There had been some confusion; something lost in translation, I suppose.
The three of us (me and the two girls I was travelling with) were supposed to have rooms booked – couch surfing to be exact – prior to arriving in Japan but, for whatever reason, it fell through. Our flight was Saturday morning and Friday afternoon I got a call from S. Every hostel/hotel/hole-in-the-wall she contacted was full. No room in the inn. She was obviously concerned.
But what can you do? We certainly weren’t going to cancel our tickets. Destiny isn’t going to be thwarted by so arbitrary a detail as a place to stay; things usually have a way of working out.
And there’s always park benches.
As it turns out we didn’t need to resort to getting our camp on. At the last moment S. managed to get us two rooms at a “capsule hotel”. The rooms where we stayed (the girls bunked together; I had my own pad) were little more than walk-in closets with capsules to sleep in. These capsules – just big enough to squeeze yourself into – were like hotel rooms in miniature: mattress, pillow, tiny TV, radio, climate control and reading light. (I looked but couldn’t find a Gideon’s Bible.)
Of course we had to find the place first. We took the train from Kansai International Airport to Shin-Imamiya Station near downtown Osaka. Somehow I wound up carrying most of our luggage.
Outside the station it reeked of piss and garbage. Not exactly a sketchy part of town (do those even exist in Japan?) but there weren’t rows of Ritz-Carlton’s or Hiltons lining the streets either. A whole fleet of bicycles locked up beneath the underpass; bodies at rest; chrome flashing and fading into shadow by turns whenever a train rumbled above us. Old men squatting over a game of “Go”; gambling, cursing and yelling. Vendors set up on the sidewalks hustling, hocking all manner of wares: household appliances; art; a prodigious selection of pornography; some vintage videogames.
It was this latter item (the games, not the porn) that caught my eye. I picked up a copy of “Dragon Quest V” for 300 yen (about three bucks.) Widely regarded as the finest 16-bit RPG to never receive an official English translation this title, originally published for the Super Famicom (SNES) in 1992, was only formally localized and released in America earlier this year. Until then getting your hands on a copy was something of a castle in the sky – or at least a very expensive purchase on EBay – for videogame collectors and aficionados. So I was thrilled to be making this (portentous as it would turn out) transaction.
The guy doing the selling – an older gentleman of few teeth and questionable odor – seemed awfully pleased with the sale so I thought I might’ve been had. But still, it would have only amounted to a couple of dollars so I couldn’t have been taken for too bad a ride. And more importantly: “Dragon Quest V”!
While I was all aglow with unabashed geekery the girls were in a Lawson’s trying to get directions to our hotel. A Japanese man very kindly offered to take us there. It was about a half block back up the street. We’d walked past it a couple of times.
After storing our bags the three of us decided to head to Namba, an entertainment district in downtown Osaka, for the night’s festivities. It was getting on towards dusk when we arrived and Namba was already a blazing Shrine to Neon. I thought they liked it lit up here in Korea but this was ridiculous; if I’d been a moth I would have probably just died then and there: sensory overload.
One of the things I was set on doing in Japan was getting in a few rounds of “Street Fighter IV”. I’ve already written at some length about my relationship with this franchise so I won’t rehearse that here but this has been a goal of mine for a while; to test my mettle against competitors who are routinely ranked as the best in the world. It isn’t a major goal, sure, but, like what Dr. Pausch recommended in his “Last Lecture”, it is an attainable one. And those are good to have; grease in the gears of bigger dreams.
The girls were pretty understanding the first couple of times I drug them into an arcade (they even played a sit down racing game) but this understanding was on the wane by arcades three and four. By arcade five I figured I’d be going it alone. But I was not to be daunted in my quest for a “Street Fighter IV” cabinet! Turns out five was my lucky number. The game was displayed on a big HD screen near the center of the arcade and all things considered I didn’t do too badly: I won six out of ten matches. There were slaps on the back; communal “oohhs” and “ahhs”; the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. An international brotherhood of geeks.
We had ramen for dinner: piping hot and incredibly delicious. If noodles have a Platonic ideal this was it.
What happened next was, for me, nothing short of phenomenal. However it involved vintage videogames. And I’m going to write about it now. At length. Certainly at more length than common courtesy would allow. So feel free to skip to the end if this isn’t your cup of tea.
[Begin Paul’s Epic no-wonder-I’m-thirty-and-unmarried Nerdsplosion]
The store was called “Big Tiger”.
