082210

The relations can't possibly understand. I gave up trying about 10 years ago. Sure, you can tell them about your many various ailments, but they won't really get it. For everyone, MS is a mystery. It's unlike cancer, or diabetes, or meningitis. There's nothing you can say that will help folks understand. It's not pain; it's a whole lot more complicated than that. Dizziness, vertigo, coordination trouble, trouble walking, tremors, etc. That's about as specific as you can get. Your life was sent into a mixed-up world some time ago. I don't personally know anything that comes close to MS. You watch your body disintegrate, steadily, unable to do a thing about it.

--Adam on Facebook

*Taiwan*

I must impress upon you the overbearing nature of a city like Taipei. Motorcycles and mopeds rule the streets. When pulling up to a red light, all the motorcycles pull around the cars, like bees on a frenzy. Of course, once you pull out, the cars take over. It's a crazy scene on the street, with motorcycles and mopeds going _both ways_ on sidewalks. You'd think the frenetic nature of the roads would have folks being careful--but they have a very Buddhist attitude about accidents: you just go headlong into it; if the gods meant you to get in an accident, you will, no question. This is not to mention the gangs, who pretty much rule the streets.

Once, I saw a huge mafia man get pissed at a club-goer. He was so large, no policeman would mess with him. Mafia man got so mad at this fellow, he beat him to death with a stool! Everyone was quiet just after the beating; no one wanted to be on the receiving of that man's ire. I think some helpers dragged the fellow into the back, where he was picked up by two officers. Another time, in Hualien, I heard some shouting on the corner; when I went to the window, I saw a lone man in the middle of the intersection, clearly dead. They ruled with an iron fist. I was always told if you didn't mess with them, they'd leave you alone.

This is not to mention the ex and reformed gangsters you're likely to meet, out and about. It might be the guy you have dinner with at the local eatery, a fellow you happen to meet on the street, or the man you run into on a visit to the nearby betel-nut stand. It could be any and all of these folks. Your neighbor, the monk at your nearby monastery (monasteries look very different in a large city than on the countryside), the teacher you find to be very worldly. Gangsters, especially the reformed ones, can wear any number of faces. They might have disappeared from Taipei only to reemerge in Hualien some day, under an assumed name.

*OPP*

By Richard Hugo

Graves at Elkhorn

for Joe Ward

'Eighty-nine was bad. At least a hundred

children died, the ones with money planted

in this far spot from the town. The corn

etched in these stones was popular that year.

'Our dearest one is gone.' The poorer ones

used wood for markers. Their names

got weaker every winter. Now gray wood

offers a blank sacrifice to rot.

The yard and nearly every grave are fenced.

Something in this space must be defined--

where the lot you paid too much for ends

or where the body must not slide beyond.

The yard should have a limit like the town.

The last one buried here: 1938. The next

to last: 1911 from a long disease.

The fence around the yard is barbed, maintained

by men, around the graves, torn down

by pines. Some have pines for stones.

The yard is this far from town because

when children die the mother should repeat

some form of labor, and a casual glance

would tell you there could be no silver here.

*Quotations*

Why did I write any of my books, after all? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions.

--Vladimir Nabakov

Everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink--for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.

--Honoré de Balzac, on why coffee was excellent for his writing

I have liked remembering almost as much as I have liked living.

--William Maxwell

I fought against the bottle, but I had to do it drunk.

--Leonard Cohen

I come from a kind of old-fashioned Midwest, and I live in a technocorporate, positronic, cool, late-late-late Eastern world. The two worlds hardly ever talk to each other, but they're completely, constantly talking to one another inside me.

--Jonathan Franzen

If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.

--Thomas Jefferson

Astonishment is the root of philosophy.

--Paul Tillich

Critics, the more kindly ones, have called my work 'witty,' a dangerous label to wear, since to many it suggests 'trivial' and 'superficially felt.' I would wish to be seriously funny, and cannot understand the supposed difference between certain poems called light verse and others ranked as poetry.

--XJ Kennedy

I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man.

--Charlie Chaplin

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

--Oscar Wilde

Peace love and ATOM jazz