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May You Know And Do Better Than We Did

by Murakami Girls

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1.
Evil twin's sky's fallen Creatures descend We watch sometimes but we don't know when to look They latch on you like you're a host on Sundays When there's two of you then it's really hell Cities are hell now Cities are hell in haven This world is not ours This world was as we knew it Apparently we've come here To fall from Eden How'd else you know we're losing our minds? Cities are hell now Cities are hell in haven (Unintelligible)
2.
He taps out batiks at twenty thousand feet Half lotus in the sagewicker basket Aloft in the clouds Conversing with gulls mulling memories of Beach bound peaches He sees in the glass of the motorcycle helmet Images of you in thirty years where You’ll be whom you love maybe even What you’ll be doing An unmade motion that seems a notion that is Closer to memory Because will he be there for you As she hopes to be Constant in imagining what it is He keeps looking for Across seven continents he witnesses An eighth in the making and the Fire underwater Violently quaking A crack in the ocean A crack in the sky: . All the bricks in Haebangchon can’t make You forget that you’re not home A folk of three, a flock feathering the turbulence Syad avaktaviyah He, Sandoval looking upwards towards the Lumbering clouds, In some ways it is In some ways it is not. Syad asti, syad nasti Your home your Meriadec n’existe toujours From beginningless time Your home non-extant and your yard Bathed in sunflower stalks high as Your hand and awash in aspirant daisies As your hand might be raised By your mothers as they walk Along either side of that self You call yours From beginningless time your mothers They two may have been three of mind For a while but he’d never leave or have Known instead retrieving from Eldorado All the light of the Earth and the waters Of Lourdes would just as well be the next Away though he is another so selfsame That he might’ve been a brother alights That sunflower field and calls you Come over! he says Sandoval looking upwards wherever he is says Since beginningless time the both of you have always been here Earth and sky and sea in space He says he feels like a mountain Watching its crown of evergreens felled Quiet in unmoving observation and torture Nonetheless moved in motionlessness to tears Nonetheless moved by that very immobility Not in so many words does he say this But in ever quaking breath it is apparent He tried to say his thoughts are crumbling His words like Paper over a fire (via NouveauTrad.com)
3.
It is cold, as these false spring days are wont. The sky attempts a middling clarity, and though the sun fights, its powers which so cleanly sear the mist of later-season mornings from drifting over the ground are less effective on the veil of pollution, whose earthen-steel pallor hangs like filthy gauze limply strung as though from invisible hooks among the buildings, and the mountains we are out today to admire. We course through the city, lurching along on a bus, our guide a lifelong resident of this place which I’ve come to know only as The Factory, given its resemblance to repetitious layers of indistinct, assembly-line mechania you can see from the incoming approaches that the airlines always take into Incheon. Incheon may have no such kitschy rhymes to serve it as well as the now faux-capital (having been officially relocated to Sejong City, a non-central burp of an urban project city convenient to no one and yet soon to be a required commute for anyone who is someone enough to be required in physical presence at their job, which simultaneously assures us that such a requirement will befall no one of genuine consequence in this city). In any case, the soulless apartment towers, flaking concrete facades, warped vinyl signs, and cracked LED screens which dominate what might be called the character of the city all serve to obscure the images we try to recall, though their origin is not in our own minds, but through the stories of our guide who speaks to us constantly. Here, this was my middle school, he says. There, nestled among the would-be skyscrapers, a pocket of red brick from the 70s. Low lying homes now mostly decrepit and unrepaired, lest any of their residents be given hope of remaining instead of one day moving themselves further towards the sky and its metaphorical promises, and as such more distant from the tireless earth that foots the bill no matter who places the order. We look for the mountains he names, and for the royal tombs we lurch by, our hands grasping vinyl loops bolted to rails running the length of the bus, only to find nearly all of the landmarks mentioned obscured by batch after batch of apartment towers. GPS is perhaps