Camilo Pessanha: "Depois da luta e depois da conquista"

June 24 marks the day in A.D. 1622 that an outnumbered and outgunned Portuguese force, composed of some determined Jesuits, a large number of slaves, and very few actual soldiers, repulsed a Dutch attack on Macau. You can read about it here in Portuguese, or here and here in English. The day was celebrated as a public holiday until Macau was returned to Chinese control in 1999.

Believe it or not, I had all but forgotten about Dia de Macau (which, by the way, is also the feast day of Saint John the Baptist, a fact that takes on a grim aspect when you read about Dutch attackers being decapitated by Portuguese-owned slaves), so my decision to translate the particular poem below, with all its martial overtones, is purely coincidental. Enjoy, and boa leitura!


---


Depois da luta e depois da conquista
Fiquei só! Fora um acto antipático!
Deserta a Ilha, e no lençol aquático
Tudo verde, verde, — a perder de vista.

Porque vos fostes, minhas caravelas,
Carregadas de todo o meu tesoiro?
— Longas teias de luar de lhama de oiro,
Legendas a diamantes das estrelas!

Quem vos desfez, formas inconsistentes
Por cujo amor escalei a muralha,
— Leão armado, uma espada nos dentes?

Felizes vós, ó mortos da batalha!
Sonhais, de costas, nos olhos abertos
Reflectindo as estrelas, boquiabertos...


***

After the fight and after the conquest
I alone remained! It was an unpleasant act!
The island deserted, and on the aquatic sheet
Everything green, green, — extending beyond sight.

Why did you go, my caravels,
Laden with all my treasure?
— Long webs of cloth-of-gold moonlight,
Inscriptions to the diamonds of the stars!

Who undid you, inconsistent forms
For whose love I climbed the wall,
— An armed lion, a sword in my teeth?

Happy you are, oh slain in battle!
You dream, on your backs, your open eyes
Reflecting the stars, staring...

"Fonógrafo" de Camilo Pessanha

Time for another Pessanha poem in English.  This may mark the first time I've included punctuation of my own in the translation. Pessanha's can be pretty idiosyncratic, but it usually doesn't require elaboration; however, in the case of "Quebrou-se agora orvalhada e velada" I felt the need to add a comma to make it work in English.

As for the poem itself, there's something sinister about the first stanza that brings Thomas Ligotti to mind, and I really dig the last two stanzas' synaesthetic quality, which feels like quintessential Pessanha to me. I believe the title has been in use since the first publication of Clepsidra, and what a title it is- I wonder what kind of record(s) Pessanha might have listened to that led to this poem.


Since I'm on the subject of poetry, João Botas over at Macau Antigo recently posted about the stone tablets found at the Camões grotto in Macau. The tablets contain a number of poems in Portuguese, English, Italian, Spanish, and Latin about Camões himself and Macau. When I was there I didn't take the time to read them properly, but I found it pretty neat that they even existed: I'm obviously not the only one taken with 澳門 and its connection to Portugal's national poet.

Boa leitura, friends.

---

Fonógrafo


Vai declamando um cómico defunto.
Uma plateia ri, perdidamente,
Do bom jarreta... E há um odor no ambiente.
A cripta e a pó, — do anacrónico assunto.

Muda o registo, eis uma barcarola:
Lírios, lírios, águas do rio, a lua...
Ante o Seu corpo o sonho meu flutua
Sobre um paul, — extática corola.

Muda outra vez: gorjeios, estribilhos
Dum clarim de oiro — o cheiro de junquilhos,
Vívido e agro! — tocando a alvorada...

Cessou. E, amorosa, a alma das cornetas
Quebrou-se agora orvalhada e velada.
Primavera. Manhã. Que eflúvio de violetas!


***

Phonograph


A defunct comic spouting off.
An audience laughs, madly,
at the old fool... and there is a smell in the air.
The crypt and dust, — of the anachronistic topic.

The register changes, here is a barcarole:
Lilies, lilies, waters of the river, the moon...
Before its body my dream floats
Over a marsh, — ecstatic corolla.

It changes again: trills, refrains
Of a golden clarion — the scent of jonquils,
Vivid and acrid! — playing the reveille...

It ceased. And, amorous, the soul of the trumpets
Is broken now, dewy and veiled.
Spring. Morning. What an effluvium of violets!

"Interrogação" de Camilo Pessanha

Not much to say about this one. Among Camilo Pessanha's poems, this one is strikes me as being one of the more straightforwardly romantic. That said, the sense of sad, bitter longing present in so much of his work is on display here as well, more or less stripped of symbolist imagery. I have no idea where the title comes from.

I couldn't find a satisfactory way to translate the first line of the second stanza, which reads weirdly in Portuguese too, and the shifting verb tenses don't make a lot of sense to me, but I hope you enjoy the poem anyway.

***

Interrogação

 
Não sei se isto é amor. Procuro o teu olhar,
Se alguma dor me fere, em busca de um abrigo;
E apesar disso, crê! nunca pensei num lar
Onde fosses feliz, e eu feliz contigo.

Por ti nunca chorei nenhum ideal desfeito.
E nunca te escrevi nenhuns versos românticos.
Nem depois de acordar te procurei no leito
Como a esposa sensual do Cântico dos Cânticos.

Se é amar-te não sei. Não sei se te idealizo
A tua cor sadia, o teu sorriso terno...
Mas sinto-me sorrir de ver esse sorriso
Que me penetra bem, como este sol de Inverno.

Passo contigo a tarde e sempre sem receio
Da luz crepuscular, que enerva, que provoca.
Eu não demoro o olhar na curva do teu seio
Nem me lembrei jamais de te beijar na boca.

Eu não sei se é amor. Será talvez começo...
Eu não sei que mudança a minha alma pressente...
Amor não sei se o é, mas sei que te estremeço,
Que adoecia talvez de te saber doente.

---

Interrogation


I don't know if this is love. I seek your gaze,
If any pain wounds me, in search of refuge;
Nevertheless, believe me! I never thought of a home
Where you would be happy, and me happy with you.

For you I never cried an unmade ideal.
And I never wrote you any romantic verses.
Nor after waking up did I seek you in bed
Like the sensual wife of the Song of Songs.

I don't know if this is loving you. I don't know if I idealize you
Your healthy color, your tender smile...
But I feel myself smile to see that smile
That penetrates me so, like this winter sun.

I pass the afternoon with you and always without fear
Of crepuscular light that enervates, provokes.
I do not let my gaze linger on the curve of your breast
Nor did I remember to kiss your mouth.

I don't know if this is love. Maybe the beginning...
I don't know what change my soul foresees...
I don't know that love is what it is, but I know you make me tremble,
That I might have sickened to know you ill.

Not poems.

I was going to talk about how I've managed to avoid smoking cigarettes for over two months, but that's boring. I may give in any day, which would consign me to the massive pile of would-be ex-smokers. If I end up there, so be it; if I don't, or do, I have no reason to discuss it. Nothing will make me feel better about giving up smoking, and nothing will make me feel okay about smoking.

All I've posted lately has been poetry, none of it mine and all of it better than anything I could write. Maybe someone wishes I would write something else. As the days accrete, I grow increasingly convinced that, as bad as I am at it, I am better suited to translating other people's poetry than I am offering up my own; but, being a self-involved shit like pretty much every other member of my generation and species, I will continue to post my own work here when I have something I think is worthwhile.

In the interim, allow me to suggest the following things that might enrich your life, dear reader.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the best TV shows ever aired, along with
Twin Peaks and The X-Files. (Not web pages, obviously.)

Mercer Arboretum.

Ursula K. Le Guin's website.

The Macau Streets homepage.

And that's it.

"Madalena" de Camilo Pessanha

Time for another Camilo Pessanha poem. This one has given me more trouble than others, and while I'm not really satisfied with parts of my translation I don't think I'm capable of improving on it at this point. Perhaps when my Portuguese is better and I have a better grasp of Pessanha's poetics.

As has been the case with my other translations of Pessanha's poems, I've tried to stick as closely to the original as I can. This results in the loss of the rhyme and rhythm of the original, and my translation- and pretty much anyone's, I'd wager- suffers for it, but there's no way to maintain the rhyme scheme in English. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.



Madalena

          ...e lhe regou de lágrimas os pés, e os
          enxugou com os cabelos da sua cabeça.

          Evangelho de S. Lucas



Ó Madalena, ó cabelos de rastos,
Lírio poluído, branca flor inútil...
Meu coração, velha moeda fútil,
E sem relevo, os caracteres gastos,

De resignar-se torpemente dúctil...
Desespero, nudez de seios castos,
Quem também fosse, ó cabelos de rastos,
Ensanguentado, enxovalhado, inútil,

Dentro do peito, abominável cómico!
Morrer tranquilo, — o fastio da cama...
Ó redenção do mármore anatómico,

Amargura, nudez de seios castos!...
Sangrar, poluir-se, ir de rastos na lama,
Ó Madalena, ó cabelos de rastos!

***

Magdalene

          ...and she washed his feet with tears, and
          dried them with the hair of her head.

          Gospel of Saint Luke


Oh Magdalene, oh trailing hair,
Polluted lily, useless white flower...
My heart, old useless coin,
Indistinct, the features worn down,

Shamefully pliant in resignation...
Despair, nudity of chaste breasts,
Those who also were, oh trailing hair,
Bloody, soiled, useless,

Within your breast, abominable comedian!
To die peacefully — the tedium of bed...
Oh redemption of anatomical marble,

Bitterness, nudity of chaste breasts!...
To bleed, pollute yourself, crawl through the mud,
Oh Magdalene, oh trailing hair!

Laxmanrao Sardessai: "O Mistério Aclara-se" / "The Mystery Grows Clear"

As promised/threatened, here is the translation of another Portuguese-language poem. This one comes from the Goan author Laxmanrao Sardessai (1904-1986), who wrote short stories and essays in Marathi and Konkani, as well as poetry in Portuguese. More of his poems can be found at the Archive of Goan Writing in Portuguese.

