The Symbol for Fire Within

The gingko trees are aflame today.  There, outside the German Embassy.  The Chinese character for ‘autumn’ has the symbol for fire within it. The driver of this Di Di, agrees that it is now fall.  It’s cold.  My heavy shirt is just not enough on this cloudy day.  It’s ok to walk around for few minutes but after that it needs warmth.  We keep passing and then being passed by a gentleman on a motor bike who is singing at the top of his lungs.  We have advanced very far now but his voice is ghost like in the way it regularly seems to reappear.  Even now, as we’ve turned and sped off on the highway.  I hear him.    

Heavy autumn days remind me of a Chinese sadness that is only properly echoed back from the strata of disappointments beneath Cathay. The sadness that breathes out from dry Beijing soil.  Too many injustices that will never be made fair.  A saturation of disappointment that is never quite embraced worthy, never really digested.  Fall sorrow feels all too full.  Still, an old friend whom I hadn’t seen in a while said I’d “aged well” and that filled me with a vain warmth which I can also dwell upon, if I prefer.

Walking across the road on that San Li Tun area I spied a space between two cars and tried to walk through.  They guy before me gunned the motor to threaten me off and he succeeded.  He passed.  I considered. spitting on his window.  He deserved spit, at least.  Perhaps a good key scraping across his paint job might have been in order as well.  But I remained centered, and I’m glad I did.  Mediate on where you are.  Forever, never yours, this land.  Forever a parallel system of logic, where you are always a guest, at best.

This stranger’s overt disregard for my humanity though, left me shaking.  I wanted revenge, at first.  Then I wanted to speak with him, after letting go of the anger bubbles.  Ultimately I was just glad to be safe.  Glad I didn’t need to prove to him that his metal box was no more important than me with the ante, of my own flesh.  What poor taste, this cur, to threaten someone that way.

Tuesday, 11/06/18