Sedatives and Irony Come

I’d assumed I might rise early on Sunday morning.  I’d headed to bed reasonably early.  I didn’t check the clock on my phone but the sun told me it was well passed “early.”  I tried to read another chapter of my: “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”  Finally Connie and Hilda were off in Venice.  There were some fresh observations of the City of Fortune, but mostly she was pining.  And then the bad news starting coming in about how Oliver’s wife had returned and begun making a fuss.

I know one is supposed to be struck by the unvarnished sex in the novel, though in this day an age it is, of course, rather genteel and proper.  More powerfully noted was just how prevalent and awful the pressures of class were for the English. I finished off thinking about a British friend or two with whom I might want pursue this line.  Just how prevalent is class as a marker in today’s Britain?  In this work there are the clothes and the manners and education, but largely what distinguishes otherwise phenotypically identical people are their accents.  And accents are in the end, mutable.

This must be an entire line of ironic humor in the U.K. for people who fake posh accents and who are discovered to be rather common at the end of it all.  One thinks of Graham Chapman sitting around savoring the word “gorn” and being revolted by the word “tinny.”

The scene between Connie’s father and Oliver the “lover” is an especially notable class confrontation.  Beforehand we’re lead to believe it will simply be a train wreck.  But sedatives and irony come to the rescue.  The father, rather than rejecting the encounter outright lubricates himself to a point of complete inebriation so that he is sufficiently detached to navigate the discomfort he is feeling.  Drunk he’s able to pun about poaching with the gamekeeper, over and over so that they both laugh and as best as possible, bond across the gulf of British nobility.

Sunday, 03/26/17          

Buster Keaton to Unmute Things

Saturday began with a call at 5:00AM.  This was supposed to last for about three hours.  Painful, but not intolerable.  I’m usually up by six whether I want to be or not anyway.  The information was interesting, important, helpful.  I tried to concentrate.  And I thought as well about the big circular pillow I was sitting on.  I thought about it more and more.  And soon it seemed like a sensible thing to do would be to like on the tile floor and to hug this pillow.  I drifted off warily and immediately heard my name and rose like Buster Keaton to unmute things and add a comment.          

I considered coffee.  It was too early for coffee.  I tried to stand and this helped to get the blood flowing.  I made some comments, which helped even more.  By the time it was done we were at 8:45AM or so.  During the week I would never wind up doing this, but with the rest of the house yet to rise, I decided to head back up stairs, read a bit of my novel and head off back to the sleep I'd interrupted.

I’m about half way through of D. H. Lawrence’, "Lady Chatterley’s Lover."  I’d begun this endeavor as the work had shown up son a list The Guardian provided, of novels set in Venice. Finally, two hundred pages in I’m reminded of this as her ladyship posits a trip to Venice with her family.  His lordship Clifford, is paralyzed from the waist down after a war injury.  He won’t be going.  Her ladyship, reckons the trip could do her good, even though she isn’t keen to go.  She is concerned that her affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors has resulted in a pregnancy.  As I drift off to sleep she is toying with the idea of using Venice to explain a pregnancy if indeed she turns out to be with-child.  I’d bought it quickly on line and the edition has what appears to be a thin, five-point font.  The text is woozy beneath my contact lens films and soon it doesn’t matter at all. 

My older one and I went to the gym later in the day.  She was doing her stretches.  I was pulling weights out laterally, trying to toughen up my gut.  On my ears was a “Pod Bless America” pod that a good friend had recommended.  It's interesting to consider news analysis in this fashion, as I do not usually do so.  Off to the left a middle-aged guy has walked in to the gym.  Immediately he begins talking to my daughter.  I stopped my weights and watched.  They were about thirty feet away.  I considered the grizzly bears and other animals that charge things when something comes between they and their young.  Was this guy trying to chat her up or does he know her?  I looked for clues in her face but found none.  Eventually he walked off and I stopped feeling like a grizzly. 

Saturday 03/25/17

Notably More Adult

Parent teacher day at school with two kids enrolled.  I’ve scheduled these for years now but somehow it’s always the same.  You reach the 10:40AM French meeting up on the third floor at 10:45AM and notice on the schedule the next meeting is with the athletics teacher in the gym in five minutes.   “Bonjours.  Comment dit en ‘very late.’ en Francais?  “Je suis très en retard.”

Many people from many different directions are texting me and calling me, pinging on multiple medium trying to get information.  “Parent Teacher Conf” is a pretty effective repellent.  The teachers are all thoughtful and I find myself scribbling lots and lots of notes.  I’ve filled one and then another page with good old fashioned hand written script.  I know that later this afternoon I’ll go through what I wrote, class by class with my daughters.  Why don’t I type these notes?  I’d capture more info and it would be easier to read later on.  Somehow it doesn’t feel right to break out a laptop in a classroom setting. 

