Stuff from an Old Notebook #4

Watching a kite circling over a river, looking for fish.  A group of others was a little further off, whistling.  These whistles seemed to draw the single kite back to the group.   

On the turntable:  Maria Callas, "The Legend"

(untitled)

 

Shifting the horizon,
With every sip...

On the turntable:  Art Pepper, "Among Friends"

Does a Body Good

A real beauty, she comes proudly walking up the street, head high, dressed well and warm against the cold, sipping from a 1000 ml carton of milk with a straw.


On the turntable:  Moe, "Bonnaroo, 06/22/02"

Slice of Life

In a hotel, watching a prep cook chopping lettuce without looking at the knife.  Samurai!


On the turntable:  "Flamenco:  Fire and Grace"

Mise-en-scène

I recently came across my first journal entry written in Japan, penned on a train as I rode north toward the city that would be my home for the next 12 years...

Sept 10, 1994 

Train through the countryside toward Yonago.  Rice paddies give way to mountains.  Running along rivers, blue herons everywhere.  Villages nestled between hills.  Scarecrows with straw hats bent over rice.  A baseball game in a small city.  A VW beetle welded to a ramp appears ready to hurdle the stream.  A woman bends to pick rice while her husband sits on a tractor nearby scratching his forearm.  A trainload of sleeping Japanese pulls alongside.  Piles of rice dry in the sun.  Trees hide a small shinto shrine.  Fishermen wade in streams, casting a line from a rod over four times their height.


On the turntable:  The Rolling Stone, "Stripped"

    

On a streetcar in Hiroshima

I'm on one of Hiroshima's local streetcars, shepherding a group of Americans through the city.  Like me, they are standing, spread out along the length of the car.  They are quieter than usual, as Americans often are when first arriving in this city, as if pondering the act of their countrymen which put the name of this city in the mouths of the world.

An old man is sitting directly before me, his head turned up toward mine.  He is of that certain age…  I look down to make eye-contact.  "Are you going to the A-bomb Dome?'  he asks me.  "Yes," I answer, squatting down to make my eyes the level of his.   

"I was a soldier when I was seventeen, and that morning, the bomb destroyed the barracks around me."  He presses one his palms to his ribs.  "I still have the scars here.  

I don't say anything, just nod as I continue looking at his warm eyes. 

He smiles.  "That was a long time ago.  I've traveled all over the world, seen many countries.  But I've never been to America."

I was expecting this, but not what he said next.  

"Too many guns there."


On the turntable:  Air, "Virgin Suicides Soundtrack"


  

Yoshinaka and Tomoe at Rest

Visiting the graves of Kiso Yoshinaka and Tomoe Gozen, who rest quietly in a small forested hillside just off the Kiso Road. Tokuonji is a quiet temple, offering pleasant views of rice fields and a small river that narrows at it lengthens toward the upper reaches of Koma-ga-take.

There are four ancient graves in back.  Beneath one rests Tomoe, who in later life became a nun after the death and defeat of her warrior lover.  There's a stone for him as well, although his body is buried between Lake Biwa and the famed poet Basho.  Yoshinaka's head is reputed to be buried at Hōkanji in Kyoto, near the tall pagoda that punctuates the hilly streets leading up to Kiyomizudera. 

The graves overlook a small shrine, and a bronze statue of Tomoe on horseback.  It is easy to imagine her racing through a rain of arrows, her naginata twirling behind.  Modern archers practice in the kyūdōjō attached to the temple, shooting through the swirl of dragonflies, the rice stalks beyond bending toward autumn.


On the turntable:  The Yardbirds,  "The Very Best of...
On the nighttable:  John Dougill, "In Search of Japan's Hidden Christians"

  

All Together...Now

The mustachioed man puffs out cigarette smoke like a steam locomotive, the stripes of the crosswalk serving as railroad ties.  I sit before him, on the other side of the glass, in a hip little place I found as I walked through Jingu-mae.  I had three hours to kill, so it had been a day spent moving slow, quite a luxury in a city of Tokyo's size, particularly as it was a weekday. 

From this window of San Francisco Peaks,  I spy berets and beards,  Van Dykes and VW Beetles.  A T-shirt bearing the words, "United Arrows" reminds me for a moment of the PM, and I remind myself that sloganeering generally indicates a lack of ideas.  There's more depth in the pop song coming through the speakers.  Despite that, there's definitely an increase in men in uniforms these days.  And I do hope that some of these hipsters I see passing by notice it too.     

I sip IPA from a plastic glass, which rests soundly on a denim coaster perfectly squared.  There are no other customers in here, so the waitress throws a glance every so often as she moves a cloth over metal utensils.  Waitstaff in Japan certainly polish a lot of silverware.  Every sip of my beer adds another ring to the smooth inner curve of the glass, and before long it begins to look like the banded atmosphere of Jupiter. 

Before ordering another pint, I climb the stairs to the toilet.  Along the wall are posters of San Francisco in its hippie heyday, one in particular of a crowd taken from the stage of some outdoor concert.  Psychedelic lettering above their shaggy heads reads, "All Together...Now."   And I'm together with them, the owners downstairs, with the whole chilled out vibe here.  They certainly have created a nice space.  But what they may not realize is that San Francisco Peaks is the name of a mountain range outside Flagstaff.  Unless of course it's an acid reference.  San Francisco peaking.  All together.  Now.

Out on the street, a guy in a beanie bobs his head deferently as he speaks with a tall man in a leather jacket and black pork pie hat.  I imagine them to be a struggling musician talking to a famous record producer, in a casual meeting here on the street.  In Japan, even the hipsters bow...



On the turntable:  Beck, "Mellow Gold"
On the nighttable: "The Ise Stories"

Runs

Currently in Matsumoto.  There's a big symphonic event happening here, with Seiji Ozawa behind the wand. So it goes that the notes from a violin flow through the hotel halls, masterfully played, the arpeggios like water bouncing on rock.


On the turntable:  Yo-Yo Ma, "The Cello Suites"

Above Oike

Above Oike, I sit in my hotel room, in a chair by the window.  The opposite side of the road, the north side, is lined with high-priced apartments, their perfectly squared forms nuanced with motifs ranging from Aztec to Miami Vice cool blue.  In one, a young woman stands on her balcony, one arm folded along the top of the rail, the other vigorously moving a toothbrush back and forth.  She is dressed in a simple T-shirt and slacks on this Sunday morn.  She stands there for a few minutes, turning her head to look east, turning her head to look west.  Then, her teeth satisfactorily polished, she turns toward the glass door behind her, pausing to look down at something by her feet, then goes behind the other side of the door. The screen is closed, glass door is closed, the lock twisted, the curtains closed behind her.  Six stories below, the traffic begins to hum...


On the turntable:  Joan Baez, "Forever Young"
On the nighttable:  George Samson, "A History of Japan"