scruta

Inspiration is not a bolt of lightening or an angel appearing on the doorstep of your mind. It’s a bit of shelter in the pouring rain when the world is dark and gray. To get there, you must be willing to fight your way to it.

It’s about compromising one’s values and convincing others to do things that they would think twice about.

Isn’t that what being a politician is about? Isn’t that what seducing a woman is about?

It’s that person you think you know, the one who makes you feel comfortable. But then a remark, a casual gesture or a sudden glance that becomes a deep penetrating sling-shot into your eyes reveals the distance between you.

And like that, you know you’re dealing with an utter stranger.

I hailed a cab, Shanghai, thinking I knew you, when suddenly you stared me right in the face. You stared me right in the face with your concrete slabs, your rotting porticoes and your dolled up waif women looking at me on the street corners with fear and a hidden disgust. You spoke to me in words that suddenly seemed more distant than I knew before, their syllables garbled in a way you knew I couldn’t understand. You pointed at me with your neon lights, raising shadows all around me. The cab driver asked me where to go and I was speechless.

I didn’t know you, Shanghai. I didn’t know you at all.

I will be asked why I stay here, and I will say it’s a secret. It’s a secret locked inside a silver talisman that never leaves my beating chest.

I will share it with no one, I say.

But there’s a deeper secret: the locket is locked, has always been locked and I do not have the key.

Learning Chinese in Shanghai:

A shopkeeper insists on using English

To sell me Chinese books.

Quincunx

Plangent

The checkered patterns of these linen hearts

Will ripple in the summer breezes

Dry and fresh, they will wonder how they’ve grown.

I am tired of loud revolutionaries. I’m sick of bullhorns and shanytowns with pizza deliveries. I’m tired of movements, of seasons of change. The world that is growing needs them; in fact, it cannot exist without them. This is why I am sick of them.

The loud mouth wailers and those intoxicated with self-righteousness are essential in the game of liberal democracy. They are the pawns in the great game – easily sacrificed. Rarely do they rise to greatness, and when they do, the end is near.

The revolutionaries I admire stay away from rallies. They avoid them altogether. They see the whole thing for the game it is. And, besides, they are too busy designing new games.

Shako

Tribades

And about humanity?

We are just not monkeys —

Where you put the emphasis tells the tale.