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PUBIC CRIMES
Dulcey,
Thanks for the phone call. I think we are on to something juicy that would interest Terry . Is pedophilia (spelling? I cannot find it in any of my dictionaries!) too "hot?" Genji is suspected of it when he abducts a young girl her grandmother had refused to let him have – poem # 5-10, 5-13, 5-15, 5-19, 5-24 & 5-26. Later in the story ( pg. 6 ; poems 9 –22, 23 ) he does "deflower" her and makes her his wife (in that order) which indicates that he only toyed with her until that point.
Genji did seem to "get off" by sleeping with nuns or women in sacred places (see pgs. 60 - 70). Also, in chapter 24, pgs. 50 -54, the text implies that when Genji is surprised in the Bedchamber Lady's room by his best friend, the Captain's Secretary, the two guys go off together making jokes about each other's sexuality and the reader is unable to know who lost what clothing when.
He also was attracted to the daughters of women he had loved, but in both cases the daughters had wised up to him.
Drug dealers’ snow
blowing anywhere
behind screens
by remote control
conversant service
copter overhead
pale casualties
bonded as though
as they’d been glued
to fly-traps
dragons – those beasts of yore,
breathing fire, unearthly fear
their story’s never told before
of a sacrifice, that is clear
Jhurupa:
Look - sand leans against me - no resistance - inborn. We are on a flatbed’s river-mouth soothingly to beach our feet in quicksand.
Fatima:
I feel exiled since we left the dunes – sand dust on my diamond.
Jhurupa:
It fits with a book I once read – Lines on yellowed pages - wave-tracks.
Fatima:
Well, Jhurp, runes come, runes go hand-chiseled. I lay two fingers on the high, one between the deepened place – then they begin to indulge in a dialogue. Do you think early rites are remembered as return-visits?
breaking the laws
of gravity and joyfulness
the waterfall
a living creature springs
over the steepest rocks
in the clearing
a meadow full of sunshine
a lake of light
floating the purple boats
of three kinds of gentians
sunset
no trace of economy
in its colors
the perfect passion of crimson
fit to burn among the stars
Jhurupa:
Like perfumes. Yves Saint Lorrent, who left us today, carried the vibes of a daily wished-for resident.
Fatima:
Once in a cloud of his Opium, I’d a dream that led me bent over twelve-toed tracks.
Jhurupa:
Pleiades-tracks - honey you act like a lunatic held hostage for a show in Hollywood, titled: The Questionable Barricading Itself
instead of blazes laying waste
to countries like a known war
the evolution humans faced –
a need for passion even more
wearing only the widest grin
they now sleep in still waters
surely you’ve seen the dragons
called crocodiles – alligators
their smoldering fires to lovers given
the earth greens peaceably as heaven
fly-fishing
<female & male.com> enlists
fancies written in water
like a winged date’s rush until
“I’ll tell you the rest when I see you”
Genji also had an attraction for his father's second wife, his step-mother, and against her wishes, fathered a child on her. Murasaki Shikibu, the author, as a young woman, married a much older man who had sons her age and it is thought that her portrayal of this relationship could have had some connection to her own life. Hope this is enough to get us on Fresh Air!
[later]
The US invasion of Iraq began that week and the need to know about that war eclipsed the interview about the book, Love Poems from The Tale of Genji on Terry Gross’s NPR program.
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