Remember that one time, in Japan?

“The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.”

2011-12-17T07:12:00.006+09:00

I want to be a good woman.

I scanned an article about someone who did good early this morning. Later this afternoon it was everywhere - posted on the walls of friends, and picked up by the big news crews, so I read it again. Someone, somewhere (the point of origin is unknown) decided to pick up the tabs on KMART layaway accounts. They left enough for the recipient to finish the task (leaving nominal amounts of .04 cents to $50 or so dollars) so that KMART would be prompted to call the account holder and notify them of the deposit.

Someone had done this and perhaps told another. Or the recipient of this thoughtful gift told tale. Regardless of the how, the why inspired enough to follow suit as that KMARTs across the state were a flurry of holiday giving.

Some dropped a lot of cash, while others helped in ways that they could- paying off $250 balances, $75 balances. The weight balances when you consider the cost.

This article drove me to list making, not because I was trying to free up some extra cash to donate for the holidays, but because I exhaust money on needless things routinely that could go to better use. I read this and think, if only I had the money, I, too, would be so generous. But I want for nothing, fiscally. I live within my means, and they are warm and adorned. And I'm not advocating for complete frugality, but, but, but... I think I've lost sight of my senses.

It's convenient that this all comes to mind around the holidays; New Years which is basically a blanket mandate for reform. But reminders, whether in person or in print should be accepted and heeded.

I don't know what to do but Hiro suggests I do what I know. So perhaps I can start with writing and work my way from there.

They had a natural buoyancy unsuitable for anything outside the realm of elastic love.

2011-12-16T06:44:00.001+09:00

When there is nothing left to burn
you have to set yourself on fire.

Do you believe in something beautiful, then get up and be it

2011-12-13T12:59:00.002+09:00

Rachel told me today that she was going to give me a gift.

She said, "I am going to give you a great gift."

I was soon to type, "Please don't let it be a lesson," but I was too type for her svelte fingers. There on g-chat she delivered a message, intended to be taken as a lesson, with no need for modesty.

She told me that I'm to chose how I react. Meaning, I needn't react as much as I do.

I wanted to contest. Respond in CAPS, tell the tale in my own version, but, see, that was the crux of Rachel's concern. I have nervous tick emotions. I jump at the slightest touch and feel the faintest slice of sun. Some call us Hyper Sensitive Personalities, which they argue is both enabling and disabling. Good/Great work done in therapy has helped me own my sensitive shortfalls, learn to desensitize when it doesn't serve me but still the reaction. I feel like I do nothing but try to feel something.

But there's something to Rachel's creed: I can shut it off. I could easily not wind up when someone has a turn key in paw. I even feel equipped to follow this advice. It's just... there's something to raw emotion. I feel like I have a secret sense, and even more, I feel like I'm doing someone a service by making every effort to understand their understatements.

But Rachel could say, "not everyone wants to be read." Or "maybe you are thinking of yourself here."

But instead she says, "I love having you as a friend."

That warrants reaction. But of the hug someone in happiness variety. We should all be so lucky as to have a friend like that.

I couldn't small talk my way out of a doll house

2011-11-15T06:04:00.003+09:00

I'm fiscally anxious in as much as I am fiscally irresponsible. With the wedding come costs on costs. The dress needs to be altered. The flower girl a basket, the hall another deposit. Everyone has some say in how I can best save money and while I appreciate and solicit their advice I wish I could just fall back on success to quiet the concern.

Hiro, my savvy supporter, insists that I keep writing. He thinks writing is our ticket to success. He asks that I draft the ticket, publish it and collect the earnings. It's cute. Trouble is, I think he really believes it.

I've never had such a hero. He stands by, patiently, persistently while I drum out clumsy phrases and turn nasty in my bouts of doubt. He just can't seem to give up on hope, and I am truly fortunate to have such an editor in my corner.

So for Hiro I write. And for myself. And for the dreams I thought deferred. But for he I write all I can, in the hopes of one day making us proud.

A snippet of what's to come:

Looking back, what a terrible way to introduce her. But I can’t help the association. The memory has secured itself and when I think of her, I often remember little moments of weakness. I don’t believe I do so out of spite, but perhaps to convince myself that she is a mortal. That she is subject to the endeavors of everyday living. Which she has. And still does, although we all refuse to believe it. She is just that good an actor. So we have to remember her at fault, if we are to remember her at all, with any semblance of love.

If you really love something then get up and be it

2011-10-26T08:09:00.003+09:00

"There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one."

So spoke Kazuo Ishiguro. A writer I'm so taken by that I pick fights with senior citizens in book club and pen late night letters to him in the hopes of one day receiving a response.

Everyone needs a hero. I have my own in a selfless, supportive finance (see posts of old re: man I love most), but I also need someone to come out on top in the pages I read. I need someone to mimic and inspire. So I'll keep reading in the hopes of sooner writing, after which I'll toast to Ishiguro-san, and maybe someday, he to me.

I'm Too Young to be This Old

2011-10-26T07:55:00.002+09:00

I'm embarrassed by my posts of old. They belong to no less than 6 different blogs I thought I'd attend to and all are disjointed in scope. I haven't shared these URL's and the blogs are better off dead, but, I can't seem to cut the chord. Sure I was dramatic in some late night confessionals. Truer yet that 40% of the text could be attributed to Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst. I mean, these are not the sentences I'd sooner inscribe anywhere. But, but, but they were words. Lots of words. Words that told tale of where and who I was, and I miss having such a blog trail to go by. Even more, I've been living without urgency to dictate my thoughts when once I thought that to be all I was capable of. It might be that I've grown and that silly, soppy blog bits are thankfully no-more. But I hope I haven't outgrown my love of writing. Honestly, I hope I've just been lazy. (And I have. Been lazy). Still, that's without excuse! As a consequence I'm willing myself to dust off ye old blogger login and go back to what I know. Because really, if I have outgrown this, I am too young to be this old.

Have Heart, Will Carry

2010-07-09T00:17:00.002+09:00

A braggarts blog post:

I am incredibly in love. Enough to warrant the telling. He is kind and good and thoughtful and fun. He makes me feel beautiful. He makes me aspire to be a better woman. Because of him I have quit smoking and run 5 miles, all in the course of an a.m..

A sampling of why I am as happy as I am:

-He leaves slippers outside the bathroom door
-He asks me to coffee in French
-He rents zip cars if only to take me home
-He has an affinity for summer drives
-He had a planned jacket for our first date
-He rode his brakes the entire leg of our first bike ride
-He sees color in songs
-He never fully locks his door
-He talks to his mother regularly
-He agrees to spontaneous sword play
-He adopts my phrases
-He is a beautiful painter

He, he, he, he, he.
If I don't stop now I never will.

Things, in Boston, are lovely.

xoxoxo

Terrified of telephones and shopping malls and knives

2010-05-20T22:58:00.002+09:00

69

by Philip Schultz

This morning I'm tired of the same newspapers and arguments.
I'm tired of sticking the same legs into the same pants,
the same hands poking out of the same sleeves, going west
and then east, heating up the same tea, watching the same sun
rise over the same horizon, the same trees shedding the same leaves.
Tired of climbing the same stairs to look out the same window
at the same street, tired of shaking the same hands, opening and
closing the same doors, dreaming the same dreams, saying hello
good morning happy birthday I'm so sorry please forgive me.

In homage to a torn piece of paper I found in some luggage nested into some larger luggage that reads, "I'm sorry, I love you. Please marry me."

And all this bowing in reverence to a light-hearted quip heard on Parks & Recreation:
"Whenever a couple marries, two single people die".

I'll try anything three times

2009-12-22T10:19:00.001+09:00

I.Love.This:

www.yearof52adventures.wordpress.com

Campaign to undergo 52 adventures in one year (one per week).

Game on!

Now that I've met you, would you object to, never seeing eachother again?

2009-12-07T08:16:00.000+09:00

I think we should all sing in union. Always.

Meaning, as found by Myndi

2009-12-02T12:27:00.003+09:00

An old friend Myndi posted this on her blog and I couldn't help but pay homage to it here:

Advent Calendar of Christmasy Activities

Everything is just so lovely.

Forgive Me Lover, For I Have Loved You Wrong

2009-11-25T05:09:00.001+09:00

When in search of all things lovely, please, do defer to these two:

See the cat? See the cradle?

2009-11-17T14:07:00.002+09:00

Solitutde: A Sweet Absence of Looks

2009-11-15T02:19:00.002+09:00

Depression, when it’s clinical, is not a metaphor. It runs in families, and it’s known to respond to medication and to counseling. However truly you believe there’s a sickness to existence that can never be cured, if you’re depressed you will sooner or later surrender and say: I just don’t want to feel bad anymore. The shift from depressive realism to tragic realism, from being immobilized by darkness to being sustained by it, thus strangely seems to require believing in the possibility of a cure.
-Jonathan Frazen

I'm still listening to hear where you are.
And certain these words are fleeting and unseen.

Today is a day to discuss with few. I can't concentrate. I can't sustain the hope so oft found in these entries. I'll likely delete this with humility, but for now I wish there was just one respondant with some understanding.

"You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange."

2009-11-10T09:13:00.003+09:00

The subject heading seems a shame, as that's typically how I vet my dates. There's nothing better than to talk for hours about things you might sooner forget but seem so important in the moment of the telling. To get excited and ramble and drone and trail and offer up dangling modifiers and find common interests in a mutual disdain of cheese.

Then, somehow someone references a typewriter and you swell with swell pride and talk and talk and talk about how you love the jankety old things and you can't defend yourself, but don't need to because he's been smiling the whole time and just encourages your diatribe and yes. slow. That was a lovely night.

I imagine my grandparents had a similar conversation. And walked arm in arm past one of these:

I want to go to there.

I want for everything that I've already had. It doesn't seem fair, that I'm without, and lonely and longing. But, to be fair I have known wild romance. I've had epic romance, so it only seems right that I sit these plays out. It doesn't soften the blow. It just makes it more justifiable.

I am always enamoured of Robert Penn Warren, specifically his nod to the power of a woman's smile. But, because we're flirting with Milan Kundera (see: subject heading) today, let's focus on additional savory senses.

"We all need someone to look at us. we can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. the first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. the second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. they are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. they are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. this happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. people in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. one day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. and finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. they are the dreamers."
— Milan Kundera

I, too, want to go to there.

Your del.icio.us tag cloud could be mistaken for a come on

2009-11-08T23:31:00.002+09:00

I owe more words, but for now let's revel in the beauty of Kevin Brown's:

Diagramming Won’t Help This Situation

by Kevin Brown

Grammatical rules have always baffled
me, leaving me wondering whether my
life is transitive or intransitive, if I am the
subject or object of my life, and no one
has been able to provide words to describe
my actions, even if they do end in –ly.

