One More than Zero

 

 

 On the train, reading Slaves of New York for the first time in close to 40 years.   And I immediately think of you, and how as budding creative writing majors we used to rib this book, as well as Less than Zero and Bright Lights Big City, and all those other books by young authors belonging to that genre dubbed, "...and then they fucked," generally brought out on Gary Fisketjon's Vintage Contemporaries series.  (Although by now, both nostalgia and academia have come on board, and the genre is referred to as "Dirty Realism.")

And just as I'm thinking this, you get on the train.  But it's not you, but your Japanese doppelganger, looking as you did back in school, with your bobbed hair and pouty lips and slim build.  And I so much want to sneak this woman's photo and send it to you, so that we can both laugh about the coincidence.  But sadly, you passed away last summer...

And with you gone, and with Zielke gone near 20 years, our little gang of aspiring writers lives on only in me.  Does that bring us back to Less than Zero, with Blair and Julian gone, and only I left to tell the tale?

 

On the turntable:  Ramones, "Too Tough to Die" 

The Tensile Strength of Oak

 

 

It was another Oeno-archaeological mystery, the label on the bottle so faded and worn that it took awhile to determine its identity. Finally from a small readable section of what had been an import stamp, a date appeared, 2000, though the actual purchase had been made eight years later in Taiwan. Uncorking one of these grand old dames is a true exercise in zen, mindfulness in every twist of the wrist. It demands calm and patient work, an attempt at coaxing this old piece of bark from the narrow neck that had long been its home. There was promise in a definitive resistance at the start, but all at once there was a slip where the curled metal tip met decayed center. After a steady and gradual climb upwards, the cork suddenly broke off, as if impatient for freedom. 

 

Resetting the corkscrew, I began yet again to pull, micrometre by micrometre. As the cork rose, what came with it was a small hiss, as if the contents of the bottle itself were longing for freedom. It struck me that what I was hearing was the sound of vintage air, twenty-three years old.

  

On the turntable:  Nina Simone, "The Montreaux Years"

On the nighttable:  Gary Snyder, "Back on the Fire"

    

Drag on Peace

It was the Zen that I stumbled across during my university days that led to a deep reading on the subject after graduation, which culminated in my coming to live in Japan. Ryoan-ji was a name that appeared again and again in those old books. Naturally I made an immediate beeline to the place the first time I went to Kyoto.

 

That initial visit was a disappointment, as it was crowded and noisy. I took in the famous garden for a little bit and wandered around to the back of the temple in a dark mood. There I discovered the tsukubai sitting mossy and green and alone by itself.  And there I found the stillness that I had sought. It was only later that I learned, with great irony, that the characters on this famous stone basin can be read as “I am content with what I have.”

 

Since then I have returned dozens of times, most often as a guide. It never fails in being crowded and noisy. Like most of the iconic sites of Kyoto, I vowed I would never go as a paying civilian, except in times of great snow.

 

But the feeling still nagged me. I wanted to see the garden in the same way as the great Zenmen of old. And so it was that I woke with the sun and I arrived at the front gates not long before they opened. 

 

And I finally got the garden to myself. For seven glorious minutes…

 

 

On the turntable: Levon Helm, "Levon Helm"

Gion, 2:02 pm

 

  

Watching the world go by from a stoop in Gion, on an April day that hits 29° C. Architecture bound in wires; delivery trucks unloading fish iced in Styrofoam boxes; a pair of Geiko chat beneath parasols; the rigid gait of a well-coiffed okamisan; and an older woman tumbles painfully into the street.

 

On the turntable:   Robyn Hitchcock, "Fegmania!"

As Autumn Wanes and Fades...

 

  

The soft light of the low hanging sun penetrates more deeply into the usually dark corners of the house.

On the turntable:  "The Complete Motown Singles"

 

Die Shizen

Anti-litter signs litter the path...


On the turntable:  Can, "Tago Mago"
 

Faster than the Speed of Thought

 

Technology is moving to quickly for the inevitable changes in human ethics.  Historically large technological changes brought about an accompanying shift in human consciousness.  Technology is accelerating the rate of information to the point that we are now choking on it.  Forget about ethics then, we no longer have the time in which to process things, to just take an idea and sit and think about it.  Before you can make an informed decision, you're being led to the next, and the next. No wonder the world is so shallow.  Nothing seems fully thought out anymore.      

