1. Draft Project, Pt. 8: Bigar Waterfall at Carass Severin, Romania via tinydancerinyourhand I don’t remember how many times I have forgotten, how many times I have woken up, how many times I have remembered falsely. I open my eyes. I open my mouth. Air erupts from my throat. Life claws its way toward the surface, and I am falling. I reach out. Thin fingers reach in. Touch. Lift. Breathe again. Alabaster skin. She tilts her head, her nose brushes mine. A nuzzle. Her gaze is curious. Her lips are soft on mine. As she pulls away, lifts into the canopy, disappears into the shade, her skin blooms red. Not with embarrassment or excitement. It is the red of a wound. I’m not sure if the last sign of her I see are her lips or her eyes, but her breathing is all around me. Despite the hum of falling water, there is a steady rhythm of expansion and intake. Looking up, I can’t help but think that the dark, impermanent branches look like nails. Above, the green must be brilliant. I can barely see. Breaths, precious, do not come easily. I stretch out thoughtfully, lazily. I pull the water toward me, bunch up. Stretch again. I look up. Four branches are reaching down for me. There is a flash and then water rushes over my head. Light. And then nothing.

    Draft Project, Pt. 8: Bigar Waterfall at Carass Severin, Romania via tinydancerinyourhand

    I don’t remember how many times I have forgotten, how many times I have woken up, how many times I have remembered falsely. I open my eyes. I open my mouth. Air erupts from my throat. Life claws its way toward the surface, and I am falling. I reach out. Thin fingers reach in. Touch. Lift. Breathe again.

    Alabaster skin. She tilts her head, her nose brushes mine. A nuzzle. Her gaze is curious. Her lips are soft on mine. As she pulls away, lifts into the canopy, disappears into the shade, her skin blooms red. Not with embarrassment or excitement. It is the red of a wound. I’m not sure if the last sign of her I see are her lips or her eyes, but her breathing is all around me. Despite the hum of falling water, there is a steady rhythm of expansion and intake. Looking up, I can’t help but think that the dark, impermanent branches look like nails. Above, the green must be brilliant. I can barely see. Breaths, precious, do not come easily.

    image

    I stretch out thoughtfully, lazily. I pull the water toward me, bunch up. Stretch again. I look up. Four branches are reaching down for me. There is a flash and then water rushes over my head. Light. And then nothing.

  2. Draft Project, Pt. 7: ”Sofia” by Artonik via artforadults I am rushing towards some surface like oxygen, like bubbles where life begins. I am not sure if this rushing is urgency or joy, if it comes from inside me or from my body hurtling through something outside myself. I burst through the surface. It was inevitable. I am gasping for air, and yet I’m standing straight up. My chest is not moving. I stop breathing. There is no pressure. I feel for a pulse and there is none. The world is devoid of color. I am not blind. It is not a crushing whiteness, nor is it an endless night. There is just no color. Or all the colors at once. There is a landscape. It is similar to the almost winter plain I imagined, but there is no sense of waiting or desolation. There is no need to take shelter. This is not imagined. I am here. Is this before or after the falling place, the mists, the dreams of El Cid? I can’t be certain. Nor is this a place that grew up around me as I moved. No, it is just a landscape. I can’t see colors. I can’t see anything, but I know this place is vaguely green. Underneath, it is brown, a brown so old and patient that it might seem grey. I touch my eyes. How do I know all of this if I do not see? I’m not sure I am really touching my eyes. Maybe my mind is just telling my arm it’s moving, bending at the elbow. Maybe my fingers just feel like they’re touching my eyes. Maybe my eyes just feel like they are being touched. I am walking. Somehow, I know I am walking. In the distance, there are tents. They shift with the wind. There is a woman. She is standing in the middle of the carnival. The tents are empty. The only motion is in their exterior. And the woman is waiting. She has no clothes, no hair, no color. She is part of the landscape, or the landscape is part of her. She is a mirror. Or glass. I’m not sure if she touches me or if I touch her. The landscape explodes with color and noise. I fall down. I am gasping, now. Air has filled this world, and smell. I can smell the grass and the mud. I can smell perspiration, and I can feel people moving around where I can’t see them. I only see her. Her skin is pink and yellow and brown and white and black and blue and red. It is a profusion of color. There are tattoos shifting across her bare skin. Some of them are stars or clouds. The sky behind her reminds me of lost summer days. I feel lost. What am I doing here? She snaps her fingers. People pour from the tents. They seem to be coming from every direction. They bring her clothes, wigs. She doesn’t seem to move, but these things come and go as if they are part of her. She is looking down at me, but I know she is sad. I knew her once. Maybe it was only a moment ago, before we touched. Now, though, we are separate. She is part of everything, and I had felt that too. “Hurry,” she says. Does movement occur before understanding? Do I scream before I know I am screaming? I am pulled every which way, along the path of all the people, and further. I am pulled into the sky, the sun, the clouds, the rain. I soak into the earth. In less than a moment, I am pulled in an infinite amount of directions. I am everywhere far away from her, or from where we were. I can still see her and the people milling around her. I see it in a thousand different ways. She is still part of me though, from when we touched, and we are screaming.

