NON SEQUITUR SYNDROME

GORO TAKANO

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York
Non Sequitur Syndrome
by Goro Takano
Copyright © 2018

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza

Cover Art: Ooze by Yu Shiotsuki

First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-312-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018939201

BlazeVOX [books]
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Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

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Fifty

A husband stands alone absent-minded

before a small kitchen garden left unweeded
All the flowers loved by his deceased wife
are gone with her passing ― he is now fifty

He doesn’t know that the place of his house

used to be occupied by the chief of a tiny village
When a mighty famine took a heavy toll
of his villagers’ lives ― the chief was fifty

The desperate chief had nothing better than to

offer his only daughter to the indignant Divine
After the end of the famine, her spirit came back
to her father’s village in ruins and unweeded

The husband still stands alone absent-minded

No one helps him walk into the dense weeds yet
How long will it take him to stop weeping
and start weeding to see the flowers again

13
Andalusian Cat

Recently I fell into an inconspicuous but awkward habit: time after time I
intentionally isolate myself from the world around me and lead my mind straight to my
own bygone days to wonder what was the true meaning or value of each critical moment in
them. I personally don’t like this kind of nostalgia, but I can hardly get out of it, maybe
because of my age (I’m fifty now). Sometimes, what is worse, my mind is unconsciously
dragged into this trick before I notice it. “Isn’t this a sign of cognitive impairment?” ― I
even feared once or twice, but, so far, there seems to be no serious symptom in me. So,
normally, I bury such concern into oblivion and, while being otherwise engaged,
momentarily get infatuated with such nonsensical questions as “Why did I do that then?”
or “How is that peculiar experience connected to what I am today?”

The other day the daydream-like moment caught me again all of a sudden and
shut me from the eyes of others staring at me, although I was at work then (by the way, I’ve
been making my living by teaching English at a Japanese university). It was during my class
that the odd habit sneaked back into me ― more accurately, it was when my eyes were
somehow riveted to a certain English word in the textbook I was holding right before a
classroomful of students. The following broken query (in my native language Japanese,
mind you) slowly swept me away: “The existence ― beyond the boundary of human
knowledge ― God shows it to us humans ― people often say ― only once or twice in a
lifetime ― such a religious instant ― does it come to an atheist like me? ― did it,
already?” I’m afraid all my students were surely perplexed by their teacher’s abrupt uncanny
silence. The textbook word I was intently staring at was “revelation.”

The silence was quite short-lived then, of course. Yet, during this odd interval, I
saw a series of different past memories crossing around the back of my head, all of which
were, after all, lacking in dramatic components, not to mention religious ones. For instance,
one of them went like this:

I’m now sitting at a corner table in a café adjacent to a city library. I’m waiting for
someone, probably. A foreign couple is sitting right behind me. Husband and wife,
probably. Behind the couple are a Japanese young woman and her child. There seems to be
no other customers in the cafe. Totally let loose, an old black cat is weaving her way
through numerous table legs, calmly and somewhat melancholically. A cup of fresh coffee
is already placed in front of me, along with the café’s famous specialty: a plate of Mont-
blanc aux marrons. Nothing is unusual there.

I stopped by this café on my way back home from a movie theater in town. What
did I watch there? Luis Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou. It was my very first time to watch the

14
surreal “masterpiece,” but I could not enjoy it at all, honestly. I usually have some respect
toward surrealism, but this short film was too much for me. Almost all of its scenes were
totally against my preferences, and the most nauseating moment for me was its famous (or
notorious) opening scene where a close-up of a woman’s eyeball is meaninglessly cut with a
knife. As soon as I left the theater, I decided to stop by the cafe for a change of pace ― I
just wanted to forget the grotesqueness of the close-up as soon as possible.

Now the old black cat quietly stops near my toes. Her morbid but gracious eyes
begin to stare up at my moving mouth. I’m in the middle of taking a big mouthful of the
Mont-blanc. The owner of the café walks slowly to me and asks: “Would you like another
glass of water?” Oh, please, thanks, I say. Looking down at his cat, the owner smiles wryly
and says: “Believe me or not, her lifetime is now ending. Unfortunately, she is a terminal-
cancer patient.”

