parataxis

from a recent conversation online; and from me being laid up with the flu this weekend and having far too much time on my hands; a list of things i like; to be updated; for the benefit of my own poor memory more than anything

BOOKS

1001 Nights, Abe Kobo, Aeschylus, Aesop’s Fables, Albert Camus, Aldous Huxley, Aleksandr Pushkin, Aleksandr Solzhenistyn, Alexander Pope, Alfred Jarry, Andre Breton, Andre Gide, Anthony Burgess, Anton Chekhov, Antonin Artaud, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Ariwara no Narihara, Arthur Miller, Arthur Rimbaud, August Strindberg, Baruch Spinoza, Beowulf, Blaise Pascal, Bram Stoker, Carlos Fuentes, Charles Baudelaire, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, China Mieville, Christopher Marlowe, Cicero, Claude Levi-Strauss, Daniel Defoe, Dante, Dazai Osamu, DH Lawrence, Don DeLillo, Donald Barthelme, Doris Lessing, Dylan Thomas, Edgar Allan Poe, Edmund Spenser, Edward Gibbon, ee cummings, El Cid, EM Forster, Emile Zola, Emily Bronte, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene Ionesco, Euripides, Ezra Pound, F Scott Fitzgerald, Flannery O’Connor, Ford Madox Ford, Francis Bacon, Francois Rabelais, Frank Herbert, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevski, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gene Wolfe, Geoffery Chaucer, George Bernard Shaw, George Eliot, George Herbert, George Orwell, George RR Martin, Georges Battaile, Gertrude Stein, GK Chesterton, Graham Greene, Gunter Grass, Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, Harold Pinter, Henrik Ibsen, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, Herman Hesse, Herman Melville, Herodotus, HG Wells, Homer, Horace, Isaac Babel, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Italo Calvino, Ivan Turgenev, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, James Joyce, Jane Austen, JD Salinger, Jean Baudrillard, Jean Cocteau, Jean Cocteau, Jean Genet, Jean Paul Satre, Jean Racine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Barth, John Milton, John Steinbeck, Jonathan Swift, Jorge Luis Borges, Jose Saramago, Joseph Conrad, JRR Tolkien, Julius Gais Caesar, Kawabata Yasunari, Knut Hamsun, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Leo Tolstoy, Leonardo Da Vinci, Lewis Carroll, Longinus, Lope de Vega, Lord Byron, Mahabharata, Marcel Proust, Marco Polo, Marcus Aurelius, Margaret Atwood, Mark Twain, Mary Wollenstonecroft Shelley, Menander, Mervyn Peake, Michel Foucault, Miguel de Cervantes, Mishima Yukio, Moliere, Monkey, Nakagami Kenji, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Neal Stephenson, Nikolai Gogol, Norman Mailer, Octavio Paz, Orhan Pamuk, Oscar Wilde, Ovid, Pablo Neruda, Patrick O’Brian, Patrick White, Paul Valery, Paul Verlaine, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Peter Carey, Petrarch, Machiavelli, Philip K Dick, Philip Larkin, Philip Roth, Pindar, Plato, Plautus, Plutarch, Primo Levi, Ralph Ellison, Ramayana, Raymond Chandler, Richard Wagner, Robert Burns, Robert Frost, Robert Louis Stevenson, Roger Zelazny, Rudyard Kipling, Saint Augustine, Saki, Salman Rushdie, Samuel Beckett, Samuel Butler, Sappho, Saul Bellow, Seamus Heaney, Seneca, Simone de Beauvoir, Sir Thomas Malory, Sir Thomas More, Snorri Sturlson, Sophocles, Soren Kierkegaard, Stanislaw Lem, Stendahl, Stephane Mallarme, Tennessee Williams, The Apocrypha, The Bhagavad Gita, The Eddas, The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Holy Bible, The Nibelungen Lied, The Qur’an, The Saga of the Volsung, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Upanishads, Thomas De Quincey, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Keneally, Thomas Mann, Thomas Pynchon, Thucydides, Truman Capote, TS Eliot, Ursula K Le Guin, Victor Hugo, Virgil, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Voltaire, VS Naipaul, W. Somerset Maugham, Walter Benjamin, WH Auden, Wilfred Owen, William Blake, William Butler Yeats, William Empson, William Faulkner, William Gibson, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth

FILMS

Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock, Bernado Bertolucci, Billy Wilder, Brian De Palma, Charlie Chaplin, Christopher Nolan, Clint Eastwood, Darren Aronofsky, David Cronenberg, David Fincher, David Lynch, Dennis Hopper, Ed Wood, Federico Fellini, Francis Ford Coppola, Francois Truffault, Fritz Lang, George Lucas, George Romero, Hal Hartley, Ingmar Bergman, Jane Campion, Jean-Luc Godard, Jim Henson, Jim Jarmusch, Joel and Ethan Coen, John Cassavetes, Ken Russell, Kevin Smith, Luis Bunuel, M. Night Shyamalan, Martin Scorsese, Mel Brooks, Milos Forman, Oliver Stone, Orson Welles, Pedro Almodovar, Peter Jackson, Peter Weir, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, Ridley Scott, Rob Reiner, Robert Altman, Roman Polanski, Sam Mendes, Sam Peckinpah, Sam Raimi, Sergei Eisenstein, Sir Richard Attenborough, Sofia Coppola, Spike Jonze, Spike Lee, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, Todd Solondz, Walt Disney, Werner Herzog, Wes Craven, Woody Allen

