Opening Installment of "First Contact", Breaking Through!

Detina is a science fiction novel which I started writing in senior high school, but like many of my earlier projects, I never managed to complete. It concerns a gang of boys growing up in rural Australia in the 1980s who realize that they are not ordinary kids, but actually deepcover agents from another galaxy. Intergalactic war is summoning them back prematurely to their homeworld in the Small Magellanic Cloud, so that they can attend an unprecedented sitting of the Detinian Congress.

Concurrently, the Cold War between the western powers and the Soviet Union and her allies is threatening to go hot. From the macro to the micro levels, the dogs of war are howling!

Exiting the wormhole to the Small Magellanic Cloud, courtesy of Bing Image Creator

(To preview the first five chapters of Detina on Wattpad, click here. To read them on my Crowded World mirror site, click here.)  

Cracking the Code

For many years, JavaScript evaded me. I wanted it for my website, I could see its potential for my life, but I just couldn't wrap my head around how it worked. It was a fruit I couldn't reach, a nut that wouldn't crack. I made a promising debut in the biz, you might say: I grew up with a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, and learned BASIC at an early age. I even programmed a video game in Year 10 Computer Studies, a racing car simulation with sprite and treacherous track. That was in the age of the Commodore 64. When the Internet arrived, half a decade later, I fancied that it could provide the platform for a new kind of literature, an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure style of fiction. I started to write a novel which I hoped would be like the magic book from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: a device that was more storyteller than mere story, bespoke but bewilderingly cuttingedge, an intuitive, intelligent machine. HTML was cool and easy to pick up, but it wasn't interactive enough for my goal. I soon realized that only JavaScript could deliver the desired dynamism. Unfortunately, computer languages had evolved since my TA forays, and this new lingo looked a hell lot more complicated than BASIC. What is it with these functions, attributes and elements? I remember asking myself, frustrated; what does object-oriented mean? Looking back, I can see that I had succumbed to the same misconception that scuppered my efforts to learn German in Year 11: I did not appreciate that every language has its own grammar. As language leaners know, grammar is the hardest part. Master the grammar, and the rest will follow.  


This breakthrough was 20 years in the making, but something miraculous has happened in the past few months... I suddenly get JavaScript! Of course, these days I no longer write fiction... I suppose you could say that fiction writes me. Life is a code (Baudrillard), a narrative (Lacan), and JavaScript is the interface which enables me to read this code, one line at a time...

We all have algorithms running in our minds at any time, unfathomable routines, an endless chain of signification (to put it in Lacanese). Functions waiting to be triggered, like samskaras lurking in the murk. The first step is to codify what it already there, conscious and unconscious, constructive and destructive. Then you can set about reprogramming yourself. Currently JavaScript can predict how far I can drive from home, estimate my tax due  (var taxdue = taxableIncome * .19;), and even tell me when it is time to move out. Piece by piece, my personal assistant is taking shape. The Grand Algorithm is here!

We're All Floating

Have you ever read a haiku poem? Not only are they fascinating compositions in themselves, as fragile as a cherry blossom, but they also open a window into the culture and the consciousness of the Japanese people.

For those who don't know, haiku comprise three nonrhyming lines of five, seven and five syllables. To our Occidental mind, they appear too fleeting and incomplete. We feel that there should be something more substantial. If we think Orientally, however, we will realize that they reveal something less... that is, the vacuum which encapsulates the core of the Japanese experience. Just like the empty gestures of the tea ceremony (茶道), they condense the essential nothingness of the Universe. This is the original meaning of the "Floating World", in my opinion at least.

The following haiku, by Matsuo Basho (松尾 芭蕉) is said to be one of the most profound achievements in Japanese literature, but is only seven words long:

"Furuike ya!
Kawazu tobikomu
Mizu no oto."

("Oh -- ancient pond!
A frog jumps in,
The sound of water.")

