Happy New Year!

I am going away on a brief New Year's trip to Singapore and Malaysia.

Happy 2010!!!

The Foreign Student

Yes yes, so he was from an affluent family. Well-endowed, eh?

Nice nice, so he studied in London. For four years!

And he lived in a beautiful neighborhood! A student in a beautiful apartment?

But please, don't assume his life was devoid of anxiety, misery, or, even poverty.

Yes, poverty.
(And poverty, is an emotional condition. It would be wrong to assume that it was a material condition. Yes, it can have material causes. Very possibly. But the condition itself is really an emotional state.)

Don't you know how badly some foreign students can suffer from incurable cases of the inferiority complex? Oh, so mired in so much pain and anguish?

Even if you are rich in one country, you can be a nobody in another. Easy to understand, but no, you would never want to experience this.

And I'd hate to say this, but it's true. The inferiority complex is first and foremost for students coming to the metropole from the margins. (It can happen to students going the other way, but hey, what do they know? is my honest opinion.)

Oh, but of course, he should have dealt with his inferiority complex in a much, much, much better way. Oh!

That's why I am so frustrated.

I know, or I think I know, the foreign student's misery. His loneliness.

But the one who studied in London, he failed to understand that the Problem was inside of him, not outside in the world of U.S. tanks and suicide bombers.

His version of Islam, if it can be called that, was not spiritual at all. It was so materialist and image-ridden. Oh! That is not what any religion, or religious experience, is all about.

One knows that prayer, meditation, communication...these have to do with the spirit. Not chemicals! Not planes! Not guns! Not even guts.

It's complicated....

Ah, maybe I am assuming too much.

A Wavering Person

Grigri asked: "I am a wavering person. And you?"

Play as Well as You Can

"Play as well as you can."

That's what Maude said in Harold and Maude, a movie I adore and come back to time and time again.

Here is the full movie, from Google Videos. Please watch it, if you have the time:

Harold and Maude (1971)

Dir. by Harold Ashby. Written by Colin Higgins.

91 mins.



Another work of art that has had a profound influence on me, to the point of being almost harmful, is Somerset Maugham's Moon and Sixpence.

Coyote's Christmas

"coyote des neiges" is a favorite blog of mine, which I came across a few months ago by chance. The blog's author, a French-Canadian, is humorous and knowledgeable, without ever sounding presumptuous. In her recent blog entry, she writes about spending Christmas alone. Christmas is supposed to be a time of gathering, cheer, and parties, but she says, this year, she is going to be by herself. She sniffs: oh, solitude! ah, solitude! Then she looks in the thesaurus and starts listing all the synonyms of "solitude," like abandonment, recluse, exile, isolation, separation, dereliction, Thebaide.... She humorously adds that she didn't recognize the last two. "But wait," she says. "There are more synonyms than just those." She then ingeniously puts together a second list of synonyms that include: cocoon, shelter, a place of rest, den, refuge, oasis, peace. After all, she lives in snow country, where, yes, it is better to stay inside, and even be a little bit misanthrope.

Yeah! I think even if one didn't live in snow country, one is allowed to celebrate and have a merry Solitude (read: Peace, Refuge, Oasis...).

Here is the blog's URL: http://coyote-des-neiges.blogspot.com/. Her entry on her New Year's eve in Paris was also hilarious and very well-written! And so was her entry on public toilets, or her fear thereof.

Joyeux Noël !

Moonlight

Moonlight

Is graffiti

Covering the wall

Today

Yes, and I found

The biggest lie

Sustaining my life

Today the eyes

Have been opened

Maybe the ears, too

Oh years!

Timbuktu

Like Timbuktu

Cities contributing to scholarship

Unite:

Do not be overshadowed by the Olympics

Transmission and preservation

Do take time, and lives, so many lives

And generations

It does take learning to know

That preservation means renewal

That culture means food and nurturing

(Not headaches!)

Dominguez says: "If time travel were available,

I would travel to Timbuktu in the 12th century."

Yorokobi says: "Yes, and be an auditor at the

University of Sankoré!"

The East

Rage raging, snow falling

Probing probes

Too fatigued for memory's sake

Shallowness, borrowed speech

Eyes, condemning

Lips, apart

Paper. Covers. Desk. And.

I. Have. Nowhere. To Sit.

Peace

Well, yes, peace is weak. Very weak. Like people.

I am Anti-Justification

Hello? Konnichiwa.

There is no just war.

Absolutely none. But yes, police action does sometimes become necessary. In that case, why not call it 'covert operations' like a good U.S. president? I happen to prefer lies and stealth to wars. Wars are lies and stealth anyway, but I hate how every war needs justification. Covert operations, on the other hand, are inherently unjustified and have something undoubtedly wrong about them, so needs no justification in the first place. Well, enough sarcasm. But there is probably something terribly wrong with anything that needs a lot of justification. That I know. Haha. Can't laugh.

Unfortunately, wars are profitable. But so are other things....

Need an outlet? Please play sports. Or games. Or instruments. You can kick soccer balls, but not people's heads. You can molest the piano keys all you want (well, even that only to a certain point), but not people's sensibilities.

Need goals? Have you read all the biographies in your nearest library? If so, I'm sure you can find more on Amazon.com.

Need money? Yes, more money has to go into education. Not just tuition, but also living expenses while people study.

Bravery? Then do not make war, go to war, or try to justify any war. Brave people do not fight. They think and feel. Learn that they are not immortal. Understand and accept that their lives and values are actually neither heavier nor lighter than the others'.

But not to say that we are small. We are big. Big problems, big hearts. But so are other people and their problems, their hearts.

So there. You can't have everything. Justify, or lose. "I choose lose," Metty said. But she added, "And it isn't even losing." But yes, once you are in that mindset, it's hard to tell the difference between winning and losing.

There is no evil in the world. There is only the perception of evil. Now that, is everywhere.

Children's Library

A must in any town, any village.

Social Class and Culture

Class, as in social rank, is a truly self-defeating concept. Do you think "class" really exists in reality as it is talked about? How much of it is delusional? There is definitely inequality in terms of money, material possessions, and access to services and opportunities. But how much of that really determines the way people live? It's more the imaginary associations and feelings of entitlement or non-entitlement that are at the basis of action and thought. Advantages and disadvantages exist purely in the subjective realm; it is all but impossible to analyze what truly gives someone an edge. In a way, wealth and poverty are both curses. But within those curses also exist, like blades of grass in a rock-field, virtues. They need to be cultivated, though, those virtues. They will not grown on their own. Hence, culture. One can blame everything on class, as one can blame everything on race, gender, nationality. But what really matters is one's own ability to recognize the budding sprouts on the terrain on which one happens to find oneself (any terrain is a rough terrain, if you are on it). That's culture. Culture is not about family pedigree or socioeconopolitimetridevelopedevelopinginnercityrannical status. Similarly, class inequality is not about the average per capita income and the high school drop-out rate. It has to do instead with a displacement and misdirection of various discontentments and feeling of self-aggrandizement or diminution all across the board. It's all very phantasmagoric and symbolic. Mushy and shifty stuff, like light and sounds (art, music, that kind of thing). If only we were able to respect others in all walks of life (one person can be walking more than one walk at a time), and talk to each other in a straightforward way. Oh, superiority/inferiority complex! Oh, frankness! Oh, culture! By the way, there is no high or low culture. Do a somersault, and you'll see why.

Keeping Track

German, Chinese.

DDDRussian, Korean.

DDDDDDPersian, Arabic.

DDDDDDDDDSwedish, Vietnamese.

Latin.

DDDSpanish, Portuguese.

Snails

You know that toilet bowls really are shells,

And so are bath tubs, wash basins, and yes, even plates.

Cups, too, and pitchers,

Glassware and silverware,

You also carry your mind in a shell, too. The skull, yes?

The shell, the shells, the shelling shelly-shell.

The wondrous magic of the spiral, this holiday season: Cheers!

Slow Thinking (2)

Detours, I mean.

Slow Thinking

Slow thinking is my life;

That's how I would like to live.

Slow thought,

The beauty you notice,

Less glare.

Cannot catch up,

But can catch.

Can slip,

But cannot slip away.

(Can slip, because of the slow, slow, slowness.)

Moving, but slowly: a snail.

