Black Jackals With Orange

 

The early Tuesday call was rescheduled to the same time today.  And once again at 4:25AM, scrolling through the overnight emails on the can, in the harsh light I notice that the call had, once again, been cancelled.  It might have been my guys in China who had a conflict.  But this client is over there in Tel Aviv and with rockets falling, I wonder.  Another call later in the morning was scheduled during my drive into school with my little one.  I generally decline all such invites, but this call is with a friend, with whom I also happen to do business with.  He is also in Tel Aviv.  He’s dismissive, brave.  He’s been through worse.

 

I must rush home though.  I was up late with a colleague in Taipei and a colleague in Seoul, trying to prepare for a call with a prospect.  This would be decisive, and I’d run out of time to do all the preparation I might have otherwise wanted to do.  Water on the face, straighten my hair, see what arrived in the Inbox while I made the drive over the Hudson and back and the prospect, who it just so happens is also based in Tel Aviv, has written to cancel on account of the situation there on the ground.  Perhaps we can meet next Wednesday.  Then again, we’ll have to see.

Grateful, surely, to have more time to properly prepare.  But how can the mind focus on business, when this is the world for people you work with.  The people of Israel are tough, surely.  The Palestinian people are tough, surely.  I wish them both strength and safety just now, to navigate this intractable nightmare that is only ever pacified but seemingly never resolved.  Outside my window black jackals with orange beaks swoop down from the canopy forty feet across the yard and bank with their sharply feathered wings, knowing just how to arch their wings and flutter down effortlessly on to the bird feeder below.  More grateful than usual for the peace and quiet of the Hudson Valley. 

Later, after I’ve navigated two more calls, both with people in England, who agree that matters in Israel are sobering, I’m finally made it through a particularly jammed morning and collapsing on a swing chair my wife has positioned inexplicably at the bottom of the driveway I look up at the shape of the southern red oak that stands at an angle in our yard, banking thankfully away from the house.  My wife is talking about a business idea.  I’m not crazy about it.  I try to be polite.  But she can sense that I am distracted as I stare and try to imagine the century of growth that slowly occupied all this space. 

 

 

 

Thursday, 05/13/21