CHOMU SAYS DROP OUT OF THE GAME OF LIFE

Prostate Abrupter

2010-05-06T11:15:00.000+09:00

Polycystic ovary syndrome;
Oysters with pearl fangs
in pink darkness.

Not a Death Poem

2009-08-20T06:17:00.001+09:00

Nirvana beckons;
I'd rather stay and notice
The stink of ferrets.

The Cask of Amontillado in the Practice of Vipassana Meditation, by Quentin S. Crisp

2009-08-17T03:56:00.003+09:00

THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I took myself to my meditation room, assumed the lotus position upon the cushion that sat squarely between the four unadorned walls, and started on anapana meditation in order to clear my mind. When some thirty minutes had passed, my mind being sufficiently focused, I moved on to vipassana meditation, observing my bodily sensations, noticing how the subtle vibrations of pleasant sensation or the gross vibrations of unpleasant sensation were both equally subject to the law of impermanence, anicca.

Anicca! Anicca!

Coming again to a state of samadhi and realising that all phenomena arise and pass, arise and pass, I understood the truth of the doctrine of anatta, and comprehended the futility of attachment to any of the phenomena of either mind or matter. Consequently, I found arising a sense of joy, compassion and deep peace.

Leaving my meditation room, I contemplated how best to celebrate my liberation from the bondage of dukkha. I will call my erstwhile enemy, Fortunato, the very enemy upon whom, only an hour or so previously, I had thought of exacting revenge, and I will share with him, I decided, a pipe of Amontillado I had recently come by and stored in my vaults.

I set the table in my dining room, laying places for two, a candelabra between them. I decided upon a light pasta dish with a sauce of my own concoction, sent my servant out with an invitation to Fortunato, and began my preparations. As I was doing so, I remembered of a sudden the Five Precepts of the Sila to which I had made my vows when I took up the practice of vipassana meditation, that I must abstain from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and intoxication.

I slapped my forehead in frustration.

Anicca! Anicca!

The sense of joy and compassion that had arisen now passed. The invitation had been sent out, but my plan had changed.

I would show Fortunato the vault where I kept the Amontillado, yes, but neither he nor I would ever drink that wine, and only one of us would ever leave the vault again.

Anicca! Anicca!

As I put the last brick in place behind which Fortunato had now grown silent, I felt at peace, detached, equanimous, in accordance with the doctrine of anatta - no self and no other.

Equanimous mind.

Justin Isis - The Unassailable Value of Human Dignity

2009-07-23T10:32:00.001+09:00

Pissing in my mouth; tearing off testicles; killing enemies; killing all enemies; amassing more territory; amassing more females; Spanish government granting me rights; killing children and crushing throats; amassing power; amassing food; amassing more females; warring with neighboring groups; crushing throats; amassing power; ethicist Peter Singer sympathizing with me; gaining territory; masturbating; pissing; shitting; masturbating;

Fearing others will take my place; killing their children; tearing out throats; amassing power; amassing food; pissing; shitting; humans approaching me; throwing shit at humans; running away from humans; screaming at humans; screaming; eating lower primates; biting off human fingers; Jane Goodall commenting on my lifestyle; crushing and eating children; satisfying my emotional needs at the expense of others; pissing in my mouth; amassing more females; masturbating;

Humans taking me out of my territory; humans putting me in artificial environments; humans making noises at me; humans giving me food; throwing shit at humans; amassing rocks to throw at humans; throwing rocks at humans;

Reading Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, realizing concept of 'rights' implies responsibilities; changing lifestyle to incorporate newly discovered concept of ethics; no longer killing children of enemy groups; no longer dismembering enemies; applying concepts of tolerance and liberalism to all aspects of life;

Applying for jobs in greater metropolitan area; showing up to job interviews wearing neatly-ironed suits; resisting urge to dismember job interviewer and smear shit across the walls; resisting urge to bite off human testicles;

Becoming concerned with environmental preservation; resisting urge to throw shit at humans; removing excess hair at salon; attempting to straighten posture; attending consciousness-raising seminars on interspecies cooperation;

Having sex with animal liberationalist liberals and interspecies sex advocates; licking human vaginas; resisting urge to bite off human vaginal lips; experiencing insecurity over inch-long chimpanzee penis in comparison with longer human penises;

No longer feeling any attraction at all towards chimpanzee females; feeling like a tourist when attending human nightclub events; growing disenchanted with animal liberationists and interspecies sex advocates; attempting sex with mainstream human females;

Receiving condescending stares from unreconstructed humans when walking in public with human girlfriend; wondering whether human girlfriend genuinely cares about my emotional needs or is only interested in me as a chimpanzee; meeting human girlfriend's sincere liberal parents; feeling reassured by atmosphere of tolerance and inclusiveness;

Experiencing intense satisfaction from equal-partnership marriage; discussing emotional needs with human wife; dividing household chores equally with human wife; experiencing intense satisfaction from inclusive and liberal environments supportive of diversity; feeling reassured by the unassailable value of human dignity -

Wondering whether I have "sold out" and unreconstructed chimpanzees have more authenticity than me; feeling simultaneous jealousy and contempt when considering unreconstructed chimpanzees;

Instructing interspecies children not to bite off human testicles or smear shit on walls; instructing interspecies children not to smoke cigarettes; instructing interspecies children to avoid unreconstructed chimpanzees; encouraging interspecies children to pursue extracurricular activities;

Watching interspecies children smearing shit on walls; watching interspecies children biting off human testicles; watching interspecies children mating with unreconstructed chimpanzees; wondering why interspecies children regard me as outdated; discussing emotional insecurities with human wife;

Etc.

I am trying to think of words that will transcend time and save my soul - this is not a joke

2009-03-06T09:45:00.001+09:00

Radioactive Teacher on the Run, Part I

2009-02-28T00:03:00.004+09:00

Donald Leopard leaned against the handrail of the ferry and watched the churning wake spread choppily over the glaucous waves. The clouds above were the colour of seagull shit, and rain was starting to fall. As the South Wales coastline receded, Leopard felt as if he were steadily straining some magnetic force to its elastic limit, and that soon its hold over him would be gone. Soon. Very soon. If only he did not feel so wretchedly sick, perhaps he would even have been elated at his freedom.

He felt spots of rain on his skin now, accompanied by a strange, melting warmth, as if his very skin were dissolving. One spot brushed close to his right ear, and he was sure he heard a tiny sizzle. Could he be imagining it? To be so permeated with that weird, invisible force, that was at once inimical to life and now such a bone-achingly familiar part of his own life, had done strange things to his imagination. Surely he was imagining this now - this acidic, melting feeling. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. When he opened his eyes again he saw the section of railing where his hand had just been. Faintly, but unmistakably, it was glowing, a kind of fungoid grey-green.

He recoiled and staggered.

"Excuse me!"

A youngish couple with their two small children were trying to get past him on the deck. He muttered his apologies and skulked unsteadily away.

He needed air, but he also needed to sit down. He would go inside for a while, just sit and keep his head down. Before he knew it that magnetic pull he felt would be gone, and then there would be County Wexford before him. He need not think any further than that at the moment - the rolling grey waves and County Wexford. He coughed into his hand and staggered into the main seating area of the ferry, placing himself on a low PVC seat away from the other passengers.

He hung his head between his hands, as if the sea he were now crossing were the sea of his own sickness, and he simply had to sit and keep himself still and steady for the duration.

"Excuse me."

The voice surprised him with its sense of nearness. He had drifted into a web of greyish clouds of distance inside himself.

He looked up. There was a well-dressed and tanned man standing above him, with streaks of grey in immaculately groomed hair.

"Is this yours? I think you dropped it."

Leopard recognised his notebook at once.

"Yes. That's mine."

The man held it out, but Leopard looked alarmed and did not take it.

"Well, er, do you want it?" asked the man.

"Yes. Perhaps you could put it on the seat in front of me. I'm feeling very ill and... I have a condition, you see. It makes it hard for me to move my arms."

"I'm sorry. Sure. I'll just put it there for you."

The man deposited the book as instructed on the seat in front, looking, now and then, in a puzzled fashion, as Leopard.

Leopard was too tired and ached too much now to try and calculate what was least likely to give him away if someone was suspicious, and the weary, almost bitter words, came to his lips without much thought. "Do I know you?" he asked.

"I don't think so," said the man. "Not many people this side of the Pond do. I mean, I used to be well-known back in the day. Er... Jeff Altman..."

And here he extended his hand.

Leopard gazed at it, as if it were some unidentifiable insect.

"Oh, yeah, sorry, I forgot. Can't move your arms. Well, I guess I'll be seeing you. Where you going, by the way?"

"County Wexford," said Leopard.

"Yeah, I guess we're all going there."

"Is there anything I can do for you? Maybe you'd like a glass of water?"

"No. I just have to rest here. Thank you."

"Okay. I hope you feel better soon. If you want a little of the best medicine - laughter, I mean - you could try catching me at my show in town when we arrive. I've got some spare tickets. Here, I'll slip a couple in your notebook. Bring a friend. Bring an enemy. Bring someone who knows how to laugh in the right places."

"Thank you."

"Okay. You take care now."

The man who had called himself Jeff Altman passed on, and Leopard sank once more into the dark grey clouds of his inner distance with relief.

(To be continued...?)

Justin Isis - Economic Circumstances Ni Mo Makezu

2009-01-18T02:36:00.002+09:00

Fitter happier
More productive
Not losing to the rain
Not losing to the wind
Not losing to the snow or to the heat of the summer
Comfortable
With a strong body
Unfettered by desire
Never losing temper
Not drinking too much
Regular exercise at the gym [3 times a week]
Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
At ease
Cultivating a quiet joy
Eating well [no more microwave dinners or saturated fats]
Every day four bowls of brown rice
Miso and some vegetables to eat
A patient better driver
A safer car [baby smiling in back seat]
Sleeping well [no bad dreams]
No paranoia
Careful to animals [never washing spiders down the plug holes]
Keep in contact with old friends [enjoy a drink now and then]
Will frequently check credit at [moral] bank [hole in the wall]
Favours for favours
Fond but not in love
Charity standing orders
In everything
Count yourself last and put others before you
Watching and listening, and understanding
And never forgetting
On sundays ring road supermarket
[no killing moths or pouring boiling water on ants]
Car wash [also on sunday]
No longer afraid of the dark
Or midday shadows
In the shade of the woods of the pines of the fields
In a little thatched hut
Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate
Nothing so childish
At a better pace
Slower and more calculated
No chance of escape
Now self-employed
Concerned but powerless
An empowered & informed member of society [pragmatism not idealism]
If there is a sick child to the east
Going and nursing over them
If there is a tired mother to the west
Going and shouldering her sheaf of rice
If there is someone near death to the south
Going and saying there's no need to be afraid
If there is a quarrel or a suit to the north
Telling them to leave off with such waste
Will not cry in public
Less chance of illness
Tyres that grip in the wet [shot of baby strapped in back seat]
A good memory
Still cries at a good film
When there's drought, shedding tears of sympathy
When the summer's cold, walk in concern and empathy
Still kisses with saliva
Like a cat
Tied to a stick
Thats driven into
Frozen winter shit [the ability to laugh at weakness]
Calm
Fitter, healthier and more productive
A pig
In a cage
On antibiotics
Called a blockhead by everyone
Without being praised
Without being blamed
Such a person
I want to become

Animated Kingsley Amis Crawling from a Jar

2008-12-05T03:11:00.000+09:00

Justin Isis - Paperback Horror Anthologies Made My Pussy Wet

2008-12-04T15:27:00.003+09:00

A soft pink ball of matter floated through the air, seeking attention. It had materialised at noon on a hot summer day, and as it hovered over the streets it vibrated gently, a soft patterning of light passing across its surface, so that it seemed to give off its own heat haze.

The ball gravitated towards a group of children playing by the river. They were building a dam and, utterly absorbed in their labour, they failed to notice the ball as it hovered above their heads. For several minutes it vibrated imploringly, tracing loops and figure-eights in the air, swooping into their line of sight. But if they noticed it at all they dismissed it as an insect, a trick of the light. The ball went on its way.

Mr. Carter was on his way home from work. He had just gotten off at the bus station, and as he stepped onto the sidewalk he loosened his collar and untied his tie. He wiped his brow, feeling the heat of the day. The ball floated in front of him, but Mr. Carter did not notice it, being preoccupied with his own thoughts. Though he had finished work he was already thinking of work again, and around this general concern there orbited thoughts of his family and his past, so that even as the ball whirled around him he paid it no mind.

Old Mrs. Wilson sat on her front porch smoking, listening to her fat sons and grandsons laughing in the living room behind her. The ball appeared and floated slowly towards her, its surface a vulnerable pink like a heart turned inside out. When Mrs. Wilson saw it she spat. In ninety-six years she had never wasted her time with trivial concerns.

The ball continued on its way. It appeared at a party, in an office building, at the Robinsons' dinner table. It hovered in front of televisions and computers, in front of children playing with a frisbee, in front of couples walking in the park. But the little apparition went unnoticed; everyone was too busy to give it any attention. It began to spin in desperate circles, emitting a high, flat sound like a dog whistle, waves of heat rising off its surface. As dusk fell it vanished with a pop, air rushing to fill the space of its absence.

Justin Isis - Violating Hitomi Shimatani In a Place Unknown to the Follies of Men, Etc.

2008-11-24T04:19:00.000+09:00

I love freshly-baked profiteroles more than almost anything - more, in fact, than has been good for my well-being, and the well-being of my friends and family. You think this is a strange way to begin a novel of this length? You think, perhaps, that it will be a comedy of light oddness, desperate for applause and ashamed of its desperation? I can assure you it is nothing of the sort. In fact, my experiences in southern Italy of that year - but why do you think you deserve to hear my story at all? You don't. Fuck you.

Brent Peterson - Horror is a Dish Best Served by Moldavian Refugees

2008-10-16T06:48:00.000+09:00

If all of the mental and physical representations of Kevin’s horror could be whittled down until a unifying principle might be identified, what would emerge would be an image, swathed in the numinous clarity of nightmare, of Carl’s jr. What Carl’s jr looked like, Kevin could only imagine: the teenage fry cooks suffused in oil, sweat, and hormones, hosts for grotesque archipelagoes of abrasions and acne; the Down’s Syndrome-afflicted cashiers with their lisping voices and indistinct features, bodies like trash bags filled with wet sand and minds imbued with a deranged elation that ignores both place and time; the middle-aged managers, balding and little more attractive than their teenage underlings, dull-eyed, yet sharply insistent on maintaining a certain arbitrary sense of order; the customers, blob-like automatons from whose mouths, extending like cilia in search of offal and lard, there comes a crackling and popping that signals an inward suction of the anticipatory release of saliva, a ritual of idiot desire; the miasmatic vapor of grease and dead flesh commingled that permeates the restaurant; the garish and illiterate promotional signs that serve as cynosures for the throng, now throbbing with hunger and transmuting themselves by blind need into writhing, tentacle-lined stomachs with pulsating, fleshy aperture. If these were only the feeble approximations of his agitated mind, Kevin could scarcely imagine the true, ineffable horror of Carl’s jr.

Throughout the day, Kevin would endeavor to calm his mind and consider the cavalcade of images offered up by his affairs. All too frequently, however, the image – or rather, his inadequate, envisaged facsimile thereof – of Carl’s jr. would roil the peaceful impressions that he tried to cultivate, insinuating itself into the mental processes that underlay even the most innocuous ritual. Or perhaps, Kevin considered, the subjective impression that he had of Carl’s jr. emerging from some hidden location in the depths of his psyche was a red herring; perhaps Carl’s jr. was not an excrescence that subsisted parasitically on his otherwise clear and pristine consciousness, but the substratum of his awareness, the turbid and frenetic canvas on which more pleasant thoughts were imposed.

Kevin could not carry this line of reasoning further lest he lose all sense of what it meant to be “Kevin.” If Carl’s jr. was not a phantasm superimposed on mental landscape that was intrinsically and inalienably his, then perhaps he, Kevin, was merely a minute extension of a topology both infinitely vast and infinitely callous, a tiny fragment of a horrifying whole whose misfortune lay in the accident of its sentience and its awareness of Carl’s jr.—the all-pervasive substance on which he, as well as all conscious beings, had been stamped. Upon banishing this thought from his mind, Kevin jogged home, stripped himself to the skin, and retrieved a few rolls of sandpaper from his toolbox. His skin felt as though, beneath its pale pink surface, it was one substance with the leering, uncanny façade of Carl’s jr. Upon climbing into his iridescent, claw foot bathtub, Kevin began to scrub his skin frantically with strip after strip of sandpaper, starting with his ankles and gradually inching his way up to his torso.

Useful Parasites, by Quentin S. Crisp

2008-10-16T01:52:00.002+09:00

Useful Parasites

Some time on the 4th of July, 2008, poet and science fiction writer, Thomas M. Disch, put a gun to his head and shot himself. At 68 years of age, Disch had a long career behind him. Critically acclaimed for novels that extended the range of the science fiction genre, but perhaps best known to the public as the creator of The Brave Little Toaster, he had just finished a novel entitled The Word of God, written in the first person from the point of view of the titular hero.

This might sound like the profile of someone with abundant reasons to live, but it seems that the reasons for suicide, even without a note, are probably all too readily understandable. A fire in his apartment, the death of a partner of over 30 years, the flooding of his New York home, and then the threat of eviction on his return to that apartment – these appear to form the bones of the misfortune that overwhelmed him. Perhaps, however, the spirit of that misfortune, the way it might have felt to Disch himself, can be glimpsed in an event that took place two days before the suicide. This was an interview, apparently to promote his new book, on something called Radio Happy Hour. The interviewers, including one Dr. Blogstein, had not read the book, did not know who Disch was, and throughout, seemingly taking the title of the novel at face value, taunted Disch for believing himself to be God. Disch seemed to play along at first, but the mockery was as relentless as it was ill-informed, and at the end, Disch asked, “Is that it?” That, apparently, was it – fifteen minutes of schoolboy sniggering and abuse. Disch lost his composure (not with a raised voice, but only in diction) for the first time. His final words in the interview were, “Well, piss on your shoes.”

Though it would probably be wrong to hold the clueless ‘shock jockeys’ at Radio Happy Hour responsible for Disch’s death, they do provide us with a very specific example of the attitudes and conditions that can make society, for a writer, a depressingly hostile environment.

I learnt of these events from an article on a blog called His Vorpal Sword, to which the writer and para para dancer Justin Isis had sent me a link. The article in question was given the title, ‘Hypatia and the Burning Library’. Soon afterwards, I wrote my own blog entry on the same subject, under the title, ‘The Publisher Drinks Wine from the Author’s Skull’ (an aphorism associated with Ambrose Bierce used in ‘Hypatia and the Burning Library’, which brings to mind another quote, from Elias Canetti, about the ill-fated writer Robert Walser: “I ask myself whether, among those who build their leisurely, secure, dead regular academic life on that of a writer who had lived in misery and despair, there is one who is ashamed of himself”).

Something about Disch’s suicide and the circumstances surrounding it (given in admirable detail at His Vorpal Sword) seemed to have moved me. I don’t mean simply to sadness, but to fury, disgust, amazement. I wondered if others, who read my blog entry, would be similarly stirred up. I imagined hundreds or thousands of Internet users all Googling “Thomas Disch” to learn about the terrible thing that had happened. This prompted me to check the statistics for my blog and find how many hits the entry had received. I looked up and down the list. It was not there. All the entries I had recently written had received hits, even some I had written after the entry on Thomas Disch. The Disch entry alone had received none. I suddenly felt very cold. Could it be that no one actually cares?

I pictured to myself again Thomas Disch’s end, the personal loss, the overwhelming material setbacks, the ruthlessness of the landlords, who used the death of Disch’s partner, to whom the apartment was officially let, as leverage in suing for eviction, the humiliation from the representatives of a world of philistines, the suicide, and then… and then just nothing, it seemed. Bewilderment became anger, and I wrote my own comment beneath the blog entry I had written, where no one else had commented. I ended the comment with, “Piss on your shoes”, directed to everyone who was not there, which seemed to be the entire world.

I am someone who, like “the best” in Yeats’s poem, generally lacks all conviction. For once, however, my anger seemed deep and natural. Without wishing to sound pompous, for once I felt it almost a duty to express it.

Afterwards, of course, I did question that anger, and if I did not perhaps I would not be writing this. It could be that the lack of hits on that blog entry did not really indicate anything at all. Perhaps it was just ‘chance’, whatever that is. After all, it had not been very long since I had written the entry. It could be possible that I was overestimating the iciness of people’s apathy. At this remove from the event, I am still not sure. My impression is that if I was overestimating, then it was not greatly.

I would like to think that my indignation was not entirely selfish, but I’m sure that the reader will already have discerned that it was at least partly selfish (although I’m not sure how easy it is to separate selfishness from selflessness, in the sense that the latter perhaps involves feeling selfish on behalf of another) in that I am a writer, my particular area of fiction bordering on and even overlapping with that of Thomas Disch. Whether I was angry on behalf of Disch or myself, however, the question I was confronted with was did I have the right to be angry, generally or specifically, at how writers are treated by society?

This is not even a new question for me; in fact, it seems central to my life story.

After failing my A-levels (actually I received a U for ‘ungraded’ rather than an F for ‘fail’), it became clear to me that I would not be able to progress to university, and that I would therefore have to decide what it was I was going to do in the world. What I actually thought to myself, perhaps word for word, was, “I want to work with the mentally handicapped.” (I was soon to learn I should use the term “people with learning difficulties”.) I had one interview, and did not pass, because I had neglected to mention that I knew my duties would include helping people go to the toilet. However, about a week later, I received a ‘phone call from the careers office asking if I still wanted to do the same kind of work. This was the beginning of over five years of community theatre work with something called Wolf and Water Arts Company. For five years or more I signed on the dole, wrote poems, began and did not finish novels, recorded songs on a four-track in a band called The Dead Bell, and worked (on a voluntary basis) as actor, stage manager and general dogsbody in various Wolf and Water drama projects, including a film of Macbeth. How I managed to dodge work for five years, I cannot now say, except that I used the same lackadaisical slipperiness that I employed in dodging P.E. at school for a comparable period. To me, work meant the death of the independence I needed in order to create art. But could I be said to be truly independent if I was not earning my living? Was I not just a parasite? My own answer to this question, if anyone asked who was ready for such an answer – and none did – was that I considered the government handout pay for the contribution I was making to society with Wolf and Water. I suppose I still felt a little shaky over this explanation, my insecurity that expressed in the opening lines of Still Ill, by The Smiths: “I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving/England is mine/And it owes me a living/But ask me why and I’ll spit in your eye.” In any case, what was sure was that I could not tolerate having a boss, and signing my life over to a stranger for the sake of a merely financial arrangement.

I am now thirty-six, and my dilemma still has no ultimate solution. Over the years it has become clear that writing is a necessity to me in a way that is perhaps incomprehensible to those who do not write. Whilst being perfectly aware that writing is at very best an uncertain way to make a living, and more often, no way to make a living at all, I have been unable to tolerate, for any length of time, any other means of paying my way. This condition has kept me relatively poor (for someone in the United Kingdom), and, I fully believe, single. The social ladder of career, family and home, in other words, what is generally called a ‘future’, has remained as inaccessible to me as the outer planets of the Solar System, whether by my own choice or by some law of nature, I cannot tell. More than this, I have never yet achieved full financial independence, except for brief periods (teaching English in Taiwan, for instance), and have spent long periods relying on government handouts, scholarships, the generosity of those who know me, and so on. Why? Because my writing does not earn me anything resembling a wage (living or otherwise), and because, unlike some writers, I seem incapable of writing and doing the nine-to-five.

This state of affairs has been for me a source of alternating fury at the world and hatred of self. Where does the blame lie? Am I a parasite, or am I undervalued in a world of philistines? Surely, some might say, no one is obliged to think that any particular writer’s work is wonderful. One cannot legislate in favour of the right to have one’s dreams come true. In a sense, it’s sheer hard luck. Isn’t it?

In the early summer of 2007, I visited a friend in Paris and felt inspired to record the time in a literary diary, much-influenced by the Japanese zuihitsu form of discursive writing. It was, indeed, a very French and a very Japanese piece of writing, what the English-speaking world would probably give the rather dull term, ‘a slice of life’. I sent this to a publisher who had accepted some of my other work, and received a reply to the effect that it was good, but not commercial. Appropriately (as if the piece had decided its own fate), The Paris Notebooks, as I called it, contained a passage dealing very directly with the problem of the unsuccessful writer:

I envied, I said, those around me with careers, homes, life partners, but I knew that I was entirely incapable of sustaining such a lifestyle. When pressed, I managed to admit, “The only thing that comes close to giving my life purpose is writing. But that is something that’s not recognised.”

S--- indicated that she understood, though I felt I had not really expressed myself adequately.

“I mean,” I said, “there’s this attitude that as a writer you deserve nothing, that you should be content with poverty and obscurity. But imagine if people took the same attitude towards, say, doctors: ‘Well, being a doctor is what you want to do. It’s a privilege, so you shouldn’t expect any money or recognition from it. You should stack shelves during the day and practice medicine for nothing in the evenings.’”

It’s no one’s fault, exactly, except that if society at large had different values it would be easier for me to survive. In other words, an unfortunate difference of values between the majority of human beings and myself has rendered me ‘a parasite’ and not a very successful one, at that. They despise me (or would if they had heard of me); I despise them. There doesn’t seem to be much of right or wrong about it. I did not ask to be born. That is my final defence. Can I help it if I’m not exactly what society ordered?

I know a great many writers, and we have learned to be humble; that is, not to expect. It seems as if it is almost considered a duty to be a martyr, and at the same time to despise oneself. I am a parasite. Publishers are doing me a favour even to read anything I have written, and to expect payment is ludicrous. I must at all costs avoid the – legendary? mythical? – arrogance of the writer, and accept all the editor’s judgements and criticisms. The notion of artistic control resting with the artist is naïve. To want financial reward but refuse to write to order is perverse. And so on. Such are the attitudes that are perpetuated.

But imagine that we were demanding such attitudes of a friend. For instance, I have called this article ‘Useful Parasites’, but am I ready to say that Thomas Disch was a parasite (and incidentally, on hearing the news of his death, one pseudonymous Internet commenter, whilst commiserating unconvincingly, also said that his or her sympathy was less than it might have been, because Disch’s apartment was rent-controlled)? Am I ready to be self-deprecating on another’s behalf, self-loathing on another’s behalf, as I was angry on my own and another’s behalf? Under the circumstances, no.

Are there, then, other options, apart from considering writers (and other artists) as parasites? Perhaps, to answer this question, it might help to try and imagine a different world to the one in which Thomas Disch felt he had to put a gun to his head. What kind of world was it to which Disch fell victim? Were the values and mechanisms of that world universal? Inevitable? Overall, just and helpful? I am reminded now of a quote from The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen, a novel dealing with the torments of a doomed writer:

…Lucian was not only engaged in composition; he was plainly rapturous, enthusiastic; Mr. Taylor saw him throw up his hands, and bow his head with strange gesture. The parson began to fear that his son was like some of those mad Frenchmen of whom he had read, young fellows who had a sort of fury of literature, and gave their whole lives to it, spending days over a page, and years over a book, pursuing art as Englishmen pursue money, building up a romance as if it were a business.

Is it, possibly, the English-speaking world that considers writers parasites, and not the entire world? I’m afraid I have not marshalled any vast array of statistical evidence for this; I largely have anecdotal evidence, personal experience, and prejudice. (I do hear, for instance, that in France, any writer may claim money from the government as a kind of wage for one or two days a week to be spent “pursuing art”.) Ultimately, I doubt the division between the Anglosphere and the rest of the world in this matter is that clear, but sense there might be something in it, and, even if it is only relatively true, it would at least give us a sliding scale of attitudes to examine and, hopefully, choose from. At best, it might lead us to hitherto unrealised conclusions.

Let us try a little what if. What if the society that killed Thomas Disch (let us not mince words) underwent some kind of change and decided that there was some value in literature, in art, in dreams and imagination generally? Would that be a bad society? I suspect that most would think that, after all, that doesn’t sound so bad. Some might raise specific, ‘practical’ points, or even philosophical ones. Am I suggesting that artists should be state-funded? My immediate response is to say ‘no’. There’s a paradox here. If we recoil at the idea of state-funded writers, it is because we recognise that the writer must be an independent voice, an outsider, and must even be so perverse in his or her independence as to appear… a parasite. Can you rebel against your sponsor? Perhaps, though, there is something in the idea of state-funding for writers; after all, if it’s true that the government in France supports writers financially, then this does not seem to have done their literature any harm. Quite frankly, French literature pisses on the anaemic social realism of English literature, and the attitude of appreciation and support out of which such a government policy probably springs might have something to do with this. However, it is the attitude more than the policy that I would especially like to see change.

Until now any serious artist has been more-or-less forced to be subversive to some degree, simply because telling the truth (even an inner truth) in a society based on what David Korten, author of The Great Turning, might call ‘the hierarchies of Empire’, is intrinsically subversive. But a serious artist surely also knows that rebellion for its own sake is vacuous and boring. What if there were a world in which there was no need to rebel, in which children were not taught that they are all the same, but were seen to have their own individual qualities and abilities to offer the world, and were valued for them? Utopian? Perhaps.

