With the Ruff Lisp

Damn, I got Kool G Rap up on the mix.  Thundering in with the ruff lisp, ballet across the rhythm, career mob lyrics that seem so real.  I’d had some old Jamaican Rocksteady on with the fat, fruitlike rhythm guitar fills and it sounded so good and seeing as how there weren't no one else around today, I plugged in my guitar.  I’d just about figured out what key it was in when “Ill Street Blues” came on and I put down the guitar and thought about those days.

My younger daughter is off with her mom.  I got we-chat photos.  She’s learning how to use a loom to make fabric.  It’s a direct hit.  You can tell she loves it.  I’d have no mind for something like weaving.  I don't think I'd make good fabric.  Endlessly remarkable to watch young minds find their pathway.  Yesterday she was asked if I wanted to hear her drumming.  “Of course.”  I expected she’d get out a pot and pan, but soon it became clear that she wanted to hit the trap set. “It’s not set up.”  Fortunately I immediately felt like a fool casting back a jewel and soon we had the whole trap set up in the odd mini-basement we have. 

She rocked.  She confidently rode the high hat, thumped the base drum and cracked the snare.  And then she’d stop.  “Keep going.  It’s great.  Try and hold it for twenty seconds.”   I’d hold up one finger, and then two, as each beat cycle passed.   When she gets home today I’m going to see if we can jam.

I was supposed to have had a presentation to give this afternoon downtown.  I’m so glad it was postponed.  I reviewed the email just to be sure I wasn’t causing some catastrophe by not showing up.  I was right.  It’s idyllic not to have to go anywhere.

My older one and I have about thirteen more ten-page installments to go with Roskolnikov.  It’s taken a while but this means we’ve shared fifty of these ten-page installments to get this far.  I think ten pages feels right for both of us.  He’s confessed the crime to Sonya.  She insists that he confess completely and purify himself.  He’s no Napoleon, he admits.  But we love Roskolnikov and we agree.  He is above them.  He’s not going to submit to them.  Sitting there with in the room with the both of them is the murder itself.  He is stained and he squirms as the spot wont come out.  “She’ll never visit me in penal servitude” he thinks, after she has to leave abruptly to address another tragedy. 

Three Other Ventricles

The Mrs. asked if we’d bring some dinner home for her.  She needed to keep working.  The older one was at the track and field party.  This meant the little one and I were to set out on our own.  “What dyou want?”  “What dyou want?”  The mind begins the drive around the neighborhood.  There are calzones to be had.  Shag panir at the Pakistani joint.  We consider a half a dozen places and decide to just go over to one of the plazas and walk around to choose one. 

Parking will be a drag by local standards.  In San Francisco on a Friday night, I’d be circling around for twenty-five minutes.  “Park there.  No!  Around there.  It’s better!”  “OK.”  “What dyou want?”  “You see that sign?  The Blue Elephant?”  “What?”  “Right there!”  “Blue Frog?”  “No not that place.  The Thai place.  Let’s get Thai food.”  “No.  I don’t like it.”  “Come on its awesome.”  “Let’s go to the Hong Kong place.” “I totally don’t want to go there.” 

Coming up on restaurant row we pass a place that seems closed.  The second place has an odd name and is uninhabited.  The third place is the Vietnamese restaurant.  “Let’s go here.” My daughter suggests.  I abandon Thailand.  A spirited table of young professionals calls for the bill as we turn the tight corner and grab a seat by the window, next to a solitary young couple who seem to be moping. 

You gotta get the summer rolls.  This chicken with the lemon grass looks good.  But so does the beef salad with the lemon grass.  Something without lemon grass please.  I’m not gonna have seafood in here.  A curry?  That sounds good.  She’s getting the calamari.  “Remember, it might not be the way you like it.”  “I know.”

A bit greasy but it wasn’t so bad.  And we talked about how she made her sister a rice crispy cake with the words “track and field” on top, written in chocolate.  And she explained that some of her friends were starting a Youtube channel chronicling they're daily adventures.  She’s eleven.  I wondered about eleven year-olds unleashing their creative impulses on Youtbube.  One ventricle cheering to support her creative impulse, to do something even cooler than these folks, and three other ventricles flushing blood red: “no way.”  “Let’s talk about it with mom before you upload anything, alright?”

There’s a Baskin and Robins across the street and that will mean we’ll be going there next.  It’s almost like being home.  “Do you take a foreign card?”  “No sir.”  “How much is a cone and single scoop?”  “Thirty yuan”  “I’ve got sixty in my wallet.  We’re cool.  She gets cotton candy flavor.  I take a bite with the cone and it has a synthetic cotton candy after-burn.  I stick with mint chocolate chip so it can be even more like home. 

Guard Dependent

“OK so you just gotta roll up like momma does and wave you’re hand and they’ll open the gate. “  We’re discussing strategy around entrance to a neighboring compound.  I can just drive to the gate and wave at my own compound these days.  Each place has its own routine.  Some places the gate may as well not even be there.  Others you just have to say “club house, kids” and up she goes.  At this one we’re heading to, it’s guard dependent. 

Roll up.  Oozing confidence.  Wave without looking, like Hitler. Guy walks over.  My daughter begins the engagement, with the guard in Chinese:  “seeing a friend.  2303.”  And then, to me.  “She’s not home. “  “Is anyone home?”  “I don’t know.”  Great.  The call to the home seems to be taking some time.  No one is answering.  “Here.  Guard.  Talk to my friend.”  “No.”  That must be a ‘no-no’ they impress upon guards on the first day of Guard Training 101:  Anyone could be on that cell phone. 

