The immensely damaging underocean earthquake that has taken so many lives and is causing much suffering has me saddened though I'm happy about other things; to be on winter break for a week, to have hiked to three amazing waterfalls yesterday, and that I'm planning to go to new year's fireworks tonight. (A hundred-and-eight of them will be sent up, a Buddhist related number representing the desires of humans). Since extreme disaster and climatic happenings are becoming more and more "usual," it really seems as though will be living differently in the near future. Something someone said to me a few months ago (we were talking about whether the choice to have children, not with each other just in general, in a world where the humans outnumber the wildlife in drastic proportions and where atmospheric and warming troubles are causing fish to get sunburns, is really a good idea, or what) was this: Children in Vietnam who lived during the war in places where, to get water and other necessities, had to cross continually shot-at areas, would make a game of avoiding the low-flying airplanes' gunfire. "So maybe," the reasoning followed, "it isn't so bad to grow up in a messed up place."

Finding things I didn't know about: Pitcairn Island, which has no port or landable beach, is inhabited by less than fifty people, the descendents of the mutinteers of the famed pirated ship Bounty, and of the Tahitian women who were with them. There is a town called Oh Dear, and a place called Break Inn Hip.
And, Dick Headley, not of Pitcairn island. Sometimes I keep clicking next blog and wade through them until I find something great, or cool or interesting. Today I next blogged only once, and arrived at what seemed like a joke: The Voyage of Dick Headley. A bad joke. I skimmed down the posts and read a few and looked at the pictures. Going by what he has written, he isn't someone I could call respectable, good at writing, or even mildly funny or perceptive. But I began to think, this person is being who he is, meaning he isn't being fake, and that's interesting. Not the kind of interesting that would cause repeat visits to his blog. Just an observation. It's at dickheadley.blogspot.com.

Having been brought up with no religion, it's maybe interesting that I take spirituality as seriously as I do without being all serious about it. Tomorrow being Christmas (happening in Japan 14-17 hours before in America, today is Friday for me), I'm thinking about the older stories it connects to. That Jesus' birthday is so near the Solstice always reminds me of how, in the old religion of the UK area, this is the time of year that "the" goddess births (rebirth's actually) "the" god, and the sunlight begins to return, and then they both become children who later court (in February at Imbolg) and then consummate (in May), and so on. Of course, there is a lot more to the story. Way later, in autumn, the god (represented by the grain of the field), dies to feed the people, and is reborn at Solstice.

I think Jesus is a form of the dying god, having been birthed by Mary the mother of god who thrives still. People partake of grainy communion as if it were his body. Jesus the person seems to exists along a parallel track to this myth-fulfilling/continuing Jesus. That is a whole 'nother story for another day. Quoting Clarissa Pinkola Estes, "The recovery of the divine is done in the dark of Hel, of Hades, or there. The return of the Christo comes as a glow from the gloaming of hell."

Another older, connected story is that of Inanna of Sumeria. She, a central goddess, voluntarily traveled to the underworld, where she had to surrender her seven powers before entering, and then remained as a corpse for three days upon which she resurrected. Sounding familiar already. Inanna was known as the Morning Star and the Evening Star more than four thousand years ago. The story of her and her lands gave way to the Ishtar story, and the Gilgamesh story, and then the old testament.

The coziness of warmth and light within cold and dark, the fireplaces, warm kitchens, people, hot food and drink that I will partake of tomorrow, is interrupted by the knowledge of those left out, since it feels pretty horrible to be a pariah in general, and especially at times like the holidays. And happiness at the return of sunlight is interrupted by the knowledge of global warming, though change is the way things apparently go. But messed up biospheric systems bother me. There are daffodils, that I remember blooming just as the snows melted in late February when I was a child, blooming now outside our house. It's cold but it's warm, in a lot of ways.

