Thursday, August 27, 2009

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.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

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

Friday, August 21, 2009

Mirrors

The curious mirroring of syllables--

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

Did I say, Good and Bad?

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Raindrops

Raindrops replacing raindrops

Sameness and difference fuse into one

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

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?

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

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

Monday, August 17, 2009

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

Friday, August 14, 2009

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

Thursday, August 13, 2009

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.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

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.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Weddings

I don't want normal weddings.

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

Sunday, August 2, 2009

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.