good morning, evening or afternoon as the case may be! tribal elders, i
beseech you - cast down your buckets where you are and cease the drudgery in
which you are surely engaged. lend me your eyes and thoughts for a spell
and you shall be rewarded with first-hand accounts of asian adventure and
two-fisted derring-do featuring He Who Bears the Sanders Banner in the land
of rice eaters.

heed the clarion call, o clansmen o" mine, as this note will attempt to be
as joyous as it will triumphant. the mood just now is flat-out stellar,
much akin to that often encountered as one turns back onto the hardtop with
the smell of wet retriever and dead duck wafting about, cowboys pre-game on
the radio and the promise of a stop at Charlie and George's on the way home
to the ritual shit shower and shave before settling on down with Camille to
watch the Boys wallop some hapless pretender so ridiculously that even
Johnston starts getting carries. Lord, those were the salad days!

(i can definitely sense Brother Steve waxing nostalgic now)

i must relate what happened last week, as it continues to be a ginormous
smile. left my backpack on a crowded subway one morn last week, which in
and of itself caused no great consternation until i recalled that the 3 $80
George Clinton P-Funk tickets were inside along with the supposedly great
Kafka book i had been reading. can you say ouch? believe y'all me, my
utterings were of a more expletive type, and the next few days were filled
with more Homer headslaps (doh!) and chinese communist-style written self-
criticisms than i care to remember. but then it turned up at the Lost and
Found with everything accounted for, and the staff even apologized for
having thrown out the rice and veggie box lunch i had prepared. silly
buggers even cleaned the tupperware! there are times when one truly has to
hand it to the nipponese- that kind of thing is very much the standard and
it is a wonder to behold.

and George....as the funky man himself said, free your mind and your ass
will follow! run, don't walk, to see the P-Funk.

have been meaning to give y'all a holler for a while now but as Scarface
would say i have had my head up my culo. mea culpa and apologies
(especially to susan and doug, peerless purveyors of holiday cheer). would
even submit to a spanking but only from the foxy sisters-in-law, provided
they abstained from the type of buttock-missing belt-wielding corporal
antics by which our Great She- Elephant used to brutalize our upper thighs
and lower backs.

all is well here and this boy's life has even gotten a wee saucy as of late
due to the attentions of one Xiao Zhou, a chinese woman with whom i spend
time on occasion. she has an X and a Zed in her name - how cool is that!?
she can scrounge up some mean dumplings and dotes on me something fierce,
both of which help with the rationalizations employed during the two hour
train trips to Kyoto to see her.

she does not know miss shoe, in case anyone wondered, but she has eaten
chicken brain.

the trip on down to Yakushima proved to be a much needed and wholly positive
one in many ways. the island is as lovely as one would expect of a World
Heritage Site, and i have never seen a rain forest give way to snowy
mountains exceeding treeline. just bizarre juxtapositions to behold, like
mossy rocks in a snowfield. and huge gnarled cedar trees that are older
than the J man and even Buddha.

four days of hiking up and over the main peak saw heaps of rain and snow
every day, with bouts of sunshine mixed in, and y'all can imagine my
shorts-wearing self did not dally too long at any point along the trail,
which on the ridge was knee-deep in snow. just outstanding scenery and i
had almost forgotten my conviction that hikers are probably the most
generous, pleasant group of folks anywhere. but one must be wary of the
nipponese when it comes to the traditional snack sharing, lest one be forced
by protocol to choke down the smoked squid eggs and dried clams fried in
seaweed foisted upon one as i was.

probably the highlight of this trip was the pair of hot springs i visited
after descending that cold ass mountain. the first of these consisted of
three natural pools formed in the rock shore and only available when the
tide goes out, most of the time being submerged. hit these on an
exceptionally starry night and it was something else. the other was on
kyushu and may not qualify as a hot spring as there was no water involved,
only a sand bath. it was pretty freaky to get buried under a foot of hot
sand by old ladies with shovels, but well worth it. i always used to make
fun of the nipponese propensity to take holidays to hot spring resorts, but
now i understand. they can really do you right.

that was about it for the trip - seven days and eight ferry rides. oh yeah
- went to Chiran, the staging base for most of the Okinawa campaign
kamikazes, aka Floating Chrysanthemums. they have a museum chock full of
last pictures and last letters home to families and loved ones. pretty
powerful museum, that was.

on a somewhat deeper note, have been thinking a lot about the old man
lately. i know not how often he crosses your minds - mine not too often for
obvious reasons. but what with asian travels and chinese sauciness, i feel
like he would actually have taken a keen interest in some things i have been
doing, you know? not just the sort of obligatory parental interest, but on
a personal level. Lord knows none of us quite understood his fascination
with this corner of the world. i used to think that he must have
entertained a healthy appreciation for the wimmins over here - much like
myself - but considering the buxom alpha female he married that does not
hold much water. it is not so important now, of course, but there sure are
some things i would like to have a chinwag with him about.

all y'all too, for that matter, and it is coming in a matter of weeks. some
details have yet to be reckoned but this much is known: april 16 to may 10
will see my return stateside. it may sound like a lot of time but it ain't,
so let me run this by y'all. either the weekend of april 22 or 29
(saturdays) it would be a good and great thing to gather at the pedernales
with just the familia. would be? strike that from the record - it will be!
so make haste to clear your calendar and pencil that in. danna, do what
you can. ricardo, if your job is truly so high-falutin' you should not have
any trouble getting off. namuski, could we drive down friday morn? john of
the taj mahal, i know you need notice and now you have it. dearest mama, if
some horrid Angela Landsbury rerun is on you'll just have to miss it.
stevo? am coming to see your ass in orlando!

but i implore y'all - do not let something keep you away from the pedernales
in april. it has been many a moon and i need to visit with y'all. y'all
need to visit with each other. we all need to pay homage to the Great
She-Elephant. take friday off and get there for an extra day, for Pete's
sake. i will let you know which weekend shortly - probably the 29th but not
positive yet, and figure y'all do not want to have easter there.

it would seem as if a whole lot is happening with everyone. john is
building the casa and keeping it together in spite of the odds, jean helen
is going to drop come springtime, doug is going to begin estrogen
injections, ricardo is going to continue to make something out of nothing
and nothing out of something, and danna is going to get back to hallowed
ground at long last. what a smile. what a big smile that is. best news i
have heard since dad bought the pedernales.

did y'all go down there rich doug and john?

alrighty then - this has been monstrously long. okay - bye bye. hope all
y'all have found the Noughties to be as fine a vintage as i have so far and
may this belated new years note find you all faring well with mo' glide in
yo' stride and mo' dip in yo' hip.

my work is done. rolland
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