words i had so many a pen with endless fountain word for every step up the mountain time it stretches out yet for all the listless days my list of things to do still weighs loss it can engulf but sometimes you burn a few trees to open cones with new seeds truth nobody knows elusive as the ocean built from stories that you've chosen right better than wrong both of them in plenty choose the right when you're ready god i don't fucking know a name to call in the instant of true panic and true amazement

I'm reading a book about peasants in the village of long bow In north china after the end of the second world war If you think you're life is hard man you haven't got a fucking clue The lives people lived not so long ago and not so far from you They dealt with droughts and floods and questionable grain-weighting Sadistic landlords, brutal religious leaders and cruel administrating Every possible way a person could be squeezed they were, and painfully so And violence that would shock most people was regularly doled out in long bow The name long bow is an english translation of changchuang A reminder that the crisis of chinese feudalism was premised upon Foreign interventions that had torn apart the fabric of chinese society Like the opium wars where british killed chinese For the right to get them hooked on drugs "Three Pillars of Heaven A man is poor, Ever thinner, ever blacker, Goes to borrow fifty coins, Is asked a hundred in return, Turns to go, Knows he's taken for a thief; A man is rich, Ever fatter, ever whiter, Goes to borrow fifty pieces, Has a hundred pressed upon him, Turns to go, Is urged to stay and drink" So it’s the height of the Second World War and Japan has occupied North China but they can’t contain the communist resistance, which has bases in the mountains. Long Bow has a large detachment of a hundred Japanese soldiers but the village is still run by the local gentry. These collaborators rule the village even more brutally than normal, doling out wanton cruelty and violence to anyone that crosses them. The village head is named Shang Shih-t'ou and he is widely but quietly despised. One day he finds a note tied to a stone in his courtyard, it’s from the communist commander in the mountains. It lists several of his most heinous acts of cruelty but offers him an opportunity to meet and turn against the Japanese occupation and redeem himself. Shang knows that working with the communist resistance means foregoing his luxury and power in Long Bow, so he refuses to meet, but he knows the communists are watching him, so he grows nervous at nights. He increasingly refuses to stay in his own house at night and almost never stays in the same place two nights in a row. His wife, knowing his history of bad behaviour with other women, publicly scolds him for staying out every night and Shang is forced to stay home to protect his honour. On the third night in his house, the communists capture him and he is killed. The village silently rejoices, suddenly aware that there must be underground resistance in the village right under the nose of the Japanese soldiers. It is the beginning of the liberation of Long Bow. Liberation didn’t come easy but eventually it came And upon the landlords and collaborators revenge would be taken People were scared at first, cos there was no way of knowing If the aristocracy would rebound and regain a hold Of power in long bow and the surrounding region The nationalists were well equipped but the peasantry was legion And despite the American and Japanese troops helping to contain revolution It was clear that the process in motion would keep moving Retribution against collaborators in long bow gained steam Their crimes were denounced in the public Square and they were beaten And centuries of utter domination were challenged and overturned The wealth that for so long had been stolen was being returned. "As the meeting progressed, Father Sun was brought from the lockup and made to stand before the crowd. One after another his own parishioners accused him to his face. 'You preach suffering and hardship for the people' shouted Cheng-k'uan. 'You say the poor should eat plain food and endure cold, never get angry and never do bad things. Then why should you eat meat and white flour every day? And if the taste doesn't suit you, you order the cook to make it over again. And every night you sleep with the nuns. It's suffering and virtue for others but for yourself it is comfort and sin.' Father Sun did not deign to answer this. He stood before them defiantly and kept his mouth shut. 