2010 ALLEGORY IN REVIEW

at the motel in newport where i spent mine and caroline's divorce weekend in april, it was the chair at the dinette table, a danish knock off that i didn't regret not trying to stuff in the rental after i found a real one at the newport antique mall. i probably would have paid twice the $65 dollar tag if i could have found a way to get it into the sub-compact. i suppose i could have just paid the extra to enterprise to get a larger car. or sent caroline home on the bus and put the passenger seat down. she was, after all, marrying someone else after a couple of weeks.

at the prater motel in hood river it's this lamp. i want it. the beaded shade with the beaded fringe are just icing to the bulbous, transparent pink lamp body with the flowers painted on the bulges and the clouded glo-tube inside. the bulb goes on too, but it's too much light for the twilight zone marathon. the light from the tube through the pink lights the champagne bowls just right as well. (those we had to bring in the car.) the lamp wouldn't be hard to take, and, from the sound of things, prater's will probably have bigger problems tonight than petty theft. "'alfred hitchcock presents' is more my speed." duchess, apparently, prefers murder.

prater's was the first vacancy sign past downtown without the "no" illuminated (i put amanda palmer's version of "i will follow you into the dark" on the driving mix), and the "$39.95 and up" sign was encouragement enough for duchess and i to pull in. the woman at reception who croaked from behind the partition wall that we'd interrupted her nap looked just like the cashier at georgia's grocery on 12th and stark in portland (minus the red hair dye), a slightly alarming development since the particularly thick gravel in her voice could just as easily have been coming from her doppelganger as well.

"just a minute. she likes to know when guests are here."

she made a phone call. "yeah. we got a couple." a couple come upstate from the city for a holiday getaway. we'd already conjured the fantasy: she just knew her part.

we had a choice of two room types since the man who checked in for the night yesterday evening -- but then decided to stay a second -- had been taken away by the police earlier in the day. "and, you know, sometimes we get the people down from the "hospital." we give them vouchers, you know? they just have to give us the voucher, and we give them a key. but one time, this guy wouldn't get out of the cab. we just hung out there in the parking lot. crazy people." two virgos having brought up the possibility of bed bugs isn't a casual conversation, but after that introduction we had our minds on different possibilities. and then we forgot, because prater's might not have much more going for its rooms than kitschy lamps and heat, but its views of the columbia are spectacular.

just one more plus, because if something happens to us tonight, it's also happening to us in fancy dress. dead or alive, you'll find us well. now, hood river, who wants an excuse to punch me before 2011?

HOW TO TAKE A FALL

it didn't snow in portland. it was, however, cold enough that the front steps frosted over, and since they're wooden, and new, that meant not much traction for a rubber-treaded bike shoe. so you instinctively save your bike by raising it up off your shoulder and take the impact with the opposite side of your body. scrapes don't cost money to fix at the paint shop, and if you don't change your socks when you transform into your street clothes you won't even have to see them until you shower next. plus, now you have solid proof to justify your justifying those white leather gloves that don't do much for the cold but would probably save your knuckles in a crash: they're tested now, at least for protecting the brunt of your hand.

then it seems a little silly that you have a bicycle because you're just walking it trying to limp off some of the pain. your hip and shoulder will be sore and tight later. later you can take a bath. stop saying ouch.

undeterred. it's supposed to be clear all weekend. junk miles here we come. you can't look good at being bad if you don't get tough. just imagine all of the races you could throw.

ooo-hh. your shoulder hurts now.

ON THE FIFTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS

the wall street journal, which in september raged against the tide of the digital revolution (excuse the minced metaphor [ha!]) by launching a weekly stand alone book review, did not include freedom on its top ten list for 2010. laudable...although it's technically the third day's news, both in that it made the wire rounds on monday and in that today is the third day since then. it seemed so much more appropriate today, however, since rupert murdoch probably has all the gold rings. got it? just read eight white nights already. then snuggle up to someone for "a tale of winter." it might even snow tonight in portland!

it may or may not make the 'looking good in pants' top ten list (which may or may not get made), but i should finish aurorarama tonight -- provided i'm not so enraptured by the dandy vagaries of the new venice bohemians that i move too quickly on my pints of scottish holiday. i don't regret now that i put off reading valtat's english debut for so long since the week between holidays has proven to be the perfect time to read a fanciful -- yet literary -- tale of wintertime revelry and escape. it is, however, with slight begrudging that i admit to having been beaten to that observation by laura miller of salon.com, who on christmas day posted an article that included aurorarama as one of two novels "to whisk you away from the dregs of the season." our takes aren't exactly similar, but "giddy rococo instrument" does do well to describe much of the mood in aurorarama, and miller does deserve credit for her stylings there.

and there you have it: peace and goodwill -- then some snowcaine and psylicates to get the party started again. murdoch! bring me some champagne.

ON THE THIRD DAY OF CHRISTMAS

jonathan franzen!: the snow! in new york! (you lucky bastard) get thee a copy of eight white nights and finish it by new year's eve. fuck the french hens (this whole thing couldn't be more perfect).

we'll talk at the party.

HOW (TO?) CHRISTOPHER GOT HIS GROOVE BACK...AGAIN

although he was hugely influential in the modernist literary movement in japan and counted kobo abe (woman in the dunes is, yes, still sitting unfinished on my night table) among his proteges, jun ishikawa is almost unknown outside of japan, a particular shame considering that ishikawa's own translations were significant to japan's introduction to the french in the 1920s. in 1946, he published "the legend of gold," which is available in english translation in a collection by the same title. japan had surrendered unconditionally to the allied powers the previous year, and large swaths of the country had been bombed into charred wastelands.

much of ishikawa's work was intricately symbolic. in the boddhisatva, for which ishikawa won the akutagawa prize in 1937, the narrator tells the story of a subversive he knows through his struggle to finish his biography of christine de pizan, the female poet who eulogized joan of arc in verse, while simultaneously layering the images of the boddhisatvas samantabhadra and manjusri onto the characters in both narratives. "the legend of gold" is another saint's story, and takes its title from the "golden legend" (both are called the same in japanese), a medieval collection of hagiographies. my copy of the legend of gold and other stories is on permanent loan, powell's has none in its immediately accesible inventory and it's too late for the library, so i've nothing to supplement my failed memory of which character in "the legend of gold" was supposed to be the holy one. i can, however, recap: the story is about regeneration, a possibility that ishikawa, a persistent and oft censored opponent of the pacific war, must have been anticipating with almost near hopelessness.

in the story, there are three personal items of the narrator's that symbolize his personal ability to move on and from out of the ashes, the most easily remembered of which is a broken watch. the two others -- shoes and a hat, maybe? (or not at all, i'm probably just projecting) -- are dealt with over the course of the story and the narrator's interaction with his postwar saint, and in the end, the watch begins again to keep time. (i won't deign to make an out and out explanation, but if you want to be kicked in the dead gift horse with being told the meanings of metaphors, i recommend seeing "black swan.")

sidi makes excellent shoes, but certain replaceable parts of their better offerings must certainly be constructed for failure. the strap for the ratchet buckle on the left of my pair of dragon 2s has been gone from the shoe since it cracked in half six months ago. with two other straps on the shoe, it stilled held sufficiently to my foot while pedaling for me to resist paying the thirty dollar msrp for a pair of "soft arch compression straps" (weakly fabricated plastic pieces with toothed bars for ratchet engagement). so my left shoe, it worked, but when the shoes are going on and coming off at least twice a day, a missing part is an obvious deficiency, the spot that pride won't let you go back to the barber for, even though it was him that cut too close.

there's no saint i can remember in this story either, but a friend just gifted me a single soft arch compression strap replacement -- ripped out of the plastic of a package of two and wrapped only in a desultory "merry christmas." it's black, which my shoes aren't, and the color, combined with the strap's brand new rigidity, make its presence just as glaring as the absence of the strap it replaced, but the shoes are definitely wholer now, even the right one, despite being looser now for its soft arch having been worn in. looking at them now, the newness of the strap looks even more out of place for the flaking of the white surface of the left shoe, which must have given up on appearances after being so long neglected (the finish on the right shoe is dulled but has remained smooth). still though, they both now go on and come off more easily, if only for my knowledge that something nagging has passed and that any ending is, come what may, a new start. and that a whole week before new year's. scoop. now get on the bike and ride.

STREETS OF GHOSTS (OF CHRISTMAS PAST)

portland, the indie darling of just about every booming cultural phenomenon that everywhere else wants to copy from the states, is no place to be on christmas. the indentured servants that run the culture machine go home to share the wealth and wonder with their families (ironically, we'll be released from servitude only in time to be kicked out of town for being over 35), and natives flee the city with significant others for coastal vacations at beach houses purchased by parents before the real estate take off (a favorable market and equity loans mean most of them now have two). as a rule, december weather in portland is grossly unfestive. even if it manages not to be too cold, the rain will still work to spoil your merriment. snow in the city is initially charming, but then crippling effect it has on transportation and commerce puts portlanders in even fouler moods than if it were raining. but then, it's christmas day, 2010, and the endlessly vanilla skies are balmy and mild. i'd consider it a boon on any other day of winter, but today the good weather just seems to be conspiring against anyone left in town to wander through the holiday, making it seem silly to held out hope for a festive mid-winter celebration in the first place.

this is my first portland christmas, and i wonder if i'll ever chance another. it's not that it's so bad, or that i haven't spent other christmases away from family. but those others (all three of the abroad) still seemed capable of making their own magics -- at least in recollection.

budapest was the site of my favorite lie. i'd met someone at a bar (the sort dank place with a maze of dark rooms in the back that still exists in most central european cities). peter, i think we'll call him, was an opera singer. at the time, he was singing baron scarpia in "tosca." it seemed like an easy way to up the romantic ante, so i told him that i was a concert pianist. in reality, i had taken more than a dozen years of lessons and was quite proficient, but i hadn't played anything appreciable from start to finish in no less than a year. lucky for me, peter lived with his ailing father, and by the time we made it to his apartment at night, it was too late to play. my hungarian was non-existent, and peter's english was only enough to tell me that there were too many hungarian words of too many nuances to describe feelings of love for him to be able to explain them all. we met in the middle where he praised the beauty of my talented hands. otherwise, they weren't a part of our courtship.

that week in budapest did well to prepare me for my first european christmas ten days later. the christmas village was up just off király (?) st., and in a maudlin show of shamelessness and poor taste, i had visited the cathedral for an advent mass on the morning after my meeting peter. i had come to the city from istanbul to meet a friend who was coming from berlin. we stayed so long only because we were booted from our hostel and offered an amazing deal on an apartment as recompense. our planned mutual destination was prague, where we arrived just over a week before christmas day.

we spent another week together in the czech republic before my friend flew back home. i had not peter nor any grand lie in prague, but i did meet a young man from poland whom i followed to kraków after being left alone by my friend. i'd originally planned to spend the holiday alone in prague, a city i knew from a previous visit, but my invitation from that young man proved irresistible once i found myself in a lonely situation. what was another five hour train ride?

and then poland. my aunts hadn't been lying. the poles really do leave the end of a bottle for a wayward drunken sailor, and that's what we did with the ends of ours after the bars, which in poland, still a very catholic country, are closed for most of christmas eve until they open for the two hours before evening mass, just enough time for a table of half a dozen friends to nearly finish a couple of bottles of vodka before rushing to st. mary's basilica to push through the throngs outside and fall into the sea of tourists snapping pictures inside, where those friends get drunker on the pomp and circumstance that are simultaneously and eternally the living breath and death rattles of the roman catholic church.

then back to the bar, where a famous theater actor sends bottles to every table in celebration and then denounces a couple of lesbians (present) for being the insensitive orchestrators of the puppet show that is (to the speaker's mind) the contemporary kraków stage. my young man's sixteen year old cousin, an aspiring actress, is all ears.

after nearly all of the vodka in kraków, my young man and i walked back through the snow to his rooms, where i was not allowed to stay (or be seen, for that matter), but into which i sneaked through a ground level window for a short while before returning to my own lodgings. the young man's mother, still a staunch communist (though bigoted in the same direction as her staunchly catholic peers), hadn't been happy with the outcome of an affair between her son and his high school russian teacher. it was time he focused on his studies. i'll admit, however, that her christmas cakes were delicious. and to think that i nearly spilled my smuggled samples trying to squeeze out the window on my way home.

where's the smuggled cake, portland? or the clandestine encounters? can't we, for one day, drop the act? but surely you're tired, too, and you're well over the artifice of my using you just to tell a story. but portland, would that artifice by any other name...? whatever. it's dark, and that works for me: my family knows the way around a bottle, and if i can't see them, well, there's not much for me to do but put my sadness out of mind with drink. plus, you've probably got a beach house to go to, and i'm nearly late for dinner. oh, holy night.

CUSTOMS

that's the title of an article at embrocation cycling journal that i didn't read until today because i assumed (as you likely did about the title of this post) that it was either some story about getting hassled by border officials over a bike box or about something precious like holiday cycling traditions in belgium compared to their vainly bastardized counterparts in bike town, u.s.a.

it turned out that "customs" was about a different kind of vanity entirely. "customs" refers neither to duty collections or to and specific set of established practices but to custom made bicycles. had i known that from the outset, i would have opened the article earlier. the author does, however, write about the custom of purchasing a custom bicycle, so his title, if perhaps confusing in its clumsiness (everyone missteps sometimes), is at least thoughtful. (and yes, we do plan to heed our own advice.)

the crux of "customs" is that customs are conspicuous luxury consumption, plain and simple -- even if the bikes themselves aren't. sure, a custom bicycle is custom fitted, but, "let’s face it, nearly everyone can be fit well on a stock bike." people buy custom bikes for the same reason that they buy custom anythings: they're pretty and just for you. as the owner of a custom bicycle, i've no hesitation in ceding that argument. unfortunately, the author treats the vanity of custom consumption in terms of a half-baked metaphysical conceit, as if having a bicycle made were essentially just the desire to consume beauty, by which activity a framebuilding "patron" is ultimately resigned to the vision and inspiration of an unknowable artist.

granted, i live in a town where every street kid and his dog builds bicycles, so i was able to engage my builder in person at every step of his process (we're extending the art metaphor). the author of "customs" gets his bikes in boxes that come in the mail. the red bike he gets in the article came from ellis cycles in wisconsin. (i don't know where the author lives.) it's "bolder" than his general tastes, but he accepts that a builder had seen something in him that he hadn't seen in himself -- something "bold, flashy, red." what? "it’s strange, but dave [of ellis cycles], along with a small number of the very best builders, is capable of expressing something about his customers without those customers making a single aesthetic decision." i hope that epiphany wasn't just veiled disappointment. customs are expensive.

and that's why i made sure to know exactly what my kid glove grey paint job would look like. and that's why i didn't listen when both the builder and the painter told me that it would wash out the white label on my downtube and contrast too little with my white components. if i'm going to be disappointed in anyone's artistic vision, it's going to be my own. then the art metaphor breaks down anyway, because inasmuch as any one bicycle is necessarily similar to the rest of them (pedal powered two wheeled transportation the lot), any recognizable dissimilarities that go beyond the requirements of function and riding style are decoration -- pop art and graphic design, where "vision" reduces just to sensibility. the "art" of customs lies in the technical craft of framebuilding, not in an eye for embellishment (sorry, edwin). saying otherwise is just simply to say that personally one has inferior taste.

ironically, the author of "customs" recognizes the importance of communication between customer and builder:

in the end, it’s trust and circumspection on the part of both parties that makes the arrangement possible. "how well does the builder know me, how well do I know myself, and...do we trust one another?"...basic questions concerning custom bikes that, i’m afraid, don’t get asked much.

i can't understand, then, why he seems to let the whole thing out of his hands. but again, "customs" isn't unthoughtful, and in its (somewhat convoluted) description of a bicycle as a metonym for its rider it did pique my curiosity as to the specific difference between metonymy and synecdoche (this site is amazing.) a lesson well learned. our metonym? just call me vanity.

ON GETTING BACK TO YOUR ROOTS

this blog once purported to make portland culture one of its primary focuses -- and although general discussion of bicycles, beer drinking and esoteric consumption habits is a decent enough description of cultural discourse in this city -- our celebrity of this fall has taken an obvious toll on what 'looking good in pants' has been able to give back to the rose city. true, there was all that time we spent abroad (and in canada), but shouldn't that just have steeled our drive to get it right on portland -- or at least to better berate it for its sad points after gaining the perspective of distance?

yesterday, an entertainment blurb at oregonlive.com (the internet arm of the oregonian) ran an announcement on a schedule change for the independent film channel's upcoming short run series "portlandia," which will debut on ifc in january. the episode in which kyle mclaughlin plays portland's (maybe gay?) mayor will not air first, ladies and gentlemen. instead, the series will begin with an episode called "the farm." portland is so excited about a spoof of itself that its primary news publication sees fit to announce changes in the episode order of a television show. (we don't exclude ourselves from that excitement, but felt that journalistic integrity -- and a designation of authority -- required the use of non-inclusive pronouns in that last statement.) and that's portland culture. the spoof is no doubt spoofing the ethos of a place that delights in seeing itself spoofed. so i suppose that everyone's a winner, except maybe the parents who watch the show and are wakened for the first time to just what it is they're paying to support their aspiring [creative type] children to do here.

"dream of the 90s," the "portlandia" promotional video that's currently making its rounds of the social networking websites, pokes fun at portland for its dedication to an eccentric, anti-mainstream laziness decked out in flannel (though what you and the show call a flannel is probably a woolen pendleton shirt if it's on a portlander). it's funny because it's true. carrie brownstein should know. but who knows, the show might be a big disappointment.

and then this morning, by pure serendipity, i read a review of what was the hipster?, a sociological study published by n+1 that was distilled for publication in shorter form by new york magazine in late october. the article in new york essentially roots the demise of hipsterdom in its self-realization and eventual spread to the mainstream. although self-consciousness in the sense of kafka and camus was always a part of the hipster persona, it couldn't tolerate seeing itself reflected in the mall.

the article also dates the era of the hipster (or, more correctly, its most recent and recognizable american incarnation) from 1999 to 2009, and in its analysis of hipsterdom as "something like bohemia without the revolutionary core," the "poisonous conduit" between rebel subculture and dominant class, articulates its own kind of 90s dream. the first decade of the twentieth century also coincided with portland's rise to celebrity from the ugly depths of fringe radicalism and urban blight, two things easily tempered by a heavy influx of educated middle-class cool hunters. that done, a city with a reputation for the unorthodox but raised newly high on boutique capitalism has a chance to steal the national limelight. (our perennially dewy skin doesn't hurt either.) or, to restate and recap, maybe the culture of the city over the last decade and a growing general ethos of the cool of quirky knowingness have just dovetailed to make a grey, second tier city like portland finally palatable to premium cable watchers of a middle class mainstream that has welcomed the warm, insulating fold of hipster aesthetics across the same timeline (if it wasn't already a part of growing that aesthetic during its twenties.)

determinism? pshaw! reactionary? forty-five percent. can't help it. i'm the product of a tail-chasing culture (and that's determinism). the second decade of the twenty-first century will do better. we'll see if portland learns from the failed insularity of late hipsterdom.

the hipster moment did not produce artists, but tattoo artists, who gained an entire generation’s arms, sternums, napes, ankles, and lower backs as their canvas. it did not produce photographers, but snapshot and party photographers...it did not yield a great literature, but it made good use of fonts. and hipsterism did not make an avant-garde; it made communities of early adopters.

i'm not so sure that last part names hipsters so much as homosexuals, but the article does mention that some british youth circles trying to emulate the american hipster have turned toward androgyny and "the queer." whatever, we can take a joke -- even if it is a big one.

HAUL OUT THE HOLLY

five bottles of red, a half gallon of milk, two pints of heavy cream, a dozen eggs, four oranges, five lemons and a big box of cookies from the heartland mean we're just a trip to the liquor store away from a cocktail party. the whole cloves don't pose any obstacles, but it's probably safer to stay away from the whole nutmeg next time. and it will be, very certainly, a question of safety unless there's a good mortar and pestle under the tree this year. hammering the devil out of those nuts over the course of several (now recycled) plastic vessels might have stuck us with the grinch if the end result -- after a quick sweep and a wipe of the counter top -- didn't leave the kitchen stinking to high heaven like the spirit. nothing says christmas like the sweet aroma of toxic delirium.

now that there's a poinsettia in the apartment there need to be at least a dozen more. or ten dozen. they'd fit. in the space and with the spirit...although they're supposed to be toxic, too (euphorbia pulcherrima, after all). let's glut this place with red. drape it with petals, because, well, without drapes this place gets cold. without drapes and without people, that is. but then the friends arrive and the oven's on and the crock pot is ladling out cups full and i can't imagine it won't be warm. let's hope it's warm. there's going to be a test batch made with bourbon tomorrow night, so come and say hello if you can stand the cold.

on the night before the night before the night before the night before christmas, it's to bed with a near future sci-fi novel by toba shin about a wartime quarantined plague city. sweet hallucinatory sugar plums, darlings. we're in for it. it's the longest night of the year. take heart, though. we may all have grown a little sadder and older, but there's a garland at the end of the tunnel. i may be rushing things, but pray that it does its job before my spirits fall again.

HOW TO AVOID A TRAP; or, ON MARTYRDOM/TRUE HERESY

the phil wood whose obituary ran at sfgate.com today had no apparent affiliation with phil wood & co., american manufacturer of fine cycling components, which will surely be no small source of confusion considering that the recently deceased founded a publishing house in berkeley called ten speed press in 1971, the same year that phil wood & co. was founded in nearby san jose. wood's first publication was titled anybody's bike book.

watch out, other bicycle riding book world wonks. it's easy to jump to conclusions. phil wood is also apparently the name of the new zealander with the record in the triple jump, and he'll likely pop up as a red herring on some site or another. the road is fraught with shad. don't get tripped up.

and where was bikesnobnyc on making this important public service announcement? after all, his seal of disapproval marks the very center of the complicated venn diagram that contrasts cycling and publishing across the internet. it would seem, however, that concern for the public good ends where the meetings with the literary agents begin. holiday sales must be good.

in other proliferations of confusion and deceit, on friday the new york times published a review of how to live ("or a life of montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer") along with a profile of its author, sarah bakewell. the review, in an echo of this much earlier one by laura miller, posits the subject of how to live, michel de montaigne, as the creator of the personal essay and, by extension, as the "father of all bloggers" (that one's in the title). we've already offended jonathan franzen, so we needn't tread lightly to avoid breaking with canon by decrying the reputation of montaigne. unfortunately, i can't insist that this particular oversight is the fault of a poor translations market, because montaigne has been translated from french, and essays in idleness has been translated from the japanese. montaigne was almost certainly translated first, but yoshida kenkō was spearheading the popularization of the personal essay more than two-hundred years before montaigne.

granted, essays in idleness is as canonical within the history of japanese literature as any other work, but i can give up on railing against the useless artifice of seminality for the moment and satisfy myself with crying euro-centrism just to be able to wonder again why no one can accept that the japanese invented blogging. no shade on montaigne.

sleep easy, phil wood.

IF ONLY IN MY DREAMS; or, ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES, part II

the mailwoman knocked on my door this morning early -- early enough, at least, that it could only have been someone like the mailman, even though i've never lived anywhere else that the mail came so early. i was awake and getting ready to leave the apartment, so the timing wasn't inopportune beyond my having to race back to the bathroom sink to spit out the toothpaste and rinse. dear ms. mailwoman: i will wait for your knock on every of your postal carrying mornings if you are delivering cookies.

a box of cookies. certain of the sheet varieties were uncut and packed in slabs, so i ate a four by sixer (that's about ten by fifteen, winnipeg) for breakfast. it was the kind with the graham cracker base that's held together with butter and a half dozen (that's a half dozen, winnipeg) other delectables glued on with condensed milk. we'll be looking good in control top pantyhose at the holiday formal tomorrow night.

it doesn't hurt that it hasn't yet rained today -- there's even some sunshine -- but it's for certain that cookie box is behind my re-lifted holiday spirits, and my second attempt at seasonal joviality has me remembering tender moments from holidays past.

i've been struggling to finish a final essay on tokyo, but she and i haven't been on speaking terms since thanksgiving, and, not for lack of desire or planning, the whole thing has been frustratingly slow going. however, in deciding not to use a particular japanese word to describe some of the areas of the city through which i'd walked, i landed upon a memory of december with the extended family. in japanese, the word "shitamachi" (下町) captures a collective nostalgia for a tokyo of yore in which merchants and artisans bustled among closely huddled wooden buildings and a thriving popular art scene. the term means "low town" or "low city" and names the lower lying areas of tokyo to the east of the imperial palace, contrasting them with the hillier, higher lying "yamanote" (山の手) section to the west (and, literally, "toward the mountain"). as much as some of the neighborhoods i walked seemed shitamachi-ish in comparison to others, i was rarely ever outside the west side, and when i was, i was changing stations.

in abandoning the word, however, i thought for the first time about its etymology and for the first time associated its naming with a state of relative under-privilege, a distinction that is masked at places like the shitamachi museum in ueno which "focuses on the history of the downtown [emphasis added] area and the way of life in this community," and where "visitors can see reproductions of downtown spaces, such as tenement houses or well sides surrounded by alleys and stores."

and then the flood of nostalgia. (names have been omitted to spurn the egos of the guilty.) speaking of franklinton, the area of columbus, ohio west across the river from downtown where the aunts and uncle were raised, [aunt] (who was alive before there were alternative lifestyles, by the way) insisted against [uncle] that they called it the bottoms because it was at the bottom of the hill (bonus: it's also a floodplain).

"they called it the bottoms because we were poor, [aunt]."

"don't argue with me, thomas [uncle]."

"we were poor, maria, WE. WERE. POOR."

"THOMAS, don't argue with me. WE HAD A MAID!"

if only grandma were still around to experience the legacy. instead of the nativity pageant, at christmas my family interprets scenes from "who's afraid of virginia woolf."

happy holidays.

ON MON DÉGOÛT (THAT'S "HERE" IN PORTLAND)

it's been raining for a week, which isn't out of the ordinary for winter in the pacific northwest, but the bike i've been riding isn't ideally equipped for this weather, and the water resistance of my bag was already suspect in december of last year, which was the beginning of what must have been a comparatively dry season because i rode without fenders for the entirety of it and had never until now thought once about buying shoe covers (they're hideous, even if they do come in white).

so it's possible -- despite having been on a holiday spirited mission to purchase the most unique and inspired wrapping paper possible for my nieces' gifts -- that my irascibility at seeing the sidewalk sign outside of oblation papers & press was nothing more than ill directed ill humor caused from going on eight days of wet feet. it's also possible that since i didn't notice the sign until i left the store that my tetchiness was just a result of not having found any paper to meet my expectations (or my nieces', i'm sure, after the beans and rice and the patchwork stuffed animal papers that oblation sold me earlier this year). but "european style" paper store? is that still something we're trying so hard for, portland? i know that some stationers know people who can make them a new sign.

i'd meant to send you all to the bookstore this evening with the 'looking good in pants' best books of 2010 list, but my disappointment with oblation lit an already short fuse (a poor choice of metaphor, because i have no way of explaining how my fuse, albeit short, stayed dry through all the rain on which i'm blaming the origin of this mood), and so all you're getting of a list is that freedom wouldn't be on it. it's on nearly every other fiction list on the internet, anyway, including laura miller's at salon.com. we've been neglecting coverage of her work lately, but her list doesn't really make us want to go tracking back through the archives, either. i read neither her review of franzen's book (i think she might have moderated the salon.com book club discussion of it, too) nor her justification for selecting it as one of her favorites. to be honest, i'm unhappy that there's a copy of the book in the apartment.

sorry, jonathan. it's tough to pick on ms. miller when salon.com is in such financial straits, and you're so easy. it makes it easier, too, this mood. it may be cold in new york, but at least there's snow; and there's romance in that, no? or maybe the romance is all just new york. no. the snow is part of it. it's so much better than this rain. there's a good chance of snow there for the holidays, no? andre aciman's eight white nights was magical. the snow and new york and late december. and eric rohmer. he's a big part of it, too. i wonder what's going on at film forum. we'll see you at the christmas eve party. we can talk about it then. secret agents on the balcony. magical. read the book. we can talk about it then.

in the meantime, i have gifts to wrap.

RED SCARES

holy weekend.

although it also meant a busy rededication to the caseload as a result of a renewed surge of zeal for the work, it was incredibly validating to read an article in the sunday nyt entitled "declassified papers show u.s. recruiting of former nazis and collaborators."

it was less of a secret that the u.s. occupation of japan restored most of japan's wartime leaders of government and industry to power after china "fell" to communism, but "hitler's shadow: nazi war criminals, u.s. intelligence and the cold war" was only issued in its final version in 2007, and it was only after the release of the report that the government documents on which it draws were declassified. however, just like in postwar japan, "tracking and punishing war criminals were not high among the army's priorities in late 1946" (although it's true that it took the initially idealistic occupation of japan until 1949 to give in to the pressure of international realpolitik on that front.)

the threat, ladies and gentlemen, is real. they're among us. it just goes to show that there's always a good reason to quote "glee." crazy? definitely. the taps were self-service at the holiday party, and my thoughts have yet to recollect themselves. also, it's that time of the month.

THE NEW TRANSAMERICA; or, LESS TRANS-FAT, MORE TRANSLATIONS

from esther allen, former director of the PEN translation fund, quoted in the article "translation as literary ambassador" from yesterday's new york times: “There is still a very entrenched attitude on the part of mainstream commercial houses that the U.S. consumer of books does not want to read translations.”

unfortunately, we know this. (a less confusing "we" this time: you and me. and you because i've been telling you so.) as the article also states, literature in translation only accounts for about three percent of the total book market in the united states. as someone who reads mostly works in translation, i feel disgustingly underserved. as someone looking for a modest sinecure at an outlet seriously involved in the publishing of new translated literature, i feel that an underserved and undervalued market is severely hampering my employment opportunities.

encouragingly, the times article is principally about efforts on the part of foreign governments and cultural institutions to help authors writing in less commonly translated languages get their works translated into english and break onto the american literary scene, a phenomenon typified by the SUR in argentina that looked oh so good in pants here (both the times and i recognized mr. steig larsson as a runaway exception to the norm).

“We have established this as a strategic objective, a long-term commitment to break through the American market,” said Corina Suteu, who leads the New York branch of the European Union National Institutes for Culture and directs the Romanian Cultural Institute. “For nations in Europe, be they small or large, literature will always be one of the keys of their cultural existence, and we recognize that this is the only way we are going to be able to make that literature present in the United States.”

the article doesn't include any statistical projections for the success of the different efforts it describes, but it does waft an air of optimism. it even mentions that late october tiff between melville house and amazon (which this year started its own imprint for literature in translation) over amazon's newly announced underwriting of the best translated book prize. it's an exciting -- and hopefully accepting -- time for publishing. the greater war may be between digital and print, but it's these overlooked fronts of voice, identity and unique artistry that really stir the blood and spur us to the fight.

it seems that many new translations are collaborations not just between authors, translators and publishers, but also (as per a quote by john o'brien of dalkey archive) between publishers and "consulates, embassies and [foreign] book institutes." that is so great. my question: why haven't the embassy, consulates and book institutes of japan been in touch? there's work to be done! but the awful feedback cycle of a down economy means that the underemployed are never able to keep their publicists on for much more than half time...

if you don't already follow words without borders and open letter books, you should get on that. and put in a good word, would you?

WOND'RING WHILE I WANDER; or, BRIGHT LIGHTS AND PROMISES

'looking good in pants' is quickly approaching its first christmas -- although its ghosts of christmas past are certainly remembered for looking good, pants or no...the holidays are, after all, a time for justifying special revelry even beyond our regular over-indulgence. and although no invitations have been finally rejected, it's looking like 'looking good in pants' will have a northwest christmas this year (unprecedented among all of its ghosts), although not likely a christmas in portland.

"why did i wander to find what lies yonder when life was so cozy at home?" that song is even called "ohio," dammit. but forget it! intrepid and inspired: that's what we are. how could you feel anything less when carol burnett is singing it to you (catching up, catching up). we'll get around to getting back some day -- if we ever feel like packing again. we might be encouraged to move if you ruined the couch and the beds, but probably not near the midwest...unless maybe to pittsburgh, which i hear they've been comparing to here.

until then, aurorarama. powell's finally has some used copies, and it's going to be raining all month. there's that stack from japan, too. joy to the world.

oh yeah, and "we're going to be hunting nazis." don't expect us back any time in particular, either. "...this might take a little while." "those nazis are slippery."

ON LOOKING BACK TO CATCH UP TO THE COMPETITION; or, IRONIES -- COLLECT THEM ALL!

you can't watch "30 rock" or "glee" from a japanese ip address, so we assumed that it was pointless to pay too close attention to the news aggregating emails that we get every weekday. maybe we wouldn't have had access to any of the outlets, right? and that's not even to mention any blogs...

so now it's catch up time. luckily, the internet is behind us as ever (in every sense of that phrase), so catching up ultimately meant slowing down to rejoin the present.

aroundabout november 10, jacob weisberg of slate.com had something charmingly naïve to say about internet journalism (in an article at the new york observer): "We basically invented blogging. And sort of the whole tone of the Web, which to me comes out of email more than anything else, a much more colloquial, personal form of diction. I think Slate was the publication that really, more than anyone else, developed that voice, which in some ways has now infiltrated back into print."

we all know that the japanese invented blogging, which, incidentally, was a source of much needed inspiration while we were in japan. that weisberg's comments were made during our absence does suspect his motives: perhaps he thought that his claiming the internet in the name of slate had a chance of flying under our radar. the japanese self-defense forces are widely manned and well equipped, but everyone knows that they're not organized to withstand a sustained attack.

looks like it's back to hardball. monday in america. can you smell the money? oh. but that might just be me. i haven't gotten the stink out of everything since leaving tokyo.

SOMETHING'S AFOOT

it's not raining in portland this weekend. i haven't heard anyone complaining, and it's a welcome "welcome home." it does, however, recommend some serious riding before the wet comes back again, even if clear skies mean lower temperatures. true, looking good in pants means happily equating junk miles with serious riding, and, true, the three coffee shops that occupied most of this morning aren't all that far from each other (or from the apartment or the closest store that sells the times). but there were some serious junk miles ridden after those three cups of coffee -- and the one burrito near the place that sold me cup number three.

beside the point. and beside the point there stands a line of pretty boys waiting to be met at three different coffee shops. too bad the puzzle was so engrossing. it was not, however, so distracting as to keep me from noticing that random order on alberta now serves coffee from seattle based roaster caffé vita. i hadn't visited in at least a few months, but t couldn't have been so long ago that i saw a stumptown sign in the window...

from random order (stop number two -- stop number one, the albina press, is still stumptown proud), i rode up alberta to what i thought was the concordia coffee house, but what i realized only after seeing the caffé vita labels on the whole beans at the register and then taking a better look at the lettered windows above the doorway to be an actual CAFE vita.

it looks like war for the title of indie rock starbucks, and the battleground is none other than stumptown, u.s.a. seattle giving us a run for our money? we're all for healthy competition, but there's no chance it's going to get the price of a cup anything less than the dollar at which the local market already bottoms out. so maybe money's not really in the running, but with stumptown coffee unsteady on its throne, might our other local microroasters have a chance at a bigger piece of the pie? and the cute ones, which pie do they prefer?

HOW TO PARTY LIKE IT'S 1957; or, BABY'S FIRST KEIRIN

remember just three years ago when america went fixed gear crazy and stateside bike shops were getting fat off of marking up and unloading anything with an njs stamp? no? not surprised. neither did a friend of mine -- a friend who lives with a hardcore commuter and bike collector -- when i started trying to explain the deal with keirin.

neither, i have to admit, did a cyclist friend of mine in japan know what i meant when i told him that i wanted to go see some track races. "track race?" "keirin, i mean. keirin." he'd never been, but was excited at the prospect. granted, there's other track racing in japan besides the specific style of racing that americans recognize as keirin (literally just "bicycle racing" in japanese), but there doesn't seem to be a culture of amateur participation like we have in north america, and everything outside of keirin in japan seems to be the realm of only olympians and world champions. i wasn't surprised that this friend had never been to a track.

in japan, keirin is more of a bettor's endeavor than a spectacle for fans of cyclesport anyway. actually, it's pretty much just a bettor's endeavor; and the japanese bet more money on keirin than on any other sport. what a country. i'm going to speculate that the japanese couldn't afford horses after world war ii and so turned to a cheaper, yet in nearly every aspect comparable form of track speculation as an alternative. it's probably not hard to find out, but i've already checked wikipedia once to get the year for my title, and that year would seem to be in keeping with my assumptions on keirin's origins. not that keirin started in 1957. that's just the year that the nippon jitensha shinkoukai (njs) set (froze) its standard for the equipment that can be used in track competition (of the sort that we designate as keirin in america). in other words, the njs stamp is a mark of authorization, not of quality or authentication. it marks an attempt to level a playing field made easily uneven by technological disparities. restating again: the njs stamp means anything but performance. but damn if that shit didn't sell.

keirin: it caught on. it's exciting, and you're likely to see it included in any track event that you probably won't ever go see at any of north america's fewer and fewer velodromes. if you ever make it, you'll understand all the betting once the keirin portion of the event is over. track events in the states include a variety of races, but keirin is just keirin. it's exciting, for sure, but you can only watch a five lap sprint race (and the racers are only really sprinting for the last one/one-and-a-half laps) so many times before you start hankering for a bit more excitement. it's something the first time you see a member of the pack pass the pacer (a cyclist in a specially colored kit reminiscent of "tron" at the track i visited in japan, but a motor scooter whenever i've seen a keirin race in portland). the pacer drops off the track, and the pack heads full force for the finish line for four, five, six hundred meters through four, five, six turns.

but the sprint gets less and less exciting the more of the races you see as part of the same event...and the races at keiokaku, the venue i visited, were scheduled from 3:30 p.m. until after 8:30. so we made it interesting.

there are about a million ways to make it interesting at the track in japan. nine racers ride in each race, and one through nine wear the same colors in each one. numbers one and two ride in white and black, and without the race schedule i can't tell you the rest of the order except that pink and purple round out the field. no one races for a team, but both the schedule and the "keirin newspaper" printed for each event list the home prefectures of each racer, and racers from the same regions are purportedly more likely to assist each other through drafts and sacrifice sprints.

the "keirin newspaper" costs about six dollars, but it's well worth the upfront expenditure if you're planning on making any bets (and you'll make them whether or not you planned on i if you plan on lasting the day). in addition to the information printed on the race day schedule, the newspaper includes expert advice, bar graphs comparing the recent winnings (in tens of thousands of yen) of the racers in each race, the way in which each racer took any recent places -- and a "talk" column. apparently, the racers are expected to ride in accordance with however they commented for publication before each race, and otherwise they're subject to hazing and ostracism. unfortunately, the "talk" is anything but straightforward, and deciphering its code is (in the best of all hopefully speculative bet-against-the-odds worlds) key to staying in the black.

got it? now just decide whether to bet straight or open on two or three racers (or any two of the groups -- racers one, two and three are in their own individual groups, and racers four and five, six and seven, eight and nine are in groups four, five, six respectively). betting straight on the top three finishers pays out the highest. you can also bet wide on either individual racers or on any two groups (if the two racers or representatives from both of your chosen groups finish in any order in the top three you get some cash), but the return is hardly worth it. (that's not really making it interesting, anyway.) there's also box betting and something called "nagashi," both of which seem to be involved with grouping bets across categories, but none of us got so sophisticated. restating again: we didn't know what we were doing. luckily, the minimum bet at keiokaku is 100 yen. hedge yours and you're looking at between 500 and 3000 per race, and then twelve races means you really hope to hit something at least a few times.

"keirin newspaper" or not, gambling is gambling in the end, and whether it makes it more interesting or just wasteful, you start betting colors or on racers named like your friends or on the chubby fifty-somethings that you figure must still be in the game because they pull it off every once in a while. you're sure that this next one is the race that the twenty-three year old favorite from the same prefecture is going to sacrifice for yellow. it's impressive, though, (and also a little disheartening that you paid money for this) to see the video footage of the locker room before each race and realize that the bellies outnumber their trimmer counterparts. most of the racers are wearing pads, so they probably seem bulkier than they would otherwise (and how many pounds does the camera add?), but these physiques don't scream bike racing. regardless, they all look competitive when they make their entrance onto the track before each race, legs glistening with embro, and every entrance seems like the opportunity for an upset (if, that is, that's how you bet).

it's the music. really. they play a weird sort of fascistic muzak that, during the twenty minutes between the end of one race and the closing of the betting on the next, makes you sure that any wild guess is a certain victory. the racers look more like how they do in the locker room shots when you see them from the open air viewing area at the start line, but they all seem like ready equals from where we were sitting from races one through seven, a third floor gallery of boxes at the back side of the track. at that back side gallery there are a panel of ladies to take your bets, and the ladies smile and ask you for corrections when you've entered an incompatible combination for the betting category you've chosen above your picks on each of your betting scantrons. that made for an interesting experience of its own for the first part of the fun, but once three of our party had left the venue for other evening plans (one way up, one 30000 down and the other smilingly demure), the more interesting game seemed to be down on the track near the action.

you really do pick your battles. another gamble. it makes sense now why the woman beside you on the third floor was happy to pay for the box seat just to read next to her (probably) husband as he downed cup after paper cup of sake and made his bets. there aren't any bet takers in the anteroom behind the doors that open onto the seating area in front of the line. a row of machines accepts your cash along with your scantrons and spits out the tickets you use to claim your winnings post-race at another row of machines. the serious bettors -- and they're all serious down here -- crowd under the video screens that update the race statistics and the betting odds as more bets are collected. they wait until the very end to cast their best calculated bets. then they move out onto the track to heckle the racers as they line up. they shout some really awful things, though i can't deny that most of it could have been construed as overly enthusiastic encouragement. the "talk" from the "keirin newspaper" seems all of a sudden more than just an interesting novelty.

photographs aren't allowed from the track. they're distracting. but the late middle-aged man who growls the warning at you then screams something so assaulting at one of the racers that "distraction" becomes all but a laughable formality. not to mention the hanging cloud of cigarette smoke. and i thought alpenrose was decadent and depraved.

at about race ten, there's a crash. the sound of the tire blowing echoes throughout the entire stadium as if the sound of the helmet of the first racer to go down had been amplified over the loud speakers. imagine also thinking you've heard the sound of a bone breaking, a steel frame cracking. he takes down the entirety of the field behind him. the six gurneys stationed around the inside field of the track are there for a reason. the men at the line rail in expletives that their racers aren't going to have a chance to see the end of the race. forfeited bets. the racers spared the crash do finish, however, to a cavalcade of jeers. that muzak plays, and you're sure again that you'll make bank on the next race.

"did you want to come to the track for the bikes or for the betting?" i'd introduced myself to that friend of a friend saying that i was interested in bicycles, which is what prompted his question, and so i stuck to the theme in my answer. that friend of a friend was the one who bought the "keirin newspaper" and shared it with the rest of us over lunch before we bought our entrance to the venue and made our first wagers. when in rome, so it goes. and i don't know why the scene of the track didn't suggest the colosseum when i first spotted those gurneys.

bets are on as to why keirin developed the cache it did outside of japan in the late twenty-aughts, but the sport is undeniably not without its draw. personally, i couldn't have cared less for buying into the njs craze. the cranks on my commuter do, for the record, make the grade, but the mark isn't visible. you can hardly tell what they were to begin with. i had them blasted and custom powder coated. white. number one.

HOW TO LIVE THE DREAM, part 5

it's been a while, in that it has been, and also in reference to a series of plane rides, train rides, car rides, cab rides -- but as of yet no bike ride -- since we were living the dream on the other side of the pacific.

and what serendipity! the cross crusade awards party was being held tonight at the water heater, only two blocks from the apartment; and god! that's where you were hiding all of the slim, fit beardy boys. right under my nose. rose city, you really did want me back. we're happy to be home.

mr. mark wasn't there tonight...and just when i'd summoned the courage to start our courtship. oh well, for the time being. thanks to "dirty pictures," i've a photo of him ass up on the trainer right above my desk. for tonight i won't hold it against them that they never asked for the rights to the photo of me sidecaring the cross bike down to portland international raceway that they printed anyway.

portland, we'll talk tomorrow.

HOW TO LIVE THE DREAM, part 4; or, 気分転換

the bicycle races. i had every intention of writing about them tonight. i really did. but i also needed to eat. and after paying the 620 yen to get onto the observation deck at sunshine city to take a picture of the docomo tower as one of my thirty-six views (no offense, hokusai, but my series looks stopped at thirty-two), i was too tired to search for anywhere other than somewhere i'd been.

i visited japan last november for a good friend's wedding, and the restaurant i visited for dinner tonight was the place that my good friend and i were able to share a meal after the frenzy of the festivities died down and before, that night, we met up with a group of mutual friends for festivities of a different sort. the japanese are wonderful at justifying all-out gatherings, and (as would be proved once again tonight) they do it with careful nomenclature and cultural aplomb.

so i had dinner again tonight -- a late one, it was verging on ten -- at nami, a teppan-yaki style restaurant that specializes in okonomiyaki and monjayaki, which are batter based griddle dishes representative of osaka and tokyo, respectively. the place is nothing like the images that most would conjure from the "japanese steak house" implication of teppan-yaki in america, which then i complicate myself by saying because nami ("wave," although not written with the character that designates that word) is subtly surfer themed. by going so far as to say that, however, i complicate myself further, because i can't imagine any way to explain why there are dozens of vuitton scarves on hand to be laid over customers' bags and jackets once those things are settled in the baskets provided for them next to each set of seats. (rather, i've no way of explanation beyond that nami is in japan, and especially in tokyo.)

so that's the scene. it was set nicely and quietly, and although i felt somewhat awkward about eating alone at a place where the menu had been written on the assumption of parties of at least two (it's the nature of the food), i had no trouble both cooking my dinner for one and reading my copy of roland barthes' incidents at the same time. it was delightful, actually. you wouldn't believe the music selection: all american, but with no discernible pattern from one song to the next.

then the unexpected. in japanese they call them "happenings" too. they really did look like a bunch of yakuza, which is what the senior waiter lamented when the group of six came in, at least twenty minutes past when she'd given me the chance to make my last food order. i made haste to finish the last of my post-meal beer and kimchi when they were sat four to my left and two to my right at the counter around the prep area.

"how rude. don't talk to him when he's reading."

i didn't care. i was only thinking about the fastest way out of an uncomfortable situation. but i let them know that they could have my seat in just a minute, which was also letting them know that i could speak japanese.

you can have more, i promise, if you want it. ask and i'll give you all the gory details. but i have a plane to catch in the morning, and several coded, in other words, completely useless, souvenirs to buy before that. they were coming from a funeral. for a friend's daughter. a stranger couldn't possible express appropriate sympathy. luckily, they'd already been drinking. and luckily, one of them was the owner.

"oregon," he said (feel free to make up the interim conversation yourselves), "you need to do something about the guns. and then all the warring." then he tried to give me his daughter and that senior member of his staff. it would seem that i was all luck tonight, because i had a recently established anecdote ready when he jokingly mentioned a certain japanese author.

"he's drunk! don't worry about paying any attention." but i was more than happy to. you talk and remember why it is you travel alone. maybe it was all good fortune, or maybe it was the mood of incidents, or maybe (probably) it was these hott new boots. i was more than happy, even before they picked up my check. tokyo, i might miss you more than i thought.

HOW TO LIVE THE DREAM, part 3; or, 微妙極まる

『乙女の密告』, winner of the most recent akutagawa prize, is about kyoto, language acquisition, memory and meaning construction, and idle gossip. of course, you don't get all of that from the jacket copy, but the book just somehow shouted out to be read -- despite tepid reactions from three trusted opinions (though none of the three had read it). reading it has so far paid off: sometimes things do make sense, even if the sense they make is to aver that things don't.

"i dreamed a dream" didn't make much sense within the rest of tonight's program at the basement bar in shinjuku ni-chome where the rally was held, but also it did. it was one of the few numbers that was sung straight (so to speak), and, for all its diva camp, managed to edge its way around the overly melodramatic. those are the kind of lyrics you sing to yourself in the bathtub. and you never needed a soak more than after having to buy a plunger at a 24 hour multistory discount retailer on the edge of kabuki-cho at eleven p.m. on a saturday (and then carry it home through the throngs).

bath yourself to that song and you won't care to wonder whether the cake or the probiotics were a better placebo.

HOW TO LIVE THE DREAM, part 2; or, 治りかけ

it's record time, i think. 45 minutes from ikebukuro to kita-shinjuku on foot; if only because no one walks it, let alone after midnight, let alone in the rain. safe in my self-diagnosis of food poisoning, i gambled on a cold for another day. after all, i come from a city of rain...although, again, dear portland, i know you're right now smitten with snow. another kick in the face: the clothes i wore on my walk will dry more quickly in my room than the ones i left to dry on the veranda before the rain.

i ask this group of friends for book recommendations -- i've only a few days to hit the bookstore before i leave -- and, sadly, haruki murakami's 1Q84 (don't worry, america, you'll have it after not too long) comes up first. the saving grace: one of them remembers that i prefer murakami ryu, and suggests the singing whale (『歌うクジラ』), which i'm sure, unfortunately, you'll never get to read in english. again unfortunately, that book was printed in two volumes and is only now available in hardcover, which means it would replace one other book as weight to carry home. japan excels at first world problems.

what's a girl to do? especially when her stomach is revolting again. make plans to cancel plans for tomorrow. roland barthes is on your side.

HOW TO LIVE THE DREAM; or, 体調崩し

the bike races here find a way to be spectacular in one way or another, and both ways will get their due treatment (also here). but an early headache, that headache's resilience in its confrontation with food and water, and then a split heel and a full body ache made today a different bet. probably, it's just a real estate up sell on tokyo's part. a decent bathtub is an absolute prerequisite for gambling here. as for tomorrow, all signs point to going to wake up with a cold.

ON TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

the tale of the heike, much less famous than the tale of genji, should be better known. it chronicles the struggle for power between the minamoto and taira clans during the late 12th century, and is one of the prime literary examples of the foreboding sense of universal impermanence that pervaded japanese artistic sensibilities during that time (and into the present). the taira had ascended, but only two decades later the arrogance and shortsightedness of that house sowed the seeds of its own destruction. the taira's was a decadence of the truest sense, and its fall marked the end of japan's rule by a self-indulgent "cult of beauty" (the embodiment of genji) and the introduction of an austere, military power structure that defined japanese politics until its imperial restoration in 1869.

heike opens (and in a nutshell):

the sound of the gion shōja bells [they sounded when the historical buddha attained nirvana] echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sāla flowers [they bloomed on the same occasion] reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. the proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.

in other words, the taira got what was coming to them. how silly of us not to have heeded time tested advice.

it's strange and confusing, trying to find a voice at all, but then trying to find one in another language. they'll tell you it's wonderful, but they also won't shy away from pointing out the gaps, which means is all well and good enough, but not enough; and it's criticizable for the same reason it's laudable: because it's almost there. but that's also where confidence flags, and on the spot it gets spotty.

just let me be, tonight. yes, i'm afraid, but i won't say so. i'm sitting across from the woman responsible for inspiring japan to flamenco, and i don't want to second guess. i want to freely make mistakes and not wonder if she's laughing with me at what i said or because she couldn't help laughing at how i said it.

of course i know my way. i've lived here, and i'm living here now for all intents (my own, of course), but then i mistake the direction from which we've come out of the underground. i'm fine walking. i live in a place where it rains all the time. anyway, there's no quicker way on the subway. i can walk the underground passage to the metropolitan government building and then head north above ground from there. i would have found and read the signs to the west exit of the station without your help, but because you ask i'm given pause and pause.

it's the challenge of exposure, to anything, that time enough puts you face to face with that most difficult hurdle: knowing enough is enough to know how much further you still have to go. tonight, i still had to get from the metropolitan government building to home.

i was soaked, but my hat was decent enough not to let me feel it. tonight (although it's daytime there), portland is expecting snow. tonight, tokyo got the rain. i get it. i've been gone too long, and clear skies couldn't last forever. as for you, portland, you've been too long without a master. "there's no point in running away. never run away, all you find is yourself. there's nothing else to find."

there's not a bit of this in what i wanted to say. so, it would seem that i heeded that advice after all. the tale of the heike. it'll only hurt for a second.

FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH

"how horrible it is when crucial moments in our lives can only be expressed in words so banal that they in turn, make the moments themselves banal."

you were warned.

(and that comma is [sic].)

i read that passage of the traveler trying finally to finish that book at a cafe somewhere between sendagaya and yoyogi, and, well, to be sure. i'd wanted to sit down for a glass of wine in the early afternoon at a cafe called bowls on the outskirts of shinjuku ni-chome and on the road that runs east-west along the northern edge of the shinjuku imperial gardens. unfortunately, bowls was full when i arrived (it was, after all, a saturday afternoon), but the handwritten chalkboard menu outside didn't make any indication of wine on offer, so i let myself move on without too much regret. i didn't want to walk much further without sitting down to finish a certain letter, but i walked on anyway.

to ochanomizu, i thought. i haven't spent much time in central tokyo, and i remembered having once been to an older establishment under a railway or highway bridge that served denki buran (electric brandy), a spirit that originated in tokyo during the meiji period (1869~1914) when alcoholic drinks in japan weren't yet on par with their european counterparts as far as alcohol content. (the mouthfeel of a higher proof spirit was compared to the sensation of an electrical current, and the drink was so named.) per my recollection, the place i had in mind served theirs mixed with beer, and although there's no comparison to make with the taste or service of that and a glass of wine, i was able to equate the two on the level of sitting down for experience.

however, once i passed the eastern edge of the gardens i was able to see the jinguu kyuujo, home of the yakult swallows (tokyo's lesser professional baseball team), and was seduced by nostalgia for an evening i spent cheering for the underdog in a box that my host father from high school maintains despite having never gone up to the capital since we were introduced eleven years ago. my warm memory was ravaged by the crowds under the ginkgo trees along the perimeter of the stadium: reality, as is necessary and appropriate, quickly gave the lie to the shallowness of nostalgia. those same crowds should also have been sufficient warning of what i'd find when i proceeded onto aoyama doori, into which the road that runs south along the stadium intersects at a perpendicular.

aoyama gives its name to one of tokyo's six elite universities, the university famous for producing models. that's no surprise when you know that aoyama is at the east end of omotesandou, home of the world's major fashion houses' tokyo flagship stores. the more finely curated stores are actually east of where omotesandou intersects aoyama doori, and i thought i still had the energy to head there and make my afternoon in the fitting rooms of comme des garçons. it turned out i didn't. this season's theme is color, and the inside of the store looked as fun as that sounds; but one snap of the camera at the doorway and i was done with the weekend shoppers as well as with all of my unwealthy tourist compatriots. issey miyake has three stores across the street (and a pop-up down the street opening on the 26th), and prada's five story bubbled glass phantasmagoria of shoes is next door. surely they'll all be less crowded on monday, and their staffs kinder to visitors with no intention to buy.

what a disaster. dear tom's shoes: if the stuff you're giving to those children in need is as painful to walk in as what they sell at nordstrom, i have to say that your mission might need a new guide. all of the food/drink establishments around omotesandou were either full, not right or, in the case of the south asian styled tea room that i decided i wouldn't have wanted to go to anyway, overpopulated with non-japanese that must have been either aging models or young advertising executives who gave me dubiously encouraging eyes when i passed by.

the new plan was to get me out of there, but the new plan was ironically more difficult the further away i got because it was executed on an increasingly aggravating empty stomach. get out of my way. (how can a city like this operate on people who move so lackadaisically?) oh yeah. h&m. congratulations portland, and that lanvin collabo comes out on the 23rd. this one (intersection of omotesandou and meiji doori) or the one in shibuya? that's a decision for tuesday morning.

tokyo can make you forget that there was ever a quiet moment in the world. and then it can also remind you how to relax. it's the difference between night and day -- though, for sure, it was now solidly dark -- being on or just off of omotesandou and walking a couple of hundred meters from harajuku station where omotesandou dead ends at the meiji shrine.

the cafe was only a ten minute walk away. it was splendid. tas yard. look it up if you're in the city. i had some food and my glass of wine, over which i was given pause in ordering because the place served coedo beer, a craft brew made in kawagoe near where i went to high school. there were a couple of young men sitting behind me to my right that seemed the epitome of tokyo creative style. i would have taken a photo if i could have shot them without getting any of this month's art exhibit (no pictures of that, understandably). but the cafe was just an overdue waylay, and besides, i wasn't there for long.

i had to race back to the apartment to change my shirt and grab a gift. i'd made my apologies for dinner and asked that i be allowed to join the party for desert. sweating, i had half an hour to get to the station, buy my ticket, ride three stops and find the restaurant. in my imagination, it was a formal affair, something that nearly made me spend the afternoon alone in my room with panic. really, though, for a ten year old's birthday? but maybe you can only think that once you're there and given the most gratifyingly warm welcome, a welcome that you'd should expect from friends -- near family -- that makes you think, "for shame..." at not having more graciously accepted the invitation to arrive earlier. when did looking good in pants come to mean being so guarded and mistrustful.

tuesday, it turns out, is a national holiday, so we'll have time to have lunch before the races start at three. then we'll bet and make a day of it. what an embarrassing relief. and what a pity to have to say so.

TOKYO BIKE SCENE THIS JUST IN

that's a post i'm going to write when i finally make it into a bike shop -- that is to say, a bike shop that's coolly japanese enough to impress the sensibilities of my countrywomen in the already saturated-in-japanese-cool state of cascadia. and that's not even to mention the recognized ascendancy [don't you prefer ascendance, too?] of our homegrown bicycle industry. this is why we procrastinate...and make things up. if the storied annals of 'looking good in pants' teach you one thing, it should be that journalism's greatest success lies in its colorful (i.e. debauched, if you don't understand japanese) relationship with fact.

i'm hoping to garner a lead during a lunch meeting i've got today, and i'm guessing i'll be sent somewhere in shibuya; but then again, the friend i'm meeting is more of a roadie than a commuter or a fixster or any in-the-middle urban rider sort, so i can't really be sure. but ultimately, i imagine myself walking into some designed-out little boutique store where i'll nonchalantly let my sleeve draw back to show my spoke bracelet, whereupon the staff will ask me where i'm from, and we'll all love that i'm there to represent portland. i don't know how many takes it's going to be to get it right, but if you can't be real, you should at least be perfect.

i do regret not taking pictures of the two riders i saw stopped the other day at an intersection on waseda doori between nakano and kōenji. one was on a fixed gear, headed north, balanced up on his bike by the aid of holding on to a telephone pole or a fence or something. he was wearing rolled up jeans and canvas sneakers, but the triple layered combination that he was wearing above the waist was so perfectly styled and color matched as to be impossible outside of japan. the other rider was stopped in traffic headed east. he was riding a production model giant road bike, anything but special, but his all black commuting ensemble would put the best of us in portland to shame. head to toe rapha (well, i suppose not his shoes), including a pair of those newly designed three-quarter lenghts. man, he looked sharp. unlike his fixed gear counterpart, the man on the giant was wearing a helmet, less, i'm sure, because he was riding with traffic and was therefore more safety conscious than because it was part of the package.

on tuesday, i'm going to a keirin race with the same friend as i'm almost late to meet for lunch. i know. keirin is so three years ago...but i'm excited anyway. i mean, they made it up here, so even if it already crested on the american trend wave, seeing it here is still an important cultural and historical experience. plus, those dudes are stacked. and apparently they get to retire at 35 to a public pension. the scene at the track moves from a distraught closeup to a building excitement to a wide shot of me hanging over the rail frantically waving the billet that just won me tens of thousands of yen. then there's a snapshot montage. i'll be able to afford myself a cup of coffee on wednesday morning.

ON GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS; or, HOW TO DO JUST THAT

there are some eight and a half million people in the 23 wards of tokyo proper, so despite my having been in a place and time not difficult for running into the person in question, i was still surprised to hear my name called from behind me on the street and turn around to see a friend. and then, what, by another chance, i'd made evening plans with a mutual friend who was scheduled to call me within thirty minutes of my chance encounter.

the italian restaurant that minami suggested was full for at least another hour, but we didn't have to look long to find something else, as there's no shortage of izakayas around ikebukuro station (most of them chains, although they still offer better fare than what you'll find in the booming copycat market in the states).

minami works in fashion. she sells clothes for paul smith -- though i think she's officially employed by tobu department store. she wants to take herself elsewhere. in other words, she wants to really work in fashion. kawaji works for a company, a japanese company with offices in ootemachi (literally the big dogs' town) near tokyo station. minami watches "the city" at mtv.com and thinks that she might just have to bet everything on an internship, an internship that she'll probably have to seek outside of japan. kawaji insists that she'll have to work abroad for the rest of her career if she goes that route. they both agree that it's risky, and that she won't have a chance at becoming a salaried employee at any japanese company if she doesn't quit her current job and make a go before she's thirty. (minami has the benefit of five years on both me and kawaji...and, in exemplification of the point at hand, speaks with calculated formality to him but not to me.)

kawaji appeals to my love of books in his arguments against the internet. minami is on uneasy ground in her defense of online content because she doesn't read. i say something about individual responsibility and the failure of japanese education as it pertains to a functional democracy. my origin in a dysfunctional democracy is borne witness to the suspect character of my argument. apparently i used to be more conservative.

minami pulls out her iphone to look up the tpp. i don't bring up that the proliferation of the iphone since i was here last year is entirely the result of a successful ad and price campaign by softbank, the innovative wireless provider here that found a way to popularize apple's smartphone in a country that has had cell phones with internet capability since the turn of the century. "japanese in their twenties don't know how to communicate." "they just communicate differently than their older coworkers." "japan is going to change. it's inevitable." "but that won't happen all of a sudden. the japanese company is too established in its function." "but it has to. the japanese company doesn't have a say."

in any case, best of luck to minami. her impression is that japanese fashion still takes too much from foreign designers. if so, japan should re-protect that industry, tpp agreements or not. it's impossible that there aren't more garments for sale in this city than in any other place in the world, and people are paying top dollar for them, bad economic times or not. unfortunately, the stores in tokyo are selling men fanny packs as something to be worn crosswise over the shoulder, and that needs to be stopped. a purse queen has her dignity. perhaps it's finally time for both america and japan to start thinking outside of the ever increasing standard of living box. designer fanny pack or not, i for one know that a situation in which people throw hundreds around like twenties can't last long.

oof. don't worry about it. i've got the check...

HOW (TO?) CHRISTOPHER GOT HIS GROOVE BACK

there it was, welcoming me back: a hanging ad in the train car advertising noriko sakai's tell-all memoir about her years of drug problems. i haven't any interest in pop idols beyond the regular passing fascination with the interest that japanese pop idols do inspire in some, but i do vaguely remember having first heard noriko's name during my earliest years of studying japanese, and her face was a regular fixture on the covers of the weekly news magazines that decorated the tokyo trains during the two years i lived in japan. i hope it sells, ms. sakai, though i won't be able to be of any direct help. my reading list is already too heavy.

how are memoirs faring in japan? i've no clue. unfortunately for ms. sakai, no one else on that train seemed likely to buy her book either, if only because most of them probably didn't see the ad. most of them were reading -- including a younger man with a newspaper that had an ad on the back for toupees, an ad that seemed aimed at younger men like the one reading the newspaper and that was big enough to be readable from where i was sitting on the bank of seats across the aisle. the older man next to me was reading a publication from some bank or insurance company on net worth and the estate tax. i would have been reading myself had i not been so dazed from my flight and distracted by tired anticipation. i'd hardly opened my borrowed copy of antal szerb's the traveler on the plane. unfortunately, despite having wanted it finished by the time i arrived at that night's destination (and in addition to my inability to concentrate), my copy of the book was in such disrepair as to be unmanageable in addition to my bags.

even if i wasn't reading, most of the rest of the train car still was. the ride from narita to nippori, where the keisei line meets two of tokyo's larger japan railway lines, takes about an hour and a half. from nippori to ikebukuro on the yamanote line is another fifteen or so minutes, and from there i didn't immediately have the humility to force myself and my luggage onto another train for another hour, so i stuffed my things instead into a coinlocker and let myself wander the area around ikebukuro station in vain hopes that by 8 p.m. the late rush hour traffic out of the city would thin enough to allow me a comfortable space on the train to higashimatsuyama in saitama where my japanese adoptive family lives.

there's a large stand of coinlockers at the "metropolitan" exit of the station (the exit's named for the shopping center above it), which is conveniently located at the above ground entrance to the tobu tojo line that runs from ikebukuro to higashimatsuyama. but, my god, if the entire city of tokyo isn't just a giant shopping center. recession or not, and regardless of japan's continuing deflation woes, the stores keep coming, and their wares are on constant display in the crowds that pass in and around them. tokyo denizens are shamingly well put together. i'll have to see about apparel shopping, which is to say that i'll have to wait and see which direction the yen blows after the g20 meeting in seoul. anyway, it's no time for frivolity. all the stations in tokyo have been on orange alert because of the apec meeting in yokohama.

so i sat for a while at the park near the west exit of the station, the park that, like most parks in tokyo, is just a lot of cement. a lot, that is, that hasn't been built up. there's a fountain on timers across from a set of railing seats for smokers and some kind of performance hall across from that. it's not by any means a tokyo must see, but it's representative enough (and vaguely nostalgic), so i took a picture before moving on. the longer i sat, the harder it was going to be to brave the home stretch of my arrival.

there's a pedestrian underpass that takes foot and bicycle traffic between the west and east sides of the station. i took it under and east to where it opens near the first floor of one of the area's larger discount electronics stores. i don't know how the employees stand it. that song can't be much longer than 30 seconds, and it plays on constant repeat. you'll know how to sing it after a dozen cycles, so you'd bettr know what you want. it's the same thing at most of the city's big chain stores, excepting the ones that sell books, and the bookstore to which i was headed isn't so awfully like a chain. it's definitely huge: the junkudou in ikebukuro (the company's original store) is at least nine floors plus a basement. but its interior is scarcely designed or gimmicked (the store on shijou doori in kyoto is no different, though slightly smaller). the japanese will stand and read at a seven eleven. it's hardly necessary for a bookstore to affect an ambience.

one sweep of the magazine section to the left rear of the cash registers on the first floor was enough. absolutely no sense in increasing my load on night one. there's a huge market for seasonal and limited time items in japan, but in my experience that doesn't affect the publishing or bookselling industries -- and saying so now makes me worried for when that floodgate finally opens.

i couldn't read on the train from ikebukuro to matsuyama either. despite having waited an hour around ikebukuro and then going to the platform and standing in the second set of lineups for the next next express, the train was still crowded. i got a seat, though at the expense of having to sit my bags in front of me in such a way as to make the seat next to me unusable. i've played that game on that same line more times than i'd like to remember, and, sadly, i don't remember specifically any of the books that i read during the two months i commuted between saitama and the city in college. the rules are similar in the opposite direction. during the peak commuting hour of the morning, higashimatsuyama station is the last station on the line where you can expect to find a place to sit on the train up to town. standing for an hour in the swarm is anything but unusual for riding morning or evening trains around tokyo, but it's not the most energizing way to start a day.

even if i hadn't been worried about losing the first fifty pages of my book over the laps and feet of the other riders, i still would have kept it in my bag. and i hated that train. the rebuffs and having to make the last one. 12:50? even if i took taxis, 55 kilometers is impossibly expensive. and so one decides to pay rent in the city. that night, though, i was happy to be riding that train to matsuyama, or if not necessarily happy, smilingly indifferent. there was be food waiting for me, and i just didn't care. looking good in pants means keeping up appearances, and having attended school in japan couldn't have been any better training. but really, anymore, i'm just tired of taking care of her. (when the LED news ticker on the super express ran that story about the man poisoning his mother, all i could do was wonder how mrs. bates had died in "psycho.")

more important than the strangers: "would they be able to talk to each other again, after all these years? after such divergent paths?" i've gradually made my way about half way through the traveler, and i wasn't surprised that a passage in a book so named would strike an assonant chord on certain heartstrings. mihály and ervin, the dissipated philanderer and the jew turned catholic priest, are able to talk to each other, and ervin sends his friend on another travel, a trip to rome. i might not need to finish reading the rest of the book. or, more correctly, i'm afraid of being sent on a different errand after already have been given the only advice i want to follow: "above all, do nothing. surrender yourself to coincidence. give yourself over to it, don't make plans..."

i'm sitting on a heated toilet seat next to which is a shelf of books. one of them,『ヘタな人生論より徒然草』("who needs some shoddy theory of living when you've got 'essays in idleness'"), strikes me by its title's coincidence with an idea that i once expressed at this blog. (the japanese, by the way, really did invent blogging.) the back cover describes something about finding fluidity between falling behind and being sucked into the pace of contemporary digital society. really, what better solution to that dilemma than a collection of seven hundred year old musings on the interplay of beauty and action?

what a strange, demented feeling it gives me when i realize i have spent whole days before this inkstone, with nothing better to do, jotting down at random whatever nonsensical thoughts have entered my head.

maybe that's why it's in the bathroom, but i guarantee that the japanese get some serious reading done there, too.

it was just a coincidence -- and, admittedly, those are easy to find when you need them. correlation and causality do, after all, have that strange and deceitful relationship. but we all know that those are the most fun to read. fun makes the writing easier, too. in other words, ms. sakai's book is an easy win on either side. it can't, also, be coincidence that the fortune i got at kiyomizu-dera temple told me that very same thing. for a hundred yen, it couldn't have been off mark. so i'll surrender. doing nothing is exactly the something i need to be doing, especially insofar as that means looking good in pants. and if there's nothing else to do than read and write, well, then that makes the decision all the easier.

HOW TO MAKE THE BEST OF IT; or, ON META-VACATIONING

there's a bookstore on istiklal ave in beyoğlu in istanbul that sells books in english. that's where i made my introduction to orhan pamuk via the new life. i also bought what i hesitate to call a collection by anaïs nin because i remember it including only two stories. one of the two stories in "artists and models" was the story of a young man, a handsome young man, who wakes every morning and takes special care in pressing his slacks, dressing, fixing his hair, and then leaves his apartment and walks the morning streets of the city to bask in the attention of the women he passes -- although without entertaining any of it -- only to return early to his apartment to sit in his bed smoking, masturbating over the excitement of possibilities.

during my two weeks in turkey, i paid special attention to following that young man's example. last night, however, the intercession of five years found me forgetting the benefits of that well learned lesson until i was confronted with the hazards of dismissing it. i should have contented myself with my one man dance and grooming party. in hindsight, an hour on the street would have been much more satisfying than two hours waiting to let myself pay a bar tab. there was no promise that the payoff would have been satisfying had the endeavor paid off anyway. the inference of hope can be enjoyed without ever having to gamble on it toward possible disappointment. and, getting what you want can be just as boring as not.

things might have come off ideally, or unexpectedly (maybe even better). but kyoto is, after all, a city raised (and razed) on sour grapes, so i'll have no compunction over having mine. i've just overheard that kyoto natives still maintain an irreproachable sense of pride over living in the capital (and that means the boundaries as they were, not the extent to which the city has been incorporated to now). nothing has ever been less tolerable in this city than losing face, and no aspect of culture here hasn't at one time been helped by the incredibly powerful force of ruined pride. my own pride, then, is bolstered to know that i've had a something like what we could call a real kyoto experience. let's call it that. pro or con, there's a satisfaction that comes with tiredness and just having it done.

still, for me, and for most japanese i think, tokyo is the indisputable center of the world, and i wonder if i'll have the chance to think so wildly once i'm back. "in tokyo we have a life. we can hide in our everyday lives." hiromi kawakami wasn't comparing the two capitals when she wrote that in manazuru, but her sense of reluctant resignation to the pull of the center is an accurate description of my feelings on the end of my vacation from my vacation. a kyoto native would no doubt take issue, but that's just sour grapes.

that said, i'll be taking a forced break from the internet for at least the next twenty-four hours, after which time i'll have gone up again to the capital and left the old one behind. what could be better? we fallen nobility think of nothing else. life in exile has its certain pleasures, but life in the capital is gay. the possibility anyway. mask my displeasure at having too many plans not to leave. for the audience it's all the same, writing not excluded (and perhaps even the best example). this could have taken me a few dozen fewer minutes. i've learned my lesson. masturbation.

ON THE THRILL OF THE ACADEMY

kyoto is teeming with anthropologists, or it seems that way anyway when you're surrounded by them and in such culturally steeped environs. it was indescribably rejuvenating to play the art fag accessory to the anthropology of art post-doc at the willy ronis photography exhibit at the kyoto museum of contemporary art yesterday afternoon, but the conversation at dinner was even more enlightening. it would seem that no one paid enough forethought to my negotiable property holdings and that no effort of charm on my part could ever have won over someone so society minded as the subject of tuesday night's fancy. you see, i don't have any pigs. not one. and no amount of clever conversation can increase my value in the eyes of a certain set without it's ultimately being underwritten by livestock.

the girlfriend wanted chickens, and so i obliged. damn. i'm as bad as he is.

ABOUT LAST NIGHT, part 2

postcards. people are sure to appreciate them more from kyoto than in tokyo, or so i've decided, so i've decided to send them from here. but instead of finding some nice ones and sitting down to write them this evening as was my plan when i woke up this afternoon, i put on a nice outfit and went to one of the fancier department stores downtown so that the salespeople on men's designer could be nice to me. walking there i couldn't tell if it was my back hurting from so much walking or my kidneys from dehydration.

japanese homo culture is probably the way it is so that the japanese can avoid the overblown dramatics of the likes of me. but looking good in pants means saying it straight and as it comes. we sometimes get worked up, but, when we finally work ourselves down, we aren't beyond recognizing that perhaps a selfish response to not getting what we wanted can overtake our necessary respect for the nuances of cultural difference. the braggadocio of near perfection blinded me to the possibility of my still being susceptible to cultural shock. so once again: ctrl identity + alt + delete adolescence. the truth is, i had fun. not sorry.

my walk took me near chion-in temple, and i remembered from my visit yesterday that the temple is open special evening hours this month for a seasonal illumination. fall in japan means colored leaves and moon gazing parties. i climbed the hill again, paid my fee and made a second round.

the main hall of the temple was dimly lit from around the altar. a recorded track of monks chanting sutras played in the background. those of you who were raised catholic will understand when i say that once you've lapsed, you develop a profoundly unique relationship with god. despite your firmness in your disbelief, he's always still there to talk, an ex who still loves you and will do whatever he can to help you stop making the same mistakes as when you were together. i'm no buddhist, but in the dim light and amidst the incense and chanting, i had a nice sit down with amida. not believing in the law made it all the easier to come clean. i'd have stayed there all night had they let me.