AMBASSADORIAL HIGHLIGHTS

Recently, Japan as an anciently cultured nation has been taking firm steps forward onto the world stage, having named Doraemon its anime ambassador; now they've gone even further, and are teetering above the orchestra pit.

The monoexpressive Hello Kitty, who got her start on a plastic coin purse back in 1974 and brought the blissfully Hello-Kittyless world to a screeching halt, will soon be named the nation's newest Tourism Ambassador, presumably so as to demonstrate to all the world whatever it is about Japan that is cutely monotonous.

As a result (in case you want to head for the wilderness a bit early), HK will be even more ubiquitous than the everywhere we once knew, though why beholding this emotionless countenance would inspire anyone to visit Japan is beyond my Kitty-weakened powers of understanding (HK has a kryptonite-like effect on certain areas of perception).

But there is a plus here: unlike the other noisemakers representing Japan (Ishihara et al.), HK is mouthless. An ambassador who can't say a single word has gotta be a plus.

Wonder if a life-sized Hello Kitty with biometric scanner nose will scan tourists' faces and take their full set of fingerprints at the airport...

Butterfly and I
staring at each other...
Who is who?

YOU CAN'T GET IT THERE FROM HERE

Reading lately of all the coast-to-coast US lamenting and gnashing of teeth and gears at the looming 4 dollars per gallon price of gasoline, I can't help but chuckle with satisfaction over here in Japan, where gasoline is already heading north of 6$ per gallon, at the mileage of my Honda Cub (the best-selling motor vehicle in history), which I use for local journeys and which gets over 300 miles per gallon. I've had it for 10 years and only had to fix a flat once. It starts instantly every time, winter or summer. I fill the 3 liter tank about once every three months. They don't sell Honda Cubs in the states, though I can't imagine why not... Must be that folks in the US don't want Honda Cubs because they're not there...

＋

Then on Saturday I read this "Say what?"headline:

Japan begins talks to expand gasoline exports to US

and my head did that Wiley Coyote yaggeda-yaggeda mind-restorer thing. It got worse when I read this quote: "Japan's falling oil demand has left it with spare refining capacity and Japanese refiners are eager to boost gasoline exports, as that would compensate for steadily decreasing domestic consumption [my bold] due to a peaking population and the increased popularity of fuel-efficient smaller cars." AS THE GAS PRICE HEADS FOR THE SKY?

Excuse me while I run outside and check what planet I'm on...

SHADOW OF ICE

I have to laugh when I read US 'news' like I read this morning, where it said that "Republicans fear public has lost confidence" following another surprise congressional loss in Mississippi - after surprise losses in other special elections in Illinois and Louisiana - the well-spun headline indicating only a vague suspicion that there might be shreds of evidence here and there suggesting the possibility that perhaps some sort of negative change could be on the verge of occurring in a small way, or not... No hint of the Shadow of Ice that resides in the White House, of the deep voter revulsion that has been evident and growing to the full heave for some years now...

But then those media are heavily pwned, are they not...

image via

From the archives, April 2002:

