Why I Do This Thing Called Blogging

Blogs are strange beasts, aren't they? Both egotistical and stupid. Egotistical cause you're hoping people will read what you have to say. Stupid cause no one is paying you for it. You're just giving it away, is the common refrain. And I'll not hold back from telling you that I don't post my fiction up here for a reason.

Blogs are not all bad, though, I hope. While most readers (and followers!) of blogs write blogs, there are those few who are starting to see that this still very new form of writing might have something going for it.

Initially I didn't want to start a blog. It was my wife's idea (and few other friends who figured it made sense for a guy who claimed to be a writer but hadn't published much). Yet with time it's grown on me. Some months I've even really loved doing it, playing with it, hopefully improving it. Getting talented friends to post their pictures, or sharing a favourite selection of songs - these things are fun. Along the way I may even have come to begin to understand the purpose of the form - when I feel like I'm sharing the kind of cafe chat I'd like to be part of. When I feel like I might be providing three or four minutes of something interesting on your lunch break. Another site to visit when the facebook news feed runs dry (I know, I know, it will never run dry - I was being metaphoric).

That said, I often do sit back and wonder to what end, for what, to whom, and why? I can admit there are times I wonder how much longer I'll continue.

But here I am again, returning after a brief hiatus, a little vacation. And even then, on beach or bus I did, in a sense, have this blog on my mind. Though very much for my fun (and more on that next post) I re-read a favourite novel on my trip because any time I write one of my little essays recommending an old favourite, I feel the need to re-read it, to get it right, to know what I want to say.

That's what I wanted to share with you, tonight. That despite the cynical feelings and the doubts, despite mine being one of millions of blogs out there, I still do aim to take it seriously. Here is my chance to work on my craft, and even get the odd bit of feedback. Here is my chance to stand up on the old soap box, like some Rasta bible salesman on a Manhattan corner, prosletyzing my shtick. And my shtick is fiction and movies. It's just my nature to share the things I love.

There. That's the purpose of my blog.

Hope you'll stick around while it lasts.

Newest Photo - Trucks in T.O.

Forget Ziggy, when he isn't taking pretty wicked-awesome pictures, it's Avital Zemer

who plays a mean guitar. I know. I've seen. Just saw. Saturday night. The guy is in like three bands. I've heard guitar is only one of the instruments he plays. Also? When he isn't music performing or photo clicking he's teaching one or the other. That's the kind of talent we're talking. In lieu of said talent, he's got a website of his photography. You should check it out.

Discovering a Great English 80s Band

How do we come to something new? And by something I of course am referring to a great book, band, movie.Word of mouth is probably the most likely answer. But what's that mean?

If growing up you had friends that had musical talent, friends in bands, orchestras even, you knew of certain famous music you were supposed to care about. Just as you were supposed to care about jazz or the Beatles, but only late Beatles (though what bullshit that turned out to be) somewhere along the line you were to know of this band.

You were to know of them round about junior high (when I came to discover Floyd and Zeppelin). This band too was to be discovered in that era of impressionable youth. Stuck firmly in the late 60s and the 70s I missed the boat for this '80s English group, though.

You miss the boat and then you feel like you can never catch up. Like holding off from Heminway, I too often get intimidated and stay away. How do you approach Truffaut, never mind getting to know the other seven symphonies Beethoven wrote?

It's a push really, actually a series of pushes, that does it. We come to things not because a single source speaks of them to our ears. It's not one trusted friend saying check this out... It takes a couple things, not just one or even two friends but then also the mention on some cool CBC or maybe NPR show, or a reference in a dissertation-sized New Yorker article. What if one of your favourite bands (Radiohead) sites them as one of their favourites? Cause isn't that most often the case. You love one artist and they put you on to the next. If it weren't for Haruki Murakami I'd never have discovered Raymond Chandler and his stylistic genius, particularly with the simile:

"'She's dark and lovely and passionate. And very, very kind.'
'And exclusive as a mailbox,' I said."

So I come to this band that is said to have influenced the guitar-based (no more synth) Brit pop of the 90s because of that friend that was in a band, because of whatever magazine or radio show that would mention them, because of some hip movie (500 Days of Summer, which I continue to feel very conflicted about but ultimately did totally relate to - thank you, Rosie), and, finally ...

