WAITING FOR THE LIGHT

On a drive down to the lakeside road early Saturday morning, I was waiting for the village traffic light to change when I saw a boy on his way from the train station to the junior high school, also waiting for the light to change.

He was standing there alone in his world, as we all do at such times. Wearing his sports uniform, apparently on his way to practice, he began to do incipient teenagey things: wriggle one shoulder, then the other, making his uniform fit his new body more perfectly, then flicking his head this way and that to fling his hair into the just-right random position, then fingering his forelock to casual perfection, tweaking his posture, fiddling with all those things I remember fiddling with back at that age, not possibly decades ago.

Leaving the uneasy edge of certain childhood and entering the bewildering dawn of the outer self-- what a journey that was: standing this tall for hours in front of mirrors, pursuing the unattainable form in the ideal shirt, perfect pants of precise fit, these shoes and no others, all of a style that would last forever, every waking moment the focus of a new-life look at this historic and invaluable instant: gleaming shoes, hair combed per minute, rat-tail comb in pegged pants back pocket, as I recall in flashes...

Then three junior high girls from the train came up quietly behind the boy and stood there at a discreet distance, remaining silent lest he turn and behold them and then what, and began doing the female version of the same choreography of hair care and mini-twerks, not one of the four wondering, any more than anyone does at that age (and beyond), "What is causing this odd behavior? Why am I doing these things?" These are not questions we get to ask, or even conceive of-- until perhaps decades later, while maybe waiting for the light...

Cultures are formed around these cosmos-driven, reflexy things. If we were placed in full charge of them we would never have evolved this far, let alone have developed the simple, cogitative, aggregative sapience that evolution has permitted us, assuaging some living need in us to deal - if only in a limited way - with such fundamental concepts as sex, subsistence and society, all of which we're still having global problems with. We are new to this, after all; as a species, we're not even out of beta yet, really...

Those tweaking, flicking, twerking kids are doing big work.

Don't Get Me Started

"'A report by Internet firm GMO Cloud characterises the difference as "self-escapism versus self-expression.' 

True or not, Grand Theft Auto is undoubtedly violent, especially when compared to Nintendo's award-winning 'Animal Crossing: New Leaf,' in which players take on the role of a mayor running a rural community. 

By contrast, past versions of Grand Theft Auto have included simulated sex with prostitutes and drunken driving, along with profanity-packed dialogue. Carjacking, gambling and killing are the staples of a game in which players take on the role of a psychopathic killer in fictional Los Angeles.'"

Excerpted from: Japan's gaming market is a world apart

What could be more socially instructive, more physically developing, more spiritually uplifting and exemplary, more all-around self-building, than hours, days, weeks, years, even decades on the couch of good healthy murder, joystick virtual sex with prostitutes, gambling, carjacking and DUI as fast mindfood, all while being a genuine psychopathic killer? Some paths just have to lead upward.

Can't wait for GTA XXV!

SQUIRRELS' EARS AND RELATED MATTERS 

The old Iroquois gardening rule-of-thumb says to plant your corn when the oak leaves are the size of squirrels' ears, which is a lot easier to remember than where you put the almanac, and makes seeds happier I suppose, but there aren't any squirrels around here, so the old saying wouldn't be much use in this neighborhood unless like me you're from New York and can remember squirrels' ears. But I gave up planting corn here even before I gave up planting onions. I wouldn't think of leaving that tall, delicate, long-growing vegetable at the mercy of certain natural neighbors, having so many times beheld where a lamented vegetable had been growing until but a moment ago...

What got me thus tangentially started on this is that the squirrels' ear thing now relates to the character of my daily existence in another, technological way: when my oak leaves are the size of squirrels' ears, I begin to lose my satellite tv signal. Kind and thoughtful friends say Why not just move your dish? True, I could do that, it might work, for a while. Corporate types suggest that I cut down the damn trees, clear the sky of pesky verdure or just take charge, get real: get cable! I could do those things as well; such thoughts crossed my mind, a time ago. But I don't live in that mind anymore.

What those folks don't seem to understand is that if I do either of those things I would have year-round, 24-hour access to what juridical bodies with corporate taste offer as factual perspectives on socioeconomic events occurring around the world, or as their idea of what is marketably entertaining, and I don't think I could stand that for long.

Pale bean stems miracling up out of the ground; the bite of new radish leaves; the rush of ripe plums: now that's news. More trees leafing, barn swallows whirling, frog on the window: that's entertainment.

YOU HAVEN'T BEEN LISTENING

When you're talking to yourself and you realize you haven't been listening, then one or both of you has to make an adjustment. Either you have to become more interesting, less of a mealy-mouthed drone and more of a discerning speaker with a spellbinding style that captivates you, or you have to learn how to pay considerate attention and listen intelligently, instead of mind-meandering all over the place while you're trying to make a point.

Conversely, you can maybe stop talking to yourself so much and start talking more to other distinctly individual persons, or you can just shut up for a while and see if you feel like you're really missing anything. Maybe in the meanwhile take some elocution classes, or join a listening-impaired focus group. Or both.

This realization came to me yesterday when I was soloing the usual drive along the Lake and got to speaking out loud on something I was thinking about, when at some point realized I wasn't listening to what I'd been saying (merely polite and distracted responses), like I was some obnoxious chatperson on the train I had to indulge-- and I was doing it all by myselves.

We truly do like solitude, but we can go too far.

NEWSPAPER LONGEVITY RAMBLE

This morning on the train I realized - because of the guy sitting next to me irritatedly rattling his precious newspaper - that his irritability, hence his rattling and reading routine, had something to do with his age, which was near my own (68) but, being of the old Japan school, he was much more regimented, which can make you grumpy, ask any Marine in basic training.

His paper had to be just so before he could even begin to read the article he had finally managed to topographically isolate, whereas I, who was reading a book (so simple to manage, so long lasting, so quiet!), am by intention a much less regimented individual, owing not only to my innate love of the eclectic, but also to my hyper-regimentative experience in Catholic school and the military, so have been spending the rest of my certifiably graduated and honorably discharged life pretty much relaxing, figuratively chewing on a hayweed as I stroll along life’s expressways in my trusty highway shoes, musing on modern life as it races by...

Anyway, at the long rattle I looked up from my book and got to thinking, did a quick little social analysis using the demographic sample at hand, and noted that newspaper reading is becoming entirely an enterprise of elder males. They were the only newspaper readers; elder males who were not reading a newspaper were asleep. In contrast, younger males who were awake were smiling or scowling into cell phones for whatever news was there, as were the younger women; the very few elder women were all asleep; they don’t usually read newspapers on the train anyway, that’s always been more of a male thing (and no longer much of a younger male thing). Fewer elder women also stare into cell phones, though they have them.

No one was reading a book except me, morning train oddball in many regards. For example, I’m one of the last commuters in Japan who doesn’t have a cell phone, which nowadays is like saying I don’t have a liver. Anyhow, it appears that newspaper reading is going to die out when these elder fellows retire, if not sooner. Cell phones are so much easier to hold with one hand when straphanging, and you don’t have to - as with a newspaper - fold them overandoverandover with geometric precision so as not to cause offense to neighbors, other than with that insufferable racket right in the ear of the guy sitting next to you trying to concentrate on his book.

I’m also one of the few elder guys who isn't grumpy on the morning train without good reason.

WHERE IS THE WILD?

"I love the wild not less than the good," said Henry, in the Higher Laws chapter of Walden, and "In wildness lies the preservation of the world." Henry was wild about wilderness, just couldn't stop talking about it one way or another, and who can blame him, he saw it disappearing.

But that was a long time ago, over 150 years now. The interesting thing is that even back then, when the wild must have still been pretty much all over the place, Henry was already condemning its decline, already lamenting the relentless incursion of the artifactual.

His were admirable early sentiments, though they fell on mostly deaf ears in those times of righteous conviction regarding clearcutting of the greater soul. Walden wasn't a big success until well after the results of manifest destiny had become manifest.

Since then, it seems we still haven't realized that the outer wild is the counterpart, the balance, to the wild we carry in ourselves, in every cell and sinew in our bodies; remove the wild from our outer lives and in our hearts and souls we suffer, our compass goes awry. All who still revere the wild know this, as Henry did; he recognized it as the greater part of the soul. So now, some 150 years later, where has it gone? Is it out on the lawn? On the hiking trail? In the Winnebago window, the satellite image, nature video, national park, endangered species, inner child, urban shaman, modern warrior, rabid zealot? Is it caught on the Net? Can it be seen with commuter eyes?

In our nowadays, with government keeping us anxious about government, business keeping us unbalanced and selling us the next step at a discount, the further we get from whatever wild there once was, and the more we are isolated and channeled by the careers, garments, incomes, appliances, habits, sciences, arts, rebellions, religions, schools of thought and mannered ways we think comprise us, the less we are the creatures of creation, one thrust of all the universe, and the more we are the static but remarkably lifelike exhibits in that big fancy museum of our own construction we call modern life.

Commensurately, the less informed we are by what is ever ongoing in the currents of the universe: the sun that is shining, tides that are flowing, moon rising, spiraling stars, galaxies whirling, blooms that are opening, seeds that are falling, scattering on all the winds and swelling with the rain; we are no longer fed by the wild, that in us is ferally fertile, and so do not germinate, let alone grow into what we were all engendered for, which is beyond dimension, in the seed of wildness.

Mostly as published in Kyoto Journal #62

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.

ILLUSIONS OF DEMENTIA, VIRTUAL GRANDMOTHERS, CENTENARIAN RECIDIVISTS, ELDERPUNKS

In re my earlier rant about Japan driving and licenses, due to time, space and wannadoo restraints I never got around to saying that during the boring lecture the bored lecturer said one unboring thing that made me perk up in my seat: henceforth, all drivers 70 years or older must be tested on a simulated driving device.

Looking around, he added that, given this young audience, the requirement clearly wouldn't be a problem for us for a while, which was flattering, since I'm 67 and look weeks younger, but the law knows nothing of flattery, I've tried it on arresting officers any number of times.

The fact is, in three years I shall be required to stand in line at the police station with the other newly doubtful folk waiting to take an electronic drive like at the game arcade, though in this case to test our reaction skills they'll presumably toss virtual grandmothers, dogs and schoolchildren out in front of the virtual car and check how quickly we hit the brakes or, if worst comes to worst, the gas. I'll be virtually ready to wheelie my way out of trouble, lay some virtual rubber on the virtual road.

On the other hand, both hands on the wheel, I read yesterday about a 100-year-old recidivist cruiser in Japan who was arrested for the second time for driving without a license - after it had been revoked following a hit-and-run accident a few months previously - when the car he was driving struck the umbrella of a schoolkid standing on the side of the road. The elderpunk's excuse was that "Driving helps me from going senile because it keeps me alert." He was clearly suffering from illusions of dementia. Alarmingly, however, the article also stated that "Starting in 2009, drivers over age 75 in Japan will be required to get checkups for dementia when they renew their licenses."

For my part, all I can say is good thing they're not checking earlier...

THE GAME

The kid in the grade school uniform gets on the train in the mornings as part of the crowd and maneuvers expertly to be the first to stand beside the only guy in the car who will be getting off at the next stop, making the seat available. This is commuting 101, but somehow every day the kid beats all the experienced grownups.

At first I thought: that kid is on the ball for his age, he's figured out the Game already, he bests all the professional commuters who get on at the same station and who, despite the fact that they take the train every day, don't seem to be paying attention, never seem to become aware that this guy in the seat next to me always gets off at the next stop after they get on, so they could quickly have a seat all the way to BigCity.

The kid runs sometimes to beat others to the spot, or just gets to the station early so he can be at the head of the boarding line, but even then he runs to stand beside the seat to be certain to get it first as soon as it's vacated, and if for some reason he isn't first he slowly maneuvers until he is; he's small, and none of the big people notice him wedging his way in there. He's only eight or nine, but he's already an ace at the game, the big folks standing all the way while he gets the seat next to me and plays a video game, reads a comic book until it's time for him to get off and go to school.

At first I had to admire him for his skill at the game at his age, how that skill would stand him in good stead as he commuted through life, but the more I thought about it the darker it got. This is no way for a kid to live, these are not the things a kid should strive for and weave the fabric of his being from, no way for a kid to learn or to grow up, already getting good at the Game among all these dour faces.

But maybe it's me, maybe it's just because I never liked the Game. When I was a kid, I disliked just about every aspect of the Game, from uniforms and schedules, rules and rote manners, upward to suits and ties and getting ahead, rungs up the ladder to higher income before I outgo; making connections, getting in the right places, knowing the right people, making the right career moves and so on, keeping my true opinions to myself so that the "prizes" would be mine, but for some reason they never appealed to me, those prizes, any more than the whole endeavor did; so, beyond getting into and out of college for the sake of the knowledge - not the career path - I never played the Game, never got wrapped up in it at any stage. So I suppose that colors my thoughts.

This kid is trapped though. He is deep in the Game already, so deep in it and so good at it that as he grows into the Big Who of himself he'll be one of the best around, may never have an inkling that there is a profound and genuinely meaningful alternative, let alone find the ability to break away into a world where he can fully exist - he'll learn nothing of that from school or dogma, peers or society... He may well spend his life on such demeaning tasks as being first in one line or another, on weighing the worth of his life in mean scales...

In time, he will perhaps acquire a professional command of mediocrity, like so many of today's politicians. He may look back over his life and passively wonder what it is that's missing from that perfectly straight line he has traced with his being-- unless somehow he finds the power to take his own direction, follow his own lead, though that gets less likely every day he notches up a small, dark victory. Perhaps video games will be his doorway...

Later I came across this article in the Chicago Times that had this subtitle: "Defying the group is a noble, necessary American tradition." In it was this line: "Once upon a time, each American's objective was to become an individual."

THE DEPTHS OF HIGH OFFICE,
or
EVERYTHING MUST HAVE A BOTTOM

In looking at some of the electoids currently holding high office here and there in the world under the rubric of democracy, it's often difficult to credit the contention that a presumably educated, presumably discerning, presumably informed electorate actually searched among themselves, looked into their souls, culled out certain especially able individuals, carefully assessed them, then voted to elect them - over others of equivalent caliber - to serve as the governmental representatives of all.

I sense I'm giving far too much credit to the electorate concept, but what the hell. Even so, that such a process could result in certain of the leaders currently bulling in the world china shop is quite a distance beyond comprehension. Could any first-world polity truly be that uneducated, that undiscerning, that uninformed? (Or that misled?)

Of course, since strictly local representatives reflect their local electorate, it's understandable that some local officials could be far below par; such examples come easily to mind when considering the US congress, for example. As Honest Abe was aware, there are some people you can fool all of the time. But If Darwin's evolution really works, those folks would never grow to comprise a national majority, so how can the basement floor become the ceiling? If Abe and Chuck are wrong about this, the world is in big trouble.

But even though the world as we know it may be ending, let me pause here to point out how nonetheless astonishing it is that, once elected to congresses, senates, parliaments and whatnot, these electoids further select from among themselves some of their number to serve in even higher positions of important public trust, such as speaker of the house, minister of justice, minister of defense etc., who in fact are no such things. This phenomenon goes by the name democracy, but surely it must be something else. Cryptosomnolence, perhaps?

On the other hand, if every cycle must have a bottom, and if the present depth determines the subsequent peak, then the world has a few Everests in the offing, so maybe we should appreciate this current crop of electoids for the breathtaking heights (tsunamis?) they're about to beget.

So if history is any guide, I think I'll just leave this beaten path and head on up into these sparsely inhabited mountains for an unspecified duration...

MINDWEND

Driving down the mountain last night in the 5:30 darkness I had to wend my way through hundreds of junior-high kids in their Russo-Japanese war military uniforms mobbing the road from their school, and as I was wending my mind wended too, wondering if these kids ever connected with the short-lived military victory implied in their 100-year-old uniforms, and then it said: these kids are getting out of school at 5:30? After dark? Then it remembered that that never happened when I was a kid; back in those days (how can only yesterday be history?), school events happened strictly in school time, never in life time (apart from some pleasurable activities like sports games and dances); anyway, I bet these kids can really read and write and do math and know history (such as their government chooses to teach it) and geography, and they sure didn't look grumbly or complainy about the long hours they'd just put in, they didn't look down-in-the-life like their fathers do heading home from an office at 11 pm, they were having a good time, brief as it might be, things are gonna get harder for them, in Japan it gets pretty dog-eat-dog in high school and beyond, but they're up for it, looks like; then down at the station the guys, now out of sight of school, precisely lowered their pants to mid-hip so as to look like US rapper wannabee imitations of ghetto kids imitating beltless high security prisoner icons of multiple felony coolness, so cultures aren't all that separate anymore, or as discerning as we like to think, bet these kids can't read or write as well as their parents, then this morning I saw a couple of older kids by the art college spraying each others' spiked hair red before going to class and I thought that maybe from now on kids will do what they want with their lives and it's gonna get dark a lot earlier than anyone expected, though that view may just be an increasingly functionless byproduct of my antique education, like my fountain pen...

SOCIETY ON THE MARCH

While arranging my chair on the deck prior to my evening post-woodsplitting glass of wine, I notice an odd smudge on the deck floor. Leaning closer, I see that it is actually a mass perturbation in the long excursion of a tribe of tiny red ants. I follow the formic safari three or four meters back along the deck, the stream being but a narrow red vein (and hard to see against the stained wood of the deck), except for that patch of chaos beneath my chair where, perhaps, they are debating the wisdom of this move. The trail traces back to where the line emerges from a space between two deck boards, the long red line apparently climbing up from the ground along one of the deck posts.

Curious about where in their world the thousands or millions could be going, I note that after passing beneath me (an hour later they are still going by, in undiminished numbers) they make a sharp turn at a serendipitously fallen weeping-cherry stem that directs them toward their new nirvana, the Heavenly Bamboo growing up through a square hole in the deck. They disappear down into the far corner of the square.

At first glance, I thought maybe they were marauding and had found a massive cache of goodies, such as our honey or my gumdrop stash. A closer look with a magnifier (these ants are really tiny) however, reveals that they aren't carrying any luggage or goodies at all, excepting quite a few marchers who are all carrying identical white nanodots, which, given their uniformity, must be the tribal eggs. I also notice that quite a few of the ants are traveling purposefully in the direction opposite that of the horde. Some of those, too, are carrying eggs. There's always a few who haven't a clue...

The odd thing is that about an hour ago, while still splitting wood pre-wine, I picked up from the ground an old roof tile that had fallen from its place in holding down the tarp on a half-cord of wood I'd stacked in front of the deck. When I picked the tile up, I saw that the underside was entirely covered, to a depth of ½ cm, in tiny red ants, who had been using the tile as a way station on their journey.

Before placing the tile back atop the tarp where it belonged, I tapped it on the ground and all the ants fell off in a seething red pile, an event that must've made local ant headlines. That was about 10 meters from the point at which the ants were now emerging from the deck on their sunset pilgrimage. Could they possibly be the same ants (fast moving!), or are such ants generally on the move hereabouts?

Right beneath me a vast society is on the move in its entirety; countless individuals have picked up their lives by the roots, burned their equivalent of bridges and set out for regions far beyond my chair, carrying all they possess of the past and the future-- a radical transformation, all without complaint, or even a sound. Still they issue from their source in silence...

Why they didn't traverse the shorter distance along the ground beneath the deck, or - if they're the tile ants - a straight line to where they're going, a MUCH shorter distance from the tile epoch than the long roundabout route they're taking (with the added hazard of this big wine-sipping human stepping over their invisible trail) is a question best asked of their leaders, as we humans fruitlessly do of our own politicians. "We are committed by fiat to this course of action; it would be unpatriotic to refuse to follow in the tracks of those brave individuals who are so selflessly sacrificing their lives to advance our cause..." etc. (Even though it's 10 times harder than the smart way, or can never be achieved at all.) In the ant world, as in the human, evidence of leadership or impressively manipulable mannequinship should not be mistaken for wisdom.

I notice the ants are still at it, as the light wanes... So are we.

A PUZZLING LACK OF RUBBER SNAKES

I’ve given up on growing slow-swelling onions, at least until (if ever) I move or build my mountain garden stalag, but some kind of madness comes over me each Spring and I cannot help myself: I plant tomatoes, the first garden plant I grew when I was a kid. For me, there is no kitchen garden without tomatoes, even if I don't get any of them. According to my careful statistical calculations, there's a reasonable (but not necessary) possibility that I'll get to the tomatoes before the monkeys do; it happens sometimes, the same way people find large gold nuggets sometimes, as earlier this Spring with my mushrooms.

Tomatoes grow fast and abundantly, and even though there's a good chance I'll get some of them, maybe even most of them, to better my odds I surrounded the tomato plants with takanotsume (hawk's talon) plants, the small but prolific hot Japanese red pepper, just to see if their flaming presence had any deterrent effect on the red-faced monkey tomato thieves.

Another trick I think would work is to put one or two brightly realistic rubber snakes among the tomato plants, since monkeys go bats at the sight of snakes (love to be on hand to see the effect of that!), but for some interesting reason, realistic rubber snakes are not easy to come by in Japan, where it would appear they could be most beneficial. This brings to mind Japan's serious lack of cherry pie. Now that I think of it, I have never seen a realistic rubber snake in Japan. Rubber snakes of whatever kind have never played any noticeable part in Japanese society that I can recall, as they do in the West, from the toy and practical joke level to serious realistic snake collecting. I must investigate this, not only for the cultural aspect, but more importantly for the sake of access to the tomatoes of tomorrow.