Old Delicious

April 29th 2010

I am sitting again in the lion cafe after just being searched by the police for some reason no one may know. I could guess at a few reason, which I am about to do, luckily all of them are much more worthwhile as to why the search happened in the first place.

Today is the 29th of April in the year 2010. I won't go through the first 2009 years before this point but suffice to say that a whole helluva lot has seemed to happen. It would be rude to say that nothing really has happened. It would also be an outright lie. What has happened is a lot of people have moved, the weather has been changing and the world on the whole has gotten to a point where most of the fighting and wars being waged in this day and age are really really far from places that are considered to be first world nations. The threat of world war could be perceived as being always imminent but hasn't happened in over 60 years. This is labeled as progress. On the topic of progress some are feet and knees above the rest of the world. If this situation needs explaining I will take this opportunity to express my sincere apologies about your second and third world situation. Hell if you are in a third world right now this probably wouldn't even be getting to you because your lack of ample clean running water, food, proper housing, medicine, internet browser, telephone, refrigerator and (I have seen in some cases) shoes. I do love a barefoot from time to time. Definitely if it is summer time and not raining. Bare feet in my opinion is a timeless and classic footwear option. So even though your situation sucks, man that dirt floor must feel nice between your toes.

Obviously I am being a complete dick here. I don't mean to be but the world is quite a fucked up place. It has extremely great things keeping us all off the ledge whether we know it or not as well as some atrocious God awful things that push us closer and closer to the preverbal precipice everyday. Some days are worse than others. Today for me is not really such a bad day considering my abundance of shoe wear options. I did however encounter something only the safe and clean white ideal of the 21st century could offer. I free frisking and ball cupping with a smile that only the police force from Japan could give. Now, this isn't a big deal. Really. They didn't come into my house uninvited. They didn't search through my home just to be safe. I wasn't sniffed by a dog to see if I had been taking bong rips in my free time at the expense of some Mexican farmers over 10,000 miles away. If they would have done that I guess it wouldn't have been bad either. But why? I know I have nothing to hide and I keep a "law abiding penis". I have been all over message boards touting violence and drug abuse but hey! it's just the internet. I like to have a little fun and the history of the world has afforded me that. Just ask the soldiers of the United States military services stationed the world over. They make the sacrifice, i get the benefit…i guess. Sometimes things happen and the benefit is taken away because the world isn't called America yet. But Europe is definitely called Europe and Asia, well, there are a lot of -Stans and Russia and China. Also, South America is known as South America WAIT! That's got America in it and they are extremely spiritual people with a ton of United States fruit, textile, and agriculture facilities just cancerously sprinkled throughout. That kind of counts. My point is that the world is slowly being America be it by some influence or the idea of collecting a ton of little states and making them responsible to a few really big, centralized governments. If you want to argue about if it's Americanization or European-ization, or Westernization I will just call upon my boy Shakespeare who asked, "What's in a name?" According to Orson Wells, a whole helluva lot. Oh well. Moving on.

I just read a lot of names in some pretty disgusting literature in the bathroom. Regretfully I didn't know a one author. Heso was in the bathroom in 2010. We seem to have something in common. If you wanted to know where the glory hole was just follow the arrows. Some guys balls are huge and I am having more in common with people than I once believed. I may even become a member of the Tokyo Esperanza Club if I would have kept reading that stuff. I was a little depressed there was not the slightest inclination of soliloquy or a dirty limerick in a place like Lion Cafe bathroom in one of the biggest cities of the world. The Lion cafe is a meikyoku kissa or music listening cafe. All they play are classical music at a pretty reasonable volume and it looks like the place was carved out of a single hunk of dark cherry wood. In a place like this, if the bathroom literature is only that bad the world may have come as far as we have hoped. The stalls have walls and a lot of people can read and write. This is good. I think most of these developments have come from others' sacrifices and again strangers have reaped the benefits. So it goes. There has got to be a catch. There always is.

So today in Japan is the Showa emperor's b-day. It's national holiday and nobody in businesses have to work and schools are off. The sun is shining and it's only rained for ten minutes today. There are a lot of people out and about today. Sometimes it gets pretty crowded on the train. A lot of people in one place can cause a lot of anonymity among people too. I was in AP psych in high school and one of the big things I learned about social psych or cog psych is that anonymity can give rise to things like vandalism and the Ku Klux Klan. Anonymity helps people to do things that can lead to an inhibition of altruistic acts as well. I know the most famous case of people being completely non-compassionate with a subconscious excuse of anonymity is the Kitty Geonevese case where a young woman was stabbed to death in public. Sometimes in Japan people jump in front of trains too. Now, i can't really project on that here. I do not think that getting astabbed publicly is the same as jumping in front of public transit. They're not. Unless that is of course you never think of a train as a giant knife being weidled by the city. Anyway, there are two million ways in which a person could reach that kind of giving up. I have never jumped in front of a train. I have never pretended and don't want to . But I wonder sometimes if feeling completely anonymous can get a person to that point. Jumping in front a train is dangerous. People late for work get upset because of the surgical accuracy of the timetable trains run on in Tokyo. Being upset can lead to other things I suppose. Thankfully most times it doesn't. The threat however is real.

There are much bigger threats I might add. In 2001 a big world changing event took place in New York and Washington D.C. Some guys associated with a terrorist organization flew three planes into buildings and the idea of security has been a big issue for America. Seeing as how American influence is throughout the world in many different ways this has effected the world and it's idea of security. No one wants things like that to happen anywhere. They have in the past. They will in the future but hopefully they don't. People are scared. They have been in the last 2009 years and they will remain. Nothing has changed in this area. I am being intentionally generalizing here only because I don't want to turn this into an essay or novel about security and all of our choices between Security and freedom. Bummer man. That's ok. I am sipping coffee listening to Berlioz so you have to take the safe with the good and the fear with the way horrible fashion. I just read again in the tiny rat hotel of a bathroom that according to Pascal Doyle, "the future is unwritten." Yay. Whatever that means. I think it may have something to do with the fear that no one on this planet has any idea what is really going to happen tomorrow. If anyone does please email me ASAP so I can plan accordingly.

People have been planning a great deal to get to where they are today. I planned on being in Japan, working and enjoying my time with new experiences, making new friends and trying to learn how to speak a few other languages -albeit really lazily- so I can contribute in some abstract way, positively. I have bigger dreams than that of course. This helps that the idea of the future being unwritten is written on the wall of a urinal in a well to do old fashioned cafe where people come to enjoy old music. Since I am on the topic, who's future is unwritten. At one point was the future written down? A few million religious devotees raise their hands with an answer. I am not going to call on any of them. Maybe Pascal Dylan was talking about his plans after the Lion Cafe. Or maybe he was certain that a place this old (50 odd years) couldn't possible stand to believe it'd be here for another 50. I don't know. Pascal Dylan was a profound guy maybe. Wait. Can the future be written? The way of Zen is said to be incommunicable through words. It's futile apparently. I read that once. I heard it a few time too. The people I heard it from were quoting of course. I wonder if when O.J. Simpson gave himself up after the famous Bronco car chase in California said to the police, "Ok. I am coming out, but first, what is going to happen when I do?" I understand this not because of Pascal Dylan but because of the fact I have listened to a lot of gansta rap when I was nine years old where I learned that if you were black and mainly in California the cops would shoot at you if they had a good enough reason, real or otherwise. Did the police respond, "Mr. Simpson, I don't know. We do really need you to step out of the car though. A lot of people are late for work." I don't know what I would have done in the Juice's shoes. Pascal Dylan laughs. O.J. was a suspect of course. He was related to some murders merely by association and perceived motivation at that juncture. That's all it took before Sept. 11th, 2001.

Today I suppose I was threatening. I matched some description maybe that the Japanese police were instructed to be on the lookout for. People that are wearing camo shorts, black on black New Era Indians baseball hats, big brown sunglasses, prism refracted space looking hoodies and all black Michael Jordan chukka boots are on a list y'all. King me! I was right on the fear money today. And why not. I have been reaping in the security others have afforded me. Why do I get a free pass to just walk down the street? Ok I'll stop being facetious. But a lot has happened in the first world to get us the things we have today: ample clean running water, good medicine (at a…price), tv, internet, movies, tooth paste, the option of going barefoot. When those things are in jeopardy everyone can be suspect. Or so I was reminded a lot in the United States between 2001 to the 2007. Now I am reminded via news from the internet. All the same I am reminded at a moments notice that nothing I have bought or paid for is free. Everything has a price/cost and this is not new. To what extent shouldn't we be reminded? I am meaning explicitly here. It's important to know the reason we have all these luxuries. Let's stop the cliches and get into something a bit different. I want to understand why I was frisked and my wallet and bag gone through extremely politely.

Privacy and respect fighting with security and freedom. Dancing with it in a stiff balance maybe. Let's just say it's a immediate and ever-present cost benefit analysis.

I am in the understanding that a mental disorder is not diagnosis-able until it reaches the point where the disease is effecting not affecting daily behavior in society. Whoa. That is the DSM-IV. If I stayed at home and talked to my favorite wall about how they are coming for me and my computer all day everyday and my income came from day trading on the internet as to need me only home to do my job and operate distendedly in society could I behave as crazy as i wished or had to be? This is a bit misleading though. Maybe. It seems precariously simple and cautiously in all cases improbable. I need to go outside sometimes. We have a lot of delivery services these days though. If a person had enough money they could logically never have to leave the house. I am not going to ask it but I guess I need to. What the hell are we doing? The world is not as secure as we hope it could be. People are not as similar as nihilists suspect. And answers are never as forthcoming as I hoped they wouldn't be. King me in this respect. I like looking for hours in record stores with no apparent aim. Trying to decide if I want to play drums all day on my day off or have fun in a cafe by myself is a perilous and fun activity . It's never as fun as actually doing something I have decided.

I kept hearing the two police officers say I am sorry before they asked is it ok if I look through this. Totally weird because I knew they weren't sorry. Were they sorry for doing their job? Were they sorry for saying sorry? Were they sorry for doing this in the busiest intersection in the country on one of the warmest days of the year? I am thinking there is a social clause where no matter what they do when there is no apparent reason as to why they are doing it they are mandated by law to express regret for any and all reasons, exposed and hidden, that they are doing what they are doing. If that sounds flimsy as hell to you I am 45 steps ahead of you because I just shut my mouth and occasionally asked why in the bejesus they needed to go through anything. I am no fluent speaker of Japanese but I have asked myself in the language enough to get the gist of anything. The reason I was asked to be checked out and patted down was because on a day like today, the dead emperor's birthday with the gorgeously minimal Japanese flag-a-flying from we're every lamppost around me was that there are a lot of people out today; on a day like today we(the japanese police) need to do random checks to make sure no drugs, weapons, unsafe articles are being transported or handed off on a day like today just to be safe. As one of the police officers told me this he waved his hand in a combing motion in 180 degrees of with a very serious look on his face. He looked like a fisherman out to sea giving a tour of this part of the surface of the Pacific ocean. That's all it took. And to be honest I wouldn't have understand a dang word of it if he had said it in English either. Pacal Dylan is fucking dying out there.