It's funny how a month has passed unnoticed because where was I last October.
There was also an illusion of the self, wanting to miss so many people, because a walk home at past 3 in the morning can be quite lonesome at times, especially with the growing smell of cold autumn finally surrounding.
Often times, I imagine being carried by a hot air balloon, alighting at any place the imagination can fabricate. I'd usually choose a quaint, little Japanese neighborhood with roughly a few dozen houses, and where an old izakaya defines the nightlife, or an old local train station concludes the very heart beat of the whole town. There is always a backstory in my head, mostly romantic in nature, typifying the beautiful complexities of a rustic Japanese life, where years are measured by how saltier the sea breeze becomes each passing summer.
I am sure the little towns along the coastline of Miyage would have been the perfect airports of my hot air balloon. Seeing how these towns were washed out to ruins just make me realize that some place remains beautiful even if they were completely scathed to utter mess.
"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.
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.
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.)
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.
Lately, there are so many things going on in my head I just wanna get over this month quickly.
On logical order of things, I'd be starting my doctoral course in a few days. I can't help but pant about it way before even it started. The only consoling thought is that I can start afresh and my head is bustling with ideas. The previous four months have just been so unmerciful to me. Thinking about mathematics and physics and mechanics every single day has, I think, taken its toll on the more moist part of my brain and has provokingly fettered my creativity until this blog has only seen a post per month. My camera has grown cobwebs, so to speak, and so did my artsy-fartsy-ness.
The past few weeks were spent on these issues, and how much I would need to reformat my say on things. I came to the conclusion that I am so unfortunate to be blessed with a fluid character but with a structured set of faculties. It came as no surprise, come to think of it, because 2 years ago, I was choosing between art school and soil mechanics. Now I wish numbers had colors.
I breath quite oddly because I think I was cursed. I was talking with an American friend a few weeks ago who told me I am making a fool of myself thinking I am working on my dream. But what is it to dream really? Is it to think of things you can actually achieve and have a good grip of and proceed further from that once they come true, or is it to think wishfully of things that you can only blindly find your way into and out?
I wish I have answers to toss around. But right now, I can only speak of things that're on my desk. Because who said you can't have multiple dreams in one lifetime, right?
The photos I took a few months back. Had some typography over there. That's all I can think of at the moment. Credits to Taking Back Sunday for the wonderful song.
Tokyo is green nowadays. It has been awhile, I guess.
Let's traipse slowly, gently into spring.
I'll try. For sun rises everyday in this part of the world, too.
---
"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
2009 was a good year, one that I will not forget for a long time. I met some of the most awesome people and had the best times with them! I had my many 'firsts' and had many opportunities to see Tokyo in numerous lights: artsy, delicious, busy, blinding, and always sublime. I had many of those subtle, poignant episodes straight from Murakami's novels. There were times when I have muttered under my breath, "good Lord, this is a good time" and hid a genuine smile of joy. Not so bad for living one whole year away from home as an expat. Thank you, thank you everyone for putting up with me a year that's for the record!
Now, 2010 makes me feel excited. I have a strong hunch it will be a very interesting year for me and for the people who will be part of it. Some magic is about to happen, right? Keep your calm, and keep the good times rollin'!
I'll leave this year with things that constantly thrill me: buildings and skies! Happy New Year everyone. Regards from here.
...because there's nowehere to go but everywhere. Keep rolling under the stars, generally the Western stars
I think Hemingway was really really thinking hard when he said this: I love sleep. When I am awake, my life has a bigger tendency to fall apart. Or something like that.
But the smell of autumn just makes me yawn all the time.
So fuckyeahhemingway!
***
Lately, I've been thinking of my old place in Yokohama pretty often. I wonder how it feels to be there again and walk aimlessly in those familiar streets and bump to someone I know. It's been close to 2 months now since I moved and only now I get to realize the big change that took place. ドラマ!
***
I heard some good news today. But I don't know if I'd have to be happy or not.
***
I actually wanted to write but seems like I am not friends with words anymore. This is the longest time I haven't read a decent book, too. (Although I consume journals like rolls of tissue paper.) But book is still a book, especially if it is Marquez or Murakami. I should probably go to the library one of these days and find if they have something interesting in English.
Another ドラマ!
***
Someone is celebrating her birthday today. Shout out to that, across the Indian Ocean.
