Midaregami

Dear Ms Cataluna,

I came to Hawai’i not long ago—last July, actually—for graduate school. UH Manoa offered me a modest scholarship and has a good reputation in my field of study, so with no particular prior interest in or knowledge of Hawai’i, The Place, I moved across an ocean to an environment radically unlike any I’d ever experienced before.

Sometimes—no, often, for music dorks—an album or artist will become inescapably associated with a particular time or place in a listener’s life. This has happened to me quite a bit; The Brilliant Green’s Terra 2001 with a visit to the Bay Area, Orange Pekoe’s Organic Plastic Music with Toyooka in November, the Casshern soundtrack and Brian Wilson’s Smile with the 3 AM commute to Target in Missoula, Montana—these are not thematic or semantic associations, but rather experiential ones.

I didn’t wind up doing an end-of-semester/end-of-year wrap-up, mostly because there was nothing particularly climactic about the conclusion of either semester or year. Let’s instead talk about what’s going to happen next year.

I am anticipating a semester workload much the same of last semester—but I expect to employ a variety of new organizational munitions in the assault of that workload. The WMD in that arsenal will be the improved version of the Early Paper Writing Explosive Device (EPWED) I employed last semester; its use in that conflict was ultimately critical for victory, and such results certainly bear further development.

The enemy’s “Term Paper” installation can look forward to hostilities involving EPWED-based munitions as early as late February.

Further intelligence will be disseminated to combat and support elements as warrants.

At Herr Holz’s request, we visited the USS Missouri, which is anchored in Pearl Harbor. I’m sure that most young boys find large seagoing vessels fascinating at some point in their lives; I was not obsessed with them as I was obsessed with, for example, dinosaurs, but you have to admit, battleships are pretty cool. Owing especially to my background as a landlocked desert-dweller, big ships seem ineffably magical and romantic to me. That’s not really relevant to anything, but it explains why I get kind of quiet around them, as one would be quiet around a sleeping god.

Last night was the final night of Herr Holz’s stay with Herself and I here on O’ahu.

To celebrate—not his leaving, of course, but his presence—we went to Keo’s for dinner. Keo’s is a swanky Thai place in Waikiki. As per the 1974 Waikiki Chintziness Statute (3.5.11) it had the requisite five (5) gas-powered tiki torches out front. I am not sure if the tiki torch was, as the external decor suggested, an integral part of the artistic milieu of the ancient kingdom of Siam, but I have an inexplicable fondness for gas-powered tiki torches, so, you know, hooray for Keo’s.

The food was excellent. I feel it important to note that I had a dish called the “Evil Jungle Prince,” and I will be god-damned if the delicious basil-sauteed beef did not exude a certain palpable malice. “Eat me,” it suggested, “And I will rain such terror upon your digestive tract as men will speak of it for generations.” Or perhaps it whispered sibilant promises of riches and women if I would simply betray my truest friend to its sinister secret police, the ruthless green curry. I’m not entirely sure what its vile message was, as I am not fluent in the language of capsaicin. I did understand the overriding theme, though, which was: Hot.

Alright, I’m delinquent. There are a variety of topics I could be discussing here, now that the semester’s over and vacation’s started, but haven’t been very… proactive about it.

I have been proactive about other things. Tuneful things. For example, it has occurred to me that The Second Line Dances Even When Dead. You may or may not agree.

I have also heard things, things about Youth and Transience—but I have not finished transcribing the message. Rest assured that it will be here when it is ready.

The amount of schoolwork I have to do this weekend is somewhere in the range of 800 milliflunks, where 1000 milliflunks is the amount of work that, left undone, will cause me to fail a class.

But hey, at least the weather’s nice.¹

¹Yes, I know I stole the idea of posting a screenshot of a weather widget from you, Fluffy. That’s because it’s a good idea.

I spend a good portion of my time being intimidated, here at the august University of The Archipelago. Let me illustrate this, via the introductions of a couple of professors that instruct at this particular institution of learning:

• Dr. John Haig. Teaches my Japanese 451: Structure of Japanese class. You might know him for his work editing the Nelson’s Kanji Dictionary.
• The real sockdolager today, Dr. Valdo Viglielmo. This retired UH professor was a guest lecturer in my Meiji-Taisho literature class. He spoke chiefly (and enthusiastically) on his great literary love for Natsume Soseki, but also related amusing tidbits about his relationship with the Tale of Genji in translation, such as his meeting of Arthur Waley, his close friendship with Edward Seidensticker, and the fact that “the most recent translation of Genji was done by a student of mine at Harvard.” Also, (and quite innocently, I might add) name-dropped as friends of his were Kawabata Yasunari and Mishima Yukio.

Man, what am I even doing here?

Midterms have come and gone, and I am left in the eye of the hurricane that is a semester in graduate school. The classical Japanese midterm that haunted my dreams with feverish visions of maddening ambiguity is now in my past. It felt easier than I expected it to, but this could indeed be because I was so drastically under-prepared that I knew so little as to be that unable to gauge my own performance.

I swear on my mother’s bible’s grave that this is not humility or self-deprecation. Classical Japanese grammar is that hard.

My roommate and partner in ridiculousness and retardery, Jake, is famous for his AIM away messages. He kind of got me started, so for the past year or so when I set an away message, I try to make it interesting. Here’s a selection, for those of you who may be too busy living your lives to catch every single one.

Here’s a selection. Commentary is italicized.