we gather to forget the past year, x 3

Last week was a goddamned trial. Penultimate and all I guess it should be expected. Thursday night, Bounenkai with the Ikebukuro crew, minus Mari who was sick which is a shame as she usually manages to create some kind of havoc. David turned up and regaled us with tales of his new dream-job in Hakone. 5 and a half months paid vacation a year the MOTHERFUCKER! :)

Friday night saw a dinner party at Ryan and Miki's, with Graf, Sarah and Mizuki in attendance. Lots of geek talk and good Mexican-Japanese hybrid cooking. Sarah it turns out is a poet who won first prize in a national tanka contest (this?) year. Mizuki and I had a slightly weird experience on the quaint tram ride back when an old man angrily demanded we not sit in the priority seating despite the fact that there was almost no-one else in the carriage.

Saturday and Mia-sensei collapsed unconscious in the teacher's office at Omiya-ko. She came to her senses after a few seconds, but just lay on the floor for 2 hours and refused any help and demanded that no-one call a doctor. Very weird.

Saturday night saw another Bounenkai in Omiya with my business classes headed by the irrepressible Jim. Small talk and shochu. Lots of shochu. High points included the announcement of Saiko's engagement, talking with Harumi about law school, which kind of cleared things up a bit in my own head, and a parting conversation with a medical researcher about the human nervous system. I managed to get the last train back and collapse in exhaustion.

Sunday Mizuki and I went skating in Edogawa-ku. It was great fun, I think my first time (if I did it as a child I can't remember the experience) and I found that I had a kind of natural talent for it. After the first 10 minutes or so of teetering about uncertainly and flailing and scrabbling at the wall for support, I was soon off and racing around the main rink at a reasonable pace. Mizuki fared less well, and after a couple of hours, she slipped and smacked her cheek on the ice, which called an end to proceedings. We tried to take a bus home, got stuck in a traffic jam behind a road accident, and finally got out and walked to a subway station. That night we watched the Woody Allen film Everybody Says I Love You which was quite excellent, though lighter in tone than what I usually enjoy from him.

Also saw Kubrick's Barry Lyndon which was beautiful and grand.

I have started two painting projects:

the first being my idealized impressions of the Australian destert landscapes I remember so vividly from childhood. Crumbling ochre and rust reds, hot black ironstone, poison spinifex, twisted old mallee trees, fragrant sandalwood, the blue sky empty and comforting. Perhaps the odd road, a broken wire-and-post fenceline, a decrepit windmill and corrugated tank, paddy melons exploding in the sun, the goannas and cockatoos and black trap-door spiders. Perhaps a distant plume of smoke like the line of drunken painter's brush, cutting across the azure plain.

the second being images of the urban residental districts Tokyo, in particular the old-style shitamachi towns which have been swamped and twisted by more recent architectural pestilences. Narrow crooked sakamichi (steeply-sloping alleys) overgrown with potted-plant jungles and tangled nests of cables wires poles and god knows what else. In these places, you're lucky if the sky is a narrow strip of blue: a glipse into an unreachable dream world of sun and space.

Recently I am reading Bob Dylan's new autobiography, which is even better than I could have hoped, Jack Vance's early stories, and I'm about to start a biography of Django Reinhardt. Just waiting for the Christmas break to begin....