A car rolls up behind me.  I’ll be nice.  I turn, get out of the way, and park on the side of the road.  My daughter now begins to plead in earnest in Chinese.  She’s making a forceful case.  She speaks so confidently in this, one of her two mother tongues.  And while the guard is being friendly, he isn’t budging.  I ask the guard for his name in Chinese.  He gives me his surname.  And then his name:  Zhang Hai Ping.  Lesson two on the first day of Guard Training 101 must be: assholes will invariably demand your name.  Provide it. 

I do a half hearted make believe call in English and repeat his name aloud over and over.  This foolishness isn’t swaying him either.  My daughter says she’ll just walk.  I note the cold and her attire.  He doesn’t budge.  Then an SUV pulls up.  He asks them where they’re going.  She smiles breezily and says in Chinese that she is with the real estate.  The gate goes up, they head in.  My daughter doesn’t miss a beat and says “how do you know who they are.”  He says he recognizes them.  They come often.  But it isn’t plausible, as he asked in the first place.

Then, it snaps and the observant, analytical side of my temperament, the part of me that was admiring my daughter’s fluidity is switched off.   He is making my daughter stand in the cold.  I raise my voice suddenly and making my way towards him, start yelling about how ridiculous all this is in Chinese, demanding he open up the gate.  And remarkably, sadly I think, he capitulates immediately and raises the gate for her. 

Later I text my daughter the three characters “张海平”。She texts back “Ha Ha Ha.”  But I’m not feeling mirthful or successful.  Routinized, rather, into something effective, fated, familiar.

Strong on My Machine

Up.  You can tell its long before sunrise.  Absolute stillness.  Impenetrable darkness. Fuzzy, retracing the handrail that lead to sleep last night.  Manageable.  The bladder quickly asserts itself at the apex of all needs.  Strong.  Strong enough to force me to sit up, then stand and force me to walk about in the dark.  The toilet seat.  At this hour, in the dark, I’ll sit. 

So.  The bed is inviting.  I imagine embracing the pillows before I actually do.  But I’m up now.  I’m lying here but sleep has left me. Sleep’s fingers can either clutch at you to return, immediately, or gently push you away.  They’re done with me for now.  If I stay here I’ll flop about and kvetch.  Pants.  Belt.  iPhone.  Last night’s magazine.  Well intentioned.  Shirt.  No.  It smells like yesterday.  New shirt’s over here. Down, one stair, two feet at first and then, holding firm, faster, one foot, one stair, one foot, one stair.

Remarkably, there is plenty of time in the day when you’re jetlagged and up at 2:30AM.  Meditation?  Sleepy fingers got ahold of my lapels while I sat there, in the dark.  Calisthenics?  Certainly.  Glance through all the emails, in two separate accounts, which earns you a gaze at the news.  It’s Super Tuesday back home.  It’s already late afternoon for them.  But they won’t call anything yet.  Still I check., over and over,  between email replies and to-do list pruning.

It’s 6:00AM and the gym is open now, isn’t it?  I can head over there and get back before the family gets up, before I need to prepare any food.  Oscar Madison style then; sneakers shorts and a tee shirt beneath a brown overcoat.  The car turns on effortlessly as it always does.  Lights, rearview mirror, some tunes and up to the dingzi lukou.   Chirping once and then six seconds later.  Safety belt to quench the chirp.

The gym’s packed.  I’m not so special.   My Stairmaster is occupied.  Who is this lady?  I stare.  “How much longer are you going to be on?”; emanates as I take off my coat to hang it.  Looking.  Put my wallet in my coat pocket.  Hendrix helps as I attempt my routine on some other machine that doesn’t do things the way I want them to at this hour.  A live album with the Experience from Miami that I had never heard before.  He says a lot of the same things to crowd that he always does.  He reinvents his standards majestically, the way he nearly always does.  Twenty minutes on I’m done with stairs and she is still going strong on my machine.   

Window is Cracked Open

Coming in like a lamb, rather than heading out like one.  Mild day in Beijing.  No signs of rebirth preparing to grip the dry, dusty winter landscape.  We may yet get hit with some more winter weather.  But today the sun’s out.  The driver’s window is cracked open, a breeze is blowing in, and I don’t mind in the least.  As I’d hoped, on this first day back in Beijing in a while, it feels a bit like spring.  We made it, once again. 

In Beijing this means we get windstorms and poplar puffs but you also get leaves and more daylight and invariably, it is an upgrade on winter.  I tried to catch a little nap a few moments back.  I drifted off quickly and reluctantly resurfaced.  Now I’m in the back of a cab.  I’m not quite awake but nor am I sure I can easily return to sleep again either.  Off to the side there are piles of trash in the rows of poplar trees out before Beijing Riviera.  Someone should clean that up.

It’s good to have one’s own routine back.  Did all the things I’m supposed to do.  Meditation, check.  Calisthenics, check.  Early morning trip to the gym before everyone else, done.   Lot’s of emails chipped away at and then the rest of the family is up.  A good productive day but by 2:30PM I am feeling it.  Jet lag is going to take what is due.  Everything outside is covered in dust.  We need rain, badly.

So the BeiGao entrance is still closed to traffic.  What’s the logic behind that?  Normally they take on a new project like that and have it sorted quickly.  This has gone on for months now.  I’ll need to look up if this is for politics or they’re actually is something they’re laboring to achieve with this.  Facing a very late arrival, again.   This road, below that exit with Wang Jing off to the right is torture.