[µstory] Partridge

He would a’ bought me a partridge. I can see him now, runnin ’round town, visiting every farm and pet store and ’splaining his ridiculous scheme, and the owners grinning from ear to ear, some laughing, You’re mad! they’d say. Course if it din’ work out he’d get the bright idea of catching one out’o the wild, and lo he’d ’a done it too, near fright’nin the poor bird half t’death I would guess, his head all a-feathered, ha ha! And at night, when we’d all be right fast asleep, he’d a’ got out with the poor thing, climbed up the pear tree in the garden with it in a litt’a cage in the crook o’is arm, and got his head pecked a dozen times, and muttered and sworn and oh my nearly fallen off, but he’d do it. Break o’dawn he’d ’a called us I’m sure. Come out to the garden! he’d be grinning and Look out the window why don’t you, saying we’d be fair surprised. And we would be.

Random writing fragment

An interval.
It has been long since epiphanies flashed before your eyes, long since you felt the sharp stinging pain behind your eyelids that comes with this enlightenment. Shut tight, the light spots warn you of madness, remind you that reason lies beyond. Open, and force yourself to look at Truth in its brilliance; but for that glimpse, you must be blind to all else. Shut tight, and your vision is saved. But there will be only darkness for you to see.

Mind of a beta-Microbiologist - #5

Neisseriae
Are in your nez
Attached by Type IV fimbriae
That from the inner membrane grow
From single units of PilA
And out the outer membrane go.


--------------------------
To be continued? :)

The pathopoet returns...?!

So I’ve started a new resolution – rather, I’ve revisited an old and oft-recycled resolution to write some worthy matter every day, or at least twice a week, depending on how it goes. The problem is, I tend to compose veritable epics in my brain and fermenting soliloquies which never end up seeing the light of day, due to the following:

1) I have a strict policy of preening any text that fumbles out of my mind into something decent before penning it down. I try to follow the route of Raymond Carver in my preoccupation with precision; I do believe, like any good poet (not that I’m calling myself a good poet, but merely indicating that I subscribe to similar theories) that things ought to be edited and refined; I vaguely remember my favourite poets and writers concurring through various quotes. However, this tends to mean that I end up writing absolutely nothing. So to remedy this, I am trying to edit absolutely nothing. Oh yes, I shall force myself to post this piece up while I cringe at its jagged corners.

2 )I have quick thoughts. Interestingly quick in Middle English means “alive,” and that is a fitting description too. I can never write as fast as I think – as for typing, will some kind soul please show me how on earth to patter down on these keys without looking? I compose what I consider to be good pieces, only to get hopelessly frustrated as I try to write them down. I am at thought number 998,786 and have gotten down four words. The end result is something that is painfully trying to catch up with the original sentiment, by then long dissipated.

3) I think of good things when it is most inconvenient. By the time I get some sort of writing implement or manage to reunite with my mechanical scribe, the muse has long since gone for a coffee and left me with fragments of ideas which barely make up a paltry sentence.

4) I can’t bear to jot down nonsense. Somewhat bemusedly yet with reasonable trepidation, I realize I am doing just that at this very moment. I love to flirt with sophistication, I am enraptured with subtleties, I gurgle with delight at that elusive complex metaphor. Which has thus far gotten me square in the middle of nowhere, as complex metaphors are wont to do.

5) I am obsessed with Purpose and Theme. There should be a Purpose to all things writ; and if they happened to be writ in a place with a little layout and quaint headings and labels such as “Stylus Virus,” then isn’t it awful to slide in something that is hopelessly disjoint from the whole elaborately established Theme?!

No, I suppose it’s not. And so, I just did.

Mind of a beta-Microbiologist - #4

Corny things to say when you're a microbiologist - 2:

Q:What do you get when you cross an enteropathogen and a glass slipper?
A:Salmonella.

. ..
Okay, my head hurts due to severe corniness.

[pathopoetry] Revival

Most Merciful.
  elevate me
far from subliminal
from horizontal
i have my eye on that
rim of sun

[µstory] Sand in the throat

He still felt some uneasiness in his throat as he continued to stare out the window. He saw the wind whip up the sand into angry, rising circles. He watched sand raised over the lip of sand, watched air become haze and haze dissolve into dust. Then words came clearly from the back of the jeep, arriving in fragments, as though they first had to be retrieved from deep archives and, once recalled, moved rustily through the throat before being deposited by the tongue.

