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.'
Monday, March 20, 2006
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
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.
"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.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Update
Promised Dad I'd update this and let him know what I've been upto of late.
Discovered YouTube yesterday; never fails to amuse. Some favorites: Merry Xmas! - this song is fucken awesome. Narnia Chronic - rotflmao. Banzai Belushi - a classic. Walken Census - this is my model when answering personal questions from students. DeNiro Terror - deadpan ftw. Punk'd - some good ideas here. Idioteque - the Lyrics.
lots of year end parties have left me a little tired. making/trading mixtapes. i built a computer from the ground up, piece by piece, which certainly taught me a lot about hardware. i spend less time with the Tribe these days but still put in an appearance. have a couple of RP events to run soon. planning to head over to Kyoto for New Years and hear the Joyanokane, the temple bells which ring out 108 times at midnight. will enjoy some hotsprings and ryokan food while i'm there. hopefully find a nice yudofu restaurant in the Gion. i guess i should go see that movie. saw Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers the other day with a nice girl. excellent.
From todays notebook: "Today I escaped from a highly dangerous situation. Sitting in Wendy's on Sunshine St. with a medium chili and a child-size paper carton of milk, Morinaga. Waiting for King Kong. I have a centre seat. Bought this book, 3 pens in 3 colors, and a block of wood, carving tools, sandpapers. Tokyu Hands. Tomorrow morning my new kitchen shelves will be delivered. Reading Kafka on the Shore. Feeling like a character in one of his books. Memories of Takamatsu. I shall carve a daruma. Eyeless and lame. I escaped from almost putting a deposit on a place in Kami-Itabashi which I am certain - now - would have been regrettable. I shall buy a shamisen tomorrow with the money I would have lost. I chose this particular cover amongst so many because it resembles a maze. Obviously mazes have played out sybolic value strings roads crisscrossed beads of dew on the web...for a good while. borges. am I feeling a little lost? 5pm starbucks near junkudo bookstore. So, I didnt buy a shamisen, but instead a black Fernandez bass for 14,800, used on sale inc case. I fucked up and bought a ticket to a dubbed version of Kong - so switched it out and now waiting for the next showing at 6:30pm. Tokyo Metropolitan High School girl sitting across and one seat to the left at this 6-seat chocolate brown table with 2 blue lamps. Doing her homework. I wonder if she is the studious type. Here it can be cool. A subset of. And all the neon and cars flashing by. And I feel at home in the Bukuro. One tree with yellow leaves clinging. Windows into brightly lit offices. People working while we sit here sipping coffee and eating cranberry oat cookies. lots of studying and reading and talking looking cool. This girl is really cute. The navy TM uniform is refined, conservative, solid, crisp. two silver buttons on the cuffs. i can imagine molly millions in it. thick strands of black hair frame her face, cover her eyes just enough to suggest teenage shyness/angst/confusion/curiosity. someone once told me "you can smell the hormones". blues piano. the blue lamps on this table remind me of the blue enamelled tin cups from scout/guide camps. inklight floods the screen. lips curved like a mongolian horsemans bow. i imagine her father: he must be a stern bastard. he knows he has a beautiful, intelligent daughter. he sends her to a good school. he has to hold off the horde with his iron gaze and will. short dark blue tartan skirt. grey burberryesque muffler, mujirushi shopping bag. shes small. just realised i havent slept in 36 hours. up last night on adobe audition manipulating background hiss. some mazes have intersecting lines. some dont. a line has two sides. are the lines the paths, or the walls?"
Discovered YouTube yesterday; never fails to amuse. Some favorites: Merry Xmas! - this song is fucken awesome. Narnia Chronic - rotflmao. Banzai Belushi - a classic. Walken Census - this is my model when answering personal questions from students. DeNiro Terror - deadpan ftw. Punk'd - some good ideas here. Idioteque - the Lyrics.
lots of year end parties have left me a little tired. making/trading mixtapes. i built a computer from the ground up, piece by piece, which certainly taught me a lot about hardware. i spend less time with the Tribe these days but still put in an appearance. have a couple of RP events to run soon. planning to head over to Kyoto for New Years and hear the Joyanokane, the temple bells which ring out 108 times at midnight. will enjoy some hotsprings and ryokan food while i'm there. hopefully find a nice yudofu restaurant in the Gion. i guess i should go see that movie. saw Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers the other day with a nice girl. excellent.
