wants to leave the place.”
"But that could just mean failure to adjust.”
"Then again, we are expats also.”
Then China, finally, came to the fore, the great unspoken white elephant that influenced everything, had a part in dreams, analysis, systems of thought. Even in the KEIWHA’ scenario.
"Rumors have been reaching Home Island Japan lately of the existence of a radical labor moment in China’s western provinces, where veneration for a mythical figure named ‘MAO Zedong’ has been renewed among the increasing tide of Hindu nationalism…”
"MAO Zedong, famed labor leader of the 1930s, disappeared into the Western mountains after the fall of Nanjing , but it is said that he has been converted into a quasi-religious figure, still alive although he would be one hundred ten years old…”
"The Japanese government, which together with the former 3rd Germany stamped out all insurrectionary labor movements earlier in the 20th century, is said to be deploying new forces into China, where some journalists are claiming a ‘secret war’ is brewing…”
"Casualties are said to be the low thousands, with the recent purchase of additional plastics by the Manchurian Force believed to be evidence of corpse disposal...”
Uchronie can go both ways. If TUSK’s first settlement of things was a bit too generous to the Empire of Japan, perhaps it is too aggressive to envision IJC as a chemical empire, deliberately spraying biopesticides and chlorine gas to control vast swaths of Siberian, Chinese, and ultimately Indian territory.
"Can you imagine how that would change society?”
"At the very least fashions would be quite different.”
"The fundamentals of the economy would be different; it would be more about control of chemical resources.”
"Petroleum used more for plastics synthesis rather than automobiles.”
The point of all this was not to just go over speculative histories. Its main point was to understand underlying values. The girls put themselves into neat rows and corridors because they were collectivist. JOHANN and TUSK spoke Asian languages overlayed onto a Western personality; they felt the dissonance when they spoke the languages. But they were again feeding into a Western-East Asian system where one believed the other the converse; the Indian/Hindu third leg of the tripod was what kept coming out; it was what made TUSK believe in the primacy of the elephantine.
"But why the elephant? Why always this animal?”
"Not always this animal. The monkey, too; the gorilla. This was the logo for a guerilla-based operation; this was the most sickening animal of all.”
"And with a gorilla you would bring war, revolution, counter-terror?”
"With a gorilla I would merely observe.”
TUSK was in line with a new psychological dimension of artificial television. First the auteur would make the standard high school series, then he would spin it into psychological introspection, and then finally at the very end he would offer a vision of alternative genres, the romantic comedy, the space opera; there would be little else to cover.
"Space opera?”
"University campus as strictly delimited no-space.”
"And genres are just reflections of widespread interest; they can be read as psychological developments of the time.”
The weather all program long had been good. As TUSK and JOHANN ascended their way to the undergraduate dorm, it was sunny, and it had been sunny with snow at the very end, a symbol of purity, a final closing to things. The campus was empty now; it seemed things had finally closed, and bereft of students, temporarily, Keiwha (not Keiwha’) seemed to be temporarily holding its breath before March would bring its crop of temporary students, and then April brought the new year. Seoul was going on, unconcerned; it had had past history with TUSK, who had once been required to spend six unemployed months there. He turned when they reached the top of the hill.
"What exactly is the point of imperialism?”
JOHANN considered. “The ordering of things?”
"And girls are just the side-effect.”
"Apparently so.”
"I disagree. The women of a culture define its culture; it’s the girls pleading the suicide bombers on that define the PLO, for example.”
"Let’s meet up again in China; I will go to the Expo.”
"You should definitely look up my friend in Sanlitun as he’s an old university close friend. Hey, strange, I never did ask you, what do you do in China?”
"I’m on a Chamber of Commerce exchange programme, but it’s ending soon. Soon I have to find a real job. How about you?”
"I do university applications for the children of the local Air Force base senior officers and all the dusty little provincial governors. Actually I really impress people when I say that but they’re all squat little monolinguals.”
