He Moved On Over

You need to be mindful of indulgent weekends.  That’s the time I usually save write, to edit.   That’s the time to post.  This weekend I read and read.   I just wanted to.  A Saturday of leisure turned into Sunday rather quickly.  Ever since I had flown off to India I was playing catch up on getting a pile of blogs posted.  They were all written.  But two weeks’-plus of entries, all needed to be edited and pictures chosen and postings physically made, titles quipped.  None of this all got finished until today.  Per below, its’ Tuesday.   And I was anxious, ill at ease, until it was all up and done.

The door rang a lot. I didn’t engage.  My wife talked to someone.  I kept working.  Soon there was another man who was working, right outside in the yard.  He walked in front of my window.  Then he walked back.  I went into the kitchen to make some lunch.  He migrated to that corner of the house, as well, working diligently, while I prepared my lunch.  And while I know he didn’t mean to, per se, when I went to the table to eat my lunch, he moved on over to that window, as if on cue.  “Hi there.”  And of course, when it was time to return to my office, it was also time for him to clean that window.  Would you like some tea?  I asked.  He suggested he was fine.  Right. 

At the end of the day the doorbell rang again.  No one else home at this point.  I went outside.  The window man was asking for three-hundred RMB, or approximately US$50.00.  I had no idea if this was accurate or what the deal was that had been struck, though it sounded like less than I’d ask for a day of physical labor.  More to the point I was skint, as Paul Weller might say.  I hadn’t a single digit of the People’s Money in my wallet.  I asked if he took Wechat pay.  He pulled out a feature phone that wouldn’t have allowed a scan.  But he suggested I connect with his boss on Wechat and then I could send it to him.  This all sounded logical but now we were getting into multiple party transactions and the margin for error was not insignificant.  I told him the Mrs. would handle it when she got back.  He considered this and made his way off. 

Before he left, he pointed to the work on the windows sills he’d been cleaning.  I suddenly noticed and indeed they looked clean.  I suppose I might have walked all around the place considering his work in more detail, but frankly I wasn’t sure what it was he’d been tasked to do, and how it would be that I might evaluate it.  He was already on his way home by now, anyway. 

Tuesday, 4/17/18

A Simpleton, Like Everyone

You know its bad when you have an achingly negative reaction to the New York Times home page because it hasn’t been updated since the last time you looked at it.  The reason it hasn’t updated is because it was only ninety minutes ago that you last considered it.  What do I expect to find?  I suppose I am looking for Trump’s reaction to Comey’s interview where in the latter suggested the prior was a serial liar and a stain on his colleagues.  Trump has already referred to the former FBI director, whom he fired as a “slime ball.”  I suppose I am interested to see just now it is Trump will escalate. 

I look there because I don’t want to look at all the emails I need to reply to.  That would take a lot of work.  I’d need to formulate a reply and compare two version of an agreement draft.  I’d much rather learn about just how angry the president is.  I am a simpleton, like everyone, watching this guy have a daily temper tantrum.   Hoping that he trips up, assuming he has already tripped up and it is only a matter of time before all is revealed. 

It happens more gradually than the burst of foliage that we’re now nearly full on into the middle of.  The day has become longer.  Ta-dah.  It’s great.  I’m riding home in a cab. It’s 7:00PM.  And it is still light outside.  It will be light for another twenty minutes or so.  And every day will inch forward yielding a bit more daytime to consider till the end of June.  Look at all the people on Gaobai Road heading the other direction gummed up at the light.  It’ll be dark by the time they’re passed all that. 

Must head back out on the late side this evening.  I certainly don’t want to go.  It’s times like that when you’d prefer to live in the city.  At least it will be late enough so that "no one" will be out on the road.  And once I’m settled in the back of that cab and I check the first line of emails, it will be 8:00AM back in New York and it will be a fine time, seventy minutes from now, to see if there is any fresh news on how Trump is reacting.  Would that I didn't care. 

Monday 4/16/18

Please Sir, After You

Why do we rage when we drive?  It’s a dumb thing to do.  We’re in our own world.  Everyone else is a steel box without a face, without any warmth.  Each car has power and could hurt us.  We know there are people inside.  But we regard them as adversarial.

