Just a week and a day until I head back for Japan, for the Seido Aichi tournament and for a few days of sightseeing and cultural investigation (including the bars of Osaka...) Got a few more things to do, lining up hotel rooms and renting a phone, figuring out what to pack. (I'm thinking about getting a big new backpack and taking that instead of a suitcase. Need to plan it out a bit more though.)
I found out that there's a new requirement for gaijin entering the country to be photographed and fingerprinted. The video put together by the Japanese equivalent of Homeland Security is a notable example of so-stupid-its-funny, as the proper Nihonjin lady explains to overacting slow-witten gaijin how the new measures make them safer.
Hopefully this week I'll get the house cleaned up, papers sorted and the like, so I don't return to a total mess.
exercise: freewrite on the phrase "flowing through me like broken glass"
and I have heard it said the in the days of American slavery, the child of the cook would be the food taster for the master of the house, because the slaves would often put ground glass in the food of their enslavers
flowing through me like broken glass
glass in the water, invisible, sharper-edged than steel when jagged, smoother than skin when whole
flowing through me like broken glass
a cutting river, internal sandblasting. I grind the glass and return it to sand.
flowing through me like broken glass. flowing through me like broken glass. flowing like a river, a river of glass, a river of molten glass, there is a myth that glass flows over time and makes windows heavier at the bottom but it's just a myth. but given enough time, everything flows, everything moves and changes. These pillars will flow down into the earth. you and I will flow down into the earth, like rain into dry soil, changed but never lost
flowing through me like broken glass, flowing through me like broken promises, flowing through me like broken fears, flowing through me like a breakthrough, a flow through, flowing through me like a broken moment, broken silence, broken tears, broken clouds, broken circles, broken barriers, broken tongues, broken words, broken bones, broken flows
flowing through me like broken glass, shiny shards that throw back the light, the reflections of my headlights off the glassphault roadway, the broken glass in the gutter, waiting for rain to wash it into the storm sewer, carry it into the stream, into the ocean, where wave and tide will slowly smooth it into brilliant pebbles.