Ashes to Ashes, Grapes to Grapes

A caveat: writing, like everything else in life, does not conform to the bell curve...there is no average amount to expect from me.

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The rain and the gray had me sinking deep into myself and my marshy thoughts. Halogen bulbs, square-box mindsets, rule charts, soulless reptile romance, and routine were chipping away at me inner motorcycle-gang leader. Then the missing element, so obvious in retrospect as most important truths always are, ignited that wild horse inside of me again.

I was invited to a local festival by one of my music groups and happened to have enough spirit left in me to bike up the hill to the "hot-tub" district (no joke). I never know what to expect anymore...so I just showed up. Within five minutes I am covered in soot, locking my bike to a guard rail (saying a quick prayer that I will find it again), and joining a labor team of drunk and genie clad Japanese. I am eternally grateful for being included in this rare celebration, and I think they appreciated the help; it never hurts to have biceps when it comes to being picked for a team.

Our official task was to carry a 300lb bail of flaming and smoldering reeds up a 2km hill to the temple at the top. the unofficial task, and the one everyone took much more seriously, was getting drunk and dirty enough to make our appearance before the local god. Our team consisted of 10 men, 8 of which lifted at a time, 3 flame-ball-groupie-chicks that followed us with a cooler and kept us fueled with peach flavored sake and beer, and an old drunk-master with a whistle, a can of kerosene and a vision. Every time drunk-master blew his whistle 3 times we gripped into the coarse, reed-binding ropes with our black charred hands and let our a "Wa--Sha-I!" battle cry which, from what I understand, means "ugh... this is heavy". Between bouts of effort and strain, face blinded and singed by smoke and flame, we smeared ash all over each others faces and dared to grab and hurl flaming embers at one another from the cindering heart.

At the top, the drunk camaraderie finalized in a 1,2,3 heave-ho of the bail into a giant bonfire. Children were beating enormous drums with giant batons, chanting and shouting. Everyone was pushing, stumbling, backslapping and black with char.

Sorry about the videos being 90 degrees off. I just started using this video function and I wast sure which way to hold the phone...just tip your head sideways.


This amazing routine is a harvest festival sigh of relief for a bountiful crop. It is a burning of the worries, a kindling of the community, a rare and primal delicacy, and like most holidays, a good excuse to drink.

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The following night some old-school musicians were getting Shinto under the full moon. The music is not describable in the common way we describe music, there is no plot, no development, no pre-conception of an emotion that is later transmitted through means of an orchestra. There seems to be only one great composer of this atonal, arrhythmic, non lyrical 'twang fest - the ebb and flow of a brook. It goes on and on, taking small and meaningless detours, bouncing and rippling, fast, slow, colliding with other currents and pushing through the disharmony and irregularities of a stony creek bed.

For me it solidifies that there is a fundamental difference in the deepest psyche of these people and myself - they must actually be perceiving something different. Maybe it isn't about hearing at all. They are not just sounds with the greater goal of altering moods/thoughts in one way or another. The act and nature of making music itself seems to be but an element of the natural human world that further completes the atmosphere of the moment. Like the crickets accompany the full moon on a cool reed lake, the human tribe twangs and piccollos from the polished wood decks overlooking the landscaped lawn.

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This Sunday I went grape and apple picking with some of my students at a local vineyard/orchard. It was a day so perfect and full of innocent fun and joy that it made me aware of a deep black pit in my stomach: man-made trouble in paradise. When I developed what started as an innocent thought, that "this isn't such a bad place to live...I like it here", I felt a dull digging in my gallows. A pinprick of a thought caused the opening of a gaping abyss into which my heart swiftly sank. I am now living with the fear of finally having found a place that I know will be a mistake to leave and from which I know I will eventually be driven from by my unquenchable thirst for knowing what is on the other side of the mountain (I just want to see what I can see). This is not some trick of rhetoric, I really have a physical uneasiness when I think about how long this country and it's people are going to have a hold of me.

Either way, I miss most of you more than you will know.