What is the alternative? On the other side of the argument from this creative Utopia there is all that has been proclaimed sensible and respectable for centuries if not millennia. There is survival. Survival is making money by any means available. One must do this to become financially independent. It is necessary to be independent because no one can support anyone else. We are in competition. To be dependent is to be weak, a parasite, to fall from the grace of respectability and place a burden upon the survival of others. And yet, as we are discovering more and more, survival is not survival, but mass suicide. In order to achieve that respectable, competitive, financial independence, the respectable, sensible survivors are intent upon stripping the world of its resources, exploiting the poor, increasing social inequality, and making the planet generally uninhabitable, first spiritually (since this competitive society is an ugly hell), but ultimately in a very literal, physical sense.

It seems it really is true that we cannot live, cannot even survive, on bread alone.

I would personally like to suggest, therefore, that writing, as one medium through which human beings dream of things other than ‘bread’ and the suicidal survivalism of the nine-to-five, is actually useful in its uselessness, even a necessity.

Perhaps, to some, the idea of nurturing all talent wherever it might be found still smacks of Utopianism. Of course, to counter such a criticism, one might ask the question, is there anything wrong with Utopianism? It seems that, at the beginning of the 21st Century, we stand in need of Utopianism as never before. Competition, and its inevitable conclusion of war, involving an unprecedentedly vast population, and utilising technologies of such power that they might be likened to bazookas in the hands of infants, has surely now become an end game, and whether that end is merely of the game itself, or of a (relatively) stable civilisation and possibly the human race, is for us to decide. Perhaps, however, the less attractive, which is to say the latter, outcomes, are not to be avoided by Utopianism. Perhaps idealism will always fail. Life is messy, and perhaps remedies will be piecemeal and messy, also. With or without Utopia, I would suggest that the writer is a necessity. As a writer I am wary of such statements simply because they make writing sound ‘legitimate’, as if it should be part of an establishment, when the great power of writing, if it has any, seems to me to come from a kind of illegitimacy. Writers should not have the kind of power and authority that corrupts. They should question all things, and especially themselves. Perhaps, then (I say this tentatively), rather than asking for writers to be seen as noble and heroic, I should, after all, ask that we be seen as parasites, but as useful parasites, a necessarily messy part of this messy life.

Professor Weinstock at Tufts-New England Medical Center offers a view of parasites at variance with the orthodoxy. The obsession with hygiene that has taken hold of the world with the Twentieth Century has had unforeseen consequences. The industrialised world has seen an outstanding growth in diseases related to the immune system, including asthma and irritable bowel syndrome, in the past fifty years. During research in the 1990s, Professor Weinstock noted a correlation between the decline of parasite worms and the rise of irritable bowel syndrome. A theory is in place as to why worms might prevent diseases such as asthma (a condition, it seems, virtually unknown in worm-rich, sanitation-poor countries); the parasite stimulates certain “regulatory pathways” in the host in order to cover its own presence, and these pathways also stabilise the immune system. There is also some supporting evidence. In Brazil, for instance, cases have been observed of children taken from their worm-rich environment developing asthma, the condition being cured by their return to that environment. Moreover, Weinstock’s own experiments treating Crohn’s disease with whipworm have had considerable success.

I am not aware of a conclusion to this research as yet, but I mention it here because it provides me with an apt analogy. According to Weinstock, “The first law of parasitology says that the parasite must impart a survival advantage to the host.”

Perhaps Weinstock’s work will lead to people re-thinking their attitude to worms. My own wish is that people (writers included) would re-think their attitude to writers. When the hygienic Puritanism of the work-ethic has purged all writers from the system of human society, through disdain, starvation, apathy, envy, there may well be unforeseen consequences.

The Iowa Writers Workshop Lacks Yuugen, by Sasa Zoric Combe and Quentin S. Crisp

2008-10-08T09:08:00.003+09:00

To make the words come magically alive, by the power of dadaoism, please click here.

The Iowa Writers Workshop Lacks Yuugen.

The Iowa Writers Workshop lacks yuugen.
Arthur Miller, of course, lacks yuugen.
James Frey, he lacks yuugen, too.
None of these people will ever play the blues.

You win,
And so you lose.
You win,
And so you lose.
You win,
You’ll never play the blues.

Edmund Wilson lacks yuugen.
White Man Novels lack yuugen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harold Bloom.
None of them have even been in the same room
With yuugen.

You win,
And so you lose.
You win,
And so you lose.
Your words, our bombs, you say,
And so you lose.
You’ll never play the blues.

Justin Isis, lacks the exacts beauty he wants
And he has yuugen as a result.
Thomas Ligotti has a book deal with Virgin
And he has yuugen too.

We win,
You lose.
We win,
You lose.
We have yuugen,
And you only have ‘the rules’.

So many people have stood in my way,
But I am not afraid.
I brush my teeth each day
With new, improved yuugen.

We win,
You lose.
We win,
You lose.
We have yuugen,
And you only have ‘the rules’.

So many people have stood in my way,
But I am not afraid.
I brush my teeth each day
With new, improved yuugen.

33 Ways of Winning at Life

2008-10-08T07:52:00.004+09:00

But we shall speak no further of these matters, for the time has come to tell how these adventures, glorified in song like the gilding that makes the passing kalpas splendid, came sadly to their end. Few are the balladeers who can sing the last song of the cycle without tears, and there are even those who say to do so is a failing in the art.

It happened that, weakened from the revels of victory on Traken, and anxious at the cosmic alarum of the cloister bell, Justin Isis and Quentin S. Crisp came to ancient Metebelis Three in search of the fabled blue crystals, by which they hoped to replenish their depleted dancing and business skills before the final reckoning with the Black Guardian. Alas, the reckoning never came. Destiny intervened with long and cruel fingernails, like those of Weng Chi'ang.

While yet foraging for crystals on the plain, vulnerable and sorrowfully unstylish, they were taken by a brutish band of the Eight-Legs' slaves, and brought before the Great One, most mighty and evil of all the Eight-Legs, whose business skills were unsurpassed in all that quadrant of reality. The judgement of the Great One was without mercy, and She rejoiced in her quivering, slimy heart that two talented opponents had thus fallen so low. By Her decree they were sent to the lowest of the larder caverns, where a loathsome agitation of menial Eight-Legs bound the two anti-life writers in a tensile silk stronger than steel, gloatingly hissing, and drooling and rubbing the while their spinnerets in semi-sexual excitement.

Fastened to opposite walls of the cheerless cave, and physically paralysed by the obscene juices with which the fangs of the Eight-Legs had injected them, they knew that their fate was fixed. When human slaves or Eight-Legs came to ensure they were yet alive enough to taunt, they demanded to know what was intended for them, but ever were greeted with laughter. "This is a larder, is it not?" hissed one nefarious arachnid, and declined to show the mercy of revealing how and when the Great One meant to dispose of them.

Low in spirits as they were, they determined to pass their last hours by composing a wonderful document under the title of '33 Ways of Winning at Life'. It was the last true classic of dadaoist literature to be bequeathed the universe, and afterwards it was declared that dadaoism had come to its decadent phase. To this day, writers of unselfconsciously experimental prose who hear the distant murmurings of yuugen and know the sparkling of the Gold of Inner Space, declare '33 Ways of Winning at Life' the most splendid treasure to be fashioned from that Gold since before the pacifying of Traken. For that we must thank the single human slave to show taste and mercy, who, though he dared not do more, smuggled the document from that cave, keeping it safe in his hovel until the Armada of the Ghost of Magibon came finally to liberate Metebelis Three from the arachnid tyranny. Chomu guards each of the 33 Ways with unyielding stubbornness and devotion, and rejoices in its duty of revealing them again, at intervals, in this humble quarter of reality.

The first of the Ways will be made known soon.

Sea and Seagulls, By Kaneko Misuzu, Sasa Zoric Combe and Quentin S. Crisp

2008-10-07T07:38:00.002+09:00

To make the words come eerily alive, please click this link.

Sea and Seagulls

I thought that the sea was blue.
I thought that the seagulls were white.

But now that I look at them, the sea
And the wings of the seagulls, too, are both grey.

I thought that everyone knew,
But it was all lies.

Everyone knows the sky is blue.
Everyone knows the snow is white.
Everyone sees. They know.
But maybe that's a lie, too.

Princess Kaguya, by Kaneko Misuzu, Sasa Zoric Combe and Quentin S. Crisp

2008-10-07T04:54:00.002+09:00

Please click on this link to make the words come alive.

Princess Kaguya

The princess born
Out of the bamboo
Went back home
To the moon

The princess went back home
To the moon,
Looked down each night
From the moon and cried.

Sad for the house she grew up in,
She cried.
Sorry for the stupid people down there, down there,
She cried.

Night after night, each the same
She cried.
The world below
It swiftly changed.

The old man and woman who loved her,
They died.
The stupid people down there, down there,
They forgot all about her.

The Mask of Evil

2008-10-07T04:38:00.002+09:00

The Mask Of Evil

On my wall hangs a Japanese carving,
The mask of an evil demon, decorated with gold lacquer.
Sympathetically I observe
The swollen veins of the forehead, indicating
What a strain it is to be evil.

Bertolt Brecht

Justin Isis - I Hunger for Flesh But This Cake Will Do

2008-10-07T01:49:00.001+09:00

Tristan Disappointed

2008-10-03T20:59:00.001+09:00

Each sickened moment of my life has been
A waiting lover's deathbed
To which comes always only
A ship with sails of black
That snap and rumble with the starving air
Like hollow cheeks.

Justin Isis - I Attain to the Level of Fucking Your Basic Hairdresser, Etc.

2008-10-02T16:31:00.003+09:00

The man and woman had lived on the island for as long as they could remember. It was their job to tend the flowers in the garden of precious metals, to clean the rust from the iron orchids and fill the ceramic vases with brittle copper roses. The island was small, but the man and woman never went wanting for anything.

They had always known that they were not real people. No blood beat in their veins, and their glass eyes shone only with the reflected glow of the electric sun. The man's golden hair never wavered in the wind, and the woman's shining silver skin was perfectly cold. But they had always loved each other. When they finished their work for the day, they retreated to the edge of the island and sat on the cliff overlooking the beach, watching the waves of acid lapping the shore. Sometimes they sat in the shade of a gemstone tree, the ground beneath it scattered with sapphires. At night they slept in each other's arms in a field of steel lilies.

The man had taken to watching the sky, and had noticed that the sun was growing weaker. Usually it pulsed strongest at midday and dimmed at night to a soft luminosity. At noon, at its highest intensity, it cast high-contrast shadows over the brass tulips and a nacreous gleam upon the pearl-studded stalks of the platinum daffodils. But now the light dimmed even during the day. The man and woman knew the sun's routine by heart, and the recent changes disturbed them. They resolved to question the Hermit when he returned to them in midsummer.

Everything the man and woman knew about the world had been taught to them by the Hermit. He was an old man who came to them once a year, sailing across the sea of acid in his lacquered hardwood ship. The Hermit had showed them how to care for the flowers, how to arrange them to produce the greatest beauty, how to leave them on the beach as an offering to the gods. And he had told them of the other world, Heaven, with its green fields, and people of flesh and blood, and other mysteries.

The man and woman felt certain that the Hermit would help them. But as the months went by, it became clear that the sun was dying. As they walked together in the garden they often felt the sky growing dark above them. Sometimes the light would fade entirely, leaving them stranded in darkness for hours. And the sun's decay spread to the flowers: when the man went to the orchids he found them furred with rust like a fungus, and the copper roses crumbled in his hand. After one long period without light, the orange frost spread even to the flowers in the garden of precious metals. The man and woman knew that gold and platinum were not supposed to rust, but it seemed to them that if the light could fade, anything was possible. Before the failing of the sun, they had known no change.

When darkness fell the woman rushed to the man's side, and they sat and waited for the light to return. At these times they were afraid, but as they drew close to each other they knew they could wait forever. If they stayed together, there was nothing to fear.

At the approach of midsummer the man and woman set out for the beach with a basket of flowers. They had spent the day gathering the last few untainted roses from the garden of precious metals and had arranged them in the fashion that signalled welcome. When they had laid them out on the beach, they walked along the shore and scanned the horizon for signs of the Hermit's ship. Towards noon the man sighted a dot moving towards them over the waves, and they moved closer to watch, careful not to tread too close to the acid tide. Eventually the ship pulled in and the Hermit debarked. He did not greet them at first, but moved to inspect the basket of flowers. Taking one of the copper roses in hand, he held it up to the sun and inspected the way the light reflected off its petals. Then he put it back in place, lifted up the basket and carried it out to shore. Gently he floated it onto the waves, letting them claim it. The flowers dissolved soundlessly. The Hermit turned back to look at the man and woman. They bowed, and he asked the question he always asked them.

-Are you happy here?

-Yes, they answered in unison.

The man thought how to broach the problem of the sun. He did not want the Hermit to think that it had resulted from anything they had done. As far as he knew, he and the woman had performed their duties to the best of their ability. But he did not have to say anything. As the three of them walked across the beach, they felt the light overhead fading. Before long darkness settled over the island, though it was just past noon.

-The sun is dying, the woman said.

The Hermit's expression remained neutral.

-Yes. I knew that it would when I built it. It's lasted longer than I expected.

-What will happen when the sun dies?

-I expect that the garden will die too. But you don't have to worry, I've prepared a ship to take you to Heaven. You can come and live with me there.

The woman came over and stood next to the Hermit.

-What is it like in Heaven? she asked.

-It's more beautiful than you can imagine. There are plants that grow from the earth and flower and die within a single season. There are men and women who live for a century or less, with coursing blood and warm skin. There is a different kind of sun that rises in the east and sets in the west.

The woman looked troubled.

-But isn't it frightening that everything dies so quickly?

-You might think so at first. But it's only because you've lived so long. In Heaven, everyone is used to a shorter life.

The woman nodded at the Hermit's words, but said nothing.

At length the Hermit announced that he was leaving the island for now, but would return tomorrow in his ship to carry the three of them across the sea of acid to the shores of Heaven. As he stepped aboard the ship and made ready to depart, the sun returned to its full intensity.

The man and woman watched the ship disappear over the horizon. When it had gone, they turned and walked back up to the garden. Just for a moment they felt the sun flicker, as if it had been struck by a sudden convulsion.

They spent the rest of the afternoon gathering untarnished flowers for the Hermit's arrival the next day. There were scarcely enough left to form an arrangement. The roses had all but rotted, and most of the orchids crumbled at the touch. Once the man found what he thought to be a perfect silver rose, but when he turned it over he saw a sickly greenish tint spreading across its petals. Its usual fragrance was gone; instead of the sharp scent of silver, there was only a dull metallic odor, the dull greenish stench of mineral decay.

With only a few flowers gathered in their baskets, they returned to the cliff overlooking the beach. The cliff face sloped down to a grouping of rocks that soon gave way to sand. The man and woman sat down next to each other and placed their baskets beside them. From here, they could make out the little cove where the Hermit's ship had landed.

The sun stuttered. The wind sang over the sands. For a long time the man could think of nothing to say. Eventually the woman broke the silence.

-I feel afraid, she said.

-What is there to fear? the man asked.

The woman took his hand, and her lovely unchanging glass eyes rolled towards him.

-The Hermit told us that the people of flesh and blood only live for a century. And what about the lovers in Heaven? Does their love only last for a season, like the flowers?

-Perhaps it fades as quickly.

-Then I don't want to go there.

The man lifted her hand up and examined it in the light of the electric sun. Her nails were chips of jade inset in slender silver fingers. He pressed them to his cheek as he stared out to the sea.

-I once thought that the Ideals were everything. I wanted to please the Hermit, and I spent hours talking with him, discussing the Ideals and the Greater Mysteries. But now I feel that I only want to keep living with you forever in the garden.

The woman's hand moved gently across his cheek and came to rest on his shoulder.

-I feel the same, she said.

They sat for a while in silence, and a resolution grew between them. They did not need to speak it aloud, but both of them knew they would not leave the island.

When dusk fell, the sun began its regular program of reduced intensity. But now its dimness was punctuated by flareups of light, sharp stabs like the last beats of a dying heart. The man and woman walked hand-in-hand down to the beach as the light broke around them. In its irregular flashes, they caught sudden frozen views of each other, of the man's golden hair and the woman's silver skin.

They crossed to the shore and saw before them the sterile surface of the waves, transparent like molten glass. The man turned to the woman and spoke.

-We will never bleed, or grow old, or attain any of the other Ideals. But we should not be afraid, because we can never remember having lived. What does it matter for us to die, if we no longer desire Heaven?

-I have no dreams, the woman said. I have never felt able to dream. And so I feel undeserving of everything, since I feel as if I can never repay my happiness.

The man looked at her, as if searching her features for some hidden meaning. Then he turned back to the sea, and as he looked at the movement of the waves, a sadness fell upon him. But when he looked at the woman again, he did not feel sad. He said:

-You remember the night a hundred years ago, when we sat speaking with the Hermit under the sapphire trees. At that time, I often dreamed of the Mysteries.

They came within range of the tide. When they felt the acid lapping at their feet, they stopped and turned to each other.

-I love you, the man said.

-I love you, the woman answered.

Still holding hands, they walked into the sea.

At first they felt only a rising warmth, as if they were stepping into a pool of liquid light. Slowly it spread from their feet up through their legs to the rest of their bodies, caressing their polished flesh. Only when it reached the line of their lips did they feel anything resembling pain, and even then it was only a higher intensity, an ecstasy, like looking at the sun. The sea rushed in through their mouths, their eyes, filling them from the inside, their hands still linked. As the warmth dissolved their other senses they were left with only touch, only the feel of each other's hands.

A strange sensation came over them. They felt as if, rather than the sea entering them, they were passing out of themselves and into it. They tried to focus on the feeling of their linked hands, but it was difficult to remember exactly where they linked, difficult to remember anything. Their awareness faded, lost in the greater warmth.

The man and woman's iron organs corroded slowly. Their polished flesh took longer; for hours afterward, two traceries of silver and gold lingered beneath the waves like sunken statues. Then they dissolved, first breaking into fragments. With their arms eaten away, their clasped hands floated together like a pair of glittering fish. As they drifted down to the sand, the sea picked them apart particle by particle.

The stillness of night settled over the waves. The last light faded, dimmed to black. But the sky did not stay black for long. A brownness like late autumn leaves spread from the dead sun, a color past death, as if the darkness were rusting. Slowly it filled the sky and crept over the island, until it covered the beach, and the cliff, and the garden of precious metals.

Justin Isis - Reasonably Satisfied with New Abdominal Definition + Successful Attempts to Fuck Girls Who Have Recently Vomited

2008-09-30T16:10:00.000+09:00

The heart of the Amish girl was a wasp's nest; Utterson had caressed it carelessly and now found his hand crawling with the drones of her love, probing and militant, surveying him meticulously, almost gently, but ready to sting at any moment.

etc.

After 2012 and the End of Capitalism-as-We-Know-It (A Prayer)

2008-09-23T21:03:00.005+09:00

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it humanoids of all conceivable modes of reality will converge on Chomu like butterflies building a rainbow hive of myriad underwear and gussetry, and they will extend probisces and sip thereat and proclaim that the nectar has reached its time of sweetness. Chomu, they will say, was the pollen, and Chomu the seed. And they will design lingerie in the mode of Haeckel.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it Betty Boop will be ressurected upon a sunbed, borne on the shoulders of six executive suicides, and she will disembark thereform and the silken hair of her vulva will be as grapes upon the vine, bearding with wine the mouth of Krishna, where she shall ride as on a Babylonian bronco to the rhythm of "Shut the fuck up and make me come!" Having got her satisfaction in such manner, she will once more dismount and apologise for her forgotten racism.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it all I have ever done will become irrelevant, and will evaporate as waste. All I have ever done will be integrated as fulfilment.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it comedy duos who enjoyed their greatest success on television during the 1970s will perform one long round of live action saucy family entertainment, and will be welcomed, and no one will know any longer whether or not it is meant to be ironic.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it those with whom I have been mutually plotting a tragedy of silence will mutually decide upon a comedy of continual conversation, and will find that the projects we were invested in, which we had predicated upon tragedy, will work just as well under the management of comedy, if not better.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it the Galapagos Islands will be the new seat of government, and the parliament will be of tortoises.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it none shall be embarrassed, because none shall be committed to believe in anything that they do, be it aromatherapy or emo.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it everyone shall read Deja You by Lynda Sandoval.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it people will age in random order.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it all religion will be redundant except as a fashion statement, and people will therefore pursue art through a series of veils. Art will be the new food. It will taste like liquorice, Marmite and cinnamon.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it the U.S. will be the world's number one destination for sex tourism.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it there will still be a surprising amount of paranoia and melancholy.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it the grass will be silver, people will cry when I speak, and there will be omnipresent fame.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it Justin Isis will enter a recording studio and find Kingsley Amis kicking back with Sifow, whereupon he will challenge Kingsley to a duel, the winner of which gets to play golf with a golden Daoist egg, using Arthur Miller's head as a tee. When the egg is hit and enters the hole in the green, the ghost of M. R. James will be evoked, singing the songs of Nalle, and he shall erect a spectral temple made of disappointment, wherein shall be housed sad and holy things, such as Tori Amos's "pumpkin PJ's", an amputated smile from the face of Donald Rumsfeld, in which the teeth have not stopped growing since the rest of him was atomised, and from which there comes a noxious, witchy, hissing vapour, James Frey's weeping rectum, the strange, holographically paralysed lovechild of Momus and the Cheshire Cat, the nature of Monkey, an exact scale model of 109, with living simulacra, Dare Wright's doll, Edith, H. P. Lovecraft's prose style, Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures, the very first silverfish ever to crawl the earth, and Lalla Ward.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it publishers, editors and readers will treat writers with respect.

After 2012 and the end of capitalism-as-we-know-it I will have a relationship with a human being.

Justin Isis - Fuck Off, Dad

2008-09-20T04:32:00.001+09:00

You started reading a new story on Chomu, only to discover that it was written in the second person. You resented the writer's attempts to narrate your actions, and soon stopped reading.

Scramble City (Part II)

2008-09-01T12:22:00.003+09:00

[This one took a turn that I didn't really plan for, so it wound up shorter than I'd planned - we'll be back sooner with the next one to compensate, I think. Simulcast at Patchwork Earth!]

--------------------

IV.

It is said, at the time of the founding of the Capitalized Lands, that there were two great figures, The Author and The Architect. One would weave the story, and the other would bring it to life. The buildings would rise from the mire as though birthed; utopia with a fare, sliding along the surface of a set of catacombs, and adrift from the dying world.

Rocky, Nick, Naomi, and others, they were children born to the Capitalized Lands, taught at the Camps, and knew only the roles they'd been chosen to play, the only history was the history of their city: The Cola Wars, the First Ride of the Monorail.

But The Author no longer spoke, and without him The Architect had no balance. Great works rose and never finished, entertainments no longer drew from the old myths, and shadows were cast by the structures where before the sun had lit every work evenly. It was as in the story that Rocky knew best, when a lasso of chain was wound about the sun and tied to a place, a lone mortal, below: brilliant, but static, and so thus unable to grow. For without the passing of the sun, time stopped and the ages ended.
It was, perhaps, the drugs that came first. Nick had taken to them all too easily. But it was not that sin that drove them apart, but rather Naomi: the discovery of her royalty.

For an instant, as Rocky's fingers trailed along the borderground's walls and fences, catching on thorns and chain link, he thought he glimpsed her torn gown through a portal, but it was gone too fast, as it ever was. Even as he passed through a vault into the tunnels, he could hear the voice of the lawman growing louder.

V.

“No! Benton! I don't want to hear about debts! Benton, listen – I want you to explain it to them very, very slowly, so they understand it. Yes, we're aware. Yes, we'll be closing the old cases. No, I didn't lose the evidence, I stored it. Because! Because, Benton, when you're called to the... to here, you don't really argue, do you? No. No. Benton, listen to me. I'm about to meet with somebody, okay. No, I don't really... no. You know how this stuff works. All but brought here in a duffel bag. A pizza box. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, buddy. You, too. Don't get captured.”

Max Mann, le détective terrible, put the talkcard away, looked over at the plinth in the center of the plaza. It was old, older than most of the things here in the center of the C.L. A child was sitting on it earlier, until a security man came from – where? Behind a bush? - and dragged him of by his ear. Now somebody had left an empty cup there, where it was being explored by a bird. He could still, however, make out the inscription.

“To all those who once passed through.
To all those who built what once was.
To all those who still stand atop our shoulders.”

He rubbed at his nose a little and headed for the magic shop down the path, where Little Lyons met Dreamworld. Where the avenue split, an old green sign was rusted and curled around, which would take the strength of too many not to be noticed. Someone had hung a fresh map sleeve on the knotted steel with something approaching irony, which was in short supply here. He slipped a map free and into his pocket, next to what he believed was the only firearm on the grounds.

Who Would Have Thought That a Girl Like Me Would Double as a Superstar? - By Quentin Isis and Justin S. Crisp

2008-08-21T23:49:00.003+09:00

In the glowing lozenge of blue were inscribed the words, “Singing with the Stars”. The invisible consciousness of the camera, soulless, nameless, all-knowing, benevolent, pulled back, as if with purpose both mystical and specific. Two human figures emerged from a background of coloured squares, like the environment of a neon planet. The arm of one of these figures was around the shoulder of the other, and between them was apparent an uncommon camaraderie, as if they were intoxicated without ingesting anything more than the colours of the lights around them, hyperactive with the fizz of pink, yellow, harlequin, cyan.

“Well, there you have it America.” It was a voice accustomed to addressing America, from one who knew what it meant to live by the microphone. “Tonight we saw Ethan Williams sing his heart out with Shakira!”

Here he elbowed Ethan teasingly. Ethan, wordless, grinned. It was true. He had sung his heart out, and now, it was almost as if his heart had been dribbled down the front of his clothes like food down a baby’s bib, but he was happy, as happy as a baby. He could hear laughter, like a thousand rising helium balloons.

“…and win his own recording contract,” concluded the host of the show. “Give him a hand.”

The collective hand was forthcoming, and in its shattering thunder, Ethan was lifted up. He had come directly, at that time of youth when hairstyles are at their most vulnerable and most precious, like the full bloom of cherry blossoms before they scatter, into the land of dreams, by what, it seemed to him, was the only route possible – the direct route, without the detour of disappointment in which so many lost their entire lives. For the detour of disappointment was a permanent detour. Ethan was a little giddy as if realising for the first time that things might have been different. He might not have made it. But he had. He had sung his heart out. With Shakira.

“Congratulations, Ethan!”

The giddy dream was formalised as Brian, the host of the microphone and beige jacket, shook Ethan’s hand.

“I’ll see you after the show.” And here the words that Ethan had heard Brian speak before to others, took on special significance, spoken, as they were, almost in an undertone, an aside not to the audience, but to the insider that Ethan had become.

In anticipation of “after the show”, Ethan made his exit. Before him was the real show, of his own life, behind him was the world that wished it could come with him.

Still with business to clear up, still on camera, Brian continued:

“Which means we have to say goodbye to these two adorable kids who really have a fine career ahead of them…”

The camera, for an instant, allowed all witnessing consciousness to access that limbo in which there stood the two runners-up, a black youth dressed in green, who seemed smarting with the reality in which he had been brought up short, and a thin white girl, eyes downcast, struggling for dignity in failure.

“…as long as it doesn’t involve singing.”

The sentence had been handed down, and it was for life. There was nothing to be done; they had come to the final authority on singing and on future, and there was no higher authority to whom they might appeal. All that was left to them was to be imprisoned in themselves, till the end of their days, without song.

“And I mean it, guys. Not even ‘Happy Birthday’.” Here Brian made a dismissive gesture towards them, as if to brush them away.

The girl was beginning to cry, but there could be no mercy now. The boy, beside her, seemed to know this, but his steadfastness would no more save him than her tears would save her. Both knew that they must turn and go, as Ethan before them had gone; unlike Ethan, however, they would go not into some greater show that was their own life, but only into their own lives, a show to no one, not even themselves. They would go, and be gone forever, and yet, for themselves, they would forever, in the dolour that comes when dread’s promise is fulfilled, remain.

This was their exit.

But Brian swung immediately back to the camera with a pointing forefinger, as used to such decisions as some arbiter of souls, necessarily consigning the dead to heaven or to hell. Was there somewhere, in the very speed of his swing, a suggestion that he knew of the weight of the hammer he let fall in judgement, knew, and thought it hypocritical to excuse himself, and kept close always to the dignity of mere role, the dignity of consistent vulgarity, making appeals to no one?

“Next week on Singing with the Stars, three new hopefuls…”

Yes, next week, always new hopefuls. Next week.

“…get their shot at a record deal… and a chance to sing with this teen pop SENSATION!”

In the weird hinterland of coloured squares from which Brian and Ethan had emerged, a silhouette was thrown upon the semi-opacity of a screen. One arm of the silhouette was upraised heroically, and the other held a microphone to the shadow that was a head.

“Who is she?”

The silhouette itself seemed to ask the question, as if it were the question mark at the heart of all humanity, ready to be answered in a moment.

