(no subject)

[susurrate]

i still can't get a hold of this city; every time i try to unravel it one end of the string ends up down the rabbit hole, mixed up in the miso soup, tangled in the dying cherry blossoms. it's a maze, it's a mystery, it's myriad opportunities and openings and confusions. oh, i flow with the mainstream; i wander slack-mouthed among the temples of consumerism just like the rest of them, weighing up the merits of useless kitchen utensils, squeezing kumquats and fingering silky slips. but then several hundred minutes later i descend into floor b2 to find two men naked, hairless in that archetypal asian way, one caught upside down in a drunken, exuberant embrace. midday in shinjuku brings me to a wizened old man in so many tatty layers i can't tell if all his limbs are present, sat firmly in the middle of the pavement with a big paper notebook balanced on his lap. he's scribbling away, the mass of thick black ink kanji dancing down the page like a mass of spiders oozing top to down, right to left. the Fear stops me from asking what he's doing; maybe i'd get a violent response, or none at all.

spring has hit with a ferocity of heat like britain's august, reminding me of both the inefficiency of japanese deodorant and also my mood's phenomenal reaction to sunlight. i wake up to dazzling sunlight, do aerobics with a sweaty joy that was almost sexual, pump pedals and picnic in the park amongst floes of dying cherry blossoms, then battle the evening chill with more cycling and home again. alive once more, the hormonal headache passed and full of guarana high.