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Email from a friend

Nagasaki memories Inbox David Mason 5:12 PM (12 minutes ago) to me Dear Koon, This is the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. I spent three years as a Navy dependent in Sasebo, Japan from 1960 to 1963. Nagasaki is about 50 miles from Sasebo. In 1963 when I was age 16 I rode an old slow steam train with hard wooden seats from Sasebo to Nagasaki, munching on a bento lunch. I roamed around Nagasaki, and I eventually visited the site where the bomb was dropped. At that time it was marked by a pillar, as it is now. Not far from it stood a large bronze statue of a seated figure pointing upwards to the sky. I saw the heat twisted steel beams of the former Mitsubishi steel works. I also briefly visited the peace museum where exhibits of fused metal, melted glass and vegetables deformed by radiation preserved in formaldehyde were on display. I walked quickly past the photographs of the devastation. I was taken aback by the young girls working there with severe radiation burns on their faces and decided that I had seen enough. What prevented the city from being completely wiped out was the fact that it is built in narrow valleys. The bomb just destroyed the city in one of the valleys. It left the harbor and ship building works unscathed. So roughly half of the city was largely untouched. For instance I strolled around a small zoo that had been visited by former President Grant on his 1879 world tour. A small monument commemorating his visit was clearly unmarred by the atom blast of 1945. On the other hand, Hiroshima suffered a lot more damage since it sits on a plain. I was in Nagasaki 18 years after the event. I recall an old lady coming up to me on the street and slapping me on the face. Later an English speaking Japanese man befriended me and gave me a little tour. He said that he had lost his family to the bomb; he was out of town when it was dropped. He pointed out to me the ruins of a Catholic Church, which was destroyed by the blast. As we parted he told me then that he was a Christian. Once as part of an organized group of Navy Brats I attempted the Kennedy 50 mile hike from Sasebo to Nagasaki. I only made it to 39.5 miles. I had worn tennis shoes instead of the recommended sturdy leather shoes. We were advised to carry big sticks to scare off barking dogs as we passed through villages. After 30 miles of trekking my feet became painfully sensitive to every pebble. A friend and I sat ourselves on the porch of a country store and drank soda pop, while we waited for the accompanying aid car to pick us up. By that time my feet were reeking with the smell of Wintergreen oil. It took a couple of weeks for my feet and legs to recover. All these memories come back to me at this time of year. Later I learned that the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was manufactured in Hanford, Washington, by the Dupont Corporation. I certainly would not have known that in 1963. Sayonara, David

The Chinese Mafia

They are surnamed "Ma." They engaged in rape, murder, plunder, but they offer "protection." Money is their ultimate aim. They may smile and shake hands and pat you on the back, all the while coveting your wallet. Once they stripped you of everything, they offer to lend you money. The next game is activated. While you gamble and whore around, they shark you to death!!!

What makes a poet?

Can you, in a paragraph or two, state what you think are the primary qualifications to be a "poet?" Send email to koonwoon@gmail.com with the subject "Poet." Thank you and we will give you the consensus.

