On my way
1:13
Well, I made it. I’m not quite sure how, as I had a nasty fight with my cellphone this morning in bed. I think our relationship is on the rocks, at the very least we’ll not be speaking to one another for a week or so.
I got out of bed exactly two hours ago, and the situation was bleak. The Nozomi Shinkansen is the fastest way to travel inside Japan, almost to a fault. Like the concorde, you spend as much time getting getting to and away the thing from where you’re actually going, that you basically multiply the trip duration times two when going to Kyoto. Anyway, my house is an absolute mess of flower petals, dust bunnies and badly burnt popcorn, but I will have to deal with that next week. I’m on vacation, and I made it here with a spirited packing and caring for the flowers that encompassed a mere hour. I got some “mizuyariki”, or something like that, to look after them in my abscence. Basically it’s just a plastic tip you put on the end of an inverted PET bottle, which you place in the soil. A simple valve regulates air intake through a small hose and conversely, pressure balance inside the bottle which regulates the water dispersal.
This is the first time I’ve ever used a laptop on the Shinkansen, I think, though I may have had poor departed Cheyenne (which will be the name of my first daughter by the way) with me once on a job hunting trip. In any case, the luxurious amount of space between the rows of seats makes using my mammoth WinBook much easier than any plane. If only there were power outlets… However, the trip is so short (2:11), that I think I may be able to make it that long with the computer constantly on.
I’m listening to DJ Warden’s Sounds of Downunder Vol. 12, a mix that starts out really light and surreal, perfect for rice fields and villages whipping by at two hundred miles per hour.
I got myself a new shirt last night, which may not be out of the ordinary to the average man, but for me it’s quite a feat, as so much of my wardrobe is from the seventh grade to high school era. So you know I have to really like a shirt before I’ll pay for it. Anything else is just a conference freebie/guest’s nightgown. It’s this really swank dirty blue Citroen soccer shirt with dark blue shoulders and red stripes. This shirt was purchased (presumably new) for about twelve dollars because it met all the core criteria for my clothes: 1) it looks campy and retro, 2) it fits my thin frame snugly, 3) virtually no one else has anything like it. Its heavy synthetic urethane fibers are grazing my still tense shoulders as I type. In other tailoring news, I dropped off my “this is Rusty” shirt at the seamstress last weekend, as the shirt had become so worn that the stitching thread had literally decomposed and the sleeves were coming off. I’ll have to take a picture of myself in this shirt, so you can truly appreciate my vintage early eighties “Levi’s Action Shirt” which is proudly “tailored for men”. I’m not making this up, it says so on the tag. This shirt has accumulated so much experience and prestige, it has enough public support to hold office in several small third world countries.
It’s funny how sometimes the only way I can get pedestrian stuff done is when I’m forced to sit in a box with no exit for two hours. 
I think it’s time to sort and clean up photographs, or perhaps read more of my PowerShot manual.
14:05
Ten minutes left in vol. 12 pt. 1, chanting, a charging tin arrow, over, and over, my fingers flex and twitch on invisible keys instinctively, like a kitten digging at a pillow for milk. When you keep virtually everything (as I do), things have a way of popping up and surprising you. I came across some pictures in a “to sort” folder on the desktop, an amalgamation of old email attachments and miscellany, it caught me off guard. But I am heion. I will be heion. The loop persuades me relentlessly. And I close my eyes, and I sigh inwards, and I think of Noah Wylie as I think of Steve Jobs, and passion that goes fully unknown.
14:20
Into the Blue…one of System F’s most uplifting pieces, it’s like a view of the ocean, where the waves crash in warm, crystal waters, and my heart catches on the wind, soaring and gliding along cliffs and over the hills, to a small city where cherry blossoms fall and children run laughing over cobblestone streets. DJ Warden must have the deepest respect for FC; through a transition and pop Gouryella springs alive, and I have to grin, grin with the smiling people of the world, those that know hardship but are not crushed, those that work on the land and bring beauty to the young. I want to go to Africa, I want to leave my plastic and my pain behind, and share smiles and meat and vegetables and stories.
14:49
The delayed hat. Sinking, coasting, into fields of blue, I can feel the shockwaves of sentinence rippling through the verdant horizon as I inhale. Life in, life out, a connection, a bond, a story, something to share and to keep. To take, and to give. Heat, cold, moist and dry. It’s something to celebrate, to wrap around oneself, and let it temper you with compassion.
Oh ho, I’m at the MSM sports complex, it’s astroturf and track rubber, I must indulge the riveting tangibility of it all. Sing, sing, sing, in a beautiful voice, she’s calling. Can I extend my hand and touch her with invisible feathers of grace?
