Under my skin

Took the dinghy out this afternoon, thanks to H, out past the lighthouse and the tori, the gate-thing on the rocks - it's big close up, as you'd imagine. Drifted off into a yunagi - a flat calm that comes in the evening - something about anabatic and katabatic winds, the pressure drops over the land as the sun sets, or vice versa. Suddenly dawned on me that I was heading off out to sea, with no wind, and the sun is setting... Managed to turn her round and point back towards the shore I'd been so keen to get away from an hour or so earlier. Then out of nowhere the wind picks up, and up, and soon I am struggling to stop the water flood over the side - the sky darkens with storm clouds, But hey, it's fun! I shoot straight across the bay and join in the windsurfers in La Chaya bay, skipping across like stones.

End up later on inside La Chaya, with good friends, the best, admiring the best performer of her genre I have seen there - the classic crooner. Great rendition of "I got you under my skin, I gottyu steep into partamee", and so on. Nice bass.

What's it all about?

Omoshiroi - just spent almost five hours chatting in Italian, in an Italian restaurant, in Japan, with a Japanese - and not just about the cat sitting on the mat, or not. Compare that with my pitifully near-complete inability to still, after nearly two years living in this country, and a much longer association with its people, put together more than the simplest exchange of pleasantries. So what's that all about then?

From fine sashimi to eggo muffinu

Shot across Kamakura Bay at 22 knots, eleven miles in 30 minutes flat from Akiya to Enoshima, like skimming across a frozen lake, scattering Tasmanian shearwater and flying fish surprised to meet a massive white sea rocket with two happy men on board.

Quite a day as usual with H. We fixed a fan belt and fiddled on the dive boat, then moved Endeavour to her new mooring while her pontoon is being replaced, before it disengages itself from the main pontoon and floats off out to sea.

Met General Custer, his wife and dog/horse in a 1929 Mercedes Benz, on the way to lunch of raw baby fish (nama shirazu). Then back across the bay, skirting the fishing nets (just), for a sunset beer on the sambashi - the harbour wall/pier - mole?

Dinner on the finest sashimi I have yet eaten, in our local fish restaurant, run by a fisherman, and very decent sake. A small place usually with a queue outside on the pavement. Must try again - 'He who knocks will be let in' (Nick Cave).

Ended up in the university accommodation - traditional Japanese room, tatami mats, communal bathing etc. Thankfully tonight I have my own room. The other night I was in a large tatami space with 8 or so other men, who kept me awake with their coughs and grunts. Longer in bed but less sleep, for the wrong reasons. Ojalla! Woke up and sought breakfast - ended up in McDonalds outside the front gate, with a paper cup of coffee-like substitute and an eggo muffinu.

My life goes from one extreme to the other - dekoboko.

Contradictions

Don't know where you stand on the nature/nurture, DNA v. society debate/continuum, but I wander back and forth, cyclically. I am presently of the mind that there is overwhelming evidence that the former is uppermost - the driving force in almost every aspect of human behaviour, our sense of well-being, our character, our happiness. Desmond Morris was right - we are naked apes. As is that chap who wrote the Language Instinct, although I still prefer Darwin's phrase - 'Language is an instinct to acquire an art'.

For example, I just picked up my guitar for pretty much the first time in six months and tried tuning it. It would be possible for a stone deaf person (not tone deaf - I mean completely deaf) to tune a guitar, by the way, because you can see and feel it when it's in tune. The strings shudder when they are out of tune, as does the body of the guitar, but when you twiddle the knob (machine head) and the two strings you are working on come into tune they visibly and sensibly hum - you can see and feel it. Once the whole guitar is in tune it too hums, and stops shuddering. (Btw I am reminded of how a sailing boat does the same thing once you get the sails set perfectly together - she starts to hum through the water).

There is a perfectly practical scientific reason for this - to do with sound waves and oscillations etc. but the point is that we humans (and other animals) naturally sense such things, and find the harmonious result innately good. The natural scientific knowledge spills over into our artistic sensibilities - in fact it might be the case that our artistic appreciation is a means of seeking and detecting scientific perfection. Which might explain why so many top scientists and mathematicians appreciate high art.

