A Sore Throat and More

Memoirs of diseases, records of ailments

Why do they abound in literature?

Notwithstanding the self-evident truth that all diseases must be averted at all costs, or even obliterated,

Notwithstanding the axiom that good health is the greatest of all gifts,

The state of being sick transports us to another realm

Transfixes us in an oblique light

Makes us float nude down the Seine, as it were

Turns us into rain, transforms us into an airy mist

As long as we survive the night, that is.

Autumn

I cannot hold my breath, and then there was autumn. Autumn, which ought to have long passed. It clouded my windows with its touch. If the Earth has to die, it will be in autumn.

Season's Greetings

Music is soothing because it progresses in one direction only

Keeping in time, even when the harmonies are complex and the colors wild

But what happens when the music ends?

I am lost, utterly lost, in the brightness of day

Closing my eyes, I see clouds billowing

They travel in every direction, to the right, to the left, crisscrossing

The wind does not carry the clouds; the clouds carry the wind

The clouds, too, keep in time, but inaudibly

Except when it rains

Snow, too, is music...

To Editors of the World

Yodel said: "Oh editors, please eat my cheese;

Please bore more holes through my cheese,

So that I may see more clearly."

Multa said: "How can you be so sarcastic?"

Yodel disappeared into the Alps to make more cheese.

Multa said: "The Alps? People certainly make cheese in other places, too. Why the Alps?"

Yodel returned to being milk, and then grass.

Multa said: "How unscientific. And distasteful."

Yodel was never a thing; it has always been and will be a voice, a harp singing in the wind.

To Be Continued

It is too easy to despair,

To fall into despair and to keep falling,

Until your knees buckle and

You begin to see your father's face as some distant object

But on the other side of the screen, you do know that

A world, some world, exists

Do twigs fall out of despair?

No, they fall with gladness - Zhuangzi knows.

And the carp, too, sing their own songs.

Clouds

Pyrus: What is happening to my mind? It is all clouded over, too well protected from the sun. It doesn't burn anymore, as it used to. Doesn't get scorched, or pierced by the moon any longer. I have ceased to feel, and know it is because of the ticking clock. No tears, no words.

Tyrol: That is a lie, a lie! You lie, you feeling thing, you sentient, joculating being. Your mind is hardly protected from that light bulb, aye, let alone the sun!

Pyrus: But the clock!

Tyrol: The clock is in your heart. And it never rushes. Even when it's beating like mad, how incredibly slowly it keeps time, compared to, say, a mouse's heart, or a fly's.

Monsieur Bushy

Shallowness, I would be so happy if you could stay in my bathtub

Or in my plate of soy sauce;

Why do they criticize Monsieur Bush so much?

Granting that Monsieur Bushy needs to examine the root-causes of the criticisms directed against himself,

We do, too.

Why don't they ask why, really why, an American president had no choice but to turn so paranoid,

So fearful and fearless all at the same time?

Of course, determinism is bad and Monsieur Bush may have less intelligence than an apple (what is intelligence?).

But why do so few see beyond the wallpaper, however tasteful?

Monsieur Bushy is crying, voicelessly;

His manly chest heaves with each sob.

Millennia

Pilippett sang: "Inert as a rock, I sit

But why did I think rocks were inert?

They are changing, slowly, millennium by millennium

Why can't animals and plants also be part of geological time?"

Why the need to rush and be rushed?

Confucius, You Amuse Me

Confucius, you amuse me with your outward diffidence,

When you said only the heavens truly understood you,

That really no one around you knew you well.

What cheerful desolation: why not choose the whole universe over a mediocre world?

If you had felt as if your life had been a failure, Confucius,

That is why your words still continue to make music in our ears, even today.

Still a petty world, but the skies have never been so immense.

Raindrops

I have said, again and again, that paths are never fixed, like rivers. Rivers change their courses all the time, with each sip of tea that you take, there, here. I have said, time and again, that real answers are incomplete ones, unfinished, and always needing work. Otherwise, they would all be lies, flat lies. Have I stressed, over and over, the importance and the difficulty of solitude, of remaining aloof enough so that you can exist, regardless of whether people see you or not.

Elemental

Rainfall, silence, I cannot sleep

Poetry, there is too much poetry in this world

Sleepless poems and dry throats

My Refuge

Gutenberg said: "I am too harsh, too harsh in a world that is already too harsh."

A deep hole only deepens, and a blue flower only becomes bluer.

The laundry bag is my refuge.

Everyone Is Floating

Idioms elude me. Idioms, as in the basic rules of speech and conduct in human society. I never know how to smile.

Details fly away like birds. Roots turn into clouds, but fail to precipitate: If there is no gravity, the atmosphere evaporates. If g=0, then cantbreath/e <>

I am thinking of the impossible scenario, in which people and houses, flora and fauna, soil and lakes, start floating upward, with much serenity as violence, into the sky. But if I am floating, too, then I will never know that the whole world was also floating.

I am a bad passenger, questioning the integrity of my own vehicle.

Night

I have been tired for a day and a half, and now I have stuffed myself, with jam tomato juice jambon lime half-moons curry mango mutton bread yogurt bread salad oil tea water air the sky the universe the sun and night. Fountains rise and fall in the dark, and you, light-eyed but deep in the shadows, are waving to a group of squirrels who have appeared on the surface of the moon.

Words

Words, you never see me pass through life

Thinking about you

Worrying that you might one day finally suffocate me

With your cruel aftertaste, oh words

You completely defy the mirror's attempts to intervene

And defy the reader's flaying arms

My nose does not smell you, words

Even when you are there, and are burning like incense

So I breathe you in and out, through my ears

As if each of you were a song, a serenade

Undecidability

Laisse-moi tranquille, je suis bovin.

Je mastique, et mastique encore.

I have forgotten how to swallow.

Violet and Vuvu

Violet sang: "When does anger turn into violence? Automatons are full of anger, and they, devoid of life, slash and kill. Each of us carries an automaton within us, or two, or more. The automatons, they never sleep. They have never lived. But they form a part of us."