But now the problem seems to be with
pronouns: I am unwilling to be him
and you are unable to be her, so we
will never be them~the ones talking
about what they need from the grocery

store because the Rogers are coming for
dinner tonight; the couple saving for a
vacation, perhaps a cruise to Alaska or a
museum tour of Europe; the two who meet
with a financial advisor to plan their children's

college fund while still managing to set enough
aside for their retirement~and so we will
continue to be nothing more than sentence
fragments, perfectly fine for effect,
but forever looking for the missing
part of speech we can never seem to find.

"Diagramming Won't Help This Situation" by Kevin Brown, from Exit Lines. © PlainView Press, 2009.

When There's Nothing Left To Burn...

2009-11-07T03:22:00.001+09:00

...you have to set yourself on fire.

What We Talk About, When We Talk About Love

2009-08-07T22:35:00.002+09:00

I thought this was so perfect. Just perfect.

Not To Trouble You

by Leonard Nathan

Not to trouble you with love, I mean
those adolescent dreams of great, of greater,
or of greatest loving, let alone
the crumbly personal kind—compared with, say,
the public good or harder thoughts of death
obliterating thoughts of love, or after-
thoughts of love outgrown or love undone;
and not to be ironic either, not
to forget we come into the world alone
and leave it so; and not to be claiming more
than you can give, uncertain as I am
what I require: something like love, I guess,
whatever it is we've done without so long,
so faithfully and with such tenderness.

And these, compliments Graham Greene to Vivienne Dayrell-Browning, as he courted her in over 1,200 letters, poems and conversions to Catholicism:

"Darling, it's wonderful when the person one loves most in the world encourages one in what one loves next best (even though far less). … I've never met so complete a companion as you. Those winter evenings you describe seem to me the only thing worth having. It's companionship with you that I want & just that sort of companionship …

"And the whole thing would be an adventure finer than ordinary marriage, because it would be two, not merely fighting for each other, but for a shared idea. Darling, it sounds fantastic, but the fantastic is often wildly practical, as when Columbus put out from Spain. And I remember you wrote once that you did love me, though it wasn't in a way I understood, but, darling, it's a way I do understand, & it's the final because there's no reason why it should ever end, which is very different to the other. I wish to God (& I mean that literally) that this dream could come true."

Oh god it's wonderful/ to get out of bed/ and drink too much coffee/ and smoke too many cigarettes/ and love you so much/

I was writ large, like a queen or a saint

2009-07-24T06:49:00.000+09:00

Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world - (song is Please don't go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

And I think in the end this was the question
that destroyed Agamemnon, there on the beach,
the Greek ships at the ready, the sea
invisible beyond the serene harbor, the future
lethal, unstable: he was a fool, thinking
it could be controlled. He should have said
I have nothing, I am at your mercy.

By the Hammer of Thor

2009-07-21T06:44:00.001+09:00

The craziest frickin’ day of your life.
Imagine that.

The craziest. Frickin’ day. Of your life.

That commands attention. That warrants worry. Or, in the very least, at least in the case of a d. Graham Kostic and I, it propels you to shell out $40 for a 5K Warrior Dash, replete with mad cap obstacles (see: chemical maze, the hell fires of Armageddon, jankety old car lot, and post-apocalyptic Magic Kingdom Main Street mayhem).

So Graham and I arrive with our matching race shirts. Graham provided the inspiration and initial design template. I botched said design, went rogue, and created these gems (keeping in line with the catch phrase theme, ‘IN IT 2 WIN IT’).

Graham and I weren’t so much IN IT 2 WIN IT as we were in it to have our photographs taken. With each photograph we aspired to become the face of the website. It’s just good math. We are in matching t’s. We are SUPER amiable to all the surrounding runners (save the times Graham would try to raise my mildly competitive spirits by pointing to a runner nearby and loudly asserting ‘We’ll definitely beat HER’). We were the Warrior Dash pep squad, so it stands to reason that the hour plus 5 k’ers that kept pace with us would appreciate our efforts to raise Warrior morale. They respected our need for interval theatrics.

And that’s just the first lap.

Here’s a sampling of what followed:
I almost lost Graham to the chemical maze. Barrels of chemicals EVERYWHERE. And some had spilt. TWIST!

I had a hell of a time trying to climb the never ending series of mounds. If I had vertigo it would have set in because that was an endless vortex of loops.

The suspended wooden planks were no more than 1 foot wide! With my big monster feet I had to gingerly tip toe across the planks. The crowds behind us were wild. Graham seemed to have no trouble. He took it slow to placate me. He’s a dear friend.

There were rusted out cars. A whole field of them! We were expected to hurdle them. And we did. We also sat in the back of a bus for good measure. And shade.

And wouldn’t you know, but positioned right before the façade of a super cute town lay a long, deep pit of murky water. We were nervous, and far from prepared, but we counted down and ran through. There was some back splash and I found it particularly adorable when Graham asked, post-murk, “Am I dirty?” The best being a Warrior, who had long usurped us in ranking, returned to the murky water obstacle to reclaim a shoe he lost. And he found it. What a hunter! He also found a bonus box of rusted nails. In the murky water. Where people oft loose their shoes. Oh Monster Mash!

Move on to the hell fires. Graham and I were certain it was all for show. Like a warm Disney production, but were we ever fooled. Those coals were piping hot and we were expected to leap over thick, hot flames. Oh doctor… Thankfully I have freakishly long legs and Graham is very limber. We moved forward without sustaining burns of any form.

And on to the mud pit and the grand finale. It looked harmless. I could not deduce why everyone was crawling when they could just as easily walk across it. I put on a great big smirk and cased all the goons we’d soon pass as we approached the mud pit, but were my cheeks ever red! There was barbed wire near the base of the pit and we HAD to crawl under it. Graham went belly first, like a true warrior, whereas I tip-toed around and tried to stay as mud-free as possible. I finally conceded and ate dirt.

We moved forward, hand-in-hand to the roar of the crowd screaming “IN IT TO WIN IT”.

And I guess we did. Just that.

Beauty is 10, 9 of which is dressing.

2009-07-21T00:06:00.005+09:00

Beauty
by Tony Hoagland

When the medication she was taking
caused tiny vessels in her face to break,
leaving faint but permanent blue stitches in her cheeks,
my sister said she knew she would
never be beautiful again.

After all those years
of watching her reflection in the mirror,
sucking in her stomach and standing straight,
she said it was a relief,
being done with beauty,

but I could see her pause inside that moment
as the knowledge spread across her face
with a fine distress, sucking
the peach out of her lips,
making her cute nose seem, for the first time,
a little knobby.

I’m probably the only one in the whole world
who actually remembers the year in high school
she perfected the art
of being a dumb blond,

spending recess on the breezeway by the physics lab,
tossing her hair and laughing that canary trill
which was her specialty,

while some football player named Johnny
with a pained expression in his eyes
wrapped his thick finger over and over again
in the bedspring of one of those pale curls.

Or how she spent the next decade of her life
auditioning a series of tall men,
looking for just one with the kind
of attention span she could count on.

Then one day her time of prettiness
was over, done, finito,
and all those other beautiful women
in the magazines and on the streets
just kept on being beautiful
everywhere you looked,

walking in that kind of elegant, disinterested trance
in which you sense they always seem to have one hand
touching the secret place
that keeps their beauty safe,
inhaling and exhaling the perfume of it—

It was spring. Season when the young
buttercups and daisies climb up on the
mulched bodies of their forebears
to wave their flags in the parade.

My sister just stood still for thirty seconds,
amazed by what was happening,
then shrugged and tossed her shaggy head
as if she was throwing something out,

something she had carried a long ways,
but had no use for anymore,
now that it had no use for her.
That, too, was beautiful.

So Said Siddartha..

2009-07-15T22:38:00.002+09:00

..."I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins"

And in moments that compel clarity, so says Keith:

me: well I want you to take care of yourself
that's a mandate
oh Keith
the same refrain
I just want my life to have meaning
I feel like I'm just ambling about
keith: yeah I am there right now too Hula
me: what do you do, love?
keith: I mean i know how you feel
I think i have to find meaning in something above work, school and just enjoyment
keith: We need to find what has meaning first you know
I think that is most difficult

me: so true
so, to make it less cumbersome
let's approach it like it's a mission
or journey
or something
I like the idea of slaying dragons in pursuit of greater truth
what do you say?
keith: that sounds true to me. So when you have an idea how to attack this dragon bounce it off of me please
me: yeah. I could disspell certain wisdom
:)

Like a velvet glove cast in iron

2009-07-07T22:40:00.002+09:00

With Michele getting married everyone in the Hula/Sweiss household is in a seasoned flurry of activity. With well over a year remaining.

No matter. It's fun to plan and implement and play with color schemes and select menu items. I may be even more excited than my sister.

That said, it has called into question my own ideal wedding. It can be a great many things. It may never happen. It might happen a many 8 times. All things considered, I'm bound to change my mind to tailor the wants of some man, if ever I should meet a man who can keep pace. That said, that said, that said, one wedding'ed aspect remains a constant. The dress.

I'd flash a picture here now, but that's really playing in to gender ideologies and makes me look a fool. Instead, I'll do you one better. My dress, my beautiful dress of all dresses was made in miniature size to fit a freaky Vikor & Rolf doll. And, as I like all things small, it seemed so fitting.

Look below for the white, satin gown with a very prominent "I Love You" embroidered across it. Isn't she just lovely??

Call people rich when they are able to meet the requirements of their imaginations...

2009-07-03T00:10:00.004+09:00

"The real offense, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his--attached to his own like a small garden-plot to a deer-park." - Henry James

But what of this worthy proponent?:

What are we unshackled? Where would we go if given the gift of uncensored fearlessness?

I would canyon. I don't know why base jumping or being propelled, or defying the natural order of gravity is so alluring. Maybe it's a nod to the many stations I've arrived at safely. Guarded arrivals make no news. Who googles traffic-less bus routes? I want to be the woman you photograph doing all the things you would if only you could. I want to be fearless and fun and free. Which begs the question; do our adventures remodel us? Can I morph into a less rigid, better-made woman if I simply jump from one base to the next? And if so, why must danger be our only recourse?

No one ever lies about being lonely

2009-06-24T01:02:00.001+09:00

moments I once knew

Michele Getting Married, and Other Tales

2009-06-13T09:17:00.002+09:00

was introduced to The Love Project, by random post after became obsessed and post-anxious with an NPR challenge that asked listener's to cite words that would withstand the test of time.

I wrote of love. Most notably, Robert Penn Warren's ostensible preoccupation with a women's laugh as written in All The Kings Men.

That got me to thinking; where are we going? where have we been?

I don't want to lose sight of the romantic. The happy adages of old.

I think this video perfectly addresses both sides of the coin.

Everything really is so beautiful.

