Bearly Itch
熊译之痒
Poetry-Translation Apparatus (fault in progress during the war)
Chapbook, A5, 36pp, 1962-2025
Bearly Itch moves along the edges of translation, where Asian bodies are repeatedly misread and language slips, stalls, or fails to transmit. Drawing from my grandfather’s work as a telegraph expert in Hanoi, the project folds telegraphic syntax into bodily experience. Phrases such as “touch.flow=good.hard” in Bath’s Notes (COPY.CAT) both conceal and disclose, while equations like “China=Holland” or “China=Failed Child+Love” register identity as something never fully delivered, persisting in a state of malfunction.
The Vanishing Point opens with the question “where is my orgasm?” and follows absence as a structural condition. My mother’s cancer, when I was twenty, became inseparable from the loss of my mother tongue—illness and language receding in parallel. Translation appears here as a contrapuntal relation: never arriving, yet continuing.
“It was hardly war, the hardliest of wars. Hardly, hardly.” The oscillation between barely and bearly runs through the work, where expression remains both impossible and unavoidable. This “itch” does not aim for obscurity. It persists as a sensitive, worn condition of language and body—close to skin, enduring over time.
Come! Rejoice! Time spills over endlessly!
《熊译之痒》沿着翻译的边缘展开。在这里，亚洲身体不断被误读，语言滑落、卡顿，或无法完成传输。项目源于我祖父在河内从事电报工作的经历，将电报式语法折入身体经验之中。《澡堂笔记（山寨版）》中的“touch.flow=good.hard”既遮蔽又显露，而诸如“中国＝荷兰”“中国＝失败的孩子＋爱”等方程式，则将身份显现为一种永远无法完整送达、持续处于故障状态的存在。
《消失点》以“我的高潮在哪里？”这一问题开场，将缺席作为一种结构性条件展开。二十岁时母亲患癌的经历，与母语逐渐失声的过程交织在一起——疾病与语言并行退却。翻译在此显现为一种对位关系：始终无法抵达，却仍在继续。
“这几乎算不上战争，最几乎的战争。几乎地，几乎地。”
在“barely”与“bearly”之间的摇摆贯穿全书，表达在这里既不可能完成，又无法避免。这种“瘙痒”并不追求晦涩，而是一种贴近肌肤、经久存在的语言与身体状态。
来吧！快活吧！时间无尽地溢出！
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