The wind, the moon, the stars - they rise for us in our dreams. Soft voices take form and whisper of happy times past. There is the distinct, gentle sound of leaves rustling as a memory from childhood stirs and tilts up. I remember running through impossibly tall pampas grass under a tropical sky. Colours vivid straw brown and ultramarine blue with the resolution that only memory can give. Tack sharp I can now feel the sticky humidity and prickly pinking of grassy spears getting into my long socks and between a Clarks leather shoe and soft ankle. When you are 5 years old and have dirt on knee (and elbow), a couple of handy scrapes and a Pirate's dream of gold and silver, all is well with the world.
January 08, 2005
January 06, 2005
Potential
So many places to go, so many things to do.
I had thought that I'd been to a fair number of countries and 'seen the sights' as it were. But it's salutory to lay out those places on map and see how few and far between they really are. How Eurocentric they've been. I realise that so many places are unknown to me like the black hand of night; dark and behind the veil.
The world really is a large expanse and when you finally reflect and look at just where it is that you've been - all laid out like it were a dining table of past meals, well perhaps it's then that you begin to realise just how limited your choices have been and how small your everyday frustrations are. And yet to look and ponder where next ... there is an enormity of places to go and things to do: new faces, experiences, possibilities. What indeed is 'our' world?
So many places to go, so many things to do.
I had thought that I'd been to a fair number of countries and 'seen the sights' as it were. But it's salutory to lay out those places on map and see how few and far between they really are. How Eurocentric they've been. I realise that so many places are unknown to me like the black hand of night; dark and behind the veil.
The world really is a large expanse and when you finally reflect and look at just where it is that you've been - all laid out like it were a dining table of past meals, well perhaps it's then that you begin to realise just how limited your choices have been and how small your everyday frustrations are. And yet to look and ponder where next ... there is an enormity of places to go and things to do: new faces, experiences, possibilities. What indeed is 'our' world?
January 03, 2005
Takoyaki
Takoyaki
The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something - because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. - And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.
Takoyaki is serious business. It's cooked in front of you, but smiles aren't included - on the signs at least. Curiously enough all of my memories of Takoyaki stalls are of places peopled by rather happy and cheerful souls deftly spinning the ball of dough (they have octopus inside them) around on a cast iron hotplate. Sign and place, a study in contrasts. As is Japan.
The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something - because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. - And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Takoyaki is serious business. It's cooked in front of you, but smiles aren't included - on the signs at least. Curiously enough all of my memories of Takoyaki stalls are of places peopled by rather happy and cheerful souls deftly spinning the ball of dough (they have octopus inside them) around on a cast iron hotplate. Sign and place, a study in contrasts. As is Japan.