Brass Bed

I got a brass bed from my brother who bought it second hand off someone on the South Shore. I slept in that bed until four in the afternoon, when I would wake up and watch Oprah. After the six o'clock news it was Entertainment Tonight and time to get on my feet. Cups of instant coffee. What to eat? Something cheap and heavy. Buy bread and cretons? Kraft Dinner? Is there any margarine left? Make some calls; somebody is going out drinking for sure. I'd buy a pitcher and sit in on a few rounds hoping it would never come back around to my turn. Maybe a 99 cent slice of pizza, if somebody's buying. A half hour walk home and back into the brass bed. Sleep through the hunger, hangover, the thoughts of disappointing everyone who is doing so much to support me. Wake up and watch Oprah.

When it all finally fell apart as I'm sure I knew, or hoped, it would, my meager belongings dispersed among family and friends, the bed was sold to a blonde girl whose father owned one of the biggest cattle ranches in Canada.

I've Got a Reason

The ridiculous idea that I could move to Japan, get a job that pays adult wages, have a studio and make art making the center of my life again is seeming slightly less ridiculous these days. Pictured above is my studio overlooking Nagasaki harbour. It's pretty much in what you'd call downtown. I feel a bit more in the mix than I did when I just walked back and forth between work and home - both in residential neighbourhoods that are shut down after six o'clock. Now I also take the bus downtown almost every day!

Nailing down reliable places to buy wood, canvas, paint, etc. is turning out to be a challenge. Nagasaki has no real art supply store so I've turned to the internet. It's been hit or miss in terms of quality but I hope I'll find that one decent place and stock up.

I hope to have an artist site up soon (no really) to show off what I've been doing, which is nothing worth showing so far. If you are keeping track, that will make a forth semi-neglected website. A mini internet empire of procrastination.

Man Rises from Death Bed to Save the World

Surprisingly, this is only my second post complaining about being sick. Seeing as, apart from working to earn money to sustain my existence, being sick is the activity that takes up the most amount of time in my life, I thought it would have received more ink. In February, much to my dismay, I discovered a new allergy. In addition to being allergic, with increasingly severe symptoms, to every mammal on God's green earth ( except humans, also known as the most dangerous game/allergen) I am now extremely allergic to the pollen from cedar trees. This stuff  hangs like fog in the Nagasaki air for about a month and is like breathing in an aerosol mist of battery acid.

The allergies left me open for a cold which lead to another cold and another and another culminating (knock on wood) with bronchitis last week. I missed a day of work and actually broke down and went to see a doctor. After a dose of antibiotics and five days and nights of hacking up green slime I seem to have finally pulled away from Death's outstretched hand, faked left and gone right, and am seeing some open field.

It seems this is my life now. Living between colds, flus, allergy attacks, and assorted headaches and stomach aches. I really should make a point of filling my healthy days with as much productive activity as my wandering mind and feeble body can endure. There are days when my mind feels sharp, I have no aches, pains, or minor (and I mean MINOR) ailments to distract me. On those days the sundry thoughts that have been fading in and out of tune in my mind finally come in loud and clear. Everything finally gathers together from a messy pile into a neat little stack ready to be pushed out of the slot in a perfect package. Unfortunately these days are often spent watching reruns of The Amazing Race.

Not his time! I'm back from the brink and I can't be stopped! 

(Except by a cold)

Greatest Thing Ever: The Sequel

"Hey! Remember that time you, me and the guys  __________ ?"

"Sure, that was the greatest night of my life!"

"I didn't even want to go at first but turned out to be awesome"

"I was really psyched but still it was better than I could've hoped for."

"Man! Good times!"

"Hey! Wanna do it again? "

"Hell yeah!"

Somethings happen and then they are done. They are complete even though they may not be resolved.Be glad you had the good fortune to experience something of that quality. Make sure you remain open to and on the look out for something of equal or perhaps greater quality in the future. Do not try to relive, recapture, revive a memory. You will be disappointed, sure, but what's worse is that disappointment will forever be tied to what was a great memory. You lose twice.

Everybody's done this. Whether it's getting back with that ex one more time or reconstructing that perfect night out. It never works out as planned and if we are honest with ourselves, we never really thought it would.