Anyway, let's move on from harmony for a while to this week's word - compassion. Caring about people is again completely natural. If we didn't care about those around us in a mutually supportive 'looking out for each other' sort of way, society would disintegrate and we'd end up with more random acts of mindless violence, such as the truly horrific stabbings that took place in a Tokyo street in broad daylight the other day. To get people to harm and kill each other is going against nature - so soldiers have to be indoctrinated into thinking (or not thinking) they are doing the right thing, somehow, by going against their own nature. In the case of the military this indoctrination is intentional. In the case of the apparently increasing random acts of violence here in Japan, the indoctrination is brought about, it seems to me, by a society that doesn't show that it cares enough about its lost individuals. Which is why this country also has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and a murder rate double that of Britain, for example, but which seems to be predominantly within families - brothers and sisters, husbands and wives - it's in the paper every week.

So, caring about each other, and showing we care, is way of increasing our own survival chances, as individuals and as a society. It's again in our DNA. So we are drawn to people who care, about whatever. People who are passionate about some aspect of life - whether it's racing cars, or opera, or global warming, or the mating rituals of the Emperor penguin (as one of my students is) - or a combination of the above. This is what can be depressing and frustrating about some of our students here - the almost complete lack of passion about life, and compassion towards others. So many of them (but by no means all, thank God) seem hidden away in their own worlds - worlds of fantasy - video games, Disneyland once a year, and sleep as often as possible - ie. escaping from, rather than passionately seeking, the reality of life on Earth.

I have just contradicted myself - because the conclusion is that these lost souls are the result of a socialisation process, which pushes them away from what is naturally within them - the need for harmony, passion and compassion in their lives.

Bonding

Went to a hugely enjoyable barbecue yesterday - the food was as eclectic as the guests. Thing about expat life is you find yourself at such gatherings amongst a diverse range of people who would probably not always hobnob if they met elsewhere. Like being in a lifeboat, perhaps. So at one point, for example, there was a hysterical conversation going on between a deep South Texan whose hobbies seemed to include killing as many different animals as possible - "I shot 'im right between the eyes boy!" - and a clearly very well-to-do British Italyophile, who imports absolutely everything from Italy - the bond between them was car engines. The former loves drag racing, while the latter has a collection of a dozen or so classic 60s racing cars in various garages in London. Had a long conversation about goats - seemed to go on for about an hour. Great tequila.

Contrast

We naturally like contrast. A photo of an object on a sunny day is more pleasing - because of the contrasts. We need contrast, we need difference. Uniformity is unnatural. Reconciliation of diversity is, however, natural. If we understand that we are driven by millions of years of natural evolution, rather than a few thousand years of human culture (which is nonetheless endlessly important and fascinating, because we are human), then God (etc.) is no longer necessary! Our purpose in life is to be human - our humanity is in our genes. We are designed to be social, so we have to learn how to fit in - how to be a productive member of our community. The cultures/arts that we see around the world are responses to this common human condition.

Robinson Crusoe

I am blessed with some wonderful friends, scattered around the world, like anchors, and three amazing children, who frequently remind me that they are wiser than their progenitor, which makes one wonder whether Darwin was right. I guess he was talking about the entire race over millenia, and not an individual over a single lifetime.

Offspring number two, for example, told me this morning that while we may not always have romance in our lives, we can have love anytime - we just have to open our hearts.

Brilliant. We are surrounded by and infused with love - as that Hugh Grant film points out - what was the song? Love is everywhere? The trick/lesson/quest in life is how to tap into it - how to access it, and then build it into our everyday actions and behaviour.

Just as we are surrounded by, and infused with, beauty - it's everywhere - it's right in front of your face. And it's within you. We are all beautiful!

Who needs drugs?

Offspring number one just pointed out another very important truth: that we should focus more on what unites us than what separates us.

Also brilliant. We are all simultaneously separate, diverse, different as well as belonging to an amorphous whole, like the individual cells of a sponge, or the single bird in the flock of thousands, or fish in a shoal. Without each other, we are nothing - we don't exist. We are lost in space.

I am reminded of that philosophical (?) question over whether a tree falling in the forest makes any sound if there is no-one there to hear it.

One of my favourite TV programmes as kid in the 60s was Robinson Crusoe - I can recall the theme tune and the opening scene - the black and white waves washing up a monochrome beach - I was almost in love with Robinson Crusoe. But I couldn't understand his angst - his longing to leave the island, risk his life doing so, his passionate delight in finally getting "Man Friday" (and then teaching his 'savage' English'!).

Now I do! (Not the English bit - clarification)

PS. Not sure what amorphous means.

PPS. Come in offspring number three!