Narita galore!
Like any sleep-deprived monster, the as yet un-decompressed traveller will sometimes marvel at mundane things, but in my case today, my foggy but no less ringing wonder is entirely justified.
Apparently, the internet is free at Tokyo airport, where I've landed en route to visiting the other half of my bloodline in the Motherland. I saw an article in the in-flight magazine about how Korea was the land of flowers. I've wanted to see that side to it ever since those tantalising photographs in the cookbook I monopolised at the Queens library for some months before conscience popped up one day in the form of a stubborn chili pepper in a stirpot of chapchae... Actually, no I didn't have a vision in the shape of paprika, but it makes a good line, doesn't it? (looks out onto empty auditorium with the house lights half out)
Anyhoo, some observations about Japan first, or at least what I gleaned from the flight and the airport, peculiar arenas to be sure, but isn't every miniature an aspect of the whole? (Don't you love those dime-store deepness moments people especially like to hawk on their blogs? I am still undecided, gavel half lifted, on the issue of emotional detoxification on blogs. It is intensely tempting, yet I think those things could be funneled into letters or well-addressed emails instead. Still, I'm sure I've had my own containment problems here as well. When I first started writing Red Eye, it was my half-hour a day of writing as recommended by a couple of fictional and poetic figures whom I prize, if from an enamoured distance.)
In other slightly unrelated news, JN and I got our Hollywood\Mexico roadtrip pictures back from the friendly, but slightly inept photo folks at the drugstore. My artificial eye has always been a bit undependable, especially since the flash on the 35mm decided to become a beacon to the gods and never turn itself off, except when it's called on to illumine some one's face overwhelmed, but all the pictures I've gotten back are grainy and dark, paired with blinding spots of lost detail... There is a passable one of me in front of a Hello Kitty store in Baja California (! but then again, since the kitty famously has no mouth, it's not like they had to find a translator to render her parlance into other tongues. Wait, if she doesn't have a mouth, that also means she doesn't have a tongue either--she must be a very unkempt kitty then) in which I'm making a protuberant peace sign whilst wearing a toothy smile and carmine red pants. If a PC Asian with an activist's angry heart happened to have thumped by and caught on.... I sometimes fear what would happen if they only knew how I walk among them, with so much tongue and salt.
I feel thirsty (gosh golly this entry is confessional) and want to walk around some more, but I would like to post some brief notes I made on the flight first.
"O it's BLUE!
JAL is the only airline I have experienced whose safety video includes a real-life demonstration of how people go down those floaty, raft-like slides designed for a quick descent from a soon-to-be exploding plane. They look happy, relaxed as they zip down the cushy fairway, their perfect postures proper as pine-beams and their smiles that betray---are they *having fun* doing this demo?--- For stranded survivors of a plane crash, they look remarkably preppy and well-cooordinated... But then again, if the airline were to ask for "realism" via method acting... methods... the panicked performances might really alarm paying passengers. Actually, that's kind of funny, but obviously in terrible taste... but still kind of funny... Well, it would be great if people actually did descend those raft things with such composure. It would definitely be a sign of the advancement of humanity. And then after that, who knows, perhaps Socialism can come back swinging for seconds.
Included in the JAL shopping magazine are: massage chairs, cup noddles with
tantalisingly full arrays of dessicated "dressing" (i.e. fish bits, veg segments, and other flavourful miniatures), popsicles with actual slices of green honeydew and red and white strawberries akin to creamy valentines. Also featured are a selection of black, charred-looking things that unfortunately called to mind the rather convincing dioramas and archival photographs of the victims of Pompeii... "
Off to walk around some more and read the incomparable, ageless Herodotus. He's almost in the Oscar Wilde, Bruce Chatwin, Kafka, etc. club. But a last note on Hello Kitty, whose costume changes on the keychains here are prodigious. My favorites so far: she's dressed in a blue fish costume with her cute globular head in a little hoodie with top fins in contrasting hues; and she's chilling in the lap of a faux jade Buddha that sorta looks like the Kamakura one, but with a noticeably lovable grin. I have to cart that one home. Plus JN and I might go to do a short round of pilgrimages to various temples around Hankook and I just read about Koyasan, lovingly founded monastery of the esteemed monk Kukai (born Mao) whose spirit is believed to still oversee the mountain by Oosaka.