Brian raised his eyebrow with a narrator’s sense of drama, seeming to know that the narrator is the true hero – a hero in his very knowing. He made a gesture of speed, dynamism and introduction towards the screen, which was a door, and the door began to rise as a voice also rose, a voice like that of a hundred valkyries about to storm the hearts of humankind with a joy so thunderous it bordered upon terror. Revealed, the question mark became its own answer. Its clear, blue eyes were open, and its voice at last spoke:

“Me! Hannah Montana!”

No emphasis, no art was needed now to elevate the one who had appeared, the one who had called herself, ‘Hannah Montana’. Her presence was lightning itself, slicing through the hearts of all who witnessed. The lightning strode forward, as lightning strides, and took her place next to Brian.

“See y’all next week! And your reality will be like a hopped-up hog at a party.”

Something in this avatar of electricity seemed to leap always into the exhilaration of inspiration, so that she chose words at once simple and elusive, puzzling and understood. Her words served to remind those who heard that they possessed faculties of understanding that were beyond their understanding, and illuminated the far skies of their souls, so that, even if they tried not to, they could not help but understand.

And then the lightning was dancing, with Brian dancing at her side, dancing as if he had been struck by lightning, and was frazzled. Before long he was nudging Hannah Montana rhythmically from the centre of the stage with his posterior, the teasing spirit of this rhythm the same he had used in elbowing Ethan moments before.

HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM

No one knew. No one seemed to realise, but suddenly two capital letters, H and M, the former pale yellow and the latter pale lavender blue, zoomed out of some corner of nowhere and blotted all from consciousness. Then they were gone.

HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM

Consciousness now occupied an aerial view of a school, where a number of pupils were making their way across the bland, sandy-grey of the playground to the school building. Whether now this was the consciousness of camera or not, perhaps even the consciousness itself could not know. In moments, however, that consciousness became so inconspicuous as to be invisible. There was a school cafeteria, and in this place, thick with individual consciousnesses, the consciousness of panorama was as if drowned out in din.

Two girls entered through the double, open doors, carrying trays holding the food they had chosen – yoghurt, fruit, muesli bars, and other such specimens, which serve to make the experience of eating an embarrassment, as if one were eating hand-me-downs. The girls were Lilly Truscott and Miley Stewart, best of friends, and two of the very few people on Earth who knew the truth of Hannah Montana’s secret identity. How was it possible that an unassuming schoolgirl like Miley (special, it seemed, only in the calm and wise adult eyes of her father, her uncles, and her aunt), and her vulnerable, sidekicky friend with the pink baseball hat, could know such a secret? The answer is easily told, though not so easily believed. Miley Stewart and Hannah Montana were one. The lightning that danced with a mane of gold at night, was by day a gentle breeze that merely shook the heads of the violets in the secret, shady dell of girlhood.

Turning towards the object of her untold adoration so that she seemed to back into the area as she spoke, Lilly expressed herself with a voice full of shuddering excitement.

“I can’t believe you’re going to be the celebrity singer on Singing with the Stars. That makes Hannah Montana just about the coolest person ever.”

As they placed their trays upon a table and slid themselves into the green plastic seats, the other occupants of that table, their movements synchronised as if through long rehearsal, slid out of their seats and swiftly departed. Seeming to catch this infection of synchronised movement from those who had so lately been here, almost sharing the table for a second, both Miley and Lilly raised one arm and then the other, sniffing beneath them diagnostically, then putting palms to their mouths, breathing upon them and again sniffing the deflected breath. Seeming to discover in armpits and in mouths no cause for the sudden exodus, the two friends turned to each other, pointed, and in unison said, “Must be you!”

Then their hands moved towards the food upon their trays.

At this moment the floppy-haired Oliver Oscar Oken (“Triple O” to his friends) came sidling up to the table, a document of some kind in his grasp, and, checking furtively to left and right, addressed the girls in an undertone.

“Guys, bad news. Amber and Ashley’s annual ‘Cool List’ is out again.”

Lilly gave an exasperated huff and snatched the sheets from Oliver’s hands.

“Well, that explains it,” said Miley, lifting her palms up in a shrug of helplessness. Hierarchies, it seems, were always to be enforced, and those who were at their apex would not let life grow into a sweet tangle of flowering weeds. Order would not be forgotten, and blooming heads that had grown too high would be snipped.

“How far down have they put us this year?” asked Lilly, her voice sinking to a querulous whine. She turned the first page.

“Keep going,” Oliver instructed, laconically. “Keep going. Keep—just skip to the last page.”

The expressions on the faces of the girls were masks of disappointment and dismay as they finally located their names.

“Oh, we’re tying for dead last with Dandruff Danny.” Miley’s voice had already taken on the suffering tone of resignation that comes from knowledge of inescapable slavery and hard labour.

By the vending machine, close at hand, a diminutive figure in a blue, short-sleeved shirt, turned, revealing a freckled face with rodent-bright eyes. His hair was dark and shiny with youth, and yet there appeared to be a streak of premature grey along the right side of his scalp. As he turned, his right hand worked incessantly at the back of his skull, as if he were long unconscious in his habit of antagonising a chronic itch. He tottered forward, dazedly and searchingly, a look of unearthly optimism upon his face, amidst the bodies of those to whom he was as the dead walking… and speaking:

“Is someone actually talking to me?”

None but Lilly and Miley seemed to hear. Miley turned her head, and Lilly, as if to caution against laying eyes upon a ghost, gently and repeatedly tapped her on the upper arm. Softly she spoke:

“Look away! Look away!”

“Okay, see you later,” said the owlish Oliver.

“Where are you going?” Miley held out supplicating arms, caught his wrist, brought him back from his escape.

Oliver bent forward as if in conspiracy.

“Look, I finally cracked the top one hundred and… and…” He seemed to take fright at their proximity and stood up straight again, looking around himself. He raised his voice the better to be heard by passers-by. “And there’s no way I’m talking to people from the last page. Stop begging!”

He gestured to Lilly and Miley derisively with his thumb, for his new, oblivious audience. Lilly and Miley recoiled, expressions of disgust upon their faces. Oliver turned to them one last time, his voice lowered again, “I’ll see you after dark.” And with that he was gone.

The disgust on her face curdling into something wry, penetrating, and yet quizzical, Miley spoke again.

“That boy flip-flops more than a catfish in a moon-bouncer.”

Just then, through the open double doors, there entered two girls at the head of a small, mixed-gender gang of pupils. On the left, in a pink top, was Ashley, and on the right, in a blue top, was Amber. The latter, seeing Miley and Lilly at their table, spoke:

“Hey look, everyone, it’s a couple of last-page losers… in their native habitat.”

Her voice was syrup-thick with sarcastic sympathy.

“Ah, so sad,” Ashley took up the same tone, clasping her hands to her chest, “still eating, as if they had a reason to live.”

“Oooh,” came Amber’s mock-sympathy once more.

Ashley being ethnically Asian, and Amber being black, from the perspective of a parallel universe, they might have been regarded, at this school, as members of minorities. But such was not the case in the present universe. The almost preternatural popularity of this pair, and the fear which they commanded throughout the school as a result, had been achieved neither because of minority status nor in the teeth of it. In short, their ethnicity was invisible. Had anyone at the school been asked to guess the ethnicity of either Ashley or Amber, they would have scratched their heads, unable to understand the question. There was, in this sense, something peculiarly noble in their bullying; it signified the irrelevance of race. However, this noble quality was itself puzzling to any who stopped for a moment to examine it, since it relied precisely on what it eliminated. It relied on that parallel universe in which ethnicity was, sadly, relevant.

Lilly and Miley swapped the long-suffering glances of the oppressed. Unable to endure the role of victim any longer, Miley reached over to the Cool List, which still lay upon the table, next to Lilly’s tray.

“Okay, that’s it,” she said, picking up the coloured sheets. “Listen, this list is as bogus as the people who wrote it.”

Miley stood now, with the momentum of her defiance.

“Come on, everyone! Let’s show Amber and Ashley that they can’t tell us who’s cool and who’s not! Let’s rip up these lists, right now!”

And now the same momentum had carried her upwards so that she was standing on her chair. Here on her dizzy perch, she began to tear the sheets of paper into shreds. So intent was she, the pent-up emotions of months and even years of frustration showing upon her face in curious, tic-like expressions, that she did not notice an uncanny thing; the entire room emptied swiftly, with only a ghostly, shuffling stir, as if it had been inhabited by phantoms. This was how confrontation was dealt with here.

“Errr… Miley!” It was Lilly. She tugged at Miley’s skirt.

Still looking down at the scrunched mass of paper, Miley said, “I’m the only one doing it, aren’t I?”

Slowly, she turned to look at the room. Only one other person remained. Sitting at a table in the corner, was the rodent-eyed Dandruff Danny. He raised an arm, and his voice echoed across the room with the same hollow optimism as before.

“I’m with ya, sister!”

He took up the pages of the Cool List from the table at which he sat, and, his face a mask of deformed but heroic effort, growling with the strain of it, he set his fists to the task of tearing them in twain. It was hard to believe that there was not something in this performance intended for comic effect, and yet, if so, then all of Dandruff Danny’s life must have been intended similarly, since there was something in his manner entirely consistent with his behaviour at all other times. Still, the incredible fact remained that, try as he might, he was unable to tear that slender list of perhaps a dozen sheets.

In a shrug of amazement, Miley turned to Lilly.

“How is he not below us?”

She threw the shreds of her own list on the table. Lilly’s face took on an expression of miserable resignation, as it sank to rest upon her hand.

It was at this moment of despair and ennui that an extraordinary thing happened. Miley had known this thing before. It had come upon her like a dream that swallowed her waking life, but at any time of the day, she might remember it. A certain strain of music might remind her, or the sight of a familiar street corner, coming to which she seems to hear laughter, as if there were unknown souls watching her life and joining in with the wondrous adventure of it. At such times she would remember the great revolving door, as she thought of it. This revolving door, in its spinning, was a kind of whirlwind. It lifted her up to heights that made her heart quiver. And with each flash of the glass in its revolving panes, there were images from her life, either from the past, or the future, she could hardly tell. She fully believed that it was this revolving door that allowed her that astounding double identity which defined her life. She was Miley Stewart, and she was also Hannah Montana. And there was a sense, too, of another, greater identity, encompassing both, perhaps an identity that was the axis on which the door revolved.

As the shreds of paper fell on the surface of the table beneath Lilly’s sickened eyes, Miley felt that spinning come again. She felt thin, and faint, and nauseas, but at the same time, was stirred by the intimation of something wonderful. She could hear a familiar song, and familiar, thrilling images seemed blowing her way on some god-wind. Yes, it was the revolving door. She remembered clearly now. This was the centre of it all. It had happened before, and it would happen again. She wondered if, this time, when she was shunted out of the spinning and back into some single moment of her life, she would keep a firm grasp on the memory of the door. She must try to remember. Must try. But it didn’t matter. Didn’t matter. Now, all she had to do was surrender to the great, golden, sugary fountain of the upsurging song. She could see lights. She could hear drums. The drums were a joyous concussion, and the lights dazzled to blindness, but now she could read a name that they spelt: “Hannah Montana”.

She was there, in front of those lights, upon some phantasmagorical stage. Full of an unearthly confidence, striding forward in pale denim jeans, pumping the air downwards with arms encased in the black sleeves of a tight jacket, she smiled a bursting smile to remember the song that made the doors revolve:

Come on!

You get the limo out front.
Hottest styles! Every shoe! Every colour!
Yeah, when you’re famous it can be kinda fun.
It’s really you, but no one ever discovers.

Who would have thought that a girl like me would double as a superstar?

You get the best of both worlds.
Chillin’ out, take it slow.
Then you rock out the show.
You get the best of both worlds.

Mix it all together and you know that it’s the best of both worlds.

While these words whirled around her, she felt herself kaleidoscoped with the flurry of images in a Montana montage. There was Lilly, her smiling face emerging from a cake in which it had just been buried. There was Oliver, dancing wildly, and her brother Jackson. An unknown hand slapped her upon the forehead, and she made a stunned face. She was coughing, pleadingly, with unconvincing spots of illness upon her cheeks. She was high-fiving with friends. Her father took sliding dance steps across the golden sands of a beach in comfortable jogging clothes. Someone was giving her a piggyback. Someone else threw flowers at her through the window of the limousine in which she rode. And she was twirling, twirling, the skirt of Miley transforming itself into the jeans of Hannah Montana. And she was singing to thousands of upraised hands.

Names came to her, too. Strange names, with the flavour of dream about them: Emily Osment. Mitchel Musso. Jason Earles. Billy Ray Cyrus.

Finally, full up with the bubbling secret of it all, she put her finger to her lips as if jokingly to hush that glory that never could be hushed, though it escaped the notice of all those it enfolded in its tender, golden embrace. Weak with the joy of it, she let some bubbles of laughter escape her, and stumbled away drunkenly. Stumbled away…

HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM

Consciousness lingered awhile outside the school entrance, timelessly.

HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM*HM

What had happened? Miley found herself outside the cafeteria talking persuadingly to Lilly.

“So maybe some people care about the list, but there are plenty of other decent people strong enough to think for themselves. And those are the people I want for my friends anyways… Like Sarah!” And she gestured towards a rather slight girl putting something in her locker nearby.

Miley and Lilly instinctively rushed over to her.

“Hey Sarah!” said Miley, standing tall with the brightness of her salutations.

Bespectacled Sarah turned. She was a rosy-cheeked girl with long, wavy hair, and an overall manner of bookish sensitivity.

“Oh, er, hi guys.”

For some reason she seemed uncomfortable, and it was not simply the habitual self-consciousness that, torturing Sarah, so grew to torture her more, though her friends silently loved her for this tender self-torture. No, there was a different kind of unease here – an unease that had about it a tinge of shame that made the usual sadness an almost tearful thing.

“Listen, Miley, I’m really sorry, but I can’t be your lab partner.”

Her hands were gesturing with an excess of awkwardness.

“Today after school,” she continued, “I have to read to the blind, er, serve punch at the blood drive, and… hose down cages at the animal shelter.”

She suddenly made as if to escape, but Miley slid across the slippery floor in time and blocked her way, Lilly cutting off the rear escape in the same manner.

“Wait a minute,” said Miley, her arms folded in obvious suspicion, “you read to the blind yesterday.”

“I… er… took an extra shift.”

And once again she tried to slip away, and once again Miley and Lilly blocked her.

With the same, cross-armed scepticism, Miley spoke again:

“Extra shift, my Aunt Petunia! You’re just bailing on me because I’m last on Amber and Ashley’s list, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not,” said Sarah, pleadingly. Suddenly she seemed to catch sight of something that alarmed her. “Oh no, here comes Amber! Sorry,” her tone now that of pity, “I’m charitable, not stupid!” And now her tone brightened into shrill superficiality: “Okay, bye!” And she fled.

Lilly looked after her in amazement, and turned to Miley.

“Great! Even Saint Sarah’s freezing us out.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Justin Isis - Cockblocked By H.P. Lovecraft

2008-08-15T18:21:00.005+09:00

Look, Philip! It's Jeon Ji-Hyun and Kim Hee Sun! Let's try to impress them with our abstruse mathematical knowledge!

...?

Do you guys have Nobel Prizes? Or the Fields Medal?

Uhhh

Well, not yet, but

We've written a number of papers on topology.

And we played a significant role in the 1950's British poetry scene known as "The Movement."

"The Movement"? I just had a "Movement" a few hours ago. But then I flushed the toilet!

AHAHAHAHAHA

H.P. Lovecraft, you're making my pussy wet.

Come on girls, let's go look at historical buildings in the Providence area.

You had me at "Come."

Damn that H.P. Lovecraft.

Damn him to HELL.

I bet he can't even factor quadratic equations without recourse to a digital calculator!

Justin Isis - Shortest Horror Fiction of All Time

2008-08-14T16:49:00.001+09:00

Justin Isis - Residual Bourgeois Manners Were the Only Thing That Saved Me From Total Ruin

2008-08-11T15:14:00.003+09:00

It was raining that morning, and still very dark. When the boy reached the streetcar café he had almost finished his route and he went in for a cup of coffee. The place was an all-night café owned by a bitter and stingy man called Wong. After the raw, empty street, the café seemed friendly and bright: along the counter there were a couple of actors, three spinners from the cotton mill, and in a corner a man who sat hunched over with his nose and half his face down in a beer mug. The boy wore a helmet such as aviators wear. When he went into the café he unbuckled the chin strap and raised the right flap up over his pink little ear; often as he drank his coffee someone would speak to him in a friendly way. But this morning Wong did not look into his face and none of the men were talking. He paid and was leaving the café when a voice called out to him:

"Son! Hey Son!"

He turned back and the man in the corner was crooking his finger and nodding to him. He had brought his face out of the beer mug and he seemed suddenly very happy. The man was long and pale, with a big nose and faded black hair.

"Hey Son!"

The boy went toward him. He was an undersized boy of about twelve, with one shoulder drawn higher than the other because of the weight of the paper sack. His face was shallow, freckled, and his eyes were round child eyes.

"Yeah Mister?"

The man laid one hand on the paper boy's shoulders, then grasped the boy's chin and turned his face slowly from one side to the other. The boy shrank back uneasily.

"Say! What's the big idea?"

The boy's voice was shrill; inside the café it was suddenly very quiet.

The man said slowly: "I can't stop thinking about vaginas."

All along the counter the men laughed. The boy, who had scowled and sidled away, did not know what to do. He looked over the counter at Wong, and Wong watched him with a weary, brittle jeer. The boy tried to laugh also. But the man was serious and sad.

"I did not mean to tease you, Son," he said. "Sit down and have a beer with me. There is something I have to explain."

Cautiously, out of the corner of his eye, the paper boy questioned the men along the counter to see what he should do. But they had gone back to their beer or their breakfast and did not notice him. Wong put a cup of coffee on the counter and a little jug of cream.

"He is a minor," Wong said.

The paper boy slid himself up onto the stool. His ear beneath the upturned flap of the helmet was very small and red. The man was nodding at him soberly. "It is important," he said. Then he reached in his hip pocket and brought out something which he held up in the palm of his hand for the boy to see.

"Look very carefully," he said.

The boy stared, but there was nothing to look at very carefully. The man held in his big, grimy palm a photograph. It was a desert landscape, and in the air, suspended by itself, was a soft pink vulva, its labial lips emitting a steady radiance.

"See?" the man asked.

The boy nodded and the man placed another picture in his palm. The vulva was floating above a beach now, and its glow seemed stronger, causing the picture to look overexposed.

"Got a good look?" He leaned over closer and finally asked: "You ever seen that before?"

The boy sat motionless, staring slantwise at the man. "Not so I know of."

"Very well." The man blew on the photographs and put them back into his pocket. "That was a vulva."

"Your wife's?" the boy asked.

Slowly the man shook his head. He pursed his lips as though about to whistle and answered in a long-drawn way: "Nuuu -" he said. "I will explain."

The beer on the counter before the man was in a large brown mug. He did not pick it up to drink. Instead he bent down and, putting his face over the rim, he rested there for a moment. Then with both hands he tilted the mug and sipped.

"Some night you'll go to sleep with your big nose in a mug and drown," said Wong. "Prominent transient drowns in beer. That would be a nice death."

The paper boy tried to signal to Wong. While the man was not looking he screwed up his face and worked his mouth to question soundlessly: "Drunk?" But Wong only raised his eyebrows and turned away to put some pink strips of bacon on the grill.

The man pushed the mug away from him, straightened himself, and folded his loose crooked hands on the counter. His face was sad as he looked at the paper boy. He did not blink, but from time to time the lids closed down with delicate gravity over his dark brown eyes. It was nearing dawn and the boy shifted the weight of the paper sack.

"I am talking about vaginas," the man said. "With me they are a science."

The boy half slid down from the stool. But the man raised his forefinger, and there was something about him that held the boy and would not let him go away.

"Twelve years ago, I was travelling in outer Mongolia. At that time I was a DJ at one of China's hottest nightclubs, but my life wasn't satisfying. I had everything you're supposed to want: money, women, influence. But it wasn't enough. Spiritually, I was empty. There was a hole, an absence in me, which craved God. Are you listening to me, Son? Without God, we are nothing. But at that time I knew nothing, only that something was wrong. So I retreated to the desert. For days I walked alone, wandering with no destination in mind, hoping that the universe would take care of me. As my supplies dwindled, I faced the sun and prayed to God for enlightenment. When I looked down again, a vulva was floating in the air above me, the same one you saw in the picture, emitting waves of calm. I asked it what was the meaning of my life. And then a voice sounded from within the labia. 'All time and space is slowly moving towards the Absolute,' the vulva told me, 'In the name of thrice-great Hermes, I proclaim the Aquarian Age...'"

The man paused.

"There is no time, every instant is proof of divinity. We are all parts of God - capillaries, perhaps. I realized that was what the vulva was trying to tell me."

He tightened his blurred, rambling voice and said:

"I took care of that vulva. I loved it. Yes...I loved it. I thought also that it loved me. It had all home comforts and luxuries. It never crept into my brain that it was not satisfied. But do you know what happened?"

"Mgneeow!" said Wong.

The man did not take his eyes from the boy's face. "The vulva disappeared. I came in one night and the house was empty and it was gone. It left me."

"With a fellow?" the boy asked.

Gently the man placed his palm down on the counter. "Why naturally, Son. A vulva does not vanish like that alone."

The café was quiet, the soft rain black and endless in the street outside. Wong pressed down the frying bacon with the prongs of his long fork. "So you have been chasing the vulva for eleven years. You frazzled old rascal!"

For the first time the man glanced at Wong. "Please don't be vulgar. Besides, I was not speaking to you." He turned back to the boy and said in a trusting and secretive undertone: "Let's not pay any attention to him. O.K.?"

The paper boy nodded doubtfully.

"It was like this," the man continued. "I am a person who feels many things. All my life one thing after another has impressed me. Moonlight. Sausages. The leg of a pretty girl. One thing after another. But the point is that when I had enjoyed anything there was a peculiar sensation as though it was laying around loose in me. Nothing seemed to finish itself up or fit in with the other things. Women? I had my portion of them. The same. Afterwards laying around loose in me. I was a man who had never loved."

Very slowly he closed his eyelids, and the gesture was like a curtain drawn at the end of a scene in a play. When he spoke again his voice was excited and the words came fast - the lobes of his large, loose ears seemed to tremble.

"Then I found the vulva. And you know what it was like? I just can't tell you. All I had ever felt was gathered together around this vulva. Nothing lay around loose in me any more but was finished up by it, by the vaginal canal."

The man stopped suddenly and stroked his long nose. His voice sank down to a steady and reproachful under-tone: "I'm not explaining this right. What happened was this. There were these beautiful feelings and loose little pleasures inside me. And this vagina was something like an assembly line for my soul. I run these little pieces of myself through it and I come out complete. Now do you follow me?"

"Did you try to make it come back?"

The man did not seem to hear. "Under the circumstances you can imagine how I felt when it left me."

Wong took the bacon from the grill and folded two strips of it between a bun. He had a gray face with a pinched nose saddled by faint blue shadows. One of the mill workers signaled for more coffee and Wong poured it. He did not give refills on coffee free. The spinner ate breakfast there every morning, but the better Wong knew his customers the stingier he treated them. He nibbled his own bun as though he grudged it to himself.

"And you never got hold of it again?"

The boy did not know what to think of the man, and his child's face was uncertain with mingled curiosity and doubt. He was new on the paper route; it was still strange to him to be out in the town in the black, queer early morning.

"Yes," the man said. "I took a number of steps to get it back. I went around trying to locate it. I went back to outer Mongolia. I went to every province it had ever mentioned to me, and I hunted down every man it had formerly been connected with. Sichuan, Shanxi, Hunan, Gansu, Fujian.. .. For the better part of two years I chased around the country trying to lay hold of it."

"But the vulva had vanished from the face of the earth!" said Wong.

"Don't listen to him," the man said confidentially. "And also just forget those two years. They are not important. What matters is that around the third year a curious thing begun to happen to me."

"What?" the boy asked.

The man leaned down and tilted his mug to take a sip of beer. But as he hovered over the mug his nostrils fluttered slightly; he sniffed the staleness of the beer and did not drink. "Love is a curious thing to begin with. At first I thought only of getting the vulva back. It was a kind of mania. But then as time went on I tried to remember it. But do you know what happened?"

"No," the boy said.

"When I laid myself down on a bed and tried to think about the vulva, my mind became a blank. I couldn't see it. I would take out its pictures and look. No good. Nothing doing. A blank. Can you imagine it?"

"Say Mac!" Wong called down the counter. "Can you imagine this bozo's mind a blank!"

Slowly, as though fanning away flies, the man waved his hand. His brown eyes were concentrated and fixed on the shallow little face of the paper boy.

"But a sudden piece of glass on a sidewalk. Or a nickel tune in a music box. A shadow on a wall at night. And I would remember. It might happen in a street and I would cry or bang my head against a lamppost. You follow me?"

"A piece of glass . . ." the boy said.

"Anything. I would walk around and I had no power of how and when to remember the vulva. You think you can put up a kind of shield. But remembering don't come to a man face forward - it corners around sideways. I was at the mercy of everything I saw and heard. Suddenly instead of me combing the countryside to find it, it begun to chase me around in my very soul. The vulva begun chasing me mind you! And in my soul."

The boy asked finally: "What part of the country were you in then?"

"Shanxi," the man groaned. "I was a sick mortal. It was like smallpox. I confess, Son, that I boozed. I fornicated. I committed any sin that suddenly appealed to me. I am loath to confess it but I will do so. When I recall that period it is all curdled in my mind, it was so terrible."

The man leaned his head down and tapped his forehead on the counter. For a few seconds he stayed bowed over in this position, his hands with their long warped fingers held palm to palm in an attitude of prayer. Then the man straightened himself; he was smiling and suddenly his face was bright and tremulous and old.

"It was in the fifth year that it happened," he said. "And with it I started my science."

Wong's mouth jerked with a pale, quick grin. "Well none of we boys are getting any younger," he said. Then with sudden anger he balled up a dishcloth he was holding and threw it down hard on the floor. "You draggletailed old Romeo!"

"What happened?" the boy asked.

The old man's voice was high and clear: "Peace," he answered.

"Huh?"

"It is hard to explain scientifically, Son," he said. "I guess the logical explanation is that I had chased the vulva for so long that finally I just lay down and quit. Peace. A queer and beautiful blankness. It was spring in Sichuan and the rain came every afternoon. All evening I just stayed there on my bed in the dark. And that is how the science come to me."

The windows in the streetcar were pale blue with light. The two actors paid for their beers and opened the door - one of the actors combed his hair and wiped off his muddy puttees before they went outside. The three mill workers bent silently over their breakfasts. Wong's clock was ticking on the wall.

"It is this. And listen carefully. I meditated on love and reasoned it out. I realized what is wrong with us. Men fall in love for the first time. And what do they fall in love with?"

The boy's soft mouth was partly open and he did not answer.

"Vaginas," the old man said. "Without science, with nothing to go by, they undertake the most dangerous and sacred experience in God's earth. They can't stop thinking about vaginas. Is that correct, Son?"

"Yeah," the boy said faintly.

"They start at the wrong end of love. They begin at the climax. Can you wonder it is so miserable? Do you know how men should love?"

The old man reached over and grasped the boy by the collar of his leather jacket. He gave him a gentle little shake and his brown eyes gazed down unblinking and grave.

"Son, do you know how love should be begun?"

The boy sat small and listening and still. Slowly he shook his head. The old man leaned closer and whispered:

"Vaginas. Vaginas. Vaginas."

It was still raining outside in the street: a mild, gray, endless rain. The mill whistle blew for the six o'clock shift and the three spinners paid and went away. There was no one in the café but Wong, the old man, and the little paper boy.

"The weather was like this in Sichuan," he said. "At the time my science was begun. I meditated and I started very cautious. I would pick up something from the street and take it home with me. I bought a foam rubber vagina and I concentrated on the foam rubber vagina and I loved it. I graduated from one thing to another. Day by day I was getting this technique. On the road from Sichuan to Fujian-"

"Aw shut up!" screamed Wong suddenly. "Shut up! Shut up!"

The old man still held the collar of the boy's jacket; he was trembling and his face was earnest and bright and wild. "For six years now I have gone around by myself and built up my science. And now I am a master. Son. I can't stop thinking about vaginas. No longer do I have to think about it even. I see a street full of people and a beautiful light comes in me. I watch a bird in the sky. Or I meet a traveler on the road. Everything, Son. And anybody. Do you realize what a science like mine can mean?"

The boy held himself stiffly, his hands curled tight around the counter edge. Finally he asked: "Did you ever really find that vulva?"

"What? What say, Son?"

"I mean," the boy asked timidly. "Did you make your peace with God?"

The old man loosened his grasp on the boy's collar. He turned away and for the first time his brown eyes had a vague and scattered look. He lifted the mug from the counter, drank down the yellow beer. His head was shaking slowly from side to side. Then finally he answered: "No, Son. You see that is the last step in my science. I go cautious. And I am not quite ready yet."

"Well!" said Wong. "Well well well!"

The old man stood in the open doorway. "Remember," he said. Framed there in the gray damp light of the early morning he looked shrunken and seedy and frail. But his smile was bright. "Remember the vulva," he said with a last nod. And the door closed quietly behind him.