Vuvu then whispered: "Does violence clear away the anger that thickens, immeasurably thickens, our brains so much that we eagerly stop thinking? Yes, it does, and that is the problem."

I Love Chilli

I love chilli too much.

I love chilli too much.

I love chilli and chilli too much.

Cogito

I cannot be sure, ergo sum.

Why don't I have a job, Marionette?

Eating ice cream makes me happy. Most of the time.

Modes of Travel

As much as I love to travel,

Far and near,

I may still prefer a life of reading

To a month spent abroad,

Or to a year-long post across the sea,

Over mountainous terrain:

Reading is as good a mode of transportation as can be.

Isn't it?

Grandma said: "Good is not a word."

Chemicals Dua

What was I trying to say? Or rather, what was Quiti trying to say? I suppose she was trying to say that each chemical, even a chemical, has a life of its own. That chemicals are not simply chemicals. They undergo many changes, whether they like it or not; they bond and disband, dance and sleep. They have voices, faces, and feet. If I were a bag of chemicals, then I should be very content.

Chemicals

Quiti sang: "There are clouds, yonder, where my grandmother lives. Apple trees and orchards, they form a reddish cloud together. Blue storms and fire, a green one. High above the telephone poles, the sky rang. Then an emptiness came over me like a raincloud. Something fell, and I began to smell chemicals all around me. The chemicals seemed to be all around me. They swallowed and embraced me. They were my only friends, my jewels. They never came to see me; they always ambushed me. When I tried to hunt them down, they scattered back into their boxes on the Periodic Table. They were too small for me to see, and yet I was small enough for them. They tried to choke me at the same time as they nourished me, half-reluctantly, almost by accident. They said to me, 'You are just a bag of chemicals.' I couldn't say anything. I was too sleepy and dumb to say anything, and knew that the chemicals in my brain were inducing the sleepiness and my own stupidity.... I will not be defeated, I decided, but the hills, the verdant hills, all around sang to the chemicals, and the shifting sunlight seemed to nod in proud agreement, more often so than in disagreement. The sky was now a bright pink. 'Was it a sunset?' I asked. 'Maybe,' Drew answered. 'Perhaps my eyesight has deteriorated?' I asked again. This time, a goldfish answered, 'Perhaps, perhaps not.' Then I asked, 'Is the world coming to an end?' With no pause in between, I said, 'Decidedly not.' I then asked, 'Am I really just a bag of chemicals?' I had to answer this question myself. 'No, no!,' I said, hurriedly. 'I am not a bag of chemicals. Instead, I am a chemical of bags, or better yet, an alchemy of bags. Full of bags, I fly around like a chemical, sometimes sit underground for many years like a chemical, and jump, consume, and am consumed like a chemical, all very clumsily because of the weight of all the bags I carry, and because the alchemical processes in my heart slow me down, for better or for worse.' I may be a ghost. Or a monster."

One breath, two breaths. A breath-ful of chemicals is what tells a story and sings many a song in the evening air.

Mountain

Because they/we don't understand,

And they/we pretend to be not pretending to understand,

They/we hang on to little ends of words randomly,

Without realizing that they/we have instead actually stepped

On the foot of a beautiful man or woman,

or chanced upon a mountain a thousand years old.

Confusionius Said

Lost, again lost, forever lost, foie gras.

Depressed, always depressed, still depressed, Denpasar.

Eating, every day eating, never not eating, music.

Confusionius said:

"The universe is wide; how can you not get lost?

"The heart does have a broad range of channels; how can depression not be one, or actually, several, of them, just like there's CNN, BBC, and ABC?

"You find yourself again when eating. When you eat, you cheer up, whether you like it or not.

"Then you fall again. But falling is not the same as failing. With each fall, your vision improves. You fail when you do not take a fall."

Swing

Qiu qian (秋千): thousand in autumn, oh swing.

Swinging back and forth, high above the millennial mountains and glaciers,

People and houses;

Or low, in between the legs and just barely above the toes.

Swinging, now this side, now that side,

There and there always, never here.

Absent is the gentleness of my grandfather's rocking chair.

The 20th Century Clogged My Toilet

The 20th century has become a kind of Costco for us. We go there for everything. Everywhere else we assume is dirtier, moldier, not as efficient, without looking. The 20th century is an important century, but foremost because it has prevented us, or at least me, from being able to see far and wide, beyond the windshield and my computer screen. Our century, the 21st, need not be a continuation of the previous century. In fact, time is a hungry rabbit. It jumps around, and lives in the woods somewhere. It goes on vacation during the winter, except when it ventures out on secret runs across the snowy plain.

The Proverbial Reversal of Fate

Putting one foot forward, you slipped, fell (rather dramatically), and found, in a dusty corner of the floor, the 100-yen coin you had always been looking for, without knowing.

Q&A

Q: In my head, I kept screaming, "I cannot accept." What couldn't I accept?

A: Ask yourself.

Q: Let me see...the fact that I was screaming, "I cannot accept." That's what I couldn't accept.

A: Then which came first, your screaming or your not being able to accept the screaming?

Q: You are not allowed to ask any questions.

A: Yes, I am.

Q: No, you are not. You only provide the answers. So no questions, please.

A: Fine. I am flipping myself over and also get rid of my midriff. Wait a moment, please.

V: Hello. Now I can ask questions, can't I?

Q: Who are you?

V: Can't you see? I am an upside-down A with no midriff.

Q: What? It's not fair. An A is forever an A.

V: Not true. Sometimes, you've just got to flip yourself over, and change into something else. Not that you become a different person. Indeed, just the opposite. You flip and change so you can hold on to the things that are most important to you. And you never answered my question.

Q: I can't because I'm a Q. Not fair at all, not fair....

A: You know what? I'm going for a swim. When I come back, I expect to meet a Mr. O.

Q: Now you've insulted my tail!

A: Not at all, and you see you can't go on living just asking questions. You know that better than anyone else...splash.

