per ljuser:egelantier

Those are my bones rifted
and curled, knees to chin,
among the rocks on the beach,
my hands splayed beneath my skull
in the mud. Those are my rib
bones resting like white sticks
wracked on the bank, laid down,
delivered, rubbed clean
by river and snow.

Ethereal as seedless weeds
in dim sun and frost, I see
my own bones translucent as locust
husks, light as spider bones,
as filled with light as lantern
bones when the candle flames.
And I see my bones, facile,
willing, rolling and clacking,
reveling like broken shells
among themselves in a tumbling surf.

I recognize them, no other's,
raggedly patterned and wrought,
peeled as a skeleton of sycamore
against gray skies, stiff as a fallen
spruce. I watch them floating
at night, identical lake slivers
flush against the same star bones
drifting in scattered pieces above.

Everything I assemble, all
the constructions I have rendered
are the metal and dust of my locked
and storied bones. My bald cranium
shines blind as the moon.

Nearing Autobiography, Pattiann Rogers

about those little stories

For the sake of clarity, I'm going to use the term 'folklore' to refer to all the little stories -- from the mythos of a culture, its anonymous but oft-repeated fairy tales up to its attributed greatest works/stories, to the minutiae of daily life and the advice elders give the next generation. (In essence, there is no reason for anyone to say, "my culture doesn't have that," because if you look at the list and the previous posts, you'll realize that although you may lack in one area, no one lacks in all areas, thus, everyone is raised with some type of folklore.)

The phrase I used before was "cultural currency," speaking in terms of external-culture authors "purchasing" a cultural bit of folklore -- but that's actually rooted in thoughts I was having on a macroeconomic, or macrocultural, scale. If you look at the exports of Japanese anime and manga, a significant number of them are moving along lines of cultural exportation (and the same goes for Korean manga), and an awful lot of the biggest of these exported products also incorporate significant distinctively-Japanese elements.

( Letters to Santa, urban folklore, Japanese v. Korean v. Chinese comics, the folklore impact of the Cultural Revolution, and white-American culture, all in three pages or fewer. I think. )

Hmmm. Dunno. Just a thought, really. Okay, a bunch of them.