Stuff from an Old Notebook #20

 

Random thoughts and ideas from the last year. 
 



-While pouring hot water for tea, my favorite cup gets a dark line down the side and the liquid bleeds through.  It is this kind of cold that defines Kyoto, I suppose.  And who knew porcelain cups could crack?

-Declaration of Independence as Dear John letter.    

 

-With all the bottled vitamins and pills, the medicine cabinet looked like Neil Peart’s drum kit.  

 

-Social media is like 1000 voices shouting in an empty room. 

 

-It was August, the month that Buddhist priests actually earn their living. 

-The delight I take in closing the shutters at night, always spending a few moments out on the darkened patio, the light now shut in by ancient painted wood. So many stars here. Their number is rivaled by the blinking lights of planes, of satellites, always in a hurry. Why such a rush, when surrounded by such beauty?  (France)

 

-Even in France I long for France.  Barely engaged with the outside world, didn't even dine out once.  I wasn't really in the mood for moneyed chic Riviera France.  I wanted quieter meals in the villages and towns up in the country.  But I knew from the number of ambulating tourists that I'd had to dodge in the narrow lanes of Ramatuelle that it wasn't the right year for it. Instead I passed long mornings out on the terrace and read, until the heat bullied me indoors.  My reading led me to Paris, and its writers and painters of the 1920s.  And introduced me to the familial bohemian scene at the Vila America, an hour's drive from here in Antibes.

 

-The S&M quality to election slogans:  "Allow me the privilege of being chosen to be your next abuser." 

-Near to where birds sang…

 

 

On the turntable:  The Shadows, "Reunited"

 

Stuff from an Old Notebook #19

 

  
Random thoughts and ideas from the last year. 
 



 

 -I wonder how much of beauty is taught to us by our parents.  In hiking today, I came to what I would consider a gorgeous little stretch of stream with a waterfall and small pool at one end.  I nearly did this hike with my daughter, and I’m sure had we come to this point, I would have unconsciously said,"How beautiful."  And hearing such things repeated through childhood, does one then learn to appreciate the same beauty (second hand beauty?) as their parents. 

 

-Did the Beats teach us freedom, or self-indulgent narcissism?  The longing to not only live a life well lived, but also to chronicle it.





-The lobotomizing effect of pop culture.

 

-English lesson as if inspired by Cage’s 4:33.

-Happo-shu string budget



 

-Celebration of the Mundane


-Story idea about a guy who’s been in Japan a long time and is starting to spend more time abroad.  Little by little he’s become like a bell curve, moving out of touch with what’s going on here. His reactions and responses no longer quite matching up.  It’s a lot like his early days when he didn’t understand Japanese.  But now he can understand nearly everything, which reflects the disjunct of his situation. 
 

-You Asaay


-Americans are like puppies, trying to jump up and lick everybody’s face.  The English on the other hand are more like cats;  they’ll occasionally climb up on your lap and let you pet them, but if you try to clutch them too tightly, they’ll become taciturn and (run off.)



 

-A rotation of Lucinda Williams and Tom Petty waltzing across my iPod.   


-Cognitive Dissidents

-(X), the greatest mass murderer since Noah.  The ark, a metaphor for climate change, some sort of climactic disaster.  Bible fond of incest; Cain and Abel, Noah’s family. 


-Ambiance Chasers

-What the trees give, the ground receives. 

-Yama-Maester Wes 

-Incongruity of Dream

-Typhoon announcements coming, their words lost to the blustery winds. 

-Even God has given up hope.  

-To quote Laurens van der Post:  “I’ve always divided humanity roughly into two main streams, those who work by expansion and those who work by contraction.  The Japanese have a genius for contraction.”  And while perhaps that have once been true,  during the bubble years they were misled to believe that expansion was the preferable new order, and have been expanding ever since, even after the parameters of the bubble burst.     


-In Dream:  Going to Yonago to find the old house in the process of being razed.  From the depths of me emits an inhuman howl of grief.  It’s like the final bits of Ken are definitively gone.  

 

 

On the turntable:  Dev Mason, "Live at Perkins Palace"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #18

SIVANANDA ASHRAM, KERALA INDIA, 2007

I've always found it difficult to write when immersed in something.  Meditation, martial arts, yoga, these practices require full participation.  One can only write from the role of observer, and in full immersion, this separation is impossible. (On the other hand, being a foreigner in Japan distances you, so it is easy to report and retain).  So the notes from my time in the ashram are haphazard and scattered: 

-Hearing the roar of lions at night and during savasana, coming from across the lake. 

-The sound of someone singing in the shower.   

-The dhobi drying laundry in the sun.  

-Sitting in lectures, the same as it was one thousand years ago.  

-The call of the Asian Koel, what I refer to as the Ali G bird: "For real, for real, for real."

-Sadhu taking photographs.

-Hindu devotional music blaring from the coconut forest, and from elsewhere, the call of a muezzin cuts through. 

-Om graffiti

-Feral dogs hardly recognizable as dogs 

-God as flower behind ear; smudge on forehead, ash symbolic of humility, draws power

-Man made god in his own image. 

