 Our less serious faculty read. I'm excited for it. I think you brought me in here, and we're going to start with the poetic stylings of Kenny Freese. I'm going to start with a poem. The faculty didn't go to sleep because they've heard his reading many times. But I've been gone for so long that the students haven't heard me. So that's what I figured I would just go with my old reliable reading. This is a poem called Body Language, which I wrote over 20 years ago. It's in my book Anesthesia, and it's kind of my hit single. It's been anthologized and translated and all that kind of stuff. Body Language. What is the scar, if not the memory, of a once open wound? You press your finger between my toes, slide the soap up the side of my leg until you reach, scar with the two holes, where the pins were inserted 20 years ago. Leaning back, I remember how I pulled the pin from my leg, how in a waist high cast I dragged myself from my room to show my parents what I had done. Your hand with my scar brings me back to the tub, and I want to ask you, what do you feel when you touch me there? I want you to ask me, what are you feeling now? But we do not speak. You drop the soap in the water, and I continue washing alone. Do you know my father would bathe my feet, as you do, as if it was the most natural thing? But up to now, I have allowed only two pair of hands to touch me there to be the staff for what still feels like an open wound. The skin is healed, but the scars grow deeper. When you touch them, what do they tell you about my life? So I'm going to read the beginning with the beginning that I have taken some out of it for time sake. I'm in the problems of the gods. My last book, which came out in the fall of 2017, which was after I was actually here at Goddard, last. You don't need to know anything. If ever I needed the presence of the gods, now is the time. I arrived in Izumutaisha, the second most sacred shrine in Japan in early October. According to legend, the sun goddess Amaterasu built the original shrine. In every other part of Japan, the 10th month of the year is known as Kanazuki, the month without gods, because every October, all 8 million Shinto deities visit Izumutaisha for Kanari Matsuri. The gods are now in residence. I stand under the graceful wooden tori, marking the entrance to the shrine's forest and grounds. Then with my cane maneuver down the Seiki Nobaba, an avenue of gnarled pines leading to the shrine's central compound. I look up, hanging over the entrance to the horrible hall is the giant shimanawa, a traditional twist of straw rope. The sculpture of straw is immense, five thick twists clinging to the assistance of six rope rings to a large wooden rod the same color as the straw, which itself is attached by four thinner rope rings to a dark brown wooden beam, descending from the three largest twists of three cone-shaped bells. I reach for one of the twists and ring the bell. Ringing the shrine bell announces a visitor's presence to the resident deity. The gods now know I am here. Ever since the doctor told me what I did not want to hear, all I can think is I don't want to die. I pull the rope and ring the bell again, this time louder, the echo reaching toward the hondon, the inner shrine, directly behind the horrible hall. I follow the sound of bronze reverberating through the air until it dissipates in front of a steep covered wooden staircase leading into the hondon. The present structure with its projecting gray wooden rafters shooting out of the roof is in its 25th incarnation. Only half as high as its pre-Buddhist original at 24 meters is still the country's tallest shrine. Entrance to the hondon is allowed only during special occasions. Lafcadio Karn, one of the first expatriate riders to live in Japan, lived only 33 kilometers away in Metsui. He was the first foreigner granted the privilege to enter the hondon. I peer through the eight-legged east gate, decorated with unpainted wooden carvings and bouquets of gohe, lit light and shaped white paper hung at Shinto shrines to ward off evil spirits and looked into the holy of holy's hall where only the head priest can go. I reach in my pocket for a particular coin. Two months ago, I found a penny in the hospital room with a man in the bed next to me died. Coins have taken on a larger meaning. I close my eyes and pray for what I know might be possible to see the best way through this, to find a way to live with the ever-present knowledge of death as my constant companion. I bow and clap and throw the coin into the offering box. I hear the coin rattle to the bottom of the box. My prayers are urgent. The coin at the bottom of the wooden box could be my soul. I think when I first came to Japan to study the lives of disabled people in Japan, Ian was supposed to accompany me. By the time I arrived in Japan, circumstances had changed. During my first day in Japan, my research proved fitful, difficult. Instead, single for the first time in 18 years, I discovered not only things about this foreign culture, but also new ways to see my different body and myself. Now, on my second visit, circumstances have changed it again. I came very close to