The sun rises and the morning is cool. My bicycle hums as overinflated tyres rush along 1970's terrazzo floors. I pass through near empty arcades. Everywhere is a blaze of Kanji in all the colours that the Nippon Densu Neon Works (or whoever they are) is capable of creating. Faces on billboards smile with whiter than white teeth; straight and narrow and even. Jean Reno, the French movie star, has something good to say about soda. Above me, exactly 1000 Japanese Summer Festival Bells tinkle - lazy in the cool breeze. All is well when the day is new. Even Japanese workers rest sometime.
Shadows play a game of tag whilst running alongside my bicycle. Old men and short men in hard polyester pants (shiny with wear) glide alongside me, their bicycles dull with age and use. They are burdened with strange cardboard cargoes. They are a disappearing past of cheap paint gone dull and rough and crinkly. Rust nibbling away at the extremities. Blink and you'll miss Japan.
One hundred and twenty million Japanese. A billion Chinese. Countless stars fallen behind the dawn. How many bicycles are rolling along in the cool of the morning at this exact moment?
"We Japanese like details."
The gentle breeze is to my back now, the half remembered speckling of light must remain outside this cool passageway - but a memory of that light brightly fluttering as white dice on sooty baize remains with me.
It's Summer Festival week which is a time when Japanese people dance badly, spontaneously and unselfconsciously in the street. All whilst marching in well organised lines. There is the constant banging of drums that continues for hours on end. Men dressed in white with great big headbands hammer away furiously at wine barrel sized drums. A splash of red dye on white is to be seen. People stare, endlessly watching on. Fireworks will explode in tidy, well mannered, arrangements. Each individual spark a conscious well arranged part of the whole.
Lucky morning.
April 23, 2005
April 22, 2005
Seminar
I went to my 'first' graduate or higher seminar today -I know what have I been doing with my time? Imagine, if you will, a room full of post-structuralists nodding their heads sanely while this Dr Dude out the front embeds the wildest assertions about the nature (or lack thereof) of 'tings into his presentation. Its a pity that my other supervisor hadn't turned up - he would have gone wild. And I mean WILD - and he would have definitely used the word incoherent. Ahh, these university guys - they all know each other anyway.
Call ME reactionary, but when someone says Yes, language determines the nature of physics, my dander gets up.
Anyway, I took notes and copied the (extensive) handouts that were provided and I've got some other readings, and a contact out of the 'effort' of going. To be fair, the presenter handed out an excellent overview / flowchart that he'd drawn up; it indicated what intellectual traditions are involved in this area (dating back to the Enlightenment) and how they connect with each other. I'll probably end up creating an electronic form of this document and uploading it - it makes the ground a lot clearer for someone interested in the history or ideas / and the firmness of reality I think.
There have been moments recently where I've felt like I should be getting a job a buying a house. The world moves on and here I am playing 'laptop man and the thesisicons' - perhaps I want my cake and to eat too. Going to today's seminar really reminded me how much it is that I love this stuff. A world of ideas, of thinking, of questioning how it is that things are. This world is not easy to come by. Not in most jobs anyway.
Call ME reactionary, but when someone says Yes, language determines the nature of physics, my dander gets up.
Anyway, I took notes and copied the (extensive) handouts that were provided and I've got some other readings, and a contact out of the 'effort' of going. To be fair, the presenter handed out an excellent overview / flowchart that he'd drawn up; it indicated what intellectual traditions are involved in this area (dating back to the Enlightenment) and how they connect with each other. I'll probably end up creating an electronic form of this document and uploading it - it makes the ground a lot clearer for someone interested in the history or ideas / and the firmness of reality I think.
There have been moments recently where I've felt like I should be getting a job a buying a house. The world moves on and here I am playing 'laptop man and the thesisicons' - perhaps I want my cake and to eat too. Going to today's seminar really reminded me how much it is that I love this stuff. A world of ideas, of thinking, of questioning how it is that things are. This world is not easy to come by. Not in most jobs anyway.
April 20, 2005
Singlespeed
Simplicity
The beauty of singlespeeding lies in its simplicity - no gears and fewer 'knick-knacks'. There is also less abstraction of the chain line. Singlespeeding is an aesthetic and practical ideal that involves less clutter in favor of a more simple, but not less involved, riding experience. I believe that singlespeeding frees the rider from the tyranny of gear selection. Whatever gear you are in, you are in the right gear; so don't even worry about it. I think that singlespeeding reconnects a rider with some of the essentials of bike riding: the fun, the pleasure, the unpretentiousness of it all. A common misconception about singlespeeding is expressed in the worry about what happens when the hill becomes too steep. Well the answer is simple, you keep pedaling until you can't turn your legs anymore and then you get off and walk. In reality one is more likely to actually run out of top end than bottom end - i.e. you are more likely to feel the need for a higher gear on the flats than for a lower gear in the hills.