Greenery

Ideas vanished on the ground like raindrops and still they rose, like clouds. Far in the distant parts of your mind, crows are cawing and small, flashing butterflies concretize the passing of time in second-flaps. Summer day, and I already long for the warmth of winter. Green things are everywhere, and I have noticed, even my fingers have turned a green color.

Giving Up

Mercury dreams of the day when

Giving up is no longer a sign of weakness, or indifference,

But becomes a defiant act, an act of determination and strength;

When giving up becomes a gesture of giving,

A sign of genuine generosity, an open heart

And up, up, up, the heart goes

The heart which has given up

Instead of down, it rises with what it has given up.

Such things are possible in the erratic stratosphere

Of the Mercurial paradise:

Like a bubble (a belch, a fart), a relief

And a statement.

I Don't Care

I don't care if this music comes from Europe or anywhere. Surely, music comes from nowhere but the heart? And the "heart" cannot be inside any geographical jurisdiction but some place else.

Robert Schumann's Fantasy in C (1836) rendered by Alicia de Larrocha:

Mirrors

"So many books, so little time."

Not enough time to read all them books.

Flip it.

People have managed to pen so many books, despite all the limitations of life, including time.

Flip it again.

If you don't have time to read those books, someone will in the future. So keep them. Keeping is reading; saving is sharing.

Egyptian Song

A bouquet of flowers stands on my head;

My head cannot nourish you, flowers

Let me bring you a vase, filled with the tears of everyone who has cried today.

Petunias

What a month, May -

The sunlight kills,

and the rapidly rising heart in the sky blocks my daylight vision,

but not my oneiric one:

Long live dreams, flirtatious and bright,

far in the Republic of Thought.

Defecation

Each step seems as if it were an irreversible step, now that I have finally come to terms with my own bestiality. I would like to adopt a more vegetative form of existence: leaves fall, new shoots will grow. But as it is, I cannot stop eating, and the eating never stops. And eating is moving.

Plottinus

Greenough sang:

"Let us do away with plots;

Plots mislead us

When they smile, they aren't smiling, really

When they look sad, we become completely their prey

I know

Life is plot-less

Only the flower pots are real.

Away from plots, I say

Because they mislead, breed hatred, misunderstanding

They hand out false hope as if it were free money

Like it was good music (or something. . .)

But no, I say no, I only care about franky-frank truths!

No more hanky-panky straight-looking but crooked lines, please. "

Accordingly, flowers flew and birds bloomed.

Confused as a Pie

Like on any other day, I ate a pie and I knew the pie was confused. Very confused. The dough was soft, but the creamy filling was so thick and dense, I knew the pie had been thinking very hard. First, the pie had to keep track of dates. It had to arrange the years and months, rearrange, and rearrange again. It knew that time, as a concept, was becoming no longer manageable. Then it had to think and think again about where it was going, but the choices that seemed available were: a) get eaten or b) rot. How it wished it could turn into a bird, or something. Devise a plan c. But the bird, too, could get eaten or be rotten, or both.

The pie sank into itself, like night falling on the ocean, and it stayed very quiet and still. Perhaps that was shortly after the journey to the oven.

When the sun hit the ocean and happy music began to fill the air, the pie was no longer there. It was there, but it was besides itself. It knew some digestive tract was going to find and eat it, but it hadn't been eaten yet, and so it was somehow hopeful that it would escape its fate. And in a way, it did. Right as I bit into the pie, the pie grew into a metallic flying saucer, a crazy U.F.O., zigzagging across the sky at amazing speeds. By disappearing into the clouds, it had handed on its confusion to me, the survivor. The confusion tasted very sweet in my mouth, and it has taken me months, years, to digest it. In a way, I will never digest it fully. It has left my digestive tract, to accumulate on the surface of my eyes, in my ears, on top of my head. And I am trying to share the fact that I have this confusion still left with me, handed to me by a simple pie, because I believe, or am actually certain, that there are other unassuming pie-eaters who, like I, spend restless nights, unable to sleep or fly, slowly enduring the sickening sweetness of confusion.

Midnight Chirpings

The human voices coming out of my headphones

Abandoned on a desk, away from my ears, at midnight

Sound like birds chirping on the street, in the sun.

Birds talk, I'm sure; they do not just chirp

But their speaking voices are simply inaudible to us humans.

Humans chirp, too, if one adopts a bird's ears.

Our voices are also inaudible outside of our limited,

Very limited circle, except as incomprehensible songs,

Repetitions, melodies, cries.

One can only hope that humans chirping are at least

Half as pleasant as the singing birds whose unmoving eyes

Glitter and turn into the wet stones that have sunk and come to rest

On a cold river bottom.

Headaches Return

Midori said, "What seems good long-term is bad short-term. What seems bad short-term is good long-term."

Potteri asked, "Wait, so what's long-term is always good?"

Midori replied, "Indeed what's long-term is always good. That's what 'long-term' really means...."

Midori then added, "The question is if one is able to withstand the loneliness that is associated with any long-term kaleidoscopes."

Potteri interjected, "What do you mean by long-term kaleidoscopes?"

Midori apologized, "Sorry, I use the word kaleidoscopes in place of other words, when I can't find any names for them. But in fact, I'd like pretty much everything to be a long-term kaleidoscope."

Potteri chanted: "To be good or not to be."

Midori went to bed.

Mark Twain said: "Be good and you will be lonely."

"Kaleidoscopes," Midori muttered in her sleep.

Loneliness seems good for a while, but is not sustainable. What's good always breaks down - but that is the short-term. In the long-term, what is broken is broken; what is not is not. Is change always bad? Yes, in the short-term. But in the long-term, change has a way of reappearing in the most unexpected places: oh gladness, fresh morning. It is not forgetting; it is remembering. I must begin wearing multiple watches, all hands pointing toward different hours in extra-temporal, inter-dimensional disunity.

