don't tell your mother

'don't tell your mother' is a relatively unknown song by the sundays, but in my view it is one of their best, and it helps to further the discussion about shiki and williams. while williams' red wheelbarrow poem is a sterling example of the ugly face of american affirmationism, i am not convinced that shiki's alternative is the most admirable aesthetic pinnacle. shiki is far from being my favorite poet in the japanese tradition, because most of the time his strictly descriptive emphasis is pretty without being truly affecting. and beyond that, i don't think that what i called the 'subtractive background' of the poem is present in quite the same way today. of course, it is present, but our relation to it is different.

the subject of 'don't tell your mother' is a fairly standard carpe diem theme; its originality and success (the latter being far more important) lies of course in the way it expresses this theme. the verse, after the lines 'it's time to learn not to work so hard/or not at all' wheels rather unexpectedly into a memento mori chorus, 'how will we know when the end is nigh/on a day much as any other.' this chorus about death is in fact the bounciest and most elated part of the song.

now, if shiki's cockscombs poem represents the continuing flourishing of life against the background of the imminent death of the poet, 'don't tell your mother,' which, again in my view (which, since this song is largely unknown, is probably not widely shared), puts both the flourishing and the disappearing in one place. the aesthetic is not, however, 'dionysian'--this word is overused in aesthetic analysis to a truly alarming degree. it is joyful in a much simpler, less nietzschean way. the singer doesn't feel herself dying, she simply knows that death is coming, could come at any moment, but in the joyful excitement of the present, this inevitable death, the inevitable nihilation of the present, becomes itself a matter of indifference, or even, in the surge of the moment, another spark for enjoyment. there is no wagnerian pain, no harmful desire for the unattainable, and none of nietzsche's pain/pleasure of the woman giving birth. and there is also none of the empty calm of meditation.

one of the central insights underlying taoism and buddhism is the problematic nature of success and hope. success always implies the possibility of failure and our inability to fully control whether we succeed or fail. similarly, hope implies fear. both leave us dependent on things outside of ourselves, which we cannot control. spinoza criticizes hope for the same reason. happiness that results from successes won through struggle will always bear a little of the taint of its origins. happiness that results from the liberation of failure is similarly tainted, always threatened by the imminent return of the project and the negativity of its origins. 'don't tell your mother' succeeds where bataille fails because it is both hopeless and joyful at the same time.

walk into a room
...
walk out of a room

williams and shiki

there are few poems i dislike more than w c williams' 'the red wheelbarrow.' this mind-numbing american affirmation of the everyday is one of the early poetic instances of the current intellectual and artistic fashion of praising everyday life as it is, everyday language as everyone speaks it, everyday things and everyday jobs, repetitive labor like bricklaying, repetitive music like john adams. as if everything ought to be adored merely by virtue of its commonness, which conceals its absolute uniqueness: every crack in the sidewalk is as unique as a snowflake...

there has been some debate about the value of one of shiki's most famous poems,

cockscombs . . .
must be 14,
or 15

which seems on the surface to be much like williams' poem. but in this case the poem is normally read with the poet's life in mind: he was dying in a hospital as he wrote it. thus the flourishing beauty of the flowers is seen against the background of the decay that comes to all entities, what might be called the subtractive tendency of time.

wagner

wagnerian excess and haiku simplicity are not as far apart as they seem. one approaches an eternity of chaos through immersion in emotions whose strength ruptures the subject; the other finds an eternity of calm in a moment of pure vision that erases the subject. but these two eternities, the eternity of chaos and the eternity of calm, are the same eternity seen from opposing points--the highest and lowest points, which touch each other. if isolde had survived the massive expenditure of her transfiguration, perhaps, in the spent emptiness that followed, she would have a glimpse of the other eternity, at the trough of the wave. given this, one can understand why mishima chose to appropriate wagner and wagnerian emotion.

the immobility of progress

today no one doubts that technological and economic progress, if not true social progress, is underway and will continue to occur into the forseeable future and beyond even that. but because this progress is the product of a vast social machine, it is difficult for the individual to conceive his life as an active part of its realization. his work impacts a tiny field around him and has no noticeable influence on the larger forces that structure the world and determine which ways of life are possible. of course, there may be a measurable result within a small circle, but the larger social forces and structures that make us what we are will remain monoliths too large to dent or scratch. on closer analysis, even the major historical figures of our time look more like debris on the crest of a wave than shapers and creators of the course of events. thus, what appears from a distance as a very rapid forward motion is in truth, as far as personal experience and choices are concerned, effective immobility. either one pursues work purely for personal financial gain, or else one attends to one's work with a monkish devotion that expects little or no tangible recompense. but this monkish labor, often rewarded with little more than the abstract knowledge that one has at least done something, may be the only way to remain above a ruinous barbarism, at least if it is applied to those worthy labors that are in such short supply. perhaps it is possible to rediscover a devotion which is not that of the protestant bourgeois work ethic, but rather the devotion of sade's lecherous pre-revolutionary monastery, where the intonation of prayers and hymns alternates with the enactment of shameless acts of abandon.

Blue Cliff Record Case 61

Fuketsu, giving instruction, said, 
  "If one raises a speck of dust, the house and the nation prosper. If one
   does not raise a speck of dust, they perish."

silence except for
my socks on the wood floor
first day of autumn

rustling fields of grass
I heard again
tall near Lawrence Sound
while slowly brushing my hair
in the quiet morning


worn down in your bed
I hear one cricket chitter through
an open window

the bird charmers - winter sun

i can't decide
just how many years i've lived
i tried to count the seasons
and winter won hands down

the bird charmers - chicken little

all the birds are singing
and my head is ringing

two levels

in chekhov, worldly time and eternal time are sometimes opposed, but sometimes only juxtaposed. worldly time can lead beyond itself, through failure, from stress exhaustion, and even in the repetitive listlessness of labor. then it breaks briefly into eternal time and drifts, either quietly or on the crest of a wave, or lying down in the snow, mute beneath the wind. astral weeks and my bloody valentine are there too, the billows of pink noise or the swelling rustle of young leaves.

nothing to do with each other

lots of things that have
nothing to do with each other
happen at the same time
and so
why not we?

the bird charmers - fallen leaf

a fallen leaf's the only tie
that can lead me back
to summer

the bird charmers - haiku

from old notebooks

summer


sun catching dust on the window:
the world outside
wrapped in gauze and turned off


powdery jet trails
made my ex-girlfriend
want to do lines in the sky



winter


once for me turquoise
you were swept up by red dust
while I gazed into the snow


judging from
the darkness of my blinds
the sky has gone out


I hit my head on the ice
and the pain left for a spinning world--
lost me in the sparkle of
snow-laden skies



spring


the queen of a rainy country--
I wonder what color
her hair is now


at the back window
a blue bowl in the sink
catching the moonlight


lining up the rug
with the cut of the floorboards
I see the morning sun


rainwater on your postcard
made blue ink run
over my fingers



autumn


the smell of fallen leaves
the autumn after you were gone--
I loved you then