New Material

Hey I just wrote this! I haven't written a poem for a little while, maybe a month or so, and this one I kinda like. It's about food though, which sounds pretty dumb, but I found a way to make it transcendent, which redeems it completely. That's my trick to try to sound smart (I stole it from John Keats): if you make anything sound transcendent, you sound like a G. I could probably write a poem about fuckin, like tying my shoes or something and with enough prodding and use of delicate (if pretentious) language make it seem big and momentous. Which, may I add, isn't necessarily synonymous with good. So, without further compromising my poetics, here it is!

It all runs down a river of red, of blood, of sweat,
Of dusty ages spent underneath the earth and locked within
Slick green walls of glass, a single polymorphous stream
Of sublimated grapes and transubstantiated soil caught
In the momentary swell of a bottle, the briefest blunted whiff of
A cylinder that is a glass I raise to my health and turn into a sip
That is more than red and more than wine but is some mysterious
Sum of flavors drawn from an earth that is some mysterious sum
Of mysterious sums, countless complicated sums that have little
To do with math but add up just the same.

Short and sweet. This isn't part of the poem anymore. It's just me rambling, and turning this post long and bitter. A quick disclaimer about that thing you may or may not have just read: I used "sublimated" incorrectly. However, I really like that word, and so will use it in just about any context, even if it that means it must be used inappropriately. "Hey Chad, how are you doing today?" 'Oh great, I just sublimated the lawn. It was getting shaggy.' Or, "You know what, I think I really sublimated that test today. Turned right to gas in my hands." Hm, can you sublimate a solid that doesn't have a liquid phase? You can't turn paper into a liquid right? If you heat it just burns. Straight to a gas. Nothing to skip, ergo unsublimatable. Well, I realize that I don't actually know what the word sublimate means. I also realize that I should avoid the barest mention of science, lest I give my own stupidity away. I do know this, however: kinase kinase kinase. I'm out.

Karaoke: Something of a Sociological Survey

If you’ve never experienced Karaoke, then you’re really missing out. Well, I guess I should qualify that statement a little bit by saying that it’s the Japanese version of karaoke that you need to experience, because they do it a little different here than I suppose we do it back West. When an American thinks Karaoke they can’t help but react negatively to the offensive smell of truckstops, stale cigarettes, cheap whiskey, Journey, and public humiliation that hits their imaginative nostrils. Karaoke back home is generally performed in wide open rooms in front of (potentially) hostile, and (almost certainly) wasted audiences ready to rip you limb from limb if you can’t hit the high notes on Don’t Stop Believin. Doesn’t seem like much fun, does it? Getting up on stage in front of a bunch of people you don’t know and trying to belt out song lyrics as performed by actually talented musicians is a pretty daunting task.

Karaoke in Japan is a different story, however. Not entirely different, of course. There are two things that are common to Karaoke anywhere in the known universe: booze and Bon Jovi. There’s really no getting away from it. I’m not entirely sure who put it into the collective unconscious that Living on a Prayer is a fun song to sing, but I’ve been to Karaoke plenty of times and I don’t think I’ve ever escaped without having to listen to some drunk fuck(s) scream about being halfway to somewhere. Maybe sobriety? At any rate, there’s no use trying to fight it, because unfortunately people get upset if you try to put in A Whole New World on repeat for three hours. You’ve just gotta swallow a couple pills of South Jersey angst before you can get back to singing stuff from the Lion King or N*SYNC. The alcohol and 80s masterpieces aside, however, karaoke is a much kinder, gentler creature over here. Worried about getting up in front of a bunch of people and signing off-key? Well, say goodbye to the spotlight, because most karaoke places here are actually just warrens of corridors and private rooms, which you rent out with just your closest friends. Hmmm, when you get down to it I guess that’s the only difference, but it’s a big difference. You don’t have to worry about being heckled by drunk bums, you only have to listen to a couple songs you don’t like so much, unless of course you go with me, in which case you’ll be singing Linkin Park and Third Eye Blind all night, and, well, the rooms are generally pretty well sanitized. It rules, which is probably why people do it here at least three times a week. I wouldn’t be surprised if some Sarari-Men spend more time with the microphone than with their children.

As I suppose you might have guessed, I went to karaoke last night. It wasn’t your normal night out on the town, however. This party had a planner. His name is George, and calling him a character doesn’t quite get down to it. The first time I met him was at the Reggae Festival, actually (which you loyal readers will recall intimately). Yep, George is the big fat liar who promised us a day with Bob Marley and delivered an afternoon with the Dixie Chicks. I don’t think he cared much, because he was totally wasted. Said he’d been drinking since 3 AM when we met him at around 5 PM, which I find highly suspect because who starts drinking at 3 AM. Ah, yes, there goes the alarm, time to greet the moon with a nice pint of Sake. No, I guess that George had been drinking for about 20 hours at that point, a guess which is at least partially substantiated by the fact that he a) plopped himself down in the midst of our little group and asked my friend Luke if he “wanted some pussy,” and b) was seen doing doughnuts around the field in his mini-van shortly after.

