arao at night

"if man is five..."

After a few trips to Sendai and a killer Christmas party, I've now been holed up in my apartment a few days. I can't decide which is more exhausting. Sometimes information is a prison, and I am currently full up with things I can't blog about. So, how about another photo to creep you out for a while?







In the area of TMI:

So this photo, in addition to being rather cheerful to look at, takes me back a bit. It was taken in the old apartment where Courtney and I lived back in, what, 2003 or so. Michael will recall being the almost-third inhabitant for several months. I have written and erased some version of "good times" for this (current) sentence several times. The fact is, it wasn't terribly happy. But certainly an intense time for all involved, I think. Drama. I had my weird food-poisoning/lymphoma scare while living here. Also popped a question. That was pretty happy. Revisiting the relationship, I find I'm a bit scarred still.

That is to say: I'm really happy right now, and am having a difficult time trusting that feeling. But I'm working on killing that shit. This monkey's gone to heaven, man... soon anyway.


Further evidence that I'm settling in here: bought two region 2 DVDs, so I had to switch the format on my Mac. You can only do this a few times. I got Casablanca and The Fifth Element. Almost picked up Enter the Dragon, but I think that's one of those films that I would love to own, but would never watch. Pretty good beginning to the collection. Also, I was gifted Nevermind, the documentary of Nirvana's album. By the by, I'm looking for a copy of About a Son... or About a Boy, not sure what it's called, but as yet haven't found it. Ewan McGregor tapped to play Kobain in the bio-pic. Still deciding how I feel about this (while attempting to hide my disgust with the Colts by thinking about movies and pop-culture and old relationship garbage).

New Years Eve coming up. No plans. Hmmm... I'll get back to you on that one.

r.i.p. lock

vilevan one

twelve twenty-four oh nine

Migas and Curry No. 5

I used my last bit of SA-imported salsa to make migas tonight. They were ok. I had to use plain Doritos instead of real chips. Tomorrow, I quest for flour tortillas and avocado... might cilantro be out of the question? We shall see.

Also had some Thai curry. Amazing. I was told that if anyone smells this curry, they want it. Could this be the next major perfume? Again, we shall see. Hopefully we can release a series of short films, starring the likes of Audrey Tautou to market it.

Christmas lights in Sendai. Kiredesuyo! I didn't bring my camera for reasons I have stated in a prior post, certain memories should be allowed to exhibit their own strength, and not be propped up by... well... props. Like photos. That said, here's a grainy iPhone photo of me and some lights and a big bright Hitachi Santa:

further discussion of salt

.
.
to paths only remembered, unreal,
it is always the coarsest philosophies that prevail


the beat-up Chevy Malibu, the two-tone Astrovan,
Sunday morning squabbles over seatbelts,
brothers always jockeying,
varying degrees of disinterest in church,
seeds of unbelief already sewn


quiet evenings of Nihonshu prisms, ice cream,
green and purple Japanese faces,
flashing lights attached to wrists, teeth, foreheads,
and a woman--she steals thoughts,
words right from lips, places them in awkward chairs
for unannounced dinners, and cooks with salt,
and salt


she complains salt,
leans salt,
stories of salt,
and (somewhere that we cannot see)
weeps salt,
an abundance

because winter is the end of something

cathartic romp

Snow had been promising, but not delivering. The wait was its own form of entertainment, but now that it has started, it just keeps falling. A prolonged building of tension between the clouds and earth, enough time to inspire me to purchase a sofa. A release, seemingly just as prolonged.

I started vacation yesterday. A beautiful beginning. Two weeks of teaching with Christmas activities, anticipating rest, now two weeks of total freedom. I am already tired.

I am in the process of transcribing several months of journal-writing onto the computer. Or translating. The transfer is not precise. My journal entries have always been sparse, impatient, containing moments but no real life-breath. I require the aid of a word processor. A few words here and there; fragments really. They are beginning to string themselves together, boil, overflow from the page. No promises of quality, but quantity is always a good sign.

It has been a while in coming, but it is nice now that it's here.

It doesn't feel like a romp, does it? But I'm keeping the title.

divination conducted with common umbrellas

Captain Crunch taught me the value of energy crystals before I was introduced to the idea by that woman from the desert. Exactly one cent. A circle had been printed on the back of the cereal box, along with instructions to tape a penny to the end of a bit of string, to ask a yes or no question and hold the string above the circle as steady as you please, and to watch as the penny began to swing up and down the vertical axis on the circular target--this for yes--or back and forth along the horizontal--for no--or else a circular pattern--indicating uncertainty.

