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.