The translator Polly Barton has fifty favourites, fifty mimetic words she recalls alongside her first experiences of Japan. There is one sound I cannot forget – ba’sari – a mimetic which Hoban translates as the sound of nevermore, for cutting something forcefully, in a single movement or all at once. And without hesitation, to cut regardless of consequence. Post ba’sarily? Perhaps to do so without hesitation is a kind of ba’sari, muted version I suppose, a kind of constant comment comment comment. To keep posting our thought but without any second thought, no stutter or rethinking. If only the comments were read back to us, if I was asked again with the certainty of yes or no. No, I am not sure, I want to question what I write. Let us continue to shout, words cut from our tongue. Am I closer to the words I say or those I write? Maybe neither. These written words here, they aren’t mine to control. Read these in the storm I could ask, through a screen, and a panicked crowd. But no, these words are not mine, I have only assembled them. Every word, each syllable and letter no matter how closely they rub, each is ba’shari’d, cut off, left to rust as metal cast to trash. And it’s sharp, trash is so sharp so we must be careful with it. Write without hesitation and second thought as ‘what we cannot speak we must pass over in silence’. Careful not to be too loud, else too many will hear, and where will they hear, in a storm or a crowd as a mess or something more.3 When I tried to move closer to the feeling I couldn’t make out its shape at all The harder you look at something the harder it looks back. It seems like a kind of remorphing. I can see what I do, the consequence of action in a vertical feed. It is there for me, to trawl and list. But once I do, when I look that slight bit longer than I expect the feed will change. It is a back and forth, of looking and the screen remaking itself. But the forth is not generous, if anything sinister, it will remake to continue the forth action of your eye, it wants it. And so the harder you look the harder it will look back, the stronger the eye the sharper the trash. What would look at more, the car clean or the car crashed. Slow the pedal and gawk at the injury. It’s how I work, I cannot turn my head as I want to see. And if it sees me looking then what comedy might it conjure, what’s gonna keep me here, sunken between mounds of rubbish. And I look closer, move my neck closer to the screen, it’s theatre, and it changes, the post itself or a comment beneath. It doesn’t idle, no a screen is active. It will shift itself and I can’t predict it, the harder I look the less I really understand, the less I control my next feeling. It sort of just happens, the next post and the next feeling, I don’t decide but the other.