Mister Chu

Men of action

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:15:00 -0500

In our age, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
-Dag Hammarskjöld

MisterChu, flying through Atlanta,
remembers the last time he was there.

It was many years ago, but even then a complex airport
filled that evening with thousands of people.

Ants without a common purpose
beyond the transportation of themselves by others.

In a bathroom designated for the use of men only
Mister Chu had splashed water onto his tired face,

washed his hands as one is supposed to.
Behind him was a corner stall

an enclosure of grey chipboard partitions
poorly designed (as to privacy)

and constructed (as to construction).
A soldier (or a man dressed very accurately

in the style of a soldier)
was obviously inside, not alone,

but perhaps about to be lonely,
and thus his companion,

a woman.

“A psychologist at a girl’s college asked the members of his class to compliment any girl wearing...

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:53:00 -0500

“A psychologist at a girl’s college asked the members of his class to compliment any girl wearing red. Within a week the cafeteria was a blaze of red. None of the girls were aware of being influenced, although they did notice that the atmosphere was more friendly. A class at the University of Minnesota is reported to have conditioned their psychology professor a week after he told them about learning without awareness. Every time he moved toward the right side of the room, they paid more attention and laughed more uproariously at his jokes, until apparently they were able to condition him right out the door”

– W. Lambert Gardiner, (Psychology: A Story of a Search, 1970)

Mister Chu:

The second joke
somewhat undercuts
the truth of the first.
If it is.

Which it is,
in essence.
Whether it is,
or not.

Mister Chu: Somehow strange to think of William carefully...

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:44:00 -0500

Mister Chu:

Somehow strange to think of William carefully weighing his words and considering his particular punctuation.

Pete Seeger, when asked how he learned to play the banjo, would say that he always just played it, didn’t ever remember not or learning, and there are some people who do some things you don’t ever imagine them working at. Not necessarily because of their brilliance or facility, but something in the style of what they do.

I love Julian Barnes, and Primo Levi (above almost all) and the piano of this one and the painting of that, but I can also imagine (and admire) their working. Not William.

Photo

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:30:04 -0500

kvetchlandia: Dmitri Kasterine Saul Bellow, Vermont ...

Sun, 12 May 2013 18:21:00 -0500

kvetchlandia:

Dmitri Kasterine Saul Bellow, Vermont 1984

“Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.” Saul Bellow, “Mr. Sammler’s Planet” 1970

Mister Chu:

Painfully and utterly and truthfully true.

“Presume not that I am the thing I was.”-Henry IV, Part 2: Act...

Sat, 11 May 2013 00:28:00 -0500

“Presume not that I am the thing I was.”
-Henry IV, Part 2: Act V, Scene V

Mister Chu:

His name is Glock
and yet I am not certain why.
More than anything
he makes me think of Laos,
Cambodia, it may be the hat.

On his front is the number 8
for there were seven before him
and none quite right
but as soon as he was
he was.

He has two faces
a biological development
that is in no way a comment
on his loyalty or discretion.

He is designed specifically
for the only terrain he exists in;
the fearful mind.

(Un)aware

Thu, 09 May 2013 23:23:00 -0500

I have almost no awareness
But the little I have causes me
No end of awkwardness

To know how little you feel
About how much you don’t know
Is a cycle without an end

A loop that extends further
With each day but is beyond
Any prospect of interruption

The bad news is the good however
For the weighted shadow
Remains always dimmed.

-JG

Mister Chu found himself somewhat alone this evening (whilst...

Thu, 09 May 2013 22:28:00 -0500

Mister Chu found himself somewhat alone this evening (whilst amongst many others) and decided to make a self-portrait of how he looks (not to others, but to himself). After an hour of work he realized that this creature was not at all him (too colorful, too good a listener, too much leaning forward, almost straining with enthusiasm), but instead would make a good friend. He wonders what Pessoa would have made with clay a few brushes? Yet one more character.

"Words are the part of silence that can be spoken."

Wed, 08 May 2013 20:28:43 -0500

“Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.”

