autumn tactics

How long has it been, I can’t remember…

Thirty years old and still a fool.

But I think that’s ok. It means I really haven’t changed inside.

Here’s to the foolish me. Cheers.

Sometimes you come back to things and they aren’t just what you expect them to be. Times change. People change. That’s the way the cards fall, and you have to be ready to adapt to it.

Being back in southeast Asia is envigorating. The streetside chaos and crumbling disarray of public infrastructure is a nice change to the polished avenues I walk back home.

Boats, paint, trucks,
pastel, odd distribution of space
I’m stronger now, but more somber growing up, growing deeper into something.
Something here but not clear yet.
Something missing.
First breakfast.

There’s something I was supposed to do today… lots of things, actually. But for the life of me I can’t remember any of them. I am alive, very much so, but exhausted to my core and rind. There is an effervescent haze that encircles my every thought like a Shanghai summer, coughing up black.

Tomorrow I leave for Thailand, fulfilling my two international trips a year quota early. I want to be quiet and peaceful, I want to say little and listen much, I want to walk through ruins that look like the set of Ico and have ages’ old Buddhism seep into my subway-texting deadened pores and give me some kind of vibrance deeper than I can extract from any brown, small caffeine-laced bottle.

Oh the road so far out it doesn’t even make sense from a map or my mind. The texture of stone.

昨日代休を取って、海に行った。初めてクラゲが刺すの経験した。変な感じ。

今日色々作品を整理して、写真ワークショップ久しぶり出席した。夜にマイちゃんの誕生日会．．．カラオケ、ボウリング。なっくんが居た。古い友達と楽しめた。新しい人と知り合った。

心の中で、懐かしい好奇心が生えた。思案しています。

やわらかくて刺激的。

Waiting is.

I can’t remember the last time I was at the ocean at night. Actually, it was probably at a company retreat about four years ago, but that doesn’t count. It wasn’t with friends, or vacation. So the real last time I was at the ocean at night was… San Francisco. When I was at GDC in 2004. That was also for work, but that time I had Amy show me around I think.

The times that stand out in my mind are the ones on dates. Shirahama in 2002 with Nobue my first summer in Japan, or any number of beach weeks at Myrtle with my fraternity.

The humidity is doused with the wind rolling off of the ocean. Today it rained like crazy but tomorrow is going to be a beautiful day; the moon is fulling and peeping out from behind the clouds. There are a few pairs of lovers here and there sitting close in the darkness, lighting sparkles and whispering softly. I almost felt like walking up to them and saying hi, working the rarely seen foreigner angle to help kill the loneliness, but then I remembered when I was eighteen, I would given anything in the world to have a few uninterrupted hours with a girl I was crazy about. So I think I’ll do my past self the same courtesy I received time and time again when I was eighteen, and just make my way back to Hotel Pierre alone to retire for the night.

Time moves on whether you like it or not. Suns rise and set, the days go by and you do your best living. There is progress whether you choose to be conscious of it or not. Perhaps it’s the simple idea of things progressing naturally that’s reassuring. As humans we are inclined to feel a need for control, that we can stop the car whenever we want. But there’s a special peace of mind that comes from the expected, even if it’s out of our control. The plants will grow, the birds will sing, and time will go on, giving us an infinite array of moments to experience, savor, and smile upon.

I have big plans, and sometimes when they don’t go how I envision them it bothers me. But as time goes by things not going as you plan comes to have it’s own appeal. You’d think that as experience grows you would become jaded and accustomed to the world. But it’s not like that. You can be surprised every day of your life if you just give yourself the chance. I’m enjoying it.

People come and go, meeting only for a moment or joining hands for the rest of their lives. And all of them are special, unique, and to be treasured. From the girl you catch a smile from on a crowded train to family member who will be with you until the end. In the world there is so much chaos and unpredictability, but that’s not a challenge, it’s a blessing.

Tickles.

I don’t usually write about work anymore, except for the occasional, “Gee, I’m busy”, but I had some insight in the shower this morning, so I thought I’d send it out to the ether.

I was thinking about it over the past several months I guess, in the back of my mind, but this morning in the shower it bubbled its way up to the surface of my consciousness.

