北京麻雀 (Sparrows of Beijing)
北 Beijing 2008 - 9
9
Unreal Unlife – Some Notes Towards a Story
Nowhere, nothing, a year uncertain
It was on a day that was on a day when the bright light streamed through the glassless window, a window that was out onto the Aegean. The lines of paint from the naked sun streamed into the painless pain, and onto the little girl’s face, she could just see Nana stopping to rub the little boy’s face and speaking damn about something that she could not quite hear; but it was how he should look to the world. She was slipping away from reality and to that unreality that only she knew of. In fact, she did not know if anyone else would drift between a real-life and the mystic sheen of dreams that was her unreal life. In fact, she would be embarrassed to reveal it. Nowhere to wear sunglasses in the night.1
In her own world, she imagined that the figure from the newspaper was real and both she and Nana were lecturing the little boy about paying attention and being erect. Nana was a big believer in Νέα Δημοκρατία; which was not something she understood, but something that commanded her attention. Almost as much as Patera. A man so terrible that he did not actually appear in her dreams but was omnipresent in something like a shadow of a terrible will. A shadow which, if it gazed upon you, you would terror and grovel.
In the real world, she looked over a molted glass bought from the store with about one-third of honey. There was another in the lower basin, which had not been opened. She was trying, in the real world, to find out whether she should look above or below to get a better view of whether she should have another spoonful of honey to go on her, a home-bought no less bread. Drone with oboe.
In the unreal world, she looked at an imagined baby. Bright and Babirusa in coming into being. A castle in the air. Abandoned in the future. It is hard to know any longer if women still exist, if they will always exist if there should be women at all.2
One thing you must understand, however, in her private dream world, everything looked like a picture out of Maurice Sendak. And the second thing is that she was actually searching for her real mother. The shattered of convention.
Since Nana was busy with the boy, and what she was doing looked childish enough, it did not occur to anyone that walked was really going on was that inside her head absorbed all of her thoughts. After all, she was just a girl; not even a woman. If she had been, perhaps Nana would have at least looked at her; and wondered which boy she was thinking about. Because once the Blossom of the kiss of womanhood was upon her, people began thinking that they might have something in their minds. But a girl would never do that. This was a reflection on how Nana had forgotten what it was to be like a girl with all of the faculties except sex. It was all so long ago. And far away, because Nana was not from this land, but another one which she whispered in the dark was much colder, and the wind blew from the north, as opposed to from the south. But the little girl was not frightened of this but looked through the pictures of a land far away; she would then imagine herself as a princess. It was the correct thing to do in her mind. In her inside world, she would whisper in the wind “μάνα”, her real mother. Not the imitation mother that trooped around and ordered people. “Nana” had wild connotations in her dreams, though she would never say so in public.
In her dream world, she was on the bank of a small stream, which ran directly into the ocean. Unlike in the real world, there were trees here. She had read that thousands of years ago the whole mainland was covered with them, and people did rituals to the Elder trees so that they would slumber; then the people would chop down the youngest trees for ships. But they left alone elder trees to form the next wave of younger trees. Every so often a tree was straight and true, and they left it alone. And every so often one of these elder trees would volunteer to be cut down, to form the prow of a kingly vessel. She imagined that she was talking to just such a tree. Bye-bye empire bye-bye.3
“Why are you letting yourself be cut down? I thought this would be the most important thing in your life. It would be for me. I would tremble and shake before they cut me down. And afterward, they would feel the blood on their hands.”
“Little child,” began the elder tree, “what you do not understand, is that the world does not live as straight and true. Even I am bent, just a little bit. And that means that the world is not straight but bent, just a little. And because it is bent, that means that it is a circle (kyklos).”
“Where does that word come from?” The question mocked.
“From Plato, of course.”
“But Plato is ancient, and we are descended from the Byzantine Empire.”
“Your descendants in other countries do not understand this. They think of Greece has old, and you think of Greece as medieval.”
“Why is this important? I know I have heard it, but I do not understand.”
“Hush hush keep it down now.4 All of their imagination is of Greeks in togas, because they only understand the beginning, and not the middle or the end. Look at Machiavelli and understand that the three orders of government are all in Plato or Aristotle. They do not understand that Greece the country kept on going, which is why you look at Byzantium and see your selves. But that does not translate, especially not into the West. And say mean something completely different by writing circle in the Greek.”
“Could I have some honey? Because it is time for me to go, and placate” - she missed the word, but not by much, and the tree forgave her. He knew that it was time to be going because she needed to learn a simple lesson: the Greeks were going to have two decide whether their upper class belonged with the other upper classes, or instead with the Greeks.5 The rebels in the outer world answered the Greeks, but in Greece, they still thought of the lower people as not part of the same family. There was an order in the Greek mind.
And she knew that order was different from what the outside wished it to be. I heard you on wireless.6
1 Reference to Corey Hart, “Sunglasses At Night”
2 Beauvoir, The Second Sex Introduction translated by Constance Borde and Shelia Malovany-Chevallier
3 Dolby, “One of our Submarines.”
4 ‘Til Tuesday, “Voices Carry”
5 In the fine script, Ardelle Li noted:
Resist the Urge to Simplify the Story
Americans love violence
computer smartphone old television screens
The cacophony choruses
multiracial photographed harrowing
infiltration teargassed interpretation
Patchwork pandemic
coronavirus outbreak
thrumming Covid unemployment masques
Antigraph antifa
Planned nefariously.
6 Buggles, “Video Killed The Radio Star”