August 24th, 2005
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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.
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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...]
