autumn tactics

on the corner of main street
just tryin’ to keep it in line
you say you wanna move on and
you say I’m falling behind

The stars are blazing
like rebel diamonds
cut out of the sun
can you read my mind?

- The Killers

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.

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.

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.

There are reasons to enjoy being back in the States. The friends, the cheap goods, the occasional microbrew or meatloaf. However, there are always about thirty thousand more reasons to enjoy being back in Japan. Either I’m becoming more sentimental with age, or the business trips are just becoming increasingly taxing. Whatever the reason, I am electrified as soon as I disembark from a plane coming home. The scents, the characters, the quiet, the way I stand above the crowds. The ritualistic courtesy from virtually every encounter, the innocent chuckling of adolescent boys on the train. I know you must get tired of reading it every time I return from overseas, but I never get tired of wanting to write about it. Japan is my home, and it is eternally getting better.

恋

先週末はバレンタインでした。ロブの誕生日会と出張に対していろいろ準備してたからあまり考えなかったけど、とにかく起こりました。日本では習慣的に男性は女性からチョコレートをもらえます。アメリカに互いは小さなプレゼントを交換しますが、ほとんど恋人はやります。小学校のころに自分のクラスメートにカードを交換します。いつも人気の女の子からバレンタインをもらえたらドキドキした。

今年立派なチョコレートをもらえました。久しぶりにちょっとドキドキした。恋かな。

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about fatigue. It’s a subject of deep concern because the level of fatigue I feel is so overpowering I often feel in the morning like I’m going to vomit. It can’t be as simple as one particular thing, there must be a confluence of reasons mitigating to drag me down like this. I’m making a concerted effort not to be stressed out by work. I’ve been avoiding drinking during the week. I’ve been running. I’ve been playing guitar and studying music. I’m not sure what more I can do… but I suppose I need to do something, because I can’t go on like this. There’s too much potential in my body and mind to be held back. Where is my love? What are my priorities? How can I get my affairs in order?

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

Long story short, train came late, didn’t die, but almost did dive to subzero temperatures in the compartment; not dwelling on it. Right now I’m in Blumenmarkt, which I wandered on to by accident but am enjoying. A row of little shops on the canal selling not just tulip bulbs but all manner of strange plants that you may “grow from a can”, including Venus Flytraps and “Buddha palms”. Alongside are of course your standard fare trinkets/branded goods. Clogs with the flag, clogs with tulips; clogs with hemp leaves. Hash tin with hash leaves, has tins with tulips, has tines with a silhouette and “red light district” written across them. Oh and a cheese shop! I may go insane buying souvenirs here (mostly for myself). I wondered about the import regulations in Japan for plants and worried about my lonesome roses back in Tokyo.

When I got here this morning I was panicking, having not eaten for over thirteen hours. So I had a frozen hamburger at a sketch middle-eastern bistro in the red light district. But now I can eat famous, natsukashii Dutch food, split pea soup! You have to respect a country where mustard and black bread come standard as a side.

Anyway, the real reason I was inspired to write now was a China dress and paper umbrella I saw outside an oriental porcelain shop. It reminded me of the fabled “white fur china dress” I’d seen in a crane game. I tried and I tried and I tried but no matter what, I couldn’t get it. I never had any trouble with boxed figures like Sakura Taisen or Evangelion, but the dress always eluded me. Arka commented that perhaps the white fur dress was symbolic, an ideal I had in my head that could never really exist. In a world where I win the dress and get some submissive girl to actually wear it for me, I wouldn’t really be happy I wonder…

Unfortunately finding a trance party continues to elude me. Maybe it’s just not meant to be, and I need to coordinate my visit with a particular party. I got excited to find a Trance Nation flyer until I realized it was for next month. Every venue sees geared up for tomorrow, but I worry if I’ll even be able to get in to one of these countdown house events. I get the impression every place is going to be packed and right now I’d give 4:1 odds that when the clock strikes 2010 I’ll be at some random street corner and just crack open a beer after kissing my cellphone. Let’s do a quick Japan-era reacp of New Year’s Eves’ past:

2009: had the flu at home, went to bed before midnight
2008: went to Iwate New Year’s Day
2007: homeless, went to midnight hatsumode with Ai during a Rocky marathon, spent New Year’s Day in Kyoto
2006: Seoul, countdown in town square with other hostel people
2005: New Year’s party in the states with Mike and co.
2004: went to Akita with Miki
2003: Akihabara and weekly mansion with Nobue while job-hunting

Wow, that was a dumb idea. I went from giddy to depressed as hell in about twenty minutes.

