Friday, January 30, 2009

Medieval


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Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Experience


Only three chords - excellent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmKMkXV_US4

20 years together, and they still can't sing in harmony - but it's the taking part that counts.


One of our more lucid free thinkers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E21MdXe3BOQ

51 years a Member of Parliament, he retired to spend more time in politics.
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Painting by Akino Fuku
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Sunday, January 25, 2009

Dreams


Is a dream a lie if it don't come true?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HxZKa4NwGo

Ｏｎｅ　ｏｆ　ｏｕｒ　ｇｒｅａｔｅｓｔ　ａｒｔｉｓｔｓ．

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00h33wk/Bruce_Springsteen_on_Songwriting/



"IN NEW York, two weeks before the US presidential election, Barack Obama was introduced at a fund-raising rally which featured one of his most famous supporters, rock legend Bruce Springsteen. Senator Obama revealed to the crowd:

"I just told Michelle that the reason I'm running for president is because I can't be Bruce Springsteen."

Scotland on Sunday
25 January 2009

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/comment/Bruce-Springsteen-profile-Bluecollar-Boss.4911008.jp
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Painting by Akino Fuku
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The elements
















Took the shinkansen (bullet train) for the first time yesterday, at the crack of dawn, and arrived at 9 a.m. in Hamamatsu in Shizuoka. As it is further south I had expected it to be warmer, but we could see the icy winds blowing hard down from the Southern Alps, and the air was full of confetti windblown snow.

We headed straight to the museum/art gallery of the wonderful Akino Fuku.































We then hiked round the edge of the Hamanako lake (renowned for its eels), and ended up on the 11th floor roof of a hotel overlooking the lake, with the Sun setting, in an onsen. The water was really rather too hot, but the screaming wind was considerably too cold, so I had to dip in and out, my lower half pink as a lobster, my upper less so.
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Must be good for you.

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Somewhat curious, to a gaijin like myself, was the fact that a bloke entered the freezing, wind-tunnelled, rooftop, male changing room - actually it's not a changing room, it's an undressing room - with his 6-ish year old daughter; both stripped stark naked next to me as I bashfully did the same, then jumped in the bath with a load of other strange men - strange in the sense of unknown.
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I had asked my companion how we should spend the day: museums or mountains. The answer came thus: that to spend the day in natural beauty is to confront the infinite; to spend it with beauty man-made is to touch another's soul.
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An orange or a rose?


















This morning we cycled, against the same head-wind, down to Enoshima to work on the boat. Much easier coming back, whizzing past the crawling Sunday traffic. Cooped up in their surround sound comfort zones.















Stopped at a striking monument. 99 years ago a group of 12 boys set out from La Chaya beach in a boat, and later drowned off the point. A pair of brothers were eventually found, buried in the deep - the elder holding the younger in his arms. It was on the 23rd of January, according to the plaque - today is the 25th, and there's a large bunch of flowers at their feet.
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Naked Children, Akino Fuku, 1954
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Can't see nothin' in front of me
Can't see nothin' coming up behind
I make my way through this darkness
I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me
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Lost track of how far I've gone
How far I've gone, how high I've climbed
On my back's a sixty pound stone
On my shoulder a half mile of line
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Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight
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Left the house this morning
Bells ringing filled the air
Wearin' the cross of my calling
On wheels of fire I come rollin' down here
.
Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight
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There's spirits above and behind me
Faces gone black, eyes burnin' bright
May their precious blood bind me
Lord, as I stand before your fiery light
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I see you Mary in the garden
In the garden of a thousand sighs
There's holy pictures of our children
Dancin' in a sky filled with light
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May I feel your arms around me
May I feel your blood mix with mine
A dream of life comes to me
Like a catfish dancin' on the end of my line
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Sky of blackness and sorrow (a dream of life)
Sky of love, sky of tears (a dream of life)
Sky of glory and sadness (a dream of life)
Sky of mercy, sky of fear (a dream of life)
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Sky of memory and shadow (a dream of life)
Your burnin' wind fills my arms tonight
Sky of longing and emptiness (a dream of life)
Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life
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Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight
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Bruce Springsteen
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Poem
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Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
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Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
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Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
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Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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Dylan Thomas
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Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Cuckoos


Spent Monday evening graced by the presence of a couple of Highnesses and a pair of Excellencies, along with 180 other people, enjoying a lecture by HIH, and the spectacle of a posse of dark-suited security men in black making sure everything went swimmingly. Learnt among other things that during the Edo period the night soil of Edo (Tokyo) was collected and sent up the river in a special barge as manure, called euphemistically 'golden fertilizer'.

The Princess kampai-ed with sake and I got my third, annual, square wooden cup (masu) - wonder how many more of those I'll acquire.

Then went down a British pub for a couple of pints of Spitfire and a chicken and mushroom pie and became somewhat (more) disoriented. Rugby on the telly.