Sincerely,

TRL

A few shots from around town...the quality is low because I broke my camera and I'm using my phone.

...and the Iceberg Flips

An illusory stability, under a quiet stillness, the majority of the ice float lies submerged: this is an overused metaphor, I know, so I'm not using that one. I am using the one where the iceberg, due to just the right meltage/freezage ratio, flips over in the ocean and creates a massive amount of hydrological power in the frozen salty sea. I was wandering, rambling, without a destination, and now here I am, still as the morning in a routine made of cast iron. This shift has caused a bellowing forth of unyielding energy, but in an entirely different realm of my life. Before we get to that, I will fill you in on the basics.

A short spliff on my current living situation: I have my own cozy studio apartment in a nice smelling mountain town in the center of Japan. The air is fresh, the water is clean, the sun is always shining and the women are natural beauties. Living situation, check. Work: I am the sole teacher at the sole branch of a floundering extra-curricular English school for children. I am not sure how dire the financial specs on the company are, so if you receive a postcard from me with a little dollar sign in the corner, it means to wire me money so I can fly home...or to fly to Thailand ;). KIDDING! I am (semi) confident that it is a stable position. I work from 12-7 Tues-Sat with a ton of free time, maybe four hours of free time during work every day but Saturday.


So, here is where the iceberg flips: I have taken the energy I used to expend in motion and transformed it inward into study. I have been spending 4-5 hours A DAY studying neurology, Zen, Japanese, guitar and Facebook. I never knew this kind of potential was there. Anyways, I feel like this new direction will definitely leave the travelogue high and dry, since this routine will last the better part of a year (circumstances pending). So, I decided to put a little paper to pen and give you a few snapshots of the signposts on my inner journey. Keep in mind the conjoining elements. But first: some photos!

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Social Grammar and the International Mind:

Social grammar is a phenomenon closely related to linguistic grammar. The way a language is structured reflects/effects the way the social world is structured. This occurs because the linguistic circuits have a primarily inter-relational social function.

Like most things cognitive, it is a two way street, where the inner contents affect the outward actions and the outer world manifests itself in the neural circuits. In a very literal way, the brain is a mirror that receives what it can and attempts to reflect those incoming messages with suitable reactions. Most of our mirrors are clouded by beliefs, past experiences or habituation (i.e. over-learned linguistic structures).

Neurological fact: with the outstanding exception of Zen like thoughtless awareness (a sufficiently large and completely separate topic that will be clarified in its place), we can only use what we have already experienced to view the world of incoming chaos. A large portion of what we have spent our formal education programming/experiencing is linguistic categorization and structure. For the majority of us (the non-enlightened ones, AKA me and probably you), a large slice of the way we view the world is based upon what language we speak/read. This has three interesting implications:

1) the more skilled at a language you are, the more detail of hue you can actually perceive in the world: this is not metaphorical; there is actually MORE reality coming through to you because you have a higher capacity to process it in detail. However, it is not a potentially unlimited increase in perception (and you will see why I make that clarification soon). However, it does serve to offer a taste, which we can all relate to, of how perception effects out experience.

Some examples to hammer the point: A rock isn't just "rock", it is hard, abrasive, rough, porous, a dull gray granite chunk of cool stone, gently accepting the morning's soft light, with glittering flakes of pink-pearl marble embedded in its subtle contours (isn't that second 'rock' more real? More unique? closer to encapsulating the ACTUAL 'rock' that is sitting outside my apartment?). On the other hand, take for example the word "love", it just doesn't quite do the job, does it? No matter how poetic, even Shakespeare cannot reach the high note that we attempt to wrangle with our damp and heavy linguistic-lassos.

2) Different languages, especially ones with completely different grammatical structures, open a new world of perception vastly different than what one may have experienced in their native tongue. For example, the Japanese language doesn't have some of the same VERBS as English! How can that be?! Do those actions exist in the Japanese mind?..., perhaps, startlingly I know, they do not. Some things do not exist here that exist in the West, and it isn't because of the soil, it is because of the lingo-cultural environment.