An important part of being professional is detachment. We build software. We’re software engineers. We need to evaluate the software we write and the software we use clinically, and do what we can to improve upon it– as it currently stands and in the future when we write new software. This has to happen objectively. It’s not about who wrote it, or what the person is like. Because I think a lot of my frustration for a long time was about “he/she keeps screwing this up, and that’s why I’m here now.” I didn’t think this actively, but I think the feeling was inside of me somewhere. Whether it was a team member’s code, or the incomplete spec coming from design, or whatever. All the frustration grew out of there being a victim and a perpetrator. Though they most certainly didn’t intend to cause this kind of hardship, by what was produced that’s the atmosphere that developed. Even without the intent though, it was the fact that someone else created this condition, and I had to deal with it. I didn’t sit around actively thinking these things, but those kind of tones were in my frame of mind, and it frustrated me, which in turn made me stressed and tired, which led down that negative spiral.

But you can’t think that way. Not just for your own good, but for professionalism’s sake. And when you realize that it’s not about who did what at all, that actually it’s just about the job at hand, then it’s easy. There is no guilt, no victim, no perpetrator, no right or wrong. It just is. We analyze the software in question, try to improve on its current weaknesses in a symptomatic (bugs) or theoretical (refactoring) aspect and move on. Experience brings better judgment and refined sense. If we can just open our minds to this truly detached mindset of appraising and using software, then there is no cause for worry.

Maybe that’s what my senior meant when he told me years ago that I needed to work without making it personal, without being emotional. I still like to see people have fun, to be able to allow them to have fun. I can feel that, and that’s ok. It’s actually very important when you’re in the entertainment business. But when it comes to the method of my work, of engineering, then there is no feeling, no emotion. It’s just critical evaluation and corresponding action to improve the entire game development process.

“Easy” is a relative term. Everyone has their standards for difficulty, success, and merit, but for me software development has gotten much “easier” since I stopped looking at it as a high school drama of who did what to who and just saw it for what it really was, simple engineering.

Soft behind the ears is my scent.
One glimpse of a familiar face drives me to drink.
Drink in the manner to remember the pain,
and to intensify it.

Now just a long, slow, ride for soil on a Sunday.
Tea, incense and an old jacket.
Soon forgotten.

昨日も今日も頑張りました。自分には善くないことが多くて分かっていますが、自分に善いことも多くて分かります。心の中に、戦ってる人がいて、その人が勝つため応援している人外にもいる。この世には毎日偉大さの近い人が数億いるなのに、彼らはどのぐらい偉大さの近いにいるのは分かってるかな。僕みたいの大変眩しいな人、僕みたいの大変不完全である人、もちょっと頑張れる人…

ちょっとだけ温もりに近づくと自分の不完全さがつかの間でも納得できるの人…

その人になりたい。心の中に、何かを許せば、

その人を愛されようにさせて。

Menthol cigarettes, chianti reserva, Miles Davis and sandalwood.

Sometimes life slows down, whether you really want it to or not. Maybe because you need it to. Maybe because that’s all you can take.

I rode my bicycle home, slowly, and took a shower. I rinsed out the cans in the sink and put on an undershirt. I slouched down into the sofa and got my deal handed to me straight by a Chinese girl. I’m attractive between my forehead and my mouth. I’m quiet.

I sat down at my desk and thought about modality, I sat down at my desk and thought about ego.

Why don’t I get a girlfriend? I cook sometimes, with spices. In China big televisions are cheap, but in Japan life is good. Work is good, the city is good. Lots of things are good.

The scales are blue and in a ten-measure cycle. My life is blue and in some kind of cycle.

Life is kind of blue.

考えています。言うまではあまり考えなかった。もっと正確に言えば、考えたくなかった。三十年この世に暮らして、意外と苦しみがそらせるように上手くなりました。最初から無意識に僕は愛するべきの気持ちを消しました。苦しみをそらすように。

でも自分の心から苦しみをそらすため、どこっかで、他の所へ流すのが必要だった。それが悪かった。最初から悪かった。僕への慈悲の気持ちが要るけど、自分の心がシェアできない。だから最悪のことした。大切な人の心に対する無頓着でした。

無頓着。最悪だった。

考えています。もっと考えたほうがいいけど。

何を感じたらいい？感じたい。

I’m wide awake
I’m wide awake
Wide awake
I’m not sleeping

So it’s 2010. In the end of December I went to Seattle on business and then a week later had my first live musical performance in roughly twenty years, and then a week later I went to Berlin and Amsterdam for my third European excursion. I have fifty pages of notes in my Kellogg’s journal, as well as seven rolls of film, but for that you’re just going to have to wait a little. In the meantime here are my new year resolutions.

The tangible:
1) I will have at least two photo exhibitions this year, one of which will be at a private showing
2) I will produce at least one EP length album of entirely new music produced

The intangible:
I will be more at peace with my decisions in life, both personal and professional, and towards this more honest with myself and others. To thine own self be true.

