2008-11-22

an entry from the wall of my room

On the wall of my room...howwow...supposedly or not is my work. The idea had come and stayed and insisted on being realized. What it would be like If I painted by luminous paint?



This is how it came into light
You purchase a blacklight no less than 40 total watt along with a black-light-sensitive paint, it may cost some $50. Before that you'd better to buy white foundation paint if the wall of your room is bumpy or not white; a perfect white is required to gain an optimal effect, and I hardly see a flawless flat white wall. See your room. It may be white but it may not be white enough as you can paint white blacklight-sensitive paint directly without divulging underlying design before turning on blacklight. So in any case you are best to cost $60 at minimum. After that, just do paint, with of course the blacklight on and all the normal light shutting off. Wait a sec. Please do not forget the foundation paint, so turn on the light anyway...I painted this from the sketch below. Rarely a person can paint out of memory. The case was that I just could not find other pictures at hand. Anything will do. The paint actually shines in the dark, anyways, on the brush, so no worry you can. Yes you can. The sun is shining probably, but to us animals and humans just the white suffices. All true and would-be and would-have-been (me) painters know it by heart and hands. This wall picture is shining but has no significant value than that. Basically, it's same as ones painted by black and white; and color nine out of ten is better than monotone. BECAUSE, I don't know...you need a reason, black and white require less than by color. But if your judgment could be a bit beyond and trochaic, don't forget to prepare old newspapers in case of droppings, it's your room. Seventh, If you have no talent of painting (as is me indeed though), I recommend try write words: poems you like, proses you are supposed to like but don't or do like..., or you're not sure about it? or random entries from Being and Time, anything. But ese, if it be without justly depressed mind or with no substantial anger, rest assured it would appear veneer'r than mine.

See, why should you do that?
I don't see why I had to paint on the wall, and not on canvas.
>
>

so far so good

next time I'll take a better picture
of my wall

2008-11-19

five and half books nobody seems to read but I read


The idea is from here,
there, and everywhere.

So ten books? I don't have so many.
i.
This is for me the best Japanese picture book for children by Sasaki Maki. No one can read Japanese, so it seems in-category that the chances are who knows nobody's reading...indeed

The good point is that there's no plot besides...once a year hot chocolate sprouts out from the fissure of mountain rocks of a volcanic region, and people from the four corner of the world gather together for it.

"The Strange Tea Party" as the title says.

Here, gathering.

They invariably take on fancy vehicles to come and take chairs out here. Such as? Hmm...rather sweet those vehicles...ugh.

Other than that, nil. No plots, no lessons of moral, no spanking trashes from the authority side. I didn't attribute so much importance to this petite work in the past, and probably the thing is around the same that I'm assessing that way this day. But somehow this book's existence, "of no, totally of no importance"-ness--I cannot help notice--attracts me.

ii. The Poems of Emily Dickinson.
I know it's not suiting to the category--every one reads. Every one supposedly reads. But I know that, bluntly speaking, almost no one reads. At least...I think I can say...it's true. The background is my room. Needs to be tidied up in any case.



iii. Patric McGrath Asylum.
Again not in category. My excuse is that around here in Japan no one translates his works, and book stores in Japan is mostly nearly only Japanese books. Ya, mostly nearly only Japanese books indeed, and besides, a thirds of them is in many cases manga. "Could you please piss off mangas and GK Euro magazines from our national shelves? Can't you understand you JPN's publication industry is all together crazy?" The situation is, you go to one of the biggest book stores in Tokyo which deals with paperbacks, and hey there, the next capital step from Garcia...Marquez...yay, happens to be just a trash commercial writer. So if that's the way it is OK I can make a big trouble and go to the second biggest...to no avail. (Such things happen when you do not feel like to check out the creditability of your credit because of Garcia Marquez or William Treavor or John Cheaver or Primo Levi or Peter Matthiessen or ad infinitum that in effect means everybody who dares to constantly squeezes out from your ditchable purse and for the time being cannot have enough courage to make use of South American counterpart of Euphrates and Tigris...) Anyway, because of this my nationals who read McGrath may be a few hundreds or less. Serious.