She feathered her hair in the style of the time, at the length of her shoulders, and would later get a permanent that never seemed to suit her, this around the time that she began cooking without salt. It may be no accident that I can only love a woman who pours salt into the pot with recklessness abandon. When I remember that desert woman, she always has her hippie hair, down to her knees, and drives a maroon 1979 Mustang. The recollections are grainy, slightly overexposed, without sound. She inexplicably hated my sister, and so I hated her with a fierceness I could never quite understand at the time. She was usually very kind to me. Confusions of this sort remained hidden and yet obvious; resembling the erections I begged myself not to take with me off the school bus in the mornings (those pleas having produced varying degrees of success).

In Denver, she took me aside quietly and showed me how to use the energy of a crystal to commune with the universe. The captain loomed large, and I said so. This proves nothing, she insisted. Why, I asked, would the universe give a shit about whether or not I'm going to find my keys before the end of the day? Still, interesting exercise in discovering what you wish the answer would be.

An umbrella placed tip-down on the pavement at a right angle will fall in some supposedly random direction. Your instructions are to follow the umbrella's direction until you have reached some kind of destination. In this way you will discover where you truly wanted to be. Or else you will get very wet.

When I decided to come to Japan, I had no notion of the place, no credentials or foreseeable method of achieving the goal, no idea why I had made the decision at all, but I was nothing but certain of myself. I bought a camera and a dictionary. The rest, I knew, would come.

precursors to snow

one is pleasantly sleepy in the morning

quieter music finds its way to the rotation

one begins to dream of NFL post-season possibilities

coffee and socks are thicker

a warm body is desired... and a sofa

one begins to take comfort in familiar objects, foods, movies

a uniform gray descends, and one is undaunted, hopeful even

a woman's coffin usurped by a man

In the afternoon she opens her arms as if to embrace him, all right angles and outlines, I cannot feel her. Children often breath against the glass and spell out her cartouche in the fog. It is always dissipating, but fingerprints remain. They tell how to survive in the afterlife; this too a vanishing fog. There are many kinds of fog to remember: from the morning by the river, the walk from the prison, beneath the foundations of the castle, I might have been considering my beheading, almost absently, or else that if I love her I should say so; from the dust of cigarettes and Chinese construction that settles in the countryside after having been carried there on cool winds, her lips are dry, my eyes stinging, the flavor of this fog catching on the sides of the tongue and flaking at the skin; from the eternal childhood of the mummy kept usually in Torino, occasionally loaned out, dark hands, thin, a woman's, weaving the death shroud for the boy's corpse, can we cry for forgotten mothers and small bodies, or must we remain scientific; from the obscurity of alphabets; from train stations; others' memories; buildings that obstruct sunrises; love. Things in which to lose yourself is better than to find it. Or at least more likely. She is painted on the wood. She cannot hold him. Isis is at our feet, rendered upside down so that only we may see her properly as we gaze at our shoes, unwilling to say what we know.

no turkey but subway... also, no subway

I had some sushi, bread, and nuts, and pretended it was turkey, yeast rolls, and nuts. Not even close to full.

There's a Subway somewhere in Sendai where you can get a turkey sub, and you can buy powdered gravy off of Amazon.

This will mark Thanksgiving number two where I didn't think my gut was going to burst. A little sad. And I hope everyone in the states is having a good day.

I couldn't be much happier than I am now, so no worries. Most of my students had never even heard of today, so I gave some of them little crash-courses in the traditional meals. Lots of food units, so it fit in nicely. No quiz, but that doesn't matter. This is Japan. If you tell them to learn something they just do it, without the threat of consequences... I know. But I'm not making this up. It's completely true.

My collaboration story with Lily, "Keys Let You Into Places," is apparently being published in Squid Quarterly. Which reminds me... I need to write something decent soon. I can feel myself becoming a poor schlub with no discernible talents or interests.

Okay, hadn't really checked in with mundane garbage for a while. Consider yourself updated.

peace

dongurichan

creepy magic tricks

the longest breakfast: getting gay with bears

horrible horrible awful

I am not trying to make a joke. When I heard the guy from Fort Hood talking about getting grief counseling for everybody, I just tried to imagine the added emotional confusion of having to visit a post-trauma specialist to try to deal with the fact that a post-trauma specialist did such an awful thing. It's some morbid shit. Anyway, I'm just dumbfounded by this whole thing. Not sure it should be quite so shocking anymore, but... well. I'm all the way over here so I don't think there's much of value to add except to hope for the best with families and such... Writing stupid now, I'll stop.

hopefully soon...

... I'll be back to my old self, or back to an even better new self, or I will become a beam of pure energy and require no such limiting descriptors as "self" or "old" or "new" or "my". Though I do hope to one day eat a decent taco again.

