The remarriage of Henry Gout

At once the neighbors gathered
in a tool shed late at night
to point their livid fingers
at a portrait of the wife,

She’s stealing him! She’s ruining
our unity! They’d chant,
each neighbor’s rant hard-boiled
as the duties of an ant.

The heaving, bloated body
of the chairman shuddered out
his ardent plot to choke the
boorish wife of Henry Gout

but many disagreements
leapt into the air like moths,
her neck was far too thin to share
amongst the hungry mob

Then, what? (the question came around
each time the council called,)
We eat the things we’ve brought for snack
and exercise our thoughts!

The smell of grease escaped
a row of foil-covered plates,
as neighbors shuffled, porcelain clinked
and mounded savory weight

The chairman split into a grin
to see what fruit had come,
He loved to loathe that woman but
could never skip a plum.

Kyoto is Girls!

A bus came by the same as they had been coming by all day; sometimes I got on and sometimes I didn’t. It was all about the number. Is it the right number? If not, I would let it come and go and do nothing more than shuffle away from the paths of exiting bus people. If it were, I would shuffle into it and try to get a seat (if there were no place, I would stand). I was doing it all day by now. When I bought my 500 yen 1 day bus pass, the girl who spoke enough English to sell it to me gave me also a detailed map with all the most famous, accessible-by-bus destinations in Kyoto. With it, I went to the Golden Pavilion, the Silver Pavilion, to a flat-forever sized park, Kiyomizu temple, and to three different Family Marts and walked everywhere in between. The bus had become kind to me, it had become friendly and familiar. Once, not knowing which place on the map to visit next, I got on a bus just so that I could sit to eat my Nikuman. I was alone, so one open seat was always enough and Nikuman was always delicious. That day, every single thing offered a warm consistency; the quiet Japanese people, the hundreds of camera-carrying professionals, the on-time buses, the Nikuman. Until now, buses had come and gone all day and I hadn’t any mind at all for where they had come from or where they would go.

A bus came, the same as they had been coming. Outside it had become dark by now, and lights from the building behind me rolled off the bus's large windows as it hissed to a stop in front of me and a small group of people at the bus stop. It hissed again to kneel and then people started to come out of the front. The people who stayed in the bus were transparencies. The girl who was staring at me with dark, gleaming eyes didn’t seem real. We looked at each other shamelessly under the protective cover of the glass barrier between us. It must have become a game between us, to see who would lose their nerve first and look away. I thought that maybe no bus had been stopped for this long all day. The way that they make you exit the bus is always by the front, and so if everyone is exiting, everyone is paying on their way past the driver. She must have been hearing the microphone’d driver’s muffling of “Arigatogozaimasu, Arigatogozaimashita, Aritagozaimasu, Arigatogozaimashita” as each passenger slipped out the front. Her gaze was frighteningly human. Fully beautiful, she was staring at me. I lost our game. I couldn’t help nervousness. Hit with smiling, I looked away, and then looked back again. She was still looking. Now her friend too. I could’ve gotten on. Would it have scared them? I thought that if I got on I would run into something difficult: I might walk into a situation where I must impress two hot Japanese girls with my limited Japanese. If that were all, I would have gotten on the bus. But all the while, I would be subject to the silent scrutiny of a whole bus worth of Japanese surveyors. I didn't think hard. Her eyes were black. I couldn’t tell if it were because of their depth or pigment itself. I could feel her attention. Her eyes were real eyes; eyes that by looking affect the body of their owner and the body of the subject of their peering. I thought nothing about what I would say if they came out or if I went in. We stared through the window.

Outside, on the wet sidewalk, the bus made a sound. It rose up again off its knees and began rolling forward. They waved at me. I waved back smiling, feeling happy to have been played with. They got thinner and thinner and soon all that was left was the back end of the bus, a square getting smaller, rolling up the street.

I wonder what would happen if I did things like getting on that bus? Is it something I avoid? or deprive myself of? Even in this case, because I don’t live in Kyoto, and I was leaving in two days I could say it was better what I did, not getting on, but I think I know better, even though I don’t act like I do. I can’t imagine looking back and saying, “I should not have boarded that bus with the two pretty Japanese girls.” Silly!

(Then ヤン says, "Distance makes beauty.")

