My last day was spent with Cynthia Tsai, my e-mail contact throughout the planning stages, Ruth Wildes Schuler a wonderful prize-winning poet from California, and another young woman who drove us. Ruth's and my flight wasn't until four in the afternoon and, rather than have us spend the day in the hotel lobby, Cynthia chose to give us a driving tour of the city and stop for a small lunch along the way. She also told me on the sly that it was to apologize for my not having been met on my arrival. We drove to the outskirts of Kaohsiung and up into the hills to view Kaohsiung Harbor and Taiwan Bay, which we saw from a home atop a high cliff on the southwest coast. The owner had recognized us as visitors as we were taking photos by the roadside and invited us to tea to afford us a better view of the sea.
On returning home I immediately sent off a note to Queena, thanking her for her graciousness, help, and most enjoyable company. “If I had a granddaughter,” I told her, “I'd wish her to be just like you."
Queena's response told me how much she “appreciated and loved the pendant” I'd given her—her memento of what she called “a most lovely experience.” She also asked if I'd mind if she continued to write. Mind? I was flattered.
I've just begun to compile a collection of my poetry to send off to my distant acquaintances, including Queena. If poetry can be a bridge between nations, promoting friendship, understanding, and peace, perhaps the internet should share in the credit, for speeding up the process.
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Night Watch by Allen McGill
Nearly midnight; silent behind the glass barrier that separates
me from the world below, I watch the lava-flow dwindle to swift-moving sparks, limning parallel river drives heading south, tunnel-swallowed where they meet.
Illuminated webs spread erratically between, moving at the whims of amber and green. Spastic stops and jolts, anticipatory edging across painted grid lines. Revolving jewels top black and whites in a race across town.
A trio of garlanded bridges spans the eastern river, motionless but for a lone bus speeding across. Beyond a building spire, rising from an isolated speck of island in the harbor, a beam-lit statue holds a glowing torch.
Rooftops black as pits. Lights appear, then die as cleaners move from floor to floor, office to office. Reflected lights in facing windows—
from my aerie—too far away to see myself.
An aircraft passes, invisible but for its wing-lights against the matte-black sky. Imagined engine roar reaches my ear, as did the police car's wail, an ambulance's siren. Just a fluorescent's hum.
The city eases into the early hours, barely slowing to recoup its energy. As if in respect for those asleep, or dying. Stars hide, unable to compete with the glare of neon. Midnight; I leave to stroll the empty streets.
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4 Short Parables Revolving Around the Theme of Travel A.B. Goelman
I. Frequent Flier
When third-generation superhero Walter Bennett Remington III swooped down from the sky, supporting the 747 on his back, no one applauded. Not the people in the airplane, not their worried relatives on the ground. Everyone knew about the second law of thermodynamics. They weren't sure of the details, but they knew the basics: all power has to come from somewhere. Each time power changes hands, you lose a little of it.
And they knew where the power that had Walter swooping in the sky, grinning and pirouetting, had come from. It had come from them. The passengers felt little—smaller than they used to—as they climbed down the stairs to the cement landing pad. One older man pressed his hand into his back. “I already had a slipped disc,” he told no one in particular, “but it hurts worse now."
Walter pretended not to hear, although his super hearing made it impossible not to. Instead he flew off to his family's Ski Chateau of Solitude in the mountains of Switzerland.
"The world doesn't appreciate us,” he told his mother. She was halfway down the mountain on her new short skis, but she heard him just fine. She skidded to a halt, kicking up a plume of previously untouched powder. “Great skiing today, Wally,” she told him. “Really great. Pure powder."
"Don't call me Wally, Mother.” Walter flew past her to the highest mountain in the Swiss Alps. The view would have been spectacular for anyone, but with Walter's super-vision it was incredible. He could see most of the inhabited world. Billions of humans going about their business. Working in factories, farms, offices. Sitting on the street begging for pennies and walking down the sidewalk in their business suits. And they all hated him, and the rest of his type.
"What if they didn't know the power came from them?” Walter asked.
His mother, executing a perfect spin as she finished the slope, shrugged. “Who cares?"
"I care,” Walter said. He looked down with his extra-perfect vision, looked straight into the brains of people for thousands of miles around, and watched. It took him eighty-three days, seven hours, and forty minutes to finally understand the way their brains worked.
For a moment he just smiled. If he had wanted, he could have written a book that would have gotten him tenure in every brain and cognitive science department in the country. But people still would have hated him. They would have known where his genius came from. It came from them.
Instead, he did what he had to do. Or at least what he wanted to do. He burned the knowledge of where his power came from right out of the cerebral cortexes of every human being in the world. About 2.7 billion people paused and looked at each other. About 500 million people commented in about forty-three languages, “Do you smell something burning?” About one tenth of these checked to make sure they hadn't left their ovens on.
And then they went on with their day. Every once in a while they caught a bit of motion in the sky high above them. Sometimes they would look up and see Walter Bennett Remington III, or someone a lot like him, soaring through the sky. They would stare for a few moments, admiring his chiseled muscles, his noble face. Although his muscles weren't really that chiseled. Although his face wasn't particularly noble.
