Daily Reporting

almost july and little to show for it

kgb

Well, I guess this blog needs a little dusting off. I left it for greener pastures when I trotted off to Japan for 8 months, so prompting the creation of a new blog (link can be found in previous post) to record down to the tiniest detail my adventures overseas. However, as is often the case, and quite apparent from a cursory look at the pattern of this blog’s archives, I am a poor excuse of a conscientious writer. At any rate, this summer has felt quite different from previous ones, which is likely a direct result of having been in a place that I absolutely loved and wasn’t too keen on leaving, so my homecoming has been lackluster and dull at best. My brain still seems to be trying to sort things in ways that make sense, but generally my head is full of half-thoughts of english and japanese.

If there is a single aspect of this summer worth noting, it is as my summer of True Blood. I have been watching this show fanatically, without pause, for the past few weeks, and have managed to get myself so raveled up in this fictitious tale that every second thought is somehow related to the show. To be unequivocally clear, I am really smitten with the character Eric Northman as portrayed by Alexander Skarsgård. Ho boy, does that vampire have a compelling physique. And his story is pretty interesting too. Apologies to Edward Cullen, but he and all the rest of the Twilight vampires really seem like a bunch of sissy-willows. I mean even the more emotionally prone Bill Compton still maintains extreme levels of badassery when pushed to his limits.

Oh, I also saw Super 8 today with my brother. It was a great little story, I thought. Definitely got my full $5’s worth of entertainment value. Plus, there was a really great preview for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which I inadvertently called when I whispered to my brother that the whole thing felt like Planet of the Apes mere seconds before the film title flashed up at the preview’s conclusion. I won’t lie, I felt very cool. But yeah, Super 8 was, well, great. I have also decided that anything set in the 1970s and involving aliens is destined to receive Steven Spielberg’s approval. If I were anything of a mathematician it might be kind of fun to come up with some function that describes this behavior, but as I am an idiot with numbers and equations I’ll stick to my meager arsenal of words.

One more thing: nostalgia is the arbiter of apathetic individuals’ decisions.

And sleeplessness is the reason behind every vaguely philosophical utterance of the adolescent mouth.

That’s all. Off to bed now, chitlins.

Wherein I speak of the clipping rate at which the semester is passing

kgb

It’s Wednesday already.  And, even more strangely, it’s also February.  I feel as if I never quite got the reigns on January and it’s run off without me.  What really gets me is when I start thinking about it like, “January of 2010 is already over… We’re a twelfth of the way through the year.  Oh how time passes at such a clipping pace.”

Well, that’s the nature of time, I guess.  I’m also getting to the halfway point of my college career.  Four years isn’t such a long time, after all.  Elementary school definitely distinguishes itself in my memory as going on for ages and ages.  Our grading terms were broken down into 6-week stretches, with 6 of them in total.  For a kid that’s basically infinity.  Then I’m thinking about Russia, how I’ve probably been gone from there for nearly 6 weeks, and that’s already becoming a historical artifact in my mind.  It makes me sad to think of it, but what can I do?

Experience quite possibly is one of the weirdest aspects of this whole big whatever (we’ll call it existence for simplicity’s sake), and I don’t really know how to make sense of it.  But, here I am, listening to the cello over internet radio, thinking it’s quite a lovely thing to be able to do, and so I’ll just enjoy it.

Snow Country

kgb

Lately I’ve gotten the images of the 1950s Japanese film Snow Country in my mind.  The past few days have had unrelenting snow, but not in the blizzarding way.  Instead it’s been a steadier, calmer precipitation, which happens to lay several inches over the course of a day.  Going outside fills me with some happiness and excitement, a lot of it to do with the feel of the crunching snow under my feet.  My shoes don’t have thick soles, so I can actually detect the sensation of the snow twisting up underneath as I step, and I get inexplicably giddy.

I’ve also been reading up on the Heian period of Japan.  It’s thoroughly fascinating stuff, if you like to read about the ridiculous habits and lifestyles of the overly privileged, and I certainly do.  As I’m reading, I sometimes think that I should really despise these people for their shallowness, but I just can’t, because when it boils down to it I want to be able to spend hours crafting the perfect letter according to the season and experience, making particular note of paper weight and color, and the proper accompaniment in the form of some seasonal flora.  How charming would that be?

a summer affair ends with sweeping

kgb

It’s August now.  I’m not sure what I was doing those few weeks of July, but I woke up this morning and saw I have lots of piles of junk I don’t really want sitting around my room.  It probably had been a part of my plan to get rid of these piles, yet now it seems they’ll sit around for some indeterminable amount of time.  I have rearranged my bookshelves.  They look tremendous.  I also uncluttered my corkboard while keeping that haphazard, cool look that hip teen catalogues promote.

Well, it seems I’ve already exhausted myself having written an entire paragraph.  Until we meet again, keep a keen eye to the eastern horizon.

making mountains into mole hills

kgb

Today, rather, yesterday I hiked a lovely little offshoot of the Appalachian Trail.  What makes this one especially nice is the waterfall at the trail end which flows majestically off a large rock face into a crisp, refreshing pool.  I’ve thought occasionally that it’d be a nice routine to start every day with a little jaunt up to the falls followed with some morning stretches in the water’s mist, but only occasionally.  I guess my desire to spend mornings in bed trumps my ambition.  But honestly, I do love a good hike, so maybe I’ll at least try to make it a weekly to biweekly event.

Speaking of things I love, The Little Mermaid is an awesome movie.  Even 20 years later the animation still holds up while the characters have actual personality.  It’s nice to see after being plagued by less than sub–par animated films from more recent years.  Really, what happened to quality?  But I am looking forward to The Princess and the Frog, especially because it marks a return to 2D animation.  It looks like it just might be a revival of the entertaining, clever, good Disney movie.  Here’s to hoping.

momentary pain and discomfort, or a thursday malaise

kgb

I spent almost the entirety of the day shoveling piles of dirt from one place to another as part of the larger process of building a rammed earth house.  It’s a pretty cool project, one that’s been in the works for the past four months, I’d say.  Construction began with the laying of a river rock foundation, piece by piece, stone by stone.  I mostly avoided this portion of the work because it was frustrating and slow, like if Tetris were a game that wasn’t fun and didn’t have the catchy yet paranoing tunes playing in the background.  But that finally got done and the whole thing was capped with cement, so now the actual rammed earth part of the building begins!  A better, more complete explanation of the “Boden Haus” can be found elsewhere for those whose interest has been piqued by my riveting prose.

So, as for shoveling, it’s an incredibly exhausting mode of physical exertion.  Not to sound too much like a wuss, but I’m more sore from one day of this than, oh, nothing else I’ve done in the past year.  In a way I’ve found the experience refreshing, and I’ll probably put in a few more days worth of digging before everything is said and done.