It should be noted that the "ya" is not even a real word, and it is merely deployed as a "state breaker", a crack of Zen revelation. I studied quite a few other haiku today and most of them were deceptively simple, but yet deeply mysterious at the same time. They make me wonder about how the same patterns coil round and round and in upon themselves, conchstyle. In Europe landscaping generally entails elaborate grounds with avenues of grand elms; in Japan the traditional garden is just a raked expanse of gravel rimmed by midget brutally pruned bonsai trees. Haiku are the bonsai of the poetry world, you might say -- severely pruned and bare.

A more contemporary state breaker can be heard in the song We're All Water, written and sang by Yoko Ono, and released on John Lennon's protest album, Some Time in New York City. Ono might be a terrible singer and the whole production is shambolic, but the curious structure of the piece redeems it. Each verse is like a haiku, with three lines of five or seven syllables each, for example this one:

"There may not be much difference
Between Manson and the Pope,
If we press their smile..."

Three is not a particularly rhythmic number at the best of times, at least on a Rock record, but here it lends an exotic, enigmatic quality. Listening to Ono's song, you might find yourself hanging on, waiting for the missing fourth line. Have the courage to let go, however, and you could fall into an abyss, one that you never even noticed there right before your feet... (For more of my discoveries regarding manifestation and the void, click here.)

Midsummer Magic

Call me naïve, call me paranoid even, but I used to worry that it would be hard meeting people in Iceland.  I used to get obsessed about it, back in the planning phase of this trip, and to combat my fears I would conduct rituals, Paper Burning ceremonies in fact, in my dingy sharehouse in Tokyo. Granted, I had met plenty of nice people on my previous visit here in 2003, among them Akiko a Japanese girl who turned into a lover, and Rodolphe the freak from the Alps who ambushed me in the mossy canyons of Þingvellir, and tried to seduce me. Great folk they all were, but they weren't locals, and it was the locals that I was really yearning to make my acquaintances with. Cute Asian girls are always a pleasure to encounter, but I can encounter plenty of them in Asia. It might well be easier hooking up with Japanese women outside of Japan than it is in their homeland, but truth be told I am over Japan after all my recent conflicts, and I want to take a break from it all. I need time out from all that stress, that Bushido bullshit! And visiting Iceland is such a rare luxury for me right now, I want to make the most of it. Icelanders are the rarest of species, anyway: how often do you see them in your home town, or at your nearest airport even? You don't see any, that's the thing... they are as elusive as elves. Apart from the staff at my youth hostel and the odd waiter or bartender downtown, I don't think I interacted with any real Icelanders on my 2003 trip -- and I was in their own country no less, in their capital city! This time around, having forked out so much for airfares and ripoff hotels, flown halfway across the world, etc, this time around I wanted to do things right, and meet the people who actually live here, rather than fellow travelers like myself. That of course can be hard when you are staying in a dorm in a youth hostel on the edge of town, and you only have six days to spend on the island. To maximize my chances of adventure, I concluded, I needed to have some kind of plan, a little piece of insurance up my sleeve. Obviously, I could have resolved to go out and network hard as soon as I touched down at Keflavíkurflugvöllur and that is indeed what I have been doing these past few days, networking my ass off so to speak! But, back in the planning phases of this trip, I required something more immediate to soothe my anxieties, something a little bit magical perhaps, something vindictively voodoo even. That is where Paper Burning came in. Call it irrational, call it superstitious nonsense, but Paper Burning seems to work. It can make your wishes come true, whether you believe in it or not. It is my key to manifestation.

