autumn tactics

Today is July 3rd. I don’t remember when I last wrote, but it seems like yesterday, whatever that means. Releases to client fall like rainy days and it’s a miracle I remember to pay the utility bills.

Tomorrow is America’s Independence Day, 232 years from when a group of influential Anglo-Saxan landowners decided they’d had enough of being controlled by a group of other influential Anglo-Saxans several thousand miles to the northeast across the Atlantic Ocean. Of all the major holidays I’ve had to abandon since forsaking social security and the right to bear arms, the Fourth of July is probably the most derelict. I’m always working late, but there’s no marketing support for it in Japan, so it comes and goes with only a mid-compile passing thought of so many teenage romantic entanglements amidst fireworks.

Tomorrow Chub-Du has a concert, as does a minor band that has shown interest in hiring me for photography (which I have badly managed). However, I’ll make it to neither as the gaming industry is one of the most underdeveloped, taxing, and grossly inefficient wings of software development. This is no cause for alarm, however, as I’ve long since acquiesced to the fact and simply accept is as being inevitable as mortal death.

In any case, I have two independent productions on the board right now, though the first is quite tenuous for lack of definition. If anyone is interested in providing artistic consul, I would be much obliged. You may leave comments or mail me.

Ikuno Oribe said, “If a retainer will just think about what he is to do for the day at hand, he will able to do anything. If it is a single day’s work, one should be able to put up with it. Tomorrow, too, is but a single day.” — Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai, seventh chapter

The express train is passing by again, numbers fall into letters and I’m three months older.

I really can’t manage any sort of original thought right now, so I think I’m going to try posting quotes from my reading for a while, occasionally with a photograph. Think of it as pocket enlightenment.

Today’s passage is from the Buddhist scriptures:

A person who is pleased when one receives good instruction will sleep peacefully, because one’s mind is thereby cleansed.

The world is like a bubble, it is like the gossamer web of a spider, it is like the defilement in a dirty jar, one should constantly protect the purity of one’s mind.

– “The Way of Practical Attainment”, from The Teaching of Buddha

I have some writing from Taico Club, but it’s on scraps of paper right now and I’m still disorganized. However, the photos are up, so please have a look. For some reason the gallery RSS isn’t working right now it seems.

The longer I spend wrapped up in work, the more disheveled I become and the more frustrating the moments of free time are. It’s when I take a step off the merry-go-round that I realize how much time has passed and how many virtual dishes have piled up in my personal life.

How many dozens of rolls of negatives are piled up on my desk?
I haven’t replied to that person in three months?
The friend’s concert I missed was when?
…
Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t put too much stock in our relationship either then.

Every time I wake up on a Saturday at noon and do a quick mental check on how many promises to myself I’ve broken, I feel sick to my stomach and roll back over, pulling the blankets over my head once more.

Why can’t I have the strength to be able to sort through all the perishable parts of living and consume them by value, in turn?

こんにちは！今週末の長野県の「TAICO CLUB」パーティの入場券が買えなかったです買えました。（＾_＾) ず～っと行きたかったけど、結局購入失敗大成功しました。誰かが、入場券一枚が余っているか、いけなくて販売したい方がいたらを持っているなら、是非連絡してください。現地で遊ぼう！

As I mentioned, today is the first day I’ve had off in a long time, and to be honest it’s never been truer that I don’t know how to take it easy. I can’t stand feeling like I’m wasting my body, my time, my life. I’ve watched a couple episodes of Quantum Leap and old E.R., but aside from that I’ve sorted the past months photographs, read some of The Negative, had a healthy fish dinner, and straightened up my desk. I’m too groggy to clean, sick of tv, and I have my console memory cards interred with an acquaintance. I can’t go to bed yet but I can’t waste any more time… reading a book would put me to sleep so I guess I’ll do some more studying with the internet. Fortunately etn is always there to give me a fresh stream of trance to keep my spirits up. There are so many things to do, some many ways to grow, so much to produce. There is a never-ending supply of liquid coal running through my veins, and my body is pulsing craton heated by the fire in my soul. I will not let this life expire unused.

Today is the first day I have been able to rest in over two months. Last night we delivered another build; all the milestones have run together like watercolor, and then proceeded to pack the company for moving on Sunday. When I left at 11:30, everyone got together and went to eat yakiniku, but meals centered around meat have become like strolls down the cheap whiskey aisle the morning after an all-weekend bender… my mind and my stomach are in complete unison in their revulsion towards slabs of red animal protein. So I dropped back to the tail of the procession and politely excused myself.

