Shattering: experimentation regarding the art of practice absolute conversation, in park in bed in karaoke box in head in foot in demanding nothing. Chinese food, fast food, the rain like a promise, health maybe or security regained? Must cook. Will cook tonight: Thai potluck. Enslaved by Kundera -- "Mirek rewrote history just like the Communist Party" -- "we want to be masters of the future only for the power to change the past / we fight for access to the labs where we can retouch photos and rewrite biography and history" -- and karaoke box 3 a.m. I say to M, give me some words please, I don't care about the order or the variation only stipulation being they've got to be your own -- in park days earlier, eerie nighttime ghost-child screams in the distance Jude the Obscure says Should we go? I say yes yes, let's go, and he heads off IN THE DIRECTION OF THE SCREAM, a miscommunication on manic levels -- fingertips trembling, international messages sent, phone a curse, aquatically majestic however, symbolic in the same way lighters used to be. Poetry. Work tomorrow.
Woke up yesterday in a daze and stumbled downstairs to eat grapes in the lounge room.
Fucked around for a while, then found Nyree and went off in search of vegetables. On the lane between our house and the station we met 3 different acquaintances in various states of hungover and sleeplessness and lost mobiles and strife. It's a weird lane that way.
Venga Venga: asparagus, red pepper, mushrooms, onion, prawns, popcorn, chips, cheese, water, beer, wine.
We go for a CAR RIDE! I think it's the first time I've been in a car in Japan that wasn't a taxi. There was tension, yes -- Japanese men drive too fast and also on the *wrong side of the road* -- but we got to this park near Chofu safe n sound, set out the bbq materials, and proceeded to adventurize. Me and Nyree plus 4 J's, one of whom, in a weird twist of fate, I'd actually met before around Christmastime, cold and tired on the train between Shinyurigaoka and Noborito. ("You are my destination!!") Nyree chopping vegetables reminding me of Thanksgiving. Her beautiful kebabs garnering praise, a general consensus among the dudes that she would make an excellent housewife. Me? I get Y last weekend telling me I'm unable to have children unless I start eating meat. Still trying to suss that one out ... There was like an eternal spring of beer.
A truly memorable car ride home.
Karaoke for 2 hours, repeating the same songs sometimes I think. Nyree and I stumble pitifully to the convenie for more beer and chips, then: Hey, you up for a movie? No. I'm up for bed.
On the train I was beside an old man with white hair and a cane and I've never felt someone's pain so fully: it seeped out of him like some kind of paralysis and I wanted to touch his shoulder and pray for him: take it away please, give him light somehow, say, you are spectacular in your own right; it's not over yet my friend. Did stretch my hand out a little, palm facing his side, tried to send something. Him, slumped against the glass door, breath condensation and when I look through the blur I see shapes of Shinjuku neon, hurtling past, God, you used to be able to give people a smoke or a dollar but this one needed something more.
Nepal showed me all these cultural film clips from his country, folk dances and women in flowing red silk and babies with rice and dye on their foreheads, music music music, and I learned new words -- topi, midi -- head spun, eyes like mountains, ne? In a surge of international something-or-other I decide to show him something Canadian, can't think, blindly get on utube and show him the video for THE GAY PIMP'S SOCCER PRACTICE. Ten seconds in I realized I was dealing with something beyond grace and looked at his face and wanted to scream: his expression said I'm going to try to be polite and interested and supportive, but Good God. ("I'm a dirty frat boy / on a dirty soccer team"). Lord Barry, I blame you for all of this. ALL OF THIS! Please, please, let's see the Nepalese folk dances again. Made me homesick none the. (less?)
Train home, packed, salarymen drunk and fashion plates vomiting near the courtesy seats, what do I see but an empty seat!!! Sit, only then do I realize why it was empty: girl beside me manic, scratching leg scratching arm scratching face, shrieking, twitching, slamming palm onto her leg. I spend the next 20 minutes trying to suss out what she was high on. Kind of settled on meth, but then she was overweight and clear-skinned, so I think some kind of psychiatric cocktail, no? Disembark at Noborito. Akin, but different, to disembarking at Quebec. See G outside station. Karaoke? Shoulda gone. Here instead.
An interesting evening in Roppongi last night, the lowlight being me tipping over and smashing A TABLE OF WINE BOTTLES. God, God. Highlight? Maybe the breakdancing dance-off at Yellow! I didn't participate but gorged on the images, hurt with the effort of complete present-tense awareness. Met some angelic people. Posed scandalously in modern art sculpture. Ate fish and chips, the fish being pure deep-fried batter, which was new. A Malaysian waiter, cigarette bar-side, shaking martinis. More modern art: hurtling myself thru concrete ring to reach tomorrow. Dawn a tragedy as usual, shaken awake by the station master, transferring successfully at Yoyogiuehara. In recollection and amazement, et al! Cold hard gin and tonic, water flowing through glass walls. It's only enigmatic mystery if you say so sir, that and yr goddamn wise bullshit, which is perhaps self-explanatory. The colours too startling, they wouldn't play Johnny Cash for me @ Motown but tried to placate with ACDC, what? What sort of wavelength are we working with here? Who is your mother, who is your father, why can't I know everything? Want to collapse in the alleyways of Mukogaokayuen and weep; want to stomp victorious through Ikuta Park reciting Kundera and sink, bashful, into obscurity. Taxi a mistake, H, backtracking thru lanes we already walked to a club we already rejected; too many levels -- concrete this time, literally got lost in the maze of bar and dance and dj and peculiar staircases, spiral, one hand on the wall the other clutching drink or smoke or person or ideal.