A to The Q

An art teacher once told me that the ideas you have when you're starting out ,in your twenties, will be your best ideas. You will always come back to them. You may approach them from different angles, expand, invert, and subvert but they will be the themes to your life's work. So, don't fight it. He wasn't wrong.

One of the things that scares me the most about aging is the ,some would say inevitable, dissipation of your passion. The zeal with which you once attacked everything from making art, playing music, drinking, having sex, even just socializing, fades over time. Of course the novelty wears off and the urgency seems to fade but, perhaps more disturbingly, the importance and necessity you once attached to these activities are seemingly lessened as they take their place in the ranking among much less spiritually nourishing activities like feeding yourself, maintaining an acceptable level of cleanliness and other grown up pursuits.

I've always felt that the creative things I do are essential to the proper maintenance of my sanity. If I don't make any art, write, or play music for an extended period I become a miserable, grumpy, argumentative twat whose topics of conversation range from complaining about the daily minutia of his job to complaining about the broader concept of work in general. Ask my wife. At the same time, I've never been fully convinced that wether I do these things or not really matters to anyone but me (and I guess those who have to put up with me). This may explain why I teach English to Japanese kids instead of give interviews to Art Forum. But if the idea that it is at least essential to my well being and my purpose for having been born slips into the background, overwhelmed by work, home ownership, child rearing, or one of a million other things that could (maybe should) draw my focus, I will feel nothing but regret.

That being said, and much to my surprise, I started a band. The handful of songs we have are made up of unused, recycled, and semi forgotten riffs from my past. It feels like cheating, not writing anything new but as my teacher said, I have some perfectly good ideas already and they just need to be explored deeper. I've rearranged some songs I wrote a while back to better suit the current band dynamics and I'm leaving the lyrics and melody up to the singer (For now. But I won't be surprised if my new collaborative bent gives way to my old tyrannical tendencies. After all my ideas are always best so why not use them?) As usual, naming the band is the first order of business, and after much discussion my candidate won out. A to the Q.

Is the passion still there? Will it exhilarate or merely tire? Has the belly fire gone out? Or worst of all, am I just a guy with some interesting hobbies?

JD Salinger

It's probably not special, nor original, nor very cool to like JD Salinger and it may betray my scant reading history and superficial literary knowledge, but I do like JD Salinger. I actually just finished reading "Raise High the Roof Beam..." for the second time and it was just as impressive as when I read it back when I was 19. What I could say about " Catcher in the Rye" could be and will be said by millions of other people but it's my blog so tough shit, here it goes.


I read a  book about a guy who is frustrated with everything, who is angry that the world isn't and will never be the way he wants it to be. He detests what he sees around him, his friends, his teachers, and himself. He turns everything outward and and when it comes back at him he feels betrayed and singled out. The only person he likes and respects is his little sister.  I read it when I was 16. How perfect is that?


He keeps bringing up day dreams of ideal worlds he could see himself living happily in. They all lack the unending pressure of interacting with others according to the arbitrary rules that we all slowly, to our disappointment and disgust , discover will govern our lives. You can't opt out and that realisation hits some of us harder than others. I still have these day dreams on a regular basis.


When my high school class read "Catcher in the Rye", everyone learned a new word: obnoxious. Holden was obnoxious. I wondered if they just felt that this was how they should react to an admittedly flawed character. I didn't admire him but I deeply understood him. Didn't they? Did they understand the book? Did they really despise this character that I felt mirrored so many of my thoughts, fears, and disappointments? If so, I was in the wrong place with the wrong people. (I would eventually, and painfully, realise that there is no right place). What was more troubling was that my identification with and defense of Holden in classroom discussions was used to mock and berate me. (though I kind of had it coming) I thought if there was anything we could all agree on is that being a teenager sucked, and none of us were happy being stuck where we were with little control or understanding of our lives. Perhaps the only thing we could bond over was turned into an insult and a joke. And much like Holden did, I reacted in an non-constructive manner (to put it mildly).


I read it again 10 years later and I cried like a baby several times. The time in my life I read it and what I went through (put my self through) in the subsequent years was brought to the surface over and over. It was exhausting. But, I may be ready to read it again. Thank you Mr.Salinger.




JD Salinger Dies at 91

Processing

Every time I move and shake up my immediate surroundings there's an adjustment period. My self-expression (visual art (mostly), writing (recently), and complaining (always)). Are put on hold as my brain pieces my new environmental stimuli back into something understandable. It's like when you watch a video on your computer and you skip ahead. Sometimes what first appears when it begins to play at the new location is jumbled, pixilated mess that slowly pulls itself into shape to reveal the scene hidden and distorted within.

