The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

Very sorry for decelerated post rhythm. There appears to be a law of blogging, a bit like the first law of thermodynamics, the more you work the less you blog. Opposite and equal.

Big deal Open Campus Day

Thousands wait in line for the Thunder Mountain ride

Uncle Vanya

Anyway big success but very demanding.

Read all about it.

http://www.oist.jp/press-room/news/2013/3/5/thousands-visit-during-oist’s-open-campus

Great oaks from little acorns grow

Back in October, on the advice of my learned sister Rosie, I bought some Brugmansia plants. They grew very well until I re-potted them. I went to the I guess Garden Center but that term doesn’t really do justice to the Japaneseness of the place. I wanted to buy some earthy stuff to fill up the bigger pots into which I was to place my flourishing Brugmansia. Alack, the dangers of illiteracy for  I bought a very nice looking sack of stuff that turned out to be highly concentrated pig shit. Into this I placed my Brugmansia and went to California for Christmas.

On my return the poor plants were in  decline and the leaves in fall.  The power of the pig shit had burned their roots and I thought they would die. I re-potted again murmuring ancient flower apology prayers and ringing a little bell. It worked. After a few weeks they started to grow again. Look at them now.

Brugmansia, in my secret garden

Anyway, this morning as I drank my coffee, I had a good look at my plants and to  my surprise I find 3 Brugmansia flowers coyly hiding behind the foliage.

“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air”

This makes me unreasonably happy. It augurs a spring of flowers and scent. By the way it is still February.

“The earth laughs in flowers.”

I then looked at the sea.

Spring sea

Spring Has Sprung

“Though the bed has a spring sprung
Outside April has sprung spring. ”

I have waited for Spring to see if the trees outside my house will sprung. They were severely beaten up by the typhoons last year however I assumed they would spring into life once Spring sprung. I now have severe doubts. I think they have been killed.

Dead , dead and never called me Mother

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

 

I struggle through the snow and icy fingered wind to the graveyard where Samuel Adams and Paul Revere and other revolutionary heroes are buried. It is very cold and I am a sub-tropical softy. The position of the graveyard is indicated on a Google map on the ‘where to go in Boston’ section of the conference App. When I get there it turns out to be project housing where, when I ask, “Is Paul Revere’s grave around here?”, happy brothers say, ” Man, I sure don’t know ’bout that but he was one,one,one, bad motherf**ker!”  The pin somehow got placed on the wrong place on the map.  I stumble the miles back to the convention center -Oates-like.

Boston dawn

Eggs Benedict with sirloin tips hiding under the eggs. 7:30am

Seika is from Okinawa

I am going to Boston where they make Cod.

I check in at Naha. The ANA check-in-lady is, as always, demure and smiling.

“Passport please.”

“Do you have a Green Card?”

“Are you checking bags?”

“You have beautiful eyes.”

Sorry?

“You have beautiful eyes.”

This makes me feel very, very good as I cannot remember the last time anyone said that to me, if indeed anyone ever has.

Fly ANA.

Naha is a fun airport with fish floating around

Security fish

I have time for a quick soba before the flight, which goes Narita, O Hare, Logan. Discuss the Scots-Irish influence on American airports.

Happy Japan

Okinawa is a very tranquil place.

I am writing this in Narita.

I think this is the plane that will take me to Chicago. Thank you plane.

It has been a very good weekend. I go diving twice, fishing twice. The weather has been beautifully warm and sunny. My hibisci are doing well and all in all, all’s well.

February

“We all know interspecies romance is weird.”

I go for an evening stroll. It is an exceptionally  low tide, which makes my mind wander to Harry Lauder.

‘Tis when the sun it goes to rest,
that’s the time that I like best.
Oh  I’m chilling, roaming in the gloaming.”

Check it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N4mxz02y-k

Old English glomung “twilight,” formed (probably on model of æfning “evening”) from glom “twilight,” related to glowan “to glow”

I wander around  my backyard and look at rock pools.

A sea cucumber’s bottom

WTF is that?

