Tag Archives: blue

Diary: December 25 is normal day (& i see you if you are blue) + ahead to New Year

Happy December 25, no matter what your clock and/or a calendar says.

“time is an abstract” says the clock shop

Important: A note to folks dealing with chronic / complex illness, otherwise shut-in or feeling alone, frustrated by “all of this”: I see you and been you. Christmases alone at Chinese restaurants, nursing coffees at Denny’s, stuck hitchhiking, blue, alone, sick, and confused &/or in Hospital #peace

Normal: And in Japan, Christmas is known as “Monday, 25th”– a normal day in which nothing special happens // although we are going to the optician [update: we did] then post office, groceries ordered and delivered, garbage goes out tonight. So we go on.

Happy Boxing Day. Great thing about December 25 just being “Monday” in Japan is 8:30 PM, postal delivery rolls by with a box from @courtneymelba
& @milk_records
from an order sent in possibly their final hour.
{Yes, that is my address so you can send me a postcard or records}

Related:

Aside: For the record (because someone always asks): no, we don’t go to KFC on Christmas. Or ever. Somehow this myth persists and I guess there are people that do this but I’ve never met them.

Funny enough, you’re only the 42nd person to ask me that this week. And the short answer is: we sure don’t and I’ve never met anyone who actually does but somehow this has become the “story” just like that in Japan everyone eats whale meat and you can buy panties from vending machines – there are probably people that do but I don’t know them. Japan has lots of weirdness but the stories that appear in the “outside media” are all about this “outrageous strange Japan that might exist but I don’t know about it”

In response to one of numerous inquiries about KFC
Any/Everything can be better designed

Next up: From now, most all the folks start to busyily prepare for New Year – which involves intense thorough house cleaning, eating plain buckwheat noodles, attempting to not choke on glutinous rice paste, and then three days of watching inane TV programs (overstimulating variety shows followed by a multi day relay marathon with tortured college students), while eating delicacies – which some might consider each a “dare you to eat this”… (I just, as it’s actually wonderfully-prepared, elegant & elevated cuisine), ergo:

Example of luxurious elevated but sometimes rather confusing cuisine

While choosing through this chessboardlike box of mysterious delights – osechi – folks *pretend* to eagerly await something more spectacular than the mythos of the Santy Clause… the simultaneous delivery on early New Year’s morning of approximately 1.3 billion postcards by the diligent and exceptional Postal Service.

Stamps, won!

Most cards – generally preformatted and understated but carrying this years’ zodiac animal/creature/avatar (dragon for the record) – carry a “secret code” which corresponds with a sort of national lottery in which you look up the numbers in the newspaper to see if you’ve won like a trip to Hawaii, a car, or maybe some stamps. I won stamps once, two of them. Lucky! ¥63

geez, I look like a hairy wookie, I’m really not

And time is overrated, direction is everything, carry on in towards the cardinal of your choosing – aho!

Diary: “where i’m calling from” (re: creativity & endeavours + caramel apples)

* where I’m calling from *

{i} Diligently send out creative goodness all the time / is doing so a worthwhile endeavour? I mean I know “yes” but…

My point: I just hope items/musings/artifacts are enjoyed and care is noticed (so i don’t feel like the family who handmade caramel apples for Halloween just to have them all tossed out when kids return home from trick or treat).

Am i making sense? Didn’t think so

** Fck Stats, Give Inspiration

Ofuro bath at Tsuchida Cottage

Two notes:

1) The bath is the most sophisticated piece of equipment in our home… A click of a variety of button (there is more than one control panel for extra convenience) and you are transported to a temperature exactly of your choosing #42.

And yes, this is also a bath tub Time Machine which takes to various dispensations & destinations.

2) Very important to paint your toes to color coordinate with the bath tub and tile colours

Mementos: Pedicures, various

These days – what with the M.E.(cfs) and Fibro etc. – slowing me down, I find activities to get me out of the house which requires doing not much but sitting.

While pedicures may not seem like a medical therapy, and they’re certainly not, self-care is important part of my healing journey. Indeed, when feeling frustrated and early days of the illness, I made a list of things I can do which involves sitting down, but get me out of the house, and leave me with a feeling of satisfaction. These ideas include: making scrapbooks, watching matinée movies, sitting in parks under a tree, getting my beard professionally trimmed (rather than chopping at it myself), as well as enjoying pedicures.

As such, on all my healing journeys, I find pedicure places to massage and soothe my feet, trim up my nails, and leave with some colour to decorate. (Noting this predilection often elicits a strange response from the practitioners as painted toes aren’t as common for men as they are for women certainly, but I find this practice quite enjoyable nonetheless.)

In some cases, I paint my toes the colour of a local flag or other traditional local schemes (coconut trees, bamboo, waves…), otherwise I generally stick to shades of blue and green. For the record: Indonesia and Thailand definitely have the best pedicure practitioners (is that the proper term?), but I’m also eager to try pedicures in Vietnam as many manicurists in the USA, come from Vietnam.