Consider the core of Western Philosophical thought: Plato convinced us that the world is full of the potential for being and non-being, things are horses or they are not horses, depending on the eternal definition of horse, the 'Form' of horse-ness. But (and this is my favorite example) there is no basic verb TO BE in Japanese. The closest thing is 'aru' which basically means 'it is in stock' or, in some cases, 'I've found it! or eureka!'. Everything only exists in relation to the topic it is being connected with. Nothing 'is', is and of itself; things 'are' only next to something else, used by something else, spent, owned, cut etc. So, if a tree falls in a Japanese forest when on one is around, does it make a sound? Only if it hits the ground!

A sub-point in this concept is the Japanese way of life in general: the respect for concision, brevity, leaving things as they are, nuance, simplicity, stark contrast and the way they view themselves in relation to the world is all reflected in the lexicon and grammatical form of the boldly syllabic and stylized language. Everything is a symbol for something, not the thing itself. I sometimes forget that an apple is only an apple because I call it one. We have all experienced the phenomenon of saying a word so many times in close repetition that it actually loses its meaning. In this phenomenon is the heart of Zen: things are not the labels we so tightly cling to for understanding. In this phenomenon, we sense the emptiness of the word, and it then becomes only a string of phonetic contortions. If you haven't experienced this, it is a simple way to test my above hypothesis...but do it alone so that people don't think your nutters.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master — that's all."
~ Lewis Carroll ~

3) Remember, the topic is that different languages change how we see the world: Different languages offer unique views of the same world, this is undeniably interesting and true as I am experiencing the seasons in a new-found respect and passivity, tonal nuances and phrase choices have made priory indescribably social situations more clear, and details within brevity have emerged. However, although it is different, it is still a limiting factor. If we can eliminate language from our perception we are one step close to actually viewing pure reality.

This is not some mystic's midnight creed, this is the nature of perception: the brain is equipped with filters, floodgates, and magnifiers for selectively perceiving and acting on a violent and chaotic world; adaptive, yes, but filters none the less. Consider: We own a commercial semi-truck that has been (as if often the case) outfitted with a max-speed restrictor: we are cruising down the highway of experience with a governor on the engine that only lets us go 55mph; optimal for gas and safety but its not the true potential of the vehicle. Any skilled mechanic knows how to rip one of those bad-boys off, (but an unskilled mechanic might blow up the engine). Again, this isn't a metaphor: the brain is the engine of our mind, of our whole world, and it has real working parts that can be welded, bent, sharpened, grown, and re-routed. Hence, I have been dedicating myself to the destructive and reconstructing exercise of concentration meditation. There is no belief structure underlying this decision other than a belief that the brain is capable of physically transforming, changing my experience along with it. (yeah Leslie, here it is again...haha)

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We draw lines in the sand of what "is" and "is not"
and by these rough lines, we abide
the great lie is that what "is" always "has been"
life is the breeze and death is the tide

21 Days of Vagrancy

Backpack contents:

wad of cash
combat knife
hippie pillow
ukulele
neuroscience textbook
suspenders
mp3 player loaded with 2pac
socks

Mission: survive 21 days without paying for accommodation and floating objectively though Japan's Westerlillies, bum-style.

I left the comfort of the red-light district, hopped a midnight bus and woke up listening to the rose that rose from concrete singing about 'my ambishunz az a ridah'. In the old Western capital, Kyoto, my first two days were spent washing myself in the river of history that flows from the countless temples, manors, pavilions, pagodas and shrines. It was a history overload that was nicely complemented with my nights spent in a riverside rain shelter. Kyoto has a modern center that vibes and flows like any of Tokyo's busiest streets but maintains many islands of classical culture; a perfect archetype of the overarching theme of contrasts that is developing in my conception of the Japanese way of life. However thick the culture, I was really itching for something less mainline after two nights.

