I have not posted a single thing for the past months!
Anyway, turned a year older a couple of weeks ago, went out of town this week (but without the cam) and did lots of things that will keep my excitement rolling in the next months.
Some photos from a few weeks back. It's damn hot in Tokyo nowadays. I can't help but pant!
"Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself,
perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool
over to high school's groaning
were tokens for holding the lonely at bay.
'Cos if you're happy in your head
then solitude is blessed and alone is okay."
"If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament."
If we're sitting in a cafe somewhere in Marseille and smoking French cigars, and you ask me what I did in Tokyo ten years ago, I'd tell you about these past weeks, when I did nothing but read and write and read, and how come the city was so unshaken with how tangible my thoughts were, and how I could almost touch all of them at one instance on my way home at 6 in the morning.
My most beautiful secrets come to life whenever I walk and think about my future. It involves a shy smile, a soft sigh of optimism, and a tweak of eyebrows that tells a great amount of anticipation. That's my secret: I feel happy when I think of my future, of things I have yet to figure out doing.
I nearly thought I would literally skip the sakura watching this year since I am mostly asleep in the day and working full time with my papers at night. But then this happened, and what a day.
I hope you all have a nice day. Tokyo and Japan in general is still reeling over the catastrophe of last month. So continue wishing everyone here good faith.
Playing is Belle and Sebastian's Another sunny day.
On that fateful Friday morning, I was south of Tokyo, in the seaside resort town of Atami, sitting by the balcony of the hotel we were renting, watching, almost crying at how simple yet arresting it was to be swallowed by a beautiful sunrise. It was one of those soft mornings, so soft in fact that I feel I'm dense and drowning to its sublimities whenever I remember.
I took a shot, three times, thinking I won't find the use of that memory someday but only in little photographs for this blog. Little did I know, with the turn of events later that afternoon, that that sunrise is the only memory I want to remain and remember out of the many unforgettable things that happened that Friday.
My heart goes out to Nihon. I can't help but cry a bit inside every time I see the raging waters surging quaint little towns up north. It kills me like a thousand heart break every time. It wrenches me but at the same time strengthens my love for this country even more, and in the hope that it would stand back stronger after all of this.
If you are following this blog, take a minute of silence, whisper a short prayer to your God, to whatever is bigger than you, and ask for relief over this country we all love. What Japan needs now is our comfort.
In a more practical level, if you cannot find anyway to give your donations, I encourage you to buy something made in Japan one of these days, even something as little as Japanese toys or t-shirts or manga magazine which are being sold in your country. It may not serve any direct purpose or may sound silly amids all of this, but in the long run, may take a little burden to the adverse effects of this disaster.
Thank you for your well wishes. I felt all of them across our oceans.
PS. We all need saving by Jon Mclaughlin was playing on my earphones while I took the photos of that sunrise. I know, it was heartbreakingly coincidental.
Lately, Tokyo is beginning to get warm. I can't help but look at the sky all the time and be pensive of the coming change. Kinda reminds me of one of my favorite lines above, and a Train's song I was being mawkish about some years back when I was still a teenager.
Photos of my skies last week. There was a day when I thought my apartment will fall down to pieces because of the strong wind blowing over the city, but when I went out to check if there was a typhoon, the clouds were like balloons that little kids forgot to tighten and flew to the sky. I know I had to take a shot.
Two of my closest friends from the lab just finished grad school today. I feel that the past two years I have spent with them are entirely an era in itself, and that the coming graduation next month will take my life, in general, into a whole new spin. I feel a bit anxious for myself, but at the same time, I share the success that they now enjoy. I look forward to the new lives they will take on this coming spring, content at the the thought that they generously filled mine ever since Tokyo took me into her arms.
ありがとう!
The consolation of the days I have enjoyed much is that I cannot pick a single one that can summarize all the wonders of a thankful heart. But if I have to, it would be this one day when they drove me out of Tokyo to their hometown, because we were all clueless of what to do with me during the days of my depression. That proved to be one morning that I can remember now in full clarity a streak of carbon-blue in my sky.
These are the photos from the black car, towing along, wafting the growing smell of pine trees of Ibaraki at the break of autumn last year.