MUSIC

ACDC, Air, Aphex Twin, Arcade Fire, Asian Dub Foundation, At The Drive-In, Atari Teenage Riot, Autechre, Avalanches, Bad Brains, Basement Jaxx, Bauhaus, Beck, Belle & Sebastian, Ben Folds Five, Bill Laswell, Billie Holiday, Bjork, Black Francis, Black Sabbath, Blur, Boards of Canada, Bob Dylan, Bob Marely & The Wailers, Bobby Digital, Bonnie Prince Billy, Boris, Brian Eno, Brian Wilson, Bruce Springsteen, Buena Vista Social Club, Buffalo Springfield, Burzum, Byrds, Can, Cannibal Corpse, Captain Beefheart, Cat Power, Celtic Frost, Chopin, Chuck Berry, Cibo Matto, Clannad, Claude Debussy, Cocco, Cocteau Twins, Coldplay, Converge, Cornelius, Cream, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Daft Punk, David Bowie, Dead Can Dance, Deerhoof, Deftones, Denki Groove, Depeche Mode, Dire Straits, Dismemberment Plan, DJ Shadow, DJ Spooky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Doc Watson, Dr. Octagon, Duke Ellington, Ed Rush, Einsturzende Neubauten, Eminem, Emperor, Enigma, Enslaved, Enya, Eric Clapton, Fantomas, Filter, Foo Fighters, Frank Black, Frank Sinatra, Franz Ferdinand, Fu Manchu, Fugazi, Fugees, Gary Numan, GG Allin, Ghostface Killah, Glenn Gould, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Gojira, Gordon Lightfoot, Gorillaz, Grandmaster Flash, Green Day, Guns n’ Roses, Hang On The Box, Harry Nilsson, High On Fire, Husker Du, Ice Cube, Interpol, Isis, Jackie-O Motherfucker, James Brown, Jane’s Addiction, Janis Joplin, Jeff Beck, Jeff Buckley, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, John Cale, John Coltrane, John Frusciante, John Lennon, John Zorn, Johnny Cash, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Joy Division, Kate Bush, Kid 606, King Crimson, King Tubby, Kiss, KMFDM, Kraftwerk, Kyuss, Lamb, Laurie Anderson, Led Zeppelin, Lee Perry, Leonard Cohen, Liars, Lisa Gerrard, Living Color, Lolita 18, Lou Reed, Low, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Madness, Manic Street Preachers, Massacre, Massive Attack, Mastodon, Mayhem, MC5, Mekons, Melt Banana, Merzbow, Meshuggah, Metallica, Michael Jackson, Mick Turner, Midnight Oil, Miles Davis, Miranda Sex Garden, Misery Index, Moby, Modest Mouse, Moebius, Mogwai, Muse, My Bloody Valentine, Neil Young, Neu!, Neuraxis, Neurosis, New Order, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Nick Drake, Nile, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Notwist, Number Girl, NWA, Olivia Tremor Control, Om, OOIOO, Opeth, Orbital, Pachelbel, Pantera, Passengers, Patti Smith, Paul Simon, Pavement, Pearl Jam, Pelican, Pere Ubu, Peter Gabriel, Philip Glass, Pink Floyd, PJ Harvey, Placebo, Planxty, Plastic Tree, Portishead, Prince, Public Enemy, Queen, Queens of the Stone Age, Rachmaninov, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Rapture, RC Succession, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Regurgitator, REM, Rodelius, Roots, Rovo, Roy Orbison, Rush, Ry Cooder, RZA, Sebadoh, Shizuo, Sigur Ros, Simon & Garfunkel, Skinny Puppy, Slayer, Sleater-Kinney, Slowdrive, Smashing Pumpkins, Smog, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, Sparta, Squarepusher, Steely Dan, Steve Earle, Steve Reich, Sunn O))), Sunny Day Real Estate, Super Furry Animals, Supergrass, Swans, Syd Barrett, Syrup16g, Talking Heads, Television, Tenacious D, The Allman Brothers Band, The Band, The Beach Boys, The Beastie Boys, The Beatles, The Beta Band, The Birthday Party, The Boredoms, the brilliant green, The Chemical Brothers, The Chieftans, The Clash, The Cops, The Cure, The Dirty Three, The Doors, The Fall, The Flaming Lips, The Folk Implosion, The Fureys, The Jesus And Mary Chain, The Kinks, The La’s, The Mars Volta, The Music, The Orb, The Pixies, The Pogues, The Prodigy, The Raincoats, The Ramones, The Rolling Stones, The Saints, The Sex Pistols, The Slits, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, The Stooges, The Stranglers, The Strokes, The Velvet Underground, The White Stripes, The Who, The Yardbirds, Thelonius Monk, They Might Be Giants, Thom Yorke, Thorns, Tom Waits, Tommy February6, Tool, Tori Amos, Tortoise, Tracy Chapman, Tricky, Turbonegro, TV On the Radio, Two Lone Swordsmen, U2, Underworld, UNKLE, Van Morrison, Vangelis, Venom, Violent Femmes, Waylon Jennings, Ween, Weezer, Wilco, Wolf Eyes, Wolf Parade, Wu-Tang Clan, X Japan, Xiu Xiu, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Yo La Tengo

夏休み

8/12 夕立

in the late afternoon the clouds open and water falls, all of sudden and with force
i am reminded of the monsoons in malaysia
the waves

a basket of freshly washed linen
still wet, dripping white
overturned on the street

8/13 大凶

on the thirteenth day, among the swords and cameras at sensoji, i draw a dark fortune
crippled, i grip my cane with a bird-like claw, my palm black with bruises

i see a girl and her grandmother standing before the steps

i am reminded of death; of joy

8/14 サムライFRANCAIS

a carpenter, he swims the kamogawa at night, burns incense each morning at the altar, wears a white headband ringed with symbols of power and strength
while he vaccuums the tatami

8/14 稲荷

In the 19th year of Oyei, Oji no Tachibana of the Hoshoji at Inari met with a serious accident and his life was in danger. The god of Inari took possession of a girl and said through her mouth, ‘If the Kwanze performs some plays for me, the sick man will recover.’ Seami, quoted in The Noh Plays of Japan, Arthur Waley

we find, deep in the heart of the mountain, down strange turnings and rough paths, a font of water springing pure and strong from the rock. surrounded by stone foxes, stern gazes locked on us, we bathe our feet in the stream, rest a while, and pass on