I have been sick on-and-off, it seems, for quite some time now. This time it is the swine flu. Or "H1N1"--I don't want to piss off the pork industry by calling the virus what it is. My sides ache from coughing. I am sick of being sick, and I am missing way too much work. I know there's nothing I can do about it, but I'm really worried about my school and me because of this. Maybe everything is ok, but I just lie in bed all day coughing and shivering and getting into fevered paranoia that everyone hates me because I'm sick. It's demented. Probably deep-seeded. Perhaps going back to elementary school, when I pretended to be sick to stay home from school... now when I am actually sick, I'm convinced I am also actually faking it.

A little window into my neuroses.



I'll be taking it easy for the remainder of the month, but hopefully I can get back out with my camera soon and take some shots. I've been growing lax there. There've been several instances where bringing my camera along would have been nice.

[another frog are you serious]

alan's week of sick wonders

I have been shut up in my apartment for several days, fighting an infection of one kind or another. It would perhaps have gone better for me had I not needed to walk three miles to the hospital (and actually, after getting lost in a fevered delirium, it was closer to four). And "need" in the above sentence is used very loosely. My judgment was that I needed fluids and rest, it took me half a day of getting neither fluids nor rest for a doctor to tell me the same damn thing, but unfortunately the fever-pitch surrounding the flu required that I go to the hospital. Fine. Dandy. I am mostly better now, but for a productive cough that is bad in the morning and evening, and an overwhelming sense of boredom and strong desire to return to work (never had that one before, I must say).

When I've had the energy, I've been using my time to research the TOEIC exam, and better strategies for teaching vocabulary and test-taking. When I haven't had the energy, I've been watching movies.

Finally watched Coraline. I was a little disappointed: not a bad film, but there was something off about it. It felt like a pretty good video-game, but as a fantasy it was lacking. The characters inhabiting this phenomenal visual world could not have fallen flatter. Stilted dialog. Half-hearted delivery. And as kids movies go, it's usually ok with me when the themes are heavy-handed, but in this case it seemed like they should have known better. To be fair, I really enjoyed it. The "stage" performances from the neighbors in the other world were fantastic, and the garden scenes were phenomenal. But this is all visual stuff. It was a cute movie. I had been expecting more is all.

Needless to say, I've gotten off my schedule. That is more frustrating than anything else. There's always next week.

labored metaphors aside (some things I was recently reminded of)

Walking among them, you cannot help but ask them questions. They are, after all, wise, and you are reminded that magic is as ancient as they.


But if you are not careful of the mystical apprehension you feel, your fate might be so ridiculous:







And it would be better to recall a different fascination, born in the year of Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus":








And to wake early on Saturday in order to wrest control of the TV from your sister or older step-brother:

it opens this way, and maybe also another...

There isn't speaking today. But there is a river, and a flashing low-battery light on my camera. Coffee, cream no sugar, the owner calls it itsumono and serves it in a glass rather than the usual coffee cup. It is bitter, rich, a person can taste his heart beginning to race from the caffeine just as it touches the tongue.

I closed my eyes and walked to the park near my office. Or I could have closed my eyes to walk there. But did not. I did not recognize my own routine until I began to see that this park was the routine of another, a woman who sits with her phone out, sometimes having a cigarette. She sometimes sits for an hour or more, usually only sitting, nothing more. Her hair is unkept, that is to say not unkempt or filthy, just not so flawlessly done as the ladies and girls one normally sees here on the street. And if she works nearby, it is in her own place, or in the back somewhere, because she wears jeans or dark pants and navy sweatshirts. She spies me now as I make my way up the walk to the entrance. When our eyes meet, she pretends not to see me, and continues with her nothing. When I thought that she must come here every day, I realized that I do as well. So does another woman, but she is invisible. I have only once seen her there, when I followed her in, but never again. But I know she is there. It is only my absence that brings her, and hers that brings me. At least that is what she tells me.

I had some chicken and cold corn for lunch. And walked. A bit aimless, but not really exploring either, this particular corner of this little corner of this corner of the world having grown on me to the point I cannot distinguish it as foreign or distant. It is neither dull nor invigorating, but it is beautiful, certainly. And my stomach is turning slightly. Somewhat with the coffee, and also with something of an urge to break down. It isn't sadness per se. Of course it must be sadness, because it feels like sadness, but also I know that it isn't. I begin to imagine that I have been climbing the knotted rope that used to hang in the back yard in California, Pico Rivera, 949-1467, the number at the house, a circle of fine dirt at the center, where the rope hangs from a branch perhaps fifteen or twenty feet in the air. I am tempted to underestimate the height because of the tendency to enlarge objects and distances remembered from a time when our bodies were smaller, and our imaginations nearly so vast as to be endless. I recall it being nearly twenty-five feet. Surely that is too high. And as I am in memory climbing the rope I have just reached the last knot with my feet, there are no more holds, and I am only halfway to the top. The coarse threads begin to burn into my fingers and between the legs as I try in vain to clasp the thing and give my arms some relief, and there is the sudden realization that the branch I am trying to reach is simply part of a tree, and has no feeling either way about whether or not I reach it. It is a struggle without merit. And so, it seems right to simply let go and climb into the swing or onto the clubhouse... both were made with me in mind. This branch is nothing but a difficult partner. And so of course I do let go. It's not so hard a fall. It shakes me a bit, I am rattled, but not seriously injured. And I go and sit in the shade on the step of the clubhouse, my feet dangling a little, and it feels nice. It is a good day, and there is a bit of a breeze, and there are clear skies, but obviously they are blocked from view by the leaves of the trees. If I had made it to the branch, I could have sat and soaked in the sun and looked out over the neighborhood. But nature had other plans. Still, the clubhouse seems wrong. And so I go inside for a burger between two slices of wonder bread and some koolaid. I hunt through a new box of frosted flakes to see if Caleb has already taken the toy. I can't find anything, but I'm not searching with real purpose. Honestly, I am thinking of the top of that tree. And I think that it was only when I decided to let go--decided that it was a pointless exercise and took a moment to consider spending the afternoon otherwise occupied--that I could see it had not been pointless. Only impossible.

And I am walking by the river, and big mulchers are eating the dead grass. I have not been chasing the wind. I can see that now. But there's nothing for it. Whatever my reasons for letting go, there's not another way to approach. And memory is mixing beauty with sadness, and truth seems unwilling to enter into the discussion. On the other hand, love always has a thing or two to say. In any case, it's kind of truth's mildly retarded cousin. You can't totally believe anything it tells you, but it's usually right anyway.

dear god, halloween, jesus and mary and josephus and philo!!!

I have to be something for Halloween this year. I have no ideas. Please do weigh in. It's for a work thing.

early to bed, early to rise... dog bars means there are dog AAs

I started a new schedule this week, and am staying away from the nightlife for a little while. I sat down yesterday at the coffee place, reading through my journal after making some Japanese vocab cards and it was apparent how much my focus has shifted since the end of May. The summer, I suppose, was about chasing after the wind... Solomon doesn't tell us this, but sometimes you need a good wind chase; it's like a cat playing with the tip of string hanging from a table. But I found a pretty decent story in it, maybe two, and I'm going to try and do something with all the material.

Sunday night the music caught me and I danced like an idiot.

I am skirting around the edges of a circle, as usual, I never did like getting into the middle of things. But if the universe is as they say, everything is at the center, and everything is at the edge, all points are equally everywhere and nowhere, and so I guess I'm skirting the center of an edge.

And such is my morning write. I had intended to include more details of my life, but find I lack the patience.

i didn't drown, thanks to honeybear

the storm wasn't too bad here. just some texas-style flash-flood garbage--and not even really as heavy as in texas. the wind was not terrible. all tolled, it could have been worse, but my feet were wet for a good chunk of the day, and that was not fun. i only had one student cancel. in my last class, one of my high school kids and i shared the sentiment that days like today are a lot of fun. a little adversity, something different, it feels like you are playing hooky at work/school. can you captain dan and still go into the office? a question for the ages... and for about three people out there.

i got some new game ideas, really simple, and had about three hours today to prepare for all my classes, and everything was wonderful. i wish preparation came in larger chunks of time... there could be so much fun had.

fun fact: although the moon is made of cheese, i learned today that it is also inhabited by rice-making rabbits. no mice of course, or there would be no moon. but who takes care of the rabbits, i wonder?

typhoon is here

walking to work in torrential rain... I'll check in again if I don't drown.

Next Post: condensed

lots of good stuff, no time to write

previous post: condensed

I've been feeling a little sad today. I'll get over it.

stale coffee with internal monologue (silicon on canvas)

There's coffee in the microwave from this morning. Should it bother me to drink something that's been sitting for half a day or more. It doesn't. Or perhaps it does, but I'm going to drink it anyway.

A day devoid of conversation. A month devoid of contact with skin. Longer since real human touch. It got all caught up in my chest today. There is something necessary about a sincere embrace. I won't pretend to understand the physiology of it, but I'm certain there have been studies that bear out my theory. If you see a friend, you put your arms around them, and that is expected... and it is something I miss, living in this place.

There were rich times, years ago, we all said we loved one another. We all looked out for each other. Not like today. At least not so far as I can see. We all keep our distance, measuring the space between ourselves and others as if contact were a thin blade.

And perhaps it is the royal "we." "Our" defenses are really mine.

I have been restraining myself... maybe for two years or more. And I can count on one hand the number of times I have spoken from the heart, made myself truly vulnerable, in all this time. Each time, it has shaken me. It never comes out clean. It has to beat its way through my chest and by the time it makes it out it is so tired, no one can hear it. Just a whisper really.

