Odes for this life

Throwing and being thrown

2010-11-25T09:04:00.000-08:00

To my martial arts teacher.

You never loved me back.
At least, not the way I loved you.
You were in control of it; I was not.
But, I have no regrets. None!

The first time I fell in love with you
it was February or March.
We were training as usual.
You were laughing, happy.

That was several years ago.
I have watched your hair turning grey
I watch your smiles change
As you age.
I have aged too.

I don’t seek your attention anymore
Except in your teaching.
The art we practise together, I learned to love that
As much as you. More.
I have almost learned not to be jealous.
I have almost learned to not mind
that I don’t know you, can’t know you.

But I have almost known you.
When I throw you, when you throw me, there is a moment
Of complete focus, of harmony
Of balance.
You taught me those things.
It is an amazing feeling - One we train our human bodies
and minds for.

It is only in those moments that I know you.
They are precious to me.
I hope you never stop practising martial arts with us.
The thought of it is suffering.

You showed me:
When we practise, our bodies are not our own.
They are heaven, earth, thunder, mountain.
When the sweat pours from me and you
We are water, fire, wind.
Bodies, minds.

There is magic in it, you know.
The heart crashes into the mat.
It is the heart’s pleasure.
It rises to fall again.

2007-09-03T04:48:00.000-07:00

Radioactive Girl is surprised by love

What must you have thought?
When I closed my eyes, it was
To protect myself.

It must have been the impact of you
For my heart suddenly reached critical mass
And I felt like I was going go nuclear, immediately
My coal-darkness shattering –
The blooming burst of it, the ravaged atoms going haywire,
Leaving radioactive waste all over your bed
Repercussions lasting for ages

And the saddest kind memory, which is darkness, into light,
Into darkness.

Then, timid, having to skulk out in the morning
Without even a puff of gusto left in me
And you smiling faintly as I go, with glowing flecks in your hair
Like daytime fire-flies.

Did you even notice?
I closed my eyes tight but could still see you
And my insides turned to green glass.

Three Poems

2007-08-14T04:43:00.000-07:00

Cleanliness

I would like to wipe myself clean,
Like the way one cleans the screen
Of a mobile phone.

Scrub
With paper
Until the greasy fingerprints
Polish the glass.

Passion

I would like to unwind in your wet heat
The way this dry leaf
Unlocks itself
In my teamug.

I would like to be Big Brother
And have a panoramic view
Of your movements in your bed.

Longing

There are great distances of silence, inside.
I would like to float along them, and come back to this body
Only to sing myself sadnesses
All in hollow vowels.

Oh, Aah, Aaw.
I don’t understand my own song.
The vowels are not only those found in English.

PARTY DOWN

2007-06-19T06:09:00.001-07:00

DO IT NOW

I would have that world

2007-01-05T18:36:00.000-08:00

I would like if there was a verb for the action of holding something, like science, or love,
in the mouth.

Sometimes I find science in my love-mouth.
I can press it between my tongue and my palate
like sweet leaf.

I have read of the million universes.
Find them hidden in the perpetual soup of non-existence
Tripping under your heels,
Dripping off your breakfast spoon.
But, I couldn't care less.

I think of all the minuscule details
Of how I might love you elsewhere than here.
I think of worlds where you want me.
When a concept is so big
It becomes boring.

When I can't help myself, I think of a world
Where you just took my hand.
I would have that world.
I pick it out
the way the eyes finds a single firefly
on a dark beach.

The goldsmith's daughter

2006-12-30T16:05:00.000-08:00

- After Rumi

The goldsmith's daughter, dearly loved,
Did not love herself.

But one man failed to love her
And she, marveling and relieved, loved him.

She went to his door
And knocked. He was brewing tea
And she was jealous that it might burn his lips
Where she wished to sear herself.

He said,
"Who's at the door?"
She said,
"I can no longer see my face, please look for yourself"

He said,
"My door is no mirror, and it has no peep-hole"
She had seen enough of mirrors, wanted no more of peep-holes.
She said,
"I am a girl"

He said
"what do you want?"
She said
"To be whole"

"What do you bring?"
"My loss"

"What have you lost?"
"This that you see."

