Only a Blockhead

The end of summer

The days of high summer have passed. The high school baseball tournament was over two weeks ago and the school holidays end today.

It’s hot. The sky is blue, with smears of cloud near the horizon (not unlike the photo in the post below; not to break the chain). The air quivers with the sound of cicadas. They’re also physically in evidence, as they launch themselves from their perch and wheel clumsily in search of the next one. A black butterfly glides gracefully across the road. There is a fair breeze at the top of the hill and the shadows of the bamboos dance on the asphalt.

There’s sadness at the passing of summer. But some summer still lingers.

--Julian

Robinson's Chicken Skin Music

- NC Tate

Any Excuse to Post Some Ry Cooder

(Not to forget Flaco.)

 

--David

Pale

- NC Tate

Song of summer

Cicadas

Deafening under the oldest trees

Accompany summer

 

I grew up in Britain where heat and humidity were not unknown, but not until a visit to Greece did I encounter cicadas. Now, here in Japan, the sound of these insects has become an ecstatic part of the hottest weeks of the year.

 (Photo: Bruce Marlin, Wikimedia Commons)

Hearing cicadas

My being vibrates to

The sound of the summer heat

 

There are several species, but here in lowland Kanto, my untrained ear can distinguish three.

 Hiss of abura-zemi (the rhythm section);

Buzz of min-min-zemi (the melody);

And gradually taking over from those, the trill of higarashi announcing the cool of late afternoon.

 

As the last light leaves the sky, the cicadas fall silent. And the gentler tones of the crickets, drowned out during the day, come to the foreground in the still of the evening. 

--Julian

Tokyo in Transit

I write about Alisa Freedman's excellent Tokyo in Transit in today's Japan Times.

Movement is central to modernity. Baudelaire's flaneur, a walker drifting through city streets, "a perfect idler, ... a passionate observer," who is a part of the urban throng even as he remains apart from it, is paradigmatic. The flaneur, however, was more a response to the changed times than an agent of that change. Trains, on the other hand, are central to the genesis of the new world that was born, in Virginia Woolf's phrase, "on or about December, 1910."

Read it all here, and if you do, you know, like it, don't hesitate to hit the "like" button.

--David

Is Sanity Sufficient?

In a well-argued and eloquent post Chris Clarke explains why he's not planning to vote for Obama in 2012.  As part of that post he outlines his "bottom line" in determining who to vote for.  He writes:

In order for me to vote for any candidate for office, that candidate:

• must neither openly nor tacitly support the use of torture in any circumstance.
• must pledge to defend women’s access to abortion against any threatened limitation, whether that obstruction be political, religious or economic.
• must pledge to oppose the enshrining in law of social discrimination against any group of people based on gender, ethnicity, sexuality, language, religious belief or lack thereof, disability, social class, or other arbitrary division.
• must agree that the rich – who have after all profited most from the country’s natural wealth, infrastructure and financial policy – ought to pay their fair share of taxes.
• must at least hold as an aspiration the provision of a tolerable standard of living to all people in the US, including shelter, food, clothing, education, health care and access to communication, regardless of the individual’s ability to pay.
• must support the continued existence of labor unions.
• must pledge not to punish individual migrants for the failures of the country’s immigration policy.
• must at least pledge to value the ecological integrity of the United States’ landscapes over the possibility that profit might be extracted from them.
• must possess at least a high-school level understanding of science, especially regarding but not limited to crucial topics such as climate change and evolutionary biology.
• must oppose any interference in the routine and proper teaching of science in our public schools by religious groups.
• must abide by the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

Makes sense to me, except for the, you know, not being able to vote for anyone thing.

In discussing this with several friends it becomes clear that for a lot of people the bottom line is simply that the candidate not be, a la Bachmann and Perry, nuts.  If that criterion is met, a little torture, a little trashing of the environment, and so on, can be forgiven.

So, what's your bottom line?

—David

Let's Get Spiritual

Me on The Tibetan Book of the Dead": A Biography by Robert S. Lopez:

In 2005 a journalist telephoned the eminent scholar of Buddhism and Tibetan Studies, Donald S. Lopez, Jr., and asked him whether "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" was the most important work in Tibetan Buddhism.

"No," Lopez replied.

"Do all Tibetans own a copy?"

"No."

"Have all Tibetans read it?"

Again, "no."

The journalist makes a final attempt:

"Have all Tibetans heard of it?"

Lopez: "Probably not."

More here.

—David

More on Summer

Shocking News!

—David

"Manatsu" high summer

High school baseball broadcast from Koshien stadium near Kobe in Central Japan. This competition is the climax of dedicated practice at schools the length and breadth of the land.

Radios and TVs are on all over the country. Bronzed warriors; pitching feats of endurance; tears of victory and defeat. 

“Shochuu o mimai” “enquiries during the season of great heat” summer greeting cards lie on the desk.

Peaches on the kitchen counter. Cold drinks in the refrigerator.

Time crawls. A fan whirls. The scent of a mosquito coil.

Outside, cicadas churn. The mercury is over 30 degrees. The sun dazzles in a clear blue sky.

--Julian