09.27.10
Back From Korea
Well, we’re back from Korea after a nice little stay there, from September 19-25. Lots to write about, if and when I get to that. In the meantime, thought I’d slap up some snaps.
09.13.10
Barefoot Blogging
Finished another barefoot walk, actually my third today. So far, no pain and no trouble. I’m trying to watch where I walk—which is good, because I saw a dead hornet on the road this morning—and avoiding running on pavement until I get truly used to this.
The first walk was this morning, my usual stroll with Buddy, but I kept it a bit short because I don’t want to overdo things. The second walk was in the park with the kids and the wife. The twins kept their sandals off for much of the time, but I tried to stop them from running on the paved paths, and tried to keep them on the grass instead.* Being kids, they liked imitating their dad (mental note: kids copy what they see, good or bad—but of course, deciding what is good or bad can be a slippery slope), and they were happy to clamber over rocks, scamper across the lawns, and trudge along a wooden bridge. You really can feel—not just in the physical but also in the spiritual sense of the word—the ground better when you’re barefoot. The final walk was just an hour ago. Having had a long nap in the evening, Buddy was a little overexcited and couldn’t sleep even though it was after 10:30 p.m. Seeing that it was drizzling outside, I grabbed an umbrella and took him outside, enjoying the lukewarm wet cement underfoot and the occasional puddle sloshing through my toes.
I still want to keep the house clean so I make sure to rinse my feet off with the hose next to the sandpit outside before I come back in. But I can already see how this new barefoot thing—which, I can assure myself, is not a fad but a trend—is going to make an already against-the-grain me even more counterculture and maverick.
Sorry for the jerky writing (so many parenthetical asides), but I can’t seem to help it. This is just the creative process, neurons firing in all directions and my fingers struggling to lend my thoughts a logical flow, without omitting interesting ideas. I ought to keep writing more. This is really therapy for me. I guess for a long while I have really felt kind of paralyzed, unable to deal with the realities of life and often just wanting one day to bleed into the other, without trying to face or analyze my life too much. I was spending a lot of time engrossed in stocks and finance, often obsessing about these topics. My brain seems to have gotten board with this routine, however. There is only so much research I can do about stocks and finance. It’s too one-dimensional, and I don’t consider myself a one-dimensional person. I’m still interested in finance, but I should let my mind be more creative and write more.
I mean, for a long while, I often felt like life was living me, instead of the other way around. Perhaps this was partly because I haven’t had much mental/emotional down time. It was hard—emotionally speaking—for me to get on here and blog, send photos to friends, or think a lot about my kids’ development, the things our family has done together. I have avoided being too introspective. (This might explain how my new interest in alcohol fits in: booze can deaden the self-analytical thought processes. However, while I want to be more introspective than before, I still like drinking as it helps me relax, and mitigates overly obsessive thinking.) Now however, I feel I want to blog more, remember more, think about my life more. Of course this may change once my schedule gets busier in October. If this all sounds like verbal diarrhea and rambling, so be it. Like I’ve said before, this blog is mostly for myself.
* Dig the irony? Keep on the grass? By the way, me being the usual counterculture iconoclast that I am, whether shod or unshod, I often make an effort to avoid the paved path and walk on the grass instead. Even if that means going out of my way a few meters. This puts me at odds with most of Japan, since everyone seems to stick to the pavement and avoid stepping on the grass. But what’s the point of having grass if you can’t walk on it? Besides, in a nod to Robert Heinlein, I enjoy walking on “living things.”
09.12.10
Shucks….
Yet another post that begins with me bemoaning how little I blog, but that’s the way life works.
It was a heck of a summer. A heck of a good one. Good because I was outdoors a lot. I spent a lot of time in the pool of a university I teach at. The family and I also went to a nearby nice clean river a few times. And we also went to the beach five times: once to a beach in or near Murakami, Niigata Prefecture, and four times to Takahagi Beach in Ibaraki Prefecture. I sure got far more than my fair share of solar radiation. I know that more than a little is not good for you, but to me it sure looks and feels healthy. I also know that many East Asian women would disagree with this opinion. I remember looking for soap once in a drug store in Manila, and I couldn’t find anything except “whitening soap.” In other words, a brown complexion can be a much harder sell over here.
Hmm, I think this will be the first blog post where I will make a conscious effort to break with my habit of existentialist ruminations. Or maybe not. Rather, I will try to be more optimistic about life instead of being unconstructively despondent. People often say in day-to-day life that you should enjoy the journey, not just anticipate the destination. For example, if you’re going to take a trip to Hawaii next month, you shouldn’t adopt a mental posture of “I can’t wait for my holiday.” I’ll take the wisdom from this well-known saying one step further. Suffice it to say that if you’re an atheist, then you don’t believe there is any final destination apart from death, and that’s not a destination worth going to. So I’m just trying to enjoy each and every day. I really have to make an effort not to think things like, “It will be great when I’ve saved up this much money.” I think that if you think things like that too often, your life will pass you by even more quickly.
In my short thirty-seven years on this planet, I can’t claim to be a pillar of wisdom, but I will say I think I know mostly what life’s about. And I will say that I think many people don’t know what life is about. I mean, it seems like there are so many different takes on the definition of morality. Just surf the news and you come across arch conservatives who believe that God hates fags, terrorists who convince themselves that taking innocent lives is justified, and on and on. But basically, if you believe that we live in an amoral, insensate universe that would just as soon crush us as overlook our existence, there can be only one true, universal definition of morality. And that would be simply: don’t cause others pain. A pretty good rule to live life by, if I may be so bold in saying so.
Little William is now Bigger William, about 10 kilograms or so. Amazing. He is a real pleasure, a wonderful child. Whenever I don’t work in the morning, I like to take Buddy for a walk down the road. I wake up, take a squirt, have some cold water or juice, maybe with some glutamine powder mixed in, pick him up in an arm, and off I go. It’s good exercise for my biceps, too, as I switch him from one arm to the other only when the current arm gets tired.
But darn! For the last few weeks, I was wearing sandals while walking him, but now I want to start walking barefoot with him. The pavement is cooler now, so it should be easier. But the now lower temperature of the road is not the main reason I want to start walking barefoot. This is not a sudden epiphany but rather the gradual crystallization of a concept I’ve slowly come to embrace: barefoot is good. I don’t care about how I look to other people, I want to feel like I’m in contact with the earth and doing things the natural way. I’m not a rigid fanatic of what is natural; I only seek out naturalness when it is better for you; viz, I take nutritional supplements, because I think that not supplementing—i.e., the natural way—is simply not as healthy.
I’ve been driving barefoot (when it’s warm) or in socks (when it’s cold) for the last two years now. I’m always barefoot at home. Sometimes I even teach barefoot (e.g., kindergarten). Today I walked in the park barefoot (of course I’ve done that before), but in a first for me, I walked into two stores barefoot. Admittedly, the first store, a supermarket, had a floor that looked kind of icky, so I donned my sandals. But not for the second one. I bought my bottle of whiskey without putting on any kind of footwear.
Some reading has influenced the way I feel. First, I remember reading this article a few months back. It’s about how running with shoes can actually be worse for you. Also, I have read dynamite stuff about this Frenchman called Erwan Le Corre. This Men’s Health article is a great read. Or just Google “walking/running barefoot” for some really cool resources.
OK, enough chatter. Time to do some reading and then hit the hay. Over and out.
