Month: March 2015

March 17, 2015

Day One

I buried myself in “Madness and Civilization” while listening to “These Foolish Things” on an endless loop, and surprisingly enjoyed the three-hour flight back to Beijing. “Madness that is the deja-la of death” to go with “the wind of March that made my heart a dancer”. It’s probably better to turn schizophrenia before fell by Alzheimer. The sun went down on my left side in the process.

It’s not that I’m particularly interested in the historical development of Looney pens in Europe through the dark age, I probably already forgot what was said on one page when I flip to the next, but it’s a well written essay printed on premium quality pages with a pleasant opal tint, and I, like John Cusack said, “just want to listen to something I can ignore.”

In the car home I felt asleep a bit and when I woke up we are already off the highway. The cityscape outside the moving window was properly lit for a March night that was already turning balmy. I listened to “wild strawberries only seven francs a kilo” and thought how Maomao keeps saying “蓝莓! 蓝莓!” if you ask him what his favorite food is. He does not have a favorite food actually, he puts anything, edible or not, in his mouth with equal enthusiasm and anticipation. And I realized this was probably the first time I thought of him during the course of day. Thought of calling for a sec but he should be sleeping by now. How I always looked forward to nine o’clock every night when it’s finally time to put him to bed. I turned off the music. The driver who is always friendly chatty with me remained professionally distant behind the wheel, and together we raced home in silence proper.

March 01, 2015

Airport
I was staring out of the window in a blissful stupor ruminating idly how I’ve probably made one too many trips to the airport in the last month or so, when Dad breached the perfect silence and said, “So how’s life? Are you happy?” Giving the usual dynamic between us, it’s fair to count this as a curve ball thrown at close range. The first thought that came to me was how a little peculiar the timing of this question is, on the way TO the airport, after he had just spent two weeks with me. But Dad works in mysterious ways. Instantly I made an “oh well” mumble to stall for time while stealing a glance at the dashboard – I’m going 120km/h but I’m still 5km away from the tollbooth, so I’ll have to come up with Something. And the image of 貓貓 came to my mind, how would he react I wondered, 30 years down the road maybe, when he, driving me to the airport somewhere on a highway on a windy Sunday morning, is asked to give me a summary judgment of his life on the spot? And I realized this is not a conversation that could be sustained, if I say I Am happy then I will not know what to say next and if I say I’m not He will be at a loss for words instead.

When we walked out of the door Mom tried to get Maomao to kiss Dad goodbye but he waved his hand vaguely and rushed out to the corridor, leaving me holding his luggage in one arm and Maomao on the other. I was not sure if he was fighting back the choke in his throat or if he simply heard the ding of the elevator. Before that he spent the last half an hour holding Maomao on his lap listening to Radetzky March (not Kleiber’s, Karajan’s, which I didn’t approve) then the last movement of “From the New World”. He held Maomao’s hands in his and together they conducted the music from the armchair. I do that with Maomao too but his movement was much more natural and graceful, he even mixed in a few violin gestures which I cannot compete with. Eventually I grabbed the camcorder and recorded 2 mins of it. While I was doing it I was thinking, when Maomao watches this clip 30 years down the road maybe, will he also have the mental image of me, silent and attentive, standing behind the camera?