Women seem wicked when you're alone

2009-05-27T10:02:00.002+09:00

"Don't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go someplace where you don't know a soul? Sometimes I feel like doing that. I really really want to do it sometimes. So, like, say you whisked me away somewhere far far away. I'd make a pile of babies for you as tough as little bulls. And we'd all live happily ever after, rolling on the floor."

NPR challenged me to quote written words that will transcend the test of time. It was the anniversary of the publication of the Bard's sonnets. They may have been printed against his will. All those lovely words that no writer will ever trump being force published. How could he not have known the onslaught effect of his creation? How can anything so lovely go against will?

California is a binary mess. The people cry foul. The people cry fair. The former assert that their rights and liberties have been pulled out from beneath them. When finally they had set the table in storms Proposition 8 - a hefty drunk of an abusive father who pounds his fists in some Right Wing Papa's Waltz. So we can keep our marriages? What of our friends and neighbors? What's to come of a community so ruthlessly divided?

And queue our second camp, the latter. They assert, with straight posture and forefarthered wisdom that we haven't any right to disrupt the will of the people.

The Will. Of the People.

See here's where things get hazy for me. What have these people willed my one-day offspring? Hatred and intolerance? Yes it's true. The people of California decided, as an entity to outlaw Gay Marriage. But it's also true that not all people voted in favor of Proposition 8. Since when has the word of the majority been a testament to truth? Can we recall the Catholic Crusades? One religion is obviously not all religions. Bloody Mary would get no further than North Korea, when once her words dictated the will of the people. More Hutus than Tutsi's lobbed machettes in the Rwandan Genocide. That was the will of the Hutu. The Holocaust, the Japanese Internment Camps, The Red Scare, EVERY WAR WE HAVE EVER HAD.

In effort to amass a crowd there has to be some will.
But there will always be some dissent.

So we may have will. And we may be mighty in number, but who is to say what is right and wrong?

If there was a Prop to overturn Suffrage or Abolition movements would we say it's just because Right Wing eccentrics have powers of persuasion?

When do we remove ourselves from the principles of voting booths and ballot numbers and ask the simple question: does this REALLY seem fair to you?

People are people are people.
For the Mormon's who glided on the Prop 8 parade float let me ask you this: Don't you think your God, (he/she/it) would be reduced to tears, totally crippled in happiness, to see his/her/it's creation full of so much beautiful love? Be it man and woman, woman and woman, man and man and every gendered identity in between? Isn't that the grand design? Aren't we here to do well and love? Love and honor? So what is love with hate and biggotry and restriction?

I don't subscribe to your God, proponents of Proposition 8. Instead, I subscribe to our forefather's notion of a just and verdant life. We have taken strides to balance and grow. I think it time that you reassess the meaning of will, as either a forthcoming offering or a conviction and recognize that the two relay a stronger message than a book or vote.

And that's on you.

My Korean Care Package

2009-03-11T00:31:00.001+09:00

Compliments Keith:

The sky was as blue as the ribbon on a prize winning lamb...

2009-02-26T01:19:00.001+09:00

things I like that I'd sooner share with you:

They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem...

2009-02-18T23:39:00.004+09:00

Oh those sister's of mercy. They are my favorite Valentine sentiment.

Today is the birthday of Toni Morrison. A little information on Toni Morrison, if you weren't otherwise informed:
born in Lorain, Ohio (1931). She started writing when she was in her thirties, unhappily married, working as an editor, and raising two children. She said, "It was as though I had nothing left but my imagination. I wrote like someone with a dirty habit. Secretly. Compulsively. Slyly." She went on to write nine novels, including The Bluest Eye (1969), Song of Solomon (1977), Beloved (1987), and in 2008, A Mercy. In 1993, she won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

We're (the collective unit of Kim & Jason) celebrating the birthday of my dear friend Helen vilner this coming weekend. As Helen's birthday is on Sunday, and Helen is spoken for on Sunday, I suggested we reign in festivities on a Friday instead at some nicer than not restaurant in the city center. Helen, lovely Russian princess that she is, refuses a gathering in honor of her birthday as it's a superstition and bad luck in Russia to celebrate one's birthday before one's birthday. So we compromised on referring to it as "Give Helen a Gift Day", but my curiosity was peeked. What other quirky superstitions does Helen uphold? Below, please find a few:

* When giving an animal as a gift (a cat, dog, bird, etc), the receiver should give the giver a symbolic sum of money, for example one Russian ruble.

* A purse (or any other money holder) as a gift requires a little money inside. Given empty it causes bad financial luck.

* A funeral procession brings good luck. But one should never cross its path or it is bad luck.

* A woman with empty water buckets coming towards you is considered a bad omen.

* A group of two or more people should not walk on either side of a tree. They should all keep to one side or the other.

* Bread should only be cut with a knife, not with your hands. Otherwise, it is said, that your life will be broken. The opposite is held true by some people.

* Two or more people should never use one towel at the same time to dry their hands or bodies, or it is said to bring conflict.

On the campaign trail I encountered even more. For a spell, I was the default driver. Odd, as I hate to drive and defer to someone, anyone else whenever possible. However, after being dispatched on a few multi-mile errands in my first few weeks of employment I found that I could milk the system. Milk for days. The reimbursement rate for my troubles was worth much more than the jacked economy's acquiesced discounted gas and oil. Celebrate! So I oft drove, and in so doing, my pal, the lovely Katie Kelly, could be found performing dedicated rituals that warranted question and stare. We would be driving, and as if without prompt she would diligently and hurridly kiss her palm, touch the car ceiling and lower her hand. Or she would pound two fists on a dashboard. I asked after a few, at first; most noteably what to do when I encountered a driver with one headlight. There even seemed some superstitious ritual to be performed when approaching a driver without lights, in the dark night. To that I prefer to flash my brights. I think I have a heavy hand over superstition in that regard.

Hearing tale of presumed beliefs, having, myself, lived with ghosts, I aim to further research. I'm in possession of a book of folklore or regionally specific rural and urban myths, "The Vanishing Hitchhiker". Let's get me to certain crazy, paranoid, suspicious and convinced in a matter of 200 pages. The countdown starts........ now.

Change we can believe in

2008-08-26T12:14:00.003+09:00

So marks Day 1 of the Democratic National Convention. This marks the first DNC that I've taken pains to observe. I have my week scheduled accordingly, with each night recorded on my mom's DVR, just in case.

I have to admit, and I'll eat my own cliche, I am so - very - inspired.

We kick started the DNC with an address from house speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi, always an avid Obama supporter, attacked McCain, as is expected of any conventions opening predator, and did so with a somewhat nervous demeanor that didn't really behoove her. Thankfully, she worked in a call and response refrain, "Obama is right, John McCain is wrong", and worked in the repetitions so many times that the audience, with gusto, chanted in queue. However, her delivery was a bit frigid and her cadence seemed a bit too rehearsed. While she was an ideal speaker to address the connectivity, tenants and hopes of this week, she paled in comparison to the later speaker's that surfaced. Oh wow. They are, as follows:

Caroline Kennedy paid tribute to her uncle in an unassuming and loving way, and in so doing worked in references and parallel ties to Barrack Obama that almost demanded that all in attendance (listeners, too) never consider the two mutually exclusive. The video montage started off a bit trite, with Ted Kennedy in a yacht that I worried would widen the yield between voters with lower socio-economic status- but they stretched the metaphor in an all encompassing manner. They pulled it off to where no one could deny the impact Senator Kennedy has had on our nation as a member of the senate for the past decades of my life, and the lives before I lived. Caroline made certain we'd remember as she detailed her uncle's contributions. Then, of all the speaker's to align themselves with Barrack, Teddy took to the stage in a robust, confident and endearing speech in which he promised to be present at all points in the Obama/McCain race and instilled hope and promise in us in assuring he'd be standing in much the same position this January. MSNBC was forewarned that he'd speak for 4 minutes and he far surpassed that anticipated time frame. He was as he's always been when dedicated to his craft and it only heightened the DNC's mission to further support Barrack Obama.

Now, Michelle. Oh Michelle. Her oratory delivery was one of the most spectacular I've yet seen. She pulled not the race card. She didn't dwell on the misgivings or hardships of her youth. Instead, she employed creative rhetoric in detailing her family's values with those of her husband in a tender, stoic and emphathetic manner. She spoke of balance, and her words, not necessarily detailing any political platforms only served to further promote her husband's position. It was beautiful. I'd argue she won the election for her husband. Commentators commented on her role in addressing the congregation today. If her main intent were to focus on delivery, she sunk it out of the park. Viewers identified with her. Felt comfortable with her. Weren't threatened or annoyed as they were with Mama Heinz. If she wanted to focus on content, she ace'd that as well, touching on some of the more intimate and immediate concerns we carry - the war in Iraq, family values, the economy in subtle, but demanding ways. She was both a vision and an inspiration, and her dialogue with her husband, that followed, in satellite television with her two daughters in tow, only perpetuated the belief shared by many that Barrack is truly a family man and that this 'illusion' isn't. That this is the American Dream realized. "With the current of history that meets the new tide of hope. You see, that, is why i love this country."-Michele Obama.

So much more to come. Until then vote with assurance. vote with heart.

We're going out in a din of discordant voices

2008-08-26T01:29:00.002+09:00

Soon to begin work and I wildly welcome the opportunity. I'm a whirlwind of movement and anxiety and vacations and holidays and time to myself just don't become me. It's ideal, then, that I have an itinerary in place. That I travel 15 hours only to work longer days. Our assignment seems secure. Elect Betsy Markey. Unseat Marilyn Musgrave. With the good people of Colorado's 4th District already disillusioned, the stakes seem safe, but I aim to collapse exhausted. I want to talk to all the people that I've never before been privileged to talk to. Talk shop. Talk life, living, the grand design. I want to be a component of the machine. The wheel. The cog. Something to expedite movement, or be essential to. I have started new, and changed my time accordingly.

"Our hell is a good life"

2008-08-18T15:47:00.001+09:00

Her, more than musing:

I wore a dress that moved

2008-08-08T04:05:00.003+09:00

Found Poem. Memories of a hair stylist, if you'll join me in inverting the pro-nouns.

What They Do To You In Distant Places

I never told you.
There was a woman-in the greening season
of a tropical island
where I had gone to break some hard thoughts
across my knee
and also, although I am no athlete
but breathe with my stomach like a satyr
and live in my stomach
according to bile and acid and bread and bitter chocolate,
to run a long race for the first time.
On that morning,
it was raining in great screens
of the purest water and almost no one at 4 a.m.
where I waited, half-sheltered
by the edge of my dark hotel, for a let-up.
Except her, suddenly
from nowhere-smelling of long hair and dew,
smelling of dew and grass and a little powder.
She wore a dress that moved.
She had been out dancing and the night and she
were young.
I wore a black watch cap like an old sailor
but I was all there was.

