Moments At Dawn

August 14, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 1 Comment 

It is nearly five in the morn­ing and the dawn light is fil­ter­ing through the cur­tains. For an hour I have been up, af­ter hav­ing been woken by some clowns who de­cided to have some fire­works fun out­side my win­dow. All is tran­quil again, though, and the air is ring­ing with the or­ches­tra of crick­ets, wind­ing down the fi­nale of the night. The trees are so still I can feel the soil breathe.

In about an hour my alarm will go off and the busi­ness of ac­tiv­i­ties will in­ter­vene. My wife and I will join two friends and go for a two day hike in Yat­sug­atake, a range of moun­tains that yearly draws me al­most like a spir­i­tual ful­crum. The weather fore­cast says rain, as it nearly al­ways does when­ever I plan a hike re­cently, but the re­lease of the strings to my apart­ment will make all the dif­fer­ence, as will, of course, the com­fort of watch­ing and join­ing good friends in laugh­ter and sto­ries. It’s been a long time.

Color hasn’t yet in­fil­trated the scenery out­side. The greens of the false aca­cia and the er­rant av­o­cado still har­bor the grays of mid­night and the hori­zon has yet to toss up the fire­ball of the sun. An in-​​between time that half echoes the voice of my thoughts, where my night self and my day self meet at the part­ing of some in­choate veil. It is as if my breath in­cor­po­rates my spirit, hang­ing in­side and out, not quite cor­po­real, and yet imag­i­nary at the same time. If I were to wake up to the world one day to the ab­sence of hu­man­ity, this is what the city might feel like. For a while. Be­fore my own re­al­iza­tion of lost purpose.

I lift my eyes to the sky, now bright­en­ing and in­tro­duc­ing birds. I wa­ger the first call will be the brown-​​eared bulbul’s, al­ways brash and brave and ea­ger to get go­ing. It is the kind of cheery at­ti­tude that makes wak­ing and forg­ing on worth­while; the kind of spirit that walk­ers in the moun­tains seem to wear on their sleeves. It is per­haps the ba­sis of my faith; herald­ing life as it is and re­joic­ing in yet an­other turn of the great circle.

Street Lights

August 12, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 4 Comments 

I’ve been avoid­ing writ­ing in the blog these last few days be­cause I’ve been in a funk and I can’t seem to find any­thing worth­while to write about with­out sound­ing like I’m whin­ing or tak­ing the world for granted. It’s been a strange and awk­ward kind of funk that I just can’t seem to shake. Bad faith from my de­sign work part­ners (now telling me to­day that they don’t know when they will be able to pay me… alarm bells go­ing off), a string of overly crit­i­cal com­ments re­cently from my boss at my evening job about my teach­ing meth­ods, the start of the plan­ning stage for go­ing about mov­ing out sep­a­rately from my wife (the talk­ing is calm, but I can’t help al­ways feel­ing this screen of un­re­al­ity veil­ing our ten­der­ness; like watch­ing a heart­break­ing movie from within a shower. You want to cry, but the tears keep get­ting washed away by the wa­ter), week­ends in­tended for moun­tain walk­ing thwarted by tiny events like a low blood sugar at­tack that pre­vents me from catch­ing the ear­li­est train that would al­low me enough time to get out to the moun­tain or be­ing so tired from all the re­cent work that I can’t find it in me to roll out of bed or a call from the land­lord ask­ing me to be around on the day I was to de­part to wait for the plumber, and so forth and so on, ad addendum.

So it was with some hunch­backed re­lief that I boarded the train this evening af­ter work, know­ing that from to­mor­row I will have seven days of va­ca­tion. There will be moun­tains and moun­tains and yet more moun­tains on my brain, hope­fully, to feed the hunger for heights that has been build­ing up for the past few months. I’ve sewn to­gether two tents and a tarp and will have my chance to fi­nally try them out. Don’t know if they will work, but at least I will know it was my fin­gers that caused the fail­ure of my equip­ment; there is some­thing re­as­sur­ing in the knowl­edge that even a fail­ure of mine will at least be my fail­ure and no one can take that away from me.

