Politics

I refuse to get involved. My experience is that it's a no-win situation. Whatever piece of turf you've staked out. I usually default to making a pot of coffee and mopping the floor. Finally selected 14 pages that I thought were pretty good, and I can read them in 42 minutes, which was my target time. I'd need to explain a couple of things, but I'd still fall under an hour, and that feels about right. I read through a couple of times, and some of these pages are very good. Aralee, now gone, liked a particular page, and I'll start with that, from October 22, 2011. I re-title it "Hazel" and make a note in pencil, to explain that "Lucy's Crotch" is an actual physical spot, where a tidal inlet looks like a pair of legs. Seamen are crude in their naming. I see why Arelee liked it, it's direct. I didn't know Gus was dead, I thought some of us lived forever. But we die. It happens. Up early and into town, so I could stop at the museum, before taking on the Chinese students. Interesting time. I ended up spending all day with them. Talked with them, about life-style, and they could barely believe I lived the way I do. No running water? no TV? no CELL PHONE? It was quickly apparent that these were affluent single-children, and that though they had all studied English since they were six or seven years old, their command of the spoken language wasn't that great. They all had IPads, with a translation function, but English is a difficult language, the nuance and the irregularities, but we got along very well. The oldest of them, a young woman, 22, spoke quite well, beautifully, in fact, and the rest of them turned to her, when they were trying to figure out what I was saying; the simplest word would throw them off. I read a few pages, then talked some more, and most of them joined me for lunch at the pub. Ordering lunch was a ordeal. Then they all came over to the museum and I took them through the shows. It was exhausting, trying to explain why something mattered, how you placed a value on something. At one point I needed a break, I'd settled on one of the new back benches, to roll a smoke, I just wanted to get outside and be alone for a few minutes, but two of them followed me, and wondered how it was possible that I rolled such a perfect cigaret. I tried to explain that practice made perfect. Try to explain that in a second language They'd all assumed American English names: Ga Ga, whose name was almost the same in Chinese, and one of the guys was White, which I found amusing, and they took pictures and recorded me, and I realized I'm going to be all over the web in China. Jesus fucking christ. I don't do the whole social media thing, I live an extremely private life. I don't want attention. I'd rather be left alone. Suddenly you're in the limelight. Something you've said or a really expensive dress that reveals the side of your breasts. In truth, I'd rather not be noticed.