Temptation in Kyoto

As obese time shuffled forward, cheeseburgers continued being built atop the grill three meters in front of me. I had already eaten meat dumplings from the Family Mart. Delicious ‘Nikuman’ cost just over a dollar, so I always get two. But even with a full stomach, I had such an urge to buy and devour one of the burgers. I was just outside of a temple on a narrow walking path where there stood tent-vendor shops on both sides selling lots of tasty looking, tasty smelling things. The air was blanketed in the warm steaming smells escaping each colorful stall. Elsewhere, the air was cold; it was night. I imagined the juice from the burger falling onto my tongue with the bread, the lettuce, cheese, the ketchup, the warm mayonnaise, the hot center. I would do it, I decided, watching three couples share great, giant cheeseburgers underneath a lamppost. But my stomach would punish me, I knew. If I dropped something so large into my system now, I would keel over and, instead of becoming like a sponge to devour the lively night, I would be promptly searching everywhere for a bathroom (or anywhere secluded) and wouldn’t find either. Reality stood like a high gate between me and the burger stall with the busy cooks making more burgers making more smells. Things had turned out so great: I was in Kyoto on an adventure with a happy stomach. But for a moment, I couldn’t imagine walking away. Then finally, and suddenly, I did. Walking up the path again, away from the little pancake balls and roasted hotdogs on sticks, I caught a first glimpse of the illuminated center of the temple between the bodies of two people higher up on the road. In full, it was a big stage walled in by white, electric paper lamps. To the left of it, people prayed in front of a darkened room filled with gold, shaking giant ropes that hung from above to sound big tin capsules with metal pieces inside. The sound was like that of a drawer of silverware being removed and shaken. Walking back with still enough money to buy a burger, I got away again and walked for a long time around the district of Kiyomizu temple.

Mr. Beast #6

Mr. Beast waves me over from the edge of the hole. So deep! Inside, rock walls creep down and down and down and disappear into dark. He looks over his shoulder at me.

We had gotten lost. When the splinter in Mr. Beast’s foot had finally been scratched out, the world went dark. Upon realizing our shivering beneath the shadowy branches that blocked out the stars (if there were any), things became more serious. We could die out here, I thought. But still, Mr. Beast had that childish way about him. During our attempt to escape, he would be stopping along the way to investigate notches in tree trunks and taking bark samples and pointing out to me the dark excrement of animals. In between the distractions, I worried. He grunted at his foot. We had no clear technique of finding our way back to the take off point. We thought it smart to start off walking in the direction that we remembered the Professional walking off in, hoping to be led back to the road, where from there we would climb. But even after walking what felt like twenty minutes in the Professional’s footsteps, we still hadn’t found any road. Surrounded by more eerily abundant, flickering leaves, Mr. Beast dashed into the darkness away from me through brush. It was so sudden, it was as if he had been snatched away. Afraid of being alone, I sprinted as fast as I could, following the sound of rustling leaves in pitch dark. Cold wind punished my face and hands for running this way through the eerie trees but I could not lose Mr. Beast. If I were alone, it might kill me, the night. From far away, the silhouette of Mr. Beast appeared and began to grow in my trembling vision; he had stopped. The doe had gotten away. Now we were so completely lost. I wanted to strike him. Then I noticed the hole in the ground.

After contemplating the pit, we conclude that someone built it, which means that it leads to somewhere or something. With my frost-bitten hand, I feel a plume of warm air. It rises from the hole and then collapses under the chilly glare of the eerie, flickering leaves. Mr. Beast and I huddle over again, clutching our own bodies against the icy breeze that returned again to molest our skin and hair. This time after it passes, Mr. Beast walks away from the ridge and disappears into the dark. A few seconds later, he appears again carrying a heavy stone. Marching over, he heaves it into the pit. We listen.

Climbing down is difficult. Yet Mr. Beast seems to have no problem whatsoever. It is such a terrible ladder made of rocks in the wall that stick out just slightly more than the others, enough to grasp each one with only the very first knuckle of each of my fingers. For certain I will die falling backwards into the pit. Lowering myself slowly, painfully, pathetically. It's then Mr. Beast begins his lecture: telling stories of himself, from his past. His voice rolls upward from underneath my trembling feet. He wants attention is all; I refuse it. But the echoes of Mr. Beast's grumbling travel from his tongue to warm stone to warm stone and then enter my ear like a tongue. I want to strike him, but my hands are trembling, slipping every moment. My body is collapsing, pathetically clinging on to the small stone shelves and going lower and lower. Mr. Beast’s stories let themselves into my ears. They must be lies. I find it hard to imagine him in Amsterdam with drugs and girls. And then, mid-sentence, he goes quiet. Worried, I look down. I can make out only his white face: floating in the center of darkness away from the wall, but not screaming, not shrinking. Not falling. He found the bottom.