Even when I moved only a few blocks the shift and subsequent restart took some time. I am essentially a reactionary. I react. And I turn those reactions into some kind of art. When the input changes the output changes, but it takes sometime to figure out what the new reaction is. Going to university and working in a shared studio was a big change but eventually was the main influence on what I was doing, from either commenting directly on other students work, using other students discarded work as a starting point for my own, or, equally reactionary, doing something as unconnected as possible from what my peers were doing. When I moved into my studio after graduating all that input disappeared and six months or more passed before I could do anything new. My job at a furniture store and associating with more fashion conscious people began to be an important influence on my paintings. Of course, this was probably so chewed up and neurotically strained and filtered by my brain as to be far less than obvious to anyone but myself. Nonetheless…

Moving to Japan was like waking up in an unfamiliar place, staring up at the unrecognizable ceiling. A few seconds of absolute panic before you slowly recall where you slept the night and that all is fine. Like that. Everyday. So the adjustment period was long and painful. I drew a bit when I arrived but everything seemed wrong. I was on a beautiful tropical beach but I was still wearing my long underwear and toque. I had to change. It took over a year and really it wasn't until I came back to Canada that I could really focus my mind. Those of you reading who have been to Nagasaki will agree that it is a visual mess. A jumble of buildings, power lines, and mountains that doesn't lend itself to a quick reckoning.

All this to say that in some ways things have not become that much clearer and writing the last installment of my Battle Hymn series is turning out to be tougher than I thought. Hang on, it's coming…..

Battle Hymn of the Apartment (2)

As I move into my 21st home, I take a brief moment to look back at the places I've lived.

Parthenais- This was one of the worst years of my life so not a lot of funny stories here. I was living alone again and barely keeping it together until I was no longer keeping it together at all. I can remember one incident (actually it's really foggy so bear with me) that was odd, a little sad but I'd say ultimately amusing.

Around late morning or early afternoon on what seems like it was a Sunday, there was a knock on my door. Unexpected knocks are rarely a good thing. I opened the door to a girl who may have been crying but at the very least looked quite distressed. And I say a girl but she was older than me (I was 21). I'd say she was near thirty but not over and looked very Plateau, French, semi-artsy with dark brown hair, a slim build. She was good looking without being exceptional in any way.

She asked to use my phone. It was an emergency. I can't remember what was wrong with her phone. She may have moved in recently and hadn't had her phone connected yet. Not wanting to get involved in the emergency any more than I needed to, I asked no questions and let her in to use the phone. My phone was only a few feet from the door so she stepped in and dialed 911.

She said there's an emergency. Please send an ambulance. Yes. Yes. No. My dog has been electrocuted and is having a seizure. What ?! What do you mean? You won't help a dog?! Just because he's not human you're going to let him die?!?!?! She hung up. She unnecessarily explained the situation to me and said her boyfriend was with the dog now but he didn't know what to do either. She walked out the door and sat on the stairs just outside my apartment and wept. I stood in the doorway looking at her.

I couldn't imagine what skills I had that would make it useful for me to go up to her place and try to resuscitate the dog. There wasn't much I could add. I thought about consoling her but I really doubted that I could do so convincingly. I've never been good at overcoming half-heartedness. I've always felt that people can smell when I'm being insincere and will be insulted while I will just feel shame. Bad all around. So I don't bother. She was fully engrossed in her weeping and didn't even look up. I started to be a little annoyed that ,at a time in my life where the slightest emotional breeze would lay me out flat on my back, I had been dragged into this drama. I closed the door.

A week or so after she came to apologize. Her dog had survived. Apparently it was epileptic. She invited me to eat brunch at her place with her and her boyfriend. I was unable to refuse free food so I went. It was uncomfortable. We ate waffles. I never spoke to them again.

* Brief Interlude*-  I spent two or three months back at my parents' house in Jonquiere. Nothing at all that I care to remember about that time. What would be the point of all the suppression,then? Oh, Habs won the cup!! Lots of beer at Chez Max with Anna and some strange girl. WoooooHoooooo!