The wanderer's route took me into the rugged stone forest prefecture of Wakayama. Down, down along the coast, I made calm beaches my home and mountain tops filled my days. It was a lonely and rugged time where the depths of some overdue thoughts were released in the nightly silence. I spent several days on top of a holy mountain in a Buddhist village, sleeping on temple floors and walking the torchlit nights in the pure silence of the cultivated mind. A lot of pain and a lot of healing is only possible alone. Living off of tea and tofu, my mind was bent by a fast intended to wring out my soul like a sopping wet towel. I was purely at peace and sat, cold and empty, like a porcelain vase. However, even peace has its limits. Dedicated to extremes and driven by road, it was only a matter of days until I arrived at the southernmost and scathingly hot tip of the peninsula.
Kushimoto town, the little settlement at the crux of the mainland and two wooded islands became my food resource as I set out on a challenge to circumvent the two islands in a meditative hike. In the early morning smoke, razor rocks rose like knives of giants and cast their darkness and power over shallow tide pools and black sands. The cliffs were severe; the solid throbbing heat and dense weight of the scenery raged like the bulging pulse of a tiger in a life or death struggle. This same pulse beat through two young lovers as they threw themselves off a jagged ocean cliff to a shared, gruesome end. It would happen that I was approaching the outcrop as these two heavy birds flew without wings. The red pulp of bodies floated in the churning tide as the whomping beat of a rescue helicopter swooped over the scene. The bodies were covered and, undoubtedly, flown to the morgue. I was planning to camp here...decided to move on through the night.
Sometime in the next few days I am picked up by a pleasant millionaire sweatshop owner and introduced to his lonely wife. We drank aphrodisiastic (and as tastes go, un-fantastic) poisonous viper liquor. We ate whole fish, drank whole bottles, laughed with our guts, inhaled the air like a hallucinogenic smoke and sang and danced to the hentai beat of twisted Japanese desire.

Pried out of the doldrums of solitude by this crazy couple, I moved towards a neon bordello, dreaming of the Osaka sun. I spent a few days bumming around a popular beach, playing my ukulele in a sideshow of a love-hunt. It wasn't long until I had a wingman pick me up as an asset. Together we swept the beaches, me with my ukulele and him with...well, the ability to speak Japanese. It was too easy; we nightly escorted piles of bikini's to evenings of beer filled restaurants. We were dynamite-fishermen in teaming seas.

Too much sun drove me into the dark caves of metropolitan all-nighters warmed by litres of souchu and sake. The bizarre and dark heart of 3am Japan is rich and thick like the sweating of blood; I was swept up like a cell through an unbearably powerful artery of hedonism. Dingy, hole-in-the-wall freak shows. Moonlight sake fountains. Sleepless skateboard hooligans. Raunchy bums. Passed out business men. The search for a quiet corner to sleep. Osaka's finest.

The local train back to Tokyo with work on the other end...it was justly drawn out. 12 hours of scenery from mountain passes to vibrant rice fields to the monster of Fuji and finally the familiar buzz of the Tokyo commute; time to get to work.

Tom Vs. the Volcano

I threw on my pack, waxed my Mohawk, adjusted my suspenders and started trudging up Japan's largest pile of hot black rocks. It took four hours of marching through volcanic sands to reach an elevation above the clouds...with four hours left to the summit. Most of the climb is monotonous, steady, and tiresome but the end result is a feeling and a view of unparalleled magnificence. From the symmetry to the pacing, this mountain represents the Japanese lifestyle.

An American individualist at heart, I bypassed the last station that offered lodging and warmth and camped on my own at the mountain's apex. I pushed to the summit just before sundown. The gale force winds were whipping me into the red rocks around the last hundred meters before the crate's edge. I felt a vendetta against me as the cold, altitude, and bursts of air tempered my spirits into steel and stone. It isn't the most physically challenging ascent but the mind is on a thin cable after seven and a half hours of high altitude desert hiking.

