The Best Medicine

This is a cross post. So what of it?

You know what made me laugh today? Watching Kung Pow! Enter the Fist. No matter how many times I see or listen to that movie, it makes me laugh a lot, and usually at the same places. I am amazed that my enjoyment of that movie has not been deadened.

You know what made me laugh yesterday? When I was jumping rope, I decided to throw in a few crossovers just to try, since I hadn't tried in a while. It was about a 75% success rate, but that's better than it ever has been in my life, I think. I had even given up trying them any time I was jumping rope. I laughed every time I succeeded and then messed up afterward. I was so excited that I succeeded and it seemed so effortless. It was that really deep, from-the-soul laughter that genuinely makes everything in your life perfect for a little while. I felt so renewed and I wanted to share the joy with everyone I knew.

I really needed that and I received it. I didn't know how much I needed it until it happened.

Still Climbing

It was just over a month ago that I hiked up Mount Fuji and came down with one large metaphor to apply to my life. And as things so happen, I've been applying it non-stop since my return. There are things going on in my personal life and my work life that involve some slippage, but mostly tenacity.

I know where I would like to go and I know how to get there: just keep moving, don't rush, and take the breathers I need to take. Drink water. Eat food. Don't give up.

On a T-shirt

T-shirts from this past week:

• everlasting immortal
• find someone you can love like crazy
• escape from you
• crocodile: live with the ground
• risk makes life funny
• tension of climax
• stylish whining
• good bye old timid me
• un ciel bleu magnifique
• last shout with beauty & happiness
• pirate of daddy
• home made elephant

A Class All Its Own

This t-shirt deserves to have its own post.

I ran out to the ring like normal and while I was milling about, tending to the balloon and greeting people, I saw the most wonderful shirt on this Japanese man:

"Not only am I PERFECT, but I'm POLISH too!"

It was a gift of humor that has continued the momentum of a good start to the day!

Walkabout

Today was the second of two days off. It's special when we get those.

Yesterday I went to Hiroshima so I could check out the floating torii gate at Miyajima. It was hot, of course, but it's much better when I'm out and about than doing shows all day, so it was very bearable. However, my camera decided it would take its behavior to another stage of annoying. Now it seems to think that the connections on my tele/macro lens are faulty and need cleaning. when I get home, I'm going to screw the Best Buy warranty because I don't have two week to send my camera out and wait for it to come back. I'm going to a camera shop and ask them to clean and check everything.

I decided to try grilled oysters (yakigaki) because – hey – when am I going to have the chance to have grille oyster street food in Japan again? Might as well take advantage of the opportunity.

They were nice enough, but I still maintain that oysters are overblown as a seafood. Then again, I prefer shrimp and crab and I think lobster is nothing special, either.

Today after I wrote out some postcards and washed my hair, I went out to hit up some errands and decided that I would walk around a bit and go places i haven't gone yet on foot. When I'm in another city or country, I really like to just take off and walk and see what I can find. Or if I've gotten an idea of where a specific thing is, I go to look for that and see what's around there.

I just walked and reached the Book Off, which is a used and new media store. Holy cow. Let's get this out of the way: they had a used Lightning Final Fantasy XIII edition PS3 in stock. I scored a couple of things (Jamiroquai's Return of the Space Cowboy and Fullmetal Alchemist Complete Best, both for ¥250 or $3) and successfully kept myself from buying a couple of others. I win! It helped that I had found a Boom Boom Satellites CD used, but for $15 (most new CDs in Japan cost about $40) and Ghostbusters on laser disc for an associate.

It was a hot day, but since I wasn't working, it was manageable. I just walked around, rolled up my sleeves and passed by Japanese women with their sun sleeves, umbrellas, and face visors on, scared of getting sun and *gasp! shock! horror!* a tan! The heat's not so bad when you can simply enjoy it and just be.

Today was a good day.

On a T-shirt

And now this past week's finds:

• be full of pleasant things
• There is only truth
• Keep your mind spicy
• Patronize your hometown merchant. He's your neighbor.
• Come into flower
• Time evolves and time and space
• Cheerful tomboy
• bubble for space
• Rock-n-rollergirl
• curiosity is expanding
• sweet juice strawberry flavor
• national garden
• great band/ he just wants to defend himself
• rough play allowed
• The hick from
• Pink gives me sweet dreams
• Big Boom Touchdown
• Water – it will fall out
• love shower
• just trust in our love
• cheer me
• exhilirating blue
• go in blind
• hysterical glamour
• shiny girls
• principle remove
• Most happy in the world
• happens to somebody else

On a T-shirt

Late, of course, here's last week's haul:

• love & lust mischievous kiss forever
• irie daddy
• natural funky
• Love & the home
• money doesn't change you
• special experience
• sleeping camp
• you got to be kind to rememberings
• gain a victory
• home boy unbreakable smile
• keep running railway
• opulent splendor
• arrive, raise hell, leave
• jump rock festival
• too busy to work, too far to touch
• I love my loser
• Take a little happy
• Not because I think it's funny, but because I can't think of anything to say

Typhoon = Typhailure

Well, it wasn't a failure, but rather it blew a little farther north of us so we didn't get hit by much. We did get some light rain that began shortly before midnight and ended at some point during my slumber. That's a relief. That just means that we truly had a day off and there was no panicked tear down and set up of the tent.

