Coffee? Coffee? Ten O'Clock

Everyone is asleep.  I am up early, of course.  The sun’s been up for a while, so I assume it is five as it would be back home this time of year.  But it is nearly seven.  The time zones are playing tricks on me.  Suddenly I feel as though the whole morning has gotten away from me.  Outside on the street below, I hear Chinese again.  We have encountered many Chinese and many Koreans of both northern and southern persuasion and heard plenty of Japanese spoken as well. 

I want to have some coffee.  We bought groceries last night but no coffee.  I look over the city map and consider a path down to the town square.  The museum won’t be open now, but at least I’ll know where it is for when we head out ensemble. Before I depart my stepson indicates he needs a Band-Aid.  I promise to look for one. 

The city is dormant at 7:30AM on a Saturday morning.  It strikes me again, that this “feels” more like “home” than China even though it is utterly exotic and I have no ability to communicate.  There are lights, suggesting food, suggesting beverages, but all of these places are closed.  It feels deflating, this lack of industriousness.  The twenty-four hour“Korean” markets of Manhattan should be part of this landscape as well. 

Through an underpass, there are stores selling shoes, and trinkets and ladies lingerie and a few that suggest they have coffee.  But they are all closed.  A pharmacy is open. I’ll get the Band-Aids.  A man in smart suit and a sour face says: “Ten O'Clock”.  Further up the road I find another pharmacy.  This one is open.  I fuddle with my translation app for what feels like interminable minutes and finally show her the word for 'band aid.'  She answers in plausible English:  “Do you want big or small.”  I get both and some aspirin as well.  On my way out I turn back and pinch an imaginary coffee cup an raise it to my lips, asking the pharmacy women, with my eyebrows inflected: “Coffee?  Coffee?”   “Ten O'Clock” she replies.  “Ten O'Clock.”

I continue, passed statues of war heroes and nineteenth century building facades.  There is a statue of and a sign for Elizabeth Pays which doesn’t sound very Russian.  Later at the museum I learn that she was an American who lived here for some thirty-five years, during the late nineteenth century.  The further I go along my way, the closer I come to the remarkable suspension bridge that looms up ahead.  Beneath the bridge there is a flame burning to martyrs of sea faring from what I can discern.  I settle in with the river at my back and read ten pages of “Dead Souls” as my plans read in a café are delayed it seems until Ten O’Clock. 

Saturday 6/23/18