July | 2013 | The Hexacoto

July 8, 2013

Don’t cry

When I was in primary four (fourth grade), I took part in a haiku competition on Children’s Day. It was also World Haiku Day or something, and everyone in school had a chance to participate. I submitted three, complete with drawings to go with them. One was about a spider, one was about a pig, and I can’t remember what the last one was.

I actually won something. I won a set of colouring pencils from Japan, with a Mickey Mouse motif. I was also given a book on haiku from children around the world. As a kid, I looked at the pictures more than I looked at the poems from children who were my age.

As I grew up, I would revisit the book every now and then. I also did something that I would never have done as a kid, and that was read the foreword and introduction. It was in Japanese, but there were translations. The foreword said to the effect of “Haiku by children are always the most precious things. They say things as they see them, and that is surely the true essence of haiku.” (I don’t have the book with me right now, I’m just writing from memory.

And that is quite true. If you look at haiku these days, people think as long as you keep the 5/7/5 syllable (or mora, in Japanese) structure, you basically have a haiku.

The above is a t-shirt design from this online store Threadless. Haikus sometimes don’t make sense on sight, but like any poem, sometimes readers have to work at them to get them. This ‘haiku’ has nothing more to it than a buffoonery of what a haiku is. People sometimes think that because the structure of haiku is so simple, the only way to be smart and outstanding is to be clever with words.

But traditionally haiku is visual poetry for the mind. The words are unassuming, but in the images they conjure, they reflect, capture and convey some truth in the natural world. Let’s look at a famous example, Bashou’s “Old Pond”.

古池や蛙飛び込む水の音

From Wikipedia, it translates as: An old pond, a frog leaps in, water’s sound. All of them simple images but powerful.

The haiku book I had said children see these images best. Have we as adults lost this ability forever, to see the natural with simplicity of mind and words? Maybe if we try hard enough, we might realise that perhaps what seem lost to time is merely buried and forgotten, but a good shovel and with some arm work, we might possible recover it.

It’s humid

I dropped my ice cream!

Don’t cry

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July 8, 2013

Cotton bread

Instead of the one-dollar cheapo sliced bread I usually get from ShopRite, for some reason I decided to buy this loaf labelled “Italian Bread” that cost 50 cents more, and it looks pretty good. It was sliced, had sesame seeds studded all over it, and had a good heft to it.

When I prised a slice loose from the loaf, it was the softest, fluffiest bread I’ve ever felt. It couldn’t be real: its white porous body yielded to my gentlest touch, I could roll it up and it would stay unbroken.

I hated it.

Seriously, why are sliced bread in America so soft? They flop around like limp, floppy fish and are useless against hardy condiments such as crunchy peanut butter. Have you tried applying chunky peanut butter against soft bread before? The moment a knife with a load of crunchy peanut butter meets soft bread, there is no way it can be spread because any attempt to do so results in a messy mutilation of the bread, where it ends up dented, misshapen or torn.

Are these bread made from cotton plants? Most bread I’ve had in Europe are much sturdier, as far as I could recall, so much so that stale bread become acceptable substitutes for frisbee throwing. Or for making knedliky’s (bread dumplings).

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July 7, 2013

To build a fortress

Last night, I was practicing being supine on the floor in my bedroom because the weather was really hot, and lying down seemed like a good idea. Despite having broken my glasses and being unable to see much, I still managed to see a mouse suddenly dart out from behind the dressers to the radiator and then back again.

This commenced an hour-long crusade where I attempted to bop the mouse on its head with a shoe.

I don’t know why I thought I could do it. Firstly, I could barely see. Secondly, trying to bop a mouse on its head with a shoe hardly seems like a very efficient method of getting rid of vermin. But it was already midnight, and the myth of a 24-hour convenience store where I could buy traps does not exist in my neighbourhood. Shoe it is then.

I wiggled the extension cord that ran behind my dressers, and the mouse ran out from the opposite side.

WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! I struck out. It ran under my bed.

I pulled and moved stuff out from under my bed, jostled things around, wiggled more wires, and it darted out again.

More whapping, more missing. There are now black scuff marks from the shoe on the door and the post. Hopefully they will come off. I also hope the neighbours don’t think too badly of me; I’m sure they would have done the same were they in my circumstance.

Eventually it crawled back into the radiator, where I could see it nestled between the coils. For a brief, mad, midsummer’s moment, I almost wished the radiator would turn on and kill the mouse by heat. So much vehemence. I blame the heat.

But then I realise sane people probably get rid of mice in their apartment with traps. So, to prevent the mouse from escaping to a place out of my knowledge, I proceeded to erect a fortress around the radiator, hoping to trap it in so that I may buy some time to buy some traps tomorrow. Here’s a schematic of the situation.

