北京麻雀 (Sparrows of Beijing)
西 New York 2012 - 1
3
To the Apartment Door
New York City
2012
Started on the train, both talking to her and at the same time writing about a completely different topic – General Sterling Price was an obsession of his – and having one have his mind on the civil war made it easier for him to emotionally reason with her. Since he left Beijing, he had decided to throw her away. The reasons for this were subtle and complex, but they boiled down to a steady grinding at him – and petulance that emerged from her wanting to settle down with him. He occasionally thought about why he would not settle down with her – and came to the conclusion that he was not appropriate, not a man who wanted to settle down with anyone. But this was a problem because she thought that he was and that he should settle down with her. The train stopped in Grand Central, and he packed up writing about General Sterling Price but continued to listen in his ear to her plaintive response, her almost steady nagging at him. This was the first time in a decade that she could be annoying. From Grand Central Station he moved to the subway – all the time listening to her voice, which was hers and not hers at the same time. It still had the magic that attracted him when first he spoke, all that many years ago, when first he finally heard her over the telephone. But what was new disturbed him, and it made him realize that he did not want to have anything to do with her. And our love turns to rust.1
Subway, while he could get on the 4,5, or 6 – it was the 4 that arrived first. He was still listening to her and looking around just to make sure that no one was watching him. It goes without saying that he found nothing, but even so, he had to check anyway. Amassing the crowded car he looked out the window so that everyone on board the car was seen in Plexiglas, including himself. Though the window also showed the dirty grime of the underpinnings of the subway, there was no pattern that he could detect in its shape. Bringer of rain to the thirsty land.2
Instead, he saw people inside the car, some were reading, some were pretending to keep busy, and some were looking at other people. The word “collage” popped into his brain again, as if it were a von Neumann expression that one did not understand what was happening, you merely got used to it. All the patterns had something in common, though he could not quite know what they were. Then he settled on his doppelgänger: a man standing with a phone, tilted at the neck, and listening to something which was remarkably what he – the real person – could imagine as being a drone on his time. It was at that point he decided that he had to do something. It was impossible to bear this person draining his life away. The pull of the dragon’s wings.3
“I have listened to you for over two hours on this phone call, and I do not wish to sound rude, but there is no way that I am going to get back together with you. I am sorry, that is just the way I feel. And there is nothing that you can say that will change my mind in the slightest. Goodbye.” And then the phone was off the line, and he then turned it off completely. The question is not whether one way is better than another, it is whether either is equal to the task. It is not enough to oppose a movement of empty minds, with a party of empty gestures. First, they ask you if you would rather live on your knees, then if you would rather live on your belly, they don't ask you anything after that. And my eyes fill with sand.4
Gradually slipped the phone into his pocket, he then got out of the car at 110 St. and wound his way to the street and along the block to where he resided. He went up three blocks, and entered into the stairway, up to flights of stairs. He fumbled with his keys but eventually found the right one to enter into his apartment. There was a litter of mail at his feet when he got through. And it did not enter his mind that she would be anymore concerned with his day-to-day life. But that was not true, and if he thought about it, he would know that it was not. It was as if he was in possession of a light from another century, possession that came as if he were a character in the mind of another agent, not his own. Someone like AS Byatt – whose men are a bit to feminine, and women to masculine. But he shook off the concentration of the thought. Because if she would by a new cell phone and talk to him, and not get a response – she was determined to do other things, including things that meant flying. This is because she still wanted a Romance, and with him. It could not occur to his little mind that what he wanted did not mean a thing, in this particular case. There were other forces at work, and they did not care what he thought – it just was not important to them, whoever they were. Perhaps it was only to be known in retrospect by Ezra Pound in his unfinished Cantos, worked on until his death with the last stanzas worked out in advance because he knew where he was going, but he did not know how he would get there: it was invented by law. She vowed “We will never be like them!”5
A mist across the window hides the light. It was the telephone gambit, in Gray but as clear as a bell. The Days of Being Wild.6
4
post-Three
A Poem
- 1 -
We should start at the beginning,
and circle around until the end.
In the first section,
we look at climate change in the very late pre-human intervention.
We should note that this is not to prove human interaction
since 1815 is part of a normal cycle.
This does not mean that the posthuman
Period works entirely under different principles,
merely that those principles are not established yet.
This paper makes assumptions that in
1800s are different than they were in the late 1900s
and afterwards.
In other words, just because there is climate change,
does not mean that we can disregard all of the things which happened before.
In this case,
it comes clear that
pre-human climate change
could be enough to change the climate,
by thoroughly natural conditions.
