autumn tactics

December means bounenkai end of year parties. Alcohol, mayhem, and people you’ve just met. Oh yes.

I have a new keyboard. This keyboard’s space key should work 100% of the time. The last keyboard’s did not. You can imagine how no space key would impede writing. Japanese was especially frustrating because the conversion key from kana to kanji is the space bar. Oh yes, it was most impossible to do any sort of writing at home.

Mail, blogs, chat, GOOGLE!

Time after time again I had to CTRL+C a space from some random web page and then CTRL+V it between every word. Maddening. Yes.

But I’m back. Slightly crazed, but back. Expect much more writing (tonight I want to get at least three posts in.) This again is a good time to recommend the RSS, because these entries are dated retroactively. A feed will inform you of them nonetheless.

Huzzah for space bars.

Come on, my star is fading
And I swerve out of control
If I, if I’d only waited
I’d not be stuck here in this hole
Come here my star is fading
And I swerve out of control
And I swear I waited and waited
I’ve got to get out of this hole

Stuck on the end of this ball and chain
And I’m on my way back down again
Stood on a bridge, tied to the noose
Sick to the stomach
You can say what you mean
But it won’t change a thing
I’m sick of the secrets
Stood on the edge, tied to a noose
You came along and you cut me loose
–Coldplay

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.

Just the right amount…

Of daylight, waking at 5:20 to see the sun.

Of discomfort, to ride five hours on a local train reading Catcher in the Rye while watching suburban Japan peel off.

Of friendship, a balance of Miho’s zeal and hurrying to a certain place while I wait, and listen, to take a roll of photographs at the end.

Of alcohol, to be together enough to tell Dad when we’re done but gone enough to explain passionately how I feel about life and be well-received.

Of family, to do whatever I can to help Mom with the dishes and talk to Dad’s protege’ while bitching about Yakult and our perennial disappointment.

Of life, my body aches in numerous places for a myriad of reasons, but today was so fulfilling it nearly made me cry.

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.

Things have gotten sort of jumbled up again lately. Another cycle of increased madness at work consumes my minutes, hours, days, nights, and more things than I can remember go left undone. This is supposed to be a very special month, at least I thought it should be, because it’s the last month of my twenties. Good bye glorious decade of self-awareness and experimentation. Where do I go from here? So many questions. Such a half-assembled mess…

I haven’t really ever found a place that I call home
I never stick around quite long enough to make it
I apologize that once again I’m not in love
But it’s not as if I mind
that your heart ain’t exactly breaking

But if my life is for rent and I don’t lean to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
–Dido

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.

Once you change trains at Soga, it’s not so bad. The Sotobo Line is about as classic JR as you can get: the curved headlight mounts and compartment seating. Inner Chiba feels close to country; the rice fields and roadside bars, the waiting at stations and leisurely lumbering pace.

It’s not polite to say so really, but there is an overpowering atmosphere that causes me to label Chiba as depressing. It’s virtually always overcast or hazy, endless flat tracks of land strung togetehr by giant warehouses, outlet centers and parking lots. The entire infrastructure is drab and tasteless, not in a charmingly classic way, but old in a “lost future oh I could have been something” kind of way.

The trains and stations are just as depressing, stations just far enough apart that it seems you should get somewhere for all the time, but no, it never changes. The same faded, pastel people at every station, the same deflated expressions. They live in Chiba, they know they’re trapped by family or cheap real estate or a lost promise of tomorrow. The lost dreams of the once righteous now quiet Chiba, acquiescence drains its residents daily like it does me just riding this train. The endless hours they spend waiting in traffic for the most mundane of errands weigh upon every eyelid in the prefecture.

Kanagawa is infinitely more interesting and Chiba knows it.