8/16 大文字

the character 大 burns brightly on the mountain; a man with arms and legs stretched wide to their utmost. the man is the universe. the man is endless

later, on stone islands in the kamogawa, we send fire flowers into the night sky. young people laugh, and i feel both a child and an ancient, and i feel i have once stood where they stand, and have laughed just so

8/18, 8/24 踊り

in juuban, the 盆 movements are simple and gentle, short cycles, shuffling forward and back, a slow happy dance, calling the spirits of loved ones

in otsuka, the 阿波 is passionate and strong, the drums roll like stormclouds, the summer rains filling the rice with sunlight.

the women are beautiful and their movements are free. torchlight flickers on strands of hair sprung loose from a straw hat, sticking with sweat on the nape of the neck

the air is bright with rhythm and laughing drunken abandon; happiness

8/23 ゲーム

A field of autumn leaves. A white table. A white seat at each edge. Four businessmen approach, place briefcases neatly, take seats. Ties slowly removed and folded, hair combed, one cracks a can of citrus cola like a nut, crisp and clean. From jewelled cases they take cards, decks prepared for the occasion, slight adjustments after a strictly casual glance at the opposition, a card here and there replaced, a shift of focus, chinks in armor, thin blades. The cards are layed on the table. The game begins.

8/24 BIG FUCK-OFF GLASSES

in harajuku, the mirrorshades are huge

8/25 SPIRALS > CIRCLES

perfection is overrated
if you go in circles you go nowhere
far better, then, to deviate
to move in a spiral
to build momentum
and power through orbital movement
and to fling oneself outwards
ever widening arcs
looping back in for another revolution
passing so close to the line but never crossing
ever hastening
reaching terminal velocity

what is that centre?
and if i break from it, where to in the void?

ON THE DAY that was meant to be the last, I returned to the temple and received a second fortune. It reads:

All of your family members should be patient and careful. You had better believe in gods or Buddha. Everything will go slowly and not progressive because devils will give you damage, and many mistakes and misunderstandings will happen.

Even if you might lose treasure, it will appear again. Do your best, then the situation will change and you can get good fortune.

bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky

ハヤブサは飛ぶ　/ the hawk's flight

Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk's flight
on the empty sky.

[Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea]

These day's I have been reading (and re-reading) UKLG's A Wizard of Earthsea in both Japanese and English. It serves as a form of language study for me, and a subject for discussion at my weekly tea-and-conversation meetings with my next-door-neighbour Mrs. Watado. She is also reading the book at the moment, on my recommendation and in preparation for the upcoming release of Miyazaki Goro's animated version, ゲド戦記 (lit. The War Journal of Ged.)

It's such a fantastic novel, I am eager to see the film. I will go see it on the 11th of August, probably at the Roppongi Hills cinema complex where I saw ハウルの動く城　(Howl's Moving Castle) 2 years ago. This will be the 3rd Ghibli movie premiere I have seen while living in this country. They seem like milestones to me somehow.

As I discussed with Mrs. Watado this morning, though, the translation into Japanese is a little odd. The long, flowing sentences of the opening passage in particular, sketching the isle of Gont where the boy Ged spent his youth, are truncated and cut into mere descriptive text. It makes me wonder how much I have lost of the countless books I have read translated out of their native tongues into English. It makes me want to study Ancient Greek and resail the wine-dark seas of The Odyssey, to get lost again in the twisting paths the Spanish Labyrthinths, to take up arms once more against the kenning guile of the skalds and their Edda.





影を放つ / the loosing of the shadow

meanwhile, i am reading a lot of blogs from lebanon. i wrote myself an email from my phone:

soundtrack to an insane world
vicarious
black swan
packed in a subway car
immersed in the blogosphere








歌詞

vicarious

the universe is hostile
so impersonal
devour to survive, so it is
so it's always been

we all feed on tragedy
it's like bood to a vampire

vicariously i live while the whole world dies
much better you than i

black swan

buy a ticket and get on the train

cause this is fucked up, fucked up

レバノン戦記

http://lebanesebloggers.blogspot.com/
http://cedarseed.livejournal.com/
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/
http://chercheusedor.blogspot.com/
http://www.michaeltotten.com/
。。。

"I felt completely fine and safe. I climbed out. I got out of the car and I said, 'Thank you,' and he was gone."

Soundtrack: The Flaming Lips, "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate." The Soft Bulletin.

The Holy Grail tonight (France or Italy?); appearing on three TV channels. Learning Italian curses.

Kidney's 37th; an old hand-held pinball bikini-girl strip game. A Hanshin Tigers' doll with a revolving face. A bottle of Awamori. Almost buying chrysanthemums.

Marla's farewell; a woman who won't leave me alone. A dream of a Japanese urban cat biting my hand and not letting go; Peacock's insight. Irishmen in the neighbourhood; Osakan okonomiyaki, beer and Herzog.

The White Diamond; mysterious caves that must not be seen. A kingdom of swifts. Staring through a bubble. What does he see? Missing fingers and a man falling to his death in the jungle. A rooster and his master: Marc Antony.

Big Muff vs. Rat. Doomed.

Miximizing: invited by two girls to this insular japanese web. Nickname: ランス

But two beautiful Korean sisters: ランツ; perhaps closer.

A Peruvian party at Noriko's place in Niiza; a room full of smiling people dancing the salsa with Lucero; so many stories, so little time.

Words: Pabo. Boji. Ippoda. Bafanculo. Filio di putana.

http://brazilianmusic.com/

http://www.doom-metal.com/

Things to do: make a garden, get laid, learn spanish, learn korean, buy a new acoustic and study latin patterns, get inked, learn to dance.

And finally, the Tribe moves on:
/salute
/log

scratchings

a strange day, this sixth of the sixth moon. the last few weeks have been dominated by music. two formations: barhof; earbleeder. long wanderings of the city taking cellphone shots by the hundred. on a sunday morning, extreme noise in a studio / okonomiyaki and beer and fish&chips and tales of witches demons and bats with two irishmen and a yank / extreme noise in a studio. on the next, 17th century gaelic music / experimental wadaiko minimalist jazz / contemporary koto pop / death-/core-/power-/thrash-metal with three japanese ladies an elderly 2nd-world war veteran and a bunch o scrubs. and the house cd was ‘prayers on fire’. kathy's kisses!



and someone finally recognized my tshirt.



the ‘deranged nightmare’ i mentioned to paul; scribbled sometime in the early morning:

talking to my father. hearing music – islamic chanting like i heard that day in malaysia, words with meaning, profound, divine, like angels, sounding like angels.

i explain, but he doesn’t hear the music – again and again – finally I imitate the sound and he listens. somehow my father is hillel slovak.

he says they are the voices of WAR. this word vibrates with epic, universe-spanning demonic undertones. his eyes are concerned. “be quiet.” he tells me. “cover your mouth.”

he is holding a silver teaspoon and places it over his mouth, the bowl facing outwards. he opens his mouth, and there is a sun inside. a golden sun, divine. the spoon is like a lens and the light flares as it passes through it. the light bathes me and rends me and opens me to be seen. it burns me. agony. like a tight fist of fire clenching the muscles. he looks into me and nods, saddened.

i open my mouth. there is another sun within me, blood-crimson. it burns him. he accepts it.

and to he i and to i he.

beats

takeshis'

the first thing i notice: the apostrophe marking the plural possessive. this film is: takeshi the yakuza flick media icon meets kitano the doppelganger out-of-work actor ---> cuts between each man's imagining of the other's life ---> the membrane between the two - between reality and fiction - between the multiple personas of an individual - between the public and private worlds - between the past and present - one past and another - one man and another --- this membrane, pierced by bullets, blown apart, the selves contained, like multicolored viscous fluids, leaking through, rushing through, pouring through, meeting, swirling around eachother, distinct but indivisible --- gunshots, a shoe tapped hard on wood

the foreign soldier, rifle raised; on the beach at the end of the world, the charging samurai; the face-off in the warehouse; the blue go signal; the bank robbery; the centipede tapdancers; the ramenshop yakuza auditions; the autobiographical car accident; the beat kiyoshi manzai oyaji gyagu; the nagging woman, breaking the note for the gum

in parts i laughed out loud, in others i sat entranced, as though partaking of a strange dream. shooting the girl in the okinawan hut, like something from a mishima novel. the lights too bright, the cicadas too loud, their sound seeping into the rock. on the beach i saw takeshi blasting away his past, disentangling himself from those dream-people, those dream-selves; the infinite machine gun. to feel the heat of the white sand. to smell the gunpowder infusing the air.

"俺は金儲けでやてるんじゃないんだよ"
"I'm not doing this for the money."

the week

drumming. after another nagauta trip out to higashimatsuyama with mr iwasaki, he took me to meet the mochizuki family down the street who are traditional musicians in the kabuki theatre. we had tea and then watched them practice. overwhelmed with the solemnity and beauty of the study. the clean smell of okou incense. the intricacies of the shamisen/song/taiko/tsuzumi. sitting in seiza is good for the soul



lost my voice

caught a fish

gaah my eyes!

machines/fish/machines

time off. mum's in canada, dad's back at work. saw an exhibition celebrating the artistic links between berlin and tokyo - the avant-garde section including Der Sturm and Fluxus. saw in the same place an exhibition by U Ram Choe of exquisite, delicate, beautiful mechanical creatures, the Urbanus. the female of the species was particularly stunning; a supernova or a flower, unfolding fronds and petals and spinning metal fins, the centre swelling with light. she dwarfed her flock of male suitors, they angling toward her, fins flowing as they swam through the urban electrosphere. just...amazing.



i was reminded today of these creatures. today was kodomo-no-hi (children's day) and the koi-nobori (swimming carp) are flying around the country on houses with children. two big carp for mother and father, and smaller ones indicating each child. bringing luck and urging kids to swim upstream against all odds, to never give up, to keep hope and strength and passion. i've always loved this time of year.

Long Stories Short

A student today, is revealed by chance glimpse of a photo in a notebook, as a friend of a friend who worships the devil across the sea - and this young girl she was born on the sixth of June, and is of an age of thirty-three this year and wants, on the nape of her neck, that unaji of erotic infamy, the numbers

666

tattooed in black ink, irrevocable. She loves skulls, like another girl I know, echoes of the Dia De Los Muertos. Cute, she says: skull-scrawled; skull-clad; skull-spangled.


INTERSTICES

I recall a drunken conversation with a co-worker the week before last; revealed by chance glimpse of twin tattoos on his forearms; black and red – I-ching hexagrams, something and Grace. Snake-Eyes and Storm-Shadow. And so we talked of chances, and creation, and flânerie: his stories of days spent wandering at the whim of a pair of dice and questions posed under influence. Schizing across the city; doing things that one doesn’t want to do, pushing into zones of extreme discomfort. And for what? he asked. And I recall that my father told these same stories, walked these same paths unwalked by any other fore or since, pebbles thrown into the same river. And I too, on acid, across the trackless urban hills, I-Ching in fist, PKD-inspired, following a rabbit down a hole to find/write/be written by my thesis.

IMAGES OF DICE

Dice roll around the edges of everything. When in university, years I spent, reading theories of determinism and free will, and I came to the conclusion that there is no freedom: that all flows from before. Spinozistic (in retrospect), I saw that God and Nature are coterminous. Platonic, that from inside we can know nothing but a distortion and that there is no outside, only the whole. Sartrean, that responsibility comes with such a revelation of human limitation. And from this Humility.

And from this The Avatar.

Dice from games I play. Systems of storytelling. Stories being everything; stories making the world go round.

I told a story the other day, shaking knucklebones in a skull, tossed them on a flat green stone.

Three sixes.

light emitting diodes descending >> river stones on wood << pixels emerging

Went to an exhibition near nippori station last sat. night; “fragile” by Miyajima Tatsuo. Beautiful old building; a restored Sento or public bathhouse from 1787. Miyajima’s works are ‘sculptures’ constructed of red LED counters ticking down at various speeds from 9 to 1 (zero is an emptiness; a darkness.) some are like latticeworks or spiderwebs, hanging delicately from the walls and spangled with crimson fireflies speeding down in time, around and around again cycling forever – some slow like aeons, some a blur of movement. Others are trapped in plastic bubbles suspended in water, floating like digital seacreatures dredged from some infinitely dark depth. Some are inside the windows; the light of the sun or of passing headlights splays ghostlike projections of numbers tumbling down the walls…what stuck me most about these things was that they are always ticking DOWN, but cycle over and over; the effect being a simultaneous sense of both loss and endlessness. I want to see more of his works.

simple electronics; nostalgia; the game of life

This exhibition evoked all sort of memories and associations. Firstly; my nostalgic love of old computer technology. The vic 20 days; the c64; the amiga – these things have entered into a unique aesthetic realm now, infinitely cool and even moving. Miyajima’s sculptures remind me of John Conway’s Game of Life where systems of extreme simplicity give rise to complex, beautiful, and mesmerizing patterns and behavior. My love of the game of I-Go is connected with my discovery of these patterns long years ago. When I first lived in Japan, in Osaka, I lived near the Shinsekai (New World) district and its famous tower the Tsutenkaku (Tower reaching to Heaven.) This area is famous for its gaming dens – the traditional games of Mahjong, Shogi, and I-go, and now more modern pastimes such as pachinko and slot machines. I hung around here for a while, watching the old men play their games, and eventually one Saturday, was invited to join them at a table. I played then every weekend for a few months. These quiet old men with their deeply-lined faces, smoking pipes and chewing strips of dried squid while sipping tea and reading the newspaper in the afternoon sun, eyes roaming over pale wooden boards strewn with white and black river stones – these are treasured memories. Go is a fascinating game, deeply philosophical like that Game of Life; creating beautiful patterns from simple rules. From Wikipedia:

It is commonly said that no game has ever been played twice. This may be true: On a 19×19 board, there are about 3^361×0.012 = 2.1×10^170 possible positions, most of which are the end result of about (120!)^2 = 4.5×10^397 different (no-capture) games, for a total of about 9.3×10^567 games. Allowing captures gives as many as

10^(7.49x10^48)

possible games, all of which last for over 4.1×10^48 moves! (For two comparisons: the number of legal positions in chess is estimated to be between 10^43 and 10^50; and physicists estimate that there are not more than 10^90 protons in the entire visible universe.)

So there are more games of Go than there are protons in the Universe. Somehow I always find this to be a comforting fact. Something I read in Borges, I think a paraphrase of a quotation of a fictious source, springs to mind: “The simplest possible abstraction of the universe is the universe itself.”

Closely related to these things; my love of the works of Benoit Mandelbrot, the Polish-French Mathematician whose books are both rigorously theoretical and exquisitely artistic. Fractals, too, are tiny equations that illustrate Emergence.

Like improvisational Jazz; unpredicted beauty from the confluence of rules and chaos.

Like Noise Music; another reason why I came to this country; waves of shimmering sound at extreme volume produces unique and irreproducible sheens and patterns, melodies and rythyms – objects of beauty captured momentarily from the void, held in the hand for the briefest of spans, marveled at and gasped over – only to disappear instantly back into the Sea of Possiblities, the cosmic background radiation, the afterbirth of the universe, the Hissing Underlying Everything. That's what you see and hear when you detune an analog receiver. That memory of the Universe's beginning.

And like a great game I want to plug: Darwinia by UK company Introversion which has been winning all sorts of awards of late and is the ultimate retro-computer nerd’s (that’s me) nostalgic trip-game. This game, truly, restores my faith in the once-grand potential of the gaming industry to create a new medium for the production of Art and Aesthetica. This is what games SHOULD be.

notes from a teacher training meeting

This is training week, where we are presented with vaulted depictions of lessons hovering in a glittering astral realm of Platonic ideation. During one particularly mind-numbing moment, I was struck by the contrast between the teaching philosophies of contemporary western education; praise, encouragement, positive reinforcement and so on – and a sudden vision of the North Korean police state with its drill-sergeant-perfect synchronization of the human being to a machinelike ordered monster, somehow brutal, remorseless, pathological. Kim standing on a hill surveying his geometrical fields of human crops. Not a shepherd; a harvester. Then suddenly, the idea that Kim and his ilk are bad teachers. That teachers, the lords of their small realms, are by their very nature tiny autocrats; dictators; leaders; visionaries; guides and prophets. As above, so below. A class that collapses into chaos or succumbs to vicious routine or quails in fear of the master’s whipwood cane – these are the small haemorrages of society. I have had terrorist students, who through jealousy or boredom or frustration or simple malice, systematically seek to take apart the nation that I and we have built. Each class has its accountants and its fundamentalists, its sheep and wolves. Who am I here? Caesar or Stalin? Victoria or Ghandi? As the lectures wore on I found my mind wandering even further, to a questioning of a fundamental premise of language teaching – the notion that teaching is a transmission of knowledge. And of course in practice a language is no static datum but rather a fluxious process, a Deleuzian becoming, a way. Reminded of martial arts training – perhaps this is another, less trodden, path? Asian students cannot learn my English – my idioms, my inflections - they must instead gather the tools and skills and experience with which to make their own. And this they do and are doing, Oxford be damned.

shoben yokocho

April each year here
Is like a flashback;
A daemonic memory
Of the ancient times
When I first walked the streets of Shinjuku
And caroused the bars of piss alley.

