Tag Archives: letter

Sometime along the way (late 2019?), Grant Lawrence, BC broadcaster and writer (and Tin Tin fan), had some question for me about the erstwhile pandemic which was here in Japan before *everywhere else* plus lots was going on in our little world, while his extraordinary wife Jill Barber was preparing for a virtual show at the legendary Palomar where my Uncle Lorne was once the maitre’d and the memory inspired this letter. I am stashing here as a diary of sorts as it catches a lot of the spirit of the time as i share some thoughts about his book Dirty Windshields and other topics. Might make sense to you, either way, carry on.

Grant and I with a crappy camera at CBC open house, prob 2006

Hello Grant, Enjoyed all the updates… Been a wild summer on this side of the Pacific for us ~ which recalls your initial questions to me back in early February when the schools in Japan were just shutting down and you were curious about how people would handle this… Or how far we’ve come!

We now have a wonderful little dude with the middle name of “Stanley“ born just before the NHL came back (not quite enough good luck with that name but still…), followed by a very unique Buddhist funeral circumstance, then a Typhoon, my 50th birthday (which included a personal archaeology project when my entire life archive a ride from various storage lockers to 150 year old grain barn now art studio/music lounge) and just recently, an oddly awesome exhibit of my poems and paintings at a goat farm, plus my singer wife (& pandemic rock who has also stick-handled through reams of paper work getting me and the official in Japan and a little dude official in Canada) returns to the stage at a cavernous convention center with her bossanova blues the same weekend as your wife hits (my great uncle’s old haunt) of the Palomar / we’re planning on “being there“.

Also, Dirty Windshield should be longer, not shorter… I mean I really enjoyed all of your books but this one was like reading about my own parallel life, ergo: we were in the same places in similar situation is just different years and circumstances. From punk rock tour vans in Germany to getting robbed in Washington DC to underground explosions in Olympia (where touring bands crashed at my house dubbed “hockey lounge“), bewildered in Japanese labyrinths, VW vans with lightspeed snowstorms & de-icing lighters… and many points in between.

Of course, I was Whalley trekking in by bus to York theater & making zines while you were in West Van doing the same stuff with Nards – just in different suburbs and, back in those days crossing a river *and* an inlet might as well be crossing the English channel.

Anyhow, thanks for the update – I love living here but I’ve been very much in the “Japan bubble” since all of this began so it’s nice to hear familiar riffs / let’s get you and the family over to Okayama for top-shelf beer at the goat farm, &/or a goat milk lattes! No these goats are not on the roof and they don’t do yoga.

And yes, we have trains, lots of trains which sparks a whole other idea…

dvo

Dave (with specs obv) and Dan and Bob along with Uncle Lorne who sorta inspired this riff

Healing Ramble

Healing: Story of Dissanayake Ayurvedic Hospital ~ Galle, Sri Lanka

April 15, 2022 daveo 2 Comments

not really at the hospital but still captures the spirit of the scene

Memo: What follows comes from my erstwhile “Healing Journal” – written/compiled on a foggy meandering journey to various countries (Pacifica, Phitsanulok, Cochin, Pokhara, Dikwella/Galle…) visiting all manner of hospitals, clinics and exploring various healing modalities and techniques.
Shared here more-or-less unedited for posterity (whatever that is) and to shed light to those struggling who might come across this riff. Please watch the “Healing Ramble, introduction” video for context on this series.
Importantly, this is not meant to be a travelogue or creative writing exercise, just laying out my experience as it came to me. I may include some links to other projects or creations that came out of this, maybe… I’m not there yet.
This entry, from is from Galle Sri Lanka, late 2017 and written in the weeks following. It’s now April 2022, i live in Japan, am stable if far from “normal”. No comments, sympathy requested or accepted. Carry on.

Background: Along my healing journey, I received treatment at Dissanayake Ayurvedic Hospital in Galle, Sri Lanka, a government-run, pay-what-you-can facility.

I attended this hospital for Ayurveda treatments for some weeks during Dec. 2017-Jan 2018 and was treated by a kind practitioner called Ruwan. I also met with a wise Doctor who recommended I do a longer in-patient Panchakarma program here, but… some life situations changed and i didn’t do the program. I saw the rooms and talked to the doctors and while it was very spartan and not cozy, the staff seemed to be very intent on their practice.