Japan: for english poetry.

For instance, this advertisement for a tuna sandwich:



and raisin bread



Black Man

Mr. Beast #5

The sky darkened. All of autumn’s colors were ducking under a veil of dusk. In that place, they lost their souls until dawn. Vibrant colors dimmed and disappeared from the day like the orange glow of once unthinkably hot lava crawling across an ocean floor. The Professional’s feet shivered, blue; His shoes had been lost, but that wasn't the reason for his shuddering. His shirt had been torn to rags; His hand was crushed beneath his skin but he hadn’t yet realized what was done to him. With one trembling hand, he clawed the top of his thigh, hissing through his teeth. The Professional's head lie rested on the steering wheel. His mouth, slack open, dropped spit between his legs and onto the floor mat below, where it landed warmly in a small pile between his fetal feet. Watching it fall, he could only have been thinking of what had happened. Realizing for a second time that he was alone, inside a locked car, his body started to feel more pain. His broken hand, laid over the curve of his knee, began to sting from within. He moaned and gurgled in pain, holding it upright, looking for a way to stop it. He noticed the bone of his smallest finger: Halfway up, at his knuckle, the skin covering was stretched with swelling, rosy pink and shiny. A frenzy of pain arose suddenly: in the very center of his palm, displaced bones, like fish-bones, caved in from every direction to stab opposing flesh whenever there was a muscle spasm. He whimpered and hissed, throwing his head around and then downward again, his unbroken hand cradling a now torturous, animal trap of a hand. Fuck. He could do nothing for himself but stay still, resting his head on the steering wheel. He remembered, ten years ago, his Driver’s Education teacher’s words on the day of their last class, “With a license, you are responsible for driving a machine that kills people.” Spit continued to fall from his open mouth, seeping deeper still into the floor-mat. Tortured physically, he dared not leave the car yet. He didn’t know what all had been done to him as it was too terrifying a thing, escaping the nightmare women. Frozen in his car, the professional coughed up everything.

Uchida Sensei's Poem

it's hard to remember, having been so loud and crowded all around, but I think this was the poem she said was her favorite.

THE SORROW OF LOVE

by: W.B. Yeats

HE quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,

The full round moon and the star-laden sky,

And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves,

Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.




And then you came with those red mournful lips,

And with you came the whole of the world's tears,

And all the sorrows of her labouring ships,

And all the burden of her myriad years.




And now the sparrows warring in the eaves,

The curd-pale moon, the white stars in the sky,

And the loud chaunting of the unquiet leaves

Are shaken with earth's old and weary cry.

The letting loose of all the little boats into places where you might never see them again.

“LISTEN UP! EVERYBODY STOP! STOP! STOP! LISTEN UP! ALRIGHT! WE’VE GOT A CHOICE! WE CAN BUY MORE BEER AT THE SEVEN ELEVEN FOR 100 YEN EACH OR BUY AT KARAOKE FOR 400 EACH!” Tuomas was screaming wisdom out as though a corkscrew were being twisted into his gut; those sounds coming out shaped as English words were duly worthy of being one’s last sequence of human utterances; a flawless demonstration of the profoundness and ferocious capability that the human voice can muster when necessary, when a house is burning up in giant monster-shaped flames from the floor leaping up into themselves, motherless, leaping up over and over again; when you want to save someone you love so much, and your body begins to die, it's the same howl shaking your chest. No matter of age, each human of eight and of eighty will howl the same to get that which cannot be physically taken or given like the exchanging goods except by way of convincing another human to do as you say for a great cause, you must think it in order to bellow that special gift hidden in the very deepest documents of the human voice. It would be named ‘primal.’ That word cannot be used. It mends intangible objects; unravels entire inner metaphysical intricacies like sheet music. It's the same thing Tuomas used stopping us in the street that night. It unfolds stories.

“THEN WE’LL SMUGGLE THEM IN-“

“Hey! Quit yelling so loud! Someone will hear!”