There are some parts of me that don’t like people watching, because it feels like a waste of time, that value equation thing again, with production of something being up on the value side. Anyway, people watching is good somethings because it’s just engaging enough to let your mind sort out things without becoming nervous.

I think that ultimately I have to make things, and I have to break them apart and master them on my own, but I still need an audience, I need someone to share them with. Fundamentally I buy off on that, and I recognize that belonging is a basic human need. I guess I just need to work on deepening my connections with others. If I could really convince myself of the value of deep relationships, fruitful, balanced relationships, I think I would be more leaning towards respecting them. Things of value require care, I know that in my head. but I don’t know it in my heart. That’s what I need, knowing in the heart. Is there any way other to figure that out then breaking all my things? Is that even a route that leads to success? No. And I’ll tell you why. because as soon as I break something I can easily replace it with something shiny and new. that’s what my charisma/looks/confidence/exoticism (the Dave appeal equation) gets me. Blessing and a curse, I don’t have to work hard for koi, it comes for the free and it’s expected. In other words–

I take it for granted.

So, because of this I don:t think the breaking things is going to lead to that valuing deeper relationships… so what is??

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?

of standard train travel. That’s how long my trip is this morning. Starting at 5:45 am. I could have taken the shinkansen and been there in just over two hours, but somehow it just turned out this is the way I chose.

Inefficient by design.

Originally I planned to stay up in Minami Aizu in my tent last night, but typhoon William sufficently washed out those plans so to speak. So I spent Monday, my first day off in nearly a month, getting acquainted with FFXII, which I quickly became hooked on and spent most all day playing. I did, however, scurry out of my blanket and tatami combination long enough to get a fairly nice bit of closing time shopping done, picking up a Snow Peak mess kit to go with my compact gas stove that I received from Rodney, as well as much needed replacement cargo straps for my Ferrino hiking pack.

Black and white film, foma RC paper, and too much imported beer. Another warm chat with the always bright checkout girl at Yamaya.

Though it’s very nearly gone from my everyday life, there are times when the magic of first coming to Japan returns for a fleeting moment like a faded odor from a childhood jacket. I exit Akihabara station and having fifteen minutes to transfer, scan the area sleepily for a convenience store.

The montage of unfamiliar signs; the nearly empty streets of early morning; the lack of time being relevant… Like a drunken bee at dusk, I stumble down into an Am/Pm for some sandwiches and token omiyage. My groggy gaze lingers on the neatly presed-together legs of a girl reading a magazine.

Royal jelly. Beauty tea. Otsuka pharmaceuticals.

Entering into the subway for a minute I am uncannily lost. The mulitple branching stairwells lead to the same platform and remind me of Silent Hill 3.

There are times when Japan doesn’t feel like Japan, usually times without architecture. The majority of people on subways at six in the morning; it could be almost anywhere. Bums the world around have similiar mannerisms, free from the pall of ethnic strata, more or less. But it rises… oh how the rays fall so corn yellow on the sea of crescent-tiled rooves. It’s been so long since I’ve seen a morning, it’s almost foreign to me. Three hours on a single section express train. The low sun is so reserved and distant.

Power lines, ginkoes, and scaffolding. Wet streets and danchi.

Sister Charles used to say that the skies in October were the bluest all year. This always filled me with a senseless kind of pride, simply because I was born in October, even though this had little to do with me.

Today is October the 27th. In three days I am going to be thirty years old. I wanted to spend a lot of this month celebrating and reflecting on this, but things were busier at work than October usually is and I had no time for much of anything. However, leaving that aside this week will be quiet and mostly reserved. I’ve been thinking of life and how simply you can change it. I could still be with the same someone a number of someones, but that doesn’t suit me now. To be honest, I see others making those kinds of commitments and I wonder are we so much in charge of our happiness? I used to think that finding someone and falling in love was rare and magical, something to desperately dream of. But after twelve years of dating, cheating, and heartbreak, I’m not sure I believe in courtly love anymore. Only the inexperience of relationships can lead one to search and hope for love. Now more than anything, love feels like a choice, the driving forces of which outside of loneliness or security I can’t fathom. I don’t say this because I’m bitter, I say it because I really can’t see it any other way. If that is innate cynicism, then I am sad and forlon that I made an environment to change me this way.

