The morning sun shone on my Beijing breakfast and glinted off the coffee in an outdoor café, black with streaks of gold in a cloudy white cup. Peaceful morning pleasures: orderly crowds going to work, orange-vested street sweepers idling, impatient cars lined up at stoplights, the sky blue, the air just coming on sticky at 8 a.m., the bell not yet rung, eggs hitting the pan, sacrifices as yet to be made, the paradoxical hidden, the insoluble still soluble, a kind of hopeful awakening promise offered, languidly received then absorbed. This was to become a day of miracles. Maybe not parting-the-sea miracles, but still, they were miracles to me. I was out of the hotel at 7:45, and a cab pulled over before I had even hailed it. I gave him a note written in Chinese and he brought down the meter and shifted into gear with long-practiced fluidity. Fearing Beijing traffic and the unknown, I was out early for a ten o’clock appointment at the American embassy. You had to reserve an appointment online, and having come all this way, I wasn’t going to be late not knowing the consequences. Would I have to get another appointment? Start all over again? The AHDD part of my brain was whirring like dragonflies on caffeine, so I had resolved to get there in plenty of time, and so here I was, two hours early, having breakfast and watching the Beijing morning go by. After an hour of sun-streaked bliss, I walked through the neighborhood, killing time—though time is so very hard to kill. At 9:30 I walked up with all the promptness I could muster and handed my paperwork to the marine guard. He looked puzzled and explained I needed to go to the new embassy. What! But, no, It can’t be, I gave myself plenty of time, what-what-what . . . he tried to calm me and wrote down the address—in Chinese—to the new embassy and I snatched it out of his hand and ran screaming for a taxi. All the calm had vaporized and I was a vibrating mess, a palm-waving idiot stepping in front of moving cabs. Most taxis swerved nonchalantly around me, then one miraculously stopped. The driver was white-gloved and serene as I jumped in, shoved the note at him and said, “Drive-drive-drive.” He looked at me quizzically, sensed my urgency, then rose to the task. I wouldn’t say he broke traffic laws but he certainly bent a lot of them, always moving forward in the dense traffic, moving like a water spider through the slightest wisp of an opening, then occupying it and moving on before anyone could react. He was always there first, ping ponging through rush hour traffic, the clock ticking, with me alternating between my faith in him and the frantic reality of the morning-clogged streets. Then, he was gesturing, proud of himself, pointing—there it is you twitchy foreigner, now get out of my cab so I can go back to being an insrutable and calm and ordinary Beijinger. I thanked him profusely, threw money at him and flew out of his cab; it was two minutes to ten. I raced by a long line and pleaded with the guard at the gate who nonchalantly admitted me and pointed me in the right direction. After a security screening I was in, no big deal, all that appointment angst wasted, stress waves fanning off me like the angry screechy banding seen in paintings by schizophrenics, and I wished I could be another kind of person who didn’t react this way to the seeming severity of bureaucracies and paperwork, but there I was, sweating, trying to mentally dissolve the excess cortisone I had produced in my flight, like a pulled weed held up in a gardener’s triumph, hair on the floor of a barber shop, a day old newspaper. Miracles are in the eye of the beholder. Then, to counter my timidity, I tackled the Beijing subway. To those who know it, they will say that’s easy, but to me it was initially a challenge. When I figured out how to get to Tiananmen Square, I regained the promise of the morning. I felt a little smaller yet walked a little taller and in the preposterous nature that is me, I leaned again towards forgiveness. Yet, In my forgiveness I was able to get out of my head and see the next miracle. It was a gray, dull machine, placed along the tourist walkways. Inactive, it was something that you would walk right by, unnoticed. But in the humid summer heat, it was a metal oasis, a smile provoking blast of cool air, a dispenser of gladness. Courtesy of the city, it was a machine that blasted a mist of cool air on demand. Sensing the possibilities, I sat down to watch. It was a reactor of joy. I watched the smiles flow by in the summer heat. And the sudden laughter of unsuspecting passersby bathed unexpectedly in the cooling mist. And how they all stopped to do it again. Children couldn’t stay away. Invited me to join them, pestered their parents to do it with them. I bought everyone popsicles. Suddenly, we were all not adults bothered by the heat, but eternal children dancing in the mist, an unexpected distraction from the paperwork and schedules and expectations and sacrifices and the things we all do to cope, to forget, to get by, and on a hot afternoon in Beijing we dissolved into a collective pool of wet joy, led by children. Afterward I tried to get the perfect photo of people wearing rainbow sun hat umbrellas, and as the afternoon passed, I counted my blessings, gave gratitude, smiled at strangers, burning paperwork in my brain, vowed to give up judgment because if you don’t you just bring more judgment to yourself, and reaffirmed that I would see people as they are and not how I was told they should be. The next miracle was that I realized I was content. And my internal jazz band of gratitude played on . . . played like an eruption of a soul volcano, played out like I just received an unexpected loan payback, or heard the news that a dark mole had turned out to be benign, a tight white whale spout forgiving Ahab, my own self forgiving my pretensions, and the tide of everything moving in and out, gathering, releasing, summoning, your heart and mine, and though the rainbow fades, we all remember the colors more than the storm, and that's just how we are. Can you dispute this? Elvis Plays Beijing Part 4
3 Comments
Sascha
9/25/2013 03:52:14 am
That is the most perfect rainbow hat photo!
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Mary
9/26/2013 08:41:56 am
The pictures are great!!! The grey machine blasts of cold air are a perfect invention. I have never seen any here..pretty clever and so interesting to watch peoples reactions. The unbrella hat is so colorful and smart too leaves your hands free.
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jude
9/28/2013 04:59:35 am
You are a miracle Mike...you. I love your Beijing. Gracias for letting me visit there...with you!
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