Remembering JJ
It's incredibly humid here at the moment, so I'm hiding in air conditioned zones as much as possible, lest I melt away to nothing! Miyu is still away in Fukushima, visiting friends and spending time with the Watanabes' new kitten. It really is an adorable little cat. Miyu's mother was walking home a couple of weeks ago when she found it and it's brother kitten huddled in a ditch by the road. Somebody had dumped them there, and Miyu's mum took them both home. Apparantly they were ravenous and ate for a whole day! One of them has now gone to one of the aunts and the other is comfortably settled in. It's so horrid that people dump cats like that. The least they could do is leave them at a vets or something.
In my act of rememberence for JJ, I set out on a bicycle ride at the same time as his funeral bagan in England, riding around the back alleys and looking for interesting, hidden things. I found a beautiful old temple, nestled amongst some ceder trees not too far from here, and I went and meditated there for a while, thinking of John and his antics, and all those times he used to visit us. Whenever I was within his field of dripping stickiness, time seemed to slow down and, I'm not sure but, maybe this was in order to mark a stark contrast with the hyper kinetic pace of Tokyo. Or maybe it's the domain of a master storyteller, where reality and fantasy combine to create a new, and I must admit, a more exciting dimension. He really did love to tell stories, didn't he? The thing was, it was always the same stories, but over time these stories seemed to get more detailed and ever more fantastical, as if he was constantly editing some internal book, and offering up a new print of "John's stories". I know he was working on a kind of autobiography, but I didn't hear if it had been completed or not - anybody out there know?
Anyway, after the meditation, I looked up at the night sky and noticed that it was a full moon, which I thought was apt, as I think moonlight, as opposed to sunlight better suited JJ's personality. I then took off and decided to go and eat at Outoya (or as John used to call it "the healthy food restaurant"), which was the first place John took me to eat when I met him after arriving in Tokyo. It's a chain restaurant, and they have them scattered all around Tokyo, including Kichijoji and Chitosekarasuyama. After finishing, I cycled slowly back to the house, and then listened to BBC Radio 4, as John so often used to. Somtimes when I went around to visit him, he'd bundle me into his "mansion", sit me down with a cup of tea and insist I listen to a program he's just downloaded. He was so excited by the combination of old tech (radio) and new tech (pc internet), and how it gave him access to a taste of Britain, here in Japan.
Then, after listening to a couple of programs, I went to sleep. I'm not sure if I dreamt of John that night, but I like to think that I did. Meeting him once more for some tea and being regaled by another one of his lyrical stories.
In my act of rememberence for JJ, I set out on a bicycle ride at the same time as his funeral bagan in England, riding around the back alleys and looking for interesting, hidden things. I found a beautiful old temple, nestled amongst some ceder trees not too far from here, and I went and meditated there for a while, thinking of John and his antics, and all those times he used to visit us. Whenever I was within his field of dripping stickiness, time seemed to slow down and, I'm not sure but, maybe this was in order to mark a stark contrast with the hyper kinetic pace of Tokyo. Or maybe it's the domain of a master storyteller, where reality and fantasy combine to create a new, and I must admit, a more exciting dimension. He really did love to tell stories, didn't he? The thing was, it was always the same stories, but over time these stories seemed to get more detailed and ever more fantastical, as if he was constantly editing some internal book, and offering up a new print of "John's stories". I know he was working on a kind of autobiography, but I didn't hear if it had been completed or not - anybody out there know?
Anyway, after the meditation, I looked up at the night sky and noticed that it was a full moon, which I thought was apt, as I think moonlight, as opposed to sunlight better suited JJ's personality. I then took off and decided to go and eat at Outoya (or as John used to call it "the healthy food restaurant"), which was the first place John took me to eat when I met him after arriving in Tokyo. It's a chain restaurant, and they have them scattered all around Tokyo, including Kichijoji and Chitosekarasuyama. After finishing, I cycled slowly back to the house, and then listened to BBC Radio 4, as John so often used to. Somtimes when I went around to visit him, he'd bundle me into his "mansion", sit me down with a cup of tea and insist I listen to a program he's just downloaded. He was so excited by the combination of old tech (radio) and new tech (pc internet), and how it gave him access to a taste of Britain, here in Japan.
Then, after listening to a couple of programs, I went to sleep. I'm not sure if I dreamt of John that night, but I like to think that I did. Meeting him once more for some tea and being regaled by another one of his lyrical stories.
posted by TOK at 12:00 pm
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