SWALLOWS

Every Spring, with no deeds or Japanese bureaucratic permits at all, the swallows build their nests above the doorways of houses and shops in the village, and homeowners and shopkeepers in a very pleasant spirit of community tenderness create ingeniously ad hoc structures of newspapers, magazines, plastic bags and bits of wood, cardboard, string and tape to catch the droppings, keep their doorsteps and wares clean, and soon the nests, just above head level, are home to eggs, and not long after come the tiny cheeps from bright yellow bigmouth beaks poking over the nest sides, when people-neighbors gather beneath for oohs and ahhs that lead to chats about the goings on in their own nests; and the adult swallows, of evenings after whirling the curlicues of their airy calligraphy of catching insects to feed the swelling brood, and soon having been put out of tiny house and home by the size of the kids, sit near their nests on a convenient awning rod or a telephone wire, soft little featherbundles calm even though within easy reach of shoppers and homeowners passing by beneath, and severely tempting kids to grab for them but the kids always find the wherewithal within themselves not to, for the tiny birds mean so much more where they are, sitting up there so proudly in their fine white ties and tails, about them a confidence and majesty that simply cannot be treated lightly, they are grace in every aspect; even male teenagers, who in the itchy clutch of hormonal chaos are tempted to scare the tiny creatures very satisfyingly into flight, nevertheless never do, the swallows in return for such restraint giving the teenagers the priceless life lesson that grace, not size, is what really matters, and so the neighborhood kids are educated by the swallows in essential regards, then one morning the adult birds take their own gawky teenagers to a nearby overhead wire, where the grownups sit like the people-parents in the park, taking what ease they can at last while cheerily prompting the kids to fidget and whir, whiffle their wings, learn to leap and flap and dive and climb and back and again and again, swooping over and over like people-kids on swings and sliding boards all day, until finally one evening the fledglings too are soaring through the summer sunsets, feeding themselves for autumn, and so the flocks both bird and folk are winged from day to day and year to year, and every village neighborhood is lifted to heights that once known are not forgotten, even in the swallow-empty airs of winter.

BONSAI

You’ve heard of bonsai, the miniature trees perfected in Japan over centuries and now popular all over the world? We at Monsane Laboratories have compressed centuries into seconds, and with our research have developed just the things to go with those bonsai trees: a complete line of bonsai livestock!

It’s no longer a dream: now, in the privacy of your own metro lifespace, you can operate a bonsai farm! Spend leisurely moments each day, watching your bonsai herd graze your bonsai pastures beneath your bonsai trees! Think of the joy of waking each morning to the tiny crow of your bonsai rooster! There’ll be bonsai omelets! Bonsai cheeses! Bonsai burgers! And ultimately, bonsai shoes, even bonsai leather jackets!

And who are all these bonsai products for? Simply send us a small sample of your own cells for cloning, and we will send you a perfectly reproduced bonsai self! That’s right! Sit back in easy chair comfort and watch your self doing the back-breaking chores on your bonsai farm: mending bonsai fence, putting in bonsai crops, hunting bonsai varmints, tacking bonsai problems, digging into those bonsai steaks at the end of a hard bonsai day—all without lifting a finger!

Your friends will be amazed! And if you send us a small sample of their cells, we’ll send you a complete set of bonsai friends! To help out on the farm! So start collecting yourself and your friends today! Order promptly, and we will reproduce your family, absolutely free!

(All products patented Monsane Global Genetix Inc.)

SORRY, WE'RE ALL OUT OF UNPATENTED HAM...

How about some fresh Monsanto bacon with those Monsanto eggs?
Part 1 of 5
(2, 3, 4, 5)

Folks who eat these probably don't mind...

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(w/thanks to Martin Frid)

World Summit on GMO-Free Diversity in Bonn (Germany), 12-16 May 2008:

"We, the participants of the 3rd Conference of GMO-Free Regions in Europe invite the farmers, gardeners and consumers of the world to celebrate the diversity of our seed and food and cultures and their freedom from GMOs, patents and corporate control... We call upon organisations, communities and institutions from around the world to join us in organising this event and to contribute to its program. Let us join forces for the freedom of seed and reproduction and the freedom from GMOs and patents on life. Let us also make our message be heard [by] the representatives of governments as well [all] the people of the world."

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RICE FARMING

The older farmer, bent-backed in his worn work-clothes and muddy boots, comes at evening with his young son - who has dyed hair and wears flashy city fashions before his Saturday night date - to unload from the back of the old pickup the trays of rice shoots for planting in a couple of days on the paddy that is now just a sheet of sky-filled water, waiting.

They are a picture of what is happening here in the countryside of Japan - a scene straight from the ages those two, quietly carrying on with their work by the mountain field in the end of day—the father on one side of each tray, in his head perhaps thoughts of these mountains and this labor, memories of war and hunger - as spoken in his bent back - of perseverance and generations of seasons; on the other side stands his young son: well-nourished, modernly educated, immersed in nights of music and crowds and high-speed city life, now anxious in these moments with his father beside this way-up-here rice field because it's getting late on a Saturday night in the unknown matter of young life—

They are like two mutually alien creatures quietly circling, respecting each other for polar reasons: one not to insist too much on the finer points of farming-- for infrequently pondered and anyway incomprehensible reasons; the other to at least go along with the ritual, it won’t take long, the night is waiting...

It is like watching an ancient river slowly diverge, its flow dividing over a new topography of earth and dusk, of hands and life, seed and springtime, sustenance and education, enka and hip-hop, go and Grand Theft Auto, hard drives and tractors-- who can see and who can say which is the truer nourishment, the truer path, the one that leads to higher places?

Together the two men work, lifting the trays from the truck and arranging them by the paddyside, the older familiar with earth and time, the younger trying to keep his clothes clean, not yet grasping what it means to have food four months from now, his body actions tacitly expressing puzzlement over the true value of this upmountain sheet of water, these repetitive tasks, that are somehow his heritage, as his father bends willingly again to this familiar routine, performed so many lifetimes before even his own, as the older man knows to his heart and hopes one day to pass on to his son, through these trays of life they carry together now...

The sunset panorama of the lake goes unnoticed for the task at hand-- it is only the work of moments; when next I look the two are gone, and there are long new rows of green life beside the water.

The young man, even if he goes away at last, and stays in the city - as so many of his farm generation are doing - may one day remember, perceive the heft of these moments, and return... If not to here, then to somewhere he will find that is as worthy - and if he is so fortunate, he will bring his growing child to lift up the other side.

ORGANIC HEIRLOOM SEEDS

In a can. At Everlasting Seeds

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And then there's Fedco Seeds...
(Check out the trees,
link found via this great article)

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And on the Darth end of the spectrum...

WINGLESS

The barn swallows are out in full now, filling the dusking sky with their chatter and stunning aerodynamics— but what is the value of those skills, exquisite as they are, compared to the ability to appreciate such beauty?

I watch here wingless, at least in fact (the least of our leasts), winged in a greater way than even those swallows, for I can behold their elegance above fresh-watered paddies lined with sprouts of rice, reflecting sunlit clouds that spell the sky with calligraphies silently relating the vastnesses of beauty occurring around this tenuous planet of ours, beauty that every concept of god falls far short of, once it is perceived... Now that's flying.

Here's hope for our fragile species, which long ago mysteriously pursued the wingless path...

From the Archives: May 2, 2002

HOW TO SWING A CAT

In the evening getting the kids to the table for supper I noticed that Haru the cat was inside the house playing with something over in the corner behind the trunk, I picked him up with my right hand, having a dishrag or a paper or something in my left, and sort of held the squirming beast in place with my left forearm as I headed to open the door to put him outside so we could eat in peace but the cat was playful, and grabbed my arm quite painfully with his claws, and I went OW! OW! OW! and pulled the arm away from him and held him out at a distance with the other hand, when I felt that he must have extremely long arms because though in my right hand he was still clawing my left forearm, and then I looked and saw that it hadn't been the cat, it was a large hissing beetle the cat had been playing with, that had fastened itself to the cat's hair in the righteous fury it was now taking out on my completely innocent forearm, and I was going OW! OW! OW! but had both hands full and couldn't put the cat down or it would understandably run upstairs and hide unreachably under the bed or worse, and so I couldn't get at the beetle, who was hissing pissed off pinching for all it was worth the tender skin of my as I say innocent forearm and I was going OW! OW! OW! and Keech was going WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? and so I started swatting at the beetle with the cat I happened to have conveniently at hand, swinging the cat in wider and wider arcs (note to cat swingers: it's hard to get pinpoint accuracy and solid impact from a cat; if you hold them by the scruff they tend to flop around when you swing them less than top speed at anything as small as even a large beetle, so you lose control on the first few swings, whereas swinging them by the legs or tail creates too great an arc so forget about accuracy; and if one is swinging a cat with any sense of urgency, one should ideally have a short stiff cat and a large target), trying for the very first time in my life to hit a beetle with a cat's head, though this fact was unobserved by me at the time, as I was still going OW! OW! OW! as the beetle went HISS! HISS! HISS! and Keech went WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? and the cat went YOW! YOW! YOW! what is this guy trying to do with me till finally I got the vectors together and swung the cat (thank god we have a living room big enough to swing one in) so that his head hit the beetle and knocked it off my forearm, altogether a very suitable YOWling HISSing OW-ing WHAT-ing bug adventure of another kind. The bite was not venomous, just a pinch, and so to dinner, cat and beetle not invited.

GETTING STIMULATED

When it comes to stimulation, often as not you'll find me first in line. I've got nothing against being stimulated, as long as it isn't by a government; that's like being stimulated by an oversized steam-driven contraption in desperate need of oil.

So I chuckled when I heard about the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, the Diebold president’s Surge-like plan to save the US economy from what he and his crew have done to it, by giving each not-yet-completely-broke citizen a nanodrop to put in their personal debt bucket-- if they don’t, under the circumstances, simply blow the check on a few cases of beer.

With a national debt in the trillions and a derivative threat of many more trillions, the crew call $300 an Economic Stimulus. (Those with qualifying income of less than $3000 [!] and tax liability of zero don’t get stimulated at all; somehow that makes a GOP kind of sense.)

I expected, though, since I’ve been living outside the country for the past 35 years, that I personally would not get stimulated in such a way. But not long ago I received one of those classy tear-along-dotted-lines-to-open letters from my relentless friend the IRS, addressed precisely to my foreign home, informing me of my possibly being entitled to a payment of anywhere from zero to $600 "plus additional amounts for each qualifying child.” In natural disbelief I looked the pulp document over carefully, searching for the must-be-there clause along the lines of “...those who have lived overseas for more than 34 years and have never paid any US taxes do not qualify for the Stimulus Payment, and will be liable for $10,000 or more in Life Elsewhere Tax for every year spent abroad.”

But I could find no sign of the naysay clause that characterizes hopefully scanned government/financial/insurance documents; there was nothing specifying my ineligibility, not even in the small print or between the lines. Can I therefore expect-- my “Net Income Tax Liability” being “Zero” (Foreign-Earned Income Exclusion) and my “Qualifying Income” being “At least $3000"-– a check from the IRS for this summer’s beer? According to this hedgy letter, I can.

Actually, I suspect I’ll get the old steam-delivered naysay clause instead of a check, but that's ok-- I’d rather not be stimulated by the G-device; who knows where it's been.

Anyway, E pluribus unum, Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes and so forth.

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In re which: How I Spent My Stimulus

Ah, the hope of Spring -
Gazing upon my new plums
as though the monkeys won't get them

WHO IS THAT GUY?

As I was going upstairs this afternoon I released one of the Olympian belches in which I take understandable pride, the reverberatory qualities of the staircase giving the emission a power that surprised even me, and plunging me back in time to the life-changing moment during my college days - the Spring of ’65, I think it was – when I first encountered a fellow student I came to greatly admire, the guy who inspired me to take on the lifelong challenge that is The Way of the Belch.

I never spoke to him directly, since my ears were always ringing when I saw him, but like anyone else who ever spent any time in his vicinity I must have asked someone Who is that guy, because I seem to recall that his first name might have been Paul; in any case, his skill far outshone whatever mere human appellation it was that failed to capture the reality. I’m sure many others from those university days remember the fellow; his presence, when he imposed it, was impossible to ignore.

My first and unforgettable experience of his vicinity was in the jam-packed Washington Tavern late on a Friday afternoon, when the uproar of intense student conversation was suddenly rendered churchlike by a sound that resembled an F-14 taking off with afterburners, just a short distance away. Whoever had emitted it must be writhing on the floor with internal injuries.

Ears ringing, I turned in reflex toward the source of the awesomeness, and beheld an unassuming guy standing there with a bland look on his face and a just-emptied glass of draft beer in his hand. He was a tall, slim, pale, unassuming type of fellow, light brown hair cut short, plain half-sleeved shirt and chinos, geeky glasses, probably a business major, I wouldn’t even recognize him in the yearbook today; his skill was so overwhelming it seemed to erase physical particulars, or at least way minimize their importance.

On several occasions over the next few years I would be at a raucous party when, from somewhere in the deafening crowd came a deep, wide and rumbling, earsplitting eructation that brought the whole place to a standstill, jaws dropping in awe at what their owners had just heard, the ensuing silence slowly filling with Who is that guys. As time will have it, one day I graduated, and I have never heard the like since.

Deeply inspired by those thunderous experiences, over the years I have sought to approach that sonic summit. I haven’t done too badly at it, if I do say so myself; indeed, in the occasional delusion that time affords I’ve often even dared surmise that I might have equaled the master himself on one or two occasions. But if the truth be known, despite valiant effort I have never brought even a small noisy room to a standstill, let alone the entire Washington Tavern on a Friday afternoon during school year or its equivalent. That accolade still belongs for all eternity to Paul, if that’s his name, wherever he is and whatever he’s doing for a living now, with whichever distant secondary skill he’s fallen back on. I can’t imagine he ever stayed silent, though, given the magnitude of his mastery; he’s likely brought quite a few board meetings to a standstill.

Funny, the memories that can roar out of the silence on a Spring afternoon almost half a century later.

He means so much,
little bird singing
in the morning sun

EYES AND OAK

As hinted at in various of these eclectic chronicles, the experiences of a freelance editor attempting to live in simple modernity out in the Japanese countryside can be surreal when the simple and modern converge head-on (in my head) at times such as today, when, after splitting a stack of firewood in the cool of the morning I came into the house to have at the waiting stack of pages and had to get at the grain of the suggestion that monocular diplopia arises from secondary astigmatism in combination with spherical aberration, whereas monocular triplopia arises from trefoil in combination with spherical aberration.

As the two experiences blend organically in said head, at some deeper level that I have no time to fathom at the moment I surmise that both diplopia and triplopia have much in common with cherry bark and the grain of oak. I’ll get out my mental wedge later and see if this mindwood will split and dry, make a viable flame.

From the Archives: April 6, 2002

MEANDERING

Coming back from the local country dentist (who is a very good dentist by the way, and cares much about his patients as individuals, unlike the high-turnover blurry dentists in the assembly line at the big clinic way up in a high building in the heart of the city), I decided not to take the main and faster highway back home, but to meander a bit in search of the kind of moments one can only come upon in mid-meander, and so took the narrow winding road along the Lake.

I would thereby also get to see the old thatched-roof cottage again, where the beauty of its aged wood and the stone path to the door were discreetly revealed by elegant bamboo fences and the gracefully sloping arms of ancient red pines, and I could feel that old spirit, one of those last embers of the old Japan, like sitting close to a fading loved one, moving closer to a dying fire.

It was a beauty of a day, more like spring than early February, the Lake on my left meandering too (large bodies of water pretty much do as they wish), along the very road, elbowing in where it could its sapphire beauty. I tended to go slowly, it's impossible to meander at high speed, and anything more than an amble is a waste of meander. So I often had to pull over to allow passage of folks bizarrely in a hurry on a slow road, likely in haste as well to get through life itself.

Then I was at the turnoff for home, and hadn't seen the old cottage, so I turned around and went back. In its discreetness, the shy place sometimes evades the seeker with the mildest distraction. I looked carefully, but still couldn't find it; then I found that where it had been was now a pile of dirt and rock and torn-up moss with a caterpillar tractor beside it, all surrounded by a temporary fence.

The centuries-old red pines were gone, the moss-bordered stone pathway was gone, the thatched roof was gone, the old house was gone. I felt my throat close up, it was very like a death I was feeling, that I would never see that old house again and wonder at its history and be inspired, or admire the beauty of its building, sense the strength of its long long time right there before me now.

Likely there would be a quick new factory-made lakeside cottage going up there soon, take a couple of weeks to build, model B perhaps, maybe model D. Thus do souls starve and die, in worlds without spirit.

SISYPHUS AND I

As Sisyphus would tell you, if he weren’t busy at the moment, wrestling with a rock is unlike any other activity. First of all, right up front, rocks are the most conservative entities in existence. Resistant to change of any kind, they hate to move, they are monumentally stubborn (granite, adamant etc.) and they are way more familiar with forever than we are.

As I live on a mountainside, ever since I got it into an opaque part of my mind to straighten a protrusion in the stone wall out front (thereby widening our driveway by a meter or so and easing the qualms of Echo whenever she has to back the car in), I have acquired a new sympathy for and kinship with the guy who metaphorizes the hopeless task, having now myself sought to move a giant rock on a mountainside without the aid of any power other than my own muscle, simple leverage of all kinds and my expanding array of international imprecations. But no TNT or power shovels, so the Big Sis and I are still in the same ballpark.

We mythoguys have this funny characteristic: we tackle life's series of rock-moving type jobs all powered up with internal bluster, confident in our ability to get a simple brute-force, all-muscle task done before lunch, the same characteristic that got the Big Sis to where he is today, somewhere on that slope up there. It's a powerful quality, until it leaves the rails. Thus it was that from the toolshed I selected the little handpick and the big prybar, that should do it, and went off to address the pushover.

I’ve never seen a handpick look so toylike so fast, or a heavy duty prybar bend that much. Turned out that the rock, which I've discovered is a member of the Stonehenge family, was no mere surface presence. Apart from its granitic heft, it had an iceberg quality in that so much more of it was underground than above. I had to dig to find out just how far toward New York it went.

Three noons later I'm Sisyphizing out here atop Gibraltar, surrounded by prybar, wooden timbers, a steel beam, two saws, rope, chain, the car jack, a shovel, a full-sized pick, a scythe, another empty water bottle, piles of dirt and rocks and even the comically tiny handpick way over there where I threw it, wiping away sweat, wringing out the towel and admiring the hole I’ve dug beside this distant cousin of the Washington Monument. Before too long after my nap, I’ll be able to topple this baby, maybe as much as a centimeter.

I'll get the pyramids done tomorrow, before lunch.

INTREPID GREEN

This morning after I had motorcycled down to the station I was putting the lock on the rear wheel when I noticed a frog on the rear carrier, where he stood staunchly facing the rear, bulgy eyes blinking rapidly and looking as though he had just swallowed a lifetime.

No wonder-- he’d come all the way down the mountain with me. He’d been up there living his hoppy morning life, enjoying the peaceful blue of a clear dawn from a splendid chrome promontory in froggy solitude, when everything at once began roaring and bouncing around-- then the whole world took off, and he hadn’t even lifted a leg.

Turning toward the rear so as to streamline the wind, it was the first time he’d ever traveled backward, the first time he’d ever stood in place and seen his entire environment moving away from him, the whole mountain (there are mountains!) slip away behind him (there is a past!) into the sky as we descended. The radical effects of these phenomenal changes on the corpus of frog thought are simply unfathomable.

What we can say, with a good deal of certainty, is that the green pioneer was the first of his generation to travel at 40 mph, the first to get to the bottom of the mountain, the first to travel a highway, survey a parking lot, and countless other achievements as yet unrecorded in amphibian archives. No wonder he was standing so staunchly, blinking so hard. Frogically speaking, it must’ve been like getting a Nobel, a Pulitzer and an Oscar all at once.

Now that he’s all puffed up at having joined the ranks of the intrepid, he probably won’t be there this evening, but if he is, I’ll double his achievements by giving him a ride back to whence he first set out, where he can spend the rest of his life as a green Marco Polo. No one will believe him, either.