I said no, I had to do something else.
She asked how far? And
if I would run all that way-hours.
I said I'd try,
and then she kissed me for luck
and her mouth on mine was as sweet as the wild guava
and the smell of her hair
was that of the little bit of dew the lover
brings home from the park
when again she shows up in the morning.

I don't know where I have been
that I have ever had such a kiss
that asked nothing and gave everything.
I walked out into the rain
as if blessed. But I had forgotten
what they do to you in distant places,
taking away your memory
before sending you back. You and me.
I confess,
I forget her within the hour
in the gross odors of my labors.
If I had known what she was doing...
Perhaps she's with you now.
-Marvin Bell

Hope is a thing, with feathers

2008-08-07T22:51:00.000+09:00

back, and not a moment too soon:

What do we do with the beauty we find in the smallest of things?

2008-08-02T18:38:00.002+09:00

Everything really was beautiful.
And nothing hurt.

I am really, truly, howl at the moon happy right now.

This is Kim-chan, signing off.
More to come from Chicago, the campaign trail and a life well lived.

The machines were struggling for a beauty beyond their humble states

2008-07-09T08:31:00.002+09:00

Writhe through the first one minute and 8 seconds.

Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship...

2008-07-02T10:03:00.001+09:00

Today I nearly set my apartment on fire. See, I put the kettle on. Yes, I do that. Daily. I usually consume an entire carafe of coffee, but because I've been sick I've taken to green tea. It's easy to defer to in these parts.

Regardless, gas top a-gassing I notice the fire is more pronounced than ever. There also appears to be a billowing stream of black smoke pouring out from under the kettle. Odd. Perhaps, I muse, there was some remnant of some food product on the bottom of my kettle. I remove it and turn down the gas. Trouble is, when I turn down the gas, the fire won't subside. It's then I realize I've placed, inexplicably, the rubber stopper for my sink on the range and that it's wildly on fire.

Well, hmm.. That's curious. Herald back to horror films of old. Frozen in fear, or maybe mere amusement. I, for a moment think it the worst decision ever to douse the flames. I figure I need baking soda. Do I have baking soda? Oh wait. This isn't a grease fire. Then I snap back into reality. Oh yes, now, now, now put it out with water. And so I do.

My apartment reeks of burnt rubber, but there was some satisfaction in having removed the charred rubber remnants in one fellow swoop with a dollar store kitchen fork.

All's well and quiet on the eastern front. Coffee is just now being made.

They gave us the wine to drink, not to talk about

2008-07-01T09:45:00.002+09:00

A new aim. Wine in the sky that seems plausible. And delicious.

My apartment is not nearly packed. I can excuse myself in part because I'm busy. One part. The other stems from the fact that I may not be ready to leave. I've made new friends. I've taken Hiroshima as a new lover and I've found that now- life, living, this moment in August, I'm as good alone as I ever was with another.

Let's drink to that. And all this mixed-up adventures to follow.
I'm bellyfull of beauty.

Trying to walk the same way to the same store takes high-wire balance...

2008-06-25T23:13:00.002+09:00

The summer that will soon define all my summers to follow starts. here.:
www.wedoitin400.blogspot.com

The venerable Lady jean Ann Stanula and I pair up to compose 400 word shorts (cross genre, hybrid genre, genre sans genre) every Monday. More to come. On Monday.

...she presented a naked white countenance to the faultfinding light of spring.

2008-06-24T09:09:00.006+09:00

"He must be always on his guard and devote every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things. The very air he exhales is indexed and filed away. If only the interest he provokes were limited to his immediate surroundings, but, alas, it is not! With distance, the torrents of wild scandal increase in volume and volubility. The silhouettes of his blood corpuscles, magnified a million times, flit over vast plains; and still farther away, great mountains of unbearable solidity and height sum up, in terms of granite and groaning firs, the ultimate truth of his being."

What many mistake for narcissim...

And here we are. Ready as ever for round two. I've been hunting the ghost, and mostly successful in my attempt, until this weekend, when I was foolish and trotted, cantered, loped backwards only to awake with a terrible headache.

that is precisely what Franklin Delanor Roosevelt said moments before his death. His last words, in fact: "I have a terrible headache."
If I have to liken it to a death sequence then I will gladly interpret my apotheosis. I tire of needing love. Disappointment is cumbersome. I'm eliminating the memory of him and all my silly short-comings. I want to walk off the tarmac, shoulders erect, anxious and anticipatory of all the beauty to follow. I know this is possible, even if Nabokov (see: above) negates it.

Stumbled upon an incredible compilation of independent and electronic artists who cover James Joyce's "Chamber Music" poems.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91757715
It's nothing incredibly inventive, but the lyricism and supplementary illusive sounds- the cadence, the verse lifted in beat is pulled off in execution. I think differently of the poem when presented in such a medium. That's to suggest, I don't often attribute an electronic base to grandiose verse, so in listening I'm more apt to summon newfound meaning. Something saucy. Something contemporary. Sure, that may cheapen it some, but it has me reassessing Joyce, and that's something few contemporary artists can do to date.

My post-secret was posted. I was so concerned that the he it was not written for would assume I had him in mind, but in the end what does it matter, his interpretation? I chose to sleep soundly. I've excavated the pea.

I am madly in love with this life.

And all you see, is where else you can be when you're at home...

2008-06-23T11:17:00.000+09:00

She was the kind of woman who thought that any injustice could be counterbalanced by something good to eat...

2008-06-17T23:30:00.003+09:00

Calling into question escape. In any and all costume.

"...And my heart needs a polygraph. I was so eager to pack my bags. When I really want to stay. When I really want to stay..."

Matsuyama and the beauty found in small things next episode. In list sequence. Emphatic! With exclamation!

until then.

Even Captain BookSmart fears contagion...

2008-06-13T22:55:00.003+09:00

I have it on good authority Nancy (see: Drew) would, too.

Let's attribute it to the booze. And the company. The ex-pat commradorie. Boots and whiskey are of the same cloth, so it stands to reason that an evening dedicated to seeing Boots off would equip me with all the liquid courage this ramshackle island can supply.

That said, I drank in merriment and recognized that the winks (what I originally dismissed as a nervous tick emotion) our waiter kept winking were for me. What does a woman do with winks? Score some free dessert, scribble her number on a cocktail napkin (I was without my craft kit), thrust it in his hands and run screaming for the streets.

Now, the reason I'd call in the assistance of lovelies Nancy and Bess. Shortly thereafter I receive the following text:

"Thank you for Email me. (insert smiley emoticon).
Let's meet up and let's chat some time!
I wanna meet up soon!! But, I gotta terrible lumbago (insert cry-eye emoticon).
I should take a day off for a month! (cry-eye, again).
when I get a complete cure, Let's meet up (thumbs up emoticon).
Keep in touch (blushing emoticon)."

WHAT?
I know this blog promises that I am found in translation, but I've never been more lost. Anyone who can discern what disease a lumbago is gets all my love and batteries. And lately I've been a small wonder.

Still reeling from my private showing of "There Will Be Blood". Mr. PTA is, has and will forever remain my favorite director. I gushed and awed over Magnolia, having watched it two times in succession, only to devote a full day and a half to internet research that confirmed that Mr. PTA is a compulsive, cinematic nut who uses one well placed bible parable, Exodus 8:2 and references it, in a variety of compelling and creepy ways 82 times throughout the film. There Will Be Blood got me going in much the same way. The end sequence, without any research to speak of is phenomenal, but it wasn't until I discovered the pirated lines, and political references of our main characters monologue, "I drink from your milkshake! I drink it up!" that I grew spastic and elated in the excuse to watch this film again and again. It's slow moving. My mother will surely hate it, but it's PTA at perhaps his finest and I'll recommend it to any and all.

Special thanks to Whitney for the viewing encouragement.

51 days. In all of 40 minutes, 50. My student wrapped his little paws around me this afternoon after having seen my goodbye poster. The mother's eek, and ask after Chicago as if it's there own departure. I worry I won't be able to pass the baton on for fear I'll be forgotten. Shoganai.

Matsuyama and other feats of strength this weekend. I'm going to carve a haiku into every concrete edifice I see.

I am presently commissioning artwork. My Reno love Dan is making me a tryptych, I'm purging photos off CoMO and calling on the artistic styles of the New York damned. If you have something, I may be willing to buy. I should probably take into account the limited wall space of my January dwelling. It's small. Turn left and I've urinated, made coffee, synched my i-pod and shaved- consecutively. I suppose it works in that I'm a multi-tasker.

I can't believe I've been this long without Helen or Jason. Or Michele, Danno, Suzanne and Patty. And Tom. And my typewriter. And my heart-to-heart bear. And Chicago - the number one love of my life.

I'm calling on the past to meet me in Cognito.

At what point, it's fair to ask, did snowflakes start believing their own publicity?

2008-06-11T09:57:00.002+09:00

"You disrupted the predictable pattern of my life, and although uncertainties and changes can be quite uncomfortable, a life is only a paper puppet show without them."

Houses move and houses speak

2008-06-07T09:20:00.004+09:00

if you take me then you'll get relief...

Oscillating between love and a need to run. Hiroshima is such a fickle mistress.
57 days and I'm not near ready.

I have the inexplicable urge to ride a motorcycle.
And of some American Movie Classic from some classically movie'd actress:
"Fasten your seat belts. It's gonna be a bumpy ride."

Maybe this post-secret

2008-06-04T00:06:00.002+09:00

l'audace, l'audace, tojour l'audace.

the season was almost done, we managed it 12-1...

2008-06-03T09:53:00.007+09:00

...so far I have known no humiliation, in front of my friends and close relations.

Blog post of no particular immediacy. I'd write of my time spent in Shikoku on our Golden Week holiday, but that's a time long past and I'd sooner defer you to pictures posted on Flickr- my new play-by-play tell-all darling lover.

I've been thrust into goodbyes more than I've ever known. I'm usually the one leaving the left and these past few weeks have found my friends, good/great/best ones, off to their homelands or areas far removed from where I'll ever be. The city of Hiroshima is minus one Boots, and his absence was obvious in the late night hours where once the streets shouted in ways different than they do now. Mike is off in favor of saving the world, and I've no doubt he will. That, among other things. We called one another the best conversationalists we've known, but our conversations always paralleled one another and it's hard to lose someone so close to understanding me. Said goodbye to Keith after a week long stay at my Fuchu mansion. Movies were watched. Pictures were painted and while I have space to stretch my legs and arms and roll over in the night without disruption, I miss the comfort of assigning someone else a key.

But, but, but were rolling in ashes. We're coming up phoenix.

Beer Garden Sunday-Funday. Some 30-40 of us took up space, drank beer, discussed in three languages the anatomical dynamics of sex, went elsewhere, danced a choreographed shuffle, made plans for adventure camping, and did the night right. Hiroshima takes me in as she had when I first arrived. It feels like coming home.
61 days.
61 days!

