hearts of darkness

eleanor coppola writes:

"april 9 [1976], baler [laguna province]: Several hundred South Vietnamese people were recruited from a refugee camp near Manila to play North Vietnamese in the film."

curiouser and curiouser. again, this problem of representation. and that there's no compassion in this but opportunism. so these would be the vietnamese folks who did in fact make it into the film which (as sunny posts) francis ford coppola claimed was not about vietnam, but was vietnam. reminds me: last semester at sfsu, luis francia and angel velasco shaw were in town, and spoke in the coppola auditorium or whatever it's called, about vestiges of war and its relevance to the current state of war in the world. one of the book's contributors, nguyen qui duc, was also on hand to speak: he reminded us that vietnam is not a war. it is a country, a people with their own cultures and history. so, where does this place folks like us who are obsessed with apocalypse now? i began my review of huu thinh's the time tree: "i will not discuss the war..." with duc's words in mind. i sort of felt guilty.

sunny also mentions the spectral quality of the montagnard people, who were followers of kurtz. and of course, in the cast credits i believe it reads something like "and as the montagnard, the ifugao people of the philippines," which you could already tell by their costume, and the movement of their hands and bodies in their slaughtering carabao dance. i don't know where to start on this problem of representation.

these may not be the absence of the "native" in willard's sweeping gaze, although willard's initial perception of the "native" is of charlie, crouching in the bush. hidden, of course, but even more so, in hiding. although, in conrad, the people concealed in the jungle are one with the jungle and that is through marlow's gaze, and it seems the "natives" and the jungle are conflated more and more the deeper into the heart of darkness marlow goes.

it may be coppola anticipating the audience's sweeping gaze, though i also do not think he intended to give the "native" his/her humanity. he certainly intended to take away the americans' humanity; every act of violence chiseling away at it. and the removal of one's humanity doesn't give back to the other his/her humanity.

and the requisite food entry

where to start? my mother volunteered me to cook laing for her and her girlfriends, so there i was, in my mother's kitchen, stinky from chopping all the garlic, ginger, onions. the bagoong in super generous quantities, shrimp, coconut milk, jalapenos, dried taro leaves. (the smell is still in my hands today after many many handwashings, and rubbing my hands with lemon.) then my dad said, "sarap! para kang bikolana." um, okay.

then i was told my 18-year old cousin was craving chicken adobo, so who better to cook this than me? (my mother volunteered me for this as well.) but my mother requested that i not make it too sour or too salty, and i'm like, wtf?! hellooo: toyo and suka, salty and sour. anyway, so i did what i could, and it came out nicely milder than my usual pungent adobo. but like usual, the meat was all falling off the bone nicely.

my aunt and my mother's girlfriends came over, and we all sat around the table eating laing, and eating crab with our hands (yes, i cracked crab with my teeth, daryl hannah splash style), and the women all said that because i now know how to cook (which, of course, i have for many years now. i'm a pulmano, for crissakes.) then i am ready to be married off. so the fix-ups don't look so awful this time around (unlike the kawawa naman engineer who called my cell phone from singapore last year to "court" me, and who i rejected not nicely. ugh...): a guy i've known since elementary school but haven't seen since high school, who i'd had a crush on for many many years is apparently still single. well, so that was the best my mom and her gf's had to offer.

to end the evening, the karaoke terrorists: me, my sis, and my cousin, wailing foreigner's "i want to know what love is." (think, hal sparks on vh1's i love the 80's). HA!

come to think of it

sunny says it succinctly: the fact that the french plantation scene was reinserted into apocalypse now redux does confirm that the movie is not necessarily about vietnam, its people and that particular war. what interests me, if my previous rambling doesn't make it clear, is the contrast between empires, one at its twilight and one in its messy heyday, all played out in that scene on the river, on the border between vietnam and cambodia.

and despite that contrast there's this: i believe the character lafavre is an honorable man, a cambodian military sergeant in the service of the french family. he fights to protect the family, to whom he seems loyal, but even in his appearance of being "colonized," he sure delivers some sobering, defiant lines at the dinner table:

"all you white people are shit."

