Re-reading The Pillow Book

{146} Things with terrifying names-
River deeps. Mountain caves. 'Scale board' walls. Iron. Clods. Thunder-not just the name, but the thing itself is extremely terrifying. Gales. Ominous clouds. Comets. 'Arm-umbrella' rain. The Wilds.
Robbery is terrifying in every way. Violent monks are very terrifying indeed. So are Kanamochi. Living spirit possession. The snake berry. Devil fern. Devil vine. Thorn bushes. Chinese bamboo. Roasted charcoal. A bull-demon. Anchors-the sight of one is more terrifying than its name.

{242} Things that no one notices-
All the inauspicious days. The aging of people's mothers.

Sei Shonagon

Arias of Love and Death

I've read some of these before but this poem seems particularly well suited to being rendered as a comic. It's got that nice narrative-sketched-so-perfectly-in-a-few-brief-lines form that the two media so obviously have in common.

If Dr. Seuss was 23 and lived in a brownstone in Williamsburg, he might sound like this.

The waker goose; the cuckoo ever unkind; the popinjay, full of delicacy

Black clouds are in the east like an ominous Parliament of Foules. And I've got my impermeables ready for the downpour. Hunkering down is like returning to the same sweetness seven days a week or sticking your face into an upturned umbrella, dark, stuffy and comfortable.

But woah Nelly! I'm at it again. Brains unwinding like a spool or thread or a skipping record, "sometimes behave so strangely" (ad infinatum). I'm old behind my time in the ways of you post-modern performance artists and post-post modern hunky-a-burning tire boys.

Instead of living outright, I dream I am a superhero's slave. Black cape, bondage gear and the rest. Top spin on the table during a convocation of murderers. I will kill you with the extreme end of my knife-blade fan.

How d'ye do, Lord Turing?

On this day 175 years ago.

Pean

Oh you, Warm Winds blow me to the Dog star and there, staring Sirius and tired, make me a crown of Cassiopeia threads. I'll dance Sursaute d'Allemagne around smoking mineral springs and inhale your oracular fumes.

While you were in the bathtub I was out howling at the moon.

Rosa est rosa est rosa

May is a lusty month and now it has almost in the Ram it's entire course y-ronne. In my experience, these days are commonly packed with disbelief and that y-ronne amok-ness that comes with the first smecking of summer: a relief and a source of frantic anxiety all it's own. And occasionally I feel wondrous in that true slapped-by-a-Deity sense that comes with spring time when everything is impossible and you're sure that flowers are steaming in color. Isn't walking out the door in a way like being shocked by multi-lingual homophones (who knew that "one" and "very" would cross the Arabian Gulf into a Czech-Arabic delicious mouthfeel pronounced trippingly on the tongue?) or is that just me?

“A process of self-obliteration conducted by an effort of the will. Pleasure bordering on almost unendurable ecstasy. ...”

Tobacco's in the Persian slipper along with some harder narcotics.

(Aorists on the brain. Sackbut. The fall of the Scythian)

I take lessons from a craggy man in the lost art of forgetfulness.

(Hemlock umbels. slithey toves. Mongol 'ordes. Naru.)

We learn: Thoughts are paper cups (so facile to crumple and throw in a bin) and each meme an island in the archipelago. Letting go is as easy as being swallowed by the sea.

(Hashassination. Timesis. You abso-fucking-loutely sometimes behave so strangely)

But there are long establish trade routes and every skein of Lorbarnery silk has a name.

I am a poor student.