I was thinking of studying Japanese all day today, but opted for rest instead. Watched the first two episodes of that new show, flashforward, which has potential to have real potential to be good. So I hope they don't screw it up. A quick walk down to the Jusco. They have everything there. It's very "supertarget" and I know if I were in the states I'd never go there. But it just seems to make sense here.

Whenever I sit down to write a blog entry, nothing organized happens. It's just these bits of brain-vomit. I don't think I'm giving a very good account of my time here. But I think maybe this is reflective of how unfocused I've allowed myself to become. I keep setting goals and just ignoring them.

My mind has been elsewhere. Even when it hasn't been.

all creatures large and small and japanese

...

Crater Pig

There is such a shortage of great phrases in this world, and on a regular basis I toss aside some amazing ones. But a vocab exercise produced the phrase "crater pig," and I won't soon forget it. I also have not forgotten "the Darenpon Connection" but as yet have no story to put beneath it.

I realized today that I had forgotten a birthday. Not entirely certain if I should contact her about it. It is very strange to me to have a best friend that also feels a bit like an enemy. And who probably does not think of me as a best friend... It never ends, does it? ...

...


having... memories...

must... ...

...

drink them... ... ...

...

away.

I probably should send something. After all, I can't stop loving what I can't stop loving... or something ridiculously sentimental like that.

more punk than punk... "live baby live"

After this he started screaming. It was pretty phenomenal. Hypnotic blend of psychedelia, punk, and what I assume is traditional Japanese sound. I don't recall his name.

I suppose I made a conscious decision recently to become fascinated with the world, sort of reacquaint myself with the concept of daily joy inside the pursuit of strange or beautiful things, to touch, to look at, walk through, open, poke, prod, adore. Because of this, even though I don't sit and think about it much, I have become more open to my surroundings and new experiences. One might think that simply the fact that I am off in a "foreign" land, I am going to be inherently more apt to adventuring and explorerating, but not so. Ruts can be had anywhere. Old habits creep up on you. But I think if you kind of stay with the music, just keep listening, you break out of them, find your thinking's been uptight, and changes in the weather can be both outward reflections of the desire to alter the tempo, as well as catalysts for change.

I wrote a song today, which I haven't done in quite a while. And last night, walking home from Lalinda's bar with the Brit, I made a startling confession... that is, it was somewhat startling to him, but infinitely more so to me. It was a feeling about life, something important, among the most visceral and frightening and amazing things that people experience, and of course I'm not going to tell you what it was (and no, I'm not homosexual). But I knew I was onto something when, after I expressed the thought, I didn't doubt it for a moment. Just before, I'd been filled with it, doubt, and just hearing the words come out, something seemed to slide into place. As they say, the truth shall set you free. I am unconcerned. Certain. Phenomenally happy to know something about myself that I'd been denying.... Tantalizing, i'nit?

Keys Let You Into Places (part 5 or so)

It is sometimes the way she doesn't. And that can be enough. I recounted the incident of Zechariah's broken arm in the summer of 1984... 85. These things are beginning to slide out of memory. When we transferred all the super8 to video, and started doing everything in harsh lighting. Magic tricks are more exposed. Memories have permanent waves and headbands. Editing machines whir and buzz at the Savings and Loan, in the middle of the night, as we wait to see what father has made of our horsing around. It runs together. Everything. With cuts and wipes. A cutaway. And I can't remember who I loved before this moment, nor predict what I will love in the next. Borges sometimes insists that all moments are present moments. And sometimes he changes birds into squadrons of bombers. There is a word at the bottom of the page in my notes. I am not certain it applies. Dictionaries can be trusted only to tell you the meaning of a word, not the proper way to toss it into conversation. For the latter, trust a woman.

"hansei"

It is something needed as I wade deeper into these waters. There is only ever deeper to go, and no retreat. Or else there is only ever the depth that is, and no other.

Grill Shogun and a Brain in a Jar

I went to the park yesterday for some music and food and beer. It was really good. I helped to save a bird that had gotten caught in the grill of an SUV. We had been trying to pull it out, and every time we pulled harder, I could see from my vantage that it was going to pull the leg off, until I realized that the reason it was going to pull the leg off was that the bird was so frightened, it had grabbed onto the grill, hooking itself into place, I carefully dislodged the claw, and the other fellow pulled, and off shot the little bird. A little stunned at first, but eventually right as... well... it did rain a little yesterday. Early on. And I think perhaps the reason I was the one who saw what the bird had done with its leg, digging in like that out of fear, hurting its own chances at healing, freedom, a future, is that I identify with the concept. When all you need to do is let go so everything will be fine, sometimes it's the hardest thing to do.

