10 Virginia Lane.

Urgent

The flit-moth, distracted

A metropolis of lights

Delights

So many to tempt

Too many to taste

Lay waste

Ravished in an hour

Left to wilt

These cities, charred skeletal

A winter, nuclear, for fifty years

Ash rain to fall what followed

Our first chemical burn.

And the others? All those others

Feed and flicker by the lick of light

Of a low wick flame

Kissing the peeling walls

Tentative, exploratory

Tender kisses, each for a streak

Of cracked wall paint and plaster

A wrinkle of character

For these observing walls

Watching all, feeling keenly

Every cry and whisper

Surprises them.

Every flit-moth born - by the day

Winding their way through the windowpane

Attracted by - their delight

The swinging bulb light

Single strung, wire to ceiling

Surprised. Why?

For every temporary resident of this room

Derives their wonder

(That old, familiar feeling)

As if it was theirs alone

To feel for the first time.

New - and never known again.

in just this way.

"'But what are we doing? We're talking.'

'Still,' said Hatsue. 'you're not Japanese. And I'm alone with you.'

'It doesn't matter,' answered Ishmael.

They lay beside each other in the cedar tree talking until half an hour had gone by. Then, once again, they kissed. They felt comfortable kissing inside the tree, and they kissed for another half an hour. With the rain falling outside and the moss softly under him Ishmael shut his eyes and breathed the smell of her fully in through his nostrils. He told himself he had never felt so happy, and he felt a sort of ache that this was happening and would never again happen in just this way no matter how long he lived."

- Snow Falling on Cedars, David Gutterson.

Where does the line lie between telling yourself how you feel, and feeling? I wonder that from time to time, as I think thoughts I never thought I'd allow, say mellow truisms to suit the circumstance and company, let the world flow by, and me in it, a leaf in the stream to the sea. Alike, in almost every way, with the full forest of falling leaves losing themselves to the river tides. Is it humility to feel this way? Or resignation?

Snow Falling on Cedars is a story of so much love, aching love, from a very teenage affair between an American boy and Japanese-American girl. The seductively forbidden kind which flared bright and burned deep. As a man, he returns to his hometown to cover the trial of his lover's Japanese husband, accused of murder. The novel traces, ever so delicately, his regrets and untidy longings. He questions whether his feelings were ever real or true. Certainly, there's nothing left for either of them to pursue in this life. She's loyal to her husband, and more loyal to her sense of being Japanese - a point sharpened by years in an American internment camp during WWII.

I guess in this reading - it's really just a skim-read over a book which I read and left years ago, unimpressed at the time with its plain language style and subdued descriptions - those are themes that stood clear. What is real? What do you do because you feel you need to? And where does right and morality come into all of this?

If anyone was to ever ask me why I work so hard, so relentlessly, in so many directions, I would probably tell them, 'To buy freedom.' It's a capitalist world we live in, cold and contractual. I know the world doesn't have to be this way, but for now, it is, and we have to abide by its framework of laws. You need money to buy comfort - a home, clothes, food, travel, free time. You exchange your time and skills for money. And if you're shrewd, strategic, and very lucky, you might build a business, write a book, make a film, which allow you more choice - freer time, endeavours to enjoy - like work, but better. And at some point, you could choose to exit completely - do your Dharma Bums mountain watch. That's where I sense, under the day-to-day muddle of doing, I'll understand the truths that elude me. Painful, honest, obscure, elegant. And maybe I'll wring art from the experience. Or maybe become something else, someone else I never imagined.

Just as I have today.

You lose, you gain. Nothing stays the same. It is merely energy, transmuted. Still, it aches. 

You Shall Know Our Velocity

"Not the first world," says Annette, "the world we are from, not the second or third world, so many people treading water. This is different. The fourth world is voluntary. It is quick, small steps from the other worlds ... Everyone is sleeping and we are here, in the sea. That is the fourth world. The fourth world is present and available. It's this close."

- You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers.

After watching Where the Wild Things Are and Away We Go, I'm reading the screenwriters' first works - his novel and autobiography. I love it. I haven't been MOVED by writing - the act of or reading - for so long, the air around me felt thin for it. Now I can feel it. That irrational, urgent desire to scribble until you kick up gold from the dust. I'm envious of Dave Eggers (though according to the Salon.com articles I've been reading, this is hardly a unique response) - he's fearless to the point of egoistic. It reminds me of Jack Kerouac's philosophy of writing - don't look back, assume everything you write is inspired.

Though Haruki Murakami sees it differently. As a steady whittling, carving a work of art by your will, your patience, by sheer stubborness alone. Elemental forces as the wind on a cliff face. He compared it to marathon running, quoting a famous Japanese marathon runner who said:

Pain is necessary. Suffering is optional.

Just my thoughts of the day. And that passage from You Shall Know Our Velocity. Is it just a spoilt, second-gen immigrant way of feeling? That you are free - free, that is, in the sense that you reject traditional 'treading water' ways of being so you can be instead a volunteer periphery dweller. At best, the latter day equivalent of a Taoist immortal hermit, living in the Wu-Tang mountains. At worst, a huge cock-up of life's opportunities deliberately missed.

Oh well, whatever, nevermind.

we goes with the prose

I have been avoiding this post for a month or so. As part of a regular full-scale retreat, from the world, from my mire of contradictory desires pulling me apart, to opposing poles. So thin I've been clinging to the bare bones routine of workdays - work, sleep, and nothing, nothing. Television. Magazines. Nothing of substance. Nothing that might actually cause me to think.

There was just so much noise in my head.

All of it whispered, sneered, pitied me with the same accusation : failure. I'd convinced myself I was somehow immune to the whole concept of failure. By upbringing, by character, by determination, by luck - mostly luck - I was simply meant to be something big. An incredibly indeterminable something, but a big one.

