The Heat Goes on.....

It has been hot since Friday. Hot and bright. Glaringly bright. The kind of brightness that gives you a smirk and goes "Hah, don't you wish you had your camera so you could capture the flowers, the clouds, the sunsets, the breath taking beauty of it all?" To scorn the glare and enjoy the sun I checked a volume of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories out of the library. They are petty little works, I suppose, with none of the lasting importance of Shakespeare or  Pope, but they are amusing. And they have had a impact on us, you know. Though it is dying out, there is still the "Ask Jeeves" search engine to be traced back to that perfect essence of a gentleman's man. There is charm in Wooster's absurd slang, in Jeeves obvious superiority, in the insecurity of their bachelorhood. There is also a quaint sort of charm in the utter stupidity of all the characters, excluding Jeeves of course. Jeeves is rather like Sherlock Holmes. Your first impulse is to sourly wish a woman into his life to show him what's what, but you come to your senses in time. Neither of these men could be themselves if they were not bachelors. Whatever makes a man go down that road, these two men have it in spades. Perhaps it is an unfortunately  accurate perception of their own superiority. 

But I must stop with books, this post is dedicated to the letter 'G' and so to 'G' I must turn. Grapes, graves, gowns, and games. The latter, I think, would make an excellent topic. I do love a good game. What is a good Game? 

1. It Engages the Player: this is why goldfish is not usually regarded as a fun game. There is neither strategy or action, just repetition. Unless you know some really groovy people to play with you will be bored out of your skull. Which brings me to the next point
2. It Creates an Avenue for Interaction: This nixes out solitary and most computer games, which are engaging but rather unfulfilling unless you regularly discuss them with other players. Don't get me wrong, even if you don't say a word to your chess opponent you are still interacting. Playing games does not have to be just another way of being social, but it should allow you react to outside stimuli. 
3. It is Challenging: This is not an absolute criteria. Some games are perfect but not challenging at all. However, the best games make you feel as if you are doing something, even if it isn't super hard. Better games leave the difficulty up to the skill of your opponent. Thus, chess is better than trivial pursuit, which is better than Sorry. 

Focus

         I suppose it had to be addressed sooner or later, but I am not good at focusing. I get distracted pretty easily if I'm doing something even slightly tedious. For years this has led to late nights spent throwing myself into work that I just could not concentrate on before. Last minute panic was the only thing that could force me to work on something. This has, sadly, not really improved as I've aged, but I think there is still hope for me. Maybe. I'm starting to desire a more peaceful, thoughtful approach to my work. Before I didn't really care so much as long as I got it turned in, but now I really want to feel proud of what I've accomplished. 

            I'm starting to experiment with  strategic withdrawal, which I think might be necessary to prevent complete attention loss. If I accidentally start looking at this and that then, before you know it, whole days go by before I resume work. However, if I purposely go "okay, work for this much time and then take a break to do X" or "Finish this much and then give yourself  so-and-so amount of time to rest the noggin," then I won't be able to wander off. I'll have stopped working, but only to regroup. This is the difference, I hope, between a retreat and a desertion. It's still in experimental stages, like I said. In fact, right now is one of my breaks. Eventually I hope to mature to the point where my discipline is high enough that I can enjoy work for its own sake, and not merely to get it done. Until then, I just hope I can break the midnight habit.* 

       Here's an unrelated musing: I saw a funeral home the other night, out of the corner of my eye. I stared at it as I was driven by, its sign waving in the wind. It struck me, who would want their name on such a sign? Who would want their name used for a funeral home? Offices of law I can understand, but to have you name swinging in front of a place for the dead; every time I saw it  I would feel as if I were looking at my tombstone.  

* Well, okay, I'll admit that it has been a while since work has kept me up until Midnight per se, but that's really just splitting hairs, isn't it?  

Easter

"Christ the Lord has Risen today, Alleluia!"

                      Every year must have a first something, and this is my first Easter away from home. My first Easter without an egg hunt. My first Easter, in almost five years, without lamb. Lamb, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. The lamb is rubbed with olive oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary before being grilled. The grilling leaves the skin almost burnt and oh, so good. The mashed potatoes require a KitchenAid. The boiled spuds are placed reverently into the silver mixing bowl and a stick of butter is added while the blade whirls around, making fluffy, white mountains. Then milk, thick and creamy, is poured in, until the whole bowl is full of thick, creamy, smooth, satiny potatoes that melt in your mouth. Can you tell that the best spot to be on Easter day is the kitchen? The whole family hangs around, hovering over the chief, who, it so happens, is my father. Taste-tester is the most treasured position, and the favored one must endure, or bask in, the jealous, coveting stares of the unlucky majority.  
                   But, as I said, this year I didn't get to share in the Easter feast. I biked over to the closest church here instead. What a site I must have been, decked out in my Easter finest, my cream rain coat keeping the wind off. Peddling along on my bright blue bicycle. Most Sundays I go to church with friends, not only because of the enjoyable fellowship, but also for the much more practical reason that I do not own a car. Naturally, as my friends were spending time with their families this Easter, I had to celebrate with a closer church. During the service, as the preacher preached of joy, a man came out a painted a picture. There isn't really a word to describe what it was like, not a church flavored word anyway. Cool, interesting, neat-o. These make it sound like entertainment only, but I really do think it added something deeper to the service, I just can't place my finger on what. Maybe it was a sense of awe, a taste of wonder. I have heard of people using art during church to get a point across, but this was the first time I had ever seen anything like it. I guess I lost something old and gained something new this Easter.