RETROBRADY

I've decided to use the top of the sidebar to go back in age-time, a la Ronni Bennett, so I'm posting/interpolating chronologically retro photos of yours truly as and when I have time to dig them out of the photo archives scattered here and there in my eclectic environment...

NEVER TRUST YOUR OVERSEAS REAL ESTATE FRIEND

Many near-pensioners and youngers in the US are thinking of moving abroad to where they can live well on less income (e. g., shrinking pensions) while paying no (or minimal) US taxes. Here is some invaluable advice for those folks:

"Buying and even shopping for real estate in another country takes nerve. The rules of engagement are completely different than back home. To be successful, you’ve got to arm yourself well in advance with an understanding of how this game is played.

The first thing to know is that the real estate agent is not your friend.

I’ve worked with real estate agents in dozens of countries. They are all friendly guys, and most are good company. I even keep in regular contact with some and value those relationships. But none of those things changes the fundamental truth about real estate agents in developing, unregulated markets: They’re wolves.

Stepping into a real estate agent’s office in these countries, you’re stepping into the wolf’s den. Believe me when I tell you that, when it comes to business (that is, the purchase of real estate), the agent you’re working with is not working for you. Buyers' agents don’t exist outside of North America. In many of the markets I recommend, real estate agents aren’t regulated or even licensed. The guy showing you around could have been a travel agent in Iowa three months ago.

Furthermore, not only are these guys not working for you...but they’re not working for the seller, either. They are working for themselves, and their goal is to extract as much commission out of you as they can. Understand that going into the conversation, and you stand a much better chance of coming out of it uncheated.

Here are some other tips to help your search go smoothly:"

From long experience, I can vouch for the truth of this advice. Invaluable for the now or future international resident, or traveler, from the excellent resource International Living.

Via

Bright sadness
laces the morning air -
cherry petal journeys

EVEN JAPANESE "ORGIES"
ARE...
WELL...
POLITE, DISCREET...

AND EXTREMELY WELL ORGANIZED...[NSFW]

THE BRADY WORKSPACE

I Sing the Body Eclectic
as posted earlier on Where Elders Blog

THE BIG NICKEL

Yesterday was one of those splendid spring days, as I noted wistfully, peeping at the merest slit of it through the blinds in the office, thinking "this is typical office weather" and wishing I were at home to enjoy the beauty of blue sky, warm sun, balmy breeze, the fragrance of the actual earth...

Then this morning on a day I was spending at home it was cloudy and threatening to rain and I thought: "typical at-home weather, this kind of weather is office weather, seems it always happens this way, why couldn’t today have been yesterday?"

But then, my mind plunging offroad on its own as it is sometimes wont to do when I let go of the reins, I remembered last Thursday when I had to go to the office it was raining torrents, and I’d thought: "Boy, I’d sure rather stay home today, curl up with a good book and listen to the rain." Of course, the nickel rarely drops at such times, even though it’s one of the biggest nickels ever minted: the fact that it isn’t the weather I’m complaining about, it’s the office.

For the truth is that, rain or shine, I’d rather be at home than in an office, because as the increasingly looming presence of the huge nickel indicates, humans were not meant to be in offices: they were not meant to sit in, work in, anything in, offices; they were designed, physically, mentally and spiritually, to be out in the world beyond windows and blinds. All other behavior is acquired, including the inability to reflexively drop the big nickel.

A love for Structured Investment Vehicles, for example, is not inborn, as is, say, the desire to sit under a leafy tree in a flowering meadow and let one’s thoughts run free, preferably napward. Practical complaints about the weather have always been with us, from the time we stared out of caves at the rain all the way until we invented the plow and beyond, but it wasn’t until modern times that we were pavloved into big-nickel retention.

BORN AGAIN, A LITTLE

No, not that born again; this born again is considerably less virtual, though I’ve never been a big fan of virtuality anyway. The fact of the matter is, I’ve been attempting to leave First Life to enter Second Life where I can visit my brother Mick, who as a virtual big wheel spends a lot of time there.

