sometimes

moving

from the sacred

is doing

the right thing.

furin on the breeze

park rose, lizardrinking, 2008 (c)

this entry is brought to you by the hyphen

And the days are not full enough, as I quoted Ezra Pound previously, yet the computer is ever-present. Maybe if it were a little less present, my days would be fuller. A poor craftswoman, or life-liver, perhaps, always blames her tools. It's true, it's true.

Anyway, to belie all that is written above, and to satisfy those who like the bicycle tales and travails, there is this:

and this:


As seen above, I did take my bicycle out to the park the other day. The sun was just setting, so it was 7 o'clock oddish - the shades of the sun, peach strained through muslin. I stayed quite late. It was dark by the time I left. And it was warm. So I had a mango-ice, as they are called here, and said hi to the little green frogs that were jumping all over the vending machines.

Little green frog and lizardrinking's cameraphone.

My point is? Just that I do go out sometimes, but I spend the majority of my time chatting to myself or with my Creepy Internet Friends (you know who you are ☺). Wonderful as they are, this dearth of companionship needs to break sometime soon.

Anyway, bicycle travails. I wanted to see the fireflies (hotaru). Apparently there are some areas near here where they light up the mountains like a Christmas tree.

Picture not taken by me, and can be seen in its orignal context here.

I was told that the park might have these hotaru, fireflies. They hold a place dear in the Japanese heart, along with collecting crickets, I think, and other insects, in summer. In fact, some of you have probably seen videos of the battles that go on between stag beetles. They, too, are collected and nurtured in summer.

A colleague was interested in seeing the fireflies with me, but as I was cycling (the park is a 40 minute ride) and was not really sure that there would be any fireflies, I went on a whim by myself after work one day. Naturally enough, being the logical person I am, it was leading up to a full moon. In fact, it was very close. In fact, it was so bright when I was walking around the park that I had no need of artificial light at all.

I had heard from only the vaguest of sources that there might be fireflies at the park. Conditions have to be just right (such as there being no moon). That was another reason for deciding to go solo. I had a feeling that a glimpse of the fireflies was going to be even more transient and ethereal than the blooming of the sakura. But I had some hope.

I saw one.

Then I stood very still and I saw another.

Then I stood very still in the way that I did when I climbed the hills just outside of Cairns as one wallaby hopped into view, and another grazed nearby, and if I held my breath another magically appeared and another and another

And I stood very still.

And I saw the original one flashing very brightly like a very miniature Moses in the bulrushes. And I held my breath

And I saw one other flashing in the trees.

And I stood very still.

… … …

Well, you know, it would have worked for Harry Butler.

He only has one video. I'm surprised. I guess he's been superseded by the Bushtucker man, and that ubiquitous and cannonised Steve Irwin.

I wasn't disappointed, though, but was glad that I went alone. The colleague who had wanted to come is Japanese, and I had enough of my own inner monologue to contend with, let alone having her imagined monologue crowd my brain. It would have gone something like this: Stupid gaijin, what makes her think she knows when the fireflies are going to glow? What are we doing walking around a deserted park in the half dark? And we saw one, one lousy firefly (oh well, two really, but the first one was the brightest), and these damned mosquitoes...

Regardless, nature and moonlight is a buzz, and I got to take a photo of a firefly of a different kind:

It's really a very beautiful park, and very Japanese, and kind of freaky and sad to find all these corners lit up with vending machines. By the same token, they probably keep the ghosts away, or help them to slake their thirst when they need a drink. There is a haka (cemetery) just along a side path after all, though it is away from the bright lights.

And on the trip home, travelling through the rice fields which are bright green in ripening (though rather black in the night), here and there I saw an insect or two flitting about - small lights against the sky.

Order of Tales

All is good in the world. The rice-boy creator has started a new comic called Order of Tales . It is about Overside before the riceboy story was told. You can read all of riceboy while you're at it too. It is well worth it for those who like a search for a grail, messiahs, mythology, surrealism and stripy pants. Riceboy, that is. Plus, T.O.E. is to die for. The artist and comic writer really has talent, and his journal is one of the ones featured in my sidebar.

0:00 Vanston Place

What am I doing up at 3 in the morning? I don't know, this just kind of struck me as being peaceful. Out the front of my house, near the bicycle. Rainy season is here in fits and starts. Most unusual.

weaving

I've been reading a few random blogs today while losing the battle with 'The laziness', as amyD terms it. Reading other people's personal stories is interesting. Many a biography has obviously sold on the principle. I wonder, though, when does the time comes for letting go? I am as prone as anyone else to blame others for any misfortune afflicting and influencing my life. I am also able to, I hope, award these blame-ees the complexity and confusion of thought, emotion and feeling that I too experience. Parents and teachers and peers and those in positions of authority within our personal lives, are not infallible gods, not fallible gods, in fact not gods at all, or if they are, they definitely have clay feet. True, especially when we are children, other children, but also adults, can have waspish tongues, perverted imaginations and no sense of empathy or sympathy whatsoever. As children, we lack the strength, maturity and perception to defend ourselves, and there is a tendency to internalise the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, rather than to take arms against a sea of troubles, or to put up a very visible shield at the least.

If our life has been made up of events that are far from the best, due to another's lack of judgement, forgetfulness, and sometimes sheer vindictiveness, then there is no need to forgive. Likewise, though, there is maybe no need to carry, one minute past the next, the hurt and pain caused by the actions. Recognising hurt is necessary for it to diminish, holding onto the hurt means that it probably will never do so. When we are children, things that strike multiple times, like a rattlesnake, secrete a poison into our bloodstreams. This might gain, rather than weaken, in toxicity when we are adolescents, depending upon our life experience, circumstances and way of looking at the world. By the time we are adults, the anti-venom may be difficult to locate. After all, the things we feel as children, the stories we tell ourselves and others tell us are hard not to view as truth, especially if we have been telling/listening to the same story all our lives.

