Flower Recites Makes News

It had been three months since the start of my ritual and there finally came results. All the evenings of hushed monologue in the living room. Surely the people living upstairs listened to my questions, personal confessions, and threats from their beds that I had made myself believe they had fallen asleep in so that I could conduct trails for making linguistic breakthroughs with Mr. Flower. For the latter half of January I went to school early every morning, ate between classes at the cafeteria, and when classes ended in the afternoon I returned home to make dinner, bathe, and wait for Mr. Flower to feel comfortable, and then, sitting with her in the living room, speaking a mix of English and Nyaa and using my body like she did in efforts to stumble upon a single solid meaning/movement pair. I labored until past midnight and was sent to bed each night with a heavier sense of the whole thing being a waste of time, I tucked myself in nearly crying every night, to think of a world where communication between species is just impossible, with no exceptions. So is what I was beginning to believe as each night brought nothing but giggles falling through the ceiling, but I was wrong!
Mr. Flower sat as usual, whether on the couch or on the tv or on the window ceil, that minx thing she does, eyes wide, forward (that’s how I could tell I was never wasting my time, you can see learning happening, a tugging at the edges of her pupils, and you can tell frustration when you see it, even easier.) Mr. Flower suddenly stopped my story of a girl in class I wanted to meet (it was always a girl in class then) by uttering these words: …Nya-aa kya-ch raeih… I couldn’t believe my ears! I spilled out the door, frightened, as I remember, then I turned around and darted back into the living room to Mr. Flower, like gold with gold fur she was there! and before I could speak, she began reciting something from Allen Ginsberg on tape, the one I always play, …units of mind thought, which is another element that comes in when your writing, cause your notation of what your saying is a notation of what you speak but its also, really, if you’re writing silently at a desk, a notion of thoughts in your mind, not what you spoke at all, but the thoughts.

Australian Open

On the TV, tennis is played by two women.

The women look lame from up high, scribbled women. Flanking the court are seven or eight pink you-can’t-tell-whats, like little electrons, springing back and forth between plays of the women, retrieving the yellow ball and running off. The ball falls out of play again and another comes running.

The two are in the room with the TV, watching the women play tennis. The top woman wins a point over the bottom woman, footage from the man-on-the-ground camera then feeds into the broadcast. The real-looking woman wipes her forehead with a towel. Standing with the woman, a highlighter-pink smudge stresses the automatic environmental RGB balance.

Lucy slaps the couch arm but says nothing.

After seconds that feel like old seconds, simpler, heavier, a teenage girl immerges from the pink blur like a ghost wearing the aura, saintly still.

Cane Toads jump around outside of the Tennis stadium in Australian dirt. Huge numbers and destroy two species of insect and one of rabbit in one morning. Forty die in one hour from eating poisonous bees asleep on the sand.

Tension is high in the Tennis stadium as the last yellow ball is catapulted from the top to the bottom. Twenty seconds fighting. Suddenly, it's flung high and falls just over the line. A few scream from relief and some out of anger and everyone else just looks and listens.

A group of cane toads are hit four at once by an ambitious motorcyclist and a babe riding bitch howling.

winter's end no weekend no morning

The Sun is up in the sky here more in winter than in any other time of the year. I wake up from a dream about making up a broken promise to a friend, thinking, “I should tell Anthony I’m going to miss his birthday.” The room is mine. It’s hardened in the winter time. Each of its 19 corners are heavy; irremovable, like dots of ink on something clean. The walls would fall otherwise. I would freeze otherwise. The alarm sounding from just beside my head is fingers tapping on an Indian drum, outside of a store in somewhere Arizona, where in the same city an old man spends the remaining days before his last days crusading in a truck around the desert seeking plastic making as if free, trying life for the first time. The chip wrappers don’t eat or defecate and find no place to fit in (in servant wind), so the old man cleans up after the RVers, taking them into his brown bag. There, wind blows the hair of the girl tapping on a tiny Indian drum. The tapping on a little drum… won’t stop from there.

Two hours after the time I had wanted to get up, I had gotten up. I had put on clothes to stop shivering. I had turned on the heater at my feet near the desk and sat in the chair. Across the house, the door opens and the chime chimes thrice. My room is dark still. The curtain was closed by me the prior night. What was I doing? Afraid someone would see what I was doing?

I put on Jerry’s shirt that he gave to me on the night before I left Portland. Open the curtain, blue sky was above the high, sun-covered building. Some older people had already finished a round of tennis matches with friends. I was reminded of getting up early everyday to spend my time full as black cake and of becoming famous.

Canada

I’m in Canada, in the airport in Vancouver. I met a girl whose name was never given to me but which I overheard and then forgot. She’s dancing at the opening ceremony of this year’s Olympics. The plane that flew us to Vancouver was a propeller plane with 8 people in it, including the pilots and lady. All of us sat in the back of the plane for the benefit of weight in the back of the plane.
Now here in Canada, looking out through the terminal windows, square cells of glass rising to the ceiling, you can see a mountain range with snow on it. A single horizon like a jagged under bite, frozen. I wonder about Canada, thinking I should live here for the mountains and bears. I would go to the Olympics. I would live with people in a big house inside the lively city at the base of the mountains, looming in the distance, surveying the technology of the age, approving and disapproving. I want to climb it with my tongue wet in my mouth with my face wet in my scarf.
I have the feeling of walking on a moving belt again after walking on one again. It’s a nice feeling. It's been 15 years. I'm in Canada again.

Having come back and going back.

Happy New Year everyone.

I returned to the United States for the holidays. It was nice seeing brother and sisters, mom and alan, baba, deda, cousins, friends, old lover. I’m listening to a Christmas CD that mom sent me when I was in Tokyo before called ‘Cool Yule’ and sitting in the Portland airport. I’m going back to Tokyo to live for another six months with Kusama-san. When do the Cherry Blossoms bloom?

Having been back to Washington I had this alien feeling, like floating around. I met Kandy at the bar, met Tri at a bar, at the movies, at dinner, Shane in his apartment, in Neato Burrito. That alien feeling, a few days ago, suddenly fell hard back into that routine groundedness of living in your hometown and having never left. I saw it for the first time, there is returning. For people away for reasons they don’t have control over, it’s alright, because you can fall back into place. You can end up in your past girlfriend’s apartment (if she lets you).

I’m proud of my brother. He and I are the boys, isn’t it that that makes us get along better with each other than with our sisters? I found a lot of respect for him over holiday. He lies down and offers help to the terrible ever angered scrutinizing sisters who get overwhelmed by trying to fit too many things into luggage. I was childish fighting back, I ought to have done what he did.

New Years with Mike and Chris Malsam. I always end up at their house for holidays like that. We drank beer and played cards and ordered pizza. I slept below the tv.

Thanks to everyone who made time for me when I came to Spokane. I’ll be back again after what will seem like a long time until I’m back, what will then seem like no time at all passed.

I left and came and left and’ll come.

Christmas songs are Bing Crosby wrapped in an electric blanket in love.