With a 'singlespeeder' the thing is to spin
If you haven't tried singlespeeding yet - give it a go. Less can be more and it's a (quiet) revolution to discover that one doesn't need a minimum of 21 or more gears to have fun or to 'make it' to the end of one's street. Gears aren't needed for small rides any more than they're needed for long rides. So ride into town or climb that hill - you'll be surprised and possibly satisfied when you complete these simple tasks.
When I worked in Japan I rode a singlespeed almost every day. In fact if I didn't ride to work I felt somewhat diminished. That's how it is with some things in life; they just get under your skin. By now I've mentally cataloged all those riding experiences into the hazy locker of memory. The reality of riding everyday is that you get wet when it rains, cold when its snowing and sticky in the heat of the summer. But one also gains time to think a great deal about life and about living - something that's harder to do when you're hunched over and fretting about gearing and position. So spin away friends, spin away ....
The beauty of singlespeeding lies in its simplicity - no gears and fewer 'knick-knacks'. There is also less abstraction of the chain line. Singlespeeding is an aesthetic and practical ideal that involves less clutter in favor of a more simple, but not less involved, riding experience. I believe that singlespeeding frees the rider from the tyranny of gear selection. Whatever gear you are in, you are in the right gear; so don't even worry about it. I think that singlespeeding reconnects a rider with some of the essentials of bike riding: the fun, the pleasure, the unpretentiousness of it all. A common misconception about singlespeeding is expressed in the worry about what happens when the hill becomes too steep. Well the answer is simple, you keep pedaling until you can't turn your legs anymore and then you get off and walk. In reality one is more likely to actually run out of top end than bottom end - i.e. you are more likely to feel the need for a higher gear on the flats than for a lower gear in the hills.
With a 'singlespeeder' the thing is to spin
If you haven't tried singlespeeding yet - give it a go. Less can be more and it's a (quiet) revolution to discover that one doesn't need a minimum of 21 or more gears to have fun or to 'make it' to the end of one's street. Gears aren't needed for small rides any more than they're needed for long rides. So ride into town or climb that hill - you'll be surprised and possibly satisfied when you complete these simple tasks.
When I worked in Japan I rode a singlespeed almost every day. In fact if I didn't ride to work I felt somewhat diminished. That's how it is with some things in life; they just get under your skin. By now I've mentally cataloged all those riding experiences into the hazy locker of memory. The reality of riding everyday is that you get wet when it rains, cold when its snowing and sticky in the heat of the summer. But one also gains time to think a great deal about life and about living - something that's harder to do when you're hunched over and fretting about gearing and position. So spin away friends, spin away ....
April 18, 2005
Reflections around graduation
I'm not sure about this whole graduation thing ... perhaps its because I'm not feeling well. However I'm not sure if this 'unwellness' is related to my flu like symptoms or to a more metaphysical malaise. The slight temperature that I'm carrying, the dull ache running across my shoulders, the tension in my neck; perhaps all these things conspire to tell me that I'm not 100% behind turning up tomorrow? So much has changed since starting the degree; doubly so since I first countenanced undertaking it back in 2000 / 2001 (?) in Japan. Angela, that person who encouraged me then to do this, she now plays parts in other people's lives. Dim are the memories of why I actually chose to do it anyway. However I remember her beside me back then but sitting behind and slightly to my right in that Internet cafe with the cheerful owner in the 'trendy thing' department store behind the railway station in downtown Kokura. A beathless sentence for a breathless country.
I remember because today I was online at Uni via wireless internet using Apple Airport technology, I didn't realise it at that moment, but today I had been looking at the same website that I searched through four years ago whilst using that ISDN internet cafe connection back in Japan. My black coffee completed a journey lasting 4 years - all over in the blink of an eye. So thinking about this now, I'm smiling at the thought of all the keystrokes typed by me on computers over the years. I'm smiling also for a deeper reason, because at least in part I've made a connection with my past and folded the page of my life in such a way as to make two points connect and be meaningful. It's a creased sheet of paper is my life.
I'll go then to the graduation and enjoy it for what it is - a brief moment of celebration, not of achievement but of passing on - all of us in that room will be thinking our thoughts and remembering our pasts; past lives, past occupations, and indeed the people who have passed through. So much happens every day that it would be (and is), easy to miss out on what is happening to us. But in the quite moments, if we are lucky, we come to think and understand who it is that we are and what it is that we are about. To write is to understand oneself, to scratch about in the mists of one's life and start to pull out surprisingly concrete things; things which were there all along, unnoticed yet all the while troubling us like sharp splinters of reality that get under one's skin.