 

On the turntable:  Laibach, "The Satanic Rock Opera"

 

Further Down the Spiral

Twentieth Century terrorism was political, therefore, intellectual.  Twenty-first Century terrorism is predominantly religious, and therefore, anti-intellectual.  


On the turntable:  Miles Davis, "Portrait"

Semi concious

A cicada lays on its back, legs wriggling in the air.  There seem to be a lot of dead semi today. These little bodies are the symptoms of the mortality of summer.

 

One has affixed itself to my front door.  I'll leave it there for awhile, not only as a lesson in impermanence, but as a reminder of how to live life:  short, but screaming loudly to the fullest.


On the turntable:  Tenor Conclave,  "Four Tenor Saxes"

Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand

The universe is a construct invented to define the infinite. Man’s mind can’t grasp the idea that there is true infinity. It’s too intimidating.  It also reflects the whole Brahman Ishvara split in ancient vedantic philosophy.  

 On the turntable:  The Muggs, "The Muggs,"

Feet in the Clouds...

From the air, the landscape takes on very different characteristics than on the ground.  The walker orients himself to objects man-made, which strike an odd balance between the comfort of a familiar human scale, and a dehumanizing disregard for his presence.  But from a great height, one encounters a landscape that goes well beyond the chauvinism of time.  The grandeur below was formed over generations, over centuries, over aeons.  Man's presence in it is incidental.  I think of the great forest cover of Cambodia, of the dusty angles of India, of the battle-pocked cones and grids of Laos.  But nowhere on earth I believe has the grandeur of Siberia.  All is tabula rasa, the twisting rivers bringing life onto the slate.  Canyons are as grand as that of Arizona, the mountains are areoli that rise from the tie-dyed steppe.


On the turntable: Drive-By Truckers, "The Unraveling"

Shards, 2019

-The Japanese on alcohol look as if they’re slightly deflated


-(Thoughts on Mongolia) ...you could see the way those in the cities were threatened by barbarians, by those beyond the perceived order upon those who dictated the dictates of order.  It was the have’s and have-not, but in this case the have-nots had all they needed and didn't care anyway, at least not for a while.


-Second hand air con in front of the shop fronts (walking muggy Singapore) 

 
Modern Japan as the inverse of the rebuilding after the war.  It feels that after Fukushima there is a debuilding of sorts, the government making decisions that are actual tearing apart the essentially elements of Japanese society.  The tourists coming in are changing the demographic.  The old is being destroyed to put up hotels, guests houses, etc.  What is allowed to remain is deemphasized and replaced by cliche.  The train systems which had always been reliable no longer seem to be. Criticism about the lack of forewarning before before the last fatal storm has created an almost knee-jerk reaction in the main railway company.  Train lines go down 12 hours or more before a storm is supposed to come, and in many cases the storm never does. 


-conceptional art vs representational art.  What’s there vs what is perceived to be there


-it seems the human condition is to strive, to always want to better oneself.  So it is that I believe we complain so much, that we are constantly finding fault with our situation so as better to improve upon it.  Those of more economic privilege of course have created a world in which most of those cares and worries have disappeared.  So it is that I find that they seem to grumble about the inane and the mundane things, that which is not so important.  Thus it is that an offshoot of people’s drive to survive is to complain, chronically.   


On the turntable:  Adam and the Ants, "Antmusic: The Very Best of..."

Random Out of the Blue Thoughts on Yoga

In the gassho position, the shoulders are naturally pulled back, the chest and the heart lifted.  It's no wonder the simple act of placing ones hands together has become an almost universal symbol of spirituality, as it physiologically makes one feel so good about oneself, filled with light from within.


On the turntable:  The Blasters, "4-11-44"

Running off to the Circus...

