Unholy hour

Tokyo, 2am. Dark and silent. The devil, your conscience, brings you to. He runs through the plan with you one more time, then you begin to rise from your bed. You're careful not to disturb sleeping beauty beside you. You zip up your jeans, pull on a t-shirt and head down to the garage. The key slots into the ignition...it's been a while. Your rust-ridden Yamaha shudders like a sick child, angry at you for waking it in this unholy hour. You chug on through deserted streets, the odd stream of light trailing off in the distance, some late-night workers sit slurping ramen in an off-beat noodle bar. The air is muggy and hot. It's a twenty minute ride to the riverbank and you're thinking "is this pile of crap gonna hold out?"...it does. The riverbank is pitch black. You turn off the engine and roll down to the water's edge. The moon watches you from above. A few birds flutter off to the right, disturbed by your presence. Mild fear gnaws at your stomach. "So this is it" you say in a low voice, "the moment of truth". You edge the bike over the concrete wall, the water below is placid and deep. You make one last check, and you let go. The water swells and swallows the rusty bike with a large gulp, bubbles rise and pop at the surface. You step back, light a cigarette and begin the long journey home.

One cliché begets another

When you think of Japan what is the first thing that comes to mind? One undisputed cliché, besides the slivers of raw fish, the kinky graphic novels, the ultra kitsch fads, the giggling school girls with mobile phones, the group photo ops where index and middle fingers are forced apart like scissors, the reams of electonic gadgets, the men in white gloves, the crammed-in-like-sardines trains, the lunar-landing module sleeping arrangements and the fanatic work ethic, is Mt. Fuji. What is a cliché? The mind's embroidering on the image of something we have never seen first hand. Whether the cliché exists at all or whether the fantasy we project is in any way close to the reality is not something I'm concerned with here. The Mt. Fuji of my mind was very real and very clear, and if I grew too old and wrinkled to fantasize anymore, she was the place I wanted to curl up and die in. She was quasi-perfection, reified beyond the realm of the living world, her long white hair floating with the clouds, her tender curves cushioning the landscape for miles around - she was a sacred summit that only the gods and the most worthy of earth dwellers could attend. But I saw blasphemy through representation one day: my beloved Fuji, sullied on the side of a derelict warehouse, morose like an outcast-being without reason to live. Tears and mascara dripped from a pale visage, listless and weak. Alas...Fuji was no longer the goddess she once used to be. So I moved on, I was forced to, no matter how hardious the rift may have been...now I have a new dream: to walk in among the sycamore trees that line the plains of Israel.

Surreptitious Snakes

A snake decided to pay me a visit this afternoon, impropmtu to say the least. I was expecting the odd sparrow, possibly a crow or two but a long, black slithering snake had not been on the agenda. I'm still not certain what business he had with me, was it amicable or hostile? I think it was a 'he', the flanking maneuver he executed smacked of masculine fourberie. Though the female snake is known to be most cunning too. In the Chinese folktale "Baishe Zhuan" (The Story of Madam White Snake):

"A young man encountered a beautiful maiden attended by a maid during a festive outing near a lake. He followed her and was invited to her fine mansion outside the city, where he dined and stayed overnight. After that one-night stand, the young man became visibly emasculated, his vital essence being slowly drained. The suspicion that he had been bewitched was confirmed by a revisit to the mansion-in reality, a graveyard. A Taoist was called in to perform an exorcism, and, sure enough, a white snake and an otter were driven out. Upon this skeleton, though, other elements were soon added to give it flesh and substance."

(Whalen Lai, From folklore to literate theater: unpacking 'Madame White Snake'Asian Folklore Studies Vol.51 No.1 April 1992 pp.51-66)

There was no beautiful maiden hiding in this snake and she certainly didn't invite me to her mansion outside the city, well not that I know of anyway. When I first caught site of the intruding reptile I think the eyes of my heart popped out and the remnants of a childhood phobia, the roots of which lie in tales from a next-door neighbour's twisted imagination and that 'snakepit' scene in Indiana Jones, re-surfaced and propmted my brain to administer a rather large dose of adrenaline in my bloodstream. Like a jack-in-the-box, I sprang up from my pic-nic rug, bundled my things and hurried to a safe distance. Once some level of composure returned, I mustered the courage to follow the scaly beast and snap its picture, which I give to you here. I remain straddled over an unabated divide when it comes to snakes: on one side there is fear; childish and squeamish fear pouring from an emotional tap. On the other side is awe and respect, acknowledgement of the fact that humans are not always feared in the animal world.

Black holes in the beach

Black holes in the beach - oh the beach! Where boys and girls with buckets and spades, sandcastles and popsicles, frolicked in the sun. Where men fell pray to copper hornets, zooming by - front, back and sides - until the poison struck and the beaches receded to nothing but I...And then there's her. Her with the white snarling teeth, and that ocean jaw. She's cunning, oh beautiful in her cunning ways! She simmers like bubbling broth, flat lid tingling on the back burner. Softly, calmly, her ripples lap at the land like the cat's tongue in milk. But do not let her halcyon ways hoodwink your wavering eye, because beneath her deep blue shroud, she has you locked in her sight, eye to the scope, finger at the ready - her fixation and a steady flow of saliva form the white froth I call l'écume du jour - she will devour us all one day! Oh yes, make no mistake, she will be most unforgiving in that regard. "Build the defences" I hear you cry. And why not? We have become masters of fortification, and not to forget that the beach itself is a natural line of defence, a noble buffer, strong at heart, though one who is not unaccustomed to defeat. Trenches, walls, barricades and blockades: they are the likely candidates to keep her at bay, but they all share the same vulnerability: time - all things crumble and fall in time. So I say put down the bricks and mortar and lay your trowels to rest, and since time will not be defeated let us go in the direction that time is taking us: build a boat. A mighty vessel that spans two continents in breadth but floats lighter than a cork in a sink - a 'Contintental Ark'! And what the great ocean takes from us in land, we shall claim back in sea!

Always & the beginning

In the beginning there was always, which this new blog belongs to, and which makes it part of the beginning. The face(s) to my left are one of the many illustrations of what always can be: indistinct and repeatable to inifinity/intricate and precise to a split atomic level. I once sat next to a Japanese transvestite called Saori, drinking vodka and lime in a bar. Saori's face was indistinct and precise just like the picture. Perhaps she/he was the embodiment of always. I cannot tell at this point. In any case I welcome you errant wayfarers to this new blog here of mine...whilst at the same time I am wondering, secretly, what you might be doing here...