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Paper Flowers & Cyber Peacocks By Maung Day, translated from...

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:53:51 +0800

Paper Flowers & Cyber Peacocks

By Maung Day, translated from the Burmese by the poet
December 3, 2012via Guernica

I have come here to suck on the rims of oil rigs

There are moon-sized holes in the floors of cyber cafes

Me? I am a mass expanding gradually

& your malaria parasite

In an anthropological museum, there’s a man who breathes through the tip of his head

You live in the HTML format too

Infinities are the length of Independence Monument in Yangon

I have to get a new email address every day

Snakehead is a deity fish The temple choking in my throat

is an illegitimate star somewhere else

We have thoroughly searched the place

The parking buses themselves are bad karma

I punched & bruised the guy in my dream

Let us legally do what we must do in the dark

When the right time comes, we will sacrifice a pig

Though it’s not time, the instrument tuner has come

On the inside he is bringing laws to amend

On the inside of the inside he is bringing child soldiers

On the inside of the inside of the inside he is bringing paper flowers

I have lies to sell

Unearth the earth says the sky

The italicized sentences I am happy in their house

Communist State of Mind

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 13:51:00 +0800

Inspired by empire state of mind

Yeah I’m up in Yonghe, now I’m down on Gui Jie

Got up out the CBD but I’m a Blood forever

I’m the new Hessler and since I made it here,

I can make it anywhere, yeah they love me everywhere

They used to cop in Sanlitun, Nigerian compadres

Middle of a vacant lot right there next to Nanjie

Took it to my stash spot, right across from Gongti

Like Kro, take my nest, but you cant take my name from me

Cruisin down Dongsi – flying pigeon

Sanlunche so slow that I can’t stop bitchin’

Me I’m up at Dong wai, party’s at your embassy

Now I live on broadsheets and I brought my blog with me

Say what up to taitais still sipping Moutai

Sitting courtside Li Na gives me high fives

Olympic gold medal match, you saw it on the BBC,

Tell by the dateline that I’m most definitely from

Beijing, corrupt jungle where dreams are made of, there’s nothing you can’t do, now you’re in Beijing, even the streets are all brand new, fireworks will inspire you, let’s hear it for Beijing, Beijing!

Catch me on the field with C Dice playing kickball

You cholo’s costumes pretty fly but We. Still. Beat. Y’all.

You should know I’m blood red, but I ain’t a pink-o

But I got some party members walking with my clique though

Whip open Shitty Weekend, gotta try to find a date

Open bar on houjie or openings in 798

Yellow cab, black cab, pedicab, running late

For foreigners it aint fair they act like they didn’t see us wait

20 million stories, migrant workers too though

Got my sketchy visa, half of y’all don’t have hukou

Me I gotta plug Tsinghua and CET

If you’re direct enroll, I’m fluent IUP

5 dice shaizi, all night mahjong

National day parade, rest in peace mao zedong

Bulldoze the hutongs, burn down the CCTV

Rebuild the great wall, I’m from that communist state thats

Dawn is blinding, yashow raybans

So you can get to brunch quick, work on a suntan

Numb to air quality, sippin bub casually

Then gradually become drunk, staff asks you to leave

Caught up in the in-crowd, off to d-lounge

Air’s still full of funk, at punk with your junk out

The city of smog, new tricks, new dogs

Good bitch gone bad now she’s famous on her blog

Meimei took a bus route down from wudaokou

Wound up in sanlitun now she’s staying out though

Wan Sui! to the city you’re a virgin,

Social -isms can’t save you class starts when your school ends

Came on a fulbright graduated to the high life

Fu’erdai and finance, spark & latte every night

Green tea and whisky got you feeling so free

Beijing never sleeps, but we’ll go to KTV

One hand in the air for the forbidden city, bird’s nest still shines, still lookin pretty, no place in the world that can compare, tanks roll through the square, let me here you say yeahh for Beijing

The Ten Commandments of Beijing

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:47:00 +0800

1. Thou shalt not praise Shanghai, nor move down to it, for Beijing is a filthy jealous mistress.

2. Thou shalt complain about the air quality, the traffic, and the fake alcohol, but thou shalt love that it scares away the unworthy, for Beijing shews mercy unto the thousands that love it and keep its commandments,

3. And when you invite those thousands to your party, thou shalt not take their email addresses in vein! thou shalt BCC or risk the wrath of the vengeful spam gods, who will not hold you guiltless.

