The frontier of human psyche is a domain of intense dispute. It draws on the present more than it does on the past because of our ability to create immediacy and interconnect, which, at the moment, dominates our ability to gather information – accessible to many of us at our fingertips, as they say. The lingo of interconnectivity, of exchange, boasts a “vocabulary” much broader than before, when ‘before’ has become shy of definition. Things have turned lateral and easy to relate to; supply and demand – a figure of speech; the practicality of accessories, of gadgetry – no more than a blind spot, a black box of potential use, to the city dweller nowadays, in the cosmopolitan (un)place where déjà vu prevails. There is “interface anxiety” in the air of simplification, in the tools that were created to do the job for us while we provide the final touch, adding finesse – a byproduct of reproduction and replication, reason enough to stay.
What is the thing that makes our lives “so much easier”? Where is the apogee of this achievement if not in a mythologized underground laboratory, blinking with outdated LEDs of haunting ramifications? We ought to close our eyes and rely on it, even to the extent of denying its static function/s. It hasn’t changed much over the years, really, though like everything else, it has become somewhat more integrated and interconnected. Our perception of it hasn’t changed much either – we still ascribe to it more than what it means to a group of people, working with it directly, and on a regular basis, to boot. I’m talking, without further ado, about the mainframe computer – ancestor of the PC and sci-fi prototype to the supercomputer.
You have seen it at work, right? In an early hacker flick perhaps? Glimpses of it in the monadic (even earlier) occultations by Godard (Alpha 60[1]) and Kubrick (HAL 9000[2]), where you didn’t quite notice the whole caboodle running the show? Or, more evidently, in The Matrix? If you have been around, it has been on your mind, no doubt. But where does it take you today? Surely, to the PC, one would assume. Well then, yes and no – a ‘yes’ for accessing your bank account through the internet (i.e. by using a PC) and a tentative ‘no’ (because you, like many of us, tend to believe in what you see in front of you) for every time you have drawn money from the ATM. At any rate, it has most probably been convincing enough, through a variegated set of interactive and flashy menus, that it, in fact, has become the PC (or a network of them, at most – working together). If you have been around, it most probably wouldn’t be taking you to an underground laboratory with lanky dudes, sporting white coats, receding hair and horn-rimmed spectacles. Not exactly.
The mainframe computer, or simply put, the mainframe, is something of a legend. It is a heavy-duty machine for processing “tons and tons” of input and output data. It takes huge computer “dumps” on “green screens” in split-seconds of tiny problems that make the lives of mainframe operators/administrators, sustaining engineers and developers a “low-level”[3] hell. It is notoriously user-unfriendly (among those who have the odd pleasure of working with it) and spookily backward-compatible – that is, it runs the same code that it ran 30-40 years ago, with very minor alterations in between.
Historically speaking, the mainframe hasn’t been much of an innovation, as it has been a “bargain bin” for mergers and acquisitions. One big company (IBM) would be making the hardware and another big company (Computer Associates) would be buying the aspiring underdogs, making mainframe software. It has been the model for many years, up until recently, when the amount of shady business strategies, corporate lawsuits in lieu of peaceful knowledge-and-produce acquirement deals has reached its inevitable boiling point. Why did it happen? Why did the CEO of the largest mainframe-software “manufacturer”, catering to government agencies, stock markets, banks and research institutions, had to go to jail[4]? Naturally, there was a committee, an investigation and a report, but what was the “lateral thing”, the “peripheral” cause that had dictated the key strategy to grow financially, without really focusing on novelty, that simply couldn’t be sustained by fair play and, ultimately, lawful conduct? Some people in the (IT) industry call it the “Mainframe Gap”, or the “Mainframe-Skills Gap” – a phenomenon whose dossier hasn’t been on the table of board members until very recently.
The Mainframe Gap, or from now on, the Gap, is something that happened organically – new generations of computer engineers who didn’t want to be bothered with “low-level” (programming) languages and “green screens” with no GUI (Graphical User Interface). The major catalysts were Apple Lisa and Microsoft Windows operating environments (and later, systems), with some offbeat aficionados, here and there, hankering for the so-called X-Windows (and its later derivatives) – a GUI environment for Unix systems, developed in MIT in 1984. The command-line window has become a “cool” choice among many sci-fi and espionage-thriller buffs, but even that couldn’t get too much prime time, in favor of a neatly rendered graphical window, springing up miraculously from the super-tech depths of arcane command-line prompts.
The Gap has lasted long enough (over 20 years), in which time many have decided that mainframes were a thing of the past, and tried to switch to distributed-computing (i.e. PCs), to make their business tick. But nothing, alas, can (to this day) handle as much input and output data as the mainframe. It simply cannot be substituted. Why cannot it be substituted, you ask? The answer varies according to what one expects: either due to no innovation where there were mainly acquisitions and artificial growth instead, for lack of interest to support and manufacture software for a cumbersome “passing fad”; or, if “all else”, indeed, has failed, then irreplaceability. No matter what is your personal preference, it is still out there, “sitting in a locked room in some distant city”[5], and there’s a good chance that you cannot live without it.
On a slight tangent, Cloud Computing, a term en vogue today, relates you to what you essentially need from “your” system, which is nowhere near you, as rumor has it and practice shows – taking the functionality “outside of the box” and giving you only the basic means to interact with it (e.g. keyboard, mouse, screen). The most basic cloud-computing solutions offer external storage facilities to its users, while more complex ones provide more engaging modes of interaction. In any case, you need a good deal of request-processing power to make everyone happy, and what better way to answer for it than by plugging a handful of mainframes into the “big picture”?
For its guzzling and spewing unimaginable wads of data, the mainframe can be used as a storage-coordinator, putting stuff on and fetching them from ultra-high-capacity magnetic tapes. This gives us more “memory” to fiddle with, more memory than you and I can imagine perhaps, emptying our heads of important mementos and recorded footage of the last trip to Rome for what’s hip and what’s new. But how can we continue in the same vein if we are on the brink of superficiality, skimming over all these details of our lives, all the highlights, if we are on the brink of forgetting how to operate these machines to whose benefits we have acquiesced and to whom we have partly relinquished these precious details? In essence, by taking this “thinking outside the box” initiative rather seriously (in the past few decades, from pocket calculators to personal computers, to mass storage equipment and PDAs), we have started doing to machines what we have gradually been doing to ourselves – relieving the mind (or the central processing unit, for that matter) of its obligations to think and remember, thus continuing the trend of creating (and “developing”) something in our own image.
As soon as I sit down he gets up. Ordinarily, I’d assume that the two events were unrelated merely with the appearance of a finely tuned operation, the two of us attached to some secret machine. As I go down, he rises slowly. The movement smooth and balanced.
