ON AIMLESS NOODLING
(imagine mikado sticks on noodles
pull a stick and read a story)
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MIKADO
Mikado is a game we used to play on placid and bored afternoons at my grandparent’s house. A box of crumby old sticks with lines that we had to elegantly pull away from the others without disturbing them. I realise now that the name Mikado makes no sense, a reference to a Japanese emperor which somehow became appropriated into a game originating in Old Europe. The thing about games is that you have to suspend your disbelief and trust that your labor matters. But the moment a stick was mistakenly bumped and the clutter was disturbed, a sibling would storm off a sore loser.
We’re playing Mikado on the floor of his bedroom. There’s nothing else we could be doing right now, on this quiet evening like every other in Brunswick, Maine. We tried talking seriously about this topic of aimless noodling throughout the day, with various intermissions including a youtube rendition of Into the Woods and various naps, cat-like in the sun, or dawdling to the pond, watching woodpeckers and water snakes.
I’d write about my time here, he says. This aimless noodling makes me feel like I’m disappearing. Meanwhile, this is the most serene I have felt in months. I’ve just actively REM’d for twelve hours straight, conversing with myself in my dreams, asking myself what I make of this and that. Whereas I see him melt into the bed. Aimless noodling, like Mikado, only satisfies in moderation.
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WRITE A POEM ABOUT NOODLING
i noodled for many days
uncertain which path to take
so I took every single one of them
until I couldn't walk anymore
OR
J'ai flâné des jours entiers
incertaine de quel chemin explorer
alors je les ai tous pris
jusqu'à ne plus pouvoir marcher
OR
i noodled for many days
uncertain which path to take
so I noodled down every single one of them
until I couldn't walk anymore
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WRITE ABOUT SHITTY, AIMLESS NOODLING, SAYS MY PARTNER. LIKE FUCKING IN GARBAGE.
I know what he’s referring to. It was at one of those raves in Hong Kong. We had taken an incomprehensible amount of something or other and I couldn’t shake away that feeling I had once felt when biting into a perfect lemon tart in the north-east of France. The crackle of the pastry and the sourness clambering up into my cheeks made me think: this is too much goodness for one person. So we were feeling too much goodness for one person when I decided to venture back to my hammock on a patch of grass on a corner of the beach. In the dark brush, I stumbled upon a couple noodling on the ground, as if the subjects of Marie Antoinette in the tall hedges of Versailles except this is Hong Kong and the pollution is real and they were copulating in garbage under my hammock.
I was way too high to feel grossed out, instead my brain releasing another rush of euphoria and I managed to utter “carry on!” as I padded my hammock to suss out my sleeping bag. The next day, I found the mosquito net torn so I’m guessing they tried to fuck on my hammock which is admirable albeit a case of talentless and unfortunate noodling.
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WRITE ABOUT WOBBLY ARCHITECTURE, SAYS JENNIFER
This is in reference to the bamboo scaffolding that Taiwan and Hong Kong share. That tall grass that reaches towards the sky. I watched the dancer bamboo scaffolders assemble it outside my window for sometime when I was young, plunging our apartment into month-long obscurity, into a moth-like womb. Bamboo is wobbly and waivers with the typhoon that hits our shores. The scaffolders danced outside my window, shirtless, cigarette between their teeth, and ripped. The smoke seeped into my childhood window and as with an erotic cigarette, I began to associate the smell with virtuosity and the freedom one must feel when they climb very high heights. It may be noodling but not aimless as the dancer scaffolders build around an idea, a pleasure, straddling futurity and the past.