FENCES IN THE HEAD

What does it mean, bottom line, to be from a country? Even more bottomly, what does it mean to be from a planet? Wherever you were born, wherever you grew up - your “home” country - is but an atom on a mote on this dust-speck in the cosmos we designate by a primal breathsound "erth," our only home so far, excluding asteroid transport to our fledgling lifeless planet of enzyme building blocks, at which timepoint we anyway had no opinion as to the all of it all. Ultimately, though, because of us and our inner horizons, that dust-speck holds profound meaning for the entire cosmos, even if we are alone.

For my small part, while I’m here and moving around I try not to be misguided or feel controlled by passports, visas, borders, boundaries etc., which are after all virtual fences designed to keep others out, which would be bad enough in a happy society (the hopeful fruit of evolution), but even worse, in our currently diverse societies they’re often serving to keep us in.

Whether we know it or not, or even think about it, we transcend territory by an infinite range, yet still we have fences and borders. We abstract them into the skies and into the sea and earth, as well as in the South and North Poles, and beyond even those dimensions we carry ancient, locally built stone fences in our heads.

Seems impossibly distant, but one day, one day...

GLAD TO BE BACK

I was in LA for an hour or so this morning; glad to be back on a mountainside in rural Japan, I realized, as I stepped out onto the deck into cool air and birdsong, summer green on every side except for the ice blue of the Lake down there, dotted with green islands beneath tomorrow’s LA sky. A little bit of the traveler’s singular homesickness left me. 

I’d spent that earlier time googlemapping my way around several nice areas in LA, looking for places where I'd spent some time in my travels, but those old places were gone; they’re all new places now. I also wandered among areas where Kasumi and Krew are soon going to be living and moving around in for varying lengths of time, starting this summer and beyond, depending on the ultimate selection of scenarios...

Those sunbaked neighborhoods were generally pleasant, tranquil below their palm trees as I moved like a ghost along their streets and walkways, but to the me of now they were no longer places where I would reside... no people on the streets, just cars (Nobody Walks in LA, as the Missing Persons still sing so well), it all had that daytime noir feeling Chandler captured to classic effect in his scenes-- wonderful to remember, electric history, great to visit but not my place to live anymore...

My head was still in those places when I stepped out through the kitchen doorway onto the deck and found myself returned to this forested mountain with cool air and birdsong, summer green on every side except where the Big Lake is ice blue. Glad to be back.

Thanks for that, LA. You’re a fine, fine lady at night, though.

Expats and the Affordable Care Act

"A Doctor Explains: What the Affordable Care Act Means for Expats

By Timothy J. Garrett, MD, MBA

October 1, 2013 saw the beginning of the enrollment period for health coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Along with the news about glitches with the health care website came lots of questions for expats: Do expats have to enroll? Will there be penalties for expats who do not enroll? Even if expats are not required to enroll, is there a benefit to enrolling?

Here are three things that every expat should know in regards to the ACA:

1. U.S. citizens who are bona fide residents of a foreign country are not required to have health insurance as mandated by the ACA.In general, U.S. citizens living outside of the United States for at least 330 days in a given year and who meet the IRS requirements to be a bona fide resident of another country are exempt from the ACA. (You’ll find the full list of requirements for bona fide residence in Form 2555 on the IRS website.)
2. U.S. citizens living outside of the United States but who are not bona fide residents of a foreign country arerequired to have health insurance or face fines.
   If you:
   a) have told your country of residence that you are not a resident of that country
   and
   b) are not required to pay income tax in your country of residence,
   then you are not a bona fide resident of that country. 
   If you don’t meet these stipulations—or any of the other listed IRS requirements—and you do not purchase health insurance, then you could face fines in 2014 of $285 per family (US$95 for individuals)—or 1% of your income, whichever is the greater amount... That amount will rise to a whopping $2,085 per family (US$695 for individuals) or 2.5% of your income by 2016.
   To avoid these fines, it’s in your best interest to purchase at least minimum essential coverage.
   Good news if you are entitled to Medicare, however: Medicare qualifies as minimum essential coverage. If you’re eligible for Medicare, you won’t be at risk of fines.
3. It could make sense for you to have minimum essential coverage under the ACA even if you are a bona fide resident of another country.
   Many expats are fortunate to live in an area with high-quality, affordable, and easily accessible health care. Those who are bona fide residents don’t have to pay for health coverage in the U.S. But even if you are a bona fide resident of a foreign country, having extra cover in the U.S. could help you to secure your own peace of mind.
   If, for any reason, you think that you or your family might have health issues that will require treatment in the United States, it’s worth thinking about purchasing a low-premium/high-deductible U.S. plan that’s coupled with a medical evacuation policy. There are several medical evacuation companies that will provide evacuation from almost any location in the world to the U.S. hospital of your choice for a reasonable membership fee.

