autumn tactics

The longer I spend wrapped up in work, the more disheveled I become and the more frustrating the moments of free time are. It’s when I take a step off the merry-go-round that I realize how much time has passed and how many virtual dishes have piled up in my personal life.

How many dozens of rolls of negatives are piled up on my desk?
I haven’t replied to that person in three months?
The friend’s concert I missed was when?
…
Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t put too much stock in our relationship either then.

Every time I wake up on a Saturday at noon and do a quick mental check on how many promises to myself I’ve broken, I feel sick to my stomach and roll back over, pulling the blankets over my head once more.

Why can’t I have the strength to be able to sort through all the perishable parts of living and consume them by value, in turn?

こんにちは！今週末の長野県の「TAICO CLUB」パーティの入場券が買えなかったです買えました。（＾_＾) ず～っと行きたかったけど、結局購入失敗大成功しました。誰かが、入場券一枚が余っているか、いけなくて販売したい方がいたらを持っているなら、是非連絡してください。現地で遊ぼう！

As I mentioned, today is the first day I’ve had off in a long time, and to be honest it’s never been truer that I don’t know how to take it easy. I can’t stand feeling like I’m wasting my body, my time, my life. I’ve watched a couple episodes of Quantum Leap and old E.R., but aside from that I’ve sorted the past months photographs, read some of The Negative, had a healthy fish dinner, and straightened up my desk. I’m too groggy to clean, sick of tv, and I have my console memory cards interred with an acquaintance. I can’t go to bed yet but I can’t waste any more time… reading a book would put me to sleep so I guess I’ll do some more studying with the internet. Fortunately etn is always there to give me a fresh stream of trance to keep my spirits up. There are so many things to do, some many ways to grow, so much to produce. There is a never-ending supply of liquid coal running through my veins, and my body is pulsing craton heated by the fire in my soul. I will not let this life expire unused.

Today is the first day I have been able to rest in over two months. Last night we delivered another build; all the milestones have run together like watercolor, and then proceeded to pack the company for moving on Sunday. When I left at 11:30, everyone got together and went to eat yakiniku, but meals centered around meat have become like strolls down the cheap whiskey aisle the morning after an all-weekend bender… my mind and my stomach are in complete unison in their revulsion towards slabs of red animal protein. So I dropped back to the tail of the procession and politely excused myself.

I came home and had a glorious three-quarter pint of Kilkenny’s, and fell asleep in front of the TV with the screen door open to the chilling drizzle. Luckily, the bitter cold got me up on time for my lunch with Yamamoto-san. In the process I actually managed to look half respectable in a button down with my new haircut and a fresh shave. We talked about pedestrian things: friends and family, the yen’s legacy of being pegged to the dollar, and the price of butter. After waving goodbye I stood in front of the Tokyu Plaza and my mind drifted for a few minutes. The breeze carried the mist in waves through the canopy of umbrellas in Shibuya, but I decided to stop at Omotesando and walk home through the Meiji shrine inner gardens.

I am so taut and bristling with verve. Yet my body has learned not to fight my spirit in fatigue and instead simply acquiesce, being led along at the hand like a bemused parent to a child’s string of sensuous wonders on Saturday.

Two days.
Sixteen hours open to the public.
Three and a half for installation.
Thirty minutes striking the set.
+300 visitors to the booth.
Twenty-two acquaintances.
Six times asked if I was a professional photographer.
One conversation with an art magazine.
One potential hire for band publicity photos.
6400 yen in sales.
5000 in contributions from benefactors.
One hell of a time.

こんにちは。今週末私のブース、「複視」に来て頂いたの皆様、どうも有難うございました！

写真が好きでしたら、是非私のネットギャラリーご覧ください。いっぱい面白い写真が載っています。何かご意見や質問があれば、いつでもメールしてください。fukushi@ichigoichie.org.

Do you remember my eyes? How they shift between blue and grey depending on the weather? The amber ring in the center that catches the sunlight?

Yes, the circumstances have changed, but my eyes and the soul behind them are still the same.