“WHA- NO ONE UNDERSTANDS A FUCKING WORD OF ENGLISH HERE! IT’S OK! OK, SO TO THE KARAOKE PLACE WE’LL SMUGGLE IN THE BEER WE BUY RIGHT HERE INSTEAD OF PAYING 400 FOR EACH INSIDE!”

Everyone had stopped to listen, but only two or three guys darted into the Family Mart afterward to buy more beer to smuggle into the karaoke place. The rest had just stopped to continue the small conversations they had been having before when they were walking, before the stopping. Each person stood in the illumination of the Family Mart, some with umbrellas, some giggling quietly to themselves at something funny, some just standing about doing nothing, and others, like that one tired-looking guy, asked us, “Are you guys working your game tonight?” in a tone I took to be honest. Sveinn and I had drunk at the nomikai like every other person standing there (eat-as-much-as-you-can and drink-as-much-as-you-can for 2600 yen, two hours afterward, be ushered out by impatient employees wearing red leather hats). Sveinn and I looked at him, thinking of what to say.

“What the fuck are you talking about!?” Sveinn said (and then I erupt giggling again, at everything about this moment: the question, Sveinn's answer, this Nomikai aftermath situation, the Family Mart employee behind the counter watching us in horror, the drunkenness of my friends and this weird guy, this weird guy who says to me, 'Rachel, right?' (who is standing a few meters down the street to my right, facing her Chocolate-Boy with the apartment where such things as alcohol drinking, movies and sex can happen, such things as make Japan a pleasant place again, finally.) and me giggling with that 'too wide' smile, so much so wide and unclosable that i believe in it.)

Looking nowhere in particular, the weird guy goes, “Are you guys trying to get laid?”

“Oh, well, my wife is inside the seven eleven in the bathroom…”

The rain was struggling to fall, yet the road had become full black and wet. We stood in a pool reflecting the blue/green lights of the Family Mart sign above us.

ジーンズの中の地図

Law: When trading a beautiful thing for a beautiful thing, agree it is the received thing that is much more beautiful. Be confident that ugly things stay ugly and enjoy learning more about the new beautiful thing. Do things such like: take walks, see movies, hold hands, drink alcohol, do all things. It is unnecessary to mind happenings that surround the ugly thing, as they certainly in no way compare to the what, who and where involving the closer, hot, beautiful thing. If the ugly thing is suddenly chosen by a person and taken up for enjoyment, it is a phenomenon that occurs next. In time, in the mind of the seller, the ugly thing, after being taken up by a stranger, will have become the pinnacle of high, sophisticated beauty, and all of the most poetic, erotic and otherwise good components of humanity itself will be believed to reside humbly in its center. Furthermore, the thought of it belonging to someone else will cause self-doubt and loneliness in the seller. Although the thing will not have actually changed, it will seem unbelievably so. Meanwhile, the once-beautiful thing received by the seller in the initial trade will lose its fervor over the span of one week; continuing to function as before with less self-esteem.

Mr. Beast #4

Tracing the faint shadow of the splinter in Mr. Beast’s foot with a toothpick, I came to discover that it was much deeper down than I had originally thought. Sitting in the tree, Mr. Beast hadn’t noticed that we’d come to save him at first. He just sat there; letting insects crawl onto his skin wherever, coming so close to the insect-sized tunnels that lead into his body but still doing nothing. He appeared incoherent, watching the way they would scurry across his naked parts, getting lost in his pubic hairs. I howled his name upward once and waited a moment but nothing happened. It was as if nothing had been said. Once again I called out and, to my relief, a few moments later he began to climb down the tree. It was then, with the professional and I waiting dumbly at the bottom, when Mr. Beast’s feet stomped the ground and met the sharp end of a piece of thorn-wood, looking like sadistic crooked-scissors, risen barely 4 inches beside the tree trunk. His body refuted in a terrifying spasm and recoiled away before floating back down with this sort of sorrowful, pathetic elegance. It’s so strange saying this. Even at the time, it gave me chills. His face, having been poised in its usual stern, stone-like manner, suddenly became all wrinkles, like a stack of pancakes. His ice lips, his chiseled nose, those hard eyes, they all became so sad and hopeless. He fell at the tree trunk, his hands opening out to catch his failed body like in some Greek mythological illustration: he was the damned soul begging at the knee of some impossibly enormous male figure with gorgeous golden skin.