Instead of something quicker, much too quick actually, as in, say:

123456789101112131415161718192021222324

Because you might get:

(Images courtesy of "3'' Mini-Block Swap Archive," alanandmike.com)

Throwers

Mini said: "Name throwers, watch out! The trucks are coming to pick you up. Oh, name throwers, those who throw around buzzwords and empty terms to mask their deficiency in thought and thoughtfulness, don't they realize that along with the names that they throw, they are throwing themselves out?"

Mini-Dua said: "Oh, name throwers. The trucks, thinking that you were also trash, will recycle you and your names. Do you want to let something like that fall upon you? No! So please, stop throwing those names around. They deserve better treatment, too, the names. Put them in the recycle bin, nicely and softly."

Mini-Tiga said: "But you know what, the trucks are never going to come. They drifted away with the trash."

And people thought the trash was gold; I guess the trucks did, too...oh, Mr. Voltaire!

The Birds

The birds

Did I realize

That their eras and our eras do not match

For them, 9/11 has never happened

To them, the landing of man on the moon is unknown

Unless there is a bird network of news, reporting on humans

But even then

Their songs do not completely belong to our sense of time

Of place

Their visions take us to another cosmos, which has always existed

But to us, has remained foreign and invisible

The birds

They include all the singers and writers from the past

But also real birds

Singing now in the sky

Role Models (2)

Be an exception.

Role Models

Perhaps I have said this earlier already, but I do not believe in "role models." That is, I do not believe anyone could really benefit from getting know people to whom one may strive, one day, to come close. Nor do I believe in the power of the will to emulate. This world is already so full of models, packages, and standards. They mislead more than they instruct.

But I suppose, but I guess - role models can do good, if you realize that your role models, whomever they may be, live inside you, not outside. They are the emanations of your dreams and anti-dreams, rather than the real people whom they really are. The same goes for "negative" role models, the people whom you wish you would never become. They, too, live in you.

I dislike adulation. Emulation, I view with suspicion. The real role models are never people, you see. They are always ideas and colors; sounds and music; postures and speech. Think about the commercial fashion "models." We rarely care about who they are in real life; we only care about the way they walk, and not even the way they look, to us.

Don't let personalities be your role models; look to their choreography, instead.

Japano-Serbian Poet

Just a quick introduction; there is a Japanese poet who writes poetry in both Serbian and Japanese. Her name is Kayoko Yamasaki. She has lived in Serbia since the 1980s, and is currently a professor of literature at the University of Belgrade. For her doctorate, she studied avant-garde Serbian and Japanese poetry within a comparative framework. She will be speaking on November 29, 2009 in Tachikawa, Tokyo, on the relationship between narrative perspective and avant-garde poetic movements. She chose to remain in Belgrade when the NATO bombed the city in 1999.

The image below shows Kayoko Yamasaki posing for the camera. I like the skirt in black. It reflects light, like a darkened, unshaded window.

(Photo courtesy of Kulturni Centar Beograda)

Not to Be Taken Lightly

Someone, please, we need to translate Shinichiro Nakamura's works into English. He is too great to remain unknown outside of Japan, although he is also not terribly well known there. And his greatness is not immediately apprehensible. That fact adds to his greatness, as corny as that may sound, and does set him apart from the likes of, I must say, Mishima, Murakami, Tanizaki, etc.

The image below is taken from Nakamura's preparatory notes for his books on Edo kanshibun (early modern Japanese literary and philosophical texts composed in the Chinese style), including The Traffic of Clouds, Sanyo Rai and His Epoch, Horti Poetae (Poet's Garden), and Kenkado Kimura's Salon.

(Photo courtesy of the National Institute of Japanese Literature)

The Shoutbox

The shoutbox has disappeared on its own!

Not Far Too Close

RRRRRRRRRRRRIn May 2009, there was a fire in Niamey,

RRRRRRRRRRNiger

RRRRRRIn the city's central market

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRZFire

RRRRRRBlocked streets, vendors and merchandise

RRRRRRRRRescue: extinguish, pillage

In time, too late

RRRRRRRRRRRThe sun spread on the ashes

RRRRRRRRRRRRRBlame the government

RRRRRRRA plot to distract -

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRecuerdos y memoria, not

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrfar too close, of the fires in Yedo

Violets

There is a terrible glimmer in the sky

Look to your left, at the violets

They will survive this, the ordeal

* * *

Profiles

Facebook, Mixi, and the like.

Profiles proliferate; stupid profiles.

Some people are misled to think that each one of us ought to be expressed in pre-packaged meatbags with labels, as if we were flat, very flat characters in a cartoon.

"Impressive," some say, marveling at other people's profiles. Their simplemindedness is impressive. Actually, appalling. Sad, in fact.

One learns non-linear equations at, what, age twelve? Only if non-linear narratology were taught right around the same time. Then we would begin to see, very clearly, that those profiles are the most disastrously fake pieces of shit.

Don't excuse the unclean language.

Nocturne

Deep in the night: according to my dictionary, "a useful" (noun) in Australian slang means "a person who runs errands or handles unimportant tasks."

Megra screamed: "Utilitarians, beware!"

"Because," Zadie added, "Useful shan't mean important."

Relevance is closer in meaning to importance than to usefulness. Sands trickled down a palm tree at night. Quack-quack, the quacker quacked. Then the day broke.

Painting

Literature and the arts make some people feel unbearably uneasy.

Those people begin to question their own lives: Have I always lived in deep reflection? Have I always striven to learn and develop my taste for the high arts? Have I thought about my place in this world, and what to do about it?

No, they say. No, they shake their heads. They have been to busy trying to feed themselves and their families. They have toiled for so long to secure their social standing, keep a roof over their heads, and make sure they have insurance and the benefits. They have been too busy.

Then some of them, although not all, begin accusing the literati of idling their time, like good, well-endowed dilettantes. When we have been working so hard. But on what?

It's true some members of the literati are indeed idle, or boring, or both. But the accusers also paint an unnecessarily bleak picture of the world, making it seem as if it were human destiny to have no time and money to spare for colors, music, and words - for reflection. If one believes in this picture, then the world becomes just that.

But remember, it is just a picture. It can be torn down or repainted. (Or exalted.) I wish the number of men and women running for-profit businesses who also appreciate thoughtfulness and good taste will increase. They are the potential champions, much more than benefactors on the periphery.

The greatest fallacy in business is to equate time with money and understanding that equation as a motive for cutting back on time. No; just as money ought to be enjoyed, time also ought to be enjoyed. If one cut back on it, there would be nothing left.

Also, please don't "invest." The expectation of a return is stifling and, quite simply, stressful. Seriously, it is okay if the "returns" never come. Take it easy, please, for everyone's sake.

Yes? Children are starving in Africa? Don't throw around Africa too much like a ball; Africa is the place of culture. Look, there is a starving man under the bridge, right under your foot in Metropolitan Europe, or Japan, South Korea, or whatever place where people are not supposed to be starving. Yes, money is not easy to share. Then, what about time? Share your time, in whatever way - there are more than billion possible channels - so the person the most distant from you, or the most proximate to you, can step forward with a renewed sense of hope and optimism.

Start by painting a picture.

Thirst

Tanha, thirst.

I search for thirst, even as I constantly look for a sense of fulfillment.

Dukkha, suffering.

I search for suffering, too, but that phase in my life is over, at least for the time being. But then, regardless of what you want, suffering hits, sometimes without warning, or, really, with or without warning. You are powerless as to the timing and the manner of its hitting.

I do not believe thirst necessarily leads to suffering. I don't want to believe. I refuse to believe. Suffering is something that hits all of a sudden, and it's a completely impersonal thing. Like an accident. Thirst has nothing to do with it.

Thirst, it can be painful or enjoyable depending on your belief. If you believe thirst is painful, it will be painful. If not, not.

Suffering is always painful, whatever your belief.

But thirst, it will give life, if you believe it will. If not, it only takes your life away.

Central Asia

I went to Central Asia in my dream. I was still on the Chinese side of the border, but from the roof of the rolling bus on which I lay, flat on my stomach, I saw a sign post that read: To Kyrgyzstan. All around, there were bare, brown hills and unbelievably steep roads. My spirit soared. Then the airport, with a rectangular indoor pond.

So many languages: Sogdian, Dungan, Chagatai. Endless dreams.

Clutter

He loves his clutter, even when he hates it.