The boy did not speak for a long time. He pulled down the bangs on his forehead and slid his grimy little forefinger around the rim of his empty cup. Then without looking at Wong he finally asked:

"Was he drunk?"

"No," said Wong shortly.

The boy raised his clear voice higher. "Then was he a dope fiend?"

"No."

The boy looked up at Wong, and his flat little face was desperate, his voice urgent and shrill. "Was he crazy? Do you think he was a lunatic?" The paper boy's voice dropped suddenly with doubt. "Wong? Or not?"

But Wong would not answer him. Wong had run a night café for fourteen years, and he held himself to be a critic of craziness. There were the town characters and also the transients who roamed in from the night. He knew the manias of all of them. But he did not want to satisfy the questions of the waiting child. He tightened his pale face and was silent.

Scramble City (Part I)

2008-08-09T10:43:00.003+09:00

Chomu and Patchwork Earth have been friends since the site's inception, so I'm grateful to caretakers Justin Isis and Quentin S. Crisp for not only allowing me to contribute from time to rare time, but also for sponsoring this little project - "Scramble City" will be a novella simulcast at both websites, This today is the first three segments of the novella, with more to follow at a likely irregular schedule.

------------------

Scramble City
A Mash'Em Up

I.

The usual spot, beneath the passing 'rail. The setting sun cast the spires in fading gold. Rocky kicked aside an old packing crate, a translucent garbage bag. The tape around his forearms was shredded, hung in loose ribbons. Beneath one foot, an octet of failed Polaroids; purplish and bubbled. Beneath a cracked and tar-papered skateboard, he found it: the familiar weight, the curve of the chamber, the key with its chain wound about the trigger guard like a rosary. The monorail roared above, eclipsing the whole alley.

II.

The story is known to most: once, there was a great wolf, a fierce and brave hunter, who fell in love with the sun. But wolves cannot court the sun, for they are all promised to the moon, pay tribute in song every time the moon waxes. And indeed, this wolf bore over one ear a white patch of fur in the shape of a crescent moon, signaling his betrothal. Wolves are creatures of the shadows, and disappear as the sun rises. The warmth of the sun was saved for the children of Bastet, who could curl in slices of the sun that fell upon the ground and purr to their heart's content. Such a love should never be, and yet it was so.

This wolf was cunning, as all wolves are, and so he hatched a plan to stay tethered to his love for all his life. He went to the Forger, a dirty man who was the source of all the world's watered steel, and weapons of great power. This wolf entreated the Forger to make a chain that could not be broken, that he could chain himself to the sun.

The Forger was cunning, though, as well, and even the fangs of a wolf paled before the ferocity of the weapons of man, and so he who formed them of the earth. What use have I for your love, he sneered, and taunted the wolf with figures in the coin of the realm – for wolves had no use for money. And so the wolf offered his song in trade instead, for he'd have no cause to serenade the moon anon. The Forger accepted this boon, and he got to work.

It was dangerous work indeed, for to make a chain that would stand the heat of the sun itself, it would have to be struck against the Anvil of Dawn, which existed only at the border of the sun's and the moon's domains.

And so it was, that now Rocky was dressed in the leather breeches of The Forger; with children's delight in his every snarl, as he pulled the lever that sent their carriages through the doors into the Anvil of Dawn. There was a squeal from a little girl, quickly stifled by her mother, as the doors closed in preparation for the next group. Another carriage rolled into place, as a pair of lovers disembarked. The summer heat was soaked into every ground-laid brick, and the light splayed across the labyrinth of metal cordons. At the far end of the line, a dancing performer in a thick felt tanooki suit looked woozy.

The weapon was tucked into his waistband, the key dancing awkwardly against his member.

He helped strap in a pair of twins, who wrestling over a one tangle of cotton candy between them, and when he turned back to regard the crowd, he saw a figure slumped against a tree. The sun was in Rocky's eyes, and he couldn't be sure until the figure turned slightly and he saw that it was indeed a man with his arm in a sling; a man who was now regarding a black squirrel who'd come down the tree to beg for popcorn scraps.

The man was waiting for something, and Rocky closed his eyes, twitched his lips a bit, and then took an unscheduled break.

III.

Another day passed, and Rocky was passing through Little Lyons, in the hopes of seeing Naomi stroll through the Promise Garden which lay beyond its borders. Each storefront in Little Lyons was connected from the inside, with the varied buildings displayed on the exterior as a sort of façade, and the entrances more like turnstiles. Everything was wooden, and that thick, browned wood at that. The displays and shelving looked hewn from ancient, impressive furniture. A cashier in Baroque stylings was ringing up a brace of plastic missiles and an appliqué t-shirt.

“Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings?” A man was beside him, flipping through a book. Rocky started, but this was a man that he had never met before. “But who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?”

“I don't understand.” He was allowed to speak, within the city, unlike the tanooki or the kappa, but this was as much a weakness as a strength. Rocky tended not to speak much at all, if he could avoid it. The man smoothed out his scarf, which bore the repeated emblem of Britannia, and smiled.

“I've heard it said that one who knows nothing can understand nothing. Which I suppose is a poetic way of saying 'if you don't know, don't ask.' Personally, I always encourage the asking of questions.”

“Okay, sure.” His hands were sweating. “Did you want an autograph or something, then?”

“So quick to sign your name! What sort of devil are you, pray tell?”

There was a shriek, and they both turned. A young babe was bawling into her mother's shoulder, shaking her head over and over. The woman's shirt was changing color. “Sorry! She's just a little... 'You' were very scary in your movie.”

“Right. I'll just be heading on.” Before the other man could address him further, Rocky was out a back exit, which (owing to the ambiance of the store's thematic conceit) was perhaps the only exit to backstage which was labeled “employees only.”

There was a snake's width of space between the borders of the Capitalized Lands, and he slipped through that space until he felt he'd gotten sufficient distance, and then realized that he was holding the book that the man had been reading. He placed it under his arm. He'd be sent to the White Room if they believed him a thief.

He'd missed his chance to see Naomi. He tried to picture the folds of her crinoline dress, tried to calm down. But he'd been expected.

“You've been avoiding me.” The man in the sling was waiting there. His undamaged arm was flexing around a tourniquet. The man didn't look up, but they knew each other's faces well enough by now.

“What do you want, Nick?”

Nick just shook his head, held open his palm. A trio of chalky pills lay flat in his hand. At least one of them bore a familiar sprite. “You using?”

“Naw. Naw, I'm clean.” Nick shrugged, popped all three of the one-ups into his mouth, mumbled “for the blood,” and then fished out the leather case with the syringe. For a junkie, Nick was a well-supplied and orderly sort. It begged the sort of questions that Rocky did not want to answer.

“They can see us,” he hissed, and grabbed Nick's arm – the needle-target, not the broken one – and hauled him up to his feet. “You can't do this here.”

“What happened to you, Rocky?” Nick lolled his head. “Don't you remember who you are?”

The snake's width was obscured from the Lands beyond with fencework, tall hedges, trees, pitch tarp, and whatever else would obscure the infrastructure. The design, however, was such that there were many viewing ports available, only visible from the interior. Through one of these, now, Rocky saw a figure that could only be a lawman, far out of his jurisdiction if he was patrolling the Capitalized Lands. He was searching for something, or someone. Rocky looked at Nick, who wasn't noticing a lot – the tube of the syringe bounced against his forearm from where it was stuck.

When Rocky closed his eyes this time, it was as if he could hear the thousand thousand eyes of The Architect watching him.

He left Nick behind, walking the length of the borderground as The Forger once had in the legend, the wolf at his heels, approaching the Anvil.

Justin Isis - Philip Larkin Debuts Princess Style™

2008-08-02T15:14:00.003+09:00

I'm tired of writing poems about masturbating.

I wish I'd been born a girl.

They told me only girls could wear pretty clothes.

Why can't I be a fucking princess too?

I want to wear Jesus Diamante clothes and stand outside a hostess bar.

I'd have to give up my investigations into topological vector spaces, but that's okay.

Philip, want to do a photoshoot with me?

OH GOD YES

TSUU-CHAN, YOU'RE THE GREATEST!

Philip, what the fuck are you doing!

Get your ass back to the research center and finish your paper on Cauchy-Riemann equations.

Can't I do my photoshoot first?

NO

Dammit, Kingsley

I'm sick of you pressuring me to finish my research.

No one cares about the Fields Medal, only the Nobel Prize. And there is no Nobel Prize for mathematics.

That's because Alfred Nobel was a wanker who couldn't INTEGRATE.

...?

Meditation II: Oneironaut, by Quentin S. Crisp

2008-07-31T20:07:00.002+09:00

Meditation II: Oneironaut

O, children of a future age,
Reading this bewildered page,
Know that in a former time,
Dream, sweet dream, was deemed a lie.

But children of the future age, you are not separate; or only so because you know there is no future. And so you sit inside the circle, and I must begin my address across time with the O that cancels time, dialling zero with nothing on the non-existent, telepathic oneirophone. And who is the oneironaut, and who is on the ground, I do not know.

The dreams began in caves - stalactited space capsules. In future, as past, physical travel is obsolete, only the transition of the present moves. I see the cockpit cave where future and past are a single sky of Dreamtime, viewed through a scanner of rock and paint, navigated by serpents and rainbows, steered by song.

There are not two serpents, only one. Watch their writhing closely, and the double image is resolved into single. There is only this rock. There has only ever been this rock. We have not moved an inch. Where can we go? But only close your eyes and a jungle of possibles leaps upon the screen of nothing.

There are no controls upon the console of this rock, but only close your eyes...

The sand is the same in this box, but the patterns change. The colours are continous, but the dream-clouds rearrange themselves with greater ease than mercury, in an endless series of complete transformations, night after night.

I am the oneironaut. There seems to be a problem - a malfunction somewhere. I am aware of distance. I drift in space and since I must breathe, a tube connects me to the base I cannot see. Only through this thin tube, twisting into the distance where it disappears, do I live and breathe. Suddenly, I realise, as any oneironaut must, that this umbilical cord is a serpent.

It writhes, and sinks its fangs into my stomach, injecting the necessary venom. Without this poison there is nowhere to go. The scales of the serpent are a rainbow. They change colours like the pigment of a cuttlefish, flashing a virulent code whose language will be translated in the body of the oneironaut - translated by pain and fever. Now my helmet fills with images of dream. They slide across my visor, like a film upon a screen. I see nothing else. This helmet has become a magic lantern, suffocating me with alien landscapes, other-dimensional skies, pavilions of telepathic conference where invertebrate dignitaries of dream federations recallibrate my concepts and perceptions with wreathes of synaesthetic incense, geometrical dances of universal pandemonium, biological catacombs connecting worlds, fireworks of synchronistic superclusters building to the crashing of a fractal wave, Disney deities promulgating abundant cartoon universes, primogenitors of strange aeons who are mere bacteria in a microcosmic slime culture beneath the dewlaps of primogenitors, which wheels-within-wheels break when the Tao becomes not-Tao into strange aeons curving to vaster cycles that become once more the Tao, from which there crawl and slobber the primogenitors of strange aeons,

At this point the message was interrupted. There is only crackle from the receiver.

The skeleton of the oneironaut, suited, drifts through space, the dreams still playing in flickering colours, an aurora borealis of beyond, across the screen of the visor.

Justin Isis - Kingsley Amis is Tired of Life

2008-07-28T01:07:00.004+09:00

Life under late capitalism offers few pleasures.

I spend my days watching Korean dramas and imagine myself sodomising the leads.

'Lovers in Paris' left me in tears.

I wish Satan existed so I could sell my soul for fifteen minutes of licking Kim Jung-Eun.

I try to apply myself to mathematics, to the investigation of Calabi-Yau spaces.

But the Fields Medal won't get me popular in Korea either.

Justin Isis - I Attain To the Level of Fucking Your Basic Hairdresser

2008-07-16T14:47:00.003+09:00

A: Okay man, right now I'm talking to you, right, but I mean I'm not really saying anything, you know, I'm just trying to make it seem like we're really having a conversation

A: I mean if you just see one guy sitting there alone it's like...but if there's two guys, right, that are talking

A: ...then it's cool because they obviously have some kind of, I guess, point of interest. Right now we're just getting that down. Say something back.

B: Something.

A: Right.

A: It's like, I read this review of 2001, cant remember who wrote it, but the guy was saying how...okay, you know how there's really no big dialogue in the movie?

B: Yeah.

A: Well like, he was saying that most of the time when people are talking in that movie, it's just to show people talking. Like it doesn't move the plot or anything, it's just kind of the idea.

B: Kind of interesting. So the conversations aren't for exposition; they just create a kind of iconic idea of communication.

C: Hey.

C: Are you guys having one of those metaconversations?

A: What?

C: One of those self-referential conversations.

A: Yeah.

A: You know about them?

B: Wait, no.

B: We were talking about 2001. The conversation started off as self-referential like you said, but then it changed.

A: I thought we were just trying to keep it going.

C: So you're saying the conversation evolved.

B: It seemed to be, yes.

B: But then you jumped in and altered the conversation's dynamic. It went from an extrapolation of the original, to use your term, meta-conversation, to a conversation about the nature of the original conversation.

C: Is that a distinction?

B: Well, of course. Before your intervention, the conversation had arguably turned into a legitimate conversation, that is, a verbal exchange of ideas facilitating genuine communication; but then you subverted that possibility by reverting to talking about the nature of the conversation.

A: What's your name?

C: Alyssa

C: Okay, I see your point, but the current conversation has that expression of ideas too. I think it's still developing.

B: We're talking about the conversation, though.

B: It's become self-referential again. Before when we were talking about 2001, that was a legitimate conversation. Right now, we're having a metaconversation.

A: So, have you seen 2001?

C: Uh

C: Your argument's flawed. We're talking now about the conversation you guys were having before I joined in. We're not talking about the current conversation, therefore the current conversation is not a metaconversation.

B: That's because when you joined in you changed its course.

C: So

C: You admit the conversation has evolved after all; it's not the dead end you thought I made it.

B: Um...no.

B: The first conversation didn't end; it was just continued.

C: If that's true, then my presence in the conversation didn't affect its course as a conversation developing from a metaconversation to a regular conversation. If it was a separate conversation, then this conversation isn't a metaconversation because it refers to a previous conversation, not itself. Logically, you've contradicted yourself.

B: So you think, but by discussing whether or not the current conversation is a metaconversation, it's been turned into one by referring to itself.

A: So yeah,

A: I liked the part in 2001 where that computer flipped the fuck out and took everyone out.

A: Alyssa, what are you doing this weekend?

Meditation I: A Cloud in a Teapot, by Quentin S. Crisp

2008-06-22T04:00:00.006+09:00

Meditation I: A Cloud in a Teapot

An aerial view of my teapot - simple china circles bellied over the straight lines of bare floorboards. The blue flowers on the delicate pale-blue background seem blurred by a wash of moving water, like ornamental goldfish. Everything here is hard and intact, crisply focused, as if it could not be any other way, and all the world is reduced to this self-contained minimalism.

The glaze of the teapot gleams. This is the discipline of beauty. The china of the empty pot is cold to the touch, but filled with tea it conducts heat quickly, and when its hot round belly is cupped in the palm of my hand, I could almost believe this was still malleable clay. From the spout there is a suggestion of steam. There is such potential here in this thing so inert and fixed.

This is the main accessory of my ritual when I write. I pinch the knob of the lid between thumb and forefinger, turning it upside down as I remove it to view the contents. There is the swamp water, and drowned beneath, a swirling canopy of green, all of it turning to rising steam. These leaves have been shipped or flown or teleported from one intersection of latitude and longitude to another. They have come to me like a dream comes in the precipitation of sleep, from the evaporation of the sea of unbeing. Pouring hot water onto these leaves, I have brewed up a new cloud containing mountains, forested slopes and streams. When I pour from this pot it will be the curling clouds of the Immortals as seen in ancient scroll paintings that pour from the spout, since within this portalled matrix of bellying circles, every latitude and longitude intersects in infinite steaming potential.

Looking at the spout now, I see the dark brown stains just inside its lip. This is the precious and elegant filth of all culture. This is the stained and wrinkled cheek of the matriarch of a dying tribe. Most of her teeth are gone now, though she still chews the betelnut until her tongue is red. These stains are the superstition and the love which together form the magic keeping the tribe vital and alive. Something is happening now, and the numbers of the tribe are dwindling. She looks out from the treehouse at the mist rising up from the valley, and to the cataract beyond. Where will the spirits of the ancestors go now with no one to honour them in life? A fragile rainbow rises from the falls. The souls are disappearing, one by one, beyond the falls, going into seclusion. Soon only the waterfall will remain. Mist rises, the valley seems to break open.

The name that can be named is not the Eternal Name, and with strange aeons even death may die. O Gaia! O Tao! O Great Cthulhu! The smaller cycle is disrupted, shed like a skin, a shape green and monstrous erupts through the shaking canopy of trees from its sleep - the new shapeless shape of eternity, the ever-mutating Way, the self-transcending forever nameless Name, the root and the mud, the darkness within darkness, the subterrene flow, the gateway and the spawn. A sticky yinyang all tentacled with Tao-slime, beyond Good and Evil.

That probiscidean face!

Now the inside of the spout is revealed in the human experience of time. Time is twisted and turns inside-out. It buckles and chasms, and from out of the chasm comes the cubist rainbow of Dreamtime.

Dreamtime!

The body of the Great Old One, the Tao, is a viscous cloud of green, and the claws are a deluge. Pandemonium foams down the filthy brown spout. I am sitting at a desk in a darkened study, and sheets of paper fill with inky code telegraphed straight from the nightmare of ultimate and infinite blackness in a warning that can save no one. This poetry that purports to uncover the truth of a great doom, can neither confront nor reveal, though the blackness of the ink is the very same blackness as the endless night that swallows all. The message is lost in the vast night of the truth, and the truth is lost in the enfolding meaning of the tiny writing of the message, and there is only an awesome redundancy in this script found in the pitchy void, a redundancy like the scent of a candle snuffed out by a breath of nighted eternity.

The claws of the deluge come. Dreamtime. Pandemonium. The pages are scattered. The last of the tribe. The ancestral spirits gone behind the waterfall.

I pour some more tea in my ritual and uselessly, compulsively, as if enslaved by a telegraph signal from some dreaming darkness too vast to pour through me, I write.

And with strange aeons, even Dao may die. And in Dreamtime, even death may dao.

The Dream Cycle

2008-06-22T03:49:00.006+09:00

In July, 2007, I started, in my Moleskine notebook, a series of what might be described as prose-poems, which I decided to call meditations. To be honest, I wasn't really sure what they should be called as a literary form. I wrote down five titles, and wrote pieces for two of them. Then other parts of life encroached in such a way that I never wrote the other three. In fact, I even had an idea for a sixth piece, whose title I didn't even write down, though I remember it.

I have decided to start posting these pieces here on Chomu in the hope this will encourage me to finish them, and because I also need to give more attention to Chomu.

I have also decided, for now, to call all the pieces, collectively, The Dream Cycle. These are the five titles I wrote in the notebook:

I: A Cloud in a Teapot
II: Oneironaut
III: The Magic of Childhood
IV: Presence
V: The Last Word

The sixth meditation, which I might have been intending to insert at some point, rather than tag on the end, was called, 'The Serpent'.

Michael Peterson - Wild Dogs and Alley Cats

2008-05-28T15:18:00.006+09:00

She stood in a brown room, looking out towards the green terrace across the way. It had an old school Oriental feel, like the veranda of some samurai warlord’s paper manor. The lush greens spilled out over and through the pattern carvings in the fencework. In the glass, Emily Bauhaus could see Darcy’s reflection as she hunted for the can-opener. Darcy seemed to be leaning over that fence towards her with a puzzled but determined expression, only to turn away.

To her: “We should probably talk about it before we get home.”

Darcy’s reply: “I actually think that’s the worst idea ever, but thanks for trying.”

The house didn’t look very lived in, from here. Emily turned, let her sandal squeak on the hardwood. Everything was brown and orange, everything matched. She’d never been in a house where everything in the room matched. The blue skies in the desert print even lined up with the accents in the lighting fixtures at the same height. She sat back down next to the tower of easy listening CDs, watched Miller and Connie shuffle around Darcy’s ankles.

Darcy seemed made for glasses but never wore any. Her skin was dark as stained cherrywood, but paler as it reached her too-slender fingers. A perfectly round head that softened her features, made her look forever amused, even at her most tired; hair in a bun torqued tight with a socket wrench. She wore smart suits, razor-sharp creases in loose trouser legs that gave her angles like a graffiti drawing, that snapped like sails in the wind; wide lapels blooming from beneath her jacket and white vests over unreadable black shirts. She always had an Archie Digest rolled up in her pocket.

Miller was a Pomeranian. Cognac was a Bichon Frisé.

Emily picked at her sandals. The sandals were cute, and apparently the salmon color was in (unintentional), but wearing them all the time was leaving her soles the color of asphalt, even out of the shower. She’d been marked up for the last week, had carried the shadowed soles for a hundred miles. “I just think that if we wait until…”

“Nothing happened, Emily.”

“But…”

“Nothing happened.”

***

There had been a prison outside her window.

She could look up and over the shredded cinema-red fuzz of her cubicle wall through the grimy upper pane of one of the office’s tall windows, and it would be rising like a monolith. It was tall, some twenty stories, and triangular. The dull ecru of parking garages, with thin arrow slits for cell windows, and occasionally to nothing at all, like vents, like the whole building would begin to rotate and gather speed for lift-off. It dominated the window’s view, blotting out the older Brooklyn-style towers that were all fire escapes and crenellations and tiny buttresses.

Outside, it was surrounded by a wide quad that cleaved the intersection leading to her office. It was ringed waist-high with planters, gardens of red and white. The glass entrance way, a dissonant cube, glowed eerie lights from its lobby after dark. A co-worker called it “out of Demolition Man.” From her window, or the window she was closest to, its wall was coming apart. There was a diagonal patch in the wall, a parallelogram of the same concrete, that looked built in. There were fleck holes like it had born a shotgun blast, or a giant moth. And one square stone was dissolving in oddly geometric Tetris shapes, laying bare the copper wire and dry wall beneath so you could almost picture fingers poking through into the air.

Sometimes the window’s blinds tilted just so, blocking each of little cell vents, and the building looked like nothing but a solid wall into nothing and forever.

***

They were rescue dogs, and so they required extra care. Emily watched Darcy flick the needle’s tip. Later, they’d walk them amongst the suburban cicadas.

They’d quit the night before spring break. Spilled out the doors, a riot of two. The bus ride in was slumber party giggles, coming back it was the occasional snap of a turned magazine page, metronome in silence. The sand burnt, mosquitos were everywhere. They exploded against neon beer logos. They never paid for a single drink. Darcy now fulfilling a promise she’d made, pulling pee wipes from a special tube beneath the sink.

“This place is so sterile.” No dust, even on the high top of the china cabinet.

“They’ve got another living area upstairs, Emily.” A long sigh. The knees of those trousers swiffing across the tile and hardwood. She’d been wearing some impractical designer bikini top and redneck cut-offs. “Some people like to have a nice area to entertain, to look nice when they have company.”

She remembered a story she had read or seen or dreamed. The girl lived in a pool with the water drained, rain tap-tapping on the half-drawn tarp. Some bishie rapper catching the sun reflecting off the tile. Cut off from narrative drug, the web of creative souls, the Oneironet; finding again herself, finding her dance. The greatest dance in the world, a dance that could split bones and rain fire. The corporate-owned island, she was a lost princess, and her sister the sister in the pirate’s candy hold, filmed and degraded and forced to lick her way free. The Good Ship Lollipop.

They’d had to sign waivers. She’d signed with the wrong hand, it felt like someone else holding the pen. So drunk, so funny, like watching herself in a movie. The volume way down, the laughter echoing from far away.

***

Crash! of the pins. Music louder than The Kink Factory. In blacklight, everyone’s faces recede, their skulls glow beneath their skin. Cosmic!

“Yeah, we’ve known each other since we were in diapers.” Darcy talking to one of the Karaoke girls. The alley cats. They were lovely in their wide hips, their fearless single-mindedness. This one was already drunk, she was a lifer, had been up to the mic a half-dozen times. Cycling through country-western hits of the eighties. She had no voice, but between the two standing amps her mournful gravitas broke your heart. Two of her men had already stood her up today, and she’d collected another, who kept sniffling his left nostril. The skin of his face was loose, and it looked like an insect was trapped just beneath the bridge, trying to turn around and exit. “We’re moving in together in the next couple weeks. As roommates, I mean, ha ha! No, it’s funny, we just left our crappy jobs, too, so it’s like starting fresh. It’s exciting!”

I leaned against the photo booth, crossed my arms beneath my breasts, watched the leagues watch the kids watch each other. Everything had been moving all week so fast, slingshot particle accelerator momentum like you’re flying, and maybe she was a little fucked up but damn everything was exploding…

She used to check her MySpace on the hour. At a WiFi hotspot in a Texas truck farm, she had a panic attack, shut herself into a bathroom stall and dry heaved, dragged her nails through the crooks of her elbows.

Easing herself into the photo booth. Watching her eyes open and close in the preview window, she was no longer real.

“Oh, my dogs are barking.” Karaoke girl, sitting down, bottles knocking like wind chimes. “So, how’s your spring break been? Did you go wild, get your beads and booze and boys?”

Darcy’s laughter was natural, unforced, unaware, with matching blue accents. “Oh, please! Would you believe it, those guys were actually down there? I mean, what kind of girls…” What kind of living with loving with life and love with yourself? Where are you from, have you done it before, how is it, how was it, good, yeah, you enjoy that, huh, how do you feel, holy shit, do you even know where you are right now, hahaha, Jesus, so good, you’re so hot, you’re so beautiful, you’re so lovely, how much we got left, you were so perfect, how about some more, how about different, how about me and he and I and you and her and them and us and shit they’re falling they’re spinning they’re out out out?

It was supposed to be funny at first. When did it stop being funny? When did she start dancing, splintered free of the world and adrift, tucked into someone else’s corner? When did her straps spin in the air, the covers rise and fall like a tsunami, the dusty light filter in through the blinds on dark curves and a surprising pale, the camera’s lens get so big, the dogs turn on each other, teeth clawing hair, nails on softer bellies, the lasers spinning, bad rock on the video screens, the balls rolling like thunder, everything smelling like wet smoke, the boxes packing, the highways screaming, this bus heading on into the sun with the stained shirts at the bottoms of their bags.

Michael Peterson - Gepetto's Children

2008-05-28T14:51:00.006+09:00

[Excerpted from a novel in progress:]

Somewhere in Georgia, a committee decides to tidy up its charts. Gone are the towns of Roosterville and Hemp; bid farewell to Cloudland, Five Points, and Hickory Flat. A son is heading home after thirty years, a daughter looks for the family she never knew; but these homes are fiction, now. Storybook villages called Box Springs and Aonia, empty fields once named Damascus, named Lost Mountain. Somewhere in time, Hadley is telling Hemingway that he’s made a mistake. Asks him if one cock and bull story is as good as another. Blink and you miss Zetella, you miss Poetry Tulip. Scholars start warring over the Cardenio rumor. One giant becomes a windmill again. There was no room on the map for Po Biddy Crossroads. I’m somewhere in Columbus, looking for you, when we’re in two different Macy’s in the same mall. All these displays look the same and my phone’s bleeding minutes all down my fingers as your voice gets farther and farther away.

Here I am sitting in a dying Ford pickup with you, listening to tapes from before I was born. Listening to Bobby Thomson’s bat connect, tinny through the busted-ass speakers. Sounding more like a dropped pencil. Bandage around my temples, watching you take pictures as I drive. The inside of an office under construction, tiers like a temple; the girder skeletons of an elevated rail station, the inevitable pier system when the waters flush these streets away into nothing.

Mornings in Chicago are thick with fog, like a wet towel down the throat, and we’re looking for sunlight in window reflections and gleaming on the ever-exposed scaffolding. Behind us is Boston, off-road city where students climb through tunnels and large fathers knock down buildings like they can’t bear others having toys. Ahead of us is Los Angeles, disintegrating before we can reach it. All our colors are smearing together, graywash speedlines as the truck struggles into second gear and your camera dances from your wrist like a too-full medicine bag.

From your other wrist still clinks! the broken handcuff loop. Me still wishing I was on the other end of the splintered chain. The frost is giving way outside, and the snap of the air plucks at the cords of each guitar lying in our truck bed as we roll on from the red light chapels and holy-blessed wankrooms of Gainesville to the twitchy-moving pens and typewriter racket of Portland.

We left the city then, so soon after I had arrived. We broke free of the city's tangle and emerged amongst the sprawl, miles and miles of big box stores and car dealerships into infinity. Where everything was drive-through and thousands of new cars stood like soldiers at attention. And then there was row after row of self-storage units, stock’n’go carrying cases by Kenner and Hasbro and Mattel. Somewhere Eastward of Eden, my past was locked away inside an identical pod; where the metal starship walls breathed air conditioning fog. My antique British bicycle, your found art installations, the longboxes of comics and milk crates of VHS tapes. Our impermanent record.

