temporary

Seen things

The sky fades at sunset over the harbor in Hong Kong, with TST in the foreground

For two years, we have the kind of view that I will never be able to capture adequately, never be able to share completely. From our vantage point we watch the rain roll in from the north, pour down on distant islands and sweep over Kowloon until it obscures one of the world’s tallest buildings, until it finally pushes across sports fields and the park to crash against our glass-walled box. As the view disappears I feel lucky to be alive.

Looking left, up the hills of Hong Kong island towards the towers of Leighton Hill, Beverly Summit, and Jardine’s Lookout, I play a game, unfocusing my eyes against the mass of towers. I watch windows, elevators, and stairwell lights flick on and off, looking at the patterns rather than the details, creating my own personal pixel art. A few seconds unfocused like this are enough to see two or three lights turn on, or off. It’s beautiful in the way of Star Wars cities, of Bladerunner. The impossible density of Hong Kong made visible due to my height.

From the twenty seventh floor we can see twenty odd tennis courts, eight soccer pitches, three pools, six basketball courts, and two pickle-ball style short courts. Plus a running track, a school quad, the central library, and a half dozen hotels, office towers, and neon signs, all without considering the apartments, without considering the harbor, without considering Kowloon or the distant islands. The view is all encompassing, and the architects took advantage, constructing our entire tower on an angle so as to maximize it, and filling the walls with nothing but glass.

We will probably never have a view like this again. It’s a product of Covid, of us putting our travel budget into our apartment, of lowered rents, and of good jobs. Two years later it feels absurd, like something we should reconsider. We do.

Tonight, though, watching the rain sweep across the harbor, blotting out the neon temporarily, I know I’ll never forget this, and I’ll struggle to describe it. So I try, sitting on the balcony until the rain passes, eyes wide to memorize. And then I return to the table, to write while looking out at the Star Ferry, at M+ and the rest of TST, at Langham Place all the way out in Mong Kok, and at the towers of Admiralty, just barely visible behind Times Square and Hysan in Causeway.

This is a lucky view. I can see probably 800 hotel rooms scattered among the towers, and the lightning that strikes the tallest one in front of me is four times its height. The cruise ships that pull past in the mornings are huge, and yet temporary against the mountains behind the city, against the peaks of Lantau visible on clear days.

The fireworks, when they happen, are just in front of the yacht club, which I have watched closely with binoculars, looking for boats bearing friends. The fireworks at Disneyland are visible on a clear day, small plumes on the horizon.

The flight path north out of HKG goes straight overhead, high enough to be beautiful rather than a nuisance, and we watch the varied liveries for fun. The tram line runs just in front, far enough away to likewise be picturesque but close enough to hear, sometimes, from the balcony. The elevated highway along the water, the new walkway out towards north point, the walk of stars along the TST waterfront, all these things are visible, and beautiful.

It is the kind of view filled with too much to write about, too much to describe. On Saturdays we watch the junk boats pull out from Central, carrying their party crews to bays out around the corners of Hong Kong. At sunset we watch the clouds, the sky, and the water change colors from bright to oranges and pinks, until at last the sun falls behind the mountains and everything fades into purples.

I don’t expect to have this view for long, and I will try to remember how much I’ve seen while sitting here, these past two years.

I’ve seen things, indeed.

Where we go

The seasons shift. I sit at tables half exposed to the weather, one whole side of the bar opened up to the street. It will remain like this for much of the rest of the year. Outside, just past the small awning, it pours, the kind of Asian cloudburst common to this time of year. Further out though the street is dry, sheltered beneath an overpass. It is the kind of environment worthless in my home country, prime real estate here for this exact cover.

I am listening to an album via a youtube stream. It’s the only way to hear, unless somehow one purchased their two unlabeled releases in person in Los Angeles more than a decade ago. I think about this, about the value of uniqueness in the age of ubiquity. My beer was produced on an island not far from this one, and the value is in that local rarity rather than any amazing individuality. The idea is part of my rofmia backpack review, but the clarity of unique experiences has gained so much weight in our lives, the past few decades. In some sense of course this has always been true, hence our love of the travelogue, and human’s long-standing attempts to explore the unknown.

And yet, as with all things, it is our ability to communicate that takes this from a truth to a global reality, from the province of the rich, desperate, or lucky to the awareness at every moment as to what aspects of our reality are not global, are not shared. Despite being uploaded more than two years ago this album has ninety six thousand views. In comparison the Fred again.. Tiny Desk has 9.1 million. In an era when anything can be anywhere, the things that truly aren’t can gain value from that fact. Looking out the window into the rain, into the delivery driver sitting on his scooter in shorts, playing games on his phone while waiting for the dinner rush to begin, I can see all of us. The company he works for may not exist in the nation you’re reading this, and yet the idea is familiar. The shorts are a product of the tropical heat. The game may be local, the device manufactured by a regional powerhouse rather than a global one, the mobile service provider most assuredly so, and yet the idea is clear. My description conveys just enough for the sketch to be real, evoke memories.

I spend a lot of time listening to music to create memories, to create soundtracks to places and feelings. The background sounds of our lives, for the first time in history, are entirely under our own control. We are no longer victim to the top 40 of our high school radio or the covers of western hits played in the Thai beach bar. We can bring our own sounds from anywhere into being wherever we need them, wherever we would like. In some ways audio is the first true spatial technology. It’s the only digital thing I can bring to life in the real world.

And so I do, here in the rain, in the cool of AC on one side and the humid backsplash on the other. It’s beautiful, to discover things like this beer, like this album, that I will struggle to share, will struggle to re-create later. That’s the point of being alive, out in the world and listening, even if to an environment of our own creation.