...lucha de gigantes...

Hello All:

Still not much new to report. My friend left a couple nights ago, so it's me flying solo once more. But that's OK. After spending months largely alone, my tolerance of others has declined sharply while my own arrogance has swelled, and, as a result, I feel an odd porcupinal comfort, like I'm safely nestled among erectile quills interspersed with coarse hair. Not that ole Zac was intolerable by any means--he was a wonderful and welcome guest--but it was obvious even to my clueless self that I have turned into one helluva cranky bastard. Really! I wonder if any of my closest friends would recognize me based on my current behavior. Who's this brash and abrasive dick? you would likely ask, And what did he do with the sweet Crepuscular Ray who used to tickle our souls through his innate gentleness and soft mannerisms?

The idea of me changing to a degree which I can no longer be trusted or even known by my old compadres is a gnawing fear. I feel myself changing daily in ways I can't really understand. Of course, this is normal. We all change to some degree regardless of our environment, but as long as we watch each other change and change ourselves in accordance to the same trajectory-altering events life hurls at our shared lives, others' individual personality changes are understood and accepted. But here, in Japan, I feel like I'm changing in ways I can't explain, and in ways people who aren't here can't understand. Likewise, I realize that my friends are also changing in ways I can't understand seeing as how I'm no longer around. Hell, half my friends got married in the last 30 days. Talk about change. When we meet again, will it be like we're friends? Or more like awkward strangers?

I got great buddies, so I'm betting on the former. Thankfully.

Anyhoo, here's a picture of a solitary samurai in deep and thoughtful meditation. It's meant to mirror the pensiveness of this post while giving a nod to my geographic and cultural location. Perhaps a professional art critic would comment on possible onanism symbology in the graphic and subsequently declare it scandalously suggestive of the way I'm spending my alone time, but I assure you this is not the case.


PS--My friend Zach's awesome blog now has moving pictures in addition to a song of the day, a killer feature he added a few months back. I lack the blogging prowess to embed music in my blog, so instead I think I'll just write the defining lyric of a well-known song, and let my readers' minds do the rest. Here's the first one:

YOU'RE THE BEST ... AROUND!!! NOTHING'S EVER GONNA KEEP YOU DOWN!!!