Gateway between the worlds: an underpass, in Reykjavik (Iceland, 2006)

The process is so simple it's silly: in essence, Paper Burning is the transformation of psychic energy into its physical equivalent, the alchemy of -E into the "E" of Einstein's famous equation. Fire and prayer serve as the interface, the gate between the two worlds. You might liken it to mining Jung's realm of indestructible energy, or sparking a cluster of coincidences, summoning them into existence, and hoping they will play out to your advantage! That's one way of looking at it. Another way is to consider it the recycling of past events: episodes which have happened to someone else, somewhere, at sometime; episodes which you seek to recreate in your own life, right here, right now. In order for the process to work something connected to that past event, something linked to it by psychic energy, needs to be destroyed so that the psychic pattern it represents can cross the threshold into the physical realm, and (re)manifest. When I Paper Burn I first hunt down some person describing, in their own words, an experience they have had, usually online on blogs and forums and the like. Anything that looks genuine and authentic is good for me, for example stories about lucky windfalls, falling in love, ecstatic epiphanies, sex with supermodels, that kind of thing. Or for this particular occasion, the experience of going to Iceland, meeting tons of nice people, making lifetime friends here! Those are the experiences I wanted to manifest this trip: longterm friends and wanton sex! Paper Burning manifested my relationship with C., and it got me a kiss out of the blue with Akiko on the lawns of Shinjuku Gyouen (新宿御苑), so surely it could mine me a few babes and buddies in Reykjavík, and guarantee me a rollicking time here. Truth be told, however, my soul has been longing for something more luminous than just babes and buddies and rollicking fun recently, and I find myself hungering for an accomplice instead of a mere acquaintance, a Twin Flame rather than just a girlfriend, a collaborator or collaborators who can allow me to attain the Divinity in the flesh that I have sometimes glimpsed in my dreams... in short, post C. I yearn for no less than a soulbuddy or coterie of soulbuddies from another dimension, Rock star friends to deliver me the Rock star lifestyle I deserve, and dearly await! Listening to Icelandic music always gives me the suspicion that I am missing out, alienated from the art and adventure which ought to be my birthright. "Born in the wrong family, the wrong town, the wrong country," as I might have complained as a kid, growing up in regional Australia. Back then I used to call this malaise the "Goonie Feeling", and I fantasized about escape through all manner of exotic means: becoming a writer or a famous artist, a child actor, a pop star, a global citizen, etc. Assuming that my misplaced birth was the root of my woes, I figured that all I needed to do was to change my abode, and my dream life would develop around me, spontaneously. Thus my life of wandering commenced, the search for belonging in farflung lands: interestingly, the Promised Land I sought was always overseas, north not south, temperate not arid, erudite and articulate, emotionally intelligent, savvy and sophisticated, youthful but wiser than its years. The quest led me to Japan but much to my dismay, Utopia was not waiting for me there, alas. Japan is cool and all, I love the trains and vending machines, the endless concrete jungles, but it is not the social Promised Land that I was expecting it to be. If my cousin Kellie had been there to join me then perhaps it might have turned out differently, we could have established our colony. But Kellie flaked out on me, she ditched me, and after several years of life in the Far East I was compelled to resume the search for my (now) private Zion, my (personal) Canaan. Almost immediately, I settled my sights on Iceland, a country I have always held a fascination for, ever since I was a wee bairn. I booked a flight here in 2003, and stayed about six days. Amazingly, the place exceeded my expectations, it was even better than I dared to hope it would be. For the first time in my life, it seemed I had finally found the place to call home. If only it wasn't so hard to get to, and to emigrate to!

Corner of Frakkastigur and Njalsgata, in Reykjavik (Iceland, 2006)

Sometime last year I had a dream in which I was in an interior space, a long room of some kind, which was supposedly in Iceland. I can't really remember what was going on; while I often dream of being in huge parties, the atmosphere here felt sedate, more like a library than a nightclub. I was chilling on a couch, and presently I became aware that I was sitting next to this yellowhaired guy. We started talking about life and the universe, philosophy and politics and poetry, and I soon I realized that this man was going to change my life, or at least encourage me to become the real me, whatever that might mean. When I woke up, I knew it was an important dream, it was a dream with meaning. It was an inspirational dream, no less, and I used to think about it a lot during my relationship with C., when I should have been infatuated with her. I didn't know whether it would actually come true or if it was just symbolic of my Icelandic hopes: Freudian or Jungian, wish fulfillment or astral traveling, who knows. But I did remember it, and it did stay with me. That was one dream which crossed the threshold, always so foreboding and forbidding, from the unconscious, to the conscious mind... 