"freedom? bullshit. french bullshit. american bullshit."

it's all the same to him. he is not deceived by rhetoric of "liberation." he knows, as farther upriver, kurtz knows, what the people will do, to what lengths they will resist.

vietnam/mainland se asia happens to be a film's setting, which happens to really be laguna province, and the historical significance of the philippines as a seemingly friendly stand in for a politically volatile vietnam at the time of the filming. i think i am still figuring out the part where eleanor coppola's notes book and hearts of darkness documentary come in (i have yet to read and view these) and examine the irony and even hypocrisy of the movie's making (and intention). ugly americanism on camera and its mirror off camera. that just like marlow and kurtz in heart of darkness, and just like willard and kurtz in apocalypse now, coppola, sheen, brando lose their civilization the longer and farther away they are from their known world. i wonder if these things eclipse the greatness of the movie for me or simply reconfirm the film's message. i don't know yet.

and on the greatness of apocalypse now

i've been asked my opinion on the redux version's french plantation scene of said great movie. so it's been a long time since i've seen the un-redux, sans french plantation version, tho i am unsure comparing versions of the film is relevant to this discussion. off the top of my head, since i finished reading the screenplay last week and it's not too fresh in my head: it is interesting that so far upriver, willard and his company would encounter such old world "refinement." american order has broken down; the farther upriver, the more chaos/disorder. much the same as conrad's heart of darkness as marlow moves farther away from his familiar markers of "civilization," into such darkness and devilry.

the thing about the french plantation: we are reminded that america is a messy child in the practice of empire, though it is convinced it is what brings civilization the the savage (exactly like the american belief in the civilizing and christianizing of the pilipinos, who had centuries of spanish government and religion by the time the americans came). we are reminded that though the practice of empire/the manner by which the civilizing mission is executed has changed, the ideology remains: the west is the bearer of culture and the standard by which we gauge civilization. the savages are nothing, have nothing, no enterprise, no maximium utilization of their land and natural resources for profit, no god but heathen practice. the west fail to and refuse to understand and believe other ways of civilization are viable.

the civilizing mission of the american, transformed by the taming and "liberating" of the american frontier, is also in a state of denial, claiming their mission to be one of "liberation." while both american and old world european motivation is the same, the french are not in a state of denial. they know and understand and make no pretense about their presence in viet nam and cambodia, staving off that which threatens their way of life, the wealth they have amassed here. they know they have not liberated indochina; they never intended liberation.

here's an excerpt from a paper i wrote a while back:

The recording of Kurtz’s voice relating his dream illustrates the precariousness of his position: the snail, crawling along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving. This too is Willard’s position in this balance of "right" and "wrong," "good" and "evil." “As a snail which melteth, let every one of them [the wicked] pass away…” (Psalms 58:8) — this snail is symbolic of both laziness and sinfulness/wickedness but also of self-sufficiency (it carries its “home” wherever it goes). It can be seen as American presence and involvement in Viet Nam; it can also be American presence and involvement in the world. It moves slowly but leaves a trail behind it; as the bourgeois French family (certainly a remnant of European imperialism in Indochina, believing themselves to be impermeable to the region’s many independence movements) debated empire at the sumptuous dinner table with cigars and Cognac, “Yesterday, Korea. Today, Viet Nam. Tomorrow, Thailand, the Philippines.”

this belief of being impermeable i believe is european imperial arrogance, but it is also because they are not naive of the machine of empire. their own lives will end here, and they will fight to keep their way of life to the bitter end. and empire building will continue, the american way, muscled and coarse, spreading throughout this part of the world into other "uncivilized" and "unliberated" parts of the world.

hoping this rambling missive suffices as an answer.

today. yes, a food/memory entry.

call this ethnography, sunny. call this self-exoticing. but, fuck it. it's the holidays. besides, michelle has approached me twice about co-editing a flip food anthology, which i think is a phat idea! and each time she and i have talked about this, i thought of making pochero.

i have finally decided i am tired of being tired. bring on the holidays. i will be with my family til the end of the month, pretty much. and i am actually looking forward to that. being in the suburbs, cooking a lot (i love my mom's kitchen), incl. learning how to make leche flan, watching a lot of movies cuz my parents' house has digital cable.

i decided i'm going to cook pochero, which i recall from when my mother's mother was still alive (she passed away when i was in junior high). i remember it to be special occasion food, so artfully presented you kind of didn't want to disturb the presentation. i also remember, in addition to it being a somewhat collaboration between me and a nice butcher, it took me 3+ hours to make this dish, which i attempted maybe 5 years or so ago. successfully, i might add. btw, the women at my work do not think i look like i know how to cook. which is so what-EVER. their loss.

