My Jandek Plague Journal: 6/5/20 "The Duality of Self: Part One"

"Strange the mind is seeing one thing/And the body another /Move the body sight to the mind image/The timeless work." Being witness to state terror is exhausting, but imagine living through it. I am living through it, though. Despite being in Korea, I'm still bound to the US, still looking behind me to see how it tries to pull me back. I'm in a liminal state of exclusion: not quite an exile, not quite a refugee, and neither would allow me to divorce myself from what's happening there. However, I'm not there, and the relative clam and normalcy of daily life here feels schizophrenic. Things are not okay, the world is on fire, and everywhere I go feels calm and normal. Daily life is gaslighting me. The pandemic's shadow still touches everything. The produce section at the supermarket keeps getting rearranged to mask the removal of bins and declining selection. -6/5/20. "The Duality of Self: Part One" from Toronto Sunday (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)