'And as for the mass,' continued Cheng k'uan. "If anyone gave you a lot of money, you said it for him very quickly. If anyone gave you a little money you said did the mass after awhile. But if anyone had no money at all, there was no mass at all either. Is your mass a service to the people or is it just a business to earn some money?' This brought the peasant Hsiao-su to his feet. 'You told us a lot of lies,' he said, walking straight up to the priest and shaking his fist in his face. 'You said that no one must bite the wafer you handed out. You said that if we bit it with our teeth blood would flow it and we would be punished by god. But I didn't believe it. One morning I took the wafer to the privy behind the church and I broke it with my teeth and crumbled it up. I found nothing but wheat flour. Not a drop of blood flowed out of it. Your words are nothing but lies. All you do is deceive people.' 'That's right, all you do is deceive,' said Cheng k'uang, joining Hsaio-su in front of the priest. 'The Carry-On Society is supposed to help people, but the best land is farmed by the head of the Society and the landlord Fan Pu-tzu. When the Japanese came, we all asked for shelter in the church. You found room for the landlords, but we poor Catholics could only wander about the yard until we were finally driven back into the street. And of everything we brought to you for protection, you took 20 percent. Is that the way you help people?' 'Help people? Help people? They never help people,' said Wang Ch'eng-yu. 'I have been a Catholic all my life and all I ever got for it was beatings.' The words poured from him in a torrent as he told of how his little sister was taken into the orphanage and how he himself was beaten for joining the Buddhist rites. 'When the Japanese came I was a match peddler,' he sobbed. 'I was afraid they would seize my stock. I brought 70 boxes of matches to the church for safe-keeping. Society Chairman Wang put them in a drawer, but three days later wheen I returned there were only three boxes left. When I asked him what became of the matches he said 'better ask the drawer.' When I asked him again, he beat me up.'" "Men revolted in earlier ages too, There's nothing rare about such an ado, Strange things pass on earth, as in the sky, How else can the Heavenly Dog eat the moon on high? In it goes at one side, and out it pop again, Brightly as ever the moon shines then, It's always the good who come out on top, The devil's disciples soon have to stop" (landlord Ts'ui) For as long as anyone in Long Bow remembered the women were bought and sold They were valuable as wives and workers and mothers until they got too old They were subject to the tyranny and beatings of landlords, husbands and older women of the house And the indignities they bore every day and every night were just part of life in the town But revolution has a way of shaking the very ground beneath our shoes And as the landlords and the rich would face a reckoning, so the fathers and husbands would too The new women’s association was created to give voice to long-standing injustice And a growing number of women in longbow would periodically meet to discuss this But the men didn’t like it, and one evening Man-Ts'ang’s wife came home from a meeting And Man-Ts'ang said “I’ll teach you to stay home, I’ll mend your rascal ways” as he delivered a beating But Man-Ts'ang’s wife wasn’t cowed and she woke up the very next day and went to the women’s association And denounced Man-Ts'ang and asked the women for support, so they amassed the women of the village to demand Man-Ts'ang’s explanation Man-Ts'ang was arrogant and defiant and stood behind his actions He said women only go to meetings to get away from their husbands and have a free hand for flirtation and seduction At this the women lost their tempers and began beating Man-Ts'ang black and blue They said “beat her will you? Beat her and slander us all? Well this will teach you” Man-Ts'ang was punched and kicked and scratched and pummeled until he could hardly breathe Gasping for air, he solemnly promised that never again would his wife be beaten And they allowed him to stand and go and but made it known this was his only warning And Man-Ts'ang’s wife was no longer called Man-Ts'ang’s wife but forever after used her own name Ch'eng Ai-lien And in some cases the women didn’t need to beat the men in this way Sometimes they sent delegations to go to the peasant husbands and to them explain That everything was changing and they were settling accounts and men and women together Needed to put their combined energy and strength and industry into building a new long bow for the better "One night in April, T'ien-ming, the former underground worker now in charge of the public security, and Kuei-ts'ai, the vice-leader of the village, stood guard together on the road that led south out of Long Bow toward the walled town of Changchih. Under the soft light of a full moon they walked up and down in silence. Several times during the first hour, T'ien-ming slowed down his pace and turned toward Kuei-ts'ai as if prepared to say something, but apparently he thought better of it and walked on briskly as before. Finally, he did speak. 