As I was pitching my tent under the twilight shadows of the tori gate, two twinkling headlamps slowly approached my site. A Japanese man and an Indonesian had also made the summit in one day but had not checked the hotel closings at this particular site. I offered them a place to sleep with me in my little tent and they gratefully accepted. It was about an hour later, when I was on a call of nature, that I realized the far side of the crater had an lodge. I told the two and they were on their way after a five minute bout of gratitude. I, once again the proud fool, chose to stick it out in the cold and wind atop this igneous demon.


The night that ensued was a hallucination at best. After I ran out of bottled oxygen and the altitude sickness took strong hold over my malnourished and sleepless brain, the torrents of wind tore my mind into vast audio and emotional fantasies. At one point I was shouting orders to my crewmates to "MAN THE STARBOARD BASTION! HOIST THE REAR JIB! HOLD MEN! HOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooolllld!" as I lashed the two-pound tent to boulders and held the support beams in frame with my arms and legs extended. I slept zero as the dragons maw of Fuji blasted terrifying balls of air against my teflon home. I spent the night sitting erect rubbing feeling into my feet and legs between wrestling matched with the wind. And then the unexpected came...morning.

The sunrise cut the layer of nimbus clouds from the wispy cirrus above and painted the bleak darkness of night with a new hope of returning to sanity. Slowly, the surrounding regions began to glow as the sun painted details across the landscape. Lakes and foothills emerged out of the darkness and I was finally aware of my own presence atop Japan's highest altar. I didn't know what I had achieved until I looked out from the highest peak over the altitude I had conquered and watched the darkness and cold of my evenings torment recede into the warm pink-orange of the sun.

The decent was an elation. I ran down a mountain, my fatigued calves jumping forward in bounds down a slope of pebbles and dust. It took eight hours to summit and two hours to return to the base of the mountain. Every postcard, every decor in a cheesy sushi restaurant, every overpriced dorm-room poster of Fuji will bring me back to the relief and respect I felt during that descent.


I was met at the base by a grandmotherly woman making mushroom tea in a wood cabin. She helped me fold my clothes and repack my tent, gave me a cup of tea, and endured my broken Japanese recounting of the trip. I wanted to tell her and to have her understand what a goat that mountain was.

A Day In The Park

I once again have the reigns on the chaos that accompanies international living. My contract is finished, my apartment is clean and I am all set for a three week romp through the western provinces. Now, a bit of back logging:

Weirdness has a heart, a buzzing hive of pink punks and ukulele gangs. The "park" is more like a chaotic talent show with sword fights, break dancers, a-rhythmic clapping parties, and swing danging greasers littering the otherwise pristine greenery. A "Where's Waldo" shirt and a red Mohawk fit in perfectly. The park is a place where youth parades recklessness and passion. It was overwhelming how much random culture was pouring out into the atmosphere of Tokyo's Yoyogi park; NYC has a thing or two to learn.



The difference in expression between an adolescent/young adult Japanese and an adult is as clear cut a distinction as water and ice. The condensation of the free spirited youth into business suit wearing office workers occurs overnight. The Japanese treat the phases of their life like the change in their seasons; the change is abrupt and extreme. One of my students who commonly wears neon tights, random charms and sports multicolored hair showed up to class with straight black hair, a gray suit and a plain white bag because she got a job. That's the end and they know it, and I think they like it!


Until they reach that endpoint, the city has no shortage of kitch boutiques selling everything from authentic American civil war flags to Bob Seger vintage concert t-shirts to decorate the scattered identities of Tokyo's 20-somethings. I got some red suspenders and a black leather steel-studded wristband. My friend bought a t-shirt out of a giant plastic tube. We enjoyed our eccentric purchases over a cup of Bolivian coffee in a French cafe called the "Snob's Heart". Until I lived in this city, I never fully realized the extent of comfort the completely random offers my soul.

In The Thick Of It

Time has locked itself into the expressway of routine; I hadn't even noticed that nearly a month has passed since the last entry. I'd be lying if I said not a lot happened but I am not far enough removed from it to make a clear judgment on the full significance.

