ban jia le: spillingwater.freeservers.com

*shrug*

I feel like I'm a teenager again. Restless and rebellious and jumpy and anxious and alone and afraid and lost and heartachey and all for no particular reason. Surely one shouldn't go through adolescence twice, when once was quite enough?

I look for your letters every morning, when my dad brings up the post. They're never there and I look for them all the same and I know they won't come while I'm looking. I know how these things work, you see. Your letters will come - if at all - one day after I've forgotten to look for them, and forgotten that there were letters to look for - and then what fragile peace there would have been will come tumbling down and I'll start looking for letters that will never come all over again.

i got handphone.

a tiny step towards reality.

My brother – eight years younger and rather more intelligent – was trying to teach me Einstein’s special theory of relativity just now. I have gathered that

if (1) distance = time x speed of light,
and (2) the speed of light is a constant, whatever your inertial frame of reference,
then (3) time dilates as the distance increases,
where (4) to dilate = to stretch, to expand (according to the physics textbook).

So.

Elementary physics.

Is that why time weighs heavy when you are away?

On Anne Carson's Plainwater

I'm reading too fast. I know I am. And in all the wrong places too: on the MRT, with Spiritualized on my discman, with the TV on. I'm running too fast to hear the words. Sometimes you enjoy a poem just because, and sometimes you find a poem that rings through you like a bell. And sometimes, sometimes, you find a poem that is both. It seems something that ought to mentioned. And given thanks for.

Afterword


After a story is told there are some moments of silence. Then words begin again. Because you woud always like to know a little more. Not exactly more story. Not necessarily, on the other hand, an exegesis. Just something to go on with. After all, stories end but you have to proceed with the rest of the day. You have to shift your weight, raise your eyes, notice the sound of traffic again, maybe go out for cigarettes. A coldness begins to spread through you at the thought; a wish forms. Perhaps it is something about me you would like to know - not that you have any specific questions, but still, that would be better than nothing. I could pour you a glass of wine and go on talking about the sun still upon the mountains outside the window or my theory of adjectives or some shameful thing I have done in the past, and none of us would have to leave just yet.

You do not know how this vague wish of yours fills me with fear. I have been aware of it from the beginning, I must be frank about this, I have worn it around my throat like a fox collar since the moment I said "Vediamo." Just then I felt your body tense for a story, and for something else. You tracked and peered and stalked it through page after page. Now here we are. Little snouts wake and bite in.

But could you tell me, what is so terrible about stepping off the end of a story? Let us look more closely at this moment that gathers at the place called the end. Up until this time, you have been fairly succesful at holding back your tears, and suddenly you feel brokenhearted. It is not that you loved Anna, or look upon me as a friend, or hate your own life particularly. But there is a moment of uncovering, and of covering, which happens very fast and you seem to be losing track of something. It is almost as if you hear a key turn in the lock. Which side of the door are you on? You do not know. Which side am I on? It is up to me to tell you - at least, that is what other brave, wise and upright men have done in a similar position. For example, Sokrates:

The man who had administered the poison laid his hands on him and after a while examined his feet and legs, then pinched his foot hard and asked if he felt it. Sokrates said "No." And after that, his thighs; and passing upward in this way he showed us that he was growing cold and rigid. And again he touched him and said that when it reached his heart he would be gone. The coldness by now was almost to the middle of his body and he uncovered himself - for he had covered his head - and said (what was his last utterance) "Krito, we owe a cock to Asklepios: pay it back and don't forget." "That," said Krito, "will be done, but now see if you have anything else you want to say." Sokrates made no further answer. Some time went by; he stirred. The man uncovered him and his eyes were fixed. When Krito saw this, he closed his mouth and eyes.

(Plato, Phaedo 118)

A cock for Asklepios: What a courtly gesture it is with whcih Sokrates ushers his guests out into the evening air, pointing the way for them (they have had quite a bit to drink). We hardly know such hospitality nowadays. And yet, having held you in my company so long, I find I do have something to give you. Not the mysterious, intimate and consoling data you would have wished, but something to go on with, and in all likelihood the best I can do. It is simply the fact, as you go down the stairs and walk in dark streets, as you see forms, as you marry or speak sharply or wait for a train, as you begin imagination, as you look at every mark, simply the fact of my eyes in your back.

from Anne Carson, 'Canicula di Anna', in Plainwater.

Early one morning words were missing. Before that, words were not. Facts were, faces were. In a good story, Aristotle tells us, everything that happens is pushed by something else. Three old women were bending in the fields. What use is it to question us? they said. Well it shortly became clear that they knew everything there is to know about the snowy fields and the blue-green shoots and the plant called "audacity," whcih poets mistake for violets. I began to copy out everything that was said. The marks construct an instant of nature gradually, without the boredom of a story. I emphasize this. I will do anything to avoid boredom. It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and the participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough.

from Anne Carson, Plainwater.

I can't find the whole poem on the net - don't know what it's called - and I don't have a copy of One Train. But a longer excerpt, probably with the wrong line breaks because email tends to screw them up:

I thought about this moment from time to time
For eight or ten years. It seemed to me I should have done something at the time
To have used all that energy. Lovemaking is one way to use it and writing is another.
But that is probably human destiny and I am not going to go against it here.
Sometimes there are the persons and not the energy, sometimes the energy and not the persons.
When the gods give both, a man shouldn't complain.

Kenneth Koch

From Anne Carson. Kinda. Too lazy to check my book, which is upstairs:

Let us not say that time past was long, for it is gone.
But let us say that time present was long,
for when it was present it was long.

For when it was present it was long.

what's lost in the distance?

what's lost in the translation of touch into word?

if at all.

in the lima airport waiting for the flight to board - been waiting all bloody night for the check-in counters to open - and since this is the last i´ll be seeing of this continent - this half of the world - for a while i feel i should say something thoughtful about the bits of south america i{ ve seen, even if mainly from a bus window. truth is, all i can think of to say now is, where are you, and why aren´t you writing to me? you´d think that people who traded in words would understand better how important they are/could be. times like this it´s hard to resist the claim that all men are bastards. alright. will probably get progressively tetchier until i reach singapore, if it´s possible to get any tetchier, and then will write long overdue thoughtful piece. or not.