おめでとうございます Gunji-chan and Koma-chan! すばらしい~\(^_^)/
New Black Car by the July for Kings. (I remember the radio was on.)
Some things I saw while walking around my area the other day. I miss walking, not that I can't but because it's become less frequent than before due to the freezing temperature. My walking buddy is also busy finishing school and would be leaving soon, so I'm kinda feelings sick walking alone.
Anyway, cheers for February! It snowed a little yesterday. I hope it will this month of the heart, just like! last! year!
The past hours of the week has been purely a thing of the mind. Was in the zone of utter oblivion, I cannot think of anything less ordinary. Still a lot of things to decipher from the graphs, behavior of conjugate displacements I haven't found, I wish I can clearly articulate all these moments in technical innuendos.
Listening to Kissing the Lipless by The Shins for a thousand times I can carve the song in my skin.
What I like about the past winter break was how my day to day events were ran by impulse. There were a few days when I was simply over wrought by the things I like doing at the moment. You bet I was always in the zone.
For instance, I never resisted the lure of a simple walk. Thoughtless, zero-worry walk around the neighborhood. The only trouble I can think of was if my ipod will pick up my secret favorite songs when I turn on the shuffle. I took photos, of course, as random as the feelings of my moment.
Well, the other thing I like about the past winter break was the ridiculous, guiltless hours I spent snuggled inside my apartment, and thinking about 1960s, recording my funny guitar cover of a Black-eyed Peas song ten awful times, reducing my data points into a few hundreds from a few thousands, planning my future and ex-foliating my winter-dried face.
Most of all, those were the last days of the year, the rare ones, when I wasn't the usual bated breath and never really needed anyone for my little joys. The natural highs, I should say.
It is customary for people of this world to celebrate the welcoming of a year with a bang. Fireworks the loudest, people shout, scream, pant, holler at each other, jump to resist the roll. All noisy, rowdy, noisy, rowdy, noisy.
Well, I did all of those.
But for me, the real welcoming of the year started on the way home, at 6 in the morning.
The moon just slightly passed by over my apartment, the streets were quiet as ever, the winds of winter rousing the cold pavements, and there's a light thought on my mind of just how peaceful was the time. Aren't moments like these when we're alone and at terms with ourselves that make us, build us to be truly ready for the imminent changes of the arriving year?
Photos of the Yokohama skyline 2 minutes after midnight, and the moon over my apartment early morning of the first.
Wake up, Mike, 2011 is brewing. Drink your coffee, and don’t worry.
I will write you, will write about you, more often than the sparsely recorded life of a deranged man.
I will wake up with you in the morning, and we’ll light our palms red against the bursting sunshine of an 8 AM. I’ll make sure the bath is warm and that the toaster will toss warm pair of bread for breakfast. Buy your bicycle, because it is nice to start the day racing against rambunctious Japanese gradeschoolers on your way to school.
We’ll eat lunch in empty playgrounds, sitting on see-saws and listening to rousing mid-day breeze. If it's blue skies all over, we’ll throw a small picnic by that bench in the field so we can watch the universe at the same time. If you’re under the weather, there’s McDonalds and people-watching across the street. You see, there’s so much we can do before the day closes to half.
We can listen to jazz and solve math all afternoon together, just like the old times. I know you’re excited to go back to discovering Fabionacci sequences in soil, and betting your life on Mathlab. We’ll be geeks, and remain shall so amidst the languages we both don’t understand at all.
At the end of the day, we’ll do the market; I know seeing a huddle of yellow peppers is one of your guilty pleasures. We’ll visit every window of your favorite shops in Jiyugaoka, and wonder why there’s so many old, rich women in your neighborhood.
We’ll start the night with a tea, because we’re awesome like that. There are so many fabricated lives to watch from your favorite TV series. Believe me, there's always a new English tongue to rehearse.
On weekends, we’ll take the camera to the city, and shoot buildings and wonderful things in the sky. Or if you’re bored, we can always grab a coffee somewhere, read a book, or pretend we’re mysterious poets at the crack of rabid fame. And if you’re really really bored, let’s just get lazy with your guitar, sing slowly until we can see all pieces of dust settle inside your room.
