March 2012
47 posts
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Leaving
paris.
it is perhaps telling that the prevailing smell in this city the last few days has not been of baguettes being pulled fresh from an oven, or meat cooked to perfection, or even the acrid wafts of cigarette smoke, but instead, of piss.
smell ya later paris.
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sick
again.
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paris: first impressions (again)
so much bread.
so many white people.
so many french people.
so much old stuff.
so many kebabs.
so many bad haircuts.
so much wine.
so many kinds of bad strong beer.
so many smokers.
so much brick.
lots of dude style.
tons of boots.
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leaving asia
i’m currently sitting inside of a coffee shop at an airport lying an hour outside the mess that is kuala lumpur. earlier today on the bus ride from singapore rain came down in sheets and pounded against the windows with a force that not even wipers could really do much against. typical of this area though it was passing, and the while the majority of the day has been spent sitting inside...
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saturday night
last night i got drunk on a bridge with two english dudes working in dubai.
they spoke about expensive cars, expansive deserts, and camel meat tasting like beef.
a couple of french kids slurred their words on steps by the water, drinking from plastic water bottles filled with brown liquid.
in a cab the driver tells me he grew up in new york, seventeen years spent in brooklyn, 1972 to 1989.
at...
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an exit
my last night in japan, i ate chinese food in tokyo. fried rice, liver and sprouts, dumplings and yakisoba. it was delicious. i drank beer in the street and put the can under a light. i said goodbye to the city and the country and the year i spent wrapped up there and got on the subway leaving for the airport.
the plane left around midnight, it was larger than i expected. my previous flights on...
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singapore
it’s hot here.
i’m reminded of thailand, but without all the poor.
on the bus in, i saw a couple of enormous buildings with another building laying sideways on top of them all.
this place is weird.
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tomorrow night
tomorrow around midnight i’ll board a plane flying to kuala lumpur and leave behind a year in japan. living places for a specified piece of time is strange in many ways, one of which is the ability for an almost scheduled sense of retrospection.
this isn’t always afforded yearly because things don’t drastically change that much. of course this is a generalization, people get...
in tokyo
on the floor of a friend’s apartment.
with all my belongings in a bag next to me.
here’s to life friends.
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another year
last day in the city i’ve been living and working in for the last year.
it’s foggy and grey outside, a rain has just begun to fall.
the clothes and little things i have left with me pile on the ground, stacking against the large pack they’ll be placed inside soon.
my cabinets are bare, walls cleaned of pictures.
this computer sits alone on an empty desk, hangers in the closet...
last day of work in japan
and i’m as hungover as i’ve ever been,
wearing a suit,
in the rain.
if there is a snapshot of my life, this is it.
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thinking of work
A brief storm blew the earth clean. There was much to do: sun to put up, clouds to put out, blue to install, limbs to remove, grass to implant. (The grass failed. We ordered new grass.) A limb had cracked in half in the short storm, short with its feeling. We saw its innards, all the hollow places. Something flew out of the window and then the window flew out of the window.
-james shae
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the cemetery at the point
we walk from your house on talbot to the cemetery at the end of the point. white and naval, a thousand and more crosses are scattered through the hills. they slope gently down the side towards the rushing ocean. they’re in lanes neat enough to have put there with a ruler. they probably were.
on the way up, past the university you still attend, we pass to-scale models of large navy warships,...
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san francisco, two thousand nine
a block or two away is brainwash cafe, a laundromat/cafe/bar that serves coffee in pint glasses that badly burn the overeager hand. while waiting for your wash to finish you can play shitty video games, eat a sandwich, or have a beer.
i walk there some mornings, no laundry to be done. it’s the closest place you can get coffee to go but more often than not i skip the coffee and get a pbr....
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soon
next week is my last of work here in japan.
i’ve been telling my after school classes this week that we only have one more lesson.
some are children, and barely understand.
some are teenagers, couldn’t give a shit.
some are adults who have had many teachers before and will have many teachers after.
some however, tell me that i will be missed and say thank you.
.
thank you.
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spring storm
The sky has given over its bitterness. Out of the dark change all day long rain falls and falls as if it would never end. Still the snow keeps its hold on the ground. But water, water from a thousand runnels! It collects swiftly, dappled with black cuts a way for itself through green ice in the gutters. Drop after drop it falls from the withered grass-stems of the overhanging...
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the thinker as poet
When the early morning light quietly grows above the mountains….
The world’s darkening never reaches to the light of Being.
We are too late for the gods and too early for Being. Being’s poem, just begun, is man.
To head toward a star—this only.
To think is to confine yourself to a single thought that one day stands still like a star in the world’s sky.
-martin heidegger, 1947
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you won’t - who knew.
more music goodness.
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home.
saturday night, cleaning out my apartment. finding things that i brought from thailand and stashed in the closet never to look at again. nikon boxes that i can’t bring myself to throw away and so will break them down and pack them up and ship them to northern california. there is a small mountain of photographs that has been slowly built upon in the last years, on paper and in my hand. there...
the lumineers - hey ho