Except the look on his face told me there was no secret machine. The loathing was stamped on the front of the almost perfect sphere of a head, a sphere which was pressed down into a thick neck, so the flesh rippled up.
I know what you’re thinking, maybe he had to get up, maybe he was stretching his leg, maybe he just likes to keep his head bare. Maybe he’s balding. The last guy who kicked me square and steel tipped in my knee obviously had premature balding too as well along with an outbreak of military tattoos. And what I took for a kick was him stretching his legs. My knee got in the way. Inconsiderate knee.
I’d be less sensitive if people weren’t so curious about where I’m from, if they weren’t trying to pin my head somewhere on the map. Sure, it can be an ice-breaker, and sometimes I’ve been mistakenly adopted into various nationalities like the Afghani cab driver who insisted I had to be from his homeland. And sure it has worked on occasion to more than my social benefit. For a moment, there is the fantasy of belonging that the man pacing in front of me also promotes, though he is pushing whereas I’d like to imagine the others pull.
His jacket has swollen. His hands are in his jean pockets. He’s walking back and forth, doing a little twist with his arms. As threatening as he’s trying to be, there’s something to commend in the rhythm, the way he’s able to choreograph all that aggression and machismo. Regular as a washing machine agitator. But I’m glad he’s over there.
Aren’t I judging him as I assume he’s judging me? And given that my life is not as curtailed by my ambiguous features, aren’t I indulging in hate for its own sake? Okay, this is not the first time someone has sneered or made a comment. But, I have a good job, a good family life and apart from the knee, no injuries. I don’t know if I’ve earned these feelings.
Then I think about the speed with which he stood. The smoothness was more than finely tuned co-incidence. It was the harmony of revulsion. And he’s still there, twisting side to side in disgust. If it was a train, he’d be gone. Hunger would have dragged him to a nearby burger or baguette. A shit would have sped him away. Almost anything else would sweep him from the seat and my mind, and almost certainly wouldn’t be writing about him.
Backwards and forwards he twists, staring without pause.
She took his place with a more natural randomness. Nothing smooth about it all. Just someone taking a free place, the proprietorial drop into position, the body turned slightly away to avoid any attempts at interaction matter how deft or ill-at-ease.
See, I’ve immediately assumed that her behaviour is about her not me. I figure it is about how she assumes I would behave toward her and not because like the fascist washing machine she doesn’t want to really be near this ethnically ambiguous character, the melting pot in a soup cup.
It can’t be that. She sits that way because she’s fed up with the attention of men, even if it is the casual I’m-merely-registering-your-beauty look. And she is beautiful, dark olive skin, large eyes catching the fluorescent bars in their wet radiance, hair falling down her shoulders in copper spirals.
In fact, like me, she could fall into any number of backgrounds, though she looks like she’s from a generation for whom those identities are long chains attached to their parents’ ankles. Or the grandparents’. “God no, aargh,” she and her age group think. “We don’t want to be part of that. We want to be part of the great global blur. Deracinated, shimmery, bored and always 10% off.”
Which is why I cling to those mistakes of identity, the fantasies of belonging – so as not to be part of that but still to ensure I am a part, a have a part, even as a walk-on for as long as the mistake endures. Pinning myself on an invisible map, just like the washing machine.
Wouldn’t it be funny though if I had the courage to speak to her? She has a beauty magazine covers would destroy with air-brushing. It’s not just the hair, skin and eyes. It’s the way she carries herself – poised between self-realization and the fact she’ll spring up and be gone. Tangible and fleeting. It is why we worship cats and merely admire dogs for their loyalty. It’s why the Egyptians had Bass and Disney had Goofy.
If I could somehow stumble passed that innate awkwardness, the naked desperation, to – in the flurry of the moment – latch onto the ‘right thing to say’, so the ice wall I’m sure she is so adept at conjuring doesn’t even manage a layer of frost.
And once the words clear the last barrier and land on all fours, she stays. She somehow realizes that among all those nervous, badly dressed guys, I’m somehow different. I’m the one who she will grant a smile to, a smile which before you even spoke you knew was the completion, the final rousing movement, of her face. But seeing it is still as special as this moment gets. It will be what I always remember.
We’ll talk about where we’re going and what we do. If the conversation goes on long enough she’ll ask where I’m from. Really from. This time I’ll assume it is because she’s interested. To her I’m not foreign. I’m exotic. Even though when she hears my name she does a double take and I have to explain I’m named after one of my mother’s friends. Then again enough people have taken me for Irish that perhaps it’s not so strange. Or maybe they see the name before they see me. At any rate, the explanation is good because it makes my past even more elaborate and convoluted.
She’ll be surprised at my total monolingualism. Such a background and yet all it amounts to is the same international porridge of English. Perhaps this conversation will be best left for later, our second or third coffee, a dinner when at which point I’m sure she’s into me.
And if it does become something serious, if those cups of coffee or meals become so frequent that they’re no longer necessary, maybe we’ll look back on the bench and she’ll tell me how she was pleased I had the courage to speak to her. She’ll probably say – because it fits the moment and I’d be expecting it – that she was hoping I’d ask. I wouldn’t contest this, despite the initial slight turn away, the positioning of the eyes to avoid contact.
God knows how I would get around that. Assuming, I do, and assuming we have this unfurled length of time running, long and chaotically, like a yarn-ball kicked by one of us, from that bench, I would follow the imaginary length of thread back to this bench, this day. I would even mention that bald man, the fascist washing machine, who has stopped his waddled and is now looking, or could just be returning my gaze.
He has his part in it too because now I can see it was part of a bigger even more intricate machine. A skinhead vacates the seat, the love of my life fills his place. The movie only needs a name.
The young woman, oblivious of her other life with me, oblivious to the machine, the agitator, having no idea about the thread, disappears down a tunnel which leads to the platforms and so leaves the page.
Already her features are starting to fade. There are a few words for them. I have syntax to hold them together, but her image has dissipated in my mind. I quickly look down the tunnel. She has been covered by so many legs, arms, bags, kids, strollers and dogs.
A second woman, blond with skin rough and purplish puts her arms around the skinhead. They kiss for a moment which to them is over like fireworks. For us onlookers is no different to a hospital waiting room. Or a train platform. The skinhead glances one last time and they are also gone.
My train has been delayed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ryan Scott is a writer based in the Czech Republic. His poetry and prose have appeared in Shampoo, Overland, Indigo, Niederngasse and Cordite. He has work forthcoming in Otoloiths and Cottonmouth.
In icy hours of the night
Bedeviled by the pain, its attitude,
I’ll cast a signal to the skies
Of seventieth latitude.
Let a geologist of heavy beard,
Thaw out his compass by the fire,
Combine coordinates, my own appear,
Spellbound onto a mountain’s pyre.