Some poetry written today, which is nice, only problem being it's not fiction. Trying to think of a way to work all the poems into the novella (novel?) somehow, but the only way seems to be to make the protagonist a writer and that I will not do. Dammit, Jim, I'm a sandwich, not a doctor!
A coolish new bar last night, 1960s-themed cream-coloured couches one could imagine an Elvis-era Priscilla Presley lounging about on. Over-priced beer, edamame in a raku bowl.
Shimokitazawa on Monday, for 6 or so hours of intense conversation and bars. A bleary late train home, unable to sleep, restlessly scribbling and brooding.
And tomorrow at school is the Sports Festival practice. I've been asked to run in a relay race. GOOD GOD.
This heat so insane, the Fear in physical form yet again: wake up sweat, get to work sweat, come back from work sweat, go to bar sweat, got to convenie sweat, go to sleep sweat. What was it, a mere six months ago I was all excited about global warming? But it's old now.
Too many words I think, in my head and on the page, floating around, or overheard. Need to listen to more music, develop abstract pursuits like meditation or gardening, or else physical ones: massage, boxing. Alternatively I need to write more. About 30 pages this week but more is needed if I'm ever going to take the 21-year-old Allen Ginsberg's advice and be my own angel. Also got to read more, develop a personal philosophy or at least mysticism. Building blocks? Got to find the right concrete nouns but none click at the mo.
... And does that about sum it up?
What is the sum of an evening? Mathematically?
Shibuya: Chinese food, beers, we give them Western names -- Dylan and Rex. A convenience store that sells both champagne and firecrackers; I reel. Yoyogi Koen, burnt fingers by the lake, wading, Guitar Wolf an insane afterthought. Reel some more, we're in Harajuku and walk back to Shibuya (10 MINUTES!) and stagger into Womb, Heineken in a can, James Laville dj-ing his goddamn heart out, dance dance dance, stumble, a kind of vile vodka concoction. Dawn, the clubbers arguing with the legitimate people and trying to keep it all quiet, train, but, we must have another adventure! -- disembark ("Disembarking at Quebec"?), champagne and orange juice @ the bachelor pad, music again, shatter to sleep, morning with cigarettes and egg sandwiches and more champagne, fuck, aren't we meant to be at the barbecue? Off to the train station, collapsing on the escalator. Back in Noborito to pick up the Pierced One, still got his little finger so he ain't yakuza, beers on the Tama River, coincidence and kebabs, the basketball team, rampaging through the streets aimed for Cookie Bar, carrying her portable ash tray. Dancing a little bit more I think. Then karaoke and I flee after an hour, run back home, wake up at 3 in the a.m. and head out for cigarettes, think too much. There was an important phone call I didn't return. And now Guitar Wolf has pretty much taken everything over, defined the margins as it were. Thank God it's a long weekend. How do 2 J-boys know about Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise"?
God! Did I really call someone my Muslim bitch last night? She wasn't even Muslim! She's atheist I think, and Irish, result being she can't say DUDE properly so I had the gall to give her goddamn ELOCUTION lessons, Kaos on the stereo cuz there was a Canadian around, telling the Brit long, somehow INTRINSIC stories about my family, my hair's purple, the beers disappear too fast, the convenie clerks are rude when I go get more, Nyree and I were just meant to be making crafts ....
On the burner for tonight: Shibuya.
Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, resigned yesterday amid scandal and despair. I disliked the man's rightie politics -- and his hand-picked, scandal-ridden ministers, three of whom resigned in disgrace over the past year, and one of whom killed himself -- but I feel for him at the moment. He's been hospitalized for stress. Part of his leaving speech included the line, "I find myself unable to keep my promises — I myself have become an obstacle to fulfilling those promises." I don't know if he came up with that one himself, but it sounds heartfelt, the kind of thing a husband or a father might say. He's been crucified in the media today -- called "weak" among other things -- and I can't get this photo of him out of my mind -- it's from last year -- he's exiting an airport with a big grin on his face and holding his wife's hand. The media had a field day with that one. How could he do that in public? they demanded.
The Smiths, the Cure, the Stone Roses, the Clash.
Karaoke last night, heaps of fun. Good company.
Duma-Duma with Nyree and the crew the night before.
Staring out my window at the sky and apartment buildings.
Today I sat at my desk @ work for 6 hours in a row, doing nothing but thinking and writing. When I emerged I actually started muttering to myself on the walk home, I felt so batty. Now, I've muttered before, but it's usually night. And I'm high. And 18, and walking down Quadra St. in Vic, and the mutterings are actually Paul Simon songs.
