June 12th, 2005
111893761625465828
Surf Wax America
In bed this morning it was hard to wake up. It seemed so much that I’d just be staying there all morning, maybe playing Lunar 2 until mid-afternoon. Then lightning struck my brain and I got up. I got up and noticed it was a hot, lovely day. And what do we do when we manage to get up before nine on a hot and lovely day? We go to the beach of course!
The sea is foaming like a bottle of beer
The wave is coming but I ain’t got no fear
I’m waxing down so that I’ll go real fast
I’m waxing down because it’s really a blast
I’m going surfin’ cos I don’t like your face
I’m bailing out because I hate the race
Of rats that run round and round in the maze
I’m going surfing, I’m going surfing!
I put on Weezer’s Blue album and tried to get as much Jimmy Buffet into the Rio as possible. Of course my hasty departure was stymied by technology. No living AA batteries in the house, too many AAA. So I cannibalized the stereo remote and fought through half a dozen laptop shutdowns due to overheating and got out by ten, and so onto the 10:28 Odakyu rapid express for Enoshima. I was debating Kamakura or Edo gawa-ku’s Rinkai Kouen, but Kamakura won as the last time I went to Rinkai the water was unnaturally warm and the industrial haze of Tokyo seemed a little too close. So, I got the Odakyu free pass and headed for Enoshima. The brochure I got at the travel counter says that the beach is only open in the summer, which I think is the lamest thing, because it’s not like I’m going to raise Cain in June. Hopefully I’ll be able to find some oceanfront spot to unwind, since I’m just one guy and the man has better things to do than hassle me reading Kerouac and listening to the waves. My rule of thumb is if it’s hot enough to sweat, it’s hot enough tot go to the beach. Though the water is most probably ice-ass cold. [It actually wasn't so terrible, which may in itself be a bad sign.] But that’s what us polar bears are good at, right?
One of my favorite summer songs is Hajime Chitose’s “Wadatsumi no Ki“. The first time I heard it Nobue and I were laying on the beach at Shirahama, under a bamboo umbrella talking about our parents, the Beatles, and love. But that’s summer: rock, surf, love, and expectations. Two people (unemployed students) have asked me what I’m doing for the summer. “What I’m doing?”! Working! Still, it would seem that easier days are to come.
The game will be done very soon, and in about four weeks I have short holiday. Hawaii, Hong Kong, Europe… who knows but I’m out of here (though I’ll probably only know where at the last possible minute). Ten consecutive days in July, five in August. October I’m going home for about a week, mostly to be the best man in Brandon‘s wedding.
Yeah, but now I’m gettin’ old, don’t wear underwear
I don’t go to church and I don’t cut my hair
But I can go to movies and see it all there
Just the way that it used to be
If you were ever a teenage boy, you might have a song or two that was played with the expressed purpose of instigating reckless driving. Not that you’re consciously trying to bring harm to damage to anyone, but you know there are times when you’re seventeen and something incredibly tormenting is beating your soul and there’s no better panacea than downshifting into second and hearing the tires scream around a winding mountain curve as the tachometer jumps into the orange. Driving, and I mean really driving, not commuting in a sedan, is like a shooter of physical adulation and speed, all with yourself. The car is a limb, and a muscle, a part of your body you use in concert with the others, straining against limits of sinew and steel, throbbing and throttling for the rush of excessive physical forces. It’s sex like that I’ve been celibate from for five, long, years; since I rolled my Charger over in a ditch on Christmas Eve. Now all I have left are the albums, and my song is “Sleep” by Nada Surf.
I try to open my eyes to the days going by
But the trash in everything it keeps me hypnotized
I’m hypnotized
I got the poison in me but it’s amplified
Amplified
It’s like Mikiko said about daddies and mommies. They go to the beach and be daddies, no matter what their life is like on Monday, or what kind of beer gut they have. — “Peoples is peoples.” Ever since I saw “The Muppets Take Manhattan“, I’ve always used Pop’s logic to explain even the most uncomfortable of situations.
Big city, hmm? Live. Work, huh? But. Only peoples. Peoples is peoples. No is buildings. Is tomatoes, huh? Is peoples, is dancing, is music, is potatoes. So, peoples is peoples. Okay?
[This entry took a lot of cleaning up as I got sweet and thoroughly drunk on a "treat bag" of beers and chu-hi, and "dozed off" in the sun a couple times between playing in the water and reading Big Sur.]