My criteria for choosing Laxmanrao Sardessai over another poet were effectively nonexistent, almost random, and the next time I translate a Goan poem it may well be from another writer. This may be the first time this poem has appeared in English; if so, I hope I've done Sardessai's work justice. Any and all blame for poor translation should, as always, be apportioned solely to yours truly.

Obrigado, caro leitor.

---

"O Mistério Aclara-se"

O mistério aclara-se
E ai vejo definido o meu ideal,
No céu, no mar e na terra
Vejo a mesma mão,
Invisível e misteriosa,
Modelar o destino da humanidade.
No azul do oceano
No verde da terra
A mesma graça vejo
Estender-se na sua simplicidade
E o mistério aclara-se,
E aclara-se o meu espírito,
Confuso perante a difusão
De cores e linhas,
De formas e matéria
E suas infinitas intrincâncias.
Evapora-se a ilusão
E desponta no horizonte,
Vasto e claro,
O sol uno e brilhante,
A dirigir os meus passos
Para a divina realidade!

***

"The Mystery Grows Clear"

The mystery grows clear
And there I see defined my ideal,
In the sky, in the sea and in the earth
I see the same hand
Invisible and mysterious,
Shape humanity's destiny.
In the blue of the ocean
In the green of the earth
I see the same grace
Extend itself in its simplicity
And the mystery grows clear,
And my spirit grows clear,
Confused by the diffusion
Of colors and lines,
Of forms and matter
and their infinite intricacies.
The illusion evaporates
And emerges on the horizon,
Vast and clear,
The sun one and bright,
Directing my steps
Toward the divine reality!

"Olvido" de Camilo Pessanha

Here's another of Camilo Pessanha's poems. Once again, the title appears in one version of Clepsydra, while in another no title is used and the poem is referred to by its first line.

Some time ago I ran across the Archive of Goan Writing in Portuguese, much of which is poetry and, perhaps more unusual, much of which was written after 1961, when India reclaimed Goa from Portugal. I haven't combed through it in anything but a cursory manner yet, but I suspect I'll find something in there I want to translate. If/when I do, I'll post it here. I also intend on collecting all of my translations on my homepage, but I probably won't get around to that until next week.

In unrelated news, it's been over six weeks since I last smoked a cigarette. I do believe I've finally managed to quit.


 ***

Olvido

Desce por fim sobre o meu coração
O olvido. Irrevocável. Absoluto.
Envolve-o grave como véu de luto.
Podes, corpo, ir dormir no teu caixão.

A fronte já sem rugas, distendidas
As feições, na imortal serenidade,
Dorme enfim sem desejo e sem saudade
Das coisas não logradas ou perdidas.

O barro que em quimera modelaste
Quebrou-se-te nas mãos. Viça uma flor...
Pões-lhe o dedo, ei-la murcha sobre a haste...

Ias andar, sempre fugia o chão,
Até que desvairavas, do terror.
Corria-te um suor, de inquietação...

***

Oblivion

Descending at last over my heart
Oblivion. Irrevocable. Absolute.
Covering it as solemnly as a mourning veil.
You may, corpse, go sleep in your coffin.

The face now without wrinkles, features
distended in immortal serenity,
Sleeps at last without desire and without longing
For things unobtained or lost.

The clay in which you modeled a chimera
Shattered in your hands. If a flower grows...
Put your finger on it, and behold, it withers on the stem...

You went wandering, the ground always disappearing,
Until you went mad with terror.
You ran with the sweat of disquiet...

"Estátua" de Camilo Pessanha

I'm in the midst of reading Paulo Franchetti's O Essencial sobre Camilo Pessanha, which dissects most of the myths surrounding the man, e.g., his reasons for leaving Portugal, his supposed unwillingness to write down his poems, his terrible personal hygiene, the level of his knowledge of Chinese, his relationship with his son and the concubine he had in place of a wife, and so on. Franchetti argues, based on available evidence, that for various reasons some of the people charged (often by themselves) with guarding Pessanha's legacy saw fit to distort the truth and give posterity the image of a heartbroken man who lived in squalor among the Chinese, ignored the mores of Portuguese colonial society, and had little time for anything but opium. Of course, it's never that simple.

Franchetti also delves into the literary aspects of Pessanha's work, which is where I am now. I'm sure it, along with the criticism in Rui Cascais' book, will give me more to think about when I next sit down to read and translate Pessanha's poems. I recommend Franchetti's book to anyone who, like me, not only enjoys Pessanha's poetry but finds the man himself fascinating. You'll have to read it in Portuguese, though; não há uma tradução inglês.

Anyway, here's another poem from Clepsydra for you to enjoy. Like all the others I've translated, I'm not completely happy with the results, but that's how it goes, isn't it?

Oh, and here's another estátua de Camilo Pessanha.

Adeus, dudes.

---


Estátua

Cansei-me de tentar o teu segredo:
No teu olhar sem cor, — frio escalpelo,
O meu olhar quebrei, a debatê-lo,
Como a onda na crista dum rochedo.

Segredo dessa alma e meu degredo
E minha obsessão! Para bebê-lo
Fui teu lábio oscular, num pesadelo,
Por noites de pavor, cheio de medo.

E o meu ósculo ardente, alucinado,
Esfriou sobre o mármore correcto
Desse entreaberto lábio gelado...

Desse lábio de mármore, discreto,
Severo como um túmulo fechado,
Sereno como um pélago quieto.

 ***

Statue

I tired of trying to expose your secret:
Under your colorless gaze, — a cold scalpel,
My look crumbled, debating it,
Like the wave on the crest of a cliff.

Secret of this soul and my exile
And my obsession! To drink it,
Was to kiss your lips, in a nightmare,
In nights of terror, full of fear.

And my burning kiss, hallucinating,
Went cold on the marble proper,
These half-open frozen lips...

These marble lips, discreet,
Severe as a sealed tomb,
Serene as a quiet sea.

Mais poesia de Camilo Pessanha, e outras coisas

Last month I had the good fortune to return to Hong Kong and Macau, this time in the company of my brother. He'd never been to either city, and I'd been itching to go back, especially since I'd learned a veritable shitload about the history of Macau over the past year and a half. We had a great time, and I'm glad I finally got to travel with Scott. As I've said before, I'd live in Hong Kong, and even Macau, for a while without much in the way of reservations; maybe especially Macau, since there I could improve my Portuguese and learn Cantonese to boot.

I spent a couple days in Macau on my own before Scott arrived in Hong Kong. There was a lengthy list of things I wanted to see and do, and I saw and did most of them, since Macau isn't very big and I got to follow my own schedule. (To a point, that is, since a lot of places in Macau don't open until 11 AM or so.) Among my goals were visits to the Livraria Portuguesa and the Arquivo Histórico de Macau, both of which I accomplished. I signed up for my cartão de leitor for the Archive in advance, and spent a couple hours there reading random books, primarily those by Padre Manuel Teixeira, who ranks with Camilo Pessanha as one of the most fascinating figures of 20th-century Macau in my book. Speaking of books and Padre Teixeira, at the Livraria Portuguesa I picked up the only thing of his I found there, the two-volume, 1200-page Toponímia de Macau, after reading some of it at the Archive. That's a lot of pages dedicated to the street names of a small city, dudes.

Books were pretty much the only souvenirs I brought home, apart from some rolls of film I shot with my Holga. (Unsurprisingly, the photos didn't come out particularly well.) That was the plan all along, though. I was excited to find several books on Camilo Pessanha, including one that might be the only extant work on the man's poetry in English. I didn't buy everything I could, as I didn't have room in my rucksack, but it's a start.

I'll ruminate more on Macau and HK another time, but for now I wanted to post another translation of a Pessanha poem. Due to the differences between various editions of his work, titles and exact wording differ, but the text below comes from an online edition of Clepsydra which matches that used in In A Country Lost: the Poetry of Camilo Pessanha, the aforementioned English translation I bought in Macau. The only exception is that the online version uses the title "Caminho", whereas the same poem In A Country Lost has no title at all.

Thanks to Rui Cascais for providing English translations against which to compare mine, and learn more about the Portuguese language in the process. Muito obrigado!

---
Caminho

I.

Tenho sonhos cruéis; n’alma doente
Sinto um vago receio prematuro.
Vou a medo na aresta do futuro,
Embebido em saudades do presente...

Saudades desta dor que em vão procuro
Do peito afugentar bem rudemente,
Devendo, ao desmaiar sobre o poente,
Cobrir-me o coração dum véu escuro!...

Porque a dor, esta falta d’harmonia,
Toda a luz desgrenhada que alumia
As almas doidamente, o céu d’agora,

Sem ela o coração é quase nada:
Um sol onde expirasse a madrugada,
Porque é só madrugada quando chora.


II.

Encontraste-me um dia no caminho
Em procura de quê, nem eu o sei.
— Bom dia, companheiro — te saudei,
Que a jornada é maior indo sozinho

É longe, é muito longe, há muito espinho!
Paraste a repousar, eu descansei...
Na venda em que poisaste, onde poisei,
Bebemos cada um do mesmo vinho.

É no monte escabroso, solitário.
Corta os pés como a rocha dum calvário,
E queima como a areia!... Foi no entanto

Que chorámos a dor de cada um...
E o vinho em que choraste era comum:
Tivemos que beber do mesmo pranto.


III.

Fez-nos bem, muito bem, esta demora:
Enrijou a coragem fatigada...
Eis os nossos bordões da caminhada,
Vai já rompendo o sol: vamos embora.

Este vinho, mais virgem do que a aurora,
Tão virgem não o temos na jornada...
Enchamos as cabaças: pela estrada,
Daqui inda este néctar avigora!...

Cada um por seu lado!... Eu vou sozinho,
Eu quero arrostar só todo o caminho,
Eu posso resistir à grande calma!...

Deixai-me chorar mais e beber mais,
Perseguir doidamente os meus ideais,
E ter fé e sonhar — encher a alma.

---
Path


I.

I have cruel dreams; in my diseased soul
I feel a vague, premature dread.
I go in fear along the edge of the future,
Absorbed in longing for the present...