Memories of this dream played through my mind as I readied the Paper Burning apparatus for action, a few months before my recent flight. I had found a choice snippet to burn, which was now printed out on a pristine leaf of white paper, and which read beguilingly: "Though I can say that if you are doing the pub crawl around Reykjavik after 1 am on a Friday or Saturday, you will end up with lots of new friends who are very talkative and outgoing." This read, in fact, like the perfect fodder for a Paper Burning spell: disposable, just an anonymous quote from the Internet, but the way it had been appropriated gave it an edge of sorcery, of the sort you might encounter in Bronisław Malinowski, or vintage Harry Potter. I installed the sheet of paper atop a vessel crusted from the detritus of previous fires, and ignited a cigarette lighter. The vessel was actually a mini altar bell given to me by Soka Gakkai (創価学会), that mad Buddhist order to which I belong (and doubtless they would accuse me of sacrilege if they knew how I was about to treat it!) I settled on to the floor in front of the bell in my bedroom, crouched seiza style, and lit the edge of the page. Flame crept around the perimeter of the page, browning it, bending it, and lifting it with a draft of warm air. For a moment I was worried the blazing leaf might lift itself out of the bell and drop on to the wooden floor of my room. As previously related, my sharehouse is made of tatami mats and paper walls and wood, and it would burn down in a flash if it was set alight. I have to be careful with this shit, so I poked the page back into the center of the bell with a pen, ready to extinguish the flame if things got out of hand. Peak flamage subsided shortly enough, however, and the sheet curled up onto itself, disintegrating into flakes of ash and puffs of gray smoke. I bowed towards my Soka Gakkai gohonzon (sacred scroll) hanging on the wall, and chanted through the smoke three times: "Nam myou hou ren ge kyou" ("南無妙法蓮華経"). I'm not really sure why I do this, since I don't really believe in Nichiren, the Lotus Sutra, and all that jazz associated with the gohonzon. Maybe you could call this "hedging your bets": if Paper Burning didn't work, then at least Nichiren might do the trick, and grant me my wishes. That was probably my motivation. My Soka Gakkai friends would probably be appalled, but this is the system I employ, and it works for me. Freestyling forever... that is the way I play! You can't pin me down to any one style... no way.

The Sirkus, the "only bar in Reykjavik!" (Iceland, 2006)

I used to worry about meeting people in Iceland, but it turns out that this was a misguided fear. The reality of the social scene in Reykjavík is, the city is so small, it is really easy to get to know people. After just a few nights downtown doing the Runtur, I have started to notice and recognize the same old faces -- the Reykjavík gang. And because the city is so isolated, people are interested in you as a newcomer. This is the kind of place where you don't need to exchange phone numbers or business cards -- if you meet someone cool, chances you will bump into them again pretty soon, just walking down the street. And they will remember you. On Friday afternoon, while the wind blew, and I wandered around town checking stuff out, I popped into a corner store to buy a burger for lunch -- and who else was standing there at the counter but my old cocainehunting buddy from Thursday night! I have forgotten what his name was, and perhaps he never gave it to me, but he has become my first true friend in Iceland, my first Icelandic Goonie. Gods willing, more are on their way!

Saturday was Midsummer's Day and I was back down in the Miðbær (midtown) at the Cafe Rosenburg, nursing a hangover from the previous night, and submitting it to my usual hair of the dog therapy (ie, I was drinking another beer!) The Cafe Rosenburg was decorated with model ships, an old piano, and jazz instruments hanging from the walls. Outside was a beautiful day: brilliant blue sky, sunshine and a hearty North Atlantic breeze. I was drinking my beer, and to pass the time (which often seems to expand so enormously here in Iceland, especially when I am wandering around) I flipped through a copy of the Reykjavik Mag which I had discovered on one of the tables. I paused to read an article about a young cartoonist and playwright named Hugleikur Dagsson. According to the article and other stuff I have seen on the Web since then, Hugleikur is famous for his stage play Forðist okkur ("Avoid Us") and his comic books Elskið okkur ("Love Us"), Drepið okkur ("Kill Us") and Ríðið okkur ("Fuck Us"). And he also wrote another work called Bjargið okkur ("Save Us"). There was a photo of the guy in the magazine with short hair and slacker T-shirt and horn-rimmed glasses, looking uncannily like my old mate Dave Harris from Palm Beach in Sydney. (Dave is also an artist and an activist, although I haven't heard from him in years. I wondered what he would think of Reykjavík if he ever made it here.)

I ordered another beer, stuffed the Reykjavik Mag into my slingbag as a souvenir, and picked up a copy of the ever informative Reykjavik Grapevine newspaper, which the Rosenberg was kind enough to stock. Leafing through it, I stumbled upon an article about Midsummer's Day, which was being marked today. It stoked my interest, so I started to read the report which follows, quietly, as I sipped my beer:

In pagan times, holidays were marked by the phases of the moon and the changing of the seasons. The longest day of the year, Midsummer (actually the first day of summer), was a celebratory holiday that revolved around the goddess Freyja, whose primary areas of expertise were sexuality and fertility. You can imagine the gusto with which this holiday was celebrated -- after the long, brutal winter, summer's finally here, and celebrations are in honor of the Goddess of Love? You bet it was a good time. 

Not that things have changed very much since then. Even today, the arrival of summer is greeted with great enthusiasm, as you'll find that on the first remotely mild day of the year, Icelanders pour into the streets wearing skirts and t-shirts. But there are also a few superstitions surrounding Midsummer (due to begin on 21 June, 4:26AM) that have managed to survive. 

One of the biggest ones is, you can roll around in the dew at dawn on Midsummer and any wish you make will come true. This is risky, particularly in an urban area like Reykjavik, but people still do this... Midsummer is also a great time to gather magical rocks and plants, as they're supposedly at the height of their power on this day. I'd suggest getting out of town that day, going for a walk down by the beach, or in a patch of woods, and looking around for small stones that look magical to you. Pick up this stone, put it in your pocket, and keep it -- you've got your new magic talisman.

Boulders, anchor and crane, beneath a blue midsummer sky (Iceland, 2006)

Well, I am sorry to report that I didn't roll around in the dew naked on Midsummer Day 2006, but I did pick up some interesting lava stones down by the waterfront, and perhaps more importantly, I had in my credit a number of Paper Burning spells conducted in Japan which were doubtless swirling out there in the ether, biding their time, just waiting for their chance to do their thing and manifest. And manifest they did, in spectacular form! As I wrote above, June 24 had developed into a wonderfully sunny and beautiful summer's day, and it was the weekend (Saturday no less), with everybody in the mood to party. Thursday had been incredible, Friday had been sensational, and while Saturday had only just begun I could already sense that Saturday was resonating at a higher dimensional vibration altogether than all the other days... in short, Saturday was otherwordly. And who knows, perhaps it was all from the feminine Freyja energy in the air? I put the newspaper in my slingbag, drained my glass, and left the Rosenberg. After walking around for a while I landed at the Sirkus, the site of my adventures on Thursday night. As I approached the bar to buy a drink, I realized that the aforementioned Hugleikur Dagsson was standing at the other end of the counter, beer in hand. I quickly dug out the copy of the Reykjavik Mag which I had confiscated as a souvenir, just to check that I wasn't hallucinating. It was, indeed, him -- the guy standing across the room with a beer in his hand was the same comic and writer and artist I had just been reading about at the Rosenberg. He looked like he had clawed his way out of the page of the magazine, complete with horn-rimmed glasses and slacker T-shirt, and a Dave Harris smirk. Scanning the article, I noticed that Dagsson had been asked: "What is your favorite bar in Reykjavik?" And he had replied: "Sirkus. It is the only bar in Reykjavik."

