July 2010
1 post
7 tags
“Believe nothing merely because you have been told it, or because it is...”
– Buddha
June 2010
1 post
14 tags
May 2010
1 post
11 tags
April 2010
3 posts
12 tags
10 tags
9 tags
January 2010
4 posts
5 tags
6 tags
9 tags
5 tags
November 2009
1 post
6 tags
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a...”
– Robert A. Heinlein
October 2009
4 posts
5 tags
4 tags
6 tags
6 tags
August 2009
2 posts
8 tags
The probability that I will stand up on my chair...
In all aspects of my approach to life and reality I try to do away with dualism and strive to find unifications everywhere my mind wanders. I find that the universe is always in balance and that the two ends of the pendulum are actually one. As in a famous Taoist symbol, the big white entity and the big black entity actually hold a little bit of each other. They’re really one and the same,...
9 tags
The Blue Parrot
I went to a used bookstore in Takadanobaba on Sunday called The Blue Parrot. It’s apparently a pretty well known used English bookstore in Tokyo. A friend of my mine at work mentioned it to me and I finally got around to checking it out. I was lucky to find they were having a half-off sale last weekend. The place is a pretty tiny, cramped space with three aisles of various books. It has a...
July 2009
5 posts
6 tags
“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as...”
– Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
3 tags
9 tags
Dormant Creatures
We sleep in the sing song windy window rattle of Tuesday afternoons, late for class and life amid used books scattered half-read and dogeared, cold pizza and debt. —as the suns sets in Damascus, some woman bleeds in Persia, the colossus sinks into the sea, we write dissertations on bud brewed chai: honey sweetened jasmine spiced earthly melange —we ponder the beginning, in...
5 tags
“We are Tomte. The Scandinavian region of northern Europe is the fabled home of...”
– I frequent a bakery in Shinjuku station. This slogan is written on their shopping bags.
10 tags
the data aggregates from the chaos
I’ve been strangely unreasonable to myself lately. I have neglected my passions to the point that that they are no longer my passions. I seldom write. Never poetry. I don’t take photos. I no longer work on digital media. I was never any good at these things but I did them anyway. Now I just work at an unfulfilling [this is not a word—it should be] job. My personal relationships are...
June 2009
9 posts
5 tags
“That’s what the owners counted on. The fact that Americans will probably...”
– George Carlin
5 tags
6 tags
17 more words
41. carouseto engage in a drunken revel; to drink deeply and frequently. 42. homunculusan artificially made dwarf, supposedly produced in a flask by an alchemist. 43. ouroborosa circular symbol of a snake or dragon devouring its tail, standing for infinity or wholeness. 44. nincompoopa fool or simpleton. 45. catharsisthe purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, esp. through...
7 tags
7 tags
“Civilization cannot exist without new frontiers; it needs them both physically...”
– Arthur C. Clarke
6 tags
6 tags
they'll blush and try not to sound xenophobic
On Saturday I took the Chuo line from Tokyo station to Shinjuku after work as always. I sat down in a spot dividing two seats, as per the Japanese custom of avoiding sitting next to anyone. Two guys got on the train and saw that there was a seat available on either side of me, frowned, and moved on. No one ever politely asks for someone else to move over, lest the disturb the sacred Wa. I got...
7 tags
“Bulls at least are not the greatest stylists in English. No bull has ever been a...”
– Ernest Hemingway
9 tags
May 2009
14 posts
8 tags
5 tags
Check out more of this awesome music here:
Bart...
9 tags
9 tags
a charming bunch of rejects and fuck-ups
I was riding the escalator from the Chuo line platform down into the main concourse of Tokyo station. The escalators criss cross in the typical way that allows you to see people on the opposite escalator. Right as I passed it I saw another foreigner—a gaijin. As we passed he smiled and nodded at me in recognition. I couldn’t help but to involuntarily smirk before I realized the absurdity of...
10 tags
7 tags
7 tags
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a...”
– Robert A. Heinlein
8 tags
7 tags
8 tags
the guy kept verbalizing something about it being...
A few weeks back I met an interesting character on my train ride home. I take the Keio line from Shinjuku to Chitose-Karasuyama. When I work late I end up taking a commuter train around 11 p.m. These trains can get really crowded, and though I’ve never been shoved onto one by a pusher (that is, a man in white gloves who crams people onto the train) it can still get pretty tight. On on of...
4 tags
17 words
A few years ago I found a website that hosted lists of various things. One of them was a list of strange and obscure words. I copypasted the list into a txt file and have been adding words I come across ever since. There were 23 words in the original list. Here are my next 17 words.
24. woolgather:to engage in fanciful daydreaming. 25. brobdingnagian:something of huge size, tremendous. 26....
8 tags
conversation with a nearby naked man
We took a train across town to Takaido. Takaido station is on the Inokashira line in Suginami. A polluted river runs past the station and under the street. After coming out of the station we turned off the street and followed a path along the river. We walked a short distance under now green cherry trees and found a bench. We sat here, lethargic from the sun and burgers we had for lunch. I laid...
5 tags
chatting at 3 am
Stephen: man, i love picking my nose
i cant get enough
so satisfying
me: it is
you feel so purged
thats how stalin must've felt when he sent everyone to the gulags
like he just picked a giant booger
Stephen: hahahahahaha
taste bud orgasm
I got off the train in Suidobashi and met up with my Chinese friend outside the station. Yui was dressed in his usual fashion. Pastel shirt, greenish, big sunglasses, and a white jacket with a certain kind of neck strap buckle that seems to be always in fashion in Tokyo. We crossed the river and the street, shamefully avoiding eye contact with the volunteers collecting money for earthquake...
April 2009
4 posts
7 tags
the chaos looks acceptable
I had a great day yesterday. It all started when I woke up around noontime. The sun was shining and the wind the was light and breezy. I live in a small room in Setagaya-ku, Tokyo. It’s a largely residential neighborhood, with lot’s of greenery and famous for it’s many Buddhist temples. I went downstairs and took a long shower, looking out at passing people through the barred...
5 tags
want. things. can't.
The sick pointlessness of it all… my brain hurts from living I want to continue, I really do. But why continue in the face of an utter and complete lack of substance. What is substance? A goal, maybe. I need something to distract me from past regrets. I need something that will fill the void that mistakes have left in my life. I want only a few basic things. But as I write that sentence. “I...
5 tags
vestigial organ
I’ve been suffering from an unnerving sensation of uselessness lately. I only go to work. I don’t produce anything meaningful. It doesn’t help that my job isn’t fulfilling, but I should be working on my own projects regardless. I use to write more, but the motivation has left me. There was a time when I was interested in a multitude of arts. I liked to draw. I liked digital...
7 tags
the high water mark
Six months ago I sat in my Milwaukee apartment on a nice sunny day and I was miserable. I was living like a dead man, anticipating the inevitable end and rebirth that comes with big changes. I didn’t think about the moment at hand, which in hindsight was blissful, and focused instead on my demise. I was on the verge of ending my college tenure, and with no job in sight and the reality of a liberal...