Sometimes—this world being the pit of irony that it is—they would even say, “Hey. That guy really deserves what he has. That guy really has it coming."
And far, far away—even farther away then it looked to them, because it's hard to gauge distances when you're on the ground looking up—the person flying through the sky would smile.
* * * *
II. Tourists
When the aliens came, they looked like game show hosts. They looked like camp counselors. They looked like game-show-hosting camp counselors. They wore expensive suits with sandals and had long straight hair that would have been fashionable in exactly 1973. It turned out that 1973 was the last year of television that had made it to their distant planet before they had decided to visit Earth. Upon arriving, they spent days in Manhattan's Museum of Radio and Television catching up on the last twenty-three years of television as well as watching old favorites. There were three aliens, and each of them thought Jack Ritter was the funniest human on Earth. They claimed to have tests that could prove this empirically.
Not everyone liked the aliens. They were widely believed to be liars, as well as aliens. They claimed to be genderless, but they all looked like men, and had sex only with human females. They claimed to be kings. They claimed to be wise. They gave gifts that people didn't always like.
For instance, they gave almost everyone they met very small quantities of gold and frankincense and myrrh, along with their favorite recipes for using them. They accosted people on the sidewalks, or even in their cars. They would ask questions in their baritone voices. Their favorite three questions were: “If you could go to a desert island, what three types of food would you bring with you?” “What celebrity would you bring with you?” “What five albums would you have with you?” On several occasions they then put the person in question on the desert island with the food, celebrity, and albums of their choice.
"Poor celebrities,” some people—
mostly Us Magazine—said. “Poor desert island ecosystems,” fewer people—mostly Sierra Club members—said.
A few religious people said the aliens had come for the birth of the messiah who would redeem all of humanity. These people said that our sun was one of three stars that they were following to see the messiah born. But the aliens never said anything about that, and after about three months and a final weekend in Las Vegas, they left, never to be seen on Earth again. At least, not so far as anyone knew.
* * * *
III. The Unabridged Tragedy of the Scorpion and theFrog
As is well known, the scorpion, a slick little number in a dark suit with movie-star hair, met the frog on the right bank of the . “I'd like to go to the left bank of the river. The gauche as they'd say in Paree,” he said, and winked at the frog. This was back in those distant days when a French accent was still seen as the most sophisticated sort of cool. In fact, however, this scene took place in northern Louisiana, on the banks of the Mississippi, and no significance should be attached to the fact that ‘frog’ is slang for a French national in certain parts of the world. Both the frog and the scorpion were 100% American. This is an American parable.
"Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, Daddy-0,” the scorpion crooned. He snapped his claws and winked again. “A rising tide lifts all boats and all that."
The frog, being an impressionable sort, wanted her boat lifted and her back scratched. But, still, she treaded the deep water in the center of the river, enjoying the feel of the cool water against her legs. “Wouldn't you bite me?” she asked.
The scorpion scoffed and shook his head. “Bite you? Please. You are thinking of the Old World. Old Europe. And, notwithstanding my delightful accent, in spirit I am a creature of the New Europe. Of new countries like Lithuania and Poland with their delicious salted herring and decaying labor unions. Besides, if I bite you, I myself will die."
"True enough.” The frog swam towards the shore and landed next to the scorpion. Being a scorpion, the scorpion crawled atop the frog and immediately stung her to death.
"But now you'll never get across the river,” the frog said with her dying breath.
In the popular version, the scorpion famously replies, “It's my nature,” and dies, and that's where the story ends. In point of fact, the scorpion shrugged and crawled back into the forest. He said at all at the time, but months later he wrote a paper in Foreign Policy the death as one of the “inevitable sacrifices of cross-river commerce."
Years passed. French accents fell out of fashion. The scorpion died in a comfortable rest home, surrounded by satisfying educational and recreational opportunities. More scorpions and frogs were born and died.
One day, another scorpion sat on the cement pier where the forest had been. She spied a frog swimming in the middle of the river. “Pardon me,” she shouted. The frog swam closer, and in a quieter voice the scorpion asked, “Could I be so bold as to ask for a ride to the other side of the river?"
"Won't you sting me?” the frog asked. “It seems to me I read paper about that in college. Something in Foreign Policy, right?"
The scorpion chuckled. “That's ridiculous. Why would I sting you? I will help you across the river. I will look for oil slicks and other dangers. Together we will thrive."
The frog, being a cautious sort, asked for some time to think about it. He took the question to the frog community. At first all the frogs were against it. The toads as well, and, so far as could be determined, the newts, too. The old toads in particular warned the frog about what was bound to happen.
Still, as the weeks passed, the scorpion remained by the river. “I am resolute,” she told the birds, the publicists of the animal world. “With my help, the frog will cross the river safely. No more questions."
Soon the hawks were criticizing the frogs as cowards, while the doves wondered if the frogs were deliberately stopping the free exchange of people and ideas across the river. Finally, the young frog's resolve crumbled. He was very young, and only a frog after all. The whole concept of stinging something, rather than catching it with your tongue, seemed both awkward and unlikely to him.