But, as I go through my 40s without a roadmap, I know my parents didn't have one either. As I deal with emotions that swing erratically from one side of the pendulum to the other (and all the degrees inbetween), how do I know that they did not experience similar kinds of feelings and confusion when they were my age, and younger? My emotions often do not make me the most pleasant person to be around, and I hope not to inflict any shame or nastiness on loved ones, those I teach, or even random strangers, but I am not always successful. I hope that others see that I am more consistently good that consistently erratic, though this could be my own misconception. There are adults and children who should know better, but who will, perhaps, throughout their lives never know better. Who knows what makes them that way?

But for us to carry their toxin still, though it can be hard to locate and suck out, is not a healthy or happy way to live. True, the venom probably never so much leaves as it diffuses into a homeopathic remedy, applied after the event. Of course, for this to happen stages of acknowledgement and recognition have to be experienced. Nobody ever really leaves those stories behind, but they can be woven into a larger story, rather than being the story - a black thread that provides contrast and reminder, or a pastel thread, barely noticed against the others, an anomalous silver gradating between light and dark.

relief

Things are finally moving on Guantanamo , thank god, though it seems that Bush still doesn't think that people from other countries who are detained by his government should be given the same rights as the citizens of his country. Even if those people have issue with a country that is not the U.S. . It is a difficult situation it seems, as many (though definitely not all) of those detained appear to be very far from angels. Some of those released have gone on to wreak murder and mayhem, but not all, as seen by David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib . It can also be seen from those reports (though the neutrality of them is disputed - what do you expect, it's wikipedia!) that people who end up at Guantanamo are not necessarily of what is termed as sound mind, yet, when one also looks into well-documented reports of torture, the question of which comes first (the chicken or the egg?) has to be raised. "Results" gained by torture and deprivation should always be questioned, and use of such techniques by any country, and especially by countries which pride themselves on their democratic and humanitarian principles, should not be condoned.

For a comprehensive look at the issue, PBS's Frontline, The Torture Question is well worth seeking out. Though dealing with Abu Ghraib, it also looks at Guantanamo, and here is a lot of information in print form from the same documentary. Though it came out a few years ago, the issues addressed remain topical. Well, I know hypocrisy is enshrined in many a nations' constitution, but it is worth keeping in mind that if a government feels justified in using techniques of terror towards one group of people, there is no guarantee that it will not feel justified in applying it towards all people at some point in the future. And if the upholders of democracy gain government endorsement to use the tools and techniques favoured by many dictatorships and regimes, then the word democracy and everything it is purported to stand for certainly takes on a hollow ring.

shoji

Things the mobile phone camera cannot capture:

• full moon in the star-kissed sky,
• flute and bossanova guitar playing El condor Pasa (under the star-kissed sky),
• history of the buildings surrounding the barbeque where El condor Pasa is being played under the almost full moon star kissed-sky.

I wish it could. It's a good little phone. Takes some nice flower shots - and there is the shot above, taken at sunset, sun's rays streaking weathered wood. But, it could be an old building anywhere. Ambience is not apparent.

Even so. This is part of an old landowner family's property. Most of these kinds of properties have been transformed into museums; not many people live in them any more. But this family still does. The wife of the family married into the landowning family. She comes from an old sake brewing family. Once a year they open the house up as she has a beautiful garden. The roses are particularly famous. All the mobile phone pictures were blurry, so I won't post them. Other rooms are opened where art works are on display, and this year, for the first time, there were two concerts.

The property borders a lake which used to be part of the property, but which the family donated to the city. The photograph below (which is not of the property) is maybe a scene that people like to think is traditionally Japanese. And it is, but people just don't really live this way, due to lack of space, any more. It was only those who had money who used to live this way, too. This is a shot of a garden at a temple which google provided for me. So sorry original photo taker.

The reason for me posting it is that we were in a room (not tatami) that opened up onto the garden like this. Two guest musicians played the flute and guitar (bossanova style) to a contingent of locals. The area is a rural area, and so it may have been a room full of older Japanese farmers who were enjoying the bossanova in a traditional Japanese room which overlooked the garden and the lake. Some saw an anomoly, and to a degree there was. But the music and the room were beautiful and, as such, were invigorating to the spirit. Plus, some of the ladies in the audience were from my swimming club, and I know them as very interesting people. Not to say that farmers are not interesting, but it is not the view that is always held of them. One of the older ladies had in fact gone to Vienna with a music group she belongs to, to play the flute in a cathedral. Something I don't think I'll be doing in my life (don't know how to play a flute, for one).

Being foreign is often a lucky thing. Or a favoured foreigner. That and being a friend of a friend. My supervisor knows the owners of this property quite well, and they had invited her to a barbeque after the concert. As I attended the concert with her, I was invited too. Big yards, tall trees, places that date back more than a couple of hundred years, a full moon, and the musicians coming to join us afterwards. The owners of the property and their family and friends, urbane people with fluent English who had spent many years studying overseas, local people with fluent English and sophisticated ideas. However, Japanese was the language of choice, and so I just sat back and enjoyed the atmosphere for the most part,my boss translating anything very important or interesting as the need arose. Did I feel intimidated? Somewhat, but life is what it is.

Soon the older trees, which are tall enough to tower over that building in the first photo, will be knocked down, as will the old wall that skirts the property, as the road outside gets widened. The huge gate will remain, but will be moved back from the road. Though it does mean that the road will be safer, nobody wants to see the trees go. Japan does not value certain aspects of its heritage - or the officials in city hall don't. At this point of my life, I've been lucky to witness this little window, the shoji doors edged open to let in the sun.

monkey magic

I need a retreat, relief, from all the chattering monkeys in my mind. Will seriously look into them (one?) for my next extended vacation. A retreat, that is. My life is pretty much one of seclusion anyway, maybe I should delve into it a bit more deeply :)

and the days are not full enough

Well the lovely writer of the argument of her blog has left us bereft of poem and verse for a time stretching beyond an aeon - or seventeen days at least, which in blog world is an abandonment of nigh on 8 and a half years (note, if we consider one blog day is equivalent to half a human year, then the maths is correct-ish).

