Back to the Blogosphere II

About two months ago, I seized my position as a “Technology Integration Specialist” and vigorously shook it until a real, full-time job fell out. It made me feel better about myself, but also made me tired, unreflective, and an obviously poor blogger. This quarter, I’m in pursuit of the happy medium.

I’m also in pursuit of a new voice for this blog, one that allows me to write about what I see and experience here without feeling like I need to fully understand it. Because I don’t, and that leaves me feeling unable to write about it. I want to move towards less analysis or "reflection," and more simple recording. Let me know what you think.

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Our little park, located across the street and artistically rendered in modern gray and black stone with the occasional interruption of greenery, keeps growing, not in size, but in detail and complexity. We watched it take shape over the fall, open in the early winter, and now it thrives with activity. A troupe of women dance in its single, large open space each morning and night. At first I thought they were practicing for the Spring Festival, but I’ve realized they are just a fitness class convened without instructor or gym. Someone brings the boombox and away they go. My wife likes to scour the weekend crowds for new peddlers, she’s spied a balloon man, and is on the look out for a cotton candy hawker or a kite seller. I watch the guard. I’ve decided he’s there to keep the park safe from the people, rather than the other way around. At first he just had to wander the three paths, but eventually they finished a wooden bench under the concrete gazebo, atop the tiny park’s tiny hill. Now he has a small guardhouse, which even at the size of a porta-potty is too big for the park. I’ve noticed his guardhouse recently gained a light. I stroll by each day looking to see if they’ve added a T.V. or heater.

We walked by an entire old block that was knocked down, save for a long wall and two single-room shops, about a hundred yards apart. They lie on the edge of the empty block like the crust and crumbs left on the plate of some giant, too stuffed to finish his meal. Ignoring the earth-movers behind them, the ceiling of rags above them, the scattered remains around them, the stores carry on, one selling fruit the other newspapers and magazines. A ragged edge of bricks on all lines of their roof makes it clear that these shops were once wholly surrounded by others, above, behind, below and aside, already eaten away. I wonder whether they are the remnants allowed to continue, to nominally satisfy the terms of a renovation, or if they are merely the last to go, the lone hold outs against such obvious inevitability.

We are illiterate here and unnervingly at ease with it. There are signs everywhere that we cannot read and simply pass on by. Big red banners with yellow letters, strewn across courtyards. Flashing orange words on an LED screen just inside our complex. Highly official looking proclamations tacked to a board in our lobby. These letters have red stars and stamps. All that’s clear is the dates. There are always dates in the body, sometimes days and sometimes years. 1939 made an appearance on a new one today. We assume that if they were important dates, “Untented Fumigation Next Wednesday” or “Mass Eviction of Foreigners by Friday!” someone, somehow would tell us So we walk by, get in the elevator and go home.

Karaoke lulls me to sleep now. About six weeks ago someone, somewhere in my neighborhood purchased a karaoke machine and high-powered stereo. I don’t know if it’s an illicit karaoke parlor or an extreme enthusiast, but he lights it up around eleven, always a he, and carries on until anywhere from twelve to one-thirty. The sound is muted enough to take on an almost humming characteristic. No words, just a stream of “yuhs” emanate up through the floorboards.