Austin is home to "the world's largest urban bat population," and as you can easily see, they take to the air en masse. Responding to a bat signal at dusk unperceivable by humans, they launch from their roosts within the 16" channels cut into the concrete underbelly of the bridge. It's a nightly event; people bring their kids, picnic blankets, lawn chairs.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Midnight's Child
Driving east from Austin the air turned stickier and the sky steel-grey, and after certain turns the road stretched momentarily, empty and inviting, to the horizon. I arrived in 'Houston' to visit relatives both young and old, but the 'city' was not recognizable as anything but giant houses hidden among wooded lanes, and giant highways flanked by chain stores, the names of which should be recognized coast-to-coast. Dead racoons decorated the streets. Other roadkill were decomposed to clumps of moist-looking dirt, identifiable only by scaly bits, or denuded feathers. As formless as Houston.
I had lunch at the world's dirtiest Pizza Hut, which was infested with flies as assiduous as the wait-staff was indifferent.
After midnight, I walked to the Dennys next to the hotel and sat down with Rushdie's Midnight's Children, a weighty worrying work describing the 31 year history (and 31 year prehistory!) of one Saleem Sinai. Saleem, the unreliable fatalistic narrator, believes his own phantasmagorical fate is tied to that of the nation of India (a community wild, fissiparious, and imagined). At 31 he believes his end (and India's?) is near, and openly declares that he is 'cracking' and falling apart. He and the other children of midnight (born at the midnight moment where India was born from colonial British rule), gifted with strange and wondrous powers, represented the diverse potentials, the mystical chaos, the superstitions and traditions of that populace which would be disciplined into a modern nation. His hopelessness, and the ultimate destruction of the children (during the 1975-1977 state of Emergency called by Indira Gandhi where hundreds of thousands were put in jail, or worse.) seems to speak of the tragedies and contradictions of modernization, development, and political power. (My immediate interpretation: why is it necessary for post-colonial regimes to repeat the brutal legacies of their former colonial masters? Why repeat the massacres perpetrated by the British, in the name of the nation?)
The work is surprisingly consistent for all its flabby interior monologue, its interjections by Padma (his erstwhile lover and audience throughout), its indulgent forays into dream and suppposition. Oblique references uttered early prove to be omens, that if remembered correctly by befuddled readers reveal their significance in later chapters. The puzzling complexity of the work must have been a gargantuan task to keep straight; I can imagine stacks and stacks of notecards.
One lesson from Saleem Sinai (Rushdie) straight to me:
All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in ths game is the unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent. . .
I had lunch at the world's dirtiest Pizza Hut, which was infested with flies as assiduous as the wait-staff was indifferent.
After midnight, I walked to the Dennys next to the hotel and sat down with Rushdie's Midnight's Children, a weighty worrying work describing the 31 year history (and 31 year prehistory!) of one Saleem Sinai. Saleem, the unreliable fatalistic narrator, believes his own phantasmagorical fate is tied to that of the nation of India (a community wild, fissiparious, and imagined). At 31 he believes his end (and India's?) is near, and openly declares that he is 'cracking' and falling apart. He and the other children of midnight (born at the midnight moment where India was born from colonial British rule), gifted with strange and wondrous powers, represented the diverse potentials, the mystical chaos, the superstitions and traditions of that populace which would be disciplined into a modern nation. His hopelessness, and the ultimate destruction of the children (during the 1975-1977 state of Emergency called by Indira Gandhi where hundreds of thousands were put in jail, or worse.) seems to speak of the tragedies and contradictions of modernization, development, and political power. (My immediate interpretation: why is it necessary for post-colonial regimes to repeat the brutal legacies of their former colonial masters? Why repeat the massacres perpetrated by the British, in the name of the nation?)
The work is surprisingly consistent for all its flabby interior monologue, its interjections by Padma (his erstwhile lover and audience throughout), its indulgent forays into dream and suppposition. Oblique references uttered early prove to be omens, that if remembered correctly by befuddled readers reveal their significance in later chapters. The puzzling complexity of the work must have been a gargantuan task to keep straight; I can imagine stacks and stacks of notecards.
One lesson from Saleem Sinai (Rushdie) straight to me:
All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in ths game is the unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent. . .
Friday, May 19, 2006
Numb in Austin
Modern transportation is time travel. The mind struggles to keep up with speed that blurs landscape and launches you into a different season. I left NJ in May one day, and within hours arrived in August's sweaty embrace. Temperatures in the 90s, faded blue sky. It takes time for consciousness to adjust.
The birds are different here; black as ravens, long tails, needle beaks, strutting tall on legs in time with thrusts of the head (clumsily like all birds, trying to keep balance), chirps like lilting questions ("eep? eep?").
