forgetting me, remember me

At the end of a day full of bitter-sweet memories you want to forget and remember, an old fave.

Because the goal of living is to contradict ourselves.

*       *       *

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me


   --e. e. cummings


.

literary women

Some things haven't changed that much indeed concerning the treatment of women deemed to have transgressed their 'proper' place or certain social and cultural boundaries.

*       *       *

To be pointed at - to be noticed & commented upon - to be suspected of literary airs - to be shunned, as literary women are, by the more unpretending of my own sex: & abhorred, as literary women are, by the more pretending of the other! - My dear, I would sooner exhibit as a rope dancer.

--Mary Brunton, 1810 [qtd. in E. Eger, C. Grant, C. O' Gallchoir, and P. Warburton, eds. Women, Writing and the Public Sphere, 1700-1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 1.]

women on the move

And the journey continues, with the most interesting discoveries and insights cropping up on the way:

The historian Eric J. Leed acknowledges the constitutive masculinity of travel when he argues that, 'from the time of Gilgamesh,' journeying has served as 'the medium of traditional male immortalities,' enabling men to imagine escape from death by the 'crossing' of space and the 'record[ing]' of adventures 'in bricks, books, and stories.' He even labels this travel, which provides men the opportunity to achieve notable distinction through self-defining experience far from home, 'spermatic' travel.

Ever in the process of becoming 'men,' travellers affirm their masculinity through purposes, activities, behaviors, dispositions, perspectives, and bodily movements displayed on the road, and through the narratives of travel that they return home to the sending culture. Thus, travel functions as a defining area of agency. We cannot imagine Odysseus without his travels, or Aeneas, or the knights of the Round Table, or Columbus, Captain Cook, Boswell, Byron, or Loti, or, closer to our own times, Jack Kerouac. Nor can we imagine them without their travel narratives. These narratives of travel can be read as journey myths 'project[ing],' as Richard Slotkin suggests of myths generally, 'models of good and heroic behavior that reinforce the values of ideology, and affirm as good the distribution of authority and power that ideology rationalizes.'


Leed contrasts the masculine logic of mobility with the logic of 'sessility'. To be 'sessile,' in botanical terms, is to be permanently planted, tenaciously fixed, utterly immobile. It is, in a sense, to remain always 'at home,' which has been the traditional locale assigned to women. What Judith Butler describes as 'the domain of socially instituted norms,' through which gender identity and gendered relationships get reiterated in everyday occasions, secures the domestication of a woman through protocols of proper femininity that tether her to home and thus to a requisite sessility. But she is not just resident in the home. As Karen R. Lawrence observes in Penelope Voyages, 'She in effect is home itself, for the female body is traditionally associated with earth, shelter, enclosure.' Whatever particular women may be doing in their everyday lives, the idea of woman as 'earth, shelter, enclosure,' as 'home,' persists, anchoring femininity, weighing it down, fixing it as a compass point [my note: an idea that is deeply - and depressingly - entrenched in Japanese culture and language]. Moreover, the 'home' that is identified as feminine, feminized, and equated with woman becomes that which must be left behind in the pursuit of agency. This 'stifling home,' Meaghan Morris observes so tellingly, has been precisely 'the place from which the voyage begins and to which, in the end, it returns.'

Yet, even though travel has generally been associated with men and masculine prerogatives, even though it has functioned as a domain of constitutive masculinity, women have always been and continue to be on the move. They climb aboard sailing vessels, or pull themselves onto horses, or grab a walking stick and set out along rutted paths, or rush to make a train. If traveling, being on the road, makes a man a man - and makes masculinity and its power visible - what does it make a woman, who is at once subject as home and subject at home? What does it make for a particular woman to gain access to this defining arena of agency in the West?


--Sidonie Smith, Moving Lives: Twentieth-Century Women's Travel Writing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. ix-x.


The journey continues...

===================
Image: Isabella L. Bird, the intrepid Victorian traveller, in Tibet at the end of the 19th century.

(source: http://seducedbyhistory.blogspot.com/2010/10/isabella-bird-victorian-lady-world.html)

and you can turn back no longer, no longer stand still

Strange days. The wait on the eve of momentous decisions suspends time, puts life in parentheses, allows even the nursing of a heavy cold at home. Good for reading, writing, musing, imagining future possibilities.

Yet impossible at the same time to avoid a certain sadness, a sense of loss at the prospect of other once imagined possibilities and cherished hopes being left behind - foundered, shipwrecked, scorched.

But maybe, as a dear friend has recently told me, the hardest thing will be when the moment of truth arrives and you will have to renounce the numbing security of old habits, the memory of places & people that were once part of your life, however briefly. For good and all.

In the meantime, this strange limbo. Neither good nor bad, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither warm nor cold. Just something in between, moving in slow motion - inexorably, though.

*       *       *

Above and below
The roll of days spread out like a cloth
Days engraved on everyone's forehead
Yesterday folding Tomorrow opening
Today like a horse without a rider
Today a drop of water falling into a lake
Today a white light above and below

A fan of days held in a virgin hand
A burning taper burning paper
And you can turn back no longer
No longer stand still
The words of poems curling among the ashes
Hieroglyphics of larger despairs than ours.


--David Gascoyne, 'No Solution' in Selected Poems (London: Enitharmon, 1994), p. 34.

writing matters (1)

... Writing matters tremendously for women; ... how we plot ourselves into our fictions has everything to do with how we plot ourselves into our lives.

Writing hurts.


--Ruth Behar, 'Introduction: Out of Exile' in Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon, eds. Women Writing Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 15; 23.

to a troubled friend

Past the desert, out of the fog, whatever, but we will.
We shall ride out this storm, girl.

*       *       *

i command you to be
good runners
to go with grace
go well in the dark and
make for high ground
my dearest girls
my girls
my more than me

            --Lucille Clifton

poem at the end of the world

the poem at the end of the world
is the poem the little girl breathes
into her pillow   the one
she cannot tell    the one
there is no one to hear       this poem
is a political poem    is a war poem        is a
universal poem but is not about
these things    this poem
is about one human heart    this poem
is the poem at the end of the world

       --Lucille Clifton, from shapeshifter poems.

we are easily disloyal

                              ...That's how we
are disloyal, without constancy to the little
play and hurt in the soul. Being less than
strict in our gaze; the day flickers and
thins and contracts, oh yes and thus does
get smaller, and smaller: the northern
winter is an age for us and the owl of
my right hand is ready for flight. I have
already seen its beating search in the sky,
hateful, I will not look. By our lights
we stand to the sudden pleasure of how
the colour is skimmed to the world, and our
life does lie as a fallen and slanted thing.

   --J. H. Prynne, from 'Love in the Air' in The White Stones (1969).

kurutteru shakai

Again, it's somewhat reassuring to notice that I'm not alone in my perception that the number of mentally deranged individuals in this society - monster parents, monster children (not to mention monster dogs!), claimers from hell, and all sorts of misanthropes & sociopaths - is well beyond the safety limit, and that they're increasingly capable of anything to vent their spite and rage.

So watch your back - and, above all, do not ever touch anyone, not even lightly...

Kurutteru shakai, most definitely.

*       *       *

There be all kinds of monsters among us
By MARK SCHREIBER


An old saying goes "Issun no mushi ni mo gobu mo tamashi" (even a one-inch worm has a half-inch soul); i.e., even the most humble and powerless creature can put up with only so much before turning on its tormentor.

As if to confirm this aphorism, the media has been abuzz since belatedly learning that last September, a teacher at a public primary school in Gyoda, a city of 85,000 in northern Saitama Prefecture, filed suit against the parents of a girl in her third-grade class.

Reports on the TV wide shows and in the print media invariably referred to the defendants as monsutaa pearentsu (monster parents).

Apparently the previous June, the teacher had mediated a dispute between two girls, and the parents of one, believing the teacher had not been impartial, reacted with a torrent of verbal and written complaints to the school, the Ministry of Education, the Gyoda City office, the prefectural Board of Education, and the Commission on Human Rights.

"They even filed an assault charge at the Gyoda police station against the teacher, for touching their daughter on the back," a reporter at a local news bureau told Shukan Shincho (Feb. 3).

The child had reportedly claimed the teacher had smacked her from behind. The teacher said she had only "lightly touched" the child.

The 45-year-old teacher charged that the parents' persistent and aggressive complaints had traumatized her, leading to insomnia. She also maintained she could no longer function as a teacher, and demanded ¥5 million in damages.

According to a colleague, the teacher decided to proceed with the lawsuit because she "would be marked as a criminal" if the parents didn't cease their attacks.

Despite the child allegedly being singled out for bullying by classmates, the parents kept her in school to maintain her record of perfect attendance.

Determined to find proof that his complaints were justified, the father even had his daughter secrete a voice recorder on her person before going to school.

"My kid would absolutely never tell a lie," he's quoted in Shukan Post (Feb. 11).

The school has declined to comment to the media, but perhaps as a result of the growing media exposure, on Jan. 21, the teacher tendered her resignation.

"She was a good teacher, but from last year I could tell she'd begun to appear haggard," a colleague told Shukan Post.

It has been widely reported that this monster parent phenomenon by no means ends upon leaving primary school. In some cases, it continues while a child is in university, or even after reaching adulthood and taking up employment.

In Nikkan Gendai (Jan. 27), labor consultant Yuka Inage recalls a case where a parent complained to the company that her offspring was obliged to work overtime without compensation, and demanded overtime pay: "He's too docile and won't speak up for himself," came the explanation. But from a legal standpoint, writes Inage, parents or guardians are only empowered to act on behalf of minors. If you're really serious about claiming wages on your adult child's behalf, you'll require a power of attorney — a tactic unlikely to endear anyone to his or her employer.

Other species of "monsters" have also been making increasingly frequent appearances at government offices and businesses. Several years ago a business magazine, Shukan Diamond, devoted its Jan. 26, 2008, cover story to "claimers from hell." As a prime example, it related the story of an infuriated resident of Uji City in Kyoto Prefecture, who persistently demanded the city replace all its manhole covers because they bore the manufacturer's name, which happened to be the same as his surname. "My children will suffer harassment," he ranted.

Diamond went so far as to categorize claimers into 11 basic types: 1) the outright sociopaths; 2) people who harbor a phobia of dirt or germs; 3) the goody two-shoes meddlers on behalf of others; 4) the self-righteous sermonizers; 5) those who imagine they are victims of some injustice; 6) those who feel they deserve deferential treatment just because they paid money; 7) the overly tenacious; 8) those with too much time on their hands; 9) the persistent, "stalker" variety; 10) those who revel in showing off their superior knowledge about the product or technology; and 11) the hysterical whiners.

Japan, in the view of those who must contend with the above, is metamorphosing into a nation where people don't just raise complaints, but make false charges and pick fights at the slightest pretext.

The phenomenon inspired Shinichi Sekine to write a book titled "The Claimer Next Door" (Chuokoron Shinsha, 2007).

Sekine told an interviewer in Shukan Gendai magazine that he believes the recent barrage of bellicose objections reflects a change in the temperament of Japanese.

"They are not just complaining; their methods are becoming increasingly spiteful, such as demanding money or that an apology be made in writing," he noted.

The archetypal image of Japanese as a people who are stoic and undemonstrative, it seems, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.


The Japan Times: Sunday, Feb. 6, 2011
(C) All rights reserved
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/fd20110206bj.html

how can we sustain such constant loss

... And yet home is easily our
idea of it, the music of decent and proper
order, it's this we must leave in some quite
specific place if we are not to carry it
everywhere with us
......................
... Music is truly the
sound of our time, since it is how we most
deeply recognise the home we may not
have: the loss is trust and you could
reverse that without change.

--J. H. Prynne, from 'Thoughts on Esterhazy Court Uniform' in The White Stones (1969).

existential shipwrecks...

My visions were of shipwreck and famine; of death or captivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow and tears, upon some gray and desolate rock, in an ocean unapproachable and unknown. Such visions and desires--for they amounted to desires--... I regarded . . . as prophetic glimpses of a destiny which I felt myself in a measure bound to fulfill.

--Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), p. 57.

down with it (2)

I give up.

However hard you try to keep yourself in good spirits and show goodwill towards people here, you're constantly butting heads with this unassailable wall of narrow-mindedness and aloofness.

You write to a non-Japanese friend or colleague asking a favour and s/he promptly and gracefully responds, no matter how eminent or busy s/he is. You expect the same of a Japanese colleague or... er... 'friend' - and s/he couldn't care less.

These cultural and psychological differences are so immensely, so sadly revealing.

What damn moronic society is this that brainwashes people into believing that to show themselves aloof, unavailable and unresponsive to others is some kind of manly virtue or a sign of moral superiority...?

Rock bottom indeed.

But, well, you live and learn...


(Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28749138@N00/321328912/)

a wave-blurred portrait

Enough of romanticised sirens and their songs, enough.
An anti-siren song, for a change -- for something truer to life.

*       *       *

My life is hung up
in the flood
  a wave-blurred
             portrait

Don't fall in love
with this face--
   it no longer exists
              in water
                    we cannot fish


            --Lorine Niedecker

sinking to rock bottom

Whew, it seems I'm not the only one who's noticed that there's something terribly amiss in the widespread apathy, inhibited - or perhaps I should say castrated - body language, and emotional & sexual atrophy of the Japanese, especially the males, in spite of the impressive hairstyles and outfits (trying to compensate for something lacking inside?):

Only our descendants will know for sure, but we may be witnessing something not seen in the world since the slow demise of ancient Egypt — a nation expiring of natural causes. Nations, unlike people, are potentially immortal. When they die, it's usually violently. Japan may make history by its manner of leaving it. It may simply crumble into dust.... 

Of course, the young are forever astonishing the old; there's nothing new there, but generally it's youthful excess that shocks, not youthful . . . what to call it? When, as a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry survey revealed last month, fully one-third of adolescent boys aged 16 to 19 claim to have no interest in sex, a line is being crossed that suggests not simply new developments under new circumstances but a newly evolved species. [my note: there's already a name for this new species, it seems: the 'soshokukei danshi' / herbivorous men...]

Disinterest in sex is rising in both genders of all ages, the survey shows. It was this which prompted Shukan Shincho's "rock bottom" remark. "It's true," affirms a 23-year-old male university student to whom the weekly speaks, "that many men have no interest in women. My own friends seem quite satisfied to moon over anime voice actresses and computer game characters."

When a nation sinks to that, it seems reasonable to regard the future with grim foreboding.

From Michael Hoffman, 'The decline and fall of Japan and its sex drive'

The Japan Times: Sunday, Jan. 30, 2011

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/fd20110130bj.html



Couldn't agree more, alas... [sigh]

1/29

Giorgio de Chirico, Mystery and Melancholy of a Street

The date conjures up bitter-sweet memories. Thirty years ago precisely, the move to a new house, from an impoverished working-class suburb to a delusional middle-class one of parvenus forever carrying the poverty within.

The derelict railway station left behind, the forsaken best friend smiling and waving goodbye to the end of childhood.

The new family dog, born on that very day, and who'd stay with us for thirteen years. My constant, inseparable companion, and ever so often the only reliable friend.

The promise of a fresh start amidst the changes, soon followed by the realisation that the chilliness and immobility of the house, and of everything else, would never disappear. I'd never find a home there, a realisation that would condemn me to an adolescence of daydreaming and vicarious travelling, at once a blessing and a curse.

And later on the wanderlust, triggered by the rebelliousness and restlessness within. Changing beds umpteen times, incessantly butting heads against unassailable walls - against heartless, intractable people.

Forever searching for that which does not exist, despite the infernal inscription.

Painfully taking shape ever since, stumbling in the dark, groping in the half-light, growing, changing - and slowly learning to carry my clarity with me.

*       *       *

life-defining

One of my current research projects has led me to read extensively a genre of which I'm especially fond due to its hybridity and potential for experimentation: travel writing. And I especially like it when written by intrepid, unabashed ladies with a sense of humour.

I've just come upon this most interesting travelogue by Dervla Murphy, Muddling Through in Madagascar (1985). As I open it, I'm struck by the epigraph, taken straight from the OED entry:

muddling through: 'to attain one's ends in spite of blunder after blunder'.

Amazing indeed how certain phrases have the power to define a whole life - to define our journey through life.

This too would be a most appropriate epigraph for my own life story, were I ever to write it...

and yet another siren song

At this time of the year I'm way too busy and exhausted with grading, research & all sorts of deadlines looming ahead to be able to devote even a few lines in the small hours to this little corner. Yet, I couldn't resist posting this most wonderful song, with a big thanks to my dear friend Antonio for the reminder. Goodness gracious, I hadn't heard Buckley for ages!

This has also brought back fond memories of a lovely version by This Mortal Coil, which was quite a hit in the early 80s - and justly so.





Tim Buckley, Song to the Siren

Long afloat on shipless oceans
I did all my best to smile
'til your singing eyes and fingers
Drew me loving to your isle
And you sang
Sail to me
Sail to me
Let me enfold you
Here I am
Here I am
Waiting to hold you

Did I dream you dreamed about me?
Were you hare when I was fox?
Now my foolish boat is leaning
Broken lovelorn on your rocks,
For you sing, 'touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow:
O my heart, o my heart shies from the sorrow'

I am puzzled as the newborn child
I am troubled as the tide:
Should I stand amid the breakers?
Should I lie with death my bride?
Hear me sing, 'swim to me, swim to me, let me enfold you:
Here I am, here I am, waiting to hold you'

*       *       *

There are several versions, with different lyrics, of the song - such as this one:

Long afloat on shipless oceans
I did all my best to smile
'Til your singing eyes and fingers
Drew me loving into your eyes.

And you sang 'Sail to me, sail to me;
Let me enfold you.'

Here I am, here I am waiting to hold you.
Did I dream you dreamed about me?
Were you here when I was full sail?

Now my foolish boat is leaning, broken love lost on your rocks.
For you sang, 'Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow.'
Oh my heart, oh my heart shies from the sorrow.
I'm as puzzled as a newborn child.
I'm as riddled as the tide.
Should I stand amid the breakers?
Or shall I lie with death my bride?

Hear me sing: 'Swim to me, swim to me, let me enfold you.'
'Here I am. Here I am, waiting to hold you.'

siren songs...

Mermaids, sirens, selkies have provided endless inspiration to artists - and, in a particular, a privileged means for the embattled, fragile male ego to express its ingrained fear of female fullness and strength.

Here goes one more such expression by another favourite artist - an amazing musical revelation.

Thomas Feiner & Anywhen, The Siren Songs

(Music: Feiner, Thorslund, Tigerstroem, Sandahl)

On the last day of summer the sun shines bright
And we're walking through the woods
What if love is the greatest damn liar of all
Would you trust me with your life?

On the last day of summer the clouds are white
And I'm sitting by the lake
And she's singing my name, she's beckoning me
If I just lose myself for now
For one day

I want to drown in her precious arms
I want to listen to the siren songs
She got me down into the water
And she got me holding on

And she's floating oh so peacefully
As I'm watching from below
In the bluest water I ever saw
The palest body to be striped
By the sun

I want to drown in her precious arms
I want to listen to the siren songs
She got me down into the water
And she got me holding on

So let me drown in those precious arms
With all my untouchabilities washed away
Let me for once be lost for reason
Let me be lost
For words

From the album The Opiates - Revised (2008).

songs of exile (3)

Estranged as I've always been from my homeland, I must confess that I have a difficult relationship with the 'national' song (or with anything 'national', for that matter), the Fado.

Yet, Amélia Muge's music, and in particular her reinventions of Fado, defy any categories, genres, styles, traditions, and passionately combine her love of poetry in the Portuguese language with a boundless musical imagination that travels along the most unexpected and unconventional routes, all over the world, from Portugal to Africa and Brazil - and beyond.

Tempestuous, frank, fiery, fierce, Muge is not for the faint-hearted and the indifferent. As she puts it in the dedication in her wonderful album A Monte (2002), she sings for 'the friends and dear enemies. Let the indifferent go in peace. This kingdom is not theirs'.

Were I to single out a song that has stayed with me over the years, it would be this O Fado da Sereia / The Mermaid's Fado, which I leave here with no further explanation - the music and the poetry speak for themselves.

Oh, and I've taken the liberty of adding a (very) rough translation of Hélia Correia's stunning poem below, with implicit dedication.



O Fado da Sereia / The Mermaid's Fado (click to listen)

Lyrics: Hélia Correia
Vocals, Music: Amélia Muge
Piano arrangement: Jorge Palma


Serei, serei a sereia
a do pescoço doirado
que no fio da sua voz
te arrastava para o largo?
Serei, serei a donzela
que em teu desejo aparecia
sempre que à noite acordavas
contra uma cama vazia?

Ai, ai, marujo, mareante
porque te foste encerrar
num barco à prova de encanto
num barco à prova de mar?
Já das rotas me apagaste
E já o teu olhar não vê
minha garganta nas rendas
que me vestia a maré

Quem me tivera avisado
que o amor de um marinheiro
é como os vícios do mar
é como o mar traiçoeiro
Que me deixavas trocada
por mulheres que a terra dá
mulheres de pernas cobertas
por balões de tafetá
Ai tem, cautela, marinheiro
que o mar é coisa ruim
e o amor de uma sereia
não vai acabar-se assim
Que hás-de vir de novo à rede
de um amor que engana e mata
que, à vista deste, outro amor
é cinza à vista da prata

Ai quem me dera que em vez
de filha do mar, me achasse
rapariguinha solteira
que nesse mar se afogasse
Ai quem me dera que em vez
de cantadeira do mar
fosse eu mulher de viela
para ainda me ouvires cantar.

*       *       *

Am I, am I the mermaid
the one with the golden neck
who would in the thread of her voice
lure you into the open sea?
Am I, am I the maiden
who would in your desire appear
whenever you woke up at night
against an empty bed?

O sailor, seafarer
why have you shut yourself off
in a spell-proof boat
in a sea-proof boat?
You have already erased me from the sea routes
And your gaze no longer sees
my throat in the lace
in which the tide clad me

Had someone warned me
that a sailor’s love
is like the vices of the sea
it is like the treacherous sea
and that you would leave me
for women who the land offers
women with their legs covered
in taffeta balloons
O sailor, beware
the sea is an evil thing
and a mermaid’s love
won’t just end like this
You will be netted again
by a love that deceives and kills
another love that, in comparison to this one,
is as ash to silver

O I wish that instead
of daughter of the sea I were
a little maiden
who drowned in that sea
O I wish that instead of
songstress of the sea
I were a woman of the streets
so that you could still hear me sing.


[Translated from the Portuguese by DK.]

the game of intolerable shame

For E., who understands, in the skin and the bones, every word of this song.

(But you'll get over it, chérie, you will. For your own good.)

Playground Martyrs
(Music: Steve Jansen  /  Lyrics: David Sylvian)

You run to the gate

but you'll be marked late
it's for your own good
it's for your own good

You're likely to make
the grandest mistakes
you suffer alone
in the skin and the bones

Let's sharpen those
new sets of arrows
for the next generation
of playground martyrs

And joining the game
of intolerable shame
'cause everyone shares
innocence of their fathers

School bell rings
single file in
trade you my
unhappily ever after

So bring out those things
to hammer the wings
of the next generation
of playground martyrs


Source: http://www.davidsylvian.net/releases/tracks-poems/63-tracks-live/1139-playground-martyrs-live-occurrence-of-slope.html