Newer games on the first floor: this generation; PS2 and PS1; some GameCube games; a dusty and unloved Xbox in a shroud of bubble wrap stuffed in the corner. It was all interesting enough. But it was upstairs – up the Stairway to Heaven – where the real joys awaited discovery: used and new vintage.
The distinct sounds of popular Famicom (NES) games like “Super Mario Bros.” and “Zelda” played like a chorus of 8-bit angels as you ascended the stairway to the second floor. (If you grew up in the 80’s you’re probably humming these tunes right now. Amazing how Koji Kondo (the composer of many iconic videogame soundtracks, including the two mentioned above) was able to create such memorable music with such limited technology.) The walls were lined with posters of childhood favorites – Little Mac, Bonk, Akira Toriyama’s “Dragon Quest” character designs – that blurred past like you were moving through a time warp.
And the games! It was like discovering a cache of buried treasure that I’ve been studying the map to for twenty years: Super Famicom games (boxed + instructions “Final Fantasy VI”?!); MegaDrive and PC Engine games and systems; every iteration of Gameboy from its monochromatic origins to the Technicolor sunset of its final version; the various armamentarium – plush toys, promotional posters, controllers and chords and carrying cases – of two and a half decades of videogame culture.
I purchased three MegaDrive games: “Phantasy Star II”, “Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium”, and “Shining and the Darkness”. All three were had for just over 500 yen.
The first two were largely the creation of Rieko Kodama. Although not as well known a figure – either in her native Japan or abroad – as, say, Shigeru Miyamoto, or even Hironobu Sakaguchi, her works (mostly videogames) are well-loved by those familiar with them and she has had a big, if largely unheralded, influence on the role-playing (RPG) genre.
The “Phantasy Star” series (specifically the numbered entries; that is, not the on-line iterations) is, for a number of reasons, my all-time favorite videogame series.
Back before Blockbuster gobbled it up there was a little Ma and Pop video store in my old hometown called “Showcase Video”. The guy who ran the place – an obese loudmouth whose fingers and shirt were always stained with popcorn grease – was a real unpleasant dude, but Showcase was they only store in town that rented SMS games so he had me by the short and curlies.
It was $2.99 for the weekend and you had the game till five the following Monday. (And that was five pm on the dot. Even a minute over and you got slammed with an extortionate late fee. I remember my Dad shouting this usurious racket down more than a few times.) I was too young yet to be working (mowing lawns was still a few summers away) and cash on hand was a rarity so I didn’t get to rent a game every weekend, but when it did happen it was a real treat.
And of all the SMS games I rented (and I think I eventually rented them all) “Phantasy Star” was tops.
The game itself was pretty revolutionary. One of the earliest console RPGs it featured a massive quest and pseudo 3-D dungeons that pushed the SMS’s technology to the limit. At barely ten years old, however, I wasn’t aware of the game’s historical or technological significance. All I was aware of was how much ass it kicked.
I’d never played anything like it. This game was wholly unlike the run-jump-rinse-repeat platformers (think “Super Mario Bros”) I was familiar with: there was very little action; I spent a lot of the game walking around talking to townspeople; when I would finally sally forth from the city limits I’d usually end up getting slaughtered in short order by a giant bee or grasshopper or some other angry insect; I was constantly getting lost with no idea how to progress. And it was a totally engrossing experience. It certainly didn’t hurt that Reiko Kodama’s character designs paid more than a little homage to “Star Wars”, a franchise I was – surprise, surprise – pretty into at the time.
Just before Showcase Video was finally vaporized by the Blockbuster Death Star in the late-nineties they had a going out of business sale. It’d been years since I’d been in there; I doubted if they’d even still have SMS games on the shelf. But they did. And in one of the most memorable purchases of my life I asked the owner (no longer the obese and draconic man of my youth but now his equally obese and draconic son) if he’d take a five spot for “Phantasy Star”. “Yea, whatever”, he said. “It’s not like anyone plays that old shit anyway.”
And now I can add the Japanese copies of “Phantasy Star II” and “Phantasy Star IV” to my collection of old shit. Awesome.
What a place was “Big Tiger” and how appropriate that it should be named after an animal that, through the fiction of Jorge Louis Borges, has come to represent the magical and unattainable – childhood in retrospect – to me.
It is a rare thing when the dream isn’t outstripped by reality.
[End Paul’s Geektastic Excersise in New Games Journalism]
I met back up with the girls at close to eleven o’clock. (Clearly they weren’t about to have anything to do with my weepy trip down memory lane.) We decided to finish the night up at “Sex Machine”, a BBQ dive-cum-James Brown shrine. The Godfather of Soul in the form of cut-outs plastered to the walls, a passable likeness in oil paint done by one of the stores proprietors, and a miniature wooden effigy among other relics, was there to preside over the serving of cold beers at a reasonable price.
