The Glitter Of Incongruity

I wrote to a friend who has a broad familiarity with the Chinese language the meaning of a name that was written on the bow of a tanker that was docked at the Pier 86 Grain Terminal. The name was Fu Rong Feng. My friend replied that it could be translated as "'Wind of the Camellia,'" which may be a reference to Chengdu, the capital city of the Chinese province of Sichuan, which is also a major financial hub and home to many international companies. Chengdu doesn't have an ocean port, but it's called the "City of Camellias."

I spend a lot of time at the Seattle waterfront. It's a good place to go running. It's very open, which is more than a matter of space, it's a bodily sensation. I can feel it inside. It gives me a bit more elan. Seattle is a claustrophobic city. The streets are narrow and confusing, houses and buildings are mushed together, and everywhere you go it’s crowded, teeming with people, many of whom are speeding by on e-scooters and monowheels. Move slightly to the side to avoid hitting a pedestrian, or a pile of shit, and you risk getting fatally slammed by a sociopathic techie on an e-scooter, or something worse. Paris did a smart thing by banning e-scooters. But then it did a massively stupid thing and hosted the summer Olympics.

9:24 p.m., July Fourth. I hate this holiday. I hate the noise, and what it does to the birds. Not to mention pets. All to celebrate what is essentially a farce: a country whose constitution and bill of rights have been so grievously denatured that there’s not much else there except a blue-eyed comatose president staring into space at a podium. I grab my headphones and laptop and prepare for the assault. To the far right of my computer screen is a list of searches trending on Google, one of which is the Hawk Tuah girl, whose appearance on somebody’s video went viral on TikTok. Curious, I look it up, which isn’t easy, as it’s hard to find a podcaster organized and coherent enough to explain this phenomenon, which is a young girl in Nashville who – while walking down the street – is asked by a man with a microphone what’s a move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time and the young woman – smiling broadly and amiably – replied you’ve got to give him a Hawk Tua and spit on that thing. She delivers this information with charming gusto and a fetching country accent. The thing being, no doubt, a man’s boner. Prep work for a blowjob. So. What can I say? It went viral. Happy Birthday, America, you had a good run.

We’ve lost our myths. We’ve lost our way. But there’s one last narrative to blast into dandelions.

It's a story that comes from plums bursting open. Call it strength by cocoa. It's a conception advanced by poker when the lawn is ready to come into being. Groom it like a Renaissance chicken. Laziness is for creating your own conception of genius. You can't treat sadness with a bandage. You’ll need a cookbook and a kitchen. Architectural splendors. Playful insurrections. And a chrome swan floating in your breath. Are you the same person today that you were yesterday? One of these days you’re going to come walking through that door and quietly panic. You’re in for a shock. All my U-turns are teeming with sequels. If you plan to enjoy the glitter of incongruity in a woman's purse, silence is seminal. And it doesn’t hurt to be spectacular.