Tuesday night I was invited to a bar run by one of my old dears that I teach once a week. We, the sole customers, were greeted on entry by a bloke who looked like a cross between Alice Cooper, Stanley Baxter and Ken Dodd, with a Sid James filthy laugh. Scantily clad in a skimpy low-cut red satin dress, but also wearing a pin-striped jacket to keep warm, he or she flopped and fauned like a kawai schoolgirl in the most over-the-top camp manner I have ever personally been faced with. He or she was joined by what I took to be a seriously obese schoolboy/munchkin who literally ran around in circles but turned out to be a young lady. Lesbian, naturally. The conversation was dominated by Alice Cooper whose main theme, nay obsession, was his or her and other people's sexuality. I have to say I found this slightly taxing.

Then I was asked in Pythonesque manner ("Excuse me - If it's not a personal question, are you a virgin?" "Not a personal question? How much more personal can you get?!") "Is this your first time in a gay bar?" I am with four little old ladies that I normally have tea and cake with. "Do you find Alice attractive?" And so on. It turned out that Alice was 46 and looking for a husband. Apparently he/she had had three successful operations in Thailand, which he/she was keen to point out, literally.

And then the karaoke machine was wheeled out. Thankfully a bottle of decent brandy was also on hand - Alice kept me topped up. I was press-ganged into singing 'Top of the World' by the Carpenters, as the grannies sang along, slapping their knees. I thought of 'One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest'. The bar owner and I sang a lovely duet of the Tennessee Waltz. I also recall 'You were always on my mind' and 'Strangers in the Night'.

Very strange.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=AeZxRYXZ154
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=onap0Wou5Lg
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=FORgf_CXklE
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjz16xjeBAA
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=syPZZxxFCe0
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=Gawdjmxdssk
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=hlSbSKNk9f0
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=mq5pLi0huhw
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=kRNdap-ioNM&feature=related
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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Message from Michael

Just Hours Away

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

Friends,

Message from Michael

This happy, happy day!
We have made it through the Dark Ages and here we are,
in one of the most redemptive moments history has ever witnessed.
Barack Obama is our best hope to get it right,
to heal our national soul,
to reach out to the rest of the world with an olive branch instead of shocking brutality.


I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you who has worked to make this day happen. For many, the madness goes back, not eight years but twenty-eight years,
to the tragic day Reagan was sworn in to dismantle our precious "government of the people" and our beloved way of life. To all of you who have spoken up and spoken out, who have written letters and marched for peace, for all of you who never gave up, you are the true heroes today. Many of you have suffered great economic losses. Some of you have endured a loved one being shipped overseas to senseless and shameful wars, and thousands of you have seen those loved ones returned home, no longer alive. It has been a heartbreaking time. But the sun comes out at noon today. The disgraced outgoing president will slide out the side door and head to Crawford to sell the Hollywood set known as the Bush "ranch" before he settles down in an exclusive neighborhood in Dallas.

I would encourage Mr. Bush to issue one final pardon before noon today -- his own. He had better issue a blanket pardon for all crimes that may have been committed since 2001 by himself, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the whole gang. Serious laws were broken, a war was concocted on a lie, and now, please, justice must be carried out. So let us move forward and fix the horrible mess we are in. We are fortunate to have a new president who is smart and kind and committed to serving his country. Take a moment today and think about what you can do to join him in helping him do his job. We're all in this together. Our country has been so profoundly wrecked by an administration who decided to mug our constitution and then steal what they can for their Wall Street cronies on the way out the door.

Here is my plea: Let's not leave Barack Obama alone to clean up the mess. As he takes his oath today, please take one yourself -- to work harder than ever to end these wars, create universal health care, save our planet, end poverty, increase knowledge and establish a true government "of, by and for the people" (instead of "of, by and for the lobbyists, the bankers, and the war profiteers").

On a personal note, it's no secret that I have had to suffer an avalanche of hate and attack as I stuck my neck out to simply do my job. Some day I will tell you what the true cost of this has been for me, but not today. Today is a time for celebration and optimism and hope. I'm glad we all lived to see this incredible moment. And I thank each of you for your support of my work and your dedication to our democracy. 12:01pm can't come soon enough!

Happy Inauguration Day!

Yours,

Michael Moore

MMFlint@aol.com

MichaelMoore.com


http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=usRHgEXD0Ss&feature=related

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=ijnZTPP38YM

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=IXAF06qJ84A

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=BmKMkXV_US4

PS From Dekoboko: Prove how liberal and new and free you are, how much you want change, and get out of Afghanistan. Stop bombing. Stop bombing civilians, even if they are foreign and non-white, and sub-human, in your (colour-blind?) American eyes. Stop supporting and supplying those that justify bombing civilians, in a 'just cause', to teach them a lesson. What lesson?

http://mikelidgley.blogspot.com/search?q=obama
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Thursday, January 15, 2009

Simplicity









Just ended two months of self-prevaricatory procrastination and entered a clinic. For my chest - had a spot of bronchitis type-thing. The doc turned out to be an amazingly friendly little chap - so small and thin one might say petite, or petit. Oldish and wiry with brown leather skin and a huge smile with big sparkling eyes - reminded me a little of ET. Half-expected him to diagnose me, with a squeaky crackle and a long finger pointing out the window to "Go.... home...".