It is him; his clutter. In the words of a self-help expert, "it expresses you." Not: "who you are," because, who "are" you really?

No one really knows. But "you," it includes all the were's, were not's, are, are not's, not to mention the have been's and had not been's, your worlds and others'.

That clutter, helping me stay afloat, or sink, depending on the circumstances, and the time of day, keeps my desk cluttered. I'd like to clean it up now, though, so that my desk can get cluttered anew. Again.

A Feast for the Eyes

韈跫燕瑤

詭嶷苡咒

呱咎響忱

鴽然傚孝

A rather threatening feast. It has legs, perhaps dinosaur legs, footsteps, swallows, along with socks that hide one's feet, white pearls, leather, black magic, parental love, gourd-in-mouth, reverberations, some kind of bird, burning dog meat, truth, stumbling feet, intellectual or mental imperturbability, barley grain or lotus seed, lies or difference, and at last, young and old.

Prayer-Question

Master of masterminds,

Please provide for the needy,

But when you provide for the needy,

How do you know what the needy really needs?

How to avoid being presumptuous,

How to make the needy truly happy?

You would say it was love; that must be true.

But how to make it true?

How, in your name, how?

The organ blared out the answer: Blare blare, blare!!!

Or the bell sounded: Gong gong, gong!

Or a leaf fell on the water: Flap. Current. Turn. Rice cooker, armadillo!

I think you should go to sleep.

批評練習１

Moutros wrote the following text holed up inside a small cave shaped like one half of a melon. To me, the text was completely illegible except for the Arabic numeral, 1.

1. 時間的・空間的に異なる「他の文化」を理解する可能性について。 (On the possibility of inter-cultural understanding, modern science, and medieval Christianity.) 　

　他文化を理解しようとするとき、まず自分の時代と文化、言わば自意識を省みる必要があるが、それだけでなく、その自意識の中に多様性や驚きを見い出す過程をも必要とする。自らの時代や文化の内にも、単一的、あるいは固定的な枠組みの中に収まり切らない価値観や慣行が存在し、その文化や時代の内部で有効な役割を担っているのではないか、と常に自問し疑いながら、他者に目を向けてみる。そうすれば、自意識に基づく尺度が、必ずしも絶対的な真実のみの上に成立しているとは限らないことに気付く。つまり、明確に「他」の文字とレッテルを貼りつけることのできる相手と直接的な関わり合いを持つ以前から、自己の内側に潜む他者的存在について熟考し、あくまでも自己の中の他者という矛盾を孕んだ自画像の前で、目を養う。それから本番、他者の前へいよいよ進む訳だが、自己の内側でより本質的に感じられる部分、そして同じく自己の内側でより異質的に感じられる部分の両極にそれぞれ対応する側面を、縦横に他者の内側に認めることができたならば、他の文化や時代を理解し始めようとすることができる。何よりも、分裂した、あるいは多義的な自己の姿に、他者の姿の、細部は大きく異なるかも知れないが、それでも、同じく分裂し多義的、多面的な性質の予感を識別することが、重要ではないだろうか。それぞれの文化・時代・空間に固有であるものは大切に扱うが、同一の文化・時代・空間に存在するからと言って、固有種同士が矛盾や不調和を作り出すことはないはずだ、と断定するのは、他者の理解のみならず自己の理解の幅をも狭めてしまうことになろう。

　例えば、近代科学を自分の文化と位置付け、他文化であるヨーロッパの中世文化の理解を目指そうとしよう。近代科学の担い手として最初に挙げられるのは、科学者たちであろうが、実際は、科学者ほどは専門知識を持たないにも関わらず、科学の確実性を多少とも信じる多くの一般人によっても支えられている。一般人の中で、地動説を正論として信じており、日々の暮らしの中でもその現象を五感により捉えられていると信じていたとしても、科学的な方法で、地動説の一部始終を説明・証明できる者は果たして何名いるであろうか。これらの一般人、言わば「素人」は、数にすれば人口の大多数を占めるのであろうが、少なからず盲目に近い信頼を科学に置いている、という観点から判断すれば、その非専門性のゆえに、近代科学の内側にいる他者、と名付けることができないだろうか。この近代科学における専門家対素人の構造を中世ヨーロッパに大まかではあるが置き換えるとすれば、キリスト教における聖職者及び政治的権力者、対、一般人あるいは「俗人」・「俗衆」の構造が浮かび上がるのではないか。創造主の信仰については、聖職・権力者であっても、一般人であっても、本物の顕現、エピファニーのような宗教体験のある者も、無い者も、ばらばらに分散して存在していたかも知れないが、当時のキリスト教文化をなるべく包括的に捉えるとすれば、聖職・権力者側が、比較的、専門的知識に疎い俗衆に信仰を勧め、広め、その対価として宗教の支持を求めた、という点では、近代科学の科学者と素人による構造に類似している。従って、もし中世文化は無知蒙昧だと決めつける者がいれば、それは決して創造主やキリストの信仰のみが無知を助長したとは言えず、社会全体に無知が氾濫したと主張するのであれば、専門家と非専門化の間の非対称な権力構造や知識の分配に拠るところが大きいと考えてはどうだろうか。そして、この非対称な構造は、近代科学においても観察することができ、例え、近代科学が迷信の類を大幅に取り払ったとしても、大衆による科学の支持には「非専門性」の名を被った「無知」が一役買っている、と考えることもできるのだ。また、更に付け加えるとすれば、近代科学の専門分野内においても、まだまだ無知の領域は広く、皮肉なことに、科学の専門知識が深ければ深い者ほど、人類の永続的な無知を思い知る毎日を送るものではないか、と推測する。

Ignorance ought to be used as wrapping paper.
Let's read, man!
To read, we need time.
Let's ask for time.

Hello, time.
Goodbye, time.
Time has a life, too.
Let it do its thing, please.

Leave it alone, for Godot's sake....

Ecrivains Franco-Japonais?

In search of Japanese writers writing in French:

There's Yumiko Seki, whose first novel Chaud-Froid was published in France in 2005.

There's also Aki Shimazaki, a Japanese-born Canadian author writing in French.

Anyone else?

A somewhat related writer, although not Japanese by blood, would be the author of Fear and Trembling (Stupeur et tremblements), Amelie Nothomb.

Peel Away

Summer peeling away, autumn

Coolness sinking, warmth

Good hands, bad hands, waving

In unison, in the fog, far away

Like pumps, forcing out,

Or in,

Jutting, like land, into the sea

Foam.

Comedians (Japanese Case)

Yesterday, I had tea with Satori. Gloomy skies and billowing November clouds, but the tea was a warm red, and steaming. Satori said she loved to watch comedians perform, not with a little bit of guilt in her tone. I share her love of comedians, and the little guilt that comes with that love. Comedians, they are unafraid, the good ones at least, and bring laughter into the world.

But what kind of laughter?

Well, in the case of Japanese comedians, Satori and I were saying, a lot of the times, they produce laughter by mocking. And oftentimes, it is by mocking others. Self-mockery; yes, sometimes, and good ones do it, but on so many different occasions, one sees comedians poking fun at their partners, or their colleagues, in a completely mean way. Like, saying: "You're fat." "Look at that ugly -beep-, is she man or woman?" "He talks funny." "His mom talks funny, too." "You look like a potato in that outfit." "You are a potato, haha!"

Well, at least, those comedians are paid, to mock and to be mocked. So, Satori and I were saying, when we laugh at those mocking jokes, should we feel guilty? Yes, in principle, but again, the comedians are paid to perform the mockery. Those are performances that are not meant to be taken literally.

But some people don't get it. They think it's for real.

In that case, all the mocking that goes on is extremely dangerous. Even adults, Satori and I have seen, imitate what those comedians do to each other, and say very mean things, thinking they are funny. Well, we laymen are not paid to mock or to be mocked. It's all for free, gratuit. Those comedians, when mocked, make a living by mockery, sadly enough, but for us, it's different. Some of us may be born comedians, but others aren't. Why, those comedians, they ought to teach us better jokes. Satori and I finished our tea and let the gloomy weather overtake us.

On Helping People

Diri said: "Help yourself first, before helping others. A golden rule. But what makes this rule golden is the 'helping others' part. Without that, it loses all meaning."

Diri also said: "You can only lead by example. To help others, don't tell them what to do. Instead, show them what you can do."