Which is all very vain, typical and young, I know. My middle-aged colleague (let's face it, when you wander into academia at 23, everyone is your parents' age. Plus five years or so) found out I had a highly romantic literary streak and shared love of 20th century history (it's like watching an action movie, but you feel very highbrow)...so he gave me a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I don't know why it offended me at the time. Probably because I fell right into the whole 'mystical conception of destiny' belief. Maybe that's a Gen Y view of life: Go, Be, Better! You can do anything! Go be everything! (OK, my flawed interpretation, yes.)

The quote was this:

“...... Premature success gives one an almost mystical conception of destiny as opposed to willpower – at its worst the Napoleonic delusion. The man who arrives young believes that he exercises his will because his star is shining. The man who only asserts himself at thirty has a balanced idea of what will-power & fate have each contributed, the one who gets there at forty is liable to put the emphasis on will-power alone .... The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.”

Well, at least I'm romantic.

Here, I should clarify. To classify the last year as a failure is a bit of an insult. It's like watching Madonna whine about being barred from adopting another Malawi kid - it's ridiculous, self-centred, and almost embarassing. So I feel a little ridiculous, self-centred and embarassed to admit that I could be anything less than totally assured of my own grand vision, replete with a five, ten and fifteen year goal-set plan of attack. Actually, the thought of long-term plans makes me claustrophobic sick. Shh.

So I feel a bit lost. My jobs finish up end next February, and from there, I could go well, almost anywhere. I could recklessly spin the globe, choose a spot, take a plane and spend my savings dry. (Yes, this involves the least planning and as such, is the most appealing.) My brief stint in NYC was a total giddy love plunge, but I have a feeling the halcyon glow might dim a little if I had to actually work there. Perhaps I'll take on an internship somewhere. Like, this international development online magazine, development industry resource site...thing...is offering a journalism fellowship for its offices in TOKYO and WASHINGTON. (tokyo, my choice, obviously.) That could be fun. Learn Japanese. Live in a cubicle. Run through the Imperial Palace Gardens. OK. Maybe I need to grow up and stop choosing jobs on the overriding criteria of amusement/interest/fun. (This is what happens when you have no financial responsibilities whatsoever, and a sensibly growing truckload of savings.) Maybe I should get a serious job worthy of all those years (and dollar bills) spent on study. There's a reporter job at LexisNexis now. That seems like a sensible option. I mean, don't I want a clean, impressive, chic Pyrmont apartment filled with Ikea furniture? Don't I want to fill my life with stuff, with success, with my 2br/1bth contribution to humanity, with coffee table books of naked Greek statues from the Medici era? How else am I going to unravel at age 30 and live out my schizophrenic Fight Club fantasies? (See, there is a plan here.) Hell, maybe I should join the circus.

See: here's the rub. I like my squeaky impressive track record, my unblemished professional CV, my smooth-sailing personal life. I don't want to make a mess.

I suspect though, that life's in the mess.

And I bet that's where the fun is, anyway.

An American Ramble.

Why read?

For no reason at all
The simple, useless pleasure
Of a world unfolding
Layered thin & light
Like so many crisp Fall leaves

Watch each as they lift
That vital dusk gust
As if a dancer's offer, a hand
To waltz a swan song circle to the forest floor.
This Park though, is an echo
Of a wilderness Ramble
Lost long ago to looming towers, steel, glass

And subways! So old! Smeared greasy dirty
Thunderous, clanky like a fall-apart toy
Filled with miniature toy people, mad people
Business people, touring people, student people
Uncivilised - and damn proud.

Every subway is marked by green bulb lamp posts
Every neighbourhood looks like Sesame Street.
Pedestrians disappear into the dark by these posts
Like well dressed British moles.

Everybody has loved this city, but it's a Mormon lover
It can have another!

And I - well I
Delight in shotgun marriage impulse
Is there any way to be more American?

We could contemplate Buddhist scripture over Fifth Ave brunch
(The King, Not Content Until All Questions Found Answers)
We could laze at the Met
We could sit by the teen girl and her friends at Times Square as she compliments each passing pedestrian sing-song (Saturday night, for an hour.)
We could catch a show, catch a bite, catch a ferry (to Staten Island, free)
We could never sit still.

Don't you know though,
the answer is obvious.

You need a hot dog.
Ketchup. Mustard.
Go on. Get lost.

I turn my camera on.

I turn my camera on.

Nerve ends - nude

Flickering electric

Meeting - fleeting

Anonymous

As the sea

Grey and blue and

Ever so deep.

I make films

You said to me

Really.

The kind, you said, nobody sees.

(By the street red stoplight

You - new to this city

So this city was me.)

Come over

My kino-eye

Take what you will.

For your red light

Darkroom.

For my pen-slicked

Bare page.

...

Ah, tis a damn good song...

Love is as good as Soma, baby.

The Soma Cafe
Hangs deep in cigarette smoke
Everyone puffs
But me.

The clean gaijin
Asking, 'What do you love most - Tokyo?'
Most at ease
Posing questions
Gauging wisdoms

Strung thin and measured
Treasured
Single lines for the safehouse.

"I've seen the light and dark - "
(Takeshi, the DJ delivery guy
Who gave us chilli sake)
"Light and dark, and I
(you know)
Love them both.
In this city.
Tokyo."

Slipstreet lost
The Soma Cafe
Like love and wisdom
Hidden.

...

In other words...
"Do you really want to know
How they live in Toky-ooo
If you seen it, then you mean it
Then you know you have to go!!

FAST AND FURIOUS!!"

...

Take it from the guy who photographs the city...from an emergency staircase.