Round Four: Coming Back

Well hello there hoodlums and harletts,

Based on my last post it would appear that things have been getting a bit out of hand on the whole poetics/ rhyming wordplay/ babbling incoherently front, so I figured its time to bring it back down again (like anything visceral, language must also travel in waves) and give a kind of heads up, a brief tutorial, if you will, on what to do with this wild and ah Ca-raizee guy whos words you have somehow stumbled upon in this vast and digital ocean of word soup (and who you hopefully intend to continue reading).

While I love a good mindfuck, I am equally eager to seek out some kind of understanding, a bit of coherence with my coffee, and perhaps even a spoonful of "meaning" in both what I read and what I write.

For example, I lovah di jazz. It straddles the line of sanity, occasionally spilling out over the top, losing itself in the sheer joy of the sounds it creates. It is a generous genious idiot child learning speech. Jazz is what happens when the instruments learn to speak for themselves, or rather, when the musicians enable the instruments to speak through them, in turn being enable themselves by the instruments they hold. But first they must establish the "head," create the melody, the time signatures, there needs to be an understanding, some kind of recognizable bone structure on which to build the muscles of the face. Before a trip can be had, one must build the house. Otherwise it is simply wandering. Which of course can lead to its own kind of enchantment.

And yet, this is what I fear I have neglected to do so far in the creation of Skyhookery. At times it seems that the face I have presented to you all (who may be no more than one or two people) is built on a foundation of jello, words for the sake of words, riddles without answers, or worse, in which the riddle is the answer itself. But in this post I wish to paint a bit of a face for you, give you all an idea of who the little bald man behind the curtain is (though I am neither little nor am I bald, I am most certainly the man behind the curtain in this carnival of words.)

If you couldn't tell from previous posts, or from this long winded introduction, once I sit down at the computer and start typing I tend to continue until the rain has stopped and the floodgates return to their original locked and upright positions. While this is good for filling up space, at times it creates problems with readability. But the irony is that my girlfriend still thinks I'm the quiet, serious type. For those of you who know me, you can make your own desicions. Japan has changed me a bit, but not that much. I still have my days where I talk nonstop and howl at the moon. But a lot of time spent on my own in the teachers room has definitely led me to be more comfortable with my own silence (which is different than say, your own silence.)

Recently I have been re-considering about my decision to study poetry as a Graduate student (well that was a bit of a leap for such a fast moving train- hope none of you fell of in he process.) Not because I have decided to shelve my love of language (and in fact for quite the oposite reason.) Recently I have been considering becoming a (cunning) linguist as well as a slanger of words.

More on this later. For now, i gotta run. The clock bell just rang letting me know that its time to go. Fucking rat that I am, forever loyal to the bell that controls my cheese.

Round Three: The snake in the grass

And so it goes my friends, and so it goes; the constant filling and ghastly growing, mildew milling, mirthy mowing. But then of course, there is the knowing, the silly stilling and stealy stowing, seepy seething, the searing showing. The lowly bowling, burly bowing, coldly creeping, and holy howling; then the slowing, the slowering, glowering roses, those thousand buds of time riding upon the lovely, lordly (lordy look who's forty) portly bugs of rhyme.


Transvestite vestibules gestate (in jest, just ate) with the best of fools, arrest the resting, for the rest are tools, and tools, my friends, are restless.


So why not the smart? It smarts indeed (of which a need in friends kneads friendly knees). And then what of knees? Above ground bulbs of leg, limby turnips, sons of a thousand bony stalks of movement. A whole village of knees! A nation built upon the knobbled stilts! A giraffe, their king, who can be followed anywhere.


Desist dismissal of the art of ease, cease to please, I artly plead! Fall apart the seed of need (parting knees); the pardoned pout of putting out, the pleading, peeling, pushing shout, and in the end, the pearly port is pouring out, the parting after plowing, parting such (and such, sweet sweet sorrow, parting). If not today, again tomorrow

We all know how the story ends... among friends, and in the telling, rather... telling.

The world is an idiot

I was just reading myspace and there is a video posted of a plane landing and it's titled "lowest landing ever." What a dumbass. It ended up on the ground right? Isnt't that what a LANDING is? Some peoples robots, I swear.

Round Two: Redifining Reality

Well hello there boom swaddlers and rapscallions (which is actually the word from which "rap" is derived. That's right, "rap" as in spoken word rhyming, as in Tupac and Snoop and the good Dr. Dre, for apparently that incredible bunch of wordsmiths were initailly considered as up to no good what with their lyrical vandalism and scallywagging (which also seems as though it could be derived from rapscallion; as in the colloquial term "scally" which thus could have beget "scallywag" from its lustrous loins, although of course scallywag was initially coined as scalawag, and could therefore have entirely different roots. Also counting against the possible connection is the fact that "scalawag" was used In America just after the civil war to describe southern white reconstructionists, whilst "scally" is essentially an English (English English as opposed to simply English) term and so a literal sea seperates the two words like star crossed lovers lying awake in the eternity of night) Wow, I was only intending a breif introduction there and it appears as though this has turned into an entire schpeil on the history of words. Isnt' the internet incredible? Why only ten minutes ago, I had no idea of the meaning of the word scallywag, or rap for that matter, and now I do... and so do you.

But thats not really why I turned on the old fingerbox here today. Actually, I'm not sure quite why I turned on the old fingerbox, other than the sheer joy in feeling the keys give way beneath my finger tips (like the pads of tiny dogs racing quickly across an open field of letters, stopping every once in a while to back up and inspect some invisble monster of their own creation... Yes! this world of keys and its infinite permutations, where once a person plucked away with one finger at a time, where once it was required to kill a bird and fill its feather with ink just to send a "hello", to etch one's words in stone with a sharp tool, we are now allowed simply to use the tool of the intellect, the dance of our very own fingers as they move deftly alogn their seperate paths. But what does this say about us as a culture, that we can so easily record our thoughts without weighing the meaning? The beat generation was the beginning, this "stream of consciousness", this speed speed speed go go go whats next, as opposed to what is NOW? What is right here in front of me around me inside of me, rearing and ready to be released?

Living in Kyoto, where on the way to work one might stumble upon a rock that is easily 500 years old (and one does), with a poem etched on its face, a poem of seventeen syllables; it makes one wonder what we would have to say if we were required to sweat over each word. Would I talk like such a cretin? Would I babble so, like a spring brook fueled by the melting snow of winter? Where is the silence here? Where are the empty bowls of night, the universe in a dewdrop, the stories woven into a single word? Would I stretch out my thoughts till they were thin as spiderwebs and not nearly as strong? Perhaps not, though if I did, surely I would have to be an athelete as well as a poet. But alas, the veil of night grows thin as my blood thickens. And for now it is time to bid you all adieu. Good night, my invisible readers (of whom there may not yet be any). Sleep well, and may you dream of large women.

Pepsi Cucumber (In-cucking fredible)

So my Buddy back home got wind of the new Pepsi Cuke and wants to throw a party. He wrote me on myspace and requested that I send him some of the green stuff. What follows is a bit of our conversation by e-mail.


Dude,

That sounds like a fine idea. But I request a shrine in my honor at which you will pour one shot of the green stuff in front of a picture of me, and in front of which you will at both the beginning and end of the night all hold hands and thank me for allowing you to share in the joy that is Pepsi Cucumber. And bang some drums or some shit. And then fuck a Polar Bear while someone stands by and says "Well who invited YOU to the garden party?"

I wouldn't mind some kind of wordy picture deal made online posted on my myspace page as well. And a bag of dicks.

I've actually already had a couple of the Jolly Green Giants myself and damn I said DAMN, if Christopher Walken ever got his hands on that shit there's no telling what might happen. Before you agree to my terms, however, you should be warned- you'll have trouble ever going back to regular cola. Its that good.

But don't take my word for it. Beh-ner-neer.

You realize that this is a bit like kidnapping right? Accept of course for the fact that I left the equivalent of my child in a crack in your sofa.

I'm gonna need your address though. It'll sure be nice to have my phone back (although I've already gone and bought another (better) one.) But even if you already did the unmentionable with my phone, I'd still send them for the sheer joy in imbibing.

I've got another idea also. Come on out here and stay in J Vetter and I's mansion. We've got a place for you to sleep. Then you can drink all the cucumber Pepsi you want. You fucking junkie.


To which he responded (and had me literally busting out laughing in THE TEACHERS ROOM at the school I teach at...


Ebay?

(pasted screen shot from e-bay reading "0 results for bag of dicks")

FUCK! I'm gonna have to harvest them myself.

I've called the maintenance office in my building and asked them to send someone up to unclog my toilet. When the guy comes, I'll chloroform him and pluck his dick off. Then when the second maintenance guy comes looking for him or looking for the tool belt I'll get his dick too. I'm not sure how many maintenance guys we have here in this complex. But I know for sure that we definitely have a Postman. I'll get that bag. I figure I should send at least six - one dick for each cucumber. That's just common sense.

PEPSI CUCUMBER!

As far as trips to Japan, how many dicks will that cost me? I'll call a few airlines and ask them that question.

Figure out that exchange rate why don't you, Indian outsource customer reps. Probably not on their flow chart, if I had to guess. "I'm going to have to ask my manager, please hold sir."

Please include your address, neatly and precisely written, on the ransom package.

I don't want the wrong J-hole to open your bag of dicks and enjoy them.

P.S. - mansion, you say? That's what I've heard about Japanese cities... lots, and lots, and lots of room. You don't build up there, you build OUT.

Round One: Abandoning Reason

Well, it appears its time again to hook the sky, my spear for an ear and a horse for my eye (as I think the kingdom of the good book says-- of which the better has always been fettered; feathered to flee, for it lost its home when we took its tree.)

They worship trees here, you know, in Japan. And good thing too, because someone should. I suppose we still worship trees as well, back in America, but the trees we worship are already dead, cut up and printed green to invoke a semblance of life, just how we paint the faces of our dead, who ironically often show up in print on our money. So in a sense, it appears as though we have built a culture that worships death, institutionalized by our worship of money. And yet, we are so afraid of it we surround ourselves with enough other dead things to somehow draw away the cold lips of the ultimate lover. Don't beleive me? How many trees died to make your house? How many animals lived in those trees? And the plastic bags for your lunches? The children who stiched your shoes? It is true, then that we walk on the very faces of death, attempt to put a layer of death between us and the earth, for fear that it will swallow us alive. And, fortunately, it still does.

Well hell, we just started and I for one am already hooked. We've obviously wholeheartedly taken the step off reason (both as individuals, here, and as a culture on a larger scale) but its still there in the background, still seeping there in the shadows, climbing back up and reaching its hairy knuckles around the roof of our hideout. Doesn't say much for the sky though, the open blue with eyes like a mouth full of teeth and teeth like fistfulls of sand, dollars of course (we know its planned), this losing the instruments and gaining the band.

But enough now for this playing on words, (to watch on a letter is far more worth its paperwait in gold, and thus far more agreeable, though it may take more than it gives... in terms of time at least. And rhyme at best.) And as for Now?

Now! The open door to the future, the room from which you can both see, and not see yesterday and tomorrow. Now is a serious (local) time for serious (local) people, as here I sit in the shokuinshitsu (teachers room) at an Elementary School in Kyoto, the capital of ancient Japan, a realm beyond and step above, a city where, in the early hours of the morning, one can climb the clouds that rise from the mountaintops and stroll directly into a Shinto world of Mountain Gods and make love with women born of trees in forests with an ancient sense of style, where you can listen to the very riddles of androgenous old Time itself.

But I get ahead of myself (as I often do.) I am a teacher you see, of English and the finer arts of perception. (At one point I was a simple busboy (not to be confused with busybody), and even then, I blessed each piece of silver as I polished it, praying that the people who took soup from my spoons, who used my knives to cut their steak, who stabbed at their greens with my forks, would take a step towards happiness, towards the sweet fruit of contentment by the simple act of eating. Through the water I poured the subtler energy of a contemplative future into their glasses, wanting nothing more than to help people, to wake humanity up to ourselves. (Perhaps it is true that I give myself too much credit in these realms of the spirit, but does not the tiniest of flames burn like a star in the darkest realms of midnight?)

And now it appears I have gotten behind myself by getting ahead. (See what I mean about the Now?) Back to it, then. The Now, where I have spent the day finding beetles with children a third my age, discussing in Japanese the relative pros and cons of being a superhero, snarfing down kyushoku (the equivalent of a Japanese school lunch) while making funny faces and dancing, all while trying to finish eating before the homeroom (read: real) teacher gets upset. And all of this only in the time between "my" classes, when I teach the kids rudimentary English through the use of flashcards, listen and repeat, and using an arsenal of games that I have either collected from my colleagues or developed on my own in the past almost three years (Damn!) I have spent teaching English in Japan.

And there is a truth here, an element of Truth that I have found among children, among youth, the joy of being new again even as an adult, being in a new country and learning a new language as a child does, sharing that language and learning from my students as I teach them. And when they lead me by the hand to show me a new bug, or ask me questions with obvious answers like "Do you speak American?" or "Are there clouds in your country?", it jolts me a bit. It makes me step away from myself to wonder what it really IS to "speak American," makes me wonder for a moment if the clouds back home are the same as here, and if they are not, then how is it that both can still be called "clouds," it makes me wonder if naming something in another language makes it a different THING, and part of me thinks it does. Part of me knows that Ma-tin Sensei is a wholly different entity than Martin the Busboy was, and different still than MagDef, the man of infinite meaning (less) poetry, who chases a wisp of chaos on a dragon constructed of words, through a city built entirely of ones and zeros. But before the thought can bud, before the dragon can catch its breath, I am whisked along again by a herd of third graders to look at a tree that has just sprouted from an acorn, that spreads two tiny green leaves out into this world that sometimes seems to want nothing more of it than the money that can be harvested from its inevitable fall.