Park and Bernard- Back in the city. I decided to live with Andrew and I guess at that time we had known each other through Pat for  three years or more. I wouldn't say we were close friends at the time but we shared friends, sense of humour, and taste in music.

Andrew said that he found an apartment on Park (so far west!!) and Bernard (so far north!!). Near the Rialto he said. I was very skeptical but I knew his girlfriend lived around there so I went along to take a look. The place wasn't bad and it was cheap. It was a strange layout. I swear a third of the area was closets. The place would have been a fair size if you knocked out two or three of the huge, useless closets.

After seeing the apartment we headed out for a bite to eat.We stopped into Zorba's. The walls were covered with dark, thick, porous wood that looked like it had been soaked in oil. It was hard to tell whether The wood walls were the the source or receptacle of the overwhelming scent. It was a pungent mix of slowly roasted, marinated lamb, garlic, onion, warm pita, and cement thick yogurt. The hefty twin waitresses sat at a back table with various friends and/or family members and while they didn't outright welcome you, they made you feel like you could share their space for a while. The curly haired, moustache sporting cook behind the counter always had a smile that seemed to be there because he knew what you were about to experience. I had eaten a fast food souvlaki before. One filled with over cooked chunks of chicken swimming in watery sauce that fell somewhere between thousand island dressing and garlicky mayonnaise. But this was not that.

It had everything your mouth could want: savoury meat, creaminess, tomato, crispy but soft warm roasted pita, thick biting onions... I was speechless. We headed back on our way and I still couldn't quite believe what had just happened in my mouth. We called the landlord and told him we'd be taking the place. Welcome to Mile End.

Park and St.Viateur- This was my first experiment in living with a girlfriend. Melainie and I had been together maybe two years (?) and seeing as we just lived down the street from each other and saw each other everyday, we thought(I thought) we might as well move in together. I took my friend Matt's place in Melanie's apartment at the corner of St.Viateur and Park. Matt and Andrew moved in together in a slightly weird apartment on the first floor, below us.

I mostly remember music when I think of the year spent here. I became aware of a lot of my favorite bands at that time: GBV, Wedding Present, Archers of Loaf, Magnetic Fields and more. But also, it was one of the most productive song writing and recording years of my life. My band, Trevor, had reformed with a new bass player , Flo, (are you happy now?) and a whole new batch of songs that I'm still quite fond of. I started a new band before Trevor were fully back in business, called the Motorboats and we played a successful debut concert.

I had gotten an old Fostex four track from Matt and it was the simplest four track machine I had ever used. Switch it on and go. I recorded hours of electronic instrumentals, experimenting with synths and beats through various broken speakers and cheap pedals. One amp in particular had a punctured speaker and moved around inside the cabinet. If I turned the base up to ten and played a beat on my Radio Shack synth the bass drum was so percussive you could feel the room shake with each thud. The hours spent with headphones on, absorbed in a recording, not being able to stop until it was done, not eating, sometimes staying up so late that I would skip classes, were some of the happiest times in my life. 

I had a cheap tape recorder and a dollar store tape that I would switch on and record myself just playing and singing anything that came to mind. I must have filled a few ninety minute tapes like this. I would often pick up the guitar, press record and without thinking and play the first thing that my hands felt like playing. I wrote most of my favorite songs this way. Some of these songs, in particular The Motorboats songs, got the full live recording treatment downstairs in Andrew and Matt's magic kitchen studio. Something about that kitchen made everything ring and echo. Everything sounded bright and deep with a strange melancholy tinge to it. That might just be me though. Whatever... anyone who has experienced recording in the magic kitchen can attest to it's powers.

Before the year was up Melanie moved out.

St. Urbain and St.Viateur - I came back from working a summer at a camp in New York state and moved in with my university classmate, Jonathan, and his brother. I think I spent two years here and the last few months, as Jonathan had gotten married, I had a replacement roommate. She was a cute eighteen year old whose name I honestly can't remember. Strange bit of trivia for you.

A million things happened while I was living here and narrowing it down has been hard. I did my last year of Painting and Drawing at Concordia while living here and it was a very productive time artistically. But that's boring. My cat died here. But that's too sad. I was robbed. But that's nothing special. I started to date a girl called Catherine. But more on that later.

