24.11.07

I have made promises to the day,
and have broken them nearly every chance I've been given,
and scraped by by some fortune I seem to have been given also, but not respected.
I have known that my life comes with responsibility,
and the waste I have made of it so far.
Regret, the inaudible word of definition, may have been closer to the tip of my tongue than I wanted to admit.
Going against all I've known, I am complacent to my actions speaking the loudest.
Yet I curse myself when actions are failed,
and forget them within the hour.
Continue to forget,
continue to fail,
continue to forget my failures,
until they show up again.
And even then I hold no specifics, only the weight of regrets which I've secretely passed to my subconscious, so that when the next day comes I wake with heaviness which I can never quite place.
In the lack of my own clarity I have misplaced near everything.
I constantly promise to take responsibility the next day, when every day previous I understand that the next day will be too late.
Self-berating has shown no promise
the same way positivity has fallen short.
A clear mind may hold the answer,
though my mind usually feels empty,
and the two are sometimes hard to differentiate.
But I suppose it's really not all that empty;
Ay, there's a fog.

Cold Park.

I want to escape to my own
ideas of beauty.
Believing that Beauty treads further
than the eyesight of the beholder,
I accept my selfishness
and want what my own eyes see clearest.
The feeling will pass
in twenty minutes,
when I see
how she sees
the beauty I can't.

I will wish for her beauties also
to improve my vision,
and probably forget
it's my selfishness
impairing my sight.

23.11.07

Kumamoto Castle.

Black or White
is never quite what it is.
Castles of old sync up
with skyscrapers right beside.
Electric lights light up
what the Moon used to.
But the Moon maintains
its selfish side;
divides into glass
and rivers,
to keep itself
the only light you really see.

10.11.07

Last Blog at The Current Hotel.

Last night I discussed Spirals, Agnosticism and Absolute Truth.
This morning I woke up to a message which continued the conversation.

10 minutes later I blew smoke rings without touching my lips to a filter,
and sat back to watch the galaxies I had created.

They lasted only seconds.
I wonder how special they thought they were,
and if they used the time that they had,
to quarrel over it.

9.11.07

2nd Blog of the Evening.

I'm currently reading "Red Dust".
It is written in a similar style to my two favourite dystopian novels: "1984", and "We".
It is, in itself, also a dystopian novel. The difference is that it is not fiction.

A Chinese man named Ma Jian is under constant surveillance in Beijing by police for having been feared as a bourgeouis-type; a spiritual pollutant.
This is during "The Campain Against Spiritual Pollution" which happened during 1980's China.
Beginning to lose his mind, depressed, and unsure of who he is, he forges some documents and secretly embarks on a journey throughout China, hoping to discovery his country and himself.
He is a painter and a poet, and his records are so beautifully written that by the thirtieth page, I found myself in tears on the long bus-ride to Kanoya from a single paragraph noting his love for someone whom he now fears for having done so and been betrayed.
He explains a twitch he sees on her lip.

The twitch on her lip brought me to tears on a bus.

I am realizing the poor quality of my writing.

I am realizing that independence can make you a coward just as easily as it can make you a hero.

I am realizing what I was sure I knew before.

Adver-blog.

I am currently SO happy for one specific reason.
Jamison, aka, The Tremulance, has finished his album "The Breaks", and what's more,
you can download it for FREE!
Go here.

Jamison makes fantastic beats, among other things, and his mom once made me a delicious brunch way back in Abbotsford. After said delicious brunch, we watched Seinfeld and, if memory serves, Star Trek: TNG.

Memories, memories.

6.11.07

Notes on Drinking.

Where to start...

The week previous to this one was basically not much more than a drinking fest, and I suppose that is what I will tell of in part.
Us foreign teachers here in Kagoshima had a Teacher Seminar in Kumamoto (which, if you were from Kenya, translates exactly as, "hot pussy" [no joke], and therefore I feel compelled to do my Kenyan neighbour a favour and translate it as such from here on in).

So come last Wednesday I headed to a new part of Japan to give a lecture on 'Japanese Culture and Societal Ethics' to other foreign teachers.
I met some great new people; surprisingly really awesome, and thankfully my presentation was on the first day, so that I didn't have to try to do it while being dreadfully hagard the next day.
Unfortunately for other teachers giving presentations on Day 2 of this meeting, they could not help but try to fight their hang-overs.
While in (Hot Pussy), I met the guy who oversees things in that area for our company, named Dominic Walker, who continually made references to himself in the third person as D.W.
Example (after someone took a photo which he was also in): "Oy! Look at Dee Dubyah in this one! Fuckin' handsome bloke, that one!"
This is the man who will be filling in as P.S. for Kagoshima when our current P.S. (who is awesome) leaves.
As if it all wasn't enough to make one want to drink everything inaudible, he also had a thick British accent that became increasingly difficult to understand, and much more vulgar.
There's really something to be said for the vulgar capabilities the British have.
He also called me J-Dawg in-between his rants about how awesome Dee Dubyah is, so if any religious folk are about to judge me for the Sin of (alchohol-related) Gluttony, the plus side is that I didn't knock him out.
I can't remember which Sin is more deadly, Anger or Gluttony.
Probably Gluttony, which would explain my physical state of being the next day.

Anyway, aside from D.W., (Hot Pussy) was fantastic.
On the second day a couple of us walked up to the top of (Hot Pussy) Castle with a bottle of wine and sat on the grass in the cold fall/winter breeze and discussed everything from Japanese politics to "what the leaves say when they're rustling".
I voted that the leaves are saying "shhhhhhhhh", that is, if they're speaking English.
Terrible puns aside, it was a great two days in (Hot Pussy).

I returned to Kagoshima in perfect concordance with お原祭り ** , and ended up spending the next two days in Kagoshima City without returning to Kokubu (where I live, for those of you who haven't kept up).
On the second day there was an Art and Music Fest happening in a large park in the middle of the city (Tenmonkan), and on the way walking there my friend and I had to worm our way through thousands of people who were dancing up and down the streets, accompanied by the beats of the largest Taiko (drums) you've probably ever seen. On days like these, there is free drinks for those dancing, and so in a 15 minute interval you'll have this same large number of people rushing every which-way to get their hands on some tasty Sweet Potato Shochu (strong alchohol, made from exactly what is stated in it's title).
Although I didn't dance in the 祭り (festival), this is where my drinking on this day began, at 3pm on the dot, with a cup of Shochu hospitably being shoved into my hands.
I had absolutely no money on me this day, borrowed a total of 30 cents, and somehow maintained a steady 1/4 - 3/4 drunk until 6am, the following morning.
A personal record, especially considering that I only came out losing 30 cents.
You gotta love Festivals.

- じぇし~

^"Jesse" in Hiragana.

**Romanji = O-Hara Matsuri
English (direct translation) = Big-Stomach Festival