September 22nd, 2005
112739971618968738
Work and recovery cocktail
[Note to the reader: As confusing as it may be, I recommend reading all the main passages (unitalicized text) first, and then going back and looking at the pictures and reading the captions below them. Most of the normal text was written before I took an pictures at all, but if I put all the pictures together at the bottom, the balance of the post would be shot to hell and an eyesore. This journal is as much an exercise in visual symmetry and form as it is in expressing emotions through words. Please bear with my unconventional behaviors.]
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If you’re a devout afficianado of my photography, you know that I have an affinity for man-made lines stretching out into the distance. You also probably know that I love trains more than pizza (ow!) so I am wont to take pictures of vacant platforms in the country.
I dragged myself out of bed at five-thirty last Saturday morning and took one of the first Shinkansens for Kyoto. Rodney and I had been trying to put together a unified weekend for me to come home for summer vacation for a while, and since Honmachi has the big autumn matsuri this weekend, I just decided to get up and go. I actually got a fair amount of coding done on the train down, and thusly my usual “ride home” introspective journal entry is a bit sparse. I spent most of the time there talking with Rodney and visiting with his friends, which was pretty nice actually and a half decent recovery, marred only by guilt from sleeping eight to nine hours a day when I was shooting for seven.
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I scurried past this monk and under this sign countless times during my first summer in Japan, racing back for the last train to Takanohara. If you have the time, ask me about Dan’s adventures with the fountain. Sadly, the arcade that I loved so dearly, has finally closed. The neon sign is still up but the store is barren and vacant. Today there were some social workers pushing some community program. I’ll never go fishing for crustaceans there again. 
In any case, I got a fair number of pictures on Saturday bicycling from Nara to Kizu, and on Sunday at my architectural bellwheter Kyoto station. I have one-hundred and forty shots, about seventy percent of which are postable, but I haven’t decided if I’m going to make a Kyoto station special collection, or what. So for now, I’ll sprinkle a handful of chronological excerpts for your viewing enjoyment and my mildly displeased criticism.
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I was in too much of a hurry to buy mismatching colored socks at the 100 yen store here to investigate as to what exactly the Uneme Matsuri is in honor of. However, there were a great number of people and food stalls congregating around the always majestic Sarasawanoike man-made pond. The turtles and pigeons turned out in force for handouts.
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originally recorded September 17th
It’s about five months to the day since I was last at home in Nara. Usually the day after being incredibly drunk I feel sick, an augmented sensitivity towards people looking at me, and my movemnts are fluid but disturbingly accurate. It’s like mild oversteer in a car or being incredibly put off with the tiniest of details in a mania sort of way. Today I still feel sick, though it may be be not enough sleep last night, or not enough food in my stomach. Every time I meet someone that I haven’t seen in a while they ask me if I’ve gotten thinner, and the sad truth is that I have. There seems to be no end to my slow wasting away. I have the impression that binge-drinking speeds up my metabolism. In addition, I’ve been growing increasingly health conscious diet-wise, in hopes that I may improve my performance at work. Unfortunately the healthy things that I eat are all dreadfully low calorie, low sugar, and low fat. So staying up late and stressing out just makes a downward trend worse.
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Nara Park is actually a lot larger than I initially gave it credit for. I could easily bike around in it for hours visiting all the shrines and monuments. However, today as I was pressed for time I rode straight to the back and visited Kasuga jinja for the first time. The papers meticulously tied on the right are wishes left on a sacred branch to be granted.
Last week I saw The Aviator. At the video store it was that, or the movie version of Phantom. One reviewer hit it on the head and said that Leo still feels a bit young for the role, but regardless he did an excellent hob. I really liked it because it was a film, not a movie, and the post production work on the image stock was lush and evocative. It made me think of my photography from three eyears ago, when I was working with my painfully low resolution Casio. Due to the fidelity constraints of the hardware I had to mess with the palette and saturation to cover up all the artifacts produced by the grainy CCD. In any case, it was a well put together film and the eccentricities portrayed in Howard Hughes seemed at times a little too strikingly understandble for my own comfort. In that respect I think it was a useful piece of art. Art that causes you look at yourself may be some of the most wonderful of all.
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Koi is the Japanese word for carp, and a fish that has a long and hallowed tradition in local culture. Much like the warlords and daimyo of long ago, I enjoy watching them, as their slow and graceful movements calm me. I hope to flow through life as they do someday. On the way back I found a very creepy (and apparently still open) entertainment center in an eerie state of disrepair near Saidaiji. Upon mentioning it to Noriyo later, she said she remembered going bowling there twenty years ago. In Japan, this is a very, very impressive accomplishment for an establishment, regardless of its appearance.
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Express song
Floor scuffed, filleted sunlight rhombus
so many plastic rings dangle unused
sideways glances and meticulously made faces
heel tapping sneakers and I’m happy
tired, happy, and on a retreat from myself
Kizugawa runs to JR
soon the rice is all pulled in
stop at Shin-Tanabe
three years’ ago hitchhiking
lost after last train
helped by a vanful of kids.
Ladies smell wonderful.
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Meandering over hills and through a densely forested residential district outside of Heijo, I came across a field of rice carved into a perfect little trench of sunlight between trees and river. This is by leagues, the worst my PowerShot has ever failed me, and I am reluctant to post anything at all because even the perfect photograph would not be capable of reproducing a grain of the feeling at that moment. The sky was pale orange, and the sun the ever-glowing eye of Osiris. The rice was a bent and rippling sea of daffodiled harmony, so disarmingly touching that Wordsworth would have clawed out his own eyes for knowledge of never having another chance to see such serene beauty. This was a place and a moment and an expression that tore down every steel-curtained wall I’ve built in my twenty five years on earth, and it pulled me one step in towards nirvana. Words are a poor, jaded branch for me to paint love on a grain of sand. I cannot begin to tell you how perfect it was to be there just then.
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originally recorded September 18th
Today I had plans to go swimming in the Kizugawa with Rodney, but I ended up coming to Nara instead, as it was getting past one o’clock and we were invited to someone’s birthday party that begins at six. It’s hard to describe being here alone because I don’t think that I ever have. It’s always been with someone very close to me. How do you pull apart a new city from someone? It’s grafted onto your heart and the assocations stick like tendon to bone. It’s not just memories, it’s navigation and stores, cobbled streets and alleys; cafes where you had a spartan breakfast of sharp coffee and toast after a long night. A movie theater where you both sat in lace-covered highback chairs and cried; a pond you sat by countless times and saw yourself changing as the sun set. Tissue and fibre, realigning under a full dusk of patient turtles and temple pagodas. Even if I’m here by myself I’m not alone. I’m walking the streets next to a thinly veiled ghost wearing a porcelain smile and a swishing plaid skirt.
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On the left is the rebuilt facade of what was once Heijo castle, the first great national seat of Japan and home to the emperor. Unfortunately, like most Japanese castles it has been razed several times over by wars and natural disasters. Now all that remains is a huge, vacant, and mostly treeless park, bearing only the stone footprints of the world’s oldest dynasty. On the right are two sample shots from another hour at Kyoto station. The one on the left has poor contrast and shows little patience in its taking, but the lines are vaguely interesting nonetheless.
[I don't believe myself. Even though my favorite TV drama is on with a special 90 minute episode, I'm passing it up for a heavily edited network showing of Back to the Future. I've seen this movie twenty times already and even have it on DivX somewhere on my computer. Yet the fact it's on TV "live" and unexpected, I'm compelled to watch it, helplessly caught in the nostalgia. Densha Otoko is going to have to be Winny'd this weekend. Oh well. At least I can get the photos prepped now while I watch.]