You can’t make a place like this up.
Outside a trio of call girls were seeing their johns off from the love motel above us; inside the place throbbed to sixties rock and roll, soul, and jazz. James Brown and jazz, hookers, Japan on a Saturday night: I was ready at any minute for one of Murakami’s protagonists to enter the bar looking for a missing cat or girlfriend.
After some brief taxi tribulations (what trip to a foreign land would be complete without it?) the three of us decided to call it a night and headed back to the capsule hotel. It had been a busy day and Kyoto was the plan for tomorrow.
Monday, 11 May 2009
Sunday, 10 May 2009
on the eve of a journey
Japan.
“Japan”. Linger on the word a moment. Roll it about your brain like a hard candy on your tongue. Savor it. “Japan”.
Christmas Day 1988. It was a Sunday. Still my favorite day for Christmas to fall on. We opened our presents on Christmas Eve back then. There wasn’t a lot but my Mom and Dad did their best. And my sister and I were always amazed. That Christmas after we got home from church my folks asked my sister and I to check behind a curtain in the family room, said they thought they saw something back there. We raced. The curtain was yanked away. Sega Master System (SMS). Incredible. And that set the course. That planted the seed.
The games I played on the SMS – “Alex Kidd”, “Alien Syndrome”, “Phantasy Star” – were weird. G.I. Joe this was not. These were games with flying cats, kids that played rock-scissor-paper against creepy demons, space curiosities that were as “cute as they were deadly” (a direct quote from the “Fantasy Zone” game manual). I didn’t know it at the time but these games offered an almost undiluted experience with one element of then contemporary Japanese pop culture.
And I loved it.
Pretty soon after that Christmas in 1988 – if not in actual conjunction with the event – I was introduced to Saban Entertainment published cartoons like “Noozles”, “The Little Bits” and, most importantly, “Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics”. More Trojan horses from the Land of the Rising Sun.
It was in junior high when I began making the connection between these artifacts of my childhood and the country they came from. It wasn’t like it is today in America where otaku culture is, if not mainstream, at the very least a well-represented niche. My love of Japanese pop culture at the time wasn’t so much a product of the social isolation I experienced as a means of reinforcing it. This was long before (culturally speaking) the advent of the internet and message boards offered a place for shy basement dwellers to congregate (sort of) and stroke each other’s vanity while exorcising the aggression that would likely get their asses kicked at school so I had no one with whom to share my interests. And even when there were kids around I could talk to they didn’t know about (and weren’t generally interested in hearing about) the obscure videogames and cartoons that so infatuated me.
The films of Hayao Miyazaki came next. “Princess Mononoke”. October 1999 at the Palace in Kansas City. I remember I was in love with this girl at the time and she sat next to me during the movie. Her hand occasionally brushing against mine, electricity shooting up my arm and through the rest of my body every time she did so. I remember this. I remember how crazyoverwhelmingmaddeningexciting it is to be head-over-heels for someone at that age whenever I watch this movie again. And it’s really nice.
She’s married now with a beautiful baby. A family started.
More Studio Ghibli films followed: “The Cat Returns”; “Nausicaa”; Spirited Away”; "Howl’s Moving Castle”. I introduced these to my younger brother and sister and viewing them together became something of an event for us: what we would end up calling “watching a Miyazaki”.
In October 2001 I was rummaging about in a used bookstore that has long since vanished and thought I’d take a chance on a book by Haruki Murakami. I’d never heard of the author but the cover - a sheep in a suit - caught my eye. The book was “Dance, Dance, Dance”. Continuing a trend: I loved it. More Murakami – notably “Norwegian Wood” and “Sputnik Sweetheart” – followed. As well as Tanizaki, Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe, and Endo. What started with videogames and comics was now an insatiable appetite for Japanese literature.
My junior year of college (2005, what a year!) I enrolled in a Japanese culture class at UMKC. Dr. Ebersole. No cakewalk. That year (and that semester especially) was an ordeal that was in some ways made easier by this grey-headed academic sadist grinding his boot heel into me: I completely lost myself in my studies. And it was great to be adding more to my understanding of Japan than just what I’d gleaned from pop culture and the reading of a handful of novels.
And then in August 2007 I moved to South Korea. To a city about as far from Japan as is my hometown of Kansas City from Saint Louis. Why Korea and not Japan? It’s a good question. Part of it was pragmatic: student loans to pay off and Korea seemed (and has thus far proven) to be the more remunerative of the two options. But mercenary considerations are only a part of the picture. (And let me add that my time in Korea has been amazing; I’d not trade this experience for anything.)
