(The following blog has been ripped apart from its true place in time. It was originally intended for posting in mid-August, but due to circumstances out of my control it is destined for the worst kind of fate - displacement, but not of a physical kind. This is a displacement of time. A lonely, wandering blog, it is a nomad of time, a foreigner in its own land and all other lands to come, and thus a blog to be treated with suspicion. For how can it's claims be treated with respect if the author cannot afford it it's true home.
The blog's true home is mid-August and the sun is out. With the help of foreign athletes and international optimism Britain has redeemed itself with the Olympics. However its not too long till our hearts and minds must divert their attentions to those in Syria. So like the lift I am stuck in at Shinjuku station I don't know whether I am going up or down. An old lady with a hat whose brim is big enough for the both of us gets on the lift. I then get off, then back on, then off, and then back on again, with my large suitcase. A pathetic embodiment of indecision, without the eloquence of Hamlet. I am hot and tired for I am moving that day into the centre of Tokyo.
"Foreigner easily confused by new country," she says, surprising me with her good English.
"Yeah. Sumimasen," I say.
"Where are you from?" she asks.
"England."
"Ah, England. Something good has just finished there."
"Yeah.")
It is another Tokyo summer, so I am told, but this is my first, which technically makes it the first Tokyo summer. It's stifling so I am told. I am told many things though, it is one of the benefits of being a foreigner. Being told things, and being an eager learner, I am ready to listen. At least to make up the days at school when I thought it was better to try and give the teachers a nervous breakdown than learn anything. I still do. I regret nothing.
These thoughts of past days at school do nothing to help the heat though. Never does. I open my balcony window to let at least some breeze in, but the air rests still, lying plump and stationary, like a revered older lady. No moving it. I have now had to resort to closing the door and turning on the air-conditioner. The tired, plump old lady is no longer my friend. I have met someone new, and her name is Mitsubishi. She keeps me cool and grounded in an otherwise boiling hot, tiny flat. She doesn't judge me, she is kind. However, this machine imbued with human foils, unfortunately has the disorder of narcolepsy, automatically turning off every three hours. So like a twisted form of relay, when she switches off and goes to sleep, it is my turn to wake up. The plump old lady comes creeping back, pulls back my covers and lays right on top of me while I try and sleep. Eventually I get up gasping for cool air, reach over and press that red button for Mitsubishi, my sweet cyber love. And just like that the plump old lady goes rushing off, hoisting her large floral frock over her feet to help her escape, with all that is missing to make it a classic 19th Century romantic opera is a bit of cross-dressing and a duel (acceptable and illegal, respectively), fanning her heated menopausal breasts as she runs.
I don't like bugs at the best of times, but who does? The heat and humidity only serves to put a healthy spring in their step, with large beetles buzzing heavily near your head, smaller ones bold enough to crawl in your hair. Cockroaches scurrying in corners and the large rigid hulks of dead cicadas littering the streets. If I can and I see a spider or insect that can be deposited out the window, then I deposit, but there are some situations that require death. The insect my be upon a surface that negates the tried and testing cup-and-paper technique (a cushion, bedding, and the like), or may be quickly scurrying to a corner. In these situations a fast and deadly approach is required. There is no time to think of your fellow creatures. There is no time to think at all. The perfect time to kill. One grabs the nearest cloth or tissue and expunges the life from the cute little critter. However, with bigger ones that require the old "final solution" I need to build up the killer inside me, and to do this I usually yell out my war cry at the precise moment I kill.
"DIE MOTHERFUCKER, DIEEEEE!" I seem to recall myself screaming, and I am sure my neighbours also recall. When one has a death cry for insect victims, it follows that the person may start questioning their outlook on insect disposal - an issue that has troubled man from the very beginning. However one day I screamed my scream of terror just before I killed the bug, and the insect in perfect response to my yelling quickly walked in full view to the nearest window and jumped out. To think that I could have been giving insects a verbal warning all along, instead of this mindless, hate-filled blood-letting.
I tried to think of a link to my next topic, but I couldn't, so this itself is the link.
What is all this Instagram camera stuff all about then eh? Sounds suspiciously like the alias of a coke dealer who knows a thing or two about punctuality. No one actually knows what Instagram is. Many claim it to be a funky new camera app, that imitates old square shaped Kodak amd Polaroid images. This is not true. It is the Big Lie, hidden and mysterious, the one that can masquerade as truth and no one is wise to it. Be wary of this one for it distorts all true images to look cool and funky and makes the most hideous of images, like the grinning faces of a happy couple, look beautiful. Take a photo of a rotting turd and you'll think Gauguin came back to life and created his masterpiece. Take a photo of a bland Tokyo suburb complete with ugly apartment blocks and multi-story car-parks, and you'll be fooled you are gazing at the beautiful mythical lost city of Shambhala itself. Take a photo of Stalin's pock marked face with his torture-prone buddy Beria, and you'll be forgiven for thinking you are witnessing the very heart of God's compassionate self.
But hey, since when was it new that the image lies? Is that not a part of photography? Is not the choosing of a frame (its subject and composition), itself established from the subjective view of the cameraman, a lie? Isn't Instagram a continuation of the photographic traditiom, or a step too far at the risk of those hard earned frames?
Oh, Ive got another one. Take a picture of the 2010 England riots and you will end up with images of a equal and content utopian society.
Get the picture? If not, get the picture app. They're all doing it. Where's yours?
(It is early September and there is a faint freshness painted in the air. The heavy rain recently has cleared the air, non-figuratively speaking. Autumn is tentatively approaching, still a little afraid of the remaining sun's dominant heat. I have just hastily finished my blog in a tiny internet cafe cubicle, conscious of the hours I have spent here and the consequent charges. I am now comfortably settled in a nice house in a new area of which you will read about in later blogs. It is Tuesday, but of course my blog will never see the day. For although it is here now, it was also there then, and no entity but consciousness can exist in two places at once. But please be forgiving of my new blog because what we know can't exist now may be able to in the future. And only when time, past, present, and future, finds a shared plain of reconciliation, can my blog, possibly find it's home.)
