Hey, so .. yeah, I still suck in terms of posting photos and, you know, documenting interesting things about Japan and my life and whatnot. That aside, I wrote up the highlights of my dream last night, and I thought I'd share them with you. It takes place in New York, to which I may or may not be going in the next couple weeks, and it is vaguely reminiscent of the DaVinci Code, or at least I imagine it might be, since I have neither read the book yet nor seen the film. Anyway, kinda trippy. And there's drumming too! Maybe I should hang on to the movie rights for this... ;) Anyway, I left out some of the juciest bits in case Hollywood comes knocking. Think "Donnie Darko" meets a highly erotic version of "Yellow Submarine", and then you're starting to get an idea of what I left out here..
Ah, and one more thing... I wrote it all in Japanese. Sorry bout that. :P But it's actually more or less understandable if you click on the Auto-Translation link to the right! I'm actually pretty impressed by the auto-translation this time.
ブルックリン：夏、夕方。橋の横でだれもいない寂しい道を歩いてる。角を曲がって、和太鼓している友達とあって、
「太鼓イベントへ行くんっすか」って聞かれて、意味分からん。
「太鼓のイベント？」
「鼓童が来るって知らんかった？めちゃ行きたいねんけどチケットだいぶ前から売り切ってダフ屋がおらんか見てみようかなと思って来た。」
「そうなん。」
彼がどっかいっちゃった。
イベントの場所にちょっと行って見て、すげー人並んでた。でも後ろにいって、知り合いのえらいクラッシク作曲者のおじさんと偶然にあって、彼が、「黙って、こっち来い」って言って、裏口まで連れて行った。
二人で、でかいオープンスタジアムのステージに入って、静かだった。でっけー太鼓はもう置いてて、こんなに近くで見るのははじめて！感動して、おじさんに「ほんまにありがとう！！」って言おうとしながら、むこうのドアのとこでサングラスかけてる人を気づいた。そして、すくいなくなった。おじさんの顔をみて、彼も気づいてた。顔真っ白だった。ちょっと震えていた。
おじさんがしずかに、「すまんない。」って言って、違うドアから逃げた。
そして、俺が上の席まで上って、かくしといた。
イベントが始まった。スタジアムとしては小さかったけど何千人が入った。太鼓のリズムが全体で感じて、心の深いパッションが起こされた。
でも何か。。。
むこうをみて、ちょっと遠かったけど、なんでか分からんけど遠眼鏡を持ってた。それで見ると、不思議な美しさの赤い帽子のかぶっているお姉さんを見た。顔がちょっと地中海けいな感じで、スムーズな唇とほそい、とげた鼻の上からミステリアスな目で太鼓を見ていた。暗くて、ほとんど白黒でしか見れんかったけど目が逸らせなかった。何でか、分からなくて、ずっと遠眼鏡で見てた。
そして、顔を向いて、直接俺を見てた。遠くて気づくはずじゃなかったのに、。。。心がドキッ！
彼女が意味のいっぱい一目で見て、そしてすぐたって、ガードに走った。なんやろうと思って、ちょっとずつパニックの気持ちが心に入ってきた。
下を見て、影のなかで何か動いてた。アドレナリンが血にどんどん流れて、走り出した！
心が大太鼓のように「ドン！ドン！ドン！」しながら観覧席の後ろから飛んで、出口まで。。。ドカン！
最後の思い出では、俺の上に黒ずくめのFBI見たいな感じのガード５人以上おった。そして。。。
。。。
どれぐらい時間がとおたか分からん。たまに起きて、暗い部屋でいろいろ聞かれてたのは確かだ。そして、外へ行って、大きいグループで周りは警察ばかりでとこか連れて歩いて行っていた。重いではほとんどぐちゃぐちゃだったけど途中で、警察のむこうからちょっとだけあのお姉さんの顔を見た。
「ごめんなさい！許してくれる？」なきそうな顔で願っていた。
「どうなるかよー分からんけど、これが終わったら、お茶しようよ」しか言う時間がなくて、すぐ逆の方にながされた。
そして大きい、ふるい建物に入って、名前の分からないえらい人が重たいデスクのうしろから、「特別な命令がきた。こいつを留め置く事が危ない。ささっと放せ！」
・・・
次の週、なんかいもその不思議な姉さんとあって、話は軽いことしか出来なかった。でもどんどん好きになってきた。次の土曜日のごご、木のいっぱいあった公園で二人でぼーとしてた。彼女が虹の色の太い紐の夏用などレスを着てて、夏のごごの金色の光が葉っぱの影の間で踊っていた。
彼女が近くに来て、「何か忘れてない？」ってきいた。今までの快くすずしい風が急に止まった。
そして彼女が倒れた。すぐ後に、俺倒れて、。。。真っ暗。
・・・
起きて、石のブロックと誇りのいっぱいあるところで起きた。目の前にクラシック作曲者のおじさんだった。
「ごめんな、もう始まっちゃった。これからあんたにはどこにも安全な居場所がない。この本をよめば、分かる。」
「え？何？」
「この世界の深い大秘密。世の中でこの本を４、５冊ぐらいしかない。全部手作り。でももう含まれているから知った方がいいと思った。」
それで、古そうな黒いレザーの本をもらった。ふとくて、やっぱり紙のページだけじゃなかった。いろいろはいっていた。
うえをみて、おじさんがもう歩いて行っていた。
「あーあの・・・」
もういなくなった。
さて、本を開けた。ページの順番めちゃくちゃだった。１－１６を呼んで、なんかチャートがあって、「１チャプターから来たら次は６０ページ。２チャプターから来たらつぎは１４２ページ」などわけの分からん事書いてた。でも頑張って読み始めた。
最初はいっぱい知らない人の名前がでてきて、なんかドイツの戦争前の歴史も書いてあったし、何かいろんな聞いた事のないヨーロッパの村の名前とか。。。一ページ、一ページ読んで、そして、次のページにポケット二つついてた。
下の大きいポケットを開けて、焼き物のガーゴイルが入ってた。上の小さいポケットをあけて。。。なんやろう。千円札ぐらいの大きさのかみだったけど、すごく細かく折っていて、いっぱい穴がなかに焼いていた。これはどう言う手掛かり？
でも考える時間がなかった。。。だれか近付いて来てた！出来るだけ静かに近くの川の方に走った。そのガーゴイルはどこかで見たことあるような気がしたな。あ、そうだ！スペインのカテドラルやった！
じゃ、次スペインに行くしかない。。。
27 June 2006
16 June 2006
Chicks dig scars
So... once again, I find myself putting off blogging again and again, waiting until I can write that perfect blog post that at once wittily conveys deep insights about life while providing thoughtful commentary on subtle differences between Japanese and Western culture. And has cool pictures.
And once again, I find myself without the time to produce such a masterpiece, and thus my blog sits unbloggen.
I think the only way to start reversing this trend is to write lots of short, quick notes and intersperse them with the aforementioned masterpieces when time allows. Or when time is forced against its will to allow. Usually involving lack of sleep. :)
Somehow inspiration to do this seems to come only when I have Japanese homework to do for the following morning. If the human race could only learn to harness the energy of procrastination and use it to do good, we would be well along the road to world peace and universal prosperity.
So, anyway, this last month had a lot of major milestones for me. One biggie was that I paid off my credit card debt that I had accumulated over two years of looking for a robotics job in Boston! That was pretty sweet.
And I got to relive that feeling of accomplishment a second time, when I got my next credit card statement with a $4 finance charge based on my average daily blah blah blah, and I paid it off once and for all, once again.
Another big milestone: My first show with Utaurara 6! We performed up in Kita-Senri, and even though we only had time to perform 2.5 songs (there were some 40 groups performing at this event!), we were received well. Now I have a big pile of sheet music to learn for this weekend, when we're going to give a little informal show here at Takanohara for some of my friends from work.
Next milestone: Not final yet, but I'm planning to submit my first academic paper this coming week. It was supposed to be two days ago, but the deadline was extended. It's not such a big conference, but this could be the first step down a new career path for me, as the engineer within me and the scientist within me wrestle for domination.
Other... hmm, I wouldn't necessarily call them milestones, but a few of my good friends left over this past month or so. Linda went home to Canada about a month ago, and David and Olivier went back to France a couple days ago. I miss them all, but especially Linda - she'd been here since I first got here a year ago, and she was sort of the last one to leave from that first circle of friends I had. She gave me a bunch of her stuff while she was moving, and it's mostly still strewn about my apartment... gotta clean up and reorganize at some point. In fact, I ate some of her umeboshi tonight for dinner. I think I ate like 4 of them, so I'm REALLY thirsty right now! I estimate that it would take approximately six umeboshi to osmose all the water out of the dead sea.