Where, like Tannhäuser at the Venusberg,
Imprisoned by pale nakedness,
For twenty years I dwell in murk,
And burn my dream to barrenness,
That if I break the shackles to my aid
And thrust my shoulders, just like Samson,
I’ll bring it down, the heavy colonnade,
Upon this dream, and pay my ransom.
Gesture
No, I don’t need a tongue, not at all,
Only hands to speak up would suffice,
I got used to expressing with hands,
Perturbation and terror and vice.
In the woods, I shall be understood,
Speech’s a bird perched on one’s rigid hand,
Wave of palm and boldness of flight –
In this language our lies cannot stand.
And that gesture – an early old tongue,
The outpouring of savagery’s feelings,
More acute than the word, or its books,
Not in vain I was taught all its meanings.
And the movement of branches is clear,
Or its trembling elderly boles –
Telling tales of the forest itself,
With no words, no equivocal calls.
Of Song
The dark provenance
Of our ballads, songs–
An unavoidable result
Of the Fallen wrongs.
With the same, that life
Was impregnated,
In this moment of atonement,
Joins, gets dominated.
That which worn itself to terms,
Till the sleeplessness of January,
Which gets born within a stream –
Streetlamp tears and words of memory
On a box of cigarettes,
Placed to rest any old how,
On a sheet or just like that,
Paper corners, news of now,
That, which cannot wait at all,
Won’t allow to make a move,
That, which toils from its skin,
Won’t get back, return, forsooth.
You will cut it, cord from navel,
In the darkness you will stop,
You’ll be feeling half relieved –
Only let it sever, drop.
Having done with the delirium
Of those oldest, ancient torments,
You will trample afterbirth,
Look around you for a moment…
Many years will pass. The song
Will still meet with you again.
More in need and flattering,
Than an heiress, any then.
There she goes along the path,
Walking there with downcast eyes,
Timidly, irresolute,
With her peers of rank and guise.
Then you peer, not understanding,
Who is she in your own fate,
All of her, as if a stranger,
Still unknown to you to date.
In a throng, inside a bookshop,
You will make out, in the end,
Former sooty Cinderella’s
Face, forgotten, apprehend.
And by birthmarks, other signs,
Slits of lips and eyes she casts,
You will see the poet’s daughter,
For the first time and the last.
Pavlov’s Lover
The men are spending the day with their women.
Having no such possessive I am
alone for the while, with the quiet and coffee.
Only a whirring computer or
my own soft animal sounds of snuffling will empty
the space of its silence; or a car splashing
in the muffled distance beyond the netted windows
through streets impeded with slush.
The traffic carves through the snow-banks,
forcing its paths until the city is a delta and I am netted
and entrapped by this wire mesh of waters.
From my tower-like distance
the silver flash of hubcaps is like fish glimpsed
momentarily above a flailing river, water white
and faster than a mill-race.
Facebook
says everyone has gone to the park sledging.
What a winter to remember! Icicles
shimmering from the caps of traffic-lamps
like elongated fairy lights around a chalet
veranda. And how we
fell together like dogs for the sheer
heat of it, sleeping exhausted in whichever position
we dropped from each other’s mouths.
I am trying not think how you will hide the marks
in the sweet hair of your girl-babies.
You know like a dumb animal I will say nothing.
There are no stories under the snow.
Prague Spring
We spend our time celebrating the small victories:
a day without cigarettes, or remembering to buy catfood;
posting a letter at the third attempt;
finally visiting that new Serbian restaurant.
I have written one poem in four weeks,
but the olives are juicy and bitter.
And we will drink away the evening in Riegrak
with friends.
The air has that heaviness peculiar to blossoming.
An hour today I hung out my window,
breathing in the small orchard with its centrepiece
of Magnolia,
each tree so carefully tended
along the border of Verso and the vine castles.
Tomorrow’s goal is to carry a wardrobe
two blocks until the smell of fresh foccacia
wafts it effortlessly up to the balcony.
At some stage, doubtless, we may regret all this.
But my joy is the joy of the four-year-old
jumping on the café stool in her pink tracksuit,
marvelling at the light, which suffuses everything.
Vanilla Footsteps
I know that is it spring
and morning in New York
because the pianist told me.
He also told me that although
the woman was beautiful
he did not ask her name.
She was wearing some kind of raincoat
with a turquoise dress beneath it.
You could see the hem butterflying
as she hurried through the park.
On Hearing of Your Return
It had been a long time,
but I was doing all right.
The curl at the edge of the picture-frame
was obsolete. I used to flick it
with my fingers every time I passed.
So healthy that all that wasted pain
could raise a smile.
The ace of clubs had been played;
was now back in the pack,
carelessly shuffled
among blank-faced tarot cards.
It didn’t seem to portend anything
that they were vacant.
It had been a long time,
but I was doing all right.
This was the state of affairs
the night I heard of your return.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Anne Brechin was awarded a Jerwood/Arvon Young Poets Apprenticeship in 2003
and studied with Carol Rumens, George Szirtes & Christopher Reid. Published
in The Wolf, Stand, Rising, The Liberal, OVS and the Rakish Angel pamphlet
series, for four years she lived and performed in London. She has recently
moved to Prague.
the ground floor’s wood and glass had turned to brick,
higher windows were painted TRY TRY TRY.
A walkie-talkie startled into sound:
onlooking I was in the camera’s way.
Six men strode into the cars and sped them round
for seven seconds, sent up a dry beige spray.
I looked from further off, no one-man mob.
I moved, and let them get on with their job.
***
And now they’re taking photos of the future:
big windows, behind them – blinds. This is how
it’s planned to look, an image in the neuter
inviting the street to rent units now:
a woman on her mobile, shades pushed back,
two men in suits, and lesser casual figures,
a four-wheel drive, a sports coupé, no bike,
fill out the space of shadows reconfigured.
Lucky with the weather: the sky was blue.
The factory walls viewed through the passageway
have brightened: graffiti gone, windows new…
Beside the dumper trucks, under the grey
come hectic students, a jogger with her iPod,
and breaking the old clouds, the shining sky god.
***
The straightened roads my wheels will go were planned
by royal surveyor, council, sub-contractor.
Serf and day labourer shaped the land
with pickaxe and hoe, then the diesel tractor.
Where scattered streets had fallen, new blocks grew.
Old houses were left like glacial rocks.
Each window gave its partial, angled view.
Fences would bloom, and doors developed locks.
The streets were named for early business types,
markets incorporated by the gun.
The latest maps are printed; orange stripes
define the page. But when no engines run,
leave me to cycle through these lights. They too,
sometime before I rode these roads, were new.
***
Across the globe, forests fall, glaciers melt;
the slowly shifting crust will sometimes shake
and change. The way a word is spelled or spelt
draws a border, and finds soil to retake.
