Sleight of Hand

Stephen was telling me once how he can’t enjoy normal pornography, his reason was quite special, he doesn’t like it when an ‘actress’ looks at the camera because it upsets him when they break the 4th wall… Isn’t he wonderful? That story really tickles me.

I avoid learning certain things because I worry they’ll corrupt what I already have, which I value, which I enjoy. I’m that way with writing, the idea of, going to class to learn, I don’t know, somehow it feels like I’ve been given this mutation, my style being my own, and I worry that structure, whilst making it more accessible, easier, possibly deeper, would destroy a large part of what makes it mine. I write for myself, I write what I want to read, I know exactly what I want and how to do it, it’s an endeavour to find a beautiful utterance, not even a sentence, I don’t expect that much, I just want a few words that mean something to me, that are pretty to me. The finest example of this, to my mind, isn’t something of my own but actually something someone off of this site from years ago left me as a note, at 10:21:30am on the 26th of April 2003, he wrote,

"Watching a leaf flap, you can see it’s relationship to all the world."

That was sort of everything for me, ever since, it is what I had been trying to express for years, this sense of connection, how much everything is to everything else, everything is interchangeable, every single action, affects and therefore defines all others, even the invisible, the wind and gravity, have purpose and effect which can be translated to me, you, a leaf, anything. It’s almost purposeful somehow that sentence, defining an event, a meaning and obviously then a purpose. Maybe it’s a bit simple to everyone else, obvious or something, but it meant a lot to me, it said something I couldn’t but desperately wanted to. So that is my favourite sentence.

We don’t use the word hope much. Different languages, cultures, value different things, Japanese is very, cliched, almost painfully so, listen to some of their music and you’ll be lucky to find a song that doesn’t have one of these phrases in it, ‘Sky, love, bright light, moon, tomorrow, today, wind, myself alone, just the two of us, snow, Summer, Spring’ it seems quite beautiful at first but they use rehearsed phrases, it makes it very easy to translate of course but who cares I’d rather greater meaning. There is a genuinely good band by world standards called Bump of Chicken, they do a song called R.I.P. which I’m fond of, I think anyone who has lost someone, in any sense, can relate, obviously I don’t expect too many of you can understand Japanese but to put it simply, he’s singing about his memories of someone, specific events that don’t mean much to anyone but the people involved, and how the person he is singing about isn’t here anymore, and how he isn’t with her. There’s one bit I find particularly affecting, which roughly translates to ‘If we could just see the same things that would be enough, even if you felt differently that would be fine.’

Whenever I find something beautiful I want to share it, I want others to know it, and I think that’s why for me beautiful things have such a distinct sense of melancholy about them, because I do want to share them, and there are people whom I think would like them, that can’t see them anymore. I’m not very good at letting go, my Nana gave me a talisman that I hung around my neck, it’s made of Green Stone and it has the Maori symbol for friendship on it, which even at my young age of about 11 I appreciated, that we weren’t just family, that we were friends, you don’t get to pick your family but you can pick your friends. So often when I’m going on a trip I take Nana with me, I’ve got a lot of things like that, it’s not, healthy probably, but I think she’d like them, I took her with me this Christmas so she could meet my half-brother Michael.

Holding hands, holding the ones you love, giving them things, it does have significance. I remember Nana held it in her hands, and when she gave me the talisman it was warm and I put it on, that warmth was her energy, her life, at the time she gave it to me, she was literally in it, so when I give a gift I prefer to hand it over myself, because my, life, I suppose, is in it. When you hug someone, the warmth you’re feeling is them being taken into you, and vice-versa, I think we sort of, subconsciously recognise these things.

Oh, the song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2WpG1e2V9s

Finally, although it is disputed, if you don’t click links it is a clear demonstration of a lack of soul, so for your own benefit, click the link. You know who you are.