In her defence, she is feeling poorly and has had quite an exciting month, and may even have started a REAL LIFE. Still, our souls are crying out feed me so I hope that she doesn't mind if I step in and provide a few scant lines - which kind of rhyme - though the reflection she always provides us with may somewhat be amiss or missing.

I disagree with this guy's politics, though he was mad, but then, so are most dictators, not that he was one ( I don't tend to agree with the politics of dictators either, and don't let them use insanity as a defence - that was all I vaguely meant by the previous sentence). And there is always more to the story (from that reliable source, Wikipedia, lol).

But his poetry, or the few fragments I know, provide me with a glimpse, a scene painted and layered, which remains in mind's eye and fills with detail as I add to and evoke emotion from his very few words. Whether it is the emotion intended or not, I do not know. But he is able to encapsulate, as a poet should, that which is common to all of us in words uniquely his own.

And the days are not full enough

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
     Not shaking the grass

Ezra Pound

Maybe the argument of her blog's writer is having a life quite the opposite of the above, and maybe Ezra ended up spending some time incarcerated in an open cage because he didn't know how to quell the ticking of his mind by engaging in the physical as well as the ethereal, something I am more than guilty of as well. Though maybe if your friends and peers were Robert Frost, Yeats and Elizabeth Bishop, then such ethereality is more a calling in life than a call of madness, and therefore maybe more nourishing and enriching than tilling the soil (or soiling the till) and scrubbing the dirt from beneath your nails at the end of each day.

don't ever change

The letters we move in losing
carefully stowed out of harm's way

Yet, with email, when everything is so easily deleted, or conversely, stored, does it still hold true that we keep those types of letters that show a part of our diamond soul as reflected in the eyes of another? Email can have a plethora of sentiment, or a dearth of the same. How easy it is to send love. How easy it is to send hate. And how easy it is to delete the words of love, while caught up in the emotion of hate. Even though we know it will hurt us and the relationship later. Even though we know that the failure to preserve and respect the love will destroy it, and only strengthen the hate. And then there is nothing left to confirm the knowledge you have that something was once there, or to reveal to you, when you are in a more rational space, that nothing ever was.

This is from Carol Ann Duffy, published in 1990 - a time when letters were still a physical thing. Paper can always be burned, though, not that it seems to be an option for this narrator. I particularly like the eighth and ninth lines, or shall I say, they ring true.

Now, it is impossible for me to get blogger to align the poem the way it should be, so the sixth line, Don't ever change, should be to the far right.

The 'Darling' Letters (1990)

Some keep them in shoeboxes away from the light,
sore memories blinking out as the lid lifts,
their own recklessness written all over them. My own...
Private jokes, no longer comprehended, pull their punchlines,
fall flat in the gaps between the endearments. What
are you wearing?

Don't ever change.
They start with Darling; end in recriminations,
absence, sense of loss. Even now, the fist's bud flowers
into trembling, the fingers trace each line and see
the future then. Always... Nobody burns them,
the Darling letters, stiff in their cardboard coffins.

Babykins... We all had strange names
which make us blush, as though we'd murdered
someone under an alias, long ago. I'll die
without you. Die. Once in a while, alone,
we take them out to read again, the heart thudding
like a spade on buried bones.

CAROL ANN DUFFY

mountain vegetables (sansai)

Kinda peaceful. Some mountain vegetables someone had left

on what was left of a newly felled tree. The curves of the

tree trunk, and of the ubo (the name of the vegetable) entranced me.

jurojin, the god of longevity

This is turning into one of those blogs with only pictures and no words. Well, usually I have a million words interspersed with a few pictures, so view it as a welcome change, or a change, at least. I like this one. He is one of the seven gods of good fortune, derived from a Taoist tradition. This somewhat illustrates the Japanese approach to religion. In this Buddhist temple, there is a Shinto shrine, and this Taoist entity. There is a mini-statue of himself by his feet, and the jizo in the background are looking on.

Zenkouji

Traditionally women have not been allowed into many places of worship. Traditionally many still are not. There are all kinds of taboos and rules (in some cases common sense) in religions in terms of what a woman can wear, in how she can pray, and in when she can pray. That is obviously not a comprehensive list, but these rules are generally restrictive and prohibitive, and comparative rules are generally not applied to her male counterpart. Tenzin Palmo , the British woman who wrote A Cave in the Snow details how frustrated she was when she could not find any of the information she needed when she went to Nepal to study because of how she was perceived and treated as a woman. It was deemed that she didn't need to learn the intricacies and mysteries of the religion she had entered due to her sex; maybe it was deemed that she was not worthy of gaining such knowledge, even though she was recognised as a reincarnated master. Or maybe it was her life journey to meet these challenges. Who knows?

A friend of mine recently went on a retreat in Thailand, and found the women were required to do all the cleaning, preparing of food, were expected to prostrate themselves whenever the priest passed. She said the tasks and expectations did not seem evenly distributed between gender. As the work itself, of course, needs to be done, and humility is often expected in religions, it is the imbalance that is frustrating, not the actual tasks and expectations themselves. Her story is not an unusual one, and of course this imbalance is not only applicable to spiritual life.