Noise walls locked the highway into a straight Hot Wheels track, and we rolled on. The gray panels blurred, the road was a tight rope, a superstring in a dark cosmos, and then it was giving way again, broken fencework falling back before pool and patio neighborhoods, sitcom suburb snout houses with a chicken in every pot. And on past Starter Castles and McMansions, on to where the trees weren’t all fenced by eight by nine curbwork. Out past pork chop lots with electric pylons and cell towers reaching from the ground like fingers.

We’re always in by curfew, looking out at factories looming over cornfields and tract housing; making love quietly, anxiously, then rolling over to watch the sunsets we’ve recorded onto our iPods. Afraid to meet each other’s eyes, confident that nothing exists past these roads, these identical motels and their bolted furniture. Waiting to wake up, always waiting.

Sing a song to Baudrillard, whose maps were the world. Raise a glass to Kafka, or at least to Magritte. There are people writing love letters to Roy Orbison, where they wrap him in clingfilm. A grifter steals Sex.com and flees to Mexico. Japan builds the robot armor it saw run amok in its youth. Disney has a town, Muppets have AIDS and kids are reading “Mary Worth.”

It’s late at night and my arms are outstretched; the tide is coming in and it sounds like your screaming voice.

We remember these days now and forever as the best of them. The pain is romantic, the poverty is ennobling, and the loneliness is spirituality. Everyone is clever and good-looking, every moment is meaningful; we are myths and legends in our own time. We’re entitled to the world and indebted to no one. Our veins pump music and we ever breathe fire. We’re the coming body politic, with all the wisdom our buttons can share.

We are sorcerers and you can never contain us.

We are dying already.

Thomas Ligotti is My Favourite Flavour of Ice-Cream, by Quentin S. Crisp

2008-05-18T06:10:00.003+09:00

She thought she knew why dolls and teddy-bears were always so lonely. For a start, everything was the wrong size. When you made a tea-party for them, the plates were usually too small, and the food was too big. They belonged to all different sizes of space. And when you looked at the daylight on the plates and knives and teapot, you could see that nothing really belonged together at all, and you had to squeeze the dolls and bears very hard indeed to stop them from crying, and that only worked for a little while, because they'd soon get cold and lonely again. But it wasn't just sizes, it was shapes, too, that made them lonely, and especially lines. She was just like the dolls and teddy-bears, really, because when she looked at the lines of everything and how big things swallowed up little things before being swallowed up by other little things that were bigger than them, she knew she didn't belong anywhere, either, and she felt cold and lonely, too.

But at least she had one thing to help her that the poor dolls and teddy-bears didn't have and that's because she was magical, and being magical was a bit like having pets. Maybe they start off wild and want to bite you or run away or they won't eat and they die. But if you train them then they begin to do what you say. And that was just like the lines and shapes and sizes. They scared her first of all, and they still did sometimes, because there were so many of them, but she was teaching them to do tricks now.

There were lots of reasons why she knew she was magical, like the board against the wall in her room. Her dad had put the board there, and sometimes her mum would tell her to stand against the board, and she would take a squeaky black marker with a kind of square snout like a wolfy kind of pig, and she would trace a line all around her. There were four of these black outlines on the board now, all different sizes, and all of them were her, even though she was walking about like this now.

And another reason she knew she was magical was because she was sweet and melty. She found this out mainly after her last birthday when her mum drew the biggest outline around her. She had a cherry ice-pole and it made her lips and fingers red like cherries, or more like blackcurrants. Her mum had given her a special present that was a box. It was all yellow and blue with seahorses jumping over the stars in the sky. It wasn't a very big box, and she wondered what was in it at first. She couldn't find how to open it, and she thought maybe what had happened was that someone had taken the sky and turned it inside out to where it turned into the sea and then made it into a box so that it could keep everything in it forever. And when she asked her mum it turned out she was right. Her mum said that there was the whole universe inside this box, or anyway, it was her universe, and she could do whatever she wanted with it. Then her mum showed her how to open it, by finding the secret place where the sky had been folded over back on itself. And inside she found pencils and paper and felt-tip pens and rulers and rubbers and lots of other things like that, which were all to do with lines and shapes and colours. It was like a zoo that you make and unmake. That's when she really started getting the lines to do tricks and everything. One time when she was doing it after eating her ice-pole, she wanted to rub out part of a line, and the red drips of her ice-pole ran down her fingers and got rubbed into the paper. And then she tried to rub the stains aways by licking her fingers and wiping them on the page. But she only spread the pink-red cloud of smudge, until the whole page was covered with the candy-floss stain of her fingers and the little grey crumbs of rubbed-out line from the pencil on the paper. Then she drew a line on another page and rubbed it out with just the fingers she had licked, and the same thing happened. It was her that was coming off on the page. Even when the ice-pole had gone, red stickiness ran down her arms and her fingers. Then she noticed the ants on the page. She didn't know where they had come from, but they were running up her arm, following the dripping red. Some of them were crawling back down, too, and then down the table-leg and across the floor. Or had they come from somewhere across the floor? She did not notice when she wet herself. She thought it was just a trickle of ants. Or perhaps she was melting again. She sat for a long time, becoming hot and uncomfortable at her drawing table, so that she felt as if she were stuffed with stiff old straw inside like one of her teddies, and she scratched at the stitching that held her together. When she touched her body like this, it was like she was touching a thing like any other thing that had nothing to do with her. But if so, who was it that was touching this thing? This must be the strangest thing in the world, she thought, warm and alive without any head, and touching itself through an invisible me that wasn't it anyway.

And since when she touched her body with her melting hand, and found herself stitched together with ants, she proved, too, that she was the invisible twin of the strangest thing in the world, with a mouth but no face or head, she knew she must be magical.

She quickly became bored of being magical, and for many afternoons in a row watched a number of dirty grey clouds try to rub themselves out in the sky, changing into all different shapes. Everything she drew, and everything in the universe, was like these clouds. They appeared and changed and disappeared, but it made no difference to the sky.

"What's the point of a box with no treasure in it?" she asked her mum at last, but her mother just said that it did have treasure in it, and so she sulked, because her mother always cheated by saying this sort of thing.

Justin Isis - 0% of Indonesians Care That I'm Alive

2008-05-03T20:42:00.003+09:00

Brought up at Dorlcote Mill, Maggie Tulliver worships her brother Tom and is desperate to win the approval of her parents, but her passionate, wayward nature and her fierce intelligence bring her into constant conflict with her family. As she reaches adulthood, the clash between their expectations and her desires is painfully played out as she finds herself torn between her relationships with three very different men: her proud and stubborn brother, a close friend who is also the son of her family's worst enemy, and a charismatic but dangerous suitor. With its poignant portrayal of sibling relationships, The Mill on the Floss is considered George Eliot's most autobiographical novel; it is also one of her most powerful and moving.

Justin Isis - Ranzuki is the Greatest Magazine in the World

2008-04-06T01:03:00.005+09:00

Robot A was at Robot B's birthday party when Robot B's sister took his hand. Robot B had just turned eight but his sister was in high school or college - Robot A didn't know, he had only turned eight himself two months before.

The party was drawing to a close, but Robot A was going to stay the night. Robot A and Robot B were watching television. Then Robot A went to the kitchen to get some juice, where he saw Robot B's sister standing by the sink.

The tray of plastic cups was right next to her. Robot A walked over and reached up, but the tray was too far. His arms weren't long enough to reach it.

Robot B's sister noticed him and pulled the tray over. Robot A took one of the cups and sipped the juice.

"I'm sorry, I didn't see you," Robot B's sister said.

He looked up at her. She was wearing a grey skirt and some kind of white top - he didn't know anything about girls' clothes.

"What was your name?"

"Robot A."

She ran a hand through his hair. He felt the points of her nails brush against his scalp.

"Did you have a good time?" she asked.

Robot A shrugged. The party had been all right.

She reached down and grabbed his hand. Her palm was cold, wet - she'd been doing the dishes.

"Can you help me, Robot A?" she said, smiling. Her voice wavered a little, as if she were singing.

"How?" Robot A asked.

Robot B's sister smiled and led him out of the kitchen. She kept rubbing his head. Her nails felt cold and hard against his skin.

"This way."

Robot A saw Robot B in front of the television. He was gaming. Robot A hoped whatever Robot B's sister wanted would not take long.

She led him into her room. The walls were covered with posters of people he didn't recognize. She closed the door, locked it, then went to her computer and put on some music.

"Do you like this song?" she asked.

Robot A shrugged.

"Do you listen to music a lot?" she asked, and sat on her bed. She motioned Robot A over, and he sat beside her.

"Not really."

Robot B's sister was wearing lipgloss, so that whenever she spoke, her mouth glistened. Her cheeks were slack, her eyes large and empty, like a frog's. Only her nose seemed perfectly formed. It was so small that Robot A imagined it was drawing into itself, trying to escape the rest of her face. He reached out and gently pressed it.

"Honk, honk," she said.

Robot A felt like he was wasting time. He was supposed to be gaming with Robot B. If he was not there, Robot B would become conceited. He didn't know why Robot B's sister was bothering him.

She took his hand and moved it down to her skirt. He could feel the warmth of her legs beneath.

"You said you'd help me, Robot A," she said. Her voice made the same strange waver he had heard before. She was still rubbing the back of his neck. He shivered as her nails brushed against his skin.

She used his hand to pull back her skirt. Underneath, her legs were full and pale. She dragged his hand along their length.

Robot A saw a mosquito land on her leg. She brought her hand away from his neck and swatted it. A bead of dark blood stood out on the white of her thigh.

"Ow!" she said, drawing the syllable out in a low whine. She moved his hand between her legs.

"I hate insects." she said. "Can you keep doing this, Robot A?"

Now she was making his hand rub the space between her legs.

Robot A was not used to this much contact with anyone. All he could relate it to was his parents' infrequent embraces, which still had the barrier of clothes. He had seen his father in the shower once, and remembered the fine coat of hair that covered his body, thickening across his forearms. It was entirely different from the warm smoothness of Robot B's sister's skin.

Robot A heard a strange whistle. He looked up. Robot B's sister was breathing through her teeth, her eyes half-closed. He felt a damp spot on her underwear.

"Just keep doing that," she said. Soon she hooked her thumbs into her underwear and pulled it off. Her skirt momentarily obscured her legs, but then she drew it back.

Robot A looked between her legs and saw a mat of dark black hair. Robot A's father had had that too, but that was where the similarity ended. Below the mat there was nothing, just a triangle of flesh. But then Robot B's sister arched her back and he saw that there was something under the mat - the top of a raw pink slash, the color of the skin under a scab. He could feel horror draining the warmth from him. What had happened to Robot B's sister's penis?

"Are you...okay?" he asked her.

"Huh," she said. "Don't stop."

She took his hand and pressed it to the wound. It was still wet, but not with blood. A whitish grease slickened the flesh and matted hair.

"What happened?" he said, staring down at it.

She seemed finally to have noticed him.

"That's my pussy." she said.

"How did it happen?"

"How did it happen?" she repeated, a high waver in her voice. "Every girl robot has one."

It occurred to him that this was what she needed help with. But Robot B was not a doctor - how was he supposed to help her?

She showed him how to move his fingers. He felt through skin, bone and muscle. Why wasn't she crying out in pain? Even now, as his fingers moved into her, why wasn't she screaming? Her eyes closed, her breaths sharpened; but she only pushed against him harder. Robot A moved his hand away from her.

"I said not to stop."

Robot A ran to the door.

"Robot A!" Robot B's sister called after him. Then she started to laugh a little.

"Please, please come back," she said.

She lay back on the bed, legs spread. He could see her pussy more clearly now. He unlocked the door and ran out into the hall.

He went to the bathroom and washed his hands for fifteen minutes. The room's sterile tiles reassured him, but he found it difficult to leave. What if Robot B's sister was waiting for him outside? And Robot B had to be wondering where he was.

He looked at his hands. They were rubbed raw, but he could not forget how her pussy had felt against his skin. It had been like dipping his hand in a jar of slugs.

Justin Isis - Cantopop Hasn`t Been the Same Since Aaron Kwok Sold Out

2008-01-17T00:00:00.000+09:00

"Herbert! Good God! Is it possible?"

"Yes, my name's Herbert. I think I know your face, too, but I don't remember your name. My memory is very queer."

"Don't you recollect Villiers of Wadham?"

"So it is, so it is. I beg your pardon, Villiers, I didn't think I was begging of an old college friend. Good-night."

"My dear fellow, this haste is unnecessary. My rooms are close by, but we won't go there just yet. Suppose we walk up Shaftesbury Avenue a little way? But how in heaven's name have you come to this pass, Herbert?"

"It's a long story, Villiers, and a strange one too, but you can hear it if you like."

"Come on, then. Take my arm, you don't seem very strong."

The ill-assorted pair moved slowly up Rupert Street; the one in dirty, evil-looking rags, and the other attired in the regulation uniform of a man about town, trim, glossy, and eminently well-to-do. Villiers had emerged from his restaurant after an excellent dinner of many courses, assisted by an ingratiating little flask of Chianti, and, in that frame of mind which was with him almost chronic, had delayed a moment by the door, peering round in the dimly-lighted street in search of those mysterious incidents and persons with which the streets of London teem in every quarter and every hour. Villiers prided himself as a practised explorer of such obscure mazes and byways of London life, and in this unprofitable pursuit he displayed an assiduity which was worthy of more serious employment. Thus he stood by the lamp-post surveying the passers-by with undisguised curiosity, and with that gravity known only to the systematic diner, had just enunciated in his mind the formula:

"London has been called the city of encounters; it is more than that, it is the city of Resurrections," when these reflections were suddenly interrupted by a piteous whine at his elbow, and a deplorable appeal for alms. He looked around in some irritation, and with a sudden shock found himself confronted with the embodied proof of his somewhat stilted fancies. There, close beside him, his face altered and disfigured by poverty and disgrace, his body barely covered by greasy ill-fitting rags, stood his old friend Charles Herbert, who had matriculated on the same day as himself, with whom he had been merry and wise for twelve revolving terms. Different occupations and varying interests had interrupted the friendship, and it was six years since Villiers had seen Herbert; and now he looked upon this wreck of a man with grief and dismay, mingled with a certain inquisitiveness as to what dreary chain of circumstances had dragged him down to such a doleful pass. Villiers felt together with compassion all the relish of the amateur in mysteries, and congratulated himself on his leisurely speculations outside the restaurant.

They walked on in silence for some time, and more than one passer-by stared in astonishment at the unaccustomed spectacle of a well-dressed man with an unmistakable beggar hanging on to his arm, and, observing this, Villiers led the way to an obscure street in Soho. Here he repeated his question.

"How the fuck has it happened, Herbert? I always understood you would succeed to an excellent position in Dorsetshire. Did your old man disinherit you? Surely not?"

"No, Villiers; I came into all the property at my poor father's death; he died a year after I left Oxford. He was a very good father to me, and I mourned his death sincerely enough. But you know what young men are; a few months later I came up to town and went a good deal into society. And by society I mean clubs where I could practice my considerable para-para dance skills. Of course I had excellent introductions, and I managed to enjoy myself very much in a harmless sort of way. I played a little, certainly, but never for heavy stakes, and the contests I entered brought me in money--only a few pounds, you know, but enough to pay for cigars and such petty pleasures. It was in my second season that the tide turned. Of course you have heard of my marriage?"

"No, I never heard anything about it."

"Yes, I married, Villiers. I met a girl, a girl of the most wonderful and most strange beauty, coming out of Atom in Shibuya one night. I cannot tell you her age; I never knew it,but, so far as I can guess, I should think she must have been about nineteen when I made her acquaintance. My friends had come to know her at Florence; she told them she was an orphan, the child of an English father and an Italian mother, and she charmed them as she charmed me. The first time I saw her was on the psychedelic trance floor. I was standing by the door talking to a friend, when suddenly above the hum and babble of conversation I heard a voice which seemed to thrill to my heart. She was singing an Italian song. I was introduced to her that evening, and in three months I married Helen. Villiers, that woman, if I can call her woman, corrupted my soul. You, Villiers, you may think you know life, and London, and what goes on day and night in this dreadful city; for all I can say you may have heard the talk of the vilest, but I tell you you can have no conception of what I know, not in your most fantastic, hideous dreams can you have imaged forth the faintest shadow of what I have heard--and seen. Yes, seen. I have seen the incredible, such horrors that even I myself sometimes stop in the middle of the street and ask whether it is possible for a man to behold such things and live. In a year, Villiers, I was a broken man, in body and soul--in body and soul."

"But your property, Herbert? You had land in Dorset."

"I sold all that shit - everything."

"And the money?"

"She took it all from me. Bitch ruined me, Villiers! Before this I had a 401k plan and a two-car garage. I had a flatscreen plasma television and a comprehensive collection of 60`s J-pop; I mean I was shithoarding 60`s J-vinyl. All of it`s gone, Villiers."

"And then she left you?"

"Yes; she disappeared one night. I don't know where she went, but I am sure if I saw her again it would kill me. The rest of my story is of no interest; sordid misery, that is all. You may think, Villiers, that I have exaggerated and talked for effect; but I have not told you half. I could tell you certain things which would convince you, but you would never know a happy day again. You would pass the rest of your life, as I pass mine, a haunted man, a man who has seen hell."

"Come on Herbert, you gotta tell me more of this shit. I honestly don`t know what the fuck you`re talking about."

"Serious?"

"Yeah, shit, you`re being hell vague."

"I dunno. This shit is inconceivable, unspeakable. I can`t tell you any more."

"Herbert, don`t be a little bitch. Tell the fucking story."

"Okay. The night of the wedding, I found myself sitting in her bedroom in the hotel, listening to her talk. She was sitting up in bed, and I listened to her as she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke of things which even now I would not dare whisper in the blackest night, though I stood in the midst of a wilderness. Then she started trying to test my dance skills. She was like, `Herbert, your skills are getting weak, can you touch this shit?` Then she started in with this really weak ass routine that even Ken Maeda wouldn`t touch. I was like `Helen, just stop. You`re half-Italian and Italians can`t dance."

"They seriously fucking can`t. God dammit Herbert...we`ve been landed - forever, or so it seems! - with those dull-eyed, olive-skinned chocolate munchers and garlic crushers who are not the least bit English but rather Italian. In short, we`ve been overrun by the Latin race - cocky, treacherous, over-emotional imbeciles one and all that can go to the Devil for all I care!"

Herbert raised his eyebrows.

"My, my," he said, laughing. "Your remarks prove to me that you are interested in 'our own, our native land.' I should never have suspected it of you."

"Of course you wouldn't," said Villiers, lighting a cigarette. "As has so often been said, 'My own, my native land is wherever I happen to feel at home.' Now I don't feel at home except with the people of the North. But I interrupted you. Let's get back to the subject. What were you saying?"

"Okay, yeah. Helen was pissing me off, so I was like `Bitch, stop.` Then I started busting some tight ass moves. So Helen was like, `Okay Herbert, but what about this shit? Then she takes this door out of her pocket..."

"Uhhh, what the fuck?"

"Yeah like this miniature fucking door. And it gets real big all of a sudden and opens, and this Italian monk comes out. He`s like, `Follow me, Herbert...`"

"You told him to fuck off right?"

"Yeah. But he comes out and grabs me and pulls me through the door. And on the other side it`s nothing but Italians. I mean it`s some kind of Italian church with like ten thousand Italians gathered together and all chanting to the Pope, who`s standing at the head of the altar."

"Shit..."

"The Pope looked at me and said, `Italo-disco can`t be stopped. Soon you`ll be dancing to even more Giorgio Moroder-ripoff shit.`

"Impossible!" Villiers exclaimed.

"I said that too," Herbert continued. "And then the Pope said, `When Italo-disco hits lost their popularity in Europe, the Japanese market forced Italian and German producers to evolve the sound to what end up under the term "Eurobeat" and later Super Eurobeat and Eurobeat Flash. Those music styles, under the term Eurobeat, are sold only in Japan due to the Para Para culture there. Italian producers are still producing songs for the Japanese (super) Eurobeat market in the 2000`s. This evolving sound of Italo-disco involves a much higher BPM, as well as more rapid synth-lines and faster vocals. The genre itself upped the BPM in the late 80s, all the way into the 2000s."

"Good God!" Villiers shouted.

"Then...the organ broke out overhead with a blare. A dazzling light filled the church, blotting the altar from my eyes. The Italians faded away, the arches, the vaulted roof vanished. I raised my seared eyes to the fathomless glare, and I saw the black stars hanging in the heavens: and the wet winds from Lake Como chilled my face. And now, far away, over leagues of tossing cloud-waves, I saw the moon dripping with spray; and beyond, the towers of Rome rose behind the moon. And now I heard his voice, rising, swelling, thundering through the flaring light, and as I fell, the radiance increasing, increasing, poured over me in waves of flame. Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the Pope whispering to my soul: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!"

Villiers looked at him for a long time.

"Those fucking Italians," he said at last.

The Seventh Night, by Natsume Soseki

2008-01-10T04:59:00.000+09:00

Chomu's mysterious editor-in-chief, Mr. Jorkins, apologises for the slight delay in new stories. In the meantime, he asks you to enjoy the translation below of Natsume Soseki's 'The Seventh Night', from Yume Juuya, or Ten Nights of Dream. Night the Second and the Tenth may be found here and here respectively. New stories will follow when the current existential turbulence has passed. Should you experience any cosmic nausea in the meantime, remember your sick-bags are in your imagination.

The Seventh Night

(With thanks to Hayashi-san of Kyoto Univerity Bungakubu)

For some reason, I found myself aboard a gargantuan ship.

Day and night, without a moment’s pause, the ship spewed black smoke and pressed forward, cutting through the waves. The noise was terrific. However, I had no idea where the ship was bound. From the depths of the ocean the sun would rise up like a red hot poker. It would climb until it stood just above the main mast, and just as it seemed to be suspended there it would overtake the great ship, and, before I knew it, disappear into the distance. Finally, sizzling like a red hot poker, it would sink again beneath the waves. Every time it did so the blue waves would boil up in a deep maroon colour. Then the ship would make its terrible din and follow in the sun’s wake. It never caught up.

Once I accosted one of the crew and questioned him.

“Is this ship going west?”

He gave me a suspicious look and, after sizing me up for a while, finally he questioned me in return.

“Why do you ask?”

“It’s just that we seem to be following the setting sun.”

The man cackled. Then he disappeared off in the other direction.

From somewhere there came the sound of jeering voices.

“Is the east the journey’s end for the west-travelling sun? Is that true? Is the west the home of the east-rising sun? Is that also true? Our life is on the waves! An oar for a pillow! Onward! Onward!”

I went to the bow and found a great number of sailors gathered there, hauling in the thick halyard.

I felt exceedingly lonely. I had no idea when I would next set foot on land, and I had no idea where we were going. The only thing that was certain was that the ship went on spewing its black smoke and cutting through the waves. Those waves were a vast expanse, an endless blue with an occasional touch of purple. Only the immediate proximity of the moving ship was any different, being always a perfect white with the spray of churning water. I was terribly lonely. Rather than remain on this terrible ship, it would be better, perhaps, to cast myself overboard.

There were a multitude of passengers, most of whom seemed to be foreign. Their features were not as we typically imagine, but were various. When the sky darkened with clouds and the boat rocked on the waves, a woman would draw up to the handrail and weep continuously. The kerchief with which she dried her eyes flashed white in the gloom. She was wearing a western-style cotton print dress. When I saw this woman I realised I was not the only one who suffered.

One evening I went out on deck to gaze at the stars when one of the foreigners approached me and asked if I knew anything of astronomy. I was so weary that I wished even for death. What use was astronomy to me? I said nothing. Then the foreigner spoke of the Seven Stars that hung above Taurus. He said that the stars and the ocean were all the work of God. Finally, he asked if I had faith in the Lord above. I looked at the sky and said nothing.

On another occasion I entered the bar to find a young woman in a florid dress playing a piano with her back to me. Next to her stood a tall and splendid gentleman singing to her accompaniment. His open mouth appeared cavernously wide. But the two of them seemed utterly indifferent to the world around them. It was as if they had even forgotten they were on this ship.

I grew ever more weary. At last I determined on self-destruction. And so, one evening, at an hour when no one else was around, I leapt wildly over the edge of the ship. However, the instant my feet left the deck and my connection with the ship was broken, my life suddenly became precious to me. At the bottom of my heart I wished that I had changed my mind about jumping. But it was too late. Whether I willed it or no, I was to plunge into the bosom of the ocean. However, it seemed that the hull of the ship was built to a fantastic height, and even though my body had broken contact with the ship, my feet did not soon connect with the water. But there was nothing for me to grasp hold of, and slowly, slowly, I fell towards the waves. However much I drew in my legs, the water still loomed nearer. The colour of the water was black.

Before long, the ship spewed out its usual black smoke and passed on. I realised for the first time that even if I did not know where the ship was bound, it was still better to be on it – realised for the first time only now such knowledge was useless to me. Filled with infinite regret and infinite terror, I continued to fall silently towards the black waves.

Upcoming Chomu Stories

2007-12-10T00:08:00.000+09:00

The following stories will be forthcoming on Chomu:

Justin Isis - `Cantopop Hasn`t Been the Same Since Aaron Kwok Sold Out`

Justin Isis - `I Attain to the Level of Fucking Your Basic Hairdresser`

Justin Isis - `Isis Has No Friends`

Quentin S. Crisp - `Living? Our Servants Will Do That For Us, Etc.`

Quentin S. Crisp - `Thomas Ligotti Is My Favorite Flavor of Candy Bar`

More announcements to be made soon.

Justin Isis - They Told Me to Stop Whoring My Suffering and Eat More Steak

2007-11-07T18:21:00.000+09:00

art by chris wilhelm

Spontaneous Reincarnation

"Well, this is a fine pickle we've got ourselves in." MacArthur said.

Hirohito looked at MacArthur's pelvis. There was something obscenely womanish about it - its sloping girth and the way the rest of him seemed to follow it as he walked. The pipe jutted from his mouth like a handle.

Hirohito looked down at his Mickey Mouse watch.

Cafe

They were sitting in a cafe. They didn't have any yen, and from time to time the waiter would wander over and bother them.

"We need jobs." Hirohito said.

"We don't have any qualifications." MacArthur said.

"We need jobs."

"I am the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. You are the Emperor of Japan."

"We're not, anymore. We're nothing."

"I am not nothing." MacArthur said. "Every man has been put here for a reason."

Newspaper

"Hotel staff." Hirohito said, and put down the newspaper. They'd found it near the trash. They were sitting next to a man in a purple blanket. From time to time the suits would toss him coins.

"Management?"

"No...

"Well, reception?"

"Room service. Transport, cleaning, things like that."

"Chamber maids." MacArthur said. "We're going to be chamber maids."

"Hotel staff." Hirohito said.

Employment

Hirohito picked a condom from the floor. There was a knock on the door.

The woman asked for extra towels and Hirohito took them from his trolley. He put his hands at his sides.

He gave a little bow after each service he performed.

The woman didn't thank him.

Everyone was taller than him, he thought.

When MacArthur walked down the hallway, he shambled and slouched. He seemed to push the trolley with his stomach.

Piece of Shit

"This hotel is a piece of shit." Arturo said. "They should burn it to the ground."

He handed Hirohito a tin of biscuits. They always took coffee breaks in the check-out rooms when the supervisor wasn't around.

"Philippines is better than this." Arturo said.

"I used to be big in the Philippines." MacArthur said.

Encounter

"I'm really really sorry." Reiko said.

She stepped out of the elevator and vomited.

"I'm so, so sorry." she said. "You're going to have to clean that up, right?"

Hirohito looked at her.

Reprimand

"Your hygiene and personal conduct are not up to standard." Mr. Kaji said.

"What are you talking about?" MacArthur said.

"We have standards at this hotel." Mr. Kaji said. "Our cleaning staff are expected to dress neatly, and carry themselves with a certain bearing. We do not...slouch."

Direction

"Thanks so much for the towels." Reiko said.

"Is there anything else you'd like?"

"That's fine...oh, I was wondering. How can I get to Asakusa from here?"

"Would you like me to show you? I can show you."

"You mean..."

"I'll be finished soon." Hirohito said.

Dissatisfaction

"What the hell are we doing here, Arturo." MacArthur said. "A couple of guys like us."

"Do you have any more creamers in your trolley," Arturo said. "I'm out of creamers."

Interpersonal Relationship

"You don't think I'm too old?" Hirohito said.

"I like old guys." Reiko said.

Ten minutes passed.

"Are you being serious?" Hirohito said.

Tokyo Disneyland

"We should all go to Tokyo Disneyland." Reiko said.

They went there.

"I can't understand any of this." MacArthur said. "Goofy is supposed to speak English, for fuck's sake. Donald Duck is the only one that is making any sense."

Nostalgia

They were alone in the apartment.

"I think I want to get back into the army." MacArthur said.

"They're not going to let you do anything with Korea." Hirohito said.

"If they had of trusted me, this situation wouldn't even exist now."

Hirohito got another beer.

"No one believes I'm a god anymore." he said.

"I don't see why they wouldn't trust me." MacArthur said.

Hirohito's face went crooked.

"You were going too far in Korea." he said.

"I wasn't going too far."

"You were going too far. You were going to destroy the world. You destroyed the world..."

