gnight , dd ddsorry to bother you , i know ure not supposed to talk to a dear diary more than 1-ce a day but i couldnt sleep & ive been drinking , thinking & and making artsee : mamasans hatred for he who allowed me life and wished us death made her shoulders strong , her heart hard and her vision weakmamasan ( theoretically so delicately balancedlike a teacup in a dowagers palm between catholic mercy and confucian reverence for her ancestors ) , spewed hate like a harelip spittle { this image is why the big crimson gets the big $ $ } when mamasan stooped to pull the weeds that sought to steal the holy basils home , it was his hairwhen she poked a mound of steaming rice with a stick , it was his eyewhen she yelled at me or da-d , it was for himor so , later , she would say as she fleetingly touched my cheeks with hands no longer roughw/out memory of my own , w/out a picture 2 meditate on , w/ nothing more than a rawhide thong , stiff from age and sweat , holding a small silvery tag stamped with figures , my hate , so encouraged by mamasan , was hard to grow and harder to sustainmy grand paws ghost , reaching from the past , wispy , w/out wisdom , has whispered at me throughout my lifei would cock an earan ear so acute 2 so much around methe babble of different languages , all the dialects of my country , the crowded market of emotion which could overwhelm the immigrant and the teen and , especially , she who is nearly bothbut , w/ grand-paw , i would hear a rising and falling of syllables , emotionally toned , of which i could make no senseyet , mamasan , so insensitive to my teen-angsted chatter , would hear those whispers as challenges , declarations of war , promulgations of hegemonyshe would hear and make sense of those sounds beyond my ken and mutter back her own threats and imprecations my grand paw has a name , obliterated by some violent act of my mother or her mother , a blood type , a string of numbers forever attached to him by his warrior past , a religion no different from my own godlessness-sometimes i would hold his tag like an amulet and cipher his conduct under the moral mathematics of confuciusother times i would use holden caulfield , frodo baggins and bridget fieldsbut , however i do the math , i always end up in the same placemy grand paw , if his body lives as well as his acts , has issues.but what is harder to understand is y im so incensed at what these amerikans did to vnamis it real or should i just chalk it up to teeniatricsgrand paw , whom i tended to think of as a string of numbers on a tag has always been so mystical , that it is hard to accept that that he is more than a ghostthat his flesh inhabits the earth , like the taint of rotted fish on a seashore dogand this notion excites meand on the ninth day , having spent the eighth day working out the details of velcro , duct tape and cold fusion , god created the world wide web and saw that it was goodand we , his adulatory minions , received his gift with joyous incredulity-but soon , some sought airfares and others the etiology of disease , the hagiography of actors and rock stars , recipes using monk fish and samp , spiritual consolation , bits and bytes of sexbut , me , a tiny spider , discontent in my small corner of the interconnectivity , look for grandpawfrom whom all bleatings flowgnight , again , dd chapter fourteen atoll tales mike krants has been leaning against his cane for so long that he is afraid his knees might not work when he decides its time to go .