Mouse and Wall

Sometimes the wall seems too high, too thick

VVVThicke like a neck

VVVVVVand long, too long

There is, I know, a mouse who lives

VVVin my tummy, a-going, a-growing

Like a sprout.

Someday the mouse

VVVwill nibble through the wall

The wall like cheese

VVVVVVoh sneeze

The wind blows, a-blows, ablaze

VVVThe sun smiles, Philosopher, the sun smiles

VVVOh yes, even if the sun isn't a person.

The More I Read

The more I read the more the world turns and begins turning into a wide mushroom blur. The colors a swish, the moonlight a gobble. The sense that the world consists of discernible images - past, present, future - teeters and stands as if on top of a pine tree. Then that tree becomes a needle and punctures the sky, which is really a soft blanket covering the sole of someone's foot in another time and age. The danger of unreason unleashes neither pain nor pleasure but sleeplessness. Not even insomnia, just sleeplessness. The beautiful fatigue of a cloud that says: as soon as you close your eyes, the world vanishes. The sounds you hear, they come from another time. In the markets, you see people's faces and remember everything. You never forgive. In the dream realm, you begin to see without seeing, find without finding, say without saying. Meat turns into brownstone, and this kind of thing, small and incredible, receives no attention today. Don't shock me again, pal: when I said the ground moves and breathes, I meant it. It was half seismology. And half animism. But it was mostly: intuition.

Throaty Sore

Dragging a dagger across a plowed field

The cold virus draws a picture of a whale

On the inflamed surface of my throat.

Endless days, e-mails:

No sleep, but no sleep.

In a Garden

I am struck by the way gardens and rivers and flowers fill the emptiness left by disasters. They grow and fill, and cover everything up in their business. Bees mill about, and clouds float high above the fences. The water does not reflect; it shines. The green and the musk fill the air, and you are transported to timeless spring.

Maugre's Song

Maugre sang, plucking on a banjo:

"I'm so dumb, but yeah,

That's me.

The sky looms too large

And the ground too low.

But the accumulation of time

Like clouds, oh, thin air -

I am talking to thin air,

Peopled with a million voices.

The wind makes music in my ear,

In my year, never-ending, here on Earth."

Prolepsis

Imagine tomorrow:

And that tomorrow, imagined, will have already happened.

A mistake, many mistakes:

Once you have thought of them, you will have made them, learned from them, and moved on.

Memory works in advance:

You remember, in anticipation of tomorrow, which has already passed.

Heteronomy

Autonomy and heteronomy;

We live as we dream*, uncontrollably.

The self misfires;

The other is part of the self;

Boxed in, torn boxes, flapping in the wind boxes;

The wind catches fire, and burns;

Rain falls, and makes us cold.

* "We live as we dream - alone." Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.

L'infini

L'amertume me consume

Dans le douceur d'un fruit :

La terminaison d'un aboutissement

Qui finit par finir, comme l'infini.

Sand

Sometimes, I do not know if there are tears in my eyes

Because I am sleepy, or

Because I know sadness, loneliness -

"Oh, it's just sand," Pyotr said.

Vote Woes

"What is the relationship between democracy and statistics?" Fuentes asked. She was not talking about statistics on democracy. Her question had to do with the underlying democratic assumptions shaping the statistical approach - i.e. include all 'individuals' by reducing them to tiny, equal units, and count 'em!

"Well yes," Fuentes said, "I know that's not real democracy either. But isn't that how it's practiced in actuality?"

Three days later, Fuentes was cooked by the democratic stove. The statistical machine counted her as 1 victim among 3,000,000,000,000 victims. "But she will be missed," the democratic voice recorder blurted out. The voice recorder broke after 2,999,999,999,999 times. The bell curve fell through the cracks. "Oh," Fuentes said from above with disinterest, "bye, statistics."

Eyes

Pages of your new book glimmer

In the way of snow

It isn't the color

It is the sparkle

Of your own eyes

Astray

I want to be away,

Look here, a star

Gone astray.

The Right to Write

I was surprised to learn that Amy Bishop had been a writer. A serious writer, in fact. What a writer needs most is patience. Someone should have told her that. John Irving should have told her. Had he? Amy Bishop would have been able to figure out everything on her own about agents, about writing, and making it commercially successful. What she needed most, instead, was patience, which is what every writer needs. Nothing in the world is worth obliteration. Didn't she know? Patience doesn't just mean a caring attitude. It also means making a cruel, nihilistic attitude truly one's own. That's the difficulty of patience. As a writer, she must have been extremely sensitive to the injustices all around her, and most of all, to her own sense of powerlessness. Oh, who isn't powerless? But she lacked patience, and that is her own fault. An impatient writer! Pff, that is not a writer. I know Amy Bishop had the potential to create real literature. She had everything, including the misery and the stupid pride and the family and the dark-dark-dark past and intelligence and failure and fate and frustration, lots of it, and ambition and dreams and dispair and an asinine spouse and schizophrenia and imagination and terrible stupidity docked with strange genius, all EXCEPT PATIENCE! Someone, oh please, tell her in jail that what she needed was patience. She has to find out. But now, it is too late. Too late, even to have patience. Stupid professor. That is pathetic. She should have told herself she was a writer first, and a professor second, no matter how the world viewed her. Then, she might have figured out in time that what she needed badly was patience, and as a writer, she was going to have to work on acquiring patience, bit by bit. But instead, she looked the other way. Like a very careless driver. Is it too late for her to write now? I would like to say, quiet, no. Everyone's got to have a chance at writing, even a criminal and murderer. But the world will emphatically say: YES, IT IS TOO LATE FOR HER. She has even lost the right to write. She has killed herself (oh yes, she did), and taken the others with her against their will, for her lack of patience. Why, an impatient person has no right to write. No write to right.

Limited

Lesotho has mountains, snow, beautiful rondavels,

It is a kingdom

A kingdom of letters,

A neutral state,

The humble one, though

HIV and marijuana are there, too

Then stepping into South Africa,

Oh braai, I may try the monkeygland sauce,

But would like to fly also to Bhutan

And then Switzerland

Connecting the rays, stopping over in

Assam and Piedmont

The Acrobat

Acrobatic, sepak takraw.

