When I came down from the waterfall and looked again at the sign indicating a prehistoric site it looked quite sloppy and fake. There were people who did such things, meaning things that other people didn’t do, people who felt at ease and could swallow their food and sleep well at night only when they did such things. And yet as I looked at the sign, it seemed that there was a message to it saying that if you followed the sign indicating a prehistoric site you might find a frozen waterfall instead of a prehistoric site, but there was no deep meaning to it and so there was no use thinking in depth about it and I didn’t. It also seemed to be telling you not to be angry or discouraged for being deceived but I wasn’t angry or discouraged at all; I liked that kind of absurdity, and you could say that what I’m writing now too is something akin to finding a frozen waterfall instead of a prehistoric site while following a sign indicating a prehistoric site. The sign also seemed to be saying that if you made another trip this time you would find a prehistoric site instead of a frozen waterfall, but we didn’t make another trip. I pictured the person who’d put up the sign indicating a prehistoric site coming to the spot every now and then and making sure that the fake sign he’d put up was still in place, then going to the prehistoric site as the sign indicated and looking at the frozen waterfall thinking it wasn’t a prehistoric site, but that what he’d wanted to see was a frozen waterfall and not a prehistoric site, or not a frozen waterfall but something that was nothing in the form of a frozen waterfall—and yet I couldn’t imagine that he’d do such a thing.
Sometime later I woke up after falling asleep in a mud hut on a prehistoric site and it wasn’t in a dream. I was invited to an event held by the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles and after a discussion I had to spend a boring afternoon until the events held for everyone in my party came to an end. I recalled the exhibit in a room on the first floor of the cultural center loosely reenacting a Korean prehistoric site, and for some unfathomable reason I went there and lay down in a mud hut and fell asleep before I knew it, and I learned quite some time later that people were looking for me. Seeing me come out of the mud hut they asked me what had happened and although I couldn’t properly explain why I’d come out of a prehistoric site I felt as if I’d returned from a trip to a prehistoric time and found it strange that I didn’t have a stone axe in my hand.
I didn’t make another trip to the waterfall in another season and was therefore unable to see what the waterfall usually looked like, but I wasn’t curious at all about that. Like all waterfalls that waterfall too must have looked like a waterfall and must have done what all waterfalls did. But should the opportunity present itself, I want to see another waterfall that doesn’t flow because it’s been frozen in the cold. Perhaps I’ve turned into a person who now feels slight interest only in waterfalls that don’t flow. And as for prehistoric remains it seems that you could say that I have only enough interest in them to pay a visit when I happen to pass through an area near a prehistoric site, not to go out of my way to see a prehistoric site. No, that isn’t really so now that I’ve said that. It doesn’t matter if I never again see a waterfall that doesn’t flow because it’s frozen, or if I never see things like prehistoric sites.
The only thing that concerned me was finding out how long and until when I could go on saying things like this that were pure nonsense and that kept going off on a tangent and that had nothing to say and that, furthermore, made no difference whether they said anything or not and in the end were irrelevant, and you could say that I’m writing this in order to find that out (and also to find out how many repetitions of words and phrases I could use, which naturally bring pleasure to people who understand the pleasure they bring and don’t to people who don’t understand them). There were too many fictions that made an attempt to say something and too few that intentionally said something that may be irrelevant, and as for me I thought that there was a need to think that there was a need to think that there was a need to say things that may be irrelevant, and to think that there was a need to think that there was no need to say other things, and what I wanted to say was things that kept going off on a tangent forever if only that were possible.
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During my stay in Texas I didn’t try to learn many things about Texas, but I couldn’t help learning many trivial things among which were things that were good to know, although it wouldn’t have mattered if you didn’t know them regardless of whether you weren’t a Texan or you were. Through articles in some publications issued in Texas I learned that if you were a true Texan you had to be able to recognize dewberry bushes, which resembled blackberry bushes, even before they bore their black fruit and which were commonly seen in ditches and around fences (this must’ve been difficult even for a true Texan in Texas because it couldn’t have been easy to know in advance if the fruit that came out of berry bushes that looked alike would be blackberries, or dewberries, or blueberries, or loganberries, or boysenberries, or marionberries, or tayberries, and for many people it was something that could be discerned only when the fruit came out and for many others it was something that couldn’t be discerned even when the fruit did come out, and perhaps because of the name in which a goose and a berry were joined together I’d always wanted to say something good if possible about gooseberries, which were mainly used by the British to get rid of the smell of meat or fish and which had been in a dish I ordered once in a restaurant in Britain, but it seems that gooseberries which are called berries but are of a different species from the berries mentioned above have no place here and now that I’ve said that it seems that I’ve failed to say something good about gooseberries, and I think I could say something good about gooseberries if possible at another time and likewise raspberries are also something that I’d like to say something good about if possible, if the opportunity presents itself, but it seems somehow that when it comes to raspberries it would be all right to say something that couldn’t be deemed either good or bad or something you