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.