Longing for this grief that in vain I seek
To rudely drive from my breast,
It must, at the fading above the sunset,
Cover my heart in a dark veil!...

Because of pain, this lack of harmony,
All the disheveled light that illuminates
Souls madly, the sky just now,

Without it the heart is almost nothing:
A sun where the dawn may pass away,
Because it is only dawn  when it weeps.


II.

You met me on the road one day
In search of what, not even I know.
—Good day, friend— I saluted you,
As the journey is longer going alone.

It is far, very far, and there are so many thorns!
You stopped to rest, I sat down...
In the tavern in which you halted, where I halted,
We each drank from the same wine.

It is on the rough mountain, solitary,
Cutting the feet like rocks on a Calvary mount,
And burning like sand!... It was, however,

That we wept with each other's pain...
And the wine in which you wept was shared:
We had to drink the same tears.


III.

It did us good, very good, this delay:
It fortified exhausted courage...
Here are our walking sticks,
The sun is already rising: let's go.

This wine, more virgin than the dawn,
We'll have nothing so pure on the journey...
Let's fill our gourds; down the road,
from here on this nectar invigorates!...

Each on his own side!... I go alone,
I want to face the whole road on my own,
I can bear the vast quiet!...

Let me weep more and drink more,
Madly chase my ideals,
And have faith and dream — fill up the soul.

Camilo Pessanha's "Paisagens de inverno"

Today's been cold, and everything was covered in ice until the past hour or two, so it's fitting that this is my latest amateur translation of a Camilo Pessanha poem.

Aside from the usual spelling changes, there are some differences between this poem as it appears in the 1920 Ediçoes Lusitania version of Clepsidra, which is what I have in the form of a scanned copy, and later versions of the book, which can be found online. (The 1920 text is also available.) They're not huge differences, so I just picked a version (the newer one) and went with it. Also noteworthy is that the older edition of Clepsidra didn't have a title for either part of this poem, and the second part doesn't immediately follow the first. I'll have to do some digging into the book's publication history and find out why that is.

Divirta-se!
 
***

Paisagens de inverno

I.

Ó meu coração, torna para trás.
Onde vais a correr, desatinado?
Meus olhos incendidos que o pecado
Queimou! — o sol! Volvei, noites de paz.

Vergam da neve os olmos dos caminhos.
A cinza arrefeceu sobre o brasido.
Noites da serra, o casebre transido...
Ó meus olhos, cismai como os velhinhos.

Extintas primaveras evocai-as:
— Já vai florir o pomar das macieiras.
Hemos de enfeitar os chapéus de maias. —

Sossegai, esfriai, olhos febris.
— E hemos de ir cantar nas derradeiras
Ladainhas... Doces vozes senis... —


II.

Passou o Outono já, já torna o frio...
— Outono de seu riso magoado.
Álgido Inverno! Oblíquo o sol, gelado...
— O sol, e as águas límpidas do rio.

Águas claras do rio! Águas do rio,
Fugindo sob o meu olhar cansado,
Para onde me levais meu vão cuidado?
Aonde vais, meu coração vazio?

Ficai, cabelos dela, flutuando,
E, debaixo das águas fugidias,
Os seus olhos abertos e cismando...

Onde ides a correr, melancolias?
— E, refractadas, longamente ondeando,
As suas mãos translúcidas e frias...



Winter Landscapes

I.

O, my heart, turn back.
Where are you going to run, so bewildered?
My blazing eyes that sin
Burned — the sun! Come back, nights of peace.

The elms along the roads are bent with snow.
The ash has cooled over the coals.
Nights in the mountains, the old hovel...
O, my eyes, you brood like old men.

You evoke extinct springtimes:
— The apple orchard is already in bloom.
We have to decorate the Maia hats.—

Rest, cool down, feverish eyes.
— And we have to go sing in the final
Litanies... sweet senile voices...


II.

The autumn already passed, the cold already returned...
— The autumn of her wounded laugh.
Algid winter! The sun oblique, frozen...
— The sun, and the limpid waters of the river.

Clear waters of the river! Waters of the river,
Fleeing under my tired gaze,
Whither are you taking my vain attention?
Where are you going, empty heart of mine?

Tarry, her hair floating,
And, under the fleeting waters,
Her eyes open and daydreaming...

Where will you run, melancholies?
— And, refracted, rippling at length,
Her hands, translucent and cold...

No patience, or, this corpse is getting old.

Tonight I strolled down the street to see Adam Warrock, one of my favorite rappers. I went early enough to hear all of the three opening acts, 1.5 of which I enjoyed. What I didn't enjoy was the blathering of audience members that, in one way or another, could have been me ten to twelve years ago. I'm getting old, and bored of pretty much anything that isn't heavy metal-, literature-, or 16th century-related*. My pull list at the comic shop is halved every six months; I want to play D&D, but potential players are few and far between; being told that title X (be it a comic or game) is an awesome reiteration of something already well-established is not enough for me to spent time and money on it.

I guess I'm sick of so-called nerd culture, which in some ways resembles someone patting themselves on the back while furiously jerking off. My own interests could, and not inaccurately, be described as equally solipsistic and meaningless, and I'm cool with that. I just- I don't know. The constant appeal to the media one ingests, and the reaction thereto, seems hollow. "I like X, therefore Y", wherein X is a particular media product, and Y signifies practically nothing.

Whatever. I'm super-tired and not really fit to be picking apart media habits. Corpse out.

微臣
史大偉

*Which isn't accurate at all.

李寄斬蛇 / Li Ji Beheads the Serpent

 After seemingly endless chapters of 孟子/Mencius admonishing various rulers, I was pleased to discover that the most recent lesson in my classical Chinese textbook was an actual story. Here's the tale of Li Ji and my translation thereof. It's full of shitty traditional Chinese attitudes toward women, but if it's any consolation, there's a giant demon-snake, too.

I've made a few notes below to explain or comment upon some of the more blatantly obscure references, most (if not all) of which I didn't understand. Explanations are courtesy of Paul Rouzer, whose textbook I've been using and cannot recommend enough.

Enjoy!

微臣
史大偉



****

李寄斬蛇

東越閔中有庸嶺，高數十里。其西北隰中有大蛇，長七八丈，大十餘圍。土俗常懼，東冶都尉及屬城長吏，多有死者。祭以牛羊，故不得福。或與人夢，或下諭巫祝，欲得啗童女年十二三者。都尉令長，並共患之；然氣厲不息。共請求人家生婢子，兼有罪家女養之。至八月朝祭，送蛇穴口；蛇出，吞嚙之。累年如此，已用九女。爾時預復募索，未得其女。將樂縣李誕，家有六女，無男，其小女名寄，應募欲行，父母不聽。寄曰：「父母無相，惟生六女，無有一男，雖有如無。女無緹縈濟父母之功，既不能供養，徙費衣食，生無所益，不如早死。賣寄之身，可得少錢，以供父母，豈不善耶？」父母慈憐，終不聽去。寄自潛行，不可禁止。寄乃告請好劍及咋蛇犬。至八月朝，便詣廟中坐。懷劍，將犬。先將數石米餈，用蜜麨灌之，以置穴口。蛇便出，頭大如囷，目如二尺鏡。聞餈香氣，先啗食之。寄便放犬，犬就嚙咋，寄從後斫得數創。瘡痛急，蛇因踴出，至庭而死。寄入視穴，得九女髑髏，舉出，咤言曰：「汝曹怯弱，為蛇所食，甚可哀愍！」於是寄女緩步而歸。越王聞之，聘寄女為后，拜其父為將樂令，母及姊皆有賞賜。自是東冶無復妖邪之物。其歌謠至今存焉。

In the Min region of eastern Yue* are the Yong mountains, which are three miles high. In a crevice to the northwest which lives a giant serpent some seventy to eight feet in length and a hundred feet in circumference. Locals had always feared it, and it had killed the military commander of Dongye, as well as several high-ranking officials. Cattle and sheep were sacrificed to the serpent in the hope of receiving good fortune, but never to any avail. Sometimes the serpent would give men dreams; sometimes it would come down and inform wizards and priests that it wanted to eat virgin girls of twelve or thirteen. Magistrates and military officers all suffered from the serpent's poisonous aura.** The authorities sought out maidservants born into households*** and the daughters of criminals, and on the first day of the eighth month escorted them to the mouth of the serpent's cave. The giant snake emerged, chewed the girls up, and swallowed them.

Years passed in this manner, until nine virgins had been sacrificed. At this point in time the authorities searched for more virgins, but none were found until they came to Jiangle county. There, in the household of Li Dan, were six girls, but no boys. The youngest girl, named Ji, said that she would go and be sacrificed, but her father would not hear of it.

"Father and mother," Ji said, "you are without fortune. You have had six daughters and not a single boy; it is as if you haven't had children at all. I am not a daughter like Tiying, whose achievements rescued her parents. Since I cannot support you, and only waste clothing and food, there is no benefit to be had from my life- it would be better to die young. If by selling myself I make a few coppers to support my parents, how would that not be virtuous?"

But her parents, who loved Ji, still would not allow her to go. Ji could not be stopped, and secretly left on her own. She asked the authorities for a fine sword and a snake-biting dog. On the first day of the eighth month she visited the temple, where she sat with her sword against her chest and her dog by her side. She took several pecks of rice balls mixed with honey and roasted barley flour and placed them at the mouth of the serpent's cave. Catching the scent of the rice balls, the serpent- its head as large as a grain bin**** and its eyes like mirrors a foot across- promptly came out and ate them. Ji unleashed her dog, and it tore into the serpent as Ji dealt it several sword-blows. Severely wounded and in pain, the serpent leapt away and fled back into its cave*****, where it died.

Ji entered the cave and found the skulls of the nine virgins, which she picked up and took outside. "Because you were scared, weak things, you were eaten by the serpent. I pity you!" she scolded. Then Ji walked home at a leisurely pace.

