Zōkyō

As for an updated version on me…Im still the same me, talking too much, (although its more difficult in different language), still faking the guitar and piano, writing everyday, the constant 5 oclock shadow, hair in some inbetween stage of gooped city swank and anti-establishment-fuck-you-long, funky sunglasses, hats, record collecting, swing dancing (if I can find a girl brave enough…they’re a shy lot), contiplating the isms that 29 year olds contiplate, cigarette smoking, coffee drinking, hole-in-the-wall searching, wreckless, slight paranoia, a empty pit of low self assurance hiding behind a fortess wall of towering-trying-to-be-humble-yet-totally-egotisical self confidence, The host of party, the ghost of the party, the roast of the party. Not a whole lot has changed.

Actually a couple of things are feeling really fresh recently. After sorta months of waking up where my first waking breath of the day was near panic from just any number of things, I started meditating and practicing Yoga, almost everyday. It has started to overflow into every moment. Walking zazen, stretching at the trainstops, I cant seem to stop. But at least its good. And secondly I got a job writing for a pretty big time magazine. That is to say, that I have an assignment but have yet to be officially published which I guess means, I could not be hired. I should be writing right now but instead Im surfing the web, blogging you.

I am still seeing the same girl. Her name is Yasuko. Its been about 5 or so months now and its pretty great although its a bit of a mix-match. Shes really nothing like me with the excpetion that we both like to have a good time. We like different music, art, food, style, perhaps political views but Im not really sure about that one, we have different ideas about our futures, about traveling, money, religion, its actually pretty funny how unsimilar we are. Some of these things seem almost unreconcilable. For example, She loves expensive 5 star hotel restaurants on the top floors of skyscrapers (upon which I could easy pass) and it would be a cold day in hell before I could convince her to venture into a dive like Dots. She doesnt think twice about spending 500 bucks on a dress or shoes and I wear recylced clothes and complain about 20 dollar t-shirts. Ok, well Im exagerating a little, but just a little. She like hotels and I like camping. She likes champagne, I like coffee. Yes, this girl does snowboard, and yes she loves music, and she’s a wicked drummer and piano player too. And shes’s a nurse, a smart little cookie. The whole thing stinks of contridicting oxymoron. She doesnt actually stink, she smells quite nice. But in a word, it works. We’re a goofy little couple.

I dont like to think about it too much but there is little chance of us surviving here together and perhaps less of a chance of surviving there, and at moments a sense of doom overwhlems us both, but we perservere and make compromises and it seems to work. I dont know, maybe halfway, say Hawaii?

Hanami, that is Cherry Blossum season has come and gone. The whole city was filled with these pink marshmellow-popcorn-puff trees and its total magic to hang out underneath one. When the wind blows strong, the whole sky is filled with little pink petals. Truely something comparable to something like perhaps the Bosphorus, or the Pyriamids. Something everybody should experience. Life is good and like the trees for a moment, Im gonna leave.

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Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we’re kids? If you’re less than 10 years old, you’re so excited about ageing that you think in fractions.

“How old are you?” “I’m four and a half!” You’re never thirty-six and a half. You’re four and a half, going on five! That’s the key.

You get into your teens, now they can’t hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

“How old are you?” “I’m gonna be 16!” You could be 13, but hey, you’re gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life . . . you become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony . . YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!

But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There’s no fun now, you’re just a sour-dumpling. What’s wrong? What’s changed?

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you’re PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it’s all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50

and your dreams are gone.

But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn’t think you would!

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.

You’ve built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it’s a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn’t end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; “I Was JUST 92.”

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. “I’m 100 and a half!”

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It’s so often a pissing contest with some gaijin here. Who lives where, who’s lived here the longest, who speaks more Japanese, who’s been coming to this place for longer, who has a better job, who allegedly doesn’t distinguish themselves from Japanese, who’s an English teacher, who’s a model, who’s a DJ. Sometimes the shallowness feels like high school.

How pretentious is it to deliberately ignore another gaijin on the basis that “you don’t greet everyone you meet when you’re walking down the street at home”? I don’t know where you’re from but it’s certainly considered rude to not reciprocate a simple hello to someone where I’m from.

When I was a kid, there was a couple who took an afternoon walk around my block everyday, and every day that I was outside playing in front I would say hello and they would simply ignore me or anyone else who attempted the same. Not totally understanding the sarcastic nickname my parents christened this couple, I too would often say, “Here comes Mr. and Mrs. “Friendly” again.”

Later in life I heard a story once from a friend who was in a Deli in NYC. While waiting in line he made eye contact with the guy next in line and said “How’s it going?” The guy turned to him and barked, ‘Do I F*@kin’ know you?’ My friend just started laughing and soon enough the guy started laughing too.

I don’t really see how these scenarios play out all that differently over here. I smile at the same gaijin who I see all the time all over Tokyo, and sometimes offer simple “how ya doing?”s to perfect strangers sitting next to me on trains. If you’re too cool to say hello or exchange a smile because you lived in Tokyo long enough to become characterless, then just keep your headphones on and don’t worry, we’ll just keep laughing at you, Mr. and Mrs. Friendly.

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The other day one of my four year old students asked me if I was a foreigner. I said yes and she said ‘hmmm, I thought so.’ Pretty freakin’ cute.

The sun has chosen to shine on this lovely Saturday morning. I wish I had Saturdays off. Its such a wake-up-and-drink-drink-coffee-and-mozie-around-town kind of day. But alas, Im here at the daily grind, yet hardly grinding. I may have found an opportunity to do some writing with a cool magazine but its just sort of unfolding at the moment.

Last night, against my better judgement, I accompanied my best friend to his girlfriend’s ‘kabakura’ (Japanese English for Cabaret Club). Essentially it was the PG version of a strip club. Its not totally uncommon for Japanese men to spend much of their hard earned cash at these innocent houses of mildly ill repute, tete-a-teting with young Japanese who laugh at their jokes and light their cigerettes, pour them drinks. It wasn’t at all that amusing for me as the young women are just that, young women, yoooung women. Although I did realize that it is not completely different from the service I offer teaching English. Giving fifty minutes of somewhat worthless entertainment at a premium price.

Ah, Japan never ceases to be Japan for me. Endless morsels of fat to chew, uncountable mirrors inside a kaleidescope, an infinite foreigness.

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After I finally found a used copy in an obscure bookstore, I started reading Jitterbug Perfume for the 5th time. I can usually read it all in one or two sittings. Its about Perfume.

Everytime I get off a plane at Narita, I always take in a wiff of Japan’s national smell, Nori. I heard that Korea smells like Kimchee, if you know what that is.

You know something, you really do get accustomed to this food over here after a while. In the beginning intestines really freaked me out. Last night I ate wonderful horse sashimi. Some of the more interesting foods I’ve had here include the intestines, liver, throats, eyeballs, gonads, brains of any number of animals or fish, both cooked and raw, crab brains (which I am apparently allergic to), whale, candied crickets, barracuda, shark fin, fugu or blowfish (the poisonous variety), Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads, Shrimp/corn/mayonnaise pizza is pretty standard, aloe vera, which is ‘vera’ delicious in yogurt, 50 dollar cantaloupes and 30 dollar apples, numerous types of ocean plants, and some still very alive sea creatures. I ate a potato and cod roe sandwich for lunch today.

Sometimes when I ask people what they do for a living they say they work in contents. I don’t know what that means but I pretend like I do.

I wrote my girlfriend a letter today that said that although we dont speak the same language, Im happy that we can communicate our feelings. She said (I think) that the fact that we dont speak the same language in fact makes our relationship stronger. I’m still digesting that.

Team America sucked the first time I saw it, but it was great the second time. The Big Lebowski was the same. I cant listen to Darkside of the Moon anymore. Give Magnolia another watch.

I’m homesick…Am I?

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The other day I tried to pinpoint the moment my life started. This life I am in now. How did this story start, anyway? At first I went back to getting on a plane to Asia, then I thought, actually I gotta go further back to that night in Vegas, then of course I had to keep going back to Allison, yet further to a full moon over the Black Hills, and yet back again to one particular sunrise, finally I thought it started on a VW in the ocean of grass that Kansas is. But wasn’t there an episode before that, one with with spiders on a roof? Yes indeed there was. That was the day that this life started. The day before that day was a different life, that was the night I opened the door to this life.

The Chronology of my story seems to pivot around epiphangelical moments, some dark and some illuminated, indeed all rights of passages. The sky is always a different hue before and after these days yet there is always the same thought, “today is not like yesterday was, and tomorrow will never be like today was… from here on out, everything is different.”

Those chapters need to be dusted off and reread from time to time, otherwise I just might forget that reinvention is not something that happens at particular moments in one’s life but rather, that it is happening at every moment. And the story is never finished…

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So basically the reason I had put off school, aside from wanting to ski, go to shows and just generally uninterested in going, I had no interest in wasting a a hunk of change studying something that I had no interest in, just for the sake of doing it.

But here I was 4 years later, the only cracker and the only one tripping (maybe) in a Las Vagas jail on a Satuday night. (I do want to get to that story one day.)

So I went back home to Tulsa, the mothership for some refuling and home cooking. I got my head in order (for the most part). Three months of old drunken friends and backwards mentality was enough and I soon set back out west for clearer waters, this time with a college acceptance.

And I did it and whatever, it was fun, it was easy. I certainly loved it and miss it now, and its storys will make it or already have into another journal another day.

But finally out and 27, I decided to accept the invitation of the Gurungs, the crazy strong, crazy calm Nepali friends I had been working with for the previous 8 years, and to go to their stomping grounds of the Himalaya. A journey I had been dreaming of my whole life. After enough research and reading and after having been convinced that I should also go to Thailand as well, it was time to buy a ticket. I decided to leave in summer and return by Christmas (although was aware of feeling of dissappearing forever). I called the Airlines and plugged in the dates. They told me I would be allowed a free stopover in Tokyo. I thought, “hmm…Japan?”

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I have been standing at the crossroads of my life for whole goddamn duration of my actual life. The crossroads themselves somehow have seemed more captivating than the notion of actually setting out on one of the paths. It always seems wrong for me to think of it that way. I have these fleeting moments of ecstasy just staring out into the abyss followed shortly by disappointment and perhaps fear of what I might find down one of them. There are always unanswered questions and it seems unbearable to choose faith over reason though Ive heard the former is stronger. Ive made my life a waiting room for my actual life. Its not enough to just be somewhere.

I had the most lucid of my dreams two nights ago. I even remembered to turn off the lights and oddly enough, they infact turned off. The map I had looked like an MC Esher painting and I kept falling into a new dream, the whole time aware. I was riding the clutch on the hill of consciousness and the dream state, idling forward and drifting back. Its somehow like my life too but I cant fathom how to make the connection.

What am I waiting for? The smallest step feels like a quantum leap. Have I ever really been “on to” anything…? The sitting, the counting, the doing of something that makes the mind stop and concentrate for one split second seems of value. But those moments are so few and far between. In the meantime, the mind doesn’t seem to shut up for a nano second, perpetually on hyperspeed cruise cruise-control. If I could just slow it down so I could see it, and focus on ONE thing. These things to me are always easier said than done.

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