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