Next steps:

The most important things you can do next are to determine whether or not you are a bona fide resident of a foreign country...and then to carefully consider your personal needs and requirements for health care.

Then, if you find you’re required under the ACA to obtain health insurance or that your circumstances make U.S. health insurance a wise choice, the next step is to shop around for the insurance plan or medical evacuation membership that best fits your needs and budget. A trusted insurance advisor who is well versed in the intricacies of the ACA can help you find the exact U.S. coverage you need."

via International Living postcard

If It Hadn't Been for the Potato Famine

If it hadn't been for the potato famine I sure as hell wouldn't be here writing these lines, wherever they're leading, nor would my brother and sister be living their good lives in California and Florida, respectively, may their lives be full of joy, though if not for the Great Hunger that would be moot, would it not. In the current but limited understanding of the meaning of it all, nothing wonderful can happen to you if you haven't been born.

My mother and father, too, would not have been my parents without the potato famine, or even parents at all, if they themselves had not been been born from non-great grandparents who hadn't been birthable either, because their would-have-been parents, suddenly not suffering extreme starvation, thanks to complete faminelessness, were instead living good history in the bliss of a bounteous mid-19th century Ireland, prospering on a healthy diet - including potatoes - and having well-fed Irish families whose respective sons and daughters never met by chance in a tragic diaspora.

Centuries later, from the auld sod to a mountainside in Japan of all places - where as the traveler in the family I finally settled down - I think often of the sacrifice of those families back then who, after heart-rivening consideration, scraped hunger into pence and then into pounds to send off in steerage the healthiest, best-suited young family member, whom they would see nevermore but who might survive, sailing away beyond a life's horizon to the lowest rung of NYC, who then lived far enough along time's thread to meet and pass these genes down the unbroken line from all those folks who had gone before, whom I'll never know, though now and then I glimpse them in the mirror.

KYOTO JOURNAL DIGITAL NOW OUT!  

** Sign up for free issue **

The folks over at Kyoto Journal recently announced release of their 77th issue, after a long transition from print to digital (and a complete website rebuild). This puts KJ back on track as a quarterly publication providing "insights from Asia."

The 22 articles in this issue (200 pages+!) take readers beyond the ancient capital to Hiroshima, Tokyo and Fukushima, on to Korea, China, Nepal, Tibet, India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, delving into film and fiction, poetry, "off-the-beaten-track" travels, craft and calligraphy, architectural and archaeological investigations, yoga, post-disaster initiatives, and reviews, finishing up right here on Pure Land Mountain.

A KJ 77 sampler is available at: http://kyotojournal.org/current-issue-digital-edition/

And a full contents list, here: http://kyotojournal.org/current-issue-digital-edition/)

If you go to KJ's homepage, http://kyotojournal.org/, you can sign up for an occasional newsletter — and receive a free download of a classic issue, KJ 73.

A one-year subscription to KJ (4 issues) is just 4,000 yen.