Ocha o itte iru (serious desire for her green tea),
L.
Apparently, the internet is free at Tokyo airport, where I've landed en route to visiting the other half of my bloodline in the Motherland. I saw an article in the in-flight magazine about how Korea was the land of flowers. I've wanted to see that side to it ever since those tantalising photographs in the cookbook I monopolised at the Queens library for some months before conscience popped up one day in the form of a stubborn chili pepper in a stirpot of chapchae... Actually, no I didn't have a vision in the shape of paprika, but it makes a good line, doesn't it? (looks out onto empty auditorium with the house lights half out)
Anyhoo, some observations about Japan first, or at least what I gleaned from the flight and the airport, peculiar arenas to be sure, but isn't every miniature an aspect of the whole? (Don't you love those dime-store deepness moments people especially like to hawk on their blogs? I am still undecided, gavel half lifted, on the issue of emotional detoxification on blogs. It is intensely tempting, yet I think those things could be funneled into letters or well-addressed emails instead. Still, I'm sure I've had my own containment problems here as well. When I first started writing Red Eye, it was my half-hour a day of writing as recommended by a couple of fictional and poetic figures whom I prize, if from an enamoured distance.)
In other slightly unrelated news, JN and I got our Hollywood\Mexico roadtrip pictures back from the friendly, but slightly inept photo folks at the drugstore. My artificial eye has always been a bit undependable, especially since the flash on the 35mm decided to become a beacon to the gods and never turn itself off, except when it's called on to illumine some one's face overwhelmed, but all the pictures I've gotten back are grainy and dark, paired with blinding spots of lost detail... There is a passable one of me in front of a Hello Kitty store in Baja California (! but then again, since the kitty famously has no mouth, it's not like they had to find a translator to render her parlance into other tongues. Wait, if she doesn't have a mouth, that also means she doesn't have a tongue either--she must be a very unkempt kitty then) in which I'm making a protuberant peace sign whilst wearing a toothy smile and carmine red pants. If a PC Asian with an activist's angry heart happened to have thumped by and caught on.... I sometimes fear what would happen if they only knew how I walk among them, with so much tongue and salt.
I feel thirsty (gosh golly this entry is confessional) and want to walk around some more, but I would like to post some brief notes I made on the flight first.
"O it's BLUE!
JAL is the only airline I have experienced whose safety video includes a real-life demonstration of how people go down those floaty, raft-like slides designed for a quick descent from a soon-to-be exploding plane. They look happy, relaxed as they zip down the cushy fairway, their perfect postures proper as pine-beams and their smiles that betray---are they *having fun* doing this demo?--- For stranded survivors of a plane crash, they look remarkably preppy and well-cooordinated... But then again, if the airline were to ask for "realism" via method acting... methods... the panicked performances might really alarm paying passengers. Actually, that's kind of funny, but obviously in terrible taste... but still kind of funny... Well, it would be great if people actually did descend those raft things with such composure. It would definitely be a sign of the advancement of humanity. And then after that, who knows, perhaps Socialism can come back swinging for seconds.
Included in the JAL shopping magazine are: massage chairs, cup noddles with
tantalisingly full arrays of dessicated "dressing" (i.e. fish bits, veg segments, and other flavourful miniatures), popsicles with actual slices of green honeydew and red and white strawberries akin to creamy valentines. Also featured are a selection of black, charred-looking things that unfortunately called to mind the rather convincing dioramas and archival photographs of the victims of Pompeii... "
Off to walk around some more and read the incomparable, ageless Herodotus. He's almost in the Oscar Wilde, Bruce Chatwin, Kafka, etc. club. But a last note on Hello Kitty, whose costume changes on the keychains here are prodigious. My favorites so far: she's dressed in a blue fish costume with her cute globular head in a little hoodie with top fins in contrasting hues; and she's chilling in the lap of a faux jade Buddha that sorta looks like the Kamakura one, but with a noticeably lovable grin. I have to cart that one home. Plus JN and I might go to do a short round of pilgrimages to various temples around Hankook and I just read about Koyasan, lovingly founded monastery of the esteemed monk Kukai (born Mao) whose spirit is believed to still oversee the mountain by Oosaka.
Ocha o itte iru (serious desire for her green tea),
L.
posted by greenyew at 12:23 AM
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