Meanwhile, the Japanese young woman is listening with a smile to her eight-or-
nine-year-old boy’s big-voice talk: “So, this is what our teacher said, Mom: one fine day, a
pig and a dog go together to a food court, and the rich pig buys and eats a piece of a
gorgeous pizza, while the poor dog just watches it without eating anything. The dog goes:
‘Hey, Mr. Pig, next time I find a yummy-looking bone somewhere I will happily share it
with you, so can I take a bite or two from your pizza?’ The pig’s full tummy is already
hurting, but he answers: ‘I’m sorry but I cannot, Mr. Dog ― I paid for this, so this is all
mine.’ They go out of the food court together and meet a scary-looking hunter with a
shotgun in his hand. The dog quickly runs away, but the pig is just stuffed with the
gorgeous pizza, so he cannot run fast enough. The pig is shot immediately and killed. After
sunset, the dog goes back to the place where the pig was shot and finds in a dustbin a huge
bone with a mouth-watering chunk of meat still sticking to it. The dog sucks the bone
through and through, feeling very, very happy.”

While the boy’s mother is about to ask him whether or not “that was the pig’s
own bone,” the boy adds loudly: “Our teacher asked us what we can learn from this story
― how would you answer him, Mom?”

I would answer this way, I say to myself, while genteelly forking up another morsel
of the French-style cake. Money can buy anything, people often say. We should stop once
and ask ourselves who made such a horrible private-ownership system possible and so
common. Everything in this world should end up public property in the not too distant
future, like all the books in the city library, shouldn’t they? The kid’s dog-and-pig parable is
a biting satire on the society we inhabit now, though he seems to know nothing about what
a satire means!

15
 Now I find my next vacant chair already taken quietly by the old black cat. She is
anxiously staring at my crème-stained lips. She must be a foreign species. As if she is trying
to ask me for a nibble, the adorable creature breathes a faint but coquettish tone of voice.
She might be my type if she were a person.

The foreign woman discussing with her partner behind my back is also my type,
in fact. I strain my ears to catch their conversation more accurately, and know that they are
disagreeing with each other regarding a refugee problem, which seems like their biggest
issue. I turn around a little and squint at her drawing carefully on a piece of paper
something like a layout of a new house. And she says that, in their house, there are still
some vacancies in which, at the maximum, another family of four could manage to live.
Her partner inclines his head and begins to rebut: “Living with a refugee family is really
easier said than done. How can we distinguish a family decent enough to live with us from
a not-so-decent one? Where must we go to find such decent refuges, first of all? How can
we verify correctly their good manners? We even need to prove to them we are good
enough to ensure their safety, and the entire formalities for this proof must be awfully
complicated. Don’t say you will happily skip this regular procedure and, say, randomly call
out to one refugee-looking person after another on the street ― then you will be easy prey
for some swindlers!”

I scorch his opinion in my head: this world is full of such narrow-minded views
like yours ― you should be ashamed of yourself, mister ― it is a damn pity for her to keep
living with this self-centered bastard ― why doesn’t she turn to me once and ― “My cat
must be disturbing you, sorry about that,” the café owner says to me while patting the cat’s
head affectionately. Her feline eyes and the foreign woman’s ones are somehow overlapped
in my mind. “This pussy and I have been side by side for a long time,” the owner adds. “I
wish I could take her place and shoulder all her cancer pain ― every time I take her to a
vet, she refuses every treatment for some unknown reason ― she doesn’t want to die so
soon, I believe, but ―.” I know what you mean, I reply immediately. I really do ― your
feeling would be none other than mine if I were you.