Tears, laughter, lies, and clever conversation could not elicit anything more than what happened, and everyone that attended agreed it had been a classic session. JOHANN, denying it later, said, “It feels like the center of the universe.” AKEMI posted on her blog “Three magic weeks in Korea!” MIKI made similar sentiments; TUSK, for gone in his mind’s storm, could not disagree in the slightest.
The pleasure of endings is that they allow final scavengings, summations, and analysis. The biggest unreported matter was a private drama that played out between SHINO and TUSK. TUSK had tricked SHINO into looking at him for an extended period of time in Week 1. In Week 3, the Monday after Valentine’s Day, TUSK got chocolates for everyone and everyone ate them—but SHINO made a production out of it, first hiding it behind her namecard and then slowly drawing it out, implicitly communicating “Haha! I know I’m the one you really wanted to give this too. Nobody else matters!” It brought into mind the question of “balance;” that everyone managed to retaliate at least once.
So too KANYE. On Wednesday he brought winter melon (not watermelon) for his classmates. To serve it up, he also brought a very large and very shiny knife, which he waved around before inserting into the soft pale flesh of the melon. “I’m just joking guys, of course I wouldn’t stab you all to death.” JOHANN noticed. So did SHINO, who now felt just sympathetic enough (she had made a show of avoiding him a few days earlier) to accept his friend request on FB later on.
This became the topic of massive conversation later. JOHANN felt it marked the complete defeat of KANYE, who actually up to then only had suffered minor losses of reputation. “But with that knife, he was showing that he was actually toothless to defend himself socially. All of us were indeed tensing up a little inside in case he flipped out; it was the moment of final defeat.”
"God he thought it was a joke.”
"But everyone was just the tiniest bit on their feet.”
Balance also played out in the dormitory the final night. One of the halfie girls and TUSK had a conversation; she had been interested in JOHANN, but there was no point in moving it forward now, the very last night of the program. TUSK, who had avoided participating in the scramble against KANYE, put up a picture of a gorilla on his Facebook and a very subtle semiotician would see it as commentary of the week’s earlier happenings. And GREENEYES, the slightly previously hinted at half-Swede at the programme, looked up at the closing ceremony; she would become more prominent the second year (and both TUSK and GREENEYES knew the other would be there).
Is this about the song? Yes it is. Some details must be obscured, but if Ganesh is about learning, boundaries, language, Shiva is about the dance, the song, destruction. TUSK sang; his song was misinterpreted by nerd-girl of the Fulbrighters; music was prominent at both M2 and NB, and Lady Gaga was quite big this year, she dominated popular culture in the way Love Psychedelico’s Standing Bird was complete full-spectrum for summer of ’95. Absurdism, the philosophy; Dadaism, the aesthetic; these were hip; these were hot, and they would affect even the way people spoke, sang, dreamt, lov
ed. “And you walk away,” sang TUSK; and they walked away.
Week 1: Freud; Week 2: Marx; Week 3 then leaves Levi-Strauss and Jung, pop-psychology into a sea of glossy girl magazines and way-too-facile analysis. Bordering on the E of EI, the S of SN, the T of FT, and the J of PJ, TUSK interviewed for a career analysis firm upon return to Mainland, and all they could talk about was Myers-Brigg. He lost one major point in a power struggle with a native, but picked the right Indian middle-manager to support the next month. He was recontracted; he lost weight and became a vegetarian; he got his groove back. JOHANN took a job at the German stock exchange: they ate up the US markets in about a year’s time and were underway to swallow up a secondary Chinese one as well. Germany was doing well. TUSK thought up ways to talk to people to elicit MBTI naturally; he considered the Five-Factor Model, he considered Neuroticism one of the most central axes.
All this analysis failed to capture the real point, however. Language study itself altered people. From the Subject-Verb-Object structures of German and English, the Germanic-speakers went to Subject-Object-Verb, a more passive way of seeing the world, a more dissociated. “There is only one proper thing to say after every sentence in Japanese,” commented one bilingualist, “but many in English.” Limitations of freedom, paradoxically, could be liberating. Moreover, ways of command; suggestions of doing things; these
The Flowers of Keiwha Page 17