The woman who lived downstairs was a kind Portuguese lady. She had an impressive garden in the back yard and it was definitely the best view I had ever had from the back of an apartment. She had zucchinis growing on those structures that they build so the vines can stretch out and stay off the ground. Zucchinis were everywhere! One vine even crept it's way onto my balcony up on the second floor. She told me I could eat any zucchinis that grew on my balcony and I think I ended up with two or three. I believe I cooked them intoå a tomato basil sauce. The best zucchinis I have ever eaten. Like candy! Usually they are pretty bland and just soak up the flavours they are surrounded by, but these were the center of attention. Delicious!

Oh, and the living room had ceramic tiles on the floor. The design on the tiles looked a lot like a vagina.

Battle Hymn of the Apartment

As I move into my 21st home, I take a brief moment to look back at the places I've lived.

I am very uncomfortable with nostalgia. Somewhere in my early twenties, maybe after the hundred thousandth hour spent drinking and listening to myself and others rehash stories about our teen years, I made a decision to reject the instant nostalgia and story-i-fication of every event. Listening to 22 year olds swoon as they showered each other with cherished memories from four years ago quickly became one of my most white-hot hatreds. Also I grew uncomfortable with the way I pulled out a set of anecdotes about my past every time I met someone new as if these stories of drunken hi jinx somehow explained who I was, as well as the feeling that everything was a potential story to be retold at a later time to either impress, disgust, thrill or, offend someone.

It took some time to shake the filthy habit but I realise now that I very rarely, if ever, tell stories from my past. I don't package the past into little anecdote bundles. I've paid a bit of a price in that I remember almost no specifics from high school (a good thing?), my twenties are all bunched together in one messy pile, and I may be less fun at parties. In the end I think it has had a positive effect on my memories because instead of remembering stories I remember events ( as unformed as these memories may be). This the same reason why I'm disinclined to take photographs.

That being said, I will now dip my toe in the nostalgia swamp and regale you with some stories from my past. For each place I've lived over the last 20 years I will jot down the first memory that pops up. I will try to keep it snappy ,basted in my trademark wit and stuffed with my much vaunted humour.

St. Hubert - Before I actually lived here I spent a lot of time hanging out here. This may have happened during that time. One of the best things about this place were the four record collections of the four residents. Not that they were of record collectors proportions or all that exceptional, but as a 16 year old who couldn't get enough music and who drank it up skinny-guy-with-long-beard-crawling-in-the-dessert style, it was heavenly. The four, perhaps five, record collections came together one day to form a mighty Voltron-esque mega beast. We decided to play them all chronologically. Of course some albums stank (yeah, you, Rick Wakeman) so ground rules were laid down. One track from each side minimum and at least two members of the household had to be home at the time of the playing. First up was Louis Armstrong (?) and I'm pretty sure he got the minimum. I can't remember if we stuck it out to the end but it gave me a reason to rush home and probably introduced me to a few things I hadn't heard. 

Laurier - This was a busy place and I spent a pretty eventful year there. Not one thing comes to mind. Just a flood. I remember that I had started studying Fine Arts at CEGEP and my father bought me a bunch of wood (plywood and masonite) for me to paint on. I leaned it on the wall of my bedroom and cut it up as needed using a circular saw and painted quite a few paintings using it. All in my bedroom! I love living in a nice place like an adult but I miss having a place where using power tools and painting in my bedroom seemed completely reasonable. Less complicated times.

 I also had an old turntable you could stack records on and it would play the side, let the next record drop and reset the needle for the next go around. You could stack about eight albums. I would pull a speaker into the bathroom and take a bath for as long as there was hot water for refills and nobody needed to pee. This was great seeing as we almost never turned the heat on and even if we did it had little effect.

Verdun - My cat, Jack (greatest cat who ever lived), was not very outdoorsy, although he did occasionally go outside. When he did he usually didn't go too far. Jack was all about keeping his options open, though. His food dish always had to be full, whether he felt like eating or not. All doors and viable windows had to be open just in case he was suddenly struck with the urge to visit a closet, roommate's bedroom, or the balcony.