TRAVELERS

Some say that the first half of life is spent acquiring things, and the last half is spent letting them go. That's generally true, I suppose, but it's different for travelers, who from the start of their journey begin to let things go. One of the unsung benefits of travel is learning how to do this, how not to invest too much of your presence in static physical things.

If you're a traveler, by now you know the deepest meaning of goodbye. As to physical things, you've learned to never accumulate more than you wish to carry, and from your first day of wander you've worked to pare even that down, to give yourself maximum mileage; you therefore reduce all that matters to practicals, minimals, symbols, essences, thoughts, memories, things you can take with you when you go-- as you always do, or at least always think of doing.

If in your latter travels you physically settle down somewhere, in spirit you still treat time like a traveler, still live like a traveler, consider like a traveler, eye your surrounds like a traveler, always thinking: maybe next month, maybe next year; viewing all your trappings with a measuring eye, plotting what to do with them at departure, give them to friends who might need them, enjoy them, pass them on... for you know what anchors possessions can be to fluent passage on the endless river - known only to travelers - that runs always through the world and has carried you here, the marvelous river you've never really left, that runs now inside you, calling to the boat of your soul...

The traveler spends his life letting go and going on, and at death it is the same.

THINGS YOU MISS WHEN YOU LEAVE JAPAN 

A quick list of things I shall miss about Japan :(: (self.japan)

submitted 11 hours ago by grooviekenn

Background: I grew up in Japan and have been living in the US for the past 15+ years. My grandmother passed away in May and so I returned to Japan after being away for many years. Here is a quick list I compiled of things that I will miss about Japan when I go back to the States tomorrow.

(via http://www.reddit.com/r/japan/ )

RAMBLE: TRAVEL INCREASES SEX APPEAL

Odd it should take a magazine so long to discover this - and by survey, not personal experience - but I guess that's the price you pay when you spend your life sitting at a desk doing traveler surveys.

I found this "revelation" to be true as soon as I hit the road way back in the 60s, when BAM! things changed radically from when I'd just been idling and getting stranger due to a job-induced deficiency of significant motion, both psychological and spatial. Distant gazes fade in the absence of horizons.

You can get a fast car and blur the spatial aspect a bit for as long as you can keep the pedal to the metal, but apart from road rage, there are no psychological changes. Then you leave the fast lane, pull into your garage at the end of a blurry day with bugs in your hair, maybe a speeding ticket or two and there you are, same old psyche taking the key out of the ignition and just... going into the house. Where's the sex appeal in that? Then there's the mortgage and car payments.

Travelers, on the other hand, almost by definition don't need cars - strong legs are fine; good pair of highway shoes, maybe a bicycle now and then, often just rented - sometimes other peoples' wheels, if hitchhiking is of use. And being of increased sex appeal, travelers don't need houses either. Apart from worldliness, multilingualism and several other qualities, newness is a big factor in sex appeal. And nobody is newer than a traveler. Casual freedom is the key. You're just as sexy wherever you go, so what's the hurry? Just a good sleeping bag, quality ground cloth and you're there. Plus, this way you get to go slower through all the places you can be sexy in, meet the locals; as for pieds-a-terre there are meadows, caves, beaches, pro tem couches, verandas, rooftops anywhere in the rest of the world, which is sexier if there are travelers around. You really meet people when you sleep on their surfaces.

Those magaziners might have asked me or any of my worldly acquaintances, but like true travelers we're not talking, except in the present instance to esoteric readers. You'd think word would get around, but travelers don't let on about this aspect of the Big Road, never have, really; who would? Word gets out and all at once everybody is on the road; no more couches, no more porches, beaches, caves and forests all at once full of folks who in their natures would actually rather stay home, now diluting the ratio and before too long the overall sex appeal plummets, like the quality of travel magazines...

WAITING FOR MARS

Funny thing the way the world is, turning and turning, wheeling through this galaxy, doing its best always, folks all over it going their ways hither and yon in city and country, forest and prairie, most of them trying their best too, me among all just sitting here in the dark on the deck with some wine, watching the sky above the Lake, waiting for Mars to rise.