The power of culture shock moves silently, like the angel of death, seeping into the crumbling old self image and killing it at the very core. The stages of this phenomenon are startlingly accurate: there is the honeymoon phase where everything is in a golden hue, the negotiating phase where sacrifices are noticed and positives and negatives are weighed against one another, then there is the adjustment phase in which a person either assimilates completely (10% of expatriates), rejects completely (60%) or creates a self-selected mixture of virtues (or vices) and shuffles oneself into a new being (30%). Of course, in the spirit of this whole experiment, I aim and hope to be in that golden 30. My self transformation has been rocky at times, however, and I have faced large waves of cultural hardship over the last month and reacted in...interesting ways.


Most of my gripes are so small they seem like banalities, but the deep irritation they cause me is like red to a bull. I cant stand the rotating air conditioners on the subways...every time it blows on my head I snap and punch through a window. People swing their umbrellas when they walk and block large sections of thoroughfare... rage. The word for "welcome" is so spleen-splittingly annoying it makes me want to scurry up a chalkboard with my fingernails. It is the small things. It is also the small things that I love: smiling carrots, Engrish misprints, My hometown printed on plastic cups, pink haired freaks, monks on the metro, people passing out standing up, the little-old-lady-bikes everyone rides around; These are the elements that make and break me.




Most of the last month has been daily life: shopping, commuting, and working.

Work is by far the most interesting of these three. The general level of fear in my classes is quite funny. My students are afraid of the sun, afraid of pig flu, afraid of mistakes, afraid of train doors, afraid of the mohawked American maniac that forces them to imitate mowing the lawn and shoots them dead with his fingers when he has had a long day.

My contact with my students (aged 18-24) is enlightening. I have learned a lot about culture and picked up some common Japanese. The students are strange, by and large, and have some awkward quirks that can only be described as perversions. The interactions in class are priceless. A few of my favorite moments:


A: I want to touch golden-haired girl's hips on the train...how should I?
B: Swiftly

I am God; sorry for making you so unlucky

A: I have cuts all over my wrists
B: stop doing that

A: will you loan me 10,000 yen?
B: for what?
A: long vision glasses (aka binoculars)
B: for what?
A: ...never ask, never tell

A: please forgive me
B: why?
A: for this mess I've made in your wife

A: What did you do this weekend
B: I went skiing with no shirt
A: What was the brand of the shirt you wore not?

A: You stole my girlfriend!
B: We can share! Hotels will be cheaper!

Turtles commonly support turtles(what?)

Ahhh.....I yearn for that life...(about my life)

A: my girlfriend left me...what do you suggest I do?
B: I suggest you cry

The interior of animals makes me sad

I want to be a cat. Do you mind?

(I walked into this one)...and then the poor homeless woman, her son, and their dreams starved to death in the dark alley rubbish bin...

And my personal favorite:

It is a bad idea to come (onto*) on a crying girl

Yes my friend, yes it is.

I am moving on, however, as much as I love the psycho-queerness of the 20 something veterinarians to be. My new job, starting in August, will be teaching little kiddos. I am going to be moving into the mountains to a town that boasts the cleanest water in the country, majestic ski slopes, hiking trails and untouched forests. It will be a welcomed change from the polluted and dark metro mind-clogging mess of Tokyo commuting.


I will be taking a three week traveling holiday to some far regions of the island major sites and will surely have more to write. thanks for the patience.

Yours newly,



Thomas

Whiting-In

Lush and orderly gardens of trimmed shrubs and bamboo stalks separate this space. The spiritual ecology of the Kamakura great temples transforms those who enter with vespering mist that surrounds and awakens participants into a hyper-lucid green-dream. I whited-in while blanketed in the shadow of a lumbering pagoda, a silver polished pond rimmed with neon moss deflecting the pin-drops of rain all around me. My hippocampus was overloaded with the novelty and sheer magnitude of these multidimensional monuments. The peace I found on the meticulously maintained temple ground came in part from the reverence of human accomplishment of harmony in the face of a chaotic and cruel world. The resident monks’ daily chores were testaments of patience, ability and skill, all the while the non-action of massive temple structures plainly stated the capabilities of diligence. It was overwhelming. I took a nap on the stoop of a monastic dorm.