4. Thou shalt remember the sabbath day: in it thou shalt not do any work, and thou shalt brunch, and picnic, and so shall everyone else you know, for all of Beijing has blessed Sunday-funday, and hallowed it.

5. Thou shalt honor thy alma mater at the alumni ball, and honor father christmas at santacon.

6. Thou shalt not kill yourself riding home drunk, or climbing on top of buildings, or getting in fights at Latte. Not even if it seems like a good idea at the time.

7. Thou shalt not commit, and thou shalt definitely not be adulterous, which I’m pretty sure means “like an adult” … right?

8. Thou shalt not consider pirated DVDs and knockoff North Face “stealing”

9. Thou shalt not check-in falsely on foursquare, unless it is to somewhere hilarious.

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s ayi, nor their bicycle, nor their courtyard, but you can totally covet their ass. God knows we all do.

Pets are so last year.

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:03:02 +0800

alex: we went to the most incredible hipster market.

alex’s mom: hamster market?

alex: hipster.

alex’s mom: hamster? what are you going to do with a hamster?

parataxis

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:13:00 +0800

no harm no foul : no cross no crown

不僧不俗 : 不磷不缁

(不愤不启, 不悱不发.举一隅不以三隅反, 则不复也.)

npr: nprfreshair: hwentworth: Internet’s over, people....

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:18:04 +0800

npr:

nprfreshair:

hwentworth:

Internet’s over, people. Maurice Sendak just won.

Fresh Air remembers Maurice Sendak

Higher praise there could not be. —Wright

The city that dreams us all

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:56:33 +0800

this just made me fall in love with beijing all over again.

I SPEAK OF THE CITY

by OCTAVIO PAZ

news today and tomorrow a ruin, buried and resurrected every day,

lived together in streets, plazas, buses, taxis, movie houses, theaters, bars, hotels, pigeon coops and catacombs,

The enormous city that fits in a room three yards square, and endless as a galaxy,  the city that dreams us all, that all of us build and unbuild and rebuild as we dream,  the city that we all dream, that restlessly changes while we dream it,

the city that wakes every one hundred years and looks at itself in the mirror of a word that it doesn’t recognize and goes back to sleep,  the city that sprouts from the eyelids of the woman who sleeps at my side and is transformed,

with its monuments and statues, its histories and legends, into a fountain made of countless eyes, and each eye reflects the same landscape, frozen in time,  before schools and prisons, alphabets and numbers, the altar and the law:  the river that is four rivers, the orchard, the tree, the female, and male dressed in wind —  to go back, to be clay again, to bathe in that light, to sleep under those votive lights,  to float on the waters of time like the flaming maple leaf, the current drags along,  to go back — are we asleep or awake?

we are, we are nothing more, day breaks, it’s early,  we are in the city, we cannot leave except to fall into another city,  different yet identical,

I speak of the immense city, that daily reality composed of two words: the others,  and in every city there is an I clipped from a we, an I adrift,

I speak of the city built by the dead, inhabited by their stern ghosts, ruled by their despotic memory,  the city I talk to when I talk to nobody, the city that dictates these insomniac words,

I speak of towers, bridges, tunnels, hangars, wonders and disasters,  the abstract state and its concrete police, the schoolteachers, jailers, preachers,  the shops that have everything, where we spend everything, and it all turns to smoke,  the markets with their pyramids of fruit, the turns of the seasons, the  sides of beef hanging from the hooks, the hill of spices, and the towers of bottles and preserves,  all of the flavors and colors, all the smells and all the stuff, the tide of voices — water, metal, wood, clay — the bustle, the haggling, and contriving as old as time,