anyway, i've never really found a satisfactory recipe for pochero, and have had to go on instinct (and calling my mom, and calling my aunts, all my mama's daughters) much of the way. having to trek to union city's flip markets to find the right chorizo and bananas. other ingredients (i am hoping the artist formerly known as ms. winepoetics will be able to recommend a good wine to accompany) include center cut boneless pork loin, a whole chicken split lengthwise down the middle, cabbage, baby bok choy, chinese long beans, potatoes, sabah banana (oh yeah, i already said this, but it's so cool - bananas in soup). all this stewing in its own broth for hours. of course, each ingredient added at its proper time.

food and memory: yes i always think of my mother's mother, my mama, whenever i cook pochero or even think about it. now mama, illustrada ilocana to tha bone, was an artist, and because of her i think i've always regarded good cooks to be artists in their own right. damn, tho if i were to go on about what else i plan to cook for the holidays, i'd have to talk abt. my papa cuz also on my list for me to take on is an escabeche, which i always associate with papa. anyway, briefly, he is my mama's husband. he's still alive, and living in cagayan province. he's 91 and we love him like nothing you've ever seen before. we were all in cagayan last year, at papa's, right by the cagayan river, partying with ibanag-speakin boyz. i remembered the warnings not to go down to the river. the mermaid would get us. i wdve actually loved to see the mermaid. so now i've meandered.

that's write

from january 12 to march 1, 2004, i will indeed be teaching all-genre cw workshops for kearny street workshop at somarts cultural center. here's info, in case anyone out there is interested:

Mondays, 7 - 9PM
SomArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan Street (between 8th and 9th streets), San Francisco

Class size: minimum of 8, maximum of 12.
Cost: $140 non-members, $120 for KSW members.
To register, please send a check for the full amount to: Kearny Street Workshop, 934 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. Please include your name, contact information (phone number and email address if possible), and which class you are registering for. For questions, please contact program manager Samantha Chanse at 415.503.0520 or info@kearnystreet.org.

Class Description:
The all-genre* writing workshop will be an exploration of the writer's voice, a fleshing out of the writer's thoughts and ideas, an examination of the writer's instincts and aesthetics. We will generate new work through a series of writing exercises and readings. We will discuss Asian American literature as it pertains to our own writing, and we will receive and provide feedback on one another's work.

* i actually prefer "open-genre" to "all-genre." makes sense to me to blur genres if it suits you and your purpose.

my current state...

...is, well, sleepy and exhausted. if you bump into me in sf doing some xmas shopping or whatever, please do not be alarmed at how run-down i appear. terry came and visited at work the other day, invited me to 1) try out for a pinay vagina monologues (i graciously declined) and 2) sweat lodge in january (i happily accepted).

last night, after two hours of star trek: tng on spike tv, i couldn't bear to watch platoon (though or because i am convinced of the greatness of apocalypse now), which came on afterwards. i fell asleep to a documentary on kqed about a shakespeare performance workshop in nyc; kevin kline and patrick stewart discussing how acting was their "in" to understanding shakespeare, who certainly wrote for performance, for an audience to hear. and through this hearing, understand. no one word could be insignificant. ever word in its proper useful place. every word, then, needing to be spoken in the proper way. and that is all i remember before i fell asleep.

made me think, though, about the performance aspect of my own work, and how my writing is now finding itself gearing that way, even though i am still concerned with page concerns like "enjambment," and all (i also just really like saying "enjambment"). although, those things, too, are clues for performance, almost like stage directions. made me also think of the collaborative performance of maiana, nedjula, and michelle, which i witnessed this past weekend, and how each element was necessary, each working together was what tightened the larger piece, though not diminishing each element as simply a "component." so powerful that days and nearly a week later i am still in the process of understanding what happened there. i'd been thinking about collaborations for a while now, and i believe this year my strongest performances, for the dynamics, interaction, spontaneity, were what i did in collaboration with other artists who work seriously at their art. i'm finding connections with those who risk, take on art as profession. i have grown (perhaps unfairly) ambivalent to pop-appeal art.