The shrine and the temple are two very different things. The temple is a place of self cultivation, community and purity; the shrine is a playground for superstition. Accessible only through a narrow tunnel entrance, a rocky grove encloses an assortment of colorful, odorous, quirky, and sensual Shinto activities. A maze of wooden Tori gates leads to an icon adorned with various ornaments to whom people offer money and prayers. A red bridge crosses a small pond, home to an albino coy-king and his consorts who are fed by passerby and housed by a spouting waterfall. A fish, not knowing life above water nor realizing his utter dependence on it darts fro’ and to’; a small hole in a rock, five meters above the pond’s surface, serves as the source of his aquatic realm and of his very life. From above us the water falls and through us it courses. We never know from where it flows and we never need to. Who or what feeds us is a benevolent mystery.


Large iron pots filled with the dust of burning incense sends plumes of smoke intocarved out hollows in the rock. On the walls of the cave are strung countless rainbow paper cranes and on the floor in a trickling spring people squat and wash their money for luck in wealth. Small white candles are lit for whichever purpose one desires and placed in reverence, prayer, or meditation into a grotto of flames. Wooden boxes offer divined fortunes and advice. Paper bows and cork-board wishes are ties to metal wires hanging from racks. A scribe delicately brings his black brush to stroke and form intricate kanji. Charms, pendants and wards are sold in satchels for a variety of ailments or wishes. It’s a one-stop-shop to satisfy all mystical desires and to fatten persevering beliefs.

Then, as though polarized in silliness by the lighthearted novelty of the shrine, I had a moment where my heart froze as my breath burst in my guts. The colossus of the iron Daibatsu (Great Buddha) is beyond my expectations. Not kitsch or over-commercialized, the iconic enlightened one emanates a hard aura of metaphysical persistence. The clear skies overhead coupled with the rock solid signpost to clarity of thought was like a tide of hot alkaline water washing the gunk of dispassion and laziness from my eyes.


On a different note (in that order):

It is fun being different here. Red is my new favorite color. I have red pants. I don’t feel that this place has changed me per-se, it is more that I have always been a black sheep and am only given the freedom to enjoy my out-standing-ness fully when I have no other option. I couldn’t blend in here if I tried for the rest of my life.

As the wind blows the trees rustle, the rocks clank and tumble, the valleys bellow and the wings flutter. The reeds of different length whistle different notes and together this grand orchestra enlivens the universe. A melodic harmony is achieved through variation in pitch and voracity. We understand the different sounds made by the pipes of earth but cannot grasp the animating fact that the winds are the pipes of heaven. Only by the silent blowing of the wind can we hear the tangible variations composed by the eternal maestro.

Memory Maelstrom

For those of you who know me well this will be merely a reiteration of a theme that, if you still communicate with me, you must enjoy. I have a sort of penchant for the random, which, I am beginning to realize is why travel and especially Japan seem to offer me up the world of my dreams on a silver platter. Carving out a little niche in my own little corner of subtropical metropolitan jungle, the number of times my awareness is centered by the purely abstract and absurd is a gift.

Necessarily In nonsensical chronological disorder, the recounting of May 22nd-24th is only possible due to a series of random tape recordings, ala the style of the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I white’d in (the opposite of blacking out, although to be fair, it was more like a graying-in) next to an Indian elephant. This matriarchal mammalian mastodon, was moated (the verb form of the noun moat) into a flattened desert plateau merely twice her body size. It was a great way to reenter awareness because the contrast of our two lives could not be more vivid. Although it sounds a bit lacking in compassion, which I assure you is not true, seeing this beaten and hopeless shell of a great beast was energizing; I am free and they ain’t broke me yet! Elephant stories always seem to be sad ones.