Returning from the gym today, I was listening to lovely music.  Hendrix’ “Isabella”, from a live Band of Gypsies collection filled the air.  Windows down.  Sunny day.  Certainly, in my own world.  Certainly, happy.   At the corner of Anhua Lu and Tianbei Lu I came upon an old man in a three-wheeled cart on the side.  I needed to turn.  He wasn’t turning.  I had to slow down and could not overtake him with the traffic in front.  The car ahead moved.  Now I had my chance to barrel past him.  By Chinese driving norms I’d have been well within my rights to do so. 

I caught site of his grizzled old face and gestured for him to go forward.  My small gesture of civility to my neighborhood community.  Please sir, after you.  He took this in and began to speed up his vehicle to cross the path in front of me.  And at that moment a large brown SUV behind me suddenly honked. 

The SUV slowed, turned and was considering pulling around me from behind.  You’d think someone insulted my mother.  You’d think someone had spat on me.  I yanked the headphone out of my ear and twisted my head and pursed my lips as if I were Flavor Flav, and stared at this guy, he was a guy, inviting him to do something.  He stared back.  He progressed.  I progressed.  He sped on.  I didn’t try to keep pace.  It was over in a millisecond.  I considered extending a central digit his way up at the light ahead, but wisely decided it was pointless.

I think my guard was down because, in my mind I was doing something uncommonly nice to the old guy on the cart.  I wasn’t acting as if I were more important than he was, just because my vehicle had more horse power.  And this very same gesture was seen to the person behind me as the mark of a simpleton.  Why the hell did you do that?  Are you lost?  Are you having car trouble?  Are you making friends?  And to be fair, the proper way to ask any of those questions is to beep.  “I’m here.  Take note of me.  You’re confusing me with your driving.”  But in that millisecond, it felt as though someone were belittling my gesture of civility.  And, alas, as though it was I who had a lesson to teach this other person and indeed, everyone. 

Sunday 4/15/18

Error Piles Upon Error

I remember seeing a bumper sticker in San Francisco, touting a union, perhaps it was the AFL CIO, which said: you know “the folks who brought you the weekend.”  This seemed wise and secular and patriotic and ultra-left, at one and the same time.  We all should tip our hats.  Weekends are different from a “day of rest”, which most Abrahamic faiths agree on the need for if not the particular day, for.  Weekends do ‘day of rest’, one day better.  They are something I believe in and would fight for, to a point. 

This morning I read.  To each his or her own, on the weekend.  A weekend morning for me, means I can lay around and read.  “The Inspector General” is easy to get lost within as Gogol effortlessly skewers small town Imperial Russia, where no one is redeemable and error piles upon error. “The greatest play in the Russian language” is the way Nabokov referred to the work.  The time passed in a flash, before the town realizes that Khlestakov was a charlatan, and what’s more one they’ll never see again. 

My wife slept through the whole affair.  She groaned.  She does that sometimes.  It usually means she’s having a bad dream.  I suspect I probably groan as well.  When it’s her that groans I usually find out later that I was the culprit her unconscious mind had grabbed hold of to create some narrative tension. I’m generally doing something wrong.  So, I reach out and rub her shoulder to steady her in the oblivion world.  Ideally, this manages to change the plot.  Ideally, I exonerate myself. 

I think my gal has the right idea.  It’s not time to get up yet.  The little one is on a field trip.  The big one is sleeping in.  I start another book.  Here too, is a man who was not afraid to fight for something, up to a point and beyond.  I’ve had the cover’s photo of the young Trotsky staring at me for some time.  I consider a few different books I could begin, but I settle on Robert Service’ Trotsky biography, which is only one-third as long as the Isaac Deutscher one I’d finished a few weeks back.  Service seems a bit awkward thus far as he praises Trotsky’s Olympiad capacity as a thinker and an orator and a man of action and an intellect on the one hand, while reminding us that he sometimes wasn’t a good father, or wasn’t very filial or was clearly a bit egotistical on the other.  Where Deutscher’s fawning seems justified and discrete, where Service critique seems clumsy and obligatory as he takes his shots.  Still, he's right that Leon wasn't as astute reader nor as skilled a manipulator of other people's characters, as Joseph proved to be.

I plough through quickly as the plot and the characters are all rather familiar, until I realize its nearly noon.  Weekends can only justify so much rest.

Saturday 4/14/18