the only thing that prevents residents here from a case of perpetual deja vu, so alike is one block to the next, like am American suburb expanded into three fuller dimensions. We roll over asphalt. There’s a river below us, our guide says, recalling swimming in it as a child. Did you know? We shake our heads, no, we didn’t. Amazing, he says, gesturing to the hidden water. The bus merges onto another covered tributary of the river Han, whose qi softens the hardness of the essential influence of Gwanaksan, a key component of Seoul’s original placement when it was called Hanyang: Protected by a dragon to the west in Yongsan, a tiger to the north in Bukhansan, and a peacock to the south in Naksan, a cradle of animals and their totem spirits ground the capital spiritually into the very granite that the city’s wealthy would, hundreds of years later, eviscerate and flatten to ensconce their own private estates, their minor attempts at playing royalty, though none would ever be a palace no matter how high the walls. He takes out a photo, or rather displays a picture on his tablet, much larger than mine, which he takes from a green nylon pouch belted to his waist. An idyllic scene. A fountain, a spacious plaza planted with grass and trees, a streetcar, and Belle Epoch architecture befitting of the finer boulevards of Paris and the avenues of New York City. Do you know where this is, he asks us, and I shake my head, as does my companion. Seoul, he says, and I frown in disbelief. 1920s, he says, no one remembers this. Everyone looks at pictures from the 50s, the 60s, all war era and reconstruction. Of all the poverty. He looks at the screen, and shakes his head. People once said, England has London, and Korea has Seoul. No one says this anymore. He holds up the tablet and gestures to buildings that we pass. That’s the building here in the picture, and this fountain, it’s the same one as the picture, he says. It’s all gone. It’s all ugly. The best was 1935, Seoul’s golden age. Everyone forgets. (via NouveauTrad.com)
4.
In a park, reading a book; there’s a roof being painted next-door, and the paint smells like marzipan. Stepping to the roof, mug of tea in hand, a cloud of gnats or mayflies explodes; dispersing slowly and coming over your face, tangled in your hair they sit in your tea like a hot bath though, it kills them… flicking them out, their waxy wings keeping them surfacing again and again, escaping that wake of surface tension following your searching index finger. The tangles snag unexpectedly as you move through them, invisible prickles too small for your skin to feel playing out the finer fibers of your sweater, the matted stalks and dry-leaved tendrils of past seasons springy beneath you, as though they sought to propel you beyond the clutching reluctance of their blooming heirs. The stream behind you running clear and quiet, the sky likewise, and each endless, a perfect complement; one ever linear in its perfect obedience to gravity, the other knowing no bounds but diffusion into the hazy, edgeless horizon. I recognize the sigh. The shoulders as she stands there, the microphone drooping and suggesting to her the attention of the audience, we in chairs fat with stuffing creaking under minute motions. Our motions seek the comfort that ensconces a psyche met with words far worse in their depiction of far graver things than the imagination our comfort cradles. Her voice low, soft and scratchy like the drying leaves of this darkening season. Her eyes cast downward to a glowing slate in hand, her words, the spirit of her exposure, silently resonating through the air at inaudible frequencies. The mic continues its nodding, but many of us stop our motions, and accept the discomfort she gives to us, her voice the disclaimer of impossible pains. She cradles us in her speech. Walking empty halls under hollow lights, your feet treading the darkened trails worn into the carpet. Hard as wood, dead to echoes, soaking the noise of every step just as the night outside the windows laps up the weak, dithering rays the bars overhead chatter with. The ballast, about to go. A long career of constant illumination only days from exhausted termination. Always drunk up by the night or made to be as nothing beneath the sun.

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Ongoing releases as time and cold medicine permit.

credits

released March 21, 2015

Jingles and odd noises by Bela.
All the other things: Daniel Lenaghan.
For better or worse. Performed in entirety on a Guild JS-II bass guitar and an iPhone.

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Murakami Girls California

Fuzz and fluff in commensurate, sun soaked volumes. Music for the road, music for the head, music for fleet feet dancing on the bed.

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