Ah oui, je suis d'accord.

Patience

Roro said:

"In my system, patience is in short supply. Can I have yours?"

I said:
"No, you may not."

Roro exploded with anger. He said:

"Can I have at least some?"

I asked:
"Can you wait for another day?"

Roro said:
"Why? Can I have at least some?"

I said:

"Can you wait, or can't you wait?"

Roro said, again:

"Why? Can I have at least some?"

I said:

"You can have some if you can wait."

Roro said nothing.

I repeated myself.

Roro asked:
"How long do I have to wait?"

I answered:
"Another day."

Roro said:
"You are very mean."

I said:
"Yes, I am mean. So?"

Roro sighed an exasperated sigh, and paced back and forth.

I asked:
"Would you like ice cream?"

Roro said:
"No! Patience."

I had my ice cream, and then faced Roro:
"Roro, the only way to have patience is to wait. Otherwise, you will never have it."

Finally, Roro said:
"I am waiting."

"Good," I said. "Now, keep waiting, and...."

Roro joined in: "... and keep trying." I gave him the rest of my ice cream. Patient both of us grew. Night came and went, and then there was another day.

Google Ads

The great whims of Google Ads:

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In Music, In Writing

In music, one spends hours preparing for those three minutes on stage.

Likewise in other performing arts.

In writing, one wastes pages and pages

For that one page, that line.

The War of Two P's

If prose and poetry fought against each other in a war,

Which side would win?

The War of Two P's -

No end to peace?

Because prose and poetry together have the power

To change the meaning of war, fighting, and winning.

And a host of other things, too.

Pre-War Intellectuals

George told me about all these pre-World War II intellectuals who taught at select universities and high schools in Imperial Japan, in the late 1930's and early 40's when he went to school. He said one English teacher was also a professional pottery maker, and once brought in a Japanese-style plate he made with an English sonnet etched into its surface in beautiful maroon. There was also a math teacher, a slightly crazy but insanely smart man, who scolded George for having misspelled a Latin noun (I forget which) on the cover of his notebook. There was also the professor of Chinese poetry, still in his early thirties, who would freely link a scene in a Tang dynasty poem to such and such scene in André Gide's novel, which of course he had read in the original French, or compare an ancient Chinese tea-drinking guru to an eerily similar guru in such and such Sanskrit text, which he had apparently read in English and Chinese translations.

Where were they all, before, during, and after the War? How did they let it happen? Were they, goodness forbid, killed in the air raids? And an additional question: can their failure, if I dare call it that, give us a clue as to why there seem to be so few of such intellectuals (or I may simply say, people) in present-day Japan? Or, if there are any, where are they, and what are they up to? Where are you all?

* George here presumably refers to Shin'ichiro Nakamura.

Possibilities

I read about a Japanese single mother struggling to make ends meet. She has a boy of three, whom she keeps at home except on Fridays when she works at her weekly part-time job. The nature of her job was not disclosed, nor where the boy is kept while the mother is working. We do not know which town she lives in. We also are not told under what circumstances the mother became a single mother, or whether she has any relatives and friends at all.

This mother's income is barely enough to keep the two of them housed, clothed, and fed. She says she is worried about her son's future. That is the only direct quote from her in the entire piece. Perhaps the author felt the need to protect the mother's privacy a little too strongly. As a reader, I was led, simply, to pity this mother, without even coming to know any of the causes-and-effects, contingencies, and motives that might have played a role in creating, or even necessitating, her particular situation, of which we know very little in any case, except that she is barely able to pay the bills. I did not know what to do with my sense of pity. I wondered if it was even right to pity her in this way. As for the boy, he is still very young, and I hoped that he would recognize his mother's love, and only his mother's love. The mother was portrayed as a gentle, loving person, who remains extremely calm and sane even in the face of suffering.

Such a loving, calm, and strong person - would such a person not be able to pull herself out of her disquieting situation? Using her warm, rich personality as a gift, I feel she could easily open many doors, or some doors at least, for herself and for her child. Or, is she so calm and composed that she has, in a way, given up, and is simply watching herself and her boy hang by all-too-delicate threads, day by day, as if they were complete strangers from a distant world? What is keeping her from breaking out of the cage? Is it some invisible social force? That would be a fine example of scapegoating. Society is the biggest scapegoat in the world, it seems. Or rather, it is okay to blame society, perhaps not just okay and necessary at times, but society cannot be blamed for inaction, or even ineffective action. Action falls under the responsibility of actors and actresses - yes, personae with character. However hidden, superficial, artificial, or genuine a persona's character may be, an act is an act - it can change endings. It can shift meanings. And meaning is everything, isn't it?

Much of the world's work has to do with clearing the stage, so the personae can act. Act together, act alone, sleep while acting.

So many, it seems, feel they cannot act. Because the stage is too narrow. Because of auditions, because of limited resources, including time. Because one simply does not want to act. Because one wants a quiet life. But if they acted, how the world would bloom even more exquisitely, flowering in all sorts of extraordinary ways. And in fact, even a quiet life would be impossible without real acting - quiet acting.

Tom says: "The possibility is real, even when it isn't yet reality."

Yes, naive. No, but not naive. Not naive, because possibilities are as hard-won as realities are.

Stage directors, they want all actors and actresses to feel as alive and hopeful as possible, so that the audience will go, "ooh-ah!" But what they also know is that the actors and the actresses, they can't be "told" to feel alive and hopeful. Each of them has to find his or her own way, and help each other find that clicking thing, which is very likely to be different for each actor or actress, and even different according to the weather, or time of day, or how much sleep one has had the previous night.

Stage directors, they know it is all about possibilities. In the world of possibilities, nothing can go wrong, except for a drying-up of imagination, or of energy. That's really the world of art, no? It's a constant search for possibilities; it is exhausting. Combinations, permutations, associations - endless, even while life ticks away. It's a game, a hunt. For food? No, for what desires food. For what permits us to want food. It's really a primordial thing. So even a child knows. Perhaps better.

温故知新 - Wen Gu Zhi Xin

What is missing

Is the knowledge of the past

Two Extremes

Whenever I hear someone raving about someone else,

My mind jumps a little, and my eyes, too;

I wonder if the raving person is really telling me the truth

Or scared of seeing the truth, even.

Too many hurried outbursts of praises -

Somehow, they fail to ring true in my ear.

The same goes for the denouncing of someone,

Harsh criticism, and only that.

There, the scapegoat goddess in my mind would lift her head,

Warning me with green-and-red lights,

Telling me to examine the polyhedrons, one side at a time.

Because we are polyhedrons, after all;

Flatness is not a part of this world.

Labels are to be resisted and drawn on -

Don't tear, but draw on top, adding to the complexity.

And extremes just add to the complexity, don't they?

They are no good when they are made to simplify, no good, unfortunately...

Consonants

Diurnal day,

Nocturnal night,

Matinal morning!

Left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right

York, dork, fork

Size, rise, guise

D-E-N (clap)

B-M-I (clap)

G-U-T! x2

Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk-oh

Happy merry duck, oh goose! (dotted rhythm)

Measuring Things

Inside a guestbook at a hotel room on St. Kitts, I find the following neat scribbles in black anonymous ink, the tail end spilling out of the last corner of the invisible square, in which a much shorter entry would have fit perfectly well:

"1) In the tangible realm, it helps to have unified units of measurement 2) But in the realm of intangibles, let there be many units of measurement 3) Not an infinite number of units, but multiple viable ways 4) That one can devise on one's own, with care and experience. 5) Intangibles can be measured; 6) Just not in the same way as tangibles can. 7) Rock the boat, rock it 8) Not, oh no, in order to capsize the boat 9) But to suggest the possibility of a flip 10) So that one comes to love the boat, cherish it 11) Cherish it for its preciousness 12) And instead of fixating on whether or how the boat will stay afloat, 13) One can start to concentrate on the beauty of the lake, 14) The sky, the shores, 15) And of course the boat. 16) Be thankful for the fish, 17) Remember that hunger strikes the heart first 18) And last, the stomach 19) Have mercy 20)See that the boat is free 21) But not alone 22) Many boats out there 23) Looking for the shore 24) Ships, too 25) Whole islands looking 26) With hope 27) Know that when worse comes to worse... 28) Fill in the blank, don't erase."

