Aha! the Altruist reveals himself

Not much happened today, so... current conditions: 48 degrees fahrenheit or 9 (!) degrees celsius with mostly cloudy sky. This is according to the weather page. My window is black and the light from the desk lamp has made a mirror out of it.

I'm typing up notes from a reading that featured Stephen Elliott (the Bob Flanagan of the American politicking scene) and his friend who wore the cap of "poet".

A spoon is stuck in the bowl of ice cream though that isn't what I want.

S--sweet--if you're reading this, come home so I can have some chocolate cake? Yes, the unflattering truth comes out... I've been embarrassingly eyeing it like a Wayne Thiebaud come to life. Still untouched, it's sagging on the counter :(

Homemade birthday cake--that is what I (acutely) desire today.

Someone else's thought

"Etymological Dirge"



		by Heather McHugh



Calm comes from burning.

Tall comes from fast.

Comely doesn't come from come.

Person comes from mask.



The kin of charity is whore,

the root of charity is dear.

Incentive has its source in song

and winning in the sufferer.



Afford yourself what you can carry out.

A coward and a coda share a word.

We get our ugliness from fear.

We get our danger from the lord.



%     %     % 

Reprinted without permission.



I met this amazing stage presence on the night of the lunar

eclipse. She was a wealth of desirable speech and a warm

spirit. We need more poets with such rich timbres and wiry

humour.

This is my new wallpaper, grace a "Good Bye, Lenin"'s fake "Kamera Aktuelle" footage of Western refugees flooding the GDR.

Even Mr. Incredible does it

A Distinction

What is worth crying about?
Among the many things
or perhaps few things
if one were unscrupulous,
there are furious tears
boiled over a Self
shot blank
with wrongs
when it was caught
agape
at the poison
in the ointment.

Those are not the real thing,
however.
The genuine artifact
is from-the-bottom-of-the-well
weeping, out
of a giantess's sadness.
Perhaps something has died
and you're finally aware your own
name was in small print
on the epitaph. Or it was merely
lost or misplaced and so only
its hat and favorite robe lie
in the empty bed
beneath the serious stone.

This kind of outpouring
is the true public eulogy,
where the tears sting
a wintry face,
spruce and colourless
as an overcast hanky
streaked with salt.

When the sobs clear
and deep like whiskey glass
rend the caverns
of a diaphanous body
and edge the voice
to a screaming halt,
you think of nothing
but the sadness.
Even in past tense, it is
infinite and undrinkable
like the ocean.
What you kept
in your mouth
like a fiercely
secret word
has gone:
the train
has whistled past,
the anchor has been hoisted
onto the ancient white band
of the horizon and you're left
rolling downhill
with a hoary pipe
in your throat.

Why do you cry? Were you
ready for that passing,
burial of living tissue?
Was it time? Did Fate's black
seal leave a crack of light?
Is it possible to question
the undeniability of the present?

So the questions drop
pebbles into the mineshaft.
There is a draught
that blows right onto your fevered head.
Is this relief or sickness, you think
as you're seized once more
with the urge to expel.

And yet, the landscape flies
past and the two wheels
whipped by a slovenly chain
churn on, putting things
behind you.
Look,
there's that windy tunnel
where you let yourself go
too quickly.
That is
the familiar stone gate
that will enclose you
with the rest
of the large garden.
Those are
the black lanterns
that will liven shortly
and show you the way home.

By the time you reach them,
it will be forgiving,
anonymous night and you will
have finished it, that
torrential business. You will
feel a warm breeze
brush over your new
beautiful lungs
and laugh
because there is nothing
else to feel,
to do.

* * *
Another charming run of the spellcheck: they don't have "hanky", but they do have "honky". Oh, dear.

PS Some other great names: Grey Sample, Octavio Paz, Hans Hansen, and Magnus Magnussen, winner of a Strongest Man in the World contest in the late 90's.

PPS Decided not to go to S's birthday bash because there's too much reading and editing to do. Also, I was running late and she liked the cake--how's that for facile causality? I wiggle my hamster's tail in responsible literary critique's general direction!

Over-Compensation

The sky was a clear grey-blue when my bike sped down the hill toward the glow of Safeway. I was surprised to see stars, but there they were, light and bright. I hadn't seen them mapped out with such ease and grandeur since sleeping in a swag in the Northern Territory.

Operation Birthday Cake was a semi-success. Certain irreparable fissures ran through the top layer upon removal from the pan, presumably due to the moistness of the chocolate mass. Icing was a small improvement from recent attempts. Might have gone overboard with the engorged white hearts on the perimeter, however, because the sugar was beginning to get warm and less viscous after I'd done the border and shaky text.

A little peckishness caught up with me again, so impulsively, a chicken marinade was put on the stove above the busy oven. The proudest moment was when I figured out I could put the unused cabbage leaves from making dumpling filling (Safeway had chives today) in the broth for a little token veggie representation in tomorrow's lunch box. To celebrate the nearly endless spate of dishwashing, I had a little goblet of sangria in one gulp. Finally, I opened the pomegranate that had been presiding over the dining table. Then thought about writing a small collection of how-to pieces on eating complex things... like pomegranates and crabs and such. It'll be a gift to my grandmother, in vague memory of her teachings: how to pick out the snowy flesh of the freshwater shellfish with its own spindly wrenched-off limbs...

I'd like to say that the number of clear-red pomegranate seeds I ate was a multiple of seven, or that I had built a house out of them first, but that would simply be untrue.

They were perfect: sweet, tart, and pure fruit.

Time to close eyes to Mr. Cohen's gravel song as it floats on the waters dark.

Couldn't resist... or is this procrastinating making S's birthday cake?

Pavane: Belle qui tient ma vie



Am         Em      Am C

Belle qui tiens ma vie

C            G      C

Captive dans tes yeux,

Am           Em  Am  C 

Qui m'as l'ame ravie

C                G C

D'un souris gracieux,

C      Em      Am   E

Viens tot me secourir

Am   Cm    Am   E  Am

Ou me faudra mourir.

Onegin, Papa was a Rodeo

There were dancing haystacks, petty wounds of honour, duels fought by young men in long black frock coats, sprawling sets of snowy woods with real birch trunks, sumptuous ball-gowns (from magnificent empress dresses of deep red taffeta to large tiered teacups), eerily cheery lanterns of red and yellow painted faces, a grand chandelier whose most beautiful aspect was its elaborate, skewed shadow: what was not to like?