Thanks to a pair of Israeli sisters I met in a ryokan in Tokyo earlier this month. Cool cats both, with adventurous palates and open minds and a sisterly love for one another the likes of which you get to witness maybe twice in a lifetime. It was bad luck (for her) and good (for me) that the one sister - the younger - left her iPod behind (at the ryokan). Walking them  in the pouring rain on a Tokyo lane to catch the bus that would take them to their aeroplane, the younger sis asked, Could I mail it for her? I could, when I got back from my travels, I said. I'm about to go to the post office to mail it now. But first I have to thank her.

Two decades and about a million references later and I have finally come to discover The Smiths. Here I admit that one Israeli sister's bright red iPod got quite the listen to on lost walks through Tokyo neighbourhoods, on long sits on Thailand beaches, on buses and planes. In all these places I came to discover the genius blend of Morrissey's unique and sensitive and deadpan voice and lyrics matched, and maybe even topped by the utter cool of Johnny Marr's gorgeous guitar.

The Smiths. The kind of art so good I have been waiting a week, since a long and perfect for music listening while out the window wistful gazing bus ride back to Bangkok to be back home and have the time to look up the band and discover who they were and how and why and where.

Thanks to the long chain that finally brought me to yet another great artist(s). I love those chains. Hope this blog for someone, somewhere, can occasionally be a link in a chain that connects you to some book, band or movie in a way you forgot possible.

See you next week!

Back

Excuse the delay, but sometimes the well needs refilling.
PBIHT returns in a few days.
I hope to have a story or two to share with you.  
In the meantime: two ducks.

BEST OF PBIHT: A Friday in Japan* - As to why Japanese might drink and smoke as much as they do

According to a New Yorker article there is a direct link between one's length of daily commute and level of personal happiness. Common sensically, the longer the commute the greater the unhappiness. The article estimated the average big city commute across North American cities at 40 minutes. The average commute time in Japan was estimated to be around 90 minutes.


Fridays you teach at Doshisha university in Kyoto. You teach 3 classes, rather than the usual 4. This qualifies as a sleep-in. Your cell phone alarm goes off at 6:50, vibrating against the plastic of your plastic box of a bedside table (the realities of transient living). Snooze twice before getting up. Shower, don't shave, blow dry hair (men in Japan have beautiful hair; you do not have beautiful hair but you live in a place long enough and it gets to you - the need to make your hair as pretty as can be). After put small goop of gel in hand to then rub on opposite hand's fingers to then brush over hair to keep what's left in place.

Dress, retrieve Daily Yomiyuri from slot in brown metal front door. Go with newspaper to breakfast table. Enjoy long but not remotely miso soup or in any way fishy Japanese breakfast (cornflakes with raisins sprinkled on, a mandarin and a piece of toast with marmalade; the toast accompanied by a Fortnum and Mason Assam leaf tea) whilst checking front page, sports pages and, on Fridays, movie reviews, and, occasionally, even some actual news. Find the awful need to have CNN on in background while reading paper, while eating breakfast. Be thankful that it's Andersoon Cooper and not Lou Dobbs. Hate Lou Dobbs.

Follow breakfast with last minute rush before leaving. Grossly underestimate amount of time needed for: peeing, toothbrushing not very penetratingly effectively, then spitting, brushing, spitting, rinsing, towel drying running back to kitchen to ensure that first and foremost novel and journal are safely slotted in knapsack, check also that teaching materials are there. And cellphone. Shit. Cell phone. Find cell phone. Throw in knapsack, front pocket. Unzip. Rezip. Get granola bar for later snack. Put in same front pocket as cell phone. Unzip. Rezip. Illogically leave knapsack on chair at breakfast table (make this mistake each and very morning for the two years of your job contract), rush to closet by front door, retrieve coat, scarf, return to kitchen as you dress in coat and knot scarf round neck to grab knapsack. Look at elementary school-style clock on wall across from kitchen table. Stress. Remember your need for water. Say shit. "Shit." Retrieve plastic bottle from black netted stretchy thingy on side of knapsack. Empty remains of bottle. Fill with water too fast. Spill. Swear. Feel no guilt at not cleaning up slight spill. Go. Go. Go.

Walk the 12 minutes to Hotarugaike station in 9. Be sweating under your scarf and bitter about it once there. Climb the 3 steep flights of steps two at a time. Feel older. Get to the top, make the left, time it just so that a trainful of passengers has exited the gates you're gunning for, so you have to swim upstream through them who don't give you love for obstructing their race to get to work on time in a land where getting to work on time is taken pretty German seriously. Slide train pass through gate, descend escalator, walking on left. Get angry with the old man not standing all the way to the right so that you have to slightly side-step by. Make a very Canadian point of saying excuse me (sumimasen) in such a way as to basically be telling the man to off himself for ruining your escalator descent. Find train just arriving at platform as you do. Run to get on the last - least busy - car.