But those little quirks aside George is actually a total baller. He lived in Seattle for some undisclosed period of time, (I want to say in Wallingford, but I’m not so sure), so he speaks great English, and he’s basically a dirty 18 year old beach bum in a 50 some-year-old Japanese man’s body. Yes, he might be 50. But he sure dresses young, and is really friendly. He organized last night’s get together for us with a bunch of other older men (one actually celebrated his 36th with us) dressed like their much younger, hipper counterparts. 5000 yen, all you can drink, all night, karaoke and good times. Sounds expensive, but not for this country. And there was a live band! A fucking Jazz trio in a karaoke room. George sang some Frank Sinatra. If you’d told me maybe four years ago that my post-graduate life would entail hanging out with drunk Japanese men old enough to have sired me, listening to them sing Rat-Pack hits I would have smacked you upside the face with my copy of the Odyssey, but life is strange. And I no longer am shocked by such turns of events. In Japanese they say arugamama, or shikataganai for things that you can’t control, and yeah, I guess that works. It’s just the way things are. Of course people drive their cars on the sidewalk and eat fermented bean curds. Arugamamada.

I managed to put down enough beers and delicious food (there was fruit, which is like gold in this country, so I probably got my fifty bucks worth in pineapples and kiwifruit) in five hours to satisfy me, and though I think we had the room until 3 somebody put on Bon Jovi again and I had to walk out around midnight, serenaded by the sultry sounds of the South Jersey shore as I disappeared into the gently winking Japanese night. Thanks George, always a pleasure.

The Deluge Part 2

Well, it seems it takes more time and knowledge to post a video on this thing that I thought it did, but I'm trying now, so we'll see what happens. If I do manage to get it up, the video will appear on the last post where it was supposed to be. Eh, now I'm going to post some more poetry, per my promise. This is book three, maybe, I think? This part blows kinda. It's about Iesous wandering through the woods and being whiny. He eventually goes home and blah blah blah, stuff happens but it's not that tight. Initially, he had only had a father, but I thought a single mother made more sense, keeping all metaphors in mind. But yeah, of the crappy parts I think this is the second to last. The next one is silly, too, but.... it's smooth sailing through violent waters from there on out. Trust me.

Let us not with our special ability
to fend off shock lose the scope
of the occasion, for it is not even
infrequently that a man dominates
completely a god in arms. Never
is it that he achieves this unnoticed.
Yet it happened, on the banks of
a small bay just off the Aegean sea,
achieved by a young boy of unobvious,
yet readily apparent strength, achieving
the glory of Diomedes, Tydeus’s son, without
the subsequent curse.

Even while the Dethroned King
of the Sea was chasing his sanity,
and by all accounts trailing
miserably, the source of his suffering
crossed under the dappled eaves of
an enchanted wood. There the light
was a gentle blend of green and gold,
at least when dipped in Phoebus’ ink,
and silence was friendly. Most often
though, the air ran with liquid music,
the symphonies of varied birds or the
bow of the wind pulling over nature’s verdant
strings to provide a score for the forest.
Yet, for all the contented caroling and
sweetly blooming flora about him the self-titled
Arbiter saw it not, and though it usually warmed
his heart, on this day his heart was foundering too
deep under a darkling sea to make out any soothing
sound. As his feet stumbled unconsciously onward,
a single thought like a winged iron spike flew
around his head, another rooted deep in his stomach,
one thumping, in-out-again, the other held fast, a thick,
expanding root bearing fat, poisonous fruit.

“ That was a thing I had never expected,
But the rest aside, I didn’t kill him, I can
kill a god, but I didn’t kill him, and I don’t
think I can kill a hundred gods at once.
I don’t know what I can and can’t do, but
I am pretty sure of what they will do when
Triton finds them. It will be like a shower
of fire and lightning and whatever else
they can put into it falling down and down
on my home and my friends’ and neighbors’
homes until there’s nothing left of them at
all, not even the memories. They will hit
them so hard that they will erase our pasts,
and there’s nobody to blame but me. To think,
a spear, to think, me? I did it though, I did
what none of the ones they tell about could do,
not even Ajax, and I could have done more,
but I didn’t and now I will die more completely
than anyone ever has. Stupid! You live one
day at a time, you should take it one god at
a time, however impossibly silly that is.
Stupid, I don’t want to die yet, and I don’t
want anyone else to die because of me
being stupid!”



Occupied completely by these thoughts of self-
reproach, he wandered deep into the forest,
entirely mindless of where he set down each
foot, until by many a random step
chance found him at the secret gates
of his forest home. Reaching high into
the air before his unseeing eyes were
spires of cedar, their woody boughs conspiring
to form an interlocking grille so cleverly wrought
as to appear natural at first glimpse, but upon
closer inspection proving intentional and carefully
made. Continuing his aimless wandering, the youth
trudged on, neither knowing nor caring where he was,
even until the needly boughs of the gate scratched his
smooth face. Momentarily startled, he stopped short,
and stepped back, slightly surprised.

“ Uh-oh. Sooner or later, sooner or later,
but it’s just bad. It’s all bad. Still, I have to,
and later never did anybody any good.”


Then he pushed aside the boughs and with tears sparkling on
his cheeks he stepped into the hidden village. Just inside the
gate, he stopped, perhaps to imprint a memory of
this place, before the gods, as he was certain they would,
destroyed it. His feet stood on a path that
became a lane shaded by leafy olive trees, paving
the breadth of the village in lazy meanders. Simple
homes rested along the path, solid maple walls eaved
with handsome beech. Behind some of the houses
hung laundry lines, clothing gently swaying in the
little breeze that found its way into the secret clearing.
In front of the homes and in the soft lawns around them
children, little kids, played, their laughter sweet enough
to deepen the boy’s sadness to the color of
a growing bruise. Yet he was nothing if not
resolute, and though his stomach was busy
consuming itself in nervous acid, he forced
his feet to follow the street laid before them,
his gaze seeking at its terminus the humble home
of his mother.



She had been feeling the tremors for weeks, like
the preliminary rumblings of a massive earthquake,
and from the moment they began she knew there
was no way anyone could stop the eventual release
of pressure. She waited helplessly as she felt the
vibrations intensify, accelerating to an infinitesimally
sharp point before they exploded with terrible
force, seeming to tear the very air in rifts and great
rents of severed reality. She felt clearly the moment
the boy propelled himself through the mortal shroud
draped ‘round his being, a shroud not unlike one
a great sculptor would draw over a masterpiece to
keep it special before some predetermined
unveiling. She felt the moment the boy burst through
his shroud, and passed out from the shock.
When she found her reserves had again filled
enough for her to open her eyes, she perceived
the recession of the trembling; somehow the
boy had managed to gather the tatters of the
shroud around himself and knit them into
a coherent blanket, achieving once again
the concealment of his spirit from the world.
A subtle melancholy pulse was all that remained.
Even here, she felt her son draw nearer, the epicenter
of the great quake that split the sea.

He’s outside her door, and the vibration ceases.


A woman’s intuition is real, and a mother’s
intuition is fact, stretching over the wavy field
of the future like a morning haze over hilly
country, shifting sideways out of the air in
the early dawn and settling loosely upon the rises
and sinking into the valleys, taking in the topography
as if it were brail written in a language of misty
letters and half-dashed words and then gone,
burnt through and burnt off by the rising sun.
She could guess from the way the dew wet the sky
that something was coming, and there had been
that sense of impending bigness, of approaching
heights in a certain place in the air behind her
ears for the past few weeks, towering over and
evaporating around her on again and off again
while she watered her plants or sat in meetings
or when she kissed her son good-night. Then
she heard the door knob turning, and there it
was, no longer the impression of mist but
actuality locked up in dull metallic sound-waves.


Almost struggling against the resistant air,
the door creaked open and the boy walked into
his mother’s home, kneeling in front of his mother’s
chair, putting his hand upon his mother’s knee,
and speaking to his mother thus.

“Mom, I have to tell you something. Something
that will be hard for you to believe but is the
absolute honest-to-whomever-you-please truth.
Triton, the Triton, came out of a pool of water,
the sea where I go, and something has happened
to me. I did something. He made me so angry
and I speared him. I speared him and made
him cry, I know it’s impossible, crazy, but I did,
I cut straight through his shoulder, through the skin
I mean and all the way to the bone. Then I told
him to tell everyone that I did it to him, and I let
him get away. I could have killed him, I should
have killed him, do you hear me, but I didn’t.
Oh, No...... phew... I didn’t. Every time I think
about it I remember Odysseus, and if Poseidon
would put him through that for a few mere word
he will have me and everyone I know wandering
through the lowest levels of Tartarus
until the world ends. Mother, I don’t know what
to do, I don’t have a single clue, but if I do nothing
we’re all going to die. I need your help.”

From beneath delicate brows the boy’s
mother looked upon her son with
benevolent eyes, for she knew
that sometimes there are fates that
cannot be escaped, that sometimes
all roads converge upon the same
point, and the only way to differentiate
one from the next is by the scenery in
between. With this knowledge
in her heart she spoke to her son.

“ When you burst in here, your face so pale,
I thought you had lost the sheep in the forest
again. Collecting them all up took days,
searching for little puffs of white behind
all the green and brown and yellow, trying
to pick out the bleats from the whistles
of the birds and the creaks of the grasshoppers.
But in the end we found them all, and when
we did you said you would never lose them again,
and that you would learn to talk to the sheep
so that you could always keep them together.
You said you would be the best shepherd ever,
and I knew that you would, but that sheep
were too small. This day was bound to come
sooner or later, and the only question now
is not why it came but what to do now that
it is here.”

These words confused the boy in a way
that gave him hope, because he was worried
that he had pulled somthing out of nothing
in a way he could never do again, or that
he was nothing stumbled upon something
meant for someone, someone else, but if
his mother saw it, he believed her.
“I’m going to fight the gods,” he said.
“I’m going to fight the gods whether
I should or not because I have started
doing it, and with this sort of thing there
is no backing out, unless you mean dying.”

His mother was silent for a moment,
looking into her boy’s face for what would
be the last time.

“ My son, the road ahead of you could not
be more dark, because you are a little boy
in a world of angry gods. Not so little anymore,
maybe, but then again the gods are very angry.
I’m afraid you’ll need more than an umbrella
or a shady tree to weather the storm they
will raise against you. I want to sit you down
and make you eat a plate of cookies, but it makes
me old knowing that I have to direct you somewhere
else. When you have to put down a rabid animal
you must cut off the head, and so this is the same
with a rabid pantheon. You can do nothing but
cut off the head, the Olympian gods, children
of ancient Kronos, for they are in charge, and with
them removed the rest of the headless beast will
fall down dead. It must be Hades first, the
lonely Olympian beneath the ground, who sits
in the dark with the ghosts of the people we used
to be. You must go into the earth to prove your claim
to it, my child, you must teach it the goodness of your
heart from inside out so that it will know exactly who you are .”

A lesser soul would have cast aside his
gloves and thrown down his trowel, learning
that his life’s road could be paved only with the
skulls of the Olympian Gods, and further,
that the first brick was to come off the neck,
off the block of infamous Hades. What hit-man,
no matter how ice-cold, could help but blink
at the next name on his list were it to read
the “Steward of Death himself”? Yet now
resolved to the quest, nothing could deter
the boy, and with an almost uncomprehending
stoicism he nodded, quickly rising from his place
before his mother’s knee.

“Into Hades? I didn’t want to die until I was
an old man, but if I come out again then I
guess I will have been reborn. Whether or
not I will be a different person, only time will
tell, but you’re right, if I am to win this fight
I’ll need the earth on my side, and what
better way to start than by taking it back
from within? My eyes have been opened
mom, and who knows what world they
will see when I look out through them.”

His mother’s eyes were gray clouds sinking
in a quiet twilight, but she raised her hands
in a benediction, and spoke to the boy in
a voice like rain on a metal roof.
“ Your eyes have always been open, and
you see the world more clearly than I.
If you had not the thing which {necessitates}
this quest, I would do all that I might to keep you
here. It is a mother’s job to bring her boy up,
to lead him through tears and chubby cheeks
and cradles in the night to the doorsteps of
his own destiny. The doorsteps are his to walk
through, though, and when she can see their liminal
glow in the distance, she knows that she needs to let
go, and leave him with both hands free to wrestle
the world. Still, she’ll never forget the way the lines
of his palm fit into hers, no matter how time
stretches them out, and even when all I can do
is wave you on your way, I’ll be watching
the set of your shoulders and the bob of your head
as you disappear, even so I’ll be able to recognize
them in whatever world we meet next. Here,
one list thing before I see you off.”

And taking from a pocket deep within
her cloak, the woman brought forth
a gleaming talisman. It was cleverly wrought to
hold in the light that struck it and burnish
it as if with a rich and lustrous laquer. Displayed
upon the precious sigul was a bright flame
on a field of shadowy green, the deep red flame
emitting radiant streaks of brilliant white like
rays from a vibrant sun. Above the flame, the
green grew dark, and became a cap of sable within
which little diamonds hung like ornamental stars. A
single ruby shone in their midst, glistening like
blood.
Within and about the flame, like wood for
a campfire, burned an array of detailed symbols;
a giant three-pronged fork, a sceptre the color
of a deadly bruise, a great mithril axe, a giant
hammer, a staff entwined by two serpents, a slim
bow, and a few others which the intensity
of the flames obscured.

At its top, the flame blossomed out like a
rose, its petals reaching up to the stars above.

With a glint of reverence clear in his eyes, the
boy took the sacred pendant, and at his touch
it began to resonate, sending out brilliant shafts
of multicolored light that brightened the
already lit room of the house. It was hot in his hand but
he did not burn, and it seemed that as the light
escaped from the pendant it rushed directly
into his eyes, illuminating them with a beautiful
and terrible energy. Determination drawn
cleanly in every line of his being, he raised the
pendant to his neck, and clasped it there around.
As it settled over his chest it gave out a single
blinding pulse, and then went dim. It seemed
alive around his neck where it had been only a
piece of art in the hand of the woman.

He looked up at his mother and in his eyes gleamed
eternity. For a moment they were every color
and none, like darkness and light entwined and
melded, a shade and hue so radiant and impossible
that his mother faded away in the shower of not-quite-white,
and for a moment she was little more than an outline,
a small smile in the backwash of eternity. Then the boy
spoke two words to himself, “Not yet,” and willed it
to subside. In the breathless calm that ensued,
he bowed low to his mother of old, gently kissed
her forehead, and left the house forever.

A pause- and then some Art

It's strange to be out of email contact with the rest of the world for even three days. Whitman's server has been down since Sunday night for me, I guess, and so I've got nothing but radio silence from the West. My link has been severed! Well, I guess I have gmail, but I don't really use that address, so all I've got there are a few old emails about student loans. Which are pretty funny. Makes you appreciate the internet a little, I suppose. It all seems so solid, but I guess it is fragile. Hundreds of millions of people linked by fiber-optics and binary code, putting their lives into ciphers of ones and zeroes and entrusting that they'll be retranslated into alphanumerics once they've reached the other end of the instantaneous digital pulse that is the send button. Everyday we pack a little bit of our selves into invisible streams of electrons and send them streaming out into the infinite, mutable, and (to me) entirely incomprehensible internet, wrapping up our lives in words and shipping them out in little inscrutable packages that uncountable computer chips handle and chuck unceremoniously through circuits that are the digital, Silicon-Valley-inspired metaphors for delivery trucks, and then somehow anybody anywhere can open the package up, and there you are, smiling, unchanged, and none-the-worse-for-wear for a trip around the world in eigthy miliseconds. I don't understand the internet at all, but I do understand that it's sweet.

But on to bigger and better (well, longer, anyways) things (dammit that sounds like a penis joke): here's some more of my shit!! I'm hesitant to do this; not only is this an unprecedented amount of material i'm about to post here, but it's also my first forray into the world of internet acoustic covers. I'm so excited! Ok, here's what I'm going to do. I'll split it all up into two posts: one, me at my greasiest and most socially-reticent wailing away on a guitar to a song that I'll think you'll be pleasantly surprised to find isn't one of my hits, and then the second a rousing round of epic poetry. There's surprisingly little to blog about when you're largely just sitting in rooms and studying Japanese for 8 hours a day. I could speak to the grammatical expression "ばかりか” for a few moments, but I won't. But yeah, here's me in my room. I'll get a video of the concerts for homeless people and the occasional Japanese passersby i've been doing later, maybe. Sorry about the sound quality. By the way, I just discovered this dude on youtube who sings the male and female parts to A Whole New World from Aladdin. Watch it immediately, it's the fucking sweetest shit ever. He looks like Jasper Lipton if you gave him jaw implants to look like the Dad from the Incredibles.

Bombs Over... Fukuroi?

For a country that is renowned for its group dynamics and mildly repressive the-protruding-nail-is-hammered down (this is actually a proverb) view of the individual, it seems like every tiny little town is famous for something or other. If it’s not always OK to stick out as an individual, it’s fairly standard to try to stick out as a community. Don’t let anybody tell you that Japanese people are all the same, because while conformity does dress up in the guise of adherence to rules of social propriety that probably wouldn’t ever occur to many non-Japanese (it’s considered rude, for example, to drink from a water bottle while walking), this is certainly not a nation populated by flat grey robots thinking through the mechanical mind of some massive metallic queen bee barricaded in an office building in the heart of Tokyo. I think regional differences are pretty fascinating, and I have never seen a country whose people vary more from place to place or take so much pride from being residents of a particular area. Which I guess makes sense if we want to look at it in the context of group identity. Community is built fundamentally out of a connection to place, and because Japan is a society based around being a member of a group, sure, it follows that people would identify strongly with the specific place in which they live. Ugh, now that I think about it I don’t want to get into a sociological examination of Japanese identity, I just want to talk about fireworks. So I’ll dispense with the dissertation and get into it a little more.

Every place in Japan is famous for something (this is eventually where my blogging was going to stumble out of the academic woods and into the light of someplace more interesting). Of course, Kyoto is famous for autumn leaves, tea ceremony, and as a cultural center. Osaka is famous for its accent (among many other things). Tokyo is famous for being Tokyo. But that’s not quite what I mean when I say every place in Japan is famous for something. Saying Kyoto is famous for temples is like saying New York is famous for tall buildings, rude people, and crazy taxi drivers. No doi, right? However, in Japan, not just are the biggest cities famous for things, but so too are the tiny little shit towns in the middle of nowhere. Have you ever heard of Niigata? Probably not, but it’s famous for rice and Japanese people will pay a lot of money for rice grown there as opposed to, say, Gifu. Hamamatsu, where I’m currently posted up, is well-known for mikan and unagi (oranges and eel). People rave about the Okonomiyaki (a food virtually impossible to explain in English to someone who’s never eaten it) made in Hiroshima. Hirakata’s got milk-tea, Kobe cows and shoes, Miyajima cakes, and if you’ve never had dango from Ibaraki you’ve never lived. Every little shit-ball town on the map is famous for something, and everybody knows about, which brings me to the tiny little town of Fukuroi, just about a half hour or so from where I live.

Fukuroi:

A (beautiful) town of maybe 35, every year in the beginning of August Fukuroi braces itself for a tidal wave of Japanese folks as thousands of people crash upon the shores of the little hamlet to watch the third or fourth biggest fireworks display in all of Japan. It’s amazing. We got off the train at about 6:00 and for miles around there was nothing but people and rice paddies. I’m a little hungover right now, so can’t accurately or very humorously describe the situation, but I think this picture will do wonders:





My face says it all. Where did all of these people come from? I don’t know, but the allure of two hours of fireworks drew them to this little place like pyromaniacal moths to a flame. Wait, two hours? Of fireworks? I know what you’re thinking, sweetest thing ever, and yeah that’s what I thought. But at the same time, two hours is a long time…. How are they going to keep it from getting really boring? This is where my mind started doing laps and I started imagining Gandalf-inspired phosphorus dragons and fabricated incandescent rainbows snarling and streaking across the night sky, and this is also where I started to get very excited. Unfortunately, turns out Japanese people aren’t actually sorcerers, just nerds with a lot of explosives on their hands, so it was two intermittent hours of your garden variety bombs in the sky, which ain’t bad. I’ve got a lot of pictures, so, I figured I’d post them all so you could experience them too. Sit back, relax, grab an overpriced beer and a small container of yakisoba and it’s like we’re all there together, watching the static imprints of old explosions in a far-away sky.

Boom!

Phoosh!!!

I really like this one, it looks like the sun is blowing up. Or maybe the Death Star?

Doesn't this one look like a big chandelier?

Ah, so nice.

This shit seriously went on forever.

Dammit that's satisfying.

This was the grand finale, and even though it sounded like the world was being ripped apart, you couldn't really see anything because of the two hours worth of fireworks smoke in the air. Whoops, but at least we know what color yen burns when you set it on fire.

I love this kid.

Well, that's about that. If you've seen one fireworks display you've seen them all, but they're still beautiful. No getting around that. Oh yeah, here's me with a homeless dude.

More Self-Promotion

Book two, anyone? This one is shorter than the last one, but maybe not any more readable. Still in my early phase here, so there thee's and thou's sprinkled about pretty liberally. Just pretend Homer wrote it and everything will come out right. Oh yeah, Japan is alright. But it's well past my bedtime (about 8:30) so I'll have to catch up with myself a little later. 6:30 comes disgustingly early. I've got a couple pictures of me playing a private guitar concert for a homeless man I've gotta stick up. Also, I've always been in love with the youtube phenomenon that is people webcamming themselves in their depressing bedrooms doing acoustic covers of songs, so I'm going to do that. Expect a link to Wet Sand, or maybe Wagon Wheel, to be up and running soon. Rock on.




Time passed, and for the accustomed
period the land was dark, though
brushed with the softest silver in wash from
the constant stars and a wild moon.
The night was like a sable blanket tucked
under the chin of a slumbering world, but it was
like Triton had kicked off the covers and there
were only nightmares. He shivered and shook
like a child who sees terror in the dark, weeping
softly but violently into the indifferent emptiness
around him. Nobody saw, but as day threatened,
and it still seemed as if his berserk grief would never
end and that his pitiful condition would soon
be revealed to all inquiring eyes, Triton stopped
wailing. He clutched tightly at the tattered and useless
shreds of his sanity, the pitiful remnants of his
godly mantle which now seemed more like a
beggar’s vestments, and looked far to the East.
There he saw the first glowing tendrils of dawn,
as Aurora softly drew her yellow robe across those
Oriental skies. Animated by his great shame,
Triton mastered his quivering body, and slipped
quickly beneath the cover of the waves,
forsaking to their sullen fury his crumbling
throne of coral, whispering a dirge as it sank.

And so it came to pass that Aurora blazed
beautifully across the entire sky, lighting it
from her shining lamp first with tendrils of pink,
then blossoms of orange and peach that spread
like smoke from a harem fire, wafting into the
lightened sky before disappearing in the aery ocean
of early azure, all without alighting upon
anything amiss amongst the heavenly ranks.
Maybe the gulls calls were forlorn,
and maybe the sea seemed a bit hollow,
but what were they to her whose realm
was the conduit between night and day?

His introduction made in Aurora’s heraldic colors,
Apollo led his orb over the edge of the
world, its golden spray spilling over
the mountains and into the valleys of the earth
in a dramatic, sweeping moment of light. Ascending
his fiery throne, the great Archer looked down,
seeking maids of virtue and beauty to caress
with a beam, and glory to wreath with a laurel.
He too gazed at the distraught sea,
but from ignorance took its restlessness
for playfulness, passing it over.

So it was with all the other spirits
of the world. Flora tended her flowers, Ares
raged and slew, Hephaistos put the bellows
to his forge, Athena played her subtleties,
Demeter ripened the amber grains
growing in the farmer’s fields, Hades fumed
down with the dead, and so on and on
ad infinitum, up to Zeus, who sat on his throne
of clouds and threw lightning bolts where(ever)
it pleased him to. Only the spirits of the sea and
mighty Poseidon knew of the infliction of their waters.
The extent they knew not, however, for how could
they guess at the truth?

There was one who knew the truth of her lord’s
afflictions; a naiad feeling upon her soul the salt
of his wound though knowing it not. Seeking its cause
she found him, though not it. Joanna she was called
by her sisters of the sea, and seeing her lord, she hailed
him thus. “ My lord, glad am I to find thee here,
whence so much deadly pestilence hath sprung, though
it’s source I perceive not. It feels to me as though
the waters bleeds, and when the water bleeds,
I feel it poisonous upon my skin; I think that I should
not weather its unnatural sting much longer.
Dost thee feel it too? For though I would that it were
with me, and not this my beloved sea, I think not
that I am so far off the mark. Lord, what
is this anathema, from whence....”

Seeing here her lord’s sparkling wound, she
broke off sharply, and was greatly shocked
to see its drastic degree.
“ O Triton, it is not the sea that bleeds, but thee!
How camest thou by this grievous wound,
and what mighty god under the Pantheon struck it?
It is no wonder that the waters cry out, for its Monarch
to be so assaulted. But still- I see thy wound is grave,
a gaping ruin of muscle and skin, yet even then there is
more pain here than the rending of heavenly flesh,
so easily repaired, could confer. Please, what befell
thee that makes my heart tremble so?”
Here, apprehending fully her lord’s
shaky condition, she was stunned
by what she saw. His crown of shells
which once so lightly and proudly had adorned
his wide brow hung askew and crumbling,
forgotten amongst his wild locks.
Like the forsaken grandeur of an ancient ruin
mostly lost beneath a sheath of jungle creeper,
they framed the growing madness on his haggard
face. Unkempt and ragged, he looked a bedraggled
beggar at the side of a road, wild and covered
all in smut. Twin pasty paths followed a
frantic trail down his cheeks to converge
on the unsteady point of his chin, clear
evidence of the passing of many sorrowful
pilgrims, divine tears marking divine suffering.
This recognition nearly drove the naiad to weeping
herself, so out of place they seemed on that strong
face. Worst of all, though, were his eyes,
those windows to the soul, and his swam
with uncontrolled frenzy. Even when respectable
control of his body he would regain, still his eyes,
opaline shot with ultramarine round the bindings,
would be illumined with an unhealthy light
and a lurid tint, wont to flick about furtively
as if searching and deathly frightened
of what they might find.

Yet, god he was, and in the boys’s absence
he was able to remember, and affect at least
a passing resemblance to his former station.
Looking into the watery eyes of the Naiad,
he composed himself, and like Theoden before
the staff of Mitrandir he seemed to grow.
That this being so proud and so high was weeping
like a baby only moments before was impossible,
so massive seemed his presence and iron
his will. It was almost enough to make
one forget the profound wound ‘cross his shoulder,
almost enough to make it insignificant;
but his regeneration never reached his eyes,
though they filmed a little, and the turbulence there
was only momentarily turned aside.
Raising his chin, he spoke to the nymph,
dissembling, but not without love. “ Dearest
daughter, I would fain thee had not seen me
in my distress, but truly ‘twas nothing
more than a passing storm, a sudden squall
quickly come and quickly gone; already
it hath passed and I feel calmed, nearly placid,
say true. See how my countenance is eased?
As for this, as you say, a trifling,
for there is no hurt the healing arts
of the Immortals cannot mend.
Yet it brings me pain, here, and indeed when I hurt,
the sea follows suit, being tied so neatly
to the flow of my soul. As for the author
of this hurt, ‘twas nobody, and at any rate
matters not, for it closes already.
The only consequence now is to soothe
it completely. Let us go to my father,
as his skill with wounds like this is supreme,
and though it should be within my limits
to make it alone, I would not mind
your company and support should I falter.”

So convincing was his speech and
so eager was she to believe it that, ignoring
the niggling unease at the back of her
mind, and forgetting mostly the violent
doubt that had wracked her so recently,
she smiled and swam off in the direction
of Poseidon’s palace, while Triton, a sea
serpent twirling momentarily ‘round
his fishy half, followed with a cozening
hope kindling in his outer heart.

Sculpture Safari

One of the coolest things about this place is the public art sprinkled around the city like a civic engineer's version of exotic spices. Now, I put it that way because the sculptures are all quite strange, and tend towards the aesthetic of objects once used in ritual sacrifices. It's like Hamamatsu's city planners went on an artifact-finding expedition into the deepest regions of the human soul, the heart of darkness, if you will, and emerged clutching Kurtz's, misshapen, blackened head and the physical manifestations of the darkness that warped his heart. There are also some really cute statues of kitties! But honestly, the art, and in some cases, the architecture, is a (potentially unwitting) tribute to all things mysterious, pagan, and hierophantic, which is all like the coolest shit ever, so here's a little tour through the Kabbalistic wonderland I get to walk every day.

This, folks, is the Babylonian ziggurat where I go to work every day. I feel like many recent graduates find themselves waking up at an unreasonably early hour, trudging to work through a fine mist of reality-induced depression, looking up at a non-descript, boxy, twenty-something-story pile of poop of an office building, and then maybe sighing once before dragging themselves into an elevator, and sitting down behind a desk to do whatever they do for eight hours. I, too, find myself crawling out of bed at the unreasonable hour of 7:30, but instead of a bland, pile of poop office building I get to climb the steps of an obsidian, triangular temple to Asherah, peeling back sacred veils with every step upwards to reveal the increasingly more sacred mysteries of the Japanese system of Bureaucracy before reaching the sixth floor where I pass into the air-conditioned inner sanctum of room 4, take my seat around the rectangular tables of Enki and proceed to… well, compose internet blog posts for hours on end. Sometimes I play cards with the other priests. We also nap. It’s a very spiritual life.

Continuing the tour, this is the bizarre idol enshrined at the entrance to my building. I’m not entirely sure why anybody would want to pray to Earthworm Jim’s disembodied head, but you don’t put something on a pedestal of three circumscribed triangles unless you plan to bow down to it.

I’m not sure exactly whose nightmare this thing stepped out of, but the artist has somehow managed to fuse into one nefarious being the uneasy, inhuman attributes of marionettes, stone golems, headless robots, and valley girls. Notice how it seems to be trying to use the giant arrowhead thing behind it like a scratching post with its right hand while its left hand looks ready to morph into a big fat “L” and fly up to its forehead at any second? Too bad it doesn’t have a head. Whatever, Major Loser, I can’t even imagine the identity issues this thing must have. To fry you with my laser fingers, rip your head off with my claws, summon the creatures of the earth for a rocking sylvan tea-party (hey, I never said it couldn’t be friendly), or just sear you with icy disdain and simplistic catchphrases? This one’s complicated, that’s for sure.

Nothing funny to say about this, it's just a sweet photo. See my shadow? You can almost imagine a council of ghosts sitting on the lighted seats, just breathing peace and quiet into the night sky. It's a pretty calming place.






This place is gorgeous too. Last boring photo, I promise.

Now, this place does confuse me a little bit. What is a creepy, ominously lit, faux-gothic cathedral doing in downtown Hamamatsu? Is it the ancestral home of a local warlord with a European complex? A medieval themed restaurant? Perhaps the place where they're going to film the live action version of Sleeping Beauty? In a sense it's all three. Well, maybe not so much the first one, but bits and pieces of the other two. It seems to be a universal human thang to want to make one's wedding a magical, exciting production, and it's no different on this island. If you're willing to shell out the cash, you can get married on the top floor of the ACT tower, the tallest building in Hamamatsu, in the Sky Chapel, a room painted to look like it opens into the heavens and is decorated in the puffy cloud sort of way that would suit a visiting choir of angels. A nice place to tie the knot, closer to God so that he can hear your vows better, I suppose, but if your wallet isn't quite so fat, or maybe if you take a slightly darker view of the almighty, you can get together and get legitimate in Wedding Central Park at the Castle Perilous. I didn't go inside, but I imagine it's done up in tattered tapestries, guttering candlelight, cobwebs, and the scent of Satan that only an old Catholic church can provide. Of course, it's not really a Catholic church so they probably won't get that part quite right, but I do think I heard the vampiric stylings of My Chemical Romance coming from inside, so at least the soundtrack is spot-on.

I saved the best for last because this is the fucking shit. What the fuck is this supposed to be??? Somewhere on their journey into the human heart the engineers of Hamamatsu uncovered proof of the the existence of aliens! Because this technology is far too advanced for even the Japanese. Flanked on both sides by some sort of runic inscriptions that must have been designed either by Neo-Futurists or creatures from the planet Zebulon is the real prize of the city's public works projects, the creme de la creme of Hamamatsu's collection of obscure, fabricated archaeology. Backlit by what can only be described as the eery green light from some unknown, otherworldy isotope is... well.... it's fucking like.... it's kinda like The Cube but it's circular, and there's pieces missing.... And it's not very well hidden, so Megatron would have found it a long time ago.... Wait, that's it! It's not The Cube, it's a Transformer that got stuck in mid-morph! No, that's not right. See the green crystal thing in there? Maybe it's a Jabba the Hut sized interstellar turd encased in carbonite? Too easy? Yeah, I'm not even really trying anymore. I don't know what that thing could possibly be, I'm defeated by it, but I'm also entranced by it. More research is required, I think. Did I mention that it's right in the middle of the train station?