Wednesday, June 26, 2019

№ 395. Literature and Politics



“The place for literature is built by writers and readers. It’s a fragile place in some ways, but an indestructible one. When it’s broken, we rebuild it. Because we need shelter.” --- Arundhati Roy

Student art from paper cranes at the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial

Sunday, June 23, 2019

№ 394. Toy Story 4: To Infinity and Beyond

Back in grade school, I could not fully understand Velveteen Rabbit.

I couldn't really grasp the core idea in "What it means to be real?" The concepts of "love" and "real" were too mature for my young, less imaginative mind then.  It escaped me how these concepts translate in my life in school, home and play. It wasn't clear how these abstract concepts fuse with my experience, which was still very limited. These big ideas, to be sure, were simply beyond a ten-year old's imagination. At that time, the thesis and the story did not yet connect in my head.

Growing up, the life lessons made the ideas in Velveteen Rabbit no less slippery.

I thought the answer, which was written in the dialogue between the real bunny and the toy, was simple enough. But I also thought that the cliché too neatly tied up the kinks of a metaphor, which I suspected was far more than it appeared. I felt that the idea in the story mimicked the pop songs crooning about romantic love: love has the power to make things truly alive. These pop ideas are easy to enough to accept but somehow I knew they smooth out the rough maladies and many contradictions hiding under the hood.

CCP Art Exhibit

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

№ 388. In Media Res

Poppies
Mary Oliver
The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation
of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn’t a place
in this world that doesn’t
sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage
shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,
black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.
But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,
when it’s done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,
touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—
and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?