I think I may not have yet been able to confront Japan. The Japan that exists within me – the private Japan I’ve been piecing together for more than two decades, a place within my imagination so infused with nostalgia – exists within me and nowhere else. Reconciling this fantasy with the reality of a Japan of people and buildings and waiting on trains and paying too much for a bowl of noodles and culture shock is a tall order. Sometimes we stay in bed not to sleep but to keep dreaming.
“Japan”. A journey twenty years – and almost an entire life – in the making.
So am I ready now?
Does it matter? I leave tomorrow.
“Japan”. Linger on the word a moment. Roll it about your brain like a hard candy on your tongue. Savor it. “Japan”.
Christmas Day 1988. It was a Sunday. Still my favorite day for Christmas to fall on. We opened our presents on Christmas Eve back then. There wasn’t a lot but my Mom and Dad did their best. And my sister and I were always amazed. That Christmas after we got home from church my folks asked my sister and I to check behind a curtain in the family room, said they thought they saw something back there. We raced. The curtain was yanked away. Sega Master System (SMS). Incredible. And that set the course. That planted the seed.
The games I played on the SMS – “Alex Kidd”, “Alien Syndrome”, “Phantasy Star” – were weird. G.I. Joe this was not. These were games with flying cats, kids that played rock-scissor-paper against creepy demons, space curiosities that were as “cute as they were deadly” (a direct quote from the “Fantasy Zone” game manual). I didn’t know it at the time but these games offered an almost undiluted experience with one element of then contemporary Japanese pop culture.
And I loved it.
Pretty soon after that Christmas in 1988 – if not in actual conjunction with the event – I was introduced to Saban Entertainment published cartoons like “Noozles”, “The Little Bits” and, most importantly, “Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics”. More Trojan horses from the Land of the Rising Sun.
It was in junior high when I began making the connection between these artifacts of my childhood and the country they came from. It wasn’t like it is today in America where otaku culture is, if not mainstream, at the very least a well-represented niche. My love of Japanese pop culture at the time wasn’t so much a product of the social isolation I experienced as a means of reinforcing it. This was long before (culturally speaking) the advent of the internet and message boards offered a place for shy basement dwellers to congregate (sort of) and stroke each other’s vanity while exorcising the aggression that would likely get their asses kicked at school so I had no one with whom to share my interests. And even when there were kids around I could talk to they didn’t know about (and weren’t generally interested in hearing about) the obscure videogames and cartoons that so infatuated me.
The films of Hayao Miyazaki came next. “Princess Mononoke”. October 1999 at the Palace in Kansas City. I remember I was in love with this girl at the time and she sat next to me during the movie. Her hand occasionally brushing against mine, electricity shooting up my arm and through the rest of my body every time she did so. I remember this. I remember how crazyoverwhelmingmaddeningexciting it is to be head-over-heels for someone at that age whenever I watch this movie again. And it’s really nice.
She’s married now with a beautiful baby. A family started.
More Studio Ghibli films followed: “The Cat Returns”; “Nausicaa”; Spirited Away”; "Howl’s Moving Castle”. I introduced these to my younger brother and sister and viewing them together became something of an event for us: what we would end up calling “watching a Miyazaki”.
In October 2001 I was rummaging about in a used bookstore that has long since vanished and thought I’d take a chance on a book by Haruki Murakami. I’d never heard of the author but the cover - a sheep in a suit - caught my eye. The book was “Dance, Dance, Dance”. Continuing a trend: I loved it. More Murakami – notably “Norwegian Wood” and “Sputnik Sweetheart” – followed. As well as Tanizaki, Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe, and Endo. What started with videogames and comics was now an insatiable appetite for Japanese literature.
My junior year of college (2005, what a year!) I enrolled in a Japanese culture class at UMKC. Dr. Ebersole. No cakewalk. That year (and that semester especially) was an ordeal that was in some ways made easier by this grey-headed academic sadist grinding his boot heel into me: I completely lost myself in my studies. And it was great to be adding more to my understanding of Japan than just what I’d gleaned from pop culture and the reading of a handful of novels.
And then in August 2007 I moved to South Korea. To a city about as far from Japan as is my hometown of Kansas City from Saint Louis. Why Korea and not Japan? It’s a good question. Part of it was pragmatic: student loans to pay off and Korea seemed (and has thus far proven) to be the more remunerative of the two options. But mercenary considerations are only a part of the picture. (And let me add that my time in Korea has been amazing; I’d not trade this experience for anything.)
