The past and future hover in my mind like dreams as the present is settled into its normal position by the webs of society around me. If I shake around a bit then I can feel the strangeness of what is beyond the normal social existence. (The normal social existence being the one where friendliness and obligation shovel you around hither thither until the very moment you fall to sleep or let yoursefl out of the norm.) Then you enter the rest of your life--or at least the bulk of it: the stuff that isn't happening right now--the stuff of the past and the stuff that hasn't happened yet....

Living so far from my past gives my memories a gentle feeling. They are allusive, they float like clouds in the sky of the mind, and they are constantly changing as clouds tend to do.

One's memories, one's options for the future mingle around one's mind just as the world's infinite events, actions, and reactions perpetuate indefinitely. And just as it's hard to realize how driving a car can actually make the earth's atmosphere warmer, it's also hard to imagine one's life in the middle of all the complex confusion of being. An inconvient truth it is that we are not able to perceive the earth and its connectedness, or even the workings of our own lives. It is a difficult condition of humankind that we are given a somewhat incomplete ability to be conscious, to perceive what's here and there, to understand ourselves through time. It's not all that hard to see that so many people have the same blinders that horses sometimes have on each side of their eyes.

Not to be negative, just mellowly reflective; my (human) attempts at awareness.

Learning From Isolation

A new mantra: "staying alive and celebrating good times." Two classic disco tunes mixed into one good phrase.

Sometimes having what is not ideal in life, for example a job that does not satisfy, is enough to teach you just what you really want in life. For me I've realized that I could really enjoy a job where I could speak my heart and be heard on a daily basis. Perhaps something along the lines of social worker (given the right conditions, of course). I've learned as well (and this I learned as early as high school) that free time is much more enjoyable when contrasted with a day's worth (or week's worth) of hard work. All of a sudden getting to sit down and watch a movie, make art, or read a book is one hell of a luxury. But when a job is too easy there is little distinguishing the two and then all of it turns to a kind of mush.

I am very happy to be alive and to have the luxury of being able to celebrate good times. It was my birthday this weekend and I saw some good buddies and had some good food. I heard from a lot of old friends and was grateful for each contact that was made: thank you. I will never take for granted the value and meaning of a good friendship for they are what make life enjoyable and, in some tough cases, tolerable.

For my own birthday present I bought myself a pair of the new 360 Nike shoes for an unearthly amount of money. They'd better be good or else I will have to return them--I've decided that my knees are important enough to invest on, in part thanks to my parents' concern. I don't really know why I am telling you all this, but I figure at least it's a humane detail of conversation. As for "Ted's Trips," I will continue to post photos, like this one, that I took in Kyoto. It's nice to reflect on the past as, it too, has a reality in the present and adds richness to life.

Kyoto Through Masks Puppets Performers

Please enjoy my imagines for I imagine them for you; it's the truth. Who else would I imagine my images for than you? Ha .

Soon I will offer you a real word or two (when the time comes).

I imagined a new concept, or perhaps not new. Urban hiking: hiking through cities as if they are mountains. Bring the proper gear, including, in some cases, gas masks. I'm sure people already do this, so I can't pretend to be original or anything insane like that.

Three more months of Japanese heaven and then back to the statez. I plan on lying on the beaches and smoking some good pipe tobacco like in the old days. My car's not back from the shop yet but that's ok because I have Toyota's wonderful version of a clunky, ugly, clumsy diesel van. It should kick me around pretty jollily during the Golden Week coming up--a handful of holidays (minus the thumb and one lands on a Saturday (Green Day), so more like 3 holidays really).

Well I wish you the best from my humble yurt.

With Love
From Asia

"ghetto fab"

You'd better bundle up, little guy! It's a hard, cold life being made of stone!

Kyoto and Nara Through Temples

Here are some of the photos I was lucky enough to take. They let me go back to those places in a very peaceful way. Although the sites were often crowded with tourists and not cheap (~$5 a piece), they were nice to go to. The presence of other people sometimes even made them more exciting (not that they are necessarily supposed to be exciting). Sorry for not listing all the names and such; if you really want to know just ask about a specific one and I can try to fish for the name. Maybe tomorrow I'll post a few people pictures...

Kyoto Through Animals

To me animals (incl. people) are always more interesting than buildings and art, as wonderful as those things can also be. I saw a lot of great animals in Kyoto, and some great tame deer in Nara.

Just to battle confusion, that is me at the bottom. I too was an animal in Kyoto at the time. This shows that I am still alive and my scruffy self. Also note that deer photos are from Nara. Temple photos coming soon...

Enter Kyoto

My mother and I are leaving Kyoto today. I will be posting many pictures soon. They, like all pictures, will not be able to speak for themselves, but they may provide just an ounce of what you might find, visually speaking, in this city.

The city is being eaten alive by a tasteless contemporary culture that, thankfully, would never be able to fully masticate the core of ancient beauty to which this city was the heir. The kind of urban sprawl that corrodes it is of a type less outrightly harmless than that of, say, Los Angeles, but also less vital (and even more concrete).

The old city could never have really been contained though; it was made primarily out of wood, so much of it has burned to the ground numerous times. Furthermore it did not benefit from laws that put limits on the kind of new construction that can be done in the city like those put in place long ago in the monumental cities and towns of Tuscany and Umbria. The result is ugly industrial materialed (my new word) high rises right next to some of the most beautiful monuments. The skyline is destroyed, but the heart of each temple is not.

Although the contemporary culture also seeps into the ancient sites, their ancient exuberance cannot be quieted. The temples of the Zen Buddhist sects (who used to battle each other in the good old days) can be very peaceful places indeed.

My favorite section of Kyoto is in Higashiyama (eastern mountains) where one can find the Philosopher's Walk. Kiyomizudera was, despite the flocks of tourists, outstandingly beautiful.

Last night an astro-physicist from Sapporo took me out on the town to explore the nightlife. At around midnight when we decided to give up our hopeless search he told me that Sapporo and Osaka are much better for clubbing. But it was memorable anyhow.

More soon...