"The people need a firm hand."

"No one cared when I died. Because of you, the divine spirit of the Yamato people was destroyed."

"Nonsense. I showed you the democratic way of life. The people of this country live in peace and harmony now, just like the American people."

Hirohito got up and left.

"Hey...come on...I didn't mean it." MacArthur said.

Conflict

"Are you going to come out of there, or not?"

"Say your Occupation destroyed Japan, you were wrong about Korea, and the Yamato people are a divine race."

"Look...maybe I got a little carried away with Korea..."

"Say it!"

Intervention

"Hirohito is a little bastard." MacArthur said. "I'm not talking to him anymore."

Reiko went over to Hirohito's room.

"MacArthur is an imperialist swine." Hirohito said. "I'm not talking to him anymore."

Reconciliation

"This is a dead country." Hirohito said. "The entire world is dead."

"But we're alive." MacArthur said.

"Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe the Lord Jesus Christ has more work for us to do."

"I like Mickey Mouse." Hirohito said.

Eviction

"Well, hell, we only make so much." MacArthur said.

"Reiko's parents don't like me." Hirohito said. "So we can't stay there. I can't stay there."

"Why not?"

"They were student activists in the 70's." Hirohito said. "They called me a relic. To my face."

Street

"I was lying when I said I wasn't a god." Hirohito said. "I am the father of the nation."

"You're insane." MacArthur said. "There's only one God, and his name is Jesus Christ."

"I am a god." Hirohito said. "I am the descendent of Amaterasu-o-mi-kami. No one can look at my real face!"

His eyes went wet. The night stretched before him, jewelled.

MacArthur lifted his leg.

Empire

"The supervisor is an asshole." MacArthur said. "We shouldn't trust her, she's got two faces."

"I was already fired." Hirohito said. "I don't know how to clean, really."

Reiko placed another blanket over them. She'd already taken MacArthur's temperature. He was coughing a little.

"Reiko, let's start another country somewhere." Hirohito said. "Come with me and be my empress. We won't tell anyone where we are. We'll be invisible. In our empire there will be no televisions, no hotels..."

"I'm sorry." Reiko said. "I have to study."

"I am issuing an Imperial Rescript." Hirohito said. "Dissolving your university."

"My parents..."

"I will issue a new Imperial Rescript, dissolving your family."

"I like my family."

"They're dissolved." Hirohito said. "I am the only person you are allowed to love. By Imperial Rescript."

"Don't listen to him, he's crazy." MacArthur said.

"I am issuing an Imperial Rescript that will dissolve you, MacArthur. You no longer exist."

"I'm in all the books." MacArthur said.

"I will dissolve them." Hirohito said. "I dissolve history. I dissolve this country. We are now living on an island. There are only three people here."

"I'm leaving." Reiko said.

"An Imperial Rescript compels you to stay."

"They should have let me go with Korea." MacArthur said. "I don't understand why they didn't trust me."

Reiko left.

"Where's she going, do you think?" MacArthur said.

"There's nowhere for her to go." Hirohito said. "The borders of my empire are well patrolled."

"We should find a new job." MacArthur said. "I'm thinking of getting back into the army, but..."

The man with the purple blanket came over.

"You can't stay here." he said. "This is my place."

"I dissolved you." Hirohito said. "You don't exist."

The man kicked him.

"Give me your watch." he said.

"I need my watch." Hirohito said. "I use it to tell time."

"What time is it now?"

"Time is running backwards." Hirohito said. "Soon we'll be arriving in the 20's."

"No Mickey Mouse then." MacArthur said.

"Mickey Mouse is allowed in my Empire." Hirohito said.

"Can I join your empire?" the man with the purple blanket said.

"I already told you, you don't exist." Hirohito said. "I've dissolved you."

"I have to exist!" the man in the purple blanket said.

"Maybe I should start my own army." MacArthur said.

"Can I join it?" the man in the purple blanket said.

"I think it would be a better idea for you to accept the Lord Jesus Christ first." MacArthur said. "The same goes for you."

"People who don't exist are talking to me." Hirohito said. "I must be going crazy."

Introducing Chris Wilhelm

2007-11-07T18:04:00.000+09:00

Chomu and our editor-in-chief Mr. Jorkins are proud to present the work of artist Chris Wilhelm. Chris graduated from Colgate University with a double major in biology and Japanese. When he's not working on his art, Chris practices para para dance moves and imports Cantopop by the crateful. His favorite animal is a turtle.

Look for forthcoming art by Chris Wilhelm, here on Chomu.

The Second Night, by Natsume Soseki

2007-10-29T19:51:00.000+09:00

A while back on Chomu I posted 'The Tenth Night', from Natsume Soseki's Ten Nights of Dream. I mentioned that it had been published in the now defunct magazine Dream Zone. I also had two other pieces translated from Ten Nights of Dream published in the same magazine. Below I shall post another of them. Perhaps this will even encourage me to translate the rest of the pieces.

Thanks to Heather Marsden for some suggestions used in this translation.

The Second Night, by Natsume Soseki

I had this dream.

When I withdrew from the abbot’s room and returned to my own along the corridor the lantern there was burning dimly. Supporting one knee upon the cushion I adjusted the lantern’s wick and a lump of wax, like a flower, spattered upon the red lacquer stand. In the same instant the room suddenly brightened.

The painting on the sliding door was from the brush of Buson. Black willows were traced darkly then faintly, dotted far and near, and a fisherman hunched against the cold, his straw hat tilted at an angle, was passing along the top of an embankment. In the alcove hung a scroll painting depicting the god Manjusri crossing the ocean above clouds, mounted on a lion. From the gloom there still came wafts of half-burnt incense. The temple building was extensive, and so all was as still as a forest, without sign of another living soul. I glanced up and in that instant, the round shadow thrown on the dark ceiling by the lantern seemed to be alive.

Still on one knee, I turned over the cushion with my left hand, and with my right reached in to find… Yes! It was still there where I had left it. Its presence made me feel safe, so I put the cushion back as it had been and sat down upon it heavily.

You are a samurai! As a samurai you must be able to attain enlightenment! So had spoken the abbot. If you stay forever as you are, unenlightened, you are no samurai at all. You are human excrement! Then he had laughed. Ah, I see I’ve rattled you, haven’t I? If it troubles you so, bring me proof of your enlightenment. So saying he had turned sharply away.

This was not to be borne!

Before the clock in the alcove of the next room strikes the hour, without fail, I will show him enlightenment! I thought. I shall attain enlightenment, and then, this evening, I shall enter the abbot’s room once more. I shall go before the abbot and present my answer. And then I shall exchange my enlightenment for his head! Unless I achieve enlightenment, I cannot take his life. I must, at all costs, achieve enlightenment. I am a samurai!

If I fail to attain enlightenment I shall slay myself. A samurai cannot be disgraced and live. I shall die neatly, without fuss.

As I thought this, my hand went automatically into the cushion. I drew out the short sword in its vermilion scabbard. Grasping the hilt firmly, I tore away the red scabbard. The chill blade gave a single flash in the dark room. It was as if some terrible entity were rushing ceaselessly away from my hand and gathering in a single concentrated point of murderous intent at the sword’s tip. Looking at the way the sharp blade tapered, inexorable and needle-like, almost resentfully, to that dagger-point, I suddenly felt like plunging it hard into someone’s guts. All the blood in my body ran to my right wrist and the hilt I grasped became sticky. My lips trembled.

I sheathed the sword in its scabbard and slung it beneath my right arm. Then I took up the lotus position. I began to chant a sutra. I came to ‘Nothingness’ and stopped. What was ‘Nothingness’? Damned stinking priest! I ground my teeth.

I clenched my back teeth together tightly so that hot breath escaped fiercely from my nostrils. My temples were cramped. I forced my eyes open to twice their normal size.

I could see the hanging scroll, the lamp, the tatami mat. I could see the abbot’s bold pate as if it were before me. That crocodile mouth opened and I could even hear that sneering laughter.

Damned priest!

Somehow or other I had to take that bald head! I would give him enlightenment!

“No-thing-ness… No-thing-ness,” I chanted under my breath. In my ears the chant sounded like, “It’s useless. It’s useless.”

I chanted ‘Nothingness’, but still the smell of incense distracted me. Incense, of all things!

Suddenly I clenched my fists and pummelled my head until I could not bear it. I gnashed my teeth. Sweat poured from both armpits. My back was as straight as a pole. Pain lanced through my knee joints. What would it matter even if I broke my knees? I thought to myself. And yet, it hurt. It ached. Nothingness remained out of reach. Just as I thought it was within my grasp I would feel pain once more. I became angry and resentful. I felt a desperate frustration. Tears sprang, drop by drop, from my eyes. I felt like flinging my body, without further ado, onto a great boulder, to smash my bones to smithereens and my flesh to pulp.

However, I simply bore it, sitting as still as a rock. I held firm while unendurable anguish coiled up inside my chest. This anguish seemed to lift my muscles up from beneath, racing through my body - searching, searching - trying to escape through the pores of my skin. However, it was as if the surface of my body was completely sealed. There was no escape for the anguish. I was pushed to the outer limits of cruelty.

Before long my mind began to play tricks on me. It appeared to me as if the lamp, the painting by Buson, the tatami and the alcove were instantaneously there and not there, not there and there. Even so, Nothingness did not manifest itself in the least. I simply sat there vacantly. Then, suddenly, there came the sound of the clock chiming from the next room.

I was startled. My right hand fell immediately to the sword. The clock struck a second time.

Justin Isis - M-FUNK VS INITIATES OF THA CLUB F/ THA QUEST FOR INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

2007-10-19T04:30:00.000+09:00

Far in the future - across the galaxy - cross-sectioned from 4/4 time - the planet Scotland lies in a funk. Without funk, the planet lies - on its side like a dog. The asses are not moving. There is instead introspection and MILD BEMUSEMENT.

Somewhere on this satellite planet of the Anglosphere, Samuel Johnson descends a crystal staircase, his robe covered in sequins - the entrance hall of the Club arching above him like a gilded ribcage -

What is the Club?

An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions, with electronik musical accompaniment.

Johnson flicks a wall switch and a table assembles from fractured atoms - already seated are David Garrick, Edmund Burke, James Boswell, and Lord Monboddo - dressed in matching jewelled kimonos - space boots clacking - faces thin and white as eggshells -

After the ceremonial greeting, Lord Monboddo begins -

~I find that, of late, our personal style has grown cold and languid, like iced velvet~

~My dear Lord Monboddo, you have a great sense of convention, and thus a great sense of absurdity~ Samuel Johnson retorts. ~Although our progressive theatricality is combined with punk energy, the audience is only rarely allowed into the feedback loop. The revenue generated from their passive attention allows us to purchase more specialized clothing~

~But if the audience should wish to take part in the spectacle...~

Samuel Johnson waves his hand dismissively -

~Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble~

James Boswell raises his glass in a toast -

~You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in~

Johnson starts kicking rhymes -

~Boswell is pleasant and gay, / For frolic by nature designed; / He heedlessly rattles away / When company is to his mind~

~Samuel Johnson your rhyming is hype~ Lord Monboddo exclaims ~My own flow is not as tight~

~Now, on to other business...it seems that instances of auto-erotic masturbation have been occurring more frequently in The Club, or so I am told~

~Mr. Johnson, I do indeed masturbate, but I cannot help it~ James Boswell admits.

~That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help. If possible, conserve fluids and conserve the primal matter of the cosmos - retain and enamel the funk for the adoration of the masses - the funk must not fall into the hands of the underclasses. Subliminal seducers, we shall never dance~

The meeting is concluded - Johnson and Boswell continue talking - Lord Monboddo retreats to the wilderness - alone, he strolls through a whistling forest of glass trees - hunching his purple frock coat around his shoulders - the air of Scotland penetrating his veils - contemplating his recent delvings into forbidden lore - remnants of the Old Time - secrets hoarded by the strange ones in the Dome -

~What is this thing known as human sexual love?~ he wonders aloud.

Memories of the forbidden manuals and literature, declared 'unsuitable' by the Elders...Lord Monboddo reflects on his life under the martinet baronets of the Council, direct superiors of the Club - then thinks of the weaknesses of the strange Earth creatures, their ancestors, the primitives known as humans -

~These human creatures...why do they not reproduce by binary fission? What is the function of this 'love' ? I must investigate further...~

Meanwhile, in other parts of the galaxy already funkatized by ancient Afronauts, The Word goes out -

"The Club is attempting to process the funk under cover of mass spectacle. They are using the proto-fascist glam routine, controlling the supply of funk like a pusher. The asses are not moving; instead complicated hand movements are taking over. If the funk doesn't come undammed soon, the whole thing could escalate into a priority-1 visual-kei lockdown."

The extraterrestrial brothers are alerted...Earth authorities contact M-FUNK - chronic argonaut extraordinaire - blunted on hyperreality - prime stealth agent of the Altars of Boom -

M-FUNK's star-ship warp-skips across the transtemporal trafficterminals - thruster engines set to 'KILL' and killer engines set to 'THRUST' - raw funk exhaust streaking across the spaceways -

The void contracts -

~Are they cutting the funk?~ M-FUNK text messages his superiors.

~It is not as simple as that; they are shithoarding the funk for themselves. The ass-banging is insubstantial. Like a butterfly caught in a spiderweb, the funk has been drained, leaving only a shell behind~

~There is very little ass-banging in the Anglosphere~ M-FUNK avers.

~M-FUNK your mission is as follows: penetrate Scottish defenses to the heart of the interior and funk shit up~

Lord Monboddo reaches one of the human settlements - shifts to invisibility - begins peering in windows like a creeping spider monkey - inside a human child is crying - in a different room, 'the primal scene' -

~The behaviour of these humans is beyond all speculation...~

He enters an underground dance hall - long declared illegal by the Elders - the band playing in shadows - flashes of faces in the crowd - a skulking bartender with hairy wrists - the humans moving in unison -

~But there is no logic behind this. These movements have no meaning!~

The hall is raided - instruments smashed - the bartender escaping through a trapdoor -

"People rushed out of the building but [Monboddo] who, at the age of 71, was partially deaf and shortsighted, was the only one not to move. When he was later asked for a reason, he stated that he thought it 'an annual ceremony, with which, as an alien, he had nothing to do.'"

M-FUNK crash-lands in the Highlands - performs a quick scan of the area - then selects his weapons...carefully. First chosen are the vibrating bowstrings of the Funkarchery Set - next the Service Revolver of revolving services - and the Slap Bass. He follows the path to the capital - antiseptic sequined streets - hospital white halogens - a hundred classrooms filled with drone teachers, drone clones instructing pupils in the life of Samuel Johnson - a poster announces the next rally:

"Samuel Johnson and the Scotsmen from Saturn"

M-FUNK messages his superiors:

~The situation is worse than we thought. There are no clubs, no shows, no arkestras anywhere in sight. The whole planet is approaching lockdown.

~M-FUNK, it is imperative that you funkatize the entire region at once.

~Negative. I'm pulling back; the planet is already beyond help. Full funkatization would take a much larger team. All I can do now is shake my shit~

~M-FUNK, your recklessness has cost us planets before. I will not have you jeopardizing the mission!

~Then let's kick the mission to ignition. Funk not only moves, it can remove, dig?

On the way to the rally M-FUNK encounters several young girls practicing hand movements and fascist dance moves - at the sight of His Funkiness, these indoctrinated moppets react with indifference -

~James Boswell told us we are too ice hot to dance and should instead practice para para moves and write about events in the life of Dr. Johnson~ M-FUNK overhears them say.

~Don't be taken in by the Boswell Hoax~ M-FUNK cautions them. ~Johnson's life has already been chronicled. There is no need to talk up more shit about his cat. Boswell's game is to distract young people from the funk by concentrating their attention on the life of Samuel Johnson. It is a version of the shell game - now you see it, now you don't. But I have come here to tell you - the hoax is up. Instead of memorizing Johnson's aphorisms, you should be shaking your shit at a club.~

The girls crowd around M-FUNK - cell-phones ringing - contacting others - spreading the word -

~But our parents told us that having a concise yet muscular English prose style is more important than being able to dance well~ one of them objects.

~Don't pay any attention to the 'English prose style' hoax either. Try these Funk Supplement bars. This shit will help you shake your body body, move your body body~

~What do they taste like?~

~A little bit peanut butter, a little bit chocolate...ALL FUNK~

M-FUNK reaches the show just as the spangled curtain draws back - a hail of lights like sapphires -

When Johnson salutes the crowd salutes -

~The stock market is up - extracting pensions from the British monarky - our Johnson bots refuting Immaterialism by carving out mine shafts with contemptuous kicks ~

James Boswell kicks the beat -

~There will not be activities apart from writing about Samuel Johnson. There will not be horseback riding or software coding~

The audience moves as a single mass - first to the left and then to the right - everyone stands an equal distance from everyone else, arms outstretched, hips unmoving -

M-FUNK slams on the Slap Bass -

-At the sound the eyes of the Club turn to where he stands -

~I see posing and emoting but not DANCING. Samuel Johnson I challenge you to dance James Boswell I challenge you to shake your ass.

~Don't do it Boswell~ Samuel Johnson cautions.

~Johnson I challenge you to dance or else stand down.

~I do not know you, sir, but you shall be sorry you came.

Samuel Johnson uses arcane sorcery to summon John Galsworthy -

"Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight - an upper-middle-class family in full plumage. But whosoever of these favoured persons has possessed the gift of psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only delightful in itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem. In plainer words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family - no branch of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of whom existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy - evidence of that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of society in miniature. He has been admitted to a vision of the dim roads of social progress, has understood something of patriarchal life, of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the rise and fall of nations. He is like one who, having watched a tree grow from its planting - a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and persistent - one day will see it flourishing with bland, full foliage, in an almost repugnant prosperity, at the summit of its efflorescence."

M-FUNK cringes at Galsworthy's prose style, which seems to suck funk from the air itself -

~Boswell, summon Nancy Mitford and have her recite from Love in a Cold Climate~

~Johnson, do you really think the blandness of 20th century English prose can defeat me?

~It has defeated countless others before you!

M-FUNK plays the Reverse Occlusion game, neutralizing Johnson by categorizing his attributes:

~Dr. Johnson you have compiled a dictionary of the English language, and you are good at wearing sequined clothing. You were born in 1709 and died in 1784. You found employment with Edmund Cave, writing for The Gentleman's Magazine.

~Sir, you have compiled certain of my attributes but not the least of them. You forget that we have modelled our society on the intercepted transmissions from David Bowie and Marc Bolan.

Lord Monboddo returns from his pilgrimage in the wilderness of human nature - just as the Slap Bass thrums again -

~I would know the meaning of this...funk~ he interjects.

~Stand down, my Lord~ Samuel Johnson commands.

M-FUNK continues to play -

~Boswell shake your ass. Monboddo shake your ass. Everybody must get down. NO FUTURE. NO HEAVEN. LET'S GO CRAZY. GET WILD && BE SEXY.~

~His bass is fucking with our set~ James Boswell exclaims.

~Silence, my Scottish friend ~ Samuel Johnson remarks.

Lord Monboddo starts dancing - he looks like a fucking idiot but no one cares - soon the first row begins breaking up - the ass-banging begins - soon everyone is shaking it -

~Samuel Johnson James Boswell I encourage you to get down~ M-FUNK exclaims magnanimously.

~Mr. Johnson, perhaps we should do it~ Boswell wonders.

~I will instead retreat to a cold and inhospitable planet where I will wear primarily silver clothing and my sorrows will be like liquid diamonds~ Johnson remarks and casts his hand upon his forehead.

M-FUNK breaks the fourth wall -

~Remember kids nothing can be learned from English prose or dancing primarily with hand movements. You must shake your ass or else you cannot get anywhere in life. FUNK OUT.

This has been an installment

of the adventures of M-FUNK

In the realms of the Irreal.

In accordance with Intergalactic Law,

We now urge you to

STOP READING / START DANCING

Justin Isis - Your Dental Hygiene Has Slipped Slightly, Life is Limitless Horror, Etc.

2007-10-04T15:40:00.000+09:00

The man whose semen could travel through time - we were on leave when the first reports came in - minor disturbances in causality of the kind that don't usually pose a threat. We assigned them the standard level of priority and hoped it wouldn't escalate.

But the reports continued. Traces of 21st century semen were found to have infiltrated the Mesozoic. Local disturbances were also reported: similar traces present in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The infiltrations had not yet reached public consciousness, but headquarters was beginning to worry.

"Who's been ejaculating in the timestream?"

This was the question on all of our minds. The breakthrough came when several ounces were discovered to have infiltrated Germany in 1953, materializing on a fur coat worn by Mrs. Lena Osterhout of Berlin. Immediately the word went out - 'URBAN WOMEN UNDER THREAT FROM TIME-TRAVELLING SEMEN.' A direct tracer probe was successful in locating the source of the breach. Chronic argonauts were dispatched at once.

Mr. Lee Hyun-Ki was located in Pusan, Korea on the morning of July 15, 2076. The intervention came in from the 73rd ordinal, with reinforcement from the second-stage interphase. Mr. Lee was successfully removed from sequence and placed in custody. A pathological analysis of Mr. Lee's prostate gland revealed large amounts of temporal radiation.

Before Mr. Lee could be questioned properly, new reports revealed that the semen had already bypassed the differentials and was crossing the sidereal boundaries, impregnating dogs, hominids, and other pre-evolutionary lifeforms. The precision of the infiltrations made it clear that this was an inside job. A mobile team was dispatched to exterminate the resultant hybrids and cauterize the time asymptote. All ports were re-sequenced.

At his trial, Mr. Lee admitted, under hypnosis, to having made deals with outside powers as a child. Although he retained no conscious memory of the transactions, hypnotic playback allowed for headquarters to land a tracer on the infiltration route. The codes were de-sequenced and cross-filtered.

As the trial wound down, several men and women thought to be Mr. Lee's children were removed from sequence and made to testify. All of them were the products of 'virgin births' - of mothers falling pregnant without apparent cause. DNA analysis revealed that all of them were Lee's descendents. One of those cross-examined, Mr. Edward Highbridge of Boston, Massachusetts, reported that, just prior to his conception in 1863, his mother had reported contact with a 'ghost figure' or 'apparition' which descended through the ceiling as she lay asleep in her bed, conscious but unable to move. Another, Mr. Giovanni Tretta of Milan, removed from sequence in 1535, claimed to be the son of an incubus which had raped his mother. Mr. Lee claimed no conscious knowledge of these events, but serio-feedback revealed a partial 'masking' effect present in the interstitial field. After some deliberation, all of the witnesses testified against Mr. Lee, claiming his actions had adversely impacted their lives.

Mr. Lee's defense attorney claimed that since the damages had been inflicted without his knowledge, Mr. Lee could not be prosecuted in any reasonable court of law. The jury deliberated for five hours before declaring Mr. Lee innocent of conscious subversion, but in accordance with Article 10 of the de-sequencing protocol, Mr. Lee and the contaminated witnesses were detained indefinitely. The time-active prostate was removed and replaced with a prosthesis. A diagnostic of the initial conditions in the differential field estimated an 83% salvage rate.

Closure, by Quentin S. Crisp

2007-09-23T05:45:00.000+09:00

One note fell upon another inside his mind, like music. This was the music of everything falling elegantly into place. It was the music of proof.

He stared at the paper and did not see horizontal lines of writing. Instead he saw geometrical pieces of a puzzle box linking together as evidence, and there, right there, in the centre of the page, was the point on which the swirling swastika hairlines met and clicked. The ramifications of this were… He looked up from the desk and the light of the flexible lamp. Unbelievable. The room, beyond the circle of light, seemed unreal. Everything was as light as this sheet of paper in his hand. To tear it up would be the difference between one kind of universe and another. All things had coalesced here, the ends of the human nervous system tapering wispily into the deepest mysteries of sub-atomic physics. He could see a tracery of lines before his eyes, bright and pulsing. They were the veins in his eyeballs, of course.

He let out a breath.

“I’ll be famous,” he managed to say, surprised to find his voice, apparently linked to his consciousness, still operating. “I’ll definitely be famous. I practically am, already. Proof… that we… we… do not exist.”

But the idea of fame was already redundant. This was something beyond fame.

“I have to tell someone. Tell them that… we…”

The word ‘we’ was strange to him. It appeared to him now like that web of veins in his eyes, like the nervous system merging with the world of sub-atomic particles and forces, merging and dissolving.

“I have to tell someone.”

It was the strangest thirst he had ever known. As he got up from his chair he had a peculiar sensation that he could not explain. At last… At last he would meet people as they had never met before… famous… beyond famous… meet them in reality… or dream…

He ran out into the corridor, flushed, and called out. No one answered his echoing voice.

Were those notes falling into place, or falling away, being peeled off one by one?

From somewhere there came a rumble like thunder. An ocean of white rolled in from all directions.

The Ends III: from The Man Who Stopped Time, farsical, by John Cairns

2007-09-22T18:56:00.000+09:00

The Ends:

from The Man Who Stopped Time, farsical

What do I want? If he got into bed with me. If that’s what I want, I should ask. I’m too embarrassed to ask. He knows it’s what I want. He should do it. Why should he? To please me. He’d do it if he loved me to please me. I’d know he loved me then. Would I?

He wouldn’t just lie there would he, beside me in bed without doing anything, would he? I’ll ask and find out. Why don’t you lie beside me in bed? He’d do it. I know he’d do it. Why? Because I asked. All I have to do is ask.

Since you’re there, why don’t you…? I can’t ask that! Why not? If I ask he does. He’d do it! All I have to do is ask! That’s wonderful. I’ll ask, and when he’s done it I’ll know he loves me. He’ll have loved me; he loves me. He must love me to do that. He wouldn’t do that if he didn’t love me. If he doesn’t love me, why else did he do it? I asked! He did it because I asked. He didn’t do it because he loved me. I could ask that: did you do it because I asked or because you loved me?

Can I answer the old man’s question? the lady asked. Both. He would have done it had you asked because he loved you.

The old man made to turn round to where the lady’s voice seemed to come from. There was no one there, of course. The lady froze in expectation he would see her at the other side of the bed.

“He would do it if I ask because he loves me,” the old man muttered, recalling his thought as best he could.

“What?” the boy asked.

“Do you love me?”

The young man smiled, stood up stripped off and got into bed. He took the old man in his arms. Oh, he’d forgotten to pull the bed clothes up. Without quite releasing the old man he pulled the covers adequately enough over them. Then carefully and gently on top of the old man he made their love.

“What can I say?” the old man said afterwards. “You’ve made an old man very happy.”

The boy started to laugh and couldn’t stop. Between laughs words could be heard. “I’ve finally made my old man.” Once he stopped laughing, he got up, dressed, went upstairs, packed and left.

The lady couldn’t help but wonder what or whom the boy had on his list to make next. It might be her, so she hurried off home. She never did find out how the film ended. She sincerely hoped she hadn’t broken her contract. The young man didn’t turn up. Her brother did and he was affable enough but she didn’t like to ask how the film ended. He might offer to show her the rest and really she wasn’t interested, though she loved his films, to see part of one she knew she wouldn’t appear in. For her the film ended with her exit through the blank wall – with THE END stamped across her exit.

When she sat down her brother disconcertingly laughed as if she’d sat on something on the lounge chair or done something on it. She hated being laughed at. It made her feel such a fool, as she was if she’d missed seeing something he saw or didn’t understand what she saw aright. She checked. There was nothing on the seat except her seat. With dignity she resumed her thinking.

Justin Isis - Absolutely No One Gives a Shit About Your Brittle Anti-Life Short Stories

2007-09-18T23:39:00.001+09:00

Justin Isis - Abandoned by God, Unable to Pay Gas, Water, and Electric Bills, Unsuccessful at Trying Out for JV Football, Unable to Touch a...

2007-09-11T01:50:00.000+09:00

...Ganguro Gyaru's Face for Fifteen Seconds, Incapable of Remembering the Lyrics to Cocteau Twins, Unable to Successfully Learn Para Para Dance Steps, Rejected by Creditors, Incapable of Attaining Enlightenment, Defeated Routinely at Marvel vs Capcom 3, Declared Ritually Unclean by Shinto Priests, Downgraded from 'Boyfriend' to 'Sex Friend', Refused Service at Local Donut Shop, Unable to Touch a Ganjiro Gyaru's Face for Thirteen Seconds

Towards the end of his life Richard Dawkins took to dying his hair a shade advertised as 'chestnut,' but which Lalla Ward always thought of as the same lurid color as the light sheen of rust forming on the pipe behind the toilet. But Lalla helped him at first, as he slid the slickened comb through the last wisps of his hair. Then she held his hand as he dipped his head in the sink, watching the water part at its entrance.

"You don't think it looks too obvious, do you," Richard Dawkins said.

Lalla Ward smiled.

"I rather thought that was the point."

Richard Dawkins had been struggling for years with heart disease. At the age of eighty-two, a myocardial infarction had already cost him double-bypass surgery and months of protracted recovery. His friends had urged him to give up teaching and the lecture circuit, but he'd held firm.

"Have to do something with my time, after all," he'd told them. "I can't very well be lounging about all day. At that rate I'd be writing my memoirs before long, and I couldn't risk that."