I wasn’t looking forward to learning to walk again, but it couldn’t be harder than the first time. Anyway, I’d checked out Second Life a long time before out of curiosity, joined, downloaded, named my avatar and so forth, but fact was I always rathered spend my time in First Life, which was no surprise; somehow I was born with a preference for actuality. Who can explain such things, maybe it’s virtually genetic.

But then a month or so ago Mick, who flies around SL all the time and has a garageful of avatars, gave me an invite to see the island they were building in there, and the gallery he and others were constructing, as related on the collective blog Post Riders in the Sky. The virtual fotos Mick sent looked pretty impressive, so I girded my actual loins to set forth once more into the pixelian ether and meet Mick there; clicked on the SL logo and was told my software was outdated.

I’m already familiar with outdated existential hardware, i.e., my First-Life avatar, but outdated existential software was new to me. Something like being a Manichaean, perhaps. So I downloaded the new software, which took so much time I left the computer running and went outside to split some firewood. No winter warmth in virtual flames, is there. Then I experienced actual hunger, followed by other editing work to do on the computer. Are there deadlines in Second Life?

A week or so later I had an hour or so to spare and went in again, this time descending from the heaven of here and now into a remodeled newbie circle where I was advised to finalize my avatar. Like I do this all the time. As I was trying back and forth to get my face right - a new problem - and then the hair (the haute couture would come later), I was distracted by events involving a female avatar from England who descended not long after me and was already walking pretty well but was being heavily hassled by a huge white racoon with brown rings, avatar of a guy who I guess spends a lot of his SL time at the newbie port trying to pick up avatar chicks, apparently to no avail. The uncool beast was typing his come-ons furiously at the v-lady while she was busy trying on new hair, he following her around like it was the last minute of happy hour, till at last she brushed him off with a toss of new hair and loped away through the SL portals, leaving him standing there typing insults that hung in the air like fat disappointments. I was still oddfaced, bald and dressed in black. Another timechunk shot.

Work to do in actuality, where yesterday, an actual-task-filled week later (office, freelance, firewood, garden, landscaping etc.) I entered SL again, having in the meanwhile pondered my moves, but they’d changed the visual layout once more. I was instructed to walk, which I did pretty well, to the appointed spot where I was told to pick up my torch, though there wasn’t a torch in sight. Just pick it up, just brush your hand over it the dead menu kept saying, but there was no torch. The instructional format reminded me strongly of Japanese traffic signage, which says things like “Turn left here for Highway #X,” with an oddly implicit (haragei?) “not HERE, the NEXT street”… too late, you’re on the expressway to China. Guidance meant for locals, who don’t need it.

Meanwhile a guy avatar had just descended from Germany and was bouncing around beside me saying “I don’t get it, do you get it? How do you do this? I can’t do this!” but I couldn’t write yet, and anyway had no answers, I could hardly walk. I was trying to focus on picking up a torch that wasn’t there, or maybe turn my shirt red. Anything.

Then a female avatar descended from Sweden right in front of me and within 30 seconds had a torch in her hand. I didn’t see how she did it, it was suddenly just there and she was waving it around like she was the inyerface statue of liberty or something; I have to say I was virtually peeved. Are the instructions clearer in Swedish? The German guy was still jumping around asking questions. I got my shirt 10% red but it wouldn’t get any redder, like so many shirts in my life, so I gave up on that and the hair and face, who cares anyway what I virtually look like, I can’t do much about it in First Life either, though at least I have a completely red shirt here.

To be continued at some point--

ISHIYAMA-DERA

Some photos from our recent visit to Ishiyama-dera, one of our favorite local places, posted on before...

NORTH PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH



"What people don’t get is that it’s not really a patch and it’s not really an island, both of which you might be able to contain and control. No, what we found is much worse. It’s like a gigantic toxic stew..."

---Searching out the Pacific Ocean's mythical floating trash heap.

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