Scot is now in Japan.

back to Seattle, I saw two of the worst movies ever: Spy Kids 3D and The Santa Trap. I can't believe these even had theatrical releases. I wonder what they were watching in first class...

I spent the day the Tokyo District Courthouse observing a mock trial on a hypothetical patent infringement case. The morning was the Japan trial, and the afternoon was the U.S. trial. They were both interesting, and the contrast between the two was an eye-opener.

After the civilized proceedings of the morning, where Japanese attorneys for both sides made fine arguments with nuanced presentations, the head-butting and petulant objections of the attorneys on the two American teams seemed like ridiculous theatre. There was even a moment when the Japanese judge offered settlement to both sides, who had to conference with him separately. This brought loud scoffs from the American attorneys in the audience, who would never dream of weakening their case by explaining to the judge the shortcomings and possibilities for compromise of their own positions. I was deeply impressed by the level of cooperation and quality of argument from the Japanese teams.

After the two trials, I met two of the three authors of my patent text. One, a Federal Circuit judge, reminded me of a former astronaut, someone with a certain star sheen and aging attractiveness, a commanding yet down-to-earth presence who knows as much about how to ease the birth of a foal on his multimillion dollar ranch as about appellate procedure. Somewhat intimidating. The other was a loud, brash law professor who pulled his hand away from me very quickly when I shook it after introducing myself. Still, a funny if not entirely likeable guy.

I also met a few Waseda graduate law students that I might be able to get together with later. They seemed nice, and I could use more peer connections...

Mt. Fuji from the window of my office on the 5th floor of the research center.

I had never seen it from Tokyo before, but there it was, backlit by the fading red-orange glow of the sunset. Just a big mountain silhouette tearing through a bank of clouds on either side. Beautiful.

Moments like these...

It's been a crazy 10 weeks since I arrived in Japan. Some painful bits, some growing experiences, some beauty, some despair. But I will be spending a glorious 3 weeks back in the motherland over the holidays. I leave on Wednesday. I arrive on Wednesday. I arrive, in fact, before I depart. Same day, earlier time.

The fact that I get to perform a little time travel seems completely worthy of the transformation from existence in one country to another. It's more than just code-switching from Japanese to English or from one cultured behavior to another. It's about who I am in each country.

In Japan, I am the intrepid traveler, strange and estranged. In the U.S., I am reunited with my loved ones and with myself. At home. At peace. With those who are an important part of my life. What flight through air and time can make this change in me?

So thank you for reading. You've seen me go from eager explorer to pain-addled madman, back and forth, a few times. I hope you know more about me than you did. I hope I haven't frightened you.

I can't wait to see you.

How many people do you know that are fully confident about the way that they live?

Is this a product of certainty that was hard-won from the gaping mouth of self-examination and doubt? Or is it just complacency and ignorance that makes some people confident?

What can make a person sure? Of anything?

I vacillate between extolling the virtues of uncertainty as a philosophical commitment and a wavering admiration for people who seem to know what they're doing. Of that last category, however, I most respect those people who fought hard to find a place for themselves. Finding satisfaction and comfort without really hurting first kind of bothers me. Where does that little snippet of twisted morality come from? Is it some essential middle-class sentimentality that I can't shake? I don't know.

But I know that being certain of something without the flexibility to admit other possibilities is not the mindset that I want to cultivate. I would most like to be the kind of person who is open to emerging modes of thought, but capable of action. Not a fence-sitter, but a sky diver who can see the fence below and both sides of the fence clearly, rushing down at a great speed from 4,000ft. Able to change direction and land on either side with a graceful flourish of the mental parachute. Able to sail away and land in a different field entirely. Able to carve a new way of being out of the air rushing past.

That's the person I want to be. Fearless, open, screaming down from the skies, but filled with (what?) not confidence...filled with compassion. Arms spread, falling, not always entirely in control, but ready for what comes. The earth looms large, but not menacingly. The critical moment of contact is always on the way; that hard ground seems to make one last, jagged leap toward you. But it never comes. The moment is always just beyond your ability to grasp it. The moment is always...emerging.

That's a way of being I've always aspired to, but never attained.

Yes. More Finnish drinking games. Every once in a while, the two Finns would stand on top of their chairs and chant some totally inscrutable Finnish drinking song. These people astound and confuse me. My only real culture shock this year in Japan has been from hanging out with Scandinavians.

