remember when i used to do this? 

maybe i will again. or should i just let you know about the blogger? i'll think on this for a little.

i cannot say anything until i say that the new dr. dog album (we all belong) will be henceforth my spring-into-summer album of 2007.

moving on.

so i came to japan. twice.  i haven't really been updating this thing as i should, for being far away, for being in japan, for being in general. i'm at a loss. i kind of took a sabbatical from my life. i'm not sure to what extent it was or wasn't necessary. i do know new york living was getting a little beyond my means (mentally, physically, fiscally), so the slow pace has agreed with me in certain healthy ways, if not others. 

quite the dramatic set of months for me. for starters, my grandmas (both) died. my dogs (both) died. my mom and i got in a massive fight. i took the gre and applied to grad schools (still waiting). for near-finishers, there was a motherfucking cancer scare. ovarian cysts. only in japan they call them ovarian tumors. motherfucking tumors. a large, rapidly growing one. all looks to be "okay" now, though i have a feeling they'll need removal at a later date. i think i aged ten years in the time they drew my blood until i received the results for four different tests of four completely incurable cancers.

excited though i am to return, i am becoming increasingly panicky about the flight home. i erroneously thought college and study abroad would exempt me of such plebian worry.  as the broke-est, most irresponsible jet-setter in the world, i never used to have trouble with international flights... but in september i developed the most horrific phobia of flying. i told sonya that if i say outloud "i'm not going to die on the airplane" and you agree with me (i've provided a space in the comments section for you to do just that), then if i do die, you'll all be stricken with horrendous grief that will not let up for years and years. maybe even your whole life. and if you don't reply that i wont die and i do.. well then, think of all the guilt you will feel. unto your grave, my friends, unto your grave.  then you'll be sorry. do you see how clever i am by tricking fate AND my neuroses that way?

firsts on the agenda: job, healthcare, therapist. weekly. prescription drugs? looking likely.

its not all gloom and doom. the whole shit of going through this health stuff in such illiterate conditions (to say nothing of the radical isolation) has really made me appreciate the serendipitous and intentional comforts of being social.  i've got some great friends.  i miss them lots and lots. i will visit them often, though probably by train or car.

too, i've been writing a bit of music, and its all going in a new direction for me as i embrace the delicious casio.

i've started really enjoying the little ones in recent weeks, and certain mysteries of japanese culture have started to reveal themselves to me in ways that have ceased to be distasteful, so of course that means i'm leaving soon. three weeks, to be exact.

things i'm going to miss:

the beep-beep car
my kindergarten students
haagen-dazs ice cream wafer sandwiches
showering rooms with separate soaking tubs
onsen
hyakuen shops
optional stoplights
people who turn off their headlights at large intersections, as a gesture of kindness for the cars across the way
cheap udon, kappa maki
noon hour and 5 o'clock chimes
random and spooky city broadcasts of minyo singers
mountains, oceans
gusto burgers
ridiculous tshirts with inappropriate english on them. (ie: baby onesies saying "pop my cherry")
small victories in language acquistion
joel, mark, toyoko, kayo


things i wont:

incredibly wasteful packaging
being stared at everywhere i go (short! white! gaijin!)
old people trying to ride mopeds and nearly killing themselves as they swerve in and out of fast traffic
old people pushing themselves along while sitting on, but not actually pedaling, bicycles
old people walking with walkers in the middle of a street that is two meters wide
(as a counterpoint, i will miss old people in automated scooter seats trying to summit small mountains)
louis vuitton anything
the disastrous dress shorts, knee high boots combination.
the persistent smell of fish, fish flakes on everything
expensive cocktailing
karaoke renditions of red hot chili peppers
awkward classes devoted entirely to balancing classroom tension among students
rampant neo-conservatism
the lack of a good mexican-greek-italian-vietnamese-etc restaurant
AB blood type discrimination
the anxiety of communication



more later, bed for me.

i made this list a while ago (november), but i need ample time to gear up for self-improvement.

