Shards 2018

And in the continuing spirit of year-end cleaning, I came across a number of fragments written over the last decade:

"In Carl Jung's psychology, metanoia indicates a spontaneous attempt of the psyche to heal itself of unbearable conflict by melting down and then being reborn in a more adaptive form. Jung believed that psychotic episodes in particular could be understood as existential crises that were sometimes attempts at self-reparation."

         

--World, Underworld, Overworld, Dreamworld By Mike Hockney

Slouching to a Different Drummer

Small Wars in Faraway Places

 Japan --  Movement without momentum

Socially enraged Buddhism (punk)

Celts dividing the year in half, the dark half of winter a long wait for light

Yoga's popularity in the 1990s as a means of controlling end of millennium fears

Laugh like rusty hinges (nasal)

In 2008, the government of Ecuador gave the natural world the same civil rights as to humans. In contrast, the US gave civil rights to corporations.

Anti-social social club

Hysterical piss bottle theatrics

Tennyson-- “O sorrow, wilt thou live with me / No casual mistress but a wife.”

“I know more about how my meat was raised than the meat did.”

Hopping into bedlam

Road coffee, served hot and weak in styrofoam cups. 

The close relationship of DNA to the environment (and subsequently arising culture) is disconnected due to mass migrations in modern times, which leads to more psychosis.

People upset their country is dead.  All that remains is who gets to pilfer the remains.

Heian shades of winter

Churches of the west are meant to be filled with the presence of God.  Religious centers of the east are filled with the presence of oneself.

To follow a blog one must be prepared for the lack of closure. Bloggers tend to give up suddenly without any notice; you'll always be left wondering whatever happened to the person,  how the day-to-day life that you have long been following turns out.

Yesterday's news is tomorrow's history. 

The song of the bird gives way to that of the cicada.  

Life is simply a day to day struggle to make sense of things. 

Sometimes I feel like I'm a hospice worker, sitting at the bedside to watch Japan as it dies. 

Behind every traveler writer is a frustrated novelist.

Kitchens are made for dancing 

On the inflight map there were more names for rivers than for actual towns.  (Over Siberia)

Congenital congeniality

Territorial pissings

Jehovah's Witness protection program

Left to their own devices

The bizarre miniaturization effect on Japanese cities when seen from the Shinkansen. 

...it was the political version of the Archimedes principle, that the bigger an oppressor gets, the more people get displaced...

Flanders ‘stache (Band name)

Summer sunshine

Wipes the lingering snow

From Fuji's brow

On the island of Shikoku, after the drab tones of winter, spring comes in as an increase in color across the landscape..  Not only with the pink of the plum blossoms and their more celebrated cousins the sakura, but also in the white shapes drifting from temple to temple. 

Above the onsen,

Fog swirls about like transparent witches

Rushing to the mountain wizard's coven.

At an exhibit of Shinto art:

-Mori as reading for 社 (Forest as sacred)

-Nihon Shoki, every kanji character a treasure

-Intake/utaki

-Shinto forms in 8th C.  Buddhist influence

An old birch tree

Raises gnarled arms

To direct traffic.

During my long walks, farmers I pass often tell me that I'm erai when they hear I've walked more than say 10 km.   But they are the ones out here tomorrow doing the same hard physical work, whereas I'll be back at my soft desk.  

 
On the turntable: Grateful Dead, "Dick's Picks Vol. 35"