not returning at all, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Before I first arrived in Japan, I had no idea I would be going halfway around the world alone. I'm gonna just read the beginning of the first chapter where I actually arrived in Japan. It's actually not the very beginning because something happened to the dream that they don't need to know about that. You can read the book for that one. When I landed to read the airport, the sky is a dull gray, typical, I'm told, Tokyo weather during a late-screen rainy season. As soon as I'm off the plane, many dark blue-sooty Japanese businessmen talking on their K-tides surround me in the terminal. High, high, they respond as they bow to what I imagined to be an autocratic boss on the other end of the cell phone connection. On the one and a half hour train ride from Narita to Tokyo, I get my first glimpse of Japan. In the late afternoon mist, the man tending the rice paddy is smaller in comparison to the surroundings. It is not that the man himself is smaller nor is surroundings larger. The way the man fits into the surroundings seems different, but also familiar. What I see looks like the UPOA woodblock prints I have seen in museums and art books, but as if I have somehow entered the scale, the perspective of hopeless eyes at Hiroshige's floating world. As I look from the paddy to the hills, I notice the top of Japanese hills are more pointed here. The many different shades of green in the grass and trees are more distinct in the gray of the afternoon. Lime, emerald, olive, ivy, greens with tints of blue, of yellow, even a green as dark as the billiard table green of my left behind bedroom walls. Arriving at Tokyo Station, I make my way through what is the largest and busiest train station in which I have ever been. Wide lines of people surge every which way, countless signs, some even in English or a version that resembles English, direct passengers to color-coded subway lines, commuter lines from constant lines, as well as to the seemingly endless number of station exits. How much easier this would be if Ian, who is more comfortable in a bordering on chaos crowd, pausing amid all the constant motion, I finally find a sign with a symbol of a taxi. As they make my way in the direction the arrow seems to be pointing, I play over and over in my head the short phrase I learned, Roppongi Kudasai, which will supposedly lightly tell the taxi driver the area of Tokyo where I want to go. Making my way toward what I hope will be the correct exit, I check in my pocket for the copy of the Japanese map emailed to me by the International House, where I'll be staying into my apartment with Reddy in two days. You should hand this map to the taxi driver the accompanying message said. The dresses are very difficult to find in Tokyo and in the rest of Japan. Surprisingly, all works as it should and the taxi drops me off at the International House where after checking in, I fall asleep in the single bed in my small narrow room. The next morning I get instruction for the cultural office at the I House of where to go to get my very own K-tai and order my Mashi, named cards, to essentials to navigating life successfully in Japan. Walking in Roppongi, my mind and body are lit up like the countless neon lights which here in Tokyo are vertical, signs of Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana, the three distinct pictorial and glyphic systems that comprise modern Japanese as well as Romaji, English letters, hang at every site level. Cherry Cat, Exciting Plaza, Pollock Box. What do these signs mean? Roaming the winding alleys, I notice the electrical poles and wires that line the narrow streets. I wonder how secure they would be during an earthquake or a typhoon. Many fires and natural disasters have devastated Tokyo. Impermanence seems closer to the surface here. Inundated by so many unfamiliar sounds and images, while I remember my way back to the I House, Tokyo might be the only city in the world where you can make a right, another right, another right and another right and not end up in the same place as you began. This is modern day Tokyo. Welcome to biblical stylings of Eleanor Giorgio. I actually do a lot of preamble to my readings but I'm just gonna share this with you because I think it might be nice to say it's your students and it relates to being a student in the program. Honestly, I've lost the exact timing. I think it was about four and a half years ago. I was the acting, no. Yeah, about four and a half years ago I was in G1 and I had fully intended to do my degree and at the end of my G1 semester, the director of the program left. So I like to say I'm the only person who went from G1 to program director. And the reason that I'm telling you that is because as a G1, Paul said to me, you can't work on anything that you've already started before you're in the program. You have to start something new. And I was like, I don't know what it is. So I knew that I had been working on a historical novel and so I thought, okay, he's making me start something new. So I'm gonna look at my historical novel and I want it to be about war and race and