B-B-B-Boston and other feats of strength quickly approaching. Tokusan next weekend. Lucky lasses of the prefecture dress in Yukata. I'll be certain to post pictures.

Everything is beautiful. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

The silence was pregnant with avoided topics

2008-05-14T22:28:00.003+09:00

Private pilgrimage to Koyasan. The morning: muddled, sleep deprived and me forgiving myself my misgivings of the previous night. I board a shinkansen and sleep. I ride a subway and, again, sleep. I ride an alternate rail car inbound to Mt. Koya and can't do anything other than gape- mouth wide and frosting the window pane. This route took us out of the confines of inner-Osaka and into a train trail unlike any I've ever known. To liken it to the mysticism of the Polar Express would be to do it a great injustice. Imagine a narrow track, flanked in trees with inner rings that surely peak the hundreds. It took every ounce of self restraint not to de-board at one of the many vacant, untouched rail stops that suggested nothing more than their temporal space in a land so quiet and vast. The mountains collected colors and the streams moved westward- untouched- beautiful in their ability to push water as fast as they had. I'll never know a more picturesque 100 minutes in my life.

What followed was a diagonal cable car, fixed in track and also suspended for safe passage. Surely this 10 ton piece of badass machinery, full loaded, can't ascend the mountain at a near vertical angle. It was/is the bully of all ropeways. In 5 minutes I reached the peak (although I walked down the mountain in descent) of what's expected to be a 5 hour hike. Children loved the thrill. An old man snuck a photograph of his purse-lipped wife and we all filed out in a solemn procession.

Queue Koyasan (!), oh my Koyasan. I board a bus with a retired couple from San Fran to find they are staying in the same temple as I. Shinjoshin-in Temple. New Gentleman has just turned 64 so he sings, on loop, 64 by the Beatles. He's visited Japan a fistful of times and his wife appears perturbed, sore from the solid fact of his statement. It is her first visit to Japan.

I check in and am shown to my room. Larger than expected in scale with well manicured rice paper doors and a view of the garden. There is a muted vase with simple fresh flowers and the dividing doors have opalescent handpainted decals that prism in kind to whatever color I'm wearing and whichever way I sashshay. I leave the room to explore the sights nearby. I chance upon a garden with a natural stone formation and it restores my belief in the beauty of the natural. Temples in every direction- conjoined directions too!- and the rain leant them a less weather-worn look. The fog and misted skin reflected their surroundings and I hugged my camera and shot everything in sight.

I chanced upon a small shop with a woman at a loom waving me in. Her items were precious- perfect and priced at their worth. I purchased the start of a scarf- a makeshift keitai charm in the hopes that one day I'll finish it or find someone who will gladly take on the task with me.

There were a long series of low hanging tori gates. I followed them and along the dirt path the trees had shed their best blooms and roses and peonines lay trampled and rain beaten along the ground. It seemed ominous as the path led me to a temple so old and ramshackle that it appeared abandonned- a scene segway to Deliverance. I cut through the weeds to get a closer look and found a tiny shack cluttered- community yard sale stocked- with statues and icons and money trays. It was and will forever remain my only representative example for the phrase 'organized chaos'. I loved it.

Walked further to find Kongobuji Temple- the central temple for the Japanese sect of Shingon Buddhism. The place was boisterous with raucous and laughing tour groups. I removed myself from the throngs to the opposite end of the temple hall to case the rice paper doors- each depicting different scenes of the start of Buddhism in Tang China. The gold leaf left no room for errors and I moved in as closely as I could to view the carefully painted maple leaves, peonies and cherry blossoms. There was a beautiful set of doors depicting Kobo Daishi's meet and great with the great spirits who summoned him to Mt. Koya with a black and white dog as his aides. I learned of Mt. Koya's peculiar makeup- with 8 mountain peaks that conglomerate to suggest the silhouette of a lotus flower. I stood in the room where Toyotomi Hidetsugu committed ritual suicide, and walked alongside Japan's largest rock garden- raked and ready with two clusters of rocks depicting dragons at both the mouth and foot of the garden for protection. I returned to the temple to bathe: hot tub- cool night, and eat dinner in the assembly hall. Dinner, while delicious, was awkward with one couple that seemed to keep quiet in respect for me and the other lone traveler who arrived as I had finished. No matter, as we all became fast friends later on. I have a newfound love for temple food- the sesame tofu (a Mt. Koya specialty) made me reconsider my long standing separation from the food. I ate well, wore my yukata in complete comfort and made way to trek the cemetary at dusk.

All throughout the day I grew slightly sentimental, then agitated at the mass effect of gaijin couples working their way through Koyasan. Having just started up singledom, it seemed Koyasan was the place where love comes to repose. Figures. So I helped that I walked outside to find another lone traveler- a trot-on Irish traveler who was staying in the same temple as I. We talked for awhile, so much so that I lost dusk and found myself in the blackness of night. I had some decisions to make: do I traipse through an ancient and long winded cemetary alone, at night, without a flashlight?

Of course I do.

Aged, stone lanterns lit the way that were so laced with moss they provided very little light. The scene: the etheral windslap on stone was terrifying but not enough to deter me. A jogger flew past excusing himself in Japanese for disturbing my experience. the stone monuments were stories tall and the trees could easily rival the redwoods. It was perhaps the most conscious I've even been of my surroundings and the most lost I've ever been in the vastness of one great thing. Etomology be damned- words and their origins have no place in describing this hike- so cryptic and perfectly calm. I heard the repeated cries of the wind up bird. I walked in tandem with another lone traveler- a tall, handsome man. We looked at one another and it felt like forfeiting a plate of understanding.

I rocked on my heels. I understood exactly what it means to be alone.

And I exhaled in relief.

So here I am (was), room U-4, coddling, at times, the the idea of secured comfort- a partner to love and love me in return. If this is at all possible I couldn't say. I simply want to feel as terrified yet magnetically determined as I had in that cemetary. Again. And again.

In the belly of a whale

2008-02-26T08:13:00.003+09:00

Sometime after the new year I sent the e-mail (see below) to a gaggle of Hiroshima friends, a former professor and myself:

Last year Disney promoted a campagin: "The Year of 1,000,000 Dreams". They offered up 1,000,000 incentives, at the cost of the company, to Disney guests. In the end this merely amounted to 900,000 free plastic cups for additional consumption of over-priced soda water, but I can't shake their intent. Accomplishments. Many of them. To be completed in a designated time. I can do that.

This is my new years resolution.

This is the point of the writing.

Here's what I propose: Hula's year of 52 adventures.

The idea is simple. There are 52 weeks in a year. I'm to complete 52 adventures in 2008. And I'd like your help in this effort.

Now I realize that many of my ideas hold steadfast and fade out (see: adventure mondays), but I've never fallen back on a resolution, and I write to make this work. Let this document lock testimony.

I'd like you to sign on, as well. What good are adventures if they can't be shared? So here's what I'm thinking:

We adventure like we'd never adventured before. Considering my poor financial state the adventures can be as simple and as frugal as jumping off a large stone structure in Kumano, and as elaborate as getting a tattoo. These are the things we often keep ourselves from doing. I've already completed two this year. One in Houston and the other on a San Antonio Ranch. I shot some guns. I hadn't realized my fear until I held the monster in my hands. So now, my Japan loves, what's next?

This weekend I'm up for adventure. Any and all of it. I'll start a spreadsheet to document my progress.

Adventures haven't been as timely as I initially called for, but can an adventure really be scheduled? That said, I have a few under my belt and many, most and a myriad to come. They are, as follows:

1. Crazy business in the Diamond City super mall near my apartment. Think big mall. Huge. Stadium style shops for days. It's actually something of a filthy eye-sore that I try to avoid as I don't need to accumulate anything more out here save intangible awesome fear factors that I can dutifully relay to you, my faithful blogdience. That said, I can not, in good conscience explain my actions. Know they were legal (I'm not a lifter) and perhaps the best way to start off the campaign.

2. Oyster consumption. Kaki, the word used when ordering here. Alex ordered me a lunch set of fried oyster and I squirmed and reconsidered too many times before taking one in, contemplating my palette and finally offering up an emphatic thumbs up. I ate them all. In turn, I also greedily devoured a raw one. That I could take or leave but I'm still oyster-full and ready to overcome my next great obstacle: sushi. CELEBRATE!

3. Japanese OBGYN. Now to most this is something less than an adventure and more of a questionable call to all things new. But that's a counter-argument only privy to those who haven't experienced the thrilling Sweeny-Todd type automated chair mechanism they mount you in. The doctor keep calling behind a veiled curtain, "Ittai, Ittai?" Translation: Does it hurt? Does it hurt? I had been both laughing and crying. As is the case with most fun-house rides.

4. Cue the tattoo. This is a difficult post in that my mother (hi mom) is one of few to diligently attend to my blog. She's gone so far as to call to remind me that my blog is a bore and I need to update more frequently. She's also an endearing creature, and, in being just that, doesn't want her children to deface their bodies for fear of infection and regret. Luckily my pal Dan scouted out the best artist for the job. Together we hit up "Wild Monkey Tattoo" where after an initial session being canceled (our artist sick) I had a full week to further freak out over the potential pain of being poked endlessly with needle. Our plan was for me to go first as I'd surely back out after seeing Dan writhe through the pain of his more complicated tatt. After surveying the scene (the palor clean, reputable and our artist sweet and thug-friendly) I did something more than freak out. I lost my sh&*. I paced and pouted and Dan, at the ready, offered to go first. I watched him sit stoically through the endeavor and was sure I'd bow out come my turn. Alex aided in humoring me as I kept excusing myself to make convenee store runs (chocolate for days) and writing scathing journal entries to convince myself I was a badass woman worthy of a tattoo. In the end my conviction won out as I reclined on the artists chair, after 20 minutes of deciding upon a fantastic font, extended my leg, bit my lip and waited for the world's worst pain to attack me. It hurt, but in ways I hadn't experienced. Things have hurt much more and as he inked and wiped I knew it wasn't so much the pain as it was resounding sounds- the friends in arms trying to calm me by delivering tasteless jokes, the buzz of the hand-held device, something like a lady razor- that kept me white-faced and ready to faint. I burrowed my face in Alex's green sweater. Dan and Alex acted as a dynamic duo of spoilt comedy and within ten quick minutes I was tattoo'ed. It was really that easy. So now I've an impressive "26.2" insignia on my right ankle. It's something to see everything I run. It's a nod to a comment made to me by someone I'd like to memorialize. And I'm without infection. Without blood and scab and fear. In having legs that kill I plan to unleash this beaut to the wild this summer, and all the summers that follow.