The tide is far-out dude, but the beach is cosmic. It is made from ground up coral and exotic shells.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Intermediate egret fishing. What a terrible name for such a beautiful bird.

What a bitch

Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Japan came to the university. His name is Abe. Apparently this is pronounced like Downton rather than name of dead American president. I wish someone had told me.

Good old Abe with Jonathan

For many years I have not played the tin whistle much. I have concentrated on the flute, which is a stern mistress. Notwithstanding, in the right hands, the whistle is a tremendous instrument. Mary Bergin is legendary, here with Johnny McDonough,who is almost as good as she is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-jTlWGwWyg

The whistle, although using the same fingering as the flute, is a completely different animal. The flute is very physical, demanding abdomen and stomach. This is Patsy Hanley who makes it look very easy, but it is not. Notice blue tape wrapped around his flute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjLcfnY8-gY

I have not even owned a whistle for some years. However Gerard McKinley, an Ulsterman based in Okinawa and founder of Okinawa’s top irish traditional music band, the Islanders, orders a whistle for me. I get it last night at a performance in Naha.

Gerard plays the flute. I play with the new whistle

Anyway I am very pleased with my new whistle and intend to learn the subtleties of this instrument.

The only thing that I miss lately in all music is somebody that will put out a melody that you can whistle. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything happening like that.
Merle Haggard

So, I remember as a youth that one of the phrases that reputedly featured in English/French phrase books was ” My postillion has been struck by lightning.”

How often would you have used it?

In James Thurber‘s 1937 New Yorker article “There’s No Place Like Home”, a phrasebook from “the era of Imperial Russia” contains the “magnificent” line: “Oh, dear, our postillion has been struck by lightning!”. Thurber speculates that such a “fantastic piece of disaster” must have been rare, “even in the days of the Czars”.^[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_postillion_has_been_struck_by_lightning

Er, so  an expression that I came up with in Japanese class was “Watashi wa gasorinsutando gai sukidesu.” which you all know means “I love gas stations.”

This is true. The gas station experience  here reaches a level of joy that is unimaginable to Europeans and most Americans. Check out:

https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/full-service/

How often would I be able to use this expression in day-to-day conversation?

So, today I am asked to greet a group of Okinawan business folk

whom are touring the university. At the last moment I am told that they represent the owners of the gas stations on the island!

I am half way through my greeting, in English with interpreter, when I realize I can use,  “My postillion has been struck by lightning.”

I say “Watashi wa gasorinsutando gai sukidesu.”  to great glee and amazement  from listeners.

I can say little in Japanese and the odds against  placing something as bats as “I love gas stations” in conversation must be huge.

But I did it!

Big thank you to Aya sensei

Love is a many splendored thing

Er, I won’t go into the background to this photo but all in all it has been an unusual day.

I set off to clean my beaches but rush straight home again with my heart a pumping. I grab my camera and it is still there when I make it back to the beach. Yes, a Seagull! The first I have seen in 2 years in Okinawa.

Black Tailed Gull. Notice black and red tip to beak.

It looked very bedraggled.  I suppose it was blown in during the bad weather last week.

Why are there no seagulls on Okinawa?

A grey morph Pacific Reef Egret just beside the gull.

This is a search and rescue helicopter

So, I go fishing as the sun goes down. I had been out earlier and had a huge bite. Obviously a monster fish that I played expertly for some time until the line broke. I suppose it could have been the reef  but lets pretend not. Anyway I get out to the reef and it is quite rough  with big breakers crashing onto the coral. I anchor a bit further out but frankly it is too rough to fish so I head for home.

A bit too choppy to fish.

As I approach the shore I notice there is a police car with lights a flashing in my parking lot. Indeed there are two policemen waiting for me on the beach. Apparently someone phoned in saying there was a kayaker in danger. They stay an hour and are very thorough.

I then go to a party where most of the people are tremendously drunk. We stand around a bonfire but have difficulty hearing ourselves speak because of the search and rescue helicopter clattering up and down scanning the water with searchlights and the thuds of huge, drunk Americans keeling over.

I wonder if  all that fuss was because of me?