When the king of Yue heard this, he wed Ji and made her his principal consort, appointed her father an official of Jiangle county, and handsomely rewarded her mother and sisters. Since then there have been no monsters in Dongye, and to this day the ballad of Li Ji is still sung.

 ***

(A note on the title: my original source just refers to it as 李寄, but online I found 李寄斬蛇, which explains what Li Ji did- even if the extended title is still misleading, since there's no beheading going on.)

*Present-day Fujian, which is still poetically known as Min.

**Rouzer says that the serpent has been killing people indirectly by exuding some kind of noxious fog, but as I was typing up my translation the line I use above came to me, and I liked it.

***I take this to mean "girls born into household slavery."

****Given how big this snake is, this grain bin sounds more like a damned silo- which is more in line with the modern use of 囷, but I went with Rouzer's interpretation.

*****The character used, 庭, means "main hall" or "courtyard", neither of which makes sense to me w/r/t caves, but I took it to mean that the serpent, which was outside when it was gorging on rice balls and getting its ass beat, returned from whence it came.

RIP Craig Ruggles

My friend Craig Ruggles died Sunday.

Nothing can prepare you for the death of a friend. You might, like me, think yourself a Leto II pre-sandworm/pre-precocious asshole, but it takes very few genetic errors to prove you wrong, and there's no accounting for others' genetics, which is what felled Craig.

I met Craig during the 2011 UH study abroad trip.

I thought I could write something about his sudden passing, but I can't right now. I'm sorry; I'm useless as ever, but I'll try again later.

Camilo Pessanha's "Tatuagens complicadas do meu peito:"

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been learning a little Portuguese, mainly so I can read things related to Macau. While doing just that- though I confess I can't remember if I first read it in English or Portuguese, though I think it was the latter- I learned about Camilo Pessanha, who spent most of his life in Macau. A poet, lawyer, teacher, and opium addict, Pessanha influenced Fernando Pessoa, had a great beard, and translated some things from Chinese into Portuguese. He died in 1926.

I haven't found any of Pessanha's poetry available in English anywhere, which is a shame, but it works out well for me as it forces me to read it in Portuguese. I've tried my hand at translating one of the sonnets from Clepsidra, the only volume of his poetry published in Pessanha's lifetime. I doubt I'm doing him justice, but so it goes. The English translation follows the Portuguese original (the spelling of which differs from the scanned version of the original book-- Portuguese orthography has changed over the years). Enjoy.

***

Tatuagens complicadas do meu peito:
-- Troféus, emblemas, dois leões alados...
Mais, entre corações engrinaldados,
Um enorme, soberbo, amor-perfeito...

E o meu brasão... Tem de oiro, num quartel
Vermelho, um lis; tem no outro uma donzela,
Em campo azul, de prata o corpo, aquela
Que é no meu braço como que um broquel.

Timbre: rompante, a megalomania...
Divisa: um ai, — que insiste noite e dia
Lembrando ruínas, sepulturas rasas...

Entre castelos serpes batalhantes,
E águias de negro, desfraldando as asas,
Que realça de oiro um colar de besantes!


***

Complicated tattoos on my chest:
—Trophies, emblems, two winged lions...
And, between garlanded hearts,
A huge, magnificent wild pansy.

And my coat of arms... of gold, on a
red quarter, a lily; on the other a maiden,
on a blue field, her body of silver, there
on my arm like a buckler.

My crest: megalomania rampant...
My motto: a sigh — that insists night and day upon
Recalling ruins, shallow graves...

Among castles, battling wyverns,
And black eagles spreading their wings,
 a golden necklace of bezants!

Overdue.

Keeping a diary, as well as having a dedicated notebook for poetry and scraps of fiction, appears to have rendered this blog almost unnecessary. If, of course, one leaves out the need- or perhaps the desire- to share something of one's thoughts and the goings-on of one's life with others, in which case ye olde blog isn't obsolete after all.

It's been a pretty good summer thus far. I still haven't fully quit smoking, but I've cut back drastically. I'm drinking less, too, and getting regular exercise. All that adult shit is secondary to the fact that I'm writing regularly, if not prolifically. The 16th century novel, which has been broken into its two component stories for the time being, totals over 300 pages right now, though I'm unsure if either tale has reached its midpoint yet.

I'm still pluggin' away at Chinese, classical and modern, though mainly the former. I have a number of translations I keep meaning to post here, but I'm pretty lazy about polishing them to a presentable shine. I'll get to it soon, I promise. I've also been studying Italian, which is going well. Reading Corto Maltese stories gets progressively easier, and I'm reading Dino Buzzati's novel Il deserto dei Tartari too, albeit slowly and intermittently. On top of that, I've been faking my way through some historical stuff written in Portuguese, which maybe I'll make a more sincere effort to learn in the future, seeing as how most good information about Macau is in Portuguese, and I envision Macau being a major setting in another novel when the time comes.

Tracey and I are going to Newfoundland in a few days, which is pretty rad. I'll get to meet my friend Shari, who I've known online for years, in the flesh. Perhaps I'll post here while I'm there, but don't hold your breath, because I probably won't even bring my laptop.

Other tidbits: I got a Moka pot, which makes killer coffee if you don't fuck up and put it on the stove without water in it, as I managed to do within the first fortnight. Been listening to lots of Om, Acid Mothers Temple, Adam Warrock, and Perturbator, as well as the usual steady diet of metal. Speaking of metal, I finally saw Bolt Thrower live, at Chaos in Tejas, with my brother and Matt Smith. Catching up on Wong Kar-Wai movies. Hanging out with Trump and Wizzelhoof. Drinking cold barley tea. Reading a lot.

There you have it, folks, the quiet life of yours truly. Pay a visit sometime; it's always an imaginary 16th century here these days.

To-do list, and why its contents remain undone

Y'all might know how much I love certain things: Twin Peaks, D&D, heavy metal, Herman Melville, cats, Buffy, Philip K. Dick, Community, Ezra Pound, the late '90s, classical Chinese, wood panelling, comics, cigarettes, Zen Buddhism, the X-Files, und so weiter. So, you say (if "you" exist in an alternate universe where anything I say is somehow worth more than the late-night energy it took to write it), why don't you write something about it?

Good question. Long story short: I have nothing new or interesting to add to any of the thousands, or more likely millions, of words spoken and written about those topics. I can ramble on about how much they all mean to me, but that's pretty much it.

I'm cool with that. As time passes, the less I feel compelled to foist my opinions on the world, despite the sense that the world is often in need of some taste. I'll just be here, doing whatever it is I do, and should I be needed, y'all know where to find me.

袁宏道－偶作赠方子／Yuan Hongdao- "Written by chance and presented to Master Fang"

As I blathered about a couple posts ago, classical Chinese has been an ongoing interest of mine for the past year or so. In that time I've translated a few things as part of the learning process (which will never, ever end). Yesterday I spent my afternoon with a couple textbooks, a Chinese dictionary, and Zongqi Cai's How to Read Chinese Poetry, wherein I found the following poem by Yuan Hongdao. It took a little while for me to realize that this is the same Yuan Hongdao featured so prominently in Pilgrim of the Clouds, a book of Ming Dynasty poetry and prose translated by Jonathan Chaves that I picked up some time ago and have enjoyed ever since. (It turns out that each of the poets and writers included is one of the Yuan brothers, which, given their reputation, isn't as strange as it sounds.)

I don't believe this poem is included in that volume, so, for my own benefit and that of anyone who happens to be a fan of Chinese poetry, I give you the original, my humble translation thereof, and some notes that might help clarify the references. Please don't forget that I'm just an appreciative amateur, not an expert; that said, any improper transcription of characters and/or inaccurate translation falls squarely on my shoulders.


---

偶作赠方子
袁宏道

一瓶一笠一條蓑
善操吳音與楚歌
鴛鴦頭白為情多
腰間珮玦千年物
醉後顛書十丈波
近日裁詩心轉細
每將長句學東坡

a jug, a hat, and a
     grass rain cape
I've got a good grasp on the sounds of Wu
     and songs of Chu

the wild crane's spirit is pure
     because his bones are old
the mandarin duck's head white
     for its love is plentiful

the jade pendants and rings around my waist
     will last a thousand years
when I'm drunk my brush strokes become
     hundred-foot waves

these days my mind turns to details
     when writing poetry
but as for long lines
     I learn from Dongpo

---

As I understand, and personally interpret, such things:

-The jug, hat, and rain cape are symbols of the itinerant/hermit's life- i.e., simplicity and escape from society's bonds. (This kind of association is super-common in Chinese poetry, even if the poet isn't living that kind of life, which he usually isn't.)

-The songs of Wu and Chu are folk songs of a kind. Since the poet knows them well, it implies further separation from "polite" society.

-Cranes symbolize something I don't remember, and mandarin ducks are a symbol of conjugal love.

-I read the "jade pendants and rings" bit (by the way, those "rings" are not rings per se, but a kind of torc) as the poet being a man of learning and taste who has given up that life in favor of doing as he pleases, but retains the emblems of his past.

-Dongpo is Su Shi 苏轼, AKA Su Dongpo 苏東坡, a towering figure of Song Dynasty poetry and letters. Once I read some of his work I can form an opinion, but if Yuan Hongdao digs him, odds are I will too.

---


I intend to keep finding poems or prose I like, translating it, and posting it here. I love this stuff, and I hope to pass it along in the hopes that others will feel the same deep connection.

敬祝
史大偉

Ten years!

Man, it's been ten years since my first post here. I don't have much to say about that, other than I'm glad I'm still around to see such a minor milestone. This blog has never been much more than a depository for whatever occurs to me when I sit down and log in to my account-  maybe there was a time that I thought about what I'd write, but not anymore. Sometimes I write something, save it, and come back to it later before deciding to post it or not, but that's about all.

If you've kept up with The Corpse Speaks for a while, thanks for reading. I'll try to make the next decade's worth of posts a little more interesting, but if you've stuck it out this far, well, you might as well admit that your standards are pretty low. There's no shame in that. We all have bad taste in something.

Thanks again, folks! Take it easy and listen to Black Sabbath.

Your pal,
D.A.S.

