splargh</h1> <article> <h1>splargh</h1> <p>provolot — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:56:09 +0000</p> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/02/hurricane-earl-warning-massachusetts">evacuations from hurricane earl</a></p> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tZZv5Z2Iz_s?fs=1&hl=en_US" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /></object><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xRqI5R6L7ow?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /></object><p> it's just such, such a nice day. I went for a jog in prospect park and I could feel movement balancing out to a point of comfortable exertion. I bought three peaches, ate two within the hour. escaped (from dean st. mosquitos) to this cafe and there's the sound of cars passing and the breeze comes in through the backyard and here I am.</p> <p>someone sits across from me and I know I've met him before, very recently, but I can't remember where, I try and I stretch my mind and I roam around the past narratives of the last few days, few weeks, and I get a taste in my mouth of another sense of nostalgia-for-the-present appearing, emerging into the present.</p> <p>--</p> <p>idea dump:</p> <p>mobile home architecture, rv architecture, moving buildings, buildings that are not slow, heavy, expensive, but are quick, nimble, aggressive, light. architecture that works against the aura of the object, work against the aura of the work (of art), work against presence maybe. </p> <p>architecture of voltron. forms move, swivel, compress, approach and fit into each other, create something new. social cooperation made literal, emergent properties made bodily.</p> <p>--</p> <p>oh, and antonio carlos jobim, you make me smile...</p> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/298/splargh">September 4, 2010 6:09 pm</a> | </div> <div class="comment-toggle"> show/hide 0 comment(s) </div> </div> <div class="parallel_posted"> <a href="http://words.provolot.com/parallel-dates/35">Other things written in the week of September 4 in previous years >></a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/298/splargh">September 4, 2010 6:09 pm</a> | </div> </div> </div> </article> <article> <h1>babylon, to and fro</h1> <p>provolot — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 01:24:16 +0000</p> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <p></p> <p>tomorrow I start. if I were less opinionated about the valences of adding-labels-to-things I might say that this would be the 'entrance of a new chapter', 'a marked change in my life', et cetera, et cetera, or so on and so forth. but because I do believe that these grandiose declarations are often times unproductive than not, that there's a certain precious value in conceiving my narrative as a gradual flow that bends but never ruptures, I'll say only that I'm: excited, calmly apprehensive (in the best way possible), interested, I'm leaning forward, I have guitar chords and a persistent lovely drumbeat in my ear and I can't wait to move, I can't wait to be in the thick of things. I can't wait to go emerge from studios for a smoke break or a food run at 1am in the morning, a few days before a project ends, burning the midnight oil, looking up and southwards towards the midtown haze, dreaming of brooklyn, dreaming of buildings and spaces being built, falling down, erected and razed, inflated, dug out, projected, popped-up, hollowed out, filled in, pulled up.</p> <p>and yesterday: was a dream of a day, no work done, no emails sent, was nothing but sun and water and a sense of home. wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful. and I was so happy to be on the train: it's as if all the trains I was on (and will ever be on) all thread through each other, pleated fabric-like manifolds of space punctured in unison. when I'm on this lovely train (tipsy happy muted voices echoing) headed back to new york, I'm in mongolia, having just left russia, looking out a window, or I'm going upstate in a yearned-for winter train, or I'm here, the lights overhead turning these night windows into mirrors, reflecting and folding the train into itself over and over, over and over and over and over and over.</p> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/297/babylon-and-fro">September 2, 2010 9:09 pm</a> | </div> <div class="comment-toggle"> show/hide 0 comment(s) </div> </div> <div class="parallel_posted"> <a href="http://words.provolot.com/parallel-dates/35">Other things written in the week of September 2 in previous years >></a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/297/babylon-and-fro">September 2, 2010 9:09 pm</a> | </div> </div> </div> </article> <article> <h1>here we are</h1> <p>provolot — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:13:56 +0000</p> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lSSPoPYe26s?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /></object><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/D2uY4VRTZGY?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /></object><p> </p> <p>sunday late afternoon. precious moments of peace.</p> <p>eat into this day as if it were a peach, cold or warm, dripping, overripe, almost bruised. textured, tender, needed.</p> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/296/here-we-are">August 29, 2010 6:08 pm</a> | </div> <div class="comment-toggle"> show/hide 0 comment(s) </div> </div> <div class="parallel_posted"> <a href="http://words.provolot.com/parallel-dates/34">Other things written in the week of August 29 in previous years >></a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/296/here-we-are">August 29, 2010 6:08 pm</a> | </div> </div> </div> </article> <article> <h1>one long sentence, 12:30am</h1> <p>provolot — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:30:28 +0000</p> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <p></p> <p>oh my god, I'm excited, I just realized, I'm excited, it is 12:26am and I am still at the Clocktower, where it feels like home, the rooftop feels like home, this space feels like home, but I'm excited, for future and for school, to jog tomorrow morning, and there is new music coming out from the internet through the wires into my computer out of my speakers, and all of a sudden (and I don't know exactly why myself) I can't help but dance and laugh to myself and swivel myself in my chair after everyone's gone, gone home, it's just me up late, empty hallways and locked rooms, a beautiful roof, lingering auras, fingers on the keyboard, and I can't help but do a little jig with my feet and dream about sleeping here, maybe on the roof, dream about waking up in the morning to a tribeca sunrise, wash my face in the sink, do some stretches, sit and smile contentedly like a cat and wait for people to come home.</p> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/295/one-long-sentence-1230am">August 27, 2010 12:08 am</a> | </div> <div class="comment-toggle"> show/hide 0 comment(s) </div> </div> <div class="parallel_posted"> <a href="http://words.provolot.com/parallel-dates/34">Other things written in the week of August 27 in previous years >></a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/295/one-long-sentence-1230am">August 27, 2010 12:08 am</a> | </div> </div> </div> </article> <article> <h1>blessedness</h1> <p>provolot — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 06:34:18 +0000</p> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <p>I go for a bike ride, and then a jog, and then a bike ride, and then I go to work, and after work I go to bhqfu and spit my mind into words, and then I peruse the streets oh-so-briefly with a friend, and then I go home to curry and a communal meal, and I talk and laugh and this all feels quite comfortable, actually, and then I work and work and try to do work more amidst this impromptu party </p> <p>and then all of a sudden a comment instigates me and I am standing up talking about the exploding galaxy commune and genesis p-orridge where the axiomatic bases of things are pulled out from underneath you, and then porn informing sex and post-pornographic architecture, and external objects as locators of the internal identity (ala lacan's mirror stage where the infant finds a coherence in the image of himself that he sees) and then from this turns to algorithms of aesthetics (catenary curves generated from hanging strings), and here is this banter about unboxed box-wine as louise bourgeoise-like catheter-like party favors, and my mind is a loft and afire and adrift and we are drunk and others are high but we're all still very lucid and sharp, feeling like a dart, converging to a point, and here we are juggling buildings in the air, tossing concepts like dice, here we are chewing on these things, us all, you and me and B, P, B, T, A, G, K, M, S, R, P, A, G, B, and we talk and there is something hanging in the air and we can pull it down and make worlds of it, buildings of it, video games and architecture, projects coming together, </p> <p>and amidst all of this is this growing excitement, this inner fervor, not only at what-is-to-come but what-is-now, the knowledge that I could build, use my hands, dip my hands into a dirty muck of mud and come out ecstatic and energetic. earlier today I had 40-year old rum, wonderful courtesy of R, and it was amazing, fantastic, smelled like maple syrup. earlier today I also had tea that was so very old, and it had the scent of soap somewhere in the upper-left quadrant of my tongue after it had steeped for twenty minutes, but I tried it anyways, decades-old tea from an estate sale, and so these things will happen, and I am so grateful for that, tongues twisted in history, steeped in what-has-been.</p> <p>and so I come upstairs to sleep and it starts raining, and I hear a million tiny pinpricks on the roof, pitter-patters of small creatures. I am blessed, I think to myself. and start to sleep.</p> <hr /> <p>I think this is called limit-attitude, or liminal-attitude (and yes I am borrowing that phrase of foucault's but it is mine now, only the phrase/signifier) but these moments where the self dissolves away in little rivulets? is, are, precious. yes? yes.</p> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/294/blessedness">August 25, 2010 2:08 am</a> | </div> <div class="comment-toggle"> show/hide 0 comment(s) </div> </div> <div class="parallel_posted"> <a href="http://words.provolot.com/parallel-dates/34">Other things written in the week of August 25 in previous years >></a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/294/blessedness">August 25, 2010 2:08 am</a> | </div> </div> </div> </article> <article> <h1>tonight, tonight</h1> <p>provolot — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 06:26:58 +0000</p> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <p>a morning wake, a bike ride, a music-laden jog, a perusal through greenmarket stands, a perfectly ripe yellow peach (at room temperature), a day at a brooklyn cafe, a subway ride north, a homey korean joint, a wonderful beer in a empty midtown office, a subway ride south, a flip over the bike, a mensch from pittsburgh, a welder from brooklyn bringing blessings, a lightweight junkyard monument lit from underneath, a gaggle of cheerful drunks, a friendly box of bandages, a hot shower, a good night's sleep.</p> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/293/tonight-tonight">August 22, 2010 2:08 am</a> | </div> <div class="comment-toggle"> show/hide 0 comment(s) </div> </div> <div class="parallel_posted"> <a href="http://words.provolot.com/parallel-dates/33">Other things written in the week of August 22 in previous years >></a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/293/tonight-tonight">August 22, 2010 2:08 am</a> | </div> </div> </div> </article> <article> <h1>mazzy star: fade into you</h1> <p>provolot — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 05:48:22 +0000</p> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BSxDo_8F14o?fs=1&hl=en_US" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /></object><hr /> <p>lightheaded, I stumble, and there's something in the air and this brooklyn sky is so dark after <a href=http://www.ubu.com/film/gmc_daysend.html>twenty three minutes</a> of gordon matta-clark that's strangely moving, I smell the gasoline exhaust from a chainsaw, dust motes drizzling up and down in the sunlight.</p> <hr /> <p>I can't believe that I forgot this, but two years ago my friend J and I, walking around at 3am in the morning, stumble across this guy at the car-less intersection of 102nd and West End, standing in the middle of the street. He's in his late fifties, early sixties, with a stick in his right hand and a large bucket on the ground, and he has the air of someone so determined that he has tunnel vision, absentmindedly focused, directed. As we approach he swings his arm in a graceful swoop, something shimmers in the cool fall night air and instantly the three of us lift our heads to look up at a soap bubble that appears, all of a sudden, larger than anything I had seen, the size of a car, a bus, floating in mid-air, hovering and lit red and green by the color of traffic lights everywhere. And then it is gone.</p> <p>He explains to us that he is practicing his bubble-blowing technique so that he could regain his Guinness record, that among the world he had many rivals, and while he had recently held the record he had lost it to a guy in Australia. One day this guy gets a VHS tape in the mail, nothing else, pops it in his player, and without an introduction, an image abruptly pops up on the TV of an enormous soap bubble, house-sized, building-sized, hovering still in the blue sky above a crisp green field. And below it: a gaggle of kids, running underneath it and chasing each other in delight, falling over each other. Meanwhile this bubble's calm, flexing, hovering, rotating slowly, shimmering gently, undulating silently.</p> <hr /> <p>I bite my lip. strains of mazzy star. </p> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/292/mazzy-star-fade-you">August 21, 2010 1:08 am</a> | </div> <div class="comment-toggle"> show/hide 0 comment(s) </div> </div> <div class="parallel_posted"> <a href="http://words.provolot.com/parallel-dates/33">Other things written in the week of August 21 in previous years >></a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/292/mazzy-star-fade-you">August 21, 2010 1:08 am</a> | </div> </div> </div> </article> <article> <h1>sleeptalk</h1> <p>provolot — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 02:20:51 +0000</p> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <p><br /> Myoung Ho Lee, Tree # 10, Archival Ink-jet print on paper, 25x20cm, 2006 </p> <hr /> <p>I've got about a dozen half-written posts about eating things, about desire as a muscle, about internalized literary logic, but all I have right now is nothing but a ocean-wave-like drone in my ears and the soft buzz of a glass of wine (or two). and I am sitting here, letting the autopilot of my hands take over, feeling the vertigo of words that come out that I may not control, mind retching stomach hurling tongue flaying in an altogether grotesque vomiting action. here it is. <i>(points.)</i> look at it. it is an allover painting.</p> <hr /> <p>there are a lot of people at home and while I do want to be friendly I miss the comfort of comfort, of me hugging myself on the train, I miss the lullaby of train tracks and the self-propelled desire and the arbitrary-ness of footsteps that I control.</p> <hr /> <p>Today it drizzled as I biked home, over the Brooklyn Bridge, stopped and walked my bike to let a parade of balloon-waving, chanting kids pass by, met someone I knew on the bridge, passed by. Yesterday on my way to work I bump into the scene of a music video, four guys in suits rocking out in front of a white screen, and it reminds me of the photographs of Myoung Ho Lee, strange displacement. Together this all makes me feel like I am in some sort of steadycam shot, where all so much action happens around the peripheries, the rich detail of everything-else so luscious and tastefully detailed, and in the midst of this all is just me, and my self, and my thoughts and feelings, and I navigate through this sequence, vignetted, very unaware.</p> <hr /> <p>Sometimes I look over drafts of various emails I haven't sent, for one reason or another, and I always like it when I fall asleep while writing them, because my face presses against the keyboard, and what ensues is a torrent of single letters which is my sleep, documented, sublimated into writing.</p> <p>Here's an excerpt:</p> <p>I am bursting with words but as soon as I open my mouth they dissipate into thin air as they were never there. dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss</p> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/291/sleeptalk">August 18, 2010 10:08 pm</a> | </div> <div class="comment-toggle"> show/hide 0 comment(s) </div> </div> <div class="parallel_posted"> <a href="http://words.provolot.com/parallel-dates/33">Other things written in the week of August 18 in previous years >></a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/291/sleeptalk">August 18, 2010 10:08 pm</a> | </div> </div> </div> </article> <article> <h1>wild nothing - summer holiday</h1> <p>provolotgmail — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 23:40:00 +0000</p> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1a3dmgpAIGc?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param></object><br /><br /> <hr /><br /><br /> Walking out of work, just having listened to wonderful stories about an older new york, just having had peals of laughter peel out of my mouth, I walk east towards Chinatown. It is Friday and the strains of dream-rock guitar echo in my ears and it is light out and I am standing on a street corner looking at a park looking at street skateboarders, impromptu basketball games, high-school goths, cosplayers.<br /><br /> All the while, I am missing something. I have this taste in my mouth as if I am missing something, some crucial piece of knowledge. Instead of figuring this out I will shake my head and get my cans of massaman curry, coconut milk, packages of tamarind, then will make my way uptown to take the train downtown, in a daze. Having-forgotten-something. Having-left-something-behind. <br /><br /> (omitted) <br /><br /> Eventually I will make my way home having forgotten that I had forgotten something, having-forgotten-forgetting, and all I will have is an aftertaste of car exhaust and restaurant kitchen-range smoke on these streets that takes me elsewhere. Puts me there, thinking about here. Here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here here. <br /><br /> <hr /> <br /><br /> And now it is Later, and I come home and go for a bike ride and a jog and a bike ride, and at one point I take off my earphones, and there is nothing but the sound of crickets and cicadas, and the air is cool, and between the trees you can see the yellow windows of apartment buildings everywhere. On the way to Prospect Park I pass rows of restaurants with tables outside, people talking and silverware clinking against plates, and suddenly: heart pulls, aches, strains. On my way home I bike and I swerve and these streets are so familiar, and I get home, and I park, walk inside. <br /><br /> I turn on something by carsick cars, as loud as I can. No-one's home but Casper, but she yowls and smiles and she rubs herself against my legs and I sit down and she comes and presses her head against my hand, says hi. Hi, Casper. And I'm sitting there, Casper pressing against the side of my back, slowly nudging her head in circles against my hand, and I'm looking at the lamp upstairs and the way it illuminates the tree next to it, and I hear the strains of an emphatic guitar and an enthusiastic voice come up from downstairs, and I realize it's been a year since I moved in here,<br /><br /> and all of a sudden I miss Brooklyn, I miss having my own time, I miss not being ragged with projects. I miss feeling the time pass through my fingers and being okay with it. I want to not have to go to work after work. I want to have at least, at least, two hours of my own time, for myself, every day. I want to go to a show after work, once a week, maybe, where a friend's playing, and smile and dance and sway with a drink in my hand and afterwards wander outside on dark streets and look up at dim stars and smile with friends and laugh without a care, right at that moment, without feeling guilty about work. I would like to throw my bike on the grass and fling myself on my back, arms outstretched, and close my eyes and not have to think about anything for an hour, half an hour, two precious minutes.<br /><br /> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/290/wild-nothing-summer-holiday">August 13, 2010 7:08 pm</a> | </div> <div class="comment-toggle"> show/hide 0 comment(s) </div> </div> <div class="parallel_posted"> <a href="http://words.provolot.com/parallel-dates/32">Other things written in the week of August 13 in previous years >></a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/290/wild-nothing-summer-holiday">August 13, 2010 7:08 pm</a> | </div> </div> </div> </article> <article> <h1>just-having-left-tokyo</h1> <p>provolotgmail — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:48:45 +0000</p> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> <div class="post-inner"> <div class="body"> I touch down here, rush upstairs to departures, stuff my bag into a storage locker, go to the lower level, take the keisei skyliner to ueno, take the tokyo metro to shibuya, walk around. the city.<br><br> the streets are: full of people walking home, groups of friends saying goodbye on a tuesday night. I feel very lonely, a salmon swimming upstream, wading in the opposite direction. around the station there are: people smoking, beautiful bikes with colnago frames locked up with pencil-thin wire locks, buildings with giant displays, japanese kids my age walking around, twenty-four hours fast food restaurants, cabs not instantly recognizable (to me) as cabs, yakitori joints. amidst this all the sky is dark and the lit buildings are carving a negative space out of the sky. everyone crosses this intersection at the same time, floods these streets. I get a sense of incredible inclusiveness around this all, and a corresponding exclusiveness on my part, and I feel very much like a single cell unit drifting around these flows, looking at things. this is what happens in a complex city with high buildings (like new york), perhaps, in a city with recognizable traits of infrastructure (like seoul), with familiar strains of cultural expression: ad formats, speech intonations, some of these things like Korea but not quite at all. <br><br> in the morning, I leave my dark little internet-cafe cubicle, the sounds of a pachinko-slot machine ringing in my ears. go out walking in the early morning air, take the first subway train going east out of shibuya along with everyone else, also bleary-eyed, also with disheveled hair. on the way to tsukiji fish market I take a shortcut, get lost on purpose, find myself on purpose. by the time I walk to the fish market it is 5:30 am, gazed past cities of styrofoam boxes, fish still wriggling on ice, tuna auctions, auctioned tuna being sliced with bandsaws, rivulets of blood streaming between cobblestones, into drains. <br><br> sushi dai has a line as always, but I only wait for about half an hour. finally I step in and sit alone, next to the other fifteen people there, and the same three sushi chefs are there, as they were last year, and the year before that, and probably the years before that. I order omakase, and with my pace, listening to my tongue, I place each piece in my mouth and chew slowly and deliberately. I am glad; I know I am blessed. <br><br> after that I step out and wander around ginza, its shops all closed and still sleeping, department stores with their eyelids shut. it is barely 7am. I take the subway to ueno, and at the last moment I divert my footsteps into vacant market alleyways and end up near a tiny temple. maps everywhere say that there's a lake here, but when I lift my eyes all I can see are rows and rows of green growing from out of the lake; a school of sluggish, sleepy koi, and a temple over there, over there. some people practicing, stretching, talking. <br><br> on the train back to the airport, I nearly fall asleep. I wake up, we're there. the airport dance: I take the elevator upstairs, walk to the lockers, open the locker, get my bag, walk to a line, stand in a line, check my bag, stand in a line for security, go through security without taking off my shoes, stand in a line, go through customs, walk to my gate, buy something with the rest of my yen. at the last moment I decide to take a shower, though. it's been thirteen hours since I first landed in narita, and I slide a 500 yen coin onto the counter with a smile and I am shown a tiny room with a plastic shower, and in the shower I feel hot water run down my hair and onto my back and think about the anti-displacement that is soon to come, the sense of having-always-been-here that will no doubt flood back in. 