    Draft Project, Pt. 7: ”Sofia” by Artonik via artforadults

    I am rushing towards some surface like oxygen, like bubbles where life begins. I am not sure if this rushing is urgency or joy, if it comes from inside me or from my body hurtling through something outside myself.

    I burst through the surface. It was inevitable. I am gasping for air, and yet I’m standing straight up. My chest is not moving. I stop breathing. There is no pressure. I feel for a pulse and there is none. The world is devoid of color. I am not blind. It is not a crushing whiteness, nor is it an endless night. There is just no color. Or all the colors at once.

    There is a landscape. It is similar to the almost winter plain I imagined, but there is no sense of waiting or desolation. There is no need to take shelter. This is not imagined. I am here. Is this before or after the falling place, the mists, the dreams of El Cid? I can’t be certain. Nor is this a place that grew up around me as I moved. No, it is just a landscape. I can’t see colors. I can’t see anything, but I know this place is vaguely green. Underneath, it is brown, a brown so old and patient that it might seem grey.

    I touch my eyes. How do I know all of this if I do not see? I’m not sure I am really touching my eyes. Maybe my mind is just telling my arm it’s moving, bending at the elbow. Maybe my fingers just feel like they’re touching my eyes. Maybe my eyes just feel like they are being touched.

    I am walking. Somehow, I know I am walking. In the distance, there are tents. They shift with the wind. There is a woman. She is standing in the middle of the carnival. The tents are empty. The only motion is in their exterior. And the woman is waiting. She has no clothes, no hair, no color. She is part of the landscape, or the landscape is part of her. She is a mirror. Or glass. I’m not sure if she touches me or if I touch her.

    The landscape explodes with color and noise. I fall down. I am gasping, now. Air has filled this world, and smell. I can smell the grass and the mud. I can smell perspiration, and I can feel people moving around where I can’t see them. I only see her. Her skin is pink and yellow and brown and white and black and blue and red. It is a profusion of color. There are tattoos shifting across her bare skin. Some of them are stars or clouds. The sky behind her reminds me of lost summer days. I feel lost. What am I doing here?

    She snaps her fingers. People pour from the tents. They seem to be coming from every direction. They bring her clothes, wigs. She doesn’t seem to move, but these things come and go as if they are part of her. She is looking down at me, but I know she is sad. I knew her once. Maybe it was only a moment ago, before we touched. Now, though, we are separate.

    She is part of everything, and I had felt that too. “Hurry,” she says. Does movement occur before understanding? Do I scream before I know I am screaming? I am pulled every which way, along the path of all the people, and further. I am pulled into the sky, the sun, the clouds, the rain. I soak into the earth. In less than a moment, I am pulled in an infinite amount of directions. I am everywhere far away from her, or from where we were. I can still see her and the people milling around her. I see it in a thousand different ways. She is still part of me though, from when we touched, and we are screaming.

  3. Draft Project Pt. 6: City Night by Scottapotamas on Flickr. Waiting. Waking. I am a wake. I am awake, waiting. Silly word games. Fantastic, improbable worlds. Everything is fraught with meaning, but that is not a necessary state. It’s just a reflection of experience, of thought, of reaction. It’s just representation of the settling mind. Like dust over a sleeping city. The settling mind finds its way through patterns and smog and street front shops that present transparent windows but hold hidden screens that alter photos. Turn this building into a white block. Turn this building into a gray box. Turn this space into a flood of blackness. In the city, shadow and shade compete for recognition. They stare at each other as if they had opposing offices, but the city is silent. No one moves, and shade and shadow sigh like silhouettes against building walls. They are like cut-outs, boxcar figures in relief of some ancient explosion. Somewhere in this funereal, tectonic upthrust of a city, I wake up. It’s Monday. I push out from under the tarp and newspapers and roll out of bed. There is no color in this apartment. I inhale and expect to feel dust clouding my lungs. There is no smell. I push against my face with the heel of my hand. I pass a mirror. My face has a mashed, pliant look to it. I run a thumb under an eye. Is it my left or right? Mirror. Mirage. Marriage. Is someone waiting for me? Is there wind in my soul? The horizon bends like a sail, like acrylic gray eye shadow. Impasto. Impression. Like. A tear smeared against my cheekbone. There is no color in this room, my face. I stand in front of the coffee pot for hours. I press the elevator button. The door to the stairs swings open, and I descend. I sit at a bus stop. Hours pass. It is still morning. I try to go down into the subway, but after a few steps I blink and I find myself back at the moment just as I took the first step down. Flyers tumble down the street like babies. I can hear them. My skin feels filthy with rejection. Xerox beard homeless sorry I don’t grease open hands socialism cold night my band protest not today. Propaganda dots the bricks. Smiley faces in yellow, although I can’t see in color. I scratch at my forearms, trying to tear away the dirty sensation. Above and below and behind there is a droning sound. Locusts. Static. Broken electric connectivity wires fibers sin-optics. Clouds. Lungs. Veins in the sky. Red but not red. My eye. My shadow. Smeared blood. Run. I am running. Didn’t I just do this? Wake from this. Scared. Not urgent. Beyond urges. Instinct. Doom. Imminent. I am running. There is no echo. The buildings let in only the slightest block of light. The droning buzzing humming is getting louder. What sound does a snake make when it sheds its skin? I stumble. My knee is open, tendons and cartilage trailing behind me as I run. Blood. Pump. I scratch at my forearms again, my wrists. There’s no time. I’m running out of Time. The city limits. Time, the city, holds me as I run. Time conveys me, the city, orbit. Obits. Newspapers plastered to walls. Papier mache. The ocean. I can taste the salt on my lips. Everything is getting fuzzy. Mold growing on rotting fruits. Not here. Not now. Time is behind me. There are waves and waves, but they do not move. My arms are bleeding. I pull the skin away from my eyes. The raw musculature and sinews from my face and my torn connections meet at my navel. I am sitting. All of a sudden, I am sitting at a black desk facing a motionless ocean. My muscles pull themselves away from my bones like they are slugs in the garden. The fruition of Time. It never comes to bloom. Only the parasites breed in the shadows. At my desk, there are only waves becoming buildings, rising up to reflect the city behind me.

