A SPIN AROUND TOWN ON MY BICYCLE
from "Isi no Kaze(A Wind whith Stones"
A SPIN AROUND TOWN ON MY BICYCLE
Sixty peanuts are on table in the
living room -- a number equal to my age
It took me seven minutes to eat them, one
by one
I've already drunk my water; I think I'll take a spin
around town on my bicycle
A young mother, her long hair wavering in the wind as
she rides her red bicycle beneath the underpass below
Yoyogi-Uehara Station, has her child in the basket up front
Junior high girls are coming home from school
Though their uniforms match perfectly with the kanji
for "junior high girls" (_jyoshi-chuugakusei_), their
glances are so severe
Yesterday I went to the Museum of Science to see the
sliced human body Kurokawa-_kun_ told me about
A crowd gathered in front of the display, dense and unmoving
We all thought: _Though these may be solidified in plastic,
they're real_
As I am about to turn into an alley from the shopping arcade,
I see a man I loaned 3,000 yen to twenty years ago
I don't like it that he is with a woman
He may or may not notice me with my grey hair
(I think later: Why did I have to imagine that
old woman's genitals?
It was a long time ago that he took a third of my pay)
It's normal that houses have their doors shut
I don't want to be reduced to philophisizing about life after
seeing somebody receding back into his home after taking
a step or two outside
I like the sound of my bicycle's pedal creaking
I think I'll record it and embed it in a HyperCard stack
I'll transform the sound along with an image of myself into
zeros and ones and maybe I'll be refreshened as I surrender
to the flow of electrons
Early this morning in bed I was awakened by Mari grabbing
my hand
She'd been gripped with fear and shaken from her dreams; that
was when she grabbed my hand
_I'm like a handrail_, I thought
By morning, I was used to being Mari's handrail
_This is good_
Light shined in as I fell asleep
(Translated by