Dispatches from David Gilmour in Iceland

gilliemot@net-venture.com 11:42 AM (10 minutes ago) to me So you put out my short piece on the last day in Faroes and arrival in Reykjavík. I had to use the other email, Apple, from lack of service. It worked OK, but that damned autofill is an auto-pain. It’s exasperating! Two days of wintry rain made tourists colorful in their ponchos and wool hats, staggering along with humped backpacks. Good luck to them in the winds and rain of the countryside. I am staying in a stopping-spot hostel for many adventurers, having brief engagements at breakfast, very good talks actually, not frivolous. Venturing forth, taking alternate roads in the city maze, I wended my way to the underground museum The Punk Museum, like the Louvre in Paris when you go, it said ”CLOSED TODAY.” This is strange since many more people have flooded Reykjavík from Europe’s holiday month, and now they don’t open. Typical counterintuitive punk, kicking against the pricks. It is the cheapest museum in town, set in an funky underground public restroom, down a narrow flight of stairs, garbage littering the way, a couple of posters on the slimed walls. Very seductive in an underground-toilet sort of way. The door was black and shut tight. I banged and kicked at the panels, yelled a few FUCKS! You know, an angry offloading. I thought I heard a scream from inside. Then I beat it to get a fix of an non-alcoholic beer, Viking brand, at a bar down by the government buildings, away from the tourist merch-marts. In the Bar and Grill I was told it was only groups today, but all I needed was a quick, refreshing beer, so the concierge let me sit at the bar on a stool. Finishing a coffee, two Aussies from Denmark, South West Australia, a town of 6000, spoke of leaving their Antarctic winter to vacation in the summer of Iceland, presently in a winter mode. It was 9 degrees Celsius. They felt at home immediately upon arrival. Unfortunately they had a car and Tammy, the wife of Steven, left to add some IsKrona to the parking meter. [N.B. Don’t rent a car in Iceland or the Faroes, if you want to see the life of the city. They are lands of walking haunts and buses are everywhere; free in the Faroes. Passing by, I see more people ganged around cars, looking stressed, discussing how to pay and wondering if they’ll find their car again. Hundreds of autos look alike and some have to find electric plugs, payment there too. Until recent years, Faroes did not permit rental cars.] Back to the Punk Museum, shit! it’s OPEN, a 65-year-old prune-wrinkle-faced man, sporting a luminescent green spiked Mohawk, let me in some swinging doors, that said No Public Shitters here. Inside a very narrow space I paid my fee, and shouted HELLO, YOU’RE FINALLY OPEN. He nodded. Perhaps he had to find a real public shitter. “No Pissing in the Cubicles” ordered a prominent sign; “Watch Your Head” and “Look for Punk History on the Ceilings,” another couple of pieces of advice. Immediately in the black, I banged my head against the first set of headphones dangling from a chain like a torture hook. Some rage was evident in the phones, but I passed on that to make room for other visitors to get in the tight corridor. A video screen screamed with a thrashing band, a bleeding chest of Sid Vicious on a stage of broken beer bottles and silver trash bags. Sex Pistols! Right, right, yer bloody well right! John Louden, the mastermind of the anarchic message, “Don’t you dare shit on me!” Otherwise a fair Rolling Stones narrative history of Icelandic Punk was written and pasted on the walls and ceiling, in 24pt. black Icelandic and below in 24pt. Red Arial. I followed the chronology and listened in on the dangling headphones to early bad Punk and as it proceeded to later years to more mature bad Punk, nothing as polished as Bjork’s screaming jazz riffs, nothing as rock-rhythmic as The Clash’s “London Calling,” or “I’m Lost in a Supermarket.” Eventually the time came for the smash hits of Sugarcubes with Bjork’s vocal artistry and dopey narcissisistic videos, all that writhing on the stage, licking cows udders or something resembling fingers in red rubber dishwashing gloves. The accumulative sound was deafening at times, and new visitors quickly fled past when they saw I was occupying the toilet cubicle, bent down in seated position, reading the lower history cards, room for one only, unless twirking or brushing together was kosher. Young blonde-haired kids with perfect faces, eyes the size of saucers, whisked through the ghost-train carriage, strobe lights blinking red and blue, a screaming, laughing skull with eyes a-popping on a skate board, RKL, Rich Kids on LSD, “Much Love Butter” (or Batter) and a blob of something next to Butter. NO WARS:NO POWERS, PONKSAFN ISLANDS (Punk Museum of Iceland), KILLEMBILLY ROCK N ROLL. SUBHUMANZ, FUCK THE PRETTIES, LOVE THE PRETTY UGLIES, NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS. After a half-hour of deafening mixes, I thought it best to let others into the cubicles, though many eschewed the history, for poster browsing and video watching. Bjork did signify, was profound and a generous contributor to and leader of the movement, joining various bands to give them a leg up through her influence and fame. Punk history in a defunct funky underground toilet dungeon, how can you go wrong? A tad anarchic, their ethics, but on the hole [sic] right on in a hard left wing ideology. To balance out the afternoon I visited a distinguished high art museum, The House of Collections. There I sat quietly gathering myself together, coming to my senses, watching a 15-minute video of two identical cod fish, silver sheen on their flanks, as still as a still life photograph against black velvet. After a minute one gyrated spasmodically, flexing its jaws, then, as if prompted, the second cod mimicked the gesture, finishing with jaw flexing. They were both out of water, almost out of life, except for a shimmer and an electric spasmodic flick of the tail and flex of the head and mouth. Two American visitors from Grant Woodsian Nebraska breezed through in front of me, they halted and looked left. “A live video in progress,” I advised. They turned to watch, no motion, they motioned onward with a wave, and then the fishes flexed again. They’d missed it. In the children’s creative rooms, since no one was on hand, I sat and created a cut out fish on the “Ocean” floor, and sketched an Ogre on the Folklore floor. (See images if I can send them.) Once again I was alone in an art museum, outside throngs of weather protected tourists packing the merch streets, but at least I was not lost in a supermarket, high on E. (How do you spell Ecstasy?) or Ketamine.—David On 2025-08-03 3:45 am, Koon Woon wrote: