YOU REALLY WANT TO HAVE THAT WITH YOUR COOKIES?

WHAT-A-DAY DAYS

I was about to jadedly say "What a day!" this morning, after some comparatively minor cataclysm of the sort that occurs in any office/official environs on a daily basis, when, thanks to the day before yesterday, I realized that today couldn't possibly qualify as a what-a-day day, compared to said pre-yesterday or even yesterday.

Those days are way up on my top 100 list of what-a-day days, maybe even up in the top 10 in the non-travel category (traveling what-a-day days stand alone, like a hitch-hiker on a street corner for 24 hours); I'd even venture to say that the day before yesterday might have a shot at the number two position (that workday commute back in the autumn of 1967 will never be beaten in my lifetime, the parameter whence I speak).

It is a great comfort, as one advances through later life, to have those formidable banners of earlier what-a-day experience to bear aloft in times of apparent strife, that shrink to minor molehills in the face of such deep history.

I TOLD YOU I WAS ORGANIZED

I hope you can't really imagine my double-whammy of massive chagrin, potentially leading to general ulceration, arterial meltdown and possible brain explosion, when my deadline-serving US foreign resident's tax return - also known as "The Curse of Nixon" - (to be postmarked no later than June 15 under penalty of the IRS version of Al Ghraib), mailed on the 14th 'for a little postmark elbow room,' was found in my own mailbox the next day, marked undeliverable. I had forgotten to put a stamp on the envelope. My subconscious had signed off on it as very official-looking, hence as-is deliverable. I don't recall where my conscious was at the time, if it was even in the neighborhood.

This realization was realized, in the state elaborated above, at about 6pm on the 15th itself; I therefore instantly jumped into the car with IRS envelope in teeth and drove to the far-off but last closing post office (6:30) at a speed that would get me pole position at Indianapolis, had I a passport to go there. I arrived figuratively breathless (I was driving, after all) at 6:28 and asked the remarkably angelic looking lady at the counter to please make sure that the envelope was postmarked today, June 15, which she accomplished right before my very eyes and I was happy. Until I returned home.

For home is where, in preparation for my US trip, I then began to plan the tight schedule for confirming my ticket with a copy of my passport; for using my passport to obtain my multiple re-entry permit, so that upon departure I am not erased from Japan's delicate xenomemory banks and can return with my visa intact; and for using my passport to obtain my international driver's license. I glanced at my passport and found that it had expired a year ago last April.

Thus, for nearly a year and a half I had been - and am, even as I write this - a man without a country. If I hadn't casually checked my passport and had attempted to go anywhere by plane, I'd still be circling the North Pole. Likely using the same thought processes that had put no stamp on the most legally important envelope of the year, I had thought my passport expired in 2010; but as my brother used to have frequent occasion to say, "See what happens when you think?"

So today in the big city I lunch-hour rushed to the US consulate, made it through the gauntlet of detectors, wands etc. without being called aside for lengthy questioning by men in shades and black suits and applied for a new passport with full-color Cheney, Rice and their boss smirking over my shoulder. Given my organizational powers, soon as I get my passport maybe I'll run for president.

Somehow this reminds me of celebrities in designer-torn jeans...

J-CULTURE 2 A-CULTURE

I'm planning a trip to the States from July 9 to Aug 5, to visit relatives and friends - in Santa Barbara, renowned venue of my brother's residence and the recently concluded Michael Jackson trial; and Santa Fe, a beautiful and artistic town of dear friends where nothing much of prime-time newsy note has happened recently, if you except nearby Los Alamos.

Time and computer access allowing I shall be blogging as I go, noting the inevitable cultural shocks both good and bad. I haven't been back to the A-culture in 3 years, so I've pretty near fully reverted to the J-culture groove; e.g., I stare at westerners. America will be full of westerners and I shall pass among them unremarked, which will be refreshing.

Already there's been a surprise: when I went into the city to buy my ticket I found that there was now, for the first time, a "fuel charge" of about 10% of ticket cost. I'd heard about the oil price increase, of course, but hayseed that I am I'd thought that that was already ongoingly factored into the advertised ticket price. With the fuel charge plus Sales tax, Osaka airport tax, LA airport tax, Sky tax, Wing tax, Walking tax, Breathing tax, Taxation tax and various other VA surcharges, I'm paying nearly 15% above the advertised ticket price. The ticket was a lot cheaper before I bought it. Looks like oil has peaked; 20 years from now it may cost a million yen to fly the ocean on the few carriers that may remain...