He said,
"Such claims require a witness"
She said
"This longing, these tears"

He said
"Credible witnesses"
She pointed out
"I am still crying"

He laughed
"Who puts the tears in your eyes?"
She said
"The same who draws them out again"

How to clean the eyes? Fill them up.
How to cure the self? Send me back to you.

Of you, my Kung Fu Master

2006-12-30T15:47:00.000-08:00

Glasses off,
you would look as you were:
A farmer’s grown son
A strong child of China.

You would say ‘Your eyes, they must look like this’
But mine are not so dark, you know.

You rode a girl’s upright bike.
I would for you rise at 6
And you would be angled against the bath-house wall
Pulling your tight morning calf-muscles
Waiting coldly for my coming.

You always wore the same sweater that winter.
We would slip on the icy tiles, and eat hot pork baps before class.

Spring, you asked me why I was so happy
And it was because I had dreamed that we ran,
Flying, really, the dust of comets on our heels.
Somewhere beside me, you asked if I was ok,
And I laughingly swelled in delight at my legs,
And at you, my fearless leader,
At the sunlight slanting, sparkling, on us.
In life, you never spoke to me that way.

Summer, I would practice in the cool nights
Alone on the badminton court, but for the bats.
Eyes closed, I would occupy you,
Hear the rustle of your coat
Finding your movements in the arcs of my hands.

Rehearsing your coldness
I would miss you less.

Your skin isn't smooth

2006-12-30T15:43:00.000-08:00

Your skin isn’t smooth. It’s white sky and peppered birds.
The trees in it hung with black gloves and red talismans,
Your carried luck, your sharper guide.

We are not lovers
But you have drawn on my face with your fingers these past mornings, so
I try to press yours with my darker autumn colours:

I am not your paperpaste wings, and you are not my sparrowhawk
(Although
seated next to me
you say (you look down) you might fly, and I,
all eyes and no breath
am also thinking you might)

We run the fields separately
And return to each other bashful:
Hoping it will be enough.

I wrote you a haiku:

I hold your wrists, locked,
Unlocked, us both ensnared
By their faultless red.

I won’t show you. We might be lovers, one day.
For now I will content myself
Plucking at the stars,
Putting them in your already-glowing hands.

If I was to locate 'I'

2006-12-17T09:15:00.000-08:00

- After Rumi

If I was to locate 'I'
It would be entered between these eyes, lodged perhaps
in the nasal bones, or otherwise
in the cave of this mouth, rubbed back
Up into the stem of this brain
and further
Into the brain Proper, which crackles and pops
like electric breakfast cereal.

But sometimes I is wandering.
Today. Running by the canal. I shifts
out in blobby space and swings holding, bedazzled,
onto the water
which is entirely light.
The entire canal and the light
is now I's phantom limb,
and for a moment it headlocks North London.
Playful.

Later I is busy tweaking in the swollen thighs.

Over the cup of tea the face is warm and I floats there
And annoyed shoves at the steam
Demanding:
Why is I tied to this and that?
Is I in the flakes that drop off this skin?
Is I in the bumps of air that trundle from this mouth?
Whoever put this I here, will have to take it away again.

And then the infant, face tight as fist:
Her I must be in the lungs
And, sometimes, in each toe stretched
In every direction as far as it may go
I, I, I, mine, me.

The infant saying:
Stop making all those choices.
I have always been here, I know that
And anyway if someone brought me here
they are mine too.

haiku for the scholar

2006-11-26T16:13:00.000-08:00

All day you read such
Hightened prose, what might you think
Of my simple words?

I was on your floor, crying.

2006-11-23T06:51:00.000-08:00

I was on your floor, crying.
You could not be more anglic
Locked around my waist, your cheek
On my thigh, all the strength of a child
In your clasp, your furious and silent love.
I am no child perhaps, but notice
How the rounded toes of my plimsoles
are greyed and dulled by puddle-water.
We are soft small shapes.
And I perceive
There is more joy in us, that we
Have yet
have yet
to see.

haiku2

2006-11-19T02:20:00.000-08:00

From the flyover:
Black-petal crows fall, scattered
Between city's sheets

almost haiku

2006-11-19T02:19:00.000-08:00

Sea of sycamore
leaves, autumn's dying-ember
skin, still full of life.

