Eric Chaet		SOMEWHERE IN CHINA Somewhere in China, someone—say, a man— is not benefiting from the industrial transformation, the financial bonanza, the bee-hive, has, for decades, been quietly saying something completely different, when he speaks, something as subversive against the complainers & critics, as against the wicked government & clever entrepreneurs, subversive even against the victims clinging to the old ways among the poisoned villages & paddies on the cities’ outskirts. He’s rarely listened to, or if listened to, what he says is rarely grasped & remembered: it seems to have so little to do with what needs to be done, to succeed in the race along the same line as his own— opposite direction, tho— & he meanders now & then— pace varies, too— along a road he builds as he goes along, of what the others are discarding. He’s not imprisoned— he’s not taken that seriously. Maybe something he said was quoted in a newspaper, but, if so, inaccurately. Maybe he was on a TV news show, but only as a prop, someone walking around back of a crowd gathered around a collapsed building or mine, or exploded fire-works factory. He’s not one of the famous dissidents, tho he’s been talking against those who govern longer than they. He’s not famous at all, & he isn’t setting money aside, either. The people around him are as used to him as to old Lao Tzu, but they aren’t always so glad to see him as they were Lao Tzu— according to Lao Tzu. Anyway, maybe the man’s not in China, after all. Maybe he’s in India, not considered a guru, no film star, or call-center or software design tycoon, either, aware of, but not complacent about the Vedas, nirvana, communism, neoliberal development schemes, the possibilities of the internet, Sanskrit, Hindi, English. Or neither corrupt official nor ruthless rebel in Mediterranean, Saharan, or south of the Sahara Africa, east or west of the Great Rift, not mere victim of nepotism, militia rampages, disease, or of prevailing poverty, either, has something going that may or may not succeed, others encouraging him or not, some days confident, other days paralyzed with anxiety, maybe he’s learned to resist succumbing to panic til it subsides, then one step forward after another. Or maybe he’s in South America, descendant of migrants from Greek islands, Anatolia, Phoenicia, Carthage, Ur, Indus valley, Pacific isles, China, Japan, Mongolia, Siberia, great great grandson of Inca engineer or Spanish conquistador, or creole trader with British or North American exporters, having heard the speeches, then lived thru euphoric then despairing consequences, maybe he has no use for pro-Yanqui or anti-Yanqui parties, factions, gangs, cartels. When I was a child, people joked that since China was on other side of world the people must be upside-down. But now the so-called Communist rulers of China & Free Market rulers of the USA are allies, & my shirts & pants were made in China— got them for 25 cents each, like new, at separate rummage sales— & wages have dropped like a rock thru a hole thru the Earth, relative to houses, cars, fuel, education, health care, or influencing a legislator. So people in China must be oriental as we are oriented, as Einstein says that clocks are the crudest meters with only the vaguest relationship to relative speed & value of light & events— & space, too, isn’t as we thought: Euclid was only right if you’re a cartoon on a sheet of paper, not walking along a road after rush hour, dandelion morning, observing sheets, shirts, & pants pinned to a catenary, flapping in breeze— bud-bursting tree of life, green, blue, & floating white horizon beyond. Other day, in a cafe, a man who heard me talking about the USA told me, “Love it or leave it.” I replied with eyes & voice lowered, to control my fury: “This is MY country—I was born here. I worked for this country in Mississippi, Missouri, & D.C., & there are still millions left out. If you don’t like the way I’m talking in MY country, YOU leave.” The fellow in China is saying similar (so did Socrates, but it was Greek to the Athenians, arrogantly determined to get their asses kicked, permanently)— tho his language isn't Indo-European— different symbols, syntax, & pitches rising & sinking like thrown horse-shoes or ducks on a river. Many parallel lines may cross at a point, & events from different times & places have more to do with a development, sometimes, more to do with an inflection or utter transform— than those immediately adjacent or sequential, or repeated, it often seems, by everyone, everywhere— thoughtlessly, confidently.