老外 @Expat1975@qoto.org

Hitting a #baseball in slow motion

#深圳 #中国 #shenzhen #China

The Cardinals were one game above 500 a couple of weeks ago, something like 8 games back. #STLCardinals

Yadi bomb #STLCardinals

The girls.

I've never seen something quite as random as the Federated timeline. It's like doing a line of pure internet.

#beefy

#shenzhen #深圳

I don't want to brag and say I'm a genius, but hot dogs for breakfast? Yep, that was me.

When you love a person, if you do, you make their problem your own.

If you have a child, the whole world is your problem.

For which it stands

I'm always tempted to write, because I do think and believe, that we are at some showdown in the history of the United States. That, on a day coming soon, either those in present power, or the rule of law, will win. They cannot both survive. Surely they are two quite different things headed at each other on a course for conflict. The thing of infinite speed meets the immovable object, as it were.

Well, that is a case, I think after, but not THE case.

The real showdown is a test of two sides. The opposing forces are not really partisan, and although in the current climate they may align in manner, I can imagine the reverse. The true question is which matters more – the ideals of the American founding, or the power accumulated since then?

A life of a nation may well be considered in the life of a human being. You are young, you encounter turbulence, you overcome, you prosper – ah, but then, but always then, there shall come a decline. The United States, especially after WWII, grew more giant than a tiger the world has ever seen. Many will point to the underskirt – the rule of law, democracy, freedom of speech – that propelled it to this level. But has a winner at anything ever doubted their professed virtue in the hour of conquest? When all roads led to Rome, did the Romans tally the score in objective ways? As China has catapulted in stratospheric bounds, has it laid bare its grievances against itself? No and no and no.

All of life and nations and man and woman shall feel the ebb and flow should any one continue long enough. Perhaps it is only after the peak of the sun when the true reflection can begin. When shadows start to grow long and not in favor. When the skin slinks instead of tightens. When the muscles slow. When the American Century winds down.

Well, it should be a moment of grace. It should be, if we are to slip a little, that we go back to what gave us the rise and live it out the best we can. In a perfect world, and with a perfect person, there would be no question. So other economies will rise? So there could come a point where we cannot rule everything and everyone?

So what?

If we are to cry at this, we are to ignore all that the United States has done for the world. The rule of law. Democracy. Freedom of Speech. These seem so quaintly institutionalized in so many nations that we can forget, if we do not look back, how in only our grandparents’ generation, these were not guaranteed. Millions upon millions perished in the corners created where these shafts of light failed to shine.

Shall we be the nation of John Adams and George Washington or Apple?

Can we not sit somewhere, maybe at the edge of the table and instead of the center, and like a gray-haired wise one, appreciate the change we have left in ripples upon the water? It is easy to think, as a young and lively beast, that you will live forever. But it is a mark of wisdom to let go in the evening. It is quite a thing to age well.

And to age well, we must, be us a man or woman or nation, hold dear to those values we treasure. Those themes and truths we put out into the world. Those ones who, in other homes down the block, burn bright in the homefires. THAT is our legacy. THAT is what our children fought about. And THAT is what this country was all about, ever. Not Hollywood, or Nikes. Not McDonald’s. Can you, with a serious face, ask a person to die for the shareholders?

Let us end here or begin anew with the deaths of so many millions making sense. Not for a flavor of the month, but some kind of legacy. The rule of law, democracy, free speech.

Let us not slip in anger, or a chance at vengeance. Let us live. And if we defeat another enemy, who has passed the porous border at the edges of our weakness of freedom, let us strike back. At least let’s strike back with all the strength still left.

Not like this, Americans. Don’t let it end like this. When a half hated the other half enough to burn the house down. Not like this.

August 12, 2018

And every morning now is like the first day you were born, as far as I can feel. Every morning on this long break, all this time we spend together, is like another day when I first saw you in the hospital.

I cannot tell how crazy I am, but I know that it is far down the line. Past irrational. Past my place of good judgment.

Each morning you come to me and hug me and we just do that for a while. You just hug me for a while and though it doesn’t last long I know that these are the best moments I will ever live. More than any money I might make. More than any recognition I might garner. More than any place I may go. Nothing more honest or right has ever happened to a person who has ever lived. All accolade is below your arms around my neck.

And then the morning continues and I drink coffee and offer to make you eggs. You want cereal mostly. The yellow kind, you say - corn flakes. Or the chocolate kind, you say. You want the iPad always, and I give it to you as long as I can.

We have been all over this summer. Swimming. Zhongshan. Arcades. Hubei. Indoor playgrounds that were not cheap but becoming your father was everything in my life and I was glad to pay that. Because to watch you smile is to beat the sunrise. To see you happy is all the good in the world in a second. One more day with you, again and again.

I told you the other day, that I want you to be happy. You asked me if it was so I could take a picture of you smiling. I said it wasn’t, and that it was just that I wanted you to feel that way. You told me not to worry. You said you always are.

One more day with you, again and again.

It was two boys that found Pa dead in the saddle. They said he thought he was just asleep but then were confused when he didn’t answer their calls. Pa was never one to do something like that, not answer someone. My guess was that he never had a reason to hang his head down in his life. War heroes don’t hang their heads down when talking to anyone, and Pa was definitely that.

They were skinny boys, people in Creekborn called them the beanpole twins, even though they weren’t twins. Just close in age. They were skinny, though. The beanpole twins.

One of them told me that Pa still had the reins in his hand when they finally got the horse stopped. He thought Pa might have been playing some game at it for a second, then realized that Sheriff Tom Wade wasn’t one to play games.

What they did is kept him there on the horse and went to get Mayor Tibbets.

My guess is that Tibbets knew Pa was dead the moment he heard the news. He knew Pa just about as well as anyone could. They were in their respective positions for all of my life. He knew Pa would never sleep in the saddle, or even worse, ride drunk upon a horse.

It was Tibbets that brought me the news. He was, in those days, still splendidly dressed. I was kneeled at the row of corn when he came up on his horse, and right then and there, I knew it was bad news. Tibbets did not often ride a horse, except for show in ceremonies. Pa had planted the row of corn with me the week before. Just the first row. He said he would come back next week and we could add to it. But for now, or then, just to get the farm started, he said it was enough.

The next few weeks would teach me what enough was.

Pa’s full name was Thomas Leonard Wade Sr. and he was the sheriff here for twenty-five years. Him dying in the saddle seemed right for a man like Pa. Older folks called him Tom Wade and those that didn’t called him Sheriff Wade. If there was someone new in town and they saw Pa, and saw the tin badge he wore on his shirt or outside his coat when it was cold, they knew enough to call him Sir. Pa had a stern face and serious eyes enough that even a stranger would know not to mess about in addressing him.

He got his sherrifship based largely on his performance in the War of the Rebellion. Now, when it’s writ down, I suppose that Iowa should not be highly noted in that war. More likely the pen of the historian will writ down what happened to the soldier of the east, else how the Rebs were beat down, else the March to the Sea. Probably a lot about generals. But if one historian is so inclined, and looks to dig back through the medals of that war, they should find Tom Wade’s name among the most highly decorated.

Grant wrote a letter about Pa, specially commending him to Lincoln, for Pa’s service in the 14th Infantry Regiment. It was a short paragraph, but Pa’s name is in it. He was a captain then. There’s something about how brave Pa was, how he kept fighting after he was shot, how he was back to work the next day. There’s something about how the 14th saved Grant’s ass. I would guess it was true. Not the letter, I mean. I saw the letter, I mean. I just mean what Grant said. I could net well imagine such a vital General lying to the President of the United States and for what.

I was born the year that war ended. Pa caught another bullet, late and just before the end of that war, and was sent back home. I came about to be in the winter of 1865. My Ma, her name was Nettie, died the next spring. Was pneumonia they tell me. I always wisht I could remember something about her, just one thing. When I was a kid, I used to lie and say all kinds of things of false remembering about her. I felt pressured to by the adults that said kind things about her and Pa, else I felt embarrassed by kids saying I was a bastard (even though that wasn’t true by any measure) and I spun some wild tales. How I was talking a month after I was born, else the games I would play with her even before I walked.

I always heard growing up that Pa was the King of Creekborn. That’s what everybody called him. Kids called him that, the ones I would lie to. Every grown person called him that too. It took me a while in my growing to understand that he wasn’t, that the sheriff of any town is not the king. Until I was old enough to understand a little, I wondered where his crown was. I asked him about that crown one time. It was of the few instances that I can remember him laughing. One of the few times I remembered the straight of his mouth curling up.

#writing #amwriting #novel #creekbornking #writer

Working on the novel at the Night Cat restaurant in Shenzhen. The beer is cheap and cold. #Qingdao #啤酒 #写作 #深圳 #shenzhen #China