BLUE COUP D’ETAT

Here are some Oscar Wilde quotes–
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“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
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On advise: “People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.”
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“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”
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“The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”
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These guys are reconstructing my heart with light sabers.

Thanks to Ayako and Koubuchi-cun, raining in Tokyo after another really great dinner, sashimi and soupy rice with the house specialty–grilled unagi (eel).

Hot tears yawn like lava

(more mismatched words and images)

Life seems like a senseless stream of events, can’t quite get a grasp on what’s going on. Used to be a burning hope for love, used to be the reason I got up in the morning. Now (only in these moments because I know this too will pass) I feel the desire for distance, numbness, not caring–it is a trap, later I’ll regret this indulgence. This is not to say that I appear unhappy, on the contrary I laugh and smile often but feel cut adrift, floating without aim, dreamless.
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The calming waters roll off my cheeks, sit on my skin, pores open like sunflowers eating the sun.
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If the leaves turned blue and grey I could say they were the color of your eyes

If the sky felt soft and warm on my skin I could say your breath haloed my face

If absence were presence you’d be here

(The writing here has nothing to do with the pictures or does it? Thoughts from somewhere besides Kamakura, actually at least four years ago in Harlem before I even met Tomoko.)

Its a sad state of affairs when you don’t trust anybody, when you don’t believe anybody, when doubt clouds the way, when confusion tips the scales. These things are always around but they’re only dangerous when they gain weight and take the form of a filter through which you see the world and then it is a conscious effort to stop and look at the bright, to find the positive, to live a thiking life and concentrate on the hard thoughts, the thoughts that make dreams reality, the thoughts that make the world better instead of plunging it deeper and deeper into despair. Despair is easy, it takes no effort, you see it, you feel it, you succumb to it. Joy is difficult to succumb to, even when it is right in your face because you have to let go of so many things to embrace it whereas despair is all about holding on and sinking.
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I slip into a reality where the words happen, the thoughts take shape but I never move just sit there, mouth slightly agape, doing nothing, caught up on an interior dialogue that tries to fit the world into something understandable, hopefully something desireable, usually only really and truly in the solitude of my imagination.
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Objects, that’s it, that’s the problem–Objects, inanimate objects, seeing it all like pieces on a board that I can move around just like that, chess, check-mate. But someday I realize that the only piece on the board that I can really control is my piece, just mine despite all illusion and egotism. Or maybe I don’t realize and I’m full of false expectations.

(more old thoughts, random and brief but not from Tokyo)

History rhymes and now we’re recording it.
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Somehow feel as though meant to love, to be in love, to make love, to be loved and every moment outside is dead time, purgatory, waiting. But I forget and live, work, occupy myself and move with the seasons, then the pain of realization.
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Sleep calls warm and inviting but still I struggle and blink out of habit like an exuberant child twisting and turning becoming petulant and disagreeable as the eye lids droop and all breath is yawning and the hours slip away inperceptably and I sleep late, feel late, am late, then work late to compensate.

A little bit of an abstract version of the place. Oji is a neighborhood in Tokyo, I found out that Oji means “prince”. The place I was staying wasn’t all that princely (a gaijin or foriegner’s house) but it was fine for sleeping and meeting new people.

The 12 to 13 hour path of a direct flight from New York to Tokyo actually goes over the North Pole and vast, snowy mountain ranges that I romanticly assumed were Siberian . . .

I might really like fountains, keep taking pictures of them. Reminds me of that Kenneth Anger film with the French title . . . Eaux d’artifice. Really beautiful and sexual film full of fountains spouting water some out of demon faces.

Wanted to go to the museums but they were all closed that Monday (think they might always be closed on Mondays, also another tidbit of tourist news–the trains stop running at about 12:45 am, essential knowledge to night owls like myself who are unsuspectingly stuck miles away from their hotel in a foriegn country. The busiest city I’ve ever been to suddenly becomes void of pedestrians and full of cars, road construction workers, and very expensive cabs that have doors that open and close by themselves) Anyway . . . so I wandered around this beautiful park alone. Was later told there are many homeless people here but I did not see them.

Some what behind on my publications in Japan, time really flies here. So I will publish another old thought of self talk that is somewhat thought provoking, at least to me.

NO SHAME, NO SHAME! But how when you do things you feel ashamed of–stop being ashamed? Stop doing the things? Neither answer is satisfactory–I strive to stop doing the things that make me ashamed but sometimes I falter and the shame is great. It doesn’t seem right to accept things from myself that I think are wrong or shameful. I think it’s a cop out to just say, “well that’s just me and thus I love it”.

The secret to loving others is to accept and in turn love their faults–love the faults, love the person. Somehow need to apply this maxim to myself–reconcile my desire to change the things that I’m ashamed of–my faults–with a loving knowledge of those faults, maybe a sense of humor–to laugh at myself rather than torture. Will the laughter help me change or cause me to accept my weaknesses and fall into a laughing self reproach?

Impressions, unexplained recollections all out of order. . .