The air, rainless. The 'city' is a series of strip-malls, wooded parks, miniature apartment houses. Where the city recedes, the elevated interleaved highways lead you out into the surrounding suburbia with its expansive hills of brown brush dotted with small green shrubs.
Far away from Tokyo, which is now the past and not dissimilar to a dream.
The birds are different here; black as ravens, long tails, needle beaks, strutting tall on legs in time with thrusts of the head (clumsily like all birds, trying to keep balance), chirps like lilting questions ("eep? eep?").
The air, rainless. The 'city' is a series of strip-malls, wooded parks, miniature apartment houses. Where the city recedes, the elevated interleaved highways lead you out into the surrounding suburbia with its expansive hills of brown brush dotted with small green shrubs.
Far away from Tokyo, which is now the past and not dissimilar to a dream.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Cherry blossoms, a circle of light, an unoccupied bench, and the epicenter of an atomic blast
I couldn't help being drawn to the quiet dignity of this simple photographic subject. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom on a chilly March evening at Nagasaki's Peace Park (Heiwa kôen). Fifty meters from the epicenter of the second (and last) atomic bomb ever dropped, it was said that the land would remain barren for 75 years. History has clearly falsified that hypothesis, and suggests as well that though there are few certainties in the passage of time, over the long span nature endures. The only question is whether we will be there to witness it . . . or will the bench be empty instead?
'Peace' is too simple a message to take from the atomic bombings, or at least too easily disguised for narrower and more convoluted advocacies. My own perspective can be summarized (and oversimplified) as the contradictory venn diagram of 'Chinese', 'American' and 'Japanese' positions. And yet, I realize that there is no such compromise ('intersubjective') position yet. And until there is, someone will always be able to manufacture from history's swirling paradoxes the justification to repeat the tragedies of the past.
'Peace' is too simple a message to take from the atomic bombings, or at least too easily disguised for narrower and more convoluted advocacies. My own perspective can be summarized (and oversimplified) as the contradictory venn diagram of 'Chinese', 'American' and 'Japanese' positions. And yet, I realize that there is no such compromise ('intersubjective') position yet. And until there is, someone will always be able to manufacture from history's swirling paradoxes the justification to repeat the tragedies of the past.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Osaka
[I'm on a little trip right now, trying against all good sense to make it from Tokyo down to Nagasaki and back only on local trains. First stop, Kobe and Osaka.]
My nightmares often seem to arise first as comedy.
Stepping off the JR train at Osaka station, I followed a thin stream of people out onto the platform between burgeoning crowds waiting to board. The middle-aged woman in front of me stumbled, and I instinctively glanced down on the ground for obstructions. Her foot was being snared by a white sneaker . . . connected to a 12 year old boy who was apparently determined to trip her. No words were spoken. She caught her balance, and pushed forward, glaring back at the child over and over. Nobody said anything. I’d never seen anything like it in Japan, and I wonder if it’s somehow related to a particularly Osaka-inflected sense of humor.
Nevertheless, this comedy brought home how fragile society would be if this sort of anti-social activity were more prevalent. As it is, people barely avoid each other (and certain tragedy) on the streets as they hurry along on bicycles and trucks. People gingerly negotiate their way among crowds on subway platforms, even as trains come storming into the station. All it takes is a minor error, a careless fraction of a second, and there would be a fatal impact; how much worse would it be if there were a deliberate intention to injure or maim.
The first nightmare I can recall having is similarly equal parts laughter and horror. In it, I’m back in the house of my birth, haunted by a ghost. Of course, it’s no ordinary ghost; it's more like a Peanuts gang Halloween special ghost, a standardized image of a white sheet thrown over a child, with oval eye holes snipped out. This ‘ghost’ was haunting my bedroom, or rather, was following me around. And yet there was one small difference, and one that separates nightmare from comedy: below the hem of the sheet were visible not human feet, but scaly chicken feet deftly stepping forward toward me.
This nightmare image suddenly came back to me vividly via another nightmare two weeks ago. That night I struggled awake at 4am, rising out of a dream full of screams to the silence of the suburbs. Before I opened my eyes, I was watching a muddy street from the top of a 20 story building, in a city full of sunlight and stained architecture. In the churning mud below were two large buses, much like New York City MTA buses, one determinedly slamming into the other. They seemed bovine, stubborn and dim, as they collided, and I couldn't help laughing. "'Moo' you idiots," I thought. But then I noticed the riders inside, through the windows, and started to hear their screams. There was after all no place to run, no refuge for those trapped inside. They were tossed about, cut by broken glass and sheared metal, as the other bus deliberately rammed it over and over. The lead bus struggled forward in the liquid mud, caught and lost traction, and skidded to the left, its wheels evidently trapped. The rear bus then scored a direct hit in its midside, and slowly, viciously, proceeded to tear it in half; and as the metal skin of the beached whale burst, the screams of the passengers rang out. Interminable, terrible, helpless. I woke with my hands over my ears . . . surrounded by the ringing 4am silence. And by some completely mysterious mechanism, it unlocked memories of my first nightmare.