They are all completely, completely mad.

But I met a few Germans, and they taught me more useless phrases. I repayed their kindness by teaching them a few highlights of my collection, like "My nipples are swollen," in Swedish, and "How much for your daughter," in Norwegian.

I think I may be pretty much done with collecting Northern European phrases, however, as I can already say "Half a chicken is not enough," in Finnish, and "I eat glass; it doesn't hurt me," in Danish. I wouldn't mind having one in Icelandic, though...

What I really need to get cracking on are the African languages. Or maybe Hindi, Farsi, Arabic, Urdu, Tamil, and all that. Hmm, yeah. I guess I have to go meet and befriend speakers of those languages. How will I ever get stupid phrases in dead languages...?

It's nice to have a hobby, isn't it?

I now have a Japanese credit card. Woo.

I need this, because I will not get back in January to receive my stipend. I will have to live on the card for a month until my double-stipend hits in February.

But I've never had a Japanese credit card before, though I lived here for a three-year stretch once. They can be kind of difficult to get ahold of for foreigners. I only managed to qualify for this one because I am a student, and because our dorm office sponsors us to get cards so we can use their long-distance phone system, which is terribly overpriced. I just did it to get through January. I can't afford to make long-distance calls from my room.

But it's nice. I always wanted one. Now I wish I had a Japanese driver's license, too. Whenever I've lived here, I've just renewed that AAA International permit yearly. But I want a slick little card-sized Japanese license. They're kind of impressive. It is hard even for Japanese people to get them. The driving test is just really hard, I hear.

But I guess that's a project for later. I'm going home for Christmas in three days. Thank God.

Vapid, decorative prettiness or doomed and romantic symbol of the struggle for survival? This aesthetic preference troubles me in opera as well. I have never been able to stomach the mechanical prettiness of Puccini, for example, in the same way that I have never cared for the conventional beauty of flowers. I always preferred Wagner, with all of that Teutonic darkness and pain, so much more real to me than someone cackling in Italian about love lost. Few prominent artists explore the darker side of flowers. But I guess the distinction depends on your audience. And your artist.

I went to a Van Gogh exhibit focusing on his still-life paintings of flowers. I had always preferred the tormented self-portraits and twisted scenes of bedrooms, cathedrals, and night skies to his flower still-lifes, but I gained a new appreciation for those flowery canvases today. What changed my mind, funnily enough was a consideration of Japanese aesthetics.

Traditional Japanese aesthetic sensibility has always perpetuated a real love for flowers, whether in the form of rigidly structured ikebana flower-arranging, drunken cherry-blossom parties, or deeply meaningful references to flowers in poetry and drama. They even make an appearance in that oft-cited and oft-criticized treaty on all things Japanese, "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword," by Ruth Benedict, in which she makes the claim that the appreciation of beauty in Japanese culture cannot be separated from the inherent violence therein. Strong words, Ruth.

But she had a point about beauty and violence in traditional Japanese aesthetics. And the reasons that it's hard to separate the beautiful from the violent in Japan are quite interesting. They stem from the fusion of two religious sensibilities that by all rights should have been irreconcilable.

Japan, back when people cared about religion, was a poly-faith mix of Buddhism and Shinto. Buddhism teaches the transience of all things physical. That which is alive is dying. Yet Shinto praises the purity of life essence (kami) in all living things. Death is often associated with impurity and evil in Shinto, whereas in Buddhism, there is a certain love of decay. Buddhism produced the idea of wabi-sabi, or an affection for the worn and the used articles of daily life. The oldest wooden building in the world is in the Horyu-ji Buddhist temple complex near Nara. Shinto shrines, on the other hand, are burnt to the ground every two decades and rebuilt in a purifying ritual. That's why weddings in Japan are Shinto and funerals are Buddhist. One has jurisdiction over life, the other over death.

How to reconcile the worship of life essence with the need to constantly remind oneself of impermanence? Quite easily, actually. You simply worship beautiful living things that are about to die. Like cherry blossoms, which last only a week before the petals fall from the trees in a blazing, glorious rite of passing. Like young, beautiful boy samurai who go to their deaths even while torn between honor and loyalty in Chushingura. Ruth was on to something.

And so I found a new way to appreciate flowers. They are the last gasp of the desperate living, a make-or-break attempt to thrust some small beauty into the world so that life may continue, even though the blossoms themselves will fall. To contemplate the beauty of flowers is to brush against death and madness itself.