Dialects are sheaved into languages,
languages ploughed back into dialects,
but answers in the general knowledge quiz
diagnose cultures as lunatic sects,
holed up, hopeless, in compounds, upon this mess
of planet-plates and upward-downward forces,
not systems with the open end of chess,
a mix of art and engineering discourses,
machines that function both when wet and dry,
gulls at rocky coasts that can float and fly.
***
Europe’s extremest citizens patrol
coastal waters from dedicated rocks,
watch their radar for an approaching shoal,
seize it from the sea, then return to docks.
The fish must be fished: the edge isn’t glamorous.
Without borders, how can you have invasions?
No print forbids the use of private cameras
to make an image of these installations,
and permission is granted for a crew
to helicopter out and film these fishers
performing their work. Once edited through,
captions and colour stills in special issues
prove that the sea still rushes over rock,
leaving calm pools, where waves decrease in shock.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Alistair Noon was born in 1970 and has been based in Berlin since the early nineties. His work includes At the Emptying of Dustbins (Oystercatcher Press), In People’s Park (Penumbra, forthcoming), and, as translator, The Last Drop: Versions of August Stramm (Intercapillary Space, online) and Sixteen Poems: Monika Rinck (Barque Press, forthcoming). From 2005 to 2008 he coordinated the Poetry Hearings festival in Berlin. He is currently translating Osip Mandelstam.
Light engages darkness and evolves. Clothing marks its territory with iridescent ashes. The apogee of a precise fall from a great height presupposes both the pain and the pleasure of a splendid disregard for acceptance. The minotaur’s gown is hanging by a thread.
•
The meeting in the astronomy of arcane desperation. All the signs were rampant manifestations of a loving disposition to maintain the dimensions of passage and reconnaissance. The cinematic procession unfolded according to the vagaries of hallucination, and the world held tight to the forces of consciousness.
•
Sunlight shares the blood that grooms you with smoke, following thoughtless shapes out of enchantment. Eye-soundings in the thought-black miasma of a swirling wake, the healing plasma that spreads your body over its absence. Strangers fine-tune their seeds and place them in small boxes made of moonlight. The marksman closes his eyes when the target stops to taste the wind…
•
In the coveted dimensions of love and madness the long-coated herons dive for the memory of those who disappear in lucid dreams.
•
The weapon you most cherished was feminine. The wedge forced into the appearance of things was ambiguous with its dark insistence and wind-up astronomy, clicking and whirring about in circles and broken up by triangles into long, interminable caresses that went on forever, imitating a newly discovered galaxy quivering in the nearness of wolves.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
J. Karl Bogartte. Artist and poet. Surrealist by nature, Belgian by theory. Has four books of prose poems published by La Belle Inutile Editions. Works have appeared in Hydrolith (USA) Patricide (UK) 2, and 3 (forthcoming), and variously online. As an artist, invented the process of Photomorphosis in the 1970’s.
This selection is from an as yet unpublished collection A Curious Night For A Double Eclipse:
“Having to put forward candidates for God
I nominate Henri Rousseau and Dr Bucke,
tired of the lizard paradise
whose image banks renew off the flesh of others”
– Michael Ondaatje
There has always been an innate capacity to “speak up”, on different levels and different intensities. Matter has evolved in our perception and awareness of it – primarily through how it has been “communicated” to us, through so-called communicated intensities, evincing apparent structures. But we also have learned that it is possible to perceive matter as the obscure, the obfuscated, either for the lack of “emitted” intensities, or for their abundance. This abundance is not exactly the quantity of labels – symbolic and referential – we put on this or that, but the persevering preference we subconsciously employ not to reckon with the degree of diversity of certain attributes, by means of, oftentimes flawed, and manifold abstraction – for example, the phenomenon of the conspiracy.
“Great secrets”, as abstract and indispensable constructs of daily life, are always on the surface with respect to their affects (the total or partial sum of communicated intensities beyond “common sense”, that can only be “felt”). They attract speculation in an almost demanding fashion, and sooner or later, somebody is bound to spill the beans, no matter if it is true or not, no matter the upshot. In a purely physical spacetime, we have learned that even such universal obfuscations as black holes emit something, which on a mental level may take the form of a myth. That which is conspired in favor of, or against, gets hyper-differentiated (e.g. represented by a very large number of reflexive and transitive relations – symbols/signifiers/signifieds/signs); the limit-state of which is resonance on a par with the aforementioned concept of communicated intensity.
This intensity, however, doesn’t have an orientation, or a subspace of orientations/directions. It is an intensity destined for broadcast, available to all. In turn, this availability, together with receptive subjects, begets the manifold abstraction spoken of earlier, the “shadow” which the new intensity casts. This “shadow” is the conspiratorial occultation, the interference to direct(ed) intensities which provide a kind of “inert” differentiation of matter. The omnidirectional intensity is also the matter of hyper-differentiated “information”, containing in itself the “rarified” moveable oscillation, the “pure” interchangeable. And, on the other hand, the direct(ed) “inert” intensity can be the “true” obscure, whose borders are not defined; the presence of which we practically cannot sense; and which forms an undefined part of the universally undifferentiated.
Omnidirectional, or “conspiratorial” intensities are the loci of “conspiracies” (e.g. overlapping arrays of oriented intensities, intensities in a “tangle”). When they are narrowed down, or projected onto the plane of language (as language is commonly understood), the omnidirectional intensities are seen as tokens of glossolalia, which is the “smallest” common denominator of rumors, myths and “nonsensical” utterances. The primary keywords, or “buzzwords”, that come into play thereupon are “symbol” and “symbolism”. The irrelevant resolutions of their usage and the superficial hierarchies in which they are usually represented are secondary, or of no concern to those who are willing to resort to them from time to time, or even on a regular basis. And, on a slight tangent, to say that they are at the service or against those from whom (usually prominent individuals) they are derived is premature. The “symbols” and “symbolism” at hand work as pacifiers – of what is widely considered alternative thinking – on the public agitated by the quotidian, spurring intrigues.
The “pure” interchangeable can be reflexive, recurring in and occupying the reflecting/speculating mind whenever there is an attempt to share, for the very first time or at least the beginning of some exchange pertaining to it (e.g. an excited dialog or monologue about reptilian humanoids, or about the more “down-to-earth” transcending grips of oil giants); the “tapping-into” of the conspiratorial intensity, the assumed reception of its broadcast. In addition, the interchangeable can also be transitive, continuing the exchange of the “symbol”, “symbols” or “symbolism” related to the structure of the subject, expatiating on representations and meanings – (the conceptually) visual driven by verbal. The interchangeable provides means of escape since it always incurs exchange (be it one-sided or not), a preoccupation with it.