'Comrade,' he said, looking Kuei-ts'ai straight in the eye. 'In regard to the Eighth Route Army, what are your thoughts?' Kuei-ts'ai was a little taken aback. 'What are my thoughts?' he exclaimed, hoisting his rifle onto his other shoulder. 'What should my thoughts be? In the past I had nothing. I had an empty bowl. Now I have fanshened. Everything I have, the Eighth Route Army gave to me. Wherever the Eighth Route Army goes, I will follow.' 'And the Communist Party?' asked T'ien-ming. 'The Communist Party?' said Kuei-ts'ai, drawing his heavy brows together so that a crease ran up the middle of his forehead. 'The Communist Party and the Eighth Route Army - it's all the same, isn't it?' 'No, not exactly,' said T'ien-ming. 'The Communist Party organized the army. In the army there are Communist Party members. The Communist Party directs the army, but there are many soldiers in the army who are not in the Communist Party. And it is the Communist Party, not the Eighth Route Army, that leads us in the battle against the landlords. It is the Communist Party that leads our fanshen.' 'I understand,' said Kuei-ts'ai, still not too clear as to what the Communist Party was. 'If only we follow the Communist Party the working people will certainly win victory. We will overthrow the old capital holders and we will become masters of the house,' said T'ien-ming starting to walk again, this time very slowly. 'Where is the party then?' asked Kuei-ts'ai. 'I want to see it.' 'It's far away but there are party members in the army and also in the countryside. I too would like to see the party. Will you go with me to find it?' 'Yes' answered Kuei-ts'ai without a moment's hesitation. 'Let's go as soon as possible.' After that, every time Kuei-ts'ai found T'ien-ming alone, he asked him when they would start out, but T'ien-ming put him off several times. Finally, T'ien-ming said 'why are you so anxious? Don't you know it is a long journey, and a very difficult and dangerous one?' 'Never mind how difficult or dangerous it is,' said Kuei-ts'ai impatiently. 'You say the Communist Party leads us to fanshen. There is no other way out for us except with the Communist Party, so let's go find it.' 'Think it over some more,' said T'ien-ming. 'Are you willing to risk your life for the party? In the future there will be many dangers, many hardhips. You must be willing to sacrifice even your life, maybe ever the safety of your family.' 'I have already made up my mind,' said Kuei-ts'ai. 'Why do you keep talking about the dangers, as if we weren't in danger already?' 'In that case, your journey is over,' said T'ien-ming, smiling broadly. 'The party is right before your eyes. I am a member of the Communist Party.'"

This is a list of the notes I’ve been saving in my phone: To do, books to send, addresses, recording notes Things to get, summer school participants, El Salvador post Another to do list, the cat album track order and a note on Patrick Wolfe A list of additional symptoms I forgot to tell the vet about Eight thoughts about fascism that seemed important to me to write out A draft text to aliya from a fight that I don’t remember if I sent A recipe for black bean dip that I lifted from a very old friend There’s a funny thing that my nephew said to me And in the same vein, something a student wrote in an essay There’s a bit I was developing based on the characters in the show Zoobilee Zoo And the details of a dream I had about being in a beautiful courtyard in Winnipeg too And some thoughts on one of the many books I keep meaning to come back to Called Selected stories by Lu Xun published by Peking press in 1972 The only one I’ve read before is the True Story of Ah Q And since I haven’t read the others I’m gonna share a little bit of it with you Keep in mind I haven’t read this story in years, if you’re a Chinese lit scholar I read it as a graduate student with Tina Chen in like 2004 But I remember it being funny and sad and uncomfortable and strange Who was this character, Ah Q, did he deserve our pity, our hate? The story was first published in the early 1920s The Qing dynasty had just been overthrown and it was chaos in the country Lu Xun was part of a group of intellectuals who wanted China to look ahead And of the opposite tendency, the character Ah Q was chosen to represent Ah Q is absolutely and positively always full of shit He’s a dumbass drunk and he’s self-righteous and he’s a hypocrite And no