This the 8:30 you've chosen to race to get is a local (25 minutes to Umeda), not an express (17 minutes to Umeda). The worst of rush hour over, and it being a local, and the last - least busy - car, though all seats are taken, you can stand without being squooshed or even having to be in actual physical contact with the others standing around you, you Canadian boy from the suburbs and spacious shopping malls north of Lawrence Avenue.

Breath. Balance knapsack between legs. Retrieve novel from knapsack. Rezip. Grab rubber ring above seated passengers. Read for 25 minutes minus the odd lingering look at the rolling green mountains in the distance beyond the tetris mess of grey concrete buildings, houses, and shops that stretch on for the foreground immediate miles just outside the generous wide and long train windows. Despair at the crowded ugliness of all that concrete. Look to green tree covered mountains. Feel relief. Breath. Return to novel. Look up. Read. Up. Read. Ignore salaryman staring at you, the only white man in the car, and likely, on all eight cars of the Hankyu train. Try not looking at the girl in the white coat and black skirt with black stockings. Legs crossed. All that thigh. Read. Look at her thighs. Read. Again. Stop. The mountains. Umeda station.

Walk the 4 train cars worth to the middle staircase. Descend with crowd. Feel annoyed that it is not moving faster, that you can't walk faster. Cross an open but low-ceilinged area of big train station busyness, crowdedness; have to navigate between and sometimes through commuters traveling perpendicular and thus at cross-purposes to you. Love them you do not.

Swipe train pass and exit Umeda station. With hundreds of others and against oncoming hundreds more, walk the 5 minutes indoor, then 3 minutes over bridge outdoor and down the stairs to JR Osaka station. See another foreigner. Manage a nod. Receive nod response. Rejoice in the camaraderie of the visible minority. Get tense preparing for walking through Osaka station. Cross through 6,000 people coming in and out of the station even then at that late, now 9am, stage of rush hour. Swipe pass, take two escalators, walk 3 minutes. Wait in long line for long train. Take the Loop Line 3 stops - 6, 7 minutes - to Kyobashi station. Exit train, be very unfriendly to the passengers waiting to get on the train you just got off, who don't move out your way enough when you try to exit. Take it personally, walk along platform to the staircase on the left. Descend. Relieve at the relative un-busyness of said staircase. Trot down stairs in relief. Sigh. Line up for express train. Wait 7 minutes and 2 local trains before the express. Get seat. Rejoice. Sigh. Wish it wasn't a teenage boy beside you. Try ignoring his too wide spread legs, the bastard. Philosophize on the selfish nature of youth today. Acknowledge that you are part of said generation. Then immediately feel that you are somehow above it. Be Buddha good, avoiding conflict, keeping your knees Catholic school girl closed. Frustrate. Let simmer, how long 1, 2, 3 minutes? Spread your legs angry wide so your knee is now leaning on his. Assume this will send message. Curse a culture not nearly as afraid of touch as yours when said knee kissing message has no effect. Push harder against his knee. Feel great and awe-wonderful satisfaction when teenage wanker moves his knee - albeit passive-aggressive killer slowly, and just a little. Feel slight dent in satisfaction that he didn't move his knee more.

A 40 minute ride to your final stop try reading but find you can't concentrate. Spend some few minutes with book on lap trying to sleep. Tsuck your teeth in frustrated can't sleepness. Open eyes. Scowl at salaryman across from you staring at you (probably for tsucking noise made against teeth). Read 5 minutes. Fall asleep for 7 minutes, book open in hand. Jerk head wake. Embarass and look round to check if others have seen you. Find most fellow passengers sleeping. Gaze braindead out window. Wish you never need work again so braindead gaze may continue ad infinitum. Feel thankful for rural Kyoto, for small squares of rice paddy land that have now replaced the concrete, and in the distance, but closer now, the ever present soft green mountains. Dream of being atop one of those mountains alone. Check watch. 20 minutes to go. Close eyes. Open eyes. Read. Window. Two stops, one stop. Sigh. Book in bag and up. Exit train. Exit station along with a couple hundred university students. Descend shallow set of stairs to roadside. Wait. Red light. Shniggle (yes shniggle) your way through to the front of the crowd. Count seconds waiting for light to change. Remember the quote you read in the English style pub bathroom in Shinsaibashi (downtown Osaka) by Kipling, I think, something about only ever getting comfortable or sane in the East when you give up trying to change it. Stand waiting for set of lights that like all lights in Kansai, Japan take twice as long to change as lights in Canada do. Want desperately to change this.

