Thought Nestuary

Lately I have been thinking more seriously about training for and competing in a triathlon. I have alluded to this humorously in my recent blogs. But, the more I joke about it, the more I think, yeah, that would be Awesome. So, I was just looking up triathlons in Boulder to see if there were any, and what do you know, apparently Boulder, CO is considered the "triathlon mecca" of the United States. So, if I want to get into triathlons, it seems that I am moving to the right place. Exciting times.
In other news, I have found myself brooding under a cloud of homesickness recently, and this condition is only aggravated by my not having a place that I am deeply attached to to call home. With all of the moving and travelling, this little bird just feels sort of lost. However, for every cloud there is a silver lining, and right now I have the opportunity to ask: what is home? How does a place become home? How do we find home inside ourselves? I must remember to ask the great tortoise for advice on this one.
Also. My Birthday was yesterday/ is today, depending on what half of the world you are occupying at the moment. Heather took the day off to surprise me, which was wonderful. In the morning she cooked me a good homestlye breakfast of a cheese omelette, fresh squeezed OJ, and buttered toast, and then presented me with a book she made me and cds. All creative and wonderful and great for when I go home and miss being here with Heather, which is just inevitable. After breakfast and lounging, we had a day at the nearby dairy farm, owned by friends/adult students of Heather's. The farm: fresh milk, rubber aprons, raw wooden house, farm cats, kittens, cows, fertilization, feeding, resting, mud and muck of spring, grandmother, homemade cheese and bread, grapefruit from Yakushima, little 2 year old sparkling with life, warm weather, dirty clothes, drawing earth stick, horses, fluffy sheep, chained dog, hike to maple trees syrup, tea with tree water, wet pants, presents, thank you thank you, oranges oranges cheese milk sausage fresh syrup, please come again.
It was an awesome day and I learned a lot....but, the sad didn't flow out of me until my body was immersed in the hotspring waters at the onsen later in the evening. And the last dregs of sadness exited my body as Heather rubbed me to sleep last night. This morning found me exhausted and in pain with cramps, but feeling generally better about myself and life. A little bit clearer.

If my name were Coolio Julio, my life would be very different. I would talk with a sneer and a squint. I would walk with a limp, a cool limp. When I spoke, my neck would disappear between my shoulders for emphasis. And my neck would be heavy with pinchbeck. That's right. Cause somebody musta messed up and loaded the good stuff into the nickel machine down at the grocery.

That's not to say that I believe all Coolio Julios may be characterized by the above description. There are a lot of Christinas out there and probably a decent amount of Coolio Julios, too. Why do you think those kids go by C.J.? word to the mizzom.

Today is brought to me by left over cakes from the Doctors house (the Doctor is the male half of Heather's "Japanese grandparents"). The Doctor's friend, who I will remember as The Creepy Guy brought them. Mr. Guy also suggested that we all (himself, Dr., Heather, and I) play strip rock, paper, scissors, apparently a standard Geisha game. Um, do we look like geisha to you? Nonetheless, an interesting bit of cultural history from Mr. Guy. Hey thanks Guy, and I will be sure to take this information bite with a grain of salt. Helps to digest the b.s. you have been feeding us throughout tonight's meal. (Which by the way was sushi).

The bike training continues as I accompanied Heather back to work after lunch today (Heather usually has lunch at one of her schools or at the office, but this week she is having lunch at home because it is the break between the end of one school year and the beginning of another.) Yes, yes, so the bike ride was short as this town is small, the gears are a bit stiff on the bike, and my knees threatened to hit my elbows as I alternately cranked and glided along (doesn't it seem like the past tense of glide should be glid, or is that just the Japanese talking?). Anyway, it's tough being tall in a relatively small country. But, I hear the kids are getting bigger every year.

I am working hard to make my mom the best birthday present ever, and I am finding it challenging. I have to keep remembering that the best answer is probably the simplest one. What this all means is that tonight there will be watercoloring. Her (50th...shhh!) birthday is April 16th. So, if you want to throw her a surprise party, I suggest you get the ball rolling.

You know what I would love is some brown rice. You can't find brown rice over here. The reasons? Brown rice is for the lower class. People a long time back took this the wrong way and thought that if they ate white rice, they'd become wealthy. Maybe it worked. I say, why do the rich in dollars or yen always think that they can get away with eating lower quality food with less nutritional value? Oh, right because generally they can. So. Compounding this cultural trend is the supah-high tariffs on rice. Nobody wants to pay out their profits in tariffs, so nobody sells rice to Japan. This ensures that all the rice eaten in Japan is grown in Japan, and that all the rice farmers can support themselves. And that's good. I can get my protein and fiber from sushi and seaweed.