That's where Van Gogh comes in. His flower canvases start out with well-rendered petals and stems, sometimes a bit of background. As his madness progresses, the lines become stark and suggestive. The background turns into a wash of color, sometimes with madly cross-hatched brush strokes. Soon he is painting multiple copies of the same scene, repainting from his first sketch or study as if the repetition itself will cleanse the promise of death and madness from the flowers in the scene. But it never does. If anything, the flowers maintain their original essence and all of the distracting embellishments fall away to reveal the inner violence and torment of these simple sunflower blossoms.

This is not decorative art. It is a painful meditation, one with purpose and a price. To mistake the beauty of flowers for mere prettiness is to see only the beginnings of their bottomless and ephemeral existence. These flowers killed Van Gogh. That is their power to enchant and to drive one mad. I'm glad I was there to gain the insight.

For another month at least.

I gave a research presentation at the lab seminar this morning, and it wasn't terrible. It wasn't all that scintillating either, but I got some useful comments. They were mostly along the lines of, "Yeah, that's never going to work," or "Nobody's going to make any money off of that, so no one's going to patent it," or some other such comment that relegated my topic to the dusty annals of mere academic curiosity. But that's fine. Wouldn't you know that the really practical, money-making stuff is all written about so extensively that there is little room for new scholarly work on the subject matter usually. This stuff is publishable, or at least it will be when I have it in a shape that I can bear to show to other people.

In fact, someone today asked if I needed a co-author. Why not? I don't mind doing half the work I expected to. I am perfectly okay with that. Just let me publish the damn thing and let me use it as a thesis for school. That's all I want. I don't think having a co-author would crimp either of those two goals.

Well, now I have a load off my shoulders, anyway. Which just means I have to go back to what I should have been doing concurrently all along: editing that damn book for Professor who-shall-not-be-named. I can barely bring myself to look at the 16th-century Japanese legal history manuscript of that crotchety old German professor that I spent so much time on last year. And now...he has comments. COMMENTS?! It was a galley-proof! Let it go, man! Didn't I scan your damn paper because you only use typewriters? Didn't I check all your references to archaic German manuscripts? Didn't I find typesetting codes for all of your weird little teutonic marks? Wasn't that enough?

Ahhhh, I need a new life. One with challenges that are inspiring, not exasperating. The very fabric of my existence is one of tedium and toil. Calgon, take me away...

So I went to the Tokyo American Club in Roppongi today to meet a couple of American attorneys in a firm that I am wooing. I had no idea what to expect from a members-only club of Americans in Tokyo. It was all very disorienting. The complex is behind the Russian embassy, commands a nice view of Tokyo, and includes a health club, meeting halls, and a few restaurants.

The people coming and going at lunch time are a funny mix of people in trainers and suits. The workout types are munching a muffin on their way back to the SUV parked earlier by the valet (WTF?! SUVs and valets in Japan? Where am I?). And the suit types are narfity-narfing with big fake laughs about their golf game or most recent equity transaction. They ask each other how their kids are and reply with comments like "awesome!" and, "Oh, yes, she's quite a handful, HAHA." The sound of hollow, unenthusiastic laughter fills the halls. These are my people?

I have lived for years in Japan without ever needing, wanting, or even imagining a place where only Americans go and have big, American conversations about nothing. Yet I don't want to feel superior. That certainly won't get me anywhere. I need Americans in Japan. Working for an American firm or company in Tokyo is the way to be here when I want to and be home when I want to, all the while staying gainfully employed and hopefully being able to do interesting work.

But what does my knowledge of Japan and Japanese represent to them other than an oddity? Not all that much most of the time, I gather. Everyone is duly impressed, and the two attorneys I met with today kept telling me I had a bright future, but...where's the job? I guess I have to be patient. I just feel like if one more person tells me that I have a bright future but doesn't give me some positive indication of an employment opportunity, I just might have to stab their eyes out with a fork. Then I could say, "Awesome!" and let out a big, fake laugh: HAHAHA.

I had a chicken sandwich. If I could leave you with one parting thought, it would be this: when meeting potential future employers in restaurants to discuss career opportunities, do not order oversized sandwiches. I made it through okay, but I kept fantasizing about massive splorts of mustard and ketchup and guacamole shooting out of my sandwich and hitting me or someone else.

