Some Things...

When I was in college I never went to one of those spring break hot spots. The first year, I was homesick and went home.  The second year, I spent sailing and kayaking around the Channel Islands with my boyfriend.  The third year I crewed a trimaran that sailed from Port Hueneme, California, to Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii.  The fourth year I went off-trail backpacking into the high Sierras with my dad, both of us figuring that would be the last chance for us to ever do that again, which has proven true.

 “Luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
― Daphne du Maurier

I was not born in the continental United States.  Several times when I have mentioned this to someone, the person has remarked on how good my English is.

 “No political party ought to exist when one of its corner-stones is opposition to freedom of thought.”
― Ulysses S. Grant

I know a Mexican-American who is utterly disdainful of Mexico and its people.  "I know I have relatives in Mexico," he says, "but I don't know who they are and I don't want to know."

“The streets were dark with something more than night.”
― Raymond Chandler

I was offered a full scholarship to a hoity-toity university back east but when I went to visit it I felt like I was in a sinister foreign country.  Everything looked strange -- too green, too humid, the landscape too closed in.  All those red brick buildings seemed weird to me.  The air smelled of something unpleasant.  And the people looked like menacing foreigners and talked with odd accents.  The interviewers asked what I thought were irrelevant questions and eyed me with a sort of knowing expectation, as if they had caught a fish they would soon be feasting on.  I turned down the scholarship.  When I did, I was told that I was passing up on great things for myself.  Maybe, but the only great thing I wanted was to get away from there.

 “Once they have you asking the wrong questions they don't have to worry about the answers.”
― Thomas Pynchon

When I was in high school, Clint Eastwood, accompanied by a woman who looked uneasy and was wearing a really nice Chopard watch, once asked me for directions outside of Barney’s Beanery on Santa Monica Blvd. He wanted to know which bus to take to get someplace.  I did not know.  I was not pleased that he thought I looked like someone who rode the bus.

“You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy.”
― Annie Dillard

When I was a seven-year-old SOFA kid in Japan my mother took me to a tea ceremony party at the Nezu Museum in Tokyo.  Afterwards one of the ladies who had conducted the ceremony complimented me on my Japanese and for some reason instead of just thanking her, I stood up and sang the Kimigayo (君が代), the Japanese national anthem.  I learned it by hearing it on the radio and on TV.  It's a lovely song to my mind, easy to sing and the lyrics are short and simple, too:

 君が代は
千代に八千代に
細石の
巌と為りて
苔の生すまで

All the Japanese looked stunned and my mother cringed.   I still don't know why the Japanese reacted the way they did but my mother says they probably thought I was showing off and possibly insulting them. I wasn't.

 “One must pray first, but afterwards one must help oneself. God does not care for cowards.”
― Ouida

One time when I was walking along the beach near Malibu an older man came out of one of the beach houses and approached me.  I thought he was going to tell me the beach was private above the tide line where I was walking  and to move away, but instead he invited me to a party inside the house.  I decided why not? and went up to the house with him. As we walked, he introduced himself as Telly Savalas.  I knew that couldn't be true because my parents knew Savalas and this guy wasn't him. And also he had been dead for a number of years.  I should have taken that as a warning sign and excused myself, but I didn't.  I just wondered why he would tell me that.
Inside, the party was more like a bacchanal.  I looked around amazed.  Naked people were having sex on couches and chairs, standing up, lying on the floor.  Others appeared to be passed out, sprawled wherever they collapsed. There were bowls of pills of various colors, other things that looked like drugs, and, of course, alcohol.  The man who had invited me had disappeared while I was staring at what was going on.   Another man walked over to me and stood beside me watching the action.  After a minute he said, "Pretty wild, isn't it?  Let's join in."  I wasn't in the least bit tempted.  In fact, I was getting scared and wondering how I was going to get out of there.  I was silent for a minute, then I said, "How do you know I'm not an undercover cop?"  He faded away.  I walked back outside and when I stepped onto the sand I broke into a run.