My younger daughter’s program is an integrated approach to middle school and as a part of this she is supposed to lead us in a review of her progress, rather than the teachers.  She doesn’t a great job.  There is a list of suggested questions we should ask her.  I ask her something that is not on the list and when my wife directs me to the list of ‘suggested questions’ suggesting that I should stick to the script, I point out the word “suggested” and clarify that we are at liberty to innovate.  My daughter is notably more adult in her role, than either of us.

Later that evening everyone was busy with ‘one more thing’ until we all decided to have Japanese food.  We called the place that is supposed to be pretty good, which my older daughter’s recommended in the past.  They said they were booked for the next hour at least, just like the last Friday night.  No matter, there’s that other Japanese place.  I remember it as decidedly middling but I’m too distracted to protest much.  I need to spend the first thirty minutes of dinner walking around outside in the late winter air, on yet another must-do conference call. 

Friday, 03/24/17

There's Eggplant, There's Pork

People want to talk by phone.  That’s natural.  Sure.  How about 3:00PM.  I have quite a few different clients though and they often have different calendars.  I’m sure there is a very straightforward way to sync them all across multiple different email accounts, across Microsoft and Google and Apple and Wechat but I haven’t figured out how to do it other than to manually enter them all.  Commitments that seemed sensible at the time of agreement become stacked up like subways waiting to enter a station. 

The fluid art of phone etiquette is has me now preparing on nearly every call as it comes to the end of its allotted time to announce that “I have another call coming up on the hour.  I’ll need to drop off.”  Sometimes that’s the case.  Sometimes it isn’t.  But if I budgeted 30 minutes for this, I’m not sure it makes sense to go on and on for too long after.  Often times I don’t need to.  Someone else does it for me. 

This evening I will make the dinner.  What’s in the fridge?  What’s quick?  There’s eggplant, there’s pork.  My wife will lead an English class this night on Wechat.  I am the appointed native speaker.  She wants to talk about Sloppy Joes.  I am ready.  Yes.  What you’ve written is all grammatically correct. 

And there are peas to take out of the colander and little purple sweet potatoes to snatch from the oven.  My older one has put the eggplant on the table.  “Sure.  Go ahead.  Dig in.  No need to wait.”  And the pork and parsley stir-fry is just about done.  But its time for me to read about Sloppy Joes to this online class.  And at the end of this class there is a call on the half hour.  I pop a piece of pork in my mouth.  Not bad.  I consider what it will taste like in an hour or so. 

Thursday, 03/23/17

I Was In Fact Me

I took a photo of my car, before we left.  Coming in a 2:00AM to the Beijing Capital Airport, about fourteen hours later then our scheduled arrival, via Bangkok, instead of direct from Vienna, I was glad at least I wouldn’t have to talk to a disappointed Beijing cab driver who would complain that he’d been in line for two hours and now, here I was asking him to drive for twenty minutes instead of forty, and yeah, isn’t life awful, until I barked something snarky in contempt.  “Do you have the key?”  This evening we’ll drive ourselves. 

I suppose I was lucky to be here.  The gent at border control had looked at my passport and looked at me and looked at my passport and looked at me, and looked at my passport and looked at me and said:  “Do you have another picture ID.”  I pointed out the fact that I was in fact me.  That was in fact me.  He persisted.  I did as well.  Fortunately my wife was behind me in line so I resisted the urge to say: “No.  I have no other ID.” Just to see what would happen.     Rather I pulled out my U.S. driver’s license, which seemed to mollify him.  Pulling it out I said to him in Chinese that all foreigners look alike anyway, so what does it matter.  This made him laugh, though that wasn’t my intention. 

We managed to find the car without consulting the photograph.  Take a right, and then another right and at this hour there are only so many cars out there in the lot.  We debated just how long it was we had left the car here and how much they’d be expecting let us pass through the gate.  Are they going to count it as five days or six?  This was all rather relevant as threw the bags in the car and remembered that we’d driven over on a near empty tank of gas and neither the toll gate lady nor the gas guy would be able to process my foreign credit card.  We’d need to make it work with the cash on hand.

The hapless 2:30AM tollbooth lady demanded four hundred yuan at the same time the machine barked out this figure.  I guess we were lucky, stuck only for the five-day charge.  Ah, but the gal rejected one of our one hundred yuan notes.  “It’s frayed.” she pointed out.  “What else ya’ got?” 

We gave her the other notes we had that totalled as much and took back the rejected one hundred yuan note.  Yes, the gas station will be open.” My wife assured me, with supreme confidence.  But neither of us was sure if the filling station attendant would accept our once forsaken one hundred renminbi note. 

Wednesday, 03/22/17