Today’s piece is Yoko Tawada’s “Kakeru.” It may read like nonsense, but the catch is that for most of the verbs in the piece, kakeru is used. In japanese, kakeru can take any number of different meanings, and Tawada was just trying to have some fun. I switched kakeru to “do” as the main verb and tried to nominal-ize the verbs as best i can. Enjoy!
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Yoko Tawada – “Kakeru”

I did put the cover on the pillow. I did the ironing on the blouse. I did the vacuuming. I am not one to really do my house-wife chores, but I did put salt on my tomato. I did sit down and put my glasses on to work on my manuscript. I did heat up the curry around noon, and I did eat it. “Write!” I thought when my stomach was full, but I didn’t end up writing anything. Thinking I could turn the key to my consciousness, I did turn on the radio and laid down on my futon.

Lying like that I didn’t think I would annoy anyone, but I actually thought it might be better to do a little bothering of people. Even doing something irritating to a person can end up being a bridge reaching out to someone. At least it is better than just doing something all by yourself.

I want to do bad things, like doing practical jokes on goody-two-shoes, or doing something to show off my intellect, or do some gambling. If I were to get tied up with rope and put on trial in a court of morality, I would just be forced to do something drastic and make a spectacular escape.

When it was around time for the sun to do its setting, I did wake up and I did eat some “do-soba.”

No matter how big an insurance policy you take out on yourself, we’re going to do something that will end up killing us anyway, so let’s do all the fun stuff now while we still can.

Take literature, for example. Do some polishing to your writing. Do some talking to people, and do some riddling. Do something to put them in a state of hypnosis. Do it the way a bird builds its nest. The habit I have of doing things that nest within me determine on its own what will get done in the story plot.

Doing some communication between people won’t prevent the spread of crime. Better than that is to do some mixing of cats and dogs, do some promotion of a mixed-culture, do something to start the engines of optimism. Do it slowly and stitch together a new story.

In a dream I have where I do multiplication of seven and seven and divide by three, I start to do a bridge-crossing but stop half way. There is a store on the opposite river-bank that sells candy and words that people did start to say but stopped. As the sun once again begins to do its setting, a horse gallops out from the sky. The moon does its waning. The tooth that did the biting gets chipped like the brim of a tea cup.

But when you are short one person, it is hard to do a one-man play.