Through a series of unfortunate events, I found myself living (if barely) in a half basement apartment in Verdun. To keep Jack happy the window in the living room was usually open so he could jump up and get a little fresh air. One night Jack didn't come home before I went to sleep so I left the window open. I was a bit worried because he usually came running home when I called him. I was woken by sounds of him at his food bowl (which was on the corner of my bed due to a situation involving my lack of cleanliness and billions of ants). I looked up from my pillow and when my brain and eyes finally synced up I realised he had a small white mouse in his mouth. I've never liked mice. Unlike any kind of bug that you can squish without a second thought, mice provide a moral dilemma and thus are far more problematic as house guests. My first reaction was to spring out of bed and direct Jack and his mouse back outside. This was working and Jack ran toward the open window, jumped up and through, but hit his enormous head on the frame. This made him drop the mouse back into the apartment but didn't slow him down a bit as he ran off into the alley.

The mouse ran behind something and I started planning how to catch and release. These were paranoid times for me. Living alone didn't suit me and my drinking increased as my eating decreased. Sleep was uneven and my tendency to be self pitying and overly dramatic were in full bloom. I started to think, " The mouse is white. That's not a wild mouse. Where did he find it? Maybe it came from the nearby psychiatric hospital. A lab mouse. What kind of slow,degenerative,excruciating disease is it infected with? I better put on some gloves!"

I cornered the mouse behind a chair or box or something and through some clever tactics that I don't quite remember I scared him out from his hiding place so he ran towards me. The plan was to grab him and quickly release him back to the outdoors,whether or not he found his way back to the lab to continue the Ebola or extra-virulent-AIDS testing was up to him. But, about halfway to my awaiting hands , he took a sharp left turn and disappeared into a hole in the radiator. Where a panel should have been was an opening that led into the wall and down under the floor.

I stood slightly stunned, my heart racing from having almost touched a plague-ridden lab mouse, thinking about my next move. I quickly concluded that my chances of coaxing it back out of the wall were slim and picturing, if successful, the mouse leaping out of the hole and biting my face then escaping, never to be found, so that tests which could determine what had infected me and was causing blood to gush from every orifice could never be performed. I instead found a piece of cardboard and taped it over the hole.

I immediately felt terrible. This would surely lead to the slow painful starvation and eventual death for the poor mouse. This sympathy was quickly replaced with a horrible image (pretty sure from a Stephen King story) of the the mouse, which was surely pregnant, giving birth and eventually ruling a colony of mice under the floor, in the dirt floor basement. The queen mouse would grow to an enormous size evolving into a limbless, eyeless, eating machine. I slept worse than usual for the next couple of days.

Desk

I've never, until now, had a job with a desk. My desk is one of about fifty others all in one large room but it is my desk and I don't have to share it with anyone.It's a standard wood desk, well worn (I'd guess 20 to 25 years old), a bit on the small side, much like everything else in Japan. It has three drawers and a cupboard like arrangement at the bottom. I haven't accumulated enough things to fill it yet but I'm sure it won't be long. But the most remarkable aspect of the desk is how much time I spend at it.

I spend two thirds of my time sitting at my desk and far less than half of that time is filled with legitimate work. That leaves a few hours each day to fill. It sounds like a great thing but as I'm new at the job, I'm still trying to gage how busy I need to look. They know, and I know, I have nothing to do, but should we both pretend that's not the case? Should I always be pouring over papers or be aimlessly tapping away at a word document? Or is it OK to spend a few hours on boxing websites? I honestly don't know. I perform my main duties well and with care and enthusiasm. When I'm asked to do something, I spring into action and do the best I can. But there is nothing I hate more than playing the "look busy" game. It's exhausting! Far more so than actually doing something. I've been told I'm doing a great job, so far, so maybe I should relax a bit. They know how much work I have and there is no way they can think that it equates to eight hours  of non-stop work a day. 

The pace is hard to get used to and it feels strange to not feel the least bit physically tired at the end of the day. How people work at a desk in an office for thirty years is really beyond me. The lack of hard work coupled with the large increase in salary has me worried. I feel that they will realize that they made a mistake, or that I need to start doing a lot more, or that I'm not really needed and I'll be out on the street.

Maybe, I finally have a job that's like everyone else's. I should go home at five feeling may day is just beginning. I shouldn't fall asleep half an hour after eating supper. Maybe my job can be a part of my day and not all of my day. I like having my own desk, and I hope it becomes a comfortable place to be.

Adult Education

Every time I make a mistake in speaking Japanese I blush bright red, get flustered and fill with self-loathing. Anytime some one chuckles at my mistake, as funny as it may be, or shows even a hint of condescension as they correct me, I mentally ball my fist and prepare to hurl it with all my might at some one's face. These are not helpful attitudes for learning.