We make our choices as we travel through life, mostly as tourists it seems, what with preplanned schools, careers, pensions, although strict adherence to the received plan appears to be becoming less and less a good idea the longer I live. Look at cursive writing, mortgages, pensions, books, newspapers and the PhD, for just a few examples. I'm not being cynical, that's only the way it may appear to certain vested-interest folks. The truth is never cynical.

TRUST, on the other hand - you remember that word - used to be part of all those inscriptions carved over institutional doorways now falling into economoral decline everywhere-- archaeologists dig one up every now and then from another older and forgotten society that made earlier versions of the same mistakes.

One of the first places they used the word TRUST was on the money, when the money was no longer gold and became a matter of faith, whence food comes only by miracle. TRUST was also commonly used in the names of the biggest banks and most reputable finance companies, First Trust this and National Trust that, the word had that much heft; politicians even used it once upon a time, in high-sounding speeches before microphones and tape recording exposed the de facto conversations behind the scenes. The word was embroidered on old flags as well, then later printed on t-shirts manufactured in low-wage countries. Ironically, in the present day, TRUST is still engraved on the US dollar, where the illusory cachet is now needed more than ever.

TRUST was the word, back in the day. You could find it in all the holy books-- and look what they've done with it. Things have changed so much since the word itself could be "trusted" - in the original, uncorrupted sense - to mean what it originally conveyed. We should maybe find a new word for the lost definition, a word like TRUST used to be, when it didn't cause a chuckle - you'd see it in those big bronze angular Roman letters or engraved in walls and gilded, when it still had dignity and semantic power, when it was a word you could... whatever that new word will be.

As for ourselves, there is Truth in us, of the kind we have largely misplaced, or maybe lost, here on earth-- Here's hoping that when next we put the new TRUST over doorways and on our bills of exchange, we've reclaimed the old meaning and lived up to it for at least 1000 years...

THE FRUGS

Some things never leave you. In our case, one of them is simple frugality. Back when Echo and I were traveling, before the kids were born, as I've mentioned a few times in these long chronicles, we made our living as we went along, lived many years at a stretch without such niceties as utilities, so when up here on PLM our old faithful kerosene-powered water heater blew a pipe the other day we almost automatically went into low-mode living and began making necessary adjustments for the duration until repair, during which time we'd be doing dishes/laundry/bathing a la our time in Spain when we had no hot water, and even in winter bathed each with a bucket of water heated over the fire. The body steam was impressive out there in the field. We'd also grab the soap and shower in rainstorms.

When we slipped so effortlessly into that mode the other day, even these decades later, it was heartening, comforting to know what we knew and could fall back on, regressing without regret, without negativity or stress, knowing that we could adapt, we've been there; and now that warm weather is here, no hurry to repair...

That's another of the treasures that simplicity bestows again and again on the long brown road that leads wherever we choose. Traveling on foot, of course.

WWOOF

World Wide Opportunities on OrganicFarms

NAKED FEET

Down at the village doctor's on Wednesday morning for my annual physical, good day for it, crisp and clear with a dust of bright glittery snowflakes blustering down from the clouds atop the mountain and... oh yes, the-- the check up: had the usual stethoscope, blood pressure, weight and height stuff, then the doc asked me to get up on the table so he could check my abdomen, then asked me to take off my socks. My socks?

He'd never done that before, why would he want me to take my socks off? I asked him, just out of curiosity, it made no difference to me if I had to take my socks off, even with the nurse standing there and a young intern too, learning the ins and outs of personal GP dealings with village folk-- even, heaven forbid, foreigners -- which also made no difference to me, I've got nothing to hide, I'm proud of my feet, I like them, they're cool, they got me here.

