The Dreams We've Become Accustomed to by Now

Last night I dreamt about my best friend, someone I haven't seen for over a year. It was one of the most vivd dreams I have had since living in Japan, since having my thoughts scattered in a pool of characters, words, languages, goodness, awkwardness, friendliness, and, in the deepest, most tenebrous layer of sediment, guiltiness. For everything I feel, guilt. If I feel guilty for feeling guilty, it is wrotten. If I ignore what I feel as an inherent weakness of character, there is guilt.

Yesterday, my brother (Jaime has finally arrived, hooray!) and I scooted out to the Kada district of Wakayama, a very beautiful and quiet little port region on the most northwesterly corner of Wakayama City (and Prefecture). We visited Awashima Shrine, a shrine famous for its Hina Matsuri (Doll Festival). I took some wonderful pictures, my most favorite being the ones of a highly populated tanuki corner--a corner devoted to these Japanese racoon-like creatures, adorned with about 100-200 tanuki of diverse shapes and sizes (and testicle size). The sky was clear, the breeze was gentle, and all was peaceful.

Even after a day like this, I still feel guilty for something that is becoming less and less palpable and real. Maybe as we grow old, we start making stuff up to feel guilty for, just as many people make up things or reasons to be afraid of something or someone else.

Next week, Sumo wrestling, touring of Kansai, and a lot of food and drink. I will be blogging less until after the April Fool's Day. But according to the rows of 0s on my site meter (interrupted by a rare 1--once in the morning, once at night), this will not concern a great number of (non-existent) readers.

Warm Rain

I always forget how warm rain feels. Every year it takes so long to come back full circle to this brief lapse between winter and spring, when it is sunny, rainy, warm, cloudy, cool, and what not all in a brief succession of a few days. Sunday is the vernal equinox, and my brother arrives on that day. I wondered about some things this morning-- problems about Kanji and translating poems, the depth of my future looking like the surface of a waveless sea--it could be a few meters deep, or perhaps it has no floor; about interesting things and those mundane, about a poem called "Spring" by Tanikawa Shuntaro, and now I am thinking about using more words to depict an experience that is growing less and less verbal each day.

Forward March

"The turmoil of an earlier era has been replaced by a sad and rootless anomie." from Erich Schlosser's Fast Food Nation

As March moves along ever so briskly, it has taken far too long for to recover from a cold. More iyokan--a sour mikan that Japanese harvest and eat during winter. And this week, no classes, no conversations with teachers, no energy to do much besides read and fall asleep. Every page of Schlosser's Fast Food Nation adds to the disorienting realizations that have flourished recently with an acuity more potent than the even most colorful grove of sakura. In the long run, one may forget the most important parts of the book, retaining a few random details and a vague shape of its lurid contents. But now, the question does not demand what to say, but what to do. When hunger strikes fifteen minutes before boarding the train, the fastest hot lunch in the vicinity of the station being a double cheeseburger setto-: "What do I do?"

Lately the prose on mujoukan.blogspot.com has suffered a gradual but consistent desiccation of logical, grammatical, and rhetorical forms. The author of this blog has produced no convincing signs of life, has failed to to enable any experience to speak, to report things as they are on the blue guitar. Is it sad or selfish, that the author writes to himself? No. But to rage against the dying of the light, that is another task which a journal is certainly capable of, but for the sake of which this blog has foundered in progress. That is ok. There is nothing wrong with meek, flimsy writing, at least not if it is for sale.

Reminded of my hunger, time for the sanctimonious bento break--the most cherished link on the daily chain of habit.

Spring

Let's see...what is there to remark on in my life after a brief lapse in blogging...last Saturday I hiked 30km on the Kumano Ancient Road--a group of mountain trails that links important shrines in the (miraculously) dense, beautiful forests of the Kii mountain range (Wakayama once being known as the Kii 紀伊 region). The next morning I was barely able to walk, but experienced a flury of reminiscences--both from early childhood and adolescence. Next, well I woke up Monday morning with a terrible cold--the sweats, the shakes, a knife cutting into my throat as I attempt a swallow, first some sniffles, now a torrent of snot from both nostrils, coughing, wheezing, dizziness, etc. I have been taking Japanese cold medicine, which seems to be about as effective as consuming three dead ladybugs with a glass of water after every meal. Other than that, well...

...I started reading "Fast Food Nation."....I have no classes at school this week...I talked to my mom on the phone last night...my window cracked again due to the temperature difference between outside and inside...I watched a Beat Takeshi film, Kikujiro no Natsu, last night...I have thought about all types of things lately, but they are swimming in a fogginess that is most likely a cold symptom and not something deeper...nothing metaphysically pressing I might say...or may I?...who knows...yes, beloved WHO...