    Draft Project Pt. 6: City Night by Scottapotamas on Flickr.

    Waiting. Waking. I am a wake. I am awake, waiting. Silly word games. Fantastic, improbable worlds. Everything is fraught with meaning, but that is not a necessary state. It’s just a reflection of experience, of thought, of reaction. It’s just representation of the settling mind.

    Like dust over a sleeping city. The settling mind finds its way through patterns and smog and street front shops that present transparent windows but hold hidden screens that alter photos. Turn this building into a white block. Turn this building into a gray box. Turn this space into a flood of blackness.

    In the city, shadow and shade compete for recognition. They stare at each other as if they had opposing offices, but the city is silent. No one moves, and shade and shadow sigh like silhouettes against building walls. They are like cut-outs, boxcar figures in relief of some ancient explosion. Somewhere in this funereal, tectonic upthrust of a city, I wake up. It’s Monday.

    I push out from under the tarp and newspapers and roll out of bed. There is no color in this apartment. I inhale and expect to feel dust clouding my lungs. There is no smell. I push against my face with the heel of my hand. I pass a mirror. My face has a mashed, pliant look to it. I run a thumb under an eye. Is it my left or right? Mirror. Mirage. Marriage. Is someone waiting for me? Is there wind in my soul? The horizon bends like a sail, like acrylic gray eye shadow. Impasto. Impression. Like. A tear smeared against my cheekbone. There is no color in this room, my face.

    I stand in front of the coffee pot for hours. I press the elevator button. The door to the stairs swings open, and I descend. I sit at a bus stop. Hours pass. It is still morning. I try to go down into the subway, but after a few steps I blink and I find myself back at the moment just as I took the first step down.

    Flyers tumble down the street like babies. I can hear them. My skin feels filthy with rejection. Xerox beard homeless sorry I don’t grease open hands socialism cold night my band protest not today. Propaganda dots the bricks. Smiley faces in yellow, although I can’t see in color. I scratch at my forearms, trying to tear away the dirty sensation. Above and below and behind there is a droning sound. Locusts. Static. Broken electric connectivity wires fibers sin-optics. Clouds. Lungs. Veins in the sky. Red but not red. My eye. My shadow. Smeared blood. Run.

    I am running. Didn’t I just do this? Wake from this. Scared. Not urgent. Beyond urges. Instinct. Doom. Imminent. I am running. There is no echo. The buildings let in only the slightest block of light. The droning buzzing humming is getting louder. What sound does a snake make when it sheds its skin?

    I stumble. My knee is open, tendons and cartilage trailing behind me as I run. Blood. Pump. I scratch at my forearms again, my wrists. There’s no time. I’m running out of Time. The city limits. Time, the city, holds me as I run. Time conveys me, the city, orbit. Obits. Newspapers plastered to walls. Papier mache. The ocean. I can taste the salt on my lips. Everything is getting fuzzy. Mold growing on rotting fruits. Not here. Not now. Time is behind me. There are waves and waves, but they do not move. My arms are bleeding. I pull the skin away from my eyes. The raw musculature and sinews from my face and my torn connections meet at my navel. I am sitting.

