words

A few years ago I found a website that hosted lists of various things. One of them was a list of strange and obscure words. I copypasted the list into a txt file and have been adding words I come across ever since. There were 23 words in the original list. Here are my next 17 words.

24. woolgather
to engage in fanciful daydreaming.

25. brobdingnagian
something of huge size, tremendous.

26. ambergris
an opaque, ash-colored secretion of the sperm whale intestine, used in perfumery.

27. tchotchke
an inexpensive souvenir, trinket, or ornament.

28. daedalian
difficult to understand because of intricacy.

29. abacinate (ll. abacinatus)
to blind by a red-hot metal plate held before the eyes.

30. crepuscule
twilight; dusk.

31. lamister
a fugitive from the law.

32. frondescence
the process or period of putting forth leaves, as a tree, plant, or the like.

33. umbrage
leaves that afford shade, as the foliage of trees.

34. verdure (ll. viridis)
greenness, esp. of fresh, flourishing vegetation.

35. Shrovetide
the three days before Ash Wednesday, once a time of confession and absolution.

36. chutzpah
unmitigated effrontery or impudence; gall. audacity; nerve.

37. braggadocio
empty boasting; bragging. a boasting person; braggart.

38. demur
to make objection, esp. on the grounds of scruples; take exception; object.

39. demiurge
a supernatural being imagined as creating or fashioning the world in subordination to the Supreme Being, and sometimes regarded as the originator of evil.

40. firedamp
a combustible gas consisting chiefly of methane, formed esp. in coal mines, and dangerously explosive when mixed with certain proportions of atmospheric air.

I’ll post the following 17 in some time.

taste bud orgasm

I got off the train in Suidobashi and met up with my Chinese friend outside the station. Yui was dressed in his usual fashion. Pastel shirt, greenish, big sunglasses, and a white jacket with a certain kind of neck strap buckle that seems to be always in fashion in Tokyo. We crossed the river and the street, shamefully avoiding eye contact with the volunteers collecting money for earthquake victims. They have no shame and approach everyone but usually zero in on us. Foreigners are somehow percieved as philanthropists by nature and the charity workers are keenly aware of this fact. They persist in the face of all protest. When the long red light pins you on the street corner, only if you are the most hardened tightwad can you resist them. Near Suidobashi all the alms collectors have awful teeth. When I first ran across them in February, I thought they were collecting for the purpose of having their teeth fixed. For some reason this inspired more pity in me and I gave as handsomely as I could. But, strangely the earthquake victims don’t garner as much sympathy.

We were lucky, the light was green, and we slipped by the almsmen undetected (though, later, on our way home we forked over our change). We headed to Tokyo Dome City, the theme park near the Yomiuri Giant’s home stadium. In the park there is a burger place called Zest Burger. As far as I know their burgers are the best in Japan. They’re made from quality beef, and in fact, you can watch the staff carve up the beef and make the patties. Next to the register there’s a glass partition behind which the meat handler (for lack of a better term, butcher doesn’t fit) unpacks the raw meat slab, sponges off the excess, and chops it up. More often than not you’ll witness the fatty beef being molded into patties ready for cooking, but if you’re lucky you might catch the actual cutting of the beef. There is something fascinating about watching a college-age Japanese chick handle a thirty pound slab of prime cut steak.

Besides the live show, the menu is interesting. Though I’m sure it’s not unique in the world, my favorite menu item which I have not tasted anywhere else is the Avocado Burger. It’s a standard burger with avocado in place of the cheese. Between the juicy ground beef and the soft avocado, the sandwich is a taste bud orgasm. Add some grilled onion, fresh tomato, and lettuce all on a toasted bun, and fries and of course a coke to match, and you have yourself something truly special.

But where the burgers succeed in taste, creativity, and presentation they fail miserably in construction and structural integrity. All but once have the burgers slipped apart on me. The juices from the meat and the onion and the slippery texture of the sliced avocado combine to create one of the most effective lubricants known to science. Something always slips out of the undersized bun. This one caveat aside, I love these burgers and never miss a chance to have one when I’m in the area. For 800 yen during lunch time, and a little over 1000 after that, they’re worth the price.

