But its different today. I've landed only a couple of hours ago and haven't slept in 27 hours. That works for me today because the colours are sharper, the 33 degree heat more searing, the senses sharpened. You absorb things in this state. You take things in and hold them inside for a while.
We are attempting (that's the operative word) to move through Beijing in rush hour traffic. We cross several zones of the city, multiple ring roads, and I'm trying to decompress, find some center, by listening to Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" on my iPod - one of the most painstakingly exact and perfect and visceral and mindblowing albums in the history of rock and roll.
And as we drive China mourns. If the official days of mourning have passed, they have left the capital of this great nation with a wound, a tangible and profund sense of loss. Lindsey Buckingham was right on when he wrote "thunder only happens when it's raining." Beijing can't comprehend that there are people around the world who don't care about this tragedy. I know some of them - they know nothing about China or Asia. They still call it "The Orient," and its inhabitants as "Orientals," or worse, as if they were discussing this whole thing while sipping really big Jim Beams in naugahyde chairs in Dallas, 1973. Nothing moves them to thought or action that lies outside their sphere of influence or control. This tragedy didn't touch them. The thunder of the earthquake didn't affect the cars they drive or the clothes they wear, it didn't take food off their table, it didn't cause them to look in the bathroom mirror at 2:23 am and think "there but by the grace of God go I...."
But today, on a late Monday afternoon in Beijing, the cars seem to move slower. The grays in the clothes of the people are more muted, darker. The city has a dfferent texture - a density of grief and loss.
ANS