This brings us to information exchange: the value of a “scoop”, gossip, and the general power of “knowledge” – for the “pure” interchangeable is at the heart of the conspiratorial intensity. As mentioned earlier, hyper-differentiated matter is no longer matter per se. It is that which “moves” between matter (and matter), a communicated intensity – resonant with symbols, references and omissions. It can get one nowhere, but it makes one believe that it is worth the trip all the same, so to speak. Moreover, it is highly additive (i.e. from the point of view that many more intensities can be “added” to it) since it is omnidirectional. Practical examples of conspiratorial intensities are tabloids, which can be seen as “major” conspiratorial intensities, and conspiracy theories, which are “minor”. Major ones make a nearly exclusive use of the human factor (faces, bodies) in the production of symbols, and whose symbols are reflexive (breadth-differentiation – faces from different angles with makeup, accessories, etc); while minor ones rely more on abstract and transitive representation (in-depth differentiation – symbols and underlying meanings).
What separates “inert” or direct(ed) intensities from conspiratorial ones is that the latter are always ahead of themselves, as it is the case with moving particles, or particulars, as far as the “pure” interchangeable goes. The conspiratorial matter is “rarified” to a state of perpetual exchange and can only exist in that state (e.g. as money, giving you little indication where it has been, or media, with its face-values inviting for more). Conspiracies themselves, outwardly, always imply inner knowledge, the kind of knowledge that is most valued, but not necessarily most valuable – quite often, on the contrary, far from it. This knowledge is valued because it is still unknown, when it is only so-called “pure” infiltration discourse, subordinate to intensit(y/ies) of peripheral speculation. What is highly differentiated becomes “information”, a sort of matter (as it is a noun, after all), a matter of intensity. But once the exchange stops, we will either forget it, or call it a myth.
In the sky, rustier than tin,
A finger of a post.
Stood up in its place,
Like fate, almost.
- Quarter to. Fixed?
- Death doesn’t wait,
Exaggeratingly low -
The hat’s flying trait.
Every eyelash – a challenge.
Mouth cramped and firm.
Exaggeratingly low
Was the bow to affirm.
- Quarter to. Punctual?
The voice was to lie.
The heart: what’s with him?
The brain: become spry!
-
The sky – bad with omens:
Corrosion and tin.
At the very same spot.
His waiting had been.
This kiss of no sound:
The stupor of lips.
For the hand of a madam,
The dead – just like this…
A quickening commoner
Had elbowed the side.
Exaggeratingly boring
Was the whistle that cried.
Like the yelp of a dog,
Cried vexed, out of breath.
(Exaggerating the life
In the hour of death.)
Waist-high – that was yesterday,
Suddenly – to the stars.
(Exaggerated, that is:
It went up too far.)
Saying mentally: dearest.
- The hour? Now seven.
To the cinema, or? –
“Home!”, burst out leaden.
II.
A gypsy encampment, -
Led us that way!
Thunder on head,
A sword to bare-sway!
Every horror
Of words, expected,
Like a house, we fall –
The word: ‘home’,
affected.
-
The stray pampering
Of howling, now: home!
A toddler of one:
“Give”, “mine” with foam.
My brother in decadence,
My chill and my heat,
That’s the way to burst out,
Like yourself – Home! Retreat.
-
A horse free of tethering posts –
Higher – as the rope turns to ash.
- There is no home at all!
- There is, only ten steps to dash.
The home on the mountain.
- Not higher? – Atop.
A pane beneath the roof.
- “Not of one dawn to crop
Up burning?” – anew,
Life? – simplicity of poems!
Home, it means: from home
Into the night.
(O, to whom will it roam,
My sadness, my trouble,
Dread, greener than ice?..)
- You thought too much. –
Pensively: – Yes.
III.
And – the wharf. Waters
I hold, as a solid bulk.
The gardens of Semiramis
Hung up – showing their hulk!
The water – a steely line
Of deadman’s hue – I hold
As a singer holds a music
Sheet, a wall that’s cold
For blindmen… Would you give
It back? I’ll bend – Will you
Hear? Her, quencher of thirst,
I hold, as the roof’s edge askew
Is held by a lunatic…
But not from the river
A shiver – born a naiad!
Hands cling, like hands,
To the loved one, they quiver -
For faithfulness…
The dead are right.
Yes, but not all closeted
Die from the left, the right –
You. The right side,
deathly deposited.
A sheaf of striking light.
Laughter, as a penny tambourine.
“We should, we better…”
(A chill within.)
…”We shall be brave?”
IV.
The fog, fair-haired,
A wave – of gaseous flouncing.
Breath-stuffed, smoke-aired,
And mainly – no announcing!
That smell? Of haste,
Connivance, and of sin:
Commercial occultation
And ballroom powdering.
Familial single men
In rings, venerable youths…
Spelled-over and joked-full
And mainly – bookish truths!
And large, and small,
With muzzles and with fluff.
…Commercial bargaining
And ballroom powder stuff.
Just as a silver notch
In the window – a Maltese star!
Over- caressed and loved,
And mainly – cuddled too far!
Pinched… (Yesterday
‘s food – forgive me: has a whiff!)
…Commercial affairs
And ballroom powder sniff.
The chain’s too short?
Though it’s no steel, but platinum!
With every triple chin
Convulsing, oxen’s speculum –
Chomping on veal. Sweet neck, above
It is the devil – a gas burner.
…Commercial collapse
And powder in some corner –
A gift…
From Berthold Schwartz –
And patron of the people.
– We need to talk.
Shall we be brave as steeples?
V.
I love the movement of the lips.
And know – he won’t speak first.
- Love not? – No, I do love.
- Love not? – but harrowed worse,
But drunk, exasperated.
(An eagle gazing at the land):
- Pardon me, but is that – home?
- A home within my heart that stands.
- Language!
Love – flesh and blood.
A color, washed with blood.
You think that – love –
Is table talk, or what?
An hour – and go home? As
Those gentlemen and ladies?
Love, it means…
- A temple? A child,
Swapped for a scar, braided
With another! – Under the servants’,
Hawkmoth’s look? (I, with no sound:
“Love, it means a bow
A drawn bow: a parting nook”.)
- Love, it means – a bond.
When all’s apart: mouths, lives.
(I asked you: don’t put a jinx!
Upon that hour, dearest, which arrived,
Upon the mountain. Upon
Desire. Memento – the ferry:
Love – is all the gifts
Into a pyre – for free, made airy!)
The mouth’s slit of a shell
Is pale. No smile – but a list.
- And first of all a single
Bed.
- You wished for an abyss
To say? – a drumming
Of fingers. – Not moving mountains!
Love, it means…
- My own.
I follow you. Conclusions?
Countless
-
drumming of fingers
Rising. (The scaffold and the square.)
- We’ll leave. – And I: we’ll die,
I hoped. It’s simpler, and spare.
Enough, this cheapness:
Rhymes, of rails, numbers, stations…
- Love, it means: life.
