either I'm getting smarter about how to travel out of the country or I'm getting mellow with relative age. I can't remember the last time I planned something to death and it all fell through, only to find that what is happening is much more enjoyable than the alternate. I certainly did not plan on editing the short application from the director of the Hagi museum to have his town accepted as a cultural treasure. I did not invite myself to macha tea in the tiny tin shack of the keepers of some obscure temple.
I can't anticipate talking about "god" with a yellow-fingered acid freak at the epicenter of the bomb blast in Nagasaki, 
nor happily suffering a crush the night before on the shark sent to me by the bar-maid to play out a few rounds of billiards. No amount of cajoling or subtlety could get my college friend in Kyoto
to guess his travel budget three months ago so I had a clue of how far we would venture together or for how long. nor could a simple sentence reveal his state of mind at this time, so different from the tattered hat under which he found himself the last time I saw him. And I could not guess that I would find such kindness in the hands of one couchsurfing host in Tokyo, and dislike the other as much as I did. I did not expect to spend such a lusciously large portion of my time here meeting new people of all colors and creeds, relaxing with them
, eating, enjoying more, and again, invitations unfolding like so many wrappings on the secret contents of bento
boxes on the super-fast trains that I take from Kyoto to everywhere.
Japan is not all that beautiful in winter. The heavy lines of all those roof tiles, the stubble of fallow fields, the milky gray pollution, 
the pallid, ubiquitous concrete. at least the weather has been kind to me. 
sun in Tokyo and many days besides. only in Hagi was my umbrella blasted inside-out. only today, december 26, are my hands so cold as they grip the handlebars of a bicycle that I feel sure that I must stop or they will fall off. But here we are, warm among friends at Christmas. 
The dessert selection says it all- marzipan from Barcelona, rum balls from Isaac's mom in Minnesota, intense fruit cake to impress the Brit, macha suger-bombs, dutch licorice, a soft tiramisueish custard from the neighborhood baker..
I have seen many amazing ceramics, of course.
even though I end up in Hagi on a monday (museums closed), and the two around here that I most want to see are in winter renovation... bah-... but my eye is not so finely tined as to see a difference between museum quality and the kind that sells at high-end antique shops. it's still not my personal aesthetic inspiration, but my appreciation expands.. Not to mention awesome wooden creations of all sorts, boxes, tools, lacquerware, temples
, faceted glass
, silk kimono, tranquil gardens
, beautiful women (geishas in the streets!), food-art, mirror-shine wooden walkways for socks (surreptitious running and sliding), paper lanterns in the doorways, and a man who still walks through the neighborhood tapping sticks to remind people to extinguish their hearthfire in this town that has burned so many times..
the vacation I had planned started five days ago when my plane didn't take off. Pop and i had been in contact, he in Thailand, I in PDX, about the situation with the rebels in the Bangkok airport- they took it over to protest the puppet government of a man they had ousted a few months ago. for a week, a few ten thousand travellers were stranded trying to come or go, shipping came to a halt, millions in revenue was lost each day.
I was kind of excited for a revolution occurring in the little country that I love, until I talked to my Thai friend- it's useless, the government will just reform under a different name. He was right. and once again I am thwarted from sailing on this lovely school-ship whose construction plans beckoned from the wall of my concrete and flourescent studio in grad school as I left a term early to join the sailing journey from Thailand to France. two years later, the King's Cup off Phuket (west side): 200 sailing vessels divided into 34 classes racing each day for 5 days. Pop says come aboard. Rebels in the airport say not this time either, honey.
I went back to my studio- all tidy, no food, bills paid in advance... and opened a thick book. Dogs and Demons, by Alex Kerr, recommended to me by Mr Neely. I had asked him for a book that would clarify for me Japan's remarkably opaque culture. he said don't be scared, but here you go... it effectively debunked all assumptions I, and apparently most of the world, made about this golden string of islands. Culture in shreds, economy full steam towards the rocks, environment decimated by the cake make-up concrete. Education nationalist propaganda, borderline pedophilia, etc. Horror. He traces it through the psyche of control, militarism, and the amazing ability to shift vision away from reality (delusion, in my book)... and to give every last drop of blood to be the best. it's bitter, for sure. I devoured it with side-dishes of various periodicals.
