This tanker ...

…has a tall house
on its stern — six stories
of lit windows just before
dawn. But now &#fb01;rst
light has turned them o&#fb00;
on the Salacgriva, the
mouth of the Salaca, a town
in the Vidzeme region of
northern Latvia. A reversed
anchor in its coat of arms,
though what we need is a
new mappe mundi that is
more than just a Google map,
especially one that plays at
geopolitics and may restore a great
white place where China was.
But history, as much as geography,
does play such tricks on us
as soon as your back is turned —
whoever “you” may be in this or
any similar case. There is a
suggestion, for example, that
early Bolsheviks were educated,
multinational and ambitious.
Lenin’s family, we learn this morning,
maybe a bit too late, some would say,
just as the tanker hauls in its
anchor to start moving in the
direction of the open sea, while
it simultaneously happens that
“this,” (I think I’d wanted to write)
pen, a Begreen precise V5, runs out
of ink, clung desperately (we’re back
now with Lenin’s family) to its
status on the lowest rung of the
Czarist aristocracy.
                        Though today
this is a highly unlikely process
in the country that has the most sweeping
web &#fb01;ltering system in the world.
Meanwhile the Salacghriva (remember her?) has
moved from the middle window to the South
window. Hadopi, the French
agency in charge of a new anti–
piracy scheme, has been accused
of pirating the font used in its logo.
But if someone you live with is accused
of three acts of infringement, your whole
household is yanked o&#fb04;ine and added
to a list of those it is illegal to
provide internet service to. I still have
not heard back from the elderly
Haitian poet who sent me email
two hours before the disaster struck.
Had we been in Rome we would
probably not have been able to get
tickets for the world première of
Henze’s Immolazione. When
you liked the music used on the
documentary you watched before
falling asleep, you were pleased to
discover who the composer was.
You fell asleep more easily than I did
maybe because of the fear, anguish
and soccer in Africa, which could
remain unassimilable, if that is a
word, as part of a study on
“The Modern as experience.” She
can’t determine if its is a crying
or a laughing matter. But who
can, these days, I want to ask whoever
is listening. We’re out of wine
and a rose is a tulip is an anemone.

Pierre Joris