From todays notebook: "Today I escaped from a highly dangerous situation. Sitting in Wendy's on Sunshine St. with a medium chili and a child-size paper carton of milk, Morinaga. Waiting for King Kong. I have a centre seat. Bought this book, 3 pens in 3 colors, and a block of wood, carving tools, sandpapers. Tokyu Hands. Tomorrow morning my new kitchen shelves will be delivered. Reading Kafka on the Shore. Feeling like a character in one of his books. Memories of Takamatsu. I shall carve a daruma. Eyeless and lame. I escaped from almost putting a deposit on a place in Kami-Itabashi which I am certain - now - would have been regrettable. I shall buy a shamisen tomorrow with the money I would have lost. I chose this particular cover amongst so many because it resembles a maze. Obviously mazes have played out sybolic value strings roads crisscrossed beads of dew on the web...for a good while. borges. am I feeling a little lost? 5pm starbucks near junkudo bookstore. So, I didnt buy a shamisen, but instead a black Fernandez bass for 14,800, used on sale inc case. I fucked up and bought a ticket to a dubbed version of Kong - so switched it out and now waiting for the next showing at 6:30pm. Tokyo Metropolitan High School girl sitting across and one seat to the left at this 6-seat chocolate brown table with 2 blue lamps. Doing her homework. I wonder if she is the studious type. Here it can be cool. A subset of. And all the neon and cars flashing by. And I feel at home in the Bukuro. One tree with yellow leaves clinging. Windows into brightly lit offices. People working while we sit here sipping coffee and eating cranberry oat cookies. lots of studying and reading and talking looking cool. This girl is really cute. The navy TM uniform is refined, conservative, solid, crisp. two silver buttons on the cuffs. i can imagine molly millions in it. thick strands of black hair frame her face, cover her eyes just enough to suggest teenage shyness/angst/confusion/curiosity. someone once told me "you can smell the hormones". blues piano. the blue lamps on this table remind me of the blue enamelled tin cups from scout/guide camps. inklight floods the screen. lips curved like a mongolian horsemans bow. i imagine her father: he must be a stern bastard. he knows he has a beautiful, intelligent daughter. he sends her to a good school. he has to hold off the horde with his iron gaze and will. short dark blue tartan skirt. grey burberryesque muffler, mujirushi shopping bag. shes small. just realised i havent slept in 36 hours. up last night on adobe audition manipulating background hiss. some mazes have intersecting lines. some dont. a line has two sides. are the lines the paths, or the walls?"
Friday, September 09, 2005
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
3G zerg FTW
my new phone is the coolest shit EVAR!
the dang thing has 12 TV channels (at about 640x480 resolution,) FM radio, straight-up internet access, takes crystal-clear photos up to 2.0 megapixels and 1600x1200, decent video, infrared tech that allows me to charge all JR train fares in the country directly to my phone bill, built in text scanner, pen light in multiple colors, schedules and spreadsheets, light pen compatibility, and I can even play DOOM and BUBBLE BOBBLE in all their VGA glory! memory cards, personalised tamagotchi pets (which automatically interact with other handset pets on the train) and a boxing game that allows me to stick my boss' face on the opponent and beat the shit out of him (or infact the random faces of other people's bosses in my immediate vicinity.) its also motion-sensitive, so no more pressing of keys - just tilt the handset to the left and the cursor moves that way. awesome. plays mp3s and i-tunes files, memory cards and digital video input/output to download movies into it to watch while commuting, full video conferencing support, and language translation software (hilariously dodgy of course.)
if only i could play warcraft on it. /sigh
. . .
tonight a punch-up in a ramen bar. odd. recent recommendations: orhan pamuk "istanbul"; the ESX-1; Awamori; zombies; zazen; sunnO))).