Our seats were quite comfy and almost center. My nose did not bleed though my right ankle did, discreetly--those vertiginous lavender mary janes with the slim bows held up well during the long-strided rush to the opera house past the Green Day stadium and throngs of the fiercely young and pierced, but apparently I was not Cendrillon, but a step-sister. Tchaikovsky's orchestral music always takes me to the broadness of the Russian landscape; his ballets are more dainty, shamelessly romantic; I had never heard his operatic works before. Sometimes it seemed the instrumentation was competing with the aria for elegance and I think the prettier, more defined and character-driven melodies were often given to the strings and woodwinds. There were lovely sung phrases, too, especially by the ill-fated poet, Lensky, and of course, Tatyana, the naive country girl who idealistically falls for the world-weary Onegin after just one stroll on her estate.

We reached the performance only seven minutes late. The lofty ivory halls of the opera house were deserted. Velvet ropes were pulled across the cafe kiosk and the sign for glass-rental was askew. There was no one cranking the elevator. We flopped onto the carpeted landing of the fourth floor breathless and keenly hoping the overture would be long and indulgent. The house lights were dark: they were already well into the first scene where the peasants on Tatyana's estate come to celebrate the harvest with song and dance. An usher allowed us to sit on the side of the highest, least populated row until the next break between acts. My black and white silk paneled dress was too demanding about the bodice and I regretted just a little those Trader Joe's imported chocolate truffles I'd consumed with such abandon all week. The music and spectacle swept those thoughts away, but breathing remained a conscious endeavor for most of the performance.

Intermission was a struggle to get a hellishly-heeled foot into the powder room where the queues were formidable and the competing perfumes (surely eau de parfum all around from petite, dark-coloured stoppered bottles--none of that vaporous eau de toilette stuff) of the virtually uniformly pale, crinkled patronnes raged. There were some ladies under forty, but most had walked in straight from the street and looked miles more comfortable than I did. Still, I enjoyed the drama of S.'s cream-coloured pashmina shawl and the severely sculpted dress I'd chosen. How often does one get to be so utterly un-functional?

J and I walked back to the Powell St. BART station. On the way, we stopped at a late-nite donut shop on a street-corner peppered with aimless looking men. I had half a cup of syrupy chocolate milk; he had black coffee and a little cruller that disappeared very quickly. The green formica tables complemented nicely the apple neon sign blearing above our heads. Other night stragglers blew in occasionally: I had a long wait before the last train back South. The air was different once again when we stepped out of the donut dispensary. The riled-up youthful edge just after Green Day's legions let out had chilled to a slightly menacing, sporadic calm. Despite the prick on my right ankle, I made the trek without much incident and was grateful for once to be engulfed in the underground's timeless flourescent warmth.

The cab I took home from the train station had this license plate: BABAR69.

* * *
Found lyrics for the Magnetic Fields' "Papa was a Rodeo" with chords and have been plucking duly. Also figured out crude chords to "Belle Qui Tient Ma Vie". I love my guitar.

Opera, Racquetball, Film Series

I'm going to the opera! Eugene Onegin, Pushkin's baby. [The only thing I remember from Pushkin is that poem-allegory about the fisherman and his never-satisfied wife. There was a magical goldfish in it, too. Coincidentally, several of our classical Chinese texts have mentioned fish lately as well: Zhuangzi's "Fishes' Happiness" and Mengzi's "Fish is Something I Desire". Who doesn't love fish? Even frozen tuna in icy ruby chunks auctioned straight off the screaming tablesaws of a Japanese seafood market. Mmm... sushi... that is something I desire.]

What shall I wear to the opera? Since there are some trains to catch, taxis to ride, and a bolt of uncertainty in tomorrow's chronology, it can't be too fanciful. Still, I am deciding between a magnolia off-the-shoulder boatneck paired with a plum-copper full skirt or black and white 1920's-style Art Deco paneled silk dress. The companion will be one ex-boyfriend who has threatened to wear red and green pants. Let us pray the fine weather holds, if not the threads.

Have gotten myself into a situation where I shall be trying out racquetball for the first time next Thursday. Indie-rocker-guy promises no safety, so it might become a bit savage. Still, K is nice and seems able to hold onto a steady girlfriend, so there must be some heart in there. I'm more worried that my warrior-athlete side might jump out and scare everyone in the elegant glass box of a court, including this placid self.

Also snagged a long-awaited meeting with Professor R., who directs the Japanese Film Series. He was very supportive about my idea for a Chinese counterpart and gave some sound and good-humoured counsel. The ladies who look like they hardly ever leave their chairs in the affiliated office were less galvanised, but next time, hopefully I'll have a tight proposal and a sharp suit to match.

Off to get some chai or simply something sweet. The old appetite hasn't quite swung round again, but I'm feeling peckish, as Mr. Praline would say in the empty cheese shop.

an unplanned tribute, pizza

BG called Thursday night from NYC. It's always lovely to talk to him, but occasionally, I don't understand the basis of our friendship. It's part stubbornness and part repeated exposure. There is respect, too, even from the beginning when we'd argue till the sky turned dark and light again. Once we had a fight whose aftermath gloom lasted an entire summer. Mutual friends were worried. The piercing silence was getting ridiculous. Then he made some chicken corn soup and invited me over when I had a cold.

BG's roommates were all CS slaves. They included a flaming clarinet player with a penchant for blue glitter lipstick and a culturally confused cat who devoured all tidbits Japonica. Still, in comparison Benetito was by far the most interesting one because he appears to be so convincingly conventional. I've thought about nominating him to "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" many a season, but they already had a token Asian guy on a recent show. [If you're reading this, Benty--take S. out on a date! You've been stuck together seven years and she deserves a little outing now and again.]