Autobigraphical Criticism

Criticism is, traditionally, a genre of detachment. A critic writes in a detached, lofty voice, voicing opinions and delineating views that may be subjective but nonetheless have been objectively weighed. A critic can be warm-hearted, and her language also warming, but her thinking needs to be cold and crisp, like apples under water. In criticism, there is little room for I, the warm human being. I only stands for the cold, typing fingers and the eyes the eye the margins. No brains there, nor hearts. Detachment means also concealment. To maintain a detached stance, one needs to straighten one's back against gravity and disregard life's many distractions, mundane and extraordinary - the itching scalp, bad lunch, the earthquake in Sumatra, one's cat who died. WHAT TO DO.

Autobiographical criticism aims to say good-bye, farewell, Adiós, to detachment. After all, a critic is a critic because he longs for connections. He exists to make connections, to play with them. Why stay detached? Or, more precisely, why write in a detached language? Let it be noted, though, that the opposite of detachment, which is engagement, here does not equal the French engagement, where the writer must align the writing to political or social ends. The autobiographical critical engagement, by contrast, simply points to more honest forms of thinking and writing. Why the pretense of detachment, now, when still more wars are being waged, sea levels are constantly rising, and equally importantly, you and I are alive? You are alive, I am alive. How stupendous - I kid you not. Why stay detached from the nooks and crannies of life, that is much larger and heavier and messier than the, at-the-end-of-the-day, much flimsier criticism, or say, art?

The attitude of the autobiographical critic is much closer in appearance and in substance to that of a poet or a fiction writer, or a bard. The mission is to express, to engage. What use if the audience turn away in boredom, incomprehension, or disgust? Some of them may, but it is only natural to hope that the number remains small.

So, you may ask, where is the "I" in this little blog entry? Well, I must say I can't find it anywhere, except where it says, "I am alive." Isn't this enough? And let it be known that not every autobiography needs to place "I" in the center. After all, or, at least for me personally, "I" is always being displaced, replaced, and even misplaced. Please! Let writing please the soul, one last time.

And the lofty language - allow me to confess that that is the direct influence of Vladimir Nabokov's loftiest language of all time in his autobiography, titled Speak, Memory. I have been reading the book, with a wry mixture of repulsion and fascination on my living, moving face.

Days Pass

Days pass,

Already a day and two.

We the Humanity

Dorothy asked: "Would we look the same if we all had dust and windburn smearing our faces, necks, and arms? Would we all feel the same after working day after day, hour after hour in the fields, barely alive and able to sustain just our immediate families in thought and in grain? Would we love each other if we bared all our pains and turbulences, our fears and talismanic obsessions, to each other and to ourselves? Or, would we hate each other, then slowly begin to love each other, just as it takes time for the cookies to warm up and the bread to inflate? If we never washed our bodies, if we never used so much soap and make-up, if we stopped looking at ourselves in the mirror so much, would we begin to resemble each other, and ourselves, at last?"

After three days, Polona replied: "Exactly. That's why resemblances are more striking than differences."

Then Polona and Dorothy said together, in unison: "Why not focus on the resemblances? The scary, the striking, the beautiful, the enchanting, the unsettling, resemblances?"

At night, the Moon is brighter than the Sun.

A Happy Day

I want the world to be happy

I want to be happy

The universe looks on

With interest, I shall say.

A world without nuclear weapons

Had never seemed feasible

Until Obama's speech

But there are also other seeds of happiness

Perhaps smaller and less concrete

All over the universe

You can look for them

Why not?

One is sadness

One seed, one sadness

Who knew

Happiness grows from sadness

Speaking of nuclear weapons and war

What one attends to, ought to attend

Is not a bright future

That will come naturally

After one attends to sadness

To the darkness of one's history

The darkness of night before daybreak

Or the darkness around the stars, shining

Hurling us into the past, much of it still unforgotten

Brewing

Then there shall be breakfast

With light cereal and cream

And a happy day.

Leaves

He is happy one moment,

Sad the next.

The leaves keep turning,

His mind, too.

Writing II

You know, I am writing, and struggling.

Here's where your education will count:

Never give up.

Think your way through.

There are always ways to go around something, just anything.

As you see fit.

Oh - as you see fit.

There's never an end, but long journeys.

Simmering clouds; luck-rivers-o-cold.

Run like a trout. Dive like a belly-dancer.

Writing

Gordon wrote:

"Writing is so difficult

So difificult, I cannot even spell.

Oh masks, I put them on when I write

On the tips of my fingers, toes, my face, nose, mouth

All covered and masked

And revealed to the hearts and minds, I hope,

Of the world."

I made a thousand golden and silver paper cranes for Gordon and set them free into the sky.

You

Have you noticed that "you" is not always singular?

You undoubtedly have.

It is plural some of the time, many times.

Always plural grammatically.

But here, we are talking about semantics, not grammar.

So you -- yes, you -- are one and many.

You know you are part you and part many others

Who have shaped you.

And whom you have shaped.

So you, not I.

And not we, because we cannot be singular.

Singular and plural, that's you.

You!!

(But God, you is not.)

The Mind

The mind

Keeps turning in the same places

Over and over again.

Enjoy it

While you can.

Oh, but where and when and how?

It's you, and only you.

Who else, but you?

October Winds

Winds,

Clueless, fact-less winds are blowing

Society II

So, let me quickly translate a few lines from my favorite personne de lettres, Shin'ichiro Nakamura:

Realism in literature is only interested in re-enacting the "real world" of society. Yet the crucial fact is that we do not live only inside this "real world." In actuality, impossible dreams and invisible thoughts that slumber in the greatest depths of our consciousness also support us, move, and motivate us.

---Ocho Monogatari, Ch. 1, Sec. 3

Society

Like money, society stands for a multitude of things.

Money stands for: let's see, women, men, security, insecurity, hard work, grunt work, haircuts, interesting work, movies, beliefs, children, the future, the past, like, dislike, constraints, myopia, great opportunity, possibility, status, sadness, cruelty, food, fine arts, communication, miscommunication, instinct, love, altruism, self-hate. And more.

Society stands for perhaps even more things. But always remember, whether one likes it or not, society has stood and will always stand for the anti-social and the non-social - in short, resistance against the very idea of society. Society is a multitude of things. You can't let it take over the world, let alone your life - YOUR life! And that, is also a "social" statement, you see. The message is this: Don't let society decide for you. YOU decide. YOU choose. Society stands for YOU, partly, but only partly. Society is not YOU, and YOU are not society. The two do not perfectly overlap, and that's perfectly normal. Oh, please!

Beautiful Photographs

Is it the beauty of what is in the photographs,

Or is it the beauty of photography itself?

Wilderness

There is natural wilderness

But there is also wilderness, other frontiers

In thought and in mind.

The idea is not to tame it

Who wants a zoo in one's psyche

But adventure.

There are always new worlds

In the mind

Which keeps turning, a great conveyor belt

Two wheels interlocked

The horizon is always a new horizon

And you can get on it, off it

Move with it, or just enjoy the sight

There's always a new day

A new night, even

In the wilderness

Peking, 1958

I am studying Chinese not from a living person

But from dead books.

One of them is an ancient book, first published in 1958

By Peking University faculty.

It regularly talks of comrades, of Russian songs,

Russian students learning Chinese

And borrowing Chinese and Russian novels from the tushuguan.

Dear faculty, dear authors, dear teachers and friends,

We wonder what happened to you during the Revolution

Or at any point during the course of relentless currents of time

What became of you, how you survived

Or did not.

I have lost the three audio-cassettes that accompanied your book

Which may have contained the remnants of your beautiful singsong sounds

Your intelligence and your fears.

Japan

Diri said: "Japan should go to hell.

I hate Japan."

Excuse her terribly apt, to-the-point language, but I tend to agree.

What an awful place.

Let Japan exist in dreams only.

Out in the universe, even trash shines beautifully.

Endings

He bangs himself against the wall, crying,

Stupid, stupid, stupid

He means he is stupid

He wants to end it

He wants it to be over

Then why not end it?

He should stop the "it," whatever it is

Even if he says so, he doesn't want to end his life

It is not his life, but it's the "it" he wants to end

It's not life, it's "it"

The "it" can end, anytime, anyhow

We are free beings

Eating the Sky

Based on what I said below,

Am I eating the sky when I eat

Anything?

