Now You listen to Me

Dad

Unites States Marine Corps, 1946

He has a slightly apprehensive, ambiguous expression here.

Derangement of the Senses

Recently completed Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, translated by Ivan Morris: Tremendous stuff, the interlacing of creepy sex, obsessions, Rinzai Zen, architecture, in WWII and postwar occupied Japan... First thing by Mishima I've read, I think, since taking two courses in Japanese Literature from the late Professor Wolfe at UO, many moons past. I remember him discussing the film Mishima made of the short story "Patriotism."



Another poem of mine, written in the early part of this century.


Courtesy Clerk

By Jonathan Falk




Window decal: A boy pisses on a Ford logo, his eyes arched at the onlooker. In other words, piss on Ford, and Ford pisses on Chevrolet.
A volunteer sunflower with shoulders and shawls like a misfit, in the light teeming beyond the silhouette hills.
When mankind enters the doors, they are drawn to the nearest cart. If they find plastic bags, napkins, or other scatterings in a cart, they fish with their hands and flip the refuse into another cart.
Humble yellow jackets are imminent and peripheral in the el Nino of fuzzy autumn shade.
Crows pace through landscaped groves, earth slanting as they ratchet between unseen foliage.
Cars jump when they’re parked, but it’s the ones which aren’t seen which shine as they breeze by my legs, grazing my blind spot.
The maiden whose body is like an ear of corn, a spirit of partially hydrogenated soybean oil, taurine, and sucralose, flour and sugar squared and packed like maple bricks.
“Horn not working, watch for finger.”

Koizumi Yakumo

An article about the death of Lafcadio Hearn, the great interpreter of Japan (and New Orleans, Martinique, and other places) from 1904 -- apparently from the defunct Oregon Journal... The tribute is by the Japanese author and poet, Yone Noguchi. The cutting was yellowed and fragrant inside one of his books, where it no doubt had lain for around a century when I bought it. In those days, journalists were a little freer to overtly express their opinions -- also worth noting is the spelling "thru." Click to enlarge.

Here you may also catch up on the latest treaty issues from the Russo-Japanese war; along with some other material.

The rest of Oddities 3

The rest of Oddities 3 from 1982, with some more dithyrambic contributions by various people. All of the contributors in this issue were high schoolers at the time (except for Crumb!) ... The back cover is great: an illustration of H.P. Lovecraft's and Hazel Heald's "The Horror in the Museum" by Roman Scott.

Today, or rather yesterday by now, marks the fourth year in a row (and I went once some years before that as well) that I've been to the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Ore. Nuggets and news from S.T. Joshi, readings by Richard A. Lupoff and others, and some good films as usual, including an adaptation of The Outsider that was appropriately moody. Unfortunately I missed the showing of Fear of the Unknown, a new documentary about HPL. I also witnessed the wedding of Robert M. Price's daughter Victoria with Mars... Robert performed the ceremony, walking out in a sort of Esoteric Order of Dagon headdress thing... You don't see that every day. And when he pronounces something like "Yaddith," you know he means it. Clouds floated above the street, a few feeble raindrops.