scruta

Flivver

Emmetropia

On a fairly frozen evening in November

As the Shanghai lowlands fell towards freezing

We stood there wating to cross the road

We off-workers, going-homers,

Bearing home hopes and hatreds

To the curtained corridors

That we’d haltingly call home.

And in that moment everything was so calm:

Just us, our crosswalk

The great obelisks of Pudong vaulting higher

The ocher reaches of neon,

The soft hush of the city surrounding us.

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I turned around to see this spectacle.

All of us quiet together now.

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I thought I saw a girl murmuring incantations under her breath.

You told me I was nothing

And I laughed.

I suppose I misunderstood.

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I remember how you and I

Held each other naked against the cold,

Clawing, gasping for breath

And in that moment finding nothing

At the same time.

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When we awoke, everything gleamed.

Everything in all off its wondrousness.

Everything, everything, everything.

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Because you were nothing to me, too.

Stanchion

Gentian

Perhaps the best way to begin a cultural exchange is by asking the question: What don’t you like about my culture?

Friendships that arise out of this kind of exchange, if they arise at all, are the most meaningful because they expose the true natures of the participants, testing the limits of their tolerance, or more generally, more boldly, the limits of their cultures.

I raise these hands hewn roughshod like sandpaper.

In the dim light I’ll try to read their lines,

Knowing they tell how I came to this place,

How my toil will give a man his dreams,

Or perhaps give me my own.

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But soon I tire of all of this.

Soon I’ll only rub these hands together

Vigorously trying to rub away this coarseness,

Forgetting the lines crisscrossing my palms,

As if to bring me back to my home,

But mostly just to stay warm.

There’s confusion in your demeanor,

A double meaning perhaps?

There’s laughter in your words,

What words can be made out

Through the blaring fog of your sonic soundscapes.

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You’ll wrap yourself in cords!

You’ll prance above the electro-base!

You’ll call into the Mikes (and Marys),

Blaring hard down to their soles

To jump and do the cha-cha-cha!

Listen!

I think that people shouldn’t say that the Chinese will speak English in the future. It’s better to say that China will be one speaking English in the future. Everyone in China learns a specific, job-related amount of English which they perfect through practice. As a result, a foreigner can go through China without ever using Chinese, greeted by flawless English in every situation.

China will speak English. As for the Chinese, it’s touch and go.