I speak of the buildings of stone and marble, of cement, glass and steel, of the people in the lobbies and doorways, of the elevators that rise and fall like the mercury in thermometers,  of the banks and their boards of directors, of factories and their managers, of the workers and incestuous machines,

I speak of the timeless parade of prostitution, through streets as long as desire and boredom,  of the coming and going of cars, mirrors of our anxieties, business, passions, (why? Toward what? For what?),

of the hospitals that are always full(and where always die alone,)

I speak of the half-light of certain churches, and the flickering of candles at the altars, the timid voices with which the desolate talk to saints and virgins in a passionate, failing language,

I speak of dinner under a squinting light, at a limping table with chipped plates,  of the innocent tribes that camp in the empty lots with their woman and children, their animals, and their ghosts Of the rats in the sewers and of the brave sparrows that nest in the wires, in the cornices and the martyred trees, of the contemplative cats and their libertine novels in the light of the moon, cruel goddess of the rooftops,  of the stray dogs that are our Franciscans and bhikkus, the dogs that scratch up the bones of the sun,

I speak of the anchorites and the libertarian brotherhood, of secret plots of law enforcers and bands of thieves

Of the conspiracies of levelers and the Society of Friends of Crime of the Suicide Club, and of Jack the Ripper,  of the Friend of the People, the sharpener of the guillotine, of Caesar, Delight of Humankind,

I speak of the paralytic slum, the cracked wall, the dry fountain, the grafittied statue,

I speak of garbage heaps the size of mountain, and of melancholy sunlight filtered by the smog,  of broken glass, and the desert of scrap iron, of last night’s crime, and of the banquet of the immortal Trimalchio,  of the moon in the television antennas, and a butterfly on a filthy jar,

I speak of dawns like a flight of herons on the lake, and the sun of transparent winds that land on the rock foliage of the churches, and the twittering of light on the glass stalks of the palaces,

I speak of certain afternoons in early fall, waterfalls of immaterial gold, the transformation of this world, when everything loses its body, everything is held in suspense,  and the light thinks, and each one of us feels himself thought by that reflective light, and for one long moment, time dissolves, we are air once more,

I speak of the summer, of the slow night that grows on the horizon like a mountain of smoke, and bit by bit it crumbles, falling over us like a wave, the elements are reconciled, night has stretched out, and its body is a powerful river of sudden sleep, we rock in the waves of its breathing, the hour is tangible we can touch it like a fruit,  the have lit the lights, and avenues burn with the brilliancy of desire, in the parks electric light brakes through the branches and falls over us like a green and phosphorant mist that illuminates but does not wet us, the trees murmur, they tell us something,  there are streets in the half-light that are a smiling insinuation, we don’t know where they lead, perhaps to the ferry for the lost islands,

I speak of the stars over the high terraces and the indecipherable sentences they write on the stone of the sky,

I speak of the sudden downpour that lashes the windowpanes and bends the tress, that lasted twenty-five minutes and now, up above, there are blue slits and streams of light, steam rises from the asphalt, the cars glisten, there are puddles where ships of reflection sail, I speak of nomadic clouds, and of a thin music that lights a room on the fifth floor, and a murmur of laughter in the middle of the night like water that flows far-off through roots and grasses,

I speak of the longed-for encounter with that unexpected form with which the unknown is made flesh, and revealed to each of us:  eyes that are the night half open and the day that wakes, the sea stretching and the flame that speaks, powerful breasts: lunar tide, lips that say “sesame”, and time opens, and the little room becomes a garden of change, air and fire entwine, earth and water mingle,  or the arrival of that moment there, on the other side that is really here, where the key locks and time ceases to flow: the moment until now, the last of the gasps, the meaning, the anguish, the soul loses its body and crashes through hole in the floor, falling in itself, and time has run aground, and we walk through an endless corridor, panting in the sand,  is that music coming closer or receding, are those pale lights just lit or going out?