The rebels are gone now, along with the prime minister. Pop calls me every night. they won the first two days of racing, easily, with their long waterline in heavier air (basic hydrodynamics says that the longer the waterline, the more efficiently a deep-v hull will move through water given x power input. this is different from planing hulls that don't have to cut the water but skim over it). on the third day, last night for me, he calls with a slightly quavering voice- he rolled his ankle on something loose in the navigation station, and was now pop on ice. I told him that I had managed to change my ticket and would see him in Bangkok in a few days.
In the days of my vacation in portland, I spent a delightful one making pots! what a joy! a studio just over there, six feet from where I lounge on the couch dreaming of geishas... I have all these ideas that had been shelved in the interests of dishware for the big kiln... two earthenware bottles grew out of my wheel- one more top-heavy, one low in the belly. low boy grew a pendentum out his head. she in turn, a receptacle. they leaned towards each other, soft, and indented each other. His spout hovers without giving. she can just barely stand without him. this morning I wake in the sun and wind, spend hours writing in my journal. catch the news, as ususal. and purchase two tickets. a two-week train pass on the Japan Rail line, and ticket to the place to be on new year's eve. in college I had travelled new zealand for a while before meeting an art exchange group from my college for a semester program. I flew from NZ to rarotonga, cook islands on my birthday, crossing the international date line. when I woke up, it was my birthday again. I woke up in a little cabin run by a swiss woman. the air was much thicker in the pacific jungle, and the flowers were out of control. there was an oven, and I decided to make coconut bread. I vaguely remember that the thing wasn't plugged in or some such, and I remember the bread was good. but I couldn't figure out how old I was. anyhow, for this trip, I thought the smartest thing in the world would be to party like a banshee in Tokyo on new year's eve, fly across the date line to San Fransisco, and end up here the next day, which would be new year's eve! I could have if only flights from NRT to SF left in the morning... but they don't. try to tell me that isn't brilliant- I don't think my knees could have handled that much dancing!
why would I want to be in the us when i could be in mad japan? why would I want to party with my own kind when I could have a wild unusual experience in such an amazing place as japan? believe me, the decision was long before dogs and demons... what are we really talking about here? I didn't go to a lot of raves when I was in college, but I remember one in particular- an art group had gone to chicago for the pier show, and I being the smoking self-described reject or some such rot, had collected a few of the group to go separate in my little vw fox. we wanted wheels to hit a party. we found one. chicago, south side, in the basement of a bowling alley, 1997. House was big by then but breakbeat was just finding it's ahh.. jump-track? It was hot, it was messy, it was the razor's edge. there was a fight in the girl's room, there were boys breakdancing in the back, it was grit-fabulous. I was just an overgrown girl on acid wearing someone else's wide velvet corduroy, and the lady dancing in front of me was kicking ass. Her moves were all right- not amazing except for these quick drops all the way down and up again like she was a rubber-band puppet. but she schooled me in how to go like I meant it. after she left, I danced so hard that one of the b-boys smiled and ran his finger down my sweating back as he walked away. yum.
that was my taste of the underground. there were maybe twenty of us that went till dawn- mostly jungle-style breaks. we knew each other as we passed, watched each other's smoking styles, curious at a distance about the other, but sort of not really smiling much. we obviously didn't live there, but that was all right. in the parking lot they invited us to breakfast at the diner. we couldn't hack it, got lost trying to find the interstate, got followed by some boys in a hoop till we were out of their hood, and somehow made it home. so,...what happened? an odd little community. we were outsiders invited in. I mean, we paid our five dollars but that doesn't get you IN. you're in when you give, when you appreciate what is given. you're in when you enjoy/ interact with what is so vibrantly there, whatever that means to you, just don't hit the crack pipe and blow the smoke at me as if you think you could cool me off, loser.