I think I may not have yet been able to confront Japan. The Japan that exists within me – the private Japan I’ve been piecing together for more than two decades, a place within my imagination so infused with nostalgia – exists within me and nowhere else. Reconciling this fantasy with the reality of a Japan of people and buildings and waiting on trains and paying too much for a bowl of noodles and culture shock is a tall order. Sometimes we stay in bed not to sleep but to keep dreaming.
“Japan”. A journey twenty years – and almost an entire life – in the making.
So am I ready now?
Does it matter? I leave tomorrow.
mea culpa
three and a half months.
that is an awful long time to leave a blog unattended. all the usual excuses apply: ive been busy; im lazy; my dog ate my computer.
honestly part of it (although it hardly accounts for the entirety of my negligence - three and a half months?!) is that ive done some travelling: China and Japan. in that order. although im going to blog about them in reverse.
so that will get things started once more, a little travel blogging. i know that the four or five of you who happen by here have probably heard most of these stories via email and, to make matters worse, im not going to post any photos (i doubt it, anyway) with these reflections. humor me, i guess.
three and a half months is far too long to leave a little blog on its own.
keep it up and the next thing ya know im gonna get a call telling me "manisamap" was seen drinking behind the bleachers or got caught with a joint in his bookbag. some parent i am, geez...
that is an awful long time to leave a blog unattended. all the usual excuses apply: ive been busy; im lazy; my dog ate my computer.
honestly part of it (although it hardly accounts for the entirety of my negligence - three and a half months?!) is that ive done some travelling: China and Japan. in that order. although im going to blog about them in reverse.
so that will get things started once more, a little travel blogging. i know that the four or five of you who happen by here have probably heard most of these stories via email and, to make matters worse, im not going to post any photos (i doubt it, anyway) with these reflections. humor me, i guess.
three and a half months is far too long to leave a little blog on its own.
keep it up and the next thing ya know im gonna get a call telling me "manisamap" was seen drinking behind the bleachers or got caught with a joint in his bookbag. some parent i am, geez...
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
ERRATUM
Kingdom: Demonalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Acardia
Order: Demianthropoidea
Family: Adamopolous
Genus: Mierrus Hominidae
Species: Mierrus
Apology:
We have endeavored with the preceding entries in this compendium to treat our subjects with the detached objectivity appropriate to scientific writing. Given the ostensibly preternatural aspects of the subject matter at hand this was a task fraught with challenges. It has been our intention, however, from the very inception of this project to place the maligned recipients of our attentions within a context free of the distortions that inhere in so much of both religious and folk representations.
Despite our efforts there can be little doubt that we will offend the sensibilities of some whilst perchance exciting the lurid curiosities of others. But what may strike the gracious reader of this text as grotesque or pornographic has engendered no such emotions within the authors. Just as our colleagues in the separate but wedded discipline of taxonomical biology assign no moral valuations and thus do not flinch at, say, Megaselia scalarsis and its necrophagous proclivities, we too have refrained from quaint moralizing.
As scientists we are, after all, to operate as the eyes of Nature and not her conscience.
It is with professional apologies, then, that we present this our last entry. Here you will find depicted an organism so vile, so fulsome to even the most depraved mind, that we were regrettably but ineluctably compelled towards invective rather than mere description.
Anatomy:
Mierrus, whilst classified as a single organism, is composed of a myriad of constituent parts that operate under presumed notions of autonomy. (Not autonomy apart from the super organism – the existence of which the individual groups seem largely ignorant of – but autonomy apart from one another.)
The groups are in effect biologically identical with one another but do exhibit some degree of difference (see “Behaviour”) as well as distinctions between male and female genders.
The subject’s size is capable of extreme variation; presumably at will, but it is always humanoid in form; horrifically and awfully humanoid.
Behaviour:
As mentioned above Mierrus is composed of a large number of groups operating under dubious notions of autonomy. These groups are wholly dependent one on another for continued existence but act as if blind to or insensible of this fact. Indeed, interactions between groups were overwhelmingly marked by violence.
The features by which these groups attempt to distinguish themselves are essentially arbitrary: the superficial aspects of some groups – size; coloration; et cetera – show minor variations over another; certain groups excel in tasks at which other groups struggle; their vocalizations display unique semantic markers for nearly identical referents. These distinctions, and others equally arbitrary, are the grounds for justifying – in fact, frequently making virtues of – the most reprehensible atrocities imaginable. (Since the time of this writing the groups have evolved – perhaps “devolved” is more apposite – in such a way that any act of justification has been largely abandoned. Meanwhile the assignation of virtues has increased in inverse proportion.)
