脈脈

My life now is hardly recognizable. So much has changed simultaneously that it isn’t possible for my phenomenological self to keep up with the self I am on the verge of becoming each moment. Where and how to coalesce? This is the noise floor of my brain’s innumerable spikes.

Since I last made a serious go at documenting my daily life, I have climbed Mount Fuji at sunrise, moved to a new home in Hakusan, circumnavigated the planet (from Tokyo to San Francisco, D.C., Munich, Naples, Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, and back to Tokyo), started a new position as a Project Assistant Professor, and introduced Yoshiko to my family in New Mexico over Christmas.

Over the past few months I read Nitobe’s Bushido, Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, and McEwan’s Saturday. I have also started (but am various lengths of time from finishing) Hamsun’s Hunger, Abelson and Sussman’s Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, and Tolstoy’s War and Peace. The last of these I have been reading an email at a time using Daily Lit which in practice means one postage-stamp-screen at a time on the subway. It should only take a few years that way.

Six different ways to say "if"

The sound of this year is the dulcet pileup of languages, grammars, and intonations softened into harmonic composition.

Standard Issue:

(1) Beirut [The Gulag Orkestar]: Could either be the recording of a raucous wake or subdued gypsy street fight.
(2) J Dilla [Donuts]: The back story on this album alone is enough for a mention, even then the loops are brilliant.
(3) Ratatat [Classics]: Hairmetal as played by a Super Famicom.
(4) The Fiery Furnaces [Bitter Tea]: Periodically displays something resembling coherence before relapsing into orgies of studio engineering.
(5) Hot Chip [The Warning]: I keep thinking this is New Order forced at gun-point to make happy music.
(6) Nathan Fake [Drowning in a Sea of Love]: The requisite rural prodigy.
(7) White Flight [White Flight]: Induces a mood similar to eating breakfast after staying up all night.
(8) Oppenheimer [Oppenheimer]: Might as well be a fictional Pet Sounds re-issue from a non-existent Beach Boys’ synth-pop cover band.
(9) Okai [Dekonstruction of the Mind]: Neo-soul loops and a little De La positivity make me smile.
(10) Herbert [Scale]: A jazz album bent and syncopated into a house album.

Honorable Mention:

The Legends [Facts and Figures]
Basement Jaxx [Crazy Itch Radio]
Spank Rock [YoYoYoYoYo]
Dapayk [Giornata]
Mogwai [Mr. Beast]

Albums that I only really started listening to this year, but came out sometime before then:

Junior Senior [Hey Hey My My Yo Yo]
Erik Satie [Trois Gnossiennes]
Diplo [Fabriclive.24]
Takako Minekawa [Fun 9]
The Mountaineers [ Messy Century]

口下手の意味

Laying awake on my way back from SIGGRAPH in Boston, the following idea struck me: there are people whom blame all problems on those who do not adopt their philosophical, political, or religious stance. For instance, particular overwrought liberals who think that conservative politics are the source of all evil in the world. Or for example, certain maniacal Christians who think that the moral problems of the world are introduced by non-believers. So I was trying to recall the right English word, but none seemed to fit. A zealot implies just being overly committed to the cause. A drum-beater is someone who just seems to be spewing the party line without thinking. Neither of these imply the accusation that all wrong stems from opposing or other positions. Totalism or absolutism are more political ideas about the best way to structure government, not moral theories. Perhaps this calls for a neologism: diametrist.

di·a·met·ri·st
n:

An individual who thinks all wrong in the world is the result of viewpoints other than their own.

That gotten out of the way, life in Tokyo and Japan has been becoming (unexpectedly) comfortable although I still stumble over my words. Work proceeds, however slowly. I spent some time in 富山 over the weekend and was deeply impressed by the architecture of some of the more traditional buildings. My friend Ilkka has gotten a summer job working with a 大工 who works on some of older buildings about town. Staying at Ilkka’s place along with 淑子­ made for an entertaining weekend as we were treated to a fantastic meal by some of the townspeople.

In addition to a few issues of the New Yorker and a stray Harper’s, I’ve read and started some good books: Letham’s Motherless Brooklyn, Banville’s The Sea, as well as Dennett’s Breaking the Spell. Perhaps the last is what prompted the outburst at the beginning of this entry?

東京の西部の側面

東京都 is divided into two distinct parts. There is the eastern part, which is also called the “23 wards” after the dense districts that perform the vital functions of the metropolis. The western part could not be more different. It is sparse, mountainous with 町 and 神社 dotting the more horizontal parts of the hills. Perhaps this stark opposition is what draws me there.

The small 虫 hanging down from cedar and bamboo on silk threads were first invisible to my neon-saturated eys. But then as I climbed out of the valleys, the hypnotic mantras of the subway (ドアーが閉まります) were gradually filtered out by the é³¥ and the visual and aural tones of the 林.

Like shiva with a penchant for electronics

After returning from a week in Boston and two weeks in Laval and Paris, France, I found that the building across the street no longer existed. This is an entertaining bit of Tokyo, the rate at which the city devours and renews itself. In the five months since I have moved onto my street, on my block alone two buildings have been deconstructed (in the non-philosophical sense) and a new apartment building built in the place of one.

My occasion for traveling to Boston was the wedding of my childhood pal Roger. Neither flooding nor fainting could prevent the groom and bride from becoming happily married or the wedding guests from enjoying the reception.

With 48 hours of flying amortized over a few weeks there was plenty of time. And so Roth’s The Human Stain, Golding’s Rites of Passage, Coetzee’s Youth, and Atwood’s Blind Assassin each consumed a bit of it. Each in differently agreeable ways.

Somewhere amongst all that I became a 30-year-old.