Space is singing, time has vanished: it is the gasp, it is the glance that slips through the blank wall, it is the wall that stays silent, the wall,  I speak of public history, or our secret history, yours and mine,

I speak of the forest of stone, the desert of prophets, the ant-heap of souls, the congregation of tribes, the house of mirrors, the labyrinth of echoes,

I speak of the great murmur that comes from the depths of time, the incoherent whisper, of nations uniting or splitting part, the wheeling of multitudes, and their weapons like boulders hurling down, the dull sound of bones falling into the pit of history,

I speak of the city, shepherd of the centuries, mother that gives birth to us and devours us, that creates us and forgets.

L’amour fou. quenadieloentienda: People don’t write...

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:13:19 +0800

L’amour fou.

quenadieloentienda:

People don’t write sonnets about being compatible or novels about shared life goals and stimulating conversation. The great loves are the crazy ones.

Blair Waldorf

KJI looking at the absence of Coca Cola… soon to be...

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:03:09 +0800

KJI looking at the absence of Coca Cola… soon to be rectified.

kimjongillookingatthings:

looking at glass bottles

"Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you, and be silent."

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:40:53 +0800

“Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you, and be silent.”

- ~ Epictetus (55 AD-135 AD)

What Tree Rings Mean

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:50:00 +0800

fakescience:

World’s biggest employers… hello PLA, Sinopec, and...

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 23:17:37 +0800

World’s biggest employers… hello PLA, Sinopec, and State Grid.

So Apropos (a moody mix)

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 03:14:39 +0800

So Apropos (a moody mix)

In which Kevin and I visit the National Museum

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:42:00 +0800

Kevin Dolgin is a nice man from New York and Paris who has, occasionally over the past decade, written about travel for McSweeney’s here. Normally, he sticks to telling people about places they should go in Europe, but this week, he decided to share his thoughts on Beijing. There are a few witty observations, but in general, he sticks to the usual: China is like, communist, but like, capitalist at the same time! Mao was an important dude! Chinese people are totally into their own long history! There is propaganda and it is pretty lame! Facebook is blocked WTF!

What stood out for me was his gripe about the newly re-opened National Museum of China which I also visited last week.

I’ve never seen an entrance hall like that, and I couldn’t help but consider the extraordinary waste of space it represented. It is the largest enclosed space I’ve ever seen and all it enclosed was, well, space. There are no exhibits there, just some escalators and a long counter selling tourist trinkets (which I’m absolutely sure was not part of Mao’s blueprint). Maybe they sometimes use it as a garage for cruise ships or blimps, but aside from that, there doesn’t seem to be any practical reason for all this emptiness at all. Come to think of it, just heating the place probably contributes in a significant way to global warming.

Where he saw a waste of space, I saw this:

I think it speaks for itself.

it must be depressing to be a unicorn. no one expects a unicorn...

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 23:04:06 +0800

it must be depressing to be a unicorn. no one expects a unicorn to actually *do* anything.

Where I’d definitely rather to be. Looks Yunnan to me.

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:53:33 +0800

Where I’d definitely rather to be. Looks Yunnan to me.

A Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:57:25 +0800

A Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names:

enormous infographics for the win!

sometimes, gelato is the answer.

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0800

sometimes, gelato is the answer.

In which our tax dollars are at work

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:28:00 +0800

The US Embassy in Beijing has provided the following handy guide to safe clubbing in Beijing.

My favorite tip:

“When going to bars and clubs, go with other people. (The more, the merrier, the safer!)”

In which Oscar Wilde endorses your lifestyle

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:34:00 +0800

On whether and how you should indulge in the rumor mill:

I never talk scandal. I only talk gossip.

What is the difference between scandal and gossip?

Oh! Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. Now, I never moralize. A man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably plain.

On whether you will go to Sanlitun at midnight on Tuesday:

I couldn’t help it. I can resist everything except temptation.

On whether you will attend that very earnest charity event:

I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. I take the side of the charming.

On why you will turn down that TEDx invite:

I think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.

On where you and your friends slept last Saturday night:

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

For all of this and much more Oscar Wilde, get thee to Project Gutenberg.