The doc answered that he wanted to check the pulse in my feet. New to me, but it was his examination, so I took off the socks and while he was prodding my feet for signs of life I sat there examining said extremities in quite a bit of surprise. It's not often - just about never, in fact - that one is as psychologically distanced from one's feet as one is in a doctor's office with said feet out there in medicospace. Suddenly those feet become examinable -- and oneself, among others, is examining them -- and as I say, I was oddly surprised by the fact of my pedalities. They looked so... alien, sticking out there like that at the end of my pantlegs!

Ever since I set off on the long travel road nearly 40 years ago I've said probably too often that all I need to survive is a good set of garb, a good sleeping bag and a good pair of highway shoes. Didn't even stop to think about, and thank, the feet that would fill those shoes and carry me along. Let alone stop and look at them as at a new pair of hiking boots like I was doing now. How often does one really study one's feet? I mean gaze at them studiously and objectively, with an alien perspective, such as when you're a foreigner in a Japanese doctor's office and there at the bottom of your legs are two big, naked, shockingly unJapanese feet lying on the table right there in front of you?

They seemed so Martian or something! Look at those toes! And those nails! The feet down there were size elevens, 30 cm behemoths: narrow, pale, thin and long toed, with a long big toe and a second toe longer than the big toe, and all the other toes - ten of them all together there, stemming from the long narrow feet - were skinny and pale too; all so unlike all the broad, homogeneous Japanese feet and toes I see all the time at the bath and the beach and the gym, feet that are all so alike that the shoe stores practically have one size for all Japanese men and another size for all Japanese women.

That's an exaggeration, to be fair-- I think they maybe have two or three sizes to choose from, a half-centimeter apart, but you see my point I hope, much as I saw those feet on that table. And they were MY feet! How could they be such strangers to me? I know the face of the guy in the mirror, but those feet down there on the floor at the bottom, they're so remote! Sure I clip their nails, bandage their blisters and so on, but that's about it. If I had a horse, I'd know my horse better than I know my feet. This all came to me as I sat there staring at those two forlorn appendages lying there on the table naked, living most of their lives in socks and shoes, delighting in the occasional barefoot romp which to them is like the old days, they get so excited at feeling everything until they hit a sharp rock and start limping, realizing how uncalloused they are, spending most of their days swaddled in socks, cloistered in shoes...

Through aging and traveling to new places, over the years my feet and head have grown apart; but I'm sure we can become close again, in a manner of speaking. After all, they are the very feet that brought me around the world, carried me all the way here, walked me all over the country, lifted me up mountains-- my feet have been with me every step of the way. All without a word of complaint, except a few silent blisters. From now on, I have to relate to my feet more than I have been doing-- get to know them, let them run free more often, have deeper associations with them than just putting socks and shoes on and walking along to the next place in life.

It's best to be on a friendly basis with those who bear you up.

FETTUCINI BOLOGNESE a la ROBERTO

Now and then, one can use a break from even the finest Japanese cuisine, a fact even truer if one is a Westerner.

To enjoy this particular recipe to its fullest after a day of hard work the way I did, you must go out into the garden on an autumn evening when the light of a half moon or more is sufficient to see, feel among the shadowy pepper plants and find a big fresh green pepper, then on your way back to the house get some fresh basil tips.

When you get inside, chop up the pepper, tear up the basil, then from the fridge get some of the fettucini left over from the large batch you prepared a couple days ago. Also get out the leftover Sauce Bolognese a la Roberto you made on the same day. The sauce should be even better now. Don't forget the parmesan. Saute the pepper in fine olive oil, add the sauce and some hot water over high heat, add the basil and an appropriate quantity of fettucine, tossing as you cook fast to reduce the sauce and thoroughly heat the pasta, then put all on a plate, grate the parmesan on top and eat everything like you were on a hillside in Italy looking out over the Bay of Napoli. Feel free to lick the plate.

Then you look up and you're back to a mountainside Shiga, above a Lake made silver by moonight. Fast, intense and frugal world travel.

