In Which I Don't Breathe

Darlings, I rode a bullet train from Guangzhou across the countryside to Beijing!  I love trains.  I especially love bullet trains.  They are fast (~300km/h), and quiet and don't sway.  

There were a few moments in the countryside where we could actually see the blue sky!

The road to Beijing--

The train brings us to blue sky

From under the smog. 

It went away again as we got closer to Beijing.

This is the afternoon.  This is not a rain cloud.

Granted, this was a particularly bad day, but still.  The Beijing cough, a cough that starts afflicting foreign visitors to the city and stops as soon as they leave, is a thing, and a thing I developed.  The pollution of the China, and the world is a huge problem.  I don't know what to do about it, and I'm not doing anything about it.  In fact, I'm going to a really nice restaurant to eat roast duck and drink fruity cocktails. But I will eat it while feeling bad about myself. 

It seems cruelly ironic that duckies hold the chopsticks I will use
to eat a different ducke.

 Who am I kidding?  I didn't feel bad about myself while eating, particularly not when at the end we were brought cherries on a plate of dry ice.

Life is just a bowl of cherries, smoking like the sky.

I would have felt bad had I eaten this, the restaurant specialty,
sea cucumber.  I have, however, a strict policy against eating invertebrates
that lack exoskeletons.

Until the lights go out, my love, I'm yours.

In heat or air-conditioning let us lie.

Never need we pass beyond these doors

To stand beneath the sickly yellow sky.

Until the network fails, my dove, I'm here

To type away the long and weary hours

And make this roof of hell unclear

By gazing long and hard at cyber flowers.

As long as gas runs free, my heart, I'll come

Cross boundless concrete oceans to your arms.

Endless depths of trafficked wastes I'll plumb

For mobile metal shells keep me from harms.

For now we'll love, without a fear or doubt,

But oh my dear!  That day the lights go out!