consider all this to be my "taking stock" having finally slowed down from a whole year of doing. just doing. now i can say i am truly spent.

next on the agenda: i get to meet with truong of ksw to discuss the upcoming all-genre creative writing workshops i will be teaching for 8 weeks starting in january. i am a little worried about teaching in genres other than poetry, but he assures me i'll be ok. bomb-ass poet that he is, he was able to do this too.

next next on the agenda: fall semester grades haven't come in yet, but i am already planning for next semester. more poetry workshop. more one-on-one directed writing with stacy. and a super geeky-sounding class called "the grammar and rhetoric of the sentence," which one of my classmates, a novelist from my equally geeky "craft of translation" seminar told me was excellent, breaking down sentences to understand what drives them. my sisters would love this. yay super anal retentive grammar! woo-hoo

last but not least: for sunny, madeleine, and izzy, you are all in my thoughts.

"experimental"

speaking of "experimental," recently, an asian american studies student interviewed me for his asian american women class paper. he also wanted to speak to someone in the cw department about me, so i directed him to stacy doris. one thing he asked her is, "how is barbara's poetry 'experimental'?" well, i tend to think that all poets "experiment." and that writing in itself is an experiment. language is experiment. reading is experiment. especially for those who write in a language that is not their primary language. especially for those who write in a language colonially imposed upon them. rant, rant.

so, what i am getting at is this: why is "experimentation" in literature such a hard topic to breach in asian american studies, and why is "experimental" almost always equated with "difficult" and "inaccessible" in asian american studies? and why is there judgment attached to those terms? since i now have some time to think introspectively, for my own writing (and performance), and those who actually have studied it (weird-feeling, but ok), where do you get stuck? what gets you stuck? maybe these are unfair questions. you tell me. thing is, i just write.

addendum: i should explain that the reason why this issue is even important to me in the 1st place is because i am finally seeing the end point to what i thought would be endless grad school (working full time will definitely prolong school), and now i can think of a possible future in teaching asian american literature. i do not know why it's becoming a priority, but that's where i am finding myself gravitating.

from susan schultz

As the year ends, Tinfish Press is poised to publish four new chapbooks. Tinfish #13, the dirty filthy & mucky
issue of our journal, came out recently, along with Zhang Er’s Carved Water, translated by Bob Holman.

Tinfish Press Holiday Sale

15% off sale!

Tinfish press books and journals make terrific presents this time of
year, and help the press to continue its commitment to experimental
writing in the Pacific, particularly in Hawai`i.

Please see our website for details:

http://maven.english.hawaii.edu/tinfish

* copies of the dirty filthy and mucky Tinfish #13 and earlier issues

* chaps including Lisa Linn Kanae’s Sista Tongue

* books including Linh Dinh’s All Around What Empties Out

Coming in January, four new chapbooks from Tinfish!

--from The Prison Diaries of Ho Chi Minh, translated by Steve Bradbury
--from The Theory of Subjectivity in Moby Dick, by Deborah Meadows
--Philter, by Normie Salvador
--no guns, no durian, by Susan M. Schultz

The first three chaps will be $10 each; the last $7 OR all four chaps for $28

sunday with maiana, nedjula, and michelle

i am sad that yesterday evening's performance at pusod was not well-attended. it seems this tends to be the case with those pin@y artists who don't prioritize having pop appeal, who simply work at being the best artist they can be, who constantly grow and hone their craft. so last night's performance, maiana minahal's work in progress, "before their words," the retelling of the village woman sondayo battling the wind goddess who has stolen her husband, was quite intimate. this was a very strong performance. maiana's poems are works of art, delivered musically, with both quiet and insistence. to deliver a narrative while disrupting narrative is something i have always been attracted to. to tell a poem story with interdisciplinary/multimedia that does not diminish the poem story is also something i admire.

nedjula baguio, quite an accomplished (and humble) classical guitarist, accompanied maiana on acoustic guitar, and the sound of them together just filled the room. wonderful, almost even trance inducing. almost as though every note plucked corresponded to a word, a set of words, and a refrain "and/ if i/ give you/ my heart/ would you/ tear it/ apart."

on video, the bayanihan dance troupe's singkil and maiana's voice again, working with the dancers, their dramatic pauses and build-up's, the interaction between the prince and princess in their ornate courting dance, the scraping and clapping of bamboo poles. and maiana's poem, equally ornate and totally fitting the singkil pageantry.