'as if it were all a dream.' <br><br> and I worry about that, not about being-back-here itself (not at all) but about the-feeling-that-I-was-always-back-here, I think about what happens when I lose some sort of sense of movement, I think about not always being conscious of my body, I think about not always thinking about where I am going, I think about always being comfortable in my skin, I think about the days and months and years slipping by until I am then-looking-back-to-now, and I think about this (while biting my lip). but but but but it's a thought that's also a comfort because I also think that to think about this, actively, is to ward these things away. and so as long as I am thinking about the possibility of not thinking about these things I am okay, kept buoyant, floating on clouds, air, wings, the angle of attack, the bernoulli principle, the idea of the bernoulli principle, the airplane's trust in that the turbine's forward thrust will result in a corresponding lift (<i>if I do this then you will do that, yes?</i>), and I think that's actually quite beautiful, wonderful, the way more things should be, could be. <br><br> -- <br><br> there was this moment on the train from irkutsk to ulaanbataar when I was so very happy, so very ecstatic and happy. the windows were down and in the dusky distance you could see faraway clouds raining on faraway mountains, and the sun was setting behind that, and the sky was clear and everything in the air was so fresh, with vague whiffs of engine smoke drifting in almost like stray strains of perfume, but the air itself smelled like green, green grass and the trees were waving by, everything blurred sideways like a gerhard richter painting. I was alone that night in a cabin all by myself, and I closed the door and turned off the light and opened my window and felt the wind brush in as I went to sleep. once in a while opposing trains would pass our train, which meant that suddenly the ongoing rhythm of the train would be broken by this thunderous cataclysmic roar, lights and sound and fury, and the cabin would light up in a scattered strobing mix of shadows and glints-off-of-metal, and the sound and light of it would be so so visceral, piercing my eyelids even when my eyes were closed. and then everything would be over, as soon as it had started. <br><br> and then if you went out into the dark hallway because you couldn't sleep, everyone else was also there, leaning out of the window, gazing into the distance, quieted into contemplation by the rocking motion of the train and the sudden change of landscape and the expanse of sky and the enormity of all the clouds. watching the sun set. I was so very content, so very content and happy just to be there, to be there and going somewhere. I would have been content had the train broken down and stopped; I would have been content had we been going faster. I was just content to be there, moving. <br><br> - <br><br> I haven't and hadn't had that in a bit, such fully-fledged contentedness, such warmth, and now it is no longer available right now except as an abstract memory, it is not possible right now, having come back. all I can do is to think about it and to smile and to swallow hard and to try to forget it, until the next time I am able to travel like that, to take that same trip again, hopefully, sometime in the future. right now all I can do is to look out the window for the curve in the bend coming ahead and have my hair whipped around in the wind. so that is what I will do. <br><br> thirty minutes away from jay eff kay, thirty minutes away from a home. here's to hoping that the routines don't just fall into place but that they drop down, slightly mis-aligned, de-calibrated, un-synchronized, making something anew, maybe maybe maybe hopefully. </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/289/just-having-left-tokyo">August 11, 2010 10:08 am</a> | </div> <div class="comment-toggle"> show/hide 0 comment(s) </div> </div> <div class="parallel_posted"> <a href="http://words.provolot.com/parallel-dates/32">Other things written in the week of August 11 in previous years >></a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="info"> <div class="posted"> posted by provolot on <a href="http://words.provolot.com/post/289/just-having-left-tokyo">August 11, 2010 10:08 am</a> | </div> </div> </div> </article> </main></body></html>