    All of a sudden, I am sitting at a black desk facing a motionless ocean. My muscles pull themselves away from my bones like they are slugs in the garden. The fruition of Time. It never comes to bloom. Only the parasites breed in the shadows. At my desk, there are only waves becoming buildings, rising up to reflect the city behind me.

  4. Draft Project, Pt. 5: Maldives Anantara Resort and Spa in Dhigu Island Slowly, the ocean curls away from me. The air is thick and brisk at the same time, and I drink it in. Life bursts into awareness or into my awareness all around me. Dragonflies buzz in and out of raindrops. Amphibians lift their throaty calls to the fading light. The sand has somehow become mud. The forming puddles obscure the ground like the face of the moon. Plants rise up to drink as I have, turning their faces to the sky despite their roots. Giant, drooping leaves unfurl like dinosaurs waking from an eternal sleep. The rain stops, but the sky stays cast over. It broods, full of thunder clouds, and it appears to roil without moving. It might have been a painting for all its colors. The dark earth waits for Zeus’ bolt or the sigh of Persephone. The sky holds its shadows and, instead, drops of light rise like vapor. Fireflies heavy as bats bob along. Phosphorescent mosses cling to rocks. The reaching fingers of plant life tickle the underbelly of will o’ the wisps. The sun, somewhere now I can’t tell, splashes the cloud forms with peals of pink and orange, brilliant petals of yellow and magenta, the dark kissing the light. There is a clearing up ahead. The plants seem to dance before me. They are green and spongy to the touch. I wonder if they are memorizing my body as I push through them. In the clearing, there are several hooded figures. One turns to me. Her face is heart shaped, like the leaves. Her features curve back into her hood, receding like a pearl. “Follow,” she says. There is a body suspended between the hooded figures. It is not a body so much as the memory of a body. It is indistinct, like it has been burned or decomposed. It is without limbs or features. It is just a body. The hooded figures don’t look as if they’re holding it, just touching it, propelling it through the flora. Under their cloaks, they seem less like bodies than the mass they carry between them. It is as if they are stalks, gently bending to their task, gently bent by the rain. The plant life decreases as I follow the hooded figures. The mud turns to stone and the stone to sand. In the beginning, there seemed to be more figures, but now there are only three. They are moving the body over a path through the sand. The path is made out of wood. The wood is the only remnant of plant life left on this walk. The beach is gone, and the path moves through water. Stars gleam on the water’s surface. I look up, but there are no stars in the sky yet. These are no reflections and, yet, they don’t look like they come from beneath the water either. They look like they live on the surface. Some of them skate slowly about, leaving streaks of stardust behind them. At the end of a path, there is a house. It is more a vaulted roof held up by pillars of light than a walled structure. Candles dot the banisters. The hooded figures set the body on the only table in the building. There are maybe a dozen chairs. “Sit,” says one. “Stay,” says another. They leave, and I am alone. I am alone in a house of dead trees and trapped fire. Outside, the sun has left its light to play with the horizon. The stars remain trapped on the water’s surface. I long for the chatter of insects. Instead, there is only the quiet lapping of water. Inside, I am sitting on one of a dozen chairs, and there is a body on a table. This is a vigil. I am a wake, but to what?

    Draft Project, Pt. 5: Maldives Anantara Resort and Spa in Dhigu Island

    Slowly, the ocean curls away from me. The air is thick and brisk at the same time, and I drink it in. Life bursts into awareness or into my awareness all around me. Dragonflies buzz in and out of raindrops. Amphibians lift their throaty calls to the fading light. The sand has somehow become mud. The forming puddles obscure the ground like the face of the moon.

    Plants rise up to drink as I have, turning their faces to the sky despite their roots. Giant, drooping leaves unfurl like dinosaurs waking from an eternal sleep. The rain stops, but the sky stays cast over. It broods, full of thunder clouds, and it appears to roil without moving. It might have been a painting for all its colors. The dark earth waits for Zeus’ bolt or the sigh of Persephone. The sky holds its shadows and, instead, drops of light rise like vapor.

    Fireflies heavy as bats bob along. Phosphorescent mosses cling to rocks. The reaching fingers of plant life tickle the underbelly of will o’ the wisps. The sun, somewhere now I can’t tell, splashes the cloud forms with peals of pink and orange, brilliant petals of yellow and magenta, the dark kissing the light.

    There is a clearing up ahead. The plants seem to dance before me. They are green and spongy to the touch. I wonder if they are memorizing my body as I push through them. In the clearing, there are several hooded figures. One turns to me. Her face is heart shaped, like the leaves. Her features curve back into her hood, receding like a pearl.

    “Follow,” she says.

    There is a body suspended between the hooded figures. It is not a body so much as the memory of a body. It is indistinct, like it has been burned or decomposed. It is without limbs or features. It is just a body. The hooded figures don’t look as if they’re holding it, just touching it, propelling it through the flora. Under their cloaks, they seem less like bodies than the mass they carry between them. It is as if they are stalks, gently bending to their task, gently bent by the rain.