So, I have a fondness for Zenkouji temple, in that it has never barred women. It was founded in 644 AD, so this is quite surprising. It is run by a high priestess and priest from different Buddhist sects in alternating years. Maybe this is why there are so many guardians around the grounds protecting children and women, and maybe this non-discriminatory attitude goes a long way towards explaining its popularity. Of course it also houses a hidden image that is said to have been made by Buddha himself in the 6th century B.C, which was gifted to Japan in 552 A.D, and this adds to the temple's popularity as people journey to the place where it is held in the hope of finding salvation as detailed here , which does not make it so different from a Mecca or a Lourdes. However, the fact remains that apart from being open to both sexes, it is also a non-sectarian temple and (from the same site as detailed above) It is not affiliated with any one particular sect of Buddhism so all are welcome, regardless of gender, creed or religious belief .

I think one of the readings that can be applied to the many jizo that surround the place is 'womb of the earth' - so I sense a warmness and welcome-ness to the place, even if this might only be in my own mind's eye and heart.

The main hall at Zenkouji

the red-bibbed saints

My post should be in the making, or I should be mopping floors, or planning lessons, or walking in the park, shopping in Niigata, doing something about the world instead of weeping copiously into my laptop . . . Instead, I got up with the best of intentions, as always, had a shower to clear the head, sat in front of the laptop, and that was it, as I went to flickr and played with the photo account, and then skipped around from one website to another. It seems to me that television was never such a time waster and it had the added advantage of not giving you carpal tunnel.

Anyway, I told my fabulous friend Fantasy (and anyone else who wants to read) that I had a few posts up my sleeves. They were related to the extended holidays we had here last week and the touring about that I did. Enthusiasm has waned somewhat as remembrance of experience fades, but it may mean that clarity is sharpened as a result. No guarantee, though.

Along the roadsides, near temples, in graveyards (haka) and other innocuous places, you will often see these fellows.

They are known as jizo, or bodhisattva's, or bosatsu; Buddhist saints who have decided not to enter Nirvana after death, but to remain on earth to help humans through their suffering. This can also relate to the suffering of souls passing through various stages of reincarnation. My information is dodgy, so it is best that you visit this site if you want more accurate information.

Anyway, jizo are Master of Six States of Reincarnation, which are: Six States of Existence,Six Roads of Reincarnation, Six Paths of Transmigration, Six Realms of Samsara, Six Directions of Reincarnation, Six Destinies, and the Wheel of Life according to the site above, and again, I am only skimming the surface. I don't have that much knowledge about it. However, they are also the protectors of Children, Expectant Mothers, Firemen, Travellers, and Pilgrims, Protector of Aborted / Miscarried Babies, and Guardian of Children in Limbo.

It is the last two points that interest me the most.


The contraceptive pill is difficult to get in Japan. This article in the New York Times, details how the government had banned access to it for many years, the most recent reasons given (before it was made legal) were due to fears of the possible spread of AIDS (non-use of condoms), possible promiscuity, and the wish to encourage the growth of the Japanese birthrate. Low dose oral contraceptive pills (and IUDs) have been available since 1999, but they are very expensive, not covered by the national health scheme, and can only be accessed by an ongoing prescription from a doctor which is apparently closely monitored . Abortion, for many years, has been popular as a form of contraception. It has been said that the doctors often oppose the contraceptive pill due to the money that they make from abortions (which are also not covered by the national heath scheme), though the technology used for this leaves much to be desired, so the money is not going on being up to date.

Japan is also a fairly inward looking nation and people can often hold views that certain medicines can be harmful to them specifically, even if they are not harmful for other nationalities. For many years, Japanese women have been told that taking the pill is a danger to their health. Now, I am not necessarily a great fan of the pill, either. There are many negative side effects, but abortion is also not the greatest for a woman's well-being as a general matter of course. Don't peg me as a pro-lifer here. The above is just a broad statement of fact. Condoms, of course, are used, but I guess many Japanese men are as (ir)responsible as other men when it comes to wearing them, and they can break, and there is the heat of the moment, and all that. After condoms, withdrawal is the second most popular form of contraception in Japan. Diaphragms, too, are not necessarily easy to get , and women are often told to wait and see if they go in for the morning after pill, which means that a pregnancy has often progressed a fair way along its course before it is confirmed, at which stage the doctor is likely to recommend an abortion.

So, in regards to the above multi-linked paragraph, the mizuko jizo is particularly popular in Japan. This jizo is associated with protecting the journey of aborted / miscarried babies, and children in limbo, so at the base of these jizo, or very near them, you will often see toys left by those wishing to remember or respect the souls that need help along their way, if such things are believed in, or by those who wish to recognise their own experience. However, jizo are also protectors of children, alive and dead, so the toys left may not necessarily be for the above reasons. However, if the jizo is a mizuko jizo, it is likely that the above reasons are the ones for the offering. That is a very confusing paragraph, but it is sometimes very difficult to differentiate one jizo from another.

The jizo (there are six of them traditionally at many temples) are very popular with the people. I like the fact that they are outside, for one, so it is very easy to leave a little prayer or offering (often a pebble), or to just wave hello as you walk past. They are often dressed in clothes that people have knitted or sewn (or bought) for them.

Though I think most societies seem to need some form of image to refer to throughout life, (even those religions that ban images seem to be able to infuse beauty into carvings, buildings, other types of monuments), I cannot imagine my local priest in Perth condoning the idea of placing a knitted beanie on the head of the crucified Christ (it wouldn't match the loin cloth, for one).


Therefore, this common touch appeals to me, as does the outside aspect mentioned above. If one feels like offering a little prayer, or experiencing a bit of peace, or just enjoying the surrounds of a temple, it is easy to do. Everything is wide open. I can have a picnic in the temple grounds, or enjoy a quiet sandwich. My memories of church are sitting for an excruciating hour in a fairly dark building, getting lectured, the only hint of a sandwich being the discreetly released sulphur farts of fellow parishioners , though I guess the Stations of the Cross kept me entertained as I waited for the whole drear process to end.