JAMBALAYA

I'd just gotten off the evening train and was gingering my way along the snow-covered platform out here in the boonies of the most different country in the world - the nation of sushi, sashimi, ramen, gagaku, minyo, enka and various other food and musical forms - when into my ears from out of my iPod (filled for me by brother Mick, back in Santa Barbara) came the time-tripping voice of country-and-western deity songwriter Hank Williams, singing Jambalaya, crawfish pie and-a fillet gumbo...

What a chronic surprise it was to suddenly be so far away from then and there! The peerless tune and lyrics evoked their own jambalaya of memories -- that lakeside cabin way back in the New York 50’s where they played Hank Williams all the summer days long on the phonograph... and those shimmering highways winding along the red earth of the south, those ancient trees draped with Spanish moss fading into distances ahead... images immediate yet so remote here in the cold and dark on the other side of world and time-- what a psychodistance I traveled in those moments, living back along life while making my way toward the stairs to the foot of the mountain...

LET ALONE FOREVER

Well it's been about 6 weeks since I hit the road. Literally. Only a twinge or two remaining here and there at the points of various impacts, a keen one where the ribs cracked, and this morning for the first time since the accident I was again motorcycling down the curving mountain road.

It was one of those exhilarating autumn mornings only a goddess could come up with, golden sunshine draped over everything and all for free, rich autumnal perfume adding to the pricelessness, the kind of morning when you might plan to stop at lottery headquarters and pick up your winnings before heading off to grab your Oscar en route to graciously accepting your Nobel for Happiness.

But there at the heart of that lifeworthy mood, in some fuddy kind of caution I found myself holding back, tootling down the road like I was intensely 68 for godsake, which I am, but let's get real, there's no practical reason to be any particular age, so I stepped on it: there was a familiar roar of air and engine, an invigorating burst of speed and wind inside my shirt, my hair fanning out behind me, the wind making my eyes tear as I leaned back-and-forth into the curves, into the way the road really is in its own soul, and what use is the road if I don’t use it - all I have to do is pay attention - and what the hell, you can't be your age for even a moment, let alone forever...

TRUE DESTINATIONS

Some folks still think of life in the old-fashioned way, as a river flowing to a majestic sea, or as a long open highway leading to a wondrous destination, and either metaphor can still capture in a sort of word-amber what is becoming an increasingly packaged process. I can't help it; even though I don't commute much anymore, I still tend to get systematic.

I realize now that back in my commuter days, after commuting for only a short while I subconsciously began to view life, modern life, modern urban life, ok, my modern urban life, as more like a loop line. There was something manically repetitive about it, something worryingly cookiecutteresque, and every day I felt more and more like a cookie but it wasn't my recipe.

There was an unfamiliar aroma to my future, an artificial flavor I couldn't help sensing when I crowded onto the line and began my daily loop, soon falling asleep from the carbon dioxide level and waking up to look out the window only for the name of the station to see if this was where I was supposed to go, it was only a name I was supposed to go to, could have been any name on the line, depended on where the corporation was.

For a while it was one name, then I changed offices and it was a different name, there was something accumulatively deweydecimal about it, a catalog of places into which I was filing my numbered days, all linked by a macrocosmic infrastructure that took me where I had to be and then took me home again, whichever way I went.

It can take a lifetime to leave the loop line, if you ever get to want to. Lives lived in a standard place (however eclectic) at a standard pace (however frenetic) acquire a virtual quality, the buildup of habit and pattern and repetition forming layer upon layer of time after time slipping by, chronically laminating over the actual life until it resembles a sculpture standing on a platform waiting for a streetcar.

Time isn't as big as we think. Fortunately I didn't set out on this career thing until rather late in life, so I only commuted for a comparatively brief while until I departed for the countryside and the joys of actual solitude, part of which joy is talking aloud to yourself, finding out what kind of a conversationalist you really are, confronting the vast secrets to which you carry the keys. It can only happen off the loop line, where you wake into a morning like when you were born, and go out into the fresh new world with true destinations in your eyes.