I remember because today I was online at Uni via wireless internet using Apple Airport technology, I didn't realise it at that moment, but today I had been looking at the same website that I searched through four years ago whilst using that ISDN internet cafe connection back in Japan. My black coffee completed a journey lasting 4 years - all over in the blink of an eye. So thinking about this now, I'm smiling at the thought of all the keystrokes typed by me on computers over the years. I'm smiling also for a deeper reason, because at least in part I've made a connection with my past and folded the page of my life in such a way as to make two points connect and be meaningful. It's a creased sheet of paper is my life.
I'll go then to the graduation and enjoy it for what it is - a brief moment of celebration, not of achievement but of passing on - all of us in that room will be thinking our thoughts and remembering our pasts; past lives, past occupations, and indeed the people who have passed through. So much happens every day that it would be (and is), easy to miss out on what is happening to us. But in the quite moments, if we are lucky, we come to think and understand who it is that we are and what it is that we are about. To write is to understand oneself, to scratch about in the mists of one's life and start to pull out surprisingly concrete things; things which were there all along, unnoticed yet all the while troubling us like sharp splinters of reality that get under one's skin.
April 17, 2005
Lorem ipsum
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam condimentum feugiat est. Donec euismod elit tincidunt arcu. Curabitur gravida magna eu orci aliquet ultrices. Donec eleifend imperdiet dolor. Mauris in leo in lacus porta luctus.
Lorem Ipsum is printing and typesetting dummy text, according to this website, it has been in use since the 1500s when an unknown printer took a galley of latin type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. The whole point of Lorem Ipsum is that it allows a person to look at the 'form' of a page without being distracted by the content. I suspect that many honours students could use Lorem Ipsum in their theses - a possible defence of such use being 'Hey man, almost all the letters that would be found in the words that you want are there".
Surviving not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, Lorem Ipsum has remained essentially unchanged. However some feel that 'the heart' has left the Lorem Ipsum world since we all moved from cold type presses. Still others complain that moving away from woodblock lettering lies at the foundation of the great Lorem Ipsum wars that have plagued the last decades. Regardless of it's nature (electronic or otherwise) Lorem Ipsum has endured and prospered, coming to wide popularity in the groovy 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages. A follow up single "Lorem Ipsum and the brass rubbings" failed to chart.
More recently Lorem Ipsum has 'gone digital' and it can be found in such computer software programs as "Apple Pages" which comes with templates filled with Lorem Ipsum. A cynic would suggest that this is the ultimate end that computer programs are working towards: not only do they make life easier for you, they also complete the job without you having to do anything at all. A 'knock-off' of Lorem Ipsum (Morel muspl) has recently been released by a possie of Postmodernists. However nobody is sure what this knock-off looks really looks like, if it really exists anyway and why, since pages are a 'construct' and don't need to be as they are, it should be used at all.
Perhaps the most accurate thing one can say about Lorem Ipsum is that it is not simply random text; its roots lie in a piece of classical Latin literature by Cicero dating from 45 BCE. Typical of Cicero's light bedside manner some of the piece that Lorem Ipsum was based upon is as follows: "Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." This translates as: "There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..." Presumably this was the equivalent of Roman 'Light Entertainment', something light to entertain jittery locals living on the borders of the Rhine.
Lorem Ipsum is printing and typesetting dummy text, according to this website, it has been in use since the 1500s when an unknown printer took a galley of latin type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. The whole point of Lorem Ipsum is that it allows a person to look at the 'form' of a page without being distracted by the content. I suspect that many honours students could use Lorem Ipsum in their theses - a possible defence of such use being 'Hey man, almost all the letters that would be found in the words that you want are there".
Surviving not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, Lorem Ipsum has remained essentially unchanged. However some feel that 'the heart' has left the Lorem Ipsum world since we all moved from cold type presses. Still others complain that moving away from woodblock lettering lies at the foundation of the great Lorem Ipsum wars that have plagued the last decades. Regardless of it's nature (electronic or otherwise) Lorem Ipsum has endured and prospered, coming to wide popularity in the groovy 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages. A follow up single "Lorem Ipsum and the brass rubbings" failed to chart.
More recently Lorem Ipsum has 'gone digital' and it can be found in such computer software programs as "Apple Pages" which comes with templates filled with Lorem Ipsum. A cynic would suggest that this is the ultimate end that computer programs are working towards: not only do they make life easier for you, they also complete the job without you having to do anything at all. A 'knock-off' of Lorem Ipsum (Morel muspl) has recently been released by a possie of Postmodernists. However nobody is sure what this knock-off looks really looks like, if it really exists anyway and why, since pages are a 'construct' and don't need to be as they are, it should be used at all.
Perhaps the most accurate thing one can say about Lorem Ipsum is that it is not simply random text; its roots lie in a piece of classical Latin literature by Cicero dating from 45 BCE. Typical of Cicero's light bedside manner some of the piece that Lorem Ipsum was based upon is as follows: "Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." This translates as: "There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..." Presumably this was the equivalent of Roman 'Light Entertainment', something light to entertain jittery locals living on the borders of the Rhine.