Pink Purple

Ha ha ha, so this one really didn't give me a lot to work with and I don't think it came out very well; the previous one remains my favorite. I deleted about 7/8 of what I was given, and now it sounds kind of emo and intense and I don't know exactly what it's supposed to mean, but...oh well. ^_^;; Thoughts?


Your scarf should not be put in place,
the scarf of ambiguous pink purple,
tightened, tightened
you do not think
we must think
doubt the method of repelling.
curiosity is strong,
We want. We want.
Twist the leather string, getting angry,
refuse the memory.
Empty, undo, cancel.
And jump.

It is soft, the earth
the light
silence; and smile,
goodnight,
the dark is good.
Whether or not you see,
whether or not.

Even more...

I assume this will get old at some point...but I'm still quite enjoying it. ^_^ I indulged in the backspace quite a lot here, and the meaning of the poem (if it can be said to have any meaning?) is pretty much completely unrelated to the original (much of which, in fact, I posted here several months ago...). Anyway, I kind of like this one. Thoughts?


The rise and the rise
step of the stonework between mountain and river.
I imagine clearing off the secret, crossing the shrine of corrosion
of the sunlight
ancient times tilt the urgent land.
Consoling the sunlight and the shadow shrine of my secret
the rain which falls soak in the new leaf ancient wood.
Like the cascade water,
you went away.

I the rain am beautiful.
There is no at all. I go, never rising.
With my fantasy, I go.
The stairway, beautifully, raises to the shadow.
The shrine of my secret
you cannot exist.

More Babelfish poetry...

First, some pretentious musings on art:

There's something appealing to me about art that is partially left to forces beyond the direct control of the artist. One of my favorite activities with a camera is setting the ten-second timer, then swinging the camera around from its string until I hear the shutter click. Some small percentage of such pictures will be gorgeous. It slightly surprises me that I feel this way, because it's also true that a large part of what I get out of any sort of art comes from the feeling of purpose, the feeling of connecting with the vision and intention of the artist. Perhaps there's something intriguing to me in the tension between control and randomness. Some power in the act of intentionally setting out to create something through chance, and then applying a human sensibility to distill from whatever happens to come into existence something worth presenting as art.

Okay, pretension over for now. I have recently come to the realization that an entertaining use of time when I can't think of anything else to do is to create Babelfish Poetry (yeah, I like it better as one word -- I know that isn't how it's written on the site, but whatever). So I came up with rules for this game: I take something, say a poem I've written in English, and run it through Babel Fish into and out of Japanese, then copy/paste the result into Microsoft Word. I am then allowed only limited operations: I can hit Enter or Backspace, and change the capitalization of letters if it becomes necessary. That is all. With this method I have turned a random poem I wrote a while ago into the following:

We looked at month, in the naked wood:
The road where the paper arranged the note which is tidied.
Our eyes which idly follow to that distant disk.
Last project. I blinked.
That I panted, catch, being turned, innocently far distant country.
Confused, I opened my mouth; but everyone reacted.
You caught my confusion with my tongue.
To do that it is possible month?
It is isolated from other things, someone did not know, the world repelled,
as for me the paper which scrutinizes the edge correct line.
Suddenly, I surround my shoulder which feels that arm.
He asked quietly, and I nodded.
I shot my confusion of sigh.
And the world was the right,
this was our last chance because.
Month was not important; I loosened in that love.
Worry above this and above this it does not doubt.
I permitted my head remainder of that warm shoulder.
This time as for me,
This time as for me you have known permanently.

And I awoke,
simultaneously,
I hung on,
desperate in encouraging, in certainty.
But naturally, he disappeared.
And I in the world, being the place where the month moves in the sky,
crossing him,
do not grasp me under any condition.

Babelfish

It occurred to me last night as I was falling asleep (when all the best ideas happen, right?) that it might be somewhat amusing to try to write random kind of poetic-y things in my broken excuse for Japanese, and then run them through Babel Fish (which remains utterly, impressively inept at translating even the most basic sentences) a few times and see what comes out. Turns out I didn't need the "few times" bit. This is what I got going directly from Japanese to English:

It is not possible. It is and profit says, understands well. With this world, at all it is unreasonable thing. Directly, this one is good. To be necessary directly, this way. That, you understand. Thousands and tens of thousands there is a reason. Not to call at all, nothing to change, directly, directly, this way. . . Only that, it is possible. That is fact. So. . . So, already two, it is fact. If it is I, without fail, without fail, everyday, you call being completed cripes. If and, it is I, my love by all means, is enormous, it is outburst.

