北京麻雀 (Sparrows of Beijing)
北 Beijing 2008 - 8
8
At night, in a condominium
in Beijing, Near south of Tiananmen Square, just barely in the First Ring
2008
The master of Go thought about the new position, as the author described it.
He shook his head and tried to begin again, but nothing was shaking loose from that tree of wisdom that was his brain. He knew by the shaking in his head that he was to feign sleep, but he knew on a much deeper level that sleep was the farthest thing from his mind. He would even say, that wrapped up in an enigma, slumber was not part of the shufflings of the deck. In fact, he went through at least a dozen different ways of saying that he wanted no part of sleep, just to confirm the ravenous undertaking which he did not want to say what it was. But languid repose was not what he was trying to say. He pictured himself in the condominium – they were stationed in the small room that she had appropriated for herself. One came in and stared at a kitchen, with open double doors to a TV room with chairs scattered about then to the side were two bedrooms – the largest one was cluttered with things that were for the two parents with eyes closed. Who were long since dead. The smallest room which - was twice the size of a small bed – had one teacher in it, a very large fenetre, just installed, with no distraction of a curtain. One could look out over the city and one could just glimpse Tiananmen Square in the distance. They were just barely at the Second Ring – and the like from the outside drifted in like water. Everything was carried away by constant fireworks, because this was the new year, as it was reckoned in the old calendar. And everyone was excited. There were no lights on inside – except one bedraggled beige candle, which stared back at him with no remorse.
He drinks a cider drink.1
The candle that she had left out when going to bed burning. Wandering his eyes over the flame that he had lit, it seemed that the ringing in his ears corresponded to something about the flame’s warm eternal vision was connected – but this could be just an illusion and nothing more than cohabitation of two thoughts that were only loosely joined together, as if It was a French poet of the 19th century, one that he could not remember – Stefen popped into his mind, actually, Stèphane, but he could not remember the last name. It was a decadent feeling, with tumultuous bohemian lives that clashed. Possessed by some demon now a negress. Quand l'ombre menaça, le vierge, le vivace, victorieusement fui le suicide, ses purs ongles trés haut.2 The words were running through his mind, but it was an agglomeration of text which he learned when very small and did not know what the poems in French were talking about. Nor would he learn until many years there afterward. Now, the mist across the window hides the lines.3
Then in his mind, he began working on the Go problem that perplexed and bemused him at the same time – have prayed and prayed that this would not have happened. It seemed as if he were meditating on the illness that the Go player who first encountered the situation, and then fell ill thinking about the different ways that he could play through the position. It was almost as if there were two struggles going on simultaneously. One was the position on the board – joseki, that leads to both of the players having some benefit – and the struggle with the Go master's own body trying to rebel against the endless searching and innermost weighing as to what would be the sanest method to play.
The thought came from out of the blue – Mallarmé was the last name of the poet, though how this related to the joseki he did not understand – but there seemed to be a connection. Though what he did not know. He looked outside at the greying sky with a number of towers both far left and far right, leaving Tiananmen Square as a sacred place, lower down missed the buildings on either side. He then looked at the face of, not just her, but Her in all of her aspects. As a particular woman, she was nothing special, but that was just her flesh, alas, is sad, and he has read all of the books. But inside lies the mind, and in that mind was imagination alluring. She had said many things – though they were not important of themselves- that attracted him to not the woman of the flesh but the woman of the mind. He had read many stories of a man wanting the flesh of a woman – but it was not the flesh or the skin, but the puzzle that made her all of the Hers in the world. How does one do that? Because while asleep she was a mystery to him much of the time. Occasionally, she would furrow her brow, or crumple her cheeks. This way, for just a moment, she took on a specific feature. More generally, however, her face was smooth and asked: “What could be calm of me?” what indeed good become of me? It must be upon this that the tangle of the Go problem and the problem of Stephane Mallarme's word superimposed upon her bewitching face. Though he did not know how, yet. Nothing but hides the lights that shine.4
Throw of the dice will never abolish chance. He thought this as he was reading, a lonely quiet concert in his mind; all of his mental faculties were present in this symphonic exultation.5 But he knew that this was not his words, though he might try to make them his own by transliterating them from their original language. In his mind, however, he knew better. Then he glanced down at her face, and realized, that it was all just a dream; and all of his thoughts were really an etching wrapped around an expression which was not his. He was trying to express something that already had a voice made in flesh. It was hers and Hers alone. Precedents for the new formalism.
However, he still did not know how to place words with values, with the face that was soft and subtle. In his mind, a picture that was not of something, but about something, and it was soft and subtle.
That night, the spatter and splay lit up the sky, booming, crashing thunder’s fireworks of night brought to dawn. Quest for fire with un silence assourdissant (un lieu Camus commun.) Wrappers filled with firecrackers, in the world that invented them. The West just turned them around.6
Colors brachiopod flayed étoile noire, up against the glassware windows blaze from every direction till the explosion did expire, leaving her with crunchy seulement emptiness - la vacuité. Pissing the night away.7
1 Chumbawamba, “Tubthumping”
2 Mallarmé, Stéphane; Sonnet: ‘Victorieusement fui le suicide…’
3 Joe Jackson, “Steppin' Out”
4 Joe Jackson, “Steppin' Out”
5 In the fine script, Ardelle Li recalled:
Lonely people
Picks up window door
Waiting sermon belong
Were do hear darning
Died the church
Wiping dirt hands
Here lies buried
Lonely people
Wedding has been
I read who sad photograph
The grave
She once showed her room marmalade.
Is it kaleidoscope Norwegian wood?
6 Reference to The Human League, “Don't You Want Me”
7 Chumbawamba, “Tubthumping”