By Titans Was Construed

 

I started early this week, resuming consumption on Thursday night rather than my default Friday at 5:00PM.  A guest, from Vassar, whom my wife has come to know.  Someone from Shandong, near Binzhou, the heart of Qi Guo.   And it was grand to just sit and talk for a while in Chinese.  Her English was fine but so is my mandarin and we shared some ideas about her work and I noticed that I needed to restrain myself from going on and on and about my wife’s life there in the place where she was from.

 

And my dear old friend from undergraduate years arrived as well.  What a wonderful friend she is.  I was at one and the same time so proud to introduce her to my daughters and have them consider her.  My older one is quite capable of crystalizing the moment and speaking with gravity about all that she’s up to and this can’t but make a dad happy. 

 

This morning I should have set the alarm for 3:00AM.  Befuddled, and late I set it for 3:30AM.  That was when we’d had a revised call last week.  “Sorry.  Sorry.”  And I ran through my updates, though the Greater Confucian Sphere was in full ketou to the moon gods and the mid-autumn festival.  Not much to report on.  And when the call was done I sat in the toilet and red the next book, four mini books, really of my daughter’s favorite manga: “Attack on Titan.” 

 

Two calls later I got my little one up and we drove off to her school on the east side of the Hudson.  She was late and grumpy and monosyllabic.  I insisted we play the “Attack on Titan” theme song which she was immediately excited about.  I then began to pepper her with questions about who was this character?  Why did that girl behave that way?  Like chucking bread into a pond, she went swiftly to the bait and we had a good multisyllabic chat about how it was that this world besieged by titans was construed. 

Later my dad, surprisingly pooped out of our hike, on account of the rain.  There’s no rain in the forest, beneath the canopy.  Anyway, I went along and walked for a while until I was able to catch one and then another bluff on the main carriage trail.  And they were lovely and I had my binoculars but I must say they are probably a damn sight smarter to view from in the winter version of this trail, when there are no leaves there on the trees.  I shall have to return, perhaps with my dad, and see. 

Friday 10/02/20