Flipping, trembling, rolling as necessary.

Dancing, like a strong insect, or a fish

Out of water but still strong, breathing like a tiger.

Shaw.

Warm words strung together, beads of light.

Muscle strength,

Far, far, away dreams.

Chiara Massini, Harpsichordist

Chiara Massini's harpsichord is the best,

She speaks thze lanzzgzuage so wzezll anzd szhe

zdzazzzznzcze zzzszzzzzzoznzzzzthzezzstzringszzof

zTzimezz szo wezzll

Tzzhe zzoLd zziznstruzzmenzt zzwzhiczhz is nzot

zzSzo ozzlzzd

Buzt is nezw bezczause ozf tzhe dazncing

zzzSzzzPzzzIzzzzzzRzzzzzzzzzIzzzzzzzzzzzzTzzzzzzU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA8LQJypou8

Diri

“I like to be ugly,” Diri told herself. She worked hard to look ugly. And she was fine with that.

“Your name sounds like diarrhea,” Elizabeth-Christine said to Diri.

“Thank you,” Diri said. “Thank you, Elizabeth-Christine.”

Elizabeth-Christine looked startled. “What?” Elizabeth-Christine whispered silently. Then she ran and got behind Diri, and put her hands over Diri’s eyes. She said to Diri, “Diri. You don’t speak English. You don’t understand English. You are dumb, you are quiet, and now look, you are blind. Dumb, quiet, and blind! Hahaha.”

Diri felt tears gathering under her closed eyelids, but she also felt a fart gathering at the end her spine. The tears, they did not go away, but the fart did not, either. Diri, in a desperate fit, let go of Elizabeth-Christine’s hands, and finding a chair directly in front of her, climbed on it, and farted, just in time, right into Elizabeth-Christine’s face.

Elizabeth-Christine smirked. She sighed. Then she gasped, and let out a yelp. She began to cry. Tears flowed freely on Elizabeth-Christine's cheeks. Diri wanted to feel sorry for Elizabeth-Christine, but could not.

“Dumb and quiet,” Diri said.

“Not speaking,” Mrs. Sundrum, the E.S.L. teacher, explained.

Diri drew a flower.

A Curriculum of Questioning: Inquiring the Beyond

“Well,” Mr. Schoonmaker said. “Tom would never be able to survive in a corporate environment if he keeps on questioning too much.”

“Why is that?” Ms. Deacon asked.

“Well,” Mr. Schoonmaker replied. “In the traditional corporate environment, preserving the hierarchical structure of the corporation is ‘key.’ And may I add that all corporations are, by definition, traditional.”

Editor’s Note: Schools can be corporations, too.

Alive!

My body is like a farm;

I finally understand it's alive!

Surrealist Time

I was almost going to miss the bus, but

Caught the handle of my umbrella in the little handle on the side of the bus,

Which never came.

Beep beep, surrealism!!

Disunity

Stranded we stand

Ignored we stand

Hurt we stand

Confused we stand

We, the lonely people

We slipped on a banana.

Ma'am,

"Ma'am, did you order 1,001 ice creams?"

"Yes, dear, what?"

"What what?"

"What what what?"

"What what what what?"

"What what what what, what?"

The ice cream all melted, except for one scoop, which melted soon after.

Zebra

Oh zebra, come to me, oh zebra

Come to me, oh zebra

Zebra, come to me, oh

Stories to Pass On

Genocide, mass murder, human acts of atrocity: they say.

Yogurt said: "But you know. Those things were awful. Terrible. Abominable. And people suffered a lot because of them. They still continue to suffer. Sometimes, animals and plants and fish and stars, too."

Yogurt cried.

Yogurt then said: "But if you highlight people's suffering too much, their suffering because of the genocides, mass murders, and human acts of atrocity, then someone in the future is bound to commit those terrible acts again."

Yogurt said: "You know why? Because human hate knows no bounds. When humans learn that killing and burning can bring about so much suffering, for a while, they will know compassion. But when they are suddenly provoked, and believe they are in danger, they will want to retaliate very aggressively - justly or unjustly, it hardly matters. And if they know that bombing, slashing, cutting, and pillaging will somehow relieve them of their stress, their own inner suffering, their bonds that they can no longer stand, they will really bomb and slash and cut and pillage."

Yogurt added: "Here is the contradiction. Stories of suffering must be passed down. But too much of that breeds more violence. The knowledge of the suffering of others can turn murderous. And yet, stories of resilience are also dangerous. Perpetrators of violence would overestimate their victims' capacity to survive."

So what ought to be passed on, then, is this very conundrum: "Which stories to pass on, and why?"

With the knowledge that not all stories can be passed on. The Ark has a limited hold. Doesn't it?

Soseki's Birthday

Today is Soseki Natsume's birthday.

Happy birthday, Soseki!

Thanks, Google, for the reminder.

I like how the cat has run off with the second "o" and stamped a trail of paw marks on Soseki's manuscripts. But then Soseki's head is the third "o" which shouldn't exist. How eerie!

The cat is, as you know, a reference to I Am a Cat.

Exceptionalism

Exceptionalism is the most dangerous philosophy in the world.

It breeds exclusivity.

Hubris.

Yet we really do mean well when we say, "Well, oh, you are so exceptional."

See: "Not a Mannequin."

Also see: "Role Models (2)."

How to resolve the contradiction?

Will I Beg?

I will beg, in times of absolute need -

Will I beg?

Is begging ignoble?

Would pain crush me?

What is the difference between begging, praying, and swindling?

What is real magic?

Water

I drink water -

But not in order to live longer, necessarily.

Just that water tastes better.

Panini

Are you an Italian sandwich?

No. I’m an Indian Sanskrit grammarian.

Many Islands

eiland ishull الجزيرة Востраў остров illa 岛 otok Ostrov ø saar isla saarelle île Insel νησί lil האי द्वीप szigetet Island pulau oileán isola 島 섬 island sala gżira island جزیره wyspa ilha Insula Остров острво kisiwa ö เกาะ ynys אינזל...

Seemingly many languages, but it's still surprisingly a small number. Just to think that I will not learn most of the languages spoken, or once spoken, in the world.... That tells me that the world of languages will remain largely unknown to me, no matter how comprehensive Compri tries to be. That is, in fact, a liberating thought.

Maybe

Vertege is wondering:

"Is the picture below grotesque?"

Didn't think so; was only thinking of the good chili taste

But 'tis strange how associations operate

In one moment and another,

For one and someone else.

Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, no, yes: maybe (there's always hope).

Dancing Chili

Flying chili on snow - how beautiful.

Happy to be chili, happy to be human, happy to be the snowy ground.

It's as if the chili were born from the sky - the baskets, from which the chili are thrown, are bluer than the sky itself.

Happy to be a shadow, sunlight, the earth.

(Image courtesy of Yomiuri Shimbun)

Fever

Feeling feverish today

Fever m'attrape:

Onetsu.

Rings of apple rinds multiply

Far and near

Your sleep, my sleep, rest

Bien entendu.

Neither the breath, kage, nor corn. The clam.

Toyota-san, Honda-san!

Hello, I'm obsessed about Japan. Sorry!

What is happening to Japanese cars, though? Both Toyota and Honda are recalling their models. What?!

This, I have to say, shows something about what Japan is really up to. The moment of truth...oh, the moment of truth.

I Say

To an endless thing, I say, "Go, fly, don't look down. Just fly, and be well."

I say, "I'll support you from below and behind, when the time comes."

Finally, I say, "I will keep studying, and you, too."

(n0十e tロ ５e1f)

Books that need to be found:

頼山陽　『日本外史』

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

梅棹忠雄　『文明の生態史観』

Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom

十返舎一九　『東海道中膝栗毛』

『今古奇観』

永井荷風　『下谷叢話』

森鷗外　『北条霞亭』

東海散士　『佳人之奇遇』

Božena Němcová, The Grandmother

『1946・文学的考察』

『紅楼夢』

Any Romanian books?

(m0K3 1人Tey)

In the Dark

Misdirection, indirection...

They bring the most bliss, the falling leaf

The floating leaf, the leaf, oh, leaf!

Waiting for the answer, I face the dark forest

In the dark, can I see any faces?

Yes, many. Including your own...

But I am lying.

Instead, I only see leaves, mounds of leaves and leaves.

Schubert

Diri said: "Schubert's music saves me.

From crashing my head through a window."

Endless

The revision of an essay -

It is quite endless!

The Haitian Man

The Haitian man, who was rescued after all this time, from underneath the rubble that had been a grocery store -

I'm certain he never lost hope, even for a single moment

If he faltered, he got back again

Came back to his senses, with an even stronger feeling of hope

Alone in the dark

And yes, the food and drinks he found must have given him hope

But if he hadn't hoped in the beginning, he may not have found all the food and drinks lying around him in the darkness

He may not have found the energy to open that Coke can, to take a sip out of it

To tear the cookie wrappings

Swallow, chew, and live...

No One Wants

No one wants a military base in one's own neighborhood.

It's noisy. Just noisy. Terribly noisy.

I do feel sorry for the people who have to live and breathe next to military bases, every day.

The military stinks. It must stink. All day and all year.

But the current Japanese, and Okinawan, opposition to the U.S. of A. regarding the location of a military base, this opposition is at best an insincere one.

What I mean is that this opposition doesn't innocently reflect the opinions of those people who may have to live and breathe next to a noisy and stinking military base. Well, any sane person would never want to live right next to a military base. The Okinawans have suffered so much already, at the hand of the mainland Japanese.... They have been colonized, brutalized, subjugated, and sucked out over the past 300 or more years, by Japan. Okinawa remains the poorest province in Japan, and that must be because of Japan's long-standing exploitation of it.

But the problem is that this whole issue of the American military base, like most other "issues" out there, is being usurped and manipulated by the ruling party, who just wants more votes. More votes, people! This is the insincerity. No one talks about the Japanese exploitation of Okinawa. Or about how much it sucks to have to live next to an American military base. No thorough discussion, very little explanation and careful weighing of the pros and cons from multiple perspectives.

This party has no principle, has no idea what "politics" is supposed to entail. All they care about is the number of votes.

Politics, oh dear party, politics means leading a good life. Elections are just means to an end, quite obviously! We need a degree of idealism, a sheen of it, all over politics. Not too much, but politicians do need to act like fools who blindly believe in the sanctity of certain ideas and ideals. If not, that is, if you believe more in the value of money, quantity, and plain old dirty power, then go into business, please. You may succeed.

Oh, politicians, they will do anything to secure their votes. They think of votes as assets, not as liabilities and obligations which they really are. They are so short-sighted, they should be given eyeglasses and contacts instead of votes.

Forgetfulness is a curse and a blessing, as the saying goes or doesn't go. Have we forgotten already? Poverty, isolationism, war? But remember, forgetting requires as much work and effort as remembrance. Since the energy required remains the same, why not pick memory over amnesia? Does any human being, or living thing, want to be forgotten? Absolutely not.

The country of Japan is on a road to diplomatic isolation at full speed. Let's put on the brakes, now.

By speaking up and out.

Song

I would like to share this song with you, sung by Sarah Vaughan. The instrumentalists also do a great job, I think. The song is strange and eerie - shadowy, yes. This is music!

The booze part, well, right, the backstage is the backstage.

"The Shadow of Your Smile" (1964)

Addendum (February 10, 2010)
Another amazing song, sung by Sarah Vaughan:

"Stardust"

On Your Bed, In Your Car, and Inside the Washroom

What writing is about...

It is not just about writing.

It is mostly not about writing.

It's an attitude toward life...

