autumn tactics

Some kind of pain, some kind of joy. Look at the heaven and let a bit of yourself go free.

こころがとける。あ~ぁ、参った！かわいい。

Though I’m not sure I deserve it given the amount of diligence I’ve been putting into practicising lately, I bought it. Oh well, we’ll see what happens…

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.

Somehow, German draft beer on a leather love-seat while reading Faust and listening to the Foo Fighters just feels right. Most of my favorite music in high school was stolen from my car in Pittsburgh by a crack head, over two hundred CDs and eight years of music.

Recently I’ve started yearning more and more for those old songs, especially as the fire to play guitar burns hotter and hotter in my soul Foo Fighters, Nirvana, STP, this was the music I blared through my Charger’s Blaupunkt system while driving around northern Frederick. My girlfriend at the time, Mari, cooed at how I pounded the gear shift to the bass line of Cake’s The Distance, a damn great song. Driving a car of my own, a dream unknown to most Japanese teenagers, taken for granted by most Americans. Unique myself lost that special freedom, so long suffering since my father sold my car.

Before I bought it myself, I think I copied this album from Adam and had it on my Walkman. I remember walking around and listening to it, Offspring, Bush, and Everclear. Oh the wailing of guitar, fed into effects so it layers and distorts like a heavy static or a buzz saw. Could I ever cover this in front of Yoyoko in an impromptu live someday? Get Phil and Hayashi?

2010 New Year’s Resolution: no matter what I _will_ take guitar lessons and practice more. I will have at least two exhibition, I will make at least a CDs worth of electronic music.

I don’t know, track ?? just triggered a cascade of memories of Holly, the bad girl from the other side of the tracks (literally) that was on my periphery while dating Mari. We kissed, I came to her house once and we listened to Revolver on her water bed. She had bead curtains to her bedroom. Posa was all excited when we started dating. We went and laid by the river next to Church of the Brethern… she smells like cigarettes and pot. I gotta find and email her…. I was in Berlin and thought of you,

Why didn’t it work out? She had a part-time job at the 7-11 on East Street, sweet. I want to email Phil so much right now and say, “Let’s make a band!”

…

It’s about 7:20 now, well past my bedtime of late. I admit I’m quite bleary. I’m up to the 300-page tier or Faust, sleep, neck hurts. But my train isn’t for another five hours and I’ve no bed.

So, I’ve got to tough it out. I’ve though about hitting up U5 but they don’t open (assuming they’re open on Tuesday), until 800, so I guess it:s another forty minutes of Faust. Poor Gretchen! [in the end, U5 never opened...only weekends it seems]

22:15

Talk about efficient. I got from Fr. Tor to H. Bahnhof in about eleven minutes. That’s roughly ten stations and one transfer. This reinforces my theory that German transit is either faster, or the stations are even closer together that Tokyo. Anyway, the trouble now is my mass market dilemma. I can’t hope to completely avoid Foo Fighters when I travel, but I try to swear offf American bands. Unfortunately the long arm of democratic capitalism has me corner here. I was hoping to get at last one pretzel before I left Germany, I was thinking the Kasse here in Hauptbanhof but they’ve run out. It was either the fourth hoagie in three days, or face Big Brother. So I was left with Pizza Hut or BK, and the question was which would torture my digesting system less in an already long day.

More interesting is the young, Asian tourist couple next to me. How unwittingly they display the stereotypical man/woman disconnect, reinforced by racial stereotypes! The man is fervently trying to fold his receipt into an aerodynamic vessel while the girl stares glassy-eyed into her phone email. If only they could realize the absurd clarity of textbook dysfunctionality they exhibit. After upgrading his plane for supersonic flight and checking its wingspan, the male opens his subcompact laptop and being typing. How droll! The irony. How much time do we spend together communication but not with the person right in front of our faces? So sad, with today’s society affairs of the heart, never physically consummated, yes just as if not more so devastating.

Oh, so much insight to the human tragedy, inwards and out this week. This isn’t a journey of inter-nation, this is a journey of condemnation. The tragedy… and speaking of tragedy, poor Gretchen. I’ll be finished reading of her by tomorrow at this pace. Then what I will do with the rest of my rainy week? Smoke?