I needed something sharper and thinner to dig it out. Mr. Beast’s large hands came around the sides of the foot again. Wanting the splinter out, his monstrous fingernails clawed the rubbery skin, molesting the same area over and over. Too much skin began going to waste; old skin became new skin became young skin became flesh as the thorn-seeking inquisition came over and over again, digging harder and with more enthusiasm as each time the area got softer and softer. My seconds of focused inspection weren’t enough to solve the problem or remove the splinter, knowing those hands would just return again like curious demons, unwilling to wait any longer. The skin became darker. Clawing with such mindless ferocity, one hand turned to diffuse hatred at the other, tearing down two thick, fleshy lines. It was disturbing to watch. I had never seen any living thing in such a confused, terrifying state as this. It was then I began to wonder about my own well being. Would he turn on me as well? Suddenly I realized my predicament. I sat thinking, if I refuse Mr. Beast help, he could easily kill me there in the heavenly meadow where Mr. Beast crashed the hang glider. The meadow was heavenly. Also, it was quite romantic: with the violently red leaves that covered all of the ground below and obscured the sky above. Red leaves tumbled across the ground like the living inhabitants of this place where I sat alone with Mr. Beast. The professional who had helped me find Mr. Beast before could not stay or wait any longer for us. Given no further excuse, he began walking back to his car, carrying both the ladder and the stick. The wind died down, and all was silent for a moment. By then, I still hadn’t known much about Mr. Beast. This thought catalyzed a production of terrifying scenarios in my mind. My spilling blood could be caught by the red leaves and blown away by a strong passing wind.

It makes sense to not be able to do it!

It doesn't seem, maybe, like you can believe yourself that not being able to do it is not expected of you, because it seems that every person is in the middle of doing just that, that which you can't imagine yourself doing. But it's really true! You aren't at all strange! And it seeming so just is, not the doing of someone. It's that you are surrounded by people who can do this thing that you don't want (i want) or know how (i don't know how) to do that makes it seem normal and you obtuse. You always say, 'what's normal?' and you have to be saying that. Do it while knowing that no one can help you. Every single person: operate in ways that feel normal. Someone of earth: build a robot to keep my room clean.

Love Hotel

I was thinking, “Maybe this is why I can’t have meaningful relationships,” when I saw the woman’s face again. As I had learned to do, I jerked my head sharply, wincing until it purged itself from my imagination. A flinch like this would always make it disappear temporarily (nearly a full minute) as if being physically thrown from my head and onto the ground. But soon after, always, it came clawing up the side of the bed to return home to me, re-entering my imagination. Was it mine? I didn’t want it to belong to me. The face was someone I knew from school, someone who in person could conjure absolutely no desire in me. She was small, but big-boned and square-ish. Her face, large, was far from kind or young-looking (as the woman with such warm skin before me,) it was loose and frightening! Yet, I was aware of the truth. Something inside me was making it appear. In my waking mind, could I ever see beauty in such a horrid thing? In that decaying face that tormented me and came between me and the purring woman? Of course, art is art. In that way, nothing can’t be beautiful. Of course, that's so. But it should have never ever followed me into a warm place. In bed with the warm, peach-skinned woman whose lips always kiss wetly, I was lost in effortless thoughts.

of song or kiss or weeping

The voice that is in her is shaking. With head full
of blood, passionate, love, each piece of surrounding, love
her arms, how they rise of ease. Om
bare feet to dark grass, easy heart, the sruti box hums,
consumes edges, think of kissing, the voice
is a pleasant mirage hanging, an array of colorful curtains, transparencies, a
such dream. Anywhere or nowhere,
long with her, the sound of shaking winds out of the woman.
Any spine can be perfectly still, or
contort like jelly.

雪田先生

クマ：雪田先生はとてもきれいで、頭がいいだけど、私の先生だ。雪田先生の心の習い方を教えてください。その後、先生にラブレタを書く。

クモ：たいへんだね。こいは。でも、教えることができるよ。まずさいしょう、勉強しなくてはいけません。いい学生だったら、先生はあなたが好きになるかもしれないんだ。あなたのために、僕はいい贈り物のえらび方を教えてあげるよ。女じゃないんだけど、だいたい女の思いが分かると思う。あなたが買ったプレゼント、見せて。

