Sans soleil Page #3

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At nightfall the megalopolis breaks down into villages,

with its country cemeteries in the shadow of banks,

with its stations and temples.

Each district of Tokyo once again becomes

a tidy ingenuous little town, nestling amongst the skyscrapers.

The small bar in Shinjuku reminded him of that Indian flute

whose sound can only be heard by whomever is playing it.

He might have cried out if it was in a Godard film or a Shakespeare play,

"Where should this music be?"

Later he told me he had eaten at the restaurant in Nishi-nippori

where Mr. Yamada practices the difficult art of 'action cooking.'

He said that by watching carefully Mr. Yamada's gestures

and his way of mixing the ingredients

one could meditate usefully on certain fundamental concepts

common to painting, philosophy, and karate.

He claimed that Mr. Yamada possessed

in his humble way the essence of style,

and consequently that it was up to him to use his invisible brush

to write upon this first day in Tokyo the words 'the end.'

I've spent the day in front of my TV set

that memory box.

I was in Nara with the sacred deers.

I was taking a picture without knowing

that in the 15th century Basho had written:

"The willow sees the heron's image... upside down."

The commercial becomes a kind of haiku to the eye,

used to Western atrocities in this field;

not understanding obviously adds to the pleasure.

For one slightly hallucinatory moment

I had the impression that I spoke Japanese,

but it was a cultural program on NHK

about Grard de Nerval.

8:
40, Cambodia.

From Jean Jacques Rousseau to the Khmer Rouge:

coincidence, or the sense of history?

In Apocalypse Now, Brando said a few definitive

and incommunicable sentences:

"Horror has a face and a name...

you must make a friend of horror."

To cast out the horror that has a name and a face

you must give it another name and another face.

Japanese horror movies have the cunning beauty

of certain corpses.

Sometimes one is stunned by so much cruelty.

One seeks its sources in the Asian peoples long familiarity with suffering,

that requires that even pain be ornate.

And then comes the reward:

the monsters are laid out, Natsume Masako arises;

absolute beauty also has a name and a face.

But the more you watch Japanese television...

the more you feel it's watching you.

Even television newscast bears witness to the fact

that the magical function of the eye is at the center of all things.

It's election time:

the winning candidates black out the empty eye of Daruma

the spirit of luckwhile losing candidates

sad but dignifiedcarry off their one-eyed Daruma.

The images most difficult to figure out are those of Europe.

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