Anything to liven the place up.

...burp from the crush machine:

I love Tina Fey. She's whip-smart, funny as hell, and she looks damn cute in her weekend update suit. Rrrowrr!

It must be the glasses...

Yeah, it's definitely the glasses. She even knows the magic power they have over people, it seems.

Better pictures and funnier text here, but beware! This fansite is kind of creepy in a stalker-ish kind of way.

Elliott Smith is dead?! Suicide in October?!

I had to find out from reading an archived entry in Margaret Cho's blog (which is quite good by the way--look here), for christ's sake. That's how out of touch I am.

I remember seeing him play in New Orleans in a friend's living room in 1995. That was not so long before his brush with fame, but the only people who knew about him then were the hipsters and the radio dorks. Still, they gathered and sat at his feet in this living room with the utmost reverence. My vegan friend who was hosting the event made black bean soup for everyone. He was very much into Food Not Bombs in New Orleans at the time, so it seemed like a natural thing to do. I kept my distance, wandering from room to room and thinking about a girl I was trying to impress at the time.

I was distracted, as usual, but Smith left his mark on me. That impossible sincerity is infectious. It soothes the wounds of those who've had enough irony. You find yourself singing his songs to yourself, quietly, in your own world.

And you are moved.

i'm never gonna know you now, but i'm gonna love you anyhow
i'm here today and expected to stay on and on and on
-waltz #2 (xo), Elliot Smith

Here's my take on "The Last Samurai," which I went to go see last night almost by accident:

I enjoyed it. After I got home, I saw an interview with Watanabe Ken on TV, and he was saying that this was the first time that Americans had made a movie about Japan where everything was portrayed accurately. He said it felt more like a Japanese movie than a Hollywood movie.

But I think there are some big differences. It was bloodier than most jidai-geki. Also, it contained a theme that was very common to American movies: a white person's fantasy of being accepted by people who are oppressed, the fantasy of being recognized as one who appreciates their culture and stands beside them.

This theme was also in Dances with Wolves, maybe a little more strongly there. But the scenes are the same: White guy is tired of life and hates everything, white guy goes where he doesn't belong, white guy encounters people he doesn't understand who are in danger of extinction, white guy learns their culture and their language, white guy gets to show other white guys how much he's learned and how ignorant they are, white guys joins the oppressed people and fights against the bad guys, white guy gets to marry and live with a woman among the people he's joined. The main departure here is that the oppressors and the oppressees are both mostly Japanese: Meiji Government vs. Samurai. White guys are just randomly injected into both sides for narrative accessibility for the main audience of this film: more white folk.

So I think this movie is very American because it presents this theme which is so attractive to many (White?) Americans. But there is enough subtlety and beauty in the film, along with more or less accurate (I assume) depictions of Japan at that time, to give the overall product a somewhat Japanese sensibility as well.

I wish Koyuki had been given more scenes. Her slow transformation from disgust to affection to love for Cruise just wasn't that believable because we didn't get to see enough of the process. Her character was kind of one-sided. It was like she only existed to fall in love with him. Not a very fair portrayal of women... Japanese jidai-geki have very strong and interesting female characters (I always think of the poetic rebukes given to Mifune by the older matron in Sanjuro), and I felt that was missing here. Perhaps it was a deliberate attempt to cater to American stereotypes of Japanese women? I don't know.

So there you have it: a thoroughly mixed review.

On the language side, I was happy to see that Cruise spoke poor Japanese. That is, his accent was middling, but he did not use constructions of grammar that went far beyond what one could expect for the amount of time he lived there. Kill Bill was unfortunately marred by a serious reality disconnect for me (reality? why should I even be questioning Tarantino on reality?) when Lucy and Uma spoke with very familiar expressions that could not have been learned by someone who had not already at least mastered Japanese pronunciation, which is light years simpler than distinguishing and appropriately using different politeness forms.

I am a big old Japanese language nerd. But you already knew that.

Freckles. I really like freckles.

A sprinkling on the cheeks, a smattering on the shoulders.

A sparkly brown-eyed girl with freckles and a quiet smile...mmm.

I forgot to mention that punk rock girls wearing lip gloss really does it for me also.

I am binging on feelings of physical loneliness this week, so I need to see it through to the end. I hope this is the end. I am sure you do too.