A unified “Ha!” followed by a short round of clapping drew me into the woods. A line of pre-pubescent boys, standing in an open faced dojo, were shooting arrows into targets 25 meters away as two girls were clapping and collecting the spent arrows. A glimpse of a white tower standing over the trees acted as the next gravitational force. Inside the castle were various specimens of hardened steel and ferocious Samurai masks and battle armor from the shogun era. Naginata, long poles with belly-blending blades at their ends, were especially vivid to imagine in use. I was drawn into contemplation of the outcome of a battle between feudal Japanese and feudal Western armies. The style, the whole mind behind the machine, is of such a different constitution that it would be the closest thing of an interstellar war between two alien species.

The quiet of the freshly moped concrete made my presence uniquely outstanding. Using my cheap 2nd hand umbrella, I received my first kendo lesson on a train platform awaiting the train to who-knows-where from a veteran kendo fighter and very friendly neighbor. His spiritual explanation of the matter, the idea of gauging force and ability through the slightest contact of swords, of defeating the mind, made my suspicion even more concrete: I and they think even less alike than a suspicious person would think (chew on that). Although I was easily twice his mass he would have whipped my ass up and down the train platform with his umbrella. I received the nickname “Buffalo Beef”.

I white’d in on a beach far from home, the end of the line, the beginning of a new region of the island; a place where black sands and the white hair of weather beaten fisherman blend in a dance with the blue of the Pacific. Fisherman cast their poles into the shallow waters near the breakers as a contented homeless man worked on his rusty old bike. I slept on the oil-sand beach until my face burnt into a panda-eyed mask and the tide washed my backside. David Byrne sang “same as it ever was” as I poked my head into a market selling alien sea-pods; I couldn’t have found his comment less accurate.

The red lights of Roppongi lit the dark black skin of the Nigerian hustlers as I stumbled through the timeless hours of a bottle of souchu and a mega-vitamin B (8000% DV). Clubs lit by flashlight wielding hostesses had dancers on every bar had me standing in some Coyote Ugly Asiana edition audition. Strong-7 beers from the 7-11 paved the road towards the beacon of the Tokyo tower. On the morning train I got off at the wrong stop because my travelling companion woke up and, startled, woke me up and we got off the train with no reason to think it was the proper city. After a 20 minute split screen story, both of us somehow winding our way back to the terminal, I popped in through closing doors right before the train left the station.

A massive sushi-go-round shot toy prizes out of a tube if you won the video game challenge match. I know. It was this random for me too so I am trying to give you a fair treatment. They serve blended crab brains.

Breaching the last step of a stone-shod mountain path a massive iron kettle of incense filled the air with a purple smoke. A chorus of chanting echoed in the acoustic halls of a Buddhist temple. Monkeys clamored in a nearby cage as my favorite tree species, the Japanese maple, showed its full watermelon-colored array of leaves. Behind the temple stood a simply marked path leading up a wooden stairway into the woods. I climbed these stairs for 30 minutes. The violent winds atop the meditative mountain whipped the thin paper ribbons into a flutter as the steel dragon spat spring water into an opaque pool. A neon jogger in full spandex buzzed by.

In the foothills, I checked into one of my beloved onsen resorts. The sulfurous hot pools felt good on my leech wounds. As I scrubbed myself clean before entering the tub I noticed the little bloodsuckers all over my feet and between my toes. It was a blood bath, literally, as I smashed and pulverized the resilient parasites so gorged on my blood. It was out of some horror film as the little monsters edged quickly towards me over the sudsy tile floor after been flicked off. After liquefying them with my shampoo bottle I was surrounded in bright red pools of my own blood. Time for a bath. Totally naked except for my silver ring, it too was transformed by these remarkable waters. Emerging from the spring fed tub my silver band had turned a luminous red-gold; I just kept staring at it and hoping (a hope bordering on prayer) that it would start to show bright red Elvish writing.

I awoke to write this as four men in a Honda minivan pulled over a sign advertising the local massage parlor and sent smashed glass into an otherwise peaceful 3:30am.

There is a café that is full of cats as the theme. There is a cartoon porno section in the newsstand. What the hell am I doing standing between them?