As I look at some of the photos that I took while at one of my weekly visit’s to my town’s nursery school I come to think that these youngster’s are some of the wisest, most honest, brilliant people that I have ever met. (But that may be partly because I cannot understand most of what they say). They are also some of the luckiest people I have ever met. Their lives at the nursery are so much fun. They have really good lunches and they spend a lot of quality times with friends. They even got to pick all the sweet potatoes in the nursery’s own patch! There were huge sweet potatoes. That was fun. Their only troubles are when they bump their over-sized heads on things like other over-sized heads or the floor and sometimes I think they are feel alienated from each other. They may not have realized yet that the world doesn’t revolve around them. (The irony is that once you have realized this you must once again see that in some ways the world does revolve around you because your world is you). I wish I could show people how great it is to partially, if not fully, enter the world of these people. Let’s just say that the simplicity and sincerity is very refreshing. Seeing them every week means that I can never really have a bad week.

Excerpt from Tedicurus' Dialogues

What is the meaning of a human life, friend?

Well, Buddy, there ain’t one, my friend.

Thanks.

Yeah, Buddy, there are many.

Haha, I know what you’re talking about. Some have brown hair, some have bl…

Yeah, that too Buddy. But I didn’t mean that.

Oh, okay.



Crike. If you haven’t heard a drunk English man blurt this work out then you still have some good living to go and do. Blime is nearly as good, but Crike is still better.

Being in mid-mid-life is fun. There is something satisfying about knowing that I have already lived at least a quarter of the years of my life. Luckily I know that years do not measure time. I think that one good, long year can be like a century (in a good way). So those of you going through various crises of life, despair not, for there will be time for you yet in this life.

It’s been a while since I have addressed you, my reader. I may not know you too well but I can imagine why you might be compelled to read something on the internet that is not the news. The news is, unfortunately, an awful measure of the world. As it portends to connect you with the realities of the world it only obscures them with sullen, irresponsible negativity. If the world was that which is conveyed by the news I would decline to live in this world. I would role up in a ball and sit in the corner. Then, luckily, I would have already escaped the world that the news conveys (a gasp of relief).

Not to say that the world is not sometimes a very harsh and undesirable thing to us. It can bite and tear away at one like a bear that spends the better part of a day gnawing on its still-alive victim before it finally snaps the poor thing’s neck or drains it of enough blood so that it can find its peace.

Oh human life. I write this from compadre to compadre. You are my compadre, Mister or Misses, whichever the case may be. And your life doesn’t need a reason. It takes people a long time to figure that out and by the time they do they are usually just about brain dead anyway. Sorry for the vulgar talk. But I am not really trying to do much of anything except speak to some imaginary person.

So why do I live on? Partly because it would take quite an effort not to. And then there is the food, the joy of sleep, the luxury of laziness that animals in my position have. There’s vinegar to drink and there is air to breath. Sometimes I sit and talk about alcohol with a bunch of older Japanese folk while getting paid a modest sum for my services (the education of language, if you were wondering).

Then there are friends. I have not actually seen much of them lately. They do float around in my head though. Their smiles, inanity, their friendliness; I could not do much without their warmth. Oh how I miss them, but oh how they remain somehow present despite their distance. I would include my family in these kind words, but everyone knows that no one really likes their family. Relationships with them are just a part of the social imperatives (sorry family). No no, I didn’t mean that. Of course they are included! What kind of misanthrope do you take me for?

So someday I may go find my friends again. Maybe I’ll get a job at the local Trader Joe’s (my dream) where I can take the best (employee discounted) foods, beers, and wines to have parties with my friends after work and on my days off. I’ve always wished to actually interact with people and I think working in a grocery store would be one of the most organic ways in our (urban) society to do so. Also, wouldn’t it be great to have a job that requires almost none of your mind’s attention so you can muse all you want? That life is underrated I believe. But not for everyone; some people need a little motivation to think all of the time, others just do. And still others just don’t want to think at all and I can’t blame them. Thinking can be pointless and irritating. It’s a matter of what kind of thinking (or lack thereof) that one desires in one’s life. And what about doing? Did I forget about doing? Someone help me! I’ve just realized that I no longer exist—that, like some small island in the middle of the Pacific, the village of Ubuyama may as well not be on planet earth because the people here think little of the life out there and the people out there think little of here. Is that why I have plunged into relativism and subjectivism? Or is it just more fun to live that way? A friend once called me a “prophet of doom.” This was a nice characterization of me.

In my world there are two dominant ways of envisioning the world. There is the world in which I live, which I help to make up in my mind on a moment-to-moment basis (it is a pretty happy place to be but has its ups and downs like anyone else’s). Then there is the vision of the world that attempts to take in the “whole” world. But this attempt will almost always involve realizing that world is in a state beyond repair. And if it isn’t beyond repair then it will be repaired in its due course. If I see myself as an agent who can act on and change the world, I see myself as an ant among ant farms (many of them). Of course what I do matters, impacts the greater whole. But it’s changing the other ants that could really make the difference. And I know I simply cannot do that all by myself. It’s a group effort that can change the group. Of course there are the Mahatma Ghandis, Martin Luther Kings, and Rosa Parks of the world. But don’t forget the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who made these characters become themselves by supporting them and believing in their stances; the vast apparatuses that made them public figures. The people who stood with and behind the figures were just as vital as the figures themselves. The group changed the group. Individuals only appear to exist individually. Not to disrespect the work of good people. But to give credit where it’s due, not just to those who have achieved fame for what they have come to stand for. They are symbols, mantle pieces, of much greater ideas and movements of people (all of whom helped to bring about the changes).

If I have disappointed you again then I can only apologize again. It’s not that I am worried about disappointing you, it’s that you probably didn’t deserve it and just maybe you didn’t expect it either. But you must know that I am communicating for communication’s sake. You must also remember that forgiveness is the key to life’s happiness. For if and when something goes terribly wrong in the world (and this is bound to happen) one must be ready to forgive and to laugh. But perhaps most importantly, one must remember that life is much broader than the negativity it can be made to appear to be.

As Epicurus may or may not have told his many pupils in the old days in Greece, if you are lucky enough to have a working mind and a working body then you can live as well as anyone else, you can be as happy as anyone else, and you can feel as fully as anyone else. What he may not have been able to do was to teach his pupils how they can do this. But he may have.

Thank you for letting me communicate with you friend.

To be or "to be"

Are people really living their lives? Are they really appreciating them?

The more people you see the more you might believe that most people are not and do not.

It seems that most people in the lands of plenty prefer an amount of protection and padding that pretty much annihilates the process of feeling life. That said there is something extremely aesthetically taught about that kind of life. It is as if humans have finally learned how to crawl back up into the womb. They wanted the comforts that that life provided, so they have gone and gotten them back.



Then there are the crazy people who still want to feel life and feel the pain that that will bring. And it isn’t as if the hazards of the worlds have decreased because of technological innovation. You can still walk off the curb at the wrong time and be mauled by a truck, or worse, a brand new Bentley. If I were to get hit by a car I would want it to be one of those cars that were designed in order to decrease the damage done to pedestrians when they hit them. They are cool. At the right speed it might be like falling into a pillow.

And there are the extreme sports types. There are those people who don’t like a sport unless there is a good chance that one can die from it. A wave is not fun to ride unless it is piping right over some sharp coral or unless it is 15+ feet tall. They like to jump out of planes and bungee jump off rocky cliff facts in the middle of Why, Arizona. They are a lot of fun.

The outdoors people just want to breath some fresh air, remember what it’s like to feel hungry, spend some time with boulders, trees, and some peace and quiet. They are pretty reasonable people. They want to remember what it’s like to feel healthy again (and take a break from all that indoor air that is always filled with countless toxins and too much carbon dioxide).

But what about the people with all their technological devices, televisions, and inside-the-car tourist experiences that would rather live life with a soft, thick pad around their entire bodies? Is there anything wrong with womb-envy? I think it is a respectable human desire. But they should know that they are deciding to not fully feel life. I don’t think most of them know this because they have also padded another part of their bodies: their minds. Life floats around for these people as they float through life. They are not here like they appear to be through the eyes of people who are here. They waft through this room and glide over to that. They consider a thought and then it drifts out without their control. They smile when told and then sleep when tired. Automatons? Apparitions.

What if the world appeared to our eyes as it really is? It would surely have a lot more giant inflatable donuts in the sky. And ghosts.

Traces on an Ubuyama Shore

There was a day in high school that I realized I had a lifelong commitment to the forests, animals, soil, water, and air around me. I was taking Ecology in my senior year with one of my all-time best teachers, Cathy Abbott. She assigned some Aldo Leopold, the section where he describes the green fire in a wolf’s eyes. She also assigned Edward O. Wilson and numerous other writings (like Rachel Carson and Edward Abbey) that had such influence on me they may as well have changed my physical nature. And, neuro-biologically speaking, I guess they did. Of course, it was a lifelong lesson—the readings would never have taught me much if it had not been for what I had already learned: the love of my black lab Bo, the forests that provided me a protective canopy in my native Eugene, and my love for the rivers and the oceans (and all those animals I saw on the tele, the dolphins, the whales, the lions, the monkeys). In short, I was, from an early age, inundated with experiences that would eventually become my budding environmentalism.

Well something happened in college. I wouldn’t say that I became hardened to the cause, because that would be too harsh. But something happened to almost all of my likeminded friends as well. The re-“election” of our favorite politician may have iced the cake of what our younger selves would have called our cynicism. But that was only the icing. The cake had been baked and was ready for the icing. And my present self would say that I was just coming to terms with what’s real.

In high school I had made the mistake of believing that there can be the ideal reality; that there can be the good that completely overcomes the bad. I did not think it up in such a meager, simple form, but it was perhaps still produced somewhere in my mind’s landscape. Maybe it had something to do with living on top of a hill in rural Vermont. I don’t know. Then again, I don’t think I was quite that naïve, but I was certainly inspired by the literature that, for the most part, had not accounted for the new environmental crises (i.e. John Muir did not think much about global warming). For Muir it may have been a question of saving a certain amount of wilderness. It is obviously not that simple anymore.

In fact, “simple” is not a term that should ever be used to describe the environmental problems that we humans now face.

When I came to Japan I noticed, and noted on my web-log, that the Japanese were particularly good to the environment here. Upon some reflection and observation I must sadly take that statement back. Although the culture, and many of the practices, here in Japan are very friendly to the environment, much is done that utterly disregards the health of the land, air, and water. The hills are torn apart, the trucks spew out more black than America’s not-so-friendly semi-trucks, and burnable trash is burned (including paper and many plastics). People conserve here and use highly efficient appliances and cars, but there is much that is neglected as well. (It is still, in many ways, a few large paces ahead of America.) There is also the fact that most people I see here (excluding the farmers and hikers) would rather experience most of the world through the window of their cars rather than in person. Another way of saying it: nature, and the environment, have been fetishized, commodified. Puppies are cute, bugs are gross. There is little of the Muir-like reverence for trees in the popular culture here.

Not that I necessarily have a problem with this. I happen to like all forms of life here on earth (that do not involve suffering and injustice, of course). I like the cities, I like watching movies at home. I like being indoors and outdoors.

My question remains: how do we make things better? Is it just a coincidence that Ubuyama is having an unusually warm November and that the polar ice caps are melting at an alarming pace? Slowly, chaotically, steps can be taken in the right direction. It will be a mess, and we sure can’t stop our planet from going through its wild mood swings (some of which helped to bring us curious beings here).

Yi-Fu Tuan’s book Escapism (Johns Hopkins, 2000) provides an unusual, very personal depiction of ethical questions that relate to this issue. Much of the book reflects, in a confusing, yet refreshingly copious manner about the human desire to move to and away from the strange protection/stability of the modern culture and the wildness of its absence.

I have met three couples here in the town of Ubuyama that moved here from the city to get back to nature, two of which actually now farm all of their own food (with miniscule exceptions like actually buying salt). I had lunch with one of the couples on Saturday. They told me they moved to Aso (the name of this region and of the volcano in its center) because of the profundity of the land here. They picked Ubuyama in particular because it sits in between two massive volcanoes. At the right places in this town one can peer at Aso and then turn around and see Kuju, both with steaming volcanic tops. There is also extremely pure water in this town. (Probably for every year I am here it adds half a year on my potential life-span just because the water is so good.)

Tuan argues that to yearn to escape is a universal in human culture. We wish to escape from the chaos and helplessness of nomadic life and then we sometimes wish to escape back to it when things indoors start to feel a little too feelingless.

What I appreciate most about Tuan’s writing is that it implicitly produces a theory that confuses things that are good and bad. Some bad things are also good, some good things are also bad. They come in the simple pair, obviously—but they are confused and twisted together in a curious way.

So as a part of human culture eats away at its own life support and then other, smaller parts reach back again for the nourishments of the earth with kindly hands, I sit and watch doing a little of each.

In my green opinion it is those who can embrace imperfection that are capable of being happy human beings. Imperfection is the only perfection that life seems to offer. And curiously it is the quest for some kind of perfection that seems to lead the searchers of us all around in our silly searches for the right way.

Enter the strange

I must warn you all that my posts may become strange at times. They may even be frightening. For the faint of heart, I recommend a strong aperitif before eating and digesting. {the picture above is at Suizenji Park, Kumamoto City}

But before all that there is some harmless news. My mom has finally returned to her own archipelago. They love her here and pretty much want my whole family to move here (except maybe my brothers, but that is understandable). I think that she had a chance to see some things that were still the way they were when she lived here when she was seven. However, now there are cars and concrete most everywhere and that has changed the mindset of the people here, or maybe consumerism and its vagaries was the culprit.

Consumerism. A few weeks ago I acquired a new car. It is a 1995 Daihatsu Charade Detomaso. It is pretty much the perfect car. And, I only had to pay for taxes on it, which makes it even nicer (nb taxes are very high in Japan for cars). I think that it gets about 15 kilometers per liter. Still, it's fast, utilitarian, and has a leather steering wheel made by some Italian racing company. Here is a picture of it:


It is nice to finally have the freedom to explore. It's so beautiful around where I live I have trouble imagining that there are places in Japan that are more beautiful (except maybe in Hokkaido and Yakushima). But maybe I am just being dumb.

November 2005, Still Alive

Having made it this far I can say there is still a lot for me to see, learn, and do in this mysterious place. It has become certifiably cold. A few days ago I was informed that I live in the coldest area in my entire prefecture.

The bird flu has yet to kill me and maybe it has not even entered my body. The kids are learning English pretty quickly. The Beatles have been helping a lot by having made such useful songs for teaching English as "Let it Be," "Here Comes the Sun," and "With a Little Help From My Friends." Eventually I would like to teach them "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," one of my personal favorites, and maybe "Strawberry Fields Forever." Then maybe I could get some of George Harrison's solo stuff in there too.

In some ways it is as if I no longer exist during my time out here. Not that I do not make contact with the realities and friends of my past every now and then (in both mind and electronic communications), but that I have not been seen by so many people that I am so used to seeing. I am sure that many of my friends feel the same way. I am also in such an unlikely place.

Construction has started, across the street from my house (right next to the junior hish school) on a new elementary school that will combine and replace the two in this spacious town. The peace of my house will be sacrificed for most of daytime for the next many months. Fortunately the construction stops at nightfall. Maybe I will just have to move to Santorini.

Celebrating my potentially fatal stupidity

Yes,

Yesterday a hawk flew into a second story window and landed just a meter or two from where I was standing. Always having been in awe of those winged predators I decided I would make my first intimate friendship with a hawk (one who had just broken its neck). I guess it didn't matter to me that the hawk couldn't necessarily decide not to be my friend; I just figured at least it has a friend in some of its loneliest minutes. The truth probably was that I just made the stunned bird even more frightened in its first moments as a quadriplegic. Or maybe the shock took away the hawk's consciousness. Well, I was close to that hawk for some moments as it lay in my hand. I even decided to take the hawk in my car, in the passengers seat, which was probably its first time being driven around. I wanted to show my new friend to the guys and gals at work.

Later in the day my mom pointed out to me that maybe making my new friend in such a hands-on way was a bad idea; maybe the influenza that's going around in these parts had something to do with the bird's lethal mistake (flying into window). So I washed my hands and then the next day (today) we brought my day-old friend (who had subsequently been resting (dead) in the garden) to the town authorities so that it could be properly checked up by some doctors. Phew, I feel a little better now.

Well moving to Japan as a fresh 22 year old sure has been somewhat of a rude awakening. Let's face it, I had and still have a lot to learn and being in a foreign country where I can't really communicate with most people makes it all happen faster and harder. So I guess I am taking some solace in the celebration of my own folly. It's better to take some really stupid things you do/did and laugh about them than to wimper and drag your tail on the ground in misery and guilt. I shall perhaps learn from my mistakes either way.

So I'll let you know if there is an outbreak in this small town. Yesterday could have been the beginning of the end. I guess it'll find some way of working itself out.

And maybe I knew that it was stupid to hold the bird in my hands even when I first picked it up. But I guess that, like that little girl in Vietnam with her pet duck, I just wanted to make the avian-primate relationship count, especially in the hard times that the hawk was going through.