Japan, observations

I'm a mad dasher, I might as well admit it. I'm more comfortable running around, packing in the activities, losing myself in action. When I wake, I feel an urge to move, the stress of stillness...

Eerily quiet on the Hibiya line. Not a single voice heard in the packed subway car station after station. A girlish utterance absorbs into unforgiving human forms. What are these clean, self-contained, silent individuals on the express train thinking about this weekday morning...

The girl powdering her cheeks and limning her eyes smiling happy in her pouty prettiness. The guy massaging his temples. The advertisement banners hanging down from the center roof of the train that would never fly in New York; people'd put their heads through the paper ads like door curtains. The little subway dance, when someone needs to disembark around you, and you have to shuffle with tiny steps, like dancing with a six-year-old. People are more careful, quiet, and considerate here. Less of the closed-in fear and stressful almost-shoving induced by seemingly imminent door closings. I lean against the ‘back’ door and then it opens at the next station. An unexpected reversal. My logic proved faulty. Touché, subway...

What Manami said: there are two Japan's. Tokyo is not Japan!...

Japan, even Tokyo, is more structured and ordered . There's less of the disordered vibrancy that characterizes America; also called diversity or mix or "low" culture. Consider the ubiquitous umbrella, the occasional parasol...

Perfectionism is the opposite of fatalism...

Onsen tubs. Reed brooms. Raised train lines. Sea to mountain declines. Street fair food stalls. Monstrous insects. Sylvan shrines: Miyazaki...

At 5pm exactly monks ring temple bells all through Kyoto and people leave offices. Sidewalks throng with men and women in formal wear and black shoes. In some quarters, some women wear kimonos, white socks, wood sandals. They nod to smartphones waiting for the light to change...

The assumption now is that travelers will go on, are in the middle of long-term vagabondings. It wasn’t always like this. I remember the first time I heard about someone picking up and running off, how it surprised and titillated me. Now it's par for the course. Ever more wanderers...

Back at the hostel, the Italian says, “Where can I go to meet the girls!,” laughing and leering at the young Japanese woman, Siuri, staffing the hostel at 10pm. She’s says, “Why are you laughing? Haha. Too Italian!”...

Monstrous coy and carp jockey for position in the park pool. Feed me!...

I'm going to see some thing. I'm already imagining taking photos of the thing, showing those photos to other people, and how they will react to the photos. A mind divided upon itself will fall...

The vampire of regret sucks joy out of the present...

I grasp my walking stick and plan each foot-plant on the mountain trail. The wind blows the tree-tops; I think the trees are breathing. I follow their lead, take a deep breath and then another. I think, “The forest teaches you things. How to breathe, how to be patient, present...”—I blunder face-first into a spider web, drop my stick, and clutch face and hair in mortal fear...

Technological travails

Life has taken a sharp turn for the worse. I've been in a Stop n' Shop for about 2 hours. Ideally I'd never enter a Stop n' Shop or a Walmart or a McDonalds, among other omnipresent, obtrusive centers of commerce and diabetes. Stop n' Shop isn't even all that bad; it's more a matter of principle.

Nonetheless, I ended up here. What happened is this: I screwed up synching my iPhone with iTunes and, since I don't have wifi at my apartment, I had to venture forth to restore the phone's operating system. Stop n' Shop boasts wifi internet and Starbucks and cookies so here we are.

Then when the restore was on the cusp of completion, the computer lowed an emergency low battery distress signal and summarily died. Devastation! I had to restore the blood sucker and re-synch all of everything and I'm mid process. My life resides on that devilish device.

All of this has served to remind me why I don't have wifi in the apartment in the first place: technology--at least high technology--does not by and large make my life easier, let alone better.

It does, but it doesn't. I must, as always, blame myself first and foremost. I am me. And I am not an adept, precise, or meticulous problem solver when it comes to technological complexity. I'm all thumbs. My neurons are wearing oven mitts.

I believe this is because I harbor a more romantic, synthetic, gestalt-based sensibility. I mean, I want things to work and be beautiful. I want beauty to surge muse-beckoned out of my pure and unhindered soul. Things should work, should they not? I'm no concrete, technological, engineering, analytical fixer. I can't fix a chicken sandwich let alone a faulty circuit or corroded whatsit. Thus, rather than master my technology my technology masters me.

This may be a tolerable state of affairs. It depends on what I'm aiming to optimize for: poetry, motorcycle maintenance, financial analytics, journalism, funk music, teaching, child rearing. What do I want, and what do I want to do, and what do I want to do well?

I need to iron out the factors in production here, because it's not like understanding the technical, analytical relationship between factors in a poetic form inhibits poetic expression. Perhaps the dichotomy is false and quality inheres in a fusion. Let's see if unstructured intuitive creativity will solve this.
***

PS I hate how Facebook pushes its push notifications and friend lookup and other crappy crap. It's basely procreative but annoying nonetheless. And YouTube commercials now induce in me a rage that's rapidly overwhelming any pleasure I get from the site's music, comedy, Ted Talks and junk. And what about the latest iTuneses? Insidious monstrosities that make me want to commit technical seppuku. Someone save me from these technology travails

Tuesday reflections

Bluejays are beak-stuffing slobs, with dainty and sleek feathers, superficial cover for gluttony...