the dang thing has 12 TV channels (at about 640x480 resolution,) FM radio, straight-up internet access, takes crystal-clear photos up to 2.0 megapixels and 1600x1200, decent video, infrared tech that allows me to charge all JR train fares in the country directly to my phone bill, built in text scanner, pen light in multiple colors, schedules and spreadsheets, light pen compatibility, and I can even play DOOM and BUBBLE BOBBLE in all their VGA glory! memory cards, personalised tamagotchi pets (which automatically interact with other handset pets on the train) and a boxing game that allows me to stick my boss' face on the opponent and beat the shit out of him (or infact the random faces of other people's bosses in my immediate vicinity.) its also motion-sensitive, so no more pressing of keys - just tilt the handset to the left and the cursor moves that way. awesome. plays mp3s and i-tunes files, memory cards and digital video input/output to download movies into it to watch while commuting, full video conferencing support, and language translation software (hilariously dodgy of course.)
if only i could play warcraft on it. /sigh
. . .
tonight a punch-up in a ramen bar. odd. recent recommendations: orhan pamuk "istanbul"; the ESX-1; Awamori; zombies; zazen; sunnO))).
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Fuji / Nagauta
Long time since the last post here.
Summer holidays. Okinawa. Glass-blowing. Running The Visa Gauntlet.
Last Sunday went with Mr. Iwasaki to see a performance of Nagauta, long lyrical songs from Edo Japan. Mostly Shinobue, 2-3 Shamisen, 2-3 singers, and 3-4 Taiko of various type. I think I fell in love with the flutist. It happens sometimes, I'm not sure why. Her kimono was a wide flower pattern, white on ai-iro midnight blue. She wore her hair up on top of her head in a loose bun, and her eyes never left a space on the ground about 3 feet in front of her. The line of her hip and leg, drawn in seiza; the nape of her neck, trailing wisps of hair slipped loose from its binding; her melancholy eyes...entranced me for hours. I asked Mr. Iwasaki about her (he knows most of the musicians personally) but it seems she is married to the 2nd drummer. [frown]
A month or so ago I climbed Fuji-san. And what an event. Previously, I had sneeringly declared my contempt for the mountain. Following after certain comments by Dazai and others, I had had long and winding, more-or-less flippant conversations with Junko about the over-bearing perfection of such a mountain, of its too-beautiful, nausea-inducing photogeneity. He must have heard me, great Fuji, god that he is. I had been warned that he was a harsh deity, unforgiving and cruel, cunning and fickle; that he would call down storms to destroy those who sought to climb too high, steal their breath from them, tumble rocks on their head, choke them on clouds of plague insects, drown them in mist and lead them with signs and lights to plunge off sheer precipices, turn them around and twist them about and send them wandering bewitched through the gnarled and ghostly forests of shirakaba. Thousands had perished at his whim.
So I got altitude sickness. And barely managed to get to the top without suffering a full collapse, survivng on regular shots of canned oxygen and Meiji chocolate, crawling on my hands and knees for long sections near the top. The shape of the mountain. It's evil. By the time you near the top the angle has steeped to seem near-vertical. Like climbing up a blasted post-apocalyptic martian cliff. Red volcanic rock, boiled stone, bubbled and crumbling and light, porous, grating, eating the skin off your skeleton like bloody molars chewing on chicken bone. I saw a dead bird. How did it die up here? Lifeless, the mountain, except for the Presence. Beyond breath, it lives.
Near the summit, the dawn. I collapsed and watched the sun rise, a perfect circle of red fire in a bleach-white sky. Shouts of "Banzai" from behind and above. The sea of clouds; the south Alps like distant islands. My fingernails were bloody. I felt happy; the mountain basked in the light of the Sun Goddess. I could feel him stretching, the light on his face.