Everything in this café story thereafter turns far opaquer. Didn’t the old black cat
attempt to touch my cake recklessly and eat it up, just like a poor dog longing desperately
for a piece of pizza? Didn’t the tip of the fork in my right hand aim straight at her face? ―
I paid for this, so this is all mine ― the cat’s eyes shone invitingly like a knife, just like
those of a hunter with a shotgun in his hand, didn’t they? Didn’t my own snorting (like a
pig’s) surprise me? ― hell no ― I simply doubt this particular part of the memory.
Nothing like that ought to exist in my life history, and it is surely a fabrication. But ―
when the cat was pushed off the table with the fork squarely jabbed into the middle of her

16
forehead, a beam from her eyes slashed the surface of my eyeballs, just like in a movie,
didn’t it?

No, it didn’t ― or did it? Didn’t I push the cancer cat as gently as I could, with no
fork in my hand, and keep her decently away from the cake? I can easily prove it ― neither
the café owner nor the other customers looked startled then, for instance. Why cannot I
lose this terrible sensation of having held a fork tight and stabbed some creature with it?
Why cannot I lose this weird sensation of having been a slave to some invisible tyrannical
thing? Why cannot I lose this tragicomic hollowness, this strange feeling that some
frivolous fellow has rewritten me without my advance permission and forced the rewritten
me to shoulder a cardinal sin? Don’t say even this is revelation, please ―

Then I came back to myself and winced at the fact that I was still on duty in the
classroom. I hastily cast a downward glance onto a page of the textbook left open in my
hand. The wonder-stricken eyes of my students seemed to prick my skin, and I could not
look back at them at all. What was the English essay I was reading with the students
about? ― that was the one about a worldwide refugee problem, coincidentally.

During the rest of the class, I continued to be vaguely fettered by the following
fantastic questions, although I kept pretending not to before all my students: if I were an
old book which had been left untouched for an incredibly long time in a dim nook of the
city library and would eternally remain dusty as it stands, would I give a shout like “IS
THERE ANYONE WHO WILL KINDLY READ ME? MY INSIDE CAN BE ALL
YOURS!”? ― if I were an animal bone which had been left discarded for an incredible
long time in a dustbin with some edible meat still attached to its surface, would I speak in a
whisper, for instance, “IS THERE ANYONE WHO WILL KINDLY SUCK ME?
THIS MEAT CAN BE SIMPLY FOR YOUR HUNGER!”?

Right before the end of the class, I tried looking back at the sneer-like smiles of my
students. And I shot my final look at the textbook’s English word which had triggered the
strange world of the old black cancer cat. Then I finally realized my stupid mistake: it was
not spelled “r-e-v-e-l-a-t-i-o-n,” but “r-e-v-o-c-a-t-i-o-n.”

17
Death and the Wife

Sunday morning Britain’s departure from EU still captivates the public

When hurrying into the sickroom and facing an almost inaudible voice ―
“Take a deep breath, first of all”
Nodding and trying to be calmer, hearing the next order ―
“Lift up both my knees slowly”
Getting the cold swollen ones to bend gently
Hearing a beastlike groan rumbling out of the bedridden tender throat
And its echo adding ― “No more talk about cancer, please”
Answering “Of course not” and patting the cheeks
When the next order solicits feebly ― “Now I want an éclair”
For the discolored teeth the sweet is one of the things long forbidden to chew
Coming back to the sickroom with the shopping and
Watching it devoured like carrion consumed by a hungry animal in the jungle
But only two morsels of the sweet end up gone
Being asked to eat the rest abandoned at the bedside
Cramming it into the already full belly

Finding the pocketbook version of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull at the bedside

Whispering ― “I didn’t know you were reading this”
A broken answer after a short interval ― “Even this size is too heavy for me to lift”
“Then I will read it for you” ― no reply comes back
Except a series of vomit-like dry coughs
Apparently for discharging the water from the lungs for dear life
Then the next order ― “Don’t go, stay with me”
The lonesome voice is reminiscent of a sky-blue dress selected
The previous night with a good weep as the one worn for the coffin
Answering “Of course” and getting close to the supine face
Receiving a couple of light slaps on one of the cheeks
Along with a jest-like word ― “You look hopelessly pathetic today”
An instinctive reply ― “I will not marry anyone else”
A frowned response ― “That’s not my business anymore”

