Owl.

The Prizes for Turning 100


Within the 23 wards of Tokyo, a small prize is offered to residents aged 100. Of course this is not such an uncommon occurrence anymore, and so there is a system, a pre-printed letter and full-color pamphlet mailed to residents aged 99.

Residents aged 99 may choose from the following:
a) a gold vest
b) a gold cushion
c) a vase
d) a statue of an owl

Nanako admitted that her mother didn’t really like any of the choices but, since there wasn’t a box for saying ‘I am 99 and have all the presents I need, thank you’, both mother and daughter considered that a vase was the least of evils.

(To tell the truth, Nanako’s mother did express some curiosity about the owl statue, but acquiesced readily enough when Nanako gently directed her otherwise.)

Unfortunately, Nanako’s mother died shortly thereafter, a few months shy of her 100th birthday. Nanako wondered if she ought to write to the city, but never got around to it.

Nonetheless, she soon received a letter from the municipal offices informing her that the city had learned of her mother’s death (and therefore sent its most heartfelt condolences in this time of grief) and notice that the prize must, regrettably, be cancelled.

Sorry, no vase. The city, the letter admitted, could not afford to send prizes to survivors of residents aged only 99 and a half.

"Gentlemen, as long as one poor cockroach feels the pangs of unrequited love, this world is not a moral world."

--William James, in an aside to his students at Harvard, as quoted by Robert D. Richardson

Commute (16)

We can calculate and trace and map the melting of the polar caps, the decimation of the forests, the extinction of species. There is not yet a way to quantify the gouging-out of our spirits, or the cementing-over of our eyes.

Commute (15)

At 30 a woman is Christmas Cake: too late, too late!

So the students at the women's university tell me they will marry at 28. And when they become pregnant they will stop working. That’s the system.

They also say: Men are more logical than women. Men are more powerful than women. Women need men to take care of them.

Commute (14)

Recently I read a book about hikkikomori, the estimated one million Japanese who shut themselves into their rooms and do not come out for years.

The book describes not one but two men who were restored to life by going to Thailand and discovering that the buses there do not leave on time.

Commute (13)

No bird comes to this world casually anymore. Not on a lark. Just by looking at them you can tell: these birds are determined. Their acts of color and attention postpone the collapse of the office buildings.

Commute (12)

I see a woman sitting from girlhood to old age holding a jagged chunk of concrete. By the time her hair has gone gray the concrete is still concrete and at the same time it is entirely changed. She has discovered properties in concrete no one knew, or else she has imbued those properties. Sometimes it can be said to weep. If you watch closely you can see it dreaming, shuddering in its sleep.

downstairs from love and time.

Upstairs are two men with opposite attitudes toward time. You’re not conservative, are you? Actually they are sleeping together. They’re a couple. I know. Go figure.

I hope you’ll still consider living here. Even as we hear them upstairs fighting now: one with a bb gun, the other with a metal paint can: ping, ping!

Do you notice you always lie to yourself in the future tense? says one.

And the other says, Do you notice you always lie about sex?

You talk instead of act: I’m going to exercise, I’m going back to church, I’m going to make love to you every night, I’m going to change my life!

I have been BUSY everysinglesecond and I will get around to all those things.

Assuming you live as long as Darwin’s tortoise who by the way recently died as will you.

And what do you accomplish, actually, by being all the time uptight? This is a religious experience? It looks like a panic attack!

Indeed the uptight man (let’s call him Mister Now) is tremendously unpleasant. He is so obsessed by the passing moment, by the brevity of life, that he is entirely incapable of thinking straight. His house is always on fire. Which is poignant for about two seconds and afterwards really annoying.

The Tomorrow-Tomorrow guy (let’s call him Mr. Later) is only wasting his own life whereas Mr. Precious-Unrepeatable-Never-Come-Again-Here-It-Goes-Moment annoys the hell out of everyone.

Everyone, that is, except Mr. Infinite-Time-to-Waste, whose soul of inertia keeps him packed in existential blubber so thick that, even if you pierced him with, say, the inevitability of death, within thirty seconds housekeeping has already shown up with a can of paint. He’s been white and comfortable this long—who’s to say he can’t surf it right to the end?

Mr. Later would have been entirely all right, in fact, if only he hadn’t met Mr. Now. He would have gone on living here, peaceful as a cauliflower, until someone came along and lopped his head off.

Oh lucky man, who comes equipped with his own spiritual morphine drip! Every six minutes Mr. Later pushes the button and the optimism shoots right into his veins. Indeed, how else could he endure living with Mr. Infinite Panic of the Now, who must always remind you that this may be the last coffee you’ll ever drink, your last sunrise, your last irritating moment with Mr. NowNowNow.

You understand why we have a hard time finding renters to live downstairs from these two. One all the time singing “Summertime” and the other poking you in the eye. Have I mentioned that heat and air-conditioning ARE included?

And--let me warn you now—now and then they actually get through to each other and then, god forbid—

they switch.

Life is short! says Mr. Later. Run away with me tonight!

And lose my job? asks Mr. Now.

Live for the moment! shouts Mr. Later

And Mr. Now says, But I’m comfortable here.

It’s no wonder the neighbors have all disembarked and this space is available cheap—no deposit. All we ask is that you sweep out front—and serve referee for Mr. Now and Mr. Later. The location is wonderful. The neighborhood is (otherwise) first-rate. A steal at this price, a great opportunity for anyone willing to live downstairs from procrastination and sheer panic.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

RANDY MESMER'S PUNK BAND MIND

Randy Mesmer found the way forward was clear, the instruction simple: just don't believe your mind at all. Pay no heed.

A straight-forward and impossible situation.

As if he were, for example, an impoverished graduate student struggling to complete his dissertation (William James, cosmic consciousness) while living in a small broken-down van with, hello, a punk band.

A full-blown punk band, complete with electric guitars, drum set, groupies, heroin, and all members stumbling about improvising, drunk at 7am wearing nothing but t-shirts (Christ could you at least put on some underpants!), checking to see if the microphone worked--testing, testing, bigger than Jesus, fuck yeah!--and all he had to do was ignore them, put his two million 3-by-5 cards in order and quietly finish his dissertation.

Of course the punk band wasn't real--YEAH, try telling that to them!

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

BACHELORS IN PERSONAL INSANITY

Randy’s family was forbearing, resigned, or too drunk to notice. Certainly they were not shocked. Addiction was the family talent. Between the lot of them, they’d managed to work up a dazzling variety of addictions. Gin and tonics, far-right politics, fishing, beer. Oxycontin, dieting, crosswords, tomato sandwiches made- just- so.

Together they suffered depression, mania, insomnia, nightmares, lethargy, panic attacks. They were either too shy to speak or couldn’t shut up. Everything Was Traumatic. Nonetheless they managed both to work and to marry, which only goes to show that some people’s lives aren’t complicated enough already.

Everyone was functional, at least intermittently, excepting of course, dear Aunt Lucy, hospitalized for life up in Laconia. Schizophrenia—though she didn’t really seem that crazy, did she? Well, sometimes. She did what the rest of the family did—she just took it a little bit further. Like they’d all gotten their B.A. in Personal Insanity, but Aunt Lucy had gone all the way, completed the course, and actually made a career of it.

Commute (11)

When the city crumbles our habits will persist, like drunks, like flaccid old men making the rounds at the baths. Years from now, men will come and carry the husks of the train cars from station to station. And they will make a great point of leaving at exactly 8:27.

Commute (10)

What happens to reality, what happens to the world, when it is left entirely un-watered by attention? The first step appears to be: it turns entirely gray.

Commute (9)

‘Convenient’ is the cousin of ‘automatic’ and requires almost as little attention. This is a terribly convenient city: we live with no attention at all. The most fashionable and coveted possessions, cell phone and iPod, are tools for ignoring one’s surroundings. Why not make a new ad campaign: Anywhere but here!

Commute (8)

In one of the legends of the Holy Grail, Parsifal, a young knight on a quest, wanders into a parched and devastated land where nothing grows. When he arrives at the capital of this wasteland, he finds the townspeople behaving as if everything were normal. They are not wondering, "What horror has befallen us?" or, "What can we do?" Rather, they are dull and mechanical, as if under a spell.

-- Tara Brach

Commute (7)

Why have we created a world we can hardly bear to show up for?

Commute (6)

Excuse me, how do you expect people to get to work? If everybody stopped to talk. . . It’s called efficiency. Hello?

Commute (5)

I am in a hurry too, planning what I have to do, wishing for a coffee or a beer, but now and then, in the middle of my routine, I show up and look around and it occurs to me that I am living in a cemetery. What else could be so perfectly ordered? How could anyone be so obedient, without having been previously cremated?

Commute (4)

From the train I hurry to the convenience store where a line of six cashiers awaits and each time they say the same speech, ask for my point card, and pass me my change on top of my receipt without a glance in my direction. It’s a perfect system: no one’s here.

Commute (3)

On Monday at 8:27 I board the same car through the same door at the same moment I did the Monday before. The strangers are also the same. This took a long time to recognize. I’d assumed strangers were by definition random. But this is no accidental meeting: we occupy the same seats, the same space to the left or the right of the door. Like a chocolate box, if chocolate could look acutely depressed.

Commute (2)

It is a surprise, then, when the train arrives at Shirokane-takanawa, to watch the businessmen lunge across the platform to transfer to the Mita line. The first year I lunged too. It took forever for me to see it didn’t matter if I boarded third or sixth. Still, every time I must talk to myself to keep from shoving and sprinting with the rest of the crowd. Like at a scary movie when the movie starts in. I have to remind myself: this isn’t real.

