Posted on by Matt Thomas

Andrea in the Far East: Night One

Intense silence

As she walked in the room

Her black robes trailing

Sister of the moon

Stevie Nicks

Andrea got off the second leg of the flight to Seoul around 14:30 on Tuesday, military time. She had quasi-slept, faded somewhere into her subconscious, for an hour and a little. Andrea was not a heavy explorer of her subconscious, more like she knew it was there. On the flight, up there under an ocean of ozone, black window spiders jousted with a velvet gloved countess and bunches of green grapes for supremacy of the space. That was all fine, she was essentially sober, Mr. Brown had been rendered comatose by hour one, and as she rolled into customs she felt, if not exactly happy, at least ready. Ready for the industry conference and its banalities, ready for the Lotte Hotel downtown with its wall of kimchi options at breakfast, ready, even, for a puleun or two. Maybe. We’ll just have to see.

The conference “event” is set to kick off at 8 Wednesday morning, and Andrea had no intention of being on time. Events, by and large, are well planned and poorly designed. They are programmed to run and be completed, and the narrative arc conception is, well, bad. The Seoul event would be no different. “An event should be eventful,” someone once told here, and Andrea had held on to that guy like a tailsman. And, sometimes when the event lacks eventfulness, well, you gotta inject a little of that yourself. She giggled at the thought; the possibilities were many. She got game, our girl. Watch the f*** out boys.

Why don’t you ask him what’s going on?

Why don’t you ask him if he’s going away?

Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?

Lindsey Buckingham

Jump cut on account of a lazy writer. Sorry Andrea, you just lost several hours. That’s the breaks baby.

10:47 PM, Andrea is on the STREET. Can’t learn it in the office, gotta learn it on the STREET. Monsieur Puleun 1 is strolling with a feathered friend on the boulavard. Site of a protest from earlier in the day that Andrea missed. Another peanut tantrum? Korean scandels are unrivaled in their bizarre and byzantine nature. And, the assassin chick of the brother of the NK head dude wore an LOL shirt. So 2017. Check the video. Check the record/ check the guy’s track record. (Le) homo sapien sapiens, them’s bizarre. Puleun 1 sees Andrea; she sees him. Opportunity presents itself–Andrea, she needs a token, a takeaway, a reminder that she was here at all.  At the “event” site no doubt volunteers are cross-stressing before cross-dressing. Could not care less—that’s all paid for by the company. Event spaces are super permeable. So is the puleun. Andrea swings into action.

“My friend, do you know how to get to Sungnyemun?”

“Yes I do. Go with me?”

Andrea pondered. On the one hand, well, you know. Street guy? Seriously? And on the other, well, she is on vacation. A. B, she has her needs. Not what you are thinking brother. Andrea’s needs are a little more, well, esoteric. For lack of a better word.

“For a little while. Let’s walk.” Andrea slips her arm under his and feels him thrill to her touch. Hooking, hooking is easy. She’s a natural. It’s pretty clear.

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Posted on by Matt Thomas

Half Hours on Earth

Singapore, October 2018.

Over at @kyotokibbitzer on Periscope we like to “play the hits,” as any self-respecting radio station should. New content is, I promise, on the way soon, however in the meantime we are playing not so much the hits but rather the B-sides from my first blog Classical Sympathies. On Sympathies the longer pieces of linguistic anthropology got the most attention, followed probably by the pieces on the film My Dinner with Andre. There was some original poetry on the site as well, some of my own and some from talented contributors. It is, in my opinion, all worth looking back at.

Here is “Half Hours on Earth,” which I wrote in Auckland in 2009. There are a lot of mussels served in Auckland, incidentally.

The theme is pretty obvious; the poem is about an encounter, or, more precisely, an event, during which time, for me, compressed itself almost to a standstill. You have probably had this experience if you have been knocked of your bicycle by a car or something like that. When this happens over a half-hour, that’s a bit of a different guy.

Anyway, here is the poem, unchanged since it was written in 2009. I’ve always loved a good b-side. Hell, I even like the bad ones.

The quality of experience in half hours
is not uniform.
Some half hours are simply wasted
in others, something occurs
and leads into something else.
Other half hours pass quickly
they are maintenance,
but leave little residue.

Half hours on earth
what are they worth?
I don’t know.”

With the occasional half hour
something actually happens,
in the Raymond Carver sense,
something that matters.
The air is charged and thin,
butterflies roil one’s viscera
and something is on the line.

“Half hours on earth
what are they worth?”

These electric half hours
even those isolated in time
are frightening, or better
giddily upsetting, and dangerous.
They sear themselves into the memory
more–they ripple the fabric of the cosmos.

“Half hours on earth.”

Posted on by Matt Thomas

The Process Has a Point of View: A Poem

This little ditty comes from my first blog, which was called “Classical Sympathies.” It is called “the process has a point of view.”  When I started Sympathies, I didn’t really know what I was doing.  I still don’t.

the process has a point of view
the process has a plan
it consecrates opinion
of the group or of the man
the process can be tampered with
but one must take great pains
to regard the ghouls that process fronts for
ghouls weighted down with chains
each time we wantonly with process toy
one chain process doth loose
if the ghouls become untethered
we have ourselves cooked goose
blood rites, human sacrifice, motions carried
parliamentary procedures of every kind
serve well to prettify men’s base designs
but their rigidity may insult the mind
so by all means make your end run around
the process, subvert the stated order, bring fresh
thinking but beware the ghouls of process
which will claim their pound of flesh
or better yet submit to process and to “the rules”
establish your credentials and sanctify intent
until you see that form is but an empty suit
and process, when respected, can be bent