Today's Lesson

The only photo for the week is actually the front of a t-shirt I bought last Sunday.



If you don't get it, I'm certainly not going to explain it to you.

I hardly need more t-shirts, but I've pretty much given up looking for decent clothes over here, because they don't have anything Dan-sized (not that anyplace does, with the possible exception of Sweden), and I don't particularly like looking for clothes. Expect me to come back in December in naught but a loincloth and my "banzai" headband. Gah!

Before I completely stray from the topic of shirt designs, I'd like to say that I'm finally about a day away from finishing the design for the FE hoodie, which I'd been wracking my brain over for the past few weeks, constantly coming up with ideas that I felt were better than what I was working on 5 minutes ago .. tonight I finally said "yoshi," sat down and came up with 2 final options, which I will touch up and submit tomorrow either before or after (but not during) a workout at the gym.

This is significant because A) it's something I've told myself I was going to do every day for at least the past month, and B) once it's done I can start any of the ten thousand other projects I've been putting off. So what was different about this evening, that I finally bolted myself down and did it? Lately things have just sort of been coming together:

At first I was worried about dropping my guard and slipping down the path of normalcy; relax for a moment and an average lifestyle will sneak up on you. For example, Friday night I was at work till 8PM (there was a meeting! I swear!), then I ended up spending the rest of the evening resting in my apartment to fight off this cold I'd picked up (incidentally, I think exercising works for me a lot better than resting, but I was fucking tired), Saturday night I found myself doing the whole "date" thing you always see people making witty observations about on sitcoms, and next thing I know it's Sunday evening again, someone has accidentally/cleverly left their toothbrush in my bathroom, and I'm turning down an invitation to a show in Kachigawa because I want to spend the evening in Yokkaichi "working on some things."

Shit, I'm turning boring!

Boring is relative, I guess. I actually don't feel bored, which is probably the most important thing. The main character of this book I'm almost finished lives a lot like I do - stays out all night, sits around at crowded cafes reading and writing, and has all kinds of bizarre conversations with weird, random people. Or maybe all Japanese people live like this??

This book, actually, is part of the whole "things coming together" .. thing. It's called "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami. At first I didn't like it, and I even wrote a blog entry at work slagging the hell out of it:

I probably should have known better than to buy a book named after a Beatles song, or anything with the words "hip" and "sexy" in the one-liner reviews on the back. I can`t understand how this book was good even before its cliche-ridden and inconsistent translation (compare use of the god-awful term "limpid spring" with frequent use of the word "wanking"). Don`t get me wrong, it is hip and/or sexy, possibly too much so. In fact if I read it during lunch at work, I often find myself in the position of being unable to stand up for a few minutes. That`s hardly appropriate!

But as I near the end, even though there's almost no plot, the translated dialogue is totally fake, and the main character seldom says anything other than "I see what you mean," I've realized that it's more of a character study, and found that if you focus on just that - the characters - it really is "a heart-stoppingly moving story" (Glasgow Herald). Death also plays a big part in it - half the characters kill themselves at some point - why do I keep using these dashes - and after the last guy died the main character found himself thinking about the few meager things the guy had left behind and what he'd (not) be remembered for, and asking "what kind of life was that?"

...

All right, you know what? I could really get into a whole "what is the meaning of life" type tangent but the bottom line is that I decided that if I'm able to have a good time, that's perfect, but I can't have a good time when things are eating away at the back of my mind like "why don't you finish that hoodie or otherwise exploit the things that separate you from everyone else," so if I can partake of those things while not being bored or going insane doing the so-called normal stuff, that'd .. be ... good?

Up next is Naked Lunch (the actual book, not just that webpage) followed by whatever I can find by Kurt Vonnegut that I haven't read already, so if I think I've got things figured out now, they'll surely mix things up a bit.

Lastly, blogging has shifted down towards the bottom of my priority list, so I'll probably make this a weekly thing (which it pretty much is anyway), but I'll keep talking to you individually via e-mail, comments, "e&c" as Mike would say, so please don't forget about me over here.


PS - I hope the first comment is from a spammer.