1. pull yourself together daily
2. have a fag (if will temporarily help with #1)
3. spend no money ever
4. make band with meghan
5. complete (start) website
6. return to new york, take break-dancing class
7. amend length of list when overwhelmed
8. read der spiegel, guardian uk, and le figaro online. every single day.
9. eat less sugar
10. more wine stains
11. finish tristram shandy, reconsider own loquacity.
12. stop snarling at people
13. when driving, only drive
14. learn the guitar chords
15. make felted pants
16. send more packages. japankages.
17. fix cavities soon
18. air-dry
19. go a shade whiter
20. look for apocalypse (note: under bed?)
21. think about scarlett johanssen
22. sweep/vaccum with greater frequency
23. experimental cheeses
24. draw penis shapes, cross-out.
25. continue growing cilia in nose
26. enjoy all consistencies of tofu
27. shave knees like i mean it
28. purchase boggle
29. go to iceland
30. continue biting things as a means to resolving unchecked aggression issues
31. reconsider the large-earring thing
32. finish writing play. finish writing the damn play. finish it.
33. get angrier about arctic ice shelves and do something about that anger.
34. love my friends and family with more zeal. (reconsider moments in which to exercise self-indulgent wankerness)


happy 2007!

peek-a-boo.


shit, where were we? august? no. october? no.


it has been a while. i've not been entirely inspired to write in this thing. theres so much and so little going on that i'm dreadfully booh-erd by the thought of typing about what has happened in the interim.

i give this: i am having a decent time in japan. there are many fascinating things and many annoying things about living abroad... in japan. spain or germany or brazil would be different... and quite possibly better... but i am learning much about humility and navigating my own ignorance with a hitherto unexperienced adroitness..is..ity adroitness. i have been mostly loving the oodles of time to grow/change/steer. i am learning patience and even zen. and i am saving money instead of spending it on really wonderful food, excellent concerts, fantastic hyper-snob cultural happenings, clothing, and notably booze and its various illegal equivalents. new york, you filthy minx. i miss you so.

i've been reading large quantities, playing guitar a fair amount, preparing for the GRE full-on with the application process for graduate school. right now, brooklyn college leads the pack for the MFA in Dramaturgy, with UMass Amherst and Bennington trailing behind. in any case, all remains unclear to me as there are miles to go (approx. 7500) before acceptance by these programs.

what i know is that, dudes, i'm in the middle of a quasi-spiritual battle for my continued creative existence! i'm totally engaged to as many identity-based cliches as i have room for rings on my fingers! my ego can only win!


_____________________________


the eighteenth day of this year a cotton plant went sailing.
waves walking up. they dangle their fingers, they slip some skin. a finger does not find numbers on surface. they do not sink into cotton opinion. awes our grand zaftig. the only tarmac for bullshit knows the ear as it c's.

i'm moving to japan.


just wanted to let you know.


i am completely fluent in japanese.


and i have you to thank, rough guide.


very exciting.


puppets and english and music.


pocari sweat. kappa maki.


stay tuned for interdigital launch of extended exercise in self-indulgence.

i've been taking old dresses and altering them to my tastes (adding, subtracting, dyeing, narrowing, etc.) i like the idea that all clothing is part historical interaction, part intervention.

i'm intrigued by kosuke tsumura lately. there is something pretty rad in the construction of disasterwear and other more severe (?) lines coming from japan. an aesthetic like that could only be born in a country that, oh i don't know, got nuked and therefore could not help but prepare for future apocalypsi.

but you know, sometimes i just like a pretty thing.

resting its pawl and its post next door
a painters crop and nurse paddle minded
for mid-level naphthol and as palette knife
containing and containing much as many
noble born mud heap orchestra pits as
would remain confused by
the difference by open night
night green and Non-Virgilian Paris
green and ninetyone ochers

her lips would now say
they were Montezuma’d
by a no-sided parcel of paper
that just left a one-decker office

now powder smooths her old age pension neck

oil beetle pea blight
never-winking sap sits
open-chested and a
ton of power anabaptist
writing on parchment bark

sap sees four chins lap
the mint sauce on mud-built
mussels bill a mild steel as
mild-tongued paying each envelope
an ocean, each rocked oyster white

in the orange-crowned paint-spraying oil-carrying mold
sap'd aloft old-fashionedness non-co-ordination
for our Mid-atlantic

olive yellow new-rigged
himself palm oil
palmetto scrub in
odd-shaped Passeres
diacromyodi in
notched-leaved Musca borealis

the pain-chastened.

nitrogen peroxide on
each foxtail orange wife
each open-fire night-dark north-following needlepoint
of nine-part time.

now each pale brandy palladium sponge
now lost
a nanny plum oyster
now a bar will middle-burst
now a mosque will swallow
now open-spacedly object glasspaper-covered

then goes off-turning, parasol-shaped.