A Stack of Updates

Okay, let me take that first step "uphill" with what Snabulus refers to as "fluff". Basically, I'll tread water and maybe retain a bit of my readership by giving some tidbits of recent news. Some of it is bad, some of it is good, and this IS a moody website, so just ride the rapids!!!

(Yes, blogs do tend to be exercises in self-indulgence more often than not, so bear with me, 'kay?)

Part One - Y.O.A.
And the thing that has been dominating both my limbic and higher cognitive (but hopefully not my spiritual) functions these days has been [POST REDACTED].

Nope, I can't talk about it. Not here. I don't know if I'm still being spied on or not, but I dare not take a chance on it. Especially not now. Matters have been worsening since at least last September and, though not quite grave, have definitely reached "seriously nasty" status. I will go so far as to say that a whole bunch of promises have been broken (more like hijacked), and some key working relationships have become strained. One of the most important seems to have snapped already. I will also be so bold (rash?) as to say I went directly to the principal, explained the situation, and asked him to remove me from any further participation in the International Committee, let alone the sister-school project. He may not grant my request, but I think my presence there would be counterproductive regardless of whether or not it is still welcome. Considering I'm the reason both the Committee and the sister-school project exist in the first place, it is a very painful and embittering situation, but I know I can't change it. It's better to bow out with some small shred of dignity.

(To answer the obvious question, no, it does NOT have to do with that blog blunder of last summer...at least not directly. Indirectly, however...maybe.)

Part Two - On the Home Front
I posted before about my mother-in-law and her struggle against cancer. Last year she was undergoing chemotherapy, and it was just wearing her down to nothing. However, it was apparently a success, for the specialist in Tokyo she'd been vising gave her a very positive prognosis and switched to a far milder form of treatment. Her health, like her hair, came back very quickly. Pretty soon she was trucking around with a big smile as always. However, right about the time we took that trip together to Yokohama a couple of weeks ago her health started taking a turn for the worse again. She found it harder and harder to eat. She'd had spells like this before, but they'd never lasted more than a few days. This time it just went on and on, so I wound up taking a (much-needed) day off from work to drive her back down to the hospital in Tokyo. My wife, despite a very busy schedule that day, opted to come along, and her reasons were obvious.

My MIL is still in the hospital. From the start the doctors have been saying that it's nothing serious. They claim it's probably just a mild stomach bug brought on by her weakened immune system rather than a worsening of her cancer. Unfortunately, my MIL isn't buying it. She's all but convinced it's over. When she came for treatment last year, the doctors told her that almost all of her tumors had been eliminated. I repeat: almost all. Just one, stubborn, little bastard remained. The problem is that it's in one of her lymph nodes, and if my MIL is anything, she's not stupid. She knows as well as I do that doctors in Japan consider it their duty NOT to inform patients of a terminal condition. They believe doing so only brings unnecessary pain. Even Emperor Showa went to his deathbed in the late 80s firmly believing he was recovering from his cancer, because that's what his doctors were telling him.

Yes, things are a bit dark at home.

Part Three - A Furry Homecoming
We did have one small, fuzzy spot of good news, however. Pandabonium has already posted on his site about the surprise snowfall we had. This was followed soon afterward by some really rainy, nasty weather during which time we were worried sick the streets were going to wind up coated with black ice. Fortunately, it didn't happen. It was bloody cold (mainly because of the high humidity), but it managed to stay just above freezing till the pavement dried out. We had another surprise snowfall in and among it all, but luckily it didn't accumulate. We managed to weather the weather(?) well.

We did have one surprising and unfortunate occurrence, however. Our beloved cat Tora turned up missing on the evening of the big snowfall and remained unaccounted for during the cold, rainy days that followed. The weather cleared up, and there was still no sign of our feline family member. Everyone was concerned; all of us took turns hunting around for him, but with no success. I was beginning to resign myself to the fact that Tora had either frozen to death or met an unlucky end somewhere in the neighborhood.

After the better part of a week had passed I was woken by loud meowing on our front porch, but by the time somebody got to the door and opened it there was nothing there. We couldn't be sure whether it had been Tora or not, and there are other cats in the neighborhood that occasionally caterwaul around our place (and scrap with Tora), so we figured it had to have been one of them. A couple of days later I thought I saw Tora when I headed for my car to go to work, but the cat bolted across the street and into a neighbor's yard before I got a clear view. The next day my FIL reported something similar. I began to wonder if, cold and starving, Tora had gone feral.

