nothing really to report

Whenever I have exploits in Japan, I become very impressed indeed with my ability to live in a country for eight months and to learn so little of its language. This fact actually made for a rather beautiful game of blackjack the other night, wherein the bets were these word associations that became increasingly poetic, and it seemed after a time to have been a rather intimate exchange. Even so, I have definitely decided to increase my conversation practice in Japanese.

The camera has been resting for the past month. Recovering, it says. Waiting for inspiration to strike. I think it might be feeling under-appreciated. It keeps dropping hints that I should spend more time complimenting its manual features, perhaps that we should take a photoshop class together. Saturday night I forgot to ask if the camera wanted to come with me to the Jamaican's bar. When I arrived home at 4 A.M. Sunday morning, there was an argument:

I didn't know I'd be staying, I was just dropping off a CD and then I got sucked into conversation. I was only playing with words on miniature laminated cards. You know it's the kind of thing I love to do, but that you'd have been bored with. Plus it was dark and I know how much you hate using your flash. I talked about you, and I showed them some of our pictures. Do you remember RIP VW? Fine, you know what, don't say anything.

I'll stop making excuses and we'll go out soon.

how does one do grey so consistently

It dawned on me that the last time I saw the sun, I posted about it. So it hasn't been a horrendously long time, but it's been long enough. And then Thursday and Friday were devoted to paperwork and organizing. There were no students and the doors to the outside world remained closed. I begin to forget that light is not all fluorescent or incandescent. And there is a reason people like me need to take jobs teaching in faraway places rather than buried under files and filling in boxes on sheets of paper. Madness begins to set in.

Nerf Hoops helps a little.

I recall the violent compulsion to be away from the accounts managing job, and that the only days I enjoyed were those defined by some crisis that needed solving, the day-to-day holding no interest. Perhaps this is telling.

But when I begin staring at the impenetrable layers of gray in the sky, searching for some way through, I understand why it is often stated that hope is a dangerous thing to have.

And although the absence of the sun teaches me to appreciate its presence, the absence of other things, such as clear directions or particular voices, begins to teach me that they may be speaking more poignantly with silence. Their messages difficult to take, but necessary I suppose.

Even so, path tells me to continue speaking plainly, when possible, in all things, regardless of the obscurity that plainness might encounter:

Perhaps this is not the place for such plainness, however. And though I continue considering a return to SA, I find that there is an intensity there that causes me to lose my bearings almost immediately. I have not decided whether or not this is a positive thing. I am happy here, but it is not home. I need to see the ocean more; it--oddly enough--grounds me. And I am feeling nauseous from an ear infection.

three question marks - exciting punctuation blog entry!!??? ... no

“The question mark is the universal symbol of something unknown. We are prepared to solve any puzzle, riddle, mystery, enigma, or conundrum which may be brought to us.” Jupiter Jones

I consider it a psychological anomaly that I should love this line from The Three Investigators, that I should have loved this motif nearly so long as I have loved words, and yet have fundamental difficulties with the question mark as a writer.

Even though this sentence is not punctuated with a question mark, do you know anyway that it is a question. How is it you know this. Perhaps that it has already undergone transformation, so that it doesn't need marking?

But of course that last question needed to be marked, because it was not transformed using a wh- or an auxiliary reposition. Similarly, the exclamation. Exclamatory statements need not be marked, they are easy to spot: "What a good job you did." There it is. And it is further unnecessary to make imperatives or declarative statements into exclamations, because they actually just continue to be declarative or imperative, regardless, you can only make them into interrogatives, using the question mark, which, then has more of a place than exclamation points, which seem to me to be only signs of either laziness or being annoyingly ironic about exclamations. What a stupid thing to do. ... ... That's where my ironic "!!" should have gone.


Our signature is three exclamation points. The exclamation point is the universal symbol for the awkwardly emphasized. We will over-emote any advertisement, take the impact out of any heartfelt expression, big or small, which may be brought to us. I.M. Boring

Sorry for the drab. Got tired of emoting on the blog. My fingers start to feel like syrup and I have to stop. This is like a palate cleanser.

that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer

Spurred by the morning Homer, when I got to the park I continued walking on the path. Path, I think. There was a paved water feature that stretched about two blocks with a small waterwheel and a miniature wooden ship about the size of a dolphin. This took me to a bridge that runs past a building with rainbows in the windows, which I think is an aquarium. And I found the river I had not even known was there. An island full of cranes. Whoops and croaks. Geese that approached cautiously, possibly expecting to be fed. After sitting a while in silence, I thought of a song I wanted to hear and put the iPod on. Then I found a path than ran up along the bank to the flood runoff. Little black birds. Purple flowers (re: Spencer's purple flowers). Clouds beginning to gather distantly, but even their promise of later turmoil was undaunting. The present was a mere gathering, as of friends making plans together, not for the ultimate decision, but for the mere joy of each other's lazy company. I felt a momentary pang of guilt for not having discovered this place earlier, but realized that I had not been ready to find it. The external realization of quiet spaces is an internal reflection. All directions are golden.


it was another bright day, and the waters called me away from home again and again

ain't sure where I been but I'm here now for damn sure

I've been overwhelmed this week--and, yes, surprised--by the inexplicable joy of simply being. Thank you Wordsworth and, to a lesser extent, Lewis, for the intellectual connection to that interior understanding. If I am being opaque, I am sorry. There is so little of the specific at play here. I think I have been absent a long, long time. And suddenly it is like I have found love, or some elusive treasure in the tide pools. But I can point to nothing that has changed.

There is such familiar physiology between great sadness and deep joy. But one can always tell the difference.

I remember telling my sister that I did not know if I should ever be able to lie in the grass on a warm Sunday and feel that lightness that youth and innocence had in other times bestowed, and now I have no doubt that it should occur a thousand times more in my life. I have been living always elsewhere, and now it seems I have caught up to a present something.

I haven't watered my plant in weeks, and it has never seemed more alive. Even the piece that had seemed to have died has come back to life in a wet forest green. There's nothing I can do to mess this up, I think.

(I have not joined a cult)

three facts on the day

1. Sweet Child O'Mine was on the MUZAK at the supermarket this evening when I stopped for sushi, bread, and fromage roux.

2. I stood relatively motionless, trying to tie a strand of red yarn that had frayed and snapped back together again while a child named Kousei, having decided me the enemy, in the midst of what I could only assume were his equivalent of curses and screams, attempted to end my life with his fists. I waited until I had finished tying the knot before turning my attention to his attack, and only then to look and say nothing.

3. Juri took a picture of a dinner she ate in New York. Fish 'n Chips and broccoli. She had been aghast at the size of the serving. Hajime seemed disturbed that different items should be allowed to touch one another on the same plate. I described the process by which most excess food from restaurants goes through a rigorous routine of being packaged, bagged, refrigerated, aged, and then trashed.

if the ink, that will not come home (conversations in the rain from squiggly street to the palace and then back in the morning )

I forgot my pen at work again. The paper I always leave home. The frustration is illustrative... In that I also would not buy a new pen until this morning and now things are moving along once again, I can make plans and not forget them, I can speak to Merlin and write on the backs of post cards and mark the progress of my exercise routines, but still I'd like to smash the pen against a wall with my work-boots just to maintain the metaphor's relevance. I bought a spare just in case. I've been known to become violent towards my writing tools. Sentences. Stories. Letters.

I sent my information across an imaginary plane. A woman in Austin who knows my sister from somewhere. Gears are turning in some intended direction. And I am drinking chocolate-flavored protein again, from a mug, and I am hiding from my camera. I found a picture of a ghost on the last roll, either someone invisible brought halfway to the eye or someone living being forced into the aether, and now I'm afraid the lens might be haunted.

The Canadian and the Jamaican commiserated over rum. I lingered a bit with the Maker's Mark before joining in. There will be a baseball game in July, in the port city, and I have said I would join there as well. I'm not sure you care to know, but I only know how to tell you things, not how to take them away or make them interesting.

Gentleman Jack purges his visual cortex onto imaginary celluloid, having heard this is a good way to recover from an emotive hangover

I went home and...

I thought about posting a long-winded reflective entry about my trip to Texas. Even went so far as to write it, but maybe this says it all:



more later...