- No, called differently by masons
Of antiquity…
- And so? –
A rag
Of handkerchief in fist, a fish.
- So then, let’s go? – Your route?
Poison or rails to choose,
and lead to boot!
Death – and no contraptions!
- Life! – a Roman general,
A hawk that scrutinizes
The remaining forces.
- So, let’s part ways then.
As if endorsing.
VI.
- I didn’t want this.
Not this. (Silently: hark!
To want, is the craft of bodies,
But we for each other – soul stark
From now…) – And didn’t say.
(Yes, on time, when the train is served,
To women, as a glass of something,
The sad honor of parting reserved
To give…) – Maybe, nonsense?
Misheard? (A civil liar in the making,
To a lover, as a posy
The bloody honor of breaking
Delivering…) – Distinctly: syllable
After syllable, so then – goodbye,
You said? (As a handkerchief
In the hour of sweet riot thereby
Which fell…) – In that battle
You’re Caesar. (O, insolent riposte!
To the enemy – as a trophy,
Giving the bequeathed sword
From close!) – Continues. (Ringing
In the ears…) – and bowing twice:
For the first time behind
In severance. – That’s your device?
Don’t contradict! Revenge,
Worthy of Lovelace.
A gesture, doing you credit
But me, severing flesh apace
From bone. – A chuckle. Through
Mirth – death. Gesture (No desire
To want – is the craft of those,
But we for each other – shadows
Prior, henceforth…) The last
Nail is driven. A screw, for the casket
Is leaden. – The very last request.
- I ask. – Not a single word (to ask it)
About us…not to any…well…
Who’ll follow. (From the stretcher
That’s how the wounded – in spring!)
- I’d ask you the same, I’d better.
A ring as a keepsake?
- No. – A stare, widely agape
Is missing. (As a seal
On your heart, as a ring to shape
Your hand…No scenes!
Removal.) Insinuating and more quiet:
- The book to you? – Like everyone?
- No, writing them, don’t try it.
The books…
-
So then, no need.
So then, no need.
To cry no need.
In our roving
Fisherman guilds
They dance – not cry
To yield.
Drink, and not cry.
With hot blood
They pay – not cry.
Pearls in glass
They smelt – and rule
The world – not cry.
- So am I going? – Looking, yet,
Right through. The harlequin,
For fealty, to its Pierrette –
Like bone – the most despicable
Of primacies, casting: the honor
Of the end, the curtain’s gesture.
The last expression. An inch of lead
Into the chest: though better, warmer
And – cleaner would be…
Teeth
Shoved into lips.
I will not cry.
The utmost firmness –
Into the utmost pulp.
Just not to cry.
In vagrant unions
They die, not cry.
They burn, not cry.
In ash and in song
They veil the dead
In vagrant unions
Aforesaid.
- So first? First move?
Like chess, then? Nevertheless,
Even to the scaffold
They ask us first, approve…
- At once
I ask, don’t look! – The look –
(They’re just about to hail! –
But how to bring them back to bay,
Into the eyes?!) – No need, I say,
To look!!!
Loud and clear,
Staring aloft:
- Dear, let us go
I’ll cry!
-
Forgot! Among the penny banks
That live (businessmen – too)
A blond flash of the back
Of the head: maize, corn and rye
Its hue!
Washing off the commandments
Of Sinai – the fur of the maenad! –
The hairy Golkonda,
The coffers of comforting minutes -
(For all!) Not in vain nature
Saves up, not always greedy!
From those blonde tropics,
The hunters, – where is the reedy
Path back? With crude nudity
Mocking and blinding till tears –
As a sheer golden adulterer
Spilled laughing with sneers.
- Isn’t it true? – Clingy and rumpling
Look. In every eyelash – an itch
- And mostly – this sediment!
A gesture, twisted into, twitched
Into a tourniquet.
On the tearing of clothes – a gesture!
Simpler, than drinking or eating –
A smirk! (You, indeed, have
Hope for salvation, beating!)
And – a sisterly or brotherly?
Inter-allied: union, too!
- Without burying – laughing!
(And, after burying, I do.)
VII.
And – the embankment. The last.
That’s it. Apart without a hand,
Plodding as neighbors who shun
Each other – on the riverside -
We strand.
Crying. The falling brackish
Quicksilver I lick worriless:
The firmament sent not to tears
Solomon’s moon, nevertheless.
A pole. Why not to hit the forehead
For some blood? To smithereens!
Walking as wary as accomplices
(The slain – Love, overseen.)
Come off it! Are these two lovers?
At night? Apart? To sleep with others?
- You gather, that the future –
There? – I’m falling back.
- To sleep! – As newlyweds, across the carpet…
- To sleep! – Never in step, not at it
In tact. Lamentably: – Take by the arm!
We’re no state convicts, such harm!..
A current. (Right with the soul -
He lay on my hand! A current
Jolts, with hectic wires
Rends, – lay on my hand!
Clings. All rainbow bright! What
Is more bright than tears?
Rain, beadier than beads,
As a curtain. He peers.
- I don’t know such embankments
That end. – A bridge, and:
- Well then?
Here? (The hearse arrived.)
The calm ascension, a pass
Of eyes. – I’ll take you home?
For the last time, alas!
VIII.
Last bridge.
(A hand won’t give, withdraw!)
Last bridge,
Last stepping stone to go.
Water and firmament.
I lay the coins.
Silver for death, to join
With Charon’s toll for Lethe.
A shadow of a coin.
In shady hand. Soundless
Those coins.
And so, into a shady hand
A shadow of a coin.
No shine or tinkling.
The coins – to those
Pretty dead poppies, wrinkling.
A bridge.
-
The better part
Of lovers with no hope:
Oh Bridge, you are desire:
Conformity: a midway scope.
I nestle: warmth,
A rib – the reason why I cling.
No ere, no after:
A gap of inkling!
No hands, no feet.
All bone and strain:
Only the side’s alive,
Next to another one in twain.
All life – this side!
It – ear and – echo’s slur.
As yolk to albumen,
I cling, self-eaten, to the fur
Press, cling,
Get paved. Siamese twins
What – is your union?
That woman – remember: akin
To mother – forgetting
All and sundry, in a fete stock-still
To carry you,
Held you no closer, until.
Then realize! With tendons!
And become! Lulled to the bosom!
No – hurling down for me!
Dive – releasing hand goes free,
A must. And huddling,
And huddling…uncast.
A bridge, unlike a husband:
Lover – misleading to the last.
Oh Bridge, you’re on our side!
A river fed with bodies by our leave!
As ivy, biting into,
As a tick: tear at the root, bereave!
As ivy! As a tick!
Godless! Inhuman!
To leave, a thing,
Myself, no single thing
Considering in this
Base world of fallacy!
Say, that’s a dream!