As much as any other major religion, a lot of Buddhism is about money. And as much as any other major religion, it has had its wars and its suppression of people who do not hold the same views as it, and it acknowledges the rights of women no more than the other religions do. The fact that it is polytheistic, or possibly, nothing-theistic in true belief, maybe means that it is open to more viewpoints than the monotheistic religions, and may therefore be more accepting of other religions and points of view. I am not really sure, as I am, as always, skating the surface. However, sometimes I think worship, or recognising with ritual the beauty, compassion and sorrow that can be in the world, should be outside in the open and in the fresh air, and be easily accessible. It should not necessarily be tied to a weekly schedule, though naturally enough, the devout have their schedule, and times for prayers can be just as rigorous and uncomfortable. Funnily enough, Islam is also very practical in terms of when one can offer prayers and express belief. I say funnily enough only because it is one of the most ferociously monotheistic religions, and its followers therefore may not find a connection with Buddhism, but I digress.

So, last Friday I visited Zenkouji, which is a temple in Nagano. And though the huge halls, and the gilt and wooden temples are a feast for the eyes, it is the bosatsu, with their red caps and bibs, and the offerings of toys and clothes gathered at their feet that people pray will be delivered to their children, that I like to seek out. They sit patiently, obliviously, in moss covered courtyards, by the side of the roads, under the ever changing sun, clouds and rain.

my man says

four cousins dead

i have no country

still

i delete his emails

the standoff

lasts for

weeks

each time is

the last


park rose (c) 2008

go frog (updated)

They've released all the water into the rice fields. Many of the students will be planting over Golden Week (the holidays from Saturday to Tuesday). Cycling past tonight, the frogs were having a grand old time (I was cycling, not the frogs). In between the usual mooping, there was the machine gun ack-ack-ack that comes from sound having very little to bounce off. Fields and fields and fields of rice. Or slush and mud, at the moment. Or maybe it was bouncing off the walls of the surrounding houses, or the frogs wouldn't have made that ack-ack-ack noise. Either way - mooping and rain and summer. Though it is usually winter when they appear in southern Australia - but our seasons are different. Can't find any images on the net at present of the rice fields (plenty of flooded rice fields, but the rice is already growing in them, that's not the case here yet). Hopefully I'll take a few pictures tomorrow and post them.

Well, here is a picture, taken at 6am this morning (2nd May) - and you can see that someone has already planted their rice out, but not all, I swear, not all are planted and green and sprouting in rows just yet, though they soon will be.

The pictures below were taken on the 3rd of May. I went for a 12.3 km ride x 2 (not including getting to the ride), and rode past the rice fields that hadn't been planted (see below).

Past the rice fields that may have been planted. Note the scenic telephone lines, but also the blue, blue sky, and the mountains and trees.

And then past the ones that seemed to be well and truly planted and sprouting hearty heads of rice seedling hair.

All the families were out planting. The women wear hats that seem similar to bonnets, but with a peaked front like a baseball cap, and the men do wear baseball caps. They all wear gum boots as the fields are full of slush, and in some cases, snakes. The seedlings have been growing in pseudo glasshouses (that is, they are not made of glass) and they (the seedlings) are laid out on the back of the tractor. The driver then goes down and up rows, the seedlings being planted as he progresses. Excuse the lack of jargon and expertise here.

This picture was not taken by me.

It is a hard job, and I don't think it is completely finished yet. Judging from the number of families out today, planting, enjoying lunches, before returning to the hard slog, I might have been a bit harsh in giving out homework. However, judging from the number of families in the park, enjoying barbeques and other activities, sports, fishing and so on, not all students are from farming families. We'll see, come Wednesday.

sakura and tsubaki

I went to Ijimino park again today. I was hoping to see the sakura (cherry blossoms) around the lake. I did see them, but we had some strong winds in the middle of the week, and the weather has been getting warmer, so, even though there were still blossoms on the branches, there were plenty of petals on the ground, and lots of green leaves mixed in with the pink and white flowers. Below, if you look closely enough at the stream, you can see the petals flowing to the lake.

Though the cherry blossom petals were expected, the number of camellia, or tsubaki, trees that were in the woods which surround the lake was not. During winter I didn't realise that the wood was full of tsubaki as they hadn't flowered yet. Today, however, many were in full bloom, and further to that, many had dropped some of their flowers. Tsubaki are one of the few flowers that brighten winter. In fact, they are meant to herald its end, and the picture below probably supports that notion. I don't think that they originally grew wild in the area, though quick research tells me that they did grow wild in the past so, who knows? Either way, they are part of the forest aspect of the park now. Traditionally, camellias are also kept in shrine gardens, and as the park has a small haka (grave area), maybe that is why they grow there.

Note that I said the trees had dropped their flowers and not their petals. The camellia has many positive and negative cultural associations, apparently, but the one that I know is that their blossoms can symbolise death. Usually they have short stems, and the whole flower drops from these to the ground when it is ready. Other plants lose their blossoms petal by petal, but the tsubaki, like those in the pictures above and below, can fall intact. The reading I have done also says that in times past, as the stems were too short, and as the flowers had fallen to and touched the ground, tsubaki could not be displayed in vases or the like. The reasons for this were the obvious practical difficulties, and that something which had been intact with the ground in that way was not suitable for display. I guess this resonates with the notion that one would not usually want to exhume or revisit a body once it had had its time on earth.


