1913issue6online

28 Petite Manifesto 8 To be exiled is not to disappear but to shrink, to slowly or quickly get smaller and smaller until we reach our real height, the true height of the self. Swift, master of exile, knew this. –Roberto Bolaño, “Exiles” in Between Parentheses, trans. Natasha Wimmer (New York: New Diretions, 2011) Frau Frau She enters. She enters me. Halo again. Ich bin eine Frau, I said to her and she said to me, The nipple was about half the Bigness of my Head, and the Hue both of that and the Dug so varified with Spots, Pimples and Freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous. I understood her in the biggest way you can imagine as most things immediately present or absent are magnified by the jelly-like substance inside my halo, marrow to the core. I did not hesitate to reply in my perfect language of greetings and farewells, The Politics of Complexion is that of the Politics of Distance which is that of the Politics of Sization and that of Nationalization as in Gross Domestic Product. She did not hesitate to reply in turn, This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our English ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own Size, and their Defects not to be seen but through a magnifying Glass, where we find by Experiment that the smoothest and whitest Skins look rough and coarse, and ill coloured. So I promptly reflected regardless of my haloness in the littlest sense, Was she not also a fraud like me? Italics: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). -Don Mee Choi

1913issue6online

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