A gorgeous work.

iv. Theodore W. Goossen The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories.
I didn't know Kawabata had a soul. The Izu Dancer in this rigorous collection opened my eye. Kawabata Yasunari no doubt had a harsh, unforgiving mind. The editor is quite a cognizant of Japanese writers--than I do of course. Goossen correctly chooses best ones from Yoshiyuki Junnosuke and Kojima Nobuo, without a single error (before an error the thing is that no other Japanese compilation includes Yoshiyuki...) Oe Kenzaburo's Prize Stock was also an unexpected eye opener. I have to say that I simply disliked his face and the way he spoke, from where the conclusion he may be typical [useless] Japanese writer...but fortunately it was not so.

At the left background of the picture slinkingly is done by my hands:->
Home grown. His close shot over there^^ Hope the html this time reflects the intention, though I have rather no intention...@
To return from digression:

v. Cindy Sherman The Complete Untitled Film Stills
I refer back to this picture book at times. A real gem. Made me pay forty something. You can "refer" to Sherman's pictures, just as well is to Jeff Wall. I have nothing to say. Again, no one seems to read this book. "I know that some of you do not understand." Pictures are a power that adults cannot handle yet is always half striving to be confident it's under control.

vi. Paul Wadden Days in the Ancient Capital

Truly nobody reads. Totally outlandish by fair color. It's not that "seems." Haiku in English. Interestingly, this 2/1.5 inches pocketable booklet really takes you to ancient times.

A disappearing snail,
I realize
the sea beyond

The Wadden's words accompanied with the drawings or vice verse...The scanned image on the top is from this tiny brochure.

Seen or unseen
White blossoms
of the plum

2008-11-16

this train will never be going back

You lucky jawbreaker once opposed to see the world upside down,
I'm concerned of you again.

According to Chomsky, when and only when this "discrete infinity" from where our fundamental mathematical concept of infinity of the number derives, acts with a conceptual system (which might not confined to us humans)

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2008-11-12

So Young Wants A BIG Electric Car?

If I was Neil Young I don't know what should I do?

I don't know about the detail, though, that bailout (attempt) of the big 3 was televised even in Japan on the national wave...with an ironical touch. For me, it's nothing but one of those politico disenchanting--nothing related to my life. I cannot buy cars regardless of their size nor efficiency. Or before that I doubt Neil Young's really writing this article. It can be NYII or somebody like that, can't be? That the pic of Young in LincVolt may be dummy...

About Cars
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

2008-11-10

we know and we see that America can change

-Obama

unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction--towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

Something of a singular importance in the world history happened last week. Many misunderstand that they actually know "their" anger. I've come across this article by chance. A letter from Alice Walker to Obama.

"Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and
pain."

2008-11-05

Mr. Tomoyuki Yoshida, a Linguistics Professor Appeared in My Dream

Mr. Tomoyuki Yoshida, a linguistics professor appeared in my dream.
He was making it explicit, that wherein the difference between Hot Tab hypothesis and Hot Dog hypothesis lies. I didn't know those two. According to him H-Tab was composed of four hot dogs.

2008-09-30

we know and we see that America can change II

My bicycle is resembling despair day by day.

Recent Reading

is A Handbook for Teaching English at Japanese Colleges and Universities. The book is a compilation work done by a man named Paul Wadden; is various journals written on experiences of Teaching English at Japanese Colleges through which experiences teachers from the U.S., England, Australia etc discuss informative strategies they attained through classrooms. There are several specific difficulties in relation to English classes in Japan. Some are because of educational system itself, such as "less communication with students" thanks to one class per week curricula. Others, peculiar to Japanese psyche, that is; wall of silence and nationwide low standard in regard to writing, speaking, and listening in English.
You might say that the trouble peculiar to Japanese people (including me) in the international context may have deeper roots; cultural difference. I don't disagree. But we cannot improve our culture in the same way as a second language.