I came home and had a glorious three-quarter pint of Kilkenny’s, and fell asleep in front of the TV with the screen door open to the chilling drizzle. Luckily, the bitter cold got me up on time for my lunch with Yamamoto-san. In the process I actually managed to look half respectable in a button down with my new haircut and a fresh shave. We talked about pedestrian things: friends and family, the yen’s legacy of being pegged to the dollar, and the price of butter. After waving goodbye I stood in front of the Tokyu Plaza and my mind drifted for a few minutes. The breeze carried the mist in waves through the canopy of umbrellas in Shibuya, but I decided to stop at Omotesando and walk home through the Meiji shrine inner gardens.

I am so taut and bristling with verve. Yet my body has learned not to fight my spirit in fatigue and instead simply acquiesce, being led along at the hand like a bemused parent to a child’s string of sensuous wonders on Saturday.

Two days.
Sixteen hours open to the public.
Three and a half for installation.
Thirty minutes striking the set.
+300 visitors to the booth.
Twenty-two acquaintances.
Six times asked if I was a professional photographer.
One conversation with an art magazine.
One potential hire for band publicity photos.
6400 yen in sales.
5000 in contributions from benefactors.
One hell of a time.

こんにちは。今週末私のブース、「複視」に来て頂いたの皆様、どうも有難うございました！

写真が好きでしたら、是非私のネットギャラリーご覧ください。いっぱい面白い写真が載っています。何かご意見や質問があれば、いつでもメールしてください。fukushi@ichigoichie.org.

Do you remember my eyes? How they shift between blue and grey depending on the weather? The amber ring in the center that catches the sunlight?

Yes, the circumstances have changed, but my eyes and the soul behind them are still the same.

I’ve been slogging towards another milestone at work, the third such hellacious one this year, and less than thirty days since the last. I lay down new features and design revisions to my libraries as fast as countless legions of content creators can swoop down on them, testing little and barely carving out the absolute minimum to make it run. And it comes in an office where the thermometer reads 95 and builds are broken all day long from a trail of bungling and sufficient specification all the way back to 2006.

But, as they say, the show must go on. And it will go on, and I do all that I can in the 80 odd minutes between getting home from work and brushing my teeth for bed. Only an angel keeps me together and my dreams alive with an eyedropper of hope.

Here are some pictures I took with the Holga last year and just managed to get scanned the other day.

せっかく日記を復活したけど、二ヶ月が過ごして、連絡していないね。ごめん。普段は毎月10-15回くらい書きますが、今年はなかんか余裕がない。来月はまた展示会があります。しかも、固くて決心しても今回が一番中途半端になっています。仕事はきつい、毎日23：30ごろ家に到着してる。なぜか、ライフがもっと複雑か、年取っているか、毎日～6時間の睡眠が足りなくて、だるい。

とにかく、今日も、明日も、仕事ですが、深夜製作中．．．

1983. Annie closes on Broadway after 2,377 shows. Gandhi wins Best Picture as Return of the Jedi picks up steam. Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the solar system. The De Lorean Motor Company ceases production, and the McNugget is introduced. I am three years old and love Ernie. Konica also produces a charming little pocket rangefinder with auto focus, shutter, and film winding, all for the low, low price of 47,800 yen.

For some time now, I have wanted a lightweight “junk” camera that I can always have with me and throw in any number of bags. The A-1 is too versatile and valuable a piece of equipment to have jostled around in my backpack all the time. The 70-210mm zoom lens is also intimidating to a lot of people.

Anyway, I didn’t want to put a lot of money into said camera because that would defeat the purpose. So I’ve been coming flea markets and Akihabara back alleys for a couple of months. I finally found what I was looking for last weekend while helping out the Nihon Furosato Food Festival. I bought shiny, black, brick from a kindly, well-traveled old man who spoke way too much like a used car salesman. But the camera was impeccably well kept, spotless and hardly a scratch on it– inconceivable for a 25 year old consumer shoot-and-forget camera.

Though I have had a decent array of camera bodies for a while, this marks the first time I’ve ever had film bodies at the same time. I realized today how nice this was when shooting the annual hanami raves in Yoyogi park this afternoon. The weather was a real drag, frigid, raining, and dark. But having 1600 Natura pushed to 3200 in the A-1 and 400 Presto in the Konica, I felt confident that I could handle any number of shots without feeling the pressure to finish a roll for switching stock.

For the first time in a long time I have a considerable scan backlog now, so once I get through my slides I’ll make an album in the Gallery dedicated to Konnie.

I left work today at four because I have a cold. I have a cold and I’m tired. I also had a planned holiday for working a couple weekends ago.

It’s raining, and still light outside, much warmer than before but I can still see my breath in front of the window. Today feels, surreal. Whether its the drugs or the rare circumstance of leaving the office before it’s pitch black, I feel sleepy and incredibly excited at once. So much beauty to record now…