If there is one thing I've realised about myself, or made up to avoid making too much effort, it's that I am an "organic" learner. I learn through absorption and being confronted by situations that force me to find solutions. The hard way, figuring out my own solutions and tactics, helps me internalise lessons and become comfortable enough to use them again later without hesitation and relatively naturally. The upside of this, if I take my life long battle with French as an example, is that once I've come to my own solution it is so fully absorbed that I can sound rather natural when speaking, or so I've been told. The downside, apart from being a very slow process, is that, because I've never properly studied French, I have only the two or, if lucky three, ways of saying anything that I was able to become comfortable using. Fortunately, most people are not particularly adept at manipulating their own language so that my limitations mostly go unnoticed. I may not always be articulate but I always make myself understood. Unlike in English, where poetic eloquence spurts from my brain via my mouth like mayonnaise out of a super soaker.

I'm at the point in my Japanese language acquisition where I can understand most everyday or personal questions and respond appropriately but with limited detail. I can handle very simple business interactions, such as making various reservations, as well as any conversation where the context is very clear and words I don't understand can be easily guessed. ("Please hand me the XXXXX" said pointing at the vegetable peeler) . I'm well on my way to becoming functionally illiterate.

My friend Matt, who speaks Japanese quite well, is of the school that says you should just get out there and make friends, talk to people in bars, find out how to say what you want and say it. It worked for him. There is nothing in my character that suggests that this would work for me.My tendency to think that a stranger is just an asshole you haven't met, coupled with my reluctance to make mistakes that would allow said asshole to feel superior to me for even a second prevent me from doing my learning for all to see. If I may psycho analyze myself for a moment, or to put it another way, point out some things in my childhood in order to justify my short comings as an adult, growing up in Jonquiere and hardly speaking French may hold some clues to my current situation. 

I can think of a couple of people, maybe hockey team mates, who wanted to hang out with me despite my language limitations but I'm sure my general distrust and resentment put the breaks on what should have been a good opportunity. So mostly what I'm left with are the negative experiences of trying to learn French as a child and teenager in hostile territory. I won't use this chance to list every slight, real or imagined, but I'd like to site a few examples. One thing I learned is that, apparently, mistaking a masculine noun for a feminine noun, or vice versa, is HILARIOUS! Although, I've never found someone making a similar mistake in English to be particularly amusing, this may be a result of cultural differences. I also remember shopping with my mother and being pointed at, glared at, and on occasion openly insulted, for speaking with her in English. Worse than that was seeing how my mother, who made a lot of effort to learn French, going to lessons and and actually studying, was treated. People would be either genuinely confused by someone whose accent was different from theirs or  would intentionally refuse to listen to what she was saying because of her less than perfect pronunciation. I mean, I would be standing beside her and I could understand perfectly what she was saying but she had to repeat herself over and over as if she was the one who was in the wrong. There was little reward for all her effort.

Lastly, is something small that I guess in the end turned out to be a positive experience. I was about fifteen years old and my parents went to Jamaica on holiday leaving me and my brother at home alone. I remember finding out how to say Jamaica in French so I could tell my hockey team mates what was going on with me. I can't remember if I was expecting questions or if I was feeling unusually friendly. I told a couple of guys where my parents had gone and they looked at me like I was an idiot. "Where?" Oh no, I thought I may be saying it wrong so I repeated myself. I was still met with complete bewilderment. Maybe I had learned it wrong. I just went back to tying my skates and the attempted conversation was abandoned. Later I mentioned this to my father and told him how I had said Jamaica. He said I was saying it right but that they just didn't know where or what Jamaica was. It hadn't occurred to me that the problem might not be my French but that it might be that they are ignorant morons. What a relief! I spoke just fine the problem was who I was speaking to. The next year I moved to Montreal where my French suddenly seemed to be just fine and understood by everyone. I quickly improved.

Anyway this sad trip down memory lane was inspired by the fact that I started Japanese lessons again this week. It's my third serious shot at improving and if if the jump in ability is on par with what I experienced the last times, I may very well end up speaking passable Japanese someday. I never wanted or expected to learn another language in my life but it's looking like I my stumble along in my own self defeating and awkward way, baggage and all, into being somewhat competent in a third language. Never would have thought.

