Sesshu Foster's Blog, page 18

“A Few Quick Words,” by Ko Un

A Few Quick Words

At last I understand what blank margins are.

Margins are not incompleteness,

nor the familiar spaces left untouched by the brush

in old Korean paintings.

They arise in valleys where desire for completeness has melted

—there, yes, there—before tomorrow dawns.

Ah, chaste omission of action.

Bourgeois? Never.

Margins have nothing bourgeois about them.

Nor are margins

cowardly pauses in battle.

Beyond battle

they form part of a face

neither friend nor foe

never met as yet.

They’re skirts billowing wide, mile upon mile,

though they may not move very far;

and fragrant,

so fragrant!

Brother, the mightiest of powers is not America,

it’s the margins in the millennia of human history.

Oh, subtle ache in my heart!

At last, one part of the cosmos is being reborn.

But not the whole.

Wanting the whole would be wicked, my brother.

—Ko Un

translated by Brother Anthony of Taize, Young-moo Kim and Gary Gach

 

East L.A. Balloon Club Membership Application

 

East L.A. Balloon Club Membership Application

 

Name ____________________ Address __________________ $75 processing fee _______

Check All That Apply

◊Burnt sienna                                        ◊Dirt                                       ◊Hope                           ◊ Jellyfish                                ◊Monday

◊ Chopsticks user           ◊Fly fishing or lures                    ◊Peanut butter & jelly

◊Wanderer from Gran Bohemia               ◊hydrogen peroxide                  ◊ okay now                           ◊ wiring

◊ sun worshipper                            ◊ etsy account                                ◊ manual typewriter

◊ cumin lamb                                    ◊ physical fit                              ◊ olive green                           ◊2009, end of Automotive Era

Fax this to 1-800-DIRIGIBL or give to Sergio at the El Sereno ELADALT ticket counter.

 

 

How old were you when you had your first (metaphorical) experience with “balloons”?

What is your favorite color of like “bal1oons”?

What is your favorite movie about “balloons”?

What are the technical differentes between a “blimp,” a “zeppelin” and a “derigible”?

If you were in an emergency in a “balloon” at sea, which would be more practical—salt, a hand-held gas blower, or a flashlight?

What is your “history” of experience with lighter than air flight or travel?

Who do you know with some money?

Have you ever won the lottery?

Are you an uncomplaining sufferer?

Do you have a “balloon” tattoo?

How long can you hold your breath?

Have Wall Street & the banks destroyed your economy so you just want to flee the “earth” or at least the “ground”?

 

Cell phone

There’s parallelism in a bowl of cherries cold from the fridge though a fridge seems early 20 th century

And what’s parallel within the viscera of the the early 21st

Sometimes or mostly say these re.sonances mean nothing

 Which what this tiny ducking keyboard remain me of the the ducking part of the nightmare where you must prepare to repel t he attackers be they whatever some formidable rabid foes and they arm you or, improvising, you arm yourself with the first weapon you find which turns out to be a replica pistol fires smoke rings or harmless plastic disks accompanied by said smoke ring s or futuristic electronic chiming sounds

And this is what we must use to improvise the immediate defense of our existence and all our lives

Yeah how you like these electronic resonances parallel on this screen and yours and on the electron particles of nothingness

L.A. Postcard 25 c

1. any ordinary confusions

2. stars, far away tiny

3. certain women, descriptions of attitudes (if shakespeare’s tragedies are the tragedies of overweening masculine ego and ambition, as so many male narratives go that route, the feminine or feminist alternatives offered are what? virginia woolf, grace paley, nadine gordimer, clarice lispector, zora neale hurston, alice walker?)

4. dream scenarios or scenarios like dreams

5. letters from agents and unknown others pretending to be one person

6. american loneliness, parsing the weirdly huge distances between people

7. is everything over before it’s over? (“the last to know”)

8. descriptions of one day (come on, everything leads to now)

9. glib facile pretend-narrative devices, deployed (like francisco hinojosa)

10. masks for people i know (ray foster, etc.)

 

Cheap Postcard 25 c

 

i look up at the stars, i have looked up at the stars so cold and far away, so old and dead, waiting for a sign, a sound

 

OSCILLOSCOPE LABORATORIES POSTCARD

for Lisa and Andy

 

* CROW FLAPPED * DOLORES PICKED UP BLUEBERRY SHRUB * UME GOT CHICKS * CROW HOPPED ON OUR ROOF * BABY RACCOONS ON THE TELEPHONE POLE LAST WE SAW OF THEM * POSSUM WAS CRUSHED * JOE PUBLISHED NOVEL * CROWS CAWED * BEN ASKED FOR REC LETTER * WARREN ATE CA CHINESE FOOD * DENNIS COOPER PUBLISHED ONE BOOK OF POEMS AFTER 19 YEARS WEAKLINGS (XL) * HUMMINGBIRD SOARED * ELAINE SAID RELATIONSHIP WAS “IN TRANSITION” * ELI TOLD ME SHE HAS THOMSEN’S DISEASE * WHAT’S-HIS-NAME SAID HE WAS TOO BUSY * MARINA GOT SUMMER FUNDING * KAREN RECOMMENDED ME FOR $50K GRANT * I AWAIT FRENCH EUROS * I SAID, “COME EAT YOUR FOOD BEFORE IT GETS COLD.” * THE LEMON TREE GAVE * THE MONEY TREE GREW * BLUE JAY FLEW INTO THE PERSIMMON * SOPHIE MOVED TO BISHOP * VIRGINIA GOT PREGNANT * MATT HAS TO WORK TODAY * MAGGIE HUGGED * ANDREW MESSAGED * RAVEN LOOKED * NEIL YOUNG ON STEREO * SHIZU PRODUCED PRINT * MARI SOLD ITEMS * SOMEBODY’S FASCINATIONS FOR TRANSLATION STRUCK ME AS EXOTICISM * SOMEBODY’S FASCINATION FOR INTELLECTUAL ACADEMIC MARXISM STRUCK ME AS FETISHISM * SOMEBODY’S FETISHISM STRUCK ME AS ACCOMMODATION * SQUIRREL WAS CRUSHED *