My nightmares often seem to arise first as comedy.
Stepping off the JR train at Osaka station, I followed a thin stream of people out onto the platform between burgeoning crowds waiting to board. The middle-aged woman in front of me stumbled, and I instinctively glanced down on the ground for obstructions. Her foot was being snared by a white sneaker . . . connected to a 12 year old boy who was apparently determined to trip her. No words were spoken. She caught her balance, and pushed forward, glaring back at the child over and over. Nobody said anything. I’d never seen anything like it in Japan, and I wonder if it’s somehow related to a particularly Osaka-inflected sense of humor.
Nevertheless, this comedy brought home how fragile society would be if this sort of anti-social activity were more prevalent. As it is, people barely avoid each other (and certain tragedy) on the streets as they hurry along on bicycles and trucks. People gingerly negotiate their way among crowds on subway platforms, even as trains come storming into the station. All it takes is a minor error, a careless fraction of a second, and there would be a fatal impact; how much worse would it be if there were a deliberate intention to injure or maim.
The first nightmare I can recall having is similarly equal parts laughter and horror. In it, I’m back in the house of my birth, haunted by a ghost. Of course, it’s no ordinary ghost; it's more like a Peanuts gang Halloween special ghost, a standardized image of a white sheet thrown over a child, with oval eye holes snipped out. This ‘ghost’ was haunting my bedroom, or rather, was following me around. And yet there was one small difference, and one that separates nightmare from comedy: below the hem of the sheet were visible not human feet, but scaly chicken feet deftly stepping forward toward me.
This nightmare image suddenly came back to me vividly via another nightmare two weeks ago. That night I struggled awake at 4am, rising out of a dream full of screams to the silence of the suburbs. Before I opened my eyes, I was watching a muddy street from the top of a 20 story building, in a city full of sunlight and stained architecture. In the churning mud below were two large buses, much like New York City MTA buses, one determinedly slamming into the other. They seemed bovine, stubborn and dim, as they collided, and I couldn't help laughing. "'Moo' you idiots," I thought. But then I noticed the riders inside, through the windows, and started to hear their screams. There was after all no place to run, no refuge for those trapped inside. They were tossed about, cut by broken glass and sheared metal, as the other bus deliberately rammed it over and over. The lead bus struggled forward in the liquid mud, caught and lost traction, and skidded to the left, its wheels evidently trapped. The rear bus then scored a direct hit in its midside, and slowly, viciously, proceeded to tear it in half; and as the metal skin of the beached whale burst, the screams of the passengers rang out. Interminable, terrible, helpless. I woke with my hands over my ears . . . surrounded by the ringing 4am silence. And by some completely mysterious mechanism, it unlocked memories of my first nightmare.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Nightmares
The past few days I've been beset by nightmares. . . many of them seemingly reccurring ones from my childhood. I'll post up a little more tomorrow, but I'm trying to get to the bottom of where they're coming from, and why now.
Monday, February 27, 2006
Conclusion: Sharing History between the “Good People” of China and Japan
So my piece was not selected for an essay contest, and that is disappointing, but second best of course is being featured on my own private soap-box. This is the conclusion to the piece, where I attempt to weave together miscellaneous musings on history, subjectivity, and Sino-Japanese relations.
Niki Fumiko articulates the point that the Japanese perpetrators of the massacre of Chinese after the Great Kantô Earthquake were after all, “good people.” This is not in any way intended to justify their actions. Her point is that under ordinary circumstances they probably considered themselves to be good and ordinary folk, just like you and I. Yet they were capable of picking up bamboo spears and perpetrating these atrocities under extraordinary circumstances. By framing the issue in this manner, she turns the question of responsibility for the massacre back onto ourselves; instead of simply indicting “the Japanese,” Niki is pulling us out of our complacency to reflect on whether that could have been us.