Vegetables, especially.

And really, I'm also the sky?

Geophagy

The word geophagy sounds fantastic

Festive and wonderful stern, delicious

Until the reality hits

The reality of eating dirt

Am I just a prisoner of a preconceived notion that earth is inedible?

Do I eat with my head, more than with my mouth and body?

I'm hungry again.

Questions

Why does it have to be this way?

What do the trees curve this way?

Where do the roads lead to?

Why does the spider live as the spider, I, me?

How do things end, and why do they end?

That they need an ending, how am I supposed to cope?

Where is rage?

Where does it go, and what happens?

While the new clouds form, the old ones still hang.

My hand, your hand, I cannot see.

That there is indeed a hand, clutching at my heart.

My life was a waste, a waste, a waste.

Hungry as a bean, enduring the pain as a pebble might.

Beans eat other beans, and eating beans eating.

Look, a bowl of questions

And a sizzling platter of lemons

There is freedom where nothing is right.

I am hungry, I cannot eat.

You can eat me, all you want, and eat me you will.

I will let you suck at my bones and all my nerves.

I lay out in the cold, shivering

Sinking softly into the soft, dirty earth

Hearing no one

This shall be my last announcement

The pain is beyond unbearable

The emotional pain

I will exchange the bouquet of questions for a bouquet of flowers

The bouquet of flowers awaits

All cheerful and thoughtful

A bouquet of flowers awaits, and I

Am stuck in the sea-hole where I can never relax

Where waves wash over constantly and salt is everywhere

I am lying when I say I like it

I don't like it

And will not have ears anymore

All stones, all stones

Where I don't belong

And you tell me saying "I" is wrong

It's not

Sky

Where they think the sky is, there is no sky.

The sky is in the pond, the trees, reflected, absorbed.

Windows and concrete, even;

The sky is here,

On the earth, not above.

Fiction

Betsy said: "You have to understand."

Betsy said, "You have to understand that fiction protects the writer's life. It's a shield that lets the writer attack the world. How?"

She answered her own question: "By turning the writer into a laughable existence."

Amen.

Then she said, "And fiction protects the world from one-sided bigotry."

Amen to that, too.

Dust

Dust, Gus was sure, must be experienced differently all around the world. First, there are different colors of dust, and second, there's texture. Gray, copper, sapphire dust. Unwanted dust, beautiful dust. Unwanted and beautiful dust. Dust that never touched people. Dust that does touch people. Dust that only skirts people's eyes, but is nevertheless seen. Allergenic dust. Forgotten dust. Toxic dust. Rain clouds cannot form without dust, can they? Gus was very curious to find out more about dust from all over the world. Where did all the dust come from, and where was it all going? He was going to create the world's first Department of Dust. He was certain, that perhaps in a thousand years, many students and laymen around the world would be studying dust, from a variety of perspectives. The most popular boy's name would be Dustin, and for girls, Dustina. What a wonderful world it would be, to live under the humble glory of dust. And Gus would never live to see that. Timeless dust. Dust cannot be dated. Gus knew. Gus knew that any speck of dust could contain so much more than he could ever hope to hold inside himself, let alone comprehend. The world needed to see this, too.

Beijing

Gu Lou Da Jie is a street in Beijing

I had never known I would set foot on it

More than a street, it speeds through my mind like a vine,

A maze.

How could a straight road twist and turn into a labyrinth?

Your mind

Your mind, your mind, your mind

Mirrors

The curious mirroring of syllables--

Tokyo and Kyoto, Lady and Delay, Good and Bad.

Did I say, Good and Bad?

Raindrops

Raindrops replacing raindrops

Sameness and difference fuse into one

Sleep

I cannot sleep

Because I think the world is unfair

No, fair

No, unfair

No, fair

No, unfair

The Circle

Once you are outside the circle,

The circle does not mean anything anymore.

It ceases to have meaning,

No one will understand or appreciate it.

The great question is: to be or not to be inside the circle.

The circle vanishes as soon as you step outside

Will you be there for me, oh Joy, will you be there?

I need help, and no one will give it to me

The thing is, I have been here before

Outside, that is

The outside is terrifying

Will you be there, Joy? Will you be there?

It is Not Me

It is not me who is writing

But someone else.

Please, every literature professor,

Teach the students that narrator does not equal author

That the author may speak through the narrator

But that the narrator does not necessarily live out the person whom the author lives out

In real life

Of course, the distinction between

Life and Art

Is neither sacrosanct nor even definable

But it is true that

There is no one-to-one correspondence bridging life and art

Just like how

Good translators do not rely on word-to-word correspondences

And instead, live by transformations bordering on infidelity

Transformations, transfusions

Mimicry is mocking

It is not about making an exact copy

Life is art, and

I mock you, by dissembling myself in the infinite expanse

Of the one I'm not

Nevers

The end of war, the end of time

Don't forget

New ones are starting,

But also

Nothing ends in this world

Nothing has an end

Nothing is lost, if losses are disappearances

Nothing disappears

Everything accumulates,

Even losses and loss

Never assume

Embrace your indecisiveness

A blessing is a curse

And a curse, a blessing

Go out, and tell the world this

That nothing ends

That someone will survive and suffer greatly

The world's accumulation of never's

Yet

Between my eyes, as irrational as it had been,

The circus crops out and then disappears

Moonlit, moonlight, half-domes fading

Too heavy too light, the light

Keeps flashing, to keep off the night

The night breeze, and the word "breeze"

Come seeping through the rain-filled interior

Of my little hut, in the rain

The moss, the dew long due, the mountains

Look to your left, for the fog is lifting

In a carriage, you go

It is raining

You go

The fog is not lifting

Yet

O Elite America

O Elite America,

I will sing to thee

in thy praise.

Mix, mix, mix

Mix in all the love and temper in the world

And cook well

The "I"s

The "I" that Haunts:

Ima (Now, the Present)

Int'l

"I"

Ideas

The Paradox

The paradox of the written word -

silent & speaking at the same time.

On the Eve of

Unable to do anything, I stall.

Unable to think, unable to cry, unable to smell

Unable to drink, unable to seek, cry, and cry

If you have seen it even once

You will not laugh

Don't be shocked, be shocked

On the eve of commemoration

"So, what's the big deal?" You ask, in your Canadian accent. Nasal and teenager-like.

"Nothing," I say. "I feel a little pain in the palm of my tummy."

"Are you not well?" You ask.

"I am well," I say. "I am well, but someone else wasn't, well, isn't, so well."

Why didn't you ask me, "Where the heck is the palm of your tummy?"

Why didn't you ask? Instead, you went off to eat your dinner. You don't care about me any more, do you?

Plates

Dropped the plate

Sorry

Oh, nice music

Drop some more

Rain

I am the enzyme, the gadfly

I am the ruined apple in the pot,

The rain clouds

Bringing rain and the clear skies after the storms

Rain-rain, smile

Rain-rain, shine

Rain-rain, the end.

Weddings

I don't want normal weddings.

I want them to be life-changing, world-changing, world-shattering.

Orange

I asked my orange, "Are you capable of language?"

I was going to peel my orange, and admiring it, I said, "But oh, we don't share the same language."

Somehow, I knew that my orange had a world of its own that was immersed in language.

For one, the orange clearly cannot "speak" like humans. But think of all the plants and animals and even "inanimate" objects that you've ever come into contact with. Didn't they have language, some way of signifying something, maybe not to you, but to the universe?

They all have a presence, each of them. Even the small dust-ant-dust (is it alive, dead, or neither?) has a presence.

My orange. It had a structure. It was round, and much more than just round. It was organized, certainly, but it was much more than just an organization. It was really present, and very scary because of that. Much scarier than, say, just a visualized skeleton of an orange inside a computer screen. My orange had juice, and it could go bad and become rotten. It was very scary.

It would be hubris, human hubris, H-H, to think that my orange was actually trying to tell me something. Me? No! My orange is very busy. It may not have time for me. But it was trying to tell, it was already telling. Even if it wasn't "saying" anything. It may not have been "thinking," either. But it was telling.

Because I was holding it in my hand. I was looking at it. I was loving it, even before I began eating it. Language lay in the relationship between me and my orange. Whether my orange liked it or not, ever since it had become my prey, it had entered into a relationship with me.