couldn’t tell if it was indeed about raspberries or not, or talk about anything, or not talk about anything); if you were a true Texan, you also had to know what kind of cowboy hat you should wear in different seasons (in summer you were to wear a straw cowboy hat, and in winter a felt cowboy hat, and in spring and fall you were to decide for yourself as you felt inclined or as you pleased, so unless you were a fool this was something you couldn’t help but know); and you also had to be able to dance a two-step made up of very simple steps, those being quick-quick-slow-slow (I’m sure there’s no need for me to say how difficult or easy this is); and when ordering a soda at a restaurant you first had to say you wanted a Coke despite whatever beverage it was that you were actually ordering—whether that was Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Diet Coke, Sprite, or Dr. Pepper (and this could’ve been because it would’ve been bothersome to make a distinction among them, even though it was more bothersome to first say Coke and then say which of those carbonated drinks you wanted; but some true Texans, who thought that ordering a cup of carbonated drink should not have been a task that was too easy, did so and thought you weren’t a true Texan if you didn’t)—and you also had to know enough to ignore Pepsi among them (on Coca-Cola Beach in South Padre Island, a resort in southern Texas, a party sponsored by Coca-Cola was held every year where people sang and danced while drinking Coca-Cola and liquor amid all kinds of big and small ornaments representing Coca-Cola, and there seemed to be a spirit of anti-Pepsi as well and of worshiping Coca-Cola and considering Pepsi to be a cult); and a true Texan also had to know enough to be able to look down on barbeque grilled in the other US states; and again, according to the articles, must also oppose putting beans in chili, and also know the difference between kolache—a traditional Czech food and a kind of pastry with fruit or cheese in it—and klobasnek, a roll with an ordinary sausage in it which Czechs who settled in Texas began to make; but I thought it wouldn’t matter if you didn’t know these things even if you were a true Texan.
I asked my friend D, who was from Dallas, and N, who was born in
the eastern United States, but had lived in Dallas for more than twenty years, if they knew, in addition to the above, other things that a true Texan should know—but they didn’t know even half of them. They couldn’t be called true Texans even though they were living in Texas, but of course people had no problem at all living in Texas even if they weren’t true Texans. What I found amusing about Texas was that the central east area of the state was a vast plain, which meant that if you so much as walked up staircases in a building with a few stories you felt as if you were floating up slightly, and that you could see cowboys on horseback lined up among cars at drive-through fast food restaurants in little towns, getting fast food to go. One cowboy let his horse drink one of the two Cokes he’d gotten and perhaps the horse loved Coke, as became a Texan horse, and loved to come to a drive-through fast food restaurant more than anything else, but his owner gave him Coke, which wasn’t good for you but tasted good, every time, and yet gave him a burger, which likewise wasn’t good for you but tasted good, only on rare occasions, which made his spirit droop when he didn’t get to eat a burger, but he thought it was all right since he’d had a Coke, and yet, on days when he’d been to a drivethrough fast food restaurant, he found it difficult to stop thinking about a burger. It seemed that the cowboy and his horse, who’d drunk the largest-sized Coke, would take turns burping and farting, as if they’d made a bet to see who could make a louder sound, all the way back to their farm, and it seemed of course that the horse, because he was bigger, would win the bet every time and get another Coke as a reward the next time. And perhaps the Coca-Cola Company—which considered horses, who had stomachs that could ingest several times as much Coke as humans could at once, to be important potential customers—was conducting top-secret research in a laboratory in Texas in order to get horses addicted to Coke.
It was possible that Texas was related to a historical figure who seemingly bore no relation to Texas, that figure being none other than Karl Marx. The south bank of the Trinity River in central Dallas County was where La Réunion, a utopian socialist community established in 1855 by pioneers from France, Belgium, and Switzerland, was located, and where Victor Prosper Considerant—one of the founders of the community who wrote Democracy Manifesto before Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto, a French social democrat who coined the term direct democracy, as well as a Fourierist—and the pioneers sought to create an idealistic world through joint production and distribution. The pioneers, about two hundred in all and most of whom did not know how to farm, arrived near what is now Houston after a long voyage and reached the settlement, which was four hundred kilometers away, after several days of difficult journey in oxcarts. Additional pioneers came from France making the number of the pioneers about four hundred in all, and these newly arrived pioneers used different languages and had different beliefs about Catholicism and had no farming skills either, being clockmakers, weavers, brewers, and shopkeepers, and perhaps as became idealists they believed that their idealism would take care of realistic matters. Facing financial difficulties La Réunion ended up lasting for only eighteen months as the pioneers lacked skills for cultivating wheat and vegetables, and the weather in Texas didn’t cooperate either, and in a final stroke a blizzard that froze the surface of the Trinity River in May 1856 destroyed the crops and then the heat of Texas that summer brought a drought (the climate of Texas was such that it was very hot in summer and grew chilly when it snowed for a little while in winter and grew hot again after the snow stopped), and locusts in Texas ate all the remaining crops. Perhaps these utopians as became utopians closed their eyes so far as it was possible to the reality in which crops were destroyed, a reality that could be ignored to an extent, but they could not keep their eyes closed and ignore the reality forever, and so they opened their eyes to the reality only when they saw that all the crops were dead.