He swam to where the scorpion was waiting on the bank of the river. The scorpion smiled graciously at him and crawled on top of his back.
Being a cautious sort, the frog immediately dived back into the river. If the scorpion stung him, she would die, too.
The scorpion kept her stinger tightly coiled above her head. “I will direct you across the river,” she told the frog. “I can see more from up here. For instance, there's an idiot on a jet ski over to your left."
The frog obligingly stroked to the right. It was a huge river, so it took some time before they were midway across. The scorpion looked around and realized she would never be so far from land again. She stung the frog three times.
The frog said nothing as he died, being deeply disappointed in both himself and the scorpion. The scorpion said nothing, either, as scorpions are not equipped to drown and talk at the same time. The old toads said, “I told you so,” and were roundly criticized as haters.
But, for the most part, everyone continued about their business. The truth is, frogs and scorpions die all the time.
* * * *
IV. Interstellar Travel
Interstellar travel was kind of like skateboarding at first. It was kind of like punk music. It was do-it-yourself. It was hard to make money off of. It was too clean, too easy, requiring only a few pyschotropics and the knowledge of a few formulas. Then off you went. Literally anywhere.
The rulers of the world—the people who own and the people who decide—did what they had to. They did what they could. They buried the discovery, distracting people with advances in cosmetic surgery, in multi-sensory entertainment vids that could simulate multiple orgasms.
Knowledge of the discovery spread very slowly. The people who knew disappeared too quickly to tell many people. They vanished overnight with their extended families and acquaintances.
The infotainment complex sprang into action after each disappearance, spreading rumors of death squads, of corporate assassins. Websites were taken down, graffiti was power-washed away. Still, the odd hand-scribbled poster would be left up in a coffee shop bathroom for a week or two before someone took it down. Just long enough for someone else to read it and get it.
There were lulls, of course. As of 2052, ten years had passed without a single disappearance. The rulers of the world breathed a vast sigh of relief. But then, one of the government agents, unhappy, lonely, dissatisfied with night after night of soft porn alone in his condo, couldn't help but remember the formula he had seen before burning one of the disappeared families’ houses down. He disappeared, but not before leaving an explicit voice mail for his kid brother. And so it continued.
When the emptying of cities became impossible to ignore, the corporate government referred to them as “displacement suicides.” Then, in 2110, corporate government policy changed course. People were told of the travel, but also told of fiery star deaths, of deaths in the vacuum of space. “It's like Russian roulette, but with the gun fully loaded,” one advertisement proclaimed solemnly.
But centuries of distrust, of advertising lies, left people unconvinced, when vague rumors promised worlds just like Earth, but democratic, free. The ebbs turned to flows, the flows turned to torrents.
In the end only the executives, only the administrators were left. Stockholders and management with no more children to work, no more wealth to concentrate. They stayed on Earth and wrote self-righteous histories that no one read. No one. Not even a single person. Because, eventually, they died, and no one came back.
None of humanity's descendants returned to Earth. They didn't even talk about Earth. In public, at least. At cocktail parties, when it came up, people would look away. Cough embarrassedly. It was that kind of thing.
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The Doctrine of the Arbitrariness of the Sign by Shweta Narayan
&
nbsp; "Spli-pli-plitter!” Andrew called to the low grey sky. A big wet droplet exploded on his nose, and another in his hair, then it was all around; a great torrent, as if someone had pulled the plug out of a lake in the sky to send water soaking into his coat and jeans and hair. And sister. He grinned.
She glared at him. “Okay, so it's raining, so come on."
"Not just raining, Tess.” His grin widened, partly for the joy of wetness, partly because it would annoy her. “Spli-plitter raining. deluge.” He played the word around in his mouth, luxuriating in the sound and feel of it and its echo in the beat of water on pavement.
"Like I said. Raining.” She started walking.
He caught up easily. He'd been growing lately. “Not any,” he said. “Big wet warm drops that drench, and break open into little drippy droplets when they hit you. Splitter rain."
"Whatever."
He considered leaving her to her mood, then sighed. At this rate, she'd ruin the whole weekend. He looked up again. “Thrip."
"What?"
"Thrip,” he told her helpfully. “It's a kind of dry-wet word, the word of rain stopping before it should and leaving the air all damp and ominous."
"Okay, you're weird.” Then she stared. At him, at the sky. The rain had stopped.
He smiled smugly. “This is Thrip."
Tess stared at him until he looked away, then, without a word, turned for home. When Andrew hurried to catch up, she spun on him. “Leave me alone!” She strode away, leaving him to trail anxiously behind, his satisfaction lost in unease. He should never have told Tess a secret.
He ran up behind her, pulled her hair, and bolted, yelling rain words up into the air. By the time she'd chased him all the way home and then around the block, Tess was dripping and furious—and, with any luck, distracted.
GUD Magazine Issue 0 :: Spring 2007 Page 10