On the way down, stumbling and delirious, practically sliding most of the way, quickly a thick fog rose to swamp me, could barely see ten feet ahead. The switchbacks forever. Stumbling again, and again, falling. Countless trillions of midges, dense clouds of them, spotting my glasses black, covering every inch of me, thousands in my lungs; I could hear him laughing. Lastly, through the forest near the foot of the mountain, I could rest and collect myself. I sat by a small stream and drank some water. Uguisu birds, calling me to wander deeper into the woods; a surge of will; I resisted and wandered back to the bus stop. My legs quivering, my mind pulverised into a mush.
Somehow, this was joyous. I'd truly met the mountain. I had learned something. I had been taught.
Summer holidays. Okinawa. Glass-blowing. Running The Visa Gauntlet.
Last Sunday went with Mr. Iwasaki to see a performance of Nagauta, long lyrical songs from Edo Japan. Mostly Shinobue, 2-3 Shamisen, 2-3 singers, and 3-4 Taiko of various type. I think I fell in love with the flutist. It happens sometimes, I'm not sure why. Her kimono was a wide flower pattern, white on ai-iro midnight blue. She wore her hair up on top of her head in a loose bun, and her eyes never left a space on the ground about 3 feet in front of her. The line of her hip and leg, drawn in seiza; the nape of her neck, trailing wisps of hair slipped loose from its binding; her melancholy eyes...entranced me for hours. I asked Mr. Iwasaki about her (he knows most of the musicians personally) but it seems she is married to the 2nd drummer. [frown]
A month or so ago I climbed Fuji-san. And what an event. Previously, I had sneeringly declared my contempt for the mountain. Following after certain comments by Dazai and others, I had had long and winding, more-or-less flippant conversations with Junko about the over-bearing perfection of such a mountain, of its too-beautiful, nausea-inducing photogeneity. He must have heard me, great Fuji, god that he is. I had been warned that he was a harsh deity, unforgiving and cruel, cunning and fickle; that he would call down storms to destroy those who sought to climb too high, steal their breath from them, tumble rocks on their head, choke them on clouds of plague insects, drown them in mist and lead them with signs and lights to plunge off sheer precipices, turn them around and twist them about and send them wandering bewitched through the gnarled and ghostly forests of shirakaba. Thousands had perished at his whim.
So I got altitude sickness. And barely managed to get to the top without suffering a full collapse, survivng on regular shots of canned oxygen and Meiji chocolate, crawling on my hands and knees for long sections near the top. The shape of the mountain. It's evil. By the time you near the top the angle has steeped to seem near-vertical. Like climbing up a blasted post-apocalyptic martian cliff. Red volcanic rock, boiled stone, bubbled and crumbling and light, porous, grating, eating the skin off your skeleton like bloody molars chewing on chicken bone. I saw a dead bird. How did it die up here? Lifeless, the mountain, except for the Presence. Beyond breath, it lives.
Near the summit, the dawn. I collapsed and watched the sun rise, a perfect circle of red fire in a bleach-white sky. Shouts of "Banzai" from behind and above. The sea of clouds; the south Alps like distant islands. My fingernails were bloody. I felt happy; the mountain basked in the light of the Sun Goddess. I could feel him stretching, the light on his face.On the way down, stumbling and delirious, practically sliding most of the way, quickly a thick fog rose to swamp me, could barely see ten feet ahead. The switchbacks forever. Stumbling again, and again, falling. Countless trillions of midges, dense clouds of them, spotting my glasses black, covering every inch of me, thousands in my lungs; I could hear him laughing. Lastly, through the forest near the foot of the mountain, I could rest and collect myself. I sat by a small stream and drank some water. Uguisu birds, calling me to wander deeper into the woods; a surge of will; I resisted and wandered back to the bus stop. My legs quivering, my mind pulverised into a mush.
Somehow, this was joyous. I'd truly met the mountain. I had learned something. I had been taught.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
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.
.
.
.
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.
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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.
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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.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Pictures
/cheer /clap /spit on corpse /snicker /sharpen blades ...cold blood; preparation. /
spent time putting ink on paper fans and clear plastic umbrellas. something that eats into the surface a little. daryl hannah doing backflips. ri-chan and the tiled floor. /
*****
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