I know that to Bella fans the question of whether SJ is going to have a good time on a trip is second to what Bella’s going to do while I’m away. Well, rest easy. One of her favorite sitters is coming and will be here the whole time. I’ll be getting updates and Bella will be getting plenty of lap time. Bella’s been helping me pack, checking out the suitcase every time I toss something in it that I want to remember to take, and making sure I don’t leave anything behind in the laundry basket.
For your podcast listening pleasure. He’s a great interviewer, by the way.
I drank a seriously over-steeped ice-cold cup of tea by the river this morning. That wasn’t the plan; it was hot when I headed down there. But as I hit the corner by the highway I heard a shriek and then some loud “Ow! Ow! Ow!” noises. A woman across the street had slipped on the ice and couldn’t get up. I crossed over, found a man taking out his cell phone to call an ambulance. I didn’t know the woman but after he finally made it clear to the dispatcher where we were I told him to go on and I’d stay, because he was with his dogs and they were getting all interested in the poor woman, sniffing her, and she was upset enough. So I sat on the sidewalk, offered her my tea which she turned down, and waited with her for the ambulance. A number of people stopped to offer help. The poor lady kept saying she was embarrassed, and that she was afraid she’d broken her hip. I told her not to be embarrassed, but I couldn’t tell her she hadn’t broken her hip, because as the EMT confirmed when they got there, she had. After the ambulance left and I went to the park to drink my iced tea I was thinking about that, how now everything in her life changes for months, maybe longer. Depending on how bad a break it is, there’ll be surgery, a hospital stay, rehab, a slow recovery. That’s the good news. It could be much more serious, a much longer recovery, or not a complete one, ever. She has a dog at home; she called a friend to take care of him while she was lying there. She had plans for the day, for the week. Now none of that is happening.
Be careful out there, folks.
Three mergansers dive,
Swim, pop up at same piling.
Startled gull flies off.
Empty gray river.
Lone black ferry heading south
Cutting thick white wake.
Brown dog in blue boots
Trots businesslike on walkway
Between huge snowbanks.
For those of you not on Facebook, I posted this earlier:
“All morning, fabulous thick white snow. About 8″ in the yards, in the park… on the cars, on the trashbags… They said it would turn to rain just about noonish. Right now nothing’s falling at all. It feels like that pause in a concerto just before the pianist’s hands come crashing down on the keys again.”
Then a little later I said the rain had started and it was pizzicato.
Three people responded about the snow in their areas: that the pianist was still in scherzo, that it was a slushy glissando, and that the wind was multo allegro and crescendo. So come on, you guys. In musical terms, how’s your weather?
Once again, the Chinese Consulate has seen fit to allow me into their country. The consular official even suggested that if I plan to go regularly I might consider applying for a multiple-entry visa next time. Which I surely will. A word to the wise: don’t go in the middle of the day. It’s like going to the Post Office or the bank in the middle of the day. I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice: I had two unexpected doctor appointments this morning (I’m fine, thanks, just something sudden that needed to be dealt with before I go) and my little piece of paper said Pick Up Feb. 11. I’d planned to go first thing, but it was noon by the time I got down there. I considered waiting until tomorrow morning but I didn’t want to hear, Oh, no, no, your little piece of paper said yesterday, now you have to start all over… So I went, I sat, I waited as the numbers were called and called and called. Finally, me! Shanghai, here I come!
If you’ve been reading me for awhile you know I get a charge out of watching the Christmas trees hit the sidewalk. Starting Christmas Day, people who wanted a tree for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning but are going away and don’t want to leave a firetrap in their apartments chuck ’em out. From then on dead Christmas trees start piling up on the sidewalks. The City collects them at various times and turns them into mulch for the parks. The big tossed-out-trees rush is over, but some are still appearing. (If this year is anything like previous years, they’ll be popping up until Easter.)
I just spotted a particularly splay-branched one lying on the sidewalk on Sixth Ave.
Someone had drawn a chalk outline all around it.
I love New York.
Can’t sit on benches.
Snow piled everywhere. Two trees
Have lost big branches.
Ice floes trapped near shore.
Beyond pilings, they slide south.
Between, water’s glass.
Ice slips downriver.
Two big blackback gulls swoop, land,
Take cawing joyride.
If you don’t have what to do tomorrow night, come on down to KGB Bar for me, Reed Farrel Coleman, and Tim O’Mara, and some vodka!
The smiling young lady at the Chinese Consulate took my forms!
Did not have to go to Happy Family Chinese Restaurant to print new copies of disapproved paperwork, like last time. The whole process took about half an hour, almost all of it waiting time. They open at 9:00; I got there at 8:55. The first couple of times I did this you took a number and sat until it was called. Last time, in Sept. for my Oct. trip, they’d done away with the chairs and numbers and had one of those maze ropes feeding all the windows. Now the chairs and numbers are back. I was C212, and when the consular officials snapped their window shades up at precisely 9:00 they started with C200. I thought that was a very good sign, until I realized C was for tourist visas, but the rest of the alphabet, for student, working, etc. visas, was getting equal time. Nevertheless, my number was called in about 25 minutes — can’t be precise because my watch is my phone and your phone has to be off. (The sign says “Please keep your phone off or you will be asked out.” I briefly toyed with the idea of turning it on, since I haven’t had a date in awhile, but good sense prevailed.)
When my number was called a young man who’d been at window #2 already and had been sent away to improve his form slipped in front of me, his form improved. That seemed like an annoying delay, but turned out to be useful: the official, an efficient young lady, apologized for keeping me waiting. I’d taken care to wear a silver sweater and white shirt, the better to bring out the gray in my hair. Luckily for me she was smart enough to read my complicated itinerary and understand that my first flight was only a transit through Shanghai to Singapore, not an actual entry. Though, on the same basis by which you carry an umbrella so it doesn’t rain, I had filled out the form twice, once for a single entry visa and once for a double entry, complete with two sets of photos. But she was happy with what I gave her, and I think it didn’t hurt that my passport already has three other China visas in it. That passport, by the way, expires in 2017, but will likely be filled and need to be replaced long before that — always a goal of mine.
The official asked me one question: what’s the purpose of my visit? I told her, to see some friends; and with that, stamp, staple, and my receipt. Now I go back Tuesday and if everything goes well they hand me back my visa-filled passport.
I celebrated by stopping at Green Nature Coffeehouse on 42nd and 11th — highly recommended — where I had tea and cookies and read another chapter in the biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Us nerds, we know how to party.