Far beyond this town

Dinosaurs still infest
And this country is still
Ruled by samurais
No nuclear weapons are dropped yet
There is still a long way to go

18
Until the eradication of cancer

The soundless-thunder-like airwave fills the sickroom

Evening sunlight comes through the window and is subtly reflected
Over the pink pajama sprawling listlessly on the bed
The sunlight severely compels a mix of things around the bed ―
A teacup, a straw, an old pair of chopsticks, a small spoon, a disposable toothbrush
A pack of nursing care diapers and a pile of towels ―
To make a final decision whether it is time for them
To transfer from the ordinary into the extraordinary
A soliloquy ― “Everything is tangled up with its history”
A slow response ― “I have no more interest in the past”
An instant reply ― “You don’t want to meet anyone else?”
A careless response ― “No ― lucky you”
The faint smile is accompanied by another series of heavy coughs
“How does your selected one look today?”
“You remind me of the main character of Kenzaburo Oe’s A Personal Matter”
“What kind of story is it?”
“No more time to explain it”

The gaunt face asks ― “How do I look today?”

“You hold me in awe, nothing but awe”
Hiding its tears, the skinny face begs ― “I want you to kill me”
Rooted to the spot ― staring at the gradual change of the wistful look
The sunken face mumbles ― “I cannot wait to see what’s waiting for me
After my passing ― what a thrill”
A broad smile appears ― almost impossible to keep back tears
Casting a quick glance over the outside landscape slowly turning red
To find a playful seagull disregarding its flock
And repeating again and again upspins and nose-dives alone
Calling the bird “Jon” wordlessly ― a reply comes slowly
From the bed ― “Did you call me?”

The wall directly opposite the pillow is feebly pointed to

Pinned there is a photo of evergreens whose young leaves
Start to change their color deciduously due to the sunset
Their heavenliness invokes the sandman

Far beyond this town

All dinosaurs have already perished

19
And the samurai nation
Has already collapsed
Countless nuclear weapons
And weapons of mass destruction
Have already been used
The extinction of cancer
Must be close at hand

The next order ― “Raise the room temperature slightly ― the remote is behind you”
Aroused from the sudden sleepiness by this thin voice
A look of reproach is in front ― “Cannot you do me such a small favor?
Forgot why I asked you to stay here? ― pull yourself together”
A silly joke ― “Will you kindly live a little longer if I raise the temperature now?”
An almost inaudible reply ― “You’re fortunately invited here
Not to miss my last moment ― so pull yourself together”
A soliloquy with a half astonished look ― “I could not imagine at all
We could become a husband and wife like this”
A deliberate reply ― “I’m much obliged to this disease for its kindness”
Saying to the closed eyes in an undertone on a whim ―
“Hey Jon” ― the sickroom phone rings
Wondering what is spreading in the opposite world of the receiver
Wondering whether it is light or darkness or the nation fluctuating
Between hope and despair concerning the word “DEPARTURE”
Hearing a nurse’s voice while neglecting the ringing ―
“Here is your wife’s dinner” ― the tightly shut eyelids on the bed
Open slowly like the eyes of a maverick bird fading into the void
The mouth smiles and says ― “I will not go as you want me to yet”
The eroticism of a woman in extreme fright is floating on the lips

Again from beyond this town

The roars of dinosaurs pierce the darkness
Echoing with them are the loud laughs of samurais
Killing one another in ecstasy
In a remote no-nuclear battlefield
Both ears are tightly covered with both hands
While a washed-up sky-blue dress is flitting around
In the sky without any wearer in it

20
Single-mindedly

Remaining standing behind a tiny

Old scheduled-to-be-demolished
Shrine on the outskirts of
This town is a short
Sacred tree on whose each
Twig one wish paper hangs

On each oblong wish paper

One tanka is hurriedly scribbled
With elegant brush strokes

A young couple strays into

This bleak quiet backyard
The man says his father
Wrote all those amateurish tanka
In his lifetime ― “Dad had
No wish to show his
Works to others ― he just
Brought his tanka here and
Tied them to these branches
And stared at them alone”

The man and his father

Were like twins ― the woman
Starts reading some wish papers

Waiting ahead is the guillotine?

