missing

some things i miss about england:


countryside. i never noticed the countryside before; the blue remembered hills and hedges that line the motorways and A roads. it's really nice.

weather. changeable weather is quite exciting. it always gives you something to talk about.

people. i took the tube back to heathrow. as i looked at the people i realised for the first time how beautiful they all were. not that anyone looked back at me. it must be the fumes.


some things i don't miss about england:


small towns. i've done the dance a thousand times. they look at me. they mumble a comment to their friend. they laugh. they look at me again. they laugh once again.

tv. it's a lot worse than i remember it. i kept thinking i was watching a continuous show about antiques, children and food.

weather. why does it rain on sunny days?


5 songs i dig

from him.

1. mr. november - the national. the drums starts you running at full pelt. you are running through a field of tall grass on a sunny day. it's one of those green and golden days; one of those days where your young blood is coursing through your body and the future is as wide as the hills. you are running fast, but you don't feel tired. the song builds and then you find the field is on a slope and you feet are moving faster that ever before; moving so fast that you feel you might fall down if you tried to stop. you heart is beating. each step feels like a leap as you smile. the sun is lowering. then you reach a straight again and you slow down. you consider stopping and as you do you realise you are on the verge of another slope. your body takes you down. the wind rushes past your ears. your chest wants to explode. you try to stop, but you can't avoid the inevitable. the sun starts to set and the sky turns brilliant orange. you keep running; and suddenly you run beyond our view.

2. welhorn yards - richmond fontaine. this is the other song on the uncut cd. this song feels like waking up in a mysterious place after a night on the tiles. it begins as you open your eyes and you look around were you slept last night. it's somewhere you've never been before. someone starts talking to you and you can't remember if he's a friend or not. it's morning among the broken bricks and rubble. you are still tired and hungover, but all you can't think beyond your last drink. the song ends as you start speaking.

3. isis - bob dylan. i saw him perform this live on dvd during his rolling thunder tour. he must have been about 30 at the time. it's the first time i've seen moving pictures of him at that age. i saw his "robin egg" blue eyes, as joan baez calls them. i don't think dylan is a god. he is the tube that attaches my brain to the divine. he's a mixture of prayer and meditation and i am an addict.

4. don't phunk with my heart - black eyed peas. i can't resist songs with hooks and some female vocals. the hooks bury themselves into my flesh and eat me. it's like love.

5. hollerback girl - gwen stefani. see above.


tag: anyone who gives a cares.

seoul purpose

couldn't resist chance to blog from korea. am in airport now. the restaurant menu looks interesting. they don't sell dog, but i can only read half of it, so who knows really.

last week was hectic. i feel like i haven't stopped, and indeed i haven't as i am waiting for 3 hours for a plane to take me to a different country. my brief soujourn to blighty was one thing after another. i feel like i'm beening sling shot back to where i came. even when i get back to nagoya, there's an hour train journey, then a 15 minute walk before i can sit down and not move. and even when i sit down i have to turn on the hot water so i can have a bath, and start thinking about dinner. and even after that i have to unpack, wash a weeks worth of dirty clothes and call my parents to let them know i have got back ok. life is relentless.

will write more when i haven't just landed from an 11 hour flight.

two years

from a situation beyond my control comes an opportunity to return back to england. today is two years to the very day that i landed in kansai airport. this is the first time i will have been back since. it's enough to makes my mouth feel dry.

things change in two years. barry was still alive in eastenders when i left. kylie was well. beckham was still holy. suicide bombers were from other countries. there was no krispy creme in victoria station. abi was still only a nurse john was going out with. southampton were still in the premiership. johnny cash was still alive. closing time was still 11pm.

i wonder if things will really be that different. the neighborhood will look the same i guess. the people a little rounder. things may initially be the same. vices will be the same: they never change.

if you uncork it, it is impossible to return the cork to the bottle. something happens to it. the chemicals evolve and mutate as soon as they touch the air. the inside changes and starts an irreversible process toward decay. you must drink it or else it is wasted. it's in a constant state of disrepair.

i can imagine landing in london and feeling like it's a different country. "my senses will be stripped as i stumble. the sun will shine and i will be blind."


post script

if you want to meet up, or want more info: email me.

it's not all darkness

am reading king lear again. favorite line so far: "An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star."


dvds i have seen.

mean girls: it's like heathers for disney. some good lines ("she's like, an axe wound" "you smell like a baby prostitute") and people being hit by buses. best thing about it was kevin g.
dodgeball: men being hit by things. it's just funny. even the same dodgeball in the nuts joke, repeated several times, is funny. vince vaughn could be the new bill murry if he was uglier.
live forever: britpop. yes it was important. it needs better representation than this. the guys from wonderwall should write a sitcom.
far from heaven: very visual: the colours burst like pale paint over the trees and building. the actors look like statues that are unable to move too quickly. it has one of the best director commentaries i have ever seen. todd hayes is a passionate clever guy. he's prepared quotes from douglas sirk and overloads the commentary with them.

books i have read.

past mortem - ben elton: problem is: it's too predictable and all the characters sound the same. they all sound like ben elton. can't he just give all the jokes to one character, who would obviously be the ben elton character? and despite myself, i still find him funny. and despite his heavy clefts at critique, he has a point. and it's too graphic. but i couldn't stop reading. maybe it was because it was set in london.

aliens

saw war of the worlds. not as good as the book. the film lacked a climax. tom cruise should have walked away like john wayne in the searchers. spielburg should have stolen from ford. i want to talk about the ending.