I had been sitting in the grass, a little girl having convinced me to kick off my sandals and relax. If there was ever a moment when I did not have food in my hand, something was given to me to try. I was beyond full. A beautiful Japanese woman, my friend, was the master of the grill. The Daimyo, no, the Shogun of grill. And she wielded a mighty shaker of salt to bring the rings of corncob or the mushroom shafts, or unwieldy slices of beef or chicken under her domain.

The flow of conversation is unnatural. I begin with things I know. I like this. I'm from Texas. That's not sake, it's water. But, I am very quickly out of my depth. I don't want to talk about the weather. I want to talk about life, real life, the real stuff of real life. I want to ask why. How long. What did you feel when. Do you ever think that maybe. I want to tell stories and listen. But at the first sign I don't understand, people stop talking. They don't go deeper. I wish I could explain that even if I don't know what they are saying, I just want to listen. I want to hear what they have to say, the way they need to say it. It is like music for me. Nevermind the words, it's the genuine human connection that matters.

But the conversation was stilted for me, because I don't know how to explain this. And so I stand under a tree and juggle chestnuts while someone raps to TechmoBowl NES beats on the stage a little ways away.

certainty pulls everything

This evening David is sitting with his knees uncomfortably close together. His arms hang down too low below his seat. His belly is full of fish. Like a dolphin. Margaret's fingers are dancing on the neck of a fiddle. Moisture gathers on glasses. There must be a way to harvest the water gathered in rings around bar glasses; Saturday nights ought to be productive. Richard and the German are arguing over what should have been the proper sequencing of songs on the White Album. They might as well debate whether the Knight's Tale should have been first, and the Miller's Tale removed.

Language has been slowly leaking out of the atmosphere, leaving the air saturated with undirected thought. Rendering even the most mundane issues ineffable at times. The process of doing one's laundry may seem a purely spiritual and mystical enterprise. When you attempt to quantify detergent, it loses its magic.

There are no words left to express routine, god, the morning...

Between the morning and the evening, there is a discrepancy in identity. Should a man prefer to stay at home and live in memory, or to wander the streets drinking and shouting. There is not such a distinction between the two as one might imagine.

David buys something fruity for Margaret. Her sister might be coming soon.

it is a strange land where parents--mystically--are unafraid of their children... or cps

I just watched a woman beat the crap out of her son at the supermarket while a synthesized "I Think We're Alone Now" played on the Muzak. I picked up some medium sized eggs and went to the bread aisle. Should the fact that he was being a real fucking shit make a difference as to whether or not I was appalled? Because it did make a difference. And I wasn't.

I once sat in a Waffle House in Missouri and watched a woman lift her granddaughter out of her seat, maybe four or five years old, she yanked her into the air by the arm and beat her about the legs and butt as hard as she could... it was for something like asking if there was any more butter... that was horrifying. Even more horrifying was the fact that nobody but me and the person I was with (Court) seemed at all worried about it. Still did nothing. What the hell do you do?

as i wait for my ipod to charge

I found seven or eight songs I had no idea I had, nor do I know where they came from. Merry Christmas, says my iTunes. It's barely September, says I.

I'm a little tired of sitting at the bar. I need some art and nature and culture. I've been hanging out just to try to get to know some people, but I really need to get out and see some things. I will still bring my iPod.

"Calmly Crashing"

I spell like a five-year-old in Japanese - probably worse.

Ohio/OHAYO

how to feel: #2

On the first day late in the summer when it truly begins to smell of autumn, and the chill is something of a comfort, and the rain gets a little on your clothes when you go outside, that is a time to think of sitting quietly for hours, being lazy, sharing a blanket, warming her toes, laughing, letting her rest her head on your chest. Breathing slowly. And sometime making coffee. And baking cookies. And watching an old movie. And falling in and out of sleep.

It is best to think less about this as the day wears on. And to direct your mind to a book. Walk to the store. Write emails and letters. Find a glass for whiskey. And wait.

Older Plans

One day at lunch at the university, I opened my notes on the table and, over an hour and a half, we designed a hospital--though it could easily also have been a hotel or an apartment building--in the form of a unicursal labyrinth. That is to say that there is only a single path to follow from entrance to exit. It was deceptively so. A patient or visitor is meant to feel that she is wandering the halls freely, never even leaving the ground floor, but eventually to find herself facing something new in a place she has expected to find only a wall. It is a large stained-glass depiction of Saint John, chosen partially because of his significance in my life--parenthetically if you will, in possibly an open-ended sense, as I was born in St. John's in Santa Monica--but also to signify the revelation of path. Though the wandering patient feels she has been wandering, she is now made to see that she has been on a singular path. Having never believed herself traveling anywhere, she has ended up on the highest floor of the building. This understanding, once bestowed, will have one or a few of various effects upon her, determined not by our design but by her state of mind upon the moment of revelation, and of course by her wealth of experience that she has brought with her to this place.