My own discussion of the aftermath of the Kantô Earthquake illuminates the presence of people who at even the darkest of times stood up to the frenzy of ethnic hatred and through their actions undermined the simple categories of Chinese victim and Japanese perpetrator. More than the “good people” who perpetrated the massacres, the story of these unnamed Japanese who defended and harbored Chinese students and laborers compels us to question the way we have constructed Sino-Japanese relations in terms of ‘us versus them’. They force us to reflect on the hegemonic power of national identity, and how it can compel us to forget our other forms of identity -- as human being, brother, or sister. Only when we recuperate that consciousness can we approach an understanding of how humans who fundamentally share so much in common, can paradoxically deem themselves so starkly divided.
In searching for a way forward, I have chosen to discuss historical method for three important reasons: First, the Sino-Japanese conflict revolves around unresolved issues of historical interpretation. Second, the national history paradigm demarcates boundaries between people at the sites of their culture and identity. And finally, the theoretical critique of objectivity in recent decades lies at the heart of the movement to revise Japanese textbooks. Because historical practice is so tightly interwoven with the problem, it may hold the key to its resolution. Recent debates over historiography suggest that history is not a source of transcendental, universal knowledge, but rather a human enterprise, attempting to bridge the gaps between individuals and subjectivities. Thus, when we conceive of history as a transnational consensus-building project, we are not only producing a reliable, pragmatic body of knowledge. By promoting dialogue across national borders this very practice can draw Chinese and Japanese interpretations of war responsibility closer together, and undermine the importance of national subjectivity in our views of each other.
It is no easy task for history to bear the complexity of emotion and subjectivity. The public debate over history and textbooks in the spring of 2005 served as an inter-subjective flashpoint, but failed to generate significant consensus between China and Japan. Worse, it reemphasized the gap in consciousness that exists between people of the two countries, and thus produced a context in which fewer, rather than more people in Japan and China are willing to see each other as people with similar values. Nevertheless, I see this as an empirical failure of consensus-building, rather than a failure of method. Participation in a shared historical project can enable a more global historical consciousness, and hence a cultural milieu ever slightly more conducive to recognizing each other, regardless of nationality, as fellow humans.
Niki Fumiko articulates the point that the Japanese perpetrators of the massacre of Chinese after the Great Kantô Earthquake were after all, “good people.” This is not in any way intended to justify their actions. Her point is that under ordinary circumstances they probably considered themselves to be good and ordinary folk, just like you and I. Yet they were capable of picking up bamboo spears and perpetrating these atrocities under extraordinary circumstances. By framing the issue in this manner, she turns the question of responsibility for the massacre back onto ourselves; instead of simply indicting “the Japanese,” Niki is pulling us out of our complacency to reflect on whether that could have been us.
My own discussion of the aftermath of the Kantô Earthquake illuminates the presence of people who at even the darkest of times stood up to the frenzy of ethnic hatred and through their actions undermined the simple categories of Chinese victim and Japanese perpetrator. More than the “good people” who perpetrated the massacres, the story of these unnamed Japanese who defended and harbored Chinese students and laborers compels us to question the way we have constructed Sino-Japanese relations in terms of ‘us versus them’. They force us to reflect on the hegemonic power of national identity, and how it can compel us to forget our other forms of identity -- as human being, brother, or sister. Only when we recuperate that consciousness can we approach an understanding of how humans who fundamentally share so much in common, can paradoxically deem themselves so starkly divided.
In searching for a way forward, I have chosen to discuss historical method for three important reasons: First, the Sino-Japanese conflict revolves around unresolved issues of historical interpretation. Second, the national history paradigm demarcates boundaries between people at the sites of their culture and identity. And finally, the theoretical critique of objectivity in recent decades lies at the heart of the movement to revise Japanese textbooks. Because historical practice is so tightly interwoven with the problem, it may hold the key to its resolution. Recent debates over historiography suggest that history is not a source of transcendental, universal knowledge, but rather a human enterprise, attempting to bridge the gaps between individuals and subjectivities. Thus, when we conceive of history as a transnational consensus-building project, we are not only producing a reliable, pragmatic body of knowledge. By promoting dialogue across national borders this very practice can draw Chinese and Japanese interpretations of war responsibility closer together, and undermine the importance of national subjectivity in our views of each other.
It is no easy task for history to bear the complexity of emotion and subjectivity. The public debate over history and textbooks in the spring of 2005 served as an inter-subjective flashpoint, but failed to generate significant consensus between China and Japan. Worse, it reemphasized the gap in consciousness that exists between people of the two countries, and thus produced a context in which fewer, rather than more people in Japan and China are willing to see each other as people with similar values. Nevertheless, I see this as an empirical failure of consensus-building, rather than a failure of method. Participation in a shared historical project can enable a more global historical consciousness, and hence a cultural milieu ever slightly more conducive to recognizing each other, regardless of nationality, as fellow humans.
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