Commute (1)

Their suits are not actually black. Black is for funerals, for interviews, the very most official functions. The suits are dark gray. Charcoal. The suits are only nominally occupied, like a building left with a guard. The gentlemen will arrive later, behind their eyes, to occupy their suits. This is just the commute. Even when we are so jammed together our feet leave the ground, we are not here. Especially then.

All About H.Hatterr and Other Endangered Books

My life has been enlivened and sustained by books, many of them peculiar and idiosyncratic, printed in small editions by a band of believers living, more likely than not, on instant noodles.

I cannot imagine my life without the books I adore. I am wildly and permanently grateful to them, as I am to the people who hauled me in off the street when I was lost and grief-stricken. Where else could I have learned that I could have my own vision of the world, of language, and not just accept someone else’s hand-me-down?

Thus it is an act of loyalty for me to speak up for the books I love. Many of them seem on the verge of disappearing, bobbing in and out of print.

Thus it was with great delight that I discovered that NYRB classics will re-issue
G.V. Desani’s All About H. Hatterr. This book is near the top of my list of books that must not be allowed to disappear. I am very grateful that other, more powerful, people are concerned about it as well.

The pyrotechnics and word-juggling of Mr. Rushdie come hugely from this book—by Rushdie’s own admission. For me this book encapsulates the crazed gorgeous inventiveness of Indian English. It is an extraordinary book and for years you couldn’t find a copy on-line for less than 100 bucks.

I remember when I found my copy, buried in the back of a bookshop in Varanasi. For years I’d looked for it and suddenly there it was, looking like it had had a wide range of traumatic experiences which it did not wish to discuss but nonetheless intact.

I am known, of course, as a singularly sedate person, a veritable sea of equanimity, but I no doubt would slug anyone who so much as touched my copy of All About H. Hatterr. Thankfully violence is no longer necessary. You can get your own copy.

NYRB classics has performed a number of acts of literary heroism, including publishing Robert Walser, Nirad Chaudhuri, and Tatyana Tolstaya. What would I have done without these books? If you haven’t read Robert Walser, I just don’t understand how you are getting by.

The rescue of this book has made me think of other endangered books. Here are a few:

1) The stories of Lucia Berlin. The work of this American master is on the verge of disappearing. Every time I think of it I want to run into the street screaming.

2) One thousand and one-second stories by Inagaki Taruho, translated by Tricia Vita. One thousand and one seconds is longer than this book was in print. I know half a dozen people who want it and none of us can get it. (If you have a copy, don’t tell me. I will come to your house and steal it.)

3) Halldor Laxness’s books go in and out of print. It’s maddening. Someone needs to come out with a multi-volume Every-Last-Fucking-Scrap Collected Edition. Please.

4) Mahasweta Devi. Does anyone in America read her books? Sheesh!

5) James Broughton’s Ecstasies.

6) Henri Troyat’s biographies. Of course we need Chekhov: A Life so we can learn how to be a magnificent human being, but we also need Gogol so we can know that it is still possible to make something brilliant and beautiful even if you’re screwing up pretty much non-stop.

THE RESCUE OF PRINCESS MASAKO

an optimistic fiction

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

THE NAKED HOLY MAN OF UDUPI

In Udupi, Krishna’s city, Randy Mesmer discovered a naked holy man ducking around the Tata buses at the station.

Randy pursued at once, tailed the sky-clad renunciant through the crowd, following his big flat feet, his smooth brown bobbing ass as he strode among the middle-class Indian mamas and their dull polyester-clad mates, all of whom carefully avoided looking at him.

How stunning to be naked out in the world. This must be how it feels, Randy thought, to tell the whole truth for the first time in your life.

Randy followed the naked holy man into the vegetable market, where an old woman offered a fistful of long beans, which the holy man took without saying a word.

The naked holy man walked like he knew where he was going—and with good cause. This was not an ash-smeared old man, nor a fearsome Saivite with bloodshot eyes. The holy man was young, his body lean and supple, and Randy had glimpsed his enormous Cadbury chocolate eyes. Better for him to keep moving: folks were bound to come up with creative uses for doe-eyed buck naked holy man.

Such radiant displays of holiness would elsewhere not be permitted, but this was Udupi, Krishna’s city, where the god at the temple cross-dressed every Friday and required all male devotees to be shirtless in the inner sanctuary. This was a city ruled by a god with a rare sense of delight and appreciation.

Still, what a burden beauty must have been to the holy man, like a chronic backache or an aged mother. Like the Tibetan nuns Randy had seen in the Himalayan foothills, who hurried along with their eyes on the ground. Renouncing all vanity and worldliness, these unlucky women shaved their heads, abandoned paint and ornaments, and wound up drastically more beautiful than they’d been before.

Decay is unstoppable, death too, but blooming also intrudes and insists upon itself.

The holy man turned now to look at his pursuer. Randy in his faded ragged clothes, skinny from six months of dysentery and beans, his face shot through with longing. One of those well-fed foreign children who run away to India to live like beggars and careen about in manic Technicolor delusion, chasing now an elephant, now a swami, now a buck-naked holy boy standing among the marigold garlands and the cabbages.

It is said that a pickpocket in a crowd of saints sees only pockets.

Randy, likewise: here was no pious wizened saint’s prick but a generous fleshy welcoming member of the sort a philandering sensualist might pray to be equipped with.

Desire pinned Randy’s feet to the dusty earth; the holy man turned and fled into the crowd of pilgrims.

NYTimes. "In Myanmar, Fear Is A Constant Companion"

"ALL THAT THE HUMAN HEART WANTS IS ITS CHANCE." -- William James

Why Do You Always Write About Such Embarrassing Things?

Obviously I would rather write about cancer, about nice people having affairs, about the Immigrant Experience, or growing up on a farm. I would prefer, of course, to write about writing professors who sleep with insatiable teaching assistants, about the sordid underbelly of creative writing programs in these United States of America.

Unfortunately these subjects are already taken; the quota is full. Everyone wants to be a writer nowadays!

What’s left is humiliation, shame not feigned or artful but smelly and sulking. Bad sex, waking up with the clap, sitting in the public STD clinic waiting to have my urethra swabbed by a nurse who remembers my name—this space available!

Obviously I would rather write about Nice Homosexuals. But you know how it is—the Nice Homosexuals are all taken. What’s left are a few bitter-faced members of the International Sex Army: men with sour hearts and bad breath. On retrovirals. Drunk.

The men who make mistakes occasionally—they were taken long ago. Ditto the men who often make mistakes. What’s left are a few men with unpleasant personalities and unremarkable genitals who make mistakes more or less constantly.

Obviously I would much rather write about cancer. But I do so want to be a writer—and there are so few spaces left available.

And so I devote myself, my heart and living hours, to smallness, humiliation and degradation, to everyone no one else wanted. (I myself cannot claim to like them.)

Bitter-faced, small-dicked, petty-minded queer army: accept me as your humble representative.

Reality

From center stage, with a blue wig and gold eyes, Le Mado surveys her kingdom and announces, “You can be naked. Of course it is against the law to be naked. And the law is completely ignored. . . Like pot. We smoke wherever we want and nobody gives a shit. So, please: be naked.”

Le Mado on a huge screen hangs above the city. A banner on the horizon: gold blue glittery laughing Le Mado. “Did I just say that?” A playful little gasp. “Did I say that out loud?”

“I am allowed to say anything. Because I am not real. I am a drag queen. After the show I will go back into the valise.”

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Robert D. Richardson, biographer

William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism
Robert D. Richardson

(also: Thoreau: A Life of the Mind and Emerson: A Mind on Fire.)

Richardson’s biographies of Thoreau and Emerson are two of the best books I’ve encountered in my life of voracious reading and this is one is just as wondrous. I cannot read any of these books in public, because they all make me want to weep and clutch my chest and shout, "At last! Everything has been revealed!"

I wish I could explain why Richardson’s biographies are different from anyone else’s. It’s not just an artful piling up of delightful and distressing facts. Instead it’s like the doorbell rings and you have a new best friend: William James. There’s something magical and occult about this. It’s not like he went to the research library, it’s like he drew mystic diagrams on the floor.

Richardson writes that one of James’ gifts was “his uncanny ability to pick up redemptive ideas from his reading.” And it is Richardson’s gift too, to fill each page with life-giving ideas. These biographies are as purely inspirational as a strong Lao coffee with sweetened condensed milk. Reading them makes me prone to fits of euphoria.

Richardson points toward the sources of James’ genius— one of the most important of which was James’ own depression and heartbreak. He writes, “James had a remarkable capacity to convert misery and unhappiness into intellectual and emotional openness and growth. It is almost as though trouble was for him a precondition for insight.” How hopeful that is!

Richardson’s compassion for his subject spills out, somehow, to the reader, and makes one feel that one’s own nonsense and bleakness do not render one disqualified for a whole human life. What more can I ask for?

Up front, let us unfashionably admit. . .

Up front, let us unfashionably admit: it’s a scary holy world. Anywhere you put your ear to it, the world goes WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP like some freaky kind of space ship.

And all this fucking is, admittedly, just a way of keeping God at bay.

Because it is a very scary holy world. Like a horror movie when the girl’s alone: all she does is open the refrigerator and scream:

oh holy world!