It might be natural to hesitate when confronted with something unexpected. To consider whether or not it is dangerous. To begin slowly to investigate the surroundings. To look for signs of treachery, betrayal, abandonment. And of course she would not be blamed for turning around and following the path back to its beginning. The main problem then being that irksome knowledge that there are questions that will always go unanswered. Security and comfort can be forms of decay. But that is for her to say, and not for any of us.

It was our hope that her discovery would also be ours, each time new, a true revelation always being something internal, reflective, a discovery of self rather than of anything external. Our hospital only being a catalyst for the germ of thought. The appearance of the saint, not a call to salvation or spiritual ascendancy, but instead a call to ruminate, to stew, to stir, to overflow with self and to watch as that fullness reflects in those she encounters from that point forward.

But our design was flawed. It would never be constructed. I opted instead to design a city grid, the streets and waterways a model of a neural network of a person attempting to remember something he saw when he was seven, continually unable to do so. To find this image would, for him, he believes, reveal the true nature of love. Not merely the signifier tossed about across cultures or between gentlemen and ladies. It would be that perfect connection to the true thing, and not just the shadow of it. It is why he chooses to use long sentences to describe small ideas, because he believes the simple terms have been infested with meaning to the point of meaninglessness. And so in the city I saw built, it might take a man an hour to travel from his house to the nearest corner store, and it would certainly take him a lifetime to find the great center of it. Though perhaps only a moment or two to catch a glimpse of the park, the acropolis, the mall, the expansive library, the entrance to the zoo, the place where the children ride the trolley while a man dressed in lavender pinstripes calls out stations, there are no exits or entrances, only miniature models of other cities. And the children, they are children for an eternity, or at least until the city crumbles. They were designed this way. They are memories.

the problem outside the peanut

An expert on dinosaur teeth came into my office and asked me my thoughts on what happened before the Big Bang. I drew something resembling a peanut on the whiteboard, then produced an equation for the speed at which a particular internal combustion engine should motivate a two-ton truck, 65 mph. Then we observed that the truck was actually traveling at 50 mph. After a long discussion, the tooth expert asserted that there must be something wrong with my math. Maybe, I kindly suggested, there was something wrong with his mother's math. The truck that weighs two tons must actually have more mass somewhere. Hiding. Mass that doesn't affect the gravity of the truck, but which affects inertia in some other way. He explained that some dinosaurs may have had feathers. I called him a communist.

The peanut is a closed shell. There is nothing outside the peanut. If you try to crack the peanut open from the inside and look outside, you can't. So what about the rest of the whiteboard? The part outside the form of the peanut? This entire space is inhabited by a giant elephant, and if you ask too many stupid questions about what's outside the peanut, the elephant will find the peanut and eat us all. There's nothing outside the peanut, like I said. What happened before there was a before? That's one of those stupid questions.

Our conversation is being monitored, he said, from Tokyo. Why would anyone be so creepy without cause? I asked. It is because they are afraid of what you mights say about them. Who is "they?" It's hard to say, and you probably don't even know them.

I made notes on the conversation for my office records and placed them in a file folder before heading out to the store. I had been craving sushi. It was still early in the evening, but it gets dark relatively early also. I have stopped being able to recall the directions from the office to the supermarket. It is a series of steps, pauses, turns, and breaths stored somewhere in a physical memory. It plays out automatically so I can be free to concern myself with other matters. And why these other matters should somehow be more important than the way to food, I am not certain, but the fact remains that all I thought about on the walk was whether or not to make dinner plans for this Saturday. I was tempted to buy a bag of chocolate-covered peanuts, but opted instead for whiskey.

path, as it were

I come here in the mornings to read Homer. And I am told the birds I've been calling cranes are actually white heron. It is a better name, and I'm glad the better bird got it. A young Korean woman stopped me and made small talk. I pointed to where I thought the Jusco was, and she pointed almost in the opposite direction. The streets here wind more than even in San Antonio. Her name is unpronounceable to me, so she said I could call her Jaime, which seems very unfair. It isn't her name. It's just easier for those unwilling to call her what she is meant to be called.

I do a lot of walking away around corners

But being a film guy, I want to see both shots, to linger in the moment after and watch quotidian set in, or at least imagine it. He begins walking more quickly, reaches in his pocket for some change and enters a seven-eleven. I don't have the shot list for the other side.

This month, the budget has to include the expensive coffee place, regular visits. It is the place to sit when working. I have been sitting on my wallet for a while. This past week was unavoidable. There was no wallet to even sit on. But there was money in the bank this morning, and when the supermarket opens, there will be food in the cupboard and that is a wonderful thing. To be celebrated. Not too heartily, there is the coffee place to think of.