    The plant life decreases as I follow the hooded figures. The mud turns to stone and the stone to sand. In the beginning, there seemed to be more figures, but now there are only three. They are moving the body over a path through the sand. The path is made out of wood. The wood is the only remnant of plant life left on this walk. The beach is gone, and the path moves through water. Stars gleam on the water’s surface. I look up, but there are no stars in the sky yet. These are no reflections and, yet, they don’t look like they come from beneath the water either. They look like they live on the surface. Some of them skate slowly about, leaving streaks of stardust behind them.

    At the end of a path, there is a house. It is more a vaulted roof held up by pillars of light than a walled structure. Candles dot the banisters. The hooded figures set the body on the only table in the building. There are maybe a dozen chairs.

    “Sit,” says one.

    “Stay,” says another.

    They leave, and I am alone. I am alone in a house of dead trees and trapped fire. Outside, the sun has left its light to play with the horizon. The stars remain trapped on the water’s surface. I long for the chatter of insects. Instead, there is only the quiet lapping of water. Inside, I am sitting on one of a dozen chairs, and there is a body on a table. This is a vigil.

    I am a wake, but to what?

  5. Draft Project, Pt. 4: Long Forgotten Temple of Lysistrata via the Birdcage Sand. Sand and shadows. I can feel the light in patches of warmth. I can hear the sand popping as air rushes into the gaps where there had been water a moment ago. The sand pushes against my eyelids. I am awake, but to what? I roll over, sit up. Good boy. I will not play dead. I am in some kind of yawning ruin facing the sea. There are footprints heading north. The sun seems to be everywhere. Its light is flooding my view of the horizon. It’s not setting yet, but its descent has begun and the eye has no respite. Above, there is an ominous gaping mouth also letting in sunlight. The footprints seem to begin out of nothingness, directly below the hole. They lie a few meters from me, dark spots in the light. Spotted light. I think of the tiny crabs I chased as a boy, their translucent skin, the illusion of a skeleton, eyes pushing inquisitively up on stalks. Spotlight. I close my eyes. I see a single point of light, hurtling toward me. It sweeps up. There is the sky! Clouds. Stars fill in the gaps between the light’s frenzied figure eights. The moon! It will be night in a few hours. I have no idea where I am. A single bead of perspiration rolls down my nose. The footprints lead out a hole to the north. If the peak of these ruins is the mouth, are these apertures nostrils? The air is salt. I realize why the beach never felt ripe despite the rotting things you could find buried in the sand, floating on the waves. It was the salt. I exhale, put a palm on a knee, push myself up. I feel like a scarecrow, all limbs and tatters stirring in the breeze. This too is unfamiliar, something I don’t remember from life. I take a few steps, then start to run. I make my own set of footprints coming from nowhere. Gravity holds no sway over my passage. I am running. The wind is my master, and I do not remember this. I put my hands out behind me, fingers searching the air like feathers. I feel the dry air roaring in my lungs like twin furnaces. My lungs are like bellows, forging the world. My feet find purchase in the moving sand. My breath makes the sun, the stars hiding behind its light. The sky heats up. Moisture gathers. The horizon boils in front of me. The blue tries to hold its form, but it swells and cracks. It is raining.

    Draft Project, Pt. 4: Long Forgotten Temple of Lysistrata via the Birdcage

    Sand. Sand and shadows. I can feel the light in patches of warmth. I can hear the sand popping as air rushes into the gaps where there had been water a moment ago. The sand pushes against my eyelids. I am awake, but to what?

    I roll over, sit up. Good boy. I will not play dead. I am in some kind of yawning ruin facing the sea. There are footprints heading north. The sun seems to be everywhere. Its light is flooding my view of the horizon. It’s not setting yet, but its descent has begun and the eye has no respite. Above, there is an ominous gaping mouth also letting in sunlight. The footprints seem to begin out of nothingness, directly below the hole. They lie a few meters from me, dark spots in the light. Spotted light. I think of the tiny crabs I chased as a boy, their translucent skin, the illusion of a skeleton, eyes pushing inquisitively up on stalks. Spotlight.

    I close my eyes. I see a single point of light, hurtling toward me. It sweeps up. There is the sky! Clouds. Stars fill in the gaps between the light’s frenzied figure eights. The moon!

    It will be night in a few hours. I have no idea where I am. A single bead of perspiration rolls down my nose. The footprints lead out a hole to the north. If the peak of these ruins is the mouth, are these apertures nostrils? The air is salt. I realize why the beach never felt ripe despite the rotting things you could find buried in the sand, floating on the waves. It was the salt.

    I exhale, put a palm on a knee, push myself up. I feel like a scarecrow, all limbs and tatters stirring in the breeze. This too is unfamiliar, something I don’t remember from life. I take a few steps, then start to run. I make my own set of footprints coming from nowhere.

