Last night my younger daughter mentioned she needed to do a report on ‘direct action.’ Independently, she mentioned she wanted to look at the Taiping Rebellion. It would certainly fit the bill, but when I learned more about the assignment, and the request for primary sources, I suggested she consider the Cultural Revolution, or June 4th or the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia and the aftermath in Beijing as she could talk to people for whom it was a living memory. She decided to have a look at the protests in Tiananmen Square and as we talked it over, I showed her pieces from the documentary made not long after: “The Gate of Heavenly Peace.” It makes for extremely disturbing viewing.
She talked to her mom, as well, who knew people on both sides of that conflict. Servicemen called for unsavory duty and other who left at that time, who had never returned, indeed who could no longer return. And she surprised me this morning when she mentioned that she was no longer sure about writing the paper, as it might be something that might somehow, someway prevent her, herself from being able to return to China. I mastered my impulse to scream that the long arm of CCP censorship didn’t apply here, in her Quaker high school in New York. Instead, I tried to ask some questions about what she was afraid of. It struck me listening to her that, clarifying quietly in my mind that she’d still go forward, but really needed to voice her concerns, that in her case the loss of innocence is, in part, realizing that the two different worlds she knew, were at times impossible to reconcile.
The forever war, is winding down. What a said state of affairs. NPR pointed out the long history of this conflict. I suppose I assumed the guy would go all the way back to the retreat from Kabul in 1848 but rather he suggested that the current conflict began in 1973 with Daoud Khan’s overthrow of Zahir Shah.
I biked up to the Wallkill River bridge on the rail trail this afternoon. I’ve been fine with the second-hand bike I’ve been using. But today it was made clear to me that, besides perhaps addressing the aching in my coccyx , a new bike might be a quite a bit different. Pedaling along at a crisp clip, in highest gear with the most torque I was happy enough with my progress till a kid who was idly pedaling along on a slick new trail bike blew past me and left me in the dust. Perhaps I, should get such a bike, I reckoned. I don’t think I’d get any more or less exercise but I’d presumably cover more ground.
Back home ‘twas time for a shower. On the trail its twentieth century classical composers, as a rule. Not sure why. Today was Joan Tower’s “Sequoia.” Scraping my face in the bathroom, I turn to bee bop jazz, usually, but as I thumbed through the hundreds of albums that are only mere pinky nail images on my Spotify, I spied the familiar image of “All Mod Cons”, the third album by the Jam. I knew immediately I would listen to it, as loud as the little Pixel would play it. Bruce Foxton’s silly two tone boots and slacks, Rick Buckler’s sneakers and the uncharacteristically odd photo of the otherwise eternally photogenic Paul Weller, slouched in the back of the photo. “To be someone must be a wonderful thing.” All the lyrics, known by heart, falling effortlessly now, from my lips, in with the hot water on my back.
Wednesday, 04/14/21
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