Hooray for that action!

Pending Meteorological Excitement

There is a typhoon headed this way and there's a slight chance we may get some of the action. It's possible, but not necessarily highly likely, as Okayama is out of even the predicted area of influence of the predicted path across the country.

We shall see.

All is Full of Love

I really love hearing the lions and ligers roar in the evenings. I love hearing the cicadas chirping away in the trees.

And I really, really love it when the highlight of audience interaction in a show is making faces back and forth with a kid. That always makes an entire show. There is nothing that compares to that.

Sounds That Surround

Every day I take note of the sounds that surround me in my current life.

I hear laughter and morning chatter in Japanese. I hear chain smokers coughing as they head in to work. The revving of motorbike engines tell me I have about twenty minutes until the time I set for myself to head to work. I hear the fan that blows on the miniature horses and I hear the zebras tromping around their pen. I hear the big cats roaring. I hear the dumpsters being cleared and replaced or maybe they're just emptied.

Footsteps on gravel; morning trumpet practice; people saying "ohayou gozaimasu" to each other – it's normal, it's regular, but it manages not to be mundane.

On a T-shirt

• Are you shining?
• The past is stupid/around midnight
• friendly Indy/Indianapolis
• reflect back
• legend of kingdom
• Yote: flip the script
• herltage of pride
• Mother Nature's Sons & Daughters
• camp music register now
• This is my power
• Drug store/happy . . . and happy
• fight with pride/zealous
• enjoy drive

Screw God's Creatures!

I'm trying to figure out where the heck all of the gnats and fruits flies are coming from that like to hang out around my sink and my window. I'm guessing that since I'm not slovenly and since my room isn't air tight and the door is slightly damaged from some overland mishaps before I came here, they're sliding in through the small crack and through the ventilation fans.

I'd really like to find some way to repel mosquitoes that doesn't involve an indoor mister that may or may not have DDT or slathering mosquito repellent on my skin before going to bed. It's not bad, but I am getting bitten and more often than not, disturbed by mosquito buzzing in my ear in the night or as I'm just getting to sleep.

Bugs are one reason I'm not so fond of summer anymore. It doesn't help that we're by a drainage aqueduct and that our dumpsters are pretty much right in the middle of the backlot.

I petition for the death of these bugs and I endeavor to be the hand of their doom whenever possible. I'd rather they not be around in the first place.

Arise, Daywalker!

I'm on my way back. I see the fuller, more complete Gregory Parks on the horizon, returning from walkabout.

I've been spending the last seven-to-eight months doing a lot of thinking, a lot of reflection and a lot of analyzing. I've been working a lot on keeping my mouth more shut and my eyes, ears, and mind more open. There is frustration, heartbreak, and a whole mess of inner struggle going on. Four months ago I got back into doing a self-guided yoga practice with some meditation sprinkled in. I like yoga and will continue to work to get better at it. I hope to begin instructor certification in the next year.

However, I still have felt like I've been letting myself go. I haven't been exercising like I used to two or three years ago. Yoga is exercise, but it does different things for muscle tone and not a whole lot for muscle mass. I like to look a certain way and my muscle mass has been reducing a little bit, thanks to my metabolism. So I started exercising again.

I've not been in poor shape, but what I consider to be poor or less than satisfactory compared to my last physical peak of three years ago. My body is already responding, coasting off of an adrenaline high after 20 - 30 minutes of jumping rope and sprinkling in other things to break it all up.

I already feel like I am once again worthy of the title "Daywalker". My friend Ginger first called me that a couple of years ago. I have the powers and traits of a dork/geek/nerd, but none of the weaknesses. Just because you like to spend a few hours gaming or discussing the virtues of Starfleet captains doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to do some push-ups and then cook a meal that doesn't involve Mountain Dew and calling for Chinese or pizza.

Exercise is a mood booster and I don't do drugs. I hate being in the doldrums, so there you go. If I get and stay in good shape because I'm trying to work out frustrations, then so be it.