クマ：うん。どうか。

クモ：女の人が好きかどうかよく分かるから、かえして、このお皿を。そうしたほうがいいと思うよ。そのあなたが持ている花も、かえして。悪い物だろ。いらないんだ。

クマ：分かった。じゃあ、何をしたらいい？

クモ：クラスで日本語の文を作りながら、思い出して。前に。

クマ：えっと、分からない。

クモ：かっこいいにならなきゃ！

Mr. Beast #3

Mr. Beast! He’s caught inside a tree, far down! I was the one to see it happen. On landing, he was flying too low, he tumbled into vast, shimmering redness. He is mangled now. His legs are over his head, tearing from the bottom. His arm, twisted wrong. His hand is broken in his glove! Poor Mr. Beast! His face gets so stuck between his legs and strings hanging down from the device, being bothered by nasty insects. Wet with each other, and their pointy legs stick into him. Mr. Beast’s throwing of his head over and over again becomes shocking, but the disgusting, eerie things want him too much to let go of his warm cheeks. He is helpless and alone now. Even from here, it’s obvious, the place where he entered the tree. It’s where you see a mangled, yellow hang glider caught in the middle of all the red. Everywhere shimmers red. That's where I imagine he is. Helpless. “The wind today is very good. Ideal for hang gliding,” the professional said as each of our necks fell over backwards to watch colorful triangles fly over us. He’ll be dead before long, I think. If, for instance, he were bitten by one of the venomous spiders. For instance, one is waiting there to feel a snag in its web. On the edge of sleep, this spider has the same dream again, that all spiders repeatedly have, a warm body pulls her two long teeth into itself, more, more in, getting warmer, more wet, more, more in. And then Mr. Beast will come crashing in through the red leaves, making a lot of racket, ruining the web and the dream, and then struggle around in his trap that he’s made of himself and scream and howl and be terrible. He’ll be dead before long, I say.

From the edge of the jump off point, looking into the distance where Mr. Beast disappeared to, the depth and openness of the chilly air recalls for me a time when I was brought to the Grand Canyon with my little sister. Dad had taken us, he had given us both train tickets. It was the first time that I had ever been on a train. The car in front of us was a breakfast car, I remember. When it began, I would be coming back and forth carrying a paper plate balancing muffins and grapes and so on. A white woman stood in front of me in line, once. It was because she had cut. She had cut in line in front of me and twisted her neck to sneer at me. That's why I remember her. When we arrived at the station, the Grand Canyon was just up the hill. We crossed a road where cars had stopped to let us pass, and climbed up 10 steps, then left 6 steps, and then right 9 steps. By construction of the land, the top was flat and easy to walk across. When I finally peered over the edge of the world and saw unfathomable space, my spirit flew out of me! far away! straight out in front of me! It went to touch the other side of the world, the far side of the canyon, through the dust, returning with it seconds later. In those moments, a gust of wind could have blown me into the canyon. I had become a bodhisattva all of the sudden and become corrupt again. It was all so quick. We walked a long ways away from the station, on the rim of it. Then rain came. The buses overfilled. The buses where chased by running people. Lightning came. Cold wind came. Wet, we hardened. Beneath pine tree branches, we waited like spiders for lights or motion on the road, but none came. After, it was a long time.

The wind forever tears leaves away from trees at the jumping off point in Nagano. Sitting in the backseat of the professional’s car, I am telling him where Mr. Beast crash-landed. We veer to the left of the road where it widens for a moment. We open and close our doors and are standing on the ground again, much lower, listening together for Mr. Beast.

Of course I hear him. Mr. Beast is not far. Walking toward the direction of the voice, the professional carries a ladder over his shoulder, and I carry a long wooden stick with a metal hook attached to one end. Finally, we arrive at a pile of clothes. Good! I think. Mr. Beast has freed himself! But I cannot celebrate with my body. The forest is meditating. In every direction, bright white light reaches in through the spaces between branches full of violently red leaves to pet our heads. Sitting nude on a branch, high up in the tree, Mr. Beast is silent. Soft wind tosses his hair. He doesn't know that I've come. At the base of the tree, we wait with our ladder and stick, unable to speak.

