Arch and then Splash

Odd one this morning.  Deep sleep.  I was traveling somewhere and there were amalgamation people, composed of different souls my mind’s library had put together, and they all had a light rather than deep affinity as happens where you’re on the road traveling with people and gel with disposable acquaintances.  We went over to bridge where we paid a visit to a long drop down into a lake or perhaps it was a river.  There were enormous hippos in the water, just the same way there are hippos in the photo I have that sometimes shows on my screen-saver from when we were in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania.   These hippos though were a bit larger and they were leaping off bridge to do tremendous belly flops into the water.  As they leapt their bodies stretched out and you could see the enormity of their bellies.  And though this would otherwise be a rather dangerous thing to mingle with, my dream scape didn’t suggest any danger to diving down into the water with them.  People were in the water with the hippos.  People were diving along with the hippos.  And when the hippos dived it was wonderful to watch them arch and then splash. 

And when I’d opened my eyes this odd event was still rather fresh in my mind.  I noticed that the sun was already up.  I’d likely be behind on my early morning schedule, without even bothering to look at the time.  A few emails to act on. None of the ones I’d hoped would have arrived overnight were there. Another Toutiao article about another hapless Chinese official caught up in another tawdry corruption scandal.  A friend wanted to chat, but I was still trying to meditate and suggested I’d call him in twenty minutes. 

I’ve been listening to a bucket of Mingus but somehow the MC5 entered my noggin this morning and so I impulsively downloaded everything there was on Spotify and there at the gym was soon considering Detroit in 1969, shaking my head like an idiot as I went through my routine.  The silly version of the classic live album, tamely has the classic call “ Kick out the jams, muthafuckers” erased out.  Must we?  I spent more than a few minutes thinking about how if I ever got this album for my nephew, I’d want to make sure I secured the unedited version.

Now I’m sitting beneath the new overhead high-speed rail tracks being built near our Hou Sha Yu entrance to the Jing Cheng Expressway.  You can’t pass by this construction without considering it.  My driver suggests that it will head out to Chengde and then on to Xinjiang.  He quotes a figure that must have made the rounds among gossiping drivers: “One kilometer, costs one hundred million.”  Sooner or later this phenomenal Chinese infrastructure build out will reach an end.  And then it will all be about maintenance.  

Thursday, 5/16/19