Somehow, I manged to sleep over twelve hours without any difficulty. I don’t think I would have been able to get up and go look for a club anyway, so now I have a while day afead of me, refreshed and envigorated. Yesterday I made two arcs through the city centre, one from Hauptbahnhof through Brandenburg Gate and then more or less along the Spree visiting Alexandre Platz, the carnivals and the largest remaining section of the Wall in Ostbahnhof. The second route started in Mauer Park where I bought an old poster for an Eastern German performance of Ivanhoe. Afterwards I visited the Berlin Wall memorial and took some photographs through the wall into the Death Strip. I remember vaguely as a fourth grader of learning that the Berlin wall was torn down, but at the time it didn’t make much sense to me. A wall is for holidng up a house, or rounding out a garden, so the idea of a wall that went through a city to keep people apart was confusing. Most of the literature in the memorials has been in English so I’ve gotten a lot out of it. I felt a slight, sobering shiver looking at the electrical equpiment in the Death Strip, but I think I’ll have to meditate on it more today, perhaps at Volkspark.

10:30

Knowing that all of this is tied to the DDR and the Berlin Wall, can we still (should we) evaluate the works of art on their own?

‘Modern history’?!

Two perspectives on the same object, video vs. photography.

Artists don’t shy from the filth, waste, and destruction. They show what is there, and what is affecting our lives, regardless of its conent.

Is time constant? Does our perception distort its passage? So many speeds in these videos, perhaps changing dynamically, subtlely?

12:00

I’m beginning to feel like I was a fool for not having an exhibition in 2009. I need to keep pushing myself and just exhibit because without exhibiting I produce nothing, which was obvious from my 2009 nengajyou selection. I had virtually nothing suitable to choose from. Why? I didn’t take any pictures? Why? I had no burning pressure to produce for a show. I swear I will do at least two expos in 2010!!!

All things being equal, I should be content. In a sense perhaps I am, and I just don’t want to admit it. Very little is about wants and perhaps so much of what goes on is about needs. Needs are serviced in order of priority, with those for sustaining life coming fairly high up on the list… strike, no… there is something else I wanted to say. Oh well, no, there is… nevermind.

My heart is like a radio with flashes of static from varying signal strengths. It’s like living in one broadcast area and then moving just out of range into another. After some time you forget about the first, until one day you’re driving down the interstate out of your usual area and the signals start fighting halfway through the song you’ve been listening to off and on for the last several years. That old station crops up for a few seconds and you hear the chorus of your youth that you used to joyride around to. After growing used to a different kind of filter over your face, suddenly for a moment it’s torn away, pouring oxygen into your lungs which brings the fire, the adventure, and the excitement: they all come rushing back. Then in an instant it’s gone, and the big city station is back, the exhiliration rushes out of you so fast you feel disoriented and lost. What was that crackle? Who were you and there was something ou promised yourself… no… no, it’s gone.

Why did I come to Japan?
Why did I fall in love?
When did I stop remembering how to do these things, and why they were important?

…

There’s a Jeremy Piven movie on the plane. Jeremy Piven, the eternal best friend-sidekick. This reminds me of a number of moves, one of which is The Family Man. There’s a scene where Nicholas cage is in a state of shock and denial when he finds himself in an alternate history where he did end up marrying and having kids with his college sweetheart. Incredulous he consults with Jeremy, who tells him,

“Don’t screw up the best thing in your life just because you’re a little unsure about who you are.”

I’ve always really liked that line, but not until right now did I think to ask myself, what is the best thing in my life? Or more appropriately what was the best thing in my life. Was it Ai? Was it her and I threw that away? How many times can you forsake love and still expect it to give you another honest chance? And more importantly, should you as a human being really do that in the first place?

It’s one of those evenings where the autumn sun is so bright and low in the sky that the clouds hiding it gleam with sunbeams in start contrast to the lavender horizon.

I’ve been looking at these kind of skies and dreaming since high school. Is it that my life could always feel so inspired, or am I moved only in contrast to the leaden cloak I toil inside day in and out?

One thing I am sure of is that I’ll never grow out of this bittersweet heart. I’ve felt moved by life to the point I could go crazy since I was a teenager. I’ve worn mismatching socks every day for the last twelve years and never thought once about stopping. I still clumb up on curbs and low walls to walk an invisible balance beam. I catalogue scents and run my fingers over textured walls on the way home. I do none of these things just to sere as some superficial testament of my dedication to a fairytale god, I just do it because it’s who I am, and who I always will be.