Some thoughts on 文言文/Classical Chinese

Since I wrapped up my Chinese Studies degree last May, I've been pretty terrible about keeping up with, well, Chinese studies. Modern Chinese, at least. I've been pouring a considerable amount my effort into learning classical/literary Chinese, in which what almost everything before 1911 was written. Like any language, 古文 gǔ wén, also known as 文言文 wén​yán​wén, changed over time, with pre-Han dynasty literature being more grammatically rigorous than, say, that of the Ming dynasty; if anyone ever says the language was static- a claim which is more or less understandable, since it was increasingly divorced from spoken Chinese over the centuries- they're misinformed, ignorant, or have an agenda. Not that it's very likely any of my readers will run into someone with an agenda with regard to classical Chinese, but hey, who knows?

Mind you, I'm no expert, and I never will be. As fulfilling as it is to grind my way through a passage of Sima Qian's 史記 and learn 繁體字 (traditional characters) in the process, classical Chinese is not an easy language. It's more than just a language; it's a mode of thought attuned to a world that hasn't cohabitated with ours in over a century, and I'm so far removed from its source that all I can do is hope to approximate it when I make juvenile translations of the characters I copy out. It's hard work, made even harder by the nigh-unshakeable feeling that I'm achieving nothing by focusing on a dead language.

You know what, though? Classical Chinese might be dead- and yeah, it could be stale even during its heyday; read about eight-legged essays sometime- but the myriad things expressed in the 2,000-plus years it was used aren't dead. Chinese poetry, philosophy, and fiction survive for a reason, even if modern folks like you and I can't immediately appreciate or in many cases even be aware of the parallelisms, historical context, cultural references, tone patterns, et cetera, that make it such a rich language. Via classical Chinese, a culture honed its expression of the range of human emotion and experience to just about as fine a point as any writer could hope for, and that expression can be seen, albeit imperfectly, even in translation.

I remember the first volume of Chinese poetry I ever bought- a used Penguin edition of Wang Wei's poetry- and how hard the language hit me. Since then, it's only gotten more impressive, and I'm not talking only about poetry, or what I've learned since I began studying Chinese. Being able to tackle an entire world (and imperial China constitutes a world as much as Europe until the 19th century did, if not more so) on its own linguistic terms- skewed by time/distance/culture as my understanding of those terms may be- is a privilege, and even if you never pick up a word of Chinese, you can enjoy that privilege in a different form, as I did with Wang Wei. You don't have to know Chinese to see how spot on Chinese culture is about a lot of things. I merely took a few extra steps so I could try to engage it directly. I'm not very good at it, but I suspect most people aren't- viz. the small number of really acclaimed translators from classical Chinese to English.


I study classical Chinese because it is interesting; because it contains a long tradition of thought still woefully under-represented in English (no offense to all the excellent translators over the decades); because I want to send a signal, no matter how weak, to the modern world- in both its Chinese and Western forms- that their ancestors shouldn't be ignored; because I love language(s); because I sometimes like a challenge; because I am sometimes a Taoist, sometimes a Buddhist, and always deeply indebted to both schools of thought; because I appreciate the idea, if not the practice, of the 科舉 imperial examination system; because I love Li Bai and Wang Wei and Du Fu and Han Shan and all the other great poets; because I want to read the Latin of East Asia; because I can't give in to- nor do I believe- the forces that say Mandarin alone is "real" Chinese; because you can't understand shit about now if you don't know about then.

I don't need to justify or rationalize my choice of pastimes. That's not what this is about. I like classical Chinese, and while that's enough for me, there are a thousand other, better, reasons to study it. Maybe you'll find one of your own some day, but like I said, there's no shortage of amazing stuff available to you in English. We all start somewhere.

微臣
史大偉
蛇年二月十一日

"Diversion, Temporary"

"Diversion, Temporary"

A snag in the lazy stream of the afternoon:
thorn of Portuguese Hormuz in the Ottoman side,
root-lifted slabs of any sidewalk in Houston,
dropped keys, or scripture misread-

Easily overcome and circumvented,
rendered interlude rather than coda.

Work continues apace, just as the sun shines,
archons reign, and joints pop gleefully
when brain is joined by body in movement.

As o' late...

It's all black cats, blind phone phreaks, and sandworms these days.

Which is to say that we're fostering a couple inky felines from Friends for Life, I'm reading Phil Lapsley's Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell, and rereading Dune. The former book is one I've been waiting to see in print for a long while; the latter, a longtime favorite that's even more awesome this time around, which I think is the third.

Our foster cats, Trump and Littlefoot, are quite the pair. Trump likes to stay out of sight, and when he's out, he slinks like hell. Littlefoot's quite affectionate when he feels like it, which is about two or three times a day so far. They've only spent one night, so I bet they'll settle in soon. Tracey's keeping a blog about Flump and Wizzelhoof, as I call 'em (or Crump and Wiggleroot, or whatever- gotta throw out names and see what sticks, since their original monikers don't strike my fancy).

"Adieu, Knucklehead"

"Adieu, Knucklehead"


A life as rich as
and the color of
early autumn ale
underbellied with white foam
ended three nights ago,
suddenly, senselessly.

Everything she gave the world
seems gone.
Not just gone:
taken away,
leaving an empty house
and a flock of unhassled birds.

But everything she gave the world
remains. Yes, she was taken away:
no more
clawed awakenings
occupied pillows
whiskers in the window.

These human hearts can blind us
to the fact that she,
we,
all of this,
never really go, never really came;
yet those same hearts ever speak true.


in memoriam Orange Kitty, 2005-2013
(written 1.10.2013-1.11.2013)

"The sage waits without waiting."

Hey there, 2013!

I'm having trouble with my Chinese keyboard, so you're stuck with English, dear readers. I just wanted to say hello, and let you all know that since I'm only a couple months away from the 10th anniversary of this blog, I'm going to try and write more here. It's not a new year's resolution, but merely an affirmation of one of the many things I need, and want, to do.

Love all of y'all, and look forward to more of my exciting ramblings in the next three hundred sixty-odd days! (If you get tired of my silence, drop me a line, and I'll get on it. Promise.)

In the meantime, read some Ezra Pound, Li Po, and Sima Qian!

Back from Hong Kong.

Tracey and I just got back from nine rad days in Hong Kong. Man, what a city. I hope to post some of my journal entries/thoughts in the coming days, either here or on my website (dasmith.freeshell.org), maybe both. Said journal is the handwritten one I've been keeping for a couple months, so it may take some time to transcribe the relevant material. There's other stuff I want to include, too.

As time passes I find myself increasingly aware of the workings of my mind. It's an interesting phenomenon, and I can't tell what the source of it is. I'd wager that it's a combination of things, meditation foremost among them. Maybe one day this growing self-understanding will yield some good writing.

In other news, I was stoked to come home to the long-awaited LP version of MC Lars' Greatest Hits. Can't wait to hear how it sounds; post-punk laptop rap pressed on vinyl and paid for via a Kickstarter campaign is pretty damned 21st century.

Sorry for the general silence. I'll try to fix that. Just as always.

"couple skulls, jug"

Naw, naw, tweren't that sort, tweren't a toothloosener at all.

So what was it?

Twere a shrug, still is. Known what it tweren't more than what twas, that makes sense.

Aye, surely does.

Apophatic, 'tis. Liken it to that line of thinking about the divine.

The ideal word, certes. What else was it not, sides a toothloosener?

Tweren't a seambender. They's known, aye?

More'n care to admit, alas.

Tweren't an illplaced spade, neither.

Never had that particular trouble.

'Tis awful. Awful.

Surely. Hateful in its clumsiness.

Certes. Lessee. Tweren't a seepage. Tweren't wormcrawl. Tweren't replotting.

Venture something?

Can't. Said tweren't, not twas.

Misheard. Statement, not inquiry.

Pray venture forth, then.

Epiphany.

Tweren't.

Theophany.

Certes tweren't. Ventured a far piece, now.

Aye. Twas too close to absurdity's bosom. Pardon.

Given, long as the bottle comes hither.

Gladly. 'Tis an hour ripe for mulling, after all.

Thankee. A lifetime?

Less there's a reckoning before.

Hold, hold, there--

Prydes of the X-Men Fans

Dear Kitty Pryde and Kitty Pryde,

Some dude here. You were awesome in the '80s and into the '90s, especially during your Excalibur years. (Still my favorite monthly book ever.) Some foolishness went down since then, but you're still rad. I didn't care much for the X-men movies, but I hear you were important in the last one. Whatever. You're still the incredibly smart chick who can phase through anything and gets to hang out with Nightcrawler and company while providing a much-needed perspective on just about anything, be it basic human relationships to Big Shit, Mutant Variety(tm).

As for you, cute redhead rapper who at least has enough going for her to take her stage name from Colossus' ongoing crush: you are pretty neat too. I look forward to seeing where you go with the things you rap about and your resulting career. I honestly hope you don't end up some internet footnote, dude.

P.S. I like the aesthetics of your "OK Cupid" video and the sound of your version of "Call Me Maybe." As someone who thinks effort is often overrated, it's nice to see someone not trying too goddamn hard.

Man, I wish I had a stack of comics to read right now.

A night off.

Visiting the folks. Planned on writing once they called it a night, but nah, I'm just gonna enjoy some YT Cracker through these sound-swallowing headphones, smoke some of the Gauloises Brunes madre brought back from Paris, and kick back.


All. Right.

An Unpolished Gem of Fascination, or, Why This Astral Rune Bastards Record is Great

I recently got my copy of, among other things, Astral Rune Bastards' Transmissions of Runic Truth from the Event Horizons. When I first planned to put in an order with King Penda Productions, the label this was released on, I was going to buy just a couple hard-to-find Bretwaldas of Heathen Doom releases, but the inclusion of ARB in King Penda's catalog (because, I think, everything they release is related to the Bretwaldas guys) was intriguing enough for me to see what I could find on YouTube. Lo and behold, a quarter-hour later my purchase had expanded.