I kinda like it, as a little surrealist poem... ^_^

桜

I haven't taken very many pictures of cherry blossoms. Every time I see them I feel an anticipatory pang of loss, and with it a little rush of guilt that I haven't taken the time to go out with my camera and spend time trying to capture the blossoms before they vanish.

And yet, there's something other than simple laziness holding me back. A Google image search for "cherry blossoms" gets 1,040,000 hits. I had seen many gorgeous pictures of cherry blossoms before coming to Japan, and because of that, I had been fully expecting the whole sakura thing to feel overrated: like oh, it's cute that the Japanese people get so excited over these relatively pretty trees, and it's a good excuse for festivals and celebrating the beginning of spring by going outside and sitting under the blossoms...but I mean, they're just flowers. I've seen lots of flowering trees before. I've taken pictures of flowering trees before. I was expecting to acknowledge that the cherry blossoms were quite pretty, and to take a few pictures, and wonder exactly what the whole fuss was about, and chalk it up as an interesting cultural phenomenon.

But here is what all the glimpses I'd caught of cherry trees in the past, all the zillions of pictures I'd seen, even all the talk of flower viewing festivals in the spring had failed to prepare me for: These trees are everywhere. The large tree in the parking lot next to my house -- cherry tree. The little trees lining the side of the main road through Kasumi -- cherry trees. They dot the mountainsides. They arch over the steps up to the shrine behind my house. They hover outside the window of the train at every station. They are everywhere, and I had no idea. Until suddenly -- so suddenly! -- there they were, and everywhere you looked was soft and pink and fluttery. Like someone decided on a whim to take the brush, dip it in white and pink paint, and add the highlights that had been missing from the world.

And already, green is beginning to take over, more and more of the petals are on the ground becoming muddy and wilted. They'll probably be gone within a week, and I don't think I'm going to take any more pictures of them. I know I am not the first person to realize this, but somehow it hadn't occurred to me before: the cherry blossoms aren't beautiful in a way that can be captured in photographs. They're temporal art, ephemeral; their power involves the flow of time and how they come and go. Yes, they're gorgeous -- but taking pictures, in some way, just misses the point. And I think that's why I know, even as I feel those pangs of loss, that the loss is part of the beauty, and I want to experience the blossoms within the movement of time, without trying to freeze them.

So you won't see any big album of cherry blossom photos on my facebook page. But if you ever want to begin to understand them, then come to Japan -- not in the spring, but say, in January or so. Spend a couple of months shivering under a kotatsu wondering how long you can wait before plunging into the cold to get yourself a glass of water. Drive along the narrow gray roads under low clouds drizzling rain and sleet for what feels like weeks in a row. Wait until you feel like winter will never end. And then...then you'll know how beautiful cherry blossoms really are.

ただ例えれば
実る果実の　芳しく眩い香りも
ひとつ季節彩り
そっと枯れ落ちたとて。。。

Mindgrapes

Oh my god I am regressing to middle school. This is the awesome thing: I remember saying, perhaps to myself, possibly to my mom, in seventh grade or so, that Max should be some sort of critic or reviewer when he grew up, because it just seemed like something that would suit him and he'd be really good at. So it's kind of incredible to read this blog, which is almost entirely reviews of music and movies and books, and see how exactly right I was. Gratifying, in a way.

For anyone who doesn't know: I had a mindbogglingly huge crush on this guy throughout middle school. He was my first crush and remains, to this day, perhaps the most intense, certainly if you take the integral of intensity over time. For a long time he was part of my self-identity, woven completely into every instant of my life so that even when I wasn't anywhere near him I was likely to be thinking of him, and even when I wasn't thinking of him his existence still somehow altered my experience of the world around me. I couldn't imagine what it would mean to be myself and not to have this crush.