By itself, the orange could not have language. All by myself, I cannot have language, either. I can be alone and have language, certainly, but only because I've picked up and established so many relationships with everything and everyone around me since Day One, and I carry them around, not just in my head, but in my whole being, which, incidentally, might coincide, overlap completely without becoming one, with language itself. It's as if I couldn't exist without the existence of others. My language owes all to them, the others, as well as me. And my language is my being.

No music, no painting on the walls, without my being.

Memory

It's later in the day when you say, "No, I've done nothing today, I haven't done anything."

But you have done so much.

Do you know what Wan-Ah said, when I was complaining to her how quickly my day had ended and how little I felt I had accomplished?

She said, well, first she said, "You gotta, you gotta." I thought she was teasing me, because "You gotta" means "That's all good and well" in my language.

But then, I found out.

What she was trying to say to me was that I shouldn't worry, because it just meant that I had a very bad memory.

A terrible memory, for forgetting all that I had done during the day. "You can't think of anything else but the things you think you haven't finished, all because the things you have done have sadly been erased from your mind. Yes, how sad!"

I don't write in order to remember. I write, so that I can forget. When I am writing, I don't have to feel so bad about my very bad memory erasing everything in my brain.

Sands

Lying face down in the sand, Medrijev wonders, "Do I really live in this world?"

The sand covers his eyes and ears, and shifts in soft whispers over his head.

How the wind blows.

In the wind, Medrijev whispers, too, "I cannot be realistic." No sense of time, no ability to cooperate.

He leaves when no one leaves. He enters after everyone else has entered.

He is only able to grasp the future as it has already happened. Seagulls land, turtles float up the river until they hit the first stone that put them in trouble long, long ago.

Medrijev felt sure and unsure. To every living thing, he said, "Peace be with you," but to himself, he said, "I can't, I can't."

Time, please do not stop, please keep moving, but also remember that some of us never knew you existed. In fact, you do not exist.

Time, you are what does not exist.

Not a Mannequin

Portret Manana doesn't miss the church dinners, but he misses the oak smells of the sanctuary walls.

He misses the red church cushions, too, and the choir seats.

He also remembers. There was a vagrant who had wandered into the church grounds. He was hungry, but acted as if nothing in the world mattered to him. His hair was dashingly the color of wet straw, a dirty, unwholesome color.

The vagrant had wanted to know if pipe organs, usually loud and boisterous, could sing quietly. Portret demonstrated, and the vagrant was persuaded. Yea, the organ could sing softly and lovingly.

The vagrant then went off to eat in the meeting room.

Portret had to revise the impression of the vagrant, who was not actually an indifferent ball. Far from it. Everything in the world mattered to him. Absolutely everything. That is why he was a vagrant.

He wanted to be an exception in the world so full of models and examples. And he was destined to find exceptions in all things.

A mannequin, he was not.

Summer

In a way, you never arrive

You are always ending,

Like a reverie.

Oops!

Please don't say, "Like a reverie." It sounds egregious. Monster Royce will pounce on you.

Liberation

If you know your ship is sinking, why not save it?

If you can't save it, then don't die with the ship. Escape, evacuate.

"In the case of an emergency," the woman was saying, "please don't complain. Be calm. Do not panic."

I will not panic, I will be calm, or try to be. But I will complain.

I will always complain.

"Please," the woman was saying, "you are too young to complain. Wait until you are 40 to start complaining."

Then with a smile, she added, "Until then, just try your best."

But I know better. I know that a little while ago, the woman was saying to a 46 year-old man, "Now, sir, it is too late to complain. You are old enough to know, mature enough to understand. So please, don't complain. STOP."

Then yesterday, the woman was saying (I overheard) to a 40 year-old woman, "Now, ma'am, you should wait a year or two, just a year or two, before you start saying bad things about XYZ. You need slightly more experience, and life experiences, to be able to say such things"

The next moment, the woman, not the 40 year-old but the dictatorial one, was saying to another 40 year-old woman, "Nancy, dear, you've lived enough to know. When you're 40, you'll know better than to complain. You'll know it's better to keep at it, without complaining."

But I will complain, oh yes I will, no matter how old I may be, or how young. I will complain that the ship is sinking. And that it might be too late.

Then, I will make my escape. Everyone, follow me.

If you'd like. It's now, or never.

Song

Degrees of fate

Sometimes,

Song is the only remedy

The One

The dark one has it all inside, memories and thoughts.

The Blade

Sadness shines like a kite,

A blade, a stone, a cabinet.

Too fatigued for words, you search for meaning in the emptying well of your brain.

No, that's not it. That's not it.

No?

You need a wall on which to hang a lot of pictures.

Pictures.

Pictures stop the world from bleeding, and paint is an antidote to all that is shed.

The answer?

The answer lies at the back of my eyes, where I cannot see it.

You say: "The world is food I cannot eat,

Cannot grasp, cannot take."

Such cruelty no longer surprises me.

I would like to spend a lazy summer afternoon, seeped in hot, sweet iced tea.

Under the grass, inside the glass, and above,

In the exhaust

Where everybody knows that a good song starts, must always start, in pain.

Blades of grass shoot away to form a giant drape that hangs over the world in thirty, forty flaps.

Fifty flaps, and more.

Good-bye, blade.

You are so high up and floating, like rain clouds in the sky.

The Sea

The sea took me to an island.

The island took me to the sea.

The tide keeps changing, and I, too.

Gogol

"My brain is a frozen brain, devoid of life," Gogol said.

Gogol talks funny.

"Is that true, Gogol?" I asked. It startled me to think that someone as alert and as thoughtful as Gogol would be frozen in the brain. Unthinkable, of all people.

But here he was--or she was, for that matter, since I never knew Gogol's gender--complaining that his or her brain was devoid of life.

All but impossible. But true. Perhaps.

Gogol revealed to me then that he or she was suffering from a physical ailment. And the physical ailment was what had shrouded Gogol's brain in a thick, freezing mist.

"In some people," Gogol said, "physical stress induces mental clarity and well-being."

I nodded.

"But in me, the opposite," Gogol said. "Physical stress wreaks a very adverse effect on my mentality. I don't know why."

I didn't know, either. Nonetheless, I felt bad for Gogol.

Then the conversation turned to whether it is possible to exist as a person inside books.

"Of course, it must be possible," Gogol said. But Gogol was careful to say "must be" instead of "is."

"You know," Gogol said. "Some answers are just impossible to be completely sure of. This is one of those."

I urged Gogol to go on.

Gogol obliged and said, "It is entirely natural to want to pull out hair, especially if it is sticking out by itself. But sometimes, just sometimes, you cannot pull it out. You may not even be able to tug at it."

"We are always trying to pull out hairs, in one way or another," I suggested.

Gogol thought for a moment, and said, "Yes, yes. I think ultimately, we want to get to our brains. Or get at our brains, perhaps I should say. In my case, to or at my frozen brain."

Suddenly, I didn't know what to do, and so I ran away.

The next day, Gogol had turned to ice. Impossible but true, a chilling story in the heat of summer.

Ice Cream

Whenever someone made her angry, she said, "Thank you."

She didn't thank the person, oh no, and she never said it loud enough to be heard.

But she said it, and as she was saying it, she always knew she would survive.

That is, survive her anger, live longer than her anger.

She would outlive her anger.

Already the anger was not hers, it was someone else's, and now, she was just walking barefoot on a mound of soft clay and ice--mmm, anger! mmm, ice cream!

Someday

Oh, never relent. Oh, never relent.

Someday, you will have to relent.

So never relent, while you can't.

Stars Inside

If you want to be intellectual, what can you do?

Where should you be?

On the island, or off the island? In the sea among green and orange waves, or on the shore, sprinkled with glass and silver?

Should you move? Should you swim? Should you fish or hunt? Or sleep all day? Then you cannot eat.

Like a starfish, I extend the palm of my mind in five different directions. When I stretch, I see the stars clicking inside in the most chilling, but alluring way. Where should I go? What should I be?

But then it is not about where or what. Or when, as long as you can stretch. In five different directions, that is, as I said above.

Wherever I go, whatever I'm doing, whenever I'm doing it, as long as I am stretched in five different directions and seeing the stars inside go whooomm, I'll be okay, I'd like to think.

A Camera

A most amazing flower, flowers, showers, flowers.

Leaves, oh leaves! Most terrible leaves at the back of my mind.