JUNK BEHAVIOR

Scientists working in labs with male prairie voles have recently discovered that at least certain aspects of social behavior (i.e. possibly all of it) are due to the vagaries of "junk" DNA (DNA whose function is unknown to scientists). They have not yet gone so far as to designate such behavior 'junk behavior' (scientists tend to be rather shy in their claims), but I figure it's an inevitable offshoot of DNA research, so I've gone ahead and named it just so we can move forward with the concept.

We laymen know junk behavior when we see it, and we see it all the time: on streetcorners, in supermarkets, on the freeways, you name it, it's a long list. We know junk behavior like we know junk food and junk tv. But now science has found a seminal DNA basis for it all – admittedly only in male prairie voles, but it's a beginning - and given it a very colloquial name. It's about time there was a scientific foundation for this vast concept, mere seed though it may be at the moment.

But what does this imminent revelation portend for society at large? We all engage in junk behavior at some point in our lives – mostly in our earlier years, thank goodness - and if we're paying attention, we learn the difference and aim for quality behavior later in life; that's what education and personal development are all about. However, the older we get the more apparent it becomes that there are large cadres of people in society who don't make the transition; their entire lives seem to comprise junk behavior. Many of the most prominent are in media, business and politics, fields that, given the nature of power, offer little incentive toward quality behavior development.

And knowing that it might be DNA that's at fault - and not a personal lack of scruples or integrity - could tend to aggravate junk DNA-rooted societal problems down the line. Entire populaces might begin serially electing junk leaders, for example. Other parts of our junk DNA may yet evolve to save us, but the final results are not yet in; so for our own good, let's keep an eye on those prairie voles.

WILDFLOWERS AND SCHEDULE SE

Each year as Spring rolls into Summer on its golden wheel and I find myself gazing out the window into sunlight falling with June largesse from a broad blue sky upon meadows of wildflowers - within the full embrace of which I would infinitely rather be walking, or better yet, lying - I am sitting at a table facing the annual deadline, filling out my US tax phonebook “Forms and Instructions for Overseas Filers” (Drop-in-the-ocean excerpt: “If you are the spouse who carried on the business, you must include on line 3, Schedule SE, the net profit or (loss) reported on the other spouse’s Schedule C, C-EZ, or F (except income not included in net earnings from self-employment as explained on page SE-3, “Community Income Taxed to Spouse” and the amount of any net profit or (loss) allocated to your spouse as community income.” The further I blunder through the pages that sorely need an editor and forms that sorely need an accountant (I suspect I have a defective accounting gene) the more I realize I’ve always been on the side of the wildflowers.

ASK THE BUILDER

THE BIG RAIN

Today began the tsuyu (rainy season), two days later than usual according to the weather bureau, which last week forecast that the tsuyu would begin three days ago, so I guess I'd rather believe the weather, it honors its own time.

This morning I woke to the familiar voice of the tsuyu, that steady tenor the sky sings this time of year and loudest in the mornings, long thin streams of water falling in the calm, filling the air with silver, gathering down the mountain in the waiting rice paddies. And so it goes on steadily downfalling all day, misting the hours with all the perfumes the forest has spent the night concocting...

The big rain is also wondrous to walk in, generously inspiring of those with wide umbrellas and no destination in mind...

THE ART OF DISASSEMBLY

“Referring to an Amnesty International report harshly criticizing U.S. detention facilities, B--- [elision mine] sought to dismiss its credibility, stating during a May 31 press conference, ‘It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of—and the allegations—by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble—that means not tell the truth.’”

Such verbal gaffes from the voice of America have grated for years now on the ear of any English speaker whose norm is coherence, but the amazing thing here is the newly implicit belief that our vocabularies are even more limited than his own, that we need those big words defined, that we need his help to understand the heady concepts he takes such pride in verbalizing so successfully.

That level of 'disassembly' requires a very high degree of self-delusion.

HUH? "We do stuff"

NOT MY ROCK

I was out on the deck in the beauty of yesterday afternoon to survey the overall scene of my firewooding and gardening labors - and lay further plans - when, leaning on the rail I glanced at one of the hefty rocks I keep there to hold down the large flat bamboo basket I use to keep the heavy mountain snow off the satellite dish, when I noticed something odd: the rock had a small green nose.

Bending low and getting close in for a better view, I found myself eye-to-eye with a very flat green frog indeed, an otherwise normally dimensioned amphibian who had carefully jiggered and hunkered his way backwards into the very low-ceilinged space beneath the rock, there to stay damp and cool and utterly safe from hawks and crows, while yet maintaining access to the rich bug life passing by within tongue reach on the local air and rail thoroughfares.

