Ancestors Will Be Lured

Listening to “Miles in The Sky.”  As noted earlier I don’t know quite why I missed these few albums right before Bitches Brew.  They’re lovely and locked down a bit tighter than some of what comes immediately hereafter.  It is the day before, Lunar New Years Eve.  Not a bad time to be driving around.  Many, many people it would seem have already headed off home, out of the city.  Driving down Jing Mi Lu the against rush hour traffic, there doesn’t seem to be much of anyone traveling in either direction. 

I had wanted to be doing a bit of traveling ourselves this year, tracing the obligatory ritual of a trip out to Shandong to be with the family out in Wudi on New Years Eve.  A sign of the times certainly, no will be there this year.  They’ve all decided to fly down to Hainan Island and spend the holiday at a beach resort.  This would have been impossible to imagine even only a few years back.  I think of all the intricate rituals of welcoming the ancestors in and sending them back from the ancestral gravesite with a barrage of fireworks.  Not this year.  Perhaps the ancestors will be lured down to Hainan as well. 

It’s eerie really.  I’ve driven in at a rate that would have been possible only at 3:00AM under normal circumstances.  But again, this is rush hour.  Refreshing to remember that I actually live only a thirty minute drive into the city, not an hour’s drive out.  My mission is simple:  I need to get contact lenses before the entire city closes.  I’m down to my last three or four lens packets.  Like some squirrel I’ve almost certainly placed a few this piece of luggage or that drawer.  But it’s risky.  And without them, I’m not particularly functional for much more than reading a book.

Presently I’m heading south on the eastern third ring road , as I have one thousand times before and now I notice a huge tower down near Guanghua Lu.  What is that?  I seem to remember looking at that not long ago a bit earlier in its construction. Now, from a distance it is clear that it will be about thirty stories taller than anything else in the city.  A new hotel will claim the top few floors, certainly.  Some overbuilt restaurant will be referenced as a must-see, for a few month as well.  I’ll invariably head up some day when it’s cocked in with pollution and wonder why I bothered.  Will look up this thing is when next on line.  (It is known as the Z15 Tower, aka, the “Zun” which is an ancient Chinese wine vessel.   She’ll stand 108 stories tall, when she’s done.)

Thursday, 01/26/17