The Kokinshu was earlier. Large increase in travel and travelling monks. Saigyo was important in this collection. Focus on the poet looking at nature...laments, seasonal,...Fujiwara Teika: the compiler. These poems are knows as Waka: Japanese poetry. Haiku came later.
some strange guy
typing punctuating the silences
severe silence and papers in the late night
some kind of loud darkness
suffused with energy
designed toward cross purposes
ticking through the artifice
watered down into the energies
Okay,
done with that.
Now, for those of you who didn't get the message, I'm teaching a one day a week karate class. Here's some paragraphs about that:
Traditional Shotokan Karate is Japanese martial art. It is a lifetime activity that improves all aspects of physical fitness and promotes cognitive ability and emotional stability. Karate improves self-image and self-control while teaching the values of discipline and personal defense strategies.
Unlike many martial arts, Karate's foundation is in self-defense, not dueling or military engagement. Through training, students become more in tune with or aware of their immediate surroundings. This awareness allows the student to assess and avoid dangerous situations before physical confrontation takes place. The successful Karate-Ka never has a fight.
The object of Karate is to improve the participant in both mind and body. The structure of the class promotes organized thinking patterns, critical evaluation, problem-solving and listening skills along with robust physical training.
Chris Farrell has done Shotokan Karate for 28 years and received his black belt in 1986. This class will focus on the forms, applications of the forms, and going through the basic exercises. Chris is associated with the International Traditional Karate Federation and the Amateur American Karate Federation. He follows the standards for Shotokan Karate allowed by those groups.
Wednesdays, 7:15 - 8:45 p.m.
Cost: $5 per class or $20 per month.
And the link to the Corvallis Dance Center:
Dance Center
The flowers I saw in the wildwood
Have since dropped their beautiful leaves
And the many dear friends of my childhood
Have slumbered many years in their graves
But the bloom of the flowers I remember
Though their smiles I may never more see
For the cold chilly winds of December
Stole my flowers' companions from me
It's no wonder that I'm broken hearted
And stricken with sorrow should be
For we have met we have loved we have parted
My flowers companions and me
How dark looks this world and how dreary
When we part from the ones that we love
There is rest for the faint and the weary
And friends to meet with loved ones above
For in heaven I can but remember
When from earth my soul shall be free
There no cold chilly winds of December
Shall steal my companions from me
-Carter Family, Faded Flowers
Love meet me in the green glen
Beside the tall Elm tree
Where the Sweet briar smells so sweet agen
There come wi me
Meet me at the sunset
Down in the green glen
Where we've often met
By hawthorn tree and foxes den
Meet me by the sheep pen
Where briers smell at een
Meet me i the green glen
Where white thorn shades are green
Meet me in the green glen
By sweet briar bushes there
Meet me by your own sen
Where the wild thyme blossoms fair
Meet me by the sweet briar
By the mole hill swelling there
When the west glows like a fire
-John Clare
this morning in the heat
around the cats and wood
i said i'll not be around long
i'll soon be going beneath the ground
cracks on a pavement gray
take tears of pain upon my bones
in all things in the wear
the oldness, sadness, and decay
an old man came up to me
his beard a white and shiny bright
he never said a word
and yet i hear his voice a-shake.
A good karate class can completely obliterate any pointless line of reasoning you may have been going down, and reorient you toward a completely pointless and yet perfectly coherent and inwardly unambiguous system.
This World is not Conclusion
Vocabulary from the last story I was trying to read, "Eagle and Sky" by Ibuse Masuji.
峠 とうげ peak
尾根 おね mountain ridge
鷲 わし eagle
栂 つが hemlock
猛ぎん もう bird of prey
獲物 えもの game
うっとり entranced
恍惚 こうこつ ecstasy
撮影 さつえい photographing
崖 がけ cliff
吠える ほ bark
膳 ぜん small table
邸 やしき mansion
譲る ゆず turn over, assion
長兄 ちょうけい eldest brother
勝手 かって one's own way
遣る瀬無い やるせない cheerless
塀 へい wall
容貌 ようぼう looks
車掌 しゃしょう conductor
猛禽 もうきん bird of prey
後援 こうえん support, backing
Is there a sign over every bookstore that I am not seeing that says "Cell phone talking area"? Where do people get the idea that it is okay to go into a bookstore and chatter away on their cell phones? I know it is cold outside or noisy or whatever, but that doesn't mean we want your inconsiderate self in here where we are actually trying to read and look at books, not listen to how your colonoscopy went or which movie you need from the video store. Go back outside and freeze, or just hang up the phone.
These guys are finally starting to play as well as the quality of their instruments. I remember them playing a completely pathetic version of "Southern Man", but practice seems to be getting them into a kind of cool rocking zone.
John Cheever is an amazing writer. Check his stuff out. I was surfing through all the back issues of the New Yorker that are available to subscribers yesterday, because they were nice enough to provide links to all of the stories that J.D. Salinger published over the years. It was interesting to read through them in their original typeface, with the original advertisements, everything exactly as it was in the original magazine when it came out. I realized that Cheever was also probably in there somewhere, so I did a search and read one of his stories. He has a distinct and gripping style, but not overstated or even loud in any way.
"the band was not so much playing music as murdering the silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy." LOL. -from Victory, by Joseph Conrad.
There is a set way to do every kata. Of course there can be variations, but the kata has to work with the application that you have in mind. At the same time, there are certain principles that remain more or less the same. For example, the tension, inside and outside, in the stances works the same way in every case. There is a certain coordination that will allow maximum speed through stepping techniques, coordinated with their upper body movements. If one always strives to move in that way, then in a real world fighting situation, things may not be so perfect, but your technique will be stronger and faster and will have less extraneous and unnecessary motion than it would otherwise. Shotokan karate as taught by Nishiyama was optimized for speed and for maximum impact for each technique, combined with the greatest possible stability. It is an amazing system and a genuinely new invention in the way the body can coordinate through technique.
life is a jaded path and a soporific meandering....
Here's a bizarre fragment of a story. Completely fictional.
I walked up over the tracks and came to the railroad crossing sign. It looked and felt satanic in the predawn cold, and I felt an evil sort of energy. Down the street, past some trailer parks of the wrecked variety, and the "King Kone", weird-ass fast food shack, I came upon an old and twisted white church. A cat was sitting in front of it, as if waiting for me. I stopped, and then passed by. The street felt more and more threatening, and a strange looking fat guy came out of a wrecked trailer. There was evil looking detritus strewn out all over the front of that trailer. He said "I can't see who it is!", maybe at me, or maybe at someone else. Trucks were rushing by, all the same make and model all in perfect condition, all zooming their engines. I started thinking I was going being watched, but there was a girl my age looking at me. We talked, and she gave me a brownie and some chocolate milk, and blew her whistle at the trucks, called them weak, and said she was just waiting to go to church with her aunt. She said we are all sons and daughters of hippies, and she was getting nervous. I was too. There was a white truck just down the way, revving its engine. I thought I was trapped at that point by some demonic force that was completely foreign to me. We sat down next to a building, and a long-haired type guy came by on a strange long bicycle that looked as if it was custom made and then covered in dirt and grime. He sat down. He said he was going to get propane.
long beard waving in the wind
strange long and silent bicycle
down the dark streets
going across town
looking for some propane.
