You Turn the Ignition

The car won’t start.  My wife’s come back in from the cold to mention this.  It’s cold out there, but it’s not the sort of cold that interferes with automobiles.  I don’t care much for the vehicle nor do I have much of any insight or interest into car diagnostics, but none of that matters much.  I feel a man’s guilt and begin throwing on long pants and a coat so I can go out see for myself. 

Indeed.  There’s an unpleasant sound when you turn the ignition. If it’s only a charge we need we’ll get off lightly.   But it isn’t the sound I remember from a dead battery.  This sounds more complicated.  Lots of warning lights flash, like a one-armed-bandit.  Too many to consider.  It’s clear the car won’t turn. 

The other night I notice a light stayed on even after we closed all the doors and fiddled with all the light switches.  Something like this must have wound down the charge.  But walking out from the driver’s seat I notice blotches on the driveway.  Here are some oil spots where something has clearly leaked on to the ground from underneath our car.  This is worrisome  If the car isn’t starting for some other reason this could all get rather expensive. 

In the U.S., you’d call triple-A.  There may be an ACA, but I haven’t heard of it and     neither my wife nor I belong to it.  She calls her brother.  She calls our nephew.  She tries a local station.  They will send someone over.  When he comes he’s in a simple car, not a tow-truck as it might be back home.  And he fiddles for a bit and charges the battery.   He also point out a simple reason why the oil is leaking.  I notice him and consider all the things he knows how to do, implicitly, which I do not. 

Tuesday 12/11/18

                                                                                                                                                              

Donald Was Glad for This

I had a humanizing nightmare this morning.  Ran through emails, ran through the papers as I do first thing, in the morning.  Up early because I couldn’t sleep and I may as well get work done rather than lie there flopping around, kvetching.  I spent a bit of time translating another article about the arrest of Ms. Meng, the Huawei CFO.  The terms are just within the borders of polite civility.  Earnest, strident insistence to correct, mistaken actions. 

By 5:30AM I stopped what I was doing threw the big pillow I have against the wall and flipped off the lights and tried to meditate.  And I knew, given how sleepy I was, I’d likely doze off. 

It was some kind of fashion show, that preceded from one tent to another.  I walked along and soon found myself talking to the President, as one does in one’s dreams.  He was holding court in his tent, as one might expect, but he and I had a rapport.  And soon, I was thanking him for the intro to a business opportunity and reminding him that if anything came of it, I’d be sure to afford him ten-percent finders fee.  Donald was glad for this.  And he encouraged me to go push hard to get it done and it was somehow quite natural to be talking business with President Trump. 

In the next tent I found myself with his infant child.  I don’t know how Barron had regressed to this tender age or if this was a new Trump child.  But I do recall thinking about this child and thinking of his life, the opportunities and the challenges to living with such a father.  And by now in the dream, I felt a basic, human affinity for Donald Trump.  He had seemed reasonable and he had encouraged me to get business done.  And my dream mind suddenly regretted that I had blogged disparaging things about the man.  What if now held these thoughts against me? 

Waking I was unnerved.  I’d surrendered most of meditation time to oblivion.  At least I hadn’t overslept.  But as I removed the cobwebs of the dream from my conscious mind I was left with the unpalatable sensation of having liked Donald and indeed felt a bit like a pal of his for a few moments there in the tent.  I suppose the subconscious can’t help but make any two-dimensional distant figure, immediate, and human and, as generally happens with real humans, one experiences empathy.  The President hadn’t done anything to really deserve this empathy but the experience of extending it was difficult to rescind.  It was a feeling and feelings are felt, rather than logically understood.

Monday 12/10/18

Who Merited Something Grand

Ahh, the Orchard’s a good thing.  Old friends are a good thing . . . Falling asleep writing in the back of a cab, trying to write something cogent after a big brunch is an inevitable things, as well.

I’m not sure the story behind the Orchard.  I’ve a friend who lives nearby and he’s referenced it before.   I can only imagine like anything so big and beautiful, in an area of rapid development, it is precarious and has faced near-death more than once.  I looked out today at the frozen pond and the denuded willows and I thought of all the other memorable meals I’d had at this place with friends who merited something grand.

I appreciated today how distinguished the brunch spread was, in comparing it to all the many gratuitous breakfasts buffets I have access to at one hotel or another.  Every type of world cuisine and all manner of predictable must-haves are laid out and I usually just grab some fruit.  This Orchard arrangement feels as though a tasteful individual with their own personal preferences chose what to include and what to leave out.  I return more than once.

Great old friends have invited us.  The husband and I note that we’ve been friends for twenty-three years or so, have a young daughter who’s grown since the last time we met and she reminds me of my own, older daughter, who isn’t so young any more.  I ask the same follow-on question that usually gets a response to the boring opener “what’s your favorite class.”  “I don’t have one.”  “What’s the one you hate the most?”  “Chinese.  We have too much work in that class.”  I can only imagine.  I invested forty minutes this morning trying to read a bit of an article on a Chinese lunar rocket launch.  Even after all these years it's slow and grinding.  There is no way to memorize all those characters other than memorizing all those characters. 

“So," I ask, "which desert was best?”  “The carrot cake.  The chocolate cake was too sweet.”  I head off again for the obligatory desert run. There, in the queue, a loud blonde is making recommendations in a London accent to a gentleman of African descent and another fellow who strikes me as Syrian.  They don’t speak but I assign them British accents in my mind as well.  Most of the patrons though are Chinese.  And none of the food is Chinese.  And I’m glad that this seems to have been adopted by some, albeit well-heeled, segment of the local community and that the Orchard is self-sustaining.  Two young ladies catch my eye and duck into a private room where it appears some insurance company is having a function.  I consider following them in, but only for a second, and with my  dutifully continue on my way to our table, and lay my carrot cake down on our sunny perch at the other side of the restaurant.

Sunday, 12/09/18