Violence is not only exported. Often it was observed within groups, the female and young of the species typically – but not exclusively – being the victims.
In this creature at war with itself rape and murder are endemic; genocide is routine; vengeance is pursued at any cost; creativity brings forth the armaments of destruction; the blood of the innocent (what innocence there is amongst them) cries unanswered in the streets; cruelty and deception of every sort is the common currency.
It would seem that a commitment to self-annihilation is the one thing about which Mierrus agrees amongst itself.
Mierrus has means of communicating (if we may debase the word thusly) through the use of many tongue-like organs that writhe together in a perpetually agape mouth and shriek in what sounds like as many frequencies. (As we have already sullied “communication” we will do no further damage and refrain here from ascribing to these individual rackets the word “language”.) At those rare intervals when two or more contrarian tongues achieve a degree of acoustic consonance such that mutual intelligibility at least seems possible every effort is made by these accidental conspirators to frustrate their own efforts and descend once more into a chaotic, chattering din.
Mierrus is an omnivore with a preference for meat. Unsurprisingly, groups prey without discretion upon one another’s young. This in itself is not uncommon in Nature but we frequently observed behaviour associated with this appetite that was almost unfathomably appalling.
One group would sever the heads of the stolen infants of another group and then, under auspices of empathy, serve to the grieved and apparently ignorant parents the brains and entrails of their slaughtered progeny. The ignorance of the “bereaved”, however, is highly suspect. We noticed that many groups advertised or made available – subtly but irrefutably so – their young to rival groups and while they maintained an attitude of dismayed shock throughout the ordeal the sincerity of their sorrow is little to be believed. It would appear that these atrocities must be classified not as acts of kidnapping and murder but of ritualized infanticide and cannibalization.
It must be noted that this behaviour is some of the only intra-group cooperation demonstrated by Mierrus.
In matters of culture Mierrus displays a considerable propensity for the creation and adoption of religious myths and topoi. Such beliefs were very nearly ubiquitous amongst the groups observed and as they are congenial to the affecting of some of their most remarkable perversion and cruelty this may explain their considerable influence. Violence was especially fervent when sanctioned by a religious authority or the (supposed) divine mandate of a god.
Evidence suggests that Mierrus reckons its deities in its own image; a fact that, if true, only serves to further damn its nature.
Conclusion:
This concludes our entry for the daemon known as Mierrus.
To maintain for the period of time demanded of us the proximity to such a monster necessary for the accumulating of this data was nearly a trial beyond words. For Mierrus is a daemon unlike any other. It lives for death, has made an “art” out of viciousness, and glories in its violence. It is this that makes the fiend so ignoble: that it is conscious of what it does.
A certain pity can be extended to the brutish lot of the beasts of the field; they know not what they do. But what sympathies are on offer for a being that is self-aware? For a being that must surely know better?
Perhaps on second thought Mierrus is, if not worthy of our pity, at least pitiful: no promise of damnation to come could surmount the punishment of daily living with itself. Mierrus’ torture is simply, piteously, horribly, that it can never stop being Mierrus. At least Oroboros (see entry XXVI of this volume) had the consolation – specious, to be true, but no less consoling for that – of a finite length of tail to consume.
Mierrus, in spite of all its trying, can’t get rid of itself.
It is with no small measure of terror that we contemplate such a monster making its way into our midst.
-Excerpted from “Essays in Taxonomical Daemonology” , Hume and A. Toore eds. (unpublished)
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Acardia
Order: Demianthropoidea
Family: Adamopolous
Genus: Mierrus Hominidae
Species: Mierrus
Apology:
We have endeavored with the preceding entries in this compendium to treat our subjects with the detached objectivity appropriate to scientific writing. Given the ostensibly preternatural aspects of the subject matter at hand this was a task fraught with challenges. It has been our intention, however, from the very inception of this project to place the maligned recipients of our attentions within a context free of the distortions that inhere in so much of both religious and folk representations.
Despite our efforts there can be little doubt that we will offend the sensibilities of some whilst perchance exciting the lurid curiosities of others. But what may strike the gracious reader of this text as grotesque or pornographic has engendered no such emotions within the authors. Just as our colleagues in the separate but wedded discipline of taxonomical biology assign no moral valuations and thus do not flinch at, say, Megaselia scalarsis and its necrophagous proclivities, we too have refrained from quaint moralizing.
As scientists we are, after all, to operate as the eyes of Nature and not her conscience.
It is with professional apologies, then, that we present this our last entry. Here you will find depicted an organism so vile, so fulsome to even the most depraved mind, that we were regrettably but ineluctably compelled towards invective rather than mere description.
Anatomy:
Mierrus, whilst classified as a single organism, is composed of a myriad of constituent parts that operate under presumed notions of autonomy. (Not autonomy apart from the super organism – the existence of which the individual groups seem largely ignorant of – but autonomy apart from one another.)
The groups are in effect biologically identical with one another but do exhibit some degree of difference (see “Behaviour”) as well as distinctions between male and female genders.
The subject’s size is capable of extreme variation; presumably at will, but it is always humanoid in form; horrifically and awfully humanoid.
Behaviour:
As mentioned above Mierrus is composed of a large number of groups operating under dubious notions of autonomy. These groups are wholly dependent one on another for continued existence but act as if blind to or insensible of this fact. Indeed, interactions between groups were overwhelmingly marked by violence.
The features by which these groups attempt to distinguish themselves are essentially arbitrary: the superficial aspects of some groups – size; coloration; et cetera – show minor variations over another; certain groups excel in tasks at which other groups struggle; their vocalizations display unique semantic markers for nearly identical referents. These distinctions, and others equally arbitrary, are the grounds for justifying – in fact, frequently making virtues of – the most reprehensible atrocities imaginable. (Since the time of this writing the groups have evolved – perhaps “devolved” is more apposite – in such a way that any act of justification has been largely abandoned. Meanwhile the assignation of virtues has increased in inverse proportion.)
Violence is not only exported. Often it was observed within groups, the female and young of the species typically – but not exclusively – being the victims.
In this creature at war with itself rape and murder are endemic; genocide is routine; vengeance is pursued at any cost; creativity brings forth the armaments of destruction; the blood of the innocent (what innocence there is amongst them) cries unanswered in the streets; cruelty and deception of every sort is the common currency.
It would seem that a commitment to self-annihilation is the one thing about which Mierrus agrees amongst itself.
Mierrus has means of communicating (if we may debase the word thusly) through the use of many tongue-like organs that writhe together in a perpetually agape mouth and shriek in what sounds like as many frequencies. (As we have already sullied “communication” we will do no further damage and refrain here from ascribing to these individual rackets the word “language”.) At those rare intervals when two or more contrarian tongues achieve a degree of acoustic consonance such that mutual intelligibility at least seems possible every effort is made by these accidental conspirators to frustrate their own efforts and descend once more into a chaotic, chattering din.
Mierrus is an omnivore with a preference for meat. Unsurprisingly, groups prey without discretion upon one another’s young. This in itself is not uncommon in Nature but we frequently observed behaviour associated with this appetite that was almost unfathomably appalling.
One group would sever the heads of the stolen infants of another group and then, under auspices of empathy, serve to the grieved and apparently ignorant parents the brains and entrails of their slaughtered progeny. The ignorance of the “bereaved”, however, is highly suspect. We noticed that many groups advertised or made available – subtly but irrefutably so – their young to rival groups and while they maintained an attitude of dismayed shock throughout the ordeal the sincerity of their sorrow is little to be believed. It would appear that these atrocities must be classified not as acts of kidnapping and murder but of ritualized infanticide and cannibalization.
It must be noted that this behaviour is some of the only intra-group cooperation demonstrated by Mierrus.
In matters of culture Mierrus displays a considerable propensity for the creation and adoption of religious myths and topoi. Such beliefs were very nearly ubiquitous amongst the groups observed and as they are congenial to the affecting of some of their most remarkable perversion and cruelty this may explain their considerable influence. Violence was especially fervent when sanctioned by a religious authority or the (supposed) divine mandate of a god.
Evidence suggests that Mierrus reckons its deities in its own image; a fact that, if true, only serves to further damn its nature.
Conclusion:
This concludes our entry for the daemon known as Mierrus.
To maintain for the period of time demanded of us the proximity to such a monster necessary for the accumulating of this data was nearly a trial beyond words. For Mierrus is a daemon unlike any other. It lives for death, has made an “art” out of viciousness, and glories in its violence. It is this that makes the fiend so ignoble: that it is conscious of what it does.
A certain pity can be extended to the brutish lot of the beasts of the field; they know not what they do. But what sympathies are on offer for a being that is self-aware? For a being that must surely know better?
Perhaps on second thought Mierrus is, if not worthy of our pity, at least pitiful: no promise of damnation to come could surmount the punishment of daily living with itself. Mierrus’ torture is simply, piteously, horribly, that it can never stop being Mierrus. At least Oroboros (see entry XXVI of this volume) had the consolation – specious, to be true, but no less consoling for that – of a finite length of tail to consume.