Simply put, Astral Rune Bastards is my kind of thing. King Penda Productions' site describes it as "Nine tracks of electronic music based on the folk-horror stories of Northern Europe, and the writings of aliens-in-antiquity theorists such as Erich Von Daniken, Brysley Le Poer Trench and Maurice Chatelain." I know the infamous von Däniken only by name and have no idea who the other two are, but if they're lumped in with him, they're probably also awesome crackpots (again, not a complaint, at least not in this context- see below) and members of the Splendid Name Club. What matters here isn't these folks' theories per se, but that their writing, in conjunction with the artist's other interests, has inspired a cool record that, to me, manages to say- without words, as this is an entirely intstrumental album- more than was probably intended.

Transmissions, as I will refer to it from here on, appeals to a lot of my interests, which are scattershot on the best of days, but that's not the reason I enjoy it so much. The alien astronaut theories of von Däniken and Anglo-Saxon heathen folklore are fun to think and read about, sure, but it's the intersection of such seemingly unrelated interests, the music itself, and the resulting imagery it conjures, that really speaks to me. When I listen to it I envision a young dude in possession of a stash of decent weed, some secondhand synthesizers, lots of dog-eared science fiction/conspiracy theory/history/etc. paperbacks, a love for The X-Files, and maybe a crappy dialup connection. He spends a lot of time at home room reading, listening to/making music, and getting high; he also lives in a sufficiently rural environment to have to chance to take long walks through empty fields dotted with ancient ruins, and to lie around watching the night sky in all its glory, wondering not just what's up there, but why.

This young man's life experience and voracious reading and listening habits culminate in Transmissions of Runic Truth from the Event Horizons. The album's title implies historical and cosmic revelation and mystery, and the song titles reinforce this. Revelation is a tricky thing, though, and often intensely personal. I don't know if Sceot Arcwielder, the man behind Astral Rune Bastards, really has discovered the kind of truths songs title like "Saucers Study the Northern Forest Tribes" or "Astral Visitations to Ninth-Century Dorset" imply, but to me as a listener it doesn't matter. (Well, maybe a little, but that's getting away from my point.) What matters to me is that all the things the artist finds fascinating have been assembled into an evocative whole.

The fact that this is a pretty limited release (maybe not so much in terms of the number of CDs pressed, but certainly in terms of exposure) adds a lot to my appreciation of Transmissions. There isn't a big audience for an album of this sort, because not a lot of people would be into outdated-sounding synths that sometimes veer into cheesy territory but usually do a memorable job of creating atmosphere. Despite being released in 2009, Transmissions feels dated in the same way its inspirations feel dated, which is perfect. Von Däniken sold a shitload of books forty years ago, but who pays much attention to him now? Keyboards have evolved tremendously, so why listen to something that sounds like it was made on pawnshop gear? Because when you're fascinated with something, be it an idea or a sound, that's all you need. If other people think your work sounds rough and weird and irrelevant, it's their loss.

It's when I consider the album as a whole- the music, the artwork, the inspirations, the things it conjures in my imagination, the obscurity, and the DIY creative process- that things really click for me. I could be completely wrong about Sceot Arcwielder's motives, interests, and process, but again, it wouldn't matter, because he's made an album that makes my mind move in interesting ways. I like the musical stories being told on Transmissions, and I like the headspace it puts me in, which is much bigger and more complex than I would've expected.

Here's to weirdness, obscurity, and the art that springs from it. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to do a little pondering about UFOs and ancient cultures of my own. You can check out Astral Rune Bastards here.

明朝的小说/romanza della rinascita

Howdy, folks.

I don't think I've discussed the novel I'm writing, but I do know I've mentioned it, as well as some of the things that got me interested in the subject matter. I didn't touch the book for a long while, but since I graduated (oh yeah, I failed to mention that, too- yours truly now has a B.A. in Chinese Studies) and have become a full-time househusband/slacker/liver-of-the-dream, work has proceeded apace on the novel. I haven't written this much, in the sense of plugging away daily and not giving up, in years. As always, I have no idea if I'll get sick of it and shelve it again, but right now if a day passes without adding a page or two, I feel like a failure, and I spend a lot of time thinking about the book, so I'll take that as a good sign. Sure sounds better than grad school.

Anyhoo. The novel starts in 1528, and deals with two main characters: a Venetian and a Chinese from Fujian. There are some basic similarities between them, 'cause in some ways they both embody aspects of your humble Corpse. 1528 is an interesting year because nothing world-shaking happened in either China (ruled by the Jiajing emperor) or Venice (Doge Andrea Gritti represent!), which makes it tough to tie either character to grand historical events. When I say "tough," that's a good thing; I'm not aiming to mimic Eco's Baudolino, for example, and pretend that Anacleto Stornello or Xiaoyao/Yan Liang'en- my main men- are anything but two dudes who did some interesting things in the context of their times and cultures. Times and cultures, mind you, seen through historical and personal filters, with some flat-out misunderstanding, authorial fiat and "why the hell not?" thrown in.

Anacleto and Xiaoyao aren't the only protagonists. Anacleto's almost anachronistically rebellious, independent sister showed up to the party early on and she's not going anywhere, as far as I can tell. Xiaoyao is currently on his own, but he'll have some traveling companions sooner than later, though something tells me they won't be as trustworthy as Anacleto's sister. I've got a ton of ground to cover- literally and figuratively; the Ottoman Empire, the Portuguese Estado da India, the liminal world of wokou piracy, maybe even the Mughal Empire- so it's hard to tell who will show up, and in what capacity.

Long story short, I'm stoked about this book. I love how much I've learned, and how much more there is to learn, just in order to write it. I love how my own understanding of history, identity, and politics keeps changing as I process the broad strokes and the details of the Renaissance/early modernity/etc. I love seeing my own writing take on characteristics (some good, some bad) that weren't there during the writing of previous novels. Shit, I even love the aforementioned days without writing, because they are reminders that, at long last, the fire has been rekindled and won't be put out easily.

I hope to post later tonight about other things, but if I don't, this isn't a bad contribution for the day. Later, folks!

DAS

sliver poem 6.4.12

Wash the sleep from your eyes
and call it a night.
Sun crowns:
Ulthar retreats, synapses collapse,
everyone's shades and your friends
turn in.

There's still tonight.

untitled poem, 5.14.12

The delicate blue gloom
of a wet evening's birth:
sun fleeing, now flown,
cats among the puddles,
the old, welcome mystery
revived.

T.O.Y. (Team of the Year)

Another bangin' success at trivia night. Dos Links, one Robertson, one special guest Beasley (Commonwealth of Virginia represent!), and yours truly: the Agents of Orange Kitty. Three nights of trivia, three wins. My friends and wife rule. Getting to hang out with my dearest MWC friend tonight made it all our victory all the sweeter.

Life is cool. Life is all right. Allll. Right.

Lights out, dudes. Hail Acid Witch.

Lazy exultations.

I've been writing pretty consistently, and I'm a page or two from finishing the first draft of the first of the hardboiled stories I mentioned in my last post. If I hadn't sidetracked myself tonight with exultation- over drink, over a relaxed Saturday night with the cat and my wife, over the impending visit of a very dear friend- I might be done by now.

But exultation, the kind that drives one to lift a glass when there's nobody to share a toast with, the exultation that drives off so much ingrained pessimism, the exultation that never comes often enough, even though so many of our societal influences, from parents to movies to those songs we love to much, tell us it should- that exultation showed itself this evening like a night-blossoming flower, and I have opted to revel in it rather than do much of anything else.

I exult in knit ties. I exult in fireplaces. I exult in Saturday drives with Tracey. I exult in idleness, in well-brewed beer, in comfortable sweaters, in orange kitties, in glimpses of old dwellings and cool drinks of water.

A hardboiled year.

All right, me and the Royal Portable Deluxe have decided that we're going to collaborate on something. As some of you may know, I made my first money from writing when I published a hardboiled detective story in Blue Murder Magazine back in 1999. I don't even remember the title of the story, but I've always liked hardboiled detective fiction- not just reading it, but writing it. I haven't written much of it since college, but now and then I'll read something that makes me think "you've still got some stories in you, self."

I don't know if that's completely true, but I'm on my way to finding out. My goal is to write twelve pulp-style stories this year: presumably one per month, though if I crank 'em out faster, it's all gravy. Now that I've got a typewriter, I can sit down to write without the distractions that come with an internet-connected laptop, and I already notice the difference in terms of productivity (God, I hate that word, but it's apt here). There's something very satisfying about piling up pages next to the typewriter as I finish them, and the visible errors and odd indentations and the like make the typed page a much more attractive artifact than one printed from a computer. Of course, everything I type is just a first draft and will be transferred to a digital format once said drafts are finished- this isn't an exercise in antiquated technology just for the sake of it.

I hope to make each story unique with regards to plot and characters, but I'm not committing myself to anything just yet. I have several ideas, some of them thematically related to different times of the year, but I'm only working on one at a time. That's part of the deal: I won't move onto another story until the previous one is done. I need to work on completing things.

I'll provide more details, and maybe the stories themselves, as they arise. Happy 2012, folks. Take it easy.

"And the emptiness grew..."

One day, an increasingly large number of years from now, I'll write something really meaningful about heavy metal, despite the fact that metal needs no spokesperson- especially not me.

Hail the riff.

now playing: Jex Thoth, Jex Thoth

Dear Hollywood: Fuck you and your censorship-loving cronies.

I've censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet--a bill that could pass THIS WEEK. To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, visit: http://americancensorship.org/posts/13273/uncensor

████ ███████ isn't ████████ ███████; it's the ████ ████ it's ████████ ████ ██████. Do █████████, ████ if it's ████ ███████ an █████ to ████ ███████████████. ████ ████ █████.

Teachings in silence.

At the blurred, exhausted edge of a winter night
there is possibly nothing better
than a tall glass of cold water
and Ulver
(particularly the Teachings in Silence compilation).
Silence teaches you how to sing
indeed.

