Responses to Edward

[Brenton]

1. Without a shakuhatchi, how can we imitate wind blowing through a bamboo alley?
   Close your eyes and let yourself be taken. When you open them again, a tree will stand before you, unevenly surrounded by rocks, many the size of two fists, none bigger than a human head. Choose carefully, take one in your hands, and then, without thinking, turn and run back through the alley.
2. Do we have a choice? Do human-eating tigers have a choice?
   There are Forces, some so great that there seems to be only one course, one path that leads between sky-high truths and the stirred-up dust from where we have fallen before. There is Music, inescapable, irresistible, tempting us from where we need to go with its sweetness, the promise of aliveness and no-fear. There are Forces and there is Music, and there is always Choice.
3. What sound would you like whispered in your ear?
   The sounds you make when your eyes are closed.

[abhay ghiara]

Imitate the sounds your father made with his whiskered mouth against the belly of your mother expecting, wanting a girl. Your first piece of clothing was a pink dress. You hear him with his pink dress through the maze of your bamboo thicket. Later when he would kiss you each night you would remember the sound of those whiskered lips.

We eat you because you disrespect the earth. We are your ancestors. We taught you to love and cuddle. Have you ever seen a tiger mother cuddle her young? But you forget. We do have choice. To eat you and earn your scorn, earn our families the shit-flinging name maneater. Or give up the earth.

brother it's ok. We can tell the 200 people gathered our tales. At least we can sing them our lost song with broken voices, failed translations, and morse code.