Dear Eugene, Nobel surprised yet again, this time with a "safe" choice , not obscure enough, not political either. Come on, Nobel, get weird again! (For the record I like Ishiguro...but don't you think our Atwood has done something similar and did it more and better? Just my humble opinion of course, and really no point to compare apple and orange; all great writers are strange fruit in their own rights.) I wonder if we should all be our own Nobel committee, take a step back and consider the stories that we are being told and keep telling ourselves, keep living into them as if for real? But they are real, aren't they? We are living them; how can they be anything but real? Like, the invisible hand of the market, the endless prospect of ceaseless progress, the contradictory but equally real fatalism tried proven and true if by nothing else but the simple act of human dying tragically comically without-a-soundedly every hour every minute every second--aren...
Dear Eugene,
ReplyDelete“In the beginning/ A brush of paint/ Water retained/ Life possible… Let not tomorrow encroach upon today/ The final sentence stayed/ Island people/ Happy…”
Several years ago at a dinner banquet in China, I was among the happy guests surrounding an island of food in a private section adjacent to 2 other rooms with similar feasting. Mr V, our elderly host in his most vigorous state of wisdom & supreme health, had arranged this night to celebrate the success of his factory operations with his adult son & core staff including my in-laws’ family. Through a labyrinth of formalities, I was invited to this restaurant an ocean distant from my apartment rental home.
Up close, platters in opulence were presented to the diners, each delicacy obsessively weighed & circumscribed within its island of flavors. In offscreen space, the chefs whose faces I had never seen must have passionately swept their brushes of paint in sparkling spices & marinade across the culinary canvas. Cleavers marked the boundary between life & death for lobsters, Peking ducks & other flesh with their blood & spit emulsified in soup: water retained, life possible in every morsel of bite to delight the heart craving for bigger bites of life, tongue & teeth locked in a peninsula of happiness over luxury consumed.
Can you isolate, encapsulate happiness for feeding?
The motto saturating the banquet hall that night would have affirmed this mythology. In the beginning, Mr. V, the Crown of the table, had identified & packaged happiness into extraordinary bites of fortune for the seated many whose livelihoods must not be encroached by any yellow paint or boundary. His luxuriant touch & massive appetite in sales were the final sentence necessary to ensure island people happy in this side of the fence. No need to look beyond this fence. Happiness on the yellow peninsula is sacred.
At the end of the banquet, I left feeling hungrier than when I had 1st arrived.
Then about 3-4 years later, I was told Mr. V had died & his factories shut. I look over the yellow fence. In silence.
Yours, Kate