He didn’t say, “No thanks, Grasshopper, you keep the money,” but he did something that showed where his heart was. When the junkman saw that I was shivering from the cold he reached into a big sack he had with him and gave me an extra-large, olive-green, ankle-length quilted Mao jacket, an item that is next to impossible to find these days. After the Cultural Revolution ended, Mao jackets were soon as scarce as passenger pigeons. I’m sure the junkman knew the value of such a jacket. They are dandy as all get-out, a hundred percent cotton, nice and roomy, excellent in rain and raw weather, not all that stylish but a veritable fortress. I was cold and the junkman gave me a coat. I was completely blown.

My year in China didn’t exactly teach me to go with the flow, to experience the eternal Tao, which, like the water behind the Three Gorges dam, will conquer all things. You can freeze the water, poison it, boil it into steam…all of that is true. But relax your life and follow the Tao where it leads you? Choose nonaction over action? They compiled that philosophy thousands of years ago. In this day and age you pull a number like that and every graduate program in America will turn your lazy ass down. Law school? Forget about it. You pull that shit and you’ll be serving coffee at Starbucks. Try that one and what you’ve got is a lifetime “career” in coffee.

Bomb Shelter Noel

MICKEY BOUGHT ME a goldfish he named Seven Cent. He’s got an orange streak along his lateral line running from forehead to tail. His dorsal fin is as black as night and appears to have been chewed. Otherwise he is albino in coloration except for his tail, which is translucent. You can see clear through to the bone. Me personally, I would have named him X-Ray, but you can’t judge a book by its color. Seven Cent is a showman, a gifted performer, and he’s got some pretty smooth moves.

He swims the perimeter of his little fish tank hugging the side of the glass with one eye, in full presentation for effect. He swims around in concentric circles with his mouth going open-close, open-close like a normal fish until he begins to pump his gills and then shoots himself skyward, partially breaking the surface, where he executes a well-timed flip, wagging his tail for propulsion, right down to the bottom, where he shakes things loose.

When you are on the Highway to Death, like me, everything is interesting. Everything is important. You see different, taste and smell different; everything has wonder written in it. Things you have done six million times seem new, and likewise you run into a seven-cent celebration of life in its otherwise impenetrable glory.