Always a little funny sailing past Harrison, New York. I hadn’t realized we’d go over
to Queens and then up to the Bronx if we rode the Amtrak from Penn
Station. I watched it go by on the
Google Map wondering precisely where we’d make the crossing. My old home in the winter has lots of denuded
woods, with a carpeting of brown leaves and a screen of dead vines all laid about. And when you think about your youth
in a place it can’t help but be sentimental even though now as a parent
yourself you understand that it was merely an eight-year segue on the life's journey of your parents. It can’t mean the same thing
for them. They have their own youthful
reference points. And this all makes me
think of Beijing and I wonder what it will symbolize for my children. Knowing it won’t mean mean the same thing for them as it does for me.
I’m on my way to
New London. I was there over the summer
taking my older daughter to see Connecticut College.
We sat and had a burger on the back porch or Muddy's and looked out at the inlet they have there, the
space where the appropriately named, Thames River, empties into the Long Island
Sound. Today I will make my way from the
station over to an Indian reservation casino, at Mohegan Sun, as a client will have a sales
kick off there. For now listening to
some Kenny Burrell that Spotify has thrown on to a mix that came on after the
album I'd initially threw on had played it's last.
Kenny is turned up
loud. This, as are two people behind me
who are talking and talking and talking about some dry-as-warm-dust business
conversation that centers around getting a support trial for a customer. It sounds like every damn conversation I must
have, every damn day, myself. We’ve
stopped in New Haven just now and no, the talkers are not getting off. Damn. It’s less than twenty-four hours I’ve been in
the U.S. and every English conversation just pierces my ears with unwelcome
immediacy. I wish I could make it go
away.
I’m midway through
this remarkable biography of Lenin, which I would very much like to just read
right through today. I have made it right up
to the end of 1916 and the October Revolution is only nine months
away. Business leaders sometimes talk
about maniacal focus. Vladimir was
certainly blessed with this trait.
Pugilistic, academically adroit, utterly convinced, and spoiled by his
mother and his wife and his exhausted Bolsheviks, I have never really
considered the man anywhere near this deeply before. I have a big presentation to finalize but
perhaps I’ll steal another chapter in before we arrive at New London. That or take a nap. It’s properly 4:30AM for me back home.
Monday, 01/29/18
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