(Mostly as published in Kyoto Journal #49)

REMAINING IN MOTION

You can ask any person of my acquaintance and they will tell you that I have always strictly adhered to the law of gravity (except when in love), and am a close follower of inertia (both the at-rest and in-motion aspects, particularly the former).

My physical orthodoxy was demonstrated to the max a few nights ago when, as I was on my way home after a long day of work in the office in the big city, curving up the mountain road on my motorbike in that deeper kind of darkness that follows a long day in an office in a big city - plus I'd spent an hour after that at the bookstore because there was a discount sale on English language books, so my head was full of tome-ish stuff, as was my backpack, and the air was full of even darker darkness than my usual return time - a concrete telephone pole took advantage of these conditions to leave its usual location and surprise me. Reality often does this. I clearly remember being surprised at the sight of an immovable object only a meter ahead, gleaming in my headlight, in the microsecond before I faithfully displayed my strict adherence to physical laws and further lowered my opinion of telephone poles.


No doubt there are a lot of people who deeply appreciate telephone poles, since there’s no disputing taste, but personally I never could stand the eyesores, even less so now that for me they're headsores, backsores, shouldersores and ribsores. Always right in the way, all that ugliness strung out over the everyscape just so we can chat at a distance and see after dark, watch reality on tv and so forth.

I'm not being a curmudgeon here, or a grouch, grump or even a fogey, all of which you do best when you're older, so I meet the age requirement; fact is, I disliked telephone poles even when I was young, because they were almost as everywhere then, and they were just as ugly, the old ones splintery and smelling of creosote (they used wood when I was a kid; remember wood?). They ruined the scenery just as they do now, standing right in the middle of the picture, elbows sticking out in rank disapproval of these pointless esthetic yearnings of ours.

Anyway, in said strict accordance with the laws of gravity, inertia and centrifugality I traversed the appropriate mathematical arc through the pure mountain air while the motorcycle continued to unite with the pole. Following my brief calculus demonstration I found myself flat on my back there in the mountain darkness, the motorcycle headlight illuminating my sprawled body as it gasped for air, like being pinned there in the dark by the eye of god on a solitary mountain road with that What is the meaning of life question hovering there at the basis, what is reality after all - one is never so alone, yet so integrated withal, as at such moments - so after lying there on the road not thinking at all of Jack Kerouac while relearning to breathe and restructuring an appropriate degree of accepted reality, working various joints this way and that to determine the extent of my integrity, I at last was able to stand up, hobble over to and hop onto the still running motorbike, which now wouldn't turn right or very far left, and managed to drive it upmountain the rest of the way home, which to my good fortune was straight ahead. I'd have a hell of a left-body Charlie horse tomorrow (landed mainly on my left shoulder).

Which, 4 days later, is still the case. Plus a couple of cracked ribs and a subluxated collar bone, all taped up and strapped together. At least I can type, once my right hand lifts my left hand onto the keyboard.

NOGGINFOGGIN

Fresh back from strange country US, now in strange country Japan, must take shoes off indoors and suchlike, no root beer, no pie - pangs of ice cream, pizza withdrawal - life rich with jet lag, brain not yet fully arrived, IQ returning by freighter, Keech here for first visit in a while; KMM the dynamic trio due to arrive later this month, much heavy rock/log work in garden yesterday with help of young Keech muscle, today wading through mindfog to office where must present reasonable simulation of former intellect and verbal coherence... tomorrow go fishing in pond... right now must catch train... familiar but interesting shapes in mental mist...

BRADY IN THE SKY WITH FRIED ALMONDS

I'm heading into the skies today for my month-long trip to the US, to visit relatives and friends and see how the old country is doing these days, socioeconomico and otherowise... will start posting from there in a couple of days, when my senses catch up with me. Till then... Move gracefully...

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.

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