Routine: Mr. Prem dropped me off via his Tuk-tuk (he introduced me to the facility in the first place), i then went to a window to announce myself (to everyone’s great surprise!) and then sat in the waiting area. Mr. Ruwan would come back from lunch, i would strip down to underwear and lay down on a wooden table (covered with a vinyl sheet) in a shared room with folks coming and going for massage with loads and loads of oil.

Dissanayake Ayurvedic Hospital: Treatment room

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Cannabis + Culture

Letter: regarding eco-carpetbaggers, money-focused orgs, talk – action = zero, etc

June 30, 2021 daveo

Written as a letter to a friend, somehow thought good idea to put here so i don’t lose it. Not sure but hey… no one’s paying attention anyhow.

Hey [redacted],

I hear you on these hypocrites, bootlickers and carpet baggers who talk a big game but at the end of it, they spend all their “organizations energy on managing the organization” rather than actually doing stuff.

I learned a long time ago (somehow) in my punk rock youth that “talk minus action equals zero” and in that same youth, was idealistic enough to want to actively support a lot of different organizations in Utah and BC but every time I went to volunteer my (then healthy and strong) body for action (i.e. put me on those anti-whaling ships! send me out on desert missions! put me on a lookout tower!) the only answer was “you can help with fundraising… Why don’t you go door to door and ask for money?” Not impressed.

And, years later, I still see the same organizations spending all their money begging for money. E.g. After all my years of working to normalize cannabis, I see the suits and celebrities jumping into the mix and congratulating themselves and I wonder: where the fck were you on those rainy days at the capital decades ago? Where were you lobbying and writing letters and to policymakers and showing up at inane committee meetings? I hear you are running your mouth about stock prices and making cute branded labels for your factory growing weed blah blah blah.

As such, somehow I realize that despite my usual social and community-building nature, when it comes to getting shit done, I just do what I want to do on my own terms and float out into the world and don’t expect to see an impact for decades later. Been this way for my documentary films, punk rock fanzines, chap books of poetry and other arts and crafts… + Realized that I could be an artist who spends half of his time applying for grants and sending and submissions to be rejected (another quarter of my time complaining about the injustice of it all) or else I could just go hustle some day job for temporary times (goodness know i’ve had a few) and make art on my own terms and put it out there without any expectation of acceptance or money. Fuck Stats, Make Art.

Somehow I almost accidentally ended up this way as I teased with a flirting level of fame before vanishing again. Seldom seen indeed. I think of Henry David Thoreau self publishing 100 copies of Walden, dead at 37, no one remembers his contributions to pencil making or the impact that came hundred plus years later. That’s the kind of hero.

After being gone for Utah from sometime and ending up back there in recent years after my Mom died and hiding out, i saw all the precious places polluted by REI shopping yuppi3s and credit card wielding “ski bums” who think they’re making a difference by voting for “that other party”, left again as fast as I could and proclaimed my lifelong dream to never go back to Logan (the only town I’ve ever been busted for weed).

I even went to my favourite holy sacred hot spring up fifth water diamond fork on trails that I literally helped build and pools that I hauled up bags of cement to shore up the rocks to find it overflowing with BYU students, I stripped down to my naked self and took a nice shower in the waterfall and all my splendour and quickly cleared the area out for a nice leisurely soak. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

how to clear out an hot spring… (photo with Lomo sardine can spy camera)

All this is to say that I see you and hear you and admire you and you got a guy out here respecting your work and your life and understanding what you’re laying down about Lycra knuckleheads with their lawyers and mortgages.

Told a younger friend the other day who’s getting caught up in the rat race that all these asshole billionaires that end up in the news about not paying taxes or going to space, they’re all bunch of workaholics who never see their family, never just to get hang out in a barn with an illicit smoke and some used records, and hell my mother-in-law cooks as well as any restaurant and the best views are for free. And if you want to be all fancy, I built a house on a tropical island one time for $50K and another time for $70K, you can’t buy a carport most places for that. You can get your own campland near Gary’s outpost near Shasta for under 100… I’ll tell you about Paradise, the way John Prine sings about it. Move to the country, grow peaches… work little except for the real work.

That’s my riff/rant/spiel, yer pal, daveo

Hockey Art + Media

Hockey Primer (for Seattle and beyond)

June 25, 2021 daveo

Hockey Lounge 4:20 24/7, immortalized at Olympic Plaza in SLC, Utah, 2002
Preamble: for years, mostly living in Olympia, Washington and later Vancouver, BC I wrangled a website called HockeyNW tracking historic and contemporary hockey culture around Cascadia including teams: Tacoma SaberCats, Seattle Thunderbirds, Spokane Chiefs, flashing back to Seattle Metropolitans, bits of Portland and of course Vancouver, as well the in-line hockey teams i coached through a YMCA league in Olympia.

During this time my brother Dan and i (something) hosted the “Hockey Lounge” in Olympia, Washington – a speak / toke easy” to spread hockey culture (and provide occasional crash space for rock n roll bands – another story).

Some of the artifacts are shared in this archive, others might be eventually.

Anyhow… what I’m saying is: all of this was anticipating the arrival of another NHL franchise in the Northwest which eventually became the Seattle Kraken. Took a while and now I live far away but, recently shared a bit of an “hockey primer” with a friend who lives in Washington State who is a soccer/football supporter to share a little bit of culture and basics about the sport.

I don’t really write about hockey anymore and my “consumption experience” is generally solo, with coffee in the cottage in Japan, regardless, sharing here for posterity:

June 11, 2021 Hello [redacted],

Been meaning to tell you a few things about hockey and now it’s a really good time for you to start paying attention because it’s almost into the third round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, I’m currently listening to Seattle’s “expansion cousins” Vegas Golden Knights game six against the Colorado Avalanche (who used to be the Quebec Nordiques) yes it’s a little bit confusing especially when you consider the winner of the series will play the Montréal Canadiens, who are from Quebec – Canada sorta / of course but the French-centric part and who shocked the hockey world by running over their long time rival Toronto (a.k.a. the centre of the universe) Maple Leafs and then swept aside the Winnipeg Jets (who used to be the Atlanta Thrashers) it’s things like this that require a good primer.

The good thing about Seattle Kraken is now Vancouver has a natural geographical rival. In the past, the other teams would all match-up with natural dance-partners and Van was sort of stranded in their own little glorious West Coast anomaly. As we’ve seen with MLS, having teams in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver makes for good times for supporters/fans/whatever.

Continue reading Hockey Primer (for Seattle and beyond) →

Personal Musings

Riff: about Tsuchida Cottage construction + vids

March 22, 2021 daveo

A few notes originally written to a friend as a letter in Feb 2021 riffing about the “Tsuchida Cottage” (soon to be “Station”) construction project.

Sharing here for my own posterity and remembrance, along with this video of the “wall raising” day (which also included the roof which you can see in this amusing time lapse video).

^ Above: quick video of workers pounding the wall joints together, March 2021

Riff: Notes from Tsuchida Cottage (soon to be “Station” as the house is long and narrow and feels like a train so this is new “working title”)

Our construction project has started, 2 diligent sturdy men who are much older than you and I (likely), doing incredibly efficient rapid hard work with vigour and precision.

We set up a tea/coffee/snack station inside the house and another one outside, we took gifts to the neighbours in advance of the noise. We insisted, they refused, we pleaded, back and forth…

The workers, fuelled by french press, gladly did an extra job since they had their adorably sized front loader & moved a bunch of boulders to fill in a retaining wall/drainage ditch without any complaint. A huge help as doing it with a tripod, pulley and a hand wheel dolly means three rocks is a hard afternoon. We gave them extra cakes for this. (there is a time lapse of doing a session last year with my tiny mother in law and pregoo wife, not a sturdy crew).

When the HVAC man came to discuss the heat pump units (it’s an old house in Japan so no central heating of course and no insulation and a few rooms have these individual heat pumps which are heaters and coolers…) Anyway, told him I want one in my old grain barn which baffled him. {Keep in mind, each of these planning appointments requires all the formalities and tea service with a special cups and the correct “special” snacks etc.} Note: This gentleman has a slightly-dyed red toupee – still trying to hold onto his youthful style.

So I took him out to the barn/studio, up the stairs into the secret lounge and his jaw just about dropped when he saw my Clash London calling poster, stacks of records, 100 pound record player with an iron exoskeleton, a couple of lounge chairs, (he did not grok the exceptional collection of beat literature but that’s coming in handy for a Kerouac exhibition later this year etc. He *then* understood why this is needed/ wanted. But he wanted to put the unit on the wall which outside is the *perfectly preserved unblemished yakisugi wall* (I’ve sent along a photo in the past) but I explained that “the ancestors have somehow passed this barn down to my caretaking and this is aesthetic blunder is unacceptable so we’re going to have to put it here in this corner where no one can see it.”

