How Used to Him

Rolling along Jingmi Lu to an early morning meeting.  My goodness it 6:52AM on Monday morning and there’s no slack.  Traffic all the way.  Here at the Bei Gao entrance to the highway it’s jammed back for two kilometers as people double up and then merge back into one lane.  A friend is in town.  A Chinese gent, who lives in Boston, he’s back to his motherland as I’ll be myself, later in the summer.  I have a plan to go and visit Egypt Air in person down town after this meeting so I can hopefully arrange my seating on tonight’s flight over to Cairo. 

Trump is near.  He was at Panmunjom I discovered this morning.  He took it upon himself to tweet Kim Jong Un and see if he’d stop down to welcome him.  No solemnity, no protocols and only the most minimal choreography.  Come shake my hand.  Isn’t that nice.  I need a win for the upcoming election.  Trade War’s on hold for a few more weeks.  Back slapping with Putin and breaking wind upon leaving town with Abe, in old Edo.  What’s remarkable is how used to him we’ve all become. 

I wrote a long letter to a good friend this morning.  I’ve wanted to for a while.  He writes so effortlessly about his world and his communications merit something substantive.  I need to clear out time to properly engage in response.  And we talk about family and books, and music.  I told him about this trip of ours today.  He’d be a grand person to have join along.  Writing to people who write well, pushes one write at one’s best.  Which is not what I feel like I’m necessarily doing with you just now this morning tender reader.

I’ve been trying to get online this entire drive down, into the city.  I hopped on my phone’s wifi and opted for one and then another and then another different landing point in the world trying to figure out where the connection might be established.  Fremont, then Dallas no good?  Try Albania or Serbia.  China just had an upbeat summit with Germany.  Shall we give Hamburg a try?  Something must be up.  It’s never this bad, unless there’s a reason.  Suddenly now, for no apparent reason, Los Angeles is working just fine.  Now I can return to all that busy work.

Monday, 07/01/19