Arrival

2006-11-11T03:20:00.000-08:00

All of London drips off my bike helmet.
The city is one volume of rain, and it sparkles
blitzingly under each streetlight.
It is 5.30am.
In your bed, in another city,
Your steady breathing is real
And I am cycling through your surreal dream.
The huge sycamoure leaves clop down
Like great nappies or artists's rags
Then reform in the streets, into hand-shapes
That run low, palming the air that is
Just above the tarmak
Losely, just like you might still hover
in the film of atoms
Just above my neck.

Balad for Ark in Bangladesh

2006-11-09T11:13:00.000-08:00

I have not put this to music yet.

Sometimes
I write to you
But I can't put myself in words
Sometimes
I think of you
But babe there's nothing worse
Than knowing

It's been too long a time
For me to pretend you havn't changed
What's funny is how we forget everything
Most of the time.

Sometimes
I can't see why
We spin in different spheres
I know
We both get by
We walk apart for all these years
But I'm thinking

Maybe it's time to drop this weight
Dig out my favourite linen dress
Get myself to the boarding gate
and see what's down in Bangladesh.

Yeah
I dreamed of you
I know you dreamed of me too...(at least once)
Sometimes I think
There's something more for me and you

I know it's been a long, long time
I can't know all the plaes you have been
But if we meet again
I'll try real hard...to think of what to say...

You see I have to risk it all again
Pack up my bags and lock the doors
I'll put my hopes down on this plane cuz
I'd like to hear one more word of yours

Maybe it's time to drop this weight
Dig out my favourite linen dress
Get myself down to the boarding gate
And see what's down in Bangladesh.

poem for s. stringer

2006-11-06T02:13:00.000-08:00

I would like to walk
Until we find lights
In every room
Which was once ours.

And I would like to use
Your pair of gold coins
To slick a cosmic
ferryman's palm.

The other shore so bright

haiku

2006-11-06T02:05:00.000-08:00

You have been and gone.
I pull tight the sheets twisted
By our curling sleep.

I love 徐挺

2006-11-03T05:10:00.000-08:00

This is an email from my old student and friend 徐挺, 'XuTing'. He's great.

"
dear amy:
heihei !!!
i have just back beijing today from changchun which is a fucking cold city in china.

these days i am interested in the topic releteved to "The Evolution of Epistemological Assumptions "
i fould different major learners have different way of think.
and the music you here will affect your study,different type of music you have to choose when you do different thinking.especially some thing ask for logic thinking .
students in different major will have their proper Epistemological Assumptions.
and also when you are moving on the bus at first it starts it will be difficult for you to think some complex things.maybe the electricity the brain will affected by this.
different gender will lead a different way of thinking,which is not definitely but it will be certainly relatived.
such things make me a little busy.also i think you can help me if one day i want to do some experements,maybe we can corporate with each other then 5years later we can have some paper published in the science magazine.
what is your life there?busy?
and what about the beancurd shop?
when you will back china for a short visit?
xuting
"

I love him.

MRI hazards: footnote

2006-10-27T05:30:00.000-07:00

Something I discovered when being scanned yesterday: some tattoos contain metal ions which lend them their pigment. In the scanner these ions can go on an atomic rampage through your skin and leave you with MRI burns.

I asked my Prof what to do about this, seeing as I had a small and tasteful tattoo done on my right shoulder about 6 months ago. He erected himself and said 'Well! There's only one way to find out'.

I looked to the radiographer for guidance, but she just looked prissy and malevolent, because she hates working with him. She probably wants me burned, I thought. The legal battles would make her cackle.

As it turns out, the magnet did not inflict any harm on me. Although I had some auditory hallucinations later that evening, which has not happened post-scanning on other occasions.

The Sociobiology of Sperm

2006-10-20T08:34:00.000-07:00

Here's what my esteemed Professor (E.T. Rolls) has to say about that.

Monogamous primates well spread out over territory have small testes, for example gibbons and some tarsiers. Polygamous primates living in groups with several males in the group have large testes and frequent copulation, e.g. chimpanzees and monkeys. The reason for this appears to be sperm warfare - in order to pass his genes on to the next population, a male in the polygamous society with competition between males needs to increase the probability that he will fertilize a female, and the best way to do this is to copulate often, and swap the female with sperm, so that his sperm have a greater probability of getting to the egg to fertilize it.