 “I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know an old Japanese lady who emigrated to the US around 20 years ago.  I never asked about the circumstances. All that time she lived in Los Angeles, but recently her neighborhood has become too dangerous, with homeless types breaking into her apartment building lobby and camping out -- not just sleeping but moving in.  They watch when people leave to go to work and then break into their apartments and trash them, apparently just for the hell of it.  Of course, they steal anything valuable.  The cops have been called multiple times but they never show up.  The last straw for her was hearing gunshots seemingly right outside her window late one night.  She moved a thousand miles away to a small Whiteopia.  She is delighted, repeatedly saying how pleasant, helpful and kind the people are.  "It's just like being in Japan!" she exclaims.

“God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.”
― Martin Luther

I once knew a married couple with children who seemed like a typical normal family except that one of the kids had been fathered by the husband's best friend.  They had been in the same Marine fire team in Iraq and were close enough to share wives, something that is more common than you might think among those kinds of people.  About the arrangement, the husband said, "As long as he's not in there when I want in, I don't care."

I read a semi-biographical novel of 1950s-era SAC by a former pilot of a B-47, Wings of Fire by Henry Zeybel, that contains this line: “When you’re a lieutenant, you’re allowed to do anything you want, short of raping the wing commander’s wife. She might not complain, but he’d probably get jealous.”  But among those of similar rank, key parties and etc. were part of the way of life.  I suppose that's because the men at the pointed end of the war-fighting professions lead such dangerous lives, depend on each other implicitly in the face of death and may be killed at any time, that having sex with each others' girlfriends and wives is, besides probably being a male bonding ritual, a way for them to enhance their enjoyment of their leisure.  Incidentally, the author of the novel later flew AC-130 gunships during the Viet Nam War and was awarded the Silver Star for actions over Tcehpone, Laos, during Operation Lam Son 719.

  I recently looked for one of Edna St. Vincent Millay's books -- "Make Bright the Arrows," her pro-war poetry collection --at the local library. They didn't have it; in fact, they had no books of her poetry at all. But they did have a biography of her, "Savage Beauty." I then checked to see if they had Robinson Jeffers' anti-war poetry collection, "The Double Axe." No; in fact, they had nothing at all by or about Jeffers.

Then, for the heck of it, I checked to see if they had any poetry by Elinor Wylie, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth, Randall Jarrell, George Sterling... No, no, no, no, no. But they did have stuff by Maya Angelou. So I thought, well, then, they will have Langston Hughes. But no.
So what value the library? It should be where you can find what is not at the bookstores -- but then, bookstores, even the musty used ones in low-rent blocks, are vanishing.
I drove to a nearby town that has a lovely old Carnegie Library, heavy with dark woodwork, streaming sunlight, and stolid rows of shelves that smell of ancient books and furniture polish, but it was closed, having very limited hours these days.
I remembered a two-story used-book store in the same town where I first discovered Nora Waln, up the creaking staircase to the second floor and far in the back amid old books on foreign travel, so I went there. But it was out of business, as was the bakery/luncheonette next to it where I used to have coffee and a snack while I flipped through the treasures I'd just bought as I half-listened to other diners and the staff chatting and gossiping.
Well, everything can be ordered on-line now, or digitally downloaded, in the bum- and derelict-free comfort of your own home, so it's all good, right? Right? 

It amuses me how intensely interested males are in the female form.  They could be 10 or 100, it doesn't matter.  Some cleavage, a glimpse of a bare  thigh or the swaying hindquarters of a fit woman strolling down the street mesmerizes them.  Girl-watching never gets old for them.  I contrast that with the routine put-downs of women men indulge in, the belittling snark, nasty cracks, sneering contempt and crude insults.  The reverse side of the urge-to-merge coin, I guess.  I've often thought that maybe the hostility to women is a reaction to or a resistance to the intense, relentless desire for women that men seem to never be free from. 
I once sat next to an elderly man, in his mid-seventies I'd guess, on a delayed airline flight.  We got to talking to kill the time, and, as passing strangers often do, talked of many personal things.  At one point he said that his sexual urge was still strong and he patronized what he termed call-girls twice a week to satisfy himself.  He volunteered that he did not need Viagra and would like to enjoy female charms much more often but his budget wouldn't allow it.  "I do have to eat," he said, "even though my digestion won't allow me the foods I like.  But I can still enjoy sex as much as when I was a teenager!"  The man sitting across the aisle began listening in on our conversation and kept glancing at me as if he wanted to say something so I smiled at him and he burst out, "I just wanted to say I hope I can talk so freely and enjoy my sex life as much as your grandfather when I'm his age!"  I started to say that the old guy was not my grandfather and was probably just telling sea stories, but instead said "Gramps and I have a very special relationship," and winked at him.

