Anti-Exoticism

Before I go join an anti-nuclear power protest parade,

I would like to take part in an anti-exoticism march.

Exoticism is a mode of thought that overemphasizes distance, most of all.

An exotic place is somewhere very far away;

An exotic thing has come from afar;

An exotic person was born in a faraway land;

And an exotic scent has more power to transport than a normal scent.

As if going as far away as possible made one superior.

It doesn't.

What matters is precisely where one goes; precisely which routes one takes.

Far or near, the exact location counts.

Exactitude is a precious gift.

Remember: distance is always measured from a reference point.

And that reference point could be placed anywhere and everywhere.

Zebra Colors

"All of this is all too foreign to me," I cried out, staring at the rows of Chinese characters which were extremely pleasing to my eyes.  They, the characters, were like music, but even grander.  Yet perhaps it was so because I did not comprehend them entirely.  I saw them as droplets of sheer magma, exploding with a curiously warm and silent glare.  At other times, I saw them as pure ice, glinting under the weak sun, and wavering like black leaves.  If the alphabet is organismic, Chinese characters are geological.  Caves and mountains, you name them.  The galaxy.

A Batik Painting

There is a jungle above my computer screen

It is green and red

The fronds of foliage turn and turn

And the sun is nowhere to be seen

Gender Trouble and More

Never say "you're not girly enough" to a girl, or "you're not manly enough" to a boy.  What is "enough," anyway?  But regardless of what people say or don't say, the most horrifying thing is for a girl to think, "I'm not girly enough," and for a boy to think, "I'm not manly enough."  What use is it when one strangles oneself with a preconceived rope of baseless assumptions?

Pink is not for girls, and blue is not for boys.  A quiet person is not anti-social, and a loud person isn't necessarily social.  Not all birds fly; not all flying birds are the same kind of birds, although their differences also do not follow any black-and-white patterns.

What?  This is the world.

Grins

Sometimes, I am sadder than sad.

Despair is a boundless feeling.  It is akin to an incredible sense of security.  Not comfort, but security.

And I am afraid of being too busy, and becoming a headless robot.  By now, I have learned that one misses a whole lot when one speeds up too much, or spends too much time torturing oneself.

English Is

My two favorite expressions in English...

"Good for you."  A positive statement, without getting cloying.  It's far superior to saying, "That's great." or even "Good job." (the latter never really exists as a spoken expression anyway, except in children's talk).

"Why is there so much crap on my desk?"  I have always thought that "crap" sounds like something tasty.  Like "crab."  And being the little Japanese person that I am, "crap" almost always reminds me of "clap," or something festive like that.

Poplar Avenue

"I hate it when people think popularity is everything.

It's not.

It is not nothing, but it isn't everything, either.  Didn't we learn this in high school, or even earlier?

This is why I dislike votes, most of all.  What are votes?

Votes are never individual; they are never about you.

Your vote is always about everyone else, except yourself.  How could this be?

No matter how much altruistic elixir I force myself to drink, I will always die an individualist.

Who cares?  I care,"

Compri said.

Day's End

At the end of the day, all I want is laughter.  All I am looking for, ultimately, is laughter and music.  Even I knew that, but I dare not admit it to anybody, lest I be thought of as decadent.

However, I did say, "At the end of the day."  Before the day's end, there will be toil, unhappiness, and discomfort--plenty of them.

Because laughter, once it has burst open and is in the air as vibration, is universal, like music....  Even plants, especially plants, will feel it, and rocks and water, too.

Fear

Dearie and I were talking, and Dearie said: "Is it solitude, or just an overwhelming sense of fear?  Solitude is beautiful, but fear is uncalled for!  Fear is still different from caution, and helplessness a much more benign sensation than fear.  When do you experience fear?  I, for one, experience it when I know for certain that the person in front of me, whom I believe to have known very well, begins to act unpredictably.  It is, most likely, a sign of my own weakness.  After all, I am so weak, and I cannot be proud of that.  And yet, sudden bursts of fear are not just about my own weakness.  They also embody what I might call the world's total potential for misunderstanding --and alienation.  It's in the air, and is also in my head - oh yes, I can feel it - and it frightens me so much that I begin to feel as though everything was a flat pie."  I asked Dearie if she meant a "lie," not "pie."  She was sobbing so hard now that she did not respond, yes or no.

In the Night

In the likeness of a quiet mirror,

I sing

Silent songs that are but flashes of light

In the darkness of a moonless night,

I travel

Across plains lit up by the still, crystal air

Dare You, Dare Me

O masters of the universe,

Who complain, very kindly, of Tapan's cultural insularity

Have you ever thought that the very insularity of

Your own mind

Is also partly to blame?

O global citizens,

How willing are you

To listen to what the insular culture is truly saying

And to listen

To what your own glob-insular heart tells you now?

Summer

The sounds of cicadas do not leave my ears

I must tire myself tirelessly

To forget

But the sounds of cicadas cannot, and do not, leave my ears

A Didactic Moment

What is self-confidence?  Or just confidence?

Humility ought to serve as the root;

Gratitude as the leaves;

But in the end, what makes the clouds billow and the rain splatter

Is mirth: o mirth, the Muse of all things!

The Past-less, Living We

Sometimes we cling onto our past too tightly

But the past never becomes past within a person's lifetime

So keep building

Until that day when our past, present, and future

Finally pass into the realm of stones and fossils.

Change

I believe in change

And I have always believed in change

But what needs to change

Is for everyone in the world, each in his or her way,

To realize that the world may never change, for better or for worse

So that we can begin to hope

Over and over again: in cycles.

The world has always been changing

And the change is not getting any faster

Than what our faulty and ignorant histori-meter tells us.

What dealing with change means, at least for me,

Is coming to terms with the fact that we cannot change

And drawing a big picture in order to see that fact.

Remember: change is relative, and subject to whims of the skies.

A Snobbish Song

The Aha-moment comes and goes

Like carousel seats

Or the flashing silver in mirrors

O le trompe-l'oeil, time, and philosophy

(Courtesy of Art Effects)

(Photo by Compri in Iwate, Japan)

Morbid Dreams

Does art flourish particularly in times of collective crises, especially when the collective crises have psychological, non-empirical dimensions that are somehow more significant and pressing than the purely materialistic demands?

More unrelated than related to the above: I have been to Oslo and am shaken by the news of all the violence the city experienced on Friday.  All of us need to be confronting the violence within each of us - constantly.  (Ah, well, some of Munch's paintings may have lots to teach us.)  As much as I despise the perpetrators of any violent acts, we have an imperative to trace and understand, very carefully, why and how the perpetrators chose violence.  We do not need to sympathize with them, but we also do need to put ourselves into their shoes - because none of us are truly innocent.

Pigeons

I parted with humbleness a million years ago, when my fifth ancestor was born.  But tomorrow, I shall be reuniting with humbleness.  Will it forgive my very sporadic e-mails and my excuses for not writing?  O humbleness, I have missed you terribly, and yet I cannot believe I have lived for so long away from your side, in corners of the globe that are not particularly humbleness-friendly.   But o Earth, you are not a humble planet, are you?  Your skies are too clear, and your water too good to taste.  Tomorrow,  I shall return to the muddy pool and reunite with humbleness, but I know the muddy pool is only sold on Fifth Avenue, Ginza, and Orchard Road.  (Why, you may ask.  The muddy pool is a luxury!)  I will most likely be too lazy to head out to any of those places, and two of them are beyond my empirical, if not imaginative, reach in any case, at least for the time being.  So is my reunion with humbleness to be postponed to a day after tomorrow, or even later?  Only the pigeon knows.

Letters

A world filled with letters, just letters.  Letters as in letters in the alphabet, but also as in thank-you letters, love letters, and such.  Will there be envelopes, too?  No!  There shall not be any envelopes.  Only letters.  Just letters.

Puffs

At a later hour, at this late hour, as at any late hour, but no, at this particular late hour,

The quenching humor that meanness - o flashes of anger mixed with explosive laughter - can inspire

Fascinates me beyond measure.

Music can do that, but words, o stinging words, and violently waving arms

All combine to stage a theater after theater of cruel shows of verbal acrimony:

At this later hour, all combine to explode in a puff of sugar and salt.

Nachtmusik

In the blank corner of my eye, a feeling of doom resides

Helplessness without pain, choking without panic

A moon, the moon, creates a halo above the forest, a forest

As I face a baby, a cat, or both, and their moonlit eyes

Muddy Path

Fumbling for anger

I stop short:

My being teeters on a balance, and the balance keeps sliding

In favor of an almost unattainable ideal.

But this shall be how I live

And breathe, at least for the time being.

Solilo-kwayteow: Hunger at Midnight

O narratives, they do hate me so.  Or so I thought.  Memories, o memory, thou art in fragments, or even worse, in shards.  Rags and shreds: non-recyclable, except as rags and shreds.

Will you sustain me, o memory in shards and shreds, will you remember me?  You are not a person, though; you are a region in the universe where dust comes and goes, va et vient, o traffic!  No lights, please.  Only sounds, and only sounds of grass shaking, and of roots speaking underground, under the hills.

Hungry for memory, and memories, you do comfort me so.

Rain on Hold

Transformative light is all my muted vocal chords can pronounce

At this late hour

When flower petals sink to the bottom of a bottomless pit

And still they rise:

Mist and rain, wind and thunder.

We have forgotten to walk

Instead we speed past, we speed past

Ever more slowly than we can ever see