-Why can't man answer the simple question, "Who am I?"

-Wizard of Oz as a sacred text.

-iPod Mothersbaugh techno in Singapore airport at 6 a.m.  Upgraded to Business class, and while in my broad seat, read that there are no distinctions between human.


On the turntable, "Meat Loaf, "Bat out of Hell"

(untitled)

Sitting in the mountains,

Giving my life away

With every exhale.

***

Shidare-zakura laden with omikuji,

Sway in the the spring wind,

Like bridal trains.

***

Cold wind rattles the 

Bamboo like skeletons;

Whole sections twisted and fallen.

On the turntable:  Otis Span with Muddy Waters,"Live the Life"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #17

-Interesting that we engage the world as infants, strictly orally, and later, create the world through an another oral process, with words.  

-Hippies still haven’t figured out that you cannot stop war with folk music.  

-US feminists trying to combat men by acting like men themselves.  Non-American feminists utilize their femininity to develop a third possibly, a more holistic one.  

-Rereading The Inland Sea.  Richie brings the muse back to me, his every sentence perfect. 

-The 20th century did a number on the world.  The 21st seems insistent on finishing the job. 

-The house has a “Warning Police Dog" sign written in English but judging from the ferocious look of the dogs (there are two) and quite frankly from the man himself, I’d take a fair guess that he’s on the other side of the law.  

-On protest:  I don’t know why many protests begin in the autumn.  They inevitably wind up defeated by something far stronger than any government, winter.  Protest and politics are pursuits of the leisure class, and as such, are not sustainable as that class doesn’t have the fortitude.


On the turntable:  Magic Sam, "Chicago Folk Festival"

(untitled)

I used to expect a lot of others--

Hoping for art,

Then for purity,

For truth.

Lately I'll settle for...

(unfinished)

On the turntable:  Mike Oldfield, "Tubular Bells III"

Toying with Tanka

Below the waterfall

A still pool.

Flycatchers drinking

Breaking the reflection

Of a granite teapot lid.

***

Dumped ashes from fireplaces

I leave my footprint

In their softness

Legs of stone Fudō

Blackened by pilgrim's pyres.

***

Monolithic tomb--

Frost veiled trees 

In the blue haze of morning.

Percussive tapping of rain

Counts down the old year.

***

Winter twilight --

Barely nodding

Some snow drops.

Dried straw burns black

To spite its falling.

On the turntable:  Marillion, "Misplaced Childhood"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #16

Notes from a Zen film retreat at Upaya Zen Center, April 2010


MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES

Narration comes in where a viewer might grow bored.  The everyday is intensified in a way that takes the eye a moment to adjust. The bows of ships resemble shells and molluscs. The eye first goes to large objects, then we note as figures enter, dwarfed against the ships, or strip mines, or warehouses.  It is like looking at a Chinese landscape painting.  And we too are dwarfed, dehumanized.  No one person is sure of the scale of the system that drives all this.  There is beauty in the shots of tires and freeways, the eye finding relief in the curves, after all the shots of sharp metallic edges.  

Li Po, Tu Fu, and a hundred other poets, whole histories, folklores, cultures gone.  They defined China, and the places that defined them are soon to be gone.

The rhythm of the hands of the old women in the factories.  There is memory in those hands.



On the turntable:  Charley Parker & Miles Davis, "Historical Session"

(untitled)

A problem with my recent writing is 
That I’m trying to hit a home run every time.  
They mostly wind up in the cheap seats.  
Why not try for the odd grounder, 
The sacrifice bunt?
I see the next pitch coming--
High and outside.



On the turntable:  Montrose, "At The Record Plant"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #15

Notes from a lecture on Shugendo given by Quentin Durning, May 2009


-Mountains themselves were historically kami.  The Yayoi period  (300BCE - 300CE) created an agricultural base from which shrines rose gradually.

-Mountain deities were (are) female.

-Water brings energy from the mountain; the water god flows to fed the paddies.

-Kofun burial mounds are themselves mountains.  "Going to the mountain" a euphemism on death.  

-From 6th century, one got power from the mountains, an exercise with Taoist roots. Japanese Buddhism in contrast is still, grounded.    

-With the coming of Buddhism to Japan, Shinto gods were combined with Bodhisattvas.

The Heian period saw the entry of mandalas that Kukai and Saicho introduced from China.  Mandalas themselves are mountains.  

-In early history, people went alone to caves, rivers, etc.


On the turntable:  Mark Knopfler and Chet Atkins, "Neck and Neck"

(untitled)

Deep in the mountains,

A wetsuit

Hangs on a clothesline.

***

Rain swollen Kamogawa

Refreshes the faces

Of stone turtles

***

Looking Toward Ogasawara,
Past surfers on high Izu swells.

People dying out there.

***

Three punk hipsters

Stand in Triangle Park

Waiting for the light to change.  

On the turntable:  The Misfits,  "Collection 2"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #14

Notes from a lecture on Zen


-"Oz didn't give nothin' to the Zen man..."

-Anything is a koan if taken all the way.

-Koan was originally someone's doubt.  When resolved, awakening occurs.  