Or night, with morning
following,
Rome, the Express!
Grenada? I hardly know,
Brushing off feathers,
Mont Blancs and Himalayas show.
The chasm is deep:
With final blood I warm.
The side, do hear!
True in its form,
Much more than poetry…warmed up
For? Tomorrow under whom?
Say, that’s delusion!
That no, the bridge will have no
End…
- The end.
-
- Here? – A childish, a godly
Gesture. – For conclusion – I cling.
- A little more:
For last!
IX.
With factory corpuses, loud
And responsive to calls…
The innermost and sublingual
Secret from wives, husbands
And widows in thrall,
From friends – to you, the whole
Lowdown of Eve from the tree –
Here: I’m no more than a beast,
Abdomen-wounded, you see.
It burns… As would soul torn
With skin! Or as steam in the hole,
The notorious quarrelsome heresy,
Which is also known as the soul.
Pallid Christian sickness! Steam!
Cover, swathe with a poultice!
For it never existed! But
The body, wanting to hold this
Life, doesn’t want it.
-
Forgive me! I didn’t want this!
Howling of ripped insides!
How the dead, in the morning at four,
Wait for firing-squad insights
Over chess… With a grin,
Making fun of the corridor’s eye.
For the pawns are of chess!
Someone plays you and I.
Who? Good gods? Or bad thieves?
In the peephole’s full circle – an eye.
The red corridor’s clamorous clack.
And an overthrown board right nearby.
Then, a puff of tobacco. A spit.
We have lived, then, it means now a spit
…On these stones, as in chequers, we go
Straight: to trenches and ditches we toe
Into blood. Secret eye:
The acoustic moon-peephole…
And askance from the side:
- Oh how far have you gone!
X.
Joint and solidary
Shudder. – Our creamery!
Our island, our shrine,
Where we, in the morning,
Reclined -
The rabble! A couple of minutes! -
Rejoicing in matins proceeded.
Bazaars and what’s pickled,
Through-sleep and then spring…
Here, coffee was foul –
Like oatmeal for drink!
(The oats of self-will
Extinguish in trotters!
By no means Arabian –
Arcadia’s groin
Was hotter -
That coffee…
But how did she grin,
Seating us in a row,
Well-seasoned and plaintive –
With the smile of a mistress
Hoary as snow, careful:
You shall wilt! Live!
Unwittingly, broke,
To yawning, love give -
But mainly – to youth!
A smile – without reason,
A grin – of no intent,
A face – of no wrinkly bent, -
O, mainly – to youth!
To wants out of clime!
Wind-blown from somewhere,
Gushing forth out of there
Into the dreary creamery:
- Burnoose and Tunis! –
With muscles and hope
Under the frailty of copes…
(I won’t complain, old friend:
A scar upon a scar!)
O, how did she walk us,
That mistress, quite far,
With her cap of Dutch-ironing…
-
Not understood, not well-remembered,
Taking leave of the ball…
- Our street! – Not anymore…
- How many times, on it!.. – Not us,
No more…
- Tomorrow, the sun will rise in the west!
- David will sever his ties with Jehovah!
- What are we doing? – Saying goodbye.
- It says nothing to me, belies,
That utterly meaningless word:
Goodbye. – One of a hundred?
Just a word with some syllables
Behind which there is emptiness.
Hold on! In Serbian and Croatian,
Right? Czech is eccentric in us?
Goodbye. To say goodbye…
What utter meaninglessness, alas!
A sound, which ruptures ears,
Pulled to the limit of anguish…
Goodbye – Not in Russian!
Not a female or masculine way
To languish, ungodly! What are we –
Sheep, yawning endlessly at lunch?
Goodbye – in Whatsis, or Whatsit?
There is no meaning as such.
Not even a sound! Simply hollow
Noise, – of a saw through a dream.
Goodbye – simply a groan out
Of Khlebnikov’s esteem.
Swanlike…
But how did it happen?
A reservoir, dried and hot –
Air! The sound of hand-upon-hand
Saying goodbye – a thunderous shot
In the head… The ocean
In a bunkroom! The ocean’s utmost cape!
These streets are way too steep:
Goodbye – is downward in shape,
Or downhill… The sigh of two
Heavy soles… A palm, at last,
And a nail! Which is due
To tipping an argument:
Goodbye – is apart, if you ask,
But we – have grown into each other…
XI.
To lose at once –
Is really nonpareil!
A countryside or suburb:
No days are left to tell.
No bliss (read – stones),
No days, us, homes.
Dachas gone vacant! As
An old mother – honored by me.
It’s an action – to be vacant:
Hollowness isn’t empty-to-be.
(Dachas, uninhabited to one-third,
You better burn and curd!)
Just not to flinch,
While opening the wound.
Countryside, countryside,
Seams bursting, doomed!
For – with no spare pompous
Words – love is a seam.
A seam, no sash, a seam – no shield.
– O, don’t ask for defense! –
A seam, with which the dead are sewn,
The seam with which I’m held intense
To you (and time will tell of how:
Easy or threefold, not now!)
Somehow or other, friend – to seams!
To smithereens and shards!
That and the glory, for being first:
Burst, and didn’t tear, get scarred!
What’s under the basting – live strain
That’s red, no rotten bane!
O, it’s not losing –
For the one who tears!
A countryside or suburb:
Divorcing foreheads there.
In suburbs there are executions
Nowadays, – a draught for brains
Astray!
O, one doesn’t lose, away –
In the hour the dawn gets busy.
A whole life I’ve sewn for you
White-clean, no outline, easy.
So don’t reproach me, for the skew.
Suburbs: seams bursting through.
Souls gone untidy –
In scars!..
A countryside or suburb…
Irefully far
It spreads. With a boot of fortune,
Hear – on liquid clay?
…Judge my once-over hand,
Friend, and the tacked-down thread’s
Tenaciousness, no matter what!
The last streetlight abuts!
-
Against here? Close to conspiracy –
Staring. An inferior race or class –
Staring. – Up the mountain? May I?
For last!
XII.
A thick mane
Of rain in the eyes. – Hills.
We passed the suburb.
Beyond the city, still,
Are we, – that’s it!
Stepmother – not a mother!
Not any further.
Die here, not in another
Place.
Field. Fence.
A brother and a sister.
Life is a suburb, when
Outside the city there
Is construction, order!
Oh, it’s a lost
Case, gentlemen!
All that – is suburbs!
Where are the cities then?!
Tears and rages
The rain. Stand and rend.
For three months
The first together lent!
And in Job, too,
God asked to borrow?
And no, it didn’t burn:
Out the city we follow!
Out of the city! Remember? Out!
Over! The bank and the swell!
Life, is a place where you cannot live:
A Jewish quarter as well…
Hence, isn’t it much more worthy
To become an eternal Jew?