Um, what else... working on a new arrangement for Osakapella. Not sure how it's going to turn out, but it's like the blogging thing: lots of imperfect arrangements is a surer path to improvement than saving it all up for one masterpiece. Wait, I think that's the case with academic papers too. And language learning (how many Japanese people have said, "Yes, I've been studying English for 11 years, but I'm not going to speak a word until I've learned it perfectly?"). You know, sometimes I wish I could just sit down and distill out the 86 Universal Patterns in life, which would be generally applicable to everything, and then just sit back and surf out the rest of my years, knowing I had figured everything out.
Maybe I should write a book.
Then again, maybe claiming at this point that I have everything figured out is a BIT premature, considering the number of expired things in my fridge that I have to keep throwing away. I sometimes feel like I throw away more stuff than I buy, a feeling I keep repressed due to my faith in the law of conservation of mass... but yet... it's as if it's ... reproducing..? euuu... maybe something's MUCH more expired than I thought!
What else did I do this month? Hmm... camping trip at Biwa-ko. We went to the same place we went to last September. It was awesome, except that the water was freezing. Didn't stop me from swimming though. I need to live it up before the suffocating heat of summer lowers its hazy and humid fist to crush the life out of me for the next 5 months. Already I've had a couple days this year with Japanese girls nearby shivering in their long-sleeved shirts while I'm dripping sweat in a T-shirt. Sometimes it really sucks that my body temperature's set point seems to be a few degrees off from everyone around me. And sometimes... it doesn't suck at all. :) I relished the moment, frolicking about with a polar bear's glee while my evolutionarily disadvantaged friends huddled together for warmth under their furs on the shoreline.
But seasons change, and Tsuyu has come. The Rainy Season. In fact, I feel inclined to quote a haiku from one of my wonderful students at Toyonaka. I believe it went something like this:
The rainy season
We have a lot of water
The rainy season
Biking to work this morning, I started noticing how little traction I had as my bike started skidding every time I tried to stop. Slowing down to a cautious roll... (bikes can't crawl... what's the word I'm looking for here?) I was crossing a pedestrian overpass and working my way down a winding ramp, when suddenly my bike shot out from under me and I found myself in the air, then skidding along the ground, trying to decide in real time which body parts and accessories I wanted to shred, and which to try to preserve. Head... that's a good one to save. Might need it for soccer sometime. Knee... um, tough one - gotta go with that or the arm. Guess I'll sacrifice some arm to keep the legs working... I can always bike with no hands. Can't really bike with no legs. Ok, arm down. Backpack... um, I guess I'll kinda roll halfway onto my side.. ok, time's up. BANG!
Damage report: big scrape down my lower arm by the elbow and a smaller one at the heel of my palm. Minor external knee damage... a little bit of a limp, but I mostly saved the knee, I think. Bike - a few things out of alignment. iPod, fortunately safe. Plastic case holding my Japanese homework, smashed into shards. Blood running all down my arm. No serious wounds as far as I can tell, but visually quite colorful.
The secretaries in my lab came running as soon as I got into work, and they patched me up with the help of a sketchy, ancient first-aid kit (expiration date on the antibiotic ointment: 1997...? puts my fridge to shame! And why are there calcium supplements in there?) and soon I was back up and running in the frantic pace of life on the edge.
Speaking of which, I'd better get back to my homework. :P
And once again, I find myself without the time to produce such a masterpiece, and thus my blog sits unbloggen.
I think the only way to start reversing this trend is to write lots of short, quick notes and intersperse them with the aforementioned masterpieces when time allows. Or when time is forced against its will to allow. Usually involving lack of sleep. :)
Somehow inspiration to do this seems to come only when I have Japanese homework to do for the following morning. If the human race could only learn to harness the energy of procrastination and use it to do good, we would be well along the road to world peace and universal prosperity.
So, anyway, this last month had a lot of major milestones for me. One biggie was that I paid off my credit card debt that I had accumulated over two years of looking for a robotics job in Boston! That was pretty sweet.
And I got to relive that feeling of accomplishment a second time, when I got my next credit card statement with a $4 finance charge based on my average daily blah blah blah, and I paid it off once and for all, once again.
