all day to consider.  But for a change of scenery for the next few hours, it’s a grand vista. 

Iggy just came on the mix.  James Williamson, I suppose, just yelled out “can you turn it up?!”  And now Iggy himself is yelling out the lyrics to “”Head On.”  It feels like an uncompromising truck barreling towards a bridge that is just too low for safe passage.  Strong, strong solar, and because its winter, sun is lacerating my right profile.  “Now listen to this:  I was born in a trailer camp.  Days were cold nights were damp. Incubator baby I was half alive.  I’ve been eatin’ like a shittin’ jive.  Head on!. “  You can’t fake that shit.  Scott Ashton claims the adjacent trailer on his commanding bass solo, as bottles crash around Lord Osterberg.

I’m reading the Chinese paper.  Is it me, or has state run media succumbed to the same fate as our “free” American press?  I couldn’t make it past the first few pages of the Global Times without considering a half a dozen articles on our U.S. president elect:  Mssr. Dumpf,  “Trump Won’t Affect U.S. China Ties”  ‘Trump Pull Out of Trade Deal Will Only Hurt U.S.”   Even in the “good news” China press, I’ve got to consider Dumpf at every page turn.  We all do now, every day. 

And Daimler has fired a CEO.  He lived in my compound.  Apparently he got into an altercation with a Chinese person and was heard to yell, “all you Chinese are bastards.” No one confirmed what it is the Chinese gent said to elicit this imprecation. “Not important.”  But things got heated and our Teutonic friend apparently pulled out some paper spray.  That’ll cost you. Every time. I don’t know where it is one procures pepper spray in any country.  I’ve never gone out looking for it, myself.

My wife came home last night saying some one-hundred person chat group of the school where my kids both attend were all typing away about this.  “We should send all the German mad dogs home!”, were the words of one thin-skinned parent.  I felt bad about all this.  I imagined weighing-in, in Chinese on the wechat parents group about how we all ought to be reasonable.  I was tempted to add that often misquoted Maoism: “revolution comes from the barrel of a gun”, Jack.  If you got real balls do something, about it, besides typing in wechat.  Everybody’s courageous when they’re thumb-tapping.  But my commentary wouldn’t be helpful.  And I’d likely miss much of the nuance of how things had been said and assert something sharp that felt great, but landed with a flat thud.

Franco now on the ears.  “Azda.”  I love this song.  What a sad, brilliant place the Congo must be . . . Must have been in 1973?  Apollo is still roaring on my face while Franco solos with his masterful echo.  I see him here playing there at Ali’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ concert, sharing the pan-diaspora stage with James Brown and the Fania All Stars.  We’re heading down into the clouds above Shanghai.  Down now.  Farewell my sun.  I know you’re out there.