And these men
These lost men; each with stories
Too long in the telling;
Tattoos deep inked and swelling
With history and blood and emotion
Speak their hearts in cheap izakaya.

sandstorm

On the edge of the town, red earth, a plain of dust and spinifex thorn bushes twining like stunted hedge mazes across the cracked skin of the land, i sat, crouched in the arms of an old salmon gum, warm eucalyptus breeze stirring the locks of wispy blonde hair falling over my eyes. The clean parched air rippling below. A bungarra slowly swishing across the black ironstone to lay, blood-lazy with clotted warmth, on the rock. His tongue, blue-black, flickered out to lick his nose. i could tell he was thirsty, like the trees and all the land. in my dirty hard hands i turned the arrowhead over and over, feeling its sharp rusted edge, the coolness of the metal, the ridge down the centre its forged spine, the sense of pain it suggested, of pierced flesh and wood protruding from bone, lodged somewhere within, better to push through than attempt to withdraw. A clean bisection. My nose ran a little and i wiped it on the back of my hand, already sticky with half dried mucus. The archery field lay about three kilometers from my home. Out beyond the rock that had strange discolorations like the markings of a face. Maybe the traces of some lost artist, his own dust bones gently caressing away the pigments ground from river stones and massaged into the stone’s porous quartzite skin. The field was an empty space of dry red dust, turned of most large stones, fast being reclaimed by the straggling weeds and creeping spinifex of the desert. Remnants of wooden target stands lay in piles of decay at the far edge. I’d run into the place with a sense of profound awe. The empty field carved from the waste by the hands of men long since passed on, never to return. i’d stepped on the sharp arrowhead with my hard black feet. Like some kind of image in a film. i saw myself glance down, pick it up, turn it over and over. Still turning it.

In the tree i felt all of a sudden the immense stillness of the moment. The lullaby motion had ceased, a slow imperception. My hair hang motionless and soft in my eyes. i brushed it aside with my arrow-hand, running the edge of the blade across my forehead gently, visualising the pink line, opening into blood for an instant – a smooth visage. The warm wind had stopped. i peered up into the branches. Smell of eucalyptus. Everything was silent. The leaves barely rustled against eachother. There were no birds. Even the clicking cicadas and crickets held voiceless. i didnt speak much, but i was used to listening to the speech of the world around me. This was disquieting. i squirmed uncomfortably.

From the corner of my eye something caught my attention. A slight darkening on the horizon. The blue arc of the sky shadowed at the edge by perturbation, unsettlement. The silence and a distant, subsonic murmur. i felt the air picking up, a smell of electricity, of energy infusing the spaces between things, everything. i looked down; the goanna was gone, sashayed off to some dark cool hole. The world was dimming. The sky had flowed to ultramarine, navy, jet. A dull red haze began to saturate the skyline. i could see a shadow on the horizon, growing as the silence, as the noise grew. The arrowhead lay dead and hard in my palm.

This was like no storm i had ever seen. No moisture, no smell of yearning parched earth. The earth here shrivelled away, retreated, turned its face in towards its stomach, shied from the sky. Not a drop of water. i opened my lips and the stillness sucked my mouth dry. i could see this, this red storm, like a wall of dark dry blood massing on the edge of the plain. An army mustering troops, gathered from all four corners of the world, sweeping in lines across the stone land, dust rising like the beacon of some approaching violence, some heavy dead killing mask. steel and dust. the dead of the world and man. and the army came marching at me. implacable. resolute. mindless. not a machine but a force. driven, without recourse, without hope of return. To the ends of the earth. the wall of dust would blanket the earth until the winds came to blow it away.

i jumped from the tree. landed awkwardly on an old mallee root, grey and rock hard, twisted my ankle. a cry from my mouth. high and thin. a tiny sound against this roar. The sandstorm was a wall gathering at my shoulders. The sky was crimson black. ash and dull coal. but dry. so dry i thought i could not live an instant in that dust. that the water of me was a lure to this hungry things thirst, unquenchable as the desert, drinking down the world in its infinte dry belly.

i ran. limping. for the house. my ankle firing like arrows in the heel. back past the copse of eucalyptus, through the sand piles, over the hedge of withered roses my mother pretended to tend in the summer, leaping the parched yellow bullgrass lawn. the wall of sand buffeted my shoulders. the smell was of ageless stone ground into fine powder, proud mountains reduced by time to near-nothingnesses, bitter somehow about this diasporation, each one amongst so many countless millions. a collective of lost glory. dry eyes searching for the currents of blood. i leapt onto the verandah, stumbling on the top step, staggering forward to tear open the glass sliding door and slip inside through the crack, ripping it closed behind me as the first dry tongues of sand licked my shoudlers. and then the wall hit. the world went black, red. The world was noise. impossible noise. the windows vibrate

Glasgow Mega-Snake is a fucking good name for a song

(spinoza's signet ring)

Mr. Beast is a gift. this music is somehow intensely spiritual, approaching the divine. Mogwai have earned their place in my heart and my IPod for many years now. when i listen to them, in headphones with the volume pushed into my synaesthetic range, my whole body lifts, textures appear on the surface of an unnamed sense, curtains of light and energy rush through me into the sky. beyond thought, pure joy

oblivion continues to impress too. truly beautiful world-making. the modding shall begin in earnest soon as i get some free time...

last night my neighbour, a professor of urban sociology and ethnic studies, held a party with a group of people from the NGO Shanti Volunteer Association, some visiting Bangladeshis and a Buddhist monk/researcher from Koyasan University. Together with mister Watado, his wife, and another gentleman novelist, we downed copious amounts of sake and talked into the small hours. topics included the earthly avatars of Amitabha/Amida and Avalokiteshvara/Kwan Yin (Panchen Lama and Dalai Lama respectively,) the books of Mishima Yukio which as conicidence would have it both I and my neighbour's wife are reading at the moment, Nakagami Kenji the burakumin(ancient underclass) novelist, Dostoyevski, and Spinoza. good people all. i was invited to stay at Koyasan sometime and its sounds like a fascinating and unique opportunity.

