fragments from Okazaki

Land
ho

This whole airplane-riding business has gotten so out of hand lately, that if I in fact got on a wrong flight (distinct possibility), I won’t admit to that at this point. Suffice to say though, the Paper Boat will be broadcasting from the other end of the Pacific for the next little while. Captain of the ship has seen fit to take a brief shore leave somewhere where there are fewer things to hassle with. and really, no better place than an obscure industrial town like Okazaki, Japan.


(when its 3am for you East Coast types, the sky here is such)


If you are a biologist who has taken Genetics 101 along the way, the word “Okazaki” can’t help but conjure the image of short, incomplete double-strands }{{{ of DNA floating in a cell, known as “Okazaki fragments.” The exam on DNA replication would have given 3 points each to correctly answering that those incomplete bits are (rather diminishingly) referred to be on the “lagging” strand of DNA, rather than the ”leading” strand.

Whether they were discovered here, or by a dude named Okazaki (much more likely), I find myself hoping on Holism over the fragmentary. still ambivalent about what it should mean to be 'leading' rather than 'lagging' exactly, let's assume the lead.




...
It has been a couple years since I was on this end of things, continentally speaking. but so far it is feeling much the same. and this includes the Good List.

For there are a lot of great things about a place like Japan, and in terms of small details, these include that fact that:

1 - the stationary supplies are of surgical quality
2 - the smaller cars are and the larger insects share a lot in common
3 - rice balls in *crisp* seaweed for purchase in any random 7-11
4 - you can find people still wearing driving gloves

(and yet/accordingly):

5 - you can walk and bike all kinds of everywhere, feeling unbeholden to cars.

(they don’t bully. however they do drive on the other side of the road, which is good for keeping one attentive about crossing the street)

The list is longer, sure. and of course a list of things not-so-very-cool also exists. For the moment though, let’s look to the nice; it tempers the jet lag.

some May places

Lately, it seems like it is all about travel. By the end of this calendar year I reckon I may well have airplaned around more than any time before, putting the "mo" in mobility.

-Dateline – Boston----

And airplanes, yes. But then that means, inevitably and also, airplane magazines. The American Way magazine (and it is so the American way) has ads that completely dumbfound, and make me wish the word “outsource” never found its way anywhere near common usage



Globalized by habit of purchase, sure, I outsource customer service to India. I outsource my sneaker manufacture to Indonesia, apparently for ‘good’ reasons and the worst reasons both. But I’m supposed to “outsource my personal life” too? At this point I fear for the woman in the picture, and for anything left in this world that might be considered personal.

It is freaking cold here in Massachusetts in early May. I walk past an unoccupied Citizens Bank ATM upon de-planing with a receipt sticking out of it, just asking to be taken. Is this personal information? Clearly yes and clearly no. In a culture where ones' salary is the simultaneous source of both pride and careful secrecy, it is a record of both anonymous and highly specific transaction counted down to the cent.

Withdrawl: $201.50. Balance: $184,618.34. I realize I live an entitled life, but clearly others are living an E n t i t l e d L i f e.

Maybe I’m feeling a little grumpy for no good reasons. Emotionally roly-poly times make it so that an afternoon in the Boston Public Library is a free form of therapy.



You can sit there and read, zone out, and take in the exhibit on printing and typography on the first floor (nice). It tells you things you already know, but that is OK; it’s often best to be reminded:



Perusing the stacks and all sorts of patterns jump out. go to the foreign book section, for example, and note how the German language books are stacked compared to the French ones.




hmm...

…

Members of the hometown crew are doing fine. the baby is learning new words, and more importantly all the animal noises. it is like old McDonald’s Farm at C. and A.’s house that way.

>

Take the red line to Cambridge to find that B.w. knows where breakfast is at. The Brookline Café serves up the eggs Florentine needed to Fortify you for a walk around Fresh Pond. For the body, thems good eats.




-In Kackalak----

And D. comes down to visit for the weekend! such visits in spring compliment the wisteria on its purpleness and floppiness; the sun in its tenacity well past 8 pm. late day light like that means K. and S. may possess the native intuition of knowing when to go swimming at the quarry. it is a salve and antidote, a nice word from a stranger. perhaps it's important to remember we lived immersed in water for the first nine months, after all.



(quarry's edge)


...
It isn't $184,618.34, but our Lakewood household still had money left over in the collective pot from the yard sale in the spring. So the four of us spent it. Every last quarter. in quarters. How much does 30 dollars in small change and another 30 in small bills look like? it looks like a waiters nightmare at the sushi restaurant. but you like him, he likes you all, and you leave a big tip for that kind of service (although unfortunately in unrolled coins).




-There is here, Chicago.o.o.----

It is a fine place. let’s call it home, shall we. A new apartment is found surrounded by the glories of cheap and excellent vietnamese food. of public transport coded in your favorite color. now that is what luck is good for, exactly that sort of thing.

I picked up a Hungarian cookbook (they eat noodles for dessert!) and a New Orleans one as well (they eat everything with 2x the amount of cream) at R.’s yard sale. I laid claim to copy of Darwin and of Voltaire, but for now they will stay well stored in the R. bunglow basement (I swear, I am coming back for them!)

South Side apartments of friends have a quality of light and space that makes you want to eat grapes and stare happily out the window all morning at nothing but the occasional European Starling.



As for wildlife, S. and I saw three rabbits in Millennium Park, and I spied a fox in Graceland Cemetery from by window seat on the EL. That all seems very auspicious. Like Aesop is cooking up a fine little fable of the time spent. Hopefully I am the Tortoise and not the Hare; the Ant and not the Grasshopper; certainly neither the Scorpion or the Frog. fingers crossed.

...

And it is airplane time yet again. I just found my passport after some rummaging.
better pack a snack.