All this. Such adventure! And surely more to come. Mountains to hike. Oceans to wade in. Horses to ride. Cheese to make. I am at the whim of all things wonderful.

There is no love, where there is no bramble.

2008-02-14T08:34:00.006+09:00

And so we celebrate a Japanese Valentine's Day that is the inverse of all I know. Women are expected to give gifts, coated in chocolate, professionally wrapped. This is good news for the choir as I love to gift, and unconventionally so. With this great news I commissioned my pal Dan (an artist and Mass Effect guru) to draw a portrait of Alex and I. Being a patron is really all it's made out to be. I could command Dan to white wash my acne scars and tint my hair to match the fashion of the day. Thankfully my hair is always in fashion, but Dan did masterful work and the portrait, framed and gleaming, went off without a hitch.

Oh wait, there was that darling hitch I worked in. I wrapped the frame in the world's most concerning newsprint. It was a faux paper that detailed how one lady might make efforts to find her 'prince' and 'keep him'. These loosely translated articles detailed how one princess should dress, how she can find happy with her love-time soul mate if she's to keep quiet, and how said princess should turn to her friends to understand the royalty that she possesses. The later giving the paper too much credit but it's par for the course in philosophy. So I stacked on a bow and a lovely ornamental flower and stowed the gift away. Upon Alex's arrival this past weekend I presented him with the package on the pretense it was the obligatory chocolates lovers are expected to present to one another. He, anxious because it seemed to be the worlds biggest piece of chocolate, tore in. Ha, ho. Oh, we all rolled around with that one because my gift was not edible, but awesome. And, in the end, I had some freakish 3-D Ultraman and creepy alien cohort chocolate thing to present him with.

The weekend also included a ryokan stay in Miyajima. Miyajima, being on the top three illustrious list of most scenic places in Japan, was also hosting an oyster festival. CELEBRATE! Or not, as I'm terrified of fish. Oysters seem so at the ready. Bulbous. Decidedly pregnant. Ready to slide and flavor your trachea as soon as you let them in. Thus, I have never had an oyster. Any fish for that matter. And maybe it was the romance of the week. Maybe I was still reeling from the events of last night (see: Dan Fan's surprise birthday party- posts to come), but I was adamant on eating an oyster. So I ate 5. Bloody 5 oysters, of all varieties. I ate fried oyster. But that was a freebie as all fried things are delicious. Then, after much hesitation and a rowdy gaggle of friends pounding fists on a table shouting, "Hula- Oyster" in a quiet subdued restaurant, I went for the jugular and ate a slimy, just cracked, flithy-eye sore of a raw thing. Oh doctor...... it was okay! I'm getting a little crazy in my old age. Quarter life is a culinary beast.

Ryokan was perfect. Dinner was served in full Japanese fashion with all the prepared food groups present and accounted for. Breakfast even more lovely. Our view overlooked as much of the Seto Inland Sea as I've been privy to see. (That's a lot of sea, and a lot of sea/see for one sentence). As night fell, all the tourists (and hordes of them as Kaki filled as we) rushed out to make the last ferry and we pretty much had the run of the island. It was lovely to walk its ways with no one in sight and absorb all the top three ranked beauty that is this island. I'd go back every weekend if I could.

And to end, it is Valentine's Day. Students may make me cards and give me chocolates but I urge any and all reading this post to also consider others reasons we see red:

Feb 14 is also V-Day. V-Day was born in 1998 as an outgrowth of Eve Ensler's Obie-Award winning play, "The Vagina Monologues." As Eve performed the piece in small towns and large cities all around the world, she saw and heard first hand the destructive personal, social, political and economic consequences violence against women has for many nations.

From this experience V-Day was born.

V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls.
V-Day is an organized response against violence toward women.
V-Day is a vision: We see a world where women live safely and freely.
V-Day is a demand: Rape, incest, battery, genital mutilation and sexual slavery must end now.
V-Day is a spirit: We believe women should spend their lives creating and thriving rather than surviving or recovering from terrible atrocities.
V-Day is a catalyst: By raising money and consciousness, it will unify and strengthen existing anti-violence efforts. Triggering far-reaching awareness, it will lay the groundwork for new educational, protective, and legislative endeavors throughout the world.
V-Day is a process: We will work as long as it takes. We will not stop until the violence stops.
V-Day is a day. We proclaim Valentine's Day as V-Day, to celebrate women and end the violence.

So, wear Red tomorrow, and every Feb 14, to stop violence against women and girls, especially if you, or a woman you know, has been a victim of violence. When someone comments that you are wearing red for Valentines day, correct them—tell them the real reason you wear red.

Please forward this message along. For more info visit: http://www.vday.org/contents/vday/aboutvday/mission

"We didn't need dialogue. We had faces."

2007-09-23T09:22:00.000+09:00

A blog cruelly neglected and a Hula trying to make ammends. This post promises to maintain maintence, but blogspiration comes and goes. At the very least I can provide the play-by-play, which, in turn, has more twists than O'Henry.

Since I've last written I've changed my hair thrice. Blond to blonder to V for Vendetta short. Today I'll go back to basics. Brown and all things natural. Silly, as I can't remember the last time I've been without color. I call it the quarterly year change. Every 3-4 months, like clockwork, my hair changes, and in turn, slightly, so do I.

In related news, I think I'm having a love affair with commas today.

I suppose I should start with August 6th. It's as memorible a day as any, and I'm fortunate to have spent it in Hiroshima. We (a gaggle of friends and I) met up in the early morning hours to observe and pay our respects to the memory of the Atomic Bomb dropping. There was a peace vigil held in Peace Memorial Park. Thousands of residents gathered around the centograph in the heart of the park. It was early and I couldn't find my friends so I slinked in amongst the other observers and watched from a difficult distance. There was chatter, and general crowd bearing noise, but when the ceremony started I could hear every typically sound-less sound: the fidgeting of feet, a child clamping her barrett in place, the well paced two step of each woman who laid a wreath at the Heart of the memorial. This kind of silence is scary, and everyone watched with rapt attention. What we were so concerned with seeing, I can't remember. I know I needed a focal point, because to look at anyone else seemed an admission of guilt. The crimes of our country, no matter how old, never leave us.

8:15 promised a moment of silence. Everyone was positioned and poised to bow their heads, listen to the bells and think of lives lost. But then, the deterrent. A political protest some distance back that bellowed, ever so softly in the distance. It was a chorus of cries and I initially chalked it up to a dubbed recording of the screams of the victims of the bomb dropping. My, this is morbid. To hear that- as a product of your own making, never leaves you. It's the crime scene you witnessed. Or a loved ones last words before the machine shuts down. When I was later told about the protest I was incensed. Can't they observe a moment of silence? Can't they pay respects to the living in addition to the dead? But it all makes sense in the end. They were serving the only purpose they had left to serve. To fight it to the end. And their rhythm and rehearsed chants only fueled my conviction that this was something, and is something and will forever remain something that should never again happen.

Fast forward through the day. We purchased laterns and wrote messages of peace to be sent down the river, candle in tow, at nightfall. We splayed ourselves over bridge hangings and watched the laterns tug-a-lug down the river. Some laterns adherred themselves to others. Like lovers, hand-in-hand they floated. Some tipped, and the Sharpie penned messages washed away in the water. It's kind of redeeming to think of the capsized laterns. Their hope is forever embedded in the river walls. So it goes.

I saw a gold ring, from the bottle of the river. Glinting, at my foolish heart...

2007-08-11T08:14:00.000+09:00

...oh my foolish heart, it had to go diving. Diving, diving, diving into the murk.

It's exhausting, keeping up with my blog. It moves so quickly- like a small Japanese child that remarkably (smallish legs and all) always outruns me.

So catch up. It's as fun a game as any. The Hiro Happenings have been plentiful. They are, as follows:

The initiation and consequent undertaking of SUPER ADVENTURE MONDAYS! Now, SAM is a little idea I cooked up one evening when my friends and I realized why were were always so skint (see: totally broke, cash-less, without appropriate financial support). Drinks are expensive. Drinks at popular drink venues late into the evening becomes even more pricey. So why not cut out the middle man? The tenants of SAM are simple: It should be free (or free-like, the costs of bus/train/ferry fare are acceptable), and it should be wild/crazy/interesting/really, really, really pretty. So there was no better way to jumpstart our SAM than to venture on down to backwoods Kumano. Kumano is not so much backwoods as it's NOT city saavy like Hiroshima. My pal Dan lives there and we packed a picnic, donned our bathing suits (in my case another stellar three piece that really resembled a wetsuit) and headed out to a resoivor for some swimming, fishing and Happy Station Music listening.

Who knew we'd find danger and all things terrifying in pacifist Kumano. Perched atop the resoivor was a large stone wall. It had to be at least 20 feet, and my go-get-um attituded friends thought it would be fun to jump off said wall into the lake. Umm.. okay, that sounds as good a plan as any, but lets not forget my intense fear of heights. My fear of deep water. My fear of people seeing me in a bathing suit from a variety of angles. Well regardless, we did a couple test runs off a smaller, 8 foot type wall and it took all my friends in the water chanting my name, and a slew of 6 or so teenage Japanese boys counting backwards from 5 in English to get me to jump that measley distance. What followed is my greatest Kumano accomplishment. My apotheosis if you will. So I jumped. SAM is such an ego-boost.

Next Monday was lack-luster. We bought tickets to the Sun-Dance festival. This sounds more alluring than it is. No, we did not see fabulous film in Hiroshima, instead we paid the rough equivalent of $30 to go to a dirty beach. I can't complain- the company was good and transportation was included, but I'm not much of a beach bunny and we all agreed that next Monday should most certainly include more adventure.

On the agenda: Super Adventure Karaoke. My team mate John and I (see: the Dynamic Duo, members of the band "It's Something So Sad") have an agenda that includes the singing of Richard Marx, choreography, costume and stellar stunts. It is definitely something to blog home about.

Going up a mountain, coming down slowly

2007-07-24T07:24:00.000+09:00

"I have come a few miles. I have blisters on my slippered feet, as I rise, as I rise."
All idealists should climb a mountain. Anyone foolhardy enough to believe in the good of all men, the beauty in all things, that right that exists in all wrong, should strap on some boots and scale a mountain. A tall one preferribly, in the middle of a cold, quiet Japanese night only to arrive at the summit at sunrise. It was something so much more than beautiful. It was an epic score.

I did it! Or rather, we did it. Scaled Mt Fuji. CELEBRATE!!!!

I took the 6:40 shinkansen to Tokyo to run around and do Tokyo type things with friends Tara and Matt. This weekend was touted a big reunion as 6 of our 7 initial Amity trainees we're meeting to climb the biggest mountain in Japan. Some new editions entered the fold, Kevin and David, and I was able to eat a mexican (?!- in Japan!?) dinner for proper nourishment pre-climb. This seemed sensible because everyone knows how nutrient dense chips and salsa are.

