entry nº 11 // 20170918

At holiday time 

DISPLAY 

AN

EASY GRACE

FOR LONG TIME L’VE

BEEN SEARCHING FOR MY WAY

–spotted on a tote bag for sale at a dollar store somewhere around here

real slow roll on these blog journal entries, these days. hard to get the writing routines established out here. why? should be easy: plenty of time, inspiring surroundings, comfortable lifestyle. who knows? any tips? 

shoko + i spent the summer in DOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE living it up w/ best friends shawn+alix, hanging out w/ my parents often, and doing a decent amount of summer-y stuff. it was good to be home. it also made me miss japan. i think the language-imposed-quasi-solitude out here suits me, in a way, because i can indulge my hermit-like qualities to the fullest, but also those same hermit-like qualities can kinda pull me down into a rut if i let the reins out too far, and so i guess overall it’s, like, a balance thing, or whatever, like basically everything, right? cool. anyway, some highlights: 

•every week, thursday and friday were BURRITO NIGHT and PIZZA NIGHT, respectively, at shawn+alix’s house, and it was great. lots of laughs at those family dinners each week and it’s easy to take for granted how nice it is to sit down and laugh and talk about whatever w/ these people i’ve known for basically all my life. it’s a real sweet thing. nothing like BURRITO NIGHT and/or PIZZA NIGHT, that’s what i say. 

•s + i did some good little camping trips here + there when we could. the best one was black mountain pond, a couple-hrs hike out to this little alpine pond w/ a tent pad marked out w/ stones + kindly mattressed w/ a layer of pine boughs by whichever good souls used the spot before us. we had barely seen anybody else around by the time we got to the trailhead (long slow couple miles out a closed-in-winter dirt-and-ruts-and-patchy-pavement access road that was a bit tough on my station wagon, sorry volvo!), so after a couple hours of hiking out we were feeling good + secluded. it was gorgeous. there was a killer fire pit set up, too, and so we got that thing going really well and just spent hours+hours watching it until it was time to pack it in for the night. 

•we drove out deep into NEW ZEALAND wait no i mean QUEBEC, CANADA for about a week. visited shoko’s old college friends in montreal, quebec city, rimouski (keep going up up past QC about four more hours and you get there), and then finally onward to gaspé, where we camped for a night in “parc national forillon” which is essentially the end of the line, if you go all the way out to where the st. lawrence river splays out and becomes a gulf. it was incredible. very much nothing out there but landscape, and i wonder what the heck everyone does in the winter there? or in general, for work? they must all be tech industry freelancers, or maybe creative professionals?? felt very good to be that far out on the map, and during the trip i would often imagine the overhead map view and our little pin location moving further out, out, out. lots of highlights from that trip. quebec city is always magical but then again i always go in the summer, and so, of course it seems magical. found a great little place to get coffee in the morning, there on rue saint-jean one day, and we sat out on the sidewalk drinking our coffees and watching people starting their days and saw the piano tuner man come and tune up the public-art-outdoor-piano installed on the sidewalk, and it was very very pleasant. 

we also went out to orleans island, across from quebec city, where shoko worked one summer at a bed and breakfast, and we found the bed and breakfast and took a picture, and then stayed at a different b+b there for the night, the host of which was incredibly kind and sweet, and we took a spin around the island (nothing really there, just beautiful open sky and fields, all the way). found the lookout tower on one tip of the island and caught the last edge of the sunset from up there, but also got spooked + had to kind of rush down because we heard the person whose job it is to close the gates to the parking lot each night pull up and start closing the gates, and so we were like “o shit don’t want to get trapped here in a parking lot at the tip of orleans island for the night!” and got out. and THEN on the way further around the island, we drove by what seemed to be some sort of festival going on in a tiny little town? basically in small-ish empty lot/field, many people milling about, a little fire going on (the “feu d’ambiance” as advertised on one of the posters for the festival we saw hanging up once we got out of the car, a stage w/ some very local bands playing. it was complete travel magic. we went in and somebody talked to us, kind of welcomed us, explained that there was free food and cheap drinks (drink stand staffed by what we presumed to be the local high school kids). probably about 50 people there, total. it was dark and summery and warm and the fire was crackling and the music acts that started to play were good + fun + endearing and i wondered what it would be like to live in a place like that, growing up and being a kid and working at the drink stand once a year in the summer w/ my friends, and knowing who all those people are, there, where we knew nobody, and i felt that total travel magic feeling, being a complete outsider but getting pulled into some distant current for a bit, and getting absorbed into it completely, for a short while, at least. 

•what else? i played through the new zelda game on my trusty “wii u,” which i bought like two years ago because that’s when zelda was initially supposed to come out? and then they kept pushing it back and back and back and, well. anyway, after all is said and done it might be the best game i’ve ever played. deep and sweet and very very beautiful all of the time. didn’t even come close to finding all those goddamn koroks, though, and i don’t know how anybody could unless they bought the players’ guide or used cheat codes? either way, it’s been a couple months, now, since finishing the game, and most days i still daydream about playing it over again. can’t wait.  

•went on a short but sweet family trip to OCEAN CITY new jersey. total nostalgia trip for me, because i went down there w/ my aunt and uncle and cousins as a kid, and have very fond, fuzzy memories of it, and so to be there again w/ some of those same people was a trip. i never really think, like, “oh, the beach, i very much want to go to the beach,” but on this trip i was getting into it. here’s the key: beach umbrella. if you have one of those, you’re basically invincible. i couldn’t get enough of it, out there, reading books, not being near a computer, splashing around in the waves. nothing like sitting in the sun (but protected by your shadow-ellipse) reading a good book and going out to splash around in the waves for a bit. body surfing? big time. pretty awesome. it’s funny, of course, because i currently live right on the beach, but we rarely go out and, like, sit on the beach for the day. i dunno, it’s just mentally different when it’s not a “beach trip” or “beach vacation” or something, i suppose? because when it’s not that, it’s just “your life,” which, of course, is completely distinct. 

as usual i could go on+on+on, but, hey. okay, bye!