 “To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”
― Henry Miller

 

Pearl Harbor Pay Back

The USS Lexington at Pearl Harbor.

 My grandfather was serving aboard the USS Lexington (CV-2), flying Brewster F2As (his squadron referred to it as "the Peanut Special"), when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.  The Lex was at sea at the time, having sailed on Dec. 5 on a plane-delivery mission to Midway Island, but was diverted to try to locate the Japanese fleet, which she did not find.

Towards the end of December, his VF was converted to Grumman F4F-3s, the famous "Wildcat" that bore the burden of the earliest and most severe fighting of the Pacific War.

The photo at left shows the Lexington berthed at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard on April 11, 1942.  By that time she had seen a lot of action and her aviation complement had handed the Japanese some rough payback for the Pearl attack.  

In February, less that two-and-a-half months after Pearl Harbor, the Lex, as part of Task Force II, sailed into Japanese controlled waters off New Britain to strike at the main Japanese naval base at Rabaul, where was based the legendary 22nd Air Flotilla, veteran of the China war, bombing Chunking, blasting the British out of Malaya and the Dutch out of the East Indies and, most recently, bombing Darwin, Australia.

The 22nd's big H6K flying boats spotted the Lexington and radioed her position before being shot down by the ship's air patrol. The 4th Squadron, flying 18 of the the new G4M bomber, equipped with 20mm cannon defensive armament, was launched to deal with the Lex.  One bomber had to abort but 17 flew on and attacked the carrier.  But her intercepting F4Fs shot down 15 of the G4Ms and none achieved any hits on the ship.  The two remaining G4Ms made it back to Rabaul with half their crewmen dead, the the planes so badly damaged that they were junked. 

This was the first time in the history of Japanese naval aviation that it had suffered such a total defeat.  It had always enjoyed, and become used to, victory after victory.  The Japanese were shocked by the capability of US naval aviation operating on its own terms.  The Japanese had crushed the Chinese, humiliated the British, walked all over the Dutch and battered the Australians and none had the ability to deal counterblows.  But the US Navy was demonstrating it was a different foe entirely, and far more formidable.

The Lexington at sea.

In addition to the G4Ms shot down, the US Navy fliers also shot down three H6K flying boats and an E13A floatplane.  In all 88 Japanese aircrew were killed, including the squadron commander of the 4th.  The cost to us: two F4Fs shot down and one pilot killed.

Less than three weeks later, the Lexington attacked the Japanese naval base at Salamaua, New Guinea, taking the the defenders by surprise.  The Lex's  dive bombers and torpedo planes virtually annihilated the fleet in the harbor, some 15 ships, sinking five cargo vessels and four warships plus setting afire and and stopping dead in the water four more warships.  Two other warships were damaged slightly.  One of the Lexington's SBDs was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery and the crew lost.

Among the ships the Japanese lost were the Kongo Maru, Tenyo Maru and Yokohama Maru. The Kokai Maru was beached to save it from sinking, as was the seaplane tender Kiyokawa Maru and the minelayer Tsugaru. The destroyers Asanagi and Yunagi were so severely damaged that they had to return to the main Japanese fleet base at Truk for repairs. The light cruiser Yubari, flagship of the Wake Island invasion fleet, was also damaged and her executive officer killed. Altogether, 130 Japanese sailors were killed and 245 wounded in the attack.

These were the heaviest losses the Japanese Navy had suffered since the outbreak of the war and seriously harmed the ability of that Navy's South Sea Force to carry out offensive operations as well as alarming Japanese naval high command in Tokyo.  Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue, commander of the Fourth Fleet and aboard the Yubari when it was attacked, had to order the postponement (later abandonment) of the planned invasion of Port Moresby as a result of these losses. He also called for Japanese carrier back-up to counter the US Navy carrier force, thus setting the stage for the Battle of the Coral Sea.

