languid

time and money just drip though my fingers like sand... i read up on a tibetan astrology account of me today. as usual there are some thngs that zero in on me. it mentioned that i am facinated by money yet exhibit generousity with it and spend freely. both of which are true except when i am broke then i might get shady on you and imply/suggest you can cover the tip all by yourself... it said i was a metal boar. i lost interest before i retained to much more. i spent several hours in black oak books, in berkely after grubbing at saul's. i perused many a tome but didn't find anything within my budget or within my ineterst.

there were two books on japanese culture that i wanted to abosrb into my piles of books. one was a book about swordmaker craft with color photos which i have neever seen before but they wanted eighty-five dollars for that one. it wasn't as comprehensive as i would have liked but it was beautiful in the limited examples that it provided. the other was a comprehensive text introducing the many details of japanese culture from miso to fairy tales to holiday rituals to one liners of luck, advice and well wishing. it was first published in the early thirties and had a delightful presentation that was very japanese. there was a little thing about how money is frowned upon in the feudal times especially by the samurai and a tradition came about that all tips were presented in envelopes to hide the vision of the money. i love that. i have always loved the ornate extra effort that my japanese friends and relatives have gone thru to contain gifts, notes and whatnots. two or three boxes, wrappings or containers to get it together.

there was a little tidbit about food service and hospitality. ones and threes were strictly insulting. they were translated to i kill you or you kill me. twos and fours are ok but four in its primary name, shi, also means death, so yon is generally used so basically that is probably why you only get two nigiri when you get sushi.

i remeber when i was a kid and i told my grandmother, on the japanese side, that i was shi sei or fourth generation and she instructed me that it was yon sei because shi meant death as well so it was bad luck that shi was used when identifying my generation of immigration. meh. later if i had gone full goth i gcould have been the death generation... what can you expect with a cracker father and many of the traditions of life forgotten and not pased on to me and my brother. another reason was because so many of the traditions are interlaced with shinto and buddhism that my great grandmother did not pursue it with my grandmother's generation because they were christians under the missionaries in hawai'i. another cultural identity diluted by good intentions. i'm still a pinko haole when you look at me and you would never know that i am japanese on my mother's side. i love it tho, it feels good.

aloha,
j