It’s cold, even sitting in the back of the Pizza Hut. My clothes reek of CK-1, since I spilled a tester on myself the other day, and I only have one set this week. Cold and stinking of Calvin Klein, a theme for inaugural trek. If I went to America, but the middle of nowhere, would that be a vacation worth taking? Fly to Vegas then rent a car and drive out to Oklahoma or Nebraska, or somewhere. Hmm, driving alone for hours all day. Could I handle that? If I:m going to do that, why not get a Japanese license finally and drive to Kyushu? The cost would probably end up being more in highway tolls and gasoline, ha. So tired. If this train comes late, I may just die.

Fried does not begin to describe how baked I am. Although I got to Fusamoto station at five ’til eleven, I ended up not catching a train until nearly one. Ultimately it was a comedy of erros. I left my glasses at the cap site and had to trek back all the way from the station to retrieve them. Fortunately, the only thing I lost in the process was a lot of sweat and aoog quart of energy.

I hiked a toatl of four times to get up and down route 297 from Mimata to Fureai, but ti was still a total of four miles up and down the off ramp to the station. I got to meet some nice people in the process, though.

This was the first time I’ve hitched from the side of the road. Previously I’d always started from an interstate parking area which is a lot easier. People have time to size you up on the way into the food court and mull it over for a few minutes before they decide to take you or not. On the side of the road all you have are the five seconds or so from when your thumb becomes visible until they pass you. I didn’t even have a sign saying where I was heading or if I could speak Japanese. Just a big, forced toothy grin doing its best to offset the week of beard and obvious exhaustion on my face.

The first ride I got ws from a middle-aged woman in a BMW M5. She was awefully nice, and not only helped me find the campsite but also drove me up to the driveway. The rides out of the camp site were easier, there was a fairly steady stream of people heading north up 297 towards Ishihara. The second tiem down the road was tougher than the first. My lack of an oversized backpack may have hurt me (I’d left it at the station so I could run). But what that left me was a bandana and a stained undershirt. I was smart enough to take off my sunglasses, eye contact is crucial for this sort of thing.

After running virtually the whoel way back from Mimata, I just made the 1253 train (I only had a window to go home every two hours or so due to the lack of trains in the sticks). Transfers were tight, so I couldn’t get a drink and I’m hurting now from dehydration, but it’s better than waiting another hour to get home. As soon as I get off it’s going to be a huge bottle of water and a cold shower.

なんと力だ？！音力。

You may remember, Indeo, of the first tiem you attened a party; the sights and the sounds, the air moist and thick with pungent odors… how the children sparkled, how touched you were with their openness. So close to so many hearts, the distances between smiles collapsing to an inch, then shooting away, like minnows in a pool.

Different production groups attract different fans, but there still remains a very high degree of familiarity in each circle, people who go to party X generally know the organizers and other fans of party X. And those fans are close-knit similiar groups of people socially. The parties I met Jun-Masa ring of people in are very much the flower side ravers. They are the people that dress in robes and colorful clothes with many affectations around the hair and arms. Today’s Open Air Psychology is more towards the mainstream (if you can really say that) side, but not a complete garu event. the girls all wear jeans or tiny jeanshorts and the boys t-shirts with short-cropped hair. Really everyone is very drunk now; fall down slightly rowdy drunk, which is a different direction that the flower parties. People drink there, but they’re more likely to be feeling good because of something else.

What is it that calls to me, that simmers through my heart? Is it the bass? Or the treble? Or the smiles on young faces and the flare in every eye? Trucks, tents, and incense; grass, rock, and sky. The sweat between cotton fibres and under tousled hair. A light unseen, in a wider spectrum than any machine dreams of. The beat. The anticipation. The flow. Shake and froth, the filter sweeping while it cuts. Dusk melts pastel candied skies, my skin crawls through sound check testing 1..2..3..

Abandon your manmade shells and slide into the twilight– naked, alive as you were first born and radiant as the gods intended.