Perhaps the people thought when the blizzard came that there was nothing they could do about a blizzard although they might be able to do something about something else, and when the drought came they thought that there was nothing they could do about a drought although they might be able to do something about something else, and when the locusts came they thought that there was nothing they could do about locusts although they might be able to do something about something else, and they thought that among the many things they couldn’t do anything about locusts were the foremost and the people literally held up their hands before the locusts and thought they should go someplace where there were at least no locusts, and in the end some returned to Europe and a part of the rest went somewhere else in the United States, bringing an end to La Réunion. There was something comic about the history of the pioneering of these pioneers as they chose the wrong plot of land to begin with.
It was Considerant who chose the 8,100 square meters of land they purchased for seven hundred dollars, and there was no telling why Considerant who came to the United States with the help of Jean-Baptist Godin—a French Fourierist who made a fortune by getting the cast iron stove patented—and at the invitation of Albert Brisbane—an American Fourierist who founded the Fourierist Society in New York in 1839, and attempted in his later years to make a vacuum oven in which bread could be baked without yeast, and crisscrossed the United States on horseback with Brisbane and finally arrived in Texas—chose Texas of all places, and why he chose in particular the settlement in the limestone zone by the Trinity River, swarming with man-eating alligators, rattlesnakes, water snakes, mosquitoes, things that stung people, and various other things that didn’t bite or sting people but which clung to people and didn’t go away even when they tried to chase them away, and swarmed as well with alligator gars, which didn’t attack people unless attacked first but which looked frightening with their head of an alligator and body of a fish and which hunted like an alligator even though it was a fish—as I was saying, there was no telling why Considerant chose this region but it was equally possible that the original owner of the land sold it to him, duping him into believing that it was fertile in order to screw over this strange and arrogant idealist from France who spoke fluent French, just as it was possible that Considerant could have merely been helplessly drawn to the lay of the land where the three tributaries of the Trinity River met and that he felt palpably—while standing on a prairie looking at the endless grassy plain where they would be settling and watching wild rabbits running away with coyotes chasing after them and a circle of eagles in the sky—what amounted to simply a perfect day in Texas and that he came to have the firm belief that this was to be their utopia. And in a similar way one warm afternoon, although it was winter, when I felt that it was a perfect day in Texas—having seen a circle of eagles in the sky over a field and wild rabbits running with coyotes running in the opposite direction for some reason, after which a hawk appeared as if it had just been waiting to do so and then hovered in the air not too far up above with the sun just beyond it making its wing bones look like an X-ray image—I thought momentarily that it might be nice to live here but fortunately the thought vanished not after a day but instead merely as the hawk suddenly flew up toward a cloud in the distance and vanished from view.
In the end perhaps Considerant painfully learned that the only thing that could flourish in a limestone zone was lime, and why the word limestone stemmed from lime; but while he considered that a community could not be maintained on lime, and while he looked at the locusts of Texas and at the bent or severed straw eaten by the locusts, and while he looked at the bluebonnet flowers which you couldn’t help but see around Texas highways in spring until you were sick of them—thanks to the movement led by Claudia Johnson, the wife of the US president Lyndon Johnson, and who was also called “Lady Bird Johnson,” to beautify highways with flowers that were now commonly seen almost anywhere in Texas, and whose buds looked like bonnets and which were beautiful like lavender, but, unlike lavender, served no useful purpose, and which most people said had no scent, but did give off a sickeningly sweet scent to some people who had a keen no
se—as I was saying, perhaps as he looked at the bluebonnet flowers blossoming in the meadow he had to acknowledge that the ideal community he had in mind had failed without ever coming to blossom.
There was word that Karl Marx—who’d been stateless since 1845 and who’d been suffering from extreme poverty in London at the time—was planning to come to Texas himself and that it may have been at the invitation of Considerant, but was possibly nothing but a rumor but could also have been true. Perhaps Marx, who had a headache because of the proletarian revolution movements around the world, as well as other issues, considered going to Texas to cool his head. Perhaps he thought that seeing the hicks and livestock of Texas might clear his head and that it might be better (both for the revolution and for himself) to think about the proletarian revolution with a clear head, but on second thought he decided that Europe needed him and that he couldn’t even think about a proletarian revolution in Europe without himself, and that it was time to stay worried about mankind, who gave him a headache.
Perhaps Marx, who was influenced by Considerant but considered his utopian socialist community an unrealistic dream of the naïve and had mocked them, but had contributed to The New York Daily Tribune and thus had ties to the US, wanted to see firsthand the gunmen, outlaws, cowboys, and Indians of the South as well as the tension preceding the Civil War, and so one night in his little room in London he imagined himself in Texas, whose size he couldn’t very well imagine, riding a horse with a cowboy hat on his head and drew, on a corner of the manuscript he was working on of Capital, a map of Texas and wrote the words Karl Marx, the Cowboy and drew an eagle in it, but after a certain thought—perhaps the thought that upon his name, the possibility of the proletarian revolution not succeeding in Europe in the near future was as nonexistent as the possibility of him going to Texas and becoming a cowboy—erased the doodles and set aside his trip to Texas.
Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River Page 4