But my attentions today fall almost equally on two sweet sirens that stir the soul, Neko Case and Chan "Cat Power" Marshall. Dear God save me.

Either one could croon me into a deep cocoon to swoon. Lost, completely lost I am when I hear either of them.

And I know I'm just adding my name to the lists of indie boys and girls who have fallen for them both, but that doesn't matter even a little bit.

If I was as focused as back in the day when I was trying to put the Aesthetifesto together, maybe I would try to feel out all of the things I react to in an erotic/romantic way and try to draw conclusions from these. Maybe I should just jot down a few notes while I'm at it:

-fresh-faced tomboys
-tall and slightly awkward/clumsy girls
-nerdy fashionistas/hip librarians
-long, straight, dark hair
-short hairdos that expose the nape of the neck
-bobs
-Betty Page bangs
-pony-tails
-retro glasses
-bangs that hang in the eyes at a rakish angle
-clean lines, gentle arc of a shoulder blade
-warm, rounded, peach-fuzzy belly
-young moms with a bit of lipstick on, ready to go out on the town for the first time in a while
-dark, smiling eyes
-delicate ankles
-slight, fresh scents (fruity not floral, woody not musky) mixed with natural body smells
-strong thighs on soccer girls, strong calves on volleyball girls
-the nearly audible relief of a woman who has just had an acute anxiety put definitively to rest, sinking into each other's arms... nothing pleases men more than the feeling that they've just made it "better." What a comforting myth

I don't know if this can have any meaning. It's so...atomized. So reduced. I don't know how to connect these ideas, if any of them really are fully-formed ideas. Is there something essentially violent about this reduction? Is it sexist? Is it objectification? Does it matter?

Breaking it down is the way I've been taught to preserve elements for analysis. But this defies analysis. Only the indivisible whole of a person has any meaning, but the things I miss, the images that get trapped in my mind during this palpable loneliness, are less than the whole. People disappear when you are away from them. Part by part, your mind replaces them on this grotesque palette. What you have left is a collage, Frankenstein's creature, a mish-mash of inappropriately sized magazine clippings pasted together.

What is on the other side of this objectification of desire? Some meaningful statement about the nature of memory, of longing itself? A snippet of remembered texture, a smell recalled dimly. That is all you get.

Asking for meaning at times like this sounds...absurdly extravagant.

Alright, I've come clean about the Mary Janes, so I might as well spill the rest of the beans:
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I love Jane Goodall. There, I've said it. It's out there. Do with it what you will. But do not judge me. NAY! Say not a thing until you have seen a few pictures of her as a teenager. Corr blimey!! She was a stone fox, people!

And then she goes to Africa! It just gets better. She is a preeminent primatologist and conservationist, she studied under Richard Leakey, and...I mean, Christ, she's stood up to poachers with assault rifles! I ask you, what is there not to love about this woman?

Some of you may point out that she is a little wincy and English, but I would direct those foul bringers of doubt to merely gaze upon the excellent snappies of her in Chuck Connors, holding the hand of a baby chimp walking in the jungle. No one, I say NO ONE, looks wincy holding the hand of a baby chimp and rocking the chuckies! She is very punk, good folk. Punk as hell.

And I love her dearly, no matter what you say.

I will save my S&M fantasies about Martha Stewart for another time...

Okay, here's a little taste:

Martha: "Scot, those don't look like the pie crusts I was talking about at all..."
Scot: "I'm sorry, Martha."
Martha: "Sorry is not good enough..."

TO BE CONTINUED.

I promise this is my very last self-indulgent, "what kind of tree would you be"-type shallowly reflective post. But I just can't resist throwing a "Fifty Things" list out there. It's the death-knell of clever writing, and I'm proud to capitulate.

Fifty things about me:

1. I am completely honest with myself now about my Mary-Jane fetish.
2. My love affair with texture can be traced to a single childhood blanket.
3. The turning point after my hardest breakup ever came when I walked around the neighborhood after a hard rain and listened to frogs singing.
4. Root Beer is the nectar of the gods, especially if it is old-fashioned, sharp but creamy, and forms a good head.
5. My favorite painting is "Les Raboteurs de Parquet" by Gustave Caillebotte.
6. Favorite book is "Tropic of Capricorn" by Henry Miller. It is much better than "Cancer," by far, but no one bothers to read it.
7. I saw the Aurora Borealis for the first time this summer, and it absolutely made my year.
8. I climbed an erupting volcano once until I reached a spot where smoldering, bowling ball-sized rocks were whizzing by overhead. The sign below in poorly translated English did indeed say "Danger of dead" or something to that effect.
9. Favorite sport to participate in is Go-Kart Racing, with kickball a close second.
10. Favorite sport to watch is Sumo.
11. I was almost struck by lightning in the Grand Tetons.
12. A still-running chainsaw fell on my head once. (It's alright, folks. He's okay!)
13. I like old bowling alleys with pencil-and-paper score sheets, hand-set pins, and gravity-driven ball returns.
14. Despite having started studying Japanese 11 years ago and living in Japan some 4 years total, I have never been on so much as a date with a Japanese girl.
15. I did try to kiss a Japanese girl once, and she evaded very cleverly.
16. I remember seeing the first Star Wars movie in a drive-in when I was 3 and sitting on top of the car roof to better experience the whole thing.
17. I would someday like to try all dishes that reference a geographic location in the UK. I've had Welsh Rarebit and Yorkshire Pudding, but Beef Wellington taunts me endlessly. I will have it!
18. I developed a taste for Marmite some years ago, and it hasn't gone away.
19. For some reason, I think that the animals in a zoo that are moving are happy, and the ones that are still are sad. I know this is irrational.
20. I was in a band in college. I "played" guitar. I still can't play a single song on guitar. It's amazing how polite most people were in refusing to point that out at the time.
21. I am embarrassingly snobbish about sushi.
22. I was a vegetarian for five years, until rare Chinese food defeated me.
23. I know how to catch river fish with my bare hands. I hope I never have to. Again.
24. I like to be in my seat before the previews start. It's important.
25. I have way more CDs than I actually listen to.
26. I once DJed on a radio station for 24 hours straight.
27. I once received over $1000 as a result of bank error. Three years later, it happened again.
28. I love nature documentaries.
29. I despise IKEA.
30. I think scaring myself is fun. (Yes, scaring. Not "scarring"! I seem to pick up plenty of scars without trying.)
31. I encouraged my late Grandfather, during the onset of Alzheimer's, to steal a car and pick up girls.
32. My only real superpower is the ability to make my wife laugh under any circumstances. I think that's why she likes me.
33. I want to have children someday. I also want to give them really punk hairdos before they're old enough to complain.
34. I sing Iron Maiden in the shower sometimes.
35. I wooed girls with poetry in high school. I think they all thought it was cheesy, but they still went out with me.
36. I have attained the rank of "shodan" (that's like a first degree black belt in martial arts with actual belts) in Kendo, or Japanese fencing.
37. I loathe starfuckers, so I refuse to speak to celebrities or even people in bands I like unless there is something legitimately urgent I have to say to them.
38. I miss the days when people would regularly "make out" in movie theaters.
39. I have acid reflux, so I pop several Pepcid AC per day.
40. I have white guilt.
41. I had "Across the Universe" stuck in my head for several days last week.
42. I once saw thousands of Beluga whales migrating in Alaska.
43. My Mom's a cool feminist. She started the first rape crisis center in her town.
44. My Dad's a painter. He has covered a few canvases with monstrously oversized eggplants.
45. My sister likes movies where animals can speak. I find these rather creepy.
46. My wife likes movies in which black people teach white people how to dance. You'd be surprised how many such movies there are.
47. It takes me more time to explain in Japanese what my wife does (development director for an environmental non-profit) than I care to admit. Seriously. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to explain in Japanese more than once. I feel like I should be better at it.
48. I like to play chess and go, though I play neither well. When I play computer chess, the five-year old computer player can sometimes beat me. (His name is 'Ryan.' He favors his knights. Because they look like 'horsies.' Gawd, I suck.)
49. Breakfast diners line the highway to heaven in my religion.
50. I radiate heat. A lot of it. Always. Intensely.