I will drink to that.

I ordered myself a beer, and walked upstairs to the loft, where they were showing the soccer World Cup. When I entered the loft I thought to myself: Wow, this is the place from the dream, the dream set in the long interior room. This is where I am going to meet that guy, the guy that changes my life! I sat down, and this feeling of déjà vu intensified... the mood, lighting, dogeaten couches, carpet on the floor, and my own state of mind were all the same as they had been in the original dream. I thought: If that dream really was a premonition, I just have to sit back and let it happen! I don't have to force anything. So I reclined in my couch, and tried to concentrate on the game for a while, gripped in a rising excitement. From time to time I looked around, to see if anything truly luminous was going on. There wasn't, just guys slouched in couches all around me, some of them with trainershod feet sprawled on coffee tables, watching the World Cup. I was almost starting to lose hope, when finally this yellowhaired guy walked in from behind me and said. "Do you mind if I sit next to you?" I looked up and realized: Oh my God, that's the guy from the dream! Its really him! A yellowhaired guy in jeans and slacker T-shirt and bright trainers, flopping down into the seat next to me. He looked like he had just emerged out of my dreams, to grace real life. 

We started talking and after some formalities, he announced that he was the guitarist from Kimono, a band I have been listening to since 2003. I'm not sure he told me his name but based on stuff I have read online since, I am pretty sure he is Alex. Been touring for years, now back in Iceland. I told him that their Japanese Policeman in Scandinavia was one of my favorite songs and he remarked, "Wow, I didn't know we had that much of a following." We talked about earthquakes and life on the road, the Berlin rock scene, the Reykjavik rock scene, and so on. I asked him if there were any other musicians in the room with us right now, anyone I might know. "Yeah, there are a few," he replied, tantalizingly. 

The game ended, Alex made his leave, and not long after I bailed as well. I headed out on to the street thinking to myself: Man, this is one magical place. Everytime I come here, something extraordinary happens to me here! I wonder what will happen next?

Walking the streets of Reykjavik under a blue midsummer sky, looking for some action (Iceland, 2006)

After that epiphany at Sirkus, the rest of the day was an anti-climax. I wandered down into the eastern reaches of the city, down to the water where the wind blew hard, and the gulls wheeled low. I could have spent a lifetime there just photographing the houses, the cars, the dwarf trees. I read National Geographic magazines in Kofi Tómasar Frænda ("Uncle Tom's Cabin") in the evening, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. Finally, I got up, and commenced roaming again. Gatecrashed what seemed to be a private party at Hressó, sometime around 9pm. Plenty of people there, but it wasn't luminous. Eventually I left and moved on to Nelly's, which was rammed to the rafters. This was where the party was at: everyone was going crazy on the dancefloor upstairs, shaking their hands around like they just didn't care, etc. I got so drunk I fell down the stairs, and then decided it was time to call it a night. I returned to my youth hostel along the waterfront, watching the play of light on Esjan, and the sun orbiting the cold horizon. I could have spent the rest of the night out there, sitting on a rock, gazing into the grim hinterlands, that vast country of which Reykjavík serves as just an introduction. I remembered Alex saying that The Vines are pretty popular in Iceland, and that Nick Cave is actually a frequent visitor to the island. He apparently wrote the music for an Icelandic movie recently. Looking up at Esjan as I resumed my long trudge, I imagined I was Nick walking by himself on the lava beach in the middle of the night, striding home from a gig like a ghost in the mist. This is certainly the kind of country which would appeal to him, I thought to myself as I walked. Even more importantly, it is the kind of country which appeals to me!