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2008-09-28

Dybek Links

three in the morning after finishing homework
kicking back with a cup of coffee in my hand
coming around here to seek out a means to reorganize
my thoughts
I found whether it's suitable for the situation that the subject should be I or some other...

Here're voices of Stuart Dybek. One of the best guy in the world extant. I just want to post these links for myself, so I can go and listen at any time:

http://www.lib.msu.edu/vincent/writers/spring03/041803.htm A lecture
http://www.lions-online.org/podcasts/dybek.html "We didn't"
http://www.lannan.org/lf/rc/event/stuart-dybek/
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=tR6ii2CGYZA"Pet Milk"

Written form interviews:
http://www.wooster.edu/ArtfulDodge/interviews/dybekhirsch.htm
http://chicagoist.com/2005/09/14/interview_stuart_dybek_author.php
http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/weblogs/idiotprogrammer/?p=83398309
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/birnbaum_v/stuart_dybek.php
http://webdelsol.com/Other_Voices/DybekInt.htm

Human laziness is that if I download these to the harddrive, I'd forget about them.
night

2008-09-27

timeline

---------------
1989
I lost my salad.

---------------

2008-09-23

Working for the Queen: A Reaction to Edwin R. McDaniel’s “Japanese Nonverbal Communication”: (I cannot correct the minor bug in the indentation)

SUMMERY
As a clue to understand cultural motivation which is peculiar to Japanese society, McDaniel directs our attention to nonverbal interactions among Japanese people. Since every form of intercultural intercourses are taking place with a greater frequency in today’s world, individuals are asked to realize a level of awareness toward “cultural antecedents and motivations” which stipulate communicational conventions of each country. Employing a method established by M.E.Opler and J.K.Burgoon and J.L.Hale, McDaniel identifies and isolates “consistent themes” (1) such as Confucian-based collectivism, harmony, hierarchy, humility, and/or formality which he consider is conducive to thoroughly demonstrate what underlies Japanese relational communications. McDaniel introduces eleven propositions based on various past studies ranging from 1966 to 1998 (those tentative propositions deal respectively with “body language”, “eye contact”, “facial expression”, “space expectation”, and so on), through which several consistent cultural themes are directly rendered. In conclusion, McDaniel elaborates a couple of difficulties pertain to a wider application of his approach.

REACTION
In order to explore and appreciate the formation of value system of a particular culture, McDaniel’s affirmative propositions are by no means discrediting. He lends his hands to encourage straightforward understanding of behavioural codes unique to Japan. However, his thematic study often skips essential information which, quite unreasonably are not likely to be fully appreciated by those who have no experience of visiting Japan or other East Asian countries. In other words, McDaniel’s propositional approach has a given number of imperfections that are resulted from his well-qualified design itself, which potentially provide openings for long been established inter-cultural misunderstandings and miscommunications.
For example, under proposition No.10 McDaniel explains; Instances of “ma” (silence) in Japanese discourse can impart a variety of messages, with the context supplying the actual meaning. He attributes this aspect of nonverbal interaction in part to “a general mistrust of spoken words.” (McDaniel 9) The argument should be more prim and neat provided that he is not addressing exclusively ones who are living in Japan. Since any other given cultures may collectively or not have some of “a general mistrust of spoken words”, representation of specific instances is needed; in this case, he could either give example or provide felt reliability of the source should one accept the above attribution.
For one, language teachers from foreign countries (especially from the “West”) often face uncomfortable silence or hardly determinable vocalics—one such interpretable into “um, uh…mmm…” It takes just two steps for an English Language Program in Japan to fall into the characteristic silence. 1) He or she begins the class with “hello, how are you?” The reply comes as a group. Scarcely the class begins to speak up how the last weekend was like. 2) The instructor asks whether they had finished assignments. ”Um, uh…mmm…” It is not unimaginable that a foreigner who is going to pay a first-time visit to Japan may well be unable to discern that this exactly is where [the] Japanese [students] are “drawing on” the “situational context”, and the protracted silence means that they/we are trying to “empathetically determine the needs of another person” (McDaniel 9). This type of wall of silence is rarely due to “a general mistrust of spoken words.”
McDaniel’s dynamic affirmations provide us with an entrance—through his succinct identification of themes—for a subtler appreciation of our own culture and positive alternate perspective for favorite view of shyness and lack of spontaneity among Japanese people. In comparison to the entire quality of his study, potency of the over-implications could possibly be ignoble. Still defects would only be construable to “defects” and unpardonable in the academic enclave; prerogative of the academy may lie in the process of the inquiry and its legitimacy, and not such that defendable without explication and sufficient communication of that process. Any scholar ought not take charge of this kind of hasty misconception. To strike a fair balanced intercourse, we must press forward with our investigation into the “difference” and its validity.

