Verdant Green and Aquamarine

The “Palace Walk” is remarkable.  I only have time for short little bursts of this book.  I’ve left it on the kitchen table and every day when I sit down for lunch I set out to read ten pages with my salad and become lured in for twenty.  Today, the terrible exile has been lifted and Amina has been allowed to return home.   The husband, al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad is a tyrant and with his flirting is a hypocrite, cruising-for-a-bruising.   One assumes it can only be so long before he has his comeuppance. 

I find myself caring deeply about this tightly-knit family.  Each of the offspring, utterly plausible with their own vanities, their own sympathies.  Allah is invoked so commonly He is almost a character unto himself, allowing and forgiving and masterminding every gesture, the lubricant for all interactions, all difficulties.  It’s a shame I don’t have more downtime just now to read with abandon.  I’m tempted. 

The internet is a great equalizer.  No place is really any nearer or farer away, as long as you have a connection.  I got one and then another photo from my mother who is on a cruise with my stepdad, visiting Raiatea Island.  I have no idea where this island is properly located other than that it is down there, somewhere in the South Pacific.  It is, geographically speaking probably closer, or certainly not much further than her home in New York is from Beijing. But pressing the button on Wechat this morning to dial her in Raiatea, felt more extreme for a moment than doing the same thing to reach her when she’s on the back porch home in Poughkeepsie. 

Raiatea Island got rave reviews from the both of them when we spoke.  It sounds like they were finally able to get out and enjoy a river ride into the jungle.  The photos on line certainly make it look extraordinary, like a violent clash of verdant green and aquamarine.  It also appears to be small, and with seas rising, rather fragile as a delicate protrusion in the middle of the vast Pacific expanse.  We haven’t had a flake of snow this year in Beijing, but apparently they are properly missing a ferocious snow storm that is walloping New York.  I doubt she'll be on the back porch for the next call. 

Out there early this morning I did my best to verify my assumptions about the heavens.  Up there in the Southwest sky are two glistening orbs, which I'd written about yesterday.  I dutifully took my "stargazer" app and aimed it straight at these lights this morning and was med with ambiguity.  The app suggested Venus and Jupiter, nearly on top of one another just now, were a bit off to the right.  I checked again later and, given the absence of anything else, reckoned that it was these two planet that I was seeing.  Venus, smaller, and closer burns much brighter.  Jupiter is brighter than any star but less pronounced than Venus.  I should look on the Chinese web to see if there is anything to verify this further. 

Tuesday 01/22/19