His language was interesting as he had learned a load of technical, scientific, medical English, but very little of the bits in between. I have half-learnt some of these bits in Japanese so between us we could communicate quite well:

anato-no seki-wa productive cough desu-ka?

Oh yes - very productive

Phlegm-wa nani iro desuka?

Kind of yellowish-green

Ah so - wakarimashita

Anyhow, he gave me lots of drugs, five in fact, and I feel much better already. So, the lesson is, don't put it off.

May have mentioned this a while ago, but anyway - a couple of years ago I went on a road trip. In a long-wheel base, ex-army landrover, with two kittens. Bed in the back, kittens separated from me by a wire mesh. I had never had kittens before and was surprised to learn how different they can be. Thisbe would do anything to get near me and went through Houdini-like contortions to arrive on my lap, curl up and purringly go to sleep, as we pootled along. Obi half-heartedly had a go at following her but basically couldn't be bothered, as long as he had a warm place in the back. Very surprisingly, Thisbe would try to tell Obi how to get through the mesh, pointing out with her nose the gap she squeezed through, to no avail.
She was a bit special, Thisbe. A mean cat, but so needy of love and affection. So loyal.
But then Obi was great too. So into just going along with whatever was fun. Like being playfully eaten by Luna, a Bernese mountain dog - they slept together.
The journey lasted three weeks and took me, or us, from the mountains of Tuscany to where the Appenines plunge into the sea at Cinque Terre, along the Italian and French rivieras, through the Camargue, all the the way up through the Pyrenees, into the Basque Country, all along the Atlantic coast of Spain, through the Picos de Europa to Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, and Fisterra, the end of the known world. I have waffled about this at some length elsewhere, but the upshot is that I was going there to weigh up the pros and cons of moving, from Italy to Spain - a country with which I had a very strong emotional attachment. Just the spoken language crumples something inside. The first stop inside Spain was at a supermarket and as the check-out girl opened her mouth to speak I re-fell in love. So much so that I asked her directions just so I could hear her say something again.

Anyway, I was alone for three weeks, more or less. Every evening I had to find some completely out-of-the-way spot so the kittens could freely wander about outside at night. I made a camp-fire, grilled some chops, drank some wine, and gave them the bones - in some wonderful places.

On the way there, a conversation started up in my head, between the rational me and the emotional me - going over the whys and the why nots. Got quite animated.

On the way back, I re-visited the same spots, re-lit the same damp black campfires, and this third presence within me started to make himself known. Some wise know-it-all, who had clearly been enjoying listening to the banter going on between Mr Rational and Mr Emotional. But he kind of knew what the outcome would be.

I like to think of these three as the mind, heart and solarplexus, or reason, emotions and gut feelings.

A couple of years later, here in Japan actually, I managed to open up a channel between these three, for a while, with an incredible rush of awareness - almost trippy.

The upshot being, apart from a great deal of collateral damage to those nearest to me, was the understanding that we need to achieve some kind of balance amongst these three. If we rely on our reason alone, well, we probably would lead very comfortable lives but perhaps not so fulfilling, maybe. If I had let reason alone dictate my life then I guess I would have followed my grandfather George's advice to me at the age of 10 or so and got a job in a bank. I still remember the feeling of total disbelief when he suggested this, as if he had recommended spending the night in a vat of eels.

On the other hand, I continue to learn that our emotions are wonderful things, which we should relish, but which are in a constant state of flux, at least mine are, and are totally unreliable as a basis of making life-changing decisions. Emotions are real - for the moment. They enable us to experience the reality of the moment. I am reminded of a dear friend, a kind of West Country cowboy figure, whose name was Gunn, who had led a life following hunches and emotions - we ended up together for a while in Libya, drinking vaste quantities of home-made plonk, playing that card game - cribbage - and generally philosophising. I remember him telling me one time he had a dream of a place name in Mexico. He got his (Iranian) wife, their two girls, put them in a car and drove down there from California, with the idea of starting a business and spending the rest of their lives there. They finally drove into a small, dusty, poverty-stricken, middle-of-nowhere, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Bolivia, turned round and drove straight back home again. I have done similar things once or twice.