He's been known to call friends when visiting a big city to offer to bring them back some oil-free moisturiser and to sleep with his blanket over his head. His rooms are always Spartan, but clean. On his shelves, you will find manuals to C+++++++... nestled next to Kundera and Machiavelli.
The incident of his frugal pinching of TP from our school has been well documented by Feldspaar in her livejournal, but the best part of that was his rationalising the "loan" with some quasi-mathematical formula for calculating efficiency. All I know is that the theoretical wage he used for the cost of an hour's labor (i.e., opportunity cost of spending time shopping for the disappointingly short-lived stuff at CVS) was and still is way above anything I could earn. Nevertheless, he is generous in off-key ways: when some posh tech company gave him a no-strings attached food allowance during interviews, he spent it on a lavish sushi dinner for our house. Afterwards, he carried the leftovers in a clear plastic box which attracted the sarcastic attention of a bookstore clerk. The stringy, probably bitter fellow (how like an unripe asparagus!) dubbed him "Sushi-Bearer" because he apparently followed two steps behind me and V as we giggled at children's books and ogled new Phaidon testaments to modern art.

And what is this secret eccentric doing now? Being ground into his late twenties by the corporate machine and protesting it in little ways that remain unknown to his oppressors, but which bring private satisfaction to their perpetrator. At this new office, he doesn't even have a cubicle. No walls. Just a segmented desk in an assembly line of such waist-high surfaces. Instead of personalising the space like others with pictures of loved ones, photographs of tropical islands, or crazily coloured leis or stuffed animals, he has chosen to leave nothing identifiable. "Gee, BG, when you're not here, it's like nobody works at that desk at all." How ingenious! I love that this peaceful resistance makes so bare and literal all the alienation, dehumanisation, and cheapness of mid-level corporate culture.

Also, to stay the deadness of the brain while being so pragmatic, I am told BG recently raided a local library sale and is now edifying himself with Dostoevsky and Dickens' minor works as well as a fully illustrated guide to Scottish tartans. I'm envious. My books feel more indulgent, although I suppose I'm getting a head start on my MA thesis with voluntary opening of the first page of Li Bai's complete works. Today's post has turned out to be a tribute to a friend I don't speak to often, but who is nevertheless a true north presence.

O and did I mention the first time he introduced me to a friend of his visiting from SE Asia, BG's nearly exact words were: "Meet my friend, Mark. We were in the same armoured-car together"...

* * *
In my last house, each of us eight roommates had our preferential supermarkets. I was a Berkeley Bowl devotee (still wearing the worker union's pin proudly); N liked Safeway, someone else was all right with Whole Foods (I liked their little cakes that J used to bring at night); there were crossover fans of 99 Ranch, which I used to call 99 Cent Ranch for no evident reason; and L was a Trader Joe's fan. I didn't really get into Trader Joe's because their produce could not compete with the divine cornucopia of the Bowl, whose deli and cafe sections were vital to my survival at r video.

Today, however, I have added Trader Joe's to my pantheon of fave Cali places for their dreamy imported chocolate truffles: JS and I went shopping for groceries this morning after a beautiful bike ride (that slight breeze in the gentle sunlight! the smoothness of that whirring, big-wheeled motion!). We decided to make pizza for lunch and picked up fresh dough, onion, garlic, tomatoes, water-bound mozzarella, and whole basil leaves. It was a perfect afternoon of slow sauteeing our homemade sauce over low heat, kneading on a clean wooden board, sipping Cherry Cream soda, inadvertently bouncing to Eighties beats, and a badminton game of funny, peripatetic conversation.

Her apartment was spare and elegant. She had real water and wine glasses and good kitchen knives. The stove range was spotless and there were little toy cars stationed all around the place and tiny folksy birds made of pistachio shell perched on the frigidaire. This has inspired me to put my own house into order so that I may break into blossom as a hostess in the near future. It would be great to finally begin meetings for our domestic arts org.

It's been a fancy kinda day. I burnt my ginger tea to the bottom of the blackened pan (not good, will have to tell S I'm willing to give my first-born hams in atonement) while taking a guiltily long shower--something about these chilly winds at night that make me not want to get out. Time to scrub pots and nurse head (cold threatening to take over again, despite the merciful respite on Friday just in time for wushu and parties). Van Morrison, where are you? The moon is halved tonight.

What is

Tiredness. What a long, black road. My head was burning slightly last night and so I emptied two packets of ban langen, that miracle herb-root tempered with crystallised sugar, into one of S's tall drinking jars. The water's scalding heat escapes quickly through the glass. The potion makes me break into a sweat as I listen to Michael Apted's reserved British commentary on his "35 Up" and "42 Up" documentaries. It's a clean sweat, not one of those that gives you a clammy neck after a silly struggle uphill to get home on a bike heaving on low-sitting tires. I feel pleasantly switched on, with my head an electric lantern. I fall asleep to the steady, avuncular voice and wake up at three AM.

There was no alarm or perceivable event that caused me to get up. I just rose from the bed, naturally, automatically, dead-heavy and fussing. I push my way to the bathroom sink all lit up with a row of undressed glamour bulbs. I wonder if my roommate is home and whether I can get away with wearing just my blue tank top and peach underwear. I marvel at the pallor of my face as I brush my teeth. It never looks like this, a skeptical sheet, during the day. Since I've been living here where the winter afternoon sun can still burn right through your knee socks, I've been browned. Given the attention paid to race and ever more exclusive subgroups and cross-lineage permutations in this region, this marks me as Ethnic, more than ever.

I am no longer flirting with sickness. A fit of rapid uncontrollable little sneezes while writing at the library expelled me into the late afternoon sun. I didn't put on sunscreen today because it was so misty this morning. If I'd rung a huge bell, I thought, its appeals would not cut through that white haze. The sun was a cool coin slipped into the atmosphere as an afterthought. Sometime while I was in class underground, it came out in full force and the sky became a million miles of nothing again.

What am I writing about today? I didn't post yesterday because I didn't have anything to say and decided to escape the evening into the world of the Up documentaries. There were a couple of stories to critique for fiction class, but I could handle it. The handle was long enough to keep the spitting fire just out of range.

Again, the lack of desire for food visited me. I forgot to make rice last night and so didn't bring lunch today. My burrito from the Treehouse was tasty until I'd eaten half of it and all of a sudden, I could taste nothing but the heat of the broth and the salt steaming forth from the cilantro rice. Perhaps it's the cold. It's cruel that at last tonight I have time to strum, but have no voice to accompany it.

