Sunday, December 29, 2013

dispatches from nowhere #3


Found in a titanium capsule on the Antarctic ice. The interior of the capsule was inscribed with an as yet undeciphered code. The following message was embossed in gold foil, which accounts for its preservation. Based on the age of the surrounding ice, the capsule may have remained there for more than forty thousand years.


To whomever,

I do not expect you to heed my warning. But I am trying to reach you in the hope that some small alteration might be made, one thread tugged and raveled, a change.

We have books, this is something that remains to us. So we know how it was before, what has been lost. I say we know. By that I mean we grieve for something we have never seen, never smelled or touched.

We are between the narrowing walls of history. Trapped in a timely prison. You have pressed this upon us. Soon we will be crushed in the gears of this gigantic machine, along with all the rest.

While we endure, the utter chill of the vacuum has come into our world. The depth implacable is close at hand. Colder eyes than ours will it take to see beauty in this. Though it must be there. As it must be in you, though you be a fratricide.

At night the stars glint with crystalline fire in their cold firmament, there is nothing to mediate their harsh gaze, pitiless. Life the bittersweet veneer has been scraped from the rock. The ocean waves roll empty and barren, meaningless tides. The moon will make her circuit again, followed by no moth.

Do not come to this future. It is no place for you.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

dispatches from nowhere #2

Dear                      ,
 
            You’re probably surprised to receive this from me. But I’ve thought of you a lot recently. Perhaps it’s the time alone, in an unfamiliar place. Maybe it’s the sound of the waves at night.
 
            I don’t know if I should apologize or ask for an apology. Maybe it’s irrelevant. They are not the same but seem to blend together. There is a beautiful ache in the wind.
 
            Does time wear things down, blunt the edges enough, so that we can hold our memories again?
 
                                            Yours,
                                                                          
                                                        
 
 

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Analogous Structures


            On the ridge, a shrewdness of apes. Against a red sky. Still, black silhouettes. Palings. Menhirs.

            You watch them. They have ceased to move. They move as much as the ridge moves, that stony moraine calved by ice and gnawed by lichen. The sun is going down behind you, the air is precipitant with dying light.

            You watch them. They do not move, but this is deceptive. What do they carry. A long blade of grass? A shaft of bamboo, a spear? A basket full of desiccated fruit, a heavy recalcitrant rock, a curled child?

            You watch them; it grows darker. The wind shifts. The cold seeps from the stones, falls around your head. Your cheeks are burnt with darkness. The scent of minerals in cold water, algae, salt-carved wood. Then something else: warm hair, dry skin, sour milk. Sweat. Preserved flowers. Motor oil. Baking bread. Coffee grounds. Your tongue when you first wake from a night of painful dreams.

            They have not moved. They are waiting for something. They do not move, but almost beneath hearing, there is a sound. A paper cup on a glass table top. A piano string plucked by the curious hand of a child. A shoe falling from a shelf. A distant rock slide. Gunfire. The bite of an ax blade. A glass cracking with heat.

            The light is gone. You stand watching in the chill night. Shadows, ice in the wind.

            In the morning you will climb the ridge, the sun will paint the stones with heatless pastels, you will be alone with the boulders, the lichen. You will cross over into another valley, brimming with mist.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

key words

Some found poems I pieced together out of reports my students gave me to correct:

 
we went to port
 
we went to port to take a boat
the weather was moist in the sea
 

the blue, clean water under the cliff
which was full of seaweed
 

I saw the big fish living in the clean water
eat bread which people gave



key words


1. The beginning of inquiry
 
So,
wind blows hard in spring
And this is repeated
on a yearly basis

 
before rain band reaches Jeju,
Jeju is under the influence of winter monsoon
 

2. Method of inquiry

example of a windrose
a diagram of radiating lines 

Stones, women and wind 
 

3. Limit of inquiry 

there exists a limit coming from
that kind of idealization


just before sunrise
(zero pressure gradient)
there is no wind

 
4.Analysis of Collected Data 

gentle east-northeast wind blew at
the eastern Sungsan
 

the weather
is very changeable in the spring


4. Conclusion 

I was satisfied with the outcome
The answer to questions

dispatches from nowhere #1

Dearest Friend,

            I have read your letter and I agree. It is best to begin at once. We should observe all details as you present them. My only concern is the final element. Is it absolutely necessary.

            I await your reply.

 
                        Yours always,