Or is a flower garden?
Roll the dice right now
The night you’ve finally decided
To swerve from the old track

While frozen to the marrow

In the woods I eavesdrop on a giant
Fir tree’s threatening demand for
Every young and inexperienced creature’s
Act of towering without help

21
The man confesses his old
Hate for this shrine and
His late father’s tanka ― “But
I can enjoy as long as you’re with me”
The woman imagines her future
With him while unfastening two
Wish papers from the twigs

There is a fatal difference

Between my past life and
An eagle flying slowly over
The sky-splitting borderline between
Winter and the coming spring

Here’s a sheet of music

Of an idiot drifting alone
After turning his back on
A sound woman who was
Dying to be pregnant

The man touches those two

Papers as if to stroke
Them and turns his eyes
To other papers on which
The woman’s eyes also fall

Waiting impatiently for your return

Through the night single-mindedly
I start counting the number
Of visible stars and stardust
From the beginning once again

Dreaming of
Your looming up from that immediate corner
I still remain
Standing in this
Scheduled-to-be-demolished site

Once the young couple holds

Each other’s hand the bell
Of the tiny shrine rings

22
Turn

A solitary woman enters the main entrance of a hospital, which is already a familiar place
to her. However, she has never felt its entire building so threatening before.

Why can nobody but me notice the earth trembling violently like this? As long as they
remain like that in this building, they may be crushed to death soon. Why cannot they
realize the approaching risk? In this emergency, every house on earth can be a fatal
instrument for us, no matter how attached we have been to them. Why cannot those
people be aware of it?

The woman walks slowly with one of her hands touching the hospital wall all the time, as if
to support her own fragile body. Her destination is an examination room where her regular
doctor awaits her.

She finds the doctor staring silently at the X-ray photo of her body. Isn’t that her liver? She
remembers him looking at her lung’s X-ray in the last meeting. Two meetings ago, her
pancreas’s X-ray. Three meetings ago, her womb’s X-ray. Now she sits next to him and
starts gazing at today’s photo.

Pointing at the lesion on the X-ray, the doctor starts talking politely about something
important for her, but it doesn’t mean anything to her. The only phrase she can barely
catch is “NOT MUCH TIME LEFT,” which has never been used in this room before, if
her memory is correct. All the other words she cannot heed today will be, even if they
somehow reach her ears, fresh no more for her.

Gradually, the blackness covering the lesion area seems to her like a giant pond. Looking
more closely, she finds various subtle differences of colors on the pond’s uniform-looking
black surface. Every dividing line shows, for instance, the blackish red next to the reddish
black adjoining the reddish, blackish blue.

Now her mind is instantly led to the work of her favorite artist ― a red big rectangular
canvas ― another (blackish) red floats on it ― below this red, three more different red
spaces (whitish, greenish, and vermilionish) line up, as if they meet one another
accidentally ― ah, Mark Rothko. She is passionately lured to move into his world in
which those shapeless colors infest.

The doctor’s voice is clearly heard at last: “On your medical certificate I’ll mention nuclear
pollution as the root cause. However, the real main cause is probably something else.
Anyway, by using this certificate, you’ll be able to receive various preferential treatments

23
from the government. For instance ― are you interested in the Olympic games held now
in this country? You can go into every stadium for free, watch every live performance for
free, anytime you like, always sitting in a first-class seat.”

The woman is now walking to the Olympic swimming venue. She is not alone this time ―
walking with her is a group of patients certified as “polluted” like her.

One of them roars: “Why Olympic games in this emergency? This country is just stupid!”
Others join it: “So many people already left for overseas, I heard” ― “Everybody already
knows it, so how come the media never touches it?” ― “We are already polluted enough,
so that means we don’t have to run about this way and that anymore, right?” ― “The true
winners are us only, not them, right?”