...And happy to see that they’re using fewer animals. I’d like to think they’re phasing out that part of the show. (And after all, the athleticism of the human acrobats is far more interesting.). One positive aspect I suppose is that it appeared that the trainers had a loving relationship with their animals, though my heart went out to the aging elephant and lion. I hope that as the animals age, they won’t be replaced.

As it is, I found it a good teaching point to discuss with my daughter man’s inhumane treatment of animals. That said, I think she found them the most memorable. And maybe in that lies the secret, that as young children begin school and their own societal domestication, the animals give them a glimpse of the wild that still struggles to survive within.
  

On the turntable:   Jeff "Tain" Watts, "Watts"

Still, Life

I always presumed that Van Gogh adopted his color scheme from the bright light of Provence. But perhaps the seed was always there, in glimpses of the canals of Amsterdam on a clear winter’s morn.

On the turntable:  Jimmy Smith, "Dot Com Blues"

Remembering Jordan, One Year On

I think of those early days in Japan, those places, the people we knew.  All of them changed, finished, gone.  Most of all, you.  

And with you gone, I am alone in being the caretaker of memories. 

On the turntable:  James Brown, "Grits & Soul"

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"

Odds and Sods

(Some leftovers from the journals, which didn't really fit anywhere else.)

SINGAPORE:
...premise for a Singapore story, about a professional dog walker being a front for a burglar...

...houses in Singapore function not so much as homes but as places to escape the heat...

...a fence for a queue is erected around where I'm sitting.  A perfect Singapore metaphor, this control of personal space...

 ...Echoes of the muezzin's prayer overlaps across the valley, distorting the original word of god...



JAPAN:
...into the narrow valley of Oku Hida and an accompanying claustrophobia probably due to the overcast skies and the fact that it is still winter up here.  The sakura are not even close to bloom, although they've already finished in Kyoto.  Sign of the times in Japan:  staff of our inn is split between Mandarin speakers  and English-speaking Nepalese.  Not a local to be seen, but for the cook who'd pop his head out at the end of the meal, as if in expectation of accolades. Good selection of sake and surprisingly good choice of red wines.  Our small group makes its way through most of the former.  I go back to my room to read my books about Tibet, but I'm not yet ready for the Himalayas.  Not quite done with Japan... 


...in this year's insane heat of July, the crows all seem to have their mouths open. And its the first time I've seen kites in awhile.  I watch one whose tail twitches to catch the thermals and I realize that's probably why I hadn't seen them, as there's been no wind to speak of.  When it has blown, it's been sparse, and hot.  Today for the first time in weeks I can feel a bit of cool coming through my open windows.  Despite that, my body still remains wrapped in its usual sticky film...


...on the commentary for an Ozu film, Donald Richie was talking about how well the Japanese do goodbyes. It got me thinking about the American hello vs. the Japanese goodbye.  It is difficult for the individuality-loving Americans to break their personal laws of inertia to join any type of group, so when they come in they come in strong, with a robust "Hi, how are you?"  The Japanese on the other hand find difficulty in breaking through the tensile strength of the group, and the bows and farewells drag on and on... 


...I began to wonder why 49 days is the magic number for reincarnation. The Buddhists believe that the soul goes through seven stages of tests, each lasting seven days, seven of course being a magic number in many cultures.  But with a little poking around I was pleasantly surprised to find that forty-nine days is also the time in which an embryo is thought to develop, knowledge I believe the ancients were on to...     

...pale diffuse light of winter crawls down the wall...



On the turntable:  Grateful Dead, "Dick's Picks, Vol. 31"

Ruined Capitals

ATHENS

...the incredible number of Americans in Athens, their itinerary initiated by the name-recognition of place...

...mornings in Athens defined by birdsong.  The source of these oracles sought by oversized cats,  descended perhaps from the lions of Hercules...

...Greece once had oral tradition, now it has graffiti... 
   

ROME

...good acoustic sax sweeping the Godfather theme up narrow stone streets... 

...Italian toilet seats covered with cardboard, as a measure against porcelain thieves...  

...Rome ambulance sirens drone like Scottish bagpipes...

...priests in Rome walk with a certain swagger, beneath marble rising from shadow...


On the turntable:  Grateful Dead, "Dick's Picks, Vol. 30"