class. That's all I knew. I got my books for my annotations. I went on my one week vacation to Cape Cod and on the beach I started reading my first book for my annotation. I was so angry at this book that I said to my partner, do you have paper, do you have a pen? And I just like started scribbling my anger onto the page and it was about two pages long and this two pages long thing turned out to be the voice of the novel that I began four and a half years ago as a G1. So I'm gonna read you, okay. So the other thing that you need to know is I took it through four graphs and about Christmas of this year, after Christmas of this year, I asked for paper and it was hard to hear the paper and I thought to myself, I need some distance from this so I can really come back and enter the work. I was not planning on the distance being six months long but today at four o'clock I opened my manuscript for the first time in six months and so it's really scary to me to read this but these are my opening pages. It's called The Invisible Apostle and it's a gospel, I'll leave it there. And there's a note to the reader, one of them won't make sense to you unless you see it on the page because it's like it's imitating some scroll found in the page so there are fragments missing so there are signs that denote a missing friend, okay. And then what you need to know is within this testament, the words soul and mind are interchangeable, i.e. the soul is the mind and the mind is the soul. Within this testament, elder fire refers to the god of orbits. Elder fire has two functions, one it inhabits earthly bodies to express itself and it provides words when humans ask the help to verbally express what is in their soul slash minds. And within this testament, the word war just means to the eternal breath that links humanity. So this gospel is written down by an inscriber and here, here, so beginning now, this is the beginning of the book, inscriber's note. Beloveds, my ancestors traded in the purple dye of New York's shallots which makes it that I was born into a blood family of privilege. Despite coming from a people who encouraged only boys and men to read, my father saw to it that I could examine for myself the laws of our land and the rules of our faith. At the time, I was never sure why I should desire to write and read a language of edicts, decrees and commandments that wanted to shut me out. It is only now revealed to me why this skill, this gift of inscription was placed in my hands. Beloveds, I am Asino the of Canaan. I was part of the family of apostles. While it is true that our family, as it once was, no longer exists, it is also true that since it's death, I have remained connected to her, to the apostles. Beloveds, I am not certain if anyone can choose to completely leave behind a calling. I believe that a calling might change its outward appearance but the soul, which is the mind, nourishes it and coaxes it to change its form and affectens it to keep going. Beloveds, once she had made her decision to release her story, the eternal breath built her and the God of words guided her. Beloveds, I do not claim perfection in my lettering but I do claim to have accurately inscribed every word offered to me by my sister, who is my mother, who is also my daughter. I neither encouraged her to speak nor interjected my own testimony, instead I put my skill to use. Beloveds, my calling was to write. Her calling was to teach. Beloveds, it is her words that follow. One, the first section is unreal. And some of us stay silent. We are afraid that once we release our words, others will snatch them out of the air and bend them to suit their own desires. I have kept mute as others have spoken but now I worry that their words will be carved into the shore of the blades of camels while mine will disappear like incense moving. What I have witnessed are partially true testimonies of our time together, words spoken with just enough authority to ensure future prosperity. This is one of the differences between a woman and a man. A woman knows when to keep her mouth shut to protect herself from the violence of men. And when I say violence, I'm not speaking of a man's fist, bruising a woman's body. Neither am I speaking of a public spending. I am speaking of the damage that is done when a man looks at a woman and sees a child. Or a harlot. I have heard the lies. I have stood in my silence. But my time of grief is ebbing. I am ready to offer my words to the apostle Asa Marie of Cana to inscribe. And I have faith that El De Vile will provide the words to tell this story. It has been 20 years since I saw the blood that announced my wounded. In all this time, I have not once sold my body. In truth, I have known only two men. The first, a husband who is rough, made me fear for my life. And the second, a man who was my husband, my father, my brother, my son. This second man, though he looked me and treated me well, did not belong to me. He belonged to me. As I, too, belong to the eternal breath. As we all do, he was taken from me too soon. The injustice of our courts named him King of the Jews. The misguided called him savior. Others who had and still have