Mmm, mmm, sushi. I like it better than bread, or at least that's what I told the highschoolers who were studying comparatives. I say it depends on which sushi I'm comparing to which bread. For instance, a damn good fresh from the sea plate of unagi, salmon, tuna, and scallop up against a damn good warm, freshly baked crusty baguette with roquefort and camembert...oh, it would be tough. But, in this place at this time, the debate is purely theoretical because there are no good baguettes to be found and lots of excellent sushi. While I am here, I vow to eat sushi as often as possible and in as many ways as possible. That's a new clause, but I like it. Let's see, I've made it at home, had it at the doctor's house, eaten it keiten sushi bar style. Brief overview of keiten sushi here: the bar is a belt that rotates around to all of the tables. From the bird's eye view, the tables look like cogs on a gear, but they are stationary, and only the belt moves. The artisans who create the little individual serving-sized plates of sushi rush around inside the circumference of the belt, then place their finished products on the belt to distribute to the sushi eating people of the world. It should be noted that some of the seafood is still wiggling as it is stuffed into the nori and rolled up. Dually noteworthy, they serve more than just fish folks, there is potato salad rolls and corn salad rolls. And for you deep-fried lovers out there, there are sushi potatoes...deep-fried (I think) potatoes coated in honey. These bars also have desserts like pseudo-tiramisu and jello-yogurt-fruit concoctions. The desserts come with infant-sized plastic spoons so you don't have to try to eat the creamy stuff with chopsticks. Wouldn't that be a bitch. At the end of the meal you either hit a buzzer or inform your waitress and someone comes around to count your plates...this determines how much your meal costs. Most Japanese tables have about twenty plates per person at the end of a meal. These people can eat some sushi.

But, back to the listing...I haven't eaten school lunch sushi, or sushi on the beach, or sushi off of a nude body. I just can't afford that sort of delicacy except at home and well, we already covered the at home category. So here is my pledge:

On my honor, I will try
to eat as much sushi as I can
In just as many ways,
Before back home I fly.

gumbate, gumbate, gumbate. Translation: (fight, go for it, may I exhibit fortitude and strong will towards this goal).

word. and now for a little bagel poem I came across today, not for the first time.

The Bagel
David Ignatow

I stopped to pick up the bagel
rolling away in the wind,
annoyed with myself
for having dropped it
as if it were a portent.
Faster and faster it rolled,
with me running after it
bent low, gritting my teeth,
and I found myself doubled over
and rolling down the street
head over heels, one complete somersault
after another like a bagel
and strangely happy with myself.

And last, but not least, a little real personal news: the move in date to the awesome house in Boulder, CO has been finalized as May 1st. I am pleased, but yes, indeed very sad to be traveling away from Heather, whom I love very much.

It's just past noon in the Land of the Rising Sun. My stomach is pleasantly full with salmon sushi. The sun is shining in through the picture windows in the living room. It's shining right onto my back. Thank you sun. Having lived in Poughkeepsie, New York for the past four Springs, I find it difficult to trust in an easy transition from Winter to Spring. Here in Kimobetsu, Hokkaido the sun has been shining here for over a week, the snow is both evaporating into the mountain air and melting into the thirsty earth. In this way three feet of snow have disappeared in seven days. Winter seems to have taken off in a hurry, leaving only the curling gusts of wind in its wake. And, even though that means no more wading through powder on the slopes, I'm happy. Blissed, actually. With the return of warm weather and sun I feel alive again and more myself than I ever can under grey hailing, snowing, or raining skies. The Floridian in me (btw, the Floridian is about 100% of me.) is down on her knees kissing the warm pavement and the green shoots pushing through the soil. And running. I went on a jog today. My first one is a long time. Maybe the first step to my future as a triathlete. It felt good. Well, except for the couple of minutes when I really had to spit and didn't know the rules here about spitting and so my mouth was filling up and breathing was becoming difficult. Finally, when I reached a houseless corner, I decided to spit beside a garbage deposit (they are like big cages here, not dumpsters, and residents carry different kinds of rubbish to them on the appropriate days). Anyway. No red flashing lights, no admonishing locals. Post-expectoration liberation set in as I kept running (and spitting) for probably a whole mile and a half before I found myself on a highway, inhaling semi fumes and car exhaust. I decided to walk back then. It was a modest beginning, but as for my other training...sometimes we go swimming in the evenings. And Heather started digging the bikes out of the snow-obstructed storage room just today. So, I say viva la triathlon, here I come. Even more exciting than my future as a thiathlete is my future as a farmer. Near future, maybe, with the snow off the roads and the bikes in working order. I should be able to ride my bike to the organic farm I have been wanting to work at since I arrived in February. My lack of savoir faire on the icy roads combined with my rusty manual skills, then dually challenged with a switch to the other side of the car...there was no Winter driving to be had here for me. I tried, I cried, I had bad dreams about driving Heather's car. Perhaps I will try again now that it is nice out. Or just bike.
Well, because I am young and the day is nice, I am going off now, to finish digging out those bikes and celebrate Spring. Up, Up, and Away.

Travelling Crane. I came across this pairing of words in the 1984 Edition of The Pocket Oxford when I was checking if "traveller" has one or two els. Travelling Crane. I imagined: A type of Crane that migrates perenially, setting up temporary nests along the way. I saw this crane dressed in rich grey feathers made for climbing high into the air. Its delicately webbed feet were colored like an equatorial sunset and could traipse through sand heavy with seawater, if need be. I saw her regal body flying solo over junglescapes and expansive ocean, or joining the formations of other birds for a lift. A whole vision of this bird's narrative and a kinship formed between us in the instant before I read the definition. "Crane able to move along overhead support." The elegance of the travelling crane I had conjured abruptly grew large yellow painted metal panels on all sides, its head grew a plexi-glass window and spread out. The wings tied themselves into pulleys and attached to the recently manifested industrial weight cable overhead. How disappointing to find that the majority of English speakers conceive of the travelling crane in this latter way: as a man-made scooping machine. Well, to this concept I say, nevermind. May the travelling crane remain a free entity, suspended only by the wind above her undulating wings, and moving of her own volition.
Welcome to the homepage of the travelling crane. She finds this a place to nest her thoughts and share her travelling adventures.