A to Zed Guidebook

Labor Day.  I hardly knew ya’.  In the People’s Republic we celebrate international Labor Day not the end of summer, Haymarket compromise my homeland offers up.  Would that I actually observed this holiday that my antecedents worked so hard to secure. Would that I’d done like Flavor Flav and went to the Poconos with a “pack of franks and a big bag of Frito Lays.”  I worked, not with a lathe or a welding torch, certainly, in shorts and a tee shirt admittedly, unerringly though, certainly all, day long, from 5:30AM till now, 11:41PM. 

Sitting here at the arrival hall of the Beijing Capital Airport, Terminal Three arrival hall.  It’s midnight.  My older daughter’s coming back home.  She’s already landed, back from her Hong Kong visit.  The guy on the bench next to me is listening to a Qing Dynasty soap opera on his phone. It is very loud.  I have tried staring at him for a bit.  Suggesting that this is perhaps a tad presumptuous to broadcast this horseshit so everyone around you must confront it as well right along with you.  But the I’d be presuming incorrectly.  He’s presuming his public atmosphere properly.  Western artefacts of presumed civility that have a different pH balance in this aquarium. Still I glare.

“Strange Town” is looping about my mind appropriately enough.  It sounded lovely stepping away there at the gym.  I didn’t much care about the lyrics that had made me laugh when I was fourteen:  “They all ignore me, but they don’t know.  I’m really a spaceman from those UFO’s.”  It’s the song of the day and residue is stuck to something vital for a while.  What I did ponder at the gym, unwittingly, was “zed.”  Paul does not buy an A to Zee guide book, but rather, he bought an A to Zed guidebook.  Of course, he would.  How many steps to nowhere did that occupy chewing upon that distinction?  I’m sure there’s a story there.  How could be anything other than “Zee.”  It’s a fucking ‘zee-bra’ not a ‘zed-bra’.   (It’s the Greek’s fault, I’ve learned.)  I’m sure the Commonwealth finds the open eee sound just as inexplicable and irksome.

There she is.  I missed her.  She comes along the gated pathway.  I feel protective suddenly, should anyone want to ask her if she wanted a ride.  No one does.  Her bag is light.  I take it and accompany her up the path to the garage.  I’m looking for “C” but it appears that both right and left will both take you to the “C” section of the lot.  Fiddling for my phone, a gent comes up and introduces himself guessing correctly that I was who he was looking for, and we head off to the left towards his vehicle.  “How was your trip?” “It was OK.”

Tuesday 5/01/18