the boldness of unwavering faith, named him Son of God and God incarnate. King, savior, Son of God, God incarnate. I do not recognize these names. And neither did he. Since his death, safety has been my greatest concern. Some of those who were once known as apostles had reckoned on timely dates. His mother lived her last days beside me and I knew the comfort of caring for her until she drew her last earthly breath. My sisters stayed with me for as long as they chose to do so, but not all except us and the we have left me to begin new lives. I cannot blame them for this choice. To continue our teaching would have put their lives in danger. Instead, they chose a life of invisibility, of safety. One of our surviving brothers has continued a version of our work and they claim to our teachings without me. It was only his blood brother, Simon, who said, "'Brothers, surely it is Sister Mary "'and who loves the fullness of this work. "'Surely, when dawn broke open the sky this morning, "'I walked to the river to offer my thanks "'and to ask for guidance, but before I had finished, "'Elder Bar interrupted me. "'The gun of words said, "'Do not wait for others to invite you to speak. "'Simply thank the eternal breath "'for making you in all your wisdom. "'Offer your thanks with a raised head "'and a heart uplifted to the sun. "'Open your arms, press your feet into the earth "'and anoint yourself with these words. "'I am here, I am here, I am here.'" You know the place, Japan. It's a different time period. Please welcome the shadowy stylings from the break of the season. I'm here, I'm excited to be on the program. I'm going to be reading from my newest novel, The Shabbat Child. It's a historical literary thriller family saga book. I'm going to read from the part that is historical. And it's a part that I don't usually read. It's set in 1945 and it's set in Hiroshima. I went to Hiroshima and spent six months there. And the story is very difficult. And so I often read more beautiful parts or family parts. But I feel like these days, when all I read in the papers is about war, that's a war, and nuclear weapons and all this kind of craziness, and it's really important to remember what war was. We're talking about war, we're going to talk about that. So in the book, there's a woman named Lily. And she's Japanese-American. She was incarcerated in the internal camps, which my mother also was. And she is sent to Hiroshima and is living in the city. She has a young son named Toshi and he's been taken out of the city. So she has a good fortune of being out of the city looking for him on August 6th, 1945. So she's overstayed trying to find her son and she's on train and I'm just going to read three pages of what happens next. When the train stopped, they stayed in their seats. And where there was no announcement about the explosion, no movement, the few passengers in the compartment began to look at each other. They went away. Out the window, Lily noticed, people were beginning to leave the other cars. A man and his wife, arms around each other, walked directly under the window, heading along the tracks in the direction the train would have taken them. Then there were others. And she wanted to call out, what did they heard? What happened? Could they see it? She thought it was a bomb first. Maybe it's still burning in the nearby factory, but the others didn't seem afraid. Lily imagined an accident on the tracks, even a suicide, and wondered if she could bring it out. If she could stay safely in her seat, never have to see the wreckage. The life destroyed. As more people walked by, the passengers around her got up to leave and Lily found herself rising. Better to meet the group heading for the city than to end up alone. Outside, the stream of people was thin but steady. They walked for a long time besides the tracks, passing other train stations. They acknowledged each other only by moving to make room when clearing narrowly, but no one, not even the children, whispered about what might have happened. By then the low operational was unmistakable. August was a hot month, but this was different. The air was scorched, sizzling, rippling everything out of sight. The black rain had already fallen. Firestorms were sweeping through anything that could still be burnt, including people alive, trapped in the rubble. Lily didn't know yet. She wouldn't hear these stories until later. Then she was still walking through her final step of insistence. They did not know yet. They could never have imagined. Still couldn't believe when, even when the black goats began to approach them. From a distance, the ghosts looked like people, but as they got closer, something was wrong. Their hair, for one, puffed and frizzy, even in the distance, their color. From her vantage point, with the sun in her eyes and a strange glow behind them, they seemed to be completely in shadow. As they got closer, Lily could see it was their skin, it was black. Some of it burnt to expose white bone, some of it hanging off their bodies. But it seemed to be a crowd that she first saw them, whittled, people falling off in the wake of the rest to sit or lie down on the