". . . I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden." -- Montaigne (CW, 72)

Tokyo Garden

A Tokyo garden. No garden at all. Thirty-seven pots. Not to everyone’s taste. Not exactly tasteful. Thirty-seven pots inches from the highway, tripping up passersby. Mixed pots. Sprigs of this growing in that. Succulents in the ivy. Bamboo grass in the tea roses. Impatiens, marigolds, cactuses. A dull jade tree. A prize winning miniature cherry chained to the curb. Hydrangea. Chives. A little, old lady, not sweet and not nice, everyday solemnly trimming and pruning, refusing to toss out what ought to be tossed out.

If it were all terracotta—

But no. Plastic pots, cruddy blue and white, forlorn white hooks. Who in their right mind would harbor a Christmas cactus--eleven months of the year a collapsed gray green. What else? Even as far as a ceramic gnome, maybe, sleeping it off in the dirt.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

PLASTIC AND THE AFTERLIFE

Randy Mesmer died expecting the boy-next-door and the rest of the coveted neighbors. Husband, father, son, big brother. Those sins. Their corresponding punishments. Instead muscled arms and hairy asses just protruded here and there beneath a heap of plastic bottles and coffee cups, beer cans, junk cars, and burger wrappers, in a cloud of monoxide and chlorofluorocarbons.

The angels trailed plastic bags from all night pharmacies. One angel—now grounded due to acid rain-- explained that lust had lost rank in the new list of sins against the body.

“The twenty-first century has transgressions all its own,” explained the angel. ”And they have a helluva lot to do with trash.”

Carnal lust, fearsome as the Bengal tiger, is now likewise direly endangered, and hunts forlorn in scabby patches of jungle. “We can’t get them to mate,” moaned the angel. “It’s something in the water.”

Between heavy metals and depleted uranium casings—nostalgia for adultery now sweeps the heavens. “We don’t worry about wet dreams. We worry about hormone disruptors.”

“Retribution was simple when you just killed a man,” said the angel. “Then maybe his grandchildren killed yours. Now that toxins poison 100 generations down--frankly it’s hard to know what to shoot.”

On the Moment to Moment Instability of Beauty and Ugliness

Someone, I’m sure has written about this. I just haven’t come across it yet. It’s too obvious--and also too unsettling. This scandal: that the beautiful are not beautiful, and the ugly are not ugly, consistently.

That the beautiful are sometimes ugly is a disgrace. That the ugly are, without warning, beautiful is heartening.

Why struggle to befriend the beautiful people? By the time you catch up to them they could very well be hideous.

I am disconcerted. I’d prefer if people just stayed in one camp or another. Beautiful or Ugly. Permanently. The world would be easier to understand then, and easier to prepare for.

Some oscillation, some divergence, can be blamed on late nights, on whether one is beloved or forsaken, on the consumption of salmon, on happiness or unhappiness, and of course on beer—but the greater, more significant change remains a mystery. Does it change with the moon? Is it karmic or atmospheric? Should I not wait so long between haircuts?

Because nowhere is this more disruptive than in oneself. Other people can be forgiven. Here comes the day of the family portrait, it’s date night, and you think, I’m doing okay. Of course, I’m nothing special, but I do make it to the gym now and then. I moisturize.

But you look in the mirror that day and find a haggard aged goblin struggling to contain her eating disorder by means of IV drugs. Aghast at your reflection, you ask: where has this weight come from? Why is my skin this color? Have I managed to die without noticing? Yesterday I somehow imagined I was remotely okay. What happened?

That this happens is well-known. I don’t know why more people haven't written about it.

Conversely, a sudden shift from ugliness to beauty appears to be positive. However this shift is likewise calamitous and generally causes more trouble than sudden ugliness.

Imagine then, this situation. This situation which is very familiar to me. You are not attractive. Your features are unfortunate. Your body sags. Your genitals are unspectacular. You’re getting on in years. And you’ve accepted this.

You say to yourself: now it is time to focus on my spiritual life. Now I will learn to meditate and let go. Now I will study the Collected Essays of Michel de Montaigne. Now I will give back to the community.

Enough, you say. Enough nonsense. Enough vanity.

You no longer seek out mirrors but, then--one can’t really avoid them. You glance and there is a nanosecond of pure astonishment.

Hmmm. I’m not half-bad.

A nanosecond—and then you fall at once to plotting. Because if you look this good, then doubtless there are attractive people somewhere who would not object to sleeping with you. And hadn’t you better give them more opportunities to do so?

There is anxiety in this, heavy-duty anxiety, because you are well-aware that, not only will these good looks be gone in twenty years, they may very well have vamoosed by the next time you look in the mirror.

So you rush back to the mirror. Careful now not to turn on the overhead fluorescent. Still okay. Phew.

And the next moment you’re out in the street, flagging down a taxi on your way to (at best) that overpriced cruisy coffee shop or (more likely) that bar where no one wears anything but boots. Just boots. Nothing else.

Beauty and ugliness alternate back and forth. The Collected Essays of Montaigne remain unread.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

CARNAL KNOWLEDGE OF MANNEQUINS

At the age of seven Randy Mesmer became renowned--at least within the family—for groping a mannequin at Filene’s.

Curious Randy clamped his avid hands on the stolid gentleman in turtleneck and corduroys and had to be pulled off by his mother, who shouted when she discovered him in this compromised position and, to tell the truth, never looked at her little boy in quite the same way again.

Thereafter, Randy was designated: the third son, the gimp-legged one. Who gropes mannequins. His family guessed, accurately as it turned out, that little Randy was going to be a world of trouble in this arena.

The cause of this commotion--the mannequin’s nether regions—were lackluster and un-compelling. One side, in fact, was much like the other.

Misinformed thus, Randy managed several respectable years. Until age 13, when he groped his first non-mannequin and discovered a situation more complex and appealing than he’d hitherto supposed.

Of all the excesses that came afterward, his family would only sigh and explain, “What do you expect from a boy who gropes a mannequin at Filene’s?”

Indeed.

epigraph

from Montaigne, our ishta-devata, our pal Michel,
the patron saint of “on the other hand –“:

We are all a patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

GREEN LUST

Randy Mesmer was alarmed to discover his lust had expanded, past men and past women and—thankfully skipping the animals—was now headed straight for the trees. The feelings once reserved for “rugged uncut Latino hunk” were now equally called forth by the phrases “stand of white birches” or “big old oak.” Horniness had expanded, somehow, so that now he found himself with a hankering for the whole green world.

Of all the ends to which people had warned his rampant lust would lead him, this one had not been mentioned. A fetish for green. Green, which presses in everywhere, which fills every crevice, every neglected patch of dirt. This devouring, insatiable green.

Funny how, it turned out to be true, the Junior High tease: green means you’re horny.

He learned quickly to beware the sexy pictures that came in brown recycled wrappers from Audobon, Orion, and the Sierra Club. He could easily be sent into a binge and find himself at the end of the weekend with an entirely immoderate number of houseplants.

If one must have this feeling, fine, but shouldn’t it be reserved for orchids, for roses, for high-end botanical woo-woo? But, in greenery as in men, he preferred the more common varieties. It was more than a little humiliating. He was not even above geraniums.

And so many things had to be reconsidered, now that the naturalists had turned out to be every bit as alluring as the naturists. Certainly he’d never look the same way at old ladies gone bird-watching, looking so pious, clad all in canvas within the forest glen. Those ladies, he suspected, were probably getting off hard as a sailor on shore leave.

And, not to flatter himself, but he was pretty sure the trees liked him too. Somehow he just knew. And there was this great benefit: the lightning-struck black walnut did not give a damn how old he was, how clumsy or unshaven.

These perversities, of course, were no more acceptable than any of his previous ones. People were appalled—this ecology goes too far!—when they found him at the party in the corner, in flagrante delicto with a potted palm.

MONTREAL MUNICIPAL SEX LAW: Explanation for Visitors

Visitors to Montreal, bewildered by the vision of so many perfect men, may be overwhelmed by feelings of personal inadequacy. To be just ordinary, just average, may seem a cause for shame. Fortunately this is needless. For it is with this heartache in mind—and the corresponding bitterness, resentment and loss of tourist income—that municipal laws have been enacted which require city residents to have sex every day.

Frequency is dictated according to age and attractiveness. A man of seventy, dapper in his neat white suit and straw hat, is only required to have sex once. Whereas a twenty four year old with washboard abs, puppy eyes and three days growth of beard is required to have sex at least six times. Six times! It is sobering to consider what a strenuous sacrifice the citizens of Montreal have made in order for the city to be as thriving, popular and well-loved as it is today.

The core of this is that, with such tremendous quotas and requirements, even the plainest looking tourist is bound to get swept in occasionally.

Therefore, do not be surprised if you find yourself being offered sex by someone more beautiful than you would be eligible for in any other city on Earth. Do not be bashful or apologetic. That ridiculously gorgeous man is simply attempting to follow municipal law. As a responsible visitor, you should also respect the law.

It is common that residents find themselves, at nearly midnight, still short of their quota. They may call on you to help. You should do so, if humanly possible.

Residents who fail to meet their quota are fined. Habitual offenders must attend classes where they are made to watch porno and consume oysters.

The recent strength of the Canadian dollar—and the corresponding drop in tourism—has meant residents must look even further a field in order to discharge their duty. Tourists may very well be overwhelmed by appeals for help.

Some predictable questions and doubts:

Unlike the laws against public nudity and marijuana smoking, these laws are actually enforced. Violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, etc.

Married couples who wish to remain monogamous may be granted a waiver for religious reasons. It must be admitted that these people are generally looked down upon and may face discrimination in the workplace.

Why are tourists so popular? After all, residents could fulfill their quota by having sex with each other—and leave the rest of the world bereft of inspiration. The answer is simple. When calculating one’s quota, tourists are worth 33.33% more. Fucking tourists is more efficient. Also, residents who welcome visitors receive coupons from the Chamber of Commerce redeemable for exotic underpants, Belle Guelle pilsner and marijuana, all of which are very expensive and highly prized in this area.

Many visitors, entranced by the city’s warm welcome, wish to remain in Montreal for the rest of their lives. Prospective residents must ask themselves if they are up to the demands of the city’s hustle and bustle. Are you willing to have sex every day?

Other visitors may be disgusted—or simply exhausted. They may choose a city where sex is frowned-upon or banned outright. It is unnecessary to name such places. They are legion.

Inconvenienced

Frida Kahlo did not accept her crippled leg and kept it hidden beneath her flowery exotic skirts. “Every year I hate it more,” she said, matter-of-fact and without complaint. I love her for that.

In public I keep peace with my withered leg, its mangled hoof. To inquiries I’ve learned to say, “It’s a birth defect,” in the sunniest possible tone, as if I’d just spotted, in the distance, a bluebird or a cardinal.

Dutifully I strap the foot into its plastic brace, like an aged relative who merits attention even though he can do almost nothing. When I’m alone it’s different—I throw a blanket over it.

Still, it is shameful to be bothered with it, here on the beach at Sihanoukville, where the mine victims crawl, tourist to tourist, across the beach and the rule seems to be that you can't be a beggar unless you’re missing at least two limbs.

I had a lover once who was paraplegic. A Vietnam vet paralyzed below (not at) the waist. He always insisted he was not crippled. Not disabled either, or handicapped. “I am only inconvenienced,” he insisted. “Some of my friends are quads. That’s crippled.”

His arms were extraordinarily strong, especially at night, when, returned in dreams to Vietnam, he grappled in combat and, howling in his sleep, hurled me from the bed.

Refuge Vows

Today is the 14th anniversary of the day I took Buddhist refuge vows with Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche in Dharamsala. I was twenty, living in the monastery, imagining I would be a monk. I knew I liked men by then, of course, I just wasn’t quite ready for just how much I liked them.

Rereading Shantideva today. I swore to be a bodhisattva—and it’s still hard for me to give up my seat on the train. I’m sitting comfortably and some old woman totters onto the train, she’s maybe 104, one leg amputated at the knee, and, bodhisattva me, I think, “She’s just going for the sympathy vote. She doesn’t look that bad off. And as for me, I’m tired.”

I go for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.
I go for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.
I go for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.

On the Buckle

It really is one of the happiest sounds in the universe: the jangle of a man fumbling with his belt. For this reason belt buckles ought to be as large and ponderous as possible, so that a man feels proud, just hauling one around, and also cheered to unbuckle one and send it, clattering, to the ground.

Rich Sons

One afternoon in Phnom Penh, over many cups of coffee, he told us about one of the rich sons of Cambodia, who, in a moment of irritation, had opened fire on a crowd.

Rich sons, it is said, are never punished. Here was the test. A crime so heinous, committed before dozens of witnesses; the rich son slouched in the courtroom, looking bored and wearing sunglasses. Even the cynics thought he might not get away with it.

So it seemed until the morning the judge announced the verdict. There'd been a break in the case, he said. This boy was framed: now the real villain had been found.

As proof, the judge held up the perpetrator's passport. The passport was real, made late the night before for a man who did not exist.

(The testimony of witnesses counts for nothing. The witness of the poor is a bill of minute denomination and subject to constant devaluation.)

The man who did not exist was sentenced to life in prison. A terrible sentence, which no one likes to think about.

The lives of imaginary men are unspeakably long, their suffering almost unimaginable to those of us who die more easily.

The verdict: innocent people, gunned down in a market, leads to the imprisonment of an imaginary man, pulled into creation only to suffer, to serve on behalf of the rich son who walks, with his sunglasses, back out into the sun.

Fidelity

Do mosquitoes have a sense of family? Does the female mosquito long to return, at the end of the night, blood-engorged, to her mate?

Few things, then, are more melancholy than a mosquito trapped on an overnight bus. It all seemed so promising when she buzzed in the door—so many bodies pressed together, crumpled shirts exposing skin, and the travelers too tired to protest a small deduction from their veins.

Full of blood, she finds herself confined and, when she finally tumbles out, groggy with the rest of the passengers, she enters an atmosphere sultry and dense, unlike any she has known.

Heavy with blood she sinks in the air. Success counts for nothing.

She is unfamiliar with the predators of this place.

A gecko snares her.

(Vientiane, 02.05.07)

Sentence

Here I will briefly pay tribute to the most important sentence in literature.

The sentence is from Dostoyevsky, but it doesn’t really belong to him. You can use it too. Like a pair of good black pants, it’s suitable for all occasions. Like a tiny flashlight, it may suddenly become crucial. Theologically, the sentence is one of the incarnations of Vishnu, unless you’re talking to a Christian, who will pronounce it “grace”. Published by Dostoyevsky in 1844, the sentence is actually as old as the universe, which may rightfully be said to have begun with it.

Notes from the Underground, page 144. “But at this point something exceedingly strange happened.”

Note

Please keep in the mind that this guttersnipe, devoted servant of guttersnipes, also welcomes the advice of venerable, venerable you.

In fact you have some responsibility, don't you, to keep us out of danger? Elsewise we may end up descending into obscenities and mis-matched plaids.

For example, in the previous post, there was an extremely tacky use of the word "circumsized". It has been corrected now, don't worry. But please do send notes from time to time or else we fear there may yet be more disasters, botched circumcisions, et cetera.

Respectfully,

Ever Yours,

G.S. Das

Glory Holes

I’m hiding behind a sign on which FOREIGNER is written in stinking black permanent ink. Only a little bit of me sticks out: sometimes my pink face, sometimes the other part, also pink.

As for them, they’re behind signs that say JAPANESE—it isn’t written out in full—and when we get drunk together, well, we’re both drunk!

Amazing how much sex you can have, even with 97% cardboard. Hardly gets in the way at all. You just put your mouth down to the little hole. “Pardon me, honorable sir, is there some piece of you, you could send over here?”

Shoulder to shoulder in the gutted factory: what’s left of the machines is covered in rust and jammed with bones.

Doesn’t work? Doesn’t need to work! You’re getting 6,000 yen an hour, mister. Pretend it works.

The classroom is shared. The answer to number one?

We think it’s A.

No, Elana says it’s C. Next!

Number two? C?

No Elana says it’s B. Next. . . No Elana says it’s B.

No, Elana says. Elana says!

(No, I don’t know what’s up either, Takashi. And, sorry, no, there isn’t time for questions.)

(The Ugly Daughter, illustration by Akemi Shinohara)

Dream: The Ugly Daughter

I dreamt I was at an opera being held in a great field. I was with my husband but I walked away from him to where a family was seated in special boxed seats made of concrete and rabbit wire: a sallow mother, a pallid father and their only child, a daughter.

I walked right up to her. “So—You’re the bad daughter,” I said. And she was. A fat ugly poor white girl with bad skin and dull eyes.

The daughter nodded her approval of me. Her parents left us alone. The ugly daughter was smart and tough. We liked each other a lot but after my brash greeting I was very careful and formal. I understood that she was a being of vast and profound power.

I had to go then. The show was starting.

As a parting gift the ugly daughter gave me a box of delicate and slender arrows.

“I’ll put these in my check bag and not my carry-on,” I said. She laughed.

When I left her I thought, “I was a crazy, to go right up to her like that. She's unbelieveably powerful, the ugly daughter.”

Then I comforted myself. I do things other people won’t do and go places they won’t go. That’s why the gods can use me.


(from 04. 30. 06)

Traveling Companion

By the end of breakfast on the first day it's already clear that the person I’ve chosen to travel with—who seemed so nice, admittedly in a quirky way—is actually a total nutcase.

The way he stares down strangers, his affected tone of voice, his obsessive need for a schedule, his compulsion to fill up space with senseless talk, his repellent mix of timidity and vanity— it's intolerable.

When sex enters the picture—an attractive stranger, say, at the next table--then we really get the dark side. The pious timid gentleman abruptly becomes as devious, as calculating and relentless, as a Kashmiri carpet salesman. It is frankly more than a little creepy. I must make my own safety—and sanity—a priority. Therefore, I am determined to be rid of him at the earliest opportunity.

There remains this overwhelming difficulty: I am traveling alone.

( Bangkok , 01. 25.07)

Calamity

A new thrill’s a calamity. A violent accident. You’ll have an ache now, where there wasn’t one before.

or it’s a newly introduced foreign species (I’ve forgotten the term) some iridescent fish that looks so delicate, a brilliant purple flower on a creeping vine. (It’s all right. It’ll never take root here. It’s too cold.) Before you know it, the vine swarms over the telephone poles and the native fish—dull-colored bottom feeders—have all but disappeared.

The wonder is how a new desire appears in your life fully formed, as if it had been there all along. A room in your house you’ve never been. The door was papered over, the doorknob hidden in the pattern, but the room was always there, with white walls and a straight-backed wooden chair and an elegant slender lady, very tall, sitting for years in a brocade dress, hands in her lap, face painted for the Easter service, waiting for the bell to ring, so that she can come out through the wall, and tip her head and show you her enormous prick.

Please visit HITOTOKI, "a new literary site collecting stories of personal, singular experiences in Tokyo." They are creating a new map of Tokyo--a map of stories.

This seems to me a meaningful part of the painstaking work to re-enchant Tokyo. (Or was it enchanted all along and I've just been slow to notice?)

One of my stories "Ham Egg Pie" is there, along with half a dozen excellent and specific others.

Bask

illustration by Akemi Shinohara

Bask

The anaconda, it's revealed, can shorten its period of gestation by as much as 100 days just by basking in the sun.

Nothing furthers the unborn snake as much as just lazing around.

I learned this from television. I may have to reconsider television. It may be that the medium has been redeemed. I've always loathed television as a pathetic waste of the human life. As for myself, I've been ceaselessly diligent. I make a schedule and keep it; I am strict with myself.

And I’ve accomplished nothing. Filled out index cards on 4000 unrelated subjects. Nothing completed. Nothing has turned out.

To think of how many years I've wasted being diligent!

Never once did I imagine that dreaming might be the best advance.

The clue may be in the verb—to bask. Not to fritter or to putts, no anxious finger-tapping: bask.

One hundred-forty-four baby snakes: curled around each other, growing silently within. The snake must do what the snake must do; the Sun must do what the Sun must do. Inside the snakes grow in warmth and stillness. Do not interfere.

( Bangkok , 01.26.07)

The pretty coffee girls . . .

The pretty coffee girls at my kissaten have been replaced by pretty coffee boys. Not a bad way to start the day! Still, I miss the girl who, after seven months of Tuesdays, said, “the usual?” Confessions like these are illegal under the Constitution. (MacArthur hated being asked, “The usual? He wanted to be all the time new, and tall, our MacArthur.) She may as well have ripped off her head scarf, her head

Now she’s been taken away and boys sent to distract me. Boys! Indeed it is hard to think past them. These boys will never say “the usual?” Never, in any language, will these boys admit to knowing or to being known. Even some (rather formal) fellatio would be more likely. At least in my system of hoping.

(April 4, 2007, Tokyo)

Masks

When I was a child, I understood a great deal. I was what you'd call ‘disturbed’. Luckily, as time passed I understood less. I became dull. Now I am functional. More or less.

One thing I understood was that every face was only a mask and beneath it was another mask, a maddening succession of masks, so that you could stand at the mirror all day, tearing off one mask after another, until the room was littered with masks wobbling in the afternoon breeze, smelling vaguely of feet, and you’d still be no closer to the face.

Eventually a blank face emerged, with only the shape of a face but not openings, no distinguishing marks, like a paper mache dummy or a corpse wrapped in bandages. This is the end, I thought. This horror is the truth, the face.

This awful certainty lasted approximately a minute before I noticed the blank face peeling away at the ears. A new succession of masks—red, white, gold or black, weeping or laughing or sneering—proceeded. The terrible blank face was just another mask tossed into the corner.

I don’t remember when I tired of tearing off masks. Certainly I never chose one decided to stick with it. Likely I was called to dinner—maybe there was something good on TV?—and just marched off wearing whatever mask I had on at the time.

Later I forgot all this for a long long time. Also, my mask appears to have become stuck. Odd as it is, I’ve become attached to it. Every day I daub at it with expensive useless creams. I am afraid it will fall off.

After a long silence and many adventures, I have returned and will resume posting here. Postings will not be as frequent as before--I am aiming for twice a week.

Anyone willing to serve as a reader for longer work will be served with many respectful pranams and email attachments. I have been afflicted with the aspiration to submit work to magazines. Please pray for me.

Thank you very much for your notes of encouragement. I always feel grateful and astonished to hear from anyone.

Respectfully,

Guttersnipe Das

Vocation

It is natural to be committed to something one does well. Everyone understands that. Whereas there is something pathetic, mysterious and vulnerable about being devoted to something one does poorly.

How comic that I should be a traveler. Ten minutes pass before I’m brave enough to speak to the waitress. I am afraid of crowds, dogs, noises and strangers. (This is also a list of things I love.) I cannot cross the street. Recently, on a street corner in Cambodia , I waited helplessly until a soldier came, smiling, took my hand, and led me tenderly across. Helplessness is rarely so lucky.

Tone-deaf musicians, one-legged dancers, lecherous monks. I imagine they feel the same shameful compulsion I feel, as I sit down to write. There’s no escape from being ridiculous. Try to relax into it.

I love Taoism because heaven is a huge bureaucracy and you just have to find the right office. There are problems with this system, however, and they show up in places like these. The official in charge of vocation—the lady who makes the calls—has no communication with the lady who passes out talent. They had a falling out several millennia ago, over some no-good man.

This is no excuse for me, I know. I ought to stick to doing things that I do well: clearing tables, polishing silverware.

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams, Imaginations

Imaginations is a collection of five of WCW’s early works, most of them a strange amalgam of poetry and prose. Kora in Hell is here, one of the cornerstones of American prose poetry. It is one of those books that feels like being handed an invitation or permission slip.

For me, however, Spring and All is the book’s great pleasure. Spring and All contains some of WCW’s best poems surrounded by wild prose that offers theories of poetry and rants and zany plans to destroy civilization “west of the Carpathian mountains (also east)”. So much of this material has been extracted and made to look respectable and buttoned-up, like a child at church. It’s so much more exhilarating to read all together.

I should admit that there are several books here I cannot yet decipher. I open pages at random and roll about in this great strange mind and hope to live a long time and become smarter and more patient.

I like to carry this book when I have almost no time to read or think. Somehow WCW was able to make these strange fragmentary books in the midst of doctoring and exhaustion. These are messy books, messy in a way that gives me courage, full of plans and frustration and paths leading nowhere.

Williams’ poetic theories are quoted so often—and yet I found that the most fun, most liberating, part of Spring and All I’d never seen before. I immediately had a fantasy of aspiring writers being made to recite the following, like the Gettysburg Address.

“The writer of the imagination would find himself released from observing things for the purpose of writing them down later. He would be there to enjoy, to taste to enjoy the free world, not a world he carries like a bag of food, always fearful lest he drop something or someone get more than he,

A world detached from the necessity of recording it, sufficient to itself, removed from him (as it most certainly is) with which he has bitter and delicious relations and from which he is independent – moving at will from one thing to another – as he pleases, unbound – complete

and the unique proof of this is the work of the imagination not “like” anything but transfused with the same forces which transfuse the earth – at least one small part of them”

I Really Am Doing Well

I really am lucky.

I am. It's not true I don't have friends. Acquaintances should count as friends. How cruel to think otherwise, how inconsiderate of them. I have polite acquaintances who can be invited for meals. I have a good job which gives me money and status within my community. I can have whatever I want for lunch. I have as much health is typical for my age.

My job is easy. Actually my job would be very difficult to do well. I should have to keenly exert myself. Fortunately, effort is not praiseworthy. It is not looked upon well. I am mediocre at my work. Everyone is pleased with me. My mediocrity is commendable.

Above all, I am comfortable. Did you know I can set my bathwater to the precise degree that I desire? Even the floor is heated during winter.

A city where strangers never speak is highly conducive to reading.

Actually it's typical for people my age to not have many friends. This is not college. People are focused on their families, on success. I am very lucky, of course, to have neither of these things. It gives me a lot of spare time. Think of all the money I save, just by not having children!

I am not alone. I'm lucky to not be alone. I have a good husband. My good somnolent husband. I'm quite good myself. At least I am not evil. Being evil, at least in an obvious way, would entail making an effort. Evil is not something I need. I am a salaried employee. Pay day is the 20th of the month. It's direct deposit, you don't have to DO anything.

Isn't that lucky?

It's very lucky.

And so it is very embarrassing, very guilty liberal, very adolescent that I feel myself verging on tears as the bus arrives at the airport and I have to clamp my lips together to trap the pernicious weeping cheering voice that wants to shout:

Escape from the land of death!

Escape from the land of death!

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

GAY BUSINESS.

Randy Mesmer was all in favor of loving men, and sucking cock, and being queer, but this business of being gay—and a business was what it was—seemed an abundantly bad idea.

As far as Randy could figure, some time in Seventies a gaggle of rich white guys had sat down-- over a meal of white wine, Cornish game hens, and crème brule--to figure out the most profitable way to stay consistently miserable.

Happiness was all well and good in theory, but there wasn’t much money to be made from it, not compared to misery, that wish-fulfilling cow.

(The cows and the wishes, alas, are always someone else’s.)

Someone was getting rich, you can be sure, from all the exotic varieties of underpants, from lemon vodka and eyebrow waxing, from all the money spent for rainbow flags and 501s, for six hours at the baths, for moisturizer, for timeshares in Provincetown, for self-defense classes, for temporary and permanent tattoos and penis enlargement, for colored contact lenses and ginseng supplements, for books of everyday affirmations, for realistic flexible washable models of horse penises, for cigarillos and Nicoderm, for gym memberships, for hair implants, for socks to match everything, for coke, for tina, for Marianne Williamson, for recovery bumper stickers, for poppers, for E, for bottles of water to go with the E, for retrovirals, for queer theology, for beard trimmers, for grapefruit-scented non-sticky water-soluble lube.

What use were you, if you were happy and had a man you loved? You stayed home and boned him all day and hardly spent any money at all.

This was to be avoided, at all cost.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

ASHAMED.

Randy Mesmer got kicked out of the monastery for fellating a monk. The monk didn’t get kicked out, just Randy.

This was the trouble with virtue. It wasn’t enough to be good once. It wasn’t enough to be good for one day, or just until lunch.

To Randy, it seemed very unfair to demand that the monks never be fellated. There’s nothing like fellatio for improving morale. And it was Losar, Tibetan New Year, when the Dalai Lama says that even monks should kick up their heels a little.

The monks must not kick their heels up too high, however.

Who told the authorities? Were the walls thin or had the monk turned himself in?

Was it really so wrong?

Randy Mesmer was forever asking that question. When he got thrown out, he asked the manager of the monastery.

Was it really so wrong?

The manager, a pious American convert, looked at him with disgust. “You ought to be ashamed,” he said.

Which was, of course, the answer Randy Mesmer always got.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

DREAMS.

Occasionally, for very short periods, Randy Mesmer managed, actually, to be good. If you saw him during these times, you’d notice that he even looked surprised, like Wile E Coyote when he runs off a cliff and you can see him thinking, “What’s holding me up?”

He thinks that—and at once plummets a mile down into a tiny puff of smoke.

Randy Mesmer wished to think highly of himself during these brief periods of virtue, but unfortunately his dreams were a non-stop porno saturnalia, a hard-core sex channel with fast-forwarding capacity. The men in dreams, it seems, were clearer than real-life: every hair visible and every fine line of the Virgin of Guadalupe tattooed in blue on the backs of the uncut horsedicked Latino brute of his dreams and he’s crouched on the clammy tiled floor with some lug’s nutsack banging against his cheek while he shoves a bottle of amyl up against one nostril.

Jeez. Couldn’t my dreams at least skip the poppers? He muttered to himself, as he woke hearing the 4am bell at the monastery and opened his eyes to see the monsoon rains flowing down the crumbling wall inside his meditation hut.

Tucking his boner into pants, he pulled a shawl around him and sat down in half-lotus to complain to each of the 35 Purificatory Buddhas that he could really be a very holy person if not for world and, specifically, men.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

ROBES.

Randy Mesmer decided to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk because he looked good in maroon. The Thais, of course, had better food, but saffron is not the color for white people.

He spent a winter in the foothills of the Himalayas so cold he never undressed further than taking his dick out to piss or jerk off. He didn’t even shit until well into Spring.

Insurgencies / 2

On my way out of the park which surrounds Senzoku Pond, I stopped in shock at the street corner. Two workmen, their heads wrapped in pastel dish towels, stood painting an apartment house. One man’s paintbrush was steeped in red, the other’s steeped in blue and together they were painting over twenty years worth of gray. That gray which is the official color of industry, despair and Tokyo.

The apartment house was the usual jumble of haphazard angles, but now the curb and first storey were blue and the staircases on both sides, red. A triangular outcropping which jutted toward the street had turned an uncompromising green.

The remaining gray, commandeered on the second storey, served as a charming accent beneath the blue eaves. The mismatched angles of the apartment house, which had seemed ugly and careless, had been rendered as awkwardly appealing as a child’s set of building blocks.

In order to survive Tokyo, a secret internal reserve of color must be maintained. The small park at Senzoku Pond is an essential cache. For the red shrine, the iridescent pigeons and the orange carp. In this season for the yellow gingko leaves pressed to every path.

Now, however, it appears that color is spreading.

Is it too dangerous to hope that color may be making advances, might be making inroads even here in this gray city? In clear December air, the color sweeps silently down from the shrine to the carp in the stream and out to the street and the color bursts unstoppable up the red staircase and into our lives.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

REGRET.

Full of regret one morning, Randy Mesmer decided the best thing about the baths was what a relief it was, after, to return to the world outside. After ten hours of steam, cock focus, wet tiles, wrestling, lube and porn on seven channels—after a night of relentless skin—what a relief to walk out the door and discover the overcast morning, a crow in the air, people on their way to work. He wanted to call out to strangers, “Thank you for wearing pants!”

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

HOSE.

Randy Mesmer believed he could win a wet underwear contest entirely through the power of positive thinking.

“I’m sexy!” he said out loud to the mirror in the toilet of the Midtowne Spa. “I’m totally hot! I’m a first-class bit of masculine meat! Fuck,yeah!”

Standing on the fenced-in patio at the baths, the contestants in tight white underpants awaited their turn with the hose. The winning contestant would be determined by the strength of applause.

Randy Mesmer was not handsome and he knew it. His idea of Heaven: to be so beautiful you never had to talk.

Then again, beauty was an awful lot of work. So he wished he had a preposterously large penis. Amazing how an extra large uncut penis trumped all other attributes. Those men, the stars of the baths, didn’t have to do anything. Their personalities often became entirely vestigial.

The water from the house was ice cold. Randy Mesmer felt his positive thinking go limp and retreat.

No one clapped for Randy Mesmer. Then, way in back, one drunk guy started to whoop and holler and clap for all he was worth.

“Woo—hoo!”

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

HELP.

Randy Mesmer decided to seek professional help. Because it really was a compelling thought—that you could just take a pill and become a reasonable person.

He told his therapist about the compulsive sex, the nights at the baths, the blowjobs in bricked alleys, the glory holes.

Still he wasn’t sure she’d understood. Somehow she’d missed the mystic glory of it all. The way the lights looked in Chicago when no one was around and he was on his way to the Eagle at 2am.

“Do you imagine you know things no one else knows?” the therapist asked and she sounded so depressed he did not dare continue.

Guttersnipe Das in the Tokyo Advocate

Check out the new Guttersnipe Das column in this month's edition of the Tokyo Advocate.

On the last Wednesday in October, the man sitting next to me on the train died between Iidabashi and Ichigaya stations. . .

Continued on page 21 of December's Tokyo Advocate. Sporadically available at unpredictable locations throughout Tokyo -- or download it here.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

TEST.

When Randy Mesmer’s AIDS test came back negative, his friends embraced him, teary-eyed.

“Promise to be good,” they said. But Randy did not promise. Randy continued to spend every Tuesday and Thursday at the all-you-can-suck. Randy fucked and got fucked and still his AIDS test came back negative.

Well, his friends got understandably upset. They warned him of the disastrous effects of grasping desire, excess of rajas, gross lust. As time—and wickedness—progressed they grew baffled, then frustrated.

“I use condoms and a water-based lubricant,” Randy explained.

“You are putting yourself at a terrible, terrible risk,” they said. But they did not sound so happy or so sure.

Of course they did like Randy Mesmer. In spite of—you know. They liked Randy Mesmer very much but—to be frank—by going unpunished he was calling the whole system into question.

His continued sluttish larky existence was undermining the checks and balances and they had their marriages to consider.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

GOOD-FOR-NOTHING


Growing up, Randy Mesmer had a good-for-nothing young uncle who lived on the couch. Uncle Ian was entirely agreeable and also entirely useless. He was not interested in being someone or getting on in the world.

As such, of course, he was continually criticized. And at the same time no one much minded him. Everyone felt so much better about themselves. “At least I am making an effort!” they exclaimed.

Randy Mesmer disapproved of Uncle Ian--and lived in awe of him. Randy Mesmer wanted terribly to be handsome and smart and athletic, to be correct and moral and spiritual. Randy Mesmer wanted to be A Better Person.

At age 3 he wanted this. And by the age of 10 he’d already figured out he was going to fail.

Uncle Ian was the product of Grandma Preston’s late life affair with a good-for-nothing. What had she seen in him?

Uncle Ian spent his life in boxer shorts. His large penis was forever poking out, along with his low-hanging balls, which he shifted frequently from one side to the other with as much self-consciousness as a dog. He could be real good looking, Uncle Ian, if he’d just fix himself up.

Uncle Ian didn't care about that. He took it easy.

Taking it easy is like rolling your tongue. Some people don't even have to think about it. For other folks it's completely impossible.

Randy Mesmer tried to take it easy. He made a concerted effort. He spent several afternoons on the coach next to Uncle Ian playing Asteroids. He tasted beer. He practiced shrugging and saying 'Fuck'.

Randy Mesmer marveled at his Uncle Ian’s reckless courage. How was it he dared play video games, dared channel surf? All while the sands of life slipped unceasingly away!

It was no use. Randy Mesmer was doomed to self-improvement.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

SANCTUARY.

At age 17, Randy Mesmer discovered the Cambridge Bird Sanctuary. Predatory, promiscuous homosexuals, it turned out, weren’t nearly sinister as advertised. Men stumbled in and out of the reeds like professors lost at garden party. Some even carried little plastic baggies with a few forlorn wild fruits so that when the Vice Squad appeared they could say, “Officer, I’m just gathering berries!”

All summer, as the wind bent the reeds in the sun, men ruined their good shoes chasing each other through the muck.

Randy Mesmer was immediately hooked. Happy to romp with the Harvard boys, with the loons and the trolls and the unemployed.

“I’ll take a later bus,” he said. Pretty soon it was dark. (It’s important to note that this wasn’t a stage to which Randy later sank, this was the starting point.)

Still hopeful in the pitch black, Randy Mesmer found a marvelously tall stranger standing very still just at the edge of the reeds.

Just this one more, Randy promised himself. Then I’ll go home.

He walked past the guy and waited. Then he turned and looked again.

Oh hell. The tall mysterious stranger was only a nice-looking birch tree.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

BOY.


When Randy Mesmer was a sweet and innocent little boy, what he wanted more than anything was to get into the cage at the zoo with the bears.

Napping on the sofa in the afternoon sun, little Randy Mesmer daydreamed that those towering shaggy bears clutched him in their irresistible limbs, pressed him into their fur, and touched him with their heavy thudding paws.

Little Randy Mesmer incited no suspicion. “He does just love his teddy bear!” his mother said and bought him a grizzly just his size, with which he spent several years intertwined. He loved his teddy bear and his Frosted Flakes, which will make a boy swell at once into a mighty tiger upholstered with muscle and a huge set of gleaming jaws, as seen on TV.

Popeye was in the mix somewhere, as well as the Incredible Hulk, who swelled up so big his clothes tore apart.

His number one daydream, however, was of a solitary travler in the desert, scrawny and wretched, who comes across a gypsy witch who sees potential in him and gives him a vial of potion. The potion makes him bigger and stronger, bigger and bigger. Lying in the afternoon sun when he was supposed to be sleeping little Randy Mesmer imagined being big.

Does growth happen on its own? He wasn’t leaving anything to chance. Clutched his big stuffed bear, Randy Mesmer imagined every inch.

The Life and Adventures of Randy Mesmer

RANDY MESMER.


Randy Mesmer thought for a long time about the world.

Finally he decided. He was in favor of it.

Thelonius Monk
(illustration by the beloved Akemi Shinohara)
see post: Listening to Monk, Thelonius Himself

Listening to Monk, Thelonius Himself

I started listening to jazz and now I can't stop.

I never wanted to be one of those people, one those dull snobs who announced, "This poem was composed while listening to jazz."

Yeah, like, here's my poem. I wrote it listening to The Village People.

But now I listen to jazz and going without Thelonius Monk seems a monk-like penance, the kind of unfruitful austerity the Buddha would warn against.

Jazz is an essential nutrient, like B12 or Italo Calvino.

Ladies and gentlemen, ask yourself, am I getting enough Thelonius Monk?

Forthcoming in December:
THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF RANDY MESMER
A new picaresque about an average man with a little bad luck and a lot of zipper trouble.

Gentle Reader,

God help us, we are inspiring to literature. To news that stays news. Therefore, though we fail 99.9% of the time, each day provides a chance.

The reader is humbly beseeched to poke around a bit. The archives are full.

Please visit the SERIES -- the links appear on the right side of this page.

THE DEVIL, DEARLY LOVED, RENOUNCES EVIL -- about lust and desire.
NAGUSAMI -- an ongoing meditation on all the meanings of the word.
FAMILY TRAVEL -- about family, tragedy and hilarity.
SHORT WALKS IN SUMATRA -- about a lucky week spent in Sumatra.

Thank you for visiting.

Yours,

G.S. Das

Insurgencies

At 7:30 am there were already rebellions to report. The vestal virgins at jazz coffee passed me my order before I asked for it. From those starched whites not a word, a little grin, ham cheese toast and a pot of coffee.

How can I explain what this means? Ordinarily the same speech must be given, even if the customer appears at the same time every day and orders the exact same meal. But we broke the rule of anonymity. We admitted we were there, standing across the counter from each other, as we have been every Wednesday morning at 7:25 for months now.

(You must not forget the Law of Tokyo, the Law from which the life of Tokyo inevitably extends—Law #1: Let’s Pretend None of this is Going On!)

The second revolt took place in Iidabashi station, not far from the B3 exit. An old man had set up his easel and was engrossed in the task of painting, in water colors, with a pinpoint brush, the portrait of a vending machine.

How meticulously, how lovingly, he detailed every snack!

I would have embraced him, but the affectionate caresses of a strange foreigner would have no doubt caused his wa to capsize.

Ordinarily the painters are all in a gaggle around some vicious bit of cuteness. For example, that sickening little bridge in Shinjuku Park. No one looks at what is here.
(Please refer again to Law #1)

Sure-fire plans.

There’s the boy to whom coffee gives visions. First hour he hears angels. Makes sure-fire plans for great art. After that he wants to fuck anything that moves. Addiction is no laughing matter. Not in this day and age. He’s often terribly humiliated when he finally comes round. He has to be watched very carefully, that boy. Boy will do anything for a good strong cup of coffee.

Volunteer Opportunity: Paramystics Needed

Carol Lee Flinders, in her book Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics*, playfully refers to Margery Kempe as a "paramystic". "Not fully qualified perhaps but, like a paramedic,better in a pinch than no mystic at all."

Paramystic! How's that for a job title! As the world saturates with catastrophe half-baked cock-eyed mystics sprout up everywhere.

Hopefully, Jesus will be along shortly, along with Maitreya and the next incarnation of Vishnu. The Messiah is, by all accounts, overdue.

In the meantime the paramystics scamper about as best we can, holding hands and emptying bedpans.

(* If you're looking for a friendly engaging introduction to great Christian mystics like Theresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich, this is your book. In any case, you shouldn't dilly-dally too long before reading The Life of Saint Theresa by Herself, because nothing compares to her account of how unspeakably EMBARRASSING it is to start levitating during choir practice.)

Ham Egg Pie

In Tokyo I have heroes to whom I can say hardly a word. First among these is the Bad Girl of Mister Donut in Senzoku who at fifty is thin as a reed and wears sleeveless camouflage half-shirts which showcase her navel. She is a very important role model for me. Whenever we meet at Mister Donut we grin and wave to each other like cellmates in the same exuberant asylum.

Today the illustrious Bad Girl bought me a ham egg pie, which she slid onto the table as she stopped by to pick up my point cards. I always save them for her and she exchanges them at the register for free promotional gifts, for plastic lunchboxes, day planners and rice bowls.

This exchange of pie and point cards was great fun, of course, because the people all around us looked shocked and appalled. I live for these moments of cultural levitation, when things that could never ever happen in Tokyoland go ahead and happen anyhow.

The Bad Girl strutted off and I was left with a ham egg pie.

Now, as an eater, I’m as finicky as a half-starved Labrador Retriever. Put it in front of me and I’ll woof it down.

But I loathe ham egg pie. The egg is soft-boiled, see, so that the yolk bubbles out as you chew. And it’s cold.

So I’ve got this ham egg pie in front of me. The gods are laughing so hard even a mystic trained at a weekend workshop could hear them.

Mother of the Universe, bless me to love those near to me as much as I love certain adored strangers. Because I would sooner die than hurt the feelings of the divine Bad Girl of Mister Donut in Senzoku.

I ate the hideous ham egg pie: the cold egg dribbled into my beard. I laughed and wrote notes and found that, after a long time away, life at last had returned to me.

(a version of this appears online at HITOTOKI. please visit!)

Devils.

Today on the train I watched two well-to-do Tokyo ladies choose seats. There were two empty seats beside me, a foreigner, and two empty seats across the way beside a purple-faced man who was talking aloud and was clearly either drunk or mad. Stumped, they stood in the middle of the train and then, just to be safe, they sat next to him.

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Gary Young

Gary Young, No Other Life, Creative Arts Book Company, 2002

I read all the prose poems I can find in anthologies and magazines. Of all the people writing prose poems now, Gary Young is the most unassuming and the best. Our American Basho, operating with zero fanfare.

The poems are always short and untitled and deceptively easy to read. I've never found so much emotion in so little space. Before I know it, I'm sent reeling.

This book actually contains three of Gary Young's previously published books: Days, Braver Deeds, and If He Had. In the poems included here, especially Braver Deeds, there is a tremendous loss of life. Parents, children and beloveds die. Imagine reading the headlines from Iraq, but without being able to close your heart.

His new poems, being published now in magazines like Sentence: a journal of prose poetics, are gentler, more celebratory. The celebration is made real by its grounding in the knowledge of loss. Hopefully these new poems will soon be included in a book.

All hail Gary Young! We buy him a sushi dinner for sure, if he ever showed up in Tokyoland.

I won't quote my favorite Gary Young poems, it's better to just come across them and let them catch you unguarded. Here's one picked at random.

(from page 80)

My son is learning about death, about the possibilities. His cat was killed. Then Mark died, then Ernesto. He watched the news, and saw soldiers bulldozed into the earth after battle. Down the road, a boy his age was found floating in a pond. My son says, we're careful about water, and splashes in his own warm bath. We don't want to die, he says, we want to live forever. We only just die later, he says, and nods his head. Death is comprehensible; what comes later is a week away, or two, and never arrives.

On my side of town they're removing the sky ---

On my side of town they’re removing the sky, one train station at a time. The train that until today arrived among the tin roofs and vegetable market of Nishi-koyama now pulls into an immaculate tiled basin underground. A station identical to all the others except for the accent color, in this case salmon. Progress in Tokyoland. Soon I’ll be shielded from creation all together. When Fudomae drops beneath the earth I’ll lose the Meguro River lined with cherry trees, the awnings of the ramen shops, the Big Boy Barbershop. I’ll continue unimpeded in the dark. For now I keep my face pressed to the glass: I’m going to miss the world.

Dream: Sheep of Predictability

Last night I dreamt a sheep was standing in the kitchen. As soon as I walked into the room the sheep spoke to me. The sheep's voice was quiet and dry--secretarial.

"The quota of surprises for this year has been exceeded," the sheep said. "Therefore, for the remainder of this year nothing unexpected will occur."

My first feeling was relief. But then I asked myself: can I really trust this sheep?

Nagusami / 40

One thing I appreciate about Tokyo is that there are no extra friends. Every acquaintance is important. I can't afford neglect.

In California one might say: “Oh, we can’t really be friends—I’m vegan, she’s ovo-lacto.” Or: “My Buddhism is Zen, he’s Kagyu Kadampa.”

Whereas in Tokyo there’s only the delighted shock of recognition: “You drink beer! Ohmigod! I drink beer!”

Vegetarians are driven to befriend carnivores, even though it means they must subsist some evenings on nothing but green soybeans. Swedes and Texans swap accents. Driven to new heights of recklessness, Americans start learning languages.

Irritating people—such as myself—are nonetheless retained as friends. Quirks and compulsions pose no bar. There’s time to chat with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, to flirt with the Mormons. Some people even strike it up with Republicans.

Gratitude expands to fill the space dug out by loneliness; we learn to practice conservation of the human.

Friendship fed by shared relief. Here at last: a face that doesn’t slam shut at the sight of me.

Nagusami / 39

Some nights my friends are barely visible within their oily clouds of pain, that sickly iridescence littered with bad men, with what was said, and the last seven drinks.

Enter tonight’s jilted lover. We buy him beer and rub his back and step away to piously assure each other that, really, it was his own fault.

“I knew all along it wasn’t real.”

“I didn’t believe it for a second.”

This is how the world works. None of it's real and it all hurts.

I wouldn’t put up with it--except soon it will be my turn to be the heartsick fool--my toy lying broken on a street corner in Shinjuku.

It is impossible to say to whom the pain belongs. Grief scampers from table to table. We all take turns sitting up with it and we feed it from the tiny bottle, many, many times an hour.

Nagusami / 38

Security is a false god; begin making sacrifices to it and you are lost. Paul Bowles

Comfort is an exemplary verb. Everyone has a high opinion of it. We’d like to ship it round the world and if we could we’d soak the earth in it.

The noun, comfort, is not entirely reprehensible, though already there’s a whiff of the lifestyle magazine, of homes in gated communities. There’s a wall certainly, and also a door that locks. You’d like to have it for your children. You hope it extends into old age.

(Is it possible to think of comfort, really, without also feeling afraid?)

The adjective, comfortable, is entirely dubious, though my husband doesn’t think so. What’s wrong with being comfortable? he asks. We’re doing well as anyone, rock-a-bye, treetop.

Comfortable, it seems to me, is the fine print on a sleeping pill. There’s an ominous warmth. The dog circles three times and lies down for a nap.

The Reverend Hartman, at home in Winesburg, wonders if the flame of the spirit really burns in him, decides, “Oh well, I suppose I’m doing well enough.”

Is that smell smoke? Do these windows open?

I remember the day I read, in a poem by Luis Cernuda, Comfort is corrosive. I felt relieved, as when the doctor admits, “This is going to hurt.”

Nagusami / 37

A note from Yuuichiro, that gentleman most dapper, most immaculate, teaches me: In verb form, the word ‘nagusameru’ means ‘to comfort’, as in providing psychological relief when someone is under stress.

Comfort. The word appears to me in flames.

In this city we come to know intimately the pleasures and dangers of comfort. Comfort. The pillow, the nurse, the smothering.

Guttersnipe Das in the Tokyo Advocate

Please check out the new Guttersnipe Das monthly column in the Tokyo Advocate.

In humble veneration of the newspaper meanderings of Clarice Lispector and Robert Walser, we are determined to discover how odd we can get away with being in print.

Guttersnipe Das: Home Tonight (November 2006)

(The column appears on page 22. Thank you.)

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Luis Cernuda

Luis Cernuda, Written on Water: The Prose Poems of Luis Cernuda, translated by Stephen Kessler, City Lights Books, 2004

This book is on my short list of books that deserve to be famous. It will never be famous. I will go on trumpeting it anyway.

This book combines both of Cernuda's books of prose poems. Like a drinking buddy, at first it seemed a little cranky and maudlin, but it has turned out to be inexhaustible. Somehow Cernuda knows exactly how emotion feels in the body, how grief sinks and sensuality caresses. It is a very humble and generous book--as if he has saved all that was good and vibrant in his life and now he's giving it all away. When life in Tokyo feels like bitter exile, this is the book to which I turn for company.

The warm and nimble translation is by Stephen Kessler, who certainly deserves a kiss from everyone.

from Wasting Time:

"The breeze of the tropical night rests on your skin, refreshing it. You feel yourself floating, light, insubstantial. Your senses alone are alert, and with them your body; but it's a relaxed alertness, without the usual intrusions desiring and demanding. And while you, who've known that body forever, may be a bit suspicious of its calm, it claims that one kiss tonight would be enough to make it happy."

Optimism

My new lover bought himself an enormous potted plant. A spiky purple prehistoric thing with flowers that don’t bloom often. Very expensive. I never buy plants like that, even when I can afford them, because I’m sure I’ll kill the thing and feel terrible for killing it, not just because it was expensive but because it was so beautiful.

My new lover was not afraid. He was willing to spend the money and willing to take care. A good sign, I thought.

He put it just outside his door, where it sat exotic, and resplendent. Certainly a lot more impressive the neighbors’ plants. The cheap impatiens or conformist geraniums. The unkillable mint.

The next week when I came back the flowers had faded. Which was, of course, to be expected. But also the very tips of the leaves were brown, as if barbed. Not so serious but still those brown tips are there forever, the badge of the slightly depressed houseplant.

Pretty good, thanks, says the houseplant. Getting by. Could be worse. How happy can a houseplant expect to be? Even if the door opens occasionally and someone waters it-- it goes on sitting all day long in this city where the houses crowd together like tombstones.

A houseplant can’t throw a tantrum, can’t shout to be heard over the TV, “My ancestors bloomed in the Amazon!”

Sure enough, in another week that plant was dead.

I’m sure I would have killed that gorgeous expensive prehistoric plant. I just don’t think I’d have killed it so fast.

When I offered my lover sympathy, he looked surprised. “Is it so bad?” he said. He looked down at it. “It’s just a little peaked.”

That plant was stone dead. No easy thing to say to a fairly new lover. A little purple remained around the stems, like an old dried flower.

Was it possible he hadn’t watered it at all?

Standing beside his dead exotica, he looked sorry, but in another second his face cheered up. “It’ll come back!” he said.

This bordered on theology, I thought, and it wasn’t my place to correct him. Anyway, my lover was an optimist and wasn’t that a good thing? A positive thinker. It’s a good sign.

For months that plant sat just outside the door and I hurried past it on the weekends.

My lover caught me looking at it, one brilliant Sunday morning as the sun flooded its disintegrating black stems.

“This is just its dormant period,” my lover said. He sounded a little defensive. “Looks good for awhile, then not so good, and then it just comes roaring back. You know, like pansies.”

What could I say? The blight of love begins with tentative suggestions. Not so serious but there’s no getting rid of them. Those little barbs, always on the tip of your tongue.

Meanwhile the plant went on being dead.
As for our romance, well, it was pretty good. We were very, very lucky. In a city like this one? I can’t complain.

Sometimes when I closed my eyes I saw the gleaming green backwaters down near the southern tip of India. The flooded jungle. But everyone must see such things sometimes.

The next time I went to see my lover the plant was gone. I stared at the dusty space where it had been.

“I got tired of waiting,” he said. And then he smiled and took my hand again and said, “It’s for the best.”

Family Travel: end note

Gentle reader: Admittedly, a blog is not the best format for this material. For any chance at enjoyment, I strongly suggest beginning at Family Travel / 1 and moving forward, rather than reading backwards.

The preceding post (29) was the last of the Family Travel series. I'll likely return to it later. As it stands now, there are many alleys and dead end streets.

As I wrote in the disclaimer, this is only my version of events. No family history can be fairly told from the vantage point of one person.

Happy All Saints Day.

Family Travel / 29 -- Conclusion

“Everyone dies sometime,” And then the nurse asked, “Are you afraid?”

“If she’d asked me,” Aunt Gale said, “I would have said, ‘Of course not, honey. You’re going to be fine.’ I would have lied. But she asked the nurse and the nurse was so honest and your mother was calm so I asked her too, ‘Sandy, are you afraid?’”

My mother said, “I’m not afraid.”

My mother said, “I’m not afraid. But I’ll miss Jonathan.”

My aunt said she’d be sure to tell me that.

My mother said, “Please promise me.”

And my aunt promised.

Then the nurse wheeled my mother to the operating room.

Family Travel / 28

“Am I going to die?” my mother asked.

“Everyone dies sometime,” the nurse said.

Family Travel / 27

On the last day of her life, before she was taken away to the operating room, my mother talked with my aunt.

I never knew that.

“I was with her while the nurse prepared her for surgery,” Aunt Gale explained.

At one point, my aunt tells me, my mother turned to the nurse and asked her point-blank, “Am I going to die?”

Family Travel / 26

No, let me start again. I made her into a cipher--Aunt Gale—hollowed out by age and grief and cancer. Certainly there was something unearthly about her. Something of the scarecrow, of the ghost, or of the angel.

What I’ve missed—forgive me I’m new at understanding—is her force. I would have sat with her sipping tea until the end of time. As it was, when she had delivered her message she relaxed entirely and her face lit up. “Now I can die!” she said.

She is Consolation. According to my dictionary, consolation is 1. a source of comfort. 2. a game for earlier losers. Either way, I’m not about to turn it down.

Consolation. Worn-out, forgetful, fragile. But real. Alive, dammit. My mother’s sister that I thought I’d never get to see again unless it was in the casket. Aunt Gale, in whose whisper I can still hear my mother’s voice. She came back to me. Came back and we are both alive.

Another word is grace. Small actions by fallible people. Small actions--on the force of them we mount a full-scale defense of the universe.

Aunt Gale came back. She has something to tell me.