An incident of this episode:  While heading toward Salamaua a patroling SOC floatplane had failed to return.  A large-scale search was not conducted as the carrier was readying its attack.  But on the return, the Lexington, calculating the effects of wind and currents on the probably position of the SOC, sailed to where the crew, if they survived, might be found.  Seven days after the SOC failed to return, it was spotted floating on the calm sea.  As the carrier hove into sight, the SOC started its engine and took off and flew back to the ship, landing as if nothing had happened. The two crew members were hungry and thirsty but otherwise healthy, having survived on their emergency rations.  They had gotten lost and landed while the plane still had some fuel left.  

The Lexington arrived back in Pearl a couple of weeks later for resupply and maintenance, which is when the top photo was snapped.  Shortly after, it would sail again for New Guinea waters and clash again with the Japanese, but this time not being so lucky, being sunk at the Battle of the Coral Sea less than a month after the picture was taken.  The Japanese still had plenty of fighting capability and it would take months of hard fighting between two navies, the likes of which had never been seen before in history, for a winner to begin to emerge.

History doesn't repeat itself...does it?

Click on the images to see them full size.
 

          

 

Mom! Dad!

 Different parental roles:

My mom taught me how to read and write, including cursive, before I started kindergarten.  She did that by giving me alphabet blocks and playing with me, teaching the letters, singing the ABC song with me as she lifted each block, making a game of forming words with the blocks, and reading to me.  I sat by her side as she read. She ran her finger under the words as she read so I could follow along. And one day I picked up my favorite book and just naturally began reading it.  All by myself.  From then on, my mother's role shifted to directing my reading and helping me understand what I read.

She taught me block letter writing at the same time I was learning the alphabet by making it a game to draw the letters and then form them into words, then sentences.  Doing so was never boring or hard for me.  It was fun time with my mom and I looked forward to it.  She used the Palmer method to teach me cursive, using the same books her mother had taught her from.  I loved the capital "G."  The capital "L" was okay, but I did not like the capital "B."  It looked bossy and mean to me.  I didn't like "M" or "N" either, but I liked "D" and "H" was okay.  Each letter had a personality to me and it wasn't till I began forming them into words and then sentences that they lost their individuality, subsumed into the meaning of the word and sentence.

I learned to read sheet music and play the piano essentially the same way, first singing simple songs together with my mother, which was fun and came naturally, then singing the scale while she showed me the notes on paper.  To me they looked like little balloons floating up and down on a fence.  Then I sat beside her at the piano and watched and learned, connecting keys to notes -- or balloons! -- and singing.  It was so much fun. I'm sure my mother corrected me when I made mistakes, but I don't remember that.  I only remember her smile when I did things right.  To this day, I can't play Ma mère l'Oye without remembering those happy days.  Sitting at the piano in the conservatory on a sunny winter Sunday with the north wind swaying the trees, the notes flowing without thinking from my fingers, I could be five years old again, sitting next to my mother together playing the four-hand arrangement, she smiling down at me, encouraging me when my little fingers couldn't quite reach.  Then, after, hot chocolate and a nap hugging my panda bear.  To this day, if I am feeling down or melancholy and sit at the piano I automatically begin playing Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant and it seems as if my mother is right there with me, comforting me as only a mother can her child.

My  dad taught me how to ride a bicycle, running along beside me as I pedaled, instructing and encouraging me, catching me when I lost courage and slowed down then started to fall over.  He guided me through turning a circle, then a figure eight, taught me how to come to a full stop with both feet still on the pedals, only setting one foot down as I released the brakes.  I felt completely safe and grew in confidence easily because I knew dad was right there jogging along beside me.  Gradually, he would take his hands away from the bike as he ran along side.  I never noticed that I was actually balancing and riding, turning and braking unassisted.  He was still there beside me, giving tips, praising, correcting, ready to put out a hand to steady me should I wobble.  But then one day as I pedaled along I asked him a question and he didn't answer.  He wasn't beside me!  I looked around and saw him far back, standing watching me.  I circled back to him, stopped and asked why he wasn't running beside me.  He laughed and pointed out that I had ridden all by myself far ahead, turned around, rode back and stopped without any assistance from him.  I hadn't realized.  I knew how to ride a bicycle!  And it just happened.  Thanks to my dad.  To this day, when I'm facing a difficult challenge or have to deal with scary things, I imagine my dad running along beside me, ready to catch me if I fail, reminding me I can do it, I can, I can.