In Japanese, koi and ai (love viewed from the perspective of fancy and devotion, respectively) are separate things. My senpai at work once described koi as a feeling/circumtance, whereas ai was an action. Maybe in experience I’ve lost the ability to feel koi, but I’ve learned in practice what ai takes.

Does anyone over the age of thirty fall in love? Why do people marry? Why do people choose to remain with one person? I think the answer must exist, and if I talk to enough people I’ll find out this is just like any other question of human behaviour. I just need more outside influences to help me find peace in myself. It’s not impossible, just too ill-defined a problem space.

Rain. Fields. Cool autumn wind.

The rain in Fukushima is steady but light. If my mother were here, she’d say it’s a good day for ducks. Even though the weather maes taking pictures difficult, the overwhelming power of the countryside buoys my spirits. Rows of vegetables run into crimson and yellow underbrush. Tractors and very plain utility shed dot the landscape. Terraced fields of cur rice build into hillsides, and carpets of wet leaves reflect the occasionally passing car.

It’s reasonable to say that the changes to one’s personality over time are influenced by the environment one lives in. The people one interacts with on a daily basis, he absorbs their means of communicating and dealing with problems. It’s never a complete assimilation, but an intermediary interpolation, an annealing process.

I think in general as people grow older they become more calm and passive. It’s a matter of waiting, thinking, and responding. However, living in Japan may accelerate my evolution into this frame of mind. I undoubtedly have my opinions, and thoughts on events and dialogue, however as time has passed I’ve become more prone to listen quietly and reflect. It’s nothing astounding, it’s just a smooth mellowing that I’m conscious of and entertained by. Waiting is.

This morning when I awoke the air was damp, fresh, and slightly warm. Last night I went to Yoyogi park on the way home to practice guitar. I sat by the lake as a sprinkling rain began and fumbled through my standard repretoire. Tokyo has so much light pollution that in even the middle of night very few places are truly dark. Silhouettes of lovers and and homeless men are easy to pick out, silent and thoughtful.

Two months in the year have passed and I feel like I’ve accomplished little. It’s not often that I feel that time passes quickly, but I’ve been home so little this year, doing things without photographs it runs together. Parks, row boats, guitars, wine, skiing, and smokey bars. Ah, but it is life, sweet and ripe, even if feeling somewhat lost in it.

This night may end in twenty minutes, after two hamburgers and a chicken sandwich, or it could be tomorrow at 8:30 with my haircut, but whatever, it becomes doesn’t matter. It’s mine, and a day I will remember. Like so many things it starts with alcohol, a glass of twenty-two dollar wine from my neighborhood liquor store. The only thing I had today was 650 yen worth of sushi before heading to Nakano in search of a wide angle lens for the A-1, so a generous glass of Bordeaux was enough to make beat-tired me happy and forego Resident Evil 4 for a little space. When is the last time I had a night to myself, really? So I’m in McDonald’s with a poorly mixed 20 oz. shouchu/tea cocktail and listening to ソルファ while reading the Book of Matthew and thinking about my life. I remember when I was a traveler, using places like this to write and put my feet up before walking twelve miles through some city not my home.

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

[In the end, Saturday night was not a mistake, or a series of misadventures, but a controlled and mellow buzz into the late night. I sat in front of Shinjuku station's north exit and while smoking the top of a Camel hard pack, watched some performing kids draw a large crowd. Then I wandered down towards Kabuki-cho, finished my chuhai and took an hour alone in Karaokekan working on some of my favorite hits. After that, it was about eleven-thirty and I was bushed so I went home, though I don't really remember doing it. I finally went to bed after some more RE4 at two. Blah, blah, blah.]

While scanning pictures of Honmachi, I read what you wrote. I’ve seen you post a couple times on the eikaiwa community, and I liked what you said. Your comments made sense to me, so I read a couple entries from your personal blog. Your loneliness was taut, the luscious feelings you had made my heart ache. The things you said were interesting. They sounded a little like me.

You live close to here; it flashed in my mind that maybe we could be friends. After reading your blog some more, it seems that you are gay. That made me feel something else. Do I still think we could be friends? Of course. But my perception of you changed. Reading that filled me with images that didn’t come from your words, but from a whole bunch of things other people I don’t know said or insinuated. Why does my mind grasp for tangible, easy-to-sort stereotypes so quickly? Like a monkey, on a thin branch dangling out into the open, as soon as something firmer and more sheltered came into arm’s reach, I made a grab for it. I swung across and clutched it without thinking. It was a muscle twitch. I am not going to let my mind go where it is safe.