Saw this concept on a friend's blog. Couldn't resist. So dorky it's delicious.

character sheet

name: Scot
level: 8
STR: 13
DEX: 9
CON: 12
INT: 14
WIS: 14
CHA: 10
born: April 7, 1974
raised: Lafayette, Louisiana
race: white guy
class: nomad monk
religion: secular buddhist
height: 6' 1"
weight: 210 lbs.
jeans: AC 4
shoe: AC 1
skills: analyze, distract, translate, knowledge (law), argue, speak language, ride bicycle, cook
feats: immovable, body furnace, persuasive, oversleep
equipment: Japanese cell phone +1, Oversized Fujitsu laptop, GBA SP Platinum
body gear: sweater, polar fleece (resist cold, CHA -1), jeans, hiking boots (AC +1, DEX -1), overstuffed wallet of holding
hobbies: books, music, nomaddin', games, movies

I admit it. I've spent the last 30 minutes browsing women's shoes on the internet. I have a problem. Flog me. I don't care anymore.

I'm taking these few days of self-inspection following a rather annoying challenge to my ego to do a little bit of constructive reflection. The topic for today is fashion.

I don't shop often, and when I do, it is usually at the request of loved ones, who have staged an intervention of sorts that quickly morphs into a trip to some mall-type place. When I was younger, the key word during such an intervention, the magic command that started the consumer assault, was usually "orphan." Now, it seems, I have graduated to "homeless." The few times I have shopped on my own have resulted in hurried purchases of multiple items in the same pattern (but with different colors!) that only sort of fit. I can't really be arsed to try anything on unless I am forced to.

Despite being slightly shopping-challenged, I do have a very clear idea of what I want. Flannel. That's right, I want it to be warm and soft. Some materials will become warm and soft over time, but dear sweet flannel is luxury from day one. I am pathologically texture-driven, not only as regards my own dress, but that of others as well.

Which brings me to an interesting point. I may dress like a slob, but my sense of style as applied to others is honed to surgical precision. Alli asks me for fashion advice all the time. I derive a great sense of pleasure from the fact that I am usually right about such things when asked. My texture-fetish definitely extends to women's clothing. I cannot even begin to explain why a woman in a white cotton dress shirt, dark grey wool A-line mini, and black mary janes drives me to head-flailing heights of ecstasy. I can't. But it does. The soft smooth starchiness of the white shirt, the rough grit of the wool, the smooth clean-shaven expanse of leg below, the contrast again with the black leather shoes... [Head rolls back, eyes lose focus...] It must be the thing I have for hip librarians. Nerdy girls with a sense of style drive me wild. Absolutely bonkers. Put stylish retro glasses and a pony-tail on her, and I would probably fall over. Cardiac arrest.

I always look at attractive women's shoes. This is not a foot fetish. I don't dream of women with perfect pedicures and delicate arches stepping on cupcakes slowly while barefoot. Really, I don't. That image may have seemed a little too detailed to maintain plausible deniability... But really, I don't. If anything, I like to think of myself as the male justification for the obsession women are supposed to have with cute shoes. Not that women shop for shoes with a keen eye as to whether or not they will impress me sufficiently. But shoes actually matter to me. When I see a beautiful woman, I always look at her shoes. The shoes can be a deal breaker. If they aren't what I had hoped, I just sigh mentally and let my eye wander elsewhere.

So this brings me full circle. With such elaborate and specific tastes in women's fashion, why can't I seem to get interested in my own clothing? Why can't I be on the ball a little bit and enjoy dressing myself? I watch Queer Eye. I have a fair idea of what I think looks good on guys. I just don't know how to spark interest in recreating a look on myself. Let me know if there is some sort of secret I am missing here.

If I could back to some abstract noodling now that my self-pity rant (see post below) is now finished...

Alli wrote me to let me know that the actual phrasing of the bit I wrote about two days ago was not, "In and of the world," but rather, "in the world but not of the world." So I guess it IS about me. Or is it? She also wrote:

What the phrase "in the world but not of the world" actually means is that believers are aliens in this world and that they belong to another world. (Philippians 3:20, Hebrews 11:13-16, 1 Peter 2:11)

And now I am completely at a loss. To be in the world but not of the world originally referred to those whose faith sets them apart. Does this apply to me? I don't think so. Faith may be one thing that can separate us from this world, but it is probably not the operating factor in my own very personal disassociation from the real. At least not faith in a Christian God, at any rate.

But belief plays some part in this. I have lots of friends who feel the same sort of disconnect, and they invariably are people of strong personal convictions and occasionally unconventional beliefs. A year or two ago, I asked a few friends how old they were before they stopped believing that through intense concentration and the blessing of unique gifts, they might develop super powers. I was in my early teens when I stopped. I used to stare at spoons for hours, hoping they would bend. Thankfully, I found out I wasn't the only one. In fact, some of these friends went much later in life before they gave up hope. Some still believe!