Dad also taught me how to ride a motorcycle, dirt and street, how to drive a car, how to shoot (not that I really wanted to learn that, but he thought it was a skill I should master), how to care for and train dogs to be obedient and useful, how to behave around livestock, ride a horse.  He even taught me how to use a bow and arrow!  And a slingshot!  He taught me so many practical and useful things.  But maybe the most useful was, especially when anxious or upset, to slow down and examine what you are anxious or upset about and why.  Break it down, tease out the specifics.  Then you can do something about them, or at least manage your emotions regarding them.  He also taught me a similar way of dealing with recalcitrant machines and various mechanical objects.  Don't become frustrated and agitated if something doesn't work.  Examine it.  Determine how it is supposed to work, then see if you can discover why it is not working.  Once you've done that, you often have a good chance of getting it working again. 

My mother taught me how to cook, how to plan and produce a meal for two or twenty, how to sew and mend, how to design and measure to create a pattern to sew from so I could make my own custom clothes then and later for my family.  She taught me first aid and the care and treatment of the injured and sick.  When our cat had kittens she explained what was happening and answered all my questions. She taught me how to dress to bring out my best, and use make-up to conceal (a very useful skill come puberty and zits) as well as to enhance and highlight.  She even taught me how to stand and walk properly.  Don't slouch! Glide don't shamble! 

She also taught me about boys and love and sex and how I, as a girl, had so much more invested in both than boys did.  She told me that as much as I might like sex and consider it important, boys liked it orders of magnitude more and considered it so important that as men, they would risk any humiliation and loss of public stature and family to get it, with no limit to how much they desired.  She also taught me how to be a good companion to a man and how to know a good one when you find him. Of course, a lot of what she tried to teach me I didn't really believe until I learned it the hard way...so to speak. My mother also taught me about pregnancy, what to expect and how to deal with it, and the difficult days immediately after pregnancy and then the first, trying months of being a mother. And most especially she reminded me that she had made it through it all and so could I. 

 

 

Walking in Memphis

Elvis, The King, having a great time in the Army

 

 

Thinking about the old America my parents grew up in. It seems like a dream now.  It must have been so much fun to have been alive then.  Oh, sure, doubtless there were all sorts of bad things going on back in those days.  There always are.  But compared to today?  I'd take my chances with...what?  Polio?  The vaccine came out in the mid-Fifties and most people didn't catch it anyway.  World War III?  They worried about it, but it didn't happen.  The bad stuff that has led to now really got going with the assassination of Kennedy and the Viet Nam War.  So cycle me repeatedly through the decade from the end of the Korean War to the killing of Kennedy, basically the Nifty Fifties and Camelot.  

Call it Groundhog Decade.

 

 

 

 

War is for kids

From 1939:

 Also from 1939:

After a 1939 Japanese bombing raid on Chungking:

Also from 1939:

And from a few years later, published 
for distribution in Latin America:

Does anybody really know what time it is?

“The devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God. Music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out the devil and makes people cheerful.”
― Martin Luther  

Dance, sing, listen to music and forget the world.
Enjoy this brief light we have between the two great darks.

 

A most unusual year

 There were no preying mantises this year.  Well, I saw one, about two inches long, pale brown, swaying back and forth on the front porch.  They used to be everywhere come late September and October.  

I saw not one dragonfly nor devil's darning needle or grasshopper throughout all of summer.  Nor any little green frogs.  No snails at all.  And after the rains, no earthworms. Not even one.  And bees -- what bees?  I saw a few lethargic bumble bees but no honey bees. There were no pumpkin spiders at all this year -- those are big yellow-and-black spiders with a leg span of up to about three inches that create big webs between tree branches just about at face height.  Lots of fun to blunder into one unawares.  So be aware!  Except this year there was no need.