***

Excerpt from "Sandstorm," a short story

[pathopoetry] General anaesthetic

Self-administered
general anaesthetic:

Never admit
the sorrow is selfish

that you've used up all your pity
on yourself.


where was I justified in mourning
for emotions

how can I tell the hungry
that I hunger

my stomach full
their abdomens swollen

when I have cried
was it melodrama

should I purge myself
with cholera


even with fog
a sigh is delimited

what of the words you recognise
when you realise your design
is only a repeating tile





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© pathopoet

Why I think T4 is supercool

I can't believe I haven't posted this up yet. You'd think with such a blog title and hallmark illustration, I'd plaster this all over here first chance I got. Nevertheless, I now have the legitimate right to gush about how cool bacteriophage T4 is, seeing that I've delayed it so long and have posted a reasonable amount of non-T4-related posts...

Oh all right, I won't gush.

Instead, you have the privelage of viewing for yourself the coolness that is T4 in a very spiffy movie made by scientists at Purdue and Seyet LLC. Even cooler, this movie is an actual representation based on recent discoveries and earlier knowledge, using x-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy data!

Original release from Purdue University found here.

Watch the movie here from Seyet LLC.


Animation and image credit: Purdue University and Seyet LLC. Click to watch large-version Quicktime animation from the National Science Foundation website. Takes a long time to load, but well worth it.

Please visit the very informative press release from the National Science Foundation, where this animation is linked from, and where you can also find a streaming RealMedia version of the movie.

You can also watch the animation in .wmv format here, from MSNBC.

[pathos worldview] This is Beit Hanoun

Beit Hanoun.

Sound familiar? Ring a bell?

If it doesn't, you need to ask why.

It may be because you've tuned out temporarily to what's going on in the world.


Or because your world has tuned it out for you.


Is it too much for humanity to reflect upon the suffering of others?


This is Beit Hanoun:

"There are pools of bloodstained water outside one of the houses, which has had a hole blown through the roof and there are shrapnel marks everywhere from the explosion."
-BBC News Nov 8. Gaza town stunned by shelling, Matthew Price. Image: Getty

.

"The situation is very, very bad," said Mahmoud. "The Israelis have destroyed Beit Hanoun - they have destroyed the infrastructure. They've cut the water pipes and the telephone lines.

"They put explosives at the doors of the houses - and then they enter on the women and children. Everybody is terrified in their homes."
- BBC News Nov 8. Palestinians gripped by fear in Gaza
----------

[pathopoetry] Going to the Wind

put on your best coat, love -
come, we're going to the wind.

is it when she sorrows
she wails and clasps the trees

is it when she wonders
she whispers to the seas

in fury does she tear her hair
and strip away the leaves

she crashes down the ocean and
she screams, she screams, she screams...


no, the wind is but a word
the weight within her name

between the kaaf and nuun contained


our fingers sweep the rivulets
our palms cushion the rain

put on your best coat, love -
come, we're going to the wind.






---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*kaaf and nuun: two letters of the Arabic alphabet, phonetically equivalent to "K" and "N". Put together, they form the word kun - "Be". The Originator is He of the heavens and the earth: and when He wills a thing to be, He but says unto it, "Be" -and it is[al-Baqarah:117]

[pathopics] Stitching a way

[µstory] - How cahn you seeh?

This is quite remarkable. I was thinking of posting to my blog today, but didn't really have any idea what to say. But, fortunately, I have been blessed with an amusing, albeit off-putting, incident! How things turn out : )

I just came back from buying groceries with my sister on this very blustery (though pleasant) day, and we were trying to negotiate a heavy-laden trolley down a flight of stairs. I catch sight of this old lady at the bottom of the steps, and so now my task has been rendered triply difficult as I try to
a) keep my headscarf from blowing off my head
b) keep the trolley from careening down and crashing with miscellaneous fruit flying from all corners and
c) attempt to restrict myself to one side of the stairs so that the old lady can pass without incident

Ah, but successful as I was in manoeuvring the trolley to one side (my sister grasping the handle at the top and me lifting it at the bottom and trying hard not to trip on my own feet as we make our way gingerly down), the aforementioned lady climbed the steps, alas, with a wee incident. First chance I get to look up from my fluttering laces, I see this mouth-agape look of disgust. Here is the quaint exchange between us:

Her: HOW CAHN YOU SEEH?
Me: (taken aback – my sister more so)
Her: I hope you drop dead.
Me: May God guide you.*
(*I also said “Bless you” before that when I was a little dazed, but I like this response better :))

The funny thing was that, my sister was much more appalled (meanwhile I giggled at the amusing statement of “how can you see” – uhm, perhaps with these inset orbs above my nose – what’re they called again – oh, eyes). Okay, so it’s not so funny when some random person curses you with death, but hey, at least she didn’t shove the trolley down the stairs. Besides, she was old and thus can be excused from her ignorance.

Interestingly, I’ve met this lady before. I was startled once when she, in her thick European accent proclaimed loudly when our paths met, "How cahn yous see?!"
I smiled and thought, "How can you not?"