Yesterday I came back from a trip to Tokyo to find that Tora had returned. When he saw me, he let out a yowl and literally climbed right up me and onto my shoulder. One of his eyes looks like it is either wounded or infected (or both), and he seems to be sneezing a bit, but he's clearly happy to be home. I also couldn't help but notice that his meow has become louder, lower, and more masculine than I remember. I wouldn't be surprised if his family jewels got him into trouble in the first place. If I ever get time to do it, I'm going to take him to a vet and have those damned things snipped off.

Part Four-A - Still Very Much in Demand
Finding time to do things (like getting cats "fixed") has been practically impossible. One of the reasons is that music-related activities keep filling my schedule when other things don't. I admit that also includes such things as rehearsals, meetings, and shopping trips to buy music-related gear, but it all adds up. It's also all interconnected. For example, last Saturday I had a meeting in the morning related to a performance next Sunday. After that I had just enough time to snarf down a convenience store lunch before an afternoon appearance by the Flying Eggheads jazz big band at a PTA event for a local elementary school. After that I went home, changed, loaded up my BLUE RAV4 with luggage and musical gear, and headed off to Tokyo for the night and all day Sunday. I had been asked to go into a studio and record with a musician I hadn't seen in ages, and I wasn't about to say no. Next Saturday there will be an afternoon concert at Ye Olde Academy. (I'm directing.) On the Sunday after that there will be a performance by our concert band at a local international event. (I'm performing.)

I'm very happy to be doing all this, but it is wearing both me and my calendar thin...

On a side note, I made an interesting, music-related discovery recently. I was doing a "security search", i.e. Googling my own personal info, and I came up with my name in a very surprising place. Several years ago I was hired by a professional musician/songwriter/producer in Tokyo both to write lyrics for a song and to sing them. I was also asked to do a sax solo. The song was sappy by design; the writer said from the beginning (with much laughter and apology) that it was "for a video game", but he never went into much detail beyond that. I came up with lyrics that went with the (sappy) mood of the song. Then I went to the man's personal studio in Shinjuku and spent the better part of a day doing the recording work. After that he thanked me, paid me more money than I'd ever received before (or since) for music-related work, said he'd send me a CD of the recording, and promised to keep in touch. I never heard from him again.

Cut to the here and now. As I said, I Googled my own personal info and, apart from discovering that there are an awful lot of people with the same name (some of whom are apparently famous, not always for favorable reasons), I found what was unmistakably my moniker on a series of related websites. Basically, I was given singing and lyric-writing credit for that song I had recorded in Shinjuku all those years ago. Yes, it had been for a video game, one that apparently became quite popular in China. The song apparently became a karaoke hit in some quarters and is still on the charts. I think it's amazing that my name is getting spread around like that; after all, the man who wrote the music of the song and actually marketed it did so under a pseudonym. That means I'm the only one getting direct credit...although I haven't gotten a single yen (or yuan for that matter) of royalty for it.

Oh, well. It's not the first time something like this has happened. Some years ago my song "Tlesca", no doubt minus that tediously LONG introduction, got played regularly at a popular nightclub in Bangalore, India. I was told the song enjoyed some popularity and was often requested for a time at least. The DJ was a friend of a friend, and I did give them permission to use my tune. I was told they even gave me name credit for it. However, "credit" and "permission" are not the same as "royalty". I got plenty of satisfaction and fulfillment, to be sure, but not much material reward for my efforts. I guess I don't really mind, since material reward isn't really why I do music, but am I being too nice? (I'm particularly interested in hearing the answer for that from my artist/writer friends Kami, San, and Wendy as well as my musician friend Hashim.)

Part Four-B - Just Because I Thunk a Tanka:

黒い空
月の白顔
氷には
光の踊り
凍える炎

kuroi sora [Black sky]
tsuki no shirogao [The white face of the Moon]
ko'ori ni wa [In the ice]
hikari no odori [A dance of light]
kogoeru hono'o [Freezing flame]

(picture borrowed from the blog of the Tateshima Tokyu Resort)