We’ll be fine, Mike, I assure you because we are cool like that. So wake up now because a new year is brewing. I promise this will be a great one, because now I can see that your eyes are awake and they will remain wide open because I will be with you every minute that they are.
Credits: Seasons of love, because we'll measure the year with the heart this time.
When does exactly a stranger stops becoming a stranger? Is it after a shared drink and few thoughtless conversations about ephemeral current events infront of an awkward bartender? Or after a candid mistake of smiling at a snotty baby in a crib which told the mom everything was not a mere coincidence? Or after the creaking sound of a rundown bed stopped by the consolation of a one night stand in a dingy motel room?
Credits: The Blower's Daughter by Damien Rice, from Closer, because the pedestrian with strangers are mad mental exercise for unhurried feelings of loneliness and exclusion.
Someone said before: "Everytime I go to Shibuya, I fall in love with a stanger." So this is Shibuya.
I first read Murakami's Norwegian Wood when I was still living in a boy's dormitory some years back. Tossing up endlessly on top of my bed for a few nights, I dreamt I was Toru Watanabe, back in the 1960s in his college dormitory in the restless Tokyo. In the afternoon, I would go out of my dorm's balcony while reading the book, and pretend I'm at Midori's own balcony, watching a building growing fire at some distance. To say I was hooked is an understatement because I even bought The Great Gatsby halfway of the Norwegian Wood, and started reading the two books in parallel just so I can fully breath what exactly is Toru was feeling at that time. I didn't finish The Great Gatsby though, because Norwegian Wood ended so damn frustrating I was depressed for several days.
Now, Norwegian Wood is a movie. All I could think of is how to watch it. The problem is most movie theaters in Tokyo are in Japanese. I hope I could find one that has English subtitles at the end of the week. Cross your fingers Toru.
Norwegian Wood of The Beatles is playing. The photo I took a few months ago.
I'm currently watching a highly neurotic TV series, In Treatment, the American treatment of Hagai Levi's successful Israeli series BeTipul. What interests me is how people behaves differently from what their mouths say. Sometimes, that quarter of a foot distance between the heart and the tongue is a bit longer than necessary. We say hurtful things to people we love when all we want to say but don't actually say is "I love you". (God, shoot me, I'm so emo, haha.)
On the same line of thought, of equal interest are the things we don't say to cover the said distance. I think that the things we mum about are more hurtful than the things we do say. Or probably my level of paranoia is just more conscious than average?
Anyway, this post is for my dad, the man I never had said enough of what I needed to. He celebrated his birthday 2 weeks ago. If he was with us, he would have been 79.
John Mayer has a song, one of my favorites, and highly coincidental to my post. I used it to make this post highly emotional. So shoot me now.
I'm saying goodbye to the sweetest month of my year while the Hot Action Cop is singing.
Baby, what is it with autumn that keeps me feel alive when everything else around me is falling off to shreds of yellow? This isn't the best season to recover from my year-long depression but yeah, I'm breaking slowly back to life.
Anyway, got a new shade of yellow in my room. Went to Ikea yesterday and bought a stand-alone lamp for less than 20 bucks. It shines 20 times greater than the lamp I bought online in Rakuten a year ago. So you guess I'm more than happy!
I love furniture shops! What I love about it the most is how I don't get this whole Andy Warhol feeling all over me while pushing my shopping cart. Is there anyone getting this same vibe or am I just being annoying?
The other thing that I love about furniture shops are the kids. I especially like those who are having tantrums inside the shopping carts=prams while they're towed away together with the towels, the yokes, the curtain rods, etc. because mum and dad are not done shopping yet. This one, I totally get. Makes me so hopeful about the future. lol.
Well I guess the Swedes got it right with the furniture. But it got me thinking how many Vietnamese are being paid below the minimum wages to deliver the perfect White Westinghouse photo. Only the babies kept me from overanalyzing things.
By the way, Ikea has the cheapest hotdogs in town. They got the pickles right, too.
Just how much we have grown older? Me with the meds, and you with "Paris je t'aime".
That 5PM when we were scaring the birds from the 4th floor, and how much hungry we were of the golden hours in the upper west side of the globe when we were 17, remember?
