Looking Glass

This week, a little something different: Usually, I start my Friday post by pulling something at random from the last seven days’ selections at whiskey river. Then I go on to include a handful of poems, quotations, film clips, and/or songs to which the whiskey river snippet led me (by whatever inscrutable chain of thoughts).

Today, I’ve already got some poetry which I encountered elsewhere (scroll down to see #4) in the last week, poetry which I really liked.

With that already rustling in my head, then, I stopped by at whiskey river‘s archives, called whiskey river’s commonplace book, and just started to browse.

From whiskey river’s commonplace book (no specific link; it’s about halfway down the page):

Prayer

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of
themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water’s downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into
itself (it has those layers), a real current though mostly
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
motion that forces change —
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.

(Jorie Graham [source])

Not from whiskey river:

The Mirror Poems
(excerpts)

Prologue:
If she could only break the glass —
the silver is already peeled back like first skin
leaving a thin
transparent thing that floats across the ground
in front of her: this white shadow.

1. what a mirror thinks
a mirror thinks it has no self
so it wants to be everything it sees

it also thinks everything is flat

put a bunch together
& they think they see
the back side of the moon

…

6. the mirror & time
the mirror IS NOT immortal
in fact it only has nine lives:

the first one is a thief
the second a baker
the third plays the harpsichord
the fourth lives in the iron-bound
section of newark &
eats pork sausage
the fifth predictably drinks
the sixth goes into the convent
but the seventh (this gets better)
marries her father
& humps up like a camel
the eighth cries a lot and ZAP
changes into a writer

…

8. the mirror & the new math
inside the mirror
opens up like the number zero
you swim around in there
bob up
& drown
like the rat in Wonderland’s flood.
your tail would like to hook a reason,

but you keep coming
face to face
breast to breast
with yourself.

you fall backwards & away, even
think that you are lost
In Oceanic O,

but you are still
pinned to an inverse.

…

Epilogue:
Always straining toward her image, the girl
let go.

Tentacles of light
unlocked
like hooks of parasite

& she came back
in dark so dark,

she cannot see by sight

(by Toi Derricotte [source (the whole thing is worth reading; that’s the only place I could find which included them all)]

Okay, now, about that image at the top right: It shows a mug in front of a True Mirror®. The True Mirror is a commercial variation of what’s called a non-reversing mirror. To make one, you join two mirrors along one edge, at a 90-degree angle. If you do this close to perfectly, the resulting image will show no seam down the middle of what the eye sees: the object of the reflection as it would be seen by an observer.

If you think of your face as more or less symmetrical, you’re in for a shock the first time you see it in a True Mirror. Which ties, as it happens, to a theory developed by the True Mirror’s inventor and his sister: the “hair-part theory.”

A left hair part draws unconscious attention to the activities that are controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain, i.e. activities traditionally attributed to masculinity. A right hair part draws unconscious attention to the activities that are controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain, i.e. activities traditionally attributed to femininity.

This has led the Walters to infer, for example, that how a politician parts his or her hair can influence the outcome of a Presidential election.

Finally… Once I’d settled on the theme of this post, I thought, You know, you really ought to include something about identical twins. I took a couple detours — okay, several — and stumbled across an odd little bit (you never know where your mind will lead you) about a classic Japanese B-grade horror film, Mothra.

If you don’t know the movie, there’s plenty of information about it online (including, duh, at Wikipedia and IMDB). But the specific bit I want to focus on here isn’t the giant moth or the destruction it wreaks. No, I have my mind on the events which lead to the moth’s feeling destructive in the first place: the abduction of the two singing, moth-worshiping girls from the island.

The girls in question were actually a pair of twins, a Japanese “girl group” called The Peanuts. Here’s what one page says about them, in reviewing an album of their music:

…the singers, Emi & Yumi Ito, known as The Peanuts, are the same twins that appeared in all the early Mothra related films as the twin fairy’s [sic] also known as Shobijin. In the Mothra films you either loved or hated their singing. I’m one of those that enjoyed the simple, pleasant, harmonies of the Mothra songs they sang.

Born on April 1, 1941 in Aichi prefecture, Emi Ito (Birth name Hideyo Ito) and her twin sister Yumi Ito (Birth name Tsukiko Ito) were known as the popular singing duo The Peanuts. They were discovered by Watanabe Pro founder Sho Watanabe when he first saw them performing at a club in Nagoya as the Ito Sisters, and in 1958 brought them to Tokyo, where they were dubbed The Peanuts. Their records were very popular in Japan during the 1950’s & 1960’s. I’ve been told they even appeared here in the U.S. on “The Ed Sullivan Show”. They also appeared in several films including several Mothra and Godzilla films. The duo retired from performing 4 April 1975.

Much to my surprise, YouTube includes a video with clips from the film as The Peanuts (here called “the Mothra Twins”) sing their song summoning their caterpillar god — with English-language lyrics provided in a voiceover:

As an aside, Mothra itself actually got a semi-favorable review from The New York Times:

For several seasons now the Tokyo studios have been turning out this kind of diversion, with some kind of monstrosity terrorizing the country and rattling the screen in an overpowering blend of scenic effects, ranging from obvious to striking.

This one is different, if not exactly superior. There’s that color, as pretty as can be, that now and then smites the eye with some genuinely artistic panoramas and décor designs… [The] picture also contains the outest [*] set of twins (the Itoh [sic?] Sisters) any monster ever roared into town to rescue. That’s the plot, and basically it goes back to “King Kong” and it’s the best one since “Konga,” not long ago.

As tricked up here (cleverly, too), the twins are exactly one foot high, have been stolen from their island home (presided over by a giant egg) and put into a Tokyo show. In any case, Mothra cracks that egg, slithers into town as a giant caterpillar and finally flies the girls out. It’s as touchingly bizarre a climax as we’ve seen in years. Fantastic though the plot may be, there are some genuinely penetrating moments, such as the contrast of the approaching terror and those patient, silvery-voiced little “dolls,” serenely awaiting rescue. Several of the special effects shots are brilliant, such as the sight of a giant cocoon nestling against a large city’s power station tower.

Ah, the innocence of 1962…

_______________________

* I know: outest? No idea what that means. In 1962, the odds that this referred to anything at all about gayness were vanishingly slim. All I can think of is the construction “out there,” meaning “really far from the norm,” but even that seems a stretch.