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2012-01-18 GIVE ME THE TIME OF DAY [ Views :16] Author : Scott

Rated 2.28/5 (45.67%) (60 Votes)

URL: http://canuckinasia.blogspot.com/2012/01/give-me-time-of-day.html

Is there any sight as sad and as sweet as a solitary orange traffic cone, under the glow of a streetlight's soft golden lamp, two mute friends at attention, the night their lonely dark cloak? Perhaps the vending machine just down the road has its own desperate charm. Coffee and cokes, sports drinks and fresh water, all bottled up, arrayed in short rows. Awaiting coins. A few clinks. A deposit. Do those plastic tubes feel anything at all as they fall to their shelf just a few drops below? Surely a fate such as this must be viewed as quite grim.

Yet you, too, when looked at by night, when watched while you sleep, might possess a similar pity. Drooling, picking. Moaning, sighing. For seven, eight, even nine hours? Do we still exist when we can't even claim to pretend that we know what we do? I suppose I could set up a camera to catch every moment and gasp. Set it up right by your bed, or my own for that matter. Post it on YouTube. So the world could then see -- who we are, when

2012-01-02 ENVIABLE POSITIONS: A BIRD ON A ROOF AND A PHILOSOPHER'S LONG CONFESSION [ Views :13] Author : Scott

Rated 2.54/5 (50.83%) (24 Votes)

URL: http://canuckinasia.blogspot.com/2012/01/enviable-positions-bird-on-roof-and.html

This morning on my run I noticed a small black bird perched on the edge of a very large building. Just sitting there. How many feet above ground this building was, I'm not sure, but neither you nor I would lounge and relax as this bird did so well. Was it planning its next flight? Had it sat there before? Was this its usual crouch? How come I often fall to the ground while tripping over small stones, yet this bird with the brain the size of my left testicle (I'm estimating here)can somehow rest assured that its poise and its wings won't just once let it down? To sit, on the edge, of a building. Good lord. And not be contemplating suicide while doing so. That must be the mark of an ignorant kind of small genius.

Don't mind me. Just my own form of philosophical gunk. Mostly because I just finished reading a rather wise book by Brian Magee called CONFESSIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER, and it's got me thinking again about all the questions I ask myself when the lights lose their glow. Magee,

2011-12-31 THIRTY YEARS IN ONE MORNING [ Views :13] Author : Scott

Rated 2.37/5 (47.41%) (27 Votes)

URL: http://canuckinasia.blogspot.com/2012/01/thirty-years-in-one-morning.html

The first morning of the first day of a new year, dark and brisk, my body alive and fresh, and I hear, as I run, the voice of a man on a phone, his tone angry and sad. I can't understand everything he's saying, but these are those familiar tones that insist what language obscures. You know the ones I mean. High-pitched, abrupt, with strange shifts downwards, almost diagonally; you didn't know voices could do that sort of thing, shift ranges so fast. As I ran I glanced to my left, and noticed that the man, physically, did not look to be perturbed, or, to be more accurate, pissed off. He looked like a hundred other middle-aged Japanese men look like on mornings such as this -- small and intent, his exercise an authentic expression of a casual, yet steady discipline imposed from within. His strides were precise and fluid. Nothing random at work. He was headed somewhere. A hat on to combat the cold. If not for that voice, I wouldn't have even spared him my glance.

Yet that voice!

2011-12-13 HAIKU: THIS MORNING'S MT.FUJI [ Views :18] Author : Scott

Rated 2.35/5 (46.96%) (23 Votes)

URL: http://canuckinasia.blogspot.com/2011/12/haiku-this-mornings-mtfuji.html

This morning's white-capped Mt.Fuji

boldy bisects the sky --

underfoot frosted grass, sprouting for its own peak.

2011-12-04 APPROACHING A LIFE [ Views :13] Author : Scott

Rated 2/5 (40%) (24 Votes)

URL: http://canuckinasia.blogspot.com/2011/12/approaching-life.html

The homeless folk around here go down by the banks of the Tama River to die. That's what I thought. You don't see them often, but they do come out at odd times, usually underneath a Sunday afternoon's blue-sky veil. On the gray-gravel path a bicycle lazily leans against its own kickstand in a teetering balance that must last all through the night; a path made of tiny grooves in dark land leads away from the small scattered rocks and forms its own makeshift route that heads down to the dirt and cut grass arranged with what might look like some love; a few tattered green tents do their best to spite wind. I noticed all this gradually, in stages, on early-morning runs before work, when I'm still sleepy and dense. (This is my excuse.) Over a couple of weeks I started to put it all together, my own puzzle in pieces: the bike; the trail; the tent. I had thought they were all random, disconnected fragments of life that somehow collect and decay without any form or possessor.

2011-10-23 THREE SORTS OF JAPANESE BEFORE SUNRISE [ Views :12] Author : Scott

Rated 2.23/5 (44.67%) (30 Votes)

URL: http://canuckinasia.blogspot.com/2011/10/three-sorts-of-japanese-before-sunrise.html

First was the young man sprawled out face-up on the sidewalk. Staring at the stars, if he had been awake. Almost like an accident-victim, his contorted shape skewed in the pose of a man falling through air. Arms windmilling in vain, even more pathetic because his limp and spare parts were aligned on concrete. A late night, last night. More than enough to drink for one man. Best to rest on the ground by the side of the river. One can do that here, without fear of harassment from police or pickpockets. Just let them lay.

Next is the white-haired middle-aged man in a shirt the same shade, seated snug in his van, his trumpet stuck to his lips like a candy so sweet he can't bear to let go lest the sweetness dissolve in cotton-candy thin vapors. I can hear the music, his music, even through the shut door. He's not very good, is what I think. Ashamed at the thought. Who am I to judge? I played that same trumpet in high school a few decades ago. Whoop-de-do. Was even worse

2011-09-24 VISAS [ Views :14] Author : Scott

Rated 2.5/5 (50%) (30 Votes)

URL: http://canuckinasia.blogspot.com/2011/09/visas.html

The cook at the little Indian joint right across the tracks from Nakano-shima station asked me if I could get him a Canadian visa. This was while he was making the nan that I had ordered just a moment before. He had arrived here three years ago from Bangladesh. I told him that I knew a Bangledeshi fellow who ran an Indian place not unlike this when I lived in Phnom Penh. I don't own this, he said. I'm just a cook. When I asked where he lived he smiled a sad smile and pointed to the floor up above. Travelling thousands of miles from his wife and three kids, all for the grand goal of schlepping his way through the day in a little restaurant the size of a halfway decent living room. Waiting for that sweet bread to bake, he told me that he wanted to go to Canada, with the visa via me, if possible. Could I do that for him? I smiled and nodded. That's what I do when I don't know what the hell to say. I don't know what you do.

Same thing happened a few weeks ago in the Philippines.

2011-08-08 THAT LONELY LIST, SO RICH AND INCLUSIVE [ Views :13] Author : Scott

Rated 3.15/5 (63.03%) (33 Votes)

URL: http://canuckinasia.blogspot.com/2011/08/that-lonely-list-so-rich-and-inclusive.html

As far as I can figure out, the only real reason to read anything that anybody's ever written is to either a) learn something new about the human condition that you've never quite conceived of before in exactly those terms, or b) nod your head in recognition at a finely-tuned observation, one that you've long held for yourself, but that you never suspected others, too, might find valuable, even precious.

Here's a paragraph from presidential historian Doris Kearn Goodwin's memoir WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR, a coming-of-age story combining her bittersweet memories of both baseball and a Brooklyn youth:

...The Rockville Centre Public Library became one of my favorite buildings in town. When my mother weasn't feeling well, she would send me to the library with titles of books she wanted to read. Since I now had a card of my own, I took great pride in checking out her books as well as mine. In those days, each book had a sheet glued to the last page on which the librarian

2011-07-11 BURN BABY BURN [ Views :14] Author : Scott

Rated 1.82/5 (36.41%) (39 Votes)

URL: http://canuckinasia.blogspot.com/2011/07/burn-baby-burn.html

Is there greater proof of our own finite span than a sunburn's red sting? Skin in itself, we rarely give it much thought. The occasional itch. The glance in the mirror each morning, to double check our two chins. A scab here and there, that subtle scrape and its bite. It's our own overcoat, old and unwanted. Just there, really. Only when the sun reminds us once more that we're nothing but flesh do we groan with dismay: Ah, death -- I now feel thy sly touch.

For if we are honest -- and who wants to be honest, but what the hell, let's tie one on -- the pink burn that delights is but death's lazy doorman. Surely the hesitant tilt of our head when we've kissed the sun far too long is some kind of indifferent guide to the underworld that awaits when the coffin's lids creaks its way shut. Think of it: If death is the absence of life, the destruction of comfort, a blackhead extended outwards in round steady cycles, then what better prep can we have than a slap to our skin that

2011-06-27 PEOPLE -- INCLUDING YOU, YES YOU! -- ARE A STRANGE LOOP [ Views :14] Author : Scott

Rated 2.71/5 (54.29%) (28 Votes)

URL: http://canuckinasia.blogspot.com/2011/06/people-including-you-yes-you-are.html

So exactly who is the 'I' who is typing these words, and, while we're at it, who is the 'you' that is scanning them now?

These are the questions that Douglas Hofstadter, a professor of Cognitive Science, delves into in his fascinating, kind of comprehensible book 'I Am A Strange Looop'.

To give you a taste of what he dishes up, a slight diversion:

Recently, while browsing through the new arrivals rack at my local video shop in the not-so-bustling suburb of Ookurayama, I came across a new documentary about The Doors, narrated by Johnny Depp, entitled WHEN YOU'RE STRANGE. I reminded myself to pick it up, either this week or next, and give it a go. As soon as I saw the DVD box, an enormous amount of memories and associations spiralled throughout my small brain. Not all of it conscious. None of them momentous. But mention 'The Doors', and what happens next?

A poster of Jim Morrison hanging in one of the Craddock twins bedrooms in Ridgeway, Ontario.

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