His dark eye paid little attention to my massive temporary intrusion, he simply continued doing nothing very comfortably, thank you; he was sitting about as pretty as possible, frogwise. I'd had it in mind to move the rock, now that winter is over and anyway the oak leaves have cut off my satellite signal so who cares about snow on a satellite dish, but if the frog has such an inventive architectural use for the rock, who am I to interfere? It's not really MY rock, anyway.

TENUGUI

When I visited Basho, in the little museum there - where they have some personal effects like Basho’s cane of tsubaki (a little spindly thing it is!) - I bought as a souvenir a cotton tenugui with Basho’s image imprinted on it, after a famous ink painting of the poet. In Japan, at least traditionally, whenever you set out to do a task that will call for stamina and generate sweat, you tie a tenugui around your head. So early this morning, before I started firewooding I did just that, then spent all morning splitting oak with Basho tied around my head. We had a great time, got a lot of firewood split and stacked in the poetry way.

IN THE KEG

As the wedge splits the oak
out oozes juice
that looks - smells -- tastes
like premium whiskey
zero proof
aged at least 50 years

TECHNOKOAN

What is made in Japan, has a woman's face, is built for dancing, can move in all directions on three wheels hidden underneath an evening gown, comes in two colors, has ears like Mickey Mouse, wears classic attire, has a plastic exterior in shiny blue or bright red, has a male version under development and is eventually intended to care for the elderly?

Answer

WHALE MEAT AND IQ

"WHILE Australia is fighting to save endangered humpbacks from Japanese whalers, women in Tokyo were learning how to cook the mammals yesterday...

'Eating a whale is the same thing as killing and eating a cow.'"

Doesn't seem to do much for the IQ, though. Ever seen a whale ranch?

Story

TEMPTATION: LECTURE TO A ONE-YEAR-OLD

As I look out the window
of my forty-fourth year
at a rainbow
stretching from the mountain-curve of heaven
to the foot of Shinyodo pagoda
I sense a struggle of spirit beside me.
Looking down I see
my son, in infant conflict
with a vice like all others:
the tissue box
(pull up one,
up pops another).

He looks up to me, as if for advice,
his eyes full of
full of
the big question,
that rainbows all our lives...
What should I answer?
What do I know?
Should I be silent,
let him find his own way
without the wealth of my experience?
Or should I say simply:
"Don't do it!"
and stop him before he begins,
leave the struggle for later
and later
till one day he decides
to get even?

When in doubt,
pontificate.
So at last I tell him: "That, son, is temptation.
And it has no end.
It will mess up your life
if you don't gain control:
I don't mean be rigidly good, but don't be
thoroughly bad; don' t let it net you either way.
You stay in charge.
And it's better you start young,
like now,
to be carefully human,
selective of your vices;
one needs a few for balance, but carefully chosen.
Choose your virtues, too;
it's not in you to be god-like,
unless you want only distant admirers
and no friends.
And this: when you resist,
do so with a will.
When you surrender
surrender carefully, to the max.
Balance the best of your moments
so that your life will be live,
so when it comes to its end, you will find
that you have not died, but come to live
with others like yourself
and can regale the group
with tales of true humanity.

I leave him;
find him later, asleep
in a heaven of tissues.

From Bridge of Dreams

FROM AMONG THE THUNDER

This afternoon after a thunderstorm-threat picnic out on the beach we came back and I did one of my favorite things during thunderstorms other than run around in them – brings back a memory: in Spain where we lived on another mountainside above the Mediterranean, in an old finca without running water, whenever a thunderstorm was headed our way we'd take off all our clothes, run into the almond orchard with soap and there take the finest shower there is – ah yes, where was I – as the thunderstorm circled I was lying down with a good book (Changes in the Land, by William Cronon) when I started hearing these very strange sounds from within the rain and thunder, oddly misplaced metallic sounds; then the wind picked up and suddenly rain was blowing on me from the open window three meters away as the surroundsound grew louder, so I got up to close the window and couldn't see outside well, the air was all a gray vagueness like in a wet train window, all was moving sideways and I realized the wind was that strong, but what was that sound, that metallic pinging, like falling bits of sheet metal crescendoing now – I ran downstairs and the deck was already all white with what it was: quail-egg-sized hail, streaking, bouncing flying everywhere. Nothing to do but watch and wait and hope the stones didn’t get any bigger, smash our new roof tiles, on which it was ringing, as violent as nature can be when suddenly freed of restraint - it had clearly been wanting to rain for a couple hours and had been juggling those raindrops into hailstones all the meanwhile - the wind and the ice globs fast-ripped small branches off the trees, not too good for the car finish either, or for the new spinach, lettuce and tomatoes... on the other hand maybe the monkeys got caught in it but I doubt it, nature isn't partial to favors when it lets loose... then it all waned and passed and the sky was a calm blue around the mountains, no sound but of water roiling down toward the Lake, and a few thousand stunned frogs ribbeting warily... now an hour later as I ponder firewooding the storm is circling again to the south, hasn't had enough...