Had my first Japanese lesson in a while. I learned some body parts, and I asked how to say perfect. "compiki" I think. Before that I could only say good. I was very tired. Drinking on others' dimes. Disinterested. I am thinking more and more today about fruit. I was told that I am a big believer in bananas. I think it will have to be a banana then. And I need to buy a gift, perhaps some chocolates, to say thank you for allowing me to live.

Chocolates are good for the saving of a life, I think.

bites

One week before the first bite, I met the devil in a sandbox. I scooped him up with a red plastic shovel, and he hissed. From then on I steered clear, remaining for the most part under the thick wooden beams of the playhouse, in the shade with the mud-cake children. One of them was determined to dig out his brain with a straw, and it was when I refused him this pleasure that he lunged for me, taking a chunk near my armpit. The doctors treated me for rabies. That is my recollection, anyway.

And then she bit my ear, softly at first, almost unnoticeably, but she was unsatisfied and began to press harder, she wanted to tear the flesh, and so I threw her down and waited for her to relax, then I sat on the sofa next to her and watched some TV a while before she had her teeth in my scalp. There was an intellect to it, the devouring of brains, not just the blind lust of zombies, though that was not completely absent.

It was completely dark in the tent, and despite the netting, we were kept awake all night by the sounds of hands slapping ankles and necks, fingernails scratching dry skin, frustrated breathing.

I once wrote a poem in which I devoured you. I thought it was a clever way to talk about what it must be like to love me. To watch yourself being slowly broken down into nutrients and absorbed. I never wrote the end. Three hours on the toilet. It didn't seem beautiful.

The devil is small and pink with white teeth and no eyes, in case you were wondering.

we make places for them to inhabit

we build cities from thought, desire

we map their worlds, interior, little doll houses where we can keep an eye

it is our need for objects to continue, necessity, development

from: if i cannot see you, you do not exist

to: i ride trains, erasing track behind the yellow past--they are covered in rust

she will sometimes close an open window to stop a draft, and i will imagine it open again because of the way small winds play in her hair

it's cold, she says, stop toying

so i give her a silk robe, white, but she only wants to go to bed now

i haven't built this for her, and so it is only a stillness when she goes,

it is sometimes best to see circles where you have been taught to make frames

Which is the very salt of patience. I misunderstand the direction of syllables. When I walk into rooms, she is scraping a fork across the surface of a plate, laboring to produce a porcelain zest. Her feet are labored, her eyes labored, those thoughts that pass between the kitchen sounds are labored. And I am tempted to paint the scene, of course as a historical painting because those are the most important, but I am relegated to the pastoral or the realist genres. Or else a mosaic, repeated shades of labored colors. On this margin, you are directed to think of motherhood, new, unbroken, still pushing everything out. On this margin you are directed to the waning days of a prison sentence, a clean room, a library book, fantasies of stripes and chain gangs, roof-work and highway construction, the digging of ditches that serve no purpose. A clean room. Well lit. A toilet. And a window in the door. But the center. The center is a question. A demand. A word you forgot to hear, or you woke in the middle, or fell asleep at the end of it. And when I sit down to tables, she is placing salt--heaping it--in front of me. It is the very best sort, I can hear myself pretending to lie, but in fact I believe it.

the end of that summer holiday feeling

I've decided to stay in Furukawa at least another year. Working on the logistics of that, but it looks like it's going to happen. I'm really happy about it, but I do extend my apologies to those I assured that I'd be returning to Texas.

So all the Summer festivities are over, and the campaigns for the Japanese general election kicked off this week. Should be an interesting civics lesson for me. Meanwhile, it seems like a good opportunity, with projects coming to a close and a certain renewal of earnestness in the air, to hit the writing again with some vigor. I've allowed myself to lose the love of it, as it was recently put to me.

Back in the stoop days, I was sitting with Elizabeth over a glass of whiskey (she had a merlot in one of her grandmother's glasses, I think) and I was maligning a certain friend for having dropped contact with me for seemingly no reason. You were there when things went wrong, she said, even if you helped in some way, sometimes just reminding someone of pain is enough. I couldn't accept it, but I think I am beginning to agree. Writing saved my sorry ass after the split with the woman, the divorce, the ensuing identity crisis, it was sometimes the only thing I knew I could trust, but as I began to feel more like myself, I became sick of the sound of my own words. They had the feel of disgust, even when they were positive. But I have been living long enough without the love of words, the finding of things on blank screens, that now it is the silence that seems to drone. It is time again, finally, to live in anticipation of the next story, to love my shitty poetry (no joke, it's bad, but I love writing it) and to stop seeing writing as a way into pain.

Also, I need some coffee and some hot water.

Kyoto, Tokyo, an illiterate guide to: