April 2008
69 posts
“After Koizumi visited the shrine on Oct. 17, Japan’s bishops issued a...”
– http://www.cbcj.catholic.jp/eng/jcn/apr2006.htm
“TO ALL WHO ARE ABOUT TO READ THIS DOCUMENT, EVERLASTING GREETINGS IN THE LORD.”
– from my undergraduate diploma, translation from latin
Haguro, I know. snow melted in mountains touched also my face.
noctilucent mushrooms / cast about in my shadows / whither where it to?
“The sexual act destroys beauty; nothing is more beautiful till that moment.”
– Goethe
I will drop ‘Japanese’ when referring to persons; it can be inferred if no other ethnicity is specified. I thought I was meeting grandmom at 4pm, but was mistaken. Thankfully she did my laundry and I set off to look at sakura blossoms in the local castle. Skipped a chance to chat up some local beauties — instead took many photographs — now alone again in front of a...
Still no word from prospective hirers, now in Yamagata. Visited Yamatera and Zao onsen yesterday, technically my fourth. Always thinking about writing even when far away from computers — not sure if I can ever separate now, my muse forever lighting a burning fire. I was the only person at last accomodation, perhaps same tonight, although jubilant Japanese grandmother told me many things on...
My situation here is awkward. I left my apartment on Wed. because my lease ran out, made a presentation to a rural school board on Thur., was placed in a hotel nearby for the next three nights, and now have an indeterminate amount of time to kill before I am placed in a school and training begins. I am not incredibly impressed with this company but excited about the program — the desirable...
Met a man at the bookstore who told me about a local English speaking church. Met a girl at the church who told me about an English teacher in the town I was staying. Met the English teacher the next morning who offered me a place to stay and showed me around Sendai, though later in the day he told me he was a very light sleeper and asked I could find another place. Instead I stated at the nicest...
Last night a party with English teachers, many JETters, today in Sendai — shopping arcade, church, and a run in with spitting Japanese man. He seemed nice at first, offered to show me around but was frothing wildly and after some spittle found its way into my eye I excused myself from his company, splashing much water into my face after in fear that I might have contracted some terminal...
Charlton Heston Obituary →
Hey little sister, what have you done?
Drunken dinners have their disadvantages, but one advantage is, in the town of 16,000, rural and with the common man, one has finally begins to break out of the mold of modern, acquiescent Japan, and into the old realm of the Bakafu. For some reason at dinner my Japanese seemed better than usual, almost fluent, remembering a text message from one teacher in Tokyo suggesting that I was her best...
This place is beautiful.
And things are stuffed into bags. Chair to the Frenchman, water heater to the Swede, bit of tea to the American. Left behind are a few plastic bins purchased at a local dollar store, and a bike to be sold at a later point.
Northward bound.
take me past the outer courts / into the holy place
Watching Pi on the way out, again appreciating New York, Pythagoras, and the various insanities that make up the human condition. Body, mind, and soul or mind only, and mind and strange ritual, codes incomprehensible but born forward in the patterning of human social conditioning. The crux perhaps? Pythagoras attempting unified theory, much like the Bestiary, encyclopedic and comprehensive but...
Obama Sr.'s Socialist Leanings →
Gardiner | Bach: Mass in B Minor
Mounds reshaped, not really packed, but no longer mountains of disorder. A few hours of sleep, then laundry, stuffing things into bags, and as thorough a cleaning as I can manage.
Evangelicals on the Monk Bandwagon →
Now you too can become a monk “while remaining in your own home, job, career, life. You can do so whether you are single, married, male or female.” All you have to do is pray three daily prayers (suggested times only), suggested fifteen minutes a week for other requests, and, most importantly, a regular donation.
What are you waiting for? Oh, and if you make your way over there...
A warm bottle of sake on table in front of me, Faustian man across, stuffed orangutan to the right, mound of accumulated books of books too large to stuff into a suitcase on the left. As unwashed cup touches my mouth I turn again to stare into those lidless eyes.
Western civilization, death prophesied by no few still moves on, bereft of course perhaps — all one knows is that great...
Overloaded on sugar candy, mind buzzes, transfixed on the piles of things to be moved, now piled in the center of my room. Perhaps too much for one man, but no backup plan has been prepared, still struggling with split mind, tear of personality, country, civilization, to become sole white man in a place you’ve never heard of. Farmers, farming, farms, rice, rice workers, little boys and...
Staring downward upward, I waxed tremulous under the blue moon.
“Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is one of the most famous...”
– Atlantic
Can’t sleep. Don’t know why. Must leave Wed. but no plan for a bed on Wed. night. Where to? Why? Reminiscing about Korean Soju. The idea of various perceptive mediums, film esp. and the inefficiencies therein. Why watch a speech when you can read the transcript? Is there some optimal parsing technique?
The music still plays, echoes. In theory I could be writing in Japanese....
I’m falling under your spell. —Tiesto, Search of Sunrise
Int. Econ. Working Group →
I think if I could guarantee internet usage would be for journalistic efforts only I would pursue a connection — as things, my lack of self-discipline means I will have to go largely the global spidery thingy, what do we call it again?
Ah yes, the web. Sticky.
The medieval bestiary presents a problem for the philosopher qua artist — what are the appropriate limits of fantasy, especially when one confers the world of the unknown. Did science flounder because of artistic and moralizing distractions, or were multiple facets enlightened by each other?
Or do we always confuse the real and unreal, past/present/future, already/not yet? Perhaps the...
Not much humor makes it in this space these days — hopefully the provided moral lesson from a Middle Ages (c.1200) bestiary will give someone a chuckle.
Job and visa may have descended upon me today. Should have full notice as of tomorrow morning. Chary of long term commitments, but something must be done.
“There is an animal called the beaver, which is extremely gentle; its testicles...”
– Of the Beaver
“Sir Percival, actively pursuing the Grail, has his own encounter with a dragon,...”
– Kordecki, Prophecy, Dragons, and Meaning in Malory
“Fortitude then stode steadfast in his might,
Defended wydowes, cherishd...”
– John Lydgate, Fall of Princes, bk. vii.
“Al is not gold that shineth, men take hede!
Thaire galle is hid under a sugred...”
– Lydgate
Luminarium →
Sifting the tea leaves of the global economic environment — if the Euro turns becomes the de facto world reserve currency, but the US the military insurer of last resort, will some sort of tribute system be enacted? Such a system is currently unthinkable, but many Americans can also not imagine shrinking defense spending. In other words, if the markets do not wish to pay for their...
“Now gratious God he save owre kynge,
His peple and all his welwyllynge,
Gef...”
– Agincourt Carol
“Ichot a burde in boure bryht,
That fully semly is on syht,
Menskful maiden of...”
“Second, the Fed failed to take up its mandated responsibility to supervise and...”
– Paul De Grauwe, in response to same
“It is astonishing that the former chairman would write “Those of us who look to...”
– Response to Greenspan’s statement that poor models are to blame for the current crisis, not the Fed
A friend mentioned that I am perhaps doomed to wander forever, nowhere content, unable to settle — it may be true — told by others in discussions on the relation of ethics to economics that I should take a stance more amenable to compromise. But I believe that once the system moves past the inflection point of justice to corruption, one must follow the path of Boethius and go outside...
This morning contact with friends in the states, maybe the last for a long time, decision made to go north, into unknown as bygone become just that. teaching a step back from all quantifiable measures, but perhaps a step forward from death to ego-self. One wishes for more earthly security, but perhaps instead must become instead like the Lilly of the valley, splendor not the result of earthly...