How to enjoy sushi

Totally serious. No sarcasm here at all.

night maras...

woke up from a nightmare

something perched on my chest

heavy as a corpse

no breath

frozen

.

this screen a window out of the room
a world of numbers; structure
comprehensible

here's an old story i told around a campfire, carrying a lantern and a sacrificial dagger, curved like a three-day moon, sharp as crimson-lacquered talons, tusks and viridian tattoos, a golden star in the centre of my brow, softly glowing...

((As told at The Night of The Star, Feb 10th, Undercity courtyard, Maelstrom.))

DA NIGHT-MARA

Once dere wuz a lonely old troll carpentah who wuz haunted by Night-Maras. Now, as every liddle troll knows, dese Maras dey be evil spirits; dey perch on yah chest at night and whispah bad tings in yah ear...

Dis old troll, he heard 'nuf, but he knew as he could ne'er catch dat Mara by hisself, cuz such fairies dey weave webs o great drowziness o'er dere vick-teems - but he conspired wit his friend, a chandlah, and dey laid a tricksey trap indeed...

One black night, de Carpentah went ta sleep, and hiss friend de Chandlah, he sat hidden with a stingin' nettle under his bum-hole, so as if he did sleep he wake up quic-as-a-flash like! Heh heh. And sure 'nuff, in de hour afore dawn...

in troo de keyhole, e'er so slowly-like, dere crept a fat white lizzud, glissnen like Da Mooon, an it plopped on de floor and slinky-slunk towards de bed where lay de Carpentah. And de Chandlah grew sleepy, like some voodoo song be ringin in his ears...

Den Suddenlee he sit down and yell out!

"OUCH! Sweet Momma Mah Ass Be A-Stinging!"

And he rushed to de door and stuck his candle in dat keyhole, and den out he went like a light!

Meanwhile, de Carptenah he be awoken by all the shoutin', and seein' da Lizzud he grabbed is hammer and nail and wit all his might he nailed dat mean spirit-tings front paw to de floor. Den like a coconut falling from a tree he too fell into de land o Nod.

In de mornin, de two trolls woke up, and were supprahzed to find a byuutifool and honey-eyed troll girlie in dere room, nekkid as de day she popped outta her momma! Skin smooth and white like Alla-Bastah she done had...

An' hair like woven silvah...but her hand was blood red and scaly and nailed to da floor...

As soon as dey beheld her de trolls dey fell in Lurve....

"She's a-Mine!" yelled de Chandlah. " Twas mah candle dat kept her from runnin'!" "BAH! She's a-Mine!" replied de Carpentah. "Twas mah nail dat kept her here!" And so dey argued back and forth and soon dey come to violent blows...

"ENOUGH!" de Mara-girl suddenly screamed. "Cleea-lee ya both have a right tah mee - yah magick spell-charms be holdin me in dis cursed place." And she wailed like a wolf den...

(For as any young troll-un knows, de normal everyday tings o dis world are magicks to dem from bee-yond, juss as dere mudanities be sorceries and hokuzz pokuzz to uss...)

So den de two trolls dey be driven tah madness bah her words, and each one he rushed to de odder ones 'charm' and tore it free. Dem stoopid trolls...

"No candle now!" yelled de Carpentah "Ya be free o him!" "No nail now!" yelled de Chandlah. "Yah be free o him!"...And den de troll-girlie smiled a wicked smile, and out from her lips dere came a long pink tongue, and wit it she licked her own eye...

"Ha ha!" she laugh, and den she wuz a liddle white lizzud, pale as Da Mooon, and like lightin' quickasaflash, out de keyhole she skitted. Lickety-split! All in her glory...And Dat...

is da end o da story!

itadakimasu

Recent thoughts:

Food.

One of the reasons I love Japan and continue to live here is the food. It really is incomparable. This nation treats food as one of the great pleasures of life. It is a joy and an art. Today I had lunch at Ootoya, a chain of affordable ‘homestyle’ cooking restaurants that can be found near most train stations. Very popular with people from all walks of life: businesspeople, schoolkids, housewives, retirees; the works.

My lunch:

Grilled salmon served with a little lemon and oroshi daikon finely-grated Japanese radish and shoyu soy sauce.

Piping hot bowl of Japanese white rice.

Renkon sliced lotus-root in a mild mustard sauce.

Bowl of miso soup with long onions, chives, wakame seaweed, and soybean curd fu.

Soft white tofu with dried nori seaweed, katsuobushi dried bonito fish flakes, spring onions, grated wasabi horseradish and tsuyu, a chilled light dipping soup of shoyu, sweetened mirin sake, and dashi fish stock.

Tsukemono salt-pickled slices of Japanese kyuuri cucumber.

Cold spinach leaves seasoned with a kurogoma black sesame sauce.

Water and hot green tea.

All served on conservative wabisabi Japanese-style ceramic tablewear. Pristine light waribashi wooden chopsticks. A steaming oshibori hot towel with which to cleanse ones hands before dining.

Cost?

714 yen inc. tax.

At today's rate, 8 dollars 49 cents Australian. For lunch.

Tell me where I can get this in any other country. Answer: I can’t. Every lunch is a pleasure and a moment of aesthetic appreciation. Its like going to an exhibition. Before I eat I whisper the Japanese expression itadakimasu; often translated as bon appetite, but really it is something much more. An offering of thanks to the chef who prepared the meal with the skill of a master-artisan; to the spirits of the animals sacrificed so that I may live; to the gods of the land in whose soil the plants take root and to the great sun whose light makes them grow tall and strong. To the simple fact that I am alive and able to appreciate the pleasures of taste and aroma and beauty and contentment.

And then, sated, I head back to the office.

