autumn tactics

On this road, for yet another day

I’m tired again. As hard as I tried to keep a regular schedule last week, things have been slowly eroding into that yellow haze of tense-muscled crashing from two until eight, then slapping the alarm for sometime after. My clothes are on the line, and rain is coming, so the bathroom is going to have to ferment for another day or two. It’s strange, how people just do things without thought, mechanically, and it’s called loyality and a sense of duty. Seeing a job through until it’s done, but is it because I’m dedicated or frozen? Either way, it preys upon my health and siphons off my will.

So I subsist on the water that runs down the brick walls in my life. The bitter pleasure of dragging my tongue over porous ground, trickling streams of unnoticed sweetness, out of focus for so much of one’s vision.

A strand of hair, the dirt under a fingernail, the cheap lacquer on my humble studio desk. To run my hands over a household of textures and crawl out the window, collapsing ecstatic and exhausted at the base of a demurely soaking existence, taking each gentle stab with rapture and slow-knowing acceptance.

morning.

brown rice. mint tea.
clipped nails, lavender shirt.
shrill birds’ cry. distant wheels’ delivery.
the clock faithfully ticks.
i am stretching clean.

Too Much Rain Over Paradise

今日は台風です。実は台風十一号です。今日の朝また良く出来たと思う、六時に起きられました。ちょっと料理を作ったん（カボチャ）だけど、夕方六時までずっと働いて頑張ったんから、食べなかった。とにかく、九時半まで働いた。今背中凄く硬いです。ストレスが大嫌い。なんでもっと平穏出来ないかな。

最近どういうこともっと詳しく勉強したいを考えてるけど、多分何でもは無駄みたいです。時間は少ないから、仕事しない時には珍しく大事。だけど、いつも疲れたので、あまりやり気がでない。結局に、素晴らしい事を何も出来なくなる。(＾<>＾);;それは僕の問題とか「仕方が無い」状況？昔に僕は「不当な！」と感じがするはずですが、段々「やはり、僕のせい。自分が弱過ぎる。まだいい人なって無い。」一年半くらいこの思考が増えた。

今年も三回目正月の御神籤は「大吉」だったんけど、まだ変化が出ない。今年はもう66％終わったなので、自分で大変化を作らないといけないかわ。でも、その変化はフォースしたくない。「流れる波っぽい」似てる変化が欲しい。

流れる波って．．．

On the way in

The past two days I’ve had the odd circumstance of being able to leave work before nine o’clock. In both cases I went home, did a tiny amount of tidying, watched some anime’, and went to bed at eleven. _Eleven_! This is ludicrous. Both days I subsequently set my alarm for six o’clock and though I failed yesterday (got up at a mediocre eight), today I seemed to have been anticipating it, and in my dream I foresaw the garish bleeping of the ancient sound chip in my Tu-Ka Toshiba prepaid phone, which I got all the way back in 2002 when I lived in Nara.

In any case, I got up at six today and did my best to keep the instinctual ‘net news checking to a minimum, and got moving by half past six so I could cook myself lunch and dinner in advance. I give myself a five out of ten on today’s lemon and fresh ginger vegetable stir fry that I make quite frequently as I left the damn heat up too high when I was multitasking and the onions ended up on the far side of a French dip. Anyways, extra lemon juice may probably deflect some of that and I’ll tolerate it for today’s lunch and potential supper.

I listened to the Monkees while cooking; I got some MP3s off of Kazaa Lite but it just made me wish for the entire album collection I have on CD back in the States. One more thing to add to my import list for October. After this I had a shower and did some stretching, put on a new shirt and meditated a little on the sofa, debating which should be tamed first to aid the other, mind or body? For breakfast I had brown rice and brewed some spearmint tea from my garden, pausing to write a short poem about the day. I then put on my geta and took a slow and winding ride to the office.

On the rare occasion I’m not rushing my life I often stop at the temple on Fudou shopping street on the way out. It has a set of nice gardens and a graveyard behind the main building, and it’s quite peaceful and serene. Today I rang the gong and threw in my five yen, being so satisfied and grateful for life that the only thing I asked for was for others; for me to be a bright point of light in everyone’s life, and never to bestow ill effects (though this is usually what I want most, despite my propensity for bungling just that).

[Breakfast update (10:21): As you probably guessed, brown rice at seven thirty is not enough to make it until lunch (especially for me). After the company morning calisthenics, I was hankerin' for something more. Since I've sworn off all processed/heavy preservative foods for a month as an experiment, I went to the onigiriya-san (rice ball store) next to our building and got one sour plum ball and one tempura shrimp ball. Yum! And fairly healthy! Click-clock-click-clock my geta...]

寝過ぎた

最近スターオーシャン２をやってるんですが、昨日早めに寝た。仕事は九時に終わって帰って「逮捕しちゃうぞ」を見た。通常はアニメを見てゲームもチャットもやるしけど、やり気がなかった。なんでか、凄く疲れた。それで、十一時から寝て、朝六時起きるの予定だった。予定だった。携帯電話二台のお目覚ましを使うけど、いつも微妙の状況にず?っと起これない。怒って気持ち悪くなる。一杯やらないといけない事があるんですが、何も出来ない。ずっと疲れた。私は何を期待するの？お金お金お金…

それは解答では無い。私の魂は起きられないかも…

Early Morning Blues and Greens

Sunkus doesn’t have just plain iced coffee in anything smaller than 1000 ml cartons. All of the cup and pint sized java-based beverages contain fair amounts of sugar and milk, neither of which I have a use for in my hangover killer.