matter how badly Ah Q manages to fuck things up He always tells himself that by spiritual metrics he’s the truly holy one But we’re not necessarily to hate poor Ah Q entirely It’s pity we feel, as he is picked apart by the world, deluding himself to believe That he is the author and the owner of his story When in fact he’s a fool, both victim and perpetrator of every victory Victory, because that’s how Lu Xun refers to his failures Like when he finally wins at the gambling tables and gets robbed of all his silvers Or when he gets beaten by a rich man in the street only to turn around And bully someone else, to the roaring laughter of the people in the town My memory of all of this might be hazy But I think what Lu Xun was ultimately trying to say Was that pride, ego and backwardness were not going to propel China forward But dignity, intelligence and principle would make the country modern There’s some stuff there I can appreciate and some not so much But Mao called him a great thinker and a revolutionary so I’m gonna take a look And see how Ah Q and the other stories hold up to my 20 20 eyes But I’ll start tomorrow because I’m in bed beside the cat and I’m tired It’s 24 hours later and I’ve scored a few victories like the legend Ah Q Couple hours ago I was eating a crust of bread and I broke my fucking tooth Just a crunch and a weird feeling and pieces of broken tooth in my mouth I’m almost forty is this the kind of shit that’s gonna just happen now? And frankly this bizarre experience was just a blip in the day I’ve had I called my mother to fill her in on some concerning medical stuff with my cat Only to find out that someone very dear to me lost a child a few nights ago What she and her husband are going through, I honesty don’t know Ah Q’s problem was that he was stuck in the past, not looking forward But that was a hundred years ago and with Lu Xun I might need a word Cos 2020 is the dam breaking over here, and when it comes to the future I’m afraid to look I’m sorry man it’s not that I’m criticizing your book It’s just that given the state of things the future is so uncertain Everytime I think things are settling back and the better times are returning Some new loss is right there waiting to knock me on my ass And I’d like to widen the scope of this idea if you’ll give me a chance Because I’ve never lived through a time when despair was so pervasive If it’s not cops killing people is a virus that is raging And if we survive the virus there will be more on the horizon Because the planets burning up and we’re a long way from an uprising That could change the fundamental direction this is heading At least that’s how most people feel it’s like we’re all just getting ready For a descent into absolute madness and misery I mean when’s the last time you saw a happy future depicted in a movie You ever wonder what it was like to live in Rome in the 400s? How many people thought everything was fine until the goths arrived like thunder And Rome had been so fucked for so long, feeding people to lions Any wonder the empire fell at the hands of a ragtag Gothic alliance And let’s be honest it’s fucking funny that it had to be the Goths There were goth kids in my high school and I never probed them for their thoughts On the decaying Roman Empire and what it might have been like to live Through the cascading spiral of crises that culminated in the end of all of it But I’m increasingly certain that that’s what we’re all about to go through America’s a inch away from fascism, they’re overwhelmed in the ICUs It’s not a recession we’re sliding into it’s another Great Depression And there’s a lotta guns in that collapsing empire and trigger fingers flexing Oh and don’t forget the coming war with China I have no idea what it will look like and when but empires don’t usually go quietly And I don’t normally associate Americans with graciously accepting defeat It’s inter imperial rivalry time like it was in 1914 And this war won’t have a winner Just a lot of dead poor people to determine which rich get to be the centre Of the next century or less of capitalist accumulation That’s assuming we don’t blow up the planet or flood it or some other aberration So it’s strange to read Lu Xun a century after he was writing How dramatically things have changed while at the same time in the cycle We’re almost right back at the same point but on an entirely different plane I’m doing dialectics in my head but honestly this shit is hard to explain Point is, I think in spite of the chaos around him Lu Xun was full of hope And I’d like to believe I can find the same if I keep reading what he wrote So I’ll go back to Ah Q and if I find myself inspired I’ll add a few last lines here like a diligent writer