Clocks and Beauty

Today I bought a clock and a wristwatch after not having either for over 2 years. Some sense of re-entering the river after an extended picnic on the bank.

Had lunch with Graf today, catching up. He is back in a "DnD Zone" and furiously creating worlds again; will probably run a new campaign in the coming months. We brainstormed out a basic neighbourhood of Ebberron's Sharn; I will play a Warforged former soldier / born-again Cleric of the Silver Flame. Think George Bush with a 7-foot Adamantium mechanised body, a two-handed shattered-quartz-crystal-headed mace, and the actual ability to call down columns of holy flaming wrath on his enemies or cure diseases with the mere touch of his hand. I want to play him without irony and without spite; a true believer. Should be a challenge; fairly antithetical to my own self. Schizophrenia here we come!

Enjoyed tea with the Iwasakis this morning, and had a great conversation about Australia, Japan, the end of the War. Mr Iwasaki is a professed pacifist, and his emotionally-charged opinions, given what I know about his history as a Japanese soldier in China during the war, always move me to a kind of humbling admixture of awe, sadness, respect, and anger. Goes well with the tea.

When I was in Australia, Japan felt like a dream. As soon as I return to Japan, Australia feels like a dream. I don't feel I live in a dream; but that the past is always dream-like; floating down the river; a child's rhyme stuck in my head.

Australia's beauty is of Country. Of peace and nature and space and light. A beauty of the ancient land and its history, woven in the wood of the trees, in the textures of the rocks. Japan's beauty is of Culture. Of word and brush and cloth and steel. A beauty of the ancient peoples and their history, cultivated in the fields, crafted in the cities.

Images of beauty:

the towering Karri near my father's house, white trunks soaring bridges to the sky, paths teased from the earth by the Aboriginal goddess with long white hair, spread across the heavens as the Milky Way.

the sheer geometrical perfection of a graveyard in deep Shinjuku, seen birds-eye from the 7th floor of a skyscraper, ancient beyond all reckoning, a faceted grid of stone lines and flowers, seeing it moved me to tears, thinking of those who had passed and would never return.

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On Friday night, went to Ritsuko's exhibition, bought a huge black monstrosity of abstraction for 20,000; can't wait to clutter my room even more. Saw Terra for the first time in a year, and she was well.

Pictures later.