The Perversity of Expatriation

There is a perversity in expatriating yourself.

In a conversation with Marshall (who studies these things) he once made mention of the eroticization of the “other.” Since it invokes the brow-beating constitutive other, it sounds a bit abstract or at least humorously po-mo. But I have come to think the following as I stagger around Tokyo full of post-limerance.

Obviously before someone moves to a place there is a period of fantasizing and eroticization of it. The place is the the not-here and the not-routine. So inside yourself you think “when I arrive there I will be a different person.”

And indeed you are. Well, that is if you survive for long enough to see past the cliched moments of shock and alienation. For me at least the process has taken more concentration than I thought possible. Unless you just go into a sort of denial, you are instead confronted with the perversity of which I want to speak.

Basically, following upon the romanticization of the place one could be left a sense of disgust upon realizing that it is a place like every other. But if one is instead “wayward” or “willfully erring” then a different relationship with the place comes about.

One finds a pleasure in doing not what you are supposed to. You are not having 2.5 children and watching TVs on average 4 hours a day. You are not deciding that Iran’s invasion is becoming inevitable. You are not worrying about the national problem of obesity. And one day perhaps you are not defining yourself in opposition to what you take the stereotypical to be.

Number 九

A second month passed in between drawing a breath and exhaling. Daily rituals resumed and rippled my life. Moments pass when I forget how spectacular every scene was to my once unfamiliar self.

After decoding and unmasking the cultural semaphores I find myself socializing as if underwater. Every moment is slowed down and every sound attenuated. Not to say that I am not able to hear or sometimes understand.

A Chopin concert, a Fugu show, and watching Mice Parade through the back of overexcited fans each allowed me (in unevenly sampled continuities) to forget the innumerable things しなければなりません. A trip on the shinkansen to a ridiculously named ski resort allowed me to destroy a rented snowboard with a few jumps and slightly more graceful crashes. Thankfully my very first on-sen was simmering a short stumble away.

3 kanji, 2 earthquakes, and a raw egg later

It has already been one month since I made my way through customs and became a registered alien. Quite a bit has happaned in this small period of time (both internally and externally). I have a new name, or more specifically, a trans-literation of my name. I am now ka-son reinotsu. It turns out that very little business can be transacted in Japan without a hanko (or wooden stamp with familiy name). And so I found myself picking out kanji that I thought might convey the meaning of my self and my family. After consulting folks at the lab, I settled on (Rei) moutain (no) ‘s (tsu) city.

I have experienced two small earthquakes, which add an element of chance and unexpectedness to everyday life. Otherwise, much time was spent trying to come to grips with the infinite city. Kazue, a climber, has taken care to make sure that I get out and see what Japanese Bouldering is all about.

I live in Bunkyo-ku which apparently means literature city. This I find really funny (a sort of an inside joke) because for the moment I am functionally illterate.

Ten timezones away in Boston, the disk broke in arsenal.media.mit.edu, which used to host this blog. The machine has been a workhorse for me for 7 years and I find myself missing it almost like an old friend. In any case, life goes on … instead of using Subversion and centralized repository I have started using Mercurial to keep all my history and changes intact. And now my blog is migrating slowly to who knows where.

Look 右左

I am now a resident of Tokyo.

Having only been off the plane for a few days I find myself either flotsam or jetsam for swirling crowds. A constant litany of sentences moves through my head: stay on the left while walking, say 済みません (not ‘excuse me’), and try to internalize your new home.

December found me saying goodbye as if it were a new occupation.

In between I saw Iron and Wine, read The Push Man, Gang of One, as well as Kafka on the Shore. The holidays found me gliding across the white sands missile range toward my parents’ new mountain home. Whilst there I managed to sneak in a side trip to Hueco Tanks. I talked some other bouldering kids into letting me tag along and on-sight No One Gets Out Alive (V2). Time was short though, so it was really only a scouting trip. Next time I will come back with a crash pad and some time to kill.

I didn’t feel any different when the New Year came and didn’t resolve much. Marshall saw to it that my time in Boulder and my last days in the states were full of the necessary nostalgia-inducing items: a breakfast of hashbrowns, an evening of beers and thumb-twiddling, a rainbow trout, a dawn with my bags at the curb.

But now I am looking ahead. I have a new wallet for a new life. Instead of having yen clumsily poking out of my tired billfold and change clinking aimlessly in my pocket, I now have a new wallet that says “producing district is the world.”

The Transposition of Five-Oh

While listening music for this top 10 list has become an occupation (and a year round affair) today is the day I relish. It’s when I stop sorting and ranking and wince for a moment as I wonder if I’ve developed a taste for easy listening.

Standard Issue:

(1) Mice Parade [Bem-Vinda Vontade]
(2) Of Montreal [The Sunlandic Twins]
(3) The Juan Maclean [Less Than Human]
(4) Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings [Naturally]
(5) Bloc Party [Silent Alarm]
(6) Clap Your Hands Say Yeah [Clap Your Hands Say Yeah]
(7) Little Brother [The Minstrel Show]
(8) The Fruit Bats [Spelled in Bones]
(9) 13 & god [13 & god]
(10) Gorillaz [Demon Days]

Honorable Mention:

Sam Prekop [Who’s Your New Professor]
Danger Doom [The Mouse and the Mask]
The Free Design [The Now Sound Redesigned]
Brazilian Girls [Brazilian Girls]
Beck [Guero]

Albums that I only really started listening to this year, but came out sometime before last year:

CocoRosie [La Maison de Mon Reve]
Broker/Dealer [Initial Public Offering]
The Legends [Up Against the Legends]
Camp Lo [Uptown Saturday Night]
Richard X [Back to Mine]
Arvo P�rt [Spiegel im Spiegel]