"Teenagers and Cigarettes"/"16yo lungs" (first, maybe last, draft)

"teenagers and cigarettes"/"16yo lungs"

The surest sign of youth is that
patch of dirt or grass around
the side of the house,
or that sun-bled coke can,
sometimes a windowsill-
all
scratched black
and clotted with filters,
sometimes lipsticked
(and when they are, and that color isn't yours,
oh how the heart moves),
never symmetrical in their destruction.

The escape and worry,
isolation
and happiness,
the held hands
that led to
or emerged from
each long drag instance,
won't wait for archaeology
or enraged parents
or the disappointment of an older self

to signify
like the tiny orange supernova
of the word writ in fire
between synaptic headphones.

(12.8-9.11)

Achievement Unlocked: Garbage, I

The monoliths
rise before our eyes,
vertical steppes of basalt and sunburnt grass-
so out of place in this country,
this barren country,
stumps and thirst and empty wombs,
timber stripped and turned mockingly skyward.
How,
how on earth,
did they find time to build tombs while...
oh.

Oh.

Chinese eunuchs and PKD's Exegesis

Hey, look, it's been a while. What a surprise.

I blame school, mostly. The semester's simultaneously flown and crawled by, punctuated by one Chinese assignment after another, logic tests, and so on. I've got a week of classes left after Thanksgiving, and then finals. Or a final, really, since my last grades for three-fourths of my classes will come in the form of papers and such.

School stuff aside, I've been doing what I always do, and that's read. This habit almost unquestionably gets in the way of school sometimes, but I don't care, because it's reading, dude, and therefore impossible to classify as detrimental behavior. I've read a handful of books over the past couple months, and am in the midst of several more. Two of these, the recently-published Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, and The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty by Shih-Shan Henry Tsai, deserve special note. No, I'm not going to try and relate the two.

The Ming eunuch book, along with another volume (The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China by Timothy Brook, which I finished in October) have been invaluable resources about aspects of Chinese history that usually receive a few passing comments or are dealt with in broad strokes. Since I decided to take a stab at writing an historical novel that partly involves Ming China, I've read a number of books and essays dealing with various features of said dynasty, and the Tsai and Brook books have so far been my favorites- not only because they're packed with information that almost always leads to further research (God, so much to learn!), but because they've helped solidify some of my ideas for the novel. Not to mention they're both well-written and well-researched books.

The eunuch thing has been particularly fascinating. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around almost every aspect of castration-as-career-advancement, mainly because I can barely put up with what modern work demands of me. Complete emasculation under horribly unsafe conditions so I can work in the imperial household (if I'm lucky)? No thanks. Still, Tsai's book casts new light on the positive role eunuchs played in various spheres of Ming life, contrasting what he describes as a systematic bias against them by the betesticled scholar-gentry. He doesn't deny that there were notorious eunuchs, but clearly feels that those who did admirable work have been overshadowed in the history books. I would complain that the book could use some more personalized, humanizing accounts of eunuch life, but I think the absence of such material, both from this book and the historical record, proves Tsai's point. When I was in China I saw a biography of the last Qing eunuch, Sun Yaoting, who died in 1996, and while he was born a couple centuries after the end of the Ming dynasty, I bet his story would be worth hearing.

On to a different form of madness. No, madness isn't the right word, whether dealing with an era when "voluntary self-castration became epidemic," to quote Tsai, or the 8,000 mostly handwritten pages of Philip K. Dick's Exegesis, a personal (i.e., not really meant for publication) investigation into the causes and effects of what PKD called 2-3-74. This series of events is well-known to fans of PKD's work (hey, that's me!), and there's plenty about it online, so I'll spare you and I both a description. It would be easy to write off Dick's experiences as some kind of insanity or mental breakdown, but in my opinion such an approach wouldn't be accurate.

Well, not entirely accurate. The Exegesis as it exists in printed form is roughly a tenth of the material Dick wrote before his death in 1982, and I'm less than a tenth of the way through this version, which puts me at less than 1% of the original work. (Which will probably never be published in its entirety- the introduction to the excerpted version makes this clear, and the text itself makes it clear why.) Even at this point I find myself in that most interesting of positions: unconvinced by Dick's explanations of what happened to him, yet deeply intrigued by the variety of possibilities he entertains and his workings-out of them.

The degree of self-examination- which is what the Exegesis is at its core, albeit a type of self-examination that understands the self as part of something much greater; the whole microcosm/macrocosm thing, generally speaking- is staggering, downright Proustian at times, if Proust had had metaphysical and cosmological concerns as his focus. This kind of feverish attempt to explain one's experiences via constantly-shifting models- including Dick's own books, ancient Christianity, and extraterrestrial intelligence(s)- is one of the things that leads many to believe Dick lost it in the early '70s, which maybe he did to some degree. I see it- at least right now- as a sort of awakening, although since I really enjoy PKD's later work my opinion may be biased, and the books that emerged from the 2-3-74 thing aren't a complete break from earlier work anyway. A thematic detour, perhaps, but not a 180. I can't argue that the behavior that produced the Exegesis isn't obsessive, but again, I wouldn't necessarily use that term in a negative sense.

Another striking feature of the Exegesis is Dick's impressive knowledge. Some of his ruminations are grounded in faulty understanding, sure, but the ease with which he discusses philosophy, religion, and science gives me hope. In our day and age (read: the Internet era) one doesn't come across polymathic minds as often as one would like, so seeing Dick expound on all kinds of things, seemingly off the cuff, is a distinct pleasure. His wide range of interests is apparent in many of his novels, but it really shows when he isn't bound by narrative or plot. This in turn relates to why people are interested in writers' unpublished work: they like to see what writers write for themselves.

Christ, all this pontificating makes it sound like I've read more than I have- how could I glean this much from less than eighty pages? There's a couple ways to address this. One: by virtue of all the other PKD books and related material I've read over the years, I effectively have read more of, and about, the Exegesis. Two: despite being a fraction of the way through, my prior knowledge, and the structure of the book itself, leads me to believe that what I've read thus far is representative of the rest of the book. Not in terms of content, necessarily, but I think the central conceit- understanding his own experiences and, by extension, reality itself- will remain. If it doesn't, great; I'm down for all kinds of diversions from the path, the detours from detours, and seeing as how this isn't the kind of book one reads quickly, I'll have plenty of time to ponder each of Dick's new theories about why things are the way they are.

As I mentioned earlier, Dick's theories don't convince me, even though I enjoy mulling them over. I don't get the impression that he's trying to convince me, though- why would he, since the Exegesis wasn't meant for a particularly wide audience? Personal project or not, I'm glad it has reached a wider audience, which will find all kinds of intellectual gems (or proof of madness, depending on how one reads it) and interpret the work in all kinds of ways. If anything, the Exegesis will be good for that- not bad for a personal project!

It appears logorrhea's gotten the best of me. It's time to work on something else, so I'll say goodbye for now, and I'll try to write more often. Later, folks.

2011年10月18日

almost midnight:
first chill
and a bit too much beer.
through yawn after yawn,
all it takes
is this moment.

(Still) Still Reigning

October 7th marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Slayer's seminal album Reign in Blood. I, and thousands of other metalheads, regard this record as not only a historical milestone in heavy metal history, but a completely fucking awesome record that, had it existed when NASA was shooting cultural artifacts into deep space, could've been the sole musical cargo.

I think Seasons in the Abyss was the first Slayer record I heard, and I still have incredibly strong youthful memories of "War Ensemble," "Dead Skin Mask," and "Seasons in the Abyss." Reign in Blood, however, is a monolithic memory. Kyle, our neighbor in middle school- and to this day, good buddy- had the tape, which he lent to me and my brother, seemingly forever. Back then (this is 1993, I'd say) our parents left for work before we caught the bus to school, which meant that we had somewhere between thirty minutes and an hour most mornings to crank up the stereo, make lame calls to Z-Rock (106.9 KKZR), and do other juvenile shit, like try to make napalm from gasoline and styrofoam peanuts. The album I remember listening to most was Reign in Blood, blasted at a volume no stereo I've had since could achieve, because nobody seems to make three-foot-tall speakers anymore (and, of course, memory inscribes the past with legendary features that the present could never hope to equal).

Still, Reign in Blood isn't merely a nostalgia piece. I've been listening to it on a pretty regular basis for almost 20 years, and it's still killer. I don't remember where I read it, but someone, possibly numerous someones, described it as "twenty-five minutes between 'Angel of Death' and 'Raining Blood'." I think that does the album a disservice, as almost all of the other songs are awesome, particularly "Altar of Sacrifice," and "Jesus Saves." The former is still one of the most evil-sounding songs I think I've ever heard; the way it moves from a sense of victimized panic to Satanic-priest-triumphalism remains unnerving, to the point where I can understand why parents would freak out if they caught their kids listening to it. "Jesus Saves" has a great buildup and a riff that any metal band would kill to have written.

You know what? Enough of this. If you're a metal fan, you already know what I'm talking about. If you're not, go buy a copy. Reign in Blood doesn't feel 25 years old; it feels timeless. And that cover art is untouchable.

Thanks, Slayer.

Thoughts.

I was talking to my pops the other day, discussing random fields of interest and he said I should write an essay, or something along those lines, about something. It was interesting timing, given how fascinated I am with Chinese xiaopin wen (小品文), Kenko's Tsurezuregusa, and similar efforts from Westerners, and that most of the books I bought in China were volumes of essays. It's not quite what my dad had in mind, but seeing as how the matter has continually struck a chord with me for some time, I'm giving it even more thought than usual.

Part of me wants to compile some essays- and I use the term loosely, as my Chinese and Japanese inspirations would- and maybe make an effort to have them published. But why? That's the question that haunts me. Off the cuff observations are incredibly well suited to the online format, so I'm leaning toward posting any such essays here or to my freeshell.org website (or both). We'll see; the first step is actually writing something, and given my course load this semester, I'm too busy memorizing Chinese characters and doing logic proofs- not to mention reading a lot of other stuff- to write even a short essay. And writing modern, Western takes on xiaopin isn't even a high priority, compared to other things!