(I guess I'm kind of banking on his not reading this? Heh. But why would he? It's not even linked on facebook anymore...I think I'm safe. Besides, hell, that was middle school; it's not like I'm embarrassed by it now. At the time, of course, the concept that he might ever in any tiny way suspect that I cared about his existence in any way shape or form made me want to shrivel up and die....)

So it was with a wave of loss that I realized sometime in the first half of high school that all that really remained was the memory of a crush...and another few years later, that memory became like the memory of intense pain: you know in some abstract way that you felt it and it was excruciating, powerful, dramatic, all-consuming....but no actual, visceral imprint is left in your mind. I wish I could really remember how I felt, and not just that I felt.

I invented the word clellity to describe Max, and so, while I sometimes clumsily try to dance around the definition using preexisting words, he is the only true definition. It's satisfying to read his writing now and see that the clellity is still there (even though he's mostly talking about music I don't know and drugs and sex and other things that would have made innocent little middle-school-me feel horribly betrayed...).

I mean hey -- it sounds like he's living in New York right now. Maybe I'll shoot him a facebook message when I'm there next fall. You never know: I might even be able to string together more than three words at a time to him, after all these years. ^_^;;

Instead of lyrics, I'd like to continue with the things-from-my-childhood-that-are-awesome theme, and share with you some dialogue that happened to come up in conversation earlier today. The scene: The PiRats have captured the Rescue Rangers (Chip, Dale, Gadget, Monty, Zipper), and are debating exactly how to kill them. (Jolly Roger is the leader of the PiRats.)

Some PiRat: I say we make them walk the plank.
Jolly Roger: Nah, we did that last time.
Another PiRat: How 'bout we keel haul 'em?
Jolly Roger: No, we just painted the keel.
Stormy: *excitedly* We could dress 'em up like bunnies, and dip 'em in chocolate!
Jolly Roger: ...I'm afraid that ain't piratical enough, Stormy.
Gadget: Well, considering the time of day and all, you could bury us in the sand and wait for high tide to come in.
Jolly Roger: A fine idea!
Chip: Gadget!!
Gadget: Oh. Oops. You know I can't resist a challenge...

-__-;;

Today

So a couple of people seem to actually read this blog and have been like "oh wow you sound really depressed... :-(" Which is really really sweet but made me feel like I should post something that sounds less depressed. That's a little hard right now because I'm having another mostly down day. But hey, those are going to happen. Yesterday was a good day. And in a sort of meta-conscious way I quite enjoy observing my emotional/psychological states and swings and seeing how I deal with things and what works and what doesn't.

I'm tired of not feeling proud of myself for anything. I set vague goals for myself like eating better and going for walks and doing art and that kind of thing, and then I don't do those things, and just kind of shrug and think "oh well, I'm just lazy." Screw that. I'm going to eat better. I'm going to exercise four days a week: up and down the stairs of the temple by my house three times. I'm going to take care of the plants I bought, and buy more, so that the front of my house is bright and cheery and beautiful. I'm going to find a way to buy paints and canvases and paint things. I'm going to put more effort into my English board, and maybe even talk to Kuroda-sensei about giving me a little more free range with the first-years. I'm back to hoping someone falls in love with me, and maybe it will end up being Andrew, maybe it will be someone else, most likely I suppose it will be someone I haven't met yet, but in any case they're sure as hell not going to fall in love with me if I'm just sitting here in my (albeit very fluffy) bathrobe complaining to people online about how moody I am.

Starting today, not tomorrow, not next weekend, not as soon as my period ends (to much information? Sorry lol), not on 4/11 because it's a month after my birthday, not as soon as I find all 43 seveneights, not after I get caught up on the Daily Show, not on Tax Day, not on May 5th to honor the eighth anniversary of my grandfather's death...No, today, this starts today. So enough blogging; my rice is cooked and it's time to chop vegetables, have a bowl of rice, then go out to the ATM and to buy some more plants and a watering can and then I will arrange the new plants on my porch and water them all with some fertilizer and then I will go climb those steps a few times and then I will shower and wash my hair and take the time to dry it so that it doesn't stick out in funny ways, and then have a bowl of edamame and finish the vocab for this Japanese story. And then I will solve the remaining 32 seveneights. ^_^

No time for lyrics!