Look, a camera, does nothing but look!

Imaginings

What is hidden inside your bald, shaved head?

Do you hide nothing behind your violent façade?

Could you be a starving monk shouldering a day job, to contemplate by night?

Why does no one bring you food and all the sustenance a man needs?

And why, if I may ask, did you become a monk in the first place?

Did you inherit a temple, or had you an experience so devastating beyond my, or anyone's, comprehension?

Perhaps I am making unwanted waves in the reflections of your happy face, which you had directed not at me, but at the children, your customers.

Theory

Why does no one believe me?

The Tale of Genji was written in 1783 by a group of highly educated but debaucherous monks over the course of four summers. Everyone says the novel was written in the 11th century. But that's part of the novel, as it were - it's fiction. The non-fiction part is the debaucherous monks, but they did everything they could to mask their identity. Good job, sirs. And if I may add, there were two female writers among them. They did not pour tea.

Lady Murasaki, the purple one, is a dead person. As soon as one is dead, one becomes a fictitious character. Is this not true?

However, Mr. Goode, the 3rd grade teacher, says, "Don't make things up."

But, oh, isn't it almost better to make things up than to get the facts wrong? How accurate can you be when you are talking about someone who lived in the 11th century?

Not very.

Please, don't be fooled. It's better to fool than to be fooled. Fiction is an antidote to all the trickery-mockery in the world.

Don't you know?

The final word Michael Jackson uttered was: "Joker."

How do you know? No, no!

Puala

Is your name Paula?

No, Puala. Puala Mendinguez:

I have a daunting day ahead,

My brain feels dead, like a stone

But my heart isn't sinking.

Inside, I feel like a bird on her toes, getting ready for - not a fall, not a fall.

Isocrates

Isocrates, not to be confused with Socrates.

Isocrates was a rhetorician, teacher-businessman, and possibly a student of Socrates, or at least an acquaintance.

If Socrates is the father of philosophy, Isocrates is the father of education, apparently.

And you can see in Plato's Phaedrus, that even though the (1+i)Socrates had been friends, they were also enemies; even though they were enemies, they had been friends.

Philosophy and education.

Plato has Socrates, the philosopher, say: "May I consider the wise man rich."

Then Plato has Socrates add, like an afterthought: "As for gold," oh, as for gold, "Let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him."

Let education teach this to every student, every pupil, every learner.

Let him, her, shim/sher know that wealth, external, material wealth, that is, is a burden, not wings.

But then Isocrates, the educator, was not really a philosopher, apparently. He had turned education into a lucrative, money-making business.

Really, tuition should be free. Art museums and concerts should be made free. Then the wealthy could ease their burden--yes, their burden, their wealth--by donating to the teachers, artists, and those who provide administrative or logistical support.

Because art is philosophy.

And because gold is a burden, like weights, stones, and sorrow.

An Impossibility

KOTORI: Would I have gone to war, if I had been given a chance? DeeDee, do you think I would have? Or, do you think that I could have?

DEEDEE: (Says nothing.)

KOTORI: Oh yes, absolutely.

DEEDEE: (Suddenly rising to her feet) To prove yourself to those who said you were too weak. To prove yourself to yourself.

(They walk toward a small stream and gaze at the water.)

DEEDEE: Then, would you have killed? That's what they do in wars, apparently.

KOTORI: Yes, but no, I wouldn't have killed. I would have killed myself or been killed by my fellow men and women before I could kill anyone else. That much, I know.

DEEDEE: And killing is only a small part of wars, supposedly.

KOTORI: But I would still go to war. That's how much I need to see it, with my own eyes. I cannot trust what I see and hear in books, through books. I need to taste the dirt in my own mouth.

DEEDEE: You will, you certainly will, if you go to war. Would you really go to war?

KOTORI: Yes, I would.

DEEDEE: But then, you couldn't. How could you, when you would kill yourself first, before killing anyone else? You would be long gone then, before you had spent any significant amount of time in the war.

KOTORI: Yes, that's fine. That's how I envision it.

DEEDEE: No, no, but it's impossible. It's a logical impossibility. It doesn't hold.

KOTORI: Right, that's perfectly right. But I'm still going to make it hold together.

DEEDEE: Okay, but no one will know. No one will understand.

KOTORI: Sure, that would be an understatement, but sure, that's how I envision it.

DEEDEE: (To the audience) Kotori will fly away.

(Kotori flies away, leaving DeeDee by the stream.)

Doubles

Loss of face, loss of a finger ensues, and Sabina grates her teeth against the metal bar.

Grating her teeth, Sabina asks, "Am I invincible?"

Far away in the distance behind a cornroot tree, Sabina's half-sister, Moon, yawns, "Am I invisible?"

Sabina takes a bite out of the cake; Moon takes a smaller bite out of the same cake.

They both eat cake, the two half-sisters.

Where were their mother and the two half-fathers, or their father and the two half-mothers? They had no one to tell them.

Hand in hand, the half-sisters ask, "Am I invisible? Or am I invincible?"

Together, they sing in low, impossibly soft voices, "We are invincible. But also invisible."

Running

You have exhausted yourself. Yet, instead of sinking, you grow in size, like a pear.

No longer the firm you you used to be, with outlines bolder than this small piece of rock, which I am holding in my hand, and is disappearing, all of a sudden, like shadows turning into sunlight.

But you are growing. All of a sudden, you grow. Then, I no longer know you whom I have known for eight years, ten, eleven years. Or more.

Back to the solitude of the grassy summer, when you, whom I had known for a long time, passed and glided by without any greetings.

Oh, please, wake up! The novel has just ended and you, my friend, are quite at a loss as to what to do. March, parade.

Walk through the rain, and be happy.

The Wall

Paul talked to the wall, a wall.

As he was walking past, he said, looking at the wall, "How do you find the current state of affairs?"

The wall did not answer. It simply stood firm and wide, as Paul passed by.

"A dead-end," it might have said. But it didn't say.

It couldn't have said, "An opening." Where the wall ended, there was a small path leading up to a vague darkness.

Paul missed the wall.

Rain

Rain, I am hungry.

Rain, I am overfed.

Rain, I have never felt this bad.

Rest

Violin sounds.

And now, I've forgotten the rest.

Sofya's tired eyes rest on mine. My eyes, inscrutable, rest on hers.

Agitated, in the agitation of day, I've forgotten everything. Everything, I have forgotten.

Let all experience inspire you. Don't let it stifle you. And the reason why I've kept experience in the singular is because all experiences are tied: connected but bound, truthful but all so full of lies. In the end, it is you who must remain.

Then a respite, in a slowly retreating cascade.

The Name

"Yolanda," David called.

David had called, "Yolanda."

In the distance, a yacht drifted, leaving a singlemost star.

By the way, you shouldn't refer to these passages for exemplary usages of English, the English language. For that, go to the New York Times, or any of the respected newspapers. They will have the answers for you. Usually.

My island, our island, is where confusions and mistakes are not shunned. Trees grow, leaves scatter, and especially, palm trees stand still in a jagged line. And yet, the world is not perfect.

The world is not perfect.

Could he have called out, "Jocasta"? Vaguely he remembered the countours of a queen's head, buried in a pack of playing cards.

The continents, the continents. They confused him. They pushed him, shoved him, and also cajoled him. Those blocks of land, those blocks of clay, how could they exist? How do they not dissolve in the churning oceans? How do they not sink under the pressure?

David came to the island. He vaguely missed the continents and their faceless faces. Calling out the name, he knew, in that moment that was like a spark, that the island could disappear now, or never. And no one would ever know, or even remember.

Happiness

I worry. I worry about cell phones overtaking the world.

In my mind, I can imagine a cell phone the size of a person hugging me in my sleep and waking me up in the morning.

In fact, my cell phone already does that. It's just that it hasn't reached the size of a person yet.

But soon enough. Soon, it will.

For one, I worry about cell phones replacing books: paperbacks, notebooks, handbooks.

The new book, as it were, will be able to talk, and on top of that, you will be able to talk into it.

A revolution!

Many years ago, books replaced people. Living people, and the poets and the musicians in them. Silent books replaced the living, beating hearts of singing, dancing people.

O technology, you are like art. You are never happy with yourself.

Just be.

The Worst

Crippled in both legs, I run across the field in search of the worst.

The worst.

The most wonderful worst.