For everyone, who’s not a cad,
A Jewish pogrom shall ensue -
Life. Only by conversion I live!
Faithful to Judases!
To the leper islands, then, grieve!
To hell! – anywhere! – but not into
Life, – bearing out only conversions, just
The sheep – to the hangman!
My right and permission to stay
I trample, encrust!
Trample down! For David’s shield! –
Revenge! – Into a mash of bodies!
Isn’t it ravishing, that a Jew
Didn’t want to live?
The ghetto of selections! A hill,
A ditch. Expect no merciful dues!
In this most Christian of worlds
The poets – are Jews!
XIII.
That’s stones grinding knives,
That’s sawdust swept
By brooms. Under hands
Furry, wet strands.
Where are you, twains:
Male dryness, and power?
Under palms –
Tears, not rain, devour!
About which temptations –
Is it? Water – belongings!
After your diamond eyes,
Pouring in longing -
There’s no loss
For me. An end to ends!
I press – caress –
The face, suspend.
Such is ours, Marinas’
Arrogance, Pole-like.
After your eagle eyes,
Under palms, flowing bright…
You’re crying? My friend!
All is mine! Forgive me!
O, how big, how large,
Cupped saltiness would be!
Bitter male tears:
Thumping the crown of the head!
Cry, with others you will gain
Shame, with me, too lost to tread.
Fish
Of the same sea! A flap:
…Lips of a dead shell
On lips that chap.
-
In tears.
Saltbushy
Taste.
- Tomorrow
When shall I
Wake, with
Waking faced?
XIV.
A sheepish path –
Descent. There are the cities.
Three girls towards us,
Laughing. Laughing in ditties
To tears, – with all midday
Bowels, combs of the sea!
Laughing!
- Undue,
Disgraceful, manly, it seems.
To your tears, visible
Through the rain – in two scars!
Like pearls – shamefully
On the soldier’s bronze
Medals and bars.
To your first tears,
The last, – o, pour down! –
To your tears – pearls
In my crown!
My eye doesn’t grow dull.
Through the downpour – I stare.
The dolls of Venus,
Fix gaze! Everywhere,
This union is more tight,
Than to attract and lie down.
By the Song of Songs
Speech is allowed
For us, unknown birds
Solomon asks, in esteem,
Humbly, for the joint
Cry – bigger, than a dream!
-
And in the hollowness
Of the wave, the haze –
Stooping and equal –
Without a trace – silently –
As a ship, sinking into
It.
“Oceanic islands are originary, essential islands. Some are formed from coral reefs and display a genuine organism.”
– Gilles Deleuze, Desert Islands
Chaos creates room for unsettled speculation. Yet with each day that goes by, the outcomes seem clearer and more discrete; predictable, schematized and imagined. This also happens to be the case for Japan, torn and ravished by the elements as of late, whose human factor, frightfully overbearing but unprotected, yields prospects of desolation for years to come. Will the humanitarian crisis in the country reach the point of practical vacuity (sooner than total evacuation)? While, for all the “rational”, or down-to-earth reasons and as a “rule of thumb”, it looks unlikely, the cultural ramifications of this grim scenario are something to dwell on.
In the eyes of the West – or the rest of the world, to be more politically correct – Japan has always been an eloquent misunderstanding. Its culture, its lore, steeped in highly popularized and, nonetheless, exotic tradition, has provided many a source of inspiration, thus placing almost any outsider farther away from the “nitty-gritty” about the country and its inhabitants, rather than bringing them closer to it/them. This has been the trend, and still is.
The “truth” – whatever that may be – despite various attempts and degrees of effort to experience it by foreigners, has been weakly perceived. Even from within, the country would appear strange, odd, incomprehensible and perhaps irritating, for those who decide to stay and try to get accustomed to the Japanese daily grind. No matter how you look at it, the overall cultural difference between the Western world and Japan is still immense. Suffice it to recall Sofia Coppola’s 2nd feature, Lost in Translation, to get a first acquaintance with the feeling.
On a broader scale, we have witnessed the re-enactment, the adoption of the body of Western culture (if not Western thought) by the Japanese, and how bizarre it has grown in their midst. This adoption, perhaps originally mimetic by intention, occurred on the level of ideas and concepts, which have evolved into something unexpected, unprecedented and oftentimes, outright grotesque: from the Japanese New Wave (Toshio Matsumoto & Nagisa Oshima), their intricate re-interpretations of Elizabethan drama (Akira Kurosawa) and the Kafkaesque (Kobo Abe & Hiroshi Teshigahara), to their prolific postmodern artists (Keiichi Tanaami & Takashi Murakami), their Manga/Anime (Akira + Ghost in the Shell), oddly and frequently concerned with the depiction of Western(er)-like characters/archetypes from kitschy, almost infantile, yet altogether original perspectives, and general “pop mania” (J-Pop, Harajuku girls and Hello Kitty).
But what happens to a country that cannot be accessed because it’s simply not there? A country whose “true” identity has been, so far, extrapolated and derived from the synonyms of ‘honor’, ‘duty’, a few modest postures and gestures, and rich reservoirs of “otherworldly” lore? It becomes, in the spirit of Barthes, a myth; and it so happens that the myth of absence is the most viable myth known to man. With that in mind, what if the Japanese people were no longer residents of their own country? Would, then, the Vagabond Japanese become the companion of the Wandering Jew, merely by virtue of rambling on the same plane of mythological aesthetics that has to do with worldly opinions about respect and achievement , favorably devoid of the skeletons in the closet? We can only speculate and predict since nothing is certain, as we were able to learn, or get reminded, in a matter of days – that even the most technologically advanced nation (once again, part and parcel of our mythologized perception?) is at the mercy of the elements.
Having mentioned the weak connection of the West with the “true face” of Japan, should there be no country on the horizon, no consolidation, or as Gilbert Simondon would say, no ‘individuation’ – only the mythological foundation will remain. And at the same time, it is highly likely that the “real”, or the actual(ized) Japanese individual will cease to exist, for what is group-scattered and in the habit of self-authentication (out of discipline and tradition) stands apart on the edge of inscrutability. In view of the possible nuclear catastrophe sweeping across the exquisite mass of [is]land[s] (or, simply, island) – the convergent singularity that is Japan – we dream of an advanced fallen race and its new Atlantis in the making, emerging from what we have surmised from our mutual misunderstandings, language barriers and an irrepressibly vivid body of culture, rising with the sun in the east.
LaB is an upcoming weekly, free-press print magazine highlighting the best of Prague’s arts for the previous week with a small reference to the following week. It is written in Czech and in English and it will be distributed in metro stations, hotels, universities, bars, parks, clubs, airport, and on the internet. The scope of interest of the publication is primarily film, architecture, industrial design, interior design, theatre, music, fashion, photography and visual arts.