What followed dinner was chaos and confusion. We couldn't find the bus that would take us to the mountain. Our backpacks were locked away somewhere in Tokyo station (and anyone with any knowledge of/or an imagination realizes that this game of find and seek can potentially take all the days of their lives), and Owen (another friend traveling from Fukui) was running late, late and later and feared missing hte bus. Apparently Fuji was on our side as, at the last minute we found our bus, bought our tickets, extracted our baggage and boarded the bus. Something so sad, or perhaps tragic: Owen arrived just in time to watch our bus pull away. I did see him the next day at the base of the mountain and I've no worry that he had a lovely climb.

Arrival. Hooray. Celebrate! We gear up and begin our ascent. The path is nearly deserted and unlike anything I've ever traveled. For sometime we feel completely enclosed in our small bubble of friends and worry that we're descending or taking the road less taken. The first hour or so saw solely our headlamps and singing and shouting.

The mountain is peppered with another 5 stations where we could purchase provisions, if needed, and stop and rest. The distance between each station was enough to warrant a rest whenever we approached one. Initially, with all the excitement and low level terrain I moved quickly and found the climb manageable. After the sixth station, however, I began to feel the burn. We were nearly vertically climbing. Holding onto big rocks, haphazardly placed atop one another like a Lincoln Log set. Most of my group had previous climbing experience, but I merely run the roads and found the ascent increasingly difficult. I kept my pace. I didn't outdo it, and marched along with the leaders of our group. Looking like an Addidas astronaut, I wore my silver running tights to wick off sweat and maintain heat. This was all good and great, and my gear was appropriate, but my pisspoor athletic ability was tested to the limits. After an hour of vertical climbing and acclimating my body to elevations of some 3000 meters, I began to familiarize myself with akward climbing technique. I enjoyed jumping from rock to rock and even humored myself a badass adventurist. I convinced myself I was made to rock climb. I started calling Mt. Fuji my darling lover. I couldn't stop smiling.

2/3rds into the climb, climbers began appearing in droves. We're they materialized from, I know not. Many climbers hike during the day, spend the night in the few huts scattered at each station, and ascend in the early hours of the a.m. to see the sunrise. Regardless, we were engulfed by them and what followed was an eerie procession of hushed voices and lowlit lamps that moved in accordance with one another, pursuing a common goal. I was happy to walk in step with them. We regulated eachother's breaths. We felt one another's sore heels. We moved in one unit. In rhythm and time.

And then, the summit.

Whoa.

I've never seen anything like it. Sky for days, no mountains to surround. I felt as though I were on top of the world, and while there were hundreds of people surrounding me, speaking loudly of their adventure and hopes and dreams, the moment was muted and there was nothing but clarity and control and hope and happiness.

We watched the sunrise. Silly, I've never seen a sunrise. I usually rush about my everyday doings. I have to move, move, move that I never allowed myself the simple pleasure of this everyday event. And now I'm hooked, although I fear nothing will compare with this particular sun. It moved in stages, like a controlled ballet and turned the sky a milieu of colors. It was stunning. Everyone at the peak huddled around the makeshift wall and watched with simliar amazement. Cameras flashed, keitais clicked and we each captured a moment our minds will never forget.

Then, the descent. Oh doctor. Now I'm regretting this fool decision.

There is nothing romantic about the descent. It is not scenic. It is not exciting and it most certainly is not easy. Despite its downhill draw, the descent is murder on the knees. You escape the summit in steep terrain, on a sandlike surface that requires you balance yourself with every step to keep from falling forward. I cursed Fuji in my descent. I fell four times. I cried and ran screaming for the final base station. But then, some 2.5 hours in, it's all over. I browse the gift shop, buy, buy, buy for students and school and am filled with pride and accomplishment. I climbed Fuji! Me! And I smile and smile.

Fear not the finicky eater

2007-07-18T20:38:00.000+09:00

How I know I'm going to be okay...

A product of my own making.

This may be my proudest moment.

Oh how I love this place, it's sweet and bitter taste, has left me wretched, wretching on all fours- Hiroshima, I'm yours...

2007-07-18T07:35:00.000+09:00

Big plans in the making. The training crew (in near full) is meeting up in Tokyo this coming weekend to board a bus to the fifth station of Mt. Fuji. That's right. We hope to scale the tallest mountain in Japan. It's an overnight climb, and if we all make it to the top we'll huddle near one another and watch the sunrise. I think that promises to be something so lovely.

Now I am more than pleased with my extravagant camera purchase.

I've been trying to save money as best I can because spending is the name of the game here. Weekends out are pricey. That darling and far too complicated shirt in every store window is necessary. And because Japan basically mandates that you walk around with a concerning amount of yen in your pocket because credit cards are nearly non-existent, it's easy to fall prey to anything and everything pricey.

Working hard on establishing a running regimine so the International Marathon goal may be realized. Richard and I hope to run the Tokyo marathon, and fingers crossed that we get accepted despite lottery, and I hope he's all in. I tire of running alone. I can slow down with the promise of another. I can't imagine what it is to cross with added energy. I bet it's the best feeling in the world.

Green tea is delicious. I think I'll take up yoga. Japanese, as a language, is tricky.

Oh, and I have no idea what I'll do with the rest of my life. I have nine months left of careful contemplation. But I'm always contemplating. I'm always thinking and planning and proving. I was hoping to escape introspection. Maybe in my old age.

The weather is fine, and I'm sure, at least for today, that it will hold.

My nemesis is dead. Now what?

2007-07-15T15:03:00.000+09:00

"Have you ever seen an idealist with grey hairs on his head? Or successful men who keep in touch with unsuccessful friends? You maybe think you did, and I could have sworn I saw it too, but as it turns out it was just a clever ad for cigarettes."

Typhoon? Typhoon! Really? Are there precautions to take? Batteries to buy? Places to seek shelter?

School was canceled and I was a mass of critical concern. Natural diasters usually prompt a Hula freak out session, but strangely enough the promise of a typhoon was strangely alluring. I headed into the city center with hopes of joining my other impulsive, move to Japan on a whim, like-minded friends to watch the eye of the storm circle and swoop. We romanticized danger. Howling winds a gentle chorus. Tipped trashcans a playful waltz. Maybe we were trying to create. Make an allegory of our experiences. Maybe we needed the permission to destroy our past life in exchange for this new one that we tiptoe around. A storm. A natural diaster that wouldn't be a product of our own making. That's making a madness of metaphor, but it's also quite telling that the typhoon didn't materialize. That we were safe. Reeling. Waiting. Holding eachother in the hopes that we'd desperately need that tight grasph. And, it worked. Here's a home. Here's a love. Hiroshima is happiness.

We meet here for our dress rehearsal to say, "I wanted it this way"...

2007-07-06T07:43:00.000+09:00

"...because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you can the blue centrelight pop and everybody goes 'Awwww!' ".

Perfect quote to segway into my Japanese Independence Day. Photos and all!

By Japanese Independence Day I'm really referencing American Independence Day celebrated in Japan, which was infinitely more entertaining. I haven't had a Japanese Independence Day yet. Not of the accepted, calendar added variety, but the day I feel I've overthrown the culture shock and reveled in my own revolution. I'm certain it's forthcoming. Wars of this massive scale aren't often won overnight.

Regardless, I met some friends in the park nearest the Hiroshima Castle. What a beautiful thing to be walking to a destination, a tepid July evening, meeting friends at a Castle's entrance. I'll never again read a text asking to meet at a castle, turn left at a shrine. It's certainly something to blog home about. Well, we had ourselves a lovely time as Japanese children's stores sell fireworks a-plenty. Alone, yet obnoxious in the park, the police didn't mind if we blew off our own fingers, so long as our danger sticks weren't pointed at the nearest road. What followed was silly pyro-technic shows, attemtps to scale trees, and and grand tour of Hiroshima's nightlife well into the early hours of the a.m.

oh Hiroshima. I'm tired.

No matter, the city is still breathing and my bronchial infection has finally subsided.

Because everyone thinks that it goes away with age...

2007-06-19T20:53:00.000+09:00

everyone thinks they've got her appraised, but she's still miles away...

Time sprints softly and I can now upload and update from the confines of my birdie of an apartment. I have internet. Celebrate! Now we're cooking with gas.

Too much to catalogue. I was fitted in a traditional Japanese Yukata (summer kimono) for Hiroshima's Tokuasan festival- a festival that celebrated something no one was entirely certain of. That was no matter, because the ladies sucked it up and were corsetted, the men dolled lose, pajama like obi's (there is something so wrong with this dress code) and we ran around the city in our gaigin glory. About Yukatas. If I can give any advice to anyone interested and willing, it would be: not to. Such pain. Although I suppose I can't complain much. I accessorized with Converse kicks, and took off the garter, rope, stomach contraption early into the evening. I like to breath. I found it helps with conversation.

I've been over the moon for festivals, as I visited the Mikuni festival outside of Fukui a few weeks after I'd arrived. Fukui was lovely in the way that Hiroshima is exciting. I sometimes wish for the tree lined avenues of Japan's quieter alcoves, but Hiroshima is something much for intoxicating. Considering on a simple few streets there are some 3,000 bars, the association takes on many meanings. I've found falafel! A touch screen camera with a memo pad that breeds endless vainity! Karaoke co-conspirators! Marathon maniacs! I can't stop smiling for fear I'll miss any one thing.

What follows is the thrilling tale of Hula's international Disney exploration. Well, it's something rather sad in the sense that I couldn't convince my friends to hit up Tokyo Disneyland (without doubt more magical- arguabley better than the Tokyo DisneySea we settled on). Something knock me down gasph worthy: I wasn't in much of a Disney mood. I attribute it to the night terrors of the previous night. I think they were a product of my own making as we slept in a capsule Inn Hotel (see: slept in the equivilant of a coffin) and I got myself one stellar hour of sleep, if that. No matter, because I was in my mecca and ran around every bit of it (save the super scary rides that I'm much too much of a whimp to take on). I must say, the Japanese have greater control of the disney than I was willing to give them credit for. While Japan is all sorts of clean in a creepy, big brother as janitor kind of way, Disney was the porcelin basin of my grandmothers tub. It was the Oriental Rug, twice vacuumed daily. It was beautiful for those who find beauty in Disney (and really, what sort of tyrant doesn't?) I'll return in January with the sister to visit the real Disney. Then, my loves, we'll have something to blog home about.

The gymnist- high above the ground....

2007-05-09T21:26:00.000+09:00

... limbers on, and falls tender down. Ankles splay and dull tide. The gymnist, long has arrived...

True, that I am afraid of most everything (see: heights, needles, roller coasters, fish, spiders, confusing miniature electronic devices, and children with excellent posture) but nothing has prepared me to face the deamons of one of my greatest fears. Cue the cockroach my friends.