Sometimes I get angry when people honk at me while I’m riding my bike home from work. Sometimes I curse under my breath at those that I think are being crudely inconsiderate.

What if I am regressing? What if I stop being the person you love? What if I’ve already reached my apex, and now will only plummet into the quagmire of sloth and bigotry I was soaring over for so long? What if I’m already dead?

This was one of the best TNG episodes, I believe. It was also kind of sad, but I guess that’s to be expected since it was the series finale as well. I’m half tempted to read the plot summary, but I think I may have just found a good, solemn way to spend my Friday night (since I completed this week’s chores last night). So, I’ll resist the urge and try to forget about it for now.

But the real meaning of the title of this entry is a salute to two important [right] material possessions which, in the last several weeks, have left the realm of everyday utility. They have been with me for five good years, with frequent use in inhospitable conditions (standard fare for my reckless nature). So with today’s Autumn Tactics, we bid adieu my stalwart companions the Diamond Rio 500 and my blue Seahawks hat. So first, the MP3 player.

I was climbed onto the MP3 fad before it really became big. In pre-Napster era I got into it during my first year at Virginia during the fall of 1997. In those days, FTP sites were the portal of choice and the RIAA was more or less oblivious to the thousand-pound gorilla they’d have on their hands in just a feet short years. Using such pioneering sites as the long-since defunct MP3Asylum, I leveraged the academic version of WS_FTP 95 that came with the ITC student software pack to grab hundreds of tunes onto the _vast_ 8.4GB hard disk in my blazing Gateway2000 Pentium II, Sabrina. But this precedes the Rio by a good three years. After my summer at Microsoft I’d gotten sick enough of running around with my 1994 Walkman brick and bad analog tape (recorded by connecting the line out of my sound card to my tape deck), so I used the birthday money I got from my mom and purchased one of the first SmartMedia MP3 players off of Amazon. Through thick and thin, on three continents the Rio was with me for jogging, planing, and bullet-training. Along the way I upgraded the firmware so I could use 128MB cards, but it grew increasingly limiting as broadband exploded and I started pulling down two hour DJ sets at 192kbps. Additionally, the Rio wasn’t ment to put up to my kind of abuse, certainly not for five years, so after being dropped about fifty times, the LCD began to give out, at which point I started employing a hard whack to the back of the unit to perform a delicate adjustment on the current flow through the crystals. I suppose ultimately this is what lead it to it not even turning on. So after propping myself up with the 64MB in my Sanyo voice recorder, I finally put capital to the ailment and used a birthday present from this year (five years later) to get an iPod Photo, with a 20GB capacity, two and a half times the size of my entire desktop hard disk from college. Wary of what I can do to electronics I bought a little orange jacket and screen cover for the iPod, one that’s normal means of attachment to me is being looped through my thick leather belt (which I’ve been wearing now almost daily since 1996). Still, I think I may need to get a separate protector for the click-wheel, because the factory film is going to get greasy and come off fast. But first, let’s have a moment of silence for the unflagging service of the Rio, which will now be retired to the electronics box in the back of my closet until I get really bored one day and open it as a science experiment.

In even _greater_ standing (no offence of course to the Rio), is my beat and weathered Seattle Seahawks hat. This was also obtained in the golden year of 2000, but a few months ahead of my birthday at my first professional football game, a preseason matchup between the (then AFC west and considerably less adroit) Seahawks and the Indianapolis Colts. When this hat was purchased for a mere seventeen dollars it already had all the earmarks of being a Rusty trademark. It had an almost perfect pre-curved bill, an outdated and campy logo, and a faded blue finish. But most importantly it met the two key criterion for objects representative of my style: 1) it was obscure (Have you ever seen someone else in a Seahawks hat?), and 2) it was as no frills as unflavored yogurt. Also a key selling point was the fact it had a copper buckle and adjustable strap, as opposed to the little plastic holes that I always need to set on “four”, which in turn make it look like I have a fat head.

