Sighting of the Mall

Returning from the gym and music the kitchen has a woman’s voice singing out.  I greet my wife, take off my big coat and the voice pulls and teases me again.  It’s someone trying to sound like Ella. I can see her face.  One of the few white woman of the classic 50's period who was undeniably of the tradition?  I kept thinking of the name Doris Day but I know that’s wrong.  My mind is stuck on “D”  I keep fumbling with “D” names and I’m getting frustrated because I can see her album cover.  I recall who she’s accompanied by on that album.  I know his name:  Oscar Petersen.  But I can’t think of this woman's name . . .

I go and look and it is, in fact, Ella.  I was struggling so hard with memory that I forgot to listen carefully.  OK.  Ella was trying very hard to sound like Ella.  But now I am compelled to go on line and look and find that the woman I’d been looking for was:  "Anita O’Day”.  A "d" buried deep within.  Like my perennial memory lapse on Roy Eldridge which I’ve written about before, I think it’s probably best to push memory as best one can, through these vacuous challenges seem ever more pronounced as one grows older, and the mind is aided by these artificial repositories of information that become ever closer from being "online" to being implanted in the mind, itself. 

Tonight off to Wang Jing.  This where my son and his wife have moved.  Instead of cutting across into the neighborhood from Jingmi Lu we loop around the North Fourth Ring Road and cut almost all the way back to Jing Cheng Highway.   No one has been this way before and everyone is arguing with each other and the car’s navigation.  "This will be faster!"  "You're wrong!"  There is big mall up ahead. This is their mall.  The positive sighting of the mall calms everyone down.

Their compound is enormous.  But fortunately they are off to one side of it and from up above its clear they have an uninterrupted view of . . . the highway and off beyond.  But from the thirtieth floor it's more interesting than annoying.  Veterans of Beijing’s perennial expansion it is clear that no developer will obstruct their view, any time soon, by building on the physical highway.  Some things, at least, are bankable.

Saturday, 01/05/19