Techscapes and Macrobiotic Highs: An Afternoon in Aoyama

Tokyo is the ultimate urban jungle and life here presents you with endless vistas of cunningly contrived concoctions of glass, concrete and steel, everywhere you look, and seemingly everywhere you go. Whether downtown or in the 'burbs, at home or on the streets, futuristic scenes surround you, seduce you, and astound you to the extent you start to feel like you're the star of your very own Blade Runner fantasy, playing in a cinema in another dimension. Futurism is the name of the game here, the dominant architectural theme, and it has been entrenched for so long it has written itself into the fossil record of the city, as well as the DNA of its inhabitants. It's a shrine to speed, a temple to technology; frenetic as a Drum&Bass track, and just as relentless. Sometimes it is just all too noisy, and all too totalitarian, and you long for a bit of old fashioned peace, a bit of the original 和 ("harmony", the former name for Japan). Interestingly enough, not all of the futurism in Tokyo is new, and some of it looks decidedly dated... that might seem paradoxical until you realize that futurism is a movement not an era, and tomorrow is a day that never dawns. Follow the tracks of the Yamanote Line between Kanda and Akihabara, for example, and you will find older incarnations of the genre, pylons, noodle shops dug under the train lines, slabs of concrete corroded by rust, untidy bundles of wires strung up wherever they will hang, and archaic air-conditioning vents spinning in the morning humidity... pretty it ain't but back in its time this was probably the most high-tech place on Earth, and the very vision of a glorious future. Who were the dreamers who imagined this city into being? I ask myself sometimes, when I am wandering around, what inspired their stupendous leap of imagination? If futurism is just a style, in other words, who invented it, and why? I believe that the official Futurism, the one that gets a capital F, was an Italian artistic movement, an anarchist movement of sorts with Fascist complications, which flared into life in the early 20th Century. Leading proponents of the movement, notably Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Giacomo Balla, and Umberto Boccioni, glorified fast cars and rogue locomotives and good factory mud, scorned women, proclaimed that war was "the world's only hygiene", and proposed a Khmer Rouge style solution to the "problem" of tradition. According to the Futurist manifesto and the manifestos which followed, museums and libraries should be burnt to the ground or drowned, and the city torn down and built again, from scratch, by every new generation. "Time and Space died yesterday," Marinetti wrote in the first manifesto, published in 1909. "We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed." I don't know if there was any direct link between the European Futurists and Japan, although the Axis would later lead them into an ideological marriage, for a short time at least. Perhaps it doesn't matter whether there was a connection or not, this might rather be an example of synchronicity, of the Jungian kind. The way I figure it, in modern societies we all have a vision of how the future should look, each according to our own hopes and fears: it could be hyper-consumerist, neo-communalist, conformist, the brainwashed masses of 1984, or the individualist paradise symbolized by the jetpack and the Martian colonies in the works of Robert A. Heinlein. Others might imagine a world which is pacifist, Deep Ecologist, or perhaps populated by Mad Max warriors roaming the deserts fighting Google and its cyborg spawn. Disparate visions these are indeed, but where they intersect collective dreams emerge, lowest common denominator blueprints: in our case rockets and the atomic bomb, freeways and the motorcar, more recently celebrity culture, TV, and the Internet. Everything shiny and sci-fi, mind you, everyone air-brushed and glittery (and on that matter, note that you never see rust on The Enterprise. Nor do they have any astrologers or Feng Shui geomancers on the bridge! Why is that? What kind of technocentrism is being pushed?) In Asia, things turned out shiny and sci-fi, too, but much of the detail is different. Why so? I speculate that there was in fact a homegrown futurism in Japan, a Zen/Shinto futurism, which culminated not just in the Mitsubishi Zero, but also Doraemon, Gundam, anime, and all these self-flushing toilets you find here today. Futurism may have dreamed of demolishing the ancient cities of Europe but it never succeeded there, the sway of the past was too strong. Tokyo, on the other hand, has always been a city in constant flux -- a chaotic frenzy of construction and destruction -- and Marinetti's Year Zero fantasies finally found their realization beneath a Pacific sky. Accordingly, I consider Tokyo to be one of the world's foremost "techscapes" -- an environment in which the landscape has been totally subsumed by the laws and logic of the megalopolis, and the technology which enables it. It is also a city so detailed, but yet so vast, you could spend years here and keep making amazing discoveries. I discovered something amazing today, actually, with my old girlfriend Akiko: the new Prada showroom in Aoyama. The latter half of this post concerns that discovery. A little earlier in the day, Akiko and I dined at one of Tokyo's quality vegetarian restaurants, Hanada Rosso, which the first half of this post will describe. All in all it was a very cool afternoon indeed, and the coolest aspect of the whole thing is, I believe that Paper Burning made it happen. It is a bold claim, but I stand by it!