I was able to run screaming from the monkeys, and do my best lamaze type exercises on those makeshift gondolas, but where can I seek solace. The JT staff said they are inevitable, regardless of how clean I keep my apartment. Awww snap. This is not the alley I trash in.

I can't sleep for fear of being a creepy crawler snack. I guess there is truly something to be said about cohabitation. I may have to befriend my neighbors. I think I may become the friendliest gaigin ever to be found in these parts if only to have some roach exterminators in close proximity.

Missing home.

But also loving the Hiro happiness.

I'm my best contradiction.

"Please, remember me, happily, by the rosebush laughing, with bruises on my chin, the time when we counted every black car passing your house beneath the hill, and up until someone caught us in the kitchen with maps, a mountain range, a piggy bank a vision too removed to mention"

I am listening to hear where you are...

2007-05-07T17:10:00.000+09:00

Golden Week globetrotting. And by globetrotting I'm pretty much suggesting that to comb all of Hiroshima and its surrounding areas is akin to globetrotting. No matter. Hiroshima is big enough to exhaust a good 5 days and I live to tell the tale (after a close call with some crazy eyed monkeys and a karaoke binge that would leave Bukowski comatose). Below please find the play by play which isn't probably of considerable interest to anyone other than my super BFF Jason who braved monkeys and 4 hour marathon promenades with me, and my mother, who loves this kind of shit.

Okay, okay. Here we go! Vamanos!

Sunday: I take the shinkansen to Osaka early with the hopes of meeting up with training buddy extraordinaire Daniel. So we make active use of our keitais to find one another at shin-osaka, with a transcript that went a little something like this: "Hula: I'm at Central Gate. Daniel: I'm at Central Gate". funny, as in funny ha, ha, ho, hee, Daniel and I were at different train stations. For shame. Terrified I'd get further lost in Osaka I jumped on the next JR train to Kansai airport, thinking I'd arrive all kinds of early, browse about and eat frozen yogurt at that stand I took a liking to when I first arrived. Well it took some time longer than I anticipated so by the time I arrived at the airport, sumimasen'ed a few airport personnel I realized Jason had already landed. I ran to the rendevoux area and was immediately accosted by a Japanese television station. Big cameras. Lots of lights. Boom mics and me looking totally bewildered and still without my voice from last week's sickness.
Okay. this is where the week starts getting interesting. So this show, "music edge, osaka style" asks me if they can interview me. I've nothing to do but wait so I oblige. they're more interested in who I'm waiting for and proceed to make impromptu posters and scream "jason" to anyone exiting the arrival gates. so Jason and I are interviewed in full by a very emphatic host so then asks us for our memory song. Uh.. we don't have a memory song. So after Jason offers up a Pixies tune and I a Guided By voices song, they practically spoon feed us lines and tell us our memory song is "Fragile" by Sting. Sure. Why not? Who doesn't love them some Sting at akward moments in Osaka.

Monday: My manager and his wife took us to a Hiroshima Carps baseball game! Ohhh doctor, I've never seen fans of this caliber. There were organized cheers and noise makers galore and bandstands. Such a time. I'd like to argue that I memorized the cheers, but really I just followed the phonetic sounds of the carps clad kids next to me. No worries, as the Carps kicked some serious but and won by a lot. A lot roughly equates to 4 runs, but I'll take what I can get. I'm a serious Carps fan now. Fair weather and all.

Jason and I ran about the city some that night and hit a few of the foreign bars that we'd rehit repeatedly throughout the week. My favorite being Molly Malone's an unassuming Irish Bar with fantastic western toilets. I gauge my hot spots based on my ability to urinate as I would at home. I think it a good caliber of measurement.

Tuesday: Ahhh... we scaled some mountainous structure. It was bea-u-tiful. Our walking map referred to it as the Promenade of Culture but by the end we had other words for it. Promenade of hurt calves, promenade of exhaustion. Well worth it though. I've never seen anything like it. After our newfound acquistion of ashthma we hit up Hiroshima castle and a Chinese Garden. All lovely. All well worth the hike(s). After which I'm fairly certain we hit more foreign bars. That seemed to be the theme to end each evening.

Wednesday: Sad, somber day. A bomb dome and museum. They were preparing for the flower fest that weekend, so the park was lovely and a-bustle. More nightlife in Hiro to follow.

Thursday: Flower festival! Some one million people flocked Peace Boulevard for some of the more memorible parade floats and walking processions I've ever seen. After which they had a peace lighting ceremony in Peace Park. We created candles to commemorate and they lit up the entire park in the evening for a lovely, yet somber festival end. Unfortunately something became of Jason's candle. Gone. He must hate peace, as I LOVE peace and mine was standing tall and proud. No matter. It was a site to see.

Friday: Miyajima! My most favorite place in the entire world (save Walt Disney World, but come on- I'm programmed to say that). Deers everywhere. Our Hiro guide map warned us not to lose our ferry tickets to a deer and we laughed at the possibility. Nope. That is most certainly an option. We think they may have been animatronic or sedated as they let kids tug on them and basically ride them without so much as moving. We took a rope way across Mt Misen because I apparently ahve a newfound affinity for rope way gondola type things. We were some 500 or so meters in the air in a cab that held 30 plus Japanese tourists heading toward the monkey district. So I obviously discarded my newfound sense of adventuer and silently freaked out. This was captured in film. Repeatedly. Miyajima was the best. So picturesque and crafty. I bought my keitai charm there. An orange Disney thing that said Hiroshima. It must have been made for me as I LOVE orange and have a concerning obsession for all things Disney. I also adore Hiroshima, so I splurged for the disney charm. We also ate the best meal I've yet had in Japan there, at a small authentic restaurant that catered to our obnoxious vegetarianism. I don't know if I've ever taken in as much food as then, but it was well worth it. Good. Great. Now we're cooking with gas.

Saturday: Yuki! Oh, Yuki! You screwed me. This is supposedly the site of some infamous hot springs and onsens that must be mystical as we couldn't find them. We traipsed about Yuki which is a small, no, make that tiny, back woods town about an hour bus ride away from the furthest point in Hiroshima. It was pretty harrowing riding the bus as it seemed to go anywhere but where we wanted to go. Yuki did redeem itself though. Right as we were waiting for the next bus we spotted a band of monkeys. The crazy kind that you don't want to look in the eye. I got spazzy and freaked out, thinking the monkeys wanted my Yuki Onsen cookies I bought to bring back to my school and started running for cover. Funny, as the area I ran toward had only a brick wall for salvation. funny, maybe funnier that the only way out was to run toward the monkeys. Jason took a slew of action shots of me running in circles screaming for help that I haven't yet mastered in Japanese. In the end i was able to escape free of monkey scar.

Sunday: Rest, rest, rest as we ran about the city non-stop for an entire week. We went in search of Okonomiyaki (a famous pancake type conglomeration in Hiroshima) but were foiled when we eneded up again in Molly Malones and then off to some sweet, sweet karaoke. Something happened, and I don't know how, where our karaoke marathon session cost a cool 10700 or so yen. Oops. Thankfully Big Echo takes major credit cards. I'll make sure to do a bittle more research before I respond in kind with Hei to everything.

Monday: I saw Jason off, took the shinkansen back and feel as though I need another good week to recover.

Sigh, oh, sigh. Gotta love Golden Week.

You said you'd take me nowhere, I said that suits me just fine...

2007-04-23T13:53:00.000+09:00

This city scares the shit out of me.
Browsed the remnants of the A-bomb dome yesterday. Elementary school children make chains of cranes in colors that now mandate more meaning. It's beautiful in the way the beautiful used to mean something. I love it.

Missing home. Missing Jason and Helen and too many names to mention. Saught comfort in a newfound Hiroshima crew. Fun, fabulous people. They took me in with open arms. I should probably now open my arms, eh?

Consumerism is the name of the game here. I'm so tempted to buy, buy, buy but want to watch my money so I can visit Matt, Mel and Owen soon enough. Golden Week is quickly approaching. CELEBRATE! Now we're cooking with gas.

Oh the sights I've seen. I love Okayama because it was my first taste of Japan, but I love the quiet bustle of Hiroshima. The clean streets. The fancy droves of midday shoppers. My apartment view is mountains to the east. Mountains to the west. Mountains, again north and south. How did I ever deserve such beauty?

I need to figure out my keitai and make my apartment my own and lesson plan for the next year. I should also enjoy Japan. I think I may make that my first priority.

I used to say, with regularity that Chicago was my disappointing lover.
I may now argue that Japan is a pretty impressive lover. Of course, there is better. But I'm just a bittle biased. :)

This lonliness will fade.
These streets will soon shout.

The alley I trash in

2007-04-21T08:03:00.000+09:00

A braggarts blog.

I can say with complete assurance (in an uncontested dude off....):

my manager kicks your manager's ass.
my outgoing FT kicks your outgoing FT's ass.
my JT's could make soup of your JT's. (Miso maybe. Still tasty).
My apartment, well, it's probably comporable to yours...
My city, in way of Vegetarian options would annihilate your city (see Hiroshima: it's the bomb).

how did I ever get so lucky?

Am I making something worthwhile out of this place?

2007-04-16T20:07:00.000+09:00

Am I making something worthwhile out of this chase?
I am displaced...

At home in Hiroshima. This city sings. It's less of a bustle than I expected it to be, but that is a welcome homecoming. The past two days have been quiet, and that's a far cry from the boisterous one week training session of constant companionship and Okayama flavor.

My apartment is lovely. It's small with potential and everything feels and smells new and foreign. My refrigerator, rice cooker, microwave and washing machine match (the Jazzberry series, so adorable with their matching purple and blue splash colors-yet made my different manufacturers?...) and my bathroom, shower room and kitchen are surprisingly roomy. The former foreign teacher left me a nice stock of books (she is literate, that one. I like her) and my manager chose a bedding set that isn't a filthy eye-sore. More like a modern, stylish art deco set. I think I'll like him, Mr. Manager.

I havent' seen much of Hiroshima yet. The first day I inadvertently consumed 4 Benedryl, with the intent to take 4 Ibuprofen - so I was both socially inept and sedated when my fellow teachers picked me up at the station. Funny, as in funny ha ha ha ha, I also drugged my fellow trainees, passing out Benedryl like chiclets (of which Japan has none). Joke's on them I suppose. It's a good thing humor isn't all that evident here in J-land.

I'd wax poetic about the cherry blossoms I browsed or have a small Kimmie freak out session gushing over the super too cute Japanese lunch box I purchased today, but I'll reserve these stories for posts to come.

For now, know I have found beauty and peace in these parts and will regale my audience with silly vending machine pictures and Mr. Roboto stories so soon.

Work tomorrow. Oh the kids. They can kill a man.