I’ve been slogging towards another milestone at work, the third such hellacious one this year, and less than thirty days since the last. I lay down new features and design revisions to my libraries as fast as countless legions of content creators can swoop down on them, testing little and barely carving out the absolute minimum to make it run. And it comes in an office where the thermometer reads 95 and builds are broken all day long from a trail of bungling and sufficient specification all the way back to 2006.

But, as they say, the show must go on. And it will go on, and I do all that I can in the 80 odd minutes between getting home from work and brushing my teeth for bed. Only an angel keeps me together and my dreams alive with an eyedropper of hope.

Here are some pictures I took with the Holga last year and just managed to get scanned the other day.

せっかく日記を復活したけど、二ヶ月が過ごして、連絡していないね。ごめん。普段は毎月10-15回くらい書きますが、今年はなかんか余裕がない。来月はまた展示会があります。しかも、固くて決心しても今回が一番中途半端になっています。仕事はきつい、毎日23：30ごろ家に到着してる。なぜか、ライフがもっと複雑か、年取っているか、毎日～6時間の睡眠が足りなくて、だるい。

とにかく、今日も、明日も、仕事ですが、深夜製作中．．．

1983. Annie closes on Broadway after 2,377 shows. Gandhi wins Best Picture as Return of the Jedi picks up steam. Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the solar system. The De Lorean Motor Company ceases production, and the McNugget is introduced. I am three years old and love Ernie. Konica also produces a charming little pocket rangefinder with auto focus, shutter, and film winding, all for the low, low price of 47,800 yen.

For some time now, I have wanted a lightweight “junk” camera that I can always have with me and throw in any number of bags. The A-1 is too versatile and valuable a piece of equipment to have jostled around in my backpack all the time. The 70-210mm zoom lens is also intimidating to a lot of people.

Anyway, I didn’t want to put a lot of money into said camera because that would defeat the purpose. So I’ve been coming flea markets and Akihabara back alleys for a couple of months. I finally found what I was looking for last weekend while helping out the Nihon Furosato Food Festival. I bought shiny, black, brick from a kindly, well-traveled old man who spoke way too much like a used car salesman. But the camera was impeccably well kept, spotless and hardly a scratch on it– inconceivable for a 25 year old consumer shoot-and-forget camera.

Though I have had a decent array of camera bodies for a while, this marks the first time I’ve ever had film bodies at the same time. I realized today how nice this was when shooting the annual hanami raves in Yoyogi park this afternoon. The weather was a real drag, frigid, raining, and dark. But having 1600 Natura pushed to 3200 in the A-1 and 400 Presto in the Konica, I felt confident that I could handle any number of shots without feeling the pressure to finish a roll for switching stock.

For the first time in a long time I have a considerable scan backlog now, so once I get through my slides I’ll make an album in the Gallery dedicated to Konnie.

Basho came to Hiraizumi to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Yoshitsune’s death. It was then, seeing the open fields, all that remained of the once great Fujiwara monuments, that he wrote the famous haiku to sum up mankind’s fleeting glory.

Natsukusa ya (Ah, summer grass)
Tamedomo ga (All that remains from the ruin)
Yume no ato (of warriors’ dreams)

Though I always turn off my iPod when I enter a temple or shrine, I’ve spent most of my time walking around listening to the solemn half of the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack. While this is fitting, reinforcing the muted, cold atmosphere I half-wished to find on this trip, this is not completely fair. Music, like any other form of art, can be used in recreation to serve us. We see what we want to see, we hear what we want to hear, and we feel what we want to feel. Walking around with headphones all the time reinforces any barriers we already have built up around us, encased in our our little private bubbles. This cannot continue for very long without adverse effect.