The sakura, or cherry blossoms, indicate a transient beauty. That is their role in Japanese flower-lore, I think, and a reason why their quick appearance and disappearance is celebrated with such ribaldry and joy. Therefore, when I saw the tsubaki fallen on sakura petals it seemed particularly poignant (see below). One, the passing of beauty, the other, the passing of life - but both the nurturers of further beauty and life as they are bound to rot and fade and sink into the earth from whence they came and from which they will spring again.

weather's good today. rain and cloud predicted tomorrow

So much more to say - so little time to say it - so little concept of stringing the words together once I want to sit down and say it ;) And what was it I wanted to say? Oh, that's right, so much more to say - so little time to say it - so little cohesion of stringing the words together once I want to sit down and do it. This is on the fly. Can you tell? You should be able to cos' the little bugger keeps weaving all over the monitor. Note to self: Do not attempt to write blog entries on winged insects. Ah-hah-hah-hah.

It has suddenly occured to me that maybe I think I am posting to the chatboard? Never mind. I wonder where string theory lands when it applies to verbal and written cohesion. Is the auditory and oral also made up of small pieces of substance... Hmm - writing, as in the physical representation could quite easily be so (that sentence ran up a stylistic hill and tumbled down again).

Anyway, I'm off to work - might tighten the string later.

and further to that

For Stuart



(Anji - Davey Graham, played by Paul Simon and his brother??)

and the song that lifted it



(Got a Groovey Thing Going - not great quality ;)

REM - for Crash

Feeling nostalgic - think this was the first I heard of them, and it blew me away on late night radio in those days. It's not as great now, but I have a soft spot for it.



This one I still love, though. Great title, and I love overlapping harmonies - not that they actually do on reflection - oh well.



And this, thanks to 'glo for locating the video for this one!



and to end with a bit of frippery x 2. One is amateur vid and one live, I'm afraid

Eye Candy

These plants had just been watered. It looked as if the jellyfish or jubes were growing from the lap of the leaves.

comfort

take these words and

worry them like

beads of solace between

your fingers entwined

may they grant you peace.

baubles, nothing more,

nothing less.


park rose (c) 2007

cherry blossoms

Feeling nostalgic. Seems I was born with such a notion, condition perhaps. Some people think there is beauty in the word. Maybe so. Seems to also contain a certain sadness, always looking over the shoulder-ness, never moving forward-ness, unaccepting of now-ness. Could be that is the beauty. Reflection on the ephemeral, the transient.

The opening lines of this song have been with me all my life - well, most of it. Guess my folks bought the album when I was a wee tacker. A friend of mine today said that young writers were clever with their style and content, whereas older writers had more depth of wisdom and feeling. I disagree. Young writers are so close to their emotions, and often the emotion is impossible to escape from, and it is strong enough to be truth for the writer, and to be everything to the writer, and perhaps it is truth and everything. Particularly if the writer has lyrical precision. Particularly in reference to poetry and song.

Some historical cases in point: Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 19 (18 according to Wikipedia). Robbie Burns died at 37, and he wasn't alone in passing so young. Rimbaud also died at 37 and finished his writing career by age 21. And there are many, many more. Wordsworth was a bit more unusual in living until he was eighty. Maybe within the last fifty years there haven't been so many examples within literature, but there definitely is within music.

Some get better with age - Anne Tyler, Delillo, I think improved, or got clearer. McCourt's Angela's Ashes and Teacher man are sweeps of exquisite crafting. Note, I have switched to the prose writers now. But many other artists of all hues have their moments of brilliance early, cliched as that notion is.

Maybe with their initial efforts they fulfil a task that was universally set for them, a purpose for being, or psychological demons are laid to rest, and what follows those first efforts is sometimes satisfying to the reader/listener and writer in another way, sometimes not at all. Is it that styles get used to so freshness is lacking, or is it that the urgency is lacking from the writer's end, and so too then is the immediacy and clarity of image, language and metaphor?

Simon and Garfunkel seemed to think they were on borrowed time and, though I have enjoyed later Simon, their songs of true beauty for me were written at this early juncture of their lives, even though I am not really at this juncture of my life any more. This is off the Sounds of Silence album which was released in 1965, so Simon was twenty-four at the time. Not the twenty-one of the song, but still plenty young and pretty enough.

What's open on Sundays? Church and 78s.

I was looking for Tanya Donelly , remembering the CD Beautysleep I gave to a friend when I cleaned out all eleventy-hundred of myCDs. Why did I have that purge? I had decided that music was as illusionary and delusionary as everything else, and that I should make an effort not to be attached to it. A passing phase, as is evident, but the thought still carries some truth. Anyway, I came across Billie instead of Tanya, and thought I would just share these two. I know what the lyrics say, okay? First one sad, second one slightly more upbeat. Okay. Heartbreaking. Definitely human.






My interest in her probably stems from when I was 18 or 19 and I saw Absolute Beginners which made me then read the books, written by Colin MacInnes. I have the series, somewhere. They are not the greatest books, but they definitely have style. There was a lot about Billie Holiday in them. Swinging 60s in London, not that she was there.

My dad was always quite interested in jazz, too, though we didn't have a great lot of it in the house. I also remember about this time seeing a late at night repeat of Lady Sings the Blues , Diana Ross' version of Billie. It has gone on to be thoroughly panned, though you wouldn't think it from the Wikipedia entry. I was also a kid who read books about dramatic youngish stars who died tragic deaths, and Billie was one of them. I probably knew more about Rudolph Valentino than any 15 year old should (about the time I started reading such things) - not because of the death factor, but Valentino? Come on.

One hot Sunday afternoon, I took the at least an hour and a half journey (depending on the availability of the blink and they're gone buses) from our hills house to the city. Perth on a Sunday in the 80s was an absolute ghost town. But 78s used to stay open. I don't know what kind of permission they were granted. I was a curly headed goth wanna-be, so much so, that nobody could probably distinguish me from my very bogan roots . But hell, I loved the Smiths, the stuff coming underground from the UK, Oz and NZ. It was just that a weekend in the suburb I grew up in was usually not replete without some house booming out TNT while everyone washed their cars. And even though Bon Scott scared the hell out of me (reminded me of one of the boys at primary school who would fight the teachers) the people in 78s scared me too. Surely it was obvious that I wasn't wearing enough black, I was likely to poke my eye out with the mandatory black eyeliner, curly hair just doesn't like geometric stylings goddamn, and aren't ugg boots grafted to the soles of those brought up in suburbs like mine and Pamela Anderson's? I presumed a lot.