The evening sits upon the de­serted res­i­den­tial streets (all lined with walls around every house and apart­ment build­ing… one ends up walk­ing al­leys and lanes here in Tokyo, rather than the pas­sage be­tween furry green car­pets of the States) like a fat cat just fin­ished with din­ing. A cool breeze wafts through the blurry heat, stir­ring your view of the sound­less clouds scud­ding by over­head. And real cats tip­toe un­der the street lights, their shad­ows rac­ing to catch up then pass­ing them by. Ci­cadas sing elec­tric duets in the lime­light, some whirr away from the safety of their perches in the trees and break them­selves against the lamp glass, their wings shred­ding like pa­per. These crea­tures of the earth, mes­sen­gers of the sub­con­scious, lost among our alien concrete.

I stroll home, but my legs lost their swing un­til I come to a stand­still un­der one street light, look­ing up ahead and back over my shoul­der. I look up and dark birds whis­tle over the roof tops, head­ing… home? Or stand­ing still, while the earth yaws be­neath them? I can al­most hear the tim­bers creak. Un­cer­tain, my foot­steps break from reverie and find the door as I fum­ble for the keys. And that is the crux of the prob­lem, isn’t it? Just these keys. The lock snicks open and I step away, my back turned to­ward the ex­panses, to be cupped in wind­less in­er­tia. A home away from home.

Nothing To Say

August 1, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 4 Comments 

Oh God, this is un­bear­able. It has to­tally ru­ined my day. Is no one go­ing to put a stop to the mad­ness and take all those re­spon­si­ble to task?

Raindrops

August 1, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 7 Comments 

Rain­drops on a Japon­ica leaf in my gar­den, Tokyo, Japan, April 2004

Fast be­com­ing one of my fa­vorite blogs Jour­nal of a Writ­ing Man, there is some­thing dis­arm­ing and un­de­ni­ably charm­ing about Old Grey Poet’s daily sto­ries. The fact that he fo­cuses on the de­tails of his daily life, pep­per­ing the anec­dotes with bytes of such trea­sures as an an­noy­ance with the residue left over on the back of a note­book af­ter peel­ing away the price sticker, or the joy of rid­ing a bi­cy­cle again af­ter years of ne­glect, or the won­der of watch­ing a wa­ter spout, brings me back for more every day.

I can re­late to what he is writ­ing and can fit in­side the bound­aries of such a world. It has made me think hard about what I want to write here, and though my last post was the usual weltschmertz grip­ing, I in­tend to fo­cus more, from now on, on this lit­tle ring of in­flu­ence that I can man­age by my­self. The blog will un­dergo some changes, in­clud­ing new blog­ging soft­ware (Word­Press), a facelift, and some added and re­arranged cat­e­gories. It will take a lit­tle while, but I hope it will stream­line the site and fo­cus the voice here.

It’s been a har­row­ing month, what with hav­ing been cheated in my pay­ment for the spring ho­tel brochure de­sign project (the cover of the main brochure is to the left. The col­ors are def­i­nitely not right on­line… the red­dish brown on top is ac­tu­ally a lot deeper brown and the blue be­low is ac­tu­ally more vi­o­let) and hav­ing to deal with it all in some very con­vo­luted Japan­ese ne­go­ti­a­tions (my Japan­ese is very good, but I just can’t keep up in such jargon-​​rich spar­ring, es­pe­cially when there are two Japan­ese, thirty-​​year de­sign vet­er­ans against one of me… and be­lieve me, the Japan­ese know how to be con­vo­luted and vague… their whole lan­guage re­volves around say­ing things through in­nu­endo! And no, I never was able to rec­tify my losses) with­out re­sources, with­out any­one to turn to for pro­fes­sional ad­vice. It’s left me dis­cour­aged and not a lit­tle an­gry. I don’t think I will ever do de­sign work in Japan again. This is the main rea­son I haven’t been blog­ging for quite some time.

But on the bright side, it’s be­come clear that de­sign work is not my cup of tea (af­ter hav­ing been cheated five times al­ready… you’d think I would have learned by now!). Now, with all other pos­si­ble ca­reer roads taken elim­i­nated, like salt evap­o­rated out of the bucket, I have no more ex­cuses not to put all my ef­fort into mak­ing it as a writer. I’ve tried every com­bi­na­tion of vo­ca­tion (ex­cept work­ing as a field bi­ol­o­gist) that I’ve ever imag­ined my­self do­ing, and one by one elim­i­nated them. Only writ­ing holds fast and only writ­ing ful­fills all the cri­te­ria I’ve asked of my life. It’s hard, lonely, low pay­ing work and I can get cheated in this field, too, but at least it’s in my lan­guage and at least I have re­sources and peo­ple to turn to. And most im­por­tant, at least I love do­ing it as I do it, even when I’m struggling.

So here goes!