    Gravity holds no sway over my passage. I am running. The wind is my master, and I do not remember this. I put my hands out behind me, fingers searching the air like feathers. I feel the dry air roaring in my lungs like twin furnaces. My lungs are like bellows, forging the world. My feet find purchase in the moving sand. My breath makes the sun, the stars hiding behind its light. The sky heats up. Moisture gathers. The horizon boils in front of me. The blue tries to hold its form, but it swells and cracks. It is raining.

  6. Draft Project, Pt. 3: Madama Butterfly by Budi Satria Kwan via fer1972 I have never been to Japan. Strange to remember something so corporeal. In this place of falling, at the world’s end perhaps, everything feels so present. It makes memories and dreams hard to hold on to, but the warmth keeps me drowsy. I dream more than not. The trick is what to do with these dreams when I am awake. Japan, however, is not a dream. It is a memory. Sometimes it is hard to tell. I think I remember Ohio, but it’s mixed in with ghost dreams of trees and waiting. I have never been to Japan, but I am part Japanese. I remember that. Why are all these recollections confluences, points of contact? El Cid existed between the Christian and Muslim worlds. The North American Midwest was fraught with the interactions between transplanted European cultures and the Native American cultures. Japan, throughout its history, swung pendulously between isolationism and an exuberant swallowing of foreign cultures it came into contact with. The last thing I can remember, Japan was enthusiastically incorporating outside influences and setting trends in global consumption and technology. Is that right? I remember, also, a feeling that outside perceptions of Japanese culture were rather essentialized. All my memories of growing up come from America, so I am part of these perceptions, but I remember some sense of unease. Japanese girls are like this. Japanese men behave like this. Japanese people obsess like this. But, then, that overall picture was a little skewed. Or hard to hold on to. There was a television show about whales, or a documentary about dolphins. There was a book about a geisha girl, or a movie. Chinese actors. Anglophone authors. All these memories seem ephemeral, like flickering images in a dark room. They are present or, at least, recent, and they disappear like figures in the mist. What is more persistent is the feel of yellowed pages, the smell of dark wooden stages, of heavy curtains. Madama Butterfly. I can’t remember if I read the short story or saw the play. Or neither. Memories of memories. Memories of things imagined. Madame Butterfly was a Japanese woman, also known as Cho-Cho-San or Cio-Cio-San, who married an American man named Pinkerton. The American left and Cho-Cho-San named the son they had “Trouble” but meant it as a joyful thing. Pinkerton came back to Japan, but not to Cho-Cho-San. He had married an American woman. Cho-Cho-San almost killed herself in grief (as Japanese people often do in Western fiction), but her attendant Suzuki reminds her of her son, and they spirit themselves away from Mrs. Pinkerton and her acquisitive, adoptive desires. At its heart, it is a tale of leaving and waiting. Here, secreted away by curtains of mist, I am unsure whether I am more like Cho-Cho-San or Pinkerton. Is someone waiting for me or grieving my departure? I don’t know. I am waiting, no doubt. I cannot have always been here. It feels like it, but there must be a progression, a sequence to things. I am anxious to move on, but it’s difficult to know what that might mean if I can’t recall what came before this, how I got here.

    Draft Project, Pt. 3: Madama Butterfly by Budi Satria Kwan via fer1972

    I have never been to Japan. Strange to remember something so corporeal. In this place of falling, at the world’s end perhaps, everything feels so present. It makes memories and dreams hard to hold on to, but the warmth keeps me drowsy. I dream more than not. The trick is what to do with these dreams when I am awake.

    Japan, however, is not a dream. It is a memory. Sometimes it is hard to tell. I think I remember Ohio, but it’s mixed in with ghost dreams of trees and waiting. I have never been to Japan, but I am part Japanese. I remember that. Why are all these recollections confluences, points of contact? El Cid existed between the Christian and Muslim worlds. The North American Midwest was fraught with the interactions between transplanted European cultures and the Native American cultures. Japan, throughout its history, swung pendulously between isolationism and an exuberant swallowing of foreign cultures it came into contact with.

    The last thing I can remember, Japan was enthusiastically incorporating outside influences and setting trends in global consumption and technology. Is that right? I remember, also, a feeling that outside perceptions of Japanese culture were rather essentialized. All my memories of growing up come from America, so I am part of these perceptions, but I remember some sense of unease. Japanese girls are like this. Japanese men behave like this. Japanese people obsess like this. But, then, that overall picture was a little skewed. Or hard to hold on to. There was a television show about whales, or a documentary about dolphins. There was a book about a geisha girl, or a movie. Chinese actors. Anglophone authors.

    All these memories seem ephemeral, like flickering images in a dark room. They are present or, at least, recent, and they disappear like figures in the mist. What is more persistent is the feel of yellowed pages, the smell of dark wooden stages, of heavy curtains. Madama Butterfly. I can’t remember if I read the short story or saw the play. Or neither. Memories of memories. Memories of things imagined.