ground. Those who continued walking, how their arms floating in front of them were in sleepwalkers, made to avoid the pain of rubbing a robber or a robber, or maybe with the instincts of a woman holding her hem off the ground to keep their skin from dragging them since most of them were now too deeply shocked, too far beyond feeling. They didn't even look at the passengers. No one asked a question, no one offered a warning. They were even fortifying if it wasn't so clearly a nightmare. Sometime in the future, she would remember screams, she would remember silence, the first sight of the bodies clocking the Yoko Kawa River, lying at the dam that should have raised the level of the water. You could walk over them, she thought. It was how she understood they were all dead. She would remember questions, whose answers she already understood had no power to help her. What had happened to her? Lily didn't look like an op-ed when she was able to get close enough to the city, skirt the edges. She couldn't get near the castle. Instead, she searched everywhere for her father-in-law, even though she knew he could only have been in two places, the house they lived in, which had been engulfed in a huge lake of flames from the hospital. He was a better than one, her responsibility. Yet, she was wandering through streets that no one she knew would ever have traveled. She wouldn't think. There was a woman with her heads submerged in a drum, her long hair still swaying like seaweed in the murky water. A child out of a puddle of blind and his dead mother's arm. Toshi, she thought. At least he was not in the city. At least she was not the dead mother, so the child couldn't be hers. There were so many tiny bodies, so many people of all sizes. Up close, she could see that those with warm white clothing and darker patterns had been seared, their skin losing in wounds that matched the charred, once-dark designs. Their faces blurred, rubbed over. People without eyes, without ears, without a nose. There was no way to recognize anyone, but Lily was afraid to stop moving into the city, out of the city, direction of the matter. Others were doing what she was, searching automatically just to have some place to go. She couldn't help, she couldn't stop either. She had seen her over a man stop. She had watched off the work of him. He'd raise his hands high to the sky, calling out for the gods to take him or turn his wife instead. She had watched him crumple to the ground and stay there, Lily kept going. She walked through the city all day, burning her hands and the soles of her feet through her sandals before she ended up in the hospital. There were bodies lying in the hallway, in the courtyard, and camp guards had to front door injured, more dying, and others just in shock with no food and nowhere to go. Nowhere was where they all were, she realized. There was no outrunning it, an entire city incinerated by a single bomb. Her son, she thought, he was a tiny light in the sea of lights that she once believed would be protected. She had believed people had rights, that it would be rewarded, that life was precious, and fair, but no one was safe. And in the caustic embers of the city, surrounded by the impossible, this truth that she had spent all day alluding and finally caught up with him. Her hope guttered out. She sank down against the wall of the building and closed her eyes. Thank you, Rika, for the total reminder of why we were right to put her up next. Prepare yourselves for the formidable machinations of Raleigh and Machina. One of the interesting things about our residence is how much creative energy there is. And also, how vulnerable all the writers are. You were creating work and you were putting it out for the first time. So I decided to do the same thing. So what you're gonna hear is brand new. And the one thing about it is that you may be the only ones that will hear it. So you're like a few incredible privilege. So, okay, so the events, took place a couple of years ago. And I've seen one, but there is no scene, too. So a barber shop, except it's different. Something's off. It's not clear what, there's one chair. We'll call him the barber, but he probably has a name. He's sharpening the straight razor. A man who will entrance. The door's shut at the behind. We get a quick glimpse of someone in military uniform, but that's about it. The barber says, ah, do you mind if I practice my English? Well, I was gonna ask you, would you mind if I practice my Spanish? The barber. We can't agree so English it is. No, no, no, no. Better enough, barber. Most countries, you are a guest, you do what you're told, not come over and sit. Well, in my country, barber, but this is your country. Well, it's where I've been born. Well, yes, but it's not barber. That is right. You were born here. It's where the country on the citizen of the United States, well, the guest gets to choose, barber. You are a citizen of this country. If you check your passport, you're not traveling. Well, if you check your passport, it's American. It's American passport, it is Cuban. It is not American. Will. Well, that's the rules. Anyone born here, barber sit. Will. Anyone