so, .... why do i want to party in my own country when I could be jumping around in Tokyo? both are going to be a ruckus. But I want to make some noise, and I ain't talking about my mouth. in the years since that party in chicago, I ended up at other raves, other clubs, but not often. when I saw the kids sucking on pacifiers I realized it wasn't my game anymore. MC's started babbling over the flow of my favorite drum and bass, and by then I was in the woods, later, in the also metaphorical desert state of utah (can you fucking believe they threw so much money behind the CA ban on gay marriage- oh, it just boils my blood, after all their polygamy, telling people how to live and love-rrrrrg)... thailand full moon parties were fun ...
so I moved to portland, a stray cat. hungry for love, action, movement, culture, life! give it to me now!! I'm thirty years old- and the breakbeat scene is small to non-existant in this town of ragga and teckno. not enough critical mass to support the community. community. the kids dance, sort of, they're all so much younger than me. they're into the eighties. bah! terrible. I have no interest in the revamped eighties. But Bassnectar's good energy and noncorportate nonego attitude is infective! not to mention the breaks, his lovin genius for break. and Thievery Corporation embodies a movement for social change that it so so very necessary. ...oh please, oh please, after all this searching, I want to be a part of this, I want IN, I want to give this all my wild energy. I know it's just dancing. but just try to tell me it's just dancing. tell my mangy boney body it isn't conjuring revolution.
it's my little energetic delusion. can i have one? we did it, you know. how many years have so many people fought and despaired that we were all going to hell and the big boys in charge were just going to ride us to the ground. NO! Fuck no.. let me be the crazy artist, high on love and visions of a new tomorrow. I'm ready to shed the anxiety, the attachments, the drunken despair. I'm ready to be shamelessly in love. and I know that so many people out there are right with me- I want to be in the throbbing heart of them... all of them dancing... all of them... in my tribe, my community, my country, my vision of the world. NOW! GO!
hey- look at this!
good. if anyone out there is equally interested in this exact kind of technology and knows of a company in which to invest PLEASE tell me!
either I'm getting smarter about how to travel out of the country or I'm getting mellow with relative age. I can't remember the last time I planned something to death and it all fell through, only to find that what is happening is much more enjoyable than the alternate. I certainly did not plan on editing the short application from the director of the Hagi museum to have his town accepted as a cultural treasure. I did not invite myself to macha tea in the tiny tin shack of the keepers of some obscure temple.
nor happily suffering a crush the night before on the shark sent to me by the bar-maid to play out a few rounds of billiards. 
to guess his travel budget three months ago so I had a clue of how far we would venture together or for how long. nor could a simple sentence reveal his state of mind at this time, so different from the tattered hat under which he found himself the last time I saw him. And I could not guess that I would find such kindness in the hands of one couchsurfing host in Tokyo, and dislike the other as much as I did. I did not expect to spend such a lusciously large portion of my time here meeting new people of all colors and creeds, relaxing with them
, eating, enjoying more, and again, invitations unfolding like so many wrappings on the secret contents of bento
the pallid, ubiquitous concrete. at least the weather has been kind to me. 
sun in Tokyo and many days besides. only in Hagi was my umbrella blasted inside-out. only today, december 26, are my hands so cold as they grip the handlebars of a bicycle that I feel sure that I must stop or they will fall off. But here we are, warm among friends at Christmas. 
The dessert selection says it all- marzipan from Barcelona, rum balls from Isaac's mom in Minnesota, intense fruit cake to impress the Brit, macha suger-bombs, dutch licorice, a soft tiramisueish custard from the neighborhood baker..
even though I end up in Hagi on a monday (museums closed), and the two around here that I most want to see are in winter renovation... bah-... but my eye is not so finely tined as to see a difference between museum quality and the kind that sells at high-end antique shops. it's still not my personal aesthetic inspiration, but my appreciation expands..
, faceted glass
, silk kimono, tranquil gardens
, beautiful women (geishas in the streets!), food-art, mirror-shine wooden walkways for socks (surreptitious running and sliding), paper lanterns in the doorways, and a man who still walks through the neighborhood tapping sticks to remind people to extinguish their hearthfire in this town that has burned so many times..