    Madame Butterfly was a Japanese woman, also known as Cho-Cho-San or Cio-Cio-San, who married an American man named Pinkerton. The American left and Cho-Cho-San named the son they had “Trouble” but meant it as a joyful thing. Pinkerton came back to Japan, but not to Cho-Cho-San. He had married an American woman. Cho-Cho-San almost killed herself in grief (as Japanese people often do in Western fiction), but her attendant Suzuki reminds her of her son, and they spirit themselves away from Mrs. Pinkerton and her acquisitive, adoptive desires.

    At its heart, it is a tale of leaving and waiting. Here, secreted away by curtains of mist, I am unsure whether I am more like Cho-Cho-San or Pinkerton. Is someone waiting for me or grieving my departure? I don’t know. I am waiting, no doubt. I cannot have always been here. It feels like it, but there must be a progression, a sequence to things. I am anxious to move on, but it’s difficult to know what that might mean if I can’t recall what came before this, how I got here.

  7. erratum (n.)
    1. an error  in writing or printing.
    2. a statement of an error  and its correction inserted, usually on a separate page or slip of paper, in a book or other publication; corrigendum.

    So I was queueing up the errata for today, and I realized I wasn’t quite sure what errata meant. This often happens to me. Most of the words I used I didn’t learn through studying definitions (One of the few I did learn that way: sporadic; I remember I connected the word to the idea of spores). Sometimes I like a word and use it just from having read it once or twice. Laconic is a good example of this. I used it wrongly for about a year.

    I’ve always thought of errata as extra information “usually on a separate page or slip of paper.” Looking it up, however, reveals that it concerns error. Duh. Etymologize much? So the last few years*, when I’ve been using errata as a term for extra, smaller pieces of information? I guess I was wrong. But here’s my correction.

    And I guess it works (Good, because I’m not changing it!), since all the extra information I’m providing for the draft project serve as clarification for things that are not very clear in the fiction/prose. I had thought of using errata to describe the extra information/images that follow my 30 day book challenge as well. I may have to rethink that. Do those serve to fill/correct gaps in my understanding? One might hope…

    *I used to write for a sports blog, where I called my articles Epochrypha and Era-ta.

  8. Draft Project, Pt. 2

    Are these dreams or memories? I can’t tell. This seems like a waiting grounds, this world of movement and water. Light bounds off of everything, and the moisture beads on my skin as if it to say, “It will always be summer here. Drink up.”

    The idea of a waiting grounds reminds me of other images, whispers of other times. I imagine other people just beyond the bend of the mists. They are waiting too, dreaming or remembering. Do they know, more than I, where we are? Do they know what we are waiting for, or that we are waiting at all? Do they imagine the great infinity or the insularity of us all as a waiting room? I remember waiting rooms. The gloss of magazine pages. The smell of old carpet or upholstery. Tactile memories. Olfactory. The light was always turned down low. Not mood lighting. Anti-mood lighting. Ante-mood lighting. Trying to keep us from dwelling on the fact that we are waiting.

    I never minded waiting. Perhaps I even regarded it fondly. I felt like a kid in a candy shop. There was all this time to read, and all these people’s words and memories that I would never think to touch if I was at home. Waiting is a special kind of torture for some, though.

    It is these people I think of when I imagine a vast plain, gray and brown and edging on winter. The grass is dying, and the snow is barely holding on. Is the cold just beginning, or are we in its last gasps? It could very well be in Ohio. Perhaps buildings hold no warmth. Why do I think we, the waiting, abandon them? They are no homes, and I imagine we find our homes in little huddles, weathered blankets against the wind. The sky is gray forever, even at night. If the world is saturated with moisture reflecting light, if the heavens are filled with planets that wink like stars, if the stars huddle close together like the sky is one big blanket, then what is there to see? We all go blind.

    If we are little twists of home silhouetted against the horizon, if we are huddled form warmth, why do we not form a large gathering? I think of the skeleton forests that must be just beyond the horizon. In places like this, I always felt like the land was ghostly, like the empty branches were fingers reaching out for something missing. When I think of home, of what I can remember, I think of lush valleys. The land was very much alive. The trees hid the ghosts of people. We need to tear down the abandoned buildings, turn them into wagons so that, like vultures, we might circle. We need to break the trees of their desire for the sky so that we might make fire, but no body moves. Why?

    We do not move because we are the waiting. We do not touch because we do not know what we can hold on to when the waiting is over. Even this little kiss of home, this blanket where everything touches, we may lose these small memories soon.