Therefore in polygamous groups with more than one male, males should have large testes, to produce large numbers of sperm and large quantities of seminal fluid. The largest testis size in relation to body weight is found in the chimpanzee, who live in multimale groups, are highly promiscuous, and have on average 13 partners per birth.

What about humans? Despite being apparently mainly monogamous, they are intermediate in testis and penis size - bigger than expected for a monogamous species....

So, take the hint.

Ode to my sweet Belgian Boy

2006-10-18T10:21:00.000-07:00

Sweet Belgian Boy

I was sittin out there in the shadows, baby
Jus' waitin for night to come
Sittin there in the shadows baby
Wishin for day to be done

But that sweet Belgian boy, yeah
He taught me how to have some fun

He saw me sit there with my burdens
My whole soul black and blue
Yeah he saw me sittin neath my burdens, baby
I think he knew just what to do

An' I told him true then:
'Can't say what 'is that ails me, honey
But it cuts me through and through.'

He called me Missy and he told me:
'Sure you got some grief and some woe
But ain't got no time for that now see,
We gonna get out some dark cocoa.'

Now I don't want no other sweetness baby
Got no taste for wine or rum
Don't want no other sweetness baby
Just want your bitter on my tongue

Told my mama
Told my mama
This Beigian Boy's got me wrapped round his thumb.

God bless that sweet Beligian boy, yeah
He showed me way it should be done.

Childhood Obesity

2006-10-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

In 'Foresight' - Tackling Obesity: Future Choices I came across an article by Professor DJP Barker (FRS) at the University of Southampton.

"A century ago...the British government adopted a package of measures to improve the physique and health of children. They were spectacularly successful. Children became taller, healthier and fewer of them died. There was, however, a cost. The age of puberty fell. People had longer lives, but shorter childhoods."

So think about that when you're frying up a nice egg for little Rosie. Initiate her menstruation early, why don't you.

And how about this for perspective:

"In recent years cattle breeders have successfully improved the body composition of their stock, increasing muscle and reducing fat. So why would be unable to do the same with children?"

You old Nazi.

An Ode to MRI

2006-10-16T13:20:00.000-07:00

MRI Lover

You great magnet, I know
How you pull and possess.
In your liquid helium overcoat
You are so stubborn
You take no argument
You wear the pants.

I am not your lover,
For you don't care for my silks and musk.
Even if I swallow paperclips, buttons
I will be invisible to you,
Though you will push yourself through me
And draw cirles around
Those sacred parts.

But I like to lie in your still heart.
I know you search through the different pieces of me
And for instance take those certain dipoles
In ten thousand glassy fingers,
Bending them
Into a slow and stately dance.
You cradle each clumsy jolt of my nerves
My crackling of stange desires, my motor commands.
When I look into you
You pull my very eyes into alignment.

I think on restless nights
That we both wait and coil
Dreaming
Of iron and the iron-dark.

A brief introduction to fMRI

2006-10-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

First, a common question is: what is MRI and fMRI, and how do they differ?

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is fMRI's older brother. It is simply a way to use the magnetic fields to look at the brain's structure, using the density of water as it's measuring tool.

fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is the use of magnetic fields to measure activity in the brain as subjects do set tasks.

These imaging methods are used on other parts of the body too, most notably the spine, for which special magnet arrays have been developed.

fMRI uses the ratio of oxygenated:deoxygenated blood in different brain regions as an indication of brain activity. This works because the magnetic properties of heamoglobin change when it is bound to oxygen.

