autumn tactics

Recently, every time it’s been sunny outside I’ve had the almost overpowering urge to climb on the Enjoy, ride around with a couple of rolls of Super Gold, and get a crackle-cold bin beer at the peak of my adventure. This is most assuredly the natural romantic in me augmented by my swollen loathing of computers. However, as nice as it generating gigabytes of data to archive, it creates a disproportional amount of back stock which may never see the light of day.

You are probably thinking, “Rusty, I haven’t gotten any pings from your Gallery RSS in months. I see a fair number of shots in your blog, but it’s just a tiny sliver from what you’ve been up to with little frame of reference.”

Yes, yes, you’re right. If I don’t improve my skills on the post-shutter click side of things, I’ll never get anything better for the shows. The truth is, I have enough material to produce years’ worth of similarly-assembled appearances at Geisai and Design Festa. But, there are three major problems with it all:

1) it’s unprocessed
2) it’s all unrelated (aside from the relation of my mundane current style, which draws jaded criticism in its own right)
3) the presentation medium is sparse, fragmented, and high school level

So, today despite it being one of the last few hot glorious days of summer, I stayed in this morning and put together two new albums for Gallery. One is touristy (thusly in Travel), and another slightly more artistic (in Tokyo Bicycle Wanderings).

The former is my trip to Seoul which happened only three weeks ago! That’s a pretty good turnaround for me. The latter is a trip to the Arakawa in July. Of particular interest to shutterbugs is that this set is a mix of the A-1 and 5D, and some similar shots are set up around the river, so you can see the differences in the medium and my current mastery of the formats. It’s not very scientific, the comparison factor was probably just in the back of my mind. So keeping this in mind, Ken, have a look and let me know what you think (provided I ever get the damn comments working again.)

Inside a withered shell, a faintly glowing light stirs.

Twenty-seven years sedated, twenty-seven more and I’ll wait.

The weakness of the spirit throws cold water over a steaming heart. Fighting through a placenta of mediocrity, the soul tires and rolls over for another five minutes to dream.

I am not the dull and imperfect fantasy of everyday life. There must be a knife in here to cut my out.

this air is familiar.
I’ve been here before;
the clouds, the temperature,
the unwashed feel of my sleeping bag tousled on the bed,
the movie, the music,
the fingerprints on a mostly drunk glass.
this was any number of days nine years ago, end of summer.
today, once more for the past
and the people who made those days for me.
here’s to drinking in the summer.
here’s to us.

Sweat beads cover my shoulders; sleek arms glisten in the setting sun.
The echoes of a guitar ring far away; below the river crawls east.
Dusk falls on an empty city, and wordlessly I welcome the night.

Ya basta llorar
mi vida alindar
no te quiero ver sufrir
con tristeza y dolor

–The Green Car Motel

夏ばて。

まだ具体的に「夏ばて」はどういうもの、把握していないけど、恐らく、今週はそういうもの。

実は夏ばては日本の怠惰な人の弁解と思っていた。英語でたまに言うは、「The flesh is willing but the mind is weak」。この文の語源は聖書の諺ですけど、意味は反対だ。要は、体の限界は人間の想像より高い。単純に、心が弱いから、「あぁ、疲れたから、今日できないわ」とよく言います。

私はA 型行動様式ですから、いつも罪悪感は「やれ！やれ！弱いあんたやれ！」と叫んでいる。それから、やらないと死ぬほどやましくなる。それ故に自分が動かない時に、「夏ばてだ」と言いたくない。

でも、この休みに本当に何もしていない。誰もあっていない。掃除が中途半端に止まった。本やギター勉強や練習していない。大好きのチャリでも、ぶらぶら乗っていく興味がない。昨日終日食べたものは：クラッカー五枚、だけ。今日もまだ何も食べてない。変だけど、別にお腹が空いたない。単純に食べることは面倒くさい。これは夏ばて？

夏ばてなら、夏ばては私の大敵だ。私の疚しい心で、気が絶対変になっている。

Above: Japanese salarymen trudge home from the end-of-day tachinomi (drinking at standing tables in front of bars with colleagues) in Nishi-guchi. Perhaps they suffer from natsubate (summer fatigue) as well

on being

what is techno what is love?

to illuminate or fade, so many choices at instants in our life.
unthought, unspoken, unfelt, but in the pit of our souls a gear is turning.

yes today was x, y, and z.
tomorrow I will do great things and be songworthy
but no… yet no…

now we are faced with a challenge as always:
to burn, or to fold.
tomorrow is uncertain, now the blood of time is within you.
so ignite! so shine!
so give every last drop of your beautiful broken life to the stars,
for only in this instant will they weep for you!

on dancing

pulse until you drop thrive shake and spin
do not listen to the music!
run ahead of it!

you already know the next four beats, this is obvious.
they have telegraphed themselves into your brain,
you need only to complete the sequence.
it is a game of chess encoded in the rhythm of raindrops;
you have no choice honestly except to submit to their will.

Je suis revenu de mes vacances à la Corée, toutefois je suis toujours en vacances à la maison parce que maintenant c’est obon. Je passe mes jours dans la ville prenant des photographies. Il fait chaud. Le ciel est bleu, et les pluies du soleil vers le bas sur mes épaules nues. J’erre, d’un air endormi observant le écoulement des touristes le long de l’avenue ombragée.

Pourquoi la vie me fascine-t-elle ainsi?

내일 나는 한국에 가고 있다. 짧은 여름 휴가 이다. 나는 많은 사진을 찍고, 나의 전표안에 쓴다.

여기 한국어안에 몇몇 낱말은 있는다.

사과 차 야구 고기 사회주의 여권 투명한 뜨거운 비 펜 구름 키보드 검정 유리 뚱뚱한 얇은 모자 사진기 말.

당 춤 종 일 생활 죽음 할머니 직물 웃음 외침 사랑.

언젠가, 너는 나를 사랑할 것이다.

나는 너를 위해 아름다울 것이 무언가를 살 것이다.

サヨナラ。