Things I do.

It's been said, By John Donne (and I'm sure that we could include the women folk in this phrase) that; "No man is an island". Hell, even Hemingway believed it and adopted a few of the lines from this poem as the title of his book: For Whom The Bell Tolls, so who am I to disagree?
Yet I do!
I live my life and spend my days encapsulated and travelling from place to place confined within the physical structure of my body and the fantastical limits of my imagination...That itself is an island.
An island by definition will have a shoreline due to it being surrounded by elements that don't share the same physical or spiritual properties that it has and therefore is isolated due to encapsulation of that same said material; whether it be physical or moral, ephemeral or permanent.

There are times when passing boats may dock in my harbor, storms wash up detritus on my beaches or the crashing waves erode my cliff faces, but that doesn't alter the fact that I am a singular entity much like the particles that make up the atoms that make up the molecules that make up my physical self. There are forces and attractions which promote stability and create the fabric of our world and it's social infrastructure.

Wait! Now, hold on. Did I just contradict myself? Oh, shit, I did!!
Now I have to rethink this whole damned idea before I become as contradictory as Thoreau or prohibitively one sided as Ayn Rand.

Are we all in this thing together or not? If so, what exactly is my part to play? Do I have to worry that if I don't put on my socks in the morning a clothing factory in Rangoon will close down? I'm getting a little dizzy here and it's not just from the copious amounts of whiskey I dring brink, fuck, swill. I mean I'm starting to feel a little like a ping pong ball being slapped around by the Chinese national Olympic team.

Hmm, looks like I'm not gonna find the answer to many of the questions that bounce around in my head, but I sure do enjoy thinking about them.
How about you?
What's tickling your cerebellum these days???

I bought a rake

I have an odd sort of rule that I don't often get to implement (That's a rake pun, right there). If I get two consecutive days off and I don't have a backlog of work to catch up on or lessons that need to be tweaked or housework to trudge through, then one of those days is spent doing absolutely nothing. I spend no more energy than it takes to do my daily stretching, make a pot of coffee, round up a book or two and turn on the computer.

Yesterday was such a day, but the weather was so warm and inviting that I just couldn't resist a little excursion. Morioka is the kind of city that has so many Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples dotting it's landscape that you can't swing a small monkey around without running into one. They are generally the quiet idyllic kind of place that allows you to come to terms with your place in the world and gives realization that you don't really have much time to waste doing it.

You might notice his disapproval of the way I spend my time.

Just behind the place that I call home is a fairly decent sized parcel of land that lets me do the same kind of reflecting from my verandah that I can do at a shrine. On sunny days I watch the local kids run around and make noise and play games that seem to have no rules to them. I sit with my guitar and enjoy the effort my neighbor makes at turning the area behind her apartment into a flower and vegetable garden. During the winter I stand at the window and watch the snow fall and bemoan that I will soon have to drive through the frozen precipitate on my way to work.

But that space wasn't always like this...

It needed to be reclaimed from the wild, tamed and made worthwhile- 

see my previous post about how this all started. http://thenyd.blogspot.jp/2008/11/no-man-is-island.html

The problem with doing something like this is about the same as adopting a pet...your responsibility never ends.
The energy we expend on nurturing and maintaining the things that have importance to us is never truly wasted. Over time we are invigorated and rewarded with far more than we have invested  and on this particular project I even get a fair amount of physical exercise. 

It's important to keep the clutter and undergrowth from encroaching on the order you have struggled to create in your life. Personally, I like to put all my problems into neat little piles and deal with them one at a time. You still have to get that stuff out of the way and onto the garbage heap, but you don't have to strain with the whole damned miserable mess in one fell swoop.

That's why I needed the rake...

Numbers don't lie

I'm not sure if any of you reading this have the same habit of double checking your work, reviewing your life choices and making sure that your beliefs don't devolve into dogma, but I do. So, it was with quite a bit of trepidation that I decided to end my hiatus from blogging and do my best to reignite the fires of story telling with the possibility of getting some annoying and often obnoxious ideas out of my head, where they rattle and bang and confound and often keep me from getting a good night's sleep .

After slapping together my previous post; the first thing I did was to cruise around and take a peek at many of the bloggers who used to visit and sometimes comment. It was a little disconcerting to discover that a great many of them had, just as I had done, allowed their places to become dormant. I felt as if I were walking through houses that had been boarded up and were waiting for the owners to come back to resume their occupancy. The next thing I did was something that I am sure you could identify with.... I started looking through my old posts to see what I had written about in the past and to get an idea of what kind of changes I had gone through. That wasn't as fun as I thought it would be nor was it as painful.