Halloween

On the morning of Halloween after waking, sitting at my computer, I did something awful! Something so, so terrible! Of course I’ve done it before in my life, but I was in grade school then when it happened. Of course I’ll tell you, reader. But to save the rest of my story, I can’t say yet.
By bike, I went to the annual performance arts festival at my university after having the yogurt and toast breakfast with Misui-san. We went together. I was full from breakfast, but still, walking through the food stands and the shouting, Misui-san bought each of us (first) a chocolate cookie thing, then a little pancake/beef sandwich, and then shish kabob sticks. We split up after watching the Jazz Club and an air-instrument (no instruments) band lip synch to a set songs for a giant, smirking audience.
I saw a parade that changed me just afterward at the festival. Forty hands coming from glittering green sleeves were ticking on so many drums and cowbells, and shaking full, rectangle tambourines up and down forever so fast. It was Mardigras. There were the king and queen, in giant, wedding-cake dresses and headdresses and holding staffs and carrying smiles, and spinning like bubbles. There were the almost naked half-bird girls dancing to mime each tiny tick of the 100 tiny hands’ beat (just as there are). I thought to myself, when this stops I wont know what to do. When it did, I felt good.
It had gotten dark. I rode home on my bike. From there, I could’ve ended up staying home, but I met Svienn in Asagaya, and then went to Roppongi to go to a live art/music/DJ dance party in a basement club for only 1000 yen. On our way to Roppongi, Halloween became more and more obvious. The foreigners were routy. The white-bald man we saw lifting his crutches up to the sky before later nearly fell into a moving train on its way out. Someone pulled him back. I didn’t know whether to feel glad or not. On the street outside of the station a Nigerian solicitor picked up our steps, ‘All you can drink! All you can watch! All you can touch!’ The place was magnificent. The gigantic Hills Plaza, built as a commune, has everything you need. We came upon a small shrine while looking for a place to drink my bottle of vodka off of the main street, 'Shall we bless our hands?' Svienn. We did. We didn't drink there. The club was underneath ground, and was kind and cozy and intimate, and dark. Giant projector images danced on the walls to glitch DJ music. The music was invigorating. While the place was still spacious, we watched the creation of an art piece on the wall done by a group of people. The hot, intelligent, independent art girl with a mustache drawn on her upper lip drew phrases in the spaces between black lines, ‘the pain necessary for growth.’ Admiring everything, I met Tomo, dressed like a gentleman. He had been living in San Francisco for 10 years and just returned to Tokyo in March. We both liked the idea of making friends. I met a tall white guy from Stratford-Upon-Avon, England; Shakespeare’s birthplace. He says there are so many right-wing American tourists, it’s like a red state. It’s the first place they go. He says he’s almost been to Washington. He was driving up the coast having sex with this yoga instructor and when she told him she had a boyfriend, he was in Oregon. ‘Two hours of crying and I was alright, but I didn’t have enough money to go on, so I went back to California.’ I thought I understood. I didn’t see him after that. Three hours pass and so much has happened. A rapper rapped in his crunchy voice, a three-piece wearing native American clothing and screaming and being two guys and one little, monstrous, terribly cute, screaming, wailing, chirping girl. The DJ music went on after that when I started receiving wine from the girl with green hair. She would dance close to me with a glass and then turn and hold it up to me and say in my ear, ‘White wine.’ I drank a little each time and smiled. In my head, I thought that I wouldn’t have minded it if she had drugged me and stole me away. Svienn, by the way, has been the coolest club partner there is. I look over at him and he’s looking forward at the video artwork with his upper body pumping forward ten centimeters and then back the same distance and hammering over and over and doing it so genuinely, this move, with such intelligence. I haven’t found a way to describe it. Anyway, when he notices I’m checking on him his eyes move to their corners on my side as if to say, I think, something like, ‘Cool, huh?’ The girl with the green hair moves away. Maybe I didn't show enough interest? She gets with a tall Japanese wizard. Svienn and I leave the club after seven hours of dancing. We leave the green haired girl and the wizard. Outside, there are a beautiful Japanese girl that says hi to me, there are angry foreigners that want to fight each other. Svienn and I sit waiting for the subway. On the subway car packed with drunk and tired 18 to 35, the first stop takes on an old fisherman with his net. He squeezes through the young girls, his short stature. On the next stop, his net is caught on someone who tries to get off! He’s fighting it with his strong old hands! To get the net off this girls purse who is leaving and the train doesn't know so it will leave! He rips his netting apart and frees the girl wearing sexy leggings. When I get back to my bike at Musashi-sakai station, the pale sun is rising. I scooped up the dew that had collapsed overnight on my bike seat.
Well that's it. Oh, that thing I was going to say. ...I can't say it! I'm sorry, reader.