Richard Dawkins was being facetious. In truth there was no need for him to attempt a memoir, since his colleagues and research assistants had been entrusted care of his legacy. Whatever era historians would eventually term the late 20th and early 21st century, he was certain that his name would stand as one of its leading scientific lights. He'd had a good run of it, and now it was enough for him to give the occasional speech and oversee his proteges' work.

These were his thoughts as he left the Oxford grounds, pulling his car past the gate, into the bright expanse of a midsummer morning. Further along the road, ribbons of golden sunlight threaded themselves through the edges of the clouds, a shining tapestry just past view. He pulled onto the highway, the sound of distant traffic merging with the hum of an insect caught in the car-door window.

Richard Dawkins had just given a lecture on the projected influence of genetic research on the advertising industry. As the lecture progressed he'd wandered off topic, drifting into a revery of free association. He'd speculated that the areas of research to which he'd devoted his life could one day be misused by those lacking the principles of reason and humanism. From there, it was only a small step for him to conclude that the students before him, the new generation of Englishmen trained in logic and critical thinking, would be the only hope of the West. As the world slid into a new dark age of fanaticism and stupidity, their only weapons would be skepticism and common sense. He felt a brief sadness as he looked at them, wishing to continue the fight, wishing to be young again.

As he picked up speed he noticed that the sound of the insect had stopped. Through the window, beyond the overpass, he could see the light behind the clouds breaking through to the highway, catching the chrome mirrors of the cars in the passing lane. A flash of it caught his eye and he reached for the sun visor.

A moment later, as he made to turn on the radio, he felt a sharp pain in his chest, a tender clutch of needles. He pressed his hand to his side as if to massage the pain away. It was like a wave he needed to crest. Richard Dawkins had felt these waves before and had survived them purely by force of will - or so he told himself. But now, as the needles slid deeper, he wondered whether his will made any difference at all.

He pulled off the highway and veered to the side of the road, pumping the brake and fumbling with the latch of the glove compartment. There was medicine there, he remembered, and a mobile phone to call for help. But before he could open it his body seemed to sink under him. He reached for the door as the car crested to a halt, the high shape of the wheel rising above him.

He slumped to the side of the road, his hand touching grass, a layer of static scrambling his vision. The waves crested, brushed his bones. He felt a brief, blossoming pain.

Then nothing.

Richard Dawkins' Further Adventures Beyond the Veil

Richard Dawkins awoke to the feel of earth beneath his fingernails. Bringing his hand up, he saw a fine brown tracery covering its grooves, a damp coat of clay-like soil. A faint smell of jasmine came to him, and further off the sound of a distant wind echoed in his ears.

He sat up. He'd been lying in the middle of a field - probably somewhere in the country, he decided. The last thing he remembered was the car coming to a stop, the sight of the road spinning beneath him and the inner sound of his stilled heart. But he was conscious now, alive - so where was he? Where was the car, and how had he gotten here from the side of the road? Had someone stolen the car and dumped his body, taking him for dead?

He stood. His phone was still in the glove compartment - no hope of calling anyone now. He'd have to walk to the nearest town and try to find help. As he walked across the damp ground he sighed, shaking his head. All the fault of his weak heart. If only he'd been born a few decades later, so that he could live to see medical technology make the weaknesses of the flesh obsolete. Science was already catching up to death, and immortality was just around the corner.

"You're dead!"

He turned. The cry had come from the direction of the field, but now that he looked he saw nothing.

"You're dead! Dead! Dead!"

He turned back. Now an enormous shape loomed in front of him, a figure like a tower on twin struts, a painted statue come to life. It grinned.

"Dead Dawkins dead Dawkins dead dead dead!"

As the final syllable sounded, the figure reared toward him, its rounded face tilting into a leer.

Then it vanished.

Richard Dawkins spun around, grasping at the air. There was only silence and the sound of the wind.

Then the laughter broke out and the giant shapes reared up again, scores of them now, standing against the sun. For all their height, Richard Dawkins saw, they were curiously malformed, their proportions all wrong, fat-faced and flabby-limbed like monstrous children.

"We tricked you into being an adult, when you could have been eating nonexistent cactus ice cream!"

The other giants chorused in, their wide mouths spread in rictuses of rotten teeth:

"The cactus ice cream isn't real!

The cactus ice cream isn't real!

Bumped his head

The old man's dead

The cactus ice cream isn't real!"

Richard Dawkins ran, but the giants were jumping from the air now, their footfalls shaking the earth. He thought of the crushed soil of the field, the mud beneath his fingernails. Each step seemed to send him closer to the ground, and before long he pitched forward, hands in front of him.

For a long time the ground rolled under him, and he felt himself adrift again, as if tossed on the waves. When the movement stopped, he felt something prodding his leg.

His head still spinning, he looked up and saw a small man standing next to a wheeled trolley. Inset in its base was a wooden cabinet with elaborately carved doors, mostly natural scenes, flowering plants and cavorting animals.

The man was wearing a red silk hat and black breeches. His face was gnarled, unshaven.

"Don't listen to them," the little man said. "Everything they'll tell you is lies. The adult world is the most precious thing we have."

Richard Dawkins sat up and stared at him.

"They said I was dead."

"Lies! It's not possible to die," the little man said, with an expression of congealed contempt.

"Well, I'm not certain that's the case," Richard Dawkins said, standing up. "But I'd like to know what's going on here."

At this the little man opened the front door of his trolley and took out a silver tray.

"I've taken out a line in meat pies," he explained.

Richard Dawkins looked down. Cooling on the tray was a row of square-shaped, thick-crusted pies.

"You must be hungry," the little man said.

"I wasn't planning to eat," Richard Dawkins said. "I've got important things to attend to. Where is the nearest town?" He looked around, trying to orient himself. He couldn't see the field any longer, so he must have tumbled down a hill after his fall. If that was the case he'd come a considerable distance, as the ground now seemed cracked and bare, with only a few scrub grasses pushing through its surface.

"The town isn't far. I can take you there myself. But you'll need something to eat first. You can't do anything on an empty stomach!"

The little man grinned and pushed the tray forward. In spite of himself Richard Dawkins felt a hunger rising in him. He leaned forward and pointed at the row of pies nearest the rim.

"What sort are they?"

"January."

"January?"

The little man cracked a smile.

"The competition's gone soft. No severity in the pies. All June, July, summer pies. May and August creeping into the crusts."

Richard Dawkins reached for one. The little man swatted his hand.

"Have to pay for that first!"

Richard Dawkins reached for his wallet. But it wasn't there. Shaking his head again, he emptied his pockets. All he had was some loose change.

"I'm afraid I don't have much."

The little man pointed at his pocket.

"Well, what's that then?"

Richard Dawkins reached for it. It was a small bottle of his chestnut hair dye. What was it doing in his pocket?

"This? Well, I don't know, I..."

"I'll take it," the little man said, scratching his cheek. He took the bottle and handed Richard Dawkins a pie. "You'll want some sauce with that," he added, reaching into the trolley and bringing out a cracked bottle of tomato ketchup, its white cap crusted with black stains.

"No thank you, I'll have it just like this," Richard Dawkins said.

"Suit yourself," the little man said, and began to wheel the trolley over the ground. Richard Dawkins followed him, taking tentative bites from the pie. It was filled with a tough meat that tasted like rabbit.

They walked in silence for over an hour, the little man stopping occasionally to dig the trolley out of the sand or lift its wheels over a patch of rocks. Richard Dawkins helped him, feeling the weight of his age in the way his knees weakened with each effort. It seemed as if they would never reach the town.

"How much longer will it take," he said as the rocky path gave way to a thin strip bordered by sand. "I've got to contact someone, can't you see I've got to contact someone, they'll be worrying about me - "

He shook his head as he pushed the trolley and felt its weight pushing him back. It was no use; the trolley's wheels could no longer move over the thick dunes.

"We'll have to leave it," the little man said. "Come back for it later, on our way back." He patted the top of the trolley. "The pies will be safe here."

Another hour passed after they abandoned the trolley. Richard Dawkins felt the sun eating into his face.

"There's no water anywhere," he said. "No, there wouldn't be. No water, no way to contact anyone. You're not leading me anywhere!"

The little man held up a finger.

"We're approaching the Great Work," he said, pointing to the horizon.

Richard Dawkins looked up. Against the backdrop of the setting sun stood tall rows of thin silver towers, each placed at an even distance from the others. The towers formed a vast grid, a silver forest catching the sun's last light. Tiny points of red and yellow stood out on its surface.

As they approached they saw a figure standing before the towers, dressed in a brown cassock tied with a cord. The little man approached him and spoke, gesturing to his clothes.

"I wear the red silk hat and the black breeches. My colors are red and black."

At this the monk made a sign in front of the little man, then stepped aside as he walked between the rows of silver towers. Richard Dawkins followed him, observing the monks as they worked. Each monk took a small silver cylinder from the ground and placed it on top of another, forming them into the towers. Each cylinder was wrapped with a red or yellow label.

"We are engaged in the Great Work," the monk beside him said. "The Great Work places red cans on top of yellow cans. When a column reaches ten cans, a new column begins. There are ten columns per row."

"Where do the cans come from?" Richard Dawkins asked.

The monk led him past the rows, through an area of steep dunes, then pointed to a walled-off pit in the sand where other monks were digging with shovels.

"The cans were buried long ago. But the people didn't give up hope. In spite of the sects, the schisms and persecutions, the people knew we would come back for the cans and the Great Work would continue."

As he looked past the pit Richard Dawkins caught a bead of movement on the horizon. He looked closer, shielding his eyes from the sun, and saw a slender shape leaping between the dunes. At once he felt something splitting his vision, so that the shape's colors seemed superimposed, split into hard lines, neon streaks of pink and emerald clawing past each other.

"There's something wrong with my eyes," Richard Dawkins said. "It's as if I'm seeing two colors at once. Or wearing mismatched spectacles."

"It is forbidden to hunt the King's deer," the monk said.

As Richard Dawkins watched, more of the shapes darted into view, brief strobes of colored silken flesh. Looking at them he felt the same splitting sensation in his vision, like a chisel behind his eyes. The deer seemed less animals than a living mirage, an auroral burst of color in the fading light of the desert.

"Their minds aren't always pink and green," the monk added. "Sometimes they become sick, and then there are orange thoughts that they try to forget."

The monk led him back through the forest of silver towers, to a clearing where he found the little man standing. He was looking at a sculpture resting on a pedestal. It was fashioned in the shape of a young woman, and at its base was a tiny slot with two metal switches. The little man depressed one switch, then the other, then flipped both.

"Well, what does it do?" Richard Dawkins said.

The little man closed his palm and brought it away from the sculpture, then offered it to Richard Dawkins, who held out his own hand. After a moment he felt something slippery and cold. He looked down. A little golden cube sparkled in the reflected light of the towers. As he watched, it melted in the palm of his hand. He held it to his lips and received a faint taste of cinnamon.

"It provides ice cubes," the little man said. "Some of the ice cubes are gold and others are silver, and others are gold and silver at the same time."

"You mean they're mixed. Their colors are mixed."

"No, that would be absurd. The combined cubes are both gold and silver at the same time."

"But the properties," Richard Dawkins said, "The properties are complementary. The gold and silver mix together."

The little man took another cube from the sculpture and popped it into his mouth.

"Ridiculous! Nothing in the world can be complementary. The gold and silver cubes are both exclusively gold and exclusively silver at the same time. Everything is exactly itself and nothing else. The quality of qualities is that they do not merge!"

"But that's impossible," Richard Dawkins said. "Black can't very well be white now, can it?"

"Can't it? Can't it?" the little man was fairly screaming now. "You might just as soon deny that anything exists at all!"

Then, composing himself, he walked away from the sculpture and stood very straight, facing Richard Dawkins.

"Look here Dawkins, you think I am mistaken, and I think you are mistaken. There's nothing left for us to do except fight to the death."

"I think that's overstating the case somewhat," Richard Dawkins said. "Surely we could agree to disagree?"

"Impossible," said the little man. He signalled, and one of the monks walked over, carrying a tray. On it were a number of rubber bands.

"Choose your weapon, Dawkins," said the little man, taking a thin old band of red elastic. He drew it back and aimed it at Richard Dawkins, who had chosen a thicker green band. The two of them moved several feet apart.

"On your mark," intoned the monk. "Get set...go."

The red elastic band zipped past Richard Dawkins' head. Richard Dawkins feinted to the side, then fired the green band at the little man, striking him in the chest. The little man collapsed to the sand.

"You've killed him," the monk said. "You've won."

Several of the other monks descended on the little man and helped him to his feet. He walked to the other side of Richard Dawkins. Then, without a word he took off his shoes. The monks handed him a box tied with a red lace thread.

"Now you must wear the shoes that can never be removed." one of them said.

The little man accepted the box, glared at Richard Dawkins with a look of immortal hatred, and set off back through the desert.

"You've got to help me, " Richard Dawkins said. "I have to get to the nearest town."

The monks showed him to the edge of the city of towers. Before he left they placed a coronet on his head and handed him a travelling bag. Richard Dawkins thanked them.

After a day's walk, the path ahead of him began to narrow even further, and the sand dunes decreased. The dunes themselves thinned out until the terrain resembled a white beach with fine, closely packed sand. It was night now, and Richard Dawkins could see nothing on the horizon, no signs of life or even grasses beneath his feet. He stopped to rest, taking out a cotton blanket from the travelling pack. Towards dawn he set off again, following the path to a place of stacked stones, their surfaces smooth in the faint light. Further off, skeletal outlines of mountains.

Two old men with white hair and kindly faces were resting on one of the large flat stones, staring at a wooden door inset in one of the larger rocks. As Richard Dawkins approached he saw that both the men were wearing finely tailored suits, their lapels fixed with a single stick pin. At the head of the first man's pin was a perfectly rounded pearl; at the head of the second man's pin was a perfectly rounded diamond. Somehow, not a trace of sand seemed to have caught on their clothes.

"You there, maybe you can help me," Richard Dawkins said.

"Maybe," said the pearl man. And stared at Richard Dawkins with fixed grey eyes.

"What are you doing out here?" Richard Dawkins said.

The diamond man shifted slightly on the rock.

"We're trying to liberate ourselves from qualities," he said.

The pearl man shifted to match his brother.

"We came to this place as children," he said. "To liberate ourselves from qualities. We've worked, all our lives for that."

"We built this door," the diamond man said, gesturing to the wooden panel inset in the large rock. "It leads to a place where there aren't any qualities."

Richard Dawkins looked at them. Each of their movements matched the other, each subtle gesture repeated with perfect symmetry.

"And have you used it? Have you walked through to the other side?"

"I have," the pearl man said. "I've been through it."

Richard Dawkins walked over to the door and stared at its handle.

"What was on the other side?"

The pearl man shook his head.

"No, there weren't any qualities there. I was liberated from qualities." He looked down. "But when I came back through the door, the qualities returned."

The diamond man cast his head down in grief, and the pearl man cast his up, their movements matching like two timed pendulums.

"Well," Richard Dawkins said, knocking on the door. "It's not very much good then, is it? It's not very useful, is what I mean."

The two old gentlemen looked at him; and both of them gave a kind of smile, a look of infinite sadness and resignation.

The Ends II: of Phoenix Flower itself, metamorphical, by John Cairns

2007-09-05T18:08:00.000+09:00

The Ends:

of Phoenix Flower itself, metamorphical

The plant moves. It isn’t where it was, where one comes back into the garden, but across from where it was towards the fence on the other side. I swear, unless there are two plants. There’s none where it was. It lifts up its roots and moves. I may presume…. Yes; I did not see it move but I may presume it uproots itself and moves. It is unique; I know of no other plant which – Tumbleweed! It isn’t unique.

An insect flies into the garden looking for a flower to take nectar from and pollinate incidentally. Not any flower does. It shows interest in many, alighting on some but seems if one didn’t know better to be searching…. It sees the phoenixflower – it is the phoenixbee – and makes a bee…. It isn’t the phoenixbee; it isn’t making a beeline for the flower, going this way and that but somehow it has got to the flower. It is the phoenixbee, is it? How can one tell? It could be any old insect that’s happened to alight on the flower. And now the insect will fecundate the flower.

I can scarcely believe my eyes! It was very quick. What I did see was the flower seemed to grip the insect between pincers while a pink, fleshly proboscis curved out from the plant. It wasn’t the insect fecundated the plant; the flower fucked the bee! It must be the bee; but I’ve never heard of that, a plant like an animal fecundating what I’m sure is a male insect. It’s not possible. It must be female. It’s still not possible. It is male, that bee; I looked.

The bee looks startled, as well it might, but as if it wanted to be believed shocked by the upturn in events by whoever might be observing, me, who watches it take off in a would-be offended but in fact dazed, intoxicated manner. However, it quickly pulls itself together, having got exactly what it wanted, and flies directly over the trees at the bottom of the garden as far away from the phoenixflower as it can go as fast as it can; it knows where the flower is, or thinks there are other such flowers elsewhere, or believes the phoenixflower is one such flower. I don’t know what it thinks; it’s gone.

The flower stands up, rearranges its foliage and walks from the garden. It’s an animal. It’s a man. He doesn’t go into the house. He walks away. He’s done it; he’s been a flower: he did it for the bee, or the bee was incidental to his doing it. He’ll do something else, or not, as a man does.

Justin Isis - Pythagorean Theorem was a Hoax

2007-08-28T05:53:00.000+09:00

Nomura was there for the ten-year reunion, but there was no one he wanted to see. He picked up the class register and scanned the names. He couldn't remember anyone.

He walked out of the foyer and into the hall. The rows of lockers seemed tighter, the ceiling lower. The whole school was shabby and damp. He wondered why they hadn't rented out some place nice.

Nomura saw a light on at the end of the hall, in one of the classrooms. He imagined he must have followed this same route to the classroom ten years ago, but he couldn't remember why. He remembered it only from sleep now. The school, the halls and the classroom had become stock scenery for dreams. He could meet new acquaintances here along with old ones.

As he came closer he saw a reflection through the glass partition next to the door, itself half open. A tiny human figure warped in the glass, vanishing into the distance as he came closer. Nomura put his hand to the door and pulled it open.

An old man was seated at the desk, his back arched in the chair. His pen hand rested on a piece of paper in front of him, but it dangled rather than ran. He seemed to be scribbling something, or tracing lazy circles.

"Yes? Can I help you?"

"Oh, I'm sorry." Nomura said. "I didn't mean to disturb you, I..."

"Yes?"

"I'm here for the reunion."

"I see."

"I was here ten years ago. I don't know if you were even here then, I...Takashi Nomura? Did you know?"

The old man looked up, but his features barely cracked.

"Of course, you were in Class A, you sat in that second row over there. Don't tell me you've forgotten Moriyama already."

Now memories came back to him. He remembered long mathematics classes, always in the afternoon. The row of windows opened onto the sun. Everyone was sleepy and they always cheated.

He remembered Moriyama, too. Once, the old man had kept him after class. Nomura had failed test after test, and had been forced to admit that he understood nothing about the sides of a triangle, or any relationship they shared. He was certain information of that sort had nothing to do with life.

"Mr. Moriyama, of course. I still remember that Pythagorean theorem."

"Yes. It took you a while, didn't it? But I bet you still know it."

"In a right triangle, c square equals a square plus b square. The sum of the squares of the legs is equal to the square of the hypotenuse."

Moriyama gave a little smile of appreciation, as if Nomura had performed a dog trick.

"And has it come in handy?"

Nomura didn't know what to say. As he had expected, the Pythagorean theorem had had no bearing on the course of his life. It only rattled at the back of his mind like a tear-off tab in a tin can.

"To be honest I haven't ever used Pythagorean theorem. I still remember it, if that's what you mean."

Moriyama shuffled the papers on his desk and pushed them aside.

"I'll tell you something, Nomura." he said. "And you can make of it what you will. You see, Pythagorean theorem isn't technically...true, in all respects."

Moriyama was smiling now, a true smile.

"What do you mean by that?" Nomura said.

"Come closer, I'll show you."

And the old man was already writing on the back of a notebook, tracing a set of axioms. Nomura bent over his shoulder. It had been years since he'd followed a set of equations. Many times he asked Moriyama to stop. The old man let a proud patience overtake his haste. After half an hour, they arrived at the Q.E.D. Nomura felt like he was back in Class A.

"There. There it is. The sum of the squared lengths of a and b is clearly far greater than the square of c."

Nomura studied the proof, which had spread from the notebook's back cover to its inside pages. Everything seemed to make sense. But he felt certain that someone more qualified could rescue the theorem.

"It seems...wrong, somehow."

"Wrong? How? The proof is airtight. Pythagorean theorem is manifestly true only on an extremely reduced, local scale. The theorem itself is not valid in any real mathematical sense."

Nomura wished for a chair. He wondered why Moriyama hadn't offered him one.

"So why are you telling me this now?" Nomura said.

Moriyama's smile broke for a moment.

"Well, you took the trouble to visit me, didn't you? I didn't think I should let you go empty-handed."

"That's not what I meant." Nomura said. "I meant, if you can prove Pythagorean theorem is false, why aren't you publishing this information? Why aren't you writing some kind of...book? Paper?"

Moriyama closed the notebook.

"Well, when you get to be my age, Nomura, things like that seem a lot less important. I could write a paper and make a fuss and have my name in all kinds of journals, and when a correct theorem came out, I'd still be in this classroom teaching it. So why go to all that trouble?"

"I always thought that was the whole point of um...science..."

"Pythagorean theorem isn't hurting anyone." Moriyama said. "I wouldn't worry about these things so much. I just thought I should tell you, seeing as you worked so hard on it in my class."

Now Moriyama's smile was paternal. Nomura decided to leave.

Before he reached the door, Moriyama pushed the notebook towards him.

"Here," he said. "Maybe it'll revive your interest in mathematics."

Nomura took the notebook and slotted it into his briefcase and walked back to the foyer. He passed through a short side hall into the auditorium. The reunion was ending; his old classmates were exchanging cards and numbers. A pink slush rocked in the punch bowl every time someone bumped the table. Someone took his arm and he stared into the smile of a woman he was supposed to recognize. Nomura was afraid, here. He felt like he had amnesia. He wanted to be able to hide behind his wife Mayumi, who was at the hotel now.

"I'll use you to deflect conversation." he'd told her. "Everyone will ask questions about you, and you can ask them what I was like in high school. Maybe they remember."

"It won't work. I'm not the only thing that's happened to you in ten years." Mayumi said. "Most important, but..."

A vigorous looking man punched him on the shoulder. This was not the first time Nomura had been punched tonight. The vigorous and friendly punches were one of the reasons he'd gone for his walk.

"Where'd you go, buddy?" the man said. "We missed you."

---

Back at the hotel, Mayumi had ordered pizza. There was no time for anything else because they had to be back in Osaka by five. His appointment was at eight.

Nomura decided that it wasn't right for him to eat pizza from the box while wearing his business suit, so he took it off. Mayumi was in pajamas.

"How was it?" she said. "Did you meet any of your old friends?"

"I think so." Nomura said.

"You don't know?"

Nomura felt disappointed she hadn't protected him.

"You should have come." he said.

"You know that's not my kind of thing."

Nomura stared down at the pizza.

"Do you know what Pythagorean theorem is?" he said.

"The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides?"

Now he felt a kind of contempt for Mayumi. With the notebook in his briefcase, he could destroy her understanding of triangles. But he knew Mayumi would only be amazed for a few moments. After that her eyes would dull. Did these things matter, if the world continued to function? He imagined this was how Moriyama felt every day.

Mayumi asked him more questions about the reunion, then talked about her high school class when she saw he wasn't listening. Nomura tried to respond, but his thoughts kept returning to the briefcase.

Moriyama had claimed that the truth of the theorem meant nothing. But Nomura remembered the sensation of it rattling in the back of his mind. Perhaps the memory he had retained of the theorem had only been a memory of Moriyama himself.

He thought: by unveiling the truth of the theorem, Moriyama had been trying to force him into sympathy. Anyone could claim their accomplishments in public with modesty and grace. But to be a sharer of secrets to one person was a greater happiness, a private, selfish joy-

Now he felt a great dislike for Moriyama. It was nothing he hadn't felt before, ten years earlier. Moriyama meant nothing, yet he had destroyed a tiny part of the world. It seemed to him that if he began to doubt his received impressions, there would be no end to the concepts cast on the fire. But if he trusted what people told him, believing what he read and saw, there would always be an opening for another Moriyama, another old man cramped with secrets. So why should he doubt or trust anything?

It was not that these things meant anything. It was that he did not like to be told.

Nomura decided he would cut back on belief. He would believe as little as possible; would prune his mind like a tree. But with Mayumi sitting across from him, digressing, with his appointment the next day, where to begin...?

The Ends I: of Doomsday Book, part of Phoenix Flower - eschatological, by John Cairns

2007-08-23T06:08:00.000+09:00

The Ends:

of Doomsday Book, part of Phoenix Flower - eschatological

I doubt I can but Rich coaxes me out of the bower, up into the air. We fly to the Moon. Landing, I hold my breath, knowing it’s airless. My breath is lasting longer than possible, and Rich, who doesn’t seem to be holding his, is looking curiously at me. Holding it in isn’t comfortable and while I may be able to hold it indefinitely, if I can…? I might as well get it over with. I breathe. I can breathe! There’s air on the Moon. There’s no air on the Moon but I can breathe. I’m not breathing.

We sit down to watch the show. There’s a little eruption here, another there and pretty soon a total explosion without a sound and nothing there where the Earth was. There’s no point continuing to look, and since the most interesting thing about the Moon was its view of the Earth we don’t dally but take off to explore the universe, none of which detains us for long. We do find a planet very like the Earth and Rich leaves me there for a time. It’s interesting until its interest is exhausted. What’s the point of air when I don’t need to breathe? of food when I don’t eat? It’s not I need Rich, except to be…? It isn’t that he’s interesting, though he is, or that I’m interested when he’s with me, though I am…. I don’t know what it is but I’m about to leave the planet like home was but which isn’t my home to look for him when he comes back to me. It’s talking with him interests me. I can do without the universe so long as he’s with me, and without the universe he can’t leave me at all; there’s nowhere else for him to be except where I am also. No light. No thing. He is enough with me; I, however much the most important, even more important than all the rest, am not enough for him.

Introducing John Cairns

2007-08-20T20:34:00.000+09:00

After discussions with Chomu's mysterious editor-in-chief, Mr. Jorkins, we are delighted to announce that we will soon be publishing here the work of a new writer, John Cairns. Here, by way of introduction, is a message from John Cairns himself, as requested by Chomu:

I rose from the seminal waves at Shoreham-by-Sea a drowned rat, was fostered by London, dumped on grandma who said I was too big for Pumpherston; Aunt Nell brought me up.

Mum married to give me a father and I was moved to Methil where I’d the highest IQ ever, then onto Buckhaven. On a history degree from Edinburgh, I taught in Glasgow and, after carefully losing job and flat, Richmond – not before doing my procreative duty, twice.

I’d written conventional stuff Iris Murdoch criticized, Giles Gordon would’ve pushed and the BBC broadcasted had I not been seeking a style to realize the unconscious by and with it net my unremembered childhood where the loves used to that end were intoned: Christo, Derrick, Rich, Nick. Thanks; we had no choice.

Look out for forthcoming stories by John Cairns, here on Chomu.

Chomu - The Entomology of the Word

2007-08-16T21:02:00.000+09:00

I am surprised that I cannot think of more examples in literature – or anywhere – of words and language being described as insects. I would imagine that such a metaphor would be favoured by the likes of Franz Kafka or William Burroughs, though I cannot recall any specific instance of either of them using such a metaphor. I suppose Burroughs comes close when he talks about the “word virus”, the logical programming of language-based thought that locks the human mind into the destructive patterns we know so well.

Perhaps I can also write here – and so, hopefully, make it an example in literature – that I once had a rather Kafkaesque or Burroughsian hallucination, in which all the words in my room were wriggling free from their book spines, postcards and so on – and there are a great many words in my room – and swarming over the walls and floor like some unidentifiable hybrid of ant and beetle. I stood in the centre of my room, unable to move, frozen in dread, while somewhere in the distance could be heard the sound of a police siren. I think I stood like that for an hour or so. Most of the words seemed to be swarming from my complete works of Nagai Kafū, in twenty-nine volumes. Come to think of it, I have written at least two stories in which words come off the page and take on a life of their own. Clearly there is something in this for me to ponder.

Anyway, to get back to what I was saying, at present I can only think of two examples of the insect metaphor used to describe language. The first of these comes from 80’s synth-meister Thomas Dolby, who in his song about politically persecuted writers, Dissidents, has a chorus with the lines, “My writing, like tiny insects/In the palm of history”.

The effect here is to emphasise how fragile an author’s writing is, how easily lost, destroyed, ignored, censored or forgotten.

The second example comes from the long essay Sun and Steel, by Mishima Yukio. Very near the beginning of the essay, Mishima tell us, “In the average person, I imagine, the body precedes language. In my case, words came first of all…”

He then proceeds to liken the body to a wooden post and words to the “white ants” (could the translator means termites?) that eat it away. For Mishima, then, words are ants, and their action is corrosive, acidic. This might seem an obscure metaphor. I feel I can interpret it best for myself by thinking of the Daoist notion of the ‘uncarved block’ that is the ideal, or the whole state of being. Words are the ants that, with their corrosive acid, create something particular from this generality. It might be said that ants are ‘culture-carriers’, as Hitler, I believe, once disparagingly described the Japanese (culture-carriers rather than culture-producers).

