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Left Hand of Venus

2002 Takayuki Kido / translate: Maiko Hikosaka

Since this morning, my mind has been circling around a coffee cup right in front of me. The coffee is bathed in a light from the desk lamp, and its surface is sharp like a razor blade. It was 2 o'clock in the morning. How many times have I circled around the coffee? The diameter for the coffee cup, as I measured, is 7cm. Therefore, the circumference is 7cm x π, and will be around 22cm. My mind seems to take about 1.5 seconds to circle the cup. That means it makes 90 circles per minute, 5,400 circles per hour... As far as I can remember, I've been doing this at least since 10am. That means I've been circling for at least 16 hours, which will make 5,400 circles/hr x 16 = 86,400 circles. If I convert it to distance, I'd have run about 19km. What the hell... My mind after 16 hours of circling resembles the calves of marathon runners who run in Athens or in front of Tiananmen.

It is also simple to explain what I've been thinking about for the past 16 hours. My mind went from my untrimmed nails through world peace. In other words, my mind was occupied with comfortable music, mysterious expression of a night sky, and the world of Eros that was passing by. My most sensitive pleats deep inside of my chest cringed some times, and other times they were indifferent.

It is starting to snow. Snow is a confession of the sky. Confession makes a chill fall on the skin of the town, gives a sensation of lavish, humble, and ordinary days that are repeated with an amazing accuracy.

Oh please don't let it snow. Decorate my forehead with shiny fake bricks that express mean criticism and cracked walls with pert flatter. And then, among decayed shrubbery, a single, faded-orange, plastic left hand of Venus is peeping.