In the House of the Hangman 1197

Living is no laughing matter, right? You must live with great seriousness, like a squirrel, for example – I mean without looking for something above and beyond living – but I’ve never had the laughing sickness, so what good am I? Finally the hands grab the belly so the belly won’t burst but there is no belly. By this time, of course, the game had already acquired the characteristic features of a religious discipline evident in its adherents even today. These, of course, derived ultimately from the sexual shamanism of Chu Daoism and were consolidated by its association with the neo-Daoist sects of Chang’an in the Sixteen Kingdoms period. The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove were famous in their time as avid players. The legend that they had their servants follow them always with a jug of wine and a shovel (to inspire their rounds of poetry and to bury them on the spot if they keeled over dead during one of the drinking sessions) has numerous recorded variations that state that what their servants always carried with them were a jug of wine and ping pong paddles, so let’s get it right. A man walks by with a loaf of bread on his shoulder. Another searches in the mud for bones, rinds. (Each line of this poem should be followed by a silence equal in duration to one or more complete repetitions of the words of the line. Each stanza should be followed by a silence equal in duration to the time it takes to read all the words of the stanza silently one or more times.) The tides of the ocean and the floods are danced: heya heya heya .a yo . ho . yaha hahe: Ded o ded o: calea zacatechichi twigs, goji berries, mirrors, rose petals, fake flowers, glitter, and cardboard : a great jar is set up with two small ladders leaning against its sides. Dreads washed and looking good, toes painted too ... after all, a person has to look good for surgery. “But who’ll fly the plane?” “Why me, of course.” I opened my mouth so she could see how good my teeth were – like pilot’s teeth. Yeah, even my eyeballs were cold on my hike today! With that said you can easily make an infrared hat with cheap $1 infrared LEDs stitched in, the more the better … Attach a 9 volt battery to the LEDS and bam you are now a giant LED flashlight. People will see nothing out of the ordinary, but CCTV cameras will only see a large flash of infrared light coming from your head, hiding your face.

[Note: Sources: Nazim Hikmet, “On Living” (trs. Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk), in The Poetry of Our World (eds. Jeffrey Paine et al); Gregory Corso, “Zizi’s Lament”, at Song of America; Vasko Popa, “After the Game” (tr. Charles Simic), in Stony Brook 3 / 4; Alice Lyman Miller, as quoted in Donald C Miller, “The origin of ping pong”, at Chinese Law Prof Blog, 28 Aug 08, via William Keckler, “Did You Know Ping Pong’s Origins are Taoist?”, at Joe Brainard’s Pyjamas (The Sequel), 12 Jan 013; JBR; César Vallejo, “A Man Walks By With A Loaf Of Bread On His Shoulder” (tr. Clayton Eshleman), in Paine et al; Jackson Mac Low, “An Ode to Iris from the I Ching           17 February 1960”, in Stony Brook 1 / 2; Jerome Rothenberg, “Technicians of the Sacred: Selections”, in Stony Brook 1 / 2; Jackie Wang, “WITCH LYFE” …”, at Ballerinas Dance With Machine Guns, 12 Jan 013; Andi Campbell Newman, FB post, 12 Jan 013; Simon Armitage, “Aviators”, at Blackbox Manifold 3; Shawn Townsend, FB comment, 12 Jan 013; Jacob Sloan, “A DIY Hat To Prevent Your Visibility On Cameras And Video” at Disinformation, 11 Jan 013]

Comments

[Ed Baker]

thanks for the link to the origins "ping pang" ...
Song of Chin is situated in the Yellow River region where this (war) game was invented :

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/china_law_prof_blog/2008/08/the-origin-of-p.html

sure wish that I had known about this when writing S of C (in '71) !

it is the factual-I-zed "stuff" like this that adds
so much of the color to the unfathomable debts
of my works...

sounds to me that the "pings" were the farmers and that the "pongs/pangs" were the shepherds

at war worth each other ?

same metaphor as what later came with that
Cain / farmer vs. Abel / shepherd tale and all of the
subsequent wars since .

but: I could be wrong :

[john]

It's always marvelous how every little bit of "data" reverberates against and other bit ... if the right ears are listening, that is.

[Ed Baker]

two
pebbles

in
the
ripples

touch
ing

(I have a dfrawing that goes with this
and all spells checked

[furla candy bags]

You will find some fascinating points in time in this post but I don't know if I see all of them center to heart