Fading flowers and falling leaves

I feel that life moves in 3 month cycles...excitement, effort, exhaustion, discontentment, change, and then excitement again.

So many stories to tell, but the feeling that surprises me today is one of longing. For easy conversations with old friends. For the feel of the spring breeze as I take a walk down Brunswick St. For the expression and electricity of a gig at the Kitten Club with the Sham.

This longing has such a sweetness to it, an ache that reminds you of what it means to live.

Yesterday my grandfather passed on and so this sense of life and longing takes me back to days when I saw the world by looking up at it. Of hot summers on the farm, the banging of the screen door, hiding under the billiard table, braving the emu to collect eggs from the chicken pen. Nana making breakfast eggs while we listened to the big wireless. Driving into town in the Statesman, the smell of those leather seats and Pa in his bowling whites. Pa on the tractor in the far paddock at harvest.

I wonder if he stopped by those paddocks, or took a stroll around the circular drive on his way out of this life...These memories give a tangible sense of change, and I recall that change is the constant and the catalyst in all things.

Here in Japan I have discovered Haiku again. Strangely it is not the works of the great masters that drew me back into this form (which the Japanese popularly call go,nana,go or 5,7,5) but that cranky old beat guy Kerouac. His American Haiku are wonderful. Perhaps not always as beautifully simple as say Basho or Skiki, but for me, these little lines contain a universe. Some of my favourites of his so far:

Useless! Useless!
- hard rain driving
into the sea


The winter fly
in my medicine cabinet
has died of old age


While meditating
- I am Buddha
Who else?

I have started to write a few myself - they say it takes hundreds of attempts to write a good haiku, but I have enjoyed writing these anyway.

November 11 -
the last fading flowers are
picked for your doorstep

Walking in line holding
hands - the fat kid
skips at the back


On the platform
the businessman takes a swing
with his umbrella

Here are some images and snippets of life in Japan...the flame red and orange leaves standing out against the green foliage up the mountain in Mino. The warmth and beauty of these leaves, which burst forth with energy before they fall, their hue reminds me of a certain scarlet haired singer, whose heart I miss...The old man and his bent, humped body watering his many bonsai...as if this stooped position was due to so many years of tending these gnarled, abbreviated trees... the comical swaying and nodding of a whole row of Japanese seated on the train, sleeping, their heads bobbing in the precise coreography of a slumbering chorus...

Last night I held a trivia night - a lot of work, but very rewarding, attended by a large swag of intellectually competitive gaijin...plans to sell the night to some of the big venues, under the monkier EXTREME HARDCORE TRIVIA. heh heh...

Here are some more pics for your viewing pleasure.




I couldn't get this series to display as I had envisaged, but isn't it great? Here in Japan, it is totally OK to pass out or throw up on train platforms, to fall asleep while drinking in the company of work colleagues (as long as you are a senior in the company) and even to become a loud,staggering drunk (as long as you have a chaperone). People tend to find it very funny, but I must say I could do without the many 'platform pizzas' I encounter each night on my way home from work.

I want to do a series on drunken salary-men, maybe even a little short film, because it excites me to see behaviour that is so far out of the cultural and moral norm, which is still somehow sanctioned by this society. Here is another gem.



It is a bit hard to see with my crappy phone camera, but this is a businessman in full designer suit just face-planted on the platform, passed out. I actually went and checked his pulse, he looked like he had just crumpled and that was it.



This is Ry on his birthday - we had a lovely chilled night at home with friends, talking, eating brie (such a luxury!) and just chewing the fat! My baby is a man now, quarter century and all.

I have made friends with an older woman, she actually owns the building I live in. Every few weeks she takes me out and we eat somewhere nice, or climb a mountain and just talk. She always pays and won't let me contribute. After climbing a mountain in Mino, we had an onsen and then she took me for a traditional kaiseki meal. It is a formal meal of many small courses, predominantly vege, with a bit of fish. Look at the gorgeous presentation!


Ryan's bro is here and tomorrow we leave the city for the first time in months, to head up to Koya-san - staying in an old buddhist temple and being among the cedars and possibly the snow.

More tales soon, about my first ever gig as a journo (internal communications, bottom of the barrel, but you gotta start somewhere!)

Missing you all so much.
Vale James Eric O'Brien