I'm not complaining, mind you. I'm actually pleased that I have so much on my plate, even though most of it will never get eaten, so to speak. There are a lot of things I've got going on that should manifest in one form or another in the near future, which is pretty exciting. It's so fuckin' easy to lose track of possibilities if you're not careful.

Later, folks. Have a good night, and I'll do the same!

Yours,
DAS

Back.

Well, I'm back. Lots to report, but all the China stuff is over at my website, so read it there. Right now I'm doing a little writing, not thinking about school- which is going to be a drag this semester- and listening to Candlemass, so I'll get back to you later, dear reader. See you soon.

auto-theft re: my own work (LAST POST PRE-CHINA)

I just vomited up a bunch of text on Facebook. I'm reprinting it here because I'm lazy. All sentiments are still valid (since they were expressed moments ago).

--BEGIN FB TRANSMISSION--


This is big shit. I've been obsessing over China- its culture, language, history, etc.- for years, and tomorrow I get on a series of planes to visit the Middle Kingdom, and realize firsthand how utterly ignorant I am of the reality of the culture that's contributed so much to the world for a few thousand years.

Since I won't be using Facebook or my blog while I'm in Shanghai, Suzhou, Beijing, or any of the places Tracey and I might visit once she gets there (Tianjin, Xi'an, Qingdao represent!), y'all probably wont get regular updates. You have my email address (and if you don't, make haste in asking for it) if you wanna converse with me while I'm busy studying the fuck out of putonghua, eating interesting food, and conversing with old folks and anyone that crosses my path.



Many of you have an idea of how excited I am about this trip. China has been my goal for at least a decade. I'm a history nerd, but I know enough about modern China than to expect to to masturbate myself into a frenzy over historical Chinese sights and sounds. I'm thrilled to have the chance to stroll around Beijing and buy Chinese heavy metal CDs. Eat Chinese takes on world cuisine. Smoke cigarettes with anyone who has time for a long-haired Western barbarian. See sights. Plug my earbuds into the ears of the willing and curious. Write notes. Read books. Live fucking life.



I owe my beloved Tracey, the University of Houston, Zhang/Mai/Wen (in no particular order) laoshi, and my own willpower for making this happen. Whatever I make of it in the long run doesn't matter. This is about now, right fuckin' now, the Tao that is nameless. Thank all of you.



And thank everyone else that hasn't been mentioned, because I love y'all too. You're a bunch of sexy, handsome, nerdy, literate, meaningful dudes and chicks.



Love always, and I hope that upon my return I'm a better dude,

D.A. Smith


P.S. As I'm writing this I'm bangin' "Male Feminist" by MC Lars, because this song rules and more importantly women make this world fuckin' rad. Madre, Tracey Robertson, (and in no particular order) Amanda Beasley, Vanessa Riley, Megan Neal, Annie Bulloch, Renee Salmonsen, Renee Miller, Janessa Link, Holly Smith, Jennifer Groves, Linda Evans, Alexa Nash, Nicole Derby, Shabis Kinsella, Liz Smith,Shari Fitzgerald, Aunt Linda, Aunt Annell (RIP), Tati Elena, Tati Lu, Nora Joyce, Emma Goldman, Parker Posey, Justine Frischmann, Dorothy Shakespear, Pearl Buck, Dana Scully, Buffy Summers, Willow Rosenberg, Nursehella, your mom, and a zillion more, fictional or otherwise: THUMBS UP, LADIES. KEEP KICKIN' ASS.

--

Done. All hail YTCracker and his albums. See y'all on the other side of the Great Firewall.

to-do list: near future edition

Things to do within the next year, or maybe starting next summer, depending on what they are:

-get more familiar with UNIX and associated programs (vim for starters)
-set up my own Gopherspace
-get my books and music arranged alongside Tracey's; now that we're married, there's not much excuse not to merge our collections
-skate more
-translate at least three of Lin Yutang's (or someone's) essays from Chinese
-visit my brother in California
-finish volumes 2 (in progress) and 3 of In Search of Lost Time
-finish 2666, not kill self
-hit 150 pages on the current novel, or another one, as long as I'm writing something
-maybe get into some kinda grad program for Chinese, if not, no worries
-convince myself certain types of comma usage are acceptable
-lots of other things I can't think of right now

How can you help? I don't know. Remind me I wrote this in, say, January 2012, and maybe that'll start a frenzy of activity. Or I'll do nothing and blame it on what should be my final semester at UH in the Chinese Studies program.

I'll be back before I head to China. Later, folks.

now playing: Destroyer 666, Unchain the Wolves

A thousand thoughts, a thousand edits

Lately I've written several things that I either didn't post here, or took down shortly after posting them. My reasons are numerous: something wasn't finished, or it sucked, or it was inconsequential, even by the standards of this blog. Take, for example, my brief paean to Brooke Brodack, which itself relied on my habit of collecting search terms that returned no results on Google. My wife caught it before I removed it, which is fine; I wasn't ashamed of the sentiments expressed therein- after all, don't you find it odd that after all these years nobody's typed the same thing into Google?-but the muddled nature of the post irked me when I re-read it. Hence its voyage into the void.

A bizarre, and quite possibly awful, nanofiction piece I've worked on lately, "Bad Dudes," also got axed, because I posted it when it wasn't complete. It'll return for your reading displeasure very soon. I also stayed up way, way too late one night composing an essay on dressing well (Oh, the irony!), but it remains unfinished and unspecific, and may never see the light of day.

I mention these things because, very soon, I'm going to China for several weeks. The Great Firewall of China will block my access to Blogger, so I'll be incommunicado via this channel. I should be able to post to my website from the Middle Kingdom, so look there if you want to follow my activities in real(ish)-time. Whether I'll write much is an entirely different matter, and I'll probably reprint my travelogue here when I return to Houston; ergo, I can't guarantee that you'll find much worth reading- assuming there's anything in the first place.

And now some assorted facts, statements, etc. in no particular order:

-I have a gorgeous gingham tie I'm dying to wear. There are also a number of gorgeous ties I want to purchase, and wear. The disconnect between my usual mode of dress and the things I just expressed is not lost on me.

-I'm two or three days into an experiment wherein I've swapped using a webmail client (standard Gmail) for Thunderbird. So far I'm quite pleased with the separation of web and mail.

-Grails' Deep Politics album was stunning upon first listen, and only gets better with time. That D-side engraving is icing on the cake for those of us who purchase vinyl.

-I'm reading far too many books at once*. Off the top of my head, I'm in the midst of vol. 2 of In Search of Lost Time; a re-read of Pynchon's Mason & Dixon; the seemingly never-edited but defiantly enjoyable Denied to the Enemy by Dennis Detwiller (Axis Mundi Sum never had an editor, sure, but it wasn't riddled with spelling/homonym errors and awful comma splices); a volume of collected Solomon Kane tales by Robert E. Howard; The Unborn, a series of the Zen teacher Bankei's lectures and dialogues; The Confusions of Pleasure by Timothy Brook, a history of commerce and culture in Ming dynasty China that I can't recommend enough; and probably a couple more. I keep track of every book I read during the year, and having so many in rotation not only makes the list look pitifully short, it seems I never finish anything.

-Tracey and I's wedding celebration in Wimberley was awesome. I extend my thanks to everyone who came, because without y'all it wouldn't have been what it was.

-The Time of No Time Evermore by The Devil's Blood is a really, really good record.

-Julie Delpy, of (in my book) Killing Zoe fame, stars as the infamous Erszebet Bathory in a movie called The Countess. I haven't watched it yet, but man, how can you go wrong with that combination?

-Commas appear to be encroaching into my writing with a frequency that would be alarming if I wasn't confident that I use them properly. Using them well is a different story, of course.

That's all for now, dear readers. Thanks for your time, and I hope to post more before I head east by going west.

Your friend,
D.A. Smith



*Nothing new, yet always worthy of complaint.

A little late!

Did I tell you dudes that I have a web page? As in, one that ain't a blog? Well, I do, and it looks like it was made in 1997. On purpose.

Click here to waste time.

There's not much there, and it looks that way 1) because it's written in pure HTML, my grasp of which hasn't changed much since the late '90s, 2) I don't have much to offer textually speaking, much less graphically, and 3) I'm lazy, so why bother doing more?

(Cue tangent w/r/t web design, visual overload, etc. etc., then realize it's not worth it, and never write said tangent.)

The website, which was generously provided by the SDF Public Access Unix System, will be a repository for stuff that I don't feel fits this blog. As of now, nothing qualifies as such- well, nothing I've written- but I like leaving the option open. Maybe my D&D notes will end up there, should I ever type 'em up.

I'm off to read some Joe Bob Briggs movie reviews, so see y'all later!

Status report.

The busy year marches on.

Finished the semester. Got married (rad). Preparing to have wisdom teeth pulled. Finally visited Waterloo Records in Austin. Getting ready for the big wedding party in a couple weeks. Got a summer suit. All set for my China trip (or so I like to pretend). Occasionally working on the new novel. Having a hard time finding time to do a lot of the stuff I want, but trying not to get frustrated 'cause I've seen it coming for months.

Often tired. So it goes.

"solitaire bangers"

damn
i hear blogger's having problems
so why bother writing?
"oh man
ain't that a bigger question
bigger than the internet?"
well shit
you have a very good point

maybe back in the dialup era
wardialin' and angelfirin'
there was a chance of
some other dudes
or some other chicks
clicking on the mailto:

now it's all skull interior decoration
and there ain't no mailto:
a former essence preached to
probably nobody
nah
nah nah
yeah nobody gives a fuck
take off the headphones
it's all you
echo chamber

fuck all the pricks
and the web and
fuck all the snoozers takin' your bed
when you should be gettin' sleep
posting to gopher
sdf-in' for an audience of one
rhyme and cadence not a strong suit
or a suit of any kind

time to test the rumor
hate to consign shit to the void
but it's all goin' there
in the long run
my galaga scores more important
than anything else this dude
ever done
poetry's for suckers
and demigods
and motherfuckers

press
reset







"hey man, lurk moar"