Everything = Nothing

I was listening to someone (via podcast) talk about developing an audience on the web. He made a very good point, or I'm remembering it as I wish it had been, in that case I guess I'm making a very good point, about focus. If you do a bit of everything, really you are doing nothing.

That's the way I've been feeling about this blog and about my creative life in general (not my work life, there I'm doing a lot of one thing). My room is full of 80% completed sketch books, half finished projects on a theme that have been laid aside for so long that going back to them now hardly makes sense, as the original impetus is long gone.

As for this everything blog, what's it going to be? Music? Art? Boxing? Clever musings? Porn?

Runner's World

On a chilly overcast morning with the cherry blossoms about one week past peak bloom, I woke at 5:30 and caught a ride to Saga city, about an hour and a half from Nagasaki. After making a mess in two of three public restrooms along the way we got to the race site. I spent the next half hour in three different lines; the first to register, the second to sign my name on the card because apparently the first line couldn't lend me a pen, the third was back to the first to do what I tried to do twenty minutes before. I swear the Japanese national pass time is standing in line.I guess it teaches patience, or more likely resignation to a Kafkaesque nightmare existence.But I'm like that guy in the Apple commercial throwing that thing through the giant screen!  I am not a number!! Actually I just fidget and sigh a lot. They know what that really means though.

So I finally got my number (oh, the irony) and after finding a locker, changing, and sleepily trying to safety pin a piece of paper to my chest, there were about three minutes left to race time. Ten seconds of stretching. I joined the crowd covering about half a race track and spotted a guy holding a sign "40:00 - 45:00". That's me! So I pushed my way up to where he was standing. Without any warning (that I heard or understood) the gun went off and people slowly began to shuffle towards the start line. Either everyone had ignored the sign suggesting what time they expected to achieve or they were all lying to themselves. The first two kilometers were tiring as I fluctuated between calming myself down and trying to establish a steady pace and weaving in, out, and around the slow and very slow. I felt like I ran an extra 500 meters in circumventing steps and was feeling pretty flat and sluggish when I hit the half way point. I checked the time : over 23 minutes. Damn! I'm tired, my feet weigh a hundred pounds each, and I have to go to the toilet (number one and two). Can I step it up and salvage a half decent time?

The second five was a painful and thoroughly unenjoyable countdown to the finish line. With one kilometer left the shuffle on my ipod picked out the exact kick in the ass I needed: "That Was Just Your Life" by Metallica. I always seem to get into a back and forth battle with at least one other runner and this time was no different. He would pass me and as I slowly picked up the pace towards the finish I would pull ahead. He rushes past me again and, keeping a steadily increasing, pace I reeled him in. Finally we enter the stadium and hit the track towards the finish line and I floor it. Good bye anonymous foe!

I was glad to see that the second five took less than 21 minutes and I was pretty satisfied that I had emptied the gas tank but was a little disappointed that I was a minute off my best time from last fall. Have I peaked? I hope not. I hadn't been living the healthiest lifestyle in the preceding months, what with so much work and eating fast food because I'm too exhausted too cook. I put on almost five pounds and I could really feel it in the knees and feet.  One step back, two steps forward. Which is a really bad way to run.

Gonna Crawl

The sun has long since set. The volunteers left hours ago. The last brave runner who refuses to give in to his screaming muscles, his exhausted mind, crawls across the finish line.

The last six months have been grueling, at least by my standards. Starting a new job while still working at the old job was a bold move that paid off. The finish line is in sight now but still seems so far as my knees scrape along the asphalt. The last few weeks I've felt that the quality of work at both jobs had begun to suffer due to mental fatigue. This Thursday will be my last day of dual employment. I have almost two weeks off before I start the new  job as (still hard to say) a high school teacher. Already my mind is working on a way to avoid doing this job for the rest of my life. Is that crazy? Maybe, but I just don't see myself staying anywhere for the next 25 years. Five or ten, maybe. I won't give up the dream, though. I will be a real princess!

Of course I post this sob story here because I can't get the desired response (sympathy mixed with pity mixed with admiration mixed with a back rub) from my girlfriend. She works seven days a week and averages under four hours of sleep a night. I feel a little awkward groaning about waking up at seven thirty. I look to you, dear reader,  to aknowledge my heroic suffering.