Start walking pavement pounding before light has changed. Stride, delight in the fresh air of the Kyoto countryside. Having mentally prepared for it back on train, begin steep ten minute climb up tree lined street to Doshisha's Kyotanabe campus. Pass high school tennis courts, look longingly at kids playing. Wish today, blue sky day, that you were coaching tennis outdoors, blue sky day, rather than ESL indoors, white walls, ceiling, every bloody day. Reach hill top more out of breath than you'd like. Hate this. Promise to find more time to exercise. Wait at another red light for just a little longer than forever. Cross fast, walk the five minutes through campus - check watch. 2 hours door-to-door. Teach a 1 and a half hour class, eat lunch, teach 2 more 1 and a half hour classes, cross campus, repeat commute in reverse.

[*This piece was published in the online literary journal Cha] 

Sho Ga Nai

“I could claim any number of high-flown reasons for writing, just as you can explain certain dogs behavior... But maybe, it’s that they’re dogs, and that’s what dogs do.”
—Amy Hempel

BEST OF PBIHT: The Buddhist Bus Ride - III

Continued from  The Buddhist Bus Ride Part II
Originally posted November 2009

Truer Than Truth
"There is an old Jewish saying that I love," Isabelle Allende, the Chilean-American, says, opening her moving but also hilarious Ted talk called Tales of Passion. "What is truer than truth? Answer: The Story."

Well this Jewish-Canadian cannot conceive of a better way to approach even the most surface of understandings of Buddhist wisdom than with a parable.

It is ancient times and a mother has suffered the greatest tragedy a mother can - the loss of her child. In agony she pleads with the Buddha to do something. He contrives of a way to help her, saying that if she can procure one particular spice (he names a spice common to most any kitchen) from any home upon which death has not touched its door, then he can bring her child back to life.

The woman visits home upon home and of course, in every case, she learns that all the families have been touched by death. All have lost mothers, husbands, children.

At the story's end, the woman does not - cannot - get her child back of course - that is impossible. Instead, what the Buddha has taught her, what she has learned, is that she is not alone in her pain.

What If We Can't
Whether we are dealing with the most horrific of human tragedy, or the most mundane of daily struggle, there is a Disney danger, I think, in always trying to escape our fates, our pains, our realities. Yet so much of the modern western lifestyle does exactly this. Buddhism suggests the opposite because we cannot cheat death, and sometimes, when the walk would just be too long, or a bike ride just not possible because it's frigid February, sometimes we can't get off the bus.

Which brings us to the impetus for this overlong series of posts. Some advice the Dalai Lama once gave of how to deal when in a crowded, uncomfortable situation, eg. a crowded bus. He recommended to look around, to actually see the people around you. You ever do that? Look at all the other sad souls on that bus, the misery plastered on their faces? You ever recognize that the misery on your face is the misery on everyone's face? That you are not alone in your misery is, however, only the first part.



The 14th Dalai Lama, who speaks of compassion above all else as the ultimate good, takes the advice a critical step further. What he has taught me to do on that bus, and only when I remember - and oh how easily we forget - is to step out from my own misery and not just look to the misery of those passengers around me, but to empathize with them and offer of my compassion in response. Offer of your kindness to relieve their pain.

Now let's be clear, out of ten bus rides I doubt I'm batting .200, but when I do step out from me and empathize with you, I no longer feel miserable.

What Choice Do We Have
I'm sure you'll agree that there are but two types of old men in the world: the grumpy old man and the sweet, gentle old man. And the same way all men believe they are Michael when they watch "The Godfather" because, as my brother-in-law, Roberto, so astutely once put it, "Nobody thinks they're Fredo," no one believes that they will grow up to be the grumpy old man either.

And yet, with each passing year I became more the old man wanting to snip and bark at dumb teenagers who yell on buses and throw garbage out windows, that aging man I am who seethes at how much worse the world has gotten, hell in the old hand basket... But when I can remember, I lately find myself voicing in my head that mind-altering Ghandi quote:

"Be the change you want to see in the world."

We assume this to mean ending global warming or AIDS in Africa, and God bless. But it can heal small too. When I remember to be compassionate for the crap a bus driver deals with or the suffering of my fellow commuters, I like to think I inch that much closer to the sweet, gentle old man and suffer that much less. I'm not suggesting Nirvana, just feeling a bit happier.

End