- Jeanette Winterson (via marigriffin)

Hard as nails

Sun, 05 May 2013 21:45:00 -0500

As my father did
I cut my nails
and likely will ‘til
all else fails
as it did for him
not long ago
and yet they say
the nails still grow

for some time after
the breath is gone
the tune is there but
not the song
yet still we clip
and shape and file
our lives and hopes
within some style
as if a lock
and its single key
might yet remain
in memory

I cut my nails
as my father did
nor can this truth
now be hid
from my own son
and the future told
by these scissors
I now hold.

-Johnny Goodyear

(The truth about) cats and dogs

Fri, 03 May 2013 21:29:00 -0500

Cats and dogs, it rains them
and some define themselves
(and others) by a particular allegiance.

After a lifetime of having them
and feeding them and killing them
(apparently for their own good)
I’ve concluded that the abiding difference
between them is to be found
in the speed with which they react.

Open a door and unless pursued
or stung by hunger
the cat observes each contingency
considers and then enters.

The dog if it hasn’t already chased off
bowls in at a full barge
paws slipping on the unrugged floor
nose agape and running.

In their unconscious movie
both want what will be given to them
(or taken from us)
and both act in perfect truth
but at differing frames per second.

Current working conditions

Thu, 02 May 2013 22:30:00 -0500

Too cold out tonight for the burglars
who could wear dark coats of course,
but the wind is racing, unrelenting,
and only the most professional of thieves
would force themselves out of their own house
and into yours to do even a half a night’s work.

We’ll put the alarm on, but more from habit
than expectation it’ll see any trade.
Burglars are people too, subject to weather
and other interferences. A getaway car
that won’t start. Sudden holes in the gloves.
An allergic reaction to long-haired pets.

Imagine the Careers Counselor years before:
“Scared of the dark and a fear of heights?
Hardly the tools for a Roof & Window man.
Are you sure you won’t consider extortion or blackmail?
White collar crime’s only getting bigger,
some of my boys are doing just fine with mail fraud.”

Sneak thieves operate well enough in daylight
even when it’s cold, although fewer doors are left open,
but you have to wonder if the darkness robbers
keep an eye on the forecast for nights like these
and hope the wife doesn’t lay out long underwear on the bed, saying
“Find something heavy to steal, you’ll soon warm up.”

They say adrenalin keeps a man warm, but hanging around,
all that hiding in the bushes or in a parked car
(engine and heater off), waiting for the bathroom light,
the bedroom light, to finally go dark. Avoid readers, those who stay up
their nose in a book, their ears wide open. You want the talk-show crowd
fallen asleep heavily halfway before the end.

Probably best to burgle happy people, less likely to bump into them,
up and worried, walking the halls. But there’s no need to worry tonight,
unless you’re a burglar behind on your rent. Record lows in Texas
mean that only the most committed will be out working.
The rest will be at home with their disappointed wives
their dogs and dreams and largely unrequited alarms.

There is no retirement from Godif you were once indenturedin his employ. And no answers.No escape...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 16:01:00 -0500

There is no retirement from God
if you were once indentured
in his employ.

And no answers.
No escape from the created self.

-Uncle Joe

The Invisibility of Speed

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:11:00 -0500

What is coming is not a shinier version
of what has already been. The future
is as different as we are to the dark.
A king who at one time was more powerful
than a God would hide in the mental ward of himself
if confronted with this industrial world.

It will be no different for us
but sooner, and it will be unpleasant.
The best time to be has already been.
I do not wish the children of our children‘s
children the life they will have.
There will be no room for in between.

{peace.love.free}: Arroz Poetica I got news yesterday from a friend of mine that all...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:09:44 -0500

{peace.love.free}: Arroz Poetica I got news yesterday from a friend of mine that all...:

jeanetteleblanc:

Arroz Poetica

I got news yesterday
from a friend of mine
that all people against the war should
send a bag of rice to George Bush,
& on the bag we should write,
“If your enemies are hungry, feed them.”

