I'M BACK

One of the disadvantages to starting a blog is that the moment that you stop posting for days or weeks or even months at a time is that you, and others, start to see yourself as a bit of a slacker. Which is somewhat true, I guess, but if a blog is supposed to be a representation of yourself, virtually, then couldn't it be argued that the absence of such is simply a reaffirmation of yourself, in ACTUALITY? As in, reality?

Or it could just be a lame excuse for not writing more.

I'm guilty of the second, though I like the convoluted logic of the first.

How could one possibly be living in Japan and complain about not being connected?

I'm not sure, but that's my gripe. Not having a laptop, I'm at the mercy of internet cafes. Which is fine and dandy, as long as you're living in Cambodia and the Philippines, where internet access comes at fifty cents a pop. Not so tasty when Tokyo and its surrounding environs are your current abode, where hourly rates run to more than five dollars, give or take.

So that's my excuse: Japan is too expensive.

(It works for me, anyways.)

I've got a few blogs written up at home, on paper, which I'll eventually transcribe in the next few weeks. One has to do with diligence, and steadiness, and a 19th century French postman who constructed a monument to the power of persistence. The other has to do with Rocky Balboa, and Sylvester Stallone as a writer and director who has more than a few shades of Arthur Miller coursing through his veins. (I'm serious. Nobody said that you couldn't be arrested for human-growth hormones by Australian police and not be a writer of some distinction.)

I suppose I should be invading your mind with perceptive perceptions of Japanese culture, high and low, but I feel like I've said it before, or, if I haven't somebody else has, and better. Japan is like where you live, only more high-tech, and more civil, and more monolingual and monocultural. It's its own contradiction, for the moment you think one thing, Japan will contradict you, and itself. Kind of like most of us humans.

In the meantime, the rapid pace of life here, and the uncertainty of my own, has me wanting to latch on to things. I plan on buying a complete work of Shakespeare's plays tomorrow, if only because I figure I might as well finally tackle Shakespeare head-on over the next year or so. At the same time I'm slowly making my way, page by page, through various books in Japanese. Concentrating so slowly and carefully on Japanese words -- I'm lucky if I read a page a day -- has me longing somewhat to do the same in English. To rediscover in English what we take for granted. And who better to do that with than Shakespeare?

So the plan is to read Shakespeare and Japanese in limited measure, day by day. And see what it does to my head.

Be well, all.