This might sound like just so many young minds corrupted by comic books, cartoons, and video games to the casual reader. But the history of myth is punctuated with super-heroes. Hercules and Samson and others formed the basic concept long before Superman hit the scene. Certainly past generations also felt the possibility of some innate ability that set them apart from others. Feeling special is kind of a basic human need.

And consider this: quantum physicists make a more or less well-respected living out of trying to find unconventional phenomena and recreate them. Why is imagining the one-billionth of a billionth chance of tunneling through solid matter any less ridiculous than believing you might will yourself to fly?

The important thing is belief. I don't particularly care if those beliefs are ever realized, but I need to be surrounded by people who believe in something. Especially now.

After a few chance encounters, I once decided that one indicator of whether or not a person will be a good conversationalist is whether or not they believe in ghosts. It's just a small, symbolic step towards being the kind of person who can communicate and admit multiple realms of possibility. Miracles are the same way. Philosophers have written volumes on the necessarily mysterious way that miracles must be perceived. Wittgenstein always nailed this one on the head. I wish I could have met him.

So I can say with absolute confidence that my tenuous connection with reality has a long and proud history, as well as a serious experiential core. I like the way I am. I like meeting other people who are like me.

That's it! I have fucking had it. I just heard from the Japanese firm that the translation I did for them was not good enough, so they're not going to hire me. I've spent the last four hours in a depression spiral with a pinch of confidence erosion. To say the least. I don't burst into tears, but I do feel entirely goddamn inadequate in every way.

So fuck them! I am tired of hearing from potential employers who just don't give a toss. I wear my heart on my goddamned sleeve, and I'm proud of it, you soul-eating shitbags. I am fragile and I like it that way, so enjoy your lives without me. I would have enriched your wan, work-obsessed existences with funny stories and witty observations. I would have brought you donuts on occasion. I would have taken you into my confidence and listened to you complain about your problems, then I would have thought seriously about what you were saying and responded with positivity, intelligence, and concern. But now? You get nothing.

And I'm not going to let you make me tear my own ass out over this, either. You were offering a factory-line translation position with enormous potential for abuse by superiors and little in the way of actual gratification and recognition. And I never even said that I actually wanted to work for you! Holy fuck, what kind of sap am I to have fallen for this bizarrely concocted ego-bomb? You invite me over, grill my qualifications, test me thoroughly, and take your sweet time to give me an answer, which, when it does arrive, is a sickly-sweet poison to the only job skills of which I've ever felt confident!

Evil, you have a name. And it is XXXXXX XXXXXXXXX.

I've never understood that phrase. Perhaps because I've never felt like I am the kind of person to whom it would ever be applied. I'm too...meta-analytical, as it were. Other phrases that would probably never be applied to me are "salt of the earth," "well-grounded," and "what you see is what you get."

I don't know how I feel about all that. Abstruse, convoluted, paralyzed by analysis, complexity for it's own sake. Those are the things that are more likely to be said about the way that I live. And yet, I can be hollowed out completely by the simplest events. I have reactions my sister would denounce as "socially programmed sentimentalism." When did she become such a toughy, anyway? She likes kittens but not sunsets... Go figure.

In fact, my sister spends her days among the detached culture vampires that populate a certain crit-journal. But I think she feels the way I do most of the time. Sick of irony, but still prone to laugh at its vulgarities. How do we rejoin the world? Are we outcast forever? Do we have to move to New York now and wear black? We really should have gotten off of the grad school rollercoaster sooner if we wanted to avoid all of this.

I think my detachment is one of the things that makes me like Japan. I never felt a part of anything back home. Feeling like an outsider in Japan is perfectly fine, though. Because I am. I am free to observe, to participate in cultural schema to a limited extent, and to amuse myself with endless suppositions about my environment. All without ever having to be a recognized full member of this society. Japan doesn't have to be a real place to me, the same way it didn't have to be a real place to Barthes.

I've been struggling with how to answer the question, "Why are you interested in Japan?" I think this acceptable detachment is a big part of it. The fact that I am in this world but not a part of it as a foreigner in Japan is the default expectation here. And I find that comforting and liberating. But like I said, everyone gets tired of irony and detachment eventually.

Then what?