But to be perfectly clear,
my enemies are not hungry.
They are not standing in…

Stray cats die by way of absence like lovers, when they stop appearingit is fair to consider them...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 20:52:00 -0500

Stray cats die by way of absence
like lovers, when they stop appearing
it is fair to consider them dead.

-Nanny Chu

heiligistdiekuh: Simona Ghizzoni Mister Chu: I find this...

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 16:17:35 -0500

heiligistdiekuh:

Simona Ghizzoni

Mister Chu:

I find this strangely powerful. The strange part being I have no idea why. But still.

Work in Progress

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:11:00 -0500

“… what I call my self-portrait is made of thousands of working days. Each one corresponds to a number and to a precise moment in which I stopped painting. “ -Roman Opalka

It says here
(in this unknown thing
I am referencing)
that Mister Opalka
took the same photograph
of himself, his face
each year for forty years.

He did many other things also
in the artist line of work.
If one searches in the tunnels
of a man’s life randomly filled
by the robot engines
one can find all manner
of paint and penciling.

Interspersed throughout
is him looking back at you
through the same eyes set
to different depths
in an aging face
quiet and kindly
and quizzical and blank.

He doesn’t appear
to have put on or lost
any significant weight
over the years.
It is an awful pity
this was the first consideration
that came to mind.

In mitigation
the art of another’s face
is arresting
and as he continues to look
over the passing time at me
I wish only I knew more
than the so very little I do.

thebelts: This is a story somewhat about the machine daughter...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:20:00 -0500

thebelts:

This is a story somewhat about the machine daughter (although she would dispute the term) of Alan Turing.

Photo: Riemann zeta function ζ(s) in the complex plane. The color of a point s encodes the value of ζ(s): colors close to black denote values close to zero, while hue encodes the value’sargument. The white spot at s = 1 is the pole of the zeta function; the black spots on the negative real axis and on the critical line Re(s) = 1/2 are its zeros. Values with arguments close to zero including positive reals on the real half-line are presented in red.

[Related (or perhaps a clue): Bernhard Reimann made contributions to modern analytic number theory. In a short paper he investigated the Riemann zeta function and established its importance for understanding the distribution of prime numbers. He made a series of conjectures about properties of the zeta function, one of which is the well-known Riemann hypothesis.]

The rarityof childrencan be foundin the factthat we are(barring tragedy)not competitivewith themor...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:01:00 -0500

The rarity
of children
can be found
in the fact
that we are
(barring tragedy)
not competitive
with them
or defensive
because of them
but instead
hope only
they somehow
exceed us.

-Nanny Chu

Mister Chu

Men of action

“A psychologist at a girl’s college asked the members of his class to compliment any girl wearing...

Mister Chu: Somehow strange to think of William carefully...

Photo

kvetchlandia: Dmitri Kasterine Saul Bellow, Vermont ...

“Presume not that I am the thing I was.”-Henry IV, Part 2: Act...

(Un)aware

I have almost no awarenessBut the little I have causes meNo end of awkwardness

Mister Chu found himself somewhat alone this evening (whilst...

"Words are the part of silence that can be spoken."

Hard as nails

(The truth about) cats and dogs

Current working conditions

There is no retirement from Godif you were once indenturedin his employ. And no answers.No escape...

The Invisibility of Speed

{peace.love.free}: Arroz Poetica I got news yesterday from a friend of mine that all...

Arroz Poetica

Stray cats die by way of absence like lovers, when they stop appearingit is fair to consider them...

heiligistdiekuh: Simona Ghizzoni Mister Chu: I find this...

Work in Progress

“… what I call my self-portrait is made of thousands of working days. Each one corresponds to a number and to a precise moment in which I stopped painting. “ -Roman Opalka

thebelts: This is a story somewhat about the machine daughter...

The rarityof childrencan be foundin the factthat we are(barring tragedy)not competitivewith themor...

I have almost no awareness
But the little I have causes me
No end of awkwardness