Bradleys are procrastinators, with hip-hairdos and polished noggin netherworlds, who whittle away hours twiddling internet ding dongs and doodling narcissism...

Squirrels are depraved backyard denizens, violators of all seven deadly sins, rapacious and cunning delinquents, munchers, camouflaged monsters, objects of detestation...

"Hello morning!" is betoken by 7am wake up, followed tenaciously, alarms like calls to prayer...

My hope is for luminous mornings, indefatigable days, reading evenings, and - o gosh, finally - stable habits, and reliable relationships...

Libby (canis lupis familiaris) is as omnivorous as a goat - she scarfs a morning walnut ritualistically; grapes are delicacies; chicken bones can be procured through trashcan larceny; and the evening meal is human fare - certainly a princess among beasts...

What is one to make of Pynchon, the 'postmodern' luminary? G's Rainbow is a ponderous epic, singular and difficult. Is there some concealed genius - an ironclad kernel - is he just a clever scribomaniac?
The Mars Volta would seem to follow logically, part of the frantic dialectic which cherishes beautiful discord...

Syracuse, NY, most magical at nocturnal hours/ urban air after gloaming/ from illuminated city to atmospheric gloom/ and in between, ladders of light like celestial towers...

Brad is thinking

- About delineations and spectra and the middle path that appears to be fundamental.

- About when to speak plain truth and when to deceive, obfuscate, dissimulate, or utter falsifications.

- About enigmas, anomalies, the advancement of thought and science and the consequent and simultaneous waning of ignorance, myth, mysticism, magic, and speculation.

- That there is a lever in the natural construction of the human being which leaves him or her open to outside manipulation, which often induces lamentable illogic, including crowd-rule, wishful-thinking, and fallacious belief.

- Whether or not the hegemony and the progression of the hegemony, of what is fashionably considered science will make humans more or less malleable.

- That Brad knows nothing and nurtures fragile beliefs that may or may not have basis in "reality."

- That memory is fickle and that blatant fiction is as worthy a suitor for our consideration and belief as purported fact.

- That there is but one form to pray to.

- That perceptive skepticism trumps blind faith.

- That there must be an equalization.

- About WWSGD (What Would Siddhartha Guatma Do).

- About what deserves: Respect; approbation; damnation; and, outright eradication.

- That there is a coy, precious quality peculiar to the margins of the day and the night which tends to activate "weird" and pure behavior, ambiguous emotions, and tangential ambitions.

Vienen miles más domingos

Anoche, una película sobre madres y muertes me hizo llorar. Gotas escaparon de los pozos de ojos y cayeron...

Por desgracia, nos hemos puestos en una sesión de pérdida. Estupidez y codicia de los pocos causan el dolor y sufrimiento de los demás...

Solipsismo: "Yo sé que soy yo, porque siempre estoy aquí y siempre tú te vas..."

Racionalismo: "Lo hago porque funciona..."

Ten cuidado con quien te pones fe...

¿Como fue tu cara antes de que nacieron tus padres?

Si me ataras en cuerdas de queso y me pusieras en una jaula de pan debajo de un sol benigno, yo sería contento...

Había una vez, el mundo fue una bala de nevara y hielo. Ningunos seres poblaron la superficie ni los aires. Las aguas tuvieron una plétora...

Cucurrucucú...

Aún mundos desocupados tienen aspirantes a reyes...

Todo el mundo tiene un llanto en su bolsillo de detrás. El pesar y la alegría conviven en todas vidas...

Si no tuviéramos cerebros, todavía tendríamos problemas...

Somos máquinas solamente si decidimos ser máquinas. Hay que reconocer el conocimiento único y la potencia orgánica...

Cuando computadora llega a ser más listo que creador somos muertos. Mientras nuestras creaciones están manufacturados con los limites del humano y en su imagen está bien...

Cuando yo vea el espejo vació, seré iluminado...

Con dos palios, dos bongos, el metrónomo del reloj rojo, mano y mente, cualquier ser tiene el poder preciso de la percusión ilimitada...

PAZ Y PALOMAS…

Things you shouldn't do for $$

Money is not happiness. It is expendable and it is earnable. When having lost a large sum of money, consider your options and your other assets (e.g. health, education, friends & family, love). Consider your relative position as a human on the earth. Are you one of the few privileged ones capable of earning easy money? Consider the meaning of money and how you could live without any, if you wanted to.

Do not do these things for money or as a result of money:

Whine
Act immorally or against your conscience (a rule which subsumes most of the other rules)
Kill (including yourself)
Debase yourself; aka cause yourself or others to lose respect for you
Act illogically, rationalize, or self-deceive
Lose hope

Money is a paltry thing. It is the tip of the iceberg of the aggregate of wealth. Spend it wisely, spend it when you have it, save it when it is in your interest to do so, earn it honestly with dignity. Do not negate your other economic assets through worship of money. Do not deify it.