Deoxygenated blood is paramagnetic (attracting he magnetic field)
Oxygenated blood is dimagnetic (repelling the magnetic field)

All this works because of the hydrogen atoms involved (H1) which act like small magnetic dipoles. These may be in high-energy or low-energy states, depending on whether the dipole is aligned against the magnetic field, or with it, respectively. In moving between these states, energy is released (or absorbed) in the radiofrequencybandwidth, and this is what can be detected in the fMRI paradigm. This last step requires a small, fast-fluctuating magnetic field to be present alongside the whopper big magnet that will be referred to below. However the mechanics of this smaller magnet are interesting in the following way: for better detection of disturbances in the magnetic field, we would like this small magnet to provide a magnetic field that alternates quickly. However, too fast an alternating magnetic field will cause a practical problem: an electric current may be generated in the axons of people's cells (remember this from GCSE Physics?). This electric current creates involuntary muscle spasms in some participants, especially across the shoulders.

The units of measurement for a magnetic field are the Tesla (T) or the Gauss (G)

The Oxford magnet is a 3.5 T. This is pretty big. The most advanced MRI machines in the world are perhaps 7 T, but these are few and far between. Such powerful magnet are not always so useful, because they have an decreased signal:noise ratio.

I would approximate the value of Oxford's machine to be around £1 million. It was unveiled in 1997. We have a smaller machine too, which is not the usual full-body scanner that you see in pictures. It scans only the head, and is good if the experimenter wants the participant to do anything that might involve looking around, being touched, etc. Also, of course, claustrophobia can be a serious problem in the full-body scanner.

The major theoretical problem with fMRI is that it does not measure synaptic activity directly, but rather the sluggish blood response that follows brain activity. I won't get into the details of that debate here, but suffice to say other methodologies will hopefully replace fMRI in the future, perhaps methods that can somehow sidestep the formidable barrier of the skull in order to directly tap the electrical maze below. So far, no ideas. Damn skull.

The major practical problem with fMRI is how the magnet interacts with anything containing ferromagnetic material (see below).

The Oxford magnet has never in living history been turned off. The magnetic field is generated using electricity and superconducting coils, but the field is propagated by keeping the coils cold using a cucoon of liquid helium.

In emergencies, the magnet can be turned off, but only by warming the superconducting material. Employees or research scientists use the 'Quench' button to do this, which you hit with your fist. The Quench button causes the helium to quickly boil off, the magnet warms, and the magnetic field dies. This creates quite a spectacle.

What emergencies, you might ask?

The most serious problem is that metal is everywhere. MRI machines are used in hospitals where not all members of staff understand protocols regarding the magnet. Sissors are perhaps the biggest problem. Entering the magnet room with sissors will cause them to hurtle towards the centre of the magnetic field, perhaps where your participant is currently in residence. However the magnet can lift more than just sissors; oxygen canisters are a classic weighty example. Once an object like this is in the centre of the magnet, it would take a huge force to remove without switching the magnet off.

In 2001, a boy in an American hospital was killed when a member of hospital staff entered the magnet room with an oxygen canister, which flew though the air and hit the boy on the head. He died several days later in hospital.

Other major problems include cases where people have had surgical staples under their skulls, but forget or don't tell the experimenter. Any ferromagnetic metal object, when in a magnetic field, will try to align itself to the field depending on the structure and dimensions of the object. A metal staple will try to swivel around, in a way reminiscent to how early labotomies were administered using a tool somewhat like a knitting needle.

But! Never fear, Most of the time the magnet is perfectly safe for everybody involved. For example people with metal braces on their teeth will be unaffected, because the amount of ferromagnetic material is low, and the magnet is not strong enough to lift you up by your gold filling. Likewise, metal buttons or zips on clothing are kosher. However people with pacemakers should get the heck away from the MRI machine, because the device powering their heart also relies on a small magnetic signal to regulate the heart.

No Other London

2006-10-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

1 simple Ode to begin with.

No Other London

The South Bank is clapped with moonsheen:
Delayed autumn.
The streetlights shatter like geological features
Brim-cross my glasses,
And perhaps yours too

Except you choose to not wear yours. But!
I trust the wind to be slim-fingered,
Thin-bladed, and damp,
on two necks tonight.
The air's rough-tumble baffle
Shucks itself in puddles we prudently skirt
On opposite sides.

I think:
There is no London but this London.
When we meet it is London:
The river's cold iron-flow,
Banks of sky, slow-roaring, low-hung.

We are rarely together.
I am thinking now, in hope, how
In these silken-silt deeps
Our hands could be like in cold
And ebb in caress.

This poem is thanks to Maderia, much thanks.