Once they all take their designated first-class seats, the final of the individual medley race
begins in the swimming pool below. Sinewy bodies dive into the water with a big splash.
Someone whispers in the woman’s ear: “I heard that every one of those players is an
android” ― “So are all our doctors!”

Fixing each swimmer’s struggle with a silent stare exhausts the woman sooner than she has
expected. She starts looking idly over the whole rectangular space of the blue water. “This
is another Rothko, isn’t it?” ― as soon as she feels so, as if various flowers sprout up from
the ground, diverse colors ― red, green, black, and many more ― emerge sporadically on
the surface of the water.

“This way, please” ― when someone gently escorts her to the swimming pool, she is
already naked. She nods and starts walking down. When she stands at the edge of the
water, an air of uncanniness is nobly shown to the entire spectators through her emaciated
limbs, withered breasts, and almost falling-out hair.

All the people in the venue stare at her silently and enviously. They look completely frozen,
as if terror roots them to the spot.

The woman keeps swimming gracefully in the unmanned water. Am I also an android, she
thinks. If not, will I end up nothing but bleached bones? ― she stops counting how many
turns she has made.

24
Crabs

A missile’s blastoff echoes throughout a late-winter valley

A crowd of red crabs awakens from their hibernation
In a big hole of a fallen tree

Who launched the missile? For what?

To which direction did it fly?

The crabs have no idea

They go out of the hole and start marching in good order

Heading toward the seashore hidden by a mountain range

Why do they have to move to that particular quiet beach?

Why nowhere else? How did they learn which way to go?

They don’t remember anymore

On the way to the peak of a mountain

The file of the small crustaceans crosses a freeway
Vehicle tires squash some of them and speed away

Why are those cars running in such a hurry?

Where are they going? What are they escaping from?

Again the crabs have no idea

With their faces buried in their cellphones

Zombie-like people walk hurriedly
Their shoes crush some of the crabs to death

Who are those zombies?

What kind of information are they seeking so desperately?
What are they so scared of?

Those questions are beyond the crabs

The red-shell survivors pass the peak and march further

Through the next town’s main street
They see a number of human faces

25
Some laughing ― some crying ― some grieving
Is this really a living town?
Aren’t all these figures mere phantoms?

Incomprehensible for the remaining crabs

They happen to pass by a naked man and a naked woman

Making love hungrily in the deep woods

Are they the next Adam and Eve?

Aren’t they mere mannequins abandoned last night?

No more time for the crabs to think about it

Their final destination is choked up with innumerable metal containers

Classified either as “BIOLOGICAL” or as “CHEMICAL”
They block the crabs’ view of the turbulent waters

What are those containers for?

Where are they going to be carried?
Are they going to be wasted?

No matter for the remnant crabs

As soon as they soak into the ocean

A litter of used condoms clings like jellyfish to their pincers
And leads some of them to suffocation

What does a vestige of the human body fluid

In those rubber drifts suggest?

Why do the dying crabs have to care about it?

From under the hard shells of the silent stragglers

Abundant eggs are emitted into the sea

Without knowing what will happen hereafter

To the eggs as well as to themselves
The bobbing crabs start returning to their old home in the fallen tree

26
Is it really the right choice for them?
Is there any fortune still left in the big hole?

How can they know?

27
The Ugliest Look on Earth

A local carnivalesque parade passing underneath a hospital on the heights

A blanket of rape blossoms on the site of the demolished residential area

A combination of lion dances, deer dances, and demon dances

A portable shrine adorned with a big banner: “No Speedy Recovery? Why?”