What is the first thing I relish on a flight back to Japan after being in the US for any amount of time? A Kirin. I get that homesick that fast being abroad. It’s not even my favorite of the Japanese big four.

If I took my fingers and dragged them across Tuesday until tomorrow, it would leave a smudged photo of deceit, flies, and salad.

Damn the cicada are loud early in the morning. We say �䎞�J.

Let Me Let Go

Why are you following me? How come I can’t leave you behind? I’d been watching you, meaning to get to know you, but never had the courage to get past the outside cover with your lucid blue eyes and crooked smile. Then one day I did, and I wasn’t sure if it was right, your story made sense, and in a way I wanted to believe it was something great, but all the moments in between, the mundaneity, it left me disenchanted doubting what others had said about you. So I tried to speed it up, sought to consume you, to take you just for what you were and gain resolution. It was mechanical enough at first, burdensome at times, yet I was sure the best course lay on the path to burning out on your sunlight shores and cavernous depths.

But then something happened. The times we spent together, and the tedium we’d been through, it all began to make sense. There was more to you than I wanted to believe, and every time I came closer to actually saving you, the you I knew in both worlds, I let my guard down a little more and found something. Something I could hold on to through a night of sleep, something to take with me to work in the morning and pine for after lunchtime, something that made me start to love the crooked way you went about all the things I’d been trained in by others before.

And when it came time to say good bye, I almost couldn’t believe it was true. How had I woken up two months later after seeing you day after day, and now you were leaving? And not leaving with conclusion, like all the others, but leaving with the possibility of an near endless stream of ambiguous futures, more chances to win you back, each time on more intimiate terms than before. More chances, more temptations to love you. To go back through the motions, possibly all the more mundane the second or third time around, but possibly with a chance to find something new.

Still I couldn’t, I’d been through this so many times before with others, that out of instinct I had to put you down. I had to walk away and think, and find another, something new to believe in from the start and be destroyed at its conclusion in the deniable future. So I left, and you didn’t try to stop me. You just said your piece, and faded away, our memories stored in the process with magnetic media, available for recall on nights of loneliness and insobriety.

So now the only problem is I still can’t escape you. I shuffle the audio player and there you are, standing on the beach again with the half-cocked smile, backlit by a piano solo. What am I to do with you? What do you want with me? How can I go on like this, with only my desperate longing left inside? Don’t leave me like this, Kid, don’t leave me alone, Chrono Cross.

An expensive idea; the lights of san-chome

Today I spent virtually the whole day in bed. I did, however, get the house cleaned and ate a bunch of wonderful food prepared for me. In the evening, shopping was needed so the convenient destination of Shinjuku was chosen. Art supplies will invariably cost a significant amount of money when compared to food. Why? Because they’re a luxury (for all but the professional artist). My easel and kits are all back in the states, so under the advice of several graphic designers, I decided to give Sekaidou a shot and pick up some watercolors and brushes I’ll rarely have the time to use. In any case, I was excited to get some of the basics together, even though the brushes made up approximately seventy percent of the cost.

As I was meandering back to the station and my bicycle (as I am wont to do), I caught the bright lights of the Isetan department store from Shinjuku dori; looking west into cornflower dusk. Though I was without a tripod, there was a conveniently located transformer nearby and I got some interesting shots. I think these will appear again in a collection, edited since they are kind of messy, but for now here’s the raw deal of Shinjuku just after sunset.

Giants (Yankees) suck

Tokyo has two baseball teams, much like another great eastern baseball metropolis. The Giants have traditionally been the big money, star-filled power club that wins pennants and sets fans into a tizzy. As I’ve mentioned before, I root for the Swallows (Mets), the team with the smaller payroll, mostly mediocre results, and eccentric fan base. Actually, I’m a Tigers fan, because they’re the big team in Kansai, where I “grew up”, but since I’m in eastern Japan, not west, I focus my cheering towards rooting for the home team, and trouncing the Giants, who are arch rivals of the Tigers. So naturally, when I went to a Swallows-Giants game this weekend, there was no question as to which side of the field to sit on.

Hip-hop artists lead some cheerleaders in a dance for everyone’s favorite birds.

The Swallows aren’t doing horrible this year, but they’re in the same division as the Dragons and the Tigers, who recently have been doing very well. And with only two leagues/divisions to go with, there’s not much consolation for third place. However, the Giants uncharacteristically suck this year, so I was fortunate enough to attend the last of a three-game series at Jingu Yakyuu-ba where we swept them. It was actually kind of intense for a while, with the Swallows holding on to a slim 2-1 lead for most of the game. But fortunately we broke it open with a three-run sixth and kept their big bats at bay with some of the best pitchers in the league.

Another umbrella parade for a run scored. Summer fireworks surprise and light up the night for lucky 7. The gang’s all here!

I’ve now been to three games this season, and I project to hit five before it’s over. Brandon and I have a little friendly competition to see who’s the greater fan, but he may have me beat with his superior history and healthy depth chart in terms of free time.