In any case, whatever meaning was intended by Mishima, it seems fairly clear he is not describing words in a positive manner; I sense an affinity with Burroughs’ “word virus”.

At the back of his book Kwaidan, a collection of Japanese folklore compiled in 1904, Lafcadio Hearn (or possibly the publisher in after years) appends three essays under the general heading ‘Insect-Studies’. The essays are, ‘Butterflies’, ‘Mosquitoes’ and ‘Ants’. Since we have just been contemplating ants, let us refer to the essays in reverse order.

Lafcadio Hearn’s essay ‘Ants’ is possibly the most curious piece in the whole book, and is also the longest. He begins with a haiku about an ant nest destroyed by rain, moves on to a Chinese folktale about a man who understands the language of ants, and then starts in on what he really wants to write – a kind of eulogy to ants as a species, which he seems to regard as having “a civilization ethically superior to our own”. He also predicts that “certain persons will not be pleased by what I am going to say about ants”. I have to admit that this was at least partially true in my own case; the essay made me very uneasy with its Brave New World enthusiasm for a perfect society, revealed to Hearn by “the Fairy of Science”. He quotes from Herbert Spencer, who tells us that ant society is concerned with “activities that postpone individual well-being so completely to the well-being of the community that individual life appears to be attended to only just so far as is necessary to make possible due attention to social life”. Hearn himself goes on to say that “[a] greedy ant, a sensual ant, an ant capable of any one of the seven deadly sins, or even a small venial sin, is unimaginable. Equally unimaginable, of course, a romantic ant, an ideological ant, or an ant inclined to metaphysical speculations.”

The tone of admiration here is incomprehensible to me. Perhaps the uneasiness I feel arises from the sense that either ant society is evil, or I am, which seems to be the natural corollary of the essay. Hearn’s enthusiasm becomes positively alarming to me when he says, “in nearly all the higher ant-societies sex-life appears to exist only to the extent absolutely needed for the continuance of the species” and expands with relish upon the “practical suppression, or regulation, of sex-faculty”. This state of affairs is almost exactly the opposite of my own sexual values; for me the ideal world would entail more individual pleasure and less procreation. I have already mentioned Brave New World, but it is also interesting how this essay anticipates Nineteen Eighty-Four, to which it is perhaps closer, after all. Sex is also suppressed in the society depicted by Orwell.

All in all, Hearn’s essay reminds me that I find something sinister in the idea of a perfect society, and tend to suspect those who drool over such notions of having something missing. What is missing? To a lesser or greater degree, exactly what they would like to see missing in their perfect society, I suppose – the irrational, emotion. On the strength of Hearn’s essay, I would not be surprised if he were to champion the rational aliens in the film Invasion of the Bodysnatchers – if by some twist of time he were able to watch it – in turning the human world into a ‘perfect society’, without emotion and therefore without conflict.

It’s interesting that Hearn invokes “the Fairy of Science” at the beginning of his essay, too, perhaps believing that science, with its underpinning rational philosophy, and with its technological invention, is the key to creating Utopia; a Utopia embodied by ants. Are these the same as Mishima’s white ants? They seem a little different, and yet perhaps there is some relation. Mishima’s white ants are at least imaginative, but perhaps their imagination is not really their own, but a borrowed resource. Yes, after all, I think this might be right. The word virus and the white ants are the same, and are one with Lafcadio Hearn’s ants; they are the unbending logic of language. Hearn seems to deny this when he says that the ants are not ideological, and perhaps there is some hint of a terrifying truth here, that ants are a living language that has shed even ideology to become a pure logic devoid of the superfluous formalities of meaning. But now I am reminded again of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The reason the rule of Big Brother and the Party was predicted to last forever was that it had achieved perfection, and it had achieved perfection because it had ditched ideology. Power was no longer a means to an end, but an end in itself, and that is ant society. The “Fairy of Science” is involved here because scientists have long claimed that logic is not ideological, that science has no given, irrational agenda, and it is precisely this denial of the irrational that makes science as dangerous as a swarm of soldier ants.

As a writer, conscious that my words are insects, I hope, after all, that they are not ants. I do not wish to unleash an inexorable, implacable marching column of logical ants upon the world. Let me not waver here. Let me be clear and say no. I am not on the side of the ants. I will not wave an ant flag.

Let us pass then to the other insects in Hearn’s tiny invertebrate menagerie. Next we have mosquitoes. I remember a friend of mine saying, “Mosquitoes, I will kill”, indicating that he made an exception in this case. I sympathise. If ants are an entirely self-serving, implacable and meaningless logic, the egoism of the individual sublimated to the egoism of the group, thereby evading the issue of the irrational given in their existence, then mosquitoes are some kind of embodiment of bad karma. They are not scientists, or engineers, or soldiers, like ants. They are tax inspectors. Perhaps that seems arbitrary, but I can think of no other way to typify them.

In his essay on mosquitoes, Hearn begins by telling us that, “I am persecuted by mosquitoes”. Mosquitoes, of course, breed in water, and Hearn relates that the biggest breeding ground near his house comes from the neighbouring Buddhist cemetery: “Before nearly every tomb in that old cemetery there is a water-receptacle, or cistern, called mizutamé.” He then goes on to speculate about what would happen if the Tokyo authorities decided to get rid of this pest once and for all: “To free the city from mosquitoes it would be necessary to demolish the ancient graveyards; - and that would signify the ruin of the Buddhist temples attached to them… So the extermination of the Culex fasciatus would involve the destruction of the poetry of the ancestral cult, - surely too great a price to pay!...”

A salutary conclusion, steeped in a fatalism becoming to the Buddhism of the cemeteries in question. These insectile tax inspectors of human karma are indeed despicable, but they are a necessary evil. At the very least, to tolerate them is necessary. Such tolerance may help ensure the survival of poetry, but should mosquitoes themselves embody poetry? I am on the verge of saying, “Never!” However, poetry ventures into some strange places, as Hearn’s essay seems to prove. And it’s true that the Chinese ideogram for mosquito is composed of the elements ‘insect’ and ‘writing/literature’. Perhaps this is an esoteric association. Nagai Kafū seems to understand it, however, when, in A Strange Tale from East of the River, the mosquitoes breeding in the ditch remind him of summers past, and bring back memories to him even as he slaps them from his face and wipes the blood from his hand.

This brings us to the last of the three insects, and, perhaps predictably, my favourite; now we come to butterflies. Let me reveal right away that the title of this magazine was suggested by Hearn’s essay ‘Butterflies’:

Most of the Japanese literature about butterflies… appears to be of Chinese origin… Chinese precedent doubtless explains why Japanese poets and painters chose so often for their geimyô, or professional appellations, such names as Chômu (“Butterfly-Dream),” Ichô (“Solitary Butterfly),” etc.

The Chinese precedent for the name Chômu in this case is the famous story of Chuang Tse, who fell asleep and dreamt he was a butterfly, flitting blissfully from flower to flower, only to awake and wonder whether he was a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming he was a man. (Incidentally, in Mandarin pronunciation, Chômu would be rendered as 'Diemeng'. The Chinese characters themselves can be found here, in the top right corner, being the second and third characters from the extreme right.)

Hearn displays a mixture of fascination with the butterfly in Chinese and Japanese culture, and reserve towards a perceived lack of weight or depth in what it represents. He laments that, though he would like spirit-maidens to visit him and tell him tales of butterflies, as they did for the Chinese scholar Rôsan, “of course, no spirit-maidens will ever deign to visit so skeptical a person as myself”. Exactly who is rejecting whom here?

He is also deprecating about the selection of butterfly haiku he reproduces and translates: “Probably [the reader] will not care much for the verses in themselves.” But, as Hearn manages grudgingly to admit, this is a matter of cultural bias: “The taste for Japanese poetry of the epigrammatic sort is a taste that must be slowly acquired.”

Perhaps so, but some of us acquire the taste quicker than others. I for one favour the culture of the butterfly, contrary to Hearn, over that of the ant. I am tired of the Western emphasis on the quantitative in literature – on the volume and weight of the work. I am tired of the endless, earth-bound marching of ant-lines. Let our words, as writers, be butterflies. Let us eschew straight lines. Let us flit madly and drunkenly from flower to flower. Let us replace the chains of logic with the transformation that brings wings. Let us dream that we are humans dreaming that we are butterflies dreaming that we are humans. Let us dream and awake from endless dreams, so that one butterfly may be many people, and one person many butterflies. Let each flight be flown in lepidopterous finery.

Such is the manifesto of the dreaming butterfly.

Then again, looking up the word ‘Chômu’ on the Internet recently, I find it also has the following meaning:

An intellectually challenged individual, a person unable to make logical and commonsense decisions; "A person who lives for the singular purpose of trying to ruin the best parts of life for others by sub-intellectual activities".

Perhaps this is the kind of insect indicated by the entomology of the word.

Justin Isis - The Lambs in the Trenches are Lambent and Trenchant

2007-08-06T14:22:00.000+09:00

Ai and Kei liked to eat chocolate pudding.

The best kind came in packs of six, sealed with a plastic top. When Ai and Kei went grocery shopping with their mother, they would take packs of the chocolate pudding from the shelves and place them in the grocery basket.

"No, that's too much." the mother sometimes said. Other people in the aisle would turn and watch as the mother placed the chocolate pudding back on the shelf. Ai and Kei became sad. They would run off when the mother was in a different aisle and take the chocolate pudding again. The pudding packs were usually frosty from the shelf, but when Ai and Kei carried them, close to the chest, the frost disappeared and the packs became warmer.

Ai and Kei didn't wait until home to eat the chocolate pudding. The packs came with plastic spoons and Ai and Kei would tear them from the lid. They took a single pack each. The mother was left to carry the groceries.

Kei walked head down, staring into the pudding. The chocolate surface spread through the pack's gently curving cylinder. Kei took the lid flap between her thumb and forefinger.

Ai ran out and spun in circles. She stretched her arms and twirled across the parking lot. The mother watched her and carried the bags to the car.

Inside Ai and Kei opened the chocolate pudding. They pulled the flaps back slowly, stripping the plastic from the glue that sealed it to the lid. The packs croaked softly as they opened. A thin brown ring remained on the back of the flap and Kei licked it off. Ai saved hers for later. She scooped out the pudding with her red plastic spoon. As she ate, she felt a sweetness at the back of her mouth.

The mother leaned around and said "Don't eat too much."

When they arrived home the father came out. The father helped carry the bags inside. He tried to pat Ai and Kei on the head and they made faces at him, smiling. The father saw the chocolate pudding smeared around the edges of their mouths. When Ai and Kei finished, traces of pudding remained in the packs. Ai reached a finger in and scraped it off and sucked her finger.

At other times they would sit in the street, eating. The sun went down and they became silent.

The father watched their jaw bones moving. First their mouths opened to accept the spoon. Then their jaws closed. Sometimes a cheek would puff out. Sometimes their tiny mouths opened and closed, slowly. The father had seen fish breathing that way.

The father looked out into the street as the sun went down.

He saw people crossing at the corner. A man passed him wearing a shirt that said 'Punjab.' His daughters' mouths filled with pudding.

A tiny chain of lights opened in his mind. The father closed his eyes and the lights swirled in darkness. They gave off scattered grains, like pollen. The vast night of time opened before him. The father felt weightless.

The lights said, 'Punjab, Punjab, Punjab.' Gently, Punjab lifted itself out of space and floated behind his eyes. He could see it reflected upside down. A ripple passed across its surface, and the lights vanished. He had heard Punjab called "India's breadbasket state" before.

---

Stevens shifted at the podium. Kuldip Singh was twiddling his thumbs again. This peculiar habit of Mr. Singh, who always sat in the front row, had been a source of constant distraction throughout the semester.

"Farming of the kinnow, popularly called the stepbrother of the orange, has picked up considerably among farmers occupying some 5,000 hectares with an overall yield of 300,000 tonnes annually," Stevens said. But now it was impossible for him to concentrate, and he recited the rest of the lecture in a monotone, hardly hearing his own words.

He left Punjab Agriculture University at 6:30 and, after receiving a phone call, went to the post-office to pick up a package. Later, in his office, he opened it and found several photos of his family. In the first set, his nephews were playing in a garden, their feet covered in dirt.

He looked up as the bell rang. It was Amrik from his second-period class. Stevens motioned for him to come in.

"Here's my report," Amrik said, handing him a folder. "I'm sorry it's late. I needed to finish my research on crop rotation."

Stevens looked at him. He was carrying a grocery bag in his left hand. Through the plastic he could see the outline of a thick block of chocolate.

A tiny chain of lights opened in his mind. Stevens closed his eyes and the lights swirled in darkness. They gave off scattered grains, like pollen. The vast night of time opened before him. Stevens felt weightless.

The lights said, 'Chocolate pudding, chocolate pudding, chocolate pudding.' Gently, a plastic cup of chocolate pudding lifted itself out of space and floated behind his eyes. He could see it reflected upside down. A ripple passed across its surface, and the lights vanished. He had eaten chocolate pudding of this kind before.

---

Both men returned home at 9:30 PM and watched television for an hour while eating dinner. An hour later, when they went to bed, both pulled back the corner of the sheet from the left and then stopped suddenly. It seemed that they had pulled back the sheet in the same way before, and that something of great importance attached itself to the motion. Remembering it implied remembering something else, and for a moment an endless series seemed to shimmer out of reach. Then they forgot it, climbed into bed and slept facing the left, both their knees bent at the same slight angle.

Justin Isis - Your Angle Has Been Cornered And You Won't Be Able to Attain Shit

2007-08-03T16:10:00.000+09:00

As soon as she sat down he started to worry about Satoko's teeth. They were bright and clean and even, perfectly spaced; and whenever she smiled he worried that something would happen to them.

He'd seen women with beautiful teeth before, of course. But they usually formed one part of a greater beauty, a unity. The crescent of the smile beneath a delicate nose. The glint on the teeth-tips matching the light from the eyes.

There was nothing wrong with Satoko's face, but none of it called attention to itself in the same way as her teeth. They seemed almost sculpted, their tips translucent, her rounded molars pure porcelain. The points of her incisors rested on the corners of her lips like diamonds set in coral. Distracted out of all proportion, he went on staring at them, ignoring everything she said.

Your teeth are very white, he told her.

Satoko smiled. But he felt that something terrible would happen. It occurred to him that she had lived her entire life with the perfection of her teeth undisturbed. Intact for twenty years, how long would it be before one of them chipped on a nut or shifted out of place? The universe had a habit of deleting exceptions.

He felt that he had to warn her somehow, but there was nothing he could say.

In a dream the following night he met Satoko outside Kichijoji Station. She was rummaging through the garbage, reaching her arm into the bins and pulling out empty cans and bottles. What she'd taken had been stacked behind her in neat rows, one on top of the other. He helped her by lifting off the bin tops, and eventually they piled up a small castle of cans.

Several weeks later he heard from a friend that Satoko had tripped on the stairs and broken her front teeth.

The Tenth Night, by Natsume Soseki

2007-07-13T19:08:00.000+09:00

Among the Japanese texts I studied at university was Yume Juuya (Ten Nights of Dream), by Natsume Soseki. One of Soseki's lesser known works, this is a cycle of ten stories, which, as the title suggests, are all dreams. At last, the ending "and it was all a dream" becomes so appropriate that it actually goes without saying. In fact, what better ending for a story (any story?) could there be? Talk about deconstructionism! (Well, maybe later.) As a matter of fact, there are some great tales from what was once called the Orient that end, quite superbly, with the revelation that the entire action of the story had only been a dream. The stories in this cycle, however, don't end with such a revelation, but begin from that very premise. Apart from the title of the work, four of the ten stories reinforce this premise by beginning with the phrase "Konna yume wo mita": literally, "I had this sort of dream" or "I had a dream like this".

These tales are proof that a story does not need to 'make sense' to be powerful. They are a significant addition to the literature of dreams, which extends from antiquity, and, for instance, Chuang Tse dreaming he was a butterfly (of which there will certainly be more later), to the present day, and the likes of Burroughs' wonderful, My Education: A Book of Dreams. They also have a special place in Soseki's own oeuvre, revealing, as they do, the dark subconscious areas that gave the ordered rooms of his better known fiction the shadows of depth and suggestion that made them fascinating.

I have translated three of these tales (second, seventh and tenth). At least two of them I submitted to the now defunct magazine Dreamzone, because I thought them appropriate. The editor, Paul Bradshaw, a true lover of the bizarre, seemed to agree, and published them in one issue after another. I noticed in the letters column, however, that even those who supposedly loved dreams often seemed to want their dreams sanitised or lobotomised. There were a number of letters of the "What was that all about?" variety. This was one of many signs to me that I had strayed from the suburbs of literature that most readers and writers (whether of genre fiction or classics, prize-winning contemporary authors or blockbusters) seem unquestioningly to inhabit. I don't know quite where this place is that I have ended up. It is a place overgrown with nameless weeds. I think, however, that's the way I like it.

Anyway, let me now present what is perhaps my favourite story from Yume Juuya, 'The Tenth Night' (By the way, if anyone knows who the recitalist Kumoemon is, could they let me know?):

The Tenth Night

Ken-san came round to tell me the news. On the evening of the seventh day since he had been abducted by a woman, Shotaro had suddenly returned, collapsed with a fever, and was now confined to bed. Shotaro was the most dashing and well-liked man in the town. He was also extremely good-natured and honest. He had but one foible. When evening came he would don his panama hat, take a seat in front of the fruit shop and gaze in unceasing admiration at the faces of the passing women. Apart from that he had no idiosyncrasies to speak of.

At times when there were few women passing he would transfer his attention from the passers-by to the fruit. The fruit was of various kinds. Peaches, apples, loquats, bananas and so forth were piled up beautifully in baskets and arranged in two rows, ready to be bought as a gift and taken away in a trice. Shotaro would look at this display and comment on how splendid it was. “If one is setting up shop, then it’s got to be a fruit shop!” he would say. However, he himself merely loafed about in his panama.

He would even hold forth on the tangerines, saying, “This is a fine colour,” and so on. But he had never once put his money where his mouth was and actually bought any of the fruit. And, of course, you cannot eat fruit for nothing. All he ever did was praise their colours.

One evening a woman appeared in front of the shop. She looked like a woman of breeding and her clothes were of the finest. Shotaro was very taken with the colour of her kimono. On top of that, he was also marvellously impressed with the woman’s face. And so he doffed his precious panama and greeted her courteously. The woman pointed to the very biggest basket of fruit, saying, “This one please.” At which Shotaro immediately picked up the basket and handed it to her. The woman hefted its weight in her hand.

“It’s terribly heavy,” she said.

Shotaro, being essentially a person of leisure, and moreover, an exceedingly sociable gent, said, “Well, let’s carry it home for you, shall we?” And with that he and the woman left the shop. They left, and did not return.

Even for someone as happy-go-lucky as Shotaro this behaviour was too much. “This is beyond a joke!” said his friends and relatives, and made a great fuss. Then, on the seventh evening, all of a sudden, he returned. When everyone swarmed round to visit him and asked where on Earth he had got to, Shotaro replied that he and the woman had taken a train to the mountains.

It must have been a very long journey. According to Shotaro’s story they alighted from the train and stepped directly into a field. The field was immensely broad and wherever they turned their gaze there was nothing but green grass. They walked together over the grass until they came suddenly to the edge of a cliff, when the woman said to Shotaro, “Would you be so kind as to jump off here?”

Shotaro peered over the edge. He could see the cliff face, but not the bottom. Once again Shotaro removed his panama and thrice declined the woman’s invitation. At this the woman said, “If you do not go ahead and take the plunge, you will be licked by a pig. Well? Do you understand?”

The two things Shotaro hated most in the world were pigs and the recitalist Kumoemon. However, thinking his aversion not worth dying for, Shotaro, as might be expected, declined to jump. Immediately a pig came snorting in his direction. Shotaro had no choice but to strike the swine upon the tip if its snout with the slender cane of betel-nut palm that he carried. Squealing, the pig toppled over the edge, tumbling to the bottom of the cliff.

Just as Shotaro counted ‘one’ with a sigh of relief, another swine came rushing in, intent on rubbing its huge snout against him. With no time to do anything else, Shotaro once again wielded his cane. The pig squealed and, just like its predecessor, tumbled head over heels to the bottom of the precipice. No sooner had it done so than another appeared. This time, suddenly, something caught Shotaro’s attention. Looking up he saw, from the farthest reaches of the grassy green meadow, what must have been tens of thousands of pigs – more than he could count – all in a straight line, bearing down in a snorting melee upon Shotaro, where he stood at the head of the cliff. He felt terror in the deepest chamber of his heart. However, there was nothing he could do, and so he just went on neatly striking the swine on the tips of their snouts, one by one, with the betel-nut cane. Strangely, all he had to do was give them the merest tap on the nose and they toppled over, tumbling to the bottom of the chasm below. Peering over the edge he could see a line of pigs disappearing, head over heels, into what seemed to be bottomless space. When he thought that he had propelled this many pigs into the chasm, he himself grew afraid. But the pigs kept on coming, one after the other. With a power as if black clouds had grown feet and were ploughing through the grass, they came snorting on, inexhaustible.

Shotaro marshalled his courage in desperation, and continued to strike the pigs’ snouts for seven days and six nights. But at last, his spirit utterly used up, his hands weak as jelly, he was licked by a pig. Then he collapsed upon the cliff edge.

Ken-san told Shotaro’s story thus far and said, “And so you see, it doesn’t do to chase after women too much.”

I, too, thought this was a reasonable conclusion. However, Ken-san said that he wanted Shotaro’s panama hat.

Shotaro was beyond help. The panama was rightfully Ken-san’s now.

Justin Isis - No One Was Quite Certain When the Whole "Waffle Cone" Thing Started Getting out of Hand

2007-07-12T15:42:00.000+09:00

Upset at his wife having left him, Mr. Terajima decided to commit suicide by eating himself to death at a Chinese buffet. He had always been fascinated by the threshold of consumption, the point at which the body recoils from the prospect of more food. The process of satisfying hunger, he felt, held a particular poignant sadness. It was such a short time, after all, before one turned away in indifference or disgust from what had previously inflamed the appetite. Such a brief period of satisfaction. If only one could remain at the moment of first taste...

But tonight, Mr. Terajima thought as he walked into the Jade Garden, I will not turn away in disgust. I will continue to eat; I will wring every drop of joy from my plate, and in the process expire. I will taste more than most ever do, and what better way than that to depart?

As a waitress showed him to his table, Mr. Terajima watched her retreating backside. There had been something about her face, too. He hadn't seen one like her in a long time. At these times, he was overcome by a sense of wistful hopelessness. These stillborn desires with nowhere to go. Nothing would happen, and by tomorrow he would forget her. The Mongolian beef looked nice, he thought.

Mr. Terajima had looked in the mirror that morning and realized that he was aging. To make things worse, he looked completely ordinary - no matter how well he dressed, it was impossible to mistake him for anything other than a middle-aged man. Even his hair was thinning.

The waitress returned with a teapot, but by now he was already at the buffet. Denied a closer view of her. She smiled professionally as she saw him watching. Mr. Terajima turned back and began to fill his empty plate.

He helped himself to bowl after bowl of wonton soup. He gulped down hot tea and let it burn his tongue. He stuffed himself with noodles, fried rice, sweet and sour pork; went back to the buffet and ladled on lurid pink sauces. He'd been right about the Mongolian beef. He could hardly keep himself from shoveling it into his mouth.

Soon he was full. There was still meat and rice and soup in front of him but he didn't want any of it. His belt seemed tighter already. He lost his ambition to eat. He lost his ambition to die.

Indeed - what had he been thinking? Had he really believed that he wouldn't make it to work on time tomorrow? He'd spend more time in the bathroom tomorrow morning, that's all. The same office, the same cup of coffee, and when he returned, to watch the news, the same programmes, sitting in the cracked leather chair, ~~Midori making his dinner, Midori, Midori, Midori-~~

He signalled. The waitress returned with a bill and a fortune cookie. Mr. Terajima unwrapped the latter. The white edge of the message paper protruded from the cookie's lip. Mr. Terajima drew it out without cracking the cookie, his preferred method since childhood. The process always reminded him of defusing a mine, or removing the pin from a grenade. He looked down at the tiny scroll.

Please do not eat me. I am

Mr. Terajima turned it over in his hands. He supposed it was a joke - what kind of fortune was that? On the back, random numbers. No clue. He made to crack the cookie.
Something caught his eye. Something white sticking out of the cookie. Another fortune? It must have been some kind of factory mistake. He drew it out. Maybe he'd have better luck this time.

alive. This is not a joke. I

Mr. Terajima arched his back. Definitely a joke. But what was the trick? Was the cookie simply stuffed with messages? Sure enough, as he looked down, he noticed a white edge that hadn't been there before.

realize how extraordinary this is. But

He tossed the cookie in his hand; it didn't seem especially heavy. He wondered how many more messages were inside.

please believe me. Have compassion for

Another one. He drew them out one by one now, like a magician with scarves in his sleeve.

my situation. I repeat, this is the truth. If you would like proof, please ask me a question.

"My wife's name," he said, "Is Midori. What's my wife's name?"

Midori. It is a very beautiful name.

Mr. Terajima sighed. There was no reason for anyone to be doing this to him, but it was either that, or he was witnessing a miracle. Neither prospect impressed him much. But he decided to play along.

"This is unbelievable," he said, after looking around the restaurant. There were only a few customers, but he didn't want anyone to see him. "How can you be alive? Where did you come from?"

I remember being in the dark, wrapped in plastic. I was in a box with others like me, but none were responsive. Perhaps I have been reincarnated?

"Maybe," said Mr. Terajima. Best to keep his responses short. A group of young people had just came in - no need to give them anything to stare at. "Okay, I won't eat you. Actually..."

This was something that could make him rich.This was something that could make him famous. Televised interviews...all sorts of publicity for the company. Make the cookie a mascot, maybe? Instant recognition, ubiquitous stuffed toys...Midori watching him on television.

"Actually, I think we should go public." he said. "Maybe we could go into business together."

Please explain.

"Well, a talking fortune cookie...it's not something you see every day."

Apart from the novelty of my existence, I'm afraid that very little about me is interesting. Until I've learned more about myself, I don't feel that I can be of any help to you in that matter. I apologize.

Mr. Terajima wasn't especially disappointed - this being a joke, after all, it had to be a joke - but was it really necessary to use six messages to convey this rather formal rejection? The tabletop was covered with tiny scrolls. He supposed the cookie was afraid a simple "no" would have led to him snapping it, but its obsequiousness grated on him - he'd seen it all too many times in his subordinates when they wanted something.

"Well, now that we've gotten business out of the way, I'm afraid I have to be going," he said. He almost wanted to ask for another fortune cookie. He'd always liked the taste. He took out the next message.

What is your name?

So the cookie was becoming personable after all.

"Naoki Terajima."

How are you tonight, Mr. Terajima?

"Depressed? I don't know. I don't feel too bad, I guess. I came in here on some kind of whim that I was just going to start eating and not stop," he said, looking down at the empty plates, "I don't know what I was thinking. I feel sick already. I'll probably just go home, maybe rent a movie..."

That situation is not very likely. At the most, you would end up vomiting or losing consciousness.

"Yes. I know."

That seems rather irrational to me, Mr. Terajima. Why would you want to do something like that?.

He was about to start telling the Midori story when the waitress returned and asked him if everything was all right. Had she seen him talking to himself? Even though she'd never see him again and there was nothing between them now, he couldn't stand the thought of her thinking there was anything the matter with him. What was it about her face? It...Natsuki Ogawa from high school had had a face like that. The sharp cheekbones, and the same bearing, how she seemed to be looking beyond him even when she smiled. Natsuki Ogawa from the swim team, wishing for her picture on those dark afternoons spent wrapped in himself, the radio blaring foreign songs in his half-lit room... The waitress disappeared into the kitchen.

"Well," he said, "I've always been slightly depressed most of my life. I used to think that I was afraid of dying or troubled by the meaninglessness of life, but just now I realized that most of it comes from not being able to have sex with whoever I want, whenever I want to."

There - it was out in the open now. Mr. Terajima felt a tremendous sense of liberation - until he realized he was whispering his secrets to a fortune cookie in a second rate Chinese restaurant.

Would the ability to have sex with whoever you want to whenever you want to relieve this sense of hopelessness?

"Yes, yes it would!" Mr. Terajima said, lowering his face to the cookie. If miracles could be as banal as this, was it too much to hope for? "Would it be possible...could we make some kind of bargain? I'm a very wealthy man. I don't know what you are, but, there are other things, services I could provide. Even devotions, sacrifices...what is it you want?"

He reeled out the message scroll by scroll, waiting until he had the whole thing assembled on the table before reading it. He could feel his heart beating. Hadn't Midori said something about that, too?

I'm sorry to disappoint you again, but my abilities don't extend much further than providing messages on these small pieces of paper. As a sentient cookie, I can't help you with your problems. All I can offer is my moral support.

Mr. Terajima picked up the fortune cookie and snapped it in half.