NOTES

1. ”over-implications”: e.g. under Proposition No.3 McDaniel asserts; “A smile can indicate happiness or serve as a friendly acknowledgment.” “Alternatively, it may be worn to mask negative emotions, especially displeasure, anger, or grief.” Rather, I am angry about this because it is completely inaccurate. In my understanding, the smile could have meant “helplessness” or “dismay” or just because of “embarrassment” that is worn to avoid discord, and it is by no means “anger” nor “grief”. Such a usage does not exist in Japan.
2. Again, some more minor moderations would be desirable in order that keep away with potential inter-cultural preconceptions. E.g. under the “olfactices” we can see the following lines: “Although there is no supporting evidence, the near ritual tradition of frequent baths and the desire to refrain from personal offense corroborates this contention.” (JNC: A Review and Critique of Literature p.18) The “the” may have a less necessity today.
3. It can be inferred from his Conclusion that McDaniel may readily admit that weakness and strength of his work reside in the same place—that is, because of his assertive [propositional] style, wherein a possibility, I think, lie for a society or culture to become more open. The design like it or not assumes complementary role with the naiveté of Japanese psyche.


WORK CITED

Edwin R. McDaniel Japanese Nonverbal Communication: A Reflection of Cultural Themes. 2006 Thomson Learning.

2008-09-22

Days in the Ancient Capital



At 2:00 p.m.
Amherst.

I cannot remember whether its pronunciation was
Ámherst or Amĥerst.

It was something like [æımэst]


on the Moleskin
is my St. Chibi
downloaded and printed out without permission

for talisman.
I glued him with an instant adhesive
so you can see the droppings

fine

2008-09-21

"Race is a central test of our belief that we're our brother's keeper, our sister's keeper...There's a sense that if we are to get beyond our racial divides, that it should be neat and pretty, whereas part of my argument was that it's going to be hard and messy--and that's where faith comes in"
---Barack Obama Newsweek Jul. 21

I got used to be alone

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2008-09-19

A Casual Complaint: Lazy and Guilty

Since I now am a university student and sitting ELP classes (in Japan), I suppose it ain't an unexpected bahabiour when I start using this place to introduce and try get rid of unclear feeling toward what I'm (quite belatedly though) doing in the daytime

This sentence...
A bad example.
I have an ambivalent feeling toward English Language Program in my university which, I understand is the only ELP extant in Japan. Who cares? Dunno.

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2008-09-17

Bridge in Y-City


The scheme is that I make a comprehensive catalog of Matumoto Shunsuke. But I wouldn't. Tags for example is saying "scooters, vacation, fall." And would I be better to add some sensible ones? No

Four is the number of death.
Brown is the color of sadness.
I exam.

M is something ominous.
Why I guess so,
Nebulous is still,

Loyal is the purple.
"tired and gone"
Five is the perfect,
but not enough

2008-08-30

In Memoriam

He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity.
--George Orwell, speaking of Dickens

"Try write some on the Poetess, Emily Dickinson", I think I promised it with you Dana.

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2008-06-24

It's Not Coming Around Too Soon

"If you read between the line you know that I am just trying to understand"
--Johnny Cash
IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND.


Hope this post is not mine, but just a late depository of our decorum.
Soliloquies against nothing. The thing is, there were pen and paper at hand.