So I took off the headphones to leave my mind to idle though. As I further realized when walking through the jukai of Aokigahara, it’s not long before I start making nonsensical remarks to myself, quoting movies and books, frequently in an absurd voice. Before stopping for afternoon tea I wondered aloud if Basho talked to himself three hundred years ago, and if he did, did he quote popular theatrical comedy of the day, pausing to chuckle at how amused with himself he was?

summer of what to do
fell right back into you
and i still lie to you
awkward and in your room
but i’ve got something to prove
and i still lie to you
but what else could i do

i’ve got you
you’ve got me
you think something’s missing
we still dance
everybody knows it
it’s my way to tell you
everything is for you
i’ve got you
you’ve got me
and that’s all

-The Great Escape Rocks

When I was in elementary school, the annual book fair was always a time of great anticipation. How many yarn-tasseled Garfield bookmarks could I con mom into buying me this year? One time I bought a book, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. At the time I thought that it was related to Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective, in which the main character was named Basil. However, this was not the case as my mother informed me before buying it, but stubborn and not wanting to believe such depressing news, I insisted I knew this and wanted the book nonetheless. So, she bought it and it did indeed end up about being nothing about detectives or mice named Basil, but it was a very interesting read about two children who run away and live in a museum for a number of months. The image of all those toilets to oneself; the kind of comfort that comes only from the absolute pristine silence of dozens of toilets all to oneself, was strangely appealing. There is a similar line in the film With Honors; Joe Pesci makes such a comment about the bliss of living in a Harvard library.

I have a similar situation presented to me now, the only patron in a camping area with dozens of empty, tidily swept lodges. I enjoyed heavenly twenty minute trips to the ice cold toilets, slowly savoring my third read of The Dharma Bums.

Today was indeed a day spun in stories. Like a lot of times my assumptions and plans were all nonsense, but i was lucky to have people showing me the way. I climbed a 1200 meter mountain, I rode a horse, I picked my way through suicide woods at desk, I went spelunking in a bat cave, I bathed in hot water springs and ate one of the most perfect meals of my entire life. Twelve miles, thirteen hours, and a sense of deep satisfaction. I have half a bottle of the most delicious win but Japhy was right, in the mountains the air is thin and you don’t crave it. Kerouac was telling the truth, and I know how he felt…

Too physically active to drink, and something of completeness, and the hope to start a new direction in one’s life. The silence is almost maddening. [It was at least until a deer scream from the forest behind sent me quaking deeper into my Carinthia.]

You know the feeling you had as a kid right before something big happened? A special moment of clarity when you woke up from your own world and read the tension in all the grownups’ faces. That weighty realization, like the morning of a major operation or waiting on the front steps for your lost dog to come home.

It’s like I’ve had that feeling for so long that I’d stopped paying attention to it, and kind of forgot that it was even there. But life changes in ways you can never imagine. There are moments when you’re near friends and no one says a thing, but you can feel that it’s going to be all right, really, because it is all right.

Looking out of a minivan window full of dusty, exhausted travellers, the only sound trickling piano raindrops from the radio. Muddy rice fields and mountains flew by with the beat of my heart, all of us part of some great giant dreaming beyond the horizon.

ほこりっぽくて疲れた旅行者でいっぱいのミニバン窓の外を見ながら、唯一の音はラジオのパラパラなピアノだった。心臓の鼓動と一緒に濁った田圃と山を走り回って、僕らは地平線の彼方にいる巨漢の見てる夢の一部。

ばらの花 - くるり

雨降りの朝で今日も会えないや
何となく　でも少しほっとして
飲み干したジンジャーエール　気が抜けて

安心な僕らは旅に出ようぜ
思い切り泣いたり笑ったりしようぜ

愛のばら掲げて遠回りしてまた転んで
相づち打つよ君の弱さを探す為に

安心な僕らは旅に出ようぜ
思い切り泣いたり笑ったりしようぜ
僕らお互い弱虫すぎて
踏み込めないまま朝を迎える

暗がりを走る　君が見てるから
でもいない君も僕も

最終バス乗り過ごしてもう君に会えない
あんなに近づいたのに遠くなってゆく
だけどこんなに胸が痛むのは
何の花に例えられましょう
ジンジャーエール買って飲んだ
こんな味だったっけな
ジンジャーエール買って飲んだ
こんな味だったっけな
安心な僕らは旅に出ようぜ
思い切り泣いたり笑ったりしようぜ