Stream of Konsciousness

The lady with the round glasses is talking about Kundera. And Kawabata. Tuning her out, I doodle a big K, then start a list of other (bigger) Ks: Kabir, Keats, Kerouac, Khayyam, Khusrau, Kafka, King. She is still at it, making a faraway, invisible point. The unbearable burden of listening. It will take a lifetime to read just the Ks. There are more. Kahlil Gibran, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ken Follet. She is describing things that are beautiful and sad at the same time. There is some sadly beautiful word for them. Wabi-Sabi? Mono no aware? Us? The whole world? Falling apart. Healing. Scratching its scars. Bleeding. Healing. Breaking again. Broken forever.

deserted beach —
how quickly the purple twilight
grabs my arm

JK Rowling. AK Ramanujan. RK Narayan. GK Chesterton. The fan whirls slowly above us. She has moved on to the distinction of the Nobel prize. Kawabata won. Kundera didn’t. Beckett. Steinbeck. Pamuk. I need Google. And koffee. I can’t think of any famous literary character. Except Anna Karenina. Then I draw a blank. Literally. Her voice is an eraser. How about Sherlock Holmes? Herckule Poirot? Skarlett O’Hara? I am in an abandoned library with the last four books that haven’t burned down. I can’t name any others. Not with K. Not with anything. Her voice is a fog and now I’m lost. It is snowing.

But there are K words that have voices and smells. Kahwa. Kakistocracy. Kintsugi. Repairing with gold. An earth with all its wounds filled, bright as the sun. The way the morning light fills your empty arms when you wake up. The unbearable mass of light. That must be what halos are. When all your memories are healed (sealed?) and you can think again. Be again. Become an angel. Fly. Again.

then the birds arrive
        one, two, three, four
                         then the shadows: one, two, three, four, five

I think of Kobayashi Issa. Issa who said: this dewdrop world / is a dewdrop world / and yet, and yet…. She has been interrupted. Stopped. Or she has finally run out of words. Khalaas. The unbearable silence of silence. The sound of a page turning. The sound of a world turning. The sound of light. Like Kawabata’s train, this too has come out of a long tunnel and into the snow country. Snow covers the kintsugi lines. You don’t know. You have to take a chance. Underneath, the path could be broken. Or there could be a perfect seam of gold. Kismet.

 the way we live
the way we die
                     the way we know,        we don’t