Continues 24/7, even in your sleep, especially in your sleep:

Erasing, cutting, scraping off, dodging, going back

But basically "practicing" all the time

Every minute, ideally

Sharpening and calibrating

The truth, many truths

On the margins, in the margin

Sinophone Studies

My hope is for Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese studies to disappear

And fuse together, albeit loosely, into something like

Sinophone studies.

The Sinophone world should not be thought of as a civilizational sphere of exclusivity à la Samuel Huntingon's terrible book, Clash of Civilizations,

But rather an interface

Or a series of interfaces, interlocked and dispersed,

Very diverse and full of discrepancies and difference,

With a common but very divergent root, both real and imagined,

Sometimes unacknowledged or psychologically repressed,

That is the Chinese language,

Understood not just as linguistic conventions, like the Chinese characters,

But also values, shifting across time and space,

Power (political, economic, spiritual), a source of understanding

And misunderstanding, also of PRIDE and PREJUDICE.

The Earth as of now is largely Anglophone,

Whether one likes it or not,

And soon enough, it will turn largely Sinophone,

Although of course,

There will always, always be other worlds

On earth, as it is ....

Addendum (May 24, 2010)

Now that I think of it, I disagree with myself. Sinophone influences have existed and do still exist, but they are not the only, or even central, currents driving us along in East and Southeast Asia. Better just to have "Literature" with a provisionally capitalized L, or better yet, "literatures" - Department of literatures (or Literatures, is that's visually more pleasing) - or, how about just "Litty Depp"?

You: Hi Litty.

Litty Depp: Hello, my name is Litty Depp.

Strangeness

If you were a character in a novel, would you live differently,

Or in the same way?

Doesn't have to be a novel - what about a movie, a song, a TV drama?

These things, imaginary and fictitious;

How they sometimes seem to limit our imagination and our capacity for change

Rather than making them limitless.

"Say," Murundo said, "I would like to create fictional characters who are so unusual and idiosyncratic, that they could not possibly exist anywhere else other than in real life."

Merrilindo said, "Lived life is strangest, and is the best." She added, "Nothing compares to it, nothing."

Will Not Attend

It is very un-smart of the Japanese prime minister not to attend the World Economic Forum at Davos. Let the man go, Parliament*!

Don't they know that leaders are people, too? And that they like to be personally connected with their colleagues? Superficial connections shall suffice.

We are cascading down, down, down. And soon, there will be a brain drain. (I'm talking about Japan, dear.) It would be a pity to lose what we have accumulated. At least, don't make another war as you get poorer, in mind and spirit, please.

*Yes, I know, it's the "Diet" in Japan, not Parliament. The funny word comes from the name of the Holy Roman Empire's congress, Reichstag.

Man

Today I thank the government for the building codes

Tomorrow I will thank the government for guaranteeing the freedom of speech

Still, I am a thankless man

The Two P's

Passion and patience: the two P's.

PP, two P's are sufficient.

I am Laughing

There are people in Japan who, after delivering a very cogent and well-prepared speech, offer an apology and say, "I'm sorry my speech didn't make sense at all. I'm so sorry."

But your speech did make sense! Why apologize? How absurd! Are you mocking all of us? (Well, no. On the contrary, you are trying your best to demean yourself and be socially acceptable.)

Where is your brain? Okay, I will shut up now. I will choose to laugh instead. Ha ha ha.

Caution

We look too much to society for recognition, for approval, even for sources of inspiration (gods are the sources of inspiration, by definition).

Where is introspection today? Why does no one seem to appreciate quiet contemplation under the sky, by the sea, in the mountains?

The guru said: "Common good begins and only begins with inner good." Why does no one hear him?

I am crying, silently.

Tough as a Snail

You know what, I will go slowly. You?

Tough as a Sail

Ptyotr said: "I'm now as strong as a sail. Let the wind come, blow me to pieces. I will still stand."

The wind blew. The sail pushed the boat eastward.

Ptyotr hastened to add: "Yet I must add: I can never be as strong as the wind."

Professional Politics

I can never become a politician because a politician can never say: "I am wavering."

Well, no one is asking. So...okay!

A Day and a Year

Bibi said: "I lie shivering at night, thinking that my thinking will be outdated in just a few years' time."

A day passed.

"But no," Sagen said. "Because thinking goes on in loops."

"Even if you think you might be turning your back to the future," Trennen said, "you are in fact just tracing a circle that goes on and on."

Go-On then cried: "Pi-pi-pi-pi-pi."

And again: "Pi-pi-pi-pi-pi."

A year passed.

At night, Bibi was no longer shivering. In her sleep, Bibi was dreaming. She was dreaming about her thinking, that was still spinning after two hundred years, in the sky, like a system of stars.

Many moons, suns, and rainbows later...

Pepetela

Did you know about Pepetela, an Angolan writer? I didn't.

The whole world of Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) literature beckons....

Did you know that Portuguese is the official language not just in Brazil and Portugal, but also in such diverse places as East Timor, Macau, and of course, Angola, and Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé e Príncipe? I didn't....

Goa (India) and Melaka (Malaysia) are also Lusophone, and so is, perhaps, Gunma (Japan).

I must find Pepetela's novels.

Eu tenho que encontrar seus romances.

Aphorism from Abroad

Your best rival is your past self.

Internal Monologue

I know...let's float! (Je ne plaisante pas.)

Look at the picture. Look at the shadows on the balloons, look!

Regardez !

Image courtesy of www.clusterballoon.org.