Welcome the softly loving night.

Does something tribal call inside of you? Not as men and women but as boys and girls and something deeper than that. Like the fire that keeps you transfixed with drunken awe, some sort of primal power sits on your eyelids and jerks at your knees. Colors fall and repeat, noise rattles off of aluminum and quakes through mud. So stop and start relaizing those emotions rooted deep under the topsoil of your soul. This is the time to break free the soft flesh of youth inside of the yesterday you.

Lantern slep fall my heart,
skin splits open and breaks apart.
From inside another you,
moving back to whence it grew.

私は私の中にあります。どうやら一人に居る？
何を探してるを思いつかない。

Cosmos and stars aligned in curves my heart at peace. Would I feel so at peace in another world? Or would the lack of my suffering remvoe meaning from such a soothing balm? The Tao says without the lost there would be no way, so is the altruistic ideal only so gracious because of the voracious world? Is nature clean because the city is dirty? Do lovers love because haters hate? How alone must I feel for another to belong?

So much of beasts make us human.

What is it that calls to me, that simmers through my heart? Is it the bass? Or the treble? or the smiles on young faces and the flare in every eye? Trucks, tents, and incense; grass, rock, and sky. The sweat between cotton fibres and under tousled hair. A light unseen, in a wider spectrum than any machine dreams of. The beat. The anticipation. The flow. Shake and simmer, the filter sweeping while it cuts. Dusk melts pastel candied skies, my skin crawls through soundcheck testing 1..2..3…

Abandon your manmade shell and slide into the twilight, naked, alive as you were first born as radiant as the gods intended.

Welcome the softly loving night.

So I’m currently riding on the haggard and glum JR Keiyo Line, a mundaneity normally reserved for trips to Disneyland or the Tokyo Game Show (which ironically I’ll be doing again Friday). But today’s adventures extends well beyond Maihama, and even overblown Makuhari. Today I ride to the end of the line, to the fabled Soga, onyl to change lines twice more, following the Sotobo Line to the eastern tup of Chiba and the Pacific Ocean. From there lays the much anticipated private Isumi Tetsudo Line into th eheart of the Boso Peninsula, for a rave in Kachiura. Solstice, a promoter whose events I haven’t had interaction with in at least five years! This is classic raving, back in time to the days when I would set ou into the wilderness alone, with only a hand drawn map and my sense of direction to guide me. I very nearly missed my route, sleeping late dreaming of God knows what half satisfying fantasy. But I kicked me ass in gear, doing dishes, laundry, trash and just enough vacuuming to get my affairs in order. Actually, through partial laziness I’ve had a bag packed since Nature Wind, my complete camping gear set just by the front door.

I caught the exact train all the way across the board, grabbed a mostly meaningless shower, fed and watered the cat, and arrived sweaty and heaving on the Hibiya Subway Line to rearrange my effects. Less that suave but effective. I have all the envergy bars, beer, and film I require in a highly optimized Ferrino hiking pack for adventure. Passing Maihama TATE cries that “Happiness is Overrated” and iodine burns through the scrapes left in the wake of my destruction with Ai.

And speaking of
Little Miss Catherine
I feel swell, oh well
Because losing you
Was something I always…

Sorry, I really lost my head
Oh, I’m so sorry, I really lost my head
Oh, those words you said
-The Airborne Toxic Event

Missing the War

All is quiet, his tired eyes
See figures jotted down
And clothes all strewn around the bedroom floor
Now nothing’s adding up
And nothing’s making sense
She’s sleeping like a baby
She doesn’t know he wasn’t meant for this
I’m missing the war
I’m missing the war, all night
Missing the war
I’m missing the war

So much time so little to say
-Ben Folds

I can hear the blood in my ears.

In the distance, a rooster crows. My flesh is red from the late summer sun. Sweat is lacquer-heavy in my hair. The car smells like my grandmother’s old Cadillac; it’s the smell of early 90s cloth interior and wood trim.

In my mind I can still feel the waves of arresting pitch.

Another escape, another break in the tides.