There is no moral of the day. This troubles me and pleases me. No, wait--I'd been rather unkind to those sneezing and coughing around me all week through indirect annoyance. I'd felt ambushed by illness all around and kept to myself. I may have even thought that it was due to carelessness or lack of good personal habits that the deus ex machina of communicable diseases descended on those particular proto-cases of achoos and hawking-up-eight-generations-of-deaths. I'd been prideful that I hadn't been sick yet this winter and was maybe ostentatious in my consistent washing of hands, grimacing at others' uncovered exhalations or dramatically public spitting.

This isn't self-flagellation for what is essentially a semi-random, soulless occurrence, but all this bother about medicines and rest--the damned inconvenience of not being able to take pleasure in being human, e.g. in food and song--is reminding me to be more compassionate, if not exactly conservative, towards those who are struck with various maladies.

Vanity, Tom Cruise, Telling, Vanity

All right, I admit it: I am somewhat taken with checking my sales rank on Amazon. The numbers fluctuate so much between the fifth realm of heaven and the fringes of hell that I can't stop looking at them... A more interesting revelation from all this is that pop-ups are storming the pulp market (that's a fave word this week: PULP)--I did not know that "Annie, a Girl Who Loved Gordon", a book by Stephen King, is also available in pop-up format. Now I do, and apparently this book has been sold as a companion piece to my moon-crazed monkeys.

JY invited me to an auditorium screening of "Collateral" Sunday night. It was a well-made thriller (how many are there of those today) despite Tom Cruise's unmoving rock-like performance. I still hold, grey hair-dye notwithstanding, that the most talented part of him as an actor are his perfect teeth. I don't fault JY for liking him, however; he embodies a lot of things about Hollywood, what some see as a magic factory and what Bob Kaufman sagely christened "the cultural cancer of the universe".

I have to do a lot of translations tonight, so no time for purple hazing. Wanted to mention the lesson of the weekend all the same. M has advised me repeatedly to not tell my stories before I write them down. Sound words if only my ears weren't wooden doors. Sunday morning, Mom and Far call and we chat. Go over some consistent family dynamics. It's fun in its familiarity. We tell each other lame jokes. Actually, Far tells cute if innocuous jokes and I listen with genuine if dutiful pleasure. I get excited and make Mom listen to my new idea for a story concerning curiosity and a box. She calls Far to come hear it, too. Pressure mounts; I'm on speakerphone. I can hear myself repeat what I just said, unedited, and the youngness of my voice devoid of bodily trembling trebles. The story is not related chronologically. I give them a less tight rendition than the ones I've shopped to others, more contemporary fiction readers and writers. There is a notable silence when I reach the end.

"Hello?"
"Yes, we're here." Far's assurance rings from across the Atlantic.
"Well, that was the end."
"Uh huh."He's thinking.
"What did you think?" I wasn't fishing for compliments, but for identification.
"I don't know. I'll have to think about it." He sounds hesitant. About telling me what he really thinks? About deciding what he really thinks?
"What does Mom think? Mom?"
"Yes! Mom is here!" She calls from the kitchen a ways off. "That was it?" O, crushing!
" Yeah... It's not meant to be a novel."
"Why do you base all your stories in China?" She's... disappointed?
"I don't. This collection happens to be set during mid-80s China because I am interested in people's shifting social attitudes toward opening up economically and the avalanche of changes ahead of them. I wrote a story recently set in New York. What does it matter?"
"It doesn't sound like much happens in your story." Her frankness has won prizes.
"It's more like a psychological portrait of the man with the box and how the people in the community project what they think is in it." I feel the speaker's platform sinking beneath me.

"What's the moral of the story?" Far finally launches his Culminating Question.
"I don't like overt moralising in fiction. Anyway, this one doesn't have a conventional one. [I can hear his attention droop and drift over to some place else. Maybe the window overlooking the river or CNN with the sound turned down.] It's partly about the randomness of life: it is only after his neighbours start taking such interest in the box that they come to visit. And to accommodate their calls, he begins to make snacks and eventually that sets him up as an entrepreneur when the gates of commerce open in a few years... So something unexpected has galvanised him."
"I see. I don't know, sweetheart. Show it to me when you're done with it." He was trying to be kind, but sincere. Funny, that's what I try to be as well.
"Hmm... Mom will have to read the story when you finish. It sounds like a movie the way you described it." I appreciate that she's making an effort to be encouraging.

I later thought of this William Carlos Williams poem in my recovery of enthusiasm for the project. Reading it again, I paused slightly at the lonely genius part. That was not what made me remember it, but rather the joy in the narrator's knowing his dance is grotesque: he is dancing because of the life force that makes him dance for himself. This was a good occasion to remember making things, doing things, being, isn't always about audience or vanity, but action:

"Dance Russe"

If when my wife is sleeping

and the baby and Kathleen

are sleeping

and the sun is a flame-white disc

in silken mists

above shining trees,—

if I in my north room

dance naked, grotesquely

before my mirror

waving my shirt round my head

and singing softly to myself:

"I am lonely, lonely,

I was born to be lonely,

I am best so!"

If I admire my arms, my face,

my shoulders, flanks, buttocks

against the yellow drawn shades—



Who shall say I am not

the happy genius of my household?

---William Carlos Williams

Time to go back to Han Feizi and other dead pontificants. Zhuangzi still rocks.

Will be hopefully learning the first verse of the pavane, "Belle qui tiens ma vie", before going to sleep. Bu Bear has been found under some blankets on my reading chair and reinstated on the bed. He was a marvelous companion to wake up next to on this grey misty morning--such a pleasant little rump beneath the covers!

Lunch, Sex, Little Thoughts

Operation Bringing Homemade Lunch was successful. I made an expansive tomato-pepper-scallion omelette last night and lavished half of it onto a bed of rice in a small tub. After translating some small passages of Han Feizi and Zhuangzi, I went down for lunch. The department kitchen was roasting with the ghosts of various aromas set adrift from the microwave turnstile. The dish still revolving on the little pageant platform in the center of the oven had the most enchanting, meaty fragrance. Imagine the truest consomme of the heartiest cuts of real animal burst into juicy vapour, perfectly salted and rounded out by the subtle reduction of savory garlic and the plainness of a new potato--that was what reigned. My humble box of nearly vegetarian repast awaited its turn. The owner of the dish in the oven came to claim it. We exchanged polite smiles--I'm still not sure who these willowy women are who seem to emerge from nowhere at lunchtime--maybe from some airy office up on high? Under the staircase? From some male (straight) scholar's noontime dozings? ... I compliment her on the aroma of her cooking (colour, aroma, and taste are the three traditional criteria) and she modestly shrugs it off. I look closer at the contents of her blue and white tupperware. A few greyish logs of meat sat unhappily next to slices of pale, half-mushed potato over a few squashed hillocks of rice. Isn't it curious how sometimes the smell of food can be more intoxicating or flavourful than the food itself?

