Tag Archives: home

Finding Home #transcription (repeat)

No longer daunted
By subterfuge
Payola schemes or even
Assassinations by a religious stooge

Still enamored by overbites
Pretty lies, feathered caps
and Japanese super cub motorbikes

Confused by burning coals
to alchemize
and quicksilver mines
in a triangular ruse

I don’t need a course
To tell me to be happy
I already know what wealthy means:
Have you a garden, a pen and Wood stove?

The answer to the biggest question is:
“to love, and to be loved”

The pathway to go there is: kindness, tolerance, empathy, intrepidness, weakness is strength

All this is to say:
Cynicism avoided, reality reinvented, consensus subverted, admiration for the usual
Savor the regular days, notice the magnificence in nonchalance & common place.

Get down on your knees!

To look closely
The tactility of grass
The softness of sand
The circles and cycles
The shards of pottery
The ants smaller than the other ants
The lichen, the moss the dirt
The rivulets
The worm holes to everywhere else

Will lead you back to exactly here.

Lost the Plot (Finding Home), Video – Postcard #85

Thinking about “going home in October” or even more, going far away with this video version of the audio-first podcast.

+ Lost the Plot (Finding Home) – Postcard #85 podcast, but video(!) +

Take some spoken word poetry and add some shaky tuktuks and random trains with assorted filters and voila, ya got a podcast you can watch AND listen to if that’s your thing. 

+ Lost the Plot (Finding Home) – Postcard #85 podcast, but video(!) +

Blurb: Thinking about “going home in October” or going far away via freeverse poetry backed by trains from Moncton to Sri Lanka and tuk tuks from Kerala and Thailand, read by a weary fella in barn in Japan. 

Note: Postcards from Gravelly Beach, literature podcast, est 2006, now with 85 dispatches, each handcrafted with affection.

fondly, dvo

Audio-only version of “Lost the Plot (Finding Home) – Postcard #85

Continue reading Lost the Plot (Finding Home), Video – Postcard #85

Lost the Plot (Finding Home) – Postcard #85

LOST THE PLOT (FINDING HOME) – POSTCARD #85

Thinking about “going home in October” or even more, going far away from home via freeverse poetry, read directly from scribbled travel scrapbooks and backed by trains from Moncton to Sri Lanka and tuk tuks from Kerala and Thailand, by a weary fella in an olden barn in provincial Japan. Fondly home. 

Be Lost at Home: Lost the Plot (Finding Home) #85
(17MB, 10:26, 192 kbps, mp3, stereo)

Continue reading Lost the Plot (Finding Home) – Postcard #85

Abode: Tsuchida Cottage (*old* street view)

Regarding Tsuchida cottage / house: as mentioned in previous “Japan cottage musings” videos (Tsuchida Yard & Garden & Generational Home), from the 1990s up until a few years ago, the “big house” was vacant and had fallen into disrepair as evidenced by this screenshot from Google Street view.

You can notice Ryoko’s tool shed with its charcoaled yakisugi walls in the foreground, as well as directional traffic mirrors and way-finding/ distance signs to no place in particular.

The Garden too looks rather forlorn.

Ryoko and Father with Shinto priest performing ceremony on the land before house renovation

The house was completely renovated keeping original character, “bones” and many details but upgrading well… everything else / work by our family friend Morioka-san and his company AC studios (more about this in the “kura introduction” dossier). 

So much has changed, so much more will evolve.

Flood’d

Home is something i’ve never known
I only how to go, go far
by train by van by thumb by plane
by my weary legs with viking calves

To be clear, from grade 1 through 4
I lived in the same house
Near a Guildford forest
Now a shopping mall
I built tree forts with abandoned lumber
Explored burned out wreckage across the dirt lane
Where i found a rusty hammer handle
Charred with reason unseen

Since then, no where longer
than three years
i don’t count the places
as i can’t determine a criteria
what’s to be included
when all is transitory

Motels for months
Uninvited couch surf for a season
Roommates unwanted
A parked van for happy nights

Years when tents and tarps
Out-counted a solid roof room
I can light a fire in the rain
Just can’t put it out

Communes, communities and rest area
wooded campout national parks
thwarting eviction by limitations
by rangers claiming beachlands
as their authority

Destinations not near as important
as the ways and the means

Frankly i’m not particular
but partial to somewhere calm
of transport conveyance
public or private
not as interesting as dirty or clean
and most often importantly
slow, or at least not deliberately swift
though speedy and secure will suffice

Some ramblers love airports
the commotion and details
i shut off senses and try to avoid
conversations with strangers
who looks like me

Give me the awkward lost ones
the folks fumbling through
not the seasoned jaded sharpy
others can interrupt train tables
whereas i can only figure
north or south
from the town i leave
and when it might arrive
Noting: if overnight, make sure stops after 9
when the coffee shops are open
workers on their way
i’ll pause to fill a cup with cream
stir in too much sugar
for false hope and energy

I wrote instructions for other to hitchhike
must add a disclaimer to ensure no damage
i can’t be held responsible for randomness
rushing highway on-ramps, just hold a sign

While a freighter stateroom is ideal
an empty cabin might have to do
to peer out the porthole
and see the same sea each day

Fringed by sand or trees or
ports requiring approval
inky stamps are a weakness
and to think 100 years ago
a passport was rather absurd
of course you are from elsewhere
present yourself
because they already know you are here
commit to your cover story
whether lies or truth indifferent

Just become who you say
before it catches up with you

Trainspotting: VIA Rail’s “the Ocean” Heads Out of Moncton, New Brunswick

The VIA Rail train “The Ocean” – from which i just disembarked – pulls out of Moncton, New Brunswick heading west towards Montréal, Quebec, Canada.

This train is Viarail’s The Ocean which goes between Montreal and Halifax… In this case, dumping me off in Moncton, New Brunswick (from Truro, Nova Scotia) last summer when I explored eastern/maritime Canada seeking a new home Unsuccessfully — I did find many find communities between Montréal’s mile end, Quebec City, Halifax’s north end, St. John’s Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia… to name a few but turns out I’m #Pacific through and through. Note: met wonderful people in each place… So much more #friendly & open than #Vancouver indeed – also way way thriftier place to find a home and exist.

Swipe for multiple views of this fine (by 1960s standards anyway) conveyance.

Salvador Dali – his home in Portlligat

The decoration of the house is surprising, extraordinary. Perhaps the most exact adjective would be: never-before-seen. I do not believe that there is anything like it, in this country or in any other…. Dalí’s house is completely unexpected…. It contains nothing more than memories, obsessions. The fixed ideas of its owners. There is nothing traditional, nor inherited, nor repeated, nor copied here. All is indecipherable personal mythology…. There are art works (by the painter), Russian things (of Mrs. Gala), stuffed animals, staircases of geological walls going up and down, books (strange for such people), the commonplace and the refined, etc.