The hat became my “lucky hat”, because to be it was obtained at the peak of my acceleration away from suburban Maryland obscurity. It also fit the Virginia “shaggy prep” look perfectly, always leading the chase of any first date in blue stripes and a Camel Hard Pack (standard operating gear for parties)**. So in my ongoing attempt to carefully control the disintegration of my apparel to reach Jack Kerouac-like status, I wore the hat everywhere and anywhere. To the ACM World Programming Finals, where the hat and I chatted up professional condomologists on the streets of Vancouver. To the mountains of Utah, skiing down Alta for the first time (and first concussion). To Mexico, on a cruise with a depleted supply of Coronas, sweaty busboys, and drunk girls who talked through their navels, where the hat nearly met peril falling off the ship and into the Gulf of Mexico, or under the bombardment of seagulls at port in Tampa. The hat swam through salted waters Atlantic and Pacific, on the calm shores of North Carolina to the rocky coasts of Carlsbad. In the sweet, dipping sunset of the Far East, on a man-made beach hauled up from Australia to rural Japan after the original was washed away by a storm. The hat was with me like a somber compatriot, suffering through scores of rainstorms, broken loves screaming in cars, into death’s eye from multiple bicycle-car collisions. It was even run over once, the proud and grimacing bill given a nervous twitch, a crick in the arch, and black tire marks across the crown. Though frayed and rusting, the hat still criticizes me not, but looks only to quietly serve, to see me through life’s adventures. Not for being lost a dozen times in absent-minded derision, not for being shoved into the depths of my cavernous backpack for the resulting paranoia. No, the hat has served far too well through all these years to be treated with such irresponsible abuse. For as foolish it is to revere an icon, this humble patch of cotton and polyester deserves far, far more. It is my trademark, it is the spirit of my perseverance and hope for the future. And so it has been retired, to a safe keeping place; a place without a forgetful owner or the risk of crippling earthquakes. Now it sits quietly, patiently, just like it always has, but in the warm darkness of my top closet shelf, in my father’s house nine thousand miles away. Slumbering in timeless space, dreaming of the day I will return home and reclaim it, for it will be worn on my next ride to glory. Sleep well, dear friend. I am not worthy of your patience.

… after watching TNG later that night …

Watching that series finale of TNG really put an accent on the night. It was just, spectacular. So much good writing, so many interweaving stories, so many lessons to take to heart. In particular, the look on Admiral Riker’s face as he explains why he let himself get in the way of Worf and Deanna’s relationship. Still clinging to the past,

I didn’t want to admit that it was over. I always thought that we’d get together again… and then she was gone. You think you have all the time in the world, until… yeah…

So many ways to reflect on the ways we live our lives. How are we living them? What is it for, really? It’s the people. It’s the people in our lives and it’s now. Because now will never come again.

(At the weekly senior officers’ poker match, Picard makes a rare appearance and prepares to deal the next hand)
Picard: I should have done this a long time ago.
Deanna: You were always welcome.
Picard: (pauses) So… five card stud, nothing wild, and… the sky’s the limit.

I’m tired. Pretty tired. And I haven’t even LEFT for work yet. Well, tomorrow is holiday, so I’ll just try to pound a little caffeine and tough it out until 8:00 today. It was worth it though.

So I had a thing yesterday. A friend of mine and I braved the typhoon and went to the Mandarake in Shibuya (an emporium that deserves its own entry), and afterwards hit up the usual mania that is department store food shopping in the basement of Tokyu. This was in preparation for a hack of a meal, my FIRST attempt at cooking while in Japan this year [note this means I ate out for every meal for four months].

It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t fabulous…but considering I have _a_ bowl, 1.5 plates and three chopsticks, it was tolerable. I can’t say I really want to do the DISH now, but, eh….why invite our exoskeletoned, multi-legged friends in for feast while I’m at work?

We drank an impressive 2.7 bottles of wine of monotonically decreasing quality and ate half a bunch of friggin’ weird “grape-like” fruits, as she put it. At some point I put on the soundtrack to Laputa, prompting her to exclaim after 7 bars “I wish I could see it now!” Subsequently we did just that as I have nearly every Studio Ghibli film tucked away in one digital cranny or another. However, I think we got half way through, paused to do the bathroom rotation, and then fell asleep/passed out on the bed until next I discovered it was 1:40a. Oops. Well, not really. I don’t give a damn, I’m already home. Kinda nice.