A main entrance of the maternity ward where flowers for a memorial service remain
arranged

The arrival of a man and his wife unfamiliar to the recent tragedy of this town

A middle-aged stony-faced nurse leading the man into another building

A corner of the uppermost floor

The lonesome footsteps of the man entering a dismal small room

The vacant windowless space named “Semen Test Prep Room”

A big mirror attached to the right-hand wall

A giant photograph pasted on the opposite-side wall

A life-sized naked woman on the photo

The mechanical voice of the nurse telling him to masturbate there

A paper cup for gathering his sperm

His wife and a male doctor waiting in the first-floor examination room

The nurse’s expressionless exit

The quickly locked door

His prompt undressing as if he is pressed for time

28
The old wizened genitalia

A direct confrontation with the beaming face on the photo

The ugliest look on earth

Impatience with the difficult start of onanism

His idling fancy amid soundlessness

The tugged-out remembrance

An attempt to evoke the most beautiful woman in his life

The imaginary masquerading of his first choice

A clichéd preference for “a beautiful doctor in a white coat”

The worst ugliness skillfully overwritten behind his closed eyes

The selfish, gradual commencement of erection

The composure of the woman doctor announcing the man’s brain-examination result

His wife’s yearning for pregnancy

The 3-D image of the man’s seven-colored convoluted blood vessels

Nameless navel strings buried in the underworld

An agreeable impression made by the solid beauty of his own hemisphere

The silence of his fantastic doctor staring at an uncanny shadow on the image

A sweet sigh inviting him next to eyesight test

The incremental fatigue of his right hand

The wet lips instructing him to read, while covering his right eye, three infinitesimal words
on the eye chart: “WAR IS OVER”

29
His left eye misreading the sentence as “SEX IS OVER”

The first-floor male doctor’s speech: “Thanks to the dead, we mortals can remain alive”

The illusion of a child refused by the future

The reverberating countenance of an infant rejecting the past

A voice blaming the man for his sterility

A voice praising his sterility for forming the true happiness

The desolation like a nuclear test site in his opening eyes

The bewitchment like bioluminescent bacteria in his closed eyes

“My pregnancy and that horrible incident?”

The uncertainty about the hidden connections between the two

The next instruction to read, covering his left eye this time, another part of the same eye
chart

A long line of microscopic alphabets

A careful gaze at the line: “even flowers for mourning end up garbage today in a fiery
furnace what does reincarnation mean to you folks”

The man’s sudden impulse to conceal his own aging

A whim to reply this way: “no matter how many times I prowl inside a hospital to smell
death for my poetry my eyes are always frozen to the outside”

The woman doctor’s pleasure-spoiled look

No more possibility to fixate clearly on her lewdness

Delusion: “She may be a bloodstained icon”

Diagnosis: glaucoma or detachment of the retina

30
The start of blood-sample taking right after funduscopy

An urge to strip down the beautiful woman doctor

The gradual ascent of the parade up the heights

A desert shown on a color monitor in the blood-sample-taking room

A masked man cursing his hostage in the sandstorm for blaspheming his own god

The blackish blood slowly extracted through a hypodermic needle

The fresh blood gushing out of a cut in the hostage’s neck

The limit of the imagination

The moment of the change from the illusory half-naked doctor to the nameless smiling
ugly object on the wall

The numbness piercing his right hand

Waves rising on the opposite side of the Earth

The enormousness of the waves moving around the globe at the speed of light

The milky fluid slopping into the paper cup

His own reflection in the big mirror

The ugliest look on earth

A swift move down to the examination room

A chant from the outside: “The living is the living, the dead is the dead, and never the
twain shall meet”

The male doctor’s another speech: “The only asset left here is our local tradition”

The first-floor doctor’s dignified manner in front of a computer screen

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A high-power close-up of the man’s semen

An abrupt jump to “a peasant uprising” in his association of ideas

The solitude of the riot leader dying for his one and only justice

The likelihood of a secret agreement between the surviving peasants and the oppressors

His wife’s intent stare at the dance of the sperms to the music of the parade

A corner of the giant photograph at the top floor

A minute-letter note: “The best male festival dancer in town – the location of his remains
is still unidentified”

The ebb of the sperms out of the man’s view

Trinity emerging as a substitute

The happy-looking dance of flowers to the rhythm of a desert breeze

The fantastic woman doctor’s pleasure-spoiled look

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