IC; it feels good to watch george clooney tortured; seijinshiki

seem to be finding a lot of texts dealing with terrorism/anarchism/revolutionary movements recently. some quite interesting.

books:

China Mieville's Iron Council. Read the first two books, Perdido Street Station and The Scar, first.

here, the heroes are terrorist/revolutionaries. socialist mythology, the paris commune. the image of the perpetual train, a group of criminal chain gang railway workers who kill their masters/guards and lay endless tracks across the untracked wastelands, taking the rails from behind to lay down in front, is one that will stay with me. seminar discussing the book including comments from the author, here.

films:

Syriana was great. Someone said to me: 'I prefer my fantasies to have wizards in pointy hats.' But of course I disagree. All texts are fiction. All sense is fantasy. And the things that this movie said spoke to me as true as any other voice I've heard recently. Munich, Narnia, Violence, Koreda, Bergman, Capote, Vendetta, Night Watch, Immortel.

'Arabs are very family oriented, as a people. Is that racist?'
'Sure.'
'It is?'
'A little. Well no, I guess if what you're saying is positive...'

The Information Revolution, they used to call it. Who knows what is going on anymore? The answer to that question is: no one at all. And further questions: did anyone, ever? Information, not Knowledge. A human brain is only so big.

Someone else was writing a letter to her 20-year old daughter on her coming-of-age. Struggling for sage advice. 'Know thyself.' 'Wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.' 'Happiness is when what we think, what we say, and what we do are in harmony.'

on the dude's shirt: INTEGRITY

This weekend was great. hung out with old friends back in town for a time, then hung with ritz and the crew in the buya. I fell in love with a beautiful scientist and got a bloodied nose from a deathmetal gig melee. deep in a tokyo metal dungeon; full body dragon tats; blood-red light; extreme volume; a heaving mass of bodies; in the centre forms a clear circle; combatants enter, clash and part, rejoin the seething mass; at moments the tension erupts; fists glimpsed in a flash of strobe; rage and joy and a forest of rock horns raised to the gods of thunder

"the dead shall rise and feast on the living"

Saw this film “The Village” by M. Night Shyalaman. Liked it. Not too long. Who names their child ‘Night’? Did they plan for him to become a creepy supernatural/suspense film director? Ron Howard’s daughter, a beautiful blind girl. Whenever I see Adrian Brody I can’t help but think of my old mate Mike B. who resembles Brody and the story of when Mike came out of a theatre in Tokyo after watching “The Pianist” and some Japanese people stared and whispered that ‘it was him!’ The Village operates in the tradition of the ‘closed world’ tale: the controlled environment, the sterile construction, the Brecht/Beckett stage, the auteur as scientist; the setting a laboratory, the characters, pale pink-eyed rats who wouldn’t survive a moment in the outside; or moving gears and cogs, balls rolling around a machine in controlled patterns, electrons shooting around a network; diodes, transistors, silicon circuitry. In these type of constructions, a ‘working machine’ means that everything falls in its correct place, that nothing wanders off track, that the finely tuned laws of this constricted and discrete system work as a harmonic and consistent whole, precise, relentless, inevitable, crystalline, eternal. Utopia. This is what they strive for: the sense of the eternal. Of myth (not of legend) – of an elevation of the mundane into the symbolic realm (that heavenly realm of Plato’s fantasies) where Spinoza and Jung meet and talk over english tea in a lucid dream, centuries apart, even now. I love these kind of constructions – but they are a hard trick to pull off. My own writing attempts tend towards them at times. They are often moral realms: realms of moral exploration and elucidation. They carry that religious/mythical tone. Lars Von Trier’s works skirt this kind of construction but somehow in them the auteur is so strong a presence that he ‘corrupts’ the entire universe and pollutes it with his presence and his own impurities. His worlds have some hole torn in them where he leaks in and sickens the very characters gently cupped in his giant directors hands. A friend of mine once said that Mishima’s works ‘stink of blood’…somehow Von Trier’s stink of pestilence, of fevered sweat, of semen. Closed worlds: Murakami’s books are great ones for this. In his the auteur enters as an overwhelmingly positive aura. As a sense of simple wonderment at the weirdness not of life or the universe, but of existence itself (it? it?) In “Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World” the closed-off world/text/novel/creation/universe/mind/idea is a partitioned section of a man’s brain, in which he is ‘trapped’ by a security system wired into his head. He is cut off, adrift, severed from the real and left floating in a discrete world with precise boundaries, rules, cirlces; limits. God I love these works. Its all about cirlces: limits.

I live within the circle of the great train line that rings the city. It sets a boundary within which is one place, and without is another. It is important to me that I live within this. The idea of ‘beyond’ brings a sense of weightlessness, of endlessness – exposure to the horizon, the eater of edges – as though if I were to step outside it, I would no longer know where my world ends, and no longer know when I should stop walking and turn back home. As though I might fall away, to the mountains and beyond, no place to rest my feet on solid ground, no place to rest my head and say ‘I am here. I am withing the circle. The circle protects me, it gives shape and form to my world, it allows me to function in a systematic, understandable environment. It is a bulwark against the madness of the infinite.’

And this is what boundaries are: like walls of houses. Keeping us safe from the hungry infinite.

When I make music, or paint or draw, or write – I need limits. Rules, edges, lines of resistance. This is how all creation works. Take for example, a blank document in Illustrator. A blank white page of glowing gamma radiation pouring from energized liquid crystals in a matrix pattern on the screen. They just POUR out their own ‘being’. It is when we put limits on this stuff, this light/energy/exsitence, that patterns and forms emerge, that shape is given to the endless white plain. Such is the world itself: an infinite field of all things, limited and bracketed by rules. Rules that create something from nothing, rules that themselves ARE nothing (for what is a rule?) I used to love the old Russian Formalist poets and their penchant for setting strict rules to aid in creation: write a poem with no adjectives; write a poem without the letter ‘e’; write a poem while screaming obscenties at train commuters in rush hour; write a poem while fucking your wife; write a poem while you kill a man.

so...ny?

after the rootkit fiasco, you'd think SONY would learn. but no.

speaking of the outer church...

currently reading a lot of anarchist theory, and listening to John Zorn and other artists on his label Tzadik.

recent links:

pr0n
barbelith
cyberdeck
jello
benten

invisible

grantharukineil