“Huh?” I Mumbled.

I’ve got to go to Hangzhou tonight.  I won’t be walking around the West Lake, reciting poetry to the moon.  Rather I’ll get around midnight and cab straight to a hotel.  Perhaps there’ll be a bit of walking around in the morning.  Originally my meeting at Alibaba was for 8:00AM.  Now were on for noon.  The last few times I’ve gone there it seemed as the city was suffering even by Chinese standards, from some serious urban sprawl with all the attendant traffic issues.  I chose a hotel last time that was near what had been listed as “Alibaba Headquarters” in Google maps.  But that wasn’t the place where my meetings were held. 

I stayed up late last night to catch up on my posting.  I got pretty close before fatigue made it impossible to do any more editing effectively.  It was three hours later at 5:30AM when my phone rang.  An emergency?  My jungle era reflexes initially asserted a crisis.  A colleague was on the line.  “Huh?”  I mumbled?  “Oh shit, sorry, it’s an hour earlier for you.” he said, calling from Japan.  And I learned that our Hangzhou meeting would happen later in the day. 

I tried, unsuccessfully to go back to sleep, and after flopping around for a bit, I headed down, resumed the editing work.  I worked until about 7:30AM.  The school gym is officially closed today for Qing Ming Jie so I could write off that obligation without any guilt.  I know.  I’ll meditate.  I fall asleep meditating even when I’m not tired.  The quiet effort to think about nothing worked as I assumed it would and I was soon following a nonsensical narrative with college era friends in a middle school setting till it was rather suddenly time for my 8:30AM call. 

I still haven’t managed to fully recover this lost time of rest.  The girls are just back from a bike ride over to the local burrito joint.  I passed, as I’d had just such a lunch a few days back.  But I’ll arise now and head to the kitchen and make a salad with tuna fish.  I suspect it will be a matter of minutes after that mass settles in my stomach and all the blood rushes down to help digest it, that I’ll surrender into an unqualified afternoon nap. 

Tuesday, 4/4/17