He told me i have an old Japanese heart and as such, we will attach it to a beam that is prob older than the City of Seattle (colonially speaking) which is joined to the other beams without use of nails and screws so well, it’s not perfect but I will have a humidity control and heat pump and an olden barn to protect a lifetime’s worth of *valuable* books, records and papers.

I then asked him if the heat pump unit comes in something other than white, it turns out they also come in “off-white”. We looked at the catalog of all the different models and it was like the scene and lost in translation with Bill and Scarlet are looking at the menu of all the different kinds of meat and to the untrained eye, they all look the same. The catalog was 30+ pages of air conditioners that looked exactly the same – “The features were different” I was assured. I asked “don’t they come in brown or black?” But alas… not. I also asked if there was one with “a remote control that had less than 35 buttons” on it like maybe five buttons(?) but no, there are so many features but I want an on/off and a temperature control because I am a simple man. But robots win again.

Anyway, here we are, doing a construction project and it is *completely different* than your construction project where everything picked with intention and care and custom made into a lovely glorious architectural masterpiece.

In our case, we are adding to the tradition of houses in the generations before, and digging out some old pieces (for example a couple of 1920 era sliding doors for the entranceway), finding a few things at secondhand stores (for example a stainless steel sink/counter which will be the wife’s plant potting station), sourced a potbelly cast-iron stove which brought oooohs & ahhhs from the Japanese architect, scored several furniture pieces including a ultra heavy grand table from secondhand stores and brought down the total price of the project from equivalent of maybe 130,000 to about 90,000 with various resourcefulness (using numbers somewhere between CAD and USD as i can’t get my head around the flucuations).

Told him we didn’t require television cable outlets, various other knickknacks and accoutrements. The kitchen will be more spacious but simple, not a bunch of fancy cabinets and a three burner stove (an upgrade from our two burner which reminds me of living in my Volkswagen van). Oh and a 2 part sink which was a shocking idea to Japan and required sourcing. I explained i need the space for dishes and space for making pickles – then i seemed brilliant.

Dream is Ichiro will come home with his pals and our house will be the “hangout” – with this in mind, also adding a handwash station right by entrance in a stroke of brilliance and a side access door for muddy kids and their gear.

Bonus: for enthusiasts, a “slow” version of the time lapse video of wall and roof raising

Japan Life/Travel

Memo: Generational Home in Okayama

March 8, 2021 daveo

Posted as a comment on an article about someone’s kominka (trad Japanese house) project, sharing here so don’t lose it… ya know “the record” or posterity or amusement (with mild edits).

Hello from Sunny Okayama where my wife Ryoko and our new baby live on ancestral land in a “cottage” (kinda shotgun house slapped together) next to the parents who renovated Grandma/Grandpa’s kominka about 4 years ago keeping all the original touches but doing some practical and comfortable upgrades.

We are staying in a big tatami room while doing some changes to the cottage – lovely sliding doors, changed form original but maintaining aesthetics, engawas (where i sit now) now have thermal glass windows but also open fully for the fresh breeze.

We’re now bringing this full circle as we use the old sliding doors to the cottage reno, plus re-wrap the tatami mats rather than tossing out, plus adding an efficient wood stove (my wife is an arborist so always has wood gathered) – don’t get much snow but does get chilly and summer’s of course are hot and humid – plus adding a new room, moving kitchen into a more open location and whatnot. Also added a new ofuro bath so the 3 of us can bathe together #heaven.

Unlike the parents’ house, the cottage is sorta slapped together but we resisted a tear down and start again and making incremental changes. (Funny the parents said “you will just live in our house when we pass away” to which i replied, “you are 65 year old healthy Japanese so that means 30 years from now!”

Anyhow, the property also has a magnificent 150+ year old “kura” grain barn with massive wood beams, mud walls and 3 thick doors with cast iron puzzle keys. This has turned into my art studio and music lounge (needs a few little upgrades for safety and power/lighting) and a “naya” tool shed for wife’s business which also has loads of Grandpa’s heavy duty pre-war farm tools (including probably 6 pick axes!).

Documenting loads of this life (amongst other projects) if curious. Not a plug, just me saying “right on with your awesome project”.