and finally, michelle bautista, in a kali oracion, it seemed. but instead of the blade she normally wields with these movements, a malong, capturing air, creating wind and the noise/voice of wind. from the back of the room i could hear michelle breathe. i imagined her in some kind of meditative state, tangled in the malong, half-covered, hand reaching outward, upward. and maiana, delivering series of four words or syllables: trochees and spondees varying in tempo with michelle's movement.

maiana and i exchanged books: gravities of center for sitting inside wonder. i've just started reading it, but here is a part of haiku series:

seek the meat of me

past bone, blood. down to the pearl.

dark sea in me. eat.

isn't that just lovely?

pacific reader, among other things

just picked up a copy of pacific reader: an asian pacific north american review of books, volume 15 number 1 at eastwind books of berkeley, where ewbb's owner harvey dong saved a phat stack for me. i have 2 reviews published here. so here's the 1st of two:


THE TIME TREE

Poems by Huu Thinh

Translated by George Evans and Nguyen Qui Duc

ISBN 1-880684-69-1

Curbstone Press, 2003


“I have no doubt: Poetry comes from life.” --Huu Thinh

I will not discuss the war, convinced that is all Western readers expect to find in contemporary Vietnamese literature - lamentation, destruction, displacement. I choose to discuss the desire to live because Huu Thinh's The Time Tree offers us so much more than suffering and death. The sea, the earth, the land are alive in these poems, and passionately so.

If I knew the Vietnamese language, then perhaps I could say that George Evans's and Nguyen Qui Duc's translations of Huu Thinh's poems are faithful renderings of the poet's sentiments and intentions. I have only heard the music of these poems in the original Vietnamese without understanding a single word of it, and I must trust Evans and Nguyen with their English renderings. I am inclined to trust them, for not only these are lovely English renderings, these are lovely poems in English, wise and thoughtful poems, as in “Sea Dialogue”:


If you live with water, begin with water,

that is the first and last ritual.


Translations are the collaborative effort between poet and translators; Evans, accepting of the non-existence of the “perfect translation,” describes himself as a “filter through which the meanings and sounds of Huu Thinh's poems were poured.” Their regard for the poet's intentions, their interaction with the poet was crucial to this project.

I believe, then, also accepting of the non-existence of the “perfect translation,” these translations are faithful to the originals. Their lyricism is not impeded, their sentiments never flattened, never compromised:

Farewell my dilemma, my unresolved one,

Bitterness, harrowing thirst for love.


Huu Thinh's (and Evans's and Nguyen's) poetic hand is controlled; delivering these poems with perfect timbre, as in "Confession":

I love you and am shattered by you.

Desire's insistence, especially in loss, is both devastating and beautiful; indeed a reminder that a synonym for "devastation" is "beauty."

The resonance and precision of the poet's and translators' collective voice, are especially apparent in “Asking,” a dialogue between the elements and (hu)man(ity):

I ask man: How does man live with man?


I ask man: How does man live with man?


I ask man: How does man live with man?


Many moons later, I am still pondering this question, the repetition of this question, that it is left for us to answer the best way we know how, and this is precisely the power of these poems. We are all implicated. We are fortunate that Evans and Nguyen have brought The Time Tree into the English language.


***

my second review is of the 3rd reprinting of jeff tagami's october light, and once i find my e-copy of this review, i will post it here. one thing though, that i noticed from this and past issues of pacific reader, and discussed in my email dialogues with pacific reader's alan chong lau and patricia yano, lots of pin@y reviews did not happen. many reviewers promised to submit, and didn't follow through.

c'mon now, people! no work, no recognition, di ba?

whoever it was that promised many moons ago to review eileen tabios's reproductions of the empty flagpole didn't ever come through, so alan asked me to submit mine (for a future issue), which previously appeared at kenneth gurney's tamafyhr mountain poetry site. additionally, in my last correspondence with alan, he told me he was looking for someone to review going home to a landscape, so someone please come through on that and contact me.

a couple more reviews (that i have yet to read) of pin@y books in this pacific reader issue: patrick rosal's uprock headspin scramble and dive, reviewed by chris nuez, and tony robles's lakas and the manilatown fish, reviewed by ferdinand de leon.