Our apple trees had plenty of blossoms this year, but yielded very few apples. Ditto our cherry and persimmon trees.  The tomato crop failed.

The vultures are very few in number these days.  Not so long ago it was common to be able to count a dozen or more lazily circling high in the sky.  One morning I counted 13 sitting in a row, each perched on a fence post with its wings spread wide to catch the warmth of the rising sun. But that was years ago.  Now you may see one or two once in a while, always flying low, just above the treetops, flapping their wings heavily.

There were only a few barn swallows this year and they inexplicably disappeared about six weeks after they first arrived.  Last year's nests remained empty.  In September I saw an enormous flock of ravens flying from the southwest to the northeast.  Great numbers of them had already flown by when I began counting. I gave up when I reached 200 and they were still coming.  I've never seen such a vast number of ravens in my life, nor imagined I ever could.  Since that day, I have seen not even one.

A squirrel showed up in August and began chewing through tree branches, some quite thick, and dropping them onto the ground.  He went from pine tree to pine tree as if he had a mission to lop off their branches.  He also tore great strips of bark from their trunks.  After a while, he was gone.

I found a salmon, about 20 inches long, next to the rose bush beside the front room fireplace.  I thought perhaps an eagle had dropped it, but there were no claw marks on the body.

It was very cold in August, with thick fogs and low overcast lingering into the early afternoon.  Then in September and October we had a lot of rain, borne on warm, tropical southwest winds.  There are mushrooms everywhere.  After sunset packs of coyotes howl just outside the house and the dogs cower and growl but don't bark.

If I were of a gloomy nature, I would say that the world seems to be dying, at least our little corner of it.  Maybe it is.

You missed out

 

Just another day at the office, Navy style.

Japanese Men

One time when I was in Japan, not SOFA but on my own as a student taking intensive Japanese courses at International Christian University, I got around on a motorcycle, a Kawasaki 750, a large motorcycle for Japan, but of a size I was used to riding since my dad taught me how. I was tired of being groped by Japanese men on the crowded commuter trains (they would cut off locks of my hair, masturbate against me, take upskirt photos...you name it) and a motorcycle was easier to thread through traffic than a car.   I did wear leathers, custom-tailored Bates, black with red trim set off with white piping, that matched the colors of my bike.  I looked quite snazzy.

Anyway, one day I rode down to Lake Hakone (Ashinoko) and fell in with some Japanese bikers and became friendly with them. They were quite curious about an American girl tooling around Japan on a "nana-han." The upshot of this was that I was interviewed by a Japanese motorcycle magazine and as part of their story they arranged for me to be an honorary "race queen" (not that kind of race but the zoom! zoom! kind) at Suzuka Circuit.  They took a number of photos of me in my leathers beside my own bike, then in a miniskirt outfit with other race queens and in a bikini posed on a race bike and with some Japanese racers, all of whom seemed exceedingly bashful.  I thought at least one or two of them would have come on to me the way American guys did, but they didn't.  They just stared furtively and took snapshots with their own cameras when I was posing for the magazine photographers and looked away when I noticed and smiled at them. When one guy did that, then glanced back sideways at me, I stuck out my tongue at him. 

 I always found Japanese guys to be very weird in their reactions to White girls, maybe just American White girls -- well, me, anyway.  If I dealt with them in some kind of normal social situation, school, business, shopping, they were formal and polite at best and at worst tongue-tied and school-boyish.  But in an anonymous situation, even in such a public place as a crowded commuter train or bus, they were perverts. I've had Japanese men more than once leave a load of pud on my haunch when I was traveling on the Chuo-sen at rush hour.  One time after getting off a jam-packed Yamanote-sen train I found two gobs of cum on my skirt.  Whoever the creeps were who did it, you can be sure neither one of them would have taken the opportunity of us being jammed together to smile and say hello, introduce himself and chat me up, like a  normal American guy would have done.  Oh, no.  Just whip out his dick and jerk off on me.  

 That didn't only happen on commuter trains.  One afternoon I was sitting on a park bench reading when I heard a rustling in the camellia bushes behind me and turned around only to see an older man dressed in a business suit with his pants dropped and his dick rampant, staring at me and vigorously masturbating.  When he saw me looking at him he began stroking himself furiously, gasped and launched his load toward me, then pulled up his pants and scurried away. I looked at his leavings glinting wetly in the sunshine and decided I could read somewhere else.  There were plenty of people in the park, by the way, some sitting within a few feet of me, but none appeared to notice what had happened.  Well, my only consolation, if such I needed, was the knowledge that Japanese men did the same things to Japanese women.

Later I read in some weekly magazine that Japanese women would deliberately go to parks where they knew pervs would be lurking just for the thrill of it.  But I don't think so.  There is no thrill in being the object of some creep's public perversions when all you want to do is get out of your crummy apartment for a change of scenery and some fresh air.  I imagine the Japanese women just accepted that they would have to put up with the slimeballs if they didn't want to stay cooped up in their 1DKs all their lives.

Speaking of 1DKs -- that's a Japanese term for an apartment that is one room plus a dining/kitchen area -- at this time I lived in such, a four-and-a-half tatami sleeping/sitting room plus a tiny kitchen with room for a small table and chair and a little bathroom.  I was usually away at school, or working -- I modeled clothing for an agency with a big department store client.  Sometimes I modeled swimsuits or lingerie.  But even in this situation, no Japanese man ever even flirted with me.  If they accidentally made eye contact with me, they would flinch as if I had slapped them.

Anyway, one day I came home to find that my apartment had been broken into.  It had a little frosted window in the entry door and someone had smashed it, reached in and opened the door from the inside.  It was only secured with a snap lock.  My little dresser had been ransacked, as had the closet and some of my underclothing was missing.  Resting atop the dresser was a pair of my panties on which the thief had ejaculated, apparently using them to masturbate with.  I didn't know who to suspect and I was uncomfortable notifying the police.  If it had been a normal burglary, I would have, but .... I told the landlord I had been burgled and he repaired the window and offered to install a double-key lock but I decided I didn't want to stay there.  Maybe one of my neighbors was the burglar, maybe even the landlord.  Who else would know which apartment was mine?  

I thought maybe my motorcycle was attracting unwanted attention, so I sold it and bought a yellow-(license) plate or kei car.  That is a really small minicar subject to much lower taxes than a regular-size or white-plate car.  My car was a stupid-looking Suzuki Wagon R that had an engine smaller than that in my motorcycle.  I thought it would not draw attention to me.  I actually liked it because, even though I was stuck in traffic that I could have threaded through easily on my bike, I could carry stuff in it, dress for my outing without need to change and fix my hair at my destination, and not feel the need to take public transportation should the weather be bad.  I did somewhat  resent the expense I had to resort to to avoid being sexually harassed -- not only the car, but also a more expensive apartment.  But better safe than sorry.  And speaking of sorry, I felt sorry for all the Japanese women who couldn't afford to escape the eternal sexual harassment -- real sexual harassment, not the current USA "me too" stuff.

Thinking about it, the position of women in Japan may be why it seems that it is almost exclusively Japanese women who immigrate to America these days.  I don't think I've ever met a Japanese man who has left Japan for permanent life in the USA.  Typically, men are university students who go back home or businessmen assigned to the States by their company.  They go back home, too.  But I know a number of Japanese women who have fled Japan for America and would not go back on a bet.

 Curiously -- to me, anyway -- White men in the States don't sexually harass me.  Darn it!  Haha.  Kidding.  Maybe....  But black men have no problem moving right in and letting me know I get their motor running, all the while being quite charming and friendly, simply openly admiring my...um...charms and expressing the desire I elicit in them.  

 I suppose this is another example of Whites being obedient to public mores, however restrictive they may be or how much they chafe under them, while blacks don't really GAF and just do whatever they feel like doing.  I suspect a lot of White guys envy them their freedom.  Of course, you can't have a civilization or even a viable civil society if everyone openly indulges their basest appetites. 

I also suppose that my getting rid of my motorcycle in order to better fit into Japanese female behavior norms is an example of being obedient to public mores.  There are always costs to just doing whatever you want to do.  Fitting in is a kind of protective mimicry.

