The light-buzzing numbness of the after flight dehydration--the sodium food and low air pressure plugging the intestines and bloating the soft-tissues. The reanimation of constricted muscle-groups poisoned by alcohol and lack of sleep. The want the need the pain of piss passageways, stinging from piss rationing.

Being called stupid, being called foolish, childish, head in the clouds. Watching the faces of deformed, listening to their demands, pretending not to hate their blemishes, scars of anxiety, burn victims patchwork hands, pressing small-change into them with average handed bravado--perhaps bad luck comes to those who touch these hands--Smiling back at the lip less, feigning personal connection with the fuckability of those who could afford gleaming strait orthodontic lines aside from all else. Realizing she works in a Liquor store beside a discount market beside a slumping commercial oriented knitting supplies and RU-486 byway. She didn't check my ID, which is strange considering that people ID me going into porn shops, and I'm 23. I'm strange like her she likely mused--the camaraderie of the strange faced--We're I to see myself as being considered a compatriot with this one, when I was 10 I would be horrified and demand to know what was wrong.

A childhood friend once told me that if he could have one wish granted, he would like to see himself as he would appear in 10 years. I thought that a very strange wish at the time. I find the thought stranger now that he is a stranger to me...a darker, more sadistic, and driven to given to the rockets of home-house-marriage and brown leather loafer old boys club, brass and fern bars, on the happy periphery of ivy leage regalia, confused biologically--wanting to kill the mother, friends with the sister above the mother type.

Green room, green darkness. A massive pillow, wrapped in plastic, green and red with a Greenbay Packers logo...Made to look like a brick of cheese. Friend convinces me to mix it with my thoughts of starships, attacking me in my face with plastic models exploding for 70's pre-programmer age nerds, finding ways to invent the ways they would waste their time, smocked in hawaiian shirts, curly long hair and bearded, unlike me (evermore). They WASTE thier time with beauty these guys. They WASTE their time with perfecting (to what end anyway?). THEY LEARN TO COMPLETE THE RUBIC'S CUBE IN LESS THAN 45 SECONDS, FROM ANY POSITION. I Tell their girlfriends "I WANT YOU DEAD" in so many words, throwing friesbees above razorsharp steel clotheslines for them to cut their own heads off at catching. Heads toppled down from egos presuming to teach me about the mores, muddy formation off the coast of Ireland; fucking bitch stupid erudite clumsy dork fucks aborting their clever oversensitive bs out of existance thankfully.

Eye Shot.

The idea that one can really capture a moment, the idea that this can be put away, stuck in amongst cured meats and digitized photo albums, is the idea who's actualization is desired greatly. For instance, on purple night A Soldier rides on a horse into a clearing and sets his sights on a lonely group of peasant farmers, for whom practice at mating thoughts of pink/white breasts are all consuming---he rides quickly, becomes somewhat disoriented by strange flashing lights in his periphery, and hopes the villagers natural aversion to travelers down this road and distaste for generally hurried/tawdry/emergency/non-imagined encounters will prevent their foreknowledge of death from above--The soldier is well on his way, when two plastic men translucent heads and plastic red LED light shines through nicely like laser pointers through a lump of wet sugar, jump out from behind Soldier---must have been waiting, cocked, for just this situation they spring---Each discharges their rifle weapon just a nanosecond apart from the other (the machine plastic men don't believe it is seconds, in fact belief systems are of no importance, because no records are held, history is deleted, and commands are brought forth and that is all. Note: the plastic men are vessels) blowing the soldier mans left eye out of his skull along with a deadly portion of his brain, chunks a solid black spray, which when slowed down could be syrup but at high speed remains solid black--a long enough interval, the command master hoped, for the soldier to take note of half the previously useful targeting instruments becoming the slop-shot (dead soil detritus) black shrapnel, the result of being targeted in turn. Now the idea comes into play--The two shots' trajectory can be traced with dotted glass lines (this should conjure up visions of mothers dipping thermometers into oral cavities, anuses, urethras) in a grey clay, electronic model which uses as it's basis a set of photos shot at THE DEFINING MOMENTS of the lead up (prepositioned Polaroid cameras shoot the change of expression on Soldiers face along his path which was predetermined by youths masturbation, line of attack, camera placements in conical linear formation tapering towards the youths--from that face of expectation, to doubt, mouth slackening, nothingness sets in to death, to SEEING THE FAILURE-the result of death, the idea that death comes inevitably between some mundane command and its completion, the command falling blankly like an anonymous orgasm, in the trash. Pictures also relate the change in color from frame to frame---the Polaroid cameras of the third interval are tripped to set off flares, igniting a half-ring of red-flash powder that etches the frontal boundary and highlights the Soldier-man focal-point; The results are conclusive.
We circle around this future dark black world in tramways. Disturbingly a man shows me to his closet in which he reveals there is a faux wall---he pulls the barrier away to reveal further a set of wood-plank stairs leading up to the blue light of a narrow transom portice. A skyline of future dark-black-world, its islands, factories, and soggy forgotten parking lots. Is it still an Ariel view if that view is connected structurally to the ground by solids? If the world was moving in fast-motion and I was normal-speed, would my hand rip from my body if I were to catch a baseball? I point at the man who I'm looking at now from the the bottom of the stairs at the barrier of the secret room. He and three friends are curious of my opinions. I sign at them a gun with my fingers, and move my thumb to signify I'm Killing You.