-Koan 'doubt' vs. Catholic 'doubt.'

-Shōkoku-ji owns Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji.

-"Without self, boredom is impossible."  - Jeff Shore


On the turntable:  Cannonbal Adderley, "Somethin' Else"

(untitled)

On a train at dusk,
Ride through a snowy landscape;
various hues of grey and white.

***

Her lips redder than my wine,
And much more sweet.

***

Dry Farfalle;
Like butterflies 
In a child's collection.

***

At the ancient shrine,
Waiting in line to draw sacred water;
A beautiful girl texts on her cell.

***

Yellow flowers burst from hillsides
Like remnants of 
Ancient splashes of lava. 

  

On the turntable:  Micheal Hedges, "The Best of Micheal Hedges"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #13

 -Moving rocks around or raking the forest;  what in the west is Dante’s hell or Sisyphean toil is simply called shugyō (training) in Zen.

-A child playing in the snow will not realize he's cold or hungry or tired. Unless called home, he’ll play forever.  Adults use the intellect to feel discomfort.

-Goth Obasan: fishnets, leopard skin sleeveless T-shirt, shades, David Sylvain hair, safety pins

-Moody melodic music which serves as BGM for the film playing before our eyes

-Old Portuguese/Japanese dictionary has “shizen” as “spontaneously” or “without external agency”

-I hate flying as a rule, and those long trans-Pacific marathons fray my nerves for the duration.  That said, it was a very smooth crossing, uneventful except for the fact that I survived.

-A certain regatta look to an apartment block covered with drying clothes.  Unshakable optimism on such a lousy grey day.

-Had a good laugh on the way to Osaka.  And you need laughs if you have to go to Osaka. 

 -Mist on the rivers, mists between hills. A slow train loads up, ready to finish the day late, far off in Tokyo. In village after village, houses stand dark. Despite the beginnings of dusk, there’s not a light to be seen.  Where are all the people?
 
-On the way to her hometown of Hiroshima, I listen to my (ex-)wife’s accent get broader and thicker.


On the turntable:  John Lee Hooker and Miles Davis, "The Hot Spot"

(untitled)

A cheating duck 

Sits on a  stone

Beneath the river.

On the turntable:  Voodoo Child, "Baby Monkey"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #12

On a return to Yonago, 2007

The eyes are funny things.  On the ride up to Yonago for the first time in 15 months.  Passing through a landscape that you once found enchanting.  But as is also the case with a lover, the enchantment becomes contentment, then mundane.  Those lines and curves that once held you are replaced by blemishes...

..but today the magic was back.  Enthralled by it all once again, finding again those once cherished sweet spots.  Delighting in the new. 

Or maybe it was simply the fine weather.  


On the turntable:  Mutabaruka, "The Ultimate Collection"
 

Stuff from an Old Notebook #10

-Hearing the announcements form the adjacent train station through the ceiling fan in the toilet of my hotel room…

-Sound of cutting bamboo just like shinai.

-A park bench amidst rice fields, concrete chunks still stuck to legs

-The government pours concrete as liberally as its citizens pour soy sauce.

-Minis don't look so mini in Japan.


-Past the dirt walls with tiled grooves run small streams, crossed by narrow concrete bridges. And above, the peaks with shapes more often seen in South American jungles


On the turntable:  Tino, "Tino's Breaks, Volume 5"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #9

PASSAGE TO BANGKOK, 2006

From the air, the mountains of Laos are like little gumdrops.  On approach to Bangkok, you pass over hundreds of flooded paddy fields, and if the sun is right, they light up with a great burst of pyrotechnics.  Light folds around towering storm clouds, bouncing back up off a layer of smog below.

On the turntable: Modern Jazz Quartet,  "Music from Odds Against Tomorrow"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #8

There's a point in playing music where you stop concentrating and "it" clicks. It's as if the music finds you, shuts off your mind and starts to whirl you around like a waltz.  Everything else stops.


On the turntable:  Naked City w/ Mike Patton, "Live Torture Garden Tour"

Stuff from an Old Notebook #7

FIRST VISIT LONDON, WINTER 2005


-From the air, the Mongolian landscape can only be described as raw.  Low ridges look braided, like an Irish fisherman's sweater.

-On the bus, the song Henry the Eighth in my ears.  As soon as my feet hit pavement, I blare London Calling. 

-Sitting before St Martin-in-the-Fields, the sound of Mozart blending with traffic.  

-Playing dead poet hopscotch in Westminster Abbey.   The graves of lesser poets are less polished.  Other tombstones like graham crackers.  One reads, "Be of one mind.  Go in peace." In that spirit, someone leads a prayer for peace in Iraq. 

-Battersea Bridge people-watching; androgynous Euros, voices swapping consonants, buff camouflaged guy walking terrier, straight-laced looking girls with pierced noses.

-The Tube; quiet locals, noisy tourists;  sitting shelf at end of carriage; hot girl with an eye-patch; punk with a Scissor Sisters T-shirt reading Virginia Woolf.  


On the turntable:  Tino, "Tino's Breaks, Volume 5"