autumn tactics

There is another force inside of me, it rests. It waits and sleeps, sleeps for the sunlight, sleeps for the cold, sleeps for the metallic verve to caress and stroke its latent kinetic.

Down into the ground, to a world of concerte and plastic, to a capillary of transit, a translucent valve into a pulsing network. The guards slide open and I step across to join the stream, and again I’m racing to a land of illusion.

Forests, mountains, and fields. Color blurs and the residual image of my footsteps melts across soil and brick. The noonday sun is enveloped like me, and both are made to move, cutting through nonlinear planes.

What need have I for a home? Why assign meaning to concepts best left vague? Already we’ve broken at so many junctions, two meters apart and gazing into different stars. The impermanence of everything is atmospheric, and the awareness of that humidity has already cast fates down in the sand. But freedom is movement in four dimensions, and from fifty miles above unchanged but here in the grass a number of paths can be cut.

So today I leave the hours and minutes behind, and only move; moving forward, moving up, moving still while the current runs circles in my mind. Snake, dart, jump, and devour. Tonight I’ll go looking for contrast in life once more.

Riding on trains is one of my favorite parts of living in Japan, though I’m not sure how much of it is nostalgia and how much is due to the actual fantasy of the system. I don’t think it realls matters though. What sells people is the way they feel. Of course, we ride in trains because need to get places in a timely and cost-effective manner, but the benefits and splendor are immeasurable. I could probably make a life out of writing about Japanese trains, albeit a questionably profitable one.

Every destination has a meaning. If things are left to me for utility, I’ll probably ride my bicycle because that’s free, and time for arrival and in transit is entirely under my control. However, if I’m riding a train, and it’s more than once, then I have a chance to stew a little emotionally and put some sort of significance on the travelling. Who am I going to see? Whoever it is, I probably have a really good reason to take the time for the trip. I’ve waited so long for this journey to take place. And now there’s just the waiting. But as the cliche’ goes, getting there is half the fun.

I have a multitude of advetisements to read, of stations names to ponder, and a score of ever-changing families and lovers, elderly and school children, all of which I can study from the corner of my eye through half-disguised glances. The clack of the wheels the gentle rocking of the cars, the heat radiating through the worn, fabric-covered benches. So many communities, so many dreams, so many lives hurrying and shuffling, dawdling and meandering. Oh quiet trains and gentle deparature music, oh soothingly nasal conductors and streaming scenery– Whatever dreams I end up chasing after, I’ll always have a home on the rails.

Originally recorded December 16, 2006

My finger is rather tender, I accidentally put it in the revolving wheel of my bike while trying to turn on my headlight last night. It bled pretty bad.

Right now I’m in front of the Manboo manga kissa (internet cafe) next to Don Quixote on Yasukuni dori, and it’s harder to type than thought. Sambo Master is keeping me company, but today I’m really supposed to be looking for a new place to live. My trusty bicycle is laden with the most important elements I could take from my blessed rotting apartment last night, stuffed with hard disks and clothes that have sentimental value.

I could go to Yotsuya, I could live in Ueno. I dwell in the seat of fashion at Gaien or Jingumae, but I hope to avoid the humdrum of so many commuters migrating daily in a nondescript surburban malise.

It is just after eleven, though I already have more than a litre of beer in me. I’m not sure how many “rules” I’m breaking with this, but I think the fact I’m sitting at the top of the stairs leading into Subnade while typing on a Targus Stowaway more than makes up for it. Any time I think that I’m doing something slightly weird, consider how many of the twelve to twenty million people in the Tokyo area must be doing the exact same thing at the exact same instant. Yes, people are having orgams; yes, beer is being spilt on some municipal sidewalk; yes, someone is about to make a mistake that will change their life forever. If you think about it that way, there’s really not that much in the way of moral firewalls to keep you from doing whatever you feel like. “Everyone else is doing it, so why can’t we?” Yeah, maybe.

Normally, this would really piss me off, begin virtually homeless and wandering around Tokyo in the cold with two heavy rucksacks containing all the memories of my life. But actually, this is quite reminiscient of when I first came to Tokyo. Then it was the summer, incredibly hot, but I was wandering, with no schedule or particular place to go. Yes, I’m going to see James Bond tonight at seven, but other than that, I have only vague goals in mind. Having to move is still surreal, so I don’t think that I’ve really accepted it, but once I get really tired and want to just go home and watch an episode of TNG and find that I can’t, then it will sink in.

I want to do something warm and comforting, but I know it will ruin everything I have now. Ruin it in a wonderful, briefly fulfilling, but ultimately defeating way. Will I show better judgement, or bury myself in deference to umeshu? What do you think?

Thinking about the events of the day, this was probably the most Japanese January 1st I’ve ever had. Starting into my sixth year (wow) of being in Nippon, things are off to a good start, forgetting the circumstances in which I’m living. Although I had to work until very late Christmas Eve, I did have off New Year’s. I watched Rocky II, among other things, but after it was over I went to Hikawa Shrine in Meguro for my first midnight hatsumode, or first shrine visit. After waiting about an hour in line to get up to the dias, I scored a cup of hot, sweet sake, which is the Japanese equivalent of egg nog. I burned my old shoukichi (little luck) fortune from 2006 and asked the gods to protect me in the new year, since things are a little rocky now in my private life. I returned to my previous form of getting the most prosperous fortune, daikichi, but in an interesting stroke of irony, when it comes to moving the gods say to isogana, or basically, “don’t hurry.” Easy for them to say, they have an eternal home.

Later in the day I had my hatsujearu, or first ride on a JR train. I took the Nambu line from Mizonokuchi to Tachikawa, and there I had some seriously nice traditional Japanese holiday cuisine, which made up for the utter lack of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner I had to endure due to work. I think that once I get settled, I’m going to make a bird anyway. I’m starting to worry if I even remember how to use my precious oven.

[Sorry about the template still being messed up. Being without an internet connection puts a damper on my CSS study.