So we brushed our teeth, I grinned at myself in the mirror and gave her a hentai nurse t-shirt to wear and we retired for the evening. I probably slept less last night than I have in weeks, _despite_ the lousy work-delerium mess at the beginning of the month. But I don’t care. Some people are just a bouquet of stimuli to assuage the big five. She tastes like autumn and her scent reminds me of the passenger seat from some sedan I sat in on several random cold days from the 80s. I must have roused two dozen times to slide my arm around her fine-boned porcelain frame and sigh.

Hell I didn’t want her to go, and I sure as hell didn’t want to go to work today. But I’ve started the day, and walking to the station with her I had to sing old John Lennon songs, because the matted hair and recently-arrived chill wind were like an afghan nap in a leather chair; so decadent I had to beam. On the way back home I noticed for the ten-thousandth time all the corny campaign posters for local council members and felt a laugh rising in my haggard body — I should gank a bunch of these things and wallpaper my room with them…my pals making Sendagaya a better place to live.

Under the burgeoning work-to-rest ratio expanding at work, I’ve been spending some time thinking about reality. For me, it’s perception. Of course, there are physical limitations which resist argument in many cases (death, taxes), but outside that, what I get out of life is proportional to what I put in and how I interpret that. So, if reality is for the most part my interpretation (and the aforementioned attitude), then what does it matter so much how other people view what I do with my life and how I evaluate its quality? Now, there’s several billion persons more or less like me on a biochemical level, so we have roughly 6×10^9 versions of reality coexisting on this planet of gods, money, pleasures and suffering. How does that old saying of self-affirmation go? “Do whatever you want to as long as you don’t hurt anyone (+/- yourself).” This dictum stands in several formats throughout psychology, religion and politics and it is (or isn’t) an interesting conundrum that dovetails with the whole capitalist-society work-for-someone-for-money-for-your-freedom (which is in itself a paradox, 9 to 5 [or in my case 9 to 11]). Anyway, I know this is disorganized but the music has changed bands so many times in the last twelve minutes that I’m not even sure what I was set to talk about…. oh yes…

So I lived in Seattle in the golden waning dot-com summer of 2000 and worked for a software company. The skeptics would have me believe that I’ve forgotten a good deal of what happened in those storied three and a half months and that I polish the memories much more than I should. However, if we are to accept any of what I said in the preceding paragraph, I should have sufficient room to maneuver when I say blankly that it was probably one of the highest quality and well-rounded summer diversions that one (similar in my preferences) could ask for (if not the paragon). Allow me to paint for you…

A large world of wonder, vast and teeming with life…a port, two bridges, football, baseball, fresh fish, sunshine, sprinklers on perfectly trimmed lawns, evergreens that dwarf even the city skyline, invigorating air that makes every fibre in your lungs swell with life. And that’s just the city. The highways are exceptionally wide, the speed limit is 70, (most) people drive slowly but don’t get in your way, it’s three hours to both Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, British Columbia another two striking gems of the Pacific Northwest….and the whole way is down the sprawling, glorious I-5 snaking through the forest.

My job was at least as energizing…the best pay I’ve ever received (despite being an intern!), free beer, juice, and food every day. Offices bigger than my bedroom, dedicated everyone, thousands of people, dozens of clubs, sports, parties, socializing and program management. In between the other arts, away from a computer screen always in-between buildings and offices…the place where I truly thrive with GANNTs, design decisions and software design.

As if the raves, incense, underage drinking, maid service and company car weren’t enough, I had the most maintenance-free and satisfying relationship of my life. Everyday after leaving work (at an exceptionally dependable 4-6pm), home cooked dinners, Smash Brothers and 2 hours of “Married…with Children“. I could go on and on about that person for a while, but it’s better to see the look in my eyes when you ask me yourself.

It’s worth noting that despite this idyllic paradise I stumbled into, I destroyed most of it in typical tragic-hero Rusty fashion, but what’s past is past and I learned some of the most powerful lessons I’ve yet to realize in the course of it all.

Will I go back? I talk (and think) about it quite a bit. Could I be happy making (at least at first) productivity software again? Quite possibly. Seattle is my Olympus, and like Promethus I’ve spent my life among mortals for my sins, but perhaps through my own efforts or an angel’s, Hercules will be sent to show me the way back to that place again, much wiser and keen on respecting every revolutionary minute.

[Note: at the end of writing this blog, Winamp has come back the the New Radicals from which I started, framing this entry with a band that will always remind me of her, and of the summer I grew the most.]