2002 MAY 04 HER NAKED BELLY LIES AGAINST MY SKIN

"On board of every flight, there's gotta be one attendant you want to seduce. This time last year, 25,000 feet above sea level, I successfully seduced one."
—Cop 663 (Tony Leung), Chungking Express

One of the kicks of reading Murakami novels is the sporadic appearances of seemingly unwarranted sexual notations. One moment a character will be on the subway reading the newspaper and the next he'll be talking about his sudden erection. My fascination with this stems from the fact that these are all utterly natural and human states of behavior, but because of personal inhibitions, we dare not speak of them. In fact, within us all is this ball of gut reaction that exists at all times. Sometimes, it releases itself unto the world and something sensory, sensual reacts in response.

Oh, on a completely inoffensive (and filled with respect and high regard for those who are deserving) side note: One of the tragedies of the modern era is mass consumption of the lawsuit. Among other things, it has deterred American airplane companies from hiring stewardesses, now called female flight attendants, that are hot. Rather, it has forced them to hire stewardesses female flight attendants who are not very good looking and are often quite bitchy. And it's not just that, these women also cannot accept that they are not attractive and instead attempt to stay in the stage of denial by forcibly showering themselves in three pounds of make-up. It is, indeed, a travesty.

The urge to take sensual actions on impulse is king. Sweet talking a sultry Singapore Airlines stewardess on a long trans-Pacific flight to Tokyo, coffee at the airport, aroma-filled conversations about the here and now. She's headed back home to Hong Kong in a few hours. Take a chance, pass on the certainties of life and cut a ticket to go back with her. A smooth landing, catching a taxi and reaching the ultimate destination, her home and her heart. All in one night. All in one fell swoop of the mind's thought.

Alright, maybe I'm a bit off here. It's not always an impulse, but the natural flow of events that dictate our sensual actions. And that makes sense: A conversation turned into a relationship turned into a lifetime of hopes and dreams. Of course, I'm probably going overboard, but when that's what happens when that gut of yours tells you that the world is yours—you just don't look back. You let things take their course.

Murakami does this trick where he treats sex as an object, as a necessary evil for our everyday existence. Like going to a bar with your buddy, picking up two random girls, coming back home with them, performing sexual intercourse and then, in the middle of the night, switching partners. To some it's incomprehensible, and to others (like Murakami), it just happens. For every instance that we doubt as an impossibilty in our lives, that's one more chance we'll be surprised by our emotions. I'm not saying everyone's going to be a swinger when they grow up, but life has its own share of surprises. Much of it is driven by our own amazement at ourselves at the actions we're able to perform on a whim.

One of the unfortunate side effects of all this is that emotions are often forced aside by reason. Practicality is oh so boring. Acting on sensual impulses would make the world much more beautiful.

2002 MAY 01 ANATOMY OF A GLASS SHIELD

If I, on a superficial level, were to be sliced up into multiple parts which divide up my own personality, what you read here would only be a small portion, arguably somewhere around 25-35% of the total, and therefore would not be a good indicator of "me" as one would think. It's easy to go to someone's website, read their writings and think you know them—and while that may be true at times, I think many people, including myself, have the tendency to write in ways that don't reflect our everyday selves accurately.

The beauty of writing, especially on the web, is that your words are infinitely creative. It's kind of like lying on your bed with insomnia, as you have thoughts about life and death and everything in between, when time seems neverending and space goes on forever. Words let you be anything you want to be, in any time or place and lets you do anything you want to do.

In tangental continuation of that thought, I'd like to state that life is good. I'm sure that seems trite or unnecessary to you, but it's something I have to say. There comes a point in a young adulthood when you (and this applies to the general populous, I believe) realize that your own life is a gift, something special and not to be taken for granted. I've reached that somewhat, maybe even a while ago, and I know that there are many people in the world a million times less fortunate than me. So, whenever I may bitch or complain, I urge you to take into effect that I am neither stupid nor ignorant. I know what else is out there. I grew up in the most poverty-stricken country in Asia, and although we're now recovering somewhat, I've seen things people find amusing on National Geographic. And while this sounds absurdly melodramatic, I'm trying to tell you the simple truth.

The quintessential lines that always strike my mind, especially because of how misplaced they are in such a situation, are Rutger Hauer's last few utterings as the mistreated, misunderstood Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."

Surfstation-style, It's OK if you don't get it. No, seriously. There's a seeming gap between people who can put themselves in other people's shoes before saying something, before judging and those who make decisions on an impulse. You cannot call someone a villain unless you know what they've been through. In fact, historically, there have been so many precedents of this (Frankenstein, anyone?), that it's beyond beating a dead horse. It's like, "Yah, I'm done. You should get this by now, and if you don't, you probably never will."

2002 APR 29 TIDBITS OF THIS & THAT, WITH A PINCH OF SALT

At nearly 4:30AM on a Monday morning, the Financial District is dead. I'm hungry and have little money, but that doesn't matter since my options are essentially null. I can either hit up the deli ("Best in New York," they call it) on Water & Fletcher, or walk down a bit toward the wreckages of the World Trade Center and see what's happening at Jubilee, a modest, Korean-run semi-gourmet grocery store. But lack of money plus the monotony of another grilled chicken or roast beef/turkey sandwich on a hero lacks the necessary punch needed for proper motivation.

In other words, it seems like I'm going to be cooking up an exciting dish of ramen noodles.

We're not tourists, hit bosses and take hostage
Your whole setup, from the ground up we lock shit
Blood flood your eye, fuck up your optics
Switch to killer instincts for niggaz pop shit
—"Hell on Earth," Mobb Deep

It's kind of like waking up in the middle of the night, dark and blind, feeling empty and out of place, and then venturing out into the wilderness, such as the streets of the great cosmopolita of New York, tracking the savage smell that brought me here in the first place, the tendencies of the corporate landscape and the melancholy distastefulness toward the shiny bright letters that has circumvented my own reality.

Right now, we're facing the storm. Two and a half more weeks, and we'll be in the calm.