On Why I Long for Southeast Asia

• The existence of chili
• The warm air
• Greens, so many greens, on the plate as well as outside
• Ah! multicultural desu ne.
• Well, I haven't been to most places in S.E. Asia, so I should not generalize
• I haven't seen, let alone experienced, how some people live
• But you know
• You know...
• Dark history, you feel it in the window panes
• China, Arabia, India. Europe. Japan. Neighbors. Les indigènes.
• Tiles, oh, tiles!
• Plants grow, oh, plants.
• Rivers are not clear
• Am I simply longing for the expat life?
• Perhaps.
• You know how FOREX works, don't you?
• There is some guilt involved
• O false sense of security, of understanding and communion
• O!
• The darkened, flickering fluorescent lights
• Oh, if we were audacious enough to attribute an at-the-end-of-the-day philosophy to S.E. Asia, I think it could be: Do not sweat the small stuff!
• What do you think?
• The message is: You know, we are on earth, here & now
• People are not looking!
• Even if they were...meh! Hello? Why care? Please be more practical.
• I need to learn that. I mean it.
• MPH (Malaysia)
  
• Gamelan (Indonesia)
• The open air, not in the colonial sense, though...but perhaps a little bit, I don't know
• The smell of morning
• Frozen takoyaki from Japan, that's just nostalgia, or double/triple nostalgia
• Made-in-Thailand ice cream
• Mmm...orange!
• Fading colors
• Concrete blocks
• You don't feel so lost, even if you are
• Scatter, like islands
• Like islands, scatter
• And watch the sea, trees. If not the sea, hills. Dark and light hills. Towers. Dream.
• Where is New York anyway? Lolo said: "To me, my navel is the center of the universe. To you, it may be different." Lolo added: "Don't think that there is only one map of the world." Then Lolo and her friends said in their hearts: "There are many." Lolo then added: "So don't be confused. Time, too, follows no uniform rules. Time does not wear school uniforms, for sure." Lolo said she learned this while being a resident in Southeast Asia. Or so I thought.
• Oh oh, never mind.... Well. It's just impossible making a list of your really favorite things.

The Incomparables

Let us trace the incomparable through:

Metaphor-linguistics-trauma-psychology-nation-history-religion-philosophy-translation-education-nature-nurture-science-politico-disciplines-food-palate-palette-colors-cultures-money-indigo-blue.

The Beyond in Education

The world is, after all, beyond college,

Beyond school.

Scholarship is in the service of the world beyond,

(Not the misleadingly-named "real-world," but the sordid, anarchic world of the everyday, full of bills, full of worries, also of memories, letters, love, confusion, trash bags, poetry, amnesia, skin problems, babies, old people, calendars, quarrels, peace, internal monologues, solitude, misunderstanding, pride, other people's pride, hazing, paranoia, gluttony, hunger, helplessness, charitable feelings, lots of toothpaste, trees, breathlessness, fatigue, congee, telephone calls, news, growth, thoughts, food, toilet breaks, both real and unreal)

And education in schools is a skylight to heaven;

School is not the heaven itself.

Go out, go deep -

School is your home, your resting place,

Your inn: a bed and a meal, on your way to a new place,

To difference, to storms, to the stars.

The guiding light is always the what? The sky ~

Dig into the sky.

*So, the argument should not be about whether education ought to prepare students for the world out there, which incidentally includes the worlds inside. Of course it ought to. The real debate should focus instead on what that preparation means, not just for the students, but for parents, teachers, and all others. For example, someone might say studying art history doesn't prepare students for the world beyond. A proponent of art history may respond by arguing that education isn't all about usefulness. But that's not the point. Art history is useful! For life! Don't you know how colors and shapes can fire up your life, cheer you up? And through art history, we learn that our vision isn't something that's completely naturally given. How liberating such knowledge can be! So yes, it's just that there are lots of different kinds of usefulness. The question isn't about utilitarianism versus non. You know, utilities aren't just about electricity, gas, and water. Or food. They're also about strength, tolerance, understanding. And versions of truth. To put it another way, usefulness isn't just about usefulness. It's about importance. What's important to you? To us? Sometimes, we are tempted to prioritize, assigning ranks by order of importance. But why bother? Why not concentrate on enlarging our ark, so that cut-off lists are no longer relevant? When we can't hold anymore, let's acknowledge our limit head-on, instead of cutting things off and pretending as if they never existed. Let's acknowledge our narrow bandwidth, if it is really narrow, and fully, verily confront its narrowness.

Pettrie Trips

Pettrie tripped over her trip

Tripping, tipping, point

On her way

The other way

The others' ways

Tripping over her trip

Pettrie jump-ropes over the clouds

Mr. Dove-Mountain, Be Grand

I just posted on the Japanese prime minister, Mr. Hatoyama's Twitter. Hatoyama means "Dove-Mountain," by the way. Love thy dove. What a name!

Do doves twitter?

In any case, I asked him, Mr. Dove-Mountain, to present a clearer and more concrete view of Japan's future. Like, a more focused vision for comprehensive decentralization. Decentralization and breaking apart the bureaucracy have been mentioned before, but everything seems to be so rushed and exist only for short-term gains, if any gains at all. There's nothing grand about it. And grand shan't mean over-simplified. Grand things can be very complex, and yet still grand. And grand shan't mean easy, glamorous, or showy.

For Japan, grand shall mean quite the opposite of: easy, glamorous, & showy. More like grace than grand, perhaps. It needs to learn to step down. From second to third, and further down. It needs to learn to downsize. To grow older but happier. It needs to accept its marginal destiny. It needs to learn English and Chinese. Languages, I mean. (Look at the Scandinavians, peek at them, steal furtive glances at them, who speak such excellent English. You know, Chinese is to Korean and Japanese, perhaps Vietnamese, too, as English is to Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, or even Finnish, pretty much.) Be well-versed in Anglo-American, Chinese, and Indian-subcontinental cultures. (That can be accomplished with the knowledge of just two languages: English and Chinese.) It needs to expand its horizons. And stop being so impractical. For once!

Japan is experiencing a mid-life crisis. It's not seeing things very clearly. It's unable to look beyond itself. Unable and unwilling to acknowledge the heaps and heaps of debt.

Mr. Dove-Moutain, you are actually a Mr. Debt-Mountain. Mounds and mounds...of debt! Please, don't accumulate more debt. Doves are lovely, but any more debt is not. Please realize this. And please be grand. Not glitzy-grand, but solid-grand.

Thanks for the Twitter, though. At least, in this country, no one gets arrested for twittering in front of the prime minister, oh dove!