We ate our burgers at one of the tables outside, underneath the ferris wheel, the roller coaster, in sunlit shade. As we ate, we eyed the beauties that like to hang out in Korakuen on a sunny Thursday afternoon.

There’s yet more to this wonderful day.

Caveman’s Daydream

09.10.08

misery carved into our faces
	we line the platform
waiting for the train
	sunlight happily smiling down
oppressive heat
	igniting humidity
as we try desperately to look
	tortured to be alive.
I look behind, down the terminal
	at the standing masses
stretching for eons
	and see decrepit cripples
clutching alms
	corpses rotting in the rain
cadavers and bones
	strewn like Froebel gifts
dust blasted by dry winds
	onto our granite slab
receding into a shallow sea
	its frothy surf washing up
the dead.

the train arrives, the doors hiss open
	and choking on a sickly sigh
take my step check my watch
	quartz hearts resonate with ours
the door gulps closed and we depart.

Happy Valentine’s

08.02.20

You know, I wonder why it is
	standing on the edge of certainty
toes curled over the brink
	eyes open head high sunlight
beaming all uncertain down in waves
	lungs heaving in and out
knuckles cracked shoulders loose
	lump in throat heart beat
spasmodic erratic pupils
	dilated mind collapsed and then—
the words jam up my windpipe
	I smile and listen walking
side to side those boots and mine
	crunching salty ice flows breath
condensed in puffs
	smoking dragons eyes
behind darkened glasses
	black pearls and then—
lay in bed ears swooning jazzy grooves
	if only I could
improvise a sentence
	open up but doubt sets in
my jaw clenched tight
	I'll be sleeping alone tonight.

What to do?

All my life I had a direction. It was always to graduate, to go on to the next tier of education. But now, on the eve of my final one, I don’t know what the hell to do. Where do I go from here? It’s not even a desire to stay on and go higher. I don’t particularly like it at school anymore—it all seems so fruitless, but maybe that’s just a consequence of majoring in English and writing. So, I leave, degree in hand, and where do I go, what do I do? What does anyone do?

I guess get a job, and then? Work. I really took it for granted that the course for the future is always so obvious—learn, keep going, do well (though that’s not always the case) and then: gratification. But I just don’t see it, there is nothing really gratifying about earning a degree. I suppose I’m just spoiled. So many people have no access to an education and when I get one I complain and ramble on and on about a lack of direction and ambition.

Nonetheless, I feel like I’m going to end up in a dead end job with no career, working just to fill a void—have something to do. There is nothing I really desire except new experiences, but that is such a vague desire that it’s almost inconsequential. I feel trapped with the prospects for my near future. Is this how everyone feels at this time in their lives? It seems like so many people have a dream they want to fulfill, but what if you have no real dreams?

It doesn’t seem like my dreams were ever shattered or broken. No catastrophic event in my life ever ruined them. I didn’t finalize my fate with vice. Instead they evaporated leaving behind an unpleasant residue. One day I woke up and ahead of me there was no dream, no nightmare—just a gray monotonous landscape of shit. I am at a loss.

The final anomaly is that I am not depressed. I like who I am. My life might not be the the most desirable, but it goes. What I don’t know is where it’s going from here. I am a lizard wandering alone in a vast desert. Is this what the rest of it will be–a long march toward a grave across a barren landscape shrouded in the lengthening evening shadow of youth?

I hope not.

The Cicada’s Cry

The train rushes along the remnants of the old river. Buttoned up sararimen sway and grimace in the afternoon rush hour and tiny school children in white pith helmet-like hats amble on and off the train at every station. They all look full of life and darkness, all with jet hair and smooth cheeks. I lean, tired, on the door and eventually disembark at a little busy station in the suburban commercial borough of Koganei. The Tokyo eventide slams me in the face with all its heat and perfume. I cross the platform, down the stairs, and pass through the gates like one of a million complacent cattle. From the station I make my way past the sweatshop drone of the pachinko parlor and gradually into a more verdant territory, lined less with ramen shops and parked bicycles and more with family homes and trees. It’s here that they catch up to me, those old cicadas.

continued on scribd.

I’m Sick

05.29.07

Cold—

cork shoved up one nostril
leaky faucet in the other
bundle of razorblades in your throat
double knot tied in your forehead
aches in your muscles
itches in your flesh
snotty tissues stuffed down your pockets
eyes swollen, sockets pallid
nose flushed sanguine
lukewarm fever sweat dripping incessantly down your brow
and above all your head lost in delirium—
nothing seems real, are you awake or asleep?
		*aughuaghm*
	you cough—
	you're sick.
Phlegm piles up in your throat,
nowhere to spit—
give a cringe as you swallow.
	Through the window, a ray of healthy sunshine
	washes across your despondent visage—
	you look outside and the city hums about its day,
	as the people bustle, and the trains run along,
	and the summer cicadas strum their lutes in the trees—
		*aughuaghmuaghm*
	—you cough.

The Addict

        There I was, soaking it in. The cold air still and thick; smooth as silk I dragged it. And off we went—little did I know. The park was vast and empty, the great barren expanse between us and them. But soon that all changed. The park cruelly turned on us, became claustrophobic, panic ensued, I was trapped. “Toss it! Toss it! Toss it!” My chest caves in, my guts fall into an abyss, I feel like vomiting. Do I run across the void and abandon my confederates? No, I try to act cool; show my face casually to my judges, like I just emerged from the womb: innocent. There I am, there they are—the proverbial deer and the headlights it stares into. “All of you get your hands out of your pockets, and come out here. Stand in front of the car.” I stood and waited for a blink of an eye in the scope of the headlights, my pupils huge, scratched by the light. He went around for a look and came back. Flash light in one hand, his other hand loosely clasped I felt relieved. “They got nothing on us,” I thought. Then I see it, my cheap source of pleasure. I don’t even have the decency to be rebellious or defiant—search for escape or dreams. I have nothing to rebel against or escape from. I’m merely selfish. That’s all I’m in it for: me.

        They knew what we were doing, there was nothing we could say to convince them otherwise. They could smell it the way a dog smells fear. Besides, it was thick as muck on us. One of them questioned me. I spoke with the scent rich in my mouth so I avoided his face. I kept my composure somewhat, the adrenaline helped with that. They checked us all for the shit. Came up empty. That’s what saved us. We may have been stupid, but not quite that much. They turned up nothing, and they either decided we’re not worth the effort for our meager amount, or they were just lenient. There was a point where I was pretty sure I was going to be sleeping on a hard bench that night, but that feeling was far gone, replaced by humility. I felt more pathetic and dumb than scared or worried.

Yellowjacket

01.01.07

So, there was this
		yellowjacket,
	that landed on my windowsill—
the screen was up,
	and the storm window open,
and so that's how he must've
			gotten in.
	I
	took no notice of him there,
closed the window and
		went about my business—
time went by as usual,
		waiting for no one.
				And eventually
I found it stuffy,
		and thought it would be nice
	to crack
		the window,
			let in some air—
and by chance let out
			a guest.
				But
	unbeknown to me
			the wasp
		struggled for an hour
	against the glass
in futility.
		He flew against the pane,
	over and over again
unable to comprehend
		the staggering force
	that kept him sealed
in my room—
		a mausoleum for a
			variety of creatures
		with segmented limbs
			and exoskeletons.
He bounced pathetically off that
	amorphous solid
		till every ounce of life
			was gone from him.
And he lay there
	when I found him—
		and when I freed him,
			he did nothing.

Renewal

12.05.06

We used to play on the old farm,
chasing cats and chickens,
eating apples and chucking
their cores into the beat fields.

We'd go into the barn,
and jump around in the hay,
look at the cow in its stable,
swatting the flies with its lashes.

We were afraid to climb the ladder
into the attic in the barn, not
because it was dark up there,
but because the ladder was high.

We went into the farmhouse,
old and rundown, and played
with the ancient sewing machine,
left all derelict and abandoned.

We ran the hall with the specters
of the family that lived there,
their stove still warm, the house
still filled with their toil.

We cried when they tore the house
down, to make way for a new one.