Touring the shrines of Kamakura, kimonos and wedding parties, trains, surfers, big buddha, hi-tech wonderland composed of squares, the great bridges of Yokohama that look like enoromous string instruments (maybe violins or guitars), kindness upon kindness upon kindness, the people are amazing here and I am blessed with good friendships with good people, home cooking and monja in Ginza (you fry it yourself, Koubuchi-cun did the honors very skillfully, a collection of sea food and meat and vegetables with a starchy liquid, exquiste, smokey, makes your clothes smell but absolutely worth it), cute little Touko-chan, I will post pictures, great breakfast and broken languages that are no barrier courtesy of Tomoko’s mom, both grandmothers full of sweet sentiment and love, father is the model of courtesy and humor, Ayako shopping for a jacketo for Touko-chan, searching for Koubuchi-cun in Barney’s, buying sweet rolls in Ginza for the family, talking long but not long enough with Keiko, Touko-chan playing and squirming all around during dinner and then she likes to run and run and run, so much smiling my cheeks hurt, long pleasant train ride to Fujisawa, walking the narrow winding streets and looking at the nice houses, a honeycomb of humanity, listening to converstations that I can’t understand but comprehend the feeling fully, the smiles, the humor, the love, Tomoko has a great family, eating dinner with some of her friends, Belgi food (Belgian Japanese style smalls dishes with a Hoegaarden to wash it down), kind friends speaking English for my benefit except one who showed up late and a little drunk and happy, I like listening anyway, talk plenty at home, be well all, more later.

Tokyo
the other side of the world
I have a renewed admiration of those that can speak more than one language. Learning a new language is like being completely stripped and having to be open to not knowing, throwing out everything that I’ve ever known and starting from scratch. An interesting experience, humbling. I’ve had it before in other countries but here in Japan I feel it very strongly. I want to post some pictures but I cant understand the hirigana on this computer so I’ll have to wait to be assisted by someone that speaks English

c o m p u t e r t w e a k i n g o n m e d o n ‘ t k n o w h o w t o f i x i t s o t h i s t h e e n d o f t h i s e n t r y . . .

In honor of our man in Poland, a story from years ago . . .

Met up with Tim last night for dinner. I decided to get drunk to celebrate seeing him for the first time in over a month and also with the aim of getting tired early and passing out at a reasonable hour, not to be, not to be. Tim’s getting married in Moscow Dec. 27th after breaking up with his long time girlfriend Aldona two or three months ago. His fiancé’s name is Annia and he’s known her since he first visited Russia while he was in high school however things fell apart way back when and this isn’t really what I want to talk about anyway so we ate and then drank three pitchers of beer which gave me an itch to go to a strip club instead of going to sleep but instead Tim offered to smoke a joint with him back at his place in Queens to which I readily agreed thinking that I was lucky to be saving some money. So we took the M60 from 116th to Queens and continued our drunken conversation right up to his couch in his newly occupied and overly cluttered, unpacked basement apartment where he paused to roll a joint with the disclaimer–”It might be oregano, I got it off the street near Washington Square Park”. Well it was something maybe not oregano but definitely not pot. After smoking the whole joint and getting an unpleasant lemon flavor stuck on my tongue we agreed to go to the beer garden and wash away the bitter disappoint with a mug of pilsner which only served to solidify our mutual conviction that we should go on a quest for the real pot–we wouldn’t buy any unless it was the real stuff. So at about 1:30 a.m. we boarded the N train bound for 8th Street but we had to get off on 14th because it was running express. Both of us were ravenously hungry at this point and pissing in any secluded corner we could find like furtive dogs. So I started to talk about the good pizza joints with Stromboli rolls and we stormed ahead, our purpose two fold–get high, get stuffed. After a short walk we suddenly came within sight of the Washington Arch (actually it wasn’t such a short walk, we zig zagged undecidedly South) at which point we took on our looking for drugs mask–Tim’s was a questioning smile, mine a skeptical frown. Almost immediately we were met by a toothless man named Will who said he had a quarter or half-ounce, coke, and ecstasy. The quarter or half ounce was less than an eighth but definitely pot, bad pot but pot nonetheless. We passed on the coke, but the ecstasy was somehow intriguing. The pills had a letter “P” pressed into them, which he told us stood for Pokemon. Anyway we got ripped off for over eighty dollars and walked away with two pills and a seedy stemmy bag of dirt weed. Sometimes you pay stupid stuff for adventure. We popped our pills and rambled towards our pizza place–I thought we were going east but it turned out to be west which was just as well because we found this place called Ben’s Pizzeria and they have great rolls, this Indian fella that’s been working there for the last fourteen years told me all about it. He took a lot of pride in the freshness of the rolls. The young guy working there with him actually had to call him over to pick out the right rolls because they were unmarked rolls–only the man who baked them knew which one was which. Tim and I both had the Sausage, Peppers, and Onions roll and while they were baking Tim went to the bathroom and rolled the joint. Actually first he got suckered into buying another one of those “P” pills by a persistent drug dealer standing outside of the pizzeria. As we found out the pills were some mild stimulant that made you feel good at first and then wouldn’t let you sleep later, some shitty speed. Anyway Tim disappeared into the bathroom for a long time while I talked to the old Indian fella and when he finally made it out the rolls had just come out of the oven and we commenced with a 4am feast which was peppered with prideful remarks by the soft spoken Pizzeria late night manager. However, I never asked him to repeat himself despite the fact that I could hardly hear him, I just kept feeding him with questions about working nights, fresh food, the owner, rising rents, etc. Then we left, the air had grown damp with impending rain and we fired up a joint halfway down the block. Definitely pot, definitely harsh, bud scwag but it got us high. Again we walked South when we meant to head North and made our way to the Prince Street station instead of our intended 8th Street destination. On the way we made a detour to Greene Street rolled another joint on a metal park bench in the cool drizzly morning then walked half a block to some fashion victim store and smoked our second joint on their stoop. A cop car rolled by but merciful kept going and we made it safe and sound to the N train. We continued to chatter drunkenly with stoned pauses until I bid an affectionate and sleepy farewell to my friend, my comrade, my buddy ole pal at Time’s Square. I gave him the “Keep on rocking in the free world” fist pump as the train lumbered off to Queens and wondered what the hell was in that pill…