Carnival

Editor's note · excerpt

Li Kejin wrote one kind of carnival, the mythological one: "The white winds' great carnival … leaving only a single bloom — a white mushroom cloud, twisting in slow rapture with the black of night." Yanyou wrote another kind, the actual one: "Children scramble for candy thrown from floats, hoarding enough to last a year. … Adults numb themselves with alcohol; children, with sugar." The issue asks one question: when we think we are celebrating, what are we celebrating? Six dusk-and-midnight pieces from Li Kejin's Looking for the Wind cycle (image + text) thread through the issue as an atmospheric spine. Two of Yanyou's social observations sit between. The same word; two universes.