* * *
The opera lady from Saturday is still with me. I've been singing all day and the Mission-style arches are terribly forgiving. "A foggy day, in London town...", medieval French pavane (reawakened since "Orlando" the film. I think I've a crush on Tilda Swinton), et al. LPC, I'm so grateful to you and your authentically hippie sentiments. World music and dance, lo-budget hideaways in the fjords, cross-cultural crushes, communal showers, home-made breads, Swedish chocolate balls, and putz pause--mwah!!

* * *
On our home library shelf, I found a book called "Men" when I was fifteen years ripe. I wasn't sure whose book it was as it didn't seem like the kind of read I could picture Far's purchasing at Donner's and asking the reedy blonde clerk to wrap up in a flat brown paper bag. Maybe it was the pool-side companion to a bygone lady-friend from the early eighties: our library had a habit of absorbing (usually pulpy) anomalies into its mainstay garrisons of classic orange Penguin editions of bona fide literature authenticated by their smooth, yellowed pages. To his credit, Far had read nearly all his orange Penguins and recalls a good number of them. He has become especially fond lately of reciting the Danish poetry of his youth. It is no small tragedy that no one in the family understands enough of the language to commiserate with him on the passing of localised, able art into oblivion.

"Men" was an unasked for treasury of aspects of men as encountered by the game, angelic protagonist whose blonde perfection entices many lessons in love and loss. From this surprisingly well-written and unsentimental, even elegant book, I learned what an orgon box was and heard the name "Tobias" for the first time. Its episodes were erotic and natural, sometimes harsh and stark as the characters who find themselves naked in a woody clearing. I shivered and felt awkward with them. It was the ideal teenage narrative. All that worldliness gained in a day's cloistering in my bed.

It is only now that I have begun to notice the counterparts to the book's myriad lost souls and preoccupied beings substantiated in real life. How amazing and strange that people can have intimacy in the world when there is so much ceremony: circling, panting, handkerchief dropping, build-up to the dance, the fire on the walls, and perchance, the mutual surrender to dicey joy until dawn, the end of the month, the revolution of the earth around the sun, the closing of the black velvet curtain. Where does that sustained momentum come from? I rejoice in being alive and not defeated by the awesome prospects of that work, but it is a Monday in November: I want to know--but don't want to know. If action is what is needed to cut through all the thwarting stuff, then why don't people push on through to the end? Everything should have a beginning and an end. I would drive my cart to the end of the earth if I decided to find out about the horizon.

Why begin with a serenade and decline into silence? A certain Japanese artist leapt through frames with sealed paper doors, breaking them down, rupturing through them like the life force he is and represents. I've forgotten his name, but not his unique action. Or should I be the one spurred into movement? But what if my eye is off and it's not the moon, but some lantern of the dead on the water? What if the Way of natural occurrences takes care of everything and I need just float along like a lantern of my own? After a while, these questions are useless like what someone said about the rain driving into the sea.

"Why?" in the broader context of "relationships"--this is probably the most boring mystery. Maybe "Sex and the City" was right. If they don't follow up on those early throwaway gestures of kind attention, it's because they weren't that into you in the first place. The next question is: "then why bother from the start?" [I'm getting bored by this whinging myself. Such little thoughts. I'd rather have larger ones that encompass the roundness of the world. Mwahahahaha.... I had considered reinstating J. on Friendster (a silly enterprise all together) after a healing conversation in the past week, but was saved by the epiphany that if I did, I would be setting myself up for petty attentions... When Scary Rice is about to take the podium after Powell bows out. I can understand his reasons for leaving the evil office, but with him and his presumably more enlightened sympathisers gone, the spaces will only be filled by numbers with less conscience and more teething ambition.]

Lordy save us... from little thoughts and big idiotic actions alike. In the meantime, strike up that old, slack-stringed guitar and chase its six silver maids into a frenzy as you hang up the old tangible line of a song! And dance, dance, dance, all night long.

A poem, draft I

My People

Who are you?
In San Francisco, Amsterdam, Weihai, Hefei
I walk among you, a mask
grafted onto this body.
The mask is acknowledged
by everyone
and recognised
by no one.

It speaks
many languages,
has held
many tongues,
some crudely,
others
with the slicker intonations
of a native singer.

It has straight, expensive teeth
that have begun to break down
like greyed piano keys--
something about the cloudy waters
of my father's childhood. They still chew
through raw green onion stalks, thank
God, Sinter Klaas, Buddha, Guan Yin,
Guan Gong, Deng Xiaoping...

It has lips used to rouging. Which red is best
depends on your colour, but I figured it out--nothing
too pink or blond or bloody, or else you'll be taken
for a showy wife. It was only in Hong Kong
that I was scolded: a snow-faced girl with fawn hands
in a black apron announced
"That color is not suitable
for someone like you."

It has eyes that see differences
and similarities, lined in violet shades
of sleeplessness and yearning
for things every man desires:
a strong foundation for the seemingly
interminable road, unbroken back
and resilient brow for the toil,
soft lips and feet for the rewards of the toil.

Beautiful in its completeness,
the mask has become the face
that never surfaced
in the mayhem
of adaptations.
The mask
is what lies
behind the mask:

Its pout touches food and drink with reverence;
its eyes are the clerestories of this soul;
its cheeks are where real tears
descend their quivering stair,
where my mother,
after another homecoming,
kisses me goodnight.

Alleyway Puccini, City Lights empties, moonlight spying

Getting home took three and a half hours. The odyssey began with the wrong bus--but its doors were open... and the driver was so kind and waved me inside even as I said I didn't have the quarter... We sped off towards Van Ness when I wanted to go to Market, but he let me off at a corner and pointed out the right bus, which obligingly showed up a minute later. My spring-green, fawn, and light yellow scarf begins to itch. I get off the second bus a stop too early and cross Civic Center in wide strides and duck into its yawning underground entrance.