Mother and Father took me to the Olympics. I was worried we were parked too far away from the Olympic stadium to trace a path, but we parked on a hill and it offered us the perfect vantage--the hard part would be getting back to the car. The opening festivities began, below the overlook, Red People on stilts clamoured together like autumn maples in the wind. We FORGOT THE CAMCORDER--it's like going to the picnic and forgetting the basket of food! Elise urges me to compete in the relay event--but I find out its an obstacle course (like so many traps, there's usually a fail safe measure built in; a zip line leading out of the castle spire, to a nearby museum window.) I am intent on escape, but Elise and her Nazi-shaved athlete devils insist on forcing my hand--so I stop her behind me--she's below a ship piston swinging down in accordance with its design and command--precipitously-- pounding flat Elise's slender frame, disorganizing, cracking it so fast as to spray living goo on my shins (It suffocates me, this writhing sheath of death ejaculate, reminiscent of happening on to a sandpiper's nest and crushing its fertilized eggs in my naked palm; sharp shell skin; recycled glass mosaic). Watching it in the museum theatre, horror-flick catches my attention, but not for long enough to assuage the inertia of some more pressing pet-fascinations.

Hurricane into Avalanche

My mother is holding me coddled between her legs and hugged in her arms, me facing out. We're on a ship--a black iron tanker--that's struggling to stay afloat, in a powerful, rotating storm at sea. We are surrounded by an armada of ships in a staggered line all going the same direction. We move with the divoted waves in such a way, one could say we are surfing with the grain. Our ship captain, realizing that we are sinking, decides to aim our ship against the grain, into bubbling, watter-slapping stomach turning rushes of seawater, in search of the eye of the storm--a place where we might seek shelter, temporarily--perhaps waiting out the worst of the storm, and at least allowing us to gain the upper hand in bailing water. The waves turn to blasts of snow, coral reefs into exposed rock, seeking shelter becomes slipping downhill at high speed, the caps of waves are transposed onto the image of snowy mountain peaks---escaping downhill. Escape Wyoming, and pissy overflowing urinals eddies swimming with brown hairs of chew, worm eaten hand soap--holes in your hands---looking in the mirror, wiggling a front bottom tooth swaying it to rip the root, the root pulling back with tenuous small losing forces, the hippo that's eaten slowly and strangely without complaint--blood? Little blood.

...

Sitting at a restaurant just opening. Not a regular time for eating, nobody here. I'm a child, I can't be older than 9. I sit at the bar--the waitress, Japanese, thin, hair in bun, must believe I'm here with my parents somewhere in the mall--that this is our rallying point. The black leather bar stool is rounded at the back like a carved out black bean. So here at this restaurant where understandably I'm not hungry, at Rally Point ALPHA, when a normal time to eat is certainly not now, I decide to order a salad--a mango salmon salad--Appetizer? How about a house salad--yes with deluxe french dressing. People start coming in. Perhaps I'm attracting them.

Kobo's Stance, Position, Angle.

Japan Today Discussion September 26, 2006

Topic: Japanese Swimmer A---- M--------- goes missing while swimming off the coast of Brazil.

(The requested article has expired and is no longer available. Any related story, discussion and/or links provided below)

User Comments (1)

"So, in fact, he may not have disappeared while swimming; he may have disappeared while walking (i.e. been kidnapped)." Comment provided by B---------

...