What a contrast all this is with Japanese men!  They may have had the same desires as American black men but never expressed them to me but instead furtively satisfied themselves through me with no consideration for how their acts affected me, how I might be embarrassed, shamed, humiliated, angered or frightened by not only what they did, but the way they did it. The only way to have any influence on them might have been to shame them, but as a foreigner, an alien outsider, that wasn't possible for me.  And from what Japanese women have told me or from what I have read that they have written, Japanese women also have very little power to shame Japanese men.

Incidentally, let me make it clear that I wasn't wanting a relationship with a Japanese man, I'm just noting how they behaved toward me.  But I would gladly go out with a homesick American sailor overwhelmed by being surrounded by the teeming masses of the Orient and so happy to see a fellow Yankee round eye. 

Lighten Up!

Enough grim stuff.  I had a great time this weekend, chowing down on some groovy grub with grand pals and then spinning some platters far into the night, swinging and swaying, rocking and rolling to the beat.  I even sipped some happy juice and got a little frisky.  ( A little? A little?  I can hear a chorus of voices... Oh, hush, you were clapping and cheering!) Well, why not? 

A joke:

A man was sitting at home watching TV when there was a knock at the front door. He opened it to find a policeman holding a photograph. “Can I help you?” asked the man.
The policeman hesitated and then showed him the photograph and asked, “Is this your wife, sir?” The man looked at the picture and replied “Yes, yes it is. Why do you ask?”
The policeman hesitated again and then said, “I’m sorry, sir, but it looks like she has been hit by a truck.” The man responded, “Yes, I know, but I love her anyway.”

 “Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing.”
― Martin Luther

“He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long.”
― Martin Luther

  Oh, if you are wondering why most of the time I post late at night or in the wee hours of the morning it's because I'm always available to talk to my Marines when they need me, and that's usually when they can't sleep.

Thinking about War on Veteran's Day

War is something every man I have ever known was deeply interested in.
Why?




 

 

 

Calm and full the ocean under the cool dark sky; quiet rocks and the
birds fishing; the night-herons
Have flown home to their wood...while east and west in Europe and
Asia and the islands unimaginable agonies

Consume mankind. Not a few thousand but uncounted millions, not a day
but years, pain, horror, sick hatred;
Famine that dries the children to little bones and huge eyes; high-explosive
that fountains dirt, flesh and bone-splinters.

Sane and intact the seasons pursue their course, autumn slopes to
December, the rains will fall
And the grass flourish, with flowers in it: as if man's world were perfectly
separate from nature's, private and mad.

But that's not true; even the P-38s and the Flying Fortresses are as natural
as horse-flies;
it is only that man, his griefs and rages, are not what they seem to man, not
great and shattering, but really

Too small to produce any disturbance. This is good. This is the sanity, the
mercy. It is true that the murdered
Cities leave marks in the earth for a certain time, like fossil rain-prints in
shale, equally beautiful.

~ Robinson Jeffers



In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, "Our casualties were low."
~ Randall Jarrell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is not bad. Let them play.
Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane
Speak his prodigious blasphemies.
It is not bad, it is high time,
Stark violence is still the sire of all the world's values.
 

What but the wolf's tooth whittled so fine
the fleet limbs of the antelope?
What but fear winged the birds, and hunger
Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk's head?
Violence has been the sire of all the world's values.

Who would remember Helen's face
Lacking the terrible halo of spears?
Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar,
The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar?
Violence, the bloody sire of all the world's values.
~ Robinson Jeffers

You would think the fury of aerial bombardment
Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces
Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces.
History, even, does not know what is meant.

You would feel that after so many centuries
God would give man to repent; yet he can still kill
As Cain could, but with multitudinous will,
No farther advanced than in his ancient furies.

Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?
~ Richard Eberhart

 

 Reconciliation
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly
lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash
again, and ever again, this soiled world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I drawn near,
Bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
~ Walt Whitman

 

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.
~ Carl Sandburg

The Train Stops

 

The bond between a father and daughter never breaks, but it can hurt each very much to maintain.  If you don't understand this story, you probably aren't the father of a daughter or a daughter.

 First broadcast August 23, 1976: