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.