Facing the year that will be

As all moving forward entails, one often engages in the activity of deconstruction to clear the debris from previous engagements. So we do so on this sunny day off Kowloon Bay in the now Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, called Xianggang in Mandarin, and Hoeng Gong Zai in Cantonese.

We are bit early for a 50th anniversary of an August landing in Kowloon in 1965. I just turned 20 when I waved my mother goodbye while she stood on Manila South Harbor’s wharf while I sailed out on board SS President Wilson for a 20-day journey to San Francisco across the Pacific, on to a three-year theology stint in Kentucky. Kowloon was first stop and my first viewing of Sinoland, then we overnighted in famed Yokohama lights that offered a rail trip to Ginza. A few waves later, we got lei’d without getting Maui’d in Honolulu, and a few foghorns later, I rose early at dawn to weather the bay’s morning mist for a view of the Golden Gate bridge.

HK’s Victoria Peak then was shrouded by low-lying clouds while Kowloon teemed with coolies pulling their rickshaws, the living embodiment of many Hollywood views. I can now add Susie Wong of Wan chai but at the time, our prurient interest was not whetted yet. We just barely crossed over from the terrain of innocence, if not the blissful world of ignorance.

But yesterday is best left to John Lennon’s lyrics. Tomorrow is where I focus my gaze. A colleague from Canada decided to do a couple of touring days in HK headed for Pea Eye. I am the designated guide. I was forthright about HK’s tongue primarily Cantonese (not that I have any Mandarin comprehension to brag about) but I am the local security blanket and I am only too willing to play the role.

I booked a leisurely 36-hour train ride from Shenyang earlier before retirement was hurriedly announced so I reluctantly cancelled after shifting quickly to the hassle mode. My colleague would not take “no” for an answer. A plane ticket showed up in my email so now I am basking in Kowloon’s sunshine for a couple of days.

We will skip the seat with the view on famed double-decker buses. World class city HK is no different from London, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo and New York. It is the Year-that-Will-Be of 2014 that grabs my attention and pulls my mind before I watch the night’s fireworks, holding a mai tai listening to the twitter of Ilonggo and Iloko sounds. My tourist was Davao raised.

The awe and wonder about tomorrow (that’s my next 17 years) is its openness. One is free to decide to give it form and shape without feeling determined by the lingering luggage of the past. Given our sudden transition state, this reality has gotten more stark than usual. I am in fact wobbly on the dance floor of transparent nothingness sans the familiar lingering steam of choices previously made. I used the term tabula rasa before but I did not fully understand its existential meaning until now.

There is the matter of economic tyranny of which retirement is supposed to be salve, a balsam and a balm, an appeasing cream and lotion. We know of but do not share the anxiety of its anticipation nor the despair that characterizes its uncertainties; I just hunker down to chart a new course in the direction of an unknown but unsurprisingly welcoming future.

I cosigned a hefty bank loan back in Shenyang to pay for a dwelling under construction scheduled to be turned over in June/July and to be habitable for October occupancy. Many friends quake with regrets over the limits imposed by similar situations. I explore its possibilities. That is what’s so inviting about tomorrow.

Having been Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific, and midland prairie focused in the last 50 years, I now bellow “westward ho” from China’s northeast, like the way American wagon train pioneers used to holler. There is that inviting boat ride from Dalian via NoKor Chongjin port to Vladivostok, then traverse on a trans-Siberian train ride through the Far East’s khrebets via Mongolian Ulan Ude and interracial Irkutsk onward to Europe’s Moscow and St. Petersburg before grabbing a 15-30 day Euro pass from Scandinavia to south inland, heading Turkey and Greece, across the southern shores of the Mediterranean back up north of Atlantic coast EU that can easily terminate in the British Isles, spending a day or two at each stop. Or, the trek to Kasgar and Tashkent! The good thing about dreaming is that it is free, and one can always change one’s mind!

How to pay for the gig? Yo, you still in that rut!

Many are stuck in their recriminations against the past and fearful acquiescence to the fashionable modes of the future, manipulated and promoted by the guys and dolls who inhabit the penthouses of HK’s skyline and their cousins in other world cities. We shall refrain from sashaying to their tune!

For now, it is the din of nitrate bangers (HK-banned but tell that to the Chinese) initially meant to tame wild dragons (the Chiang Jiang/Yangtze and the Huanghe/Yellow mighty rivers are depicted as dragons) that will accompany our vigil tonight. My guest brought a familiar Glenfiddich of the Scottish highland. Two downs from a three-finger tumbler will do me just right. Happy New Year!