What it does prove is those climate changes,
which are natural, can do a great deal of work.
Again this does not mean that artificial changes do not happen,
but instead, we can see how they happen.
Then we looked at changes
which were pointed to by natural climate change,
which were not present in the record.
And we found that there are numerous discrepancies in the past.
This means one of two things,
either that we were wrong in assuming natural climatic variation,
which would mean that human intervention could be diminished,
or it means that we should resynchronize.
Checking this against one event,
the 1600 BC Thera eruption, t
here is a great deal of scholar weight that this corruption occurred in 1500 BC,
not succeed hundred.
This is a quandary,
either the corruption occurred later,
or the theory is wrong.
Fortunately, there are people who have tested the
eruption, and found it is the former case,
that is the corruption occurred a little bit later than is supposed,
and the results are a slip-sliding updates,
which will annoy certain people, but keep the tracker record current.
In other words,
people will have learned to get used to
certain things changing in place,
and we have proven this by this one example,
though there may be others.
This does not change climatic factors,
it instead improves climatic factors which are naturally forced,
and makes artificial factors more clear.
It does mean that people will have two
go back and check what till now has been seen as being on the table.
Artificial factors are not just 50 years,
they also change everything that we know which is natural.
We do this process in reverse order from the 1800 A.D.
Before we took a climate change which was known about,
and saw what would happen.
The 1810 AD through 1815 AD
was discovered in documents,
most particularly the cooling in summer in the north latitudes.
It was found that two things which were artificially formed before,
were actually naturally occurring:
the climate change resulted in dramatic differences that would have to be factored in.
in other words,
this small interruption in climate was not unnoticed,
even in the real world.
Civilizations were tilted by it.
Then we looked at something else entirely,
namely,
what can we determine about climate and natural forces,
when two have different cycles?
In this case, we have an exact climatic event which has been recognized:
The eruption of Thera is not fixed in time,
but is flexible,
even though that is what is reported to others.
The last date which is current is
date that is fixed by the moon,
which is in itself
a great finding.
- 2 -
Whoever just got pushed off the liberal train.
Prosperity still a whisper on his lips.
Days will go by and still, he will think of the moment,
when he rode the world,
money rolled in.
And all he needed to do was to pick which toy to buy.
He shows up on the internet,
and tells everyone it doesn't have to be this way.
But it does.
Because there aren't enough of him at any one time.
The working class went down,
and the programmers and lawyers fed on him.
The programmers went down,
and the land bubblers feasted on them.
The land bubblers went down,
and the government workers feasted on them.
Now the government workers are going down.
Someone will feast on them. For a while.
Then when that meal goes down,
then there will be a bitter cold within.
Yes, we're in a can.
“All we have to do...” he'll say.
Except that it won't happen.
It doesn't matter what can be done,
it matters what will be done.
And what will be done,
is to look at the next dying soul on the raft of the Medusa.
I've often been accused of being hard to follow,
but that is because there are
It rests on the fact that there is a small gap which is directly
accounted by the small variations.
The variation in question has to do with the slowing down of the moon's orbit,
which is visible even at the scale
- 3 -
Then there were none. 7
It was something unique.
The understand was not because madness was in the air,
and it made ever special.
It was unique that everything specific
was crowded with things with others were ordinary to one.
This is because it too was specifically valve.
Take a diamond, and scattered with thing that looks it,
but are not.
Popol Vuh records the dying word.
In 1914 a boy wrote
on the cover of exercise book from high school.
What he wrote was not important,
it was the idea which was.
This was the first deal of the Iluvatar
and the beginning of what was not history,
but an unreasoning attempt at creating non-history.
A novel, as we knew it,
was about to be a standard.
Many people had written texts which were not history,
but JRR Tolkien was about to add a single gift to his world:
etymology.
He was the first one to sketch out words which were like real words but different.
They were different because he wanted to have elves
and other things which were real as
opposed to imagined by half-drunk narrators.
Iluvatar, think on this word,
Ilu and Vatar,
think on this second word, and realize it's German
for “father”, and the second word is for “light”.
And this from a word that does not exist,
a breath, held for a second and then released.
I think this allusion, but with only one syllable,
there is waiting in that one word,
something special which a boy
waiting on world war one
will find a story in.
Confutatis Maledictis – Voce me.
1 U2, “Where the Streets Have No Name”
2 Holst, The Cloud Messenger
3 Asia,”Heat Of The Moment”
4 Led Zeppelin, “Kashmir”
5 Wang Kar-Wai, 花樣年華
6 Wang Kar-Wai, Days of Being Wild.
7 Agatha Christie