Writing heaps. Another short story finished, progress made on the novella.
The other night, watching TV with one of the British lads, me pestering him to change the dubbing to English and him saying you can't do that during commercials and me saying NOW, can you do it NOW, and him saying, Joy, you've got to learn to trust men again.
Two children, two occasions, pointing at me: "Gaijin!" Bastards. On one occasion the mum said, No, no, GaiJIN -- actually correcting the goddamn pronunciation.
Waking up at 6 in the morning and looking out the window and smiling, consistently, for at least the past two weeks.
Loving Japan, for the first time really. Loving people, and details, and the accumulation of fact and texture.
Good Lord, it continues! Last night just past midnight, finished with another ill-considered Shinjuku adventure and riding home on the train, I receive an ominous text from Nyree: stop in shimo?
So of course I stop in Shimo. And proceed to TRASH the city, starting with an innocent enough beer (on top of my 5 in Shinjuku) at a kind of Rainbow Bar with blue glass floors, a dozen gaijin at the table getting warmed up, then surging through Mosaic, Club Que, Daisy Bar, 440, Basement Bar, teaching the locals a thing or two about dancing and meeting DJ's. Helen wound up with a bleeding foot; a flutist led us through mazes of alley to an earlier club. A buddy looking for a fight, having a bit of an altercation with a bouncer. Cigarettes lit by shadowy strangers leaning against the bar. More dancing, crashing and burning at 4:30.
And that is where it probably should have ended, only Nyree wanted sushi, and the two of us weaved around the deserted station, uncertain, starved, and unhappy to be suddenly out of beer. Nothing was open and the first train wasn't for half an hour. We met a TV producer and a coder and the four of us stumbled from ramen shop to noodle joint with me shrieking something or other about NIKU JENNAI (roughly: I don't like meat), and after an hour's hike, complete with Nyree collapsing onto the sidewalk in despair and having to be piggy-backed (would that I had a picture!) and me ordering coffee into the air to prove that I knew at least minimal Japanese ("Hey, no, excellent pronunciation! Desu!"), we hailed a taxi (that is a story in and of itself but perhaps Nyree should tell it) and wound up at a 24-hour diner less than half a block later. The J. guys were saying, in Japanese, "Try not to make them scared." I can't remember if this was before or after I asked the producer, point-blank yet absently, "You sure you're not just taking us to your apartment to kill us?"
We had beers for breakfast, naturally, along with some fries and fish. Amusing stories, lots of chat. Another round of beers. The producer somehow had an expense account cuz I think he was on assignment that night, for the music festival, so it was all free, and then we were on the train, dawn too hot, then Nyree and I stumbling down the streets of Noborito hand-in-hand saying, "I thought you were trouble and you thought I was trouble but maybe it's only together that we are." Gah.
It's been an insane 2 weeks, far too much to get into here, so I'll just write about my birthday. Which rocked out!
I woke gloomy. I dislike making birthday plans due to an irrational fear that NOBODY WILL COME, so I hadn't made any.
I went downstairs, ate some yogurt, and watched a documentary about Vlad the Impaler with one of the guys from the house. Now, I'm actually quite knowledgeable about Vlad, having done some extensive research on him a few months back, but was unaware that he is considered a folk hero by modern-day Rumanians. So the documentary was totally worth watching. There were also lots of neat reconstructed images of his various castles.
I took the train to Shinyurigaoka because there is a coffeehouse there that I love. I sat and wrote for two hours, and just as I had decided to buy potato chips and champagne in honor of Marilyn Monroe's solitary birthday in "The Seven-Year Itch" (basically my life is an irony a minute!), Nyree texted me to invite me over for birthday lunch. ("Of course. Shrimp is one of Ms. Waller's favourites." [read Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore"; you will never be the same.])
I bought some champagne and took it over to Nyree's, only to see that SHE had bought champagne also -- foreshadowings of doom, but really, you must go with these things. Lunch was awesome! Potatoes, a mighty salad, a wonderful spicy red sauce thing loaded with vegetables and shrimp. I briefly considered asking Nyree to marry me, but then we were deep into the champagne and British tabloids, then a walk around Noborito, with canned chu-hi, then a horribly misguided game of Trivial Pursuit. The tipsiness begins. Watching TV, Helen and Steph: "Why does she keep changing the channel from Fox right back to Fox again?"
Cookie Bar. The beautiful Cookie gave me a free drink, and generally treated me like a star. She is awesome on so many levels. After, the Antique and Junk: such a wonderful crowd of people! Thanks to everybody who came. I recall only flashes: Masta saying ominously, "You will not pay for beer tonight;" people piled on top of each other to take pictures; crashing into a stack of antiques, hmm. Great conversation with the stellar lads on either side of me, and shouted pleasantries with all the rest. I'm told Bjorn took me home on his bicycle.
And the next morning .... Just about ten solid hours of the Fear. But it was worth it! Walked around for three hours, quit smoking for two hours, and left for Shinjuku at 7, on my way to another weird adventure.