A friend of mine lives here in a very old apartment with no appliances whatsoever, and a semi-outhouse for a bathroom. There is no actual bath or shower. He's got newspaper out there instead of tp, not that he can't afford it but maybe to retain a rustic quality? I went to try out this hole-in-the-dirt toilet, and the already-torn piece of newspaper waiting to be used had a headline that read: George Bush Will Unite Nation for Real This Time, as if it had been written by a ten year old. The apartment itself is in a very shantytown area of this little city, apparently an area that escaped some bombing way back, and so is still in the style of dirt alleyway upon dirt alleyway, so that people's homes are only accessible by foot.

For my upcoming long journey, I thought it would be best to pack as lightly as possible, except for the guitar I am learning how to play, so I went to the 100 yen shop (truly an amazing place, seriously) and bought the tiniest, lightest journal I could find, planning to write in very small letters during my travels. Last week I got a Christmas package from my mom, in which I found the coolest, and also the heaviest, journal I have ever gotten, with a card saying, I thought you might like to keep a log of your journey home. It must weigh over two pounds, but I've decided, or rather it has been decided, that it will come with me. Why not?

I dreamt I was was on site in Petaluma at the making of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, only they hadn't started filming yet, but there was a particularly dangerous crow with a Japanese name, walking with determination on a riverbank. It wasn't scary though.

that has been and continues to be dipped and redipped in petroleum then lit on fire invisibly.

A few days ago while at work, about to make either coffee or tea with an empty cup in my hand, I heard my coworker Ray outside playing some kind of speak-English dodge ball or something. He was shouting, but diminished through windy air and walls and closed windows, his tiny voice came from inside the cup.

"Eventually Geryon learned to write.
His mother's friend Maria gave him a beautiful notebook from Japan with a florescent cover. On the cover Geryon wrote Autobiography. Inside he set down the facts.

...Geryon lived on an island in the Atlantic called the Red Place. Geryon's mother was a river that runs to the sea the Red Joy River Geryon's father was gold. Some say Geryon had six hands six feet some say wings. Geryon was red so were his strange red cattle. anne carson from autobiography of red

beer vending machines that talk, washing machines that have "fuzzy logic" printed on them as a motto, roadwork signs featuring cartoon elephants taking showers, blacklit karaoke rooms with galactic images on the walls, customers smoking while ordering at the counter of a quick lunch shop. Today I asked my students to make up questions for each other using words like exciting, frustrating, etc. So Kenkichi was asked what was boring about his weekend and first he said, "I was walking on a mountain path from Tanaka to Nachi and I met a man who told me it would be better to walk to a different peak, but that it was very steep. I went that way, and it was almost straight up. When I was within sight of the top I stopped because I had met another man who said a bear lived there and I was frightened. I went back down, and then walked a few hours to Nachi peak, then went out drinking and singing for five hours. I had a hangover the next day, and had nothing to do, so I was bored." I was reminded of Clarissa Pinkola Estes' version of a Japanese story about a mountain and a bear, which is meant to teach about handling rage and forgiveness. I was also thinking of the short story A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O'Connor, because whenever people hear about a bear or a mountain lion somewhere, they seem to get nervous, while I always think, cool, because there are so few wild animals left, but if I myself went hiking thinking how cool it was only to be harmed by an animal it would be like the grandma in A Good Man is Hard to Find...
Mandatorily had to work at our school's Christmas party, a dual event, first for the kids then the adult students. It was mildly amusing.

A friend of mine performed solo at Makaroni (a tiny upstairs bar in a town called Katsuura) last Saturday. I'll post a picture when I can. He is amazing. Some other friends played after him, my favoritie was the song where Jeremy made up the lyrics on the subject of birds (that's what someone in the cozy-sized audience called out the loudest). It even rhymed.
In just over two months I am going around the world.....it's almost surreal. I'll start in Japan and finish in California, so it's the far "east" to the far "west." Where did I hear that only something like 1% of the ocean has been explored by humans? Wouldn't we see so many things differently if we knew what was under there?