                   Have I shown you this picture already? It's of the church grave in Japan. It's rather interesting actually, not something you'd ever really think of here in America. But in Japan people place their ashes in a family shrine, or grave. Every New Years, and at other times during the year too, depending on the depth of belief, families across Japan go and pray to their ancestors at these graves. Naturally, if you're a Christian, the idea of your family members praying to you is slightly disturbing (If you're a Christian and this idea is not disturbing I don't know what to make of you). To circumvent this unholy problem, the church in Hikari has it's own tomb where its members can put their ashes after they die, safe in the knowledge that they are not going to be part of some later idolatry. It is still strange to think how different life for a Japanese Christian can be. Can you imagine your mother disowning you for changing your beliefs? Can you imagine it having an impact on where you will be buried?

Mellow-Drama

                       I can already see it, this month is going to be full of deadline drama. Already, on Sunday, there was a brilliant piece of time management that encouraged me to make a little schedule. I love making schedules, I just rarely ever follow them. Do you think I could get away with it if I called myself a free-spirit? Nah, I didn't think anyone would buy that either. But you know what, I may not have to plead anything. On Monday I heard a very edifying message and proceeded to check off all the assignments for the day. I was so happy. And bored. Goodness, it's hard to find something to do when you're not avoiding work.
                       Today has been slightly less productive, and a great deal colder. I've been listening to Pandora all day. I have it seeded with the Partridge Family, so it's playing lots of things from the sixties. I'm surprised by how many of these songs I know, how many of them I grew up listening to. Then again, I think my mom's radio was permanently stuck on the oldies channel. At any rate, between "Can't you hear my heart beat" and the bright, cold day, I'm moving a lot slower than I did yesterday. But the end is in sight, if only I had a little incentive. Unfortunately, I just ate my last square of Chocolate shortbread. Oh yes, I made another batch of it on Saturday ("S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y!" - that's another song Pandora keeps playing). A friend came over, and ten minutes into Singin' in the Rain she turns to me and says "Do you want to bake something?" An hour later we were eating Chocolate shortbread with spoons, it was warm and mushy and screamed "Get me some vanilla ice cream!" In this selfish, mellow mood, I'm thinking I shouldn't have let her leave with half the batch.
                     The obvious fix is to make more, but I think once a week is probably already over doing things. To add lemon juice to this paper cut, I also downed the last of my milk. Oh milk, so sweet, and full, and smooth. Sometimes I get milk and it's milk, sometimes I get milk and it's something masquerading as milk, and then there are the times when I get milk and it's white ambrosia. This half gallon was like that, cold as steel and sweet as sugar. The weird thing is, I always buy whole milk. How can it be so different each time?



P.S. Yes, more photos of Japan! I'm araid that' all you'll be getting for a while, gomennasai ( ごめんなさい：sorry).

P.P.S Oops! I guess that burst of productivity didn't last too long. Look how manny days it's taken me to publish this post!

Clouds for Cookies

It's a cold, clammy, cloudy day. Everyone trudges to their rooms and shuts their door tight, as if able to lock out the lack of sky. For there is no sky today, just a whiteness above us. And not just above us, but around us, stretching down the sides of the mountain, seeming to continue behind distant buildings. It feels as if the whole world is encircled in fog, or perhaps it is only our lives here that are so shrouded. At any rate, the cold seems to creep even into our bones as we, the pressured, stare paralyzed at the approaching due-dates that have popped up with all the warning that accompanies a mushroom. If only we could turn our clouds to cookies. 

                But it's okay, we had our sun on the weekend. For those who are interested it went really well, by the way. The ball, that is. My dress was finished in time, my safety pins stayed pinned (more or less), and the actual dancing was thrilling. For some strange reason the ladies out numbered gentlemen 2.5 to 1, which caused a quite a bit of laughter and merriment for the simple reason that, when two people wearing hoop-skirts do anything together, they take four times the room usually required.  Lots of skirts were stepped on, but no dreams were trampled. 

Oh, and I managed to drop and break my camera just before the ball. 

              The above mentioned due dates have driven me to knitting, which should seem counter intuitive - if not, I'd advise therapy. I'm knitting fish with my sister, lakes and lakes of fish. They are about as brainless as you can get, all garter stitch glory. They are also as colourless as the clouds, in other words, nothing to make conversation out of.  Another way of, uh, encouraging that inspirational nirvana known as last minute panic, I've started thinking about my books, and even my scripts. The later being very appropriate, considering it is Script Frenzy month, according to the blogosphere. 

                In honor of this event I downloaded Celtx, a nifty piece of script writing software, and started transferring old projects into it. I'll write you a full review in a few weeks (read: May), but at first glance it is ingenious, free, and not technically meant for novels.