It was the mid-80s, so CDs and CD players weren't everywhere yet, and you have to take into account that everything comes to Perth a bit later than other places. We didn't get our first MacDonalds until the 80s, and that is the truth. And though MacDonald's is not the epitome of taste and distinction, it is ubiquitous. Perth, the city so boring that even MacDonald's couldn't be bothered. That is unfair to Perth, of course, but from my suburban perch I would just feel this heavy, drawn-out, pressing forgotteness which always seems somehow compounded in the incessant heat of the long summers. The reason I was in the city that day was that I just had to go to a bigger place to tell myself it existed and to prove to myself that it was possible to physically leave the hills. Tell myself I wasn't trapped there forever. I did that a lot in those days. It wasn't my intention to buy Billie Holiday, or to even go to 78s, but wandering down the empty streets led me there, and it was there where I riffled through the vinyls and found Lady Sings the Blues. My copy was a spin-off from the movie but it was definitely Lady Day singing the tunes, and only had 13 tracks or so, unlike Ross' 35 track number.

I loved that vinyl, and it is one of about ten vinyls that I have actually kept along with a George Michael Faith picture disc (how seriously do you take me now? huh?). It was fully scratchity and uncrisp, and it has versions of Billie songs that I haven't heard on the numerous compilations that group everything of hers together. Too much so.

I loved her voice. I loved the lyrics, though they were sad and helpless, yes indeed. I thought everyone of that era was light and floaty and bees and honey, even though I knew the social history to be different. I didn't see much different in the female vocalists of my generation, either. I wasn't too opened up musically at the time, but I was damn hungry and she was a true find for me.

I saw a series which had a soundbite from Wynton Marsalis. I can't remember the documentary, but he stated how Billie sang as if she were truly an instrument of jazz, blending and melding, dipping in and out, and how much he would have loved to have played with her (I think it was him, and not Branford). This is documented by others. And I can take or leave Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Lena Horne - my list is definitely exhaustive. But Billie doesn't exhaust me. Not this particular vinyl, anyway. A friend said of my indifference to Ella that, "She's not sad enough for you, is she?" A perceptive observation, and probably not a good reflection of my personality, but he was right. Billie was clever, too, though, or wilful. Imagine singing Strange Fruit in those times. 1939 is when she first sang it. She must have been an incredibly brave woman , or maybe just driven. She was definitely a tortured and lost soul. Maybe there was no other way to be - given the times, given her background. By the way, that song wasn't on the vinyl I bought that day, I found it later.

Because in many periods of history it is not prudent to write of hardship, or it is not encouraged, the generations to come after can think that the generations before them were all Doris Day and Rock Hudson (who had their own stories behind the facades, too, of course). When I read a poem that is centuries old, yet it reads like modern verse and I can digest it easily, I am surprised. When I get the wit and criticism evident in books such as Gulliver's Travels I am stupidly left thinking, Wow, they thought about that kind of stuff then? And they put it in print? As if discernment only came with my generation, and of course the generation after me, and possibly the one before me, will think this is not the case at all.

So people across the ages will always think and feel. Not all of the people, all of the time, but some of the time is better than none of the time. And this will manifest itself in words and songs and art and speeches, and day to day conversation. Even for a girl trapped in the outer suburbs, or maybe especially so, digging deep, and then digging a little more.

bicycle ride

Geese cried out in tandem with the ambulance wails cutting across the fields during my bike ride today. Strange how animals do that. I always imagine they realise the seriousness of the call, and are ululating in sympathy, panic and a kind of encouragement, urging the ambulance to get to the hospital faster. Yes, yes, it's probably some weird kind of mating call, I know. Even so.

They haven't all gone home to Siberia yet. I saw two graceful white winged birds descending slowly into the snow. Except it wasn't snow. It was the melted brown bit surrounded by snow. Quick reflexes and a super camera might have caught them. As it is, the rather lackadaisical (regarding effort on my part) written image above will have to suffice.

For almost all of last year I was very caught up in my study. At PAN I have taken Wade's suggestion and expanded upon it, and decided to call it quantum procrastination, because quantum gives an air of gravity to everything (except amongst 'real' scientists), and because procrastination tends to get me results eventually - so even though the act of procrastinating, and the act of doing something should be complete opposites (and are in fact) having one foot in both camps helps me come to a whole. I learnt this wonderful new word today from a man who is more commonly known for his derring-do on the Simpsons than in the research arena. Who woulda thunk it. I wanted to apply it to the above paragraph, but procrastination and action are not really mirror images, so no chance to twist the metaphor this time around.

Anyway, during this study time the inside of my house saw far too much of me. This self-imposed exile extended through spring, summer, autumn and most of winter, with just a few little sojourns here and there. Well, it's all over for a time, and there is no school to prep for at the moment, and finally, after god knows how many weeks, I have a levity to match the gravity alluded to above. Also, it has pretty much stopped snowing in this part of town. So much so that today and yesterday I took a bike ride.

This is what the weather was like.

Doesn't look promising, huh? However, the air was biting and invigorating, and the sky hadn't started spitting rain and snow pellets before I left home, though one look out my window could have told me it was likely.

The city is warmer than the mountains I was heading towards. It stands to reason. So most of the path that was used by most of the city was cleared nicely and could fit four abreast, or so. Well...maybe two.

