December 31st, 2005
113759765817642852
Semi-frequent flyer miles
[I went to Seoul for a few days over the New Year holiday, since it was the cheapeast international destination available on short notice. I have another four or five pages handwritten in my journal yet to transcribe, but here's a start.
Photographs are viewable in my new replacement for HTMLGallery, a package installed with my webserver called Gallery. It's obvious right away that someone has spent a lot more time than I did making it pretty and easy to use. Good for them.]
New Year’s is just about the only time you can really count on a vacation. To this point it’s the only holiday I’ve had regularly for every year that I’ve been in Japan. Each time it’s special I guess, for each year I’ve been somewhere different.
In 2000, I was working hard on my applications for graduate school, and I ended up spending the majority of winter break playing Final Fantasy IX and eating pizza in the lovely swank of Brandon’s and my apartment on Grady. With a Grizzly Adams beard, Jennifer and I rang in the new year on that lovely, beat, yarny sofa. In 2001, I had the last conventional holiday; as conventional as a holiday can be with a life-threatening accident. The ever faulty electrical system in my Charger finally failed for the last time and I rolled it over into a ditch with my brother on the way back from getting egg nog, a full 100 meters from my house.
2002 was the first new year experienced out of America. Nobue and I stayed the week at a time share in Akihabara, eating fish with miso soup and ultimately running around to every convenience store in Chiyoda-ku just minutes before midnight. The last, frenzied minutes of 2002 elapsed looking for a bottle opener so that we could pop open our ghetto champagne at the strike of January 1st. I spent those few days in a deserted concrete city, walking through slowly dying snow and photographing power lines in reverent silence. 2003 was my last year at home, probably the last for quite some time. I spent twelve-hundred dollars or whatever it was to get back to Virginia on the 27th and join the family at my uncle’s house on the Potomac. That was the time I recall having to fend off a barrage of, “Do you really want to do this”, and “Why can’t you live here?” inquiries.
Lastly, in 2004 Mikiko and I spent New Year’s listening to the ringing of the bells, echoing from the nearest Buddhist temple, the 104 strokes to beg release from man’s mortal sins. The next morning we rose early and took one of the first Komachi shinkansens for Akita, where we opened the first with pounding mochi at Ito Yokado and throwing snowballs after hatsumode (first shrine visit of the new year) at Iyataka Jinjya in Akita’s cavernous Senshuu Kouen. With virtually all the shops closed for the holiday, we walked and walked through white stillness, visiting a namahage kan (local forest demon folktale lodge) at Oga, and I stared down the flooring gale of the wind blowing in from the Sea of Japan.
Which brings us to 2005, the first New Year’s that I shall be truly alone. The winter’s sun feathers down on a pale Chiba, under skies hazy to be blue I ride east. Once again on the Keisei Limited Express bound for Narita. Kashmir resounds in epic grandeur as I move to a see a new year in mainland Asia, this time visiting Seoul. I’ll spend the holiday in an assumedly mute city of eight million, living off of noodle stalls and shuffling along in a Bangkok cotton jacket with a tripod over my shoulder. I go to see things, I go to listen. I go to breathe the air of another country and a people of economy and style.
Castles, streets, temples, and fields. Give me a bicycle, and a camera, and a notebook, and I’ll travel a thousand miles in contented thought.
One of these days the memories and nostalgia will tumble over my mind’s brim, spilling forth pachinko slot-like onto a carpet of so many t-shirts bought on vacation. I put my camera bag on the upper rack as the heater below the seats is in full force and I don’t want to mess with the Velvia.
I guess it would have made more sense to wear my Adidas’ since I’m going to be walking so much tomorrow and the day after, but I wasn’t thinking that much, so it’s my nearly soulless Chucks bought and made, ironcailly enough, in Thailand. Short trip. Man, I’m hungry.
[I've forgotten the names of the Taira clan already! I must review my Japanese history!]
Somehow, my first picture of any international trip is a can of the beer I got on the way. Though only a 130-minute flight, I get an alcoholic beverage and a small lunch of beef brisket, rice, vegetables, and salmon. The problem with planes, aside from not being able to move, is that you don’t really _feel_ like you’re moving. For better or worse, I decided to put ELO on after an intense Korean listening session and now I’m about to go crazy with bottled verve. Twilight is a song for somehwere between bicycling and driving down a highway to Nasu. Essentially it’s you in control of some great speed, a throttle kicking under your foot and around your hands, a bursting with gears and blood and smiling adulation. This is our time, and I have to melt crazy under the light-dripping city-fresh economy. It’s adventure! How can I sit in front of a computer when there are people and musics and choruses and techno energy so fresh flowing through the veins of capital society? “The neon in young lovers’ eyes.” Bud and sing and pop– sweet rubber under my heels.
In my place, in my place
Were lines that I couldn’t change
I was lost, oh yeah
I was lost, I was lost
Crossed lines I shouldn’t have crossed
I was lost, oh yeah
Say, say, where were we? Where were we when last we talked? How how we’ve travelled so far. Nineteen ninety-seven, high school, and college kids were adults, so much wiser and mature than us. And what?
Say, my love, I came to you with best intentions
You laid down and gave to me just what I’m seeking
Say, love, you drive me to distraction.
At the graudation of college still such a child, a child unknown to money and insurance and a life moving working what no summer vacation? Where did it end and why did it begin?
Climb on two by two
To be sure these days continue
These things we cannot change
But what can I change?
A life of moving or a life of stillness? Or maybe moving and finding stillness, oh to move but be still, how my childlike heart yearns to be like thou who have gone before. But no! But yes! The road is the journey and there is no end, no end at all. Were I to find an end what would it serve? Are goals nothing more than towns along the way? A place to replenish supplies and look down, back down that mountain– but only for a moment for if we stop for too long, truly we will tire and our bodies will grow soft, attaching themselves to one spot in the ruddy soil.
Take these chances
Place them in a box until a quieter time
Lights down you up and die
Lights down you up and die
Fifteen years ago or fifteen nights, what is a world with fire crackling in the hearts and the minds of wonderous dreamers. The known is valued and the unknown even more, for paths untravelled have so many branches yet waiting exploration.
Sweet brevity can I put all these racing thoughts into only a few syllables? Perhaps not. It may not matter, for words will always succeed only in failing me.