So, anyway - a dear friend gave me the book 'Sophie's World' recently, and I was reading it in the doctor's waiting room, and was delighted to learn that a chap called Plato had thought something similar 2,500 years ago, which was highly reassuring. About the three parts of us. Sort of. Head (reason, wisdom, mind), chest (heart, emotions, will), abdomen (solarplexus, gut feelings, appetite). And the need for opening up channels, and balance.

So we are coming to the end of yet another term. Just a few tests to go. I have had a class of 35 young men - I can call them that now as we had Coming of Age Day (20) the other day - who all appear to be dysfunctional in some way, as far as I can tell. All scientists, with no apparent interest in learning a foreign language, even if it is global, who have come through 6 years of English lessons at school with the same proficiency I had in German aged 16, after 4 years of being shouted at by our German teacher. We did 'basic writing' on computer blogs - that way they could at least read each others' work, which I hoped would give it some meaningful point. One chap, I noticed, loved reading, and was heading off into the Russians - Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment', and had just started Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'. I sent him a message suggesting he read Turgenev's 'Fathers and Sons', and Sholokhov's 'And Quiet Flows the Don', which I had read at his age. He came up to me at the end of the final class, and showed me the copy of 'Fathers and Sons' that he'd just got out of the library.

Speaking of which, I was walking along the beach just now and a friend joggingly overtakes me, and says that I am easily recognisable a mile away because of my walk. He says I walk with my hands held behind my back - which is what my father used to do, and I have noticed my kids do it too sometimes.

Another friend told me yesterday that he had tried an experiment with the voice recognition thing on his I-phone, and had asked it to ring his favourite girlfriend - apparently it suggested calling me.

And my final random thought - yesterday I was on the bus home, coming along the coast road - the Sun was thinking about sinking and it was a beautiful crisp afternoon, so I got off the bus and walked along the beach. And there was a chap playing the ukulele, to the sea. Ah, I thought, a dekoboko instrument - just a few chords and Bob's your uncle. I have a vague memory of being told that my father could play the ukulele - 'When I'm cleaning windows' by George Formby, but I find it hard to believe. Anyway, I youtubed 'ukulele' and was reminded that nothing is simple.

Things do not change; we change.
US Transcendentalist author (1817 - 1862)
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Monday, January 12, 2009

Kite

I was up the hill behind my house just now, on the way back from the shop, with tonight's comestibles in my backpack.

I stopped at the wooden platform at the summit, to admire yet another sunset across the windswept bay. Below me a great flock of kite launched itself from the wood, and slowly soared and wheeled apart and together again, leaning into the wind, with hardly a flap of their outspread wings.

Why? Some kind of evening communion perhaps, a final show of solidarity and bonding between a group that spends the day fighting over the titbits below. In the long run we are all together.

Or perhaps they merely want to spread their wings one last time before the fast-coming night envelopes them on their thin chilly perch.

Or perhaps they just love gliding through the air. Can't get enough.

Reminded me of sailing - perhaps the nearest thing we can readily get to that apparently effortless ease of movement through the ether. Same aerodynamic principle. I had an envious urge to climb on the platform rail and launch myself off and join them for a while.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=k50emadHTJ4&feature=related

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=VWMmolrId_4

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=COR3lMXKAfg


http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zvz2GJaIqI&feature=related





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Wednesday, January 7, 2009

No smoke without fire


Now back from two weeks up an Italian mountain - real dekoboko time. For part of the time we were more or less snowed in, although with chains on the landrover we managed to get down to the main road. Most of the time it was below freezing and despite leaving the water running, the pipes froze, so for 6 or 7 days we had no running water and relied on getting containers from our neighbour, or breaking the ice on the vasca outside.

Ate pretty well - highlights included part of my neighbours' goat on Christmas Day, home-made tagliatelle (all over the kitchen), and a couple of home-made tiramisu.

Sang a lot. Laughed a lot.

Felled, cut, chopped and burned humungous amounts of wood. Used a couple of large Douglas fir trunks to shore up the bridge. We are still having circulation problems inside, so although we were warm enough we were also frequently smoked out while the fires really got going. The result was that ourselves and our belongings all reeked of smoke, despite washing. On the penultimate day I tried washing my going-home clothes in a bucket and then broke the thick ice on the vasca in order to dunk them up and down with an axe handle, by way of rinsing. But when I got on the plane in Florence the poor bloke next to me spent the trip with his jumper pulled over his nose, while the people behind me made sarcastic comments about smoked salmon. A woman on the train back in Japan sat next to me then immediately got up and moved away with an air of disgust.

The trip back was dreadful - Charles de Gaulle airport was snowed under so everything was super-delayed - when we finally got onto the plane 2 hours late we then spent an hour on the tarmac before take-off, and another one the other end waiting first for steps and then a bus to get us to the terminal, etc etc. Never again.

However, I am now 'home', everything has been washed, and tomorrow is another day.

Happy New Year!


http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=S5w1Gxonito&feature=related
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