**********SPOILER WARNING**********


the son should have died. chicken shit spielburg.


*********END*********





you must be tired of living

my life in a nutshell: work five days a week. i teach english in japan. i teach 8 lessons a day. sometimes i start at 10am. sometimes i finish at 9pm. i live alone in a one bedroomed apartment. it overlooks a carpark. there are 2 vending machines stationed outside. i don't know my neighbours. i know no-one living in a 2 mile radius. i have books. books piled under my tv and on top of my stereo. books are in my closet and all around my shelves. they lie under my bed. i have a dvd player. i have cds. i have an air conditioner which was new when i moved in, but now has mould growing inside it. it's not like mould as in mouldy bread, it's mould, like the mould that will survive nuclear bombardment from north korea.

i have a kitchen which is the size of a large telephone box. i have one hotplate which i use to cook everything except rice. i have a rice cook sitting on top of a microwave. i have a 5 kilo bag of rice. i have 500g of pasta. i have 2 tins of tuna. i have 3 frozen chicken breasts in my grey freezer. i have scratches on my wooden floor that weren't there two years ago. i have tea stains on the wall. i have dusty magazines. i have a dirty balcony and 2 empty pots full of dirt. i have 2 sets of knives and fork which i stole from continental airlines. i have a bed. i have bedsheets. i have a pillow.

i have a mobile phone. i have no new messages. i have no way to check my emails. i have no idea what to do next. i haven't spoken to anyone in ages. i have an inkling. i have darkness at the break of dawn. i have all the light in the world.

i have nothing to say. i have nothing to type. i tried hitch hiking recently. no-one stopped for me. says it all really.

wise up

saw magnolia. for the first 2 hours i thought it was going to be one of the best films i had ever seen. then it went on for another hour. the stories had already climaxed and we were ready to go to bed. instead i had to wait for more random peaks in the story that i no long gave a crap about. everyone was great in it, especially tom cruise and william h macy.

saw mulholland drive. 2 nice, very ample scenes. no i bando.

saw requiem for a dream. ellen burstyn is a marvel. watching her is like watching butter melt in a hot pan. the dvd also had an interview with hubert selby jr. he talks like a wired crazy old man.

read write away by elizabeth george. it's about writing a novel. the best bit in it is a direct quote of richard II: the beginning soliloquy.

read wind in the willows by kenneth grahame. had to read certain parts again because i couldn't imagine certain parts of it. i need an illustrated dictionary to british wildlife.


the man with the wooden hands

"there's a man i used to know, a big man with wooden hands and arms. he was already old when i met him. he already lived most of his life, and had stories to tell about every aspect of it. he was always joking and laughing; telling blue jokes regardless of who was listening and sometime to no one at all. i would hear him in the garden laughing at his own joke, with no-one but the trees.

this man is the type of man everyone looked up to. they asked him for advice, and he gave it. they asked of his blessing for they knew it would bring good luck. the man with the wooden hands would be generous with his time and blessing. and he continued to laugh, and make jokes for now. his wooden hands were used for growing fruit and vegetables. used for digging, planting and picking. his wooden hands would get muddy and i would have to wash them for him. the brown water would run as he told another joke. at that time i was too young to really understand them.

as i grew up, the man with the wooden hands remained the same. i ate the fruit and vegetables he nurtured and harvested and grew tall. soon i was tall enough to leave home. he said that i should leave home and become a man. he gave me his blessing and i left home to the sounds of his jokes.

as i wandered the highways, the laugher followed me. it was in the trees. it was in the food i ate. i told his jokes to others and they laughed. i never told them where i got it from. as i became a man i met other people. they started to talk and the laugher began to drown out. i could hear it if i stretched. it became a murmur in the leaves. as the years passed the laughter decreased, as i became more and more of a man. i forgot about his jokes, except in moments of extreme joy or sadness. i would always worry that i would someday forget him. everything about the man with the wooden hands would vanish to dust. but i had to be a man, so i kept on moving on, until the trees didn't look like any i had ever seen before. i stopped growing the day i left home, but i never stopped moving.

then i got a letter the other day. the man with the wooden hands is dying. he has stopped joking and laughing. everyone gathers around him as he lays in bed. i can't see him from where i am. i want to see him, but i don't know if i can. the trees are in pain as it eats them up from the inside. it's an unstoppable force that lives in everyone. the man with the wooden hands."

london bombs

it was 2 weeks ago that it happened. people keep saying it's a different place to where i left, and it will be even more so now i guess.

i've never had any experience of death. none of my close family have ever died, nor close friends or colleagues. i've never been to a funeral. as people were being killed on the streets and on the tube all those days ago, i didn't even comprehend what was going on. the bus with the roof torn off and the dark pictures of the train carriages didn't connect with death or people being hurt. it didn't occur to me even when i saw people with injuries talk to the cameras, or the first casualties to reach hospitals. i watched it unfold like a slow book, like an inert member of a passive audience. it took me a while to realise that my friends and family live in london, and anyone one of them could have been caught up.

when i was living in london, terrorist attacks were always expected. i wouldn't say a climate of fear, but a sense of eventuallity. everytime the train was stuck in a tunnel for a little bit longer that it usually is. during the ricin and anthrax period, i'd always look up from the paper if more that 2 people started coughing heavily. the tube was always the place that was expected to be hit.

people say that cities are lonely places, where people ignore a body on the street or a person in peril. well, at least that has been proved wrong, if it only was for one day. see, we are all human after all.

luckily everyone i know are ok, though some sound like they were pretty close to it. it really is a different world.