However, after about 4 or 5 kilometres, it narrowed to this:

By the time I got here

it had started to rain, and it looked as if there was going to be a bit of slush along that path. So I picked up my bike and turned around (the path was not wide enough to wheel it around).
Still, so much fun I had - and here's a view of some of the things I passed along the way there:

I think this is rice in the yard. There were bags of this banked up around the house, too. The rice would have been harvested in summer, or the end of summer, autumn - really, I don't know, but that sounds about right. This is just a wild guess, and I am not sure precisely what would be happening. The area is famous for its sake, so it could have something to do with that, or maybe it is a regular procedure, or maybe it isn't rice at all.

Blue tin and wooden storage sheds/ factories/ timber yards

cemeteries, or haka, in Japanese. They are more memorials as Japanese are usually cremated.

And on the way back:

These operate as kind of greenhouses, nurseries in warmer weather. The last one is almost transparent because there was a lot of rain on the camera phone (and on me).

And the ubiquitous ricefields, of course. It was about here that I heard the geese. I saw the other two geese at the start of the journey.

I didn't wear my down jacket today, and neither did I need it. I did have a jacket, however, just not the down one. I had my gloves off for part of the journey. True, my face was stinging with the rain and pellets on the way home, but the downpour stopped after about ten minutes. Enough time, of course, for my jeans (sans long johns - yaay) to get soaked through, and for my toes to somewhat lose feeling once I returned home. But making the effort to do something always makes me feel good, and being able to actually transform that effort into a tangible experience feels even better.

When I told the ladies at the swimming club that I had been bike riding, they asked "What about the snow?" But even with that, there was excitement and joy, relief, anticipation, in their voices as they declared that March had arrived and the weather was warmer, despite this rain, despite this wind, despite these snow pellets (not hail, not snow). And I think this year I will finally have the energy to implement my wishes. Finally I will be able to get to know this area better.

Carver and Reid

Well, this is not the poetry blog, though poetry sometimes appears hereupon. My father wrote me a very witty email tonight. He is a funny man in print.

And when drunk.

Happy drunks are the best, though our livers do not necessarily agree.

Anyway - this one because I love it so, do not know, if others do too. So even though it should maybe appear elsewhere, I shall place it here, and the one to follow. That previous bit kind of goes to the chorus, in phrasing - not intent, of this song

From the master of those brilliant snapshots of life, Raymond Carver:




Late Fragment




And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.



(1996)




Now, a potential love of mine viewed this as terribly negative as he felt that Carver was writing as a man who was finished with life. It was a finished poem. But no, even though Carver's life was tumultuous and I doubt I would have wanted to have gone through the hurdy-gurdy with him, this is a man who was contented, for this moment, for the writing, the expression he wished to exhibit.

The love previously spoke of, the claytonship, pulled a strange meaning from these lines, too:



maybe that's what I should do

rather than build pedestals from which

even dragons would tumble...




I do not have the rest of that poem...might have deleted it ...but I have the gist. Anyway, his view was that dragons were such a despicable creature that my pedestal must have been built mighty low. Maybe it was self reflection on his part (heh!). The dragon in my mind (my poem) was wondrous, of course, but my pedestals were even higher.

Anyway, that wasn't the second poem I wanted to post, it was this:

Dear Diary



Today my wife called me

a 'pompous old fart'.

We were hugging at the time

and did not spring apart,

though her words were deliberate

and struck at my heart.

It's a fearsome business,

this loving and being loved.

Would anyone try it

if they hadn't been shoved

by a force beyond resistance -

velvet-fisted and iron-gloved?

Christopher Reid (nd?).

I cannot get the lines to indent the way I want them to. I apologise. Every second line should be indented. Anyway, I imagine this man, pot belly, balding, in the arms of his wife. Oh,the cut and thrust of familiarity. And not being able to express his hurt, knowing it would bring an attention that outweighed the slight. And knowing that he probably was a pompous old fart in many ways, but one with love, huh? Funny, I did not notice that it rhymed until now. That's a good thing for me.

I leave you without conclusion.

the deleting demon

I went a bit spare last month with getting the assignment done, and wiped everything off here - never to return, un-uh, no never - that lasted for all of the two hours or so that the deleting demon possessed me. I am terrible at deleting, well no, I am actually very good at it, therefore, I am a terrible deleter, as in it is my wont and habit: tearing things up throwing things out, emptying my whole inbox, setting things on fire. I love that piece of pottery you gave me, but you don't love me anymore, so I'm going to smash it to a thousand pieces. So there, that'll learn ya!.

I bought a ceramic dog, weird of face, but sort of endearing, that reminded me of a long term crush that went nowhere - claytonships I call them - the relationship you're having when you're not having a relationship - anyway, that dog used to sit in the garden amongst carefully, or occasionally, if we're being honest, tended flowers. My shovel made its way into his head, body, torso one very cranky afternoon. Damn it, loved that pooch, though.

I tried to get a link to that original claytons advertisement, but couldn't find it, so here is this from wikipedia.

The point being, far away from my obvious psychosis, is that I deleted the Shaun Tan pictures and links. They had reminded a friend of his interest in the author/illustrator, and he went out and bought two of the books and read them with his daughter in a cafe where a woman actually had an original print from the Red Tree. Holy synchronicity batman.

So, as Shaun Tan is a good and worthy cause, I will put the pics up again. If you are ever feeling a bit down, The Red Tree is sure to lift you up, and I spoke of The Arrival before. A true work of art that tells a truly poignant and powerful story.

Shaun Tan

And the yuki god laughed

Hey rememember this ?

and this:

and how I said Spring was just around the corner?

Well, look at what the snow god brought us:

At least as the day progressed, though it has been snowing, it warmed up some and the winds didn't blow so strongly, and you can see a change. This is at about lunchtime:

and then at about 4 this afternoon.

Everytime I say spring is almost here, see what happens!
Best I keep my mouth shut.