Another big milestone: My first show with Utaurara 6! We performed up in Kita-Senri, and even though we only had time to perform 2.5 songs (there were some 40 groups performing at this event!), we were received well. Now I have a big pile of sheet music to learn for this weekend, when we're going to give a little informal show here at Takanohara for some of my friends from work.
Next milestone: Not final yet, but I'm planning to submit my first academic paper this coming week. It was supposed to be two days ago, but the deadline was extended. It's not such a big conference, but this could be the first step down a new career path for me, as the engineer within me and the scientist within me wrestle for domination.
Other... hmm, I wouldn't necessarily call them milestones, but a few of my good friends left over this past month or so. Linda went home to Canada about a month ago, and David and Olivier went back to France a couple days ago. I miss them all, but especially Linda - she'd been here since I first got here a year ago, and she was sort of the last one to leave from that first circle of friends I had. She gave me a bunch of her stuff while she was moving, and it's mostly still strewn about my apartment... gotta clean up and reorganize at some point. In fact, I ate some of her umeboshi tonight for dinner. I think I ate like 4 of them, so I'm REALLY thirsty right now! I estimate that it would take approximately six umeboshi to osmose all the water out of the dead sea.
Um, what else... working on a new arrangement for Osakapella. Not sure how it's going to turn out, but it's like the blogging thing: lots of imperfect arrangements is a surer path to improvement than saving it all up for one masterpiece. Wait, I think that's the case with academic papers too. And language learning (how many Japanese people have said, "Yes, I've been studying English for 11 years, but I'm not going to speak a word until I've learned it perfectly?"). You know, sometimes I wish I could just sit down and distill out the 86 Universal Patterns in life, which would be generally applicable to everything, and then just sit back and surf out the rest of my years, knowing I had figured everything out.
Maybe I should write a book.
Then again, maybe claiming at this point that I have everything figured out is a BIT premature, considering the number of expired things in my fridge that I have to keep throwing away. I sometimes feel like I throw away more stuff than I buy, a feeling I keep repressed due to my faith in the law of conservation of mass... but yet... it's as if it's ... reproducing..? euuu... maybe something's MUCH more expired than I thought!
What else did I do this month? Hmm... camping trip at Biwa-ko. We went to the same place we went to last September. It was awesome, except that the water was freezing. Didn't stop me from swimming though. I need to live it up before the suffocating heat of summer lowers its hazy and humid fist to crush the life out of me for the next 5 months. Already I've had a couple days this year with Japanese girls nearby shivering in their long-sleeved shirts while I'm dripping sweat in a T-shirt. Sometimes it really sucks that my body temperature's set point seems to be a few degrees off from everyone around me. And sometimes... it doesn't suck at all. :) I relished the moment, frolicking about with a polar bear's glee while my evolutionarily disadvantaged friends huddled together for warmth under their furs on the shoreline.
But seasons change, and Tsuyu has come. The Rainy Season. In fact, I feel inclined to quote a haiku from one of my wonderful students at Toyonaka. I believe it went something like this:
The rainy season
We have a lot of water
The rainy season
Biking to work this morning, I started noticing how little traction I had as my bike started skidding every time I tried to stop. Slowing down to a cautious roll... (bikes can't crawl... what's the word I'm looking for here?) I was crossing a pedestrian overpass and working my way down a winding ramp, when suddenly my bike shot out from under me and I found myself in the air, then skidding along the ground, trying to decide in real time which body parts and accessories I wanted to shred, and which to try to preserve. Head... that's a good one to save. Might need it for soccer sometime. Knee... um, tough one - gotta go with that or the arm. Guess I'll sacrifice some arm to keep the legs working... I can always bike with no hands. Can't really bike with no legs. Ok, arm down. Backpack... um, I guess I'll kinda roll halfway onto my side.. ok, time's up. BANG!
Damage report: big scrape down my lower arm by the elbow and a smaller one at the heel of my palm. Minor external knee damage... a little bit of a limp, but I mostly saved the knee, I think. Bike - a few things out of alignment. iPod, fortunately safe. Plastic case holding my Japanese homework, smashed into shards. Blood running all down my arm. No serious wounds as far as I can tell, but visually quite colorful.
The secretaries in my lab came running as soon as I got into work, and they patched me up with the help of a sketchy, ancient first-aid kit (expiration date on the antibiotic ointment: 1997...? puts my fridge to shame! And why are there calcium supplements in there?) and soon I was back up and running in the frantic pace of life on the edge.
Speaking of which, I'd better get back to my homework. :P
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