High-tech beehive: Prada Showroom in Aoyama (Japan, 2004)

Branded as Tokyo's version of Milan's Via Montenapoleone and one of the top three shopping and entertainment hubs in the city, Aoyama (青山) and the neighboring Omotesandou (表参道) precinct is jammed with quirky boutiques, cute cafes, beauty salons, and even a United Nations University campus. There are plenty of restaurants as well, ranging from sushi joints to expensive French and Turkish eateries. Today with Akiko, a vehement vegetarian, I ventured to a classy macrobiotic restaurant called Hanada Rosso. Hanada Rosso has a policy which states, uncompromisingly: "Non-meat, non-milk, non-egg, non-chemical". When the menu appeared, Akiko and I both ordered the same dish: the Tempe-Burger, a tofu contrivance costing ¥1050. Possibly I followed her lead in ordering here, I am not sure why. But it was a good choice: not only was it delicious, but it left me with a peculiar feeling of satisfaction after eating it -- a kind of purity you might say, a sense of clarity, a macrobiotic high! I felt satisfied but not full at all. Perhaps it was because this food was spiritual food, free of harmful chemicals, lovingly prepared, with no bad dead animal karma to go along with it. Or perhaps it was because of the Korean Shizandra berry smart drug I had ingested just before the date, or even just because I was so glad to see Akiko again, after all our time apart!

Vegetarians visiting Japan often complain about their problems finding suitable food in the country. John Howley maintains a list of Japanese vegetarian restaurants on his website, mentioning only 20 establishments for the Greater Tokyo area -- a conurbation of 20 million people. So, that it is roughly one vegetarian restaurant for every million people (of course, there must be many which have flown under Howley's radar, but still, you get the drift!) Japan is not a vegetarian Utopia by any means, and this fact might seem surprising given its Buddhist past and all, the veneration shown to non-animate entities such as rivers and stones. People don't go heavy on the beef like they do in Australia or the States, but there is usually a certain amount of meat mixed into every meal in Japan -- even tofu gets doused in shaved fish! For vegetarians like my Akiko, trying to educate the masses, all this meat can make life a misery. However, there are vegetarian restaurants around, and if you are in Tokyo, I would recommend a visit to the Hanada Rosso. As well as a delicious range of main courses, the menu features organic beer and wine, soy shakes and organic coffee. The restaurant is located on the second floor of the Sleeve Building, 6-11-1 South Aoyama. The telephone number is (03) 3406 1264.

Having enjoyed a memorable hour or two at Hanada Rosso, playing some personality quiz games I have lately employed for nampa, it was time to hit the streets, and look at the surrounding attractions. We walked into the nearby Idee interior design shop to admire its ample Scandinavian and European displays. It was there, looking out the window, I caught sight of a particularly weird building in the distance, a building audacious even by Tokyo standards -- a crystalline pentagonal green pyramid which Akiko identified as the new Prada showroom. Although neither of us are brand label junkies (nothing could be further from the truth), we decided to make a beeline to the hive-like Prada showroom, to see what the fuss is all about.

Designed by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the building rises from the street like a kaleidoscope, covered with bulbous, diamond-shaped windows. Once inside, those bulbous windows start to distort your senses, making the showroom seem both very big and very small, both at the same time! In fact, "kaleidoscopic" is the best way to describe this building, which is more a piece of art than just a mere showroom. Things always seem to shapeshift when you are inside it. While the outside