The image above shows the path the mouse took, and what I did to trap the mouse. Such tactics! Such strategy! Ballads shall be sung in my honour and my excellent exploits shall ring for all posterity.

The mouse wasn’t in the radiator the next morning when I woke up. Screw the fortress. I left the house to go buy some traps.

July 6, 2013

To unicycle or not to unicycle, that is the question

“Can you help me water my plants while I’m gone?” My friend texts me, already in California.

“Sure, leave beer in the fridge!” I replied.

“There should be some left in there,” he said.

That exchange of words led me to consider now something I have never done before: Whether or not I should unicycle to a friend’s place to help him water his plants because it would rob me of precious calories; calories that cost money that I do not exactly have right now.

It’s been a week since I sent out some applications for positions at various publications and news places, and that’s probably nothing in terms of the job application process. However, considering the fact that one of the ways a freshly-graduated, but woefully-unemployed person was going to secure housing in the competitive New York City housing market was to offer to pay rent upfront. That I did, and the management company gleefully took all of a year’s worth of rent in a go.

It is as if I jumped headfirst into a noose, but instead of the sweet escape of a snappy death, I am experiencing a slow tightening of the rope around my neck as I watched my dollars and cents trickle away. Yesterday, I was relieved to have gathered $18.50 in all the loose change I’ve amassed and deposited them into the bank. That should probably buy me another two weeks worth of groceries.

No wonder I am nickel-and-joule-ing every single calorie right now.

I figured if I ate something starchy and carbohydrate-y I should be fine, right? Does unicycling in the hot sun consume more calories than if I were to do so when it is less hot? I didn’t want to be cycling in the hot sun anyway. But I couldn’t wait till it got dark, owing to the fact that I sat on my glasses and broke them a couple days prior, and can’t afford to replace them. I can’t see much save for maybe an outstretched arm’s reach distance. I mean, I can see vague shapes and lights and colours, there just isn’t any definition to anything. It’s akin to living an impressionist painting, I suppose. I am able to see traffic and all that, I should be fine. I should probably leave soon if I am going to fulfil the favour I promised my friend.

Thank goodness I stockpiled on pasta that cost eighty-eight cents a box weeks ago at the ShopRite in Midwood. Well, whatever I bought two weeks ago is going to have to last me another two or so, I fear.

For a chronically broke person, I thankfully had the luxury of choice of what pasta to cook. I chose macaroni elbows. I added some frozen carrot-and-pea mix, and some canned corn, and since I probably needed sodium and stuff, I decided to make it ‘Asian’ and used soy sauce and sesame oil. And that was breakfast/lunch. I set out for my friend’s place.

I had been unicycling for about eleven years at that point, and I am no stranger to unicycling on the streets of New York. I’ve gone both uptown and downtown Eighth Avenue during rush hours, I’ve gone through the Fashion District when trucks are unloading, and I’ve even ventured the roads of New Jersey, all on one wheel. These five or so miles are nothing to my extra-seasoned, extra-basted legs. But these five miles were the scariest five miles I’ve experienced in a while, not because of the traffic, not because I had to cycle through Bedford-Stuyvesant, but because of an unfortunate allegory playing in my head as I was cycling.

This is how it goes:

I don’t have my glasses, and I can’t see. Thus, I’ve had to pay extra close attention to the immediate patch of road in front of me, as any crack that I unknowing cycle over can potentially throw me off my unicycle. I look at my immediate front to the exclusion of many things, ignoring the pretty houses and kids playing in the park that I pass by. Aren’t I already living such a life? Taking one day at a time, worrying about whether I’ll need to spend money today or not, scarcely thinking about tomorrow. I can’t afford to think about next month or even next week, always paying close attention to my immediate present. The finer things in life can take a backseat for now.

I arrive at my friend’s place. Gee, he sure does have a lot of plants to water. I sit down and think of writing whatever I’ve thought up into a book. “This will be in a book that will make me famous!” I toyed with the idea in my head, though a thought came after, “Yea, but you won’t get to publish this book until you’re already famous.

I leave for home. Shit, I’m getting hungry. I can practically envision that pot of pasta in my stomach rapidly vanishing into the ether. “Fuel tank low! Please refuel!” cries the warning blinkers that are my stomach growls. I yearned to speed up to return home to make food, but my legs would go no faster.

“Does that thing take a lot of balance?” Some folks at the steps of my building ask me about my unicycle as I approached.

“No, just a lot of practice.” I didn’t stop to chat. I went up and made more pasta, this time with beans and tons of scallions that were three bunches a dollar in Chinatown.

Month: July, 2013