My first introduction to the work of the late Santi Bose was at a gallery in Manila called Sining Kamalig. That’s where I saw the Blue Room. I begged my parents to give me the painting for my seventeenth birthday.
A few years later — surprise, surprise! — they bought the companion painting, the White Room, for me. I brought both paintings to California with me. They are among my most treasured possessions.
mixed media, early Santi Bose. Posting for Travel with Intent’s Six Word Saturday
This scene takes place in the washroom of the police station in Setagaya. Yuichiro Goda has just been publicly humiliated by a superior, after the latest police attempt to apprehend the Lady Joker gang has turned out to be nothing but a wild goose chase.
Goda knew that from this day on there was nothing but the relentless search for evidence. There would be no time to sleep; no longer blessed with the stamina he’d had in his twenties, he found his joints were wincing in pain. Goda washed his face at the sink and, seeing his face reflected in the mirror, he immediately averted his eyes from the unwelcome sight. A voice inside of him whispered — You are an aberration, a perversion beyond a normal loss of self. In order to shush the voice away, he took off his socks and, raising one foot at a time to the sink, he washed them thoroughly. Outsid the small window facing Sangyo Road, he heard the scurrying footsteps of the media corps — Kota Sasaki must have been released — cascading over the burst of camera shutters, the lively scene seeming to belong to another world.
— Lady Joker, volume two, p. 236
Self tries to compare Lady Joker to those bleak Scandinavian novels she used to love, decades ago, the ones she read after Smilla’s Sense of Snow. There is the same sense of spiritual anomie, and in this story it does seem to rain quite a bit. Interesting, both Goda and the President of the Hinode Beer corporation are Christian. At least, they attend mass. But everything else about them is very Japanese.
Stay tuned.
Loving the narrators in this collection — so far, all young women at loose ends, unsure of themselves and mostly just going with the flow.
This narrator lives in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Not too sure what she does for a living, but she makes enough to pay a very cheap rent, and to watch movies by herself. She meets a young man named Paul, and he invites her to a party at his place.
The next night I was in Fort Greene. It was less than two miles from Williamsburg, but I had to take the train to Manhattan and back to get there. Paul’s apartment was in the basement — cavernous with almost no light.
His roommate Ralph answered the door: “Oh hey, come on in. Paul told us all about you. Hey Paul,” he yelled, “she’s here.” It was the kind of party I hadn’t been to since high school in Portland: eight people sitting around with beer, listening to loud music. They even wore the same clothes: concert t-shirts and black pants, flannel shirts and Levis. The music playing was punk from the late 70s: the Jam, the Clash, the Buzzcocks. The friends — all guys and one loud brashy girl — were all jovial and trashed. “You want a beer?” one guy Mickey said.
— Safe Places: Stories, p. 35
Thank you, University of Massachusetts Press for publishing this book, self is enjoying it sooooo much!
My friend Farhad called me last year because he was sick from headaches and vomit, and no one knew what was wrong. No doctor could cure him. I read his leaves and I said, “Farhad, you will die in seven months if you do not stop eating so much lamb.”
I’m thinking how I shouldn’t have eaten the first slice. I hate pizza in the summer, but she talked me into it. When I don’t eat in the morning, my stomach’s flat as the beach — a valley with hip bones for mountains — but now it’ll be a round little hill and I won’t be able to see past it to my toes.
— A Perfect Day at Riis Park, Story # 2 in Safe Places
Self picked up this collection almost a year ago. Where does the time go? She had Kerry sign the book for her at AWP Philadelphia. And now it’s almost time for AWP Seattle. Self would like to finish it before she gets on the plane for Seattle. She doesn’t think that will be a problem, because the voice in these stories is just . . . WOW.
Stay tuned.
January: To be done in the Parterre and Flower-Garden
Set up your Traps for Vermine, especially in your Nurseries of Kernels and Stones, and amongst your Bulbous-Roots. About the middle of this moneth, plant your Anemony-roots and Ranunculus, which you will be secure of, without covering, or farther trouble: Preserve from too great, and continuing Rains (if they happen) Snow and Frost, your choicest Anemonies and Ranunculus: Also your Carnations, and such Seeds as are in peril of being washed out, or over-chill’d and frozen; covering them under shelter, and striking off Snow where it lies too weighty; for it certainly rots, and bursts your early-set Anemonies and Ranunculus etc.
Flowers in Prime:
Winter cyclamen, Black Hellebor, Narcissus
Thanks to Jez Braithwaite for hosting the Fan of . . . challenge.
Self loves sending out Christmas cards. This holiday season was a little hectic. Alas, she didn’t send out as many as she normally does. But she still loves getting them in the mail. She pastes them on a wall in her living room. Sometimes she even keeps them up all year.
Today the boxed sets of Christmas cards were 50% off at Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino. This beautiful set (Art by Trevor Waugh) is printed in England and says, “Wishing you all the joys of the season.” She can’t wait to send them out next Christmas!
Malkovych is self’s new favorite poet! His poem was included in the anthology Writng from Ukraine: Fiction, Poetry and Essays since 1965, edited by Mark Andryczyk
AT HOME
— translated by Bohdan Boychuk and Myrosia Stefaniuk
Again I’ll visit for a day or two,
won’t help with anything again,
nervous, distracted conversations
will just distress my parents.
What will I find next time
I come? Everyone there?
As I leave: father and mother in the window
like Hutsul icons on glass.
Note: Hutsul are an ethnic group of Ukrainian highlanders that inhabit the Carpathian Mountains in Western Ukraine.
Ivan Malkovych was born in Nyzhnyii Bereziv (Ivano-Frankivsk oblast Ukraine). At age 19, Malkovych was voted best young poet in a clandestine vote among several hundred Ukrainian writers.
Kanlaon 