:)

[pathos worldview] Apparently, teaching Arabic is akin to terrorism?

To tell you the truth, I'm actually quite amused by this. Not to say that I'm not appalled by it nor adamantly against it, but I'm amused as well. I guess I've begun to take these things in stride : ) It's partly because the previous post was Arabic is a terrorist language, oh the irony.

S.F. STATE
Professor of Arabic barred from returning to U.S. from Canada
S.F. State scholar's visa gets canceled; case under review

An assistant professor of Arabic at San Francisco State University has been stranded in Canada for three months, unable to return to campus, after the U.S. State Department canceled his visa and began reviewing his security status.

Mohammad Ramadan Hassan Salama's troubles began in June, when he arrived in Canada for what he thought was a two-day stay to change his temporary scholar visa, which was due to expire. He planned to exchange it at the U.S. Consulate in Toronto for the more coveted O-1 visa, granted only to those with extraordinary ability in sciences, arts, education, business or athletics. By law, he had to go outside the country to get the visa.

But the Egyptian-born academic got a rude awakening June 20 when a consular official, without explanation, stamped "canceled'' on his temporary visa and refused to issue another visa. Instead, Salama said, he was fingerprinted, questioned and told he could not return to the United States until he received security clearance.

"It was just a shock for me,'' he said by phone on Monday. "It is very Kafkaesque. They just say, 'We will contact you.' I am Egyptian, and Egypt is a very hot country right now that has produced terrorists. They disregarded my Ph.D., my scholarship. My marriage, my kids were blindly disregarded, and I was told I could not come back."

Read the full article here on the San Fransisco Chronicle site.

[pathopoetry] Fighting hope

hope has dealt a glancing blow -
has grazed the brick and chipped the stone
and clipped the wings of all the crows

[pathos worldview] Apparently, Arabic is a terrorist language

I was collecting my thoughts to write a passable post on the aftermath of the war. I had originally stipulated to myself that no other posts would be written before the publication of that one. Then I saw this:

NEW YORK (AP) - An Arab human rights activist was prevented from boarding a plane at Kennedy Airport while wearing a T-shirt that read "We will not be silent" in English and Arabic.


Raed Jarrar was at the gate to board a JetBlue Airways flight to Oakland, Calif., on Aug. 12, when four officials from the airline or a U.S. government agency stopped him and told him he could not board with the shirt on, he said Wednesday.
One official told him: "Going to an airport with a T-shirt in Arabic script is like going to a bank and wearing a T-shirt that says: 'I'm a robber,"' he said.

Okay. It is difficult for me to comprehend this. How people can be so racist, narrow-minded, bigoted, and still claim to be looking out for other people's rights - I'm dumbfounded. Take a look at that last statement there. It reeks of ignorance and contempt. Arabic now equates terrorism? Last time I checked, the Quran was in Arabic. So please don't beat around the Bush.

Jarrar, who directs the Iraq project for Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights organization, said he refused a suggestion from the officials that he turn his shirt inside out. In the end, officials gave Jarrar another shirt to wear over his and he put it on rather than miss his flight.

Jarrar said he was forced to give up his seat near the front of the plane and was issued a new boarding pass for a seat in the rear.

How do I discriminate against thee? Let me count the ways.

----------------------------------------------------
Article copyright The Canadian Press, and can be read in its entirety here.

[ pathopoetry] Upset, and a viewed thought

Look
if you press it hard enough
it will leave a residue

don't turn your mind that way
why must it always be
something like that

as though you can't think past
your pants

there is grey matter elsewhere

Look deep at me
you see
it crumbles

I am the advocate for
disparaging souls

[pathopoetry] +/-Sad

My head hurts.
I placed it where my heart was, added some fancy tissue paper
and closed the box.

What will it do there
where moths yearn to go?
complain to a sympathetic friend
who'll say, "it's your turn now."

[pathopoetry] Paperline

I weighed my worth in ounces
forgot the conversion factor, set
the 0 mark wrong

maybe if I shift to one foot
(the burden in the heart must count)
maybe if I lean forward

I spread my arms out, trying to expand myself

how much can you lift
with an emaciated soul
what mind can balance
on adequacy

[pathopoetry] 57

My wife was one of the 57.
Had she been 4? 14? 21?
Who made a mental note when they carried her
saw her crumpled face and thought, '34'?
Or did they do it after, on the ground
was she briefly 10 after 8...9...
covered with a sheet with her knees in the air
- too stiff to lay you down, my love!
There are no spaces for names between the stones
but isn't there a number that she can call hers?
Let them distinguish her from the dust
Give me something I can scream to the world
I tell you there was a sweetness in her
I won't let her dissolve within the words
unmarked as a person, but part of a scene
not just another bag beneath the dirt
not even a number to remember her by






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©pathopoet, 2006