Mierrus, in spite of all its trying, can’t get rid of itself.
It is with no small measure of terror that we contemplate such a monster making its way into our midst.
-Excerpted from “Essays in Taxonomical Daemonology” , Hume and A. Toore eds. (unpublished)
russian riffing
Every happy family is alike insofar as its members are committed to maintaining a set of shared deceptions; it is in the upsetting of these deceptions that a family acquires its unique unhappiness.
Friday, 9 January 2009
No. 7
At dawn the sky still breaks against the face of the mountains in waves of pale blue mist. The sun emerges as Earth rehearses this arc of its ancient orbit and the waves recede; drawn in to wait again for nightfall. From the vanishing darkness a rooster signals a new day’s momentary triumph.
My punctual alarm clock pierces the sleep that surrounds me and I surface from a dream. Lying in bed I struggle to guard from marauding consciousness the fading apparition of a girl who is at once both as strange and remote to me as a fairy kingdom and the sum of every woman I’ve ever known, loved, cherished, cursed. The ember eyes of this unknown Ur-girl flash finally as the dream is outstripped by reality and I am left alone in the growing glow of morning.
In the kitchen my coffee maker exhales periodic sighs that fill my small apartment with its rich, resuscitating breath. I pour a full cup; I am going to need all the help I can get today. The mountains may be clearing but my mind feels wrapped in a stupefying fog and with half-blind eyes it peeks disconcertingly from its cephalic cave.
Opposite where I live there is a small vegetable garden. Rows of pepper and bean plants, bellflowers with milky lavender blossoms, and a pumpkin patch grow here; all enclosed by a wire fence from which ivy hangs like a shaggy, green beard. Every day with bowed back and dirt covered knees the same old woman tends to this garden. Standing at the window, the cup of coffee cooling in my hands, I observe her.
The old woman lays down her hand spade straightens her back inhales deeply and with knotted gnarled fingers begins turning over a pile of desiccated pepper plants beneath which grow seedlings their stems and leaves as pale with newness as the day seedlings that are being protected and nourished through the decay and death of the plants from which their seeds were harvested seedlings that in a short span of time will lay shriveled on the earth with new life burning under them and the old woman will strip the familiar shroud from their reincarnated selves as she has done since the time before her remembering and give them anew to the creative chaos of the sun.
I finish my coffee. The day is soon ringing with peals of children laughing and singing on their way to school.
- Yeosu, South Korea, September 2007
My punctual alarm clock pierces the sleep that surrounds me and I surface from a dream. Lying in bed I struggle to guard from marauding consciousness the fading apparition of a girl who is at once both as strange and remote to me as a fairy kingdom and the sum of every woman I’ve ever known, loved, cherished, cursed. The ember eyes of this unknown Ur-girl flash finally as the dream is outstripped by reality and I am left alone in the growing glow of morning.
In the kitchen my coffee maker exhales periodic sighs that fill my small apartment with its rich, resuscitating breath. I pour a full cup; I am going to need all the help I can get today. The mountains may be clearing but my mind feels wrapped in a stupefying fog and with half-blind eyes it peeks disconcertingly from its cephalic cave.
Opposite where I live there is a small vegetable garden. Rows of pepper and bean plants, bellflowers with milky lavender blossoms, and a pumpkin patch grow here; all enclosed by a wire fence from which ivy hangs like a shaggy, green beard. Every day with bowed back and dirt covered knees the same old woman tends to this garden. Standing at the window, the cup of coffee cooling in my hands, I observe her.
The old woman lays down her hand spade straightens her back inhales deeply and with knotted gnarled fingers begins turning over a pile of desiccated pepper plants beneath which grow seedlings their stems and leaves as pale with newness as the day seedlings that are being protected and nourished through the decay and death of the plants from which their seeds were harvested seedlings that in a short span of time will lay shriveled on the earth with new life burning under them and the old woman will strip the familiar shroud from their reincarnated selves as she has done since the time before her remembering and give them anew to the creative chaos of the sun.
I finish my coffee. The day is soon ringing with peals of children laughing and singing on their way to school.
- Yeosu, South Korea, September 2007
Thursday, 8 January 2009
No. 6
"The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance."
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (V.i.27,28)
"In war, the physical or idolatrous substitute for the real dialectic of the spirit, one lives by half-truths."
- Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (V.i.27,28)
"In war, the physical or idolatrous substitute for the real dialectic of the spirit, one lives by half-truths."
- Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism
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