  9. Draft Project, Pt. 2: Prelude Introductions will be saved for a later date (possibly this weekend). However, a bit of quick rationale. The plan was to go with drafts I saved earlier, and work my way toward the top of my draft-box. However, this image just spoke to me. I want to keep the prose for the project clean, but I like the quoted text (below), so posting this first. accumulatedephemera: this is a church and not a barn, I think, but somehow I am still reminded of all of the weathered and slowly shifting agricultural buildings that stand so isolated in the midwestern farm fields in the winter. it’s such a strange and understated landscape at that time of year; one I already miss. driving home from Ohio to Michigan one December, I remember observing that, for some reason, most of the barns in Ohio are painted white, while those in Michigan are mostly red.

    Draft Project, Pt. 2: Prelude

    Introductions will be saved for a later date (possibly this weekend). However, a bit of quick rationale. The plan was to go with drafts I saved earlier, and work my way toward the top of my draft-box. However, this image just spoke to me. I want to keep the prose for the project clean, but I like the quoted text (below), so posting this first.

    accumulatedephemera:

    this is a church and not a barn, I think, but somehow I am still reminded of all of the weathered and slowly shifting agricultural buildings that stand so isolated in the midwestern farm fields in the winter. it’s such a strange and understated landscape at that time of year; one I already miss. driving home from Ohio to Michigan one December, I remember observing that, for some reason, most of the barns in Ohio are painted white, while those in Michigan are mostly red.

  10. Draft Project, Pt. 1 I dreamed of El Cid last night. I don’t remember why. Dark dreams of tooth and nail armies circle like birds outlining the setting sky. Everything seems to fall away here, and I try to remember. Was El Cid a lord? My tongue wants so much to taste his death. An arrow through the chest. But in poems, his daughters beaten and avenged. In English, my natal verse, Cid sounds of death. Of fathers killing sons. D.H. Lawrence. Dostoevsky. The wails of dead babies. Herod. I once dreamed I would be king. King of what or where, I don’t know. I remember a letter and a house: Ma’am,This is a formal request extended with the intent and purpose of procuring your acquiescence regarding the question of the proposal of marriage of at least convenience and, if at all possible, joyous exultation to one S. Nagamatsu under the singular and most important condition of his ascension to the throne of some significant kingdom such as the United formerly entitled England, China, Mongolia, Ireland, Jamaica, or Hawaii, in the event of an attainment of an Imperial seat over the island nation of Japan and reduced to a mere civil union, and excepting all kingships assumed over such states as Siam, Oklahoma, New Zealand, Canada, Greenland, Turkmenistan, or Anatolia. Sincerely, All these dreams I had, but here they evaporate like light reflected from the sun. Here there is only the roar, and here there is only falling. The water falls and rises all at once, and I do not know who I am. The memory feels crushed from my mind. My heart remembers cooler nights where one could see forever. Here, the curvature of the earth seems to disappear, swallowed whole by the swirling of the mists. I cannot see an end, and I do not know whether there ever was a beginning. If I could just see the bottom, if there was but a moment’s serenity, maybe I would jump. But there is no cessation. And the water falls on forever.

    Draft Project, Pt. 1

    I dreamed of El Cid last night. I don’t remember why. Dark dreams of tooth and nail armies circle like birds outlining the setting sky. Everything seems to fall away here, and I try to remember. Was El Cid a lord? My tongue wants so much to taste his death. An arrow through the chest. But in poems, his daughters beaten and avenged.

    In English, my natal verse, Cid sounds of death. Of fathers killing sons. D.H. Lawrence. Dostoevsky. The wails of dead babies. Herod.

    I once dreamed I would be king. King of what or where, I don’t know. I remember a letter and a house:

    Ma’am,

    This is a formal request extended with the intent and purpose of procuring your acquiescence regarding the question of the proposal of marriage of at least convenience and, if at all possible, joyous exultation to one S. Nagamatsu under the singular and most important condition of his ascension to the throne of some significant kingdom such as the United formerly entitled England, China, Mongolia, Ireland, Jamaica, or Hawaii, in the event of an attainment of an Imperial seat over the island nation of Japan and reduced to a mere civil union, and excepting all kingships assumed over such states as Siam, Oklahoma, New Zealand, Canada, Greenland, Turkmenistan, or Anatolia.

    Sincerely,

    All these dreams I had, but here they evaporate like light reflected from the sun. Here there is only the roar, and here there is only falling. The water falls and rises all at once, and I do not know who I am. The memory feels crushed from my mind.

    My heart remembers cooler nights where one could see forever. Here, the curvature of the earth seems to disappear, swallowed whole by the swirling of the mists. I cannot see an end, and I do not know whether there ever was a beginning. If I could just see the bottom, if there was but a moment’s serenity, maybe I would jump.

    But there is no cessation. And the water falls on forever.

About me

Pursue understanding. Deconstruct systems in order to taste building blocks. Happiness waits else/everywhere. And the heart(h). Do spheres not pull at each other?
Moby-Dick, Forward

Read the Printed Word!
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