I am sitting on a little balcony at our hostel, which used to be a church, overlooking the city of Qing Dao. It’s a pretty, cobbled view, especially for China. Qing Dao was a German concession early in the last century and it’s where the beer comes from! People can buy beer in plastic bags here: you see them walking around with sloshing bags of yellow everywhere!
From my view here, the tiled rooftops with cement chimneys topple intrepidly forward to the higher apartments, which then ends at the sea. It’s pretty, though in a ragtag kind of way. Restoration has not been a priority in this quaint little European town sitting on the Northern sea of China, but then neither has destruction.
It’s quiet, too, at least compared to Beijing. Now, at 8:48, I hear buses in the distance, I am just now hearing a plane, there are a few cars backing up with that incessant beep that accompanies reverse and some clattering of boards or some sort of manual labor going on. And now a motorcycle. Now a honk. But not much considering I am in the middle of a country of a billion and a half people.
We woke up this morning to no new texts from our unwell Charlotte who stayed back in Beijing to take an extra week of classes to prepare for her senior essay, meaning she slept through the feverish night and hopefully she is on the back end of whatever is getting her. We also woke up to news in the NYT that the Chinese vaccines are much less effective than all the others worldwide with, perhaps the exception of the Russian Sputnik. The vaccine we received, Sinovac, was also called out to be 20% less effective than the other vaccine available here, Sinopharm. So there you have it. We are somewhat protected, but a lot less safe than we thought we were. Ugh.
Not knowing is often so much better than knowing, even if it kills you sooner. Ha! I just think of all the time I have spent both reading and prognosticating/worrying about news, and I wonder if I couldn’t have written a bestseller during that Trumpian time instead. Certainly, I could have been much happier, and not much in my actual life would have changed, not knowing. That’s the thing. I know I am meant to be a global citizen and informed and all that, but why exactly? I actually feel that I would likely be living a purer, more holistic life if I did not have all the knowledge of the world banging at my doorstep and begging me to let it in, which I have been prone to do. And still it calls. “Look at how everything is going to hell! You can’t do anything about it, but come and absorb all the mayhem, death, destruction, evil and despondency! It’s free for the looking! Really! It’ll make you a better person!”
Really now? I fear I have done myself a great disservice and lost much time in the pursuit of knowledge and staying current. On top of my writing, this summer I wish to read voraciously – fiction, beautiful fiction that tumbles me around in the warmth of its characters and treats me to adventures and experiences and emotions that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I want to be titillated by words and swept to faraway places sans plane rides and masks.
The church bells (in China!) just rang nine times and I went to knock on the door of our daughter and her friend to wake them up. It’s time to commence a day that will begin with breakfast and going to the beer factory!
On the way back to my writing aerie, through the little sitting area, I saw Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit and Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. I’m not the only one who loves to read tomes: endless description of minutiae, but somehow all beautifully rendered, even in it’s all misery and diurnal ramblings. When I saw Franzen’s book, I actually thought, “Oh, I wish I hadn’t already read it so I could enjoy it for the first time.” It’s one of my all-time favorite novels even though nothing of note occurs in it that I can recall.
So the keyboard is growing hot as am I so I will probably cease my ramble-write soon and head down to breakfast. I have a Kindle full of books on my phone. There will be no excuse to not lose myself in the actual joy of this trip or on another page-turning one if I need a break from present reality.
A dove has just alit on a tar-paper-used-to-be-tiled roof in front of me. It is strutting and now pecking at its body, fluttering a bit, flailing its tail. Now walking again, each step an orchestration, A wing lift and a flight down to a lower ledge. And off it goes, with a soft whiffle.
Close observation might just be my ticket to peace. Now I hear cooing, full throated, right from the breast of a bird. And I am noticing how birds swoop, but tend not to fly far. From roof top to roof top. That said, one just flew farther afield than I can now see so perhaps this is not always so. And one just flew directly over my head as I was writing this last sentence. I noticed only because of the shadow that fell on my typing hands. How lovely. Today I will watch and listen to the birds. They will be the touchstone and meditation for my day.