In India especially, they thought my practice of painting toes was very strange, as such, i did myself (very poorly yet joyfully nonetheless). In Nepal, they were low on supplies but made do with some rugged polish which was moreorless impervious to removal. Once or twice, i enjoyed a pedicure whilst at sea.

I first started this practice at the advice of a remarkable lady who took me for a pedicure in Vancouver before going to Jamaica the first time at that time, I had Jamaican flags painted on my big toes (not sure i have a photo…). Sometimes i take photos of my toes, not all the time, here are some of mah big ole ugly feets. Sometimes i forget and just take snap of the old colour before replacing. No annotations since i don’t expect anyone will look or care, i mean really, its just photos of my feet – ewwww. Continue reading Mementos: Pedicures, various

Ease, Desired (Lie to Me) – poetry + pictogram (alt. 2)

Lie to Me, please (typed) v. 2

v.3

Somebody, kindly lie to me
Tell me I am “going to be OK”
Soon, life will be like driving down Laurel Canyon in 1973
In a Galaxie 500
Top down, radio up
Nothing but possibilities
That I will rest easy… like so many humans do with ease

Someone, kindly lie to me
Whisper I’ve done enough meditating, stretching, giving, therapies, effort
That soon,  I will sleep (!) and wake up (!) and every muscle, joint and nerve won’t be on fire
Please, kindly lie to me.

I promise to believe you (for now).

Ease, Desired (alt. 1)

Somebody, kindly lie to me
Tell me I am “going to be OK”
Soon, life will be like driving down Laurel Canyon in 1973
In a Galaxie 500
Top down, radio up
Nothing but possibilities

That I will rest easy… like so many humans do with ease

Someone, kindly lie to me
Whisper I’ve done enough meditating, stretching, giving, therapies, effort
That soon, I will sleep (!) and wake up (!) and every muscle, joint and nerve won’t be on fire
Please, kindly lie to me.

I promise to believe you (for now).

Cold Water Flat (song)

Wonder Hotel

Words by Dave uncleweed Olson (written in Pokhara, Nepal) with additions by Mikael Lewis

Music, vocals, guitars by Mikael Lewis (recorded in Utah, USA)

##

Cold Water Flat

Landlady’s always angry
So I keep strangers hours
Meditate to TV static
Decorate only with the freshest flowers

Use the payphone down the stairs
Still has that old rotary dial
Instant coffee in electric kettle
Takeaway leftovers wrapped up in foil

I will wait in this cold water flat
Rent paid out 3 months in advance
It’s lonely, but I’m not alone
I’ve got memories of you… for to keep me warm

Registered under a fake name
Though I’ve really nothing to fear
Endearment terms are always wide open
And your affections are always quite near

Hot water register yawns and moans
Damn thing either freezes or it burns
Three tarnished coins run the washing machine
Dirt spins round and around as I yearn

I’ll wait in this cold water flat
Yes I’ve mailed you a dark scribbled map
It’s lonely here, but I’m never alone
I’ve got memories of you…to torture my soul

Gave up on the smokes and the booze
I like to think I’ve paid all my dues
Now my addictions are much more complex
I just torture myself with my memory of you

Preserving the Wildflower – Postcard #69

pfgb-wildflower-sm

What becomes of the seemingly ephemeral creations we leave behind? Especially in the analog-days?

Consider these in the context of missing cassette tapes made by a now departed poet/activist/scholar Foster and guitar-ing Mikael, who recorded spontaneous youthful riffs in parent’s basement in Utah. In this postcard, Mikael  Lewis sings “Wildflower (for Foster)” written by Dave in a clinic in Nepal, then adds some more verses, spiels and a poem called “Occasionally Free” – with lightning, rainstorm and crickets chiming along.

Catch lightning with Preserving the Wildflower – Postcard #69
(25MB, 14:22, mp3, stereo)

Continue reading Preserving the Wildflower – Postcard #69

Diary: Butterworth > Penang > Kathmandu #notes

I walked across the border, a confusing frontier, from Thailand to Malaysia and now sit at a train station – so alone – waiting to be whisked southwards – deliberately ignoring any detail, plan or expectation. Drifting, floating, swept away to elsewhere, savouring deliberate pages while stroking my beard with Viking oil.

#

Now in Penang, Malaysia… i came to there by a train to Butterworth (sadly devoid of pancakes), lurched by my boots aboard a ferry (which missed you mostly but i snapped the van Gogh green ceiling of metal paint), then wandered to a colonial outpost  — now a mix ethnicities and religions – skipped the temples and went to a dusty stationery store to acquire dried-out stamps with barely useful phrases, watercolour paper, scissors / glue, envelopes and and stamps / all so sumptuous.

#

Post office frolic and then early morning to Bangkok then to Kathmandu! Dream of my youth when in a tent reading exploits of mountaineers and Sherpa tigers and Yeti.

#

Now in a vast room with a balcony and yellow walls, i transcribe from journals so i can mail them elsewhere (though i do plan to return, i am not committed to t he plan) and lighten load (i am carrying 4 notebooks at this point).

Listening to Jerry Garcia and only missing one thing. No, i have tea so that’s not it. Guesses?