I started blogging in 2006 and at one point in time I had three active blogs with a combined total of 813 posts. Now that may not be a whole lot, but I started to think about how much time, thought and effort I've deposited into this particular endeavor. I have never had, probably because I didn't actively seek it out, a large fan base on this page. My other page, laid to rest a long, long time ago and which you can find among the list of bloggers who follow me, did attract more than a few interesting people. Why was that? When I compared the posts of each blog I realized they had roughly the same amount of entries but were so radically different that I found it difficult to come to terms with the fact that they had been written by the same person. But were they, really?

It's no secret that we all carry a multitude of masks that we wear depending on who we are dealing with, what we are doing, and how we might be feeling about ourselves and life in general; but right now I'm wondering just how many shadows I cast when exposed to the light of human encounters.

And if I started counting them would I even be able to see them all?

Barleycorn, sugarcane and tomato on the vine...

Here I am...again. The same misplaced man; living in the same town, doing the same mundane things on a daily basis to keep the tax man and the debt collectors at bay. Over the last two years, I have sat in front of this computer, fucking around on facebook and streaming an exorbitant amount of movies , TV shows and cat videos in order to keep my personal dilemmas and overwhelming, inconsolable sorrow from inundating my everyday life and making it impossible to function as a polite member of Japanese society.
Now don't get me wrong. My life is probably no better nor worse than any of the millions of people tapping away at their keyboards or sitting in public parks or maybe riding on trains and buses, thinking and struggling, trying to make sense and put some order into the incredible amount of activity, information and entertainment that presents itself to us on a daily basis.

I would love to be able to talk about all the sensational experiences I have had during my absence from this place and I'm certain that I will be letting those stories free to run around, prance, dance and delight, if I decide to continue writing, but right now I think that there is something that about the present that takes precedent above the past.
I made a few promises to myself that were utter foolishness and after three months of failing miserably in the effort of bringing them to fruition I decided to consider the stupidity of even attempting to achieve something I didn't really desire. Then it hit me; like Colonel Kurtz's diamond bullet, I realized the absurdity of the situation that presented itself.
I was trying to change my life by re-arranging the external circumstances, relationships and speed of movement through the miasma of contradiction and unassailable problems to maintain a certain kind of balance [the type that always ends up in a fiasco of one sort or another] instead of working on figuring out just exactly what I wanted with my days and nights on this planet. Good luck with that!
What I really wanted from life was the ability to do anything I wanted to do to even when it conflicted with the exact precepts that make fulfilling your dreams possible. In other words, I wanted my cake and I wanted to eat it too, but I believed that the consumption of a pastry and its calories would have no effect on me, I was wrong. Really, really wrong.
My selfishness and stupidity in believing that there was no price to pay in order to advance in life as well as the lack of consideration when thinking about how my decisions will affect others in both my private and personal life was a supreme moment in idiocy. In fact, it ought to be framed and set on display an any number of public spaces for all to witness one fine example of the continuing folly of the human race.

Right now I'm nibbling on olives...

I guess that's part of my Sicilian ancestry. I also nibble on cheese, but I ain't French, a Wisconsin cheese head nor a rat...(the rat part's up for debate).

We all do things that aren't necessarily connected to our genetic make up, hell, or even good for us. Christ, I've been known to eat raw fish with a pair of slim wooden sticks and I'm pretty certain that my great grand dad never did that.

How difficult is it to break out of our habits and change the way we see the world.

I have been so wrapped up in my job, a second failed marriage and a business that threatens to keep me bound to my past like Charlton Heston at the oar; that I honestly cannot remember the last time I  laughed just for the sheer pleasure of it, or danced because the music of life moved me, but that's going to change.
I think that it's about time that I let all the ridiculousness and fantasy slough off me for once and all and finally learn to get a grip on the reality of things....I guess it's time to grow up. I'm hoping that we all feel this way.

Waitin on a friend ...

Early in the morning . Too early to be doing more than rolling over and getting cuddlesome with someone special. But instead of doing than I'm sitting at the ass end of a line that's as long as  John Holmes' cock.
I guess I ought to consider myself lucky . I can sit here in sub-zero temperature and poke away at my phone to tell you all about it .
Things here in Morioka are actually looking up. In astrange way it feels a little similar to when I returned home after 9-11. People are kinder and strangers talk to each other with an
ease I seldom see.

I finished a stint making English language announcements at NHK radio two days ago. Reporting on the numbers of deaths and missing people left me feeling very gloomy. To shuck off this feeling I have started a charity drive to collect as much food, clothing, diapers etc. that my van can hold and drive the whole shebang down to a completely destroyed village where  my buddy and his family lives.

Not too sure that's gonna wipe away the patina of sadness...  

...and on the seventh day

I have a distant, but rather amicable relationship with my upstairs neighbors.When we see each other we bow and greet each other with a polite ”こんにちは”.　My neighbor loves doing laundry and I often wake up bright and early (The day is bight, not the narrator.) to the sound of her washing machine whirling and swirling the family garments with a monotonous rumble. These days the sound has been replaced with the sound of helicopters roaring overhead and the rumble of the earth that makes me think that Godzilla is out strolling in my backyard.
I would say that at this point in time We are not in a dire situation, we're waiting for one. A limbo of sorts...sitting around and waiting for the next big shake up, letting the worries and fears build until there is little left but desperation, anger and frustration at our inability to go back to a time before the earth shook us. When things were at their worst I had adrenaline to keep me goin. Now, like my van, I am running on empty. A feeling of more than just mild annoyance overcomes me when I hear people complain about what should or should not be done. It has only been a week and the trains are starting to roll, the highways are opening and relief supplies are starting to arrive. The ability and swiftness of the Japanese government to deal with not only a natural disaster of immense scale, but also to avert a nuclear catastrophe, is nothing less than astounding.
Tomorrow morning, but not too early in the day. I hope to once again hear the rumble and roar of the washing machine doing what it was built to do. It'll mean that we are getting that much closer to doing what we were meant to do too.

大地震

I was fortunate.
So much more lucky than the thousands of those who perished and the hundreds of thousands who still have not returned to their homes. The people living in the coastal cities have suffered a devastating force of nature that makes me feel awful, just plain sad.
Sitting in the dark, without any connection to the outside world, I had no idea what the people in those towns were going through. My biggest worries were getting my staff back safely to their families and making sure I had enough water, cigarettes and booze to last me through the catastrophe. Yes there was a moment during the five long minutes of the initial shock when I truly believed that the building I was in would not stand up to the quake that assaulted it, but never in my wildest imagination could I have pictured the things I saw on my TV once power was restored to my neighborhood.
Water, roiling and black, ugly and unforgiving, smashing through homes. Cars and boats, animals and people carried miles inland and strewn about; deposited like so much detritus across the land.
There are friends who still haven't made contact and we are quite worried about them....
I look back at my journal and I feel somewhat ashamed. My greatest worry was getting enough electricity to charge my phone so I could let my sister know I was still alive and stay in touch with the people who are important to me. I worried that I couldn't get bread or eggs or clean water to drink. I thought selfishly about these things when there were others who were going through a hell that still holds them in it's grip.

The shocks still occur and I still fear that large temblors will shake us, but I feel lucky.
Lucky that my wife is safe and our friends are warm and that I can sit here and write these words on my computer. We are not out of the woods quite yet..... I will post again soon.

Left, Right and Center

It's almost impossible to type while playing my blues harp...
So there just might be gaps in this post as I take  breaks to annoy my neighbors and get my thoughts in order.
< interlude >


See what I mean?

I think I spend a lot of time 'editing' my life. The stuff I don't write about far outweighs the drivel that makes its way onto these pages...probably a good thing too. Writing about your adventures with a dutch oven or the last time someone annoyed you while driving just does not make for interesting reading, does it?

So, what does?
< interlude: sounds of shower and off key singing in the background >


Daily ablutions are refreshing, don't you think? I am fortunate enough to live in a country where the bath is considered almost sacred and I have access to Onsen (Go on, Google it if you have too.) where I can share those moments in the company of others. Mixed bathing is especially nice. OK, get your mind out of the gutter and stop the porn soundtrack this instant. There's almost nothing erotic about it. Being in a bath, warm and naked with another person gives you the opportunity to express yourself differently than you would if you were wearing sartorial armour.

< interlude: bacon sizzling, eggs cracking and the smell of toast >

Food can connect you to a culture on so many different levels. I often try to maintain my American citizenship by donning my plaid Woolrich shirt, faded Levi's and one of a dozen baseball caps I keep hanging in the hallway then sitting down for a man sized plate of eggs and bacon. A pot of coffee and a tall glass of O.J. I think that most Americans would find the Japanese breakfast puzzling; I did when I first got here. Sitting on the floor with a piece of grilled fish, miso soup, a bowl of rice, some pickled radish or eggplant and natto (you can search this blog for more info on that particular dish.) is just not what John Wayne chowed down on before setting out to catch some cattle rustlers.



< interlude: jangling keys, searching and cursing and the sound of relief when the object is found. zippers being zipped and silence as the CD player is shut off.  >

I have lived almost half my life in this country and there are times when I feel that I have lost many things that would define me as "American" I am definitely not "Japanese" either, so I traipse along in a kind of limbo without worrying about being defined by my nationality. That is sometimes a good thing to have in your back pocket when you don't want to engage in the fantastically intricate social system here. I get to play the game, but more often than not I'm not held accountable to the rules as strictly as I ought to be.

Heading out to make some dough and break a few rules...
Have a great day everyone!
じゃ～まったね！

West Side serenade

Just about this time of year when everyone is tossing Hershey's Kisses at each other while expressing their love for each other in platitudes and Hallmark expressions of seriously dubious sincerity, I get homesick.
February is without a doubt the worst possible time to walk the streets of New York. It's colder than a crack whore's heart and twice as bitter. The shine and sparkle of Christmas and New Years has turned into a patina of verdigris that leaves most people sucking on the exhaust pipe of reality, but that's exactly when I want to be back home. It's easy to visit a place when it's rolling on a winning streak and folks are so happy that they are high-fiveing the bus drivers while tossing exact change into the hopper. I need to get back when the streets and the sky blend into one monochromatic tone of gray and the blare of taxicab horns cut through the winter air making you cringe and shudder and pull that coat closer around yer shoulders while waitin for a chance to sprint across the street.

I want to go down to Riverside park and stare the hawk in the face. A doob in the smitty and a half pint skit of Dewars in the back pocket of my Levis to keep the edge just right,,, And when I get numb...Just numb enough to come to my senses I'd like to head on back home to be with the girl who made me want to stare at the river in the fist place,

Politically Correct!

I went to the doctor earlier this week to find out just what the fuck is wrong with me; physically, not mentally. I have had a headache for almost two weeks and pain in the place where my kidney used to be I was bewildered as to the cause. 

He put me in a MRI (Head was hollow), took my blood (I learned, once again, that I was not Vulcan), put the cold ass jelly on my lovely plush belly (Really, are 'six-pack' abs as cuddly as mine?) and tweaked the old ultrasound, checked me out from top to bottom (literally) and after ninety minutes or so of tests he told me that there was just no reason for the pain I was in.

Hrumph!

So I'm sitting in the waiting room and the receptionist calls my name and gives me my bill...even with my coverage it's more than I can afford, so I says: "I ain't paying tis the doctor didn't do shit for me". Well after about five or ten minutes minutes of whispery argument she calls the physician out to settle the problem. He doesn't have time to deal with me and is pretty adamant about me paying my bill, but I still refuse. finally after a rather protracted and subdued "discussion" catered to the feelings and needs of the other patients in the room, the doc gets kinda flustered and in a frustrated and virulent voice blurts out, "You are an ASSHOLE, that's your problem!" 

Well goddamn, Doc! You did have a diagnosis after all...

 I paid my bill and walked out of the clinic, with more than a few profuse apologies to the staff and patients.

As I was walking to my car I realized that I could have saved the embarrassment and ignominy of the entire situation. Not to mention the hard earned cash I parted with.

My wife has been telling me the very same thing for quite a few years now...I shouldda listened to her a little bit more. 

Point no finger

I have a dopey habit of trying to find songs that will voice for me, the thoughts and feelings that often get jumbled up in my head. It's a little easier to find some kind of pep rally theme song that expresses my particular Hallmark moment than to actually sit back and evaluate the situation at hand.

I guess it's kind of similar to those days, long ago in High school, when a guy would make a mixed tape for a girl he liked. The main problem with doing just that was there was no way for her to understand exactly what you were thinking when you recorded those tunes. Well, not unless you were sending this message:

Messages ALWAYS get mixed up.


Kinda like this guy.

Maybe you can imagine a time when the words you were saying meant one thing to you, but the person on the receiving end got an entirely different meaning from your statements.


Maybe actions are like that too, huh.


I've been getting it wrong for a long time now and I just couldn't get the most important person in my life to understand just what it was I wanted her to hear.


But that's now over. Done with. In the past.
I'm trying to look ahead.

But before you step into the future it's always a good idea to clean up your past. I don't like the idea of leaving a mess behind for other people to deal with. Responsibility isn't something I've actively looked for, but bit by bit and slowly, year by year it has enveloped me with a sense of accountability that just will not allow me to shirk my duty to the people in my life. I'm sure you can see the sense of that.


I am once again tearing down the walls and rebuilding the house. I don't mind the work. The foundation seems sound enough, but the cost of renovation is taking it's toll and it gets harder to haul bricks as the years go by. 
I try not to look at my face in the morning when I shave 'cause I start to think of bedsheets. Even if they are laundered and kept in relatively good condition they are still faded, stained and frayed at the edges; not nearly as nice as a fresh, new set. 

Ice melting away.

Taking my regrets with it.

 Winter lingers long 'till Spring.