A short respite from slow-rhythmic flapping, sickening now, rubbing swollen tortured underarms with hands now dry wells, devoid of oil, each crease painfully registering with each clinch. A man in the middle of the ocean mused on one of the few tactile concepts left to him: the relativity of warmth. The contusions here close to the arm pit warmest, shoulder cooler, water cooler still and temperature dropping. Near zero visibility below the surface presented the man with a more painful mystery. Dipping one's head in below, there is a faint mauve cushion of light undulating with the wavelet triangles, but descending further there is pitch blackness. Was it slag-sediment flowing in with ebbing twilight tides, snaking its way from some offshore geothermal hot spot? The clicking and ambient rushing of sand (or was it some dark entity employing echolocation?) kept time below. The unknowables terrifying--sensation of human hair, wool even, brushing against ultra-cognisant thighs--awaiting the death, puncture of the skin--skin thus rendered the flimsy first and only line of defense in this soupy black brine. Could creatures adapt to this filth, or--as he hoped--would they swim clear of this area during blackout conditions. He imagined himself amidst cracks of thunder wielding the closet flashlight--beam searching for matches candles and pewter candlesticks--for fun usually--the city blackout always provided a chance to light candles and not out of necessity (city light pollution almost always painted these fronts of precipitation see-through melange; tamed by electric man; impotent, effects to be mitigated, terror only of the ancients, a passing spectacle).

To be lost with no hope of return. Lost and engulfed in some damn impossibly frightful liquid mass tasting of buckwheat and salt-brine--simply clay sediment brushed up by an offshore tropical depression? A possibility, yes--Always. Nothing in sight of course. At a point when he wished he could resign himself to death, he was stuck in circular pangs of the will to re-trace the origins of his predicament---the static held suspended in it shards of causation. At exactly 5:03 P.M. A------ had left his luxury suite at the new Dolphin Hotel--a day which now seemed to lose definition in this exhaustion; the mind as runny egg (had he actually been in this soup for 2 days or just one, had the drugs he had taken caused this--he did recall two sets of hands that were not his throttling his underarms, causing this swelling, rubbing the swelling--I thought salt brine took away pain. Maybe just the pain of cuts--Right, right--shark bite victims lose sensation of their lacerations almost immediately due in part to the numbing effect of salt-water. Supposing I cut into the flesh here (pointing at tortured under-flesh, rusty purple now in correct lighting he's sure), I could sleep easily--perhaps shrug this ringing state of annoyance.

Falling with Kobo Abe through his Kangaroo Notebook

Kobo's protagonists are real. They eat and sleep and shit mixed in with everyone--mostly unaware of the super-majority of people that are likewise unaware of them. Kobo's idea of hell is related to this idea of anonymity. In Stick, a Kobo short story, a man becomes a stick--he is relegated to the role of the observer (so common in Kobo's work--this idea of relegation, impotence, kanashibari, a man staring out from behind a one way mirror).

...

Japan is a place so rife with objects, the rims of it lit up by such garish bright neon Kanji, radioactive fallout, girls day--it isn't surprising that a man such as Kobo or his protagonists are forced by means of a naturalistic inclination (at maintaining the self, a self unchanged-- pure in its unitary sufficiency; views held by conception, genetically in an unavoidably, predictably, appropriately minor proportion of the human population) to grow sick in view of cosmopolitan life--a perpetual motion machine fused with a positronic brain--fastened with today's 'refinements' pearl inspired yeast disinfection applicators, live organ transplant, particle accelerator awash in ultra-pure water, suicide machines, Oscar Awards. Indeed sickness would appear to be Kobo's temple. As far as cosmopolita is concerned, sickness is a perfectly logical rationale in forgiving a man's desire for isolation. The desire may be innate (at which point Cosmopolita decries it as unforgivable, backward 'hiding' from the 'truth' Cosmopolita claims to possess--but these offenses are of less concern to Kobo's protagonists. It's not that Kobo sees his men as gratified by non-cooperation--they're as sadly perplexed as anyone would be weathering a winter storm in only their socks as they observe a dinner party taking place through the frosty windows of a warm cottage (and all the jovial participants are staring right at you).

...

There is a point which needs to be taken up with feminist theory here--The male escape fantasy. Traditionally this contains the image of a married man--the man who by virtue of having conquered that woman, having seen the top of the mountain, has no where to go but back down, to see what lies beyond women. It is a conceit of feminism to presume woman (the symbol) holds such distinct, shall I say King-making power over the whole of manhood. It is an aggressive blubbering attempt at claiming ownership of not only men's desire on average to copulate and create progeny, but also by association their aim at creating those things which lie beyond corporeal nesthood of women. Kobo's men have a male escape necessity. Their situations away from the nest, observing the nest, observing those who oblige the nest with nestmaking prowess, noting the repetition, but crucially noting the separation--the impossibility of reattainment, consecration--flicked painfully by a callous nurse the non-understanding penis engorged by an erection plunged at the urethra, and bleeding, through a plastic catheter. This is Kobo's man.

...
Circular on rail traps. The environments---The topic for the next idea. Stay tuned.