born here needs to return to the passport, barber. Rules don't make sense. You get to an age, you choose country, you choose wife, you choose country, you make the wrong choice, but here you are anyway. Well, your English is not bad, barber. I wanted to, I wish to be, yes, wanted past tense, I wanted to be transitive. It wasn't over, got it, yeah. Will. Why am I here, barber? You want to interview me, will. Well, yes, that's right, I have a meeting with an interview, but, well, it is an unusual time, barber. Well, you said, Will, it's three in the morning, barber. Yes. Well, it's three in the morning, it's not time to interview you, will. Casting that aside, barber, I am not losing this English you use. Will, three in the morning, it's not time for a shave, barber. I was woken up in bed with a woman who was not my wife, I come here to shave your beard. Will, okay, very enough, barber. What is your about that? Will, nothing I suppose, barber. Let's start, Will. I am in a country that is unfriendly, barber, not. Will, let me finish, our relationship is strange, not. Will, I'm here to interview a man who has, well, frankly, he's pissed us off for a long time enough, it's three in the morning. I have no idea what he is, and I have been brought here to a barber who has dragged out of bed, who he was sharing with a woman who was not his wife, barber. We both have reasons to be unhappy, but I need to shave your beard, Will. So you can go back to bed with barber, yes, Will. I use Gillette, when I can shave Gillette, it's the best a man can buy, barber. Yes, now I see why I was not chosen to be translator. I have no idea what you just said, Will. I don't like a man to hold a razor so close to my throat. Barber, I am a professional, Will, even so, barber. Two years I've wanted to be translator, but this is why, Will, I get that your dreams did not come to fruition, but what I would like to know, what I would like to happen is for me, for someone to not get me and drive me back to my hotel or straight to him, barber. If it was not explained, Will, but will both of us explain barber. Fidel Castro has never met with a journalist, diplomat, head of state or local idiot, also had a beard. In a room where there is a camera, there's only one person with a beard. Now I can shave your beard, maybe you can do what you come to do, or we can both sit here and see what happens next. Will, that's not a prayer. What's your name? Barber, the truth, Will. Off the record, Barber, what does that mean? Will, I am not going to credit the sources. You can tell me anything and in your identity, Barber. Off the record does not mean, well, I'm not carrying the tape record, Barber. There's no need for being recorded everywhere you say it. Everywhere you say it will not exist forever. Will, you mean will but, Barber, explain? Will, I will not get to meet him if I have a beard. Barber, let's sit down. Will says, Barber, it applies to hot towels. Barber, how is that? Well, good. Now he got his mom. At this point, there is no more conversation. I will do a little talk. If you talk, it's possible that the movement will cause you to cut the throat and you will die. No, no, we'll talk. I am sorry. The first thing I want to advise you, I advise you, I like that my English, not so bad. That's not a question. Don't answer, you will die. Pre-quest things you don't know about. Who thinks you need to know about that? He wears glasses, but never in public, or never for a journalist. The scroomer will be denied. Why this is important for you to know is that you must never hand him a piece of paper to be used blind. He will not read, and if your photographer takes a picture of this, it will not happen, of course, because it only appears quickly. But that's not necessary. There's only official photographs to be taken. This means you'll shake hands with him, photo. He will look you seriously in the face, photo. If you shake his hand, photo. Read for what is to be published. The second thing you must know is that if he does not like the line of questioning, he will. He is unpredictable. Do not ask him about food shortage, or food, or anything to do with the state of Florida. He will not mention camps of any kind, or gays, or women who are also gay. Mention the Soviet Union once, and we'll discuss Bernie Sanders and the current president to be, but he has no interest in lost emails, misplaced objects. He can ask him about both the war, capitalism, Marxism, socialism, and no other word than anthropism. There's a funny thing he must know about it. He does not believe he will die. There is no God, do not ask him about the aftermath. Do not ask him about all the dead bodies, where they are. Third, and last, he knows where CIA, he understands that the American press is not to be trusted, and it is likely you will say false statements. He is not stupid, and your report will be allowed to make false statements because it is false news. Don't make the mistake of making it all lies, or that will be for another time. He raises a mop, shows him the shade, barbersets, look surprised, I have done a good job, right? Only a little blood, a little cut, a little stupid here.