What are we?

'Cook and his men were among the few Westerners even to glimpse the old religion. But the English couldn't penetrate much beyond the surface of what they saw. "The Misteries of most Religions are very dark and not easily understud even by those who profess them," Cook wrote. Later, on his second voyage, Cook had a revealing exchange with a Raiatean chief he'd befriended.

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"He asked the name of my Marai," Cook wrote, "a strange quistion to ask Seaman." Cook interpreted the query in its narrowest sense: the chief "wanted to know the name of the place where our bodies were to return to dust." He replied with the name of the parish his family occupied in London: Stepney. Cook's second in command, Tobias Furneaux, was asked the same question and answered: "No man who used the Sea could tell where he would be buried."

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Neither man grasped that the chief may have sought something more than the name of a London churchyard. Cook's biographer J.C.Beaglehole, a New Zealander who also studied Polynesian culture, describes the marae as " an essential part of a man's social existence, and his relationship to the gods: the question was really, What place are you particularly identified with?" For a man as rootless and secular as Cook, there wasn't a ready answer to this question, even if he'd understood it.'

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From Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz.

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Photo of Gauguin by Mucha (?).

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Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

Knock me down with a Feather

Don't know who William Feather was, but I find this very encouraging:

"No man is a failure who is enjoying life."

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Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

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WB Yeats

Frolicking

Whizzed down to the beach on bikes and found our way into the water for a quick dip, along with a myriad of locals frolicking al fresco in the summer heat and humidity.

That was about it for today.

Dekoboko seems to be morphing into Poetry Please this week - send your requests to jinseidekoboko@gmail.com




Fern Hill

by Dylan Thomas
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Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
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And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
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All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
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And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
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And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
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Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
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http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15597

Henri Matisse and Dylan Thomas

That's entertainment

Went up to Tokyo the other night - last night in fact - for the first time in a couple of months, and was reminded of why I don't go up there very often. Got out at Shibuya to change trains at 6 pm, every carriage packed to the gunwhales, but managed to squeeze in a doorway - and was then impressed by the technique used to squeeze and squash a few more sweaty bodies in to the sardine tin. They spot an empty space in the doorway large enough to put one foot in, pirouette and heave backwards - if we hadn't all been so tightly packed in the first place we would have fallen over.

Thankfully it was only one stop to Ebisu, where I found myself on the 4th floor of a shopping block in a British pub - British/Irish beer, pub grub, the Clash on the video, British bar staff. Dark, smokey - so not so British these days. My friend is playing - starts off on acoustic guitar solo, is joined by a Japanese singer for a couple of numbers, then a lead guitar and drums for some ZZ Top/U2 type stuff, then a wannabee John Otway type singer. All good stuff. Find myself mulling over just what it is to be an artist, versus an entertainer, versus a self-publicist, not for the first time, and come to little conclusion - other than an artist is someone who somehow sings for us, on our behalf, somehow, as well as for him/herself. Someone who touches something in the core of our humanity. Take Wreck on the Highway for instance, by Springsteen - he may never have witnessed a road accident, and nor may we, but we can all empathise with such a tragedy, which is what he puts into a few simple words.

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Last night I was out driving

Coming home at the end of the working day

I was riding alone through the drizzling rain

On a deserted stretch of a county two-lane

When I came upon a wreck on the highway

There was blood and glass all over

And there was nobody there but me

As the rain tumbled down hard and cold

I seen a young man lying by the side of the road

He cried Mister, won't you help me please

An ambulance finally came and took him to Riverside

I watched as they drove him away

And I thought of a girlfriend or a young wife

And a state trooper knocking in the middle of the night

To say your baby died in a wreck on the highway

Sometimes I sit up in the darkness

And I watch my baby as she sleeps

Then I climb in bed and I hold her tight

I just lay there awake in the middle of the night

Thinking 'bout the wreck on the highway

Spent today jungle-hiking up a streambed through semi-virgin forest, thence to a spectacularly excellent fish restaurant at the bottom of the hill, not five minutes from our door - one of the best meals I have had here - thence to the bamboo beach bar, with its beautiful smiling bar staff, the Pacific lapping the shore 20 yards away, fireworks... a semi-naked chef.

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Painting by Gauguin

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

Not talking but slurping

Funny how social norms develop. Here in Japan there are so many fine tripwires for us gaijin to stumble over. I was often severely admonished, for example, by my Japanese ex-wife for sneezing loudly, a simple natural reflex action, as if I were deliberately attemting to be rude, like induced belching or farting. Another Japanese friend told me that my sneezing was a subconscious attempt to draw attention to myself, as I am naturally somewhat shy.

Eating techniques are particularly puzzling - the polite way to hold one's rice bowl, where to place one's chopsticks etc. If one slurped one's miso soup it would be considered indecorous. On the other hand, I stopped off for a quick bowl of noodles at the cheap and cheerful cafe at the station last night, where an unbelievable racket was going on all around me as four men slurped their udon down. Like I was in candid camera, or the Loudest Noodle Slurping Contest 2008. Reminded me of dogs howling across the valley, winding each other up, determined not to be drowned out by the others. If I hadn't been so hungry I might have walked out. Quite off-putting.

Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny, and friends, 1889, South Pacific.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9547

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7485331.stm

Not sailing but drifting

Had lunch in the middle of Sagami Bay surrounded by a myriad of sea birds - what the Japanese call ume-neko (sea cats). A myriad, I believe, is 10,000 - what the Japanese call man, so 10,000 is ichi-man - one myriad. One million would be 100 myriads. They were also having lunch, the birds.

The sea was flat calm but we got as far as Oiso, opposite the hotel where I'd had so much fun the other day going down water chutes with girls in bikinis - although regrettably not at the same time. From the calm of the bay, the layers of hills behind and beyond - the Tanzawa ridge, Hakone, Izu as far south as Ito, were a perfect study in greenish-blues and greys. No wind though, so we motored back. Ended up with H outside a bar run by a professional female snowboarder in Enoshima, singing our favourites from Fiddler on the Roof and the Sound of Music, well, the first lines thereof - the rest being babble-doobie-doo... . Then tried teaching a somewhat bemused lady a few dance steps on the pavement by the train station.

Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

Stevie Smith

Games

Everyone is into games at some level.

There may be better games than the Men's Singles Final at Wimbledon.

I hope so - and I look forward to seeing it.