Finally got the FTP FTPing again, and have included the Yokkaichi Kite Festival photos below in that post. [BTW, I highly recommend coreftp.com.]

JARED DIAMOND, CHEVRON OIL AND THE WWF

"Not only was oil company property home to far more birds than found in Papua New Guinea as a whole, it was also a place where indigenous peoples could be 'better off with us there than if we were gone,' according to a Chevron executive. For Chevron, having Jared Diamond and the World Wildlife Fund (on whose board he sits) on their side amounts to a public relations coup. In a massive ad campaign throughout the 1990s, they exploited their partnership with the WWF and other mainstream environmentalist groups."

Full story at Counterpunch

CHERRY RED AND BANANA YELLOW MELLOW

On the train this morning pondering last night's quick post about tielessness, I did a quick eyeball to see if the naked necks of Koizumi and Toyota had had any effect on the general populace and, using a very complex formula I made up myself from some old Fast-Fourier Transformations I had laying around, I calculated that the tied/tieless ratio was on the order of 50,000:1 (I never wear a tie). So much for revolution of the kind that happened more than a century ago now, when Japanese men and women threw off their kimonos en masse (what a sight!) and donned suits and dresses, mostly respectively.

This trainframe of mind (very history-evoking are trainrides, metaphoring the flow of time as we just sit there passing through) also dredged up my own singular Japan office tie experience, way back when I first began working here after coming from three years of rural freefaring in Spain and ten years of world vagabonding before that, starting from Berkeley in the early 70s, after selling my VW van/house to buy a ticket to the rest of the world.

The first day I came to the office, as I was not dealing with the public, but was working in a back office editing, I’d concluded that I didn’t need a suit or tie - which was one reason I’d chosen the job. I was dressed in my standard vagabonding garb: good boots, sturdy pants, rad but sensible shirt with strong pockets etc. Within a few days, when the folks in the office began to realize I would ALWAYS be coming in like that, the manager took me aside and as if speaking to a social radical (he was a good judge of people; unfortunately he was not such a good judge of himself and was fired a couple of years later) informed me that, as I was now a formal employee of the firm, I would be required to wear a jacket and tie to work.

But by then I’d been around the block a few times, so when I went home I dug into the lower layers of my sartorial history and came up with an heirloom I’d been unable to sell at the Alameda flea market ten years before and subsequently couldn’t part with because of the history it embodied as a relic of freer, less hung-up times: a cherry-red-and-banana-yellow paisley necktie, only eight inches wide at the bottom though it appeared to be much, much wider.

The next day to the office I wore that in a wide double-windsor over my pink shirt under my nicely faded denim jacket that had only a small hole in one elbow from that bike accident in Amsterdam, and with various hallucinogenic shirts for several days thereafter, until the manager took me aside and, cringing before my neckwear, said the only thing his dazzled mind could think of: “Do you make your own ties?”

I left the tie off from the next day on, and nobody ever mentioned the subject again.

THE SEED OF REVOLUTION

When the chairman of Toyota said "This summer I will not allow anybody with tie or jacket into my office," I fell off my zabuton (as luck would have it I was sitting on the floor at the time). In Japan? Salarimen with no suits? What is the world coming to? No ties? What is the solar system coming to? Isn't that impossible? How will those hardy minions survive the summer blasts of arctic air conditioning in between the bouts of broiling street heat beneath searing serge?

It was all so... informal, so... radical, so... anarchic! As a long-time proponent of suit-and-tielessness I didn’t know what to think: how would suitless salarimen behave, having to function all naked like that in public? But then it was only confined to Toyota (one of the eco PR champions of the world) so I figured I’d never get to see any of this extremely radical social experiment involving tieless men rampant in offices in their shirtsleeves, since as you may have surmised I don’t live in Toyota City.

Then Prime Minister Koizumi had a brilliant idea: he would not wear a suit and tie to work! (Those edgy politicians are always so first off the mark.) This time my luck didn't hold: I was sitting on a chair. No suits, and no ties, in the very government offices of a country that for decades now has almost singlehandedly supported the world necktie industry! To say nothing of the suit stores on every other corner, which will now be pretty much reduced to flogging shirts and slacks, maybe a handkerchief. How will Japan function? This could cause a revolution! One day there could be no ties everywhere! Shirts as far as the eye can see! Maybe the bureaucracy will improve. Tieless Immigration would be interesting. More room on the trains...

How radical is this change, really?

Imagine the French eating American cheese.