So much of our life is spent waiting for things that will whisk us away and over whose comings and goings we have no direct influence. I'd brought a selected anthology of Yev with me, but had already finished it, so I sat staring off into the fluorescent lights like everyone else. Eventually, I realise that there is no connecting train back to school for another hour and a half and the air had gotten considerably chillier. Off to the near horizon of the train station, loomed two lit-up places I could go. The 24-hour cafe I'd been to once before for a cup of Hershey's syrup + watery milk = hot chocolate on Halloween. The middle-aged Asian-American man manning the hostess/check-out counter was a Star Trek someone with a streak of green hair. Today, the other invitingly bright place was of all things, a Hollywood Video store. I had noticed it before, but with scorn. Tonight, it didn't look too shabby. I had a feeling they would be selling used DVDs for cheap and I hadn't yet gotten my movie fix of the weekend. I left the white glow of the station and crossed the dark asphalt streets of the airport town.

The videostore was smaller than I was used to though many of the signage and lingo was disturbingly resonant with my beloved r video. I felt rather sneaky and undercover as I examined the way they displayed their DVDs, the colour schemes of the supposed decor, the total lack of ambiance or aroma of top quality popcorn fragrant with pure safflower oil ::sniffle::... Their "foreign" section was abysmally stunted and there were no cool subsections like "women bonding", "werewolves", "Asian martial arts" (vis. a vis. other ma's), or "Ireland" to name a few. I felt sorry for the employees, too, youngish men who looked like they were there because their dads didn't want them on the couch all night squeezed into ill-fitting flaming purple button-downs... All of a sudden, I felt fortunate: at least we had cute little black tees that I now use for wushu workouts. The Hollywood people also had enormous--cow-bell size--name tags dangling around their necks on a plastic cord with their first names printed in fat arial script underneath something akin to "Hi! I'm here to help you. My name is". I took home three cheap DVDs: two silly, girly indulgences because I've been so masculine lately and "Master and Commander" to recommend to my dad because it was so superb and full of intelligent adventure and period anthropological intrigue. The most striking thing about Hollywood was that the clerks were pretty neutral and helpful. Very professional in a detached sort of way. Sean would have been proud of them, but O the shirts, the bleeding-heart-purple shirts! My heart goes out to all the employees living under Hollywood Video's thumb.

Wow, this is getting long, but since it's for my senility, no matter. City Lights proved disappointing. Not only did they have no Yev, but there have also been a string of cancelled in-store lit events. The good news was that I noticed "A Clean, Well-lighted Place for Books" haphazardly on the second bus to the station. I'd always wondered where that would be. And Green Apple, where a skater-bum friend's mom has always wanted him to work. Still, I have enormous affection for City Lights because of that party I crashed to meet M. Ferlinghetti. The staff there now is kinda cranky. One bald youngish guy seemed irritated to ask me how to spell Yev and wasn't too helpful beyond, Nope, haven't got it in. Was tempted to buy a postcard of Miles Davis standing beside a dissipating cloud of smoke he just blew out in thought-taken exasperation for G., but decided to paint him a picture instead. Why does it take so godawful long to put together one care package? Maybe this is it. Maybe I'm just not able to get logistical stuff together and this will be the pattern for the rest of my life. ::shudder:: Maybe it's the sangria that's making me all bare-naked like this. Made it last night although I knew the peaches and nectarines missing in winter were what made it so light and fresh in the summer.

Last memory I'm putting into print from today. As I walked to City Lights on Grant, where a giant Hello Kitty store used to wave its pinkness at the world, I heard strains of an aria that I thought was playing on a side street somewhere. The luscious music was in fact coming from a small stereo system AND a portentous woman with arms outstretched in imaginary embrace in an alley behind the Hermes boutique. She was singing with her arms open to the orchestrations on the stereo. A number of people stopped and listened. It was Puccini. I couldn't place the aria, but it was at his sentimental best and her top notes in particular were clear and true. Each one touched my heart like a silvery beam. Her voice was sweet and to the point, but not quite generous enough to fill a house. That was a pity. I wanted her, she who seemed to love the music as she brought it to us, to be able to make it her life if she wanted. But some of us when born land in a ditch, under a weeping willow, or on a straw mat inside a house with shingles. I leaned against the corner of a white building and fished for my wallet. A wicker basket with a duct-tape bottom sat in front of the stereo. When she finished her aria on a quiet levee, smiling, the small audience applauded and I put in my bill. I walked away singing and my eyes stinged. Music is perhaps the most mysterious of the arts and moves closest to god.

The sangria has clouded my eyes. Time to put away the heavy-duty heart and sink into the comforts of a bed under a roof.

Desire, lightness, idle flights, and Saturday

This week I've been running on very little satisfying sleep and eats. The desire for the former was keen while for the latter was almost non-existent. There had been no time for sweet suede little naps at the library's blue fuzzy chairs lately and I decided to not eat (lovelessly assembled and costly crocks on campus anyway) unless I desired and thus could enjoy food. It sounds a bit extreme and careless, but it felt like the right thing to do if I wanted to live consciously. The down side was that sometimes, my body was plain panicking due to sudden seizures by hunger or weariness. Other times, I would float over the grounds and be surprised to find I have so soon reached my destination.

Today, I began writing a story called... It's not entirely clear, but I'm certain the word, "accident", will appear in the title. Lots of Longjing tea kept me going till past three o'clock, when hunger finally wheeled around. It was crushing. My forehead and neck became clammy within minutes and the sole occupant of my attention was finding something I wanted to eat. As often happens with traffic when one is pressed for time, the line at the Bookstore cafe was not only long, but being dealt with at a snail's pace. My watch seemed to speed. I pressed the back of my hand to my throbbing head. Finally, I ordered a chai latte to go and impatiently drained almost half of it before I got to the bottom of the stairs. Wushu class, a demanding two hours of all-round physical exertion, was at 4:30 and I had no strength for it.

A lot of milling around the various "cafes" around campus revealed that few of them opened after lunch. I came back to the Treehouse (which disappointingly doesn't have any adventurous planks, rope swings, or Tarzan tendrils of hoary green) and had an increasingly familiar serving of chicken teryaki. Next week, I shall definitely have to start bringing in my own lunches. It gets to a point where even reasonably tasty things can be hard to swallow. Still, that lunch saved my life because though it was consumed in a hurry, I immediately felt more clear-headed.

Miraculously, when I just made Wushu class on time and we began the dreaded long jog, calisthenics, and kicks through the gym, I didn't feel faint or cranky. To my consternation, after my body warmed up, I found myself at the front of the queue because most others had slowed down. My legs felt all right, not leaden and impossible as on previous occasions and my lungs were open and happily greedy. Everything was light and I felt as if I could have gone on forever. How could this be? People have recommended fasting to me before, but it doesn't sound healthy for the body or mind. Nevertheless, there was a lightness to doing today's leaping drills I'd not known before. Lightness or not, sometimes it's fortunate there is no mirror in the gym to confirm visions of oneself sailing through the air like a catapulted elephant... Still, the body learns like a particularly slow viola and eventually produces the desired movements with less hesitation and difficulty.

Quasi-randomly, now that winter holiday creeps near and I've an unreasonable length of time in rainy, wintry North Europe, I am dreaming of places I've never been anew: Minsk, Budapest (kind of on a Slavic kick today), Kyoto, the S. Korean mountainside, Ushuaia and the rest of Patagonia, Tunisia, Botswana, Avignon, Aix-en-Provence, Mongolia, Brasil, Iceland, C*U*B*A!

Off to sing and strum a little because something is stuck in the heart and needs to come out. Apparently, the struggles between lavender lyricism, authorial ego, and realism of a supposedly everyman narrator in "The Accident" will have to wait till tomorrow evening, when I shall have returned from an afternoon at the holy City Lights Bookstore and perhaps an educational, infallibly depressing documentary on secretly GMed food playing at the Castro, the Cleopatra of local landmark theatres.

Chagall's Blue Lovers 

I love horses and I love this

Weddings

To A. Mezhirov

Weddings in days of war,

false cheating comfort,

those hollow phrases:

"He won't get killed..."

On a snowbound winter road,

slashed by a cruel wind,

I speed to a hasty wedding

in a neighboring village.

Gingerly I enter

               a buzzing cottage,

I, a folk dancer of repute,

with a forelock dangling

from my forehead.

All spruced up,

              disturbed,

among relatives

              and friends

the bridegroom sits, just mobilized,

distraught.

Sits

   with Vera--his bride--

but in a day or two

he'll pull on a gray soldier's coat

and, wearing it, leave for the front.

Then with a rifle he will go,

tramping over alien

                  soil;

a German bullet, perhaps,

will lay him low...

A glass of foaming home brew

he's not able yet to drink.

Their first night together

will likely be their last.

Chagrined, the bridegroom stares,

and with all his soul in anguish

cries to me across the table:

"Well, go on, why don't you dance!"

They all forget their drinking,

all fix me with goggling eyes,

and I slide and writhe,

beating a rhythm with my hooves.

Now I drum a tattoo,

                   now drag my toes

across the floor.

Whistling shrilly,

                 I clap my hands,

leap up near the ceiling.

Slogans on the wall fly past,

"Hitler will be kaput!"

But the bride

            scalds

her face

       with tears.

I'm already a wet rag,

barely catch my breath...

"Dance!"--

         they shout in desperation,

and I dance again...

Back home, my ankles

feel as stiff as wood;

but from yet another wedding

                           drunken guests

come knocking at the door once more.

Soon as mother lets me go,

I'm off to weddings once again,

and round the tablecloth anew

I stamp my feet and bend my knees.

The bride sheds bitter tears,

friends are tearful too.

I'm afraid for everyone.

                       I've no desire to dance,

but you can't

            not dance.

1955 Evgeny Yevtushenko
Translated by George Reavey (revised)

namae to eega

Twyla Tharp had a great name. Classical Chinese Teacher told us he had a student who chose a Chinese name for himself that was rather questionable. Apparently, it was due to both its distant phonetic resemblance to his actual Christian name and its "romantic" ode of faith to his fiancee that he selected: "Ai Meiren", where "Ai", or "love" is the last name and "Meiren", "beautiful [wo]man" is the first name. (In Chinese, the last name precedes the first name.) His fiancee must have been very pleased, for it is not often that lovers change their names--their roots to linguistic and social existence--into predicates that risk absurdity to honour their beloved's beauty. Classical Chinese Teacher purportedly found out about this misnomer when the student proudly handed to him freshly printed name-cards: "Surely, you are not serious?"

The amorous man should be applauded for finding it tolerable that people would call out "Beautiful [wo]man" to him because that is now his first name. That's a pretty good firecracker for genderfuck studies, especially since he bestowed it upon himself. And I thought "Lulu" was bad...

The most interesting documentaries I've seen in a while are the 7 Up films that check in with a group of British children picked from various socio-economic backgrounds every seven years. They were all so cute, though some of the posh boys had foul opinions: "I think it is a good idea to pay for schools because otherwise, they would all be crowded and naaahsty". To be fair, that particular brat, though like a Pre-Raphaelite in the face at age 7, became increasingly less attractive in a Mr. Hyde kind of way as he and his staunchly Tory stances stiffened with age. On the whole, though, the cast is adorable in their honesty. It makes me wonder if kids en masse have just stopped being as cute due to crudely premature loss of innocence today or whether the filmmakers specifically sought out poster children. Probably a bit of both, but I was reminded of how handsome and well-formed children can be at a certain age, when their proportions are just right and they are perfectly functional, pretty little people. I love seeing the cast's approaching middle age, too, and how the contours of their bodies and dreams have defied and fulfilled our voyeuristic expectations.

"Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man." --Jesuit (?) saying

Vroom vroom

There's been a rash of unsolicited introductory notes from people on Friendster I don't know. At first, it was kind of flattering and fun since I'm not interested in using it to meet people to date, but it's getting strange how they write as if they were cruising by in a shiny yellow automobile: "What's UP girl!?" That punctuation about sums up how I feel, too. It is a private revenge that I do look like my pictures, but only if you know me :)

In other news, Japanese Teacher continues to be amused by my passably eccentric outfits. I couldn't resist but wear the Avengers ensemble today, complete with sleek red on red and curvy head band. She's always so supportive. It's very nice to have an audience who appreciates such attention to frills.

Had conference with Creative Writing Teacher and we ended up talking about jazz singing. Billie Holiday apparently only had a "one octave [or two?] range". M. will have her singing class final at a four-hour performance at an undisclosed SF fish restaurant. O such vicarious glamour! Emboldened and reminded of singing's joys, on the way home I passed the time in the fast falling light with "Amazing Grace", "Ay Linda Amiga", and "Dolina".

If I ever have a son, I'm going to call him Esteban, after the incredibly hot, dead giant who washes up on the shores of Marquez' "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World". Kafka's "The Hunger Artist" is also a revelation, but the protagonist in that one isn't so overflowing with animal magnetism or nobility, so Esteban triumphs.

Need to go to SF this weekend to pick up Yevtushenko (how can it be that I have lived till now without having heard him? When was the last time I was shaken by the boom of such a voice? "Babi Yar", "Memento", and "Epistle to Neruda" have revived my girlish desire to be with a Russian poet for a perch. Surely the melancholia that courses beneath the bedrock of our cultures are the one and the same...) and a ticket home for Christmas. Discovered pretty girl in wushu class is from W, the small Northern European town where I went to high school... And that Creative Writing Teacher knows the cousin of a college friend and their cousin as well. In fact, they were all at the same wedding this past summer: my friend, his two cousins, and M. Assez bizarre, non?

And now, review of Japanese verbs and myriad ways to tell the time. Then more Confucian anecdotes on the choices of kings. Dinner will be the reward: sesame noodles with spinach and scallions. Maybe the flourish of a large egg.

PS The spellcheck on this blog thing is delightfully primitive: it suggested that I replace or correct "Yevtushenko" with "obtuseness". That's not as funny as when an anagram generator finds that "English department" is in fact "pretending Hamlets" or that God ("I am that I am") is revealed to be "Tahiti Mama". He may have been mad, but Gauguin could have been onto something.

Pleasant scents

Now burning: green tea-scented Japanese incense I found in a little shop in one of those outrageously overpriced hippie towns on Maui. My room feels like a different space. Once in Providence, I proposed an anthropological project on comparative cultural placements of particular scents: e.g. blood, earth, fires, notions of "perfume", the open sea. There was probably a lot of not readily identifiable reading to be done for such an undertaking... Maybe later when I am a fully-fledged disgruntled academic with holes in my pocket under the long yoke of tenure, I can embark on such a presumptuous journey.

I could interview people with my petite Radioshack dictaphone: "So, what do you think of this one?" [Pull out stopper to some scientific-looking bottle, watch reaction intensely--grimace, wince, pleasure, surprise, bewilderment, devastation? Record both vociferations of subject and self on tape though the commentary would be in encoded field jargon mixed in with bastard children of various languages I have farmed with varying degrees of love.]

* * *
The green tea incense has become ash, but retains its twiggy form. The room is a bit smoky and I am reminded (as I was mending some long-neglected shirt collars and buttons last night) of a folk story where a mother, a seamstress, embroiders the magical/mythical journey of her son the hero as he conquers spirited evils and passes through flames on his snowy steed. Her eyes eventually become blinded by the fumes of her pine-oil lamp.

* * *
There were two things to be excited about today and they're both names. It's great when your characters suddenly gain a face with an apt name. I'm itching to script a new story about a box, but in the meantime, there are exams and translations (one could do much worse than working with elementary Zhuangzi, he of the butterfly-philosopher-butterfly fame) to hammer out.

* * *
Christmas wish list so far: a dressmaking mannequin in my size, less aggro in the world (taking cues from Mozi), and (coming full circle) a small vial of Black Vetiver and Cafe.

prophetics

Went out to live music accompanied by chocolate mousse cake and merlot with A last night since the costume party (heroes and villains!) was too far away and we didn't have the right kind of wheels. I wasn't too bothered about not going to the fete because the cliff-hanging logistics meant I didn't have an outfit, though I could have put together from my existing wardrobe the following identities:

a) Greek hunter complete with green woolen cape (thanks to Mom for teaching me to sew last year);
b) Foxxy Cleopatra (with a too-blonde fro and slightly more modest disco shirt);
c) Diana Rigg's character, Emma Peel, in a zip-up red and white striped racing jacket with vermilion, kung-fu-amenable trumpet trousers and a modish pink hairband.

The Avenger outfit would have been the most fun. I once told a fellow filing clerk last year who complimented me on some blue velvet flares between the werewolves and classic horror sections that I only wear pants that allow me to do high kicks. *--Hi-yah!--* Hmm, kind of miss those exhilarating cries in tae kwon do. Wushu so far is pretty mute except when everyone's groaning during the push-ups :D Love the cartwheels, though--what other post-middle-school gym class occasion encourages you to do them all the way across the wooden floors?

* * *
This morning's dream: I was living by the sea. When the tide receded, the sand beneath some giant slabs of slate was firm enough to stand on. It was also quite low so the rocks were cantilevered and I could explore their newly revealed cavities. I had a feeling I knew what I was to find as my hands pried away huge chunks of packed sand and stones. A dictionary, miraculously dry and unspoilt, was pulled out, then a soft-bound volume of poetry ("The Aeneid"). One by one, books I'd been missing for years were taken out, even some photographic albums, all crisp and perfectly preserved. There was no discoloration or retention of salty damp. It seemed that I had buried my treasures under those rocks years ago and could only now reclaim them while the tide was elsewhere. There were boxes of the stuff and I was anxious about how much I'd apparently stowed away. My friend W. helped me loosen them from the shadows under the rocks. I next found myself in my apartment by the sea where with a wave of W's hand, a fully stocked, polished dark wood bookcase flew into place on the wall between the kitchen and sitting room. Of course, I was delighted and looked over at the other shelf of books I'd put up myself on the facing wall.

This means I should finish putting my house in order, because according to the dicta of Great Learning, only when one has made one's intentions pure can one's heart be righted, and only after that can one govern one's own house and after that, one's state.

Memoirs of Maui and the story about a pomegranate will have to wait.

Baby Baldwin Cove

to add further vanity to the dubious universal library

It is so beautiful outside today that I wish my room were still painted yellow. Not that chilly lemon rind one sees on overly iced cakes or waspish shower curtains, but a warm buttercup that makes black & white things, red, azure, and violet things look good. I live in a white house now and do not touch the walls.

* * *
There is a large photograph of an old Spanish man in tweeds on my wall bordered in red paper. He is looking off to his left and possibly out of my window with the Mediterranean behind him. This makes me happy.