the toilet god

Contributors

Jacob Miller, Hannah Irene Walsh

Description

In the spirit of Georges Bataille, Anne Dufourmantelle, Sigmund Freud, and others, The Toilet God presents an invitation to engage in an achronological excursion through prose that conceal moments of ambiguity — deploying rhetorical devices such as paranomasia. Exploring the richness of Japanese culture, questions of economy, hospitality, and catharsis reside just beneath the surface. Consider the posture of Buddha, handcrafted yosegi-zaiku, or the prescient dreams of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Accompanying illustrations by Hannah Walsh proffer a glimpse into the world of mojie and the vistas of Japan setting a familiar territory for The Toilet God who awaits your visitation.

Back cover blurb

Every once in a while a tale strikes you; even rarer are the moments in which they stay with you. The rarest, and most precious, of times are when — upon encountering the text — you are reminded of a tale that has always already been in you, and which is now being awakened. The Toilet God is one such moment: read it with care, for it is a hospitable text; one which invites you, opens itself to you, and might well cause you to open yourself to possibilities.

 For, as Anne Dufourmantelle teaches us, continues to teach us, to live is to risk — that to live is always also to live with, to be with another, to open oneself to the other. More than that, it is to risk being the one left behind, to have nothing other than the name of another to call, not just after they have left, but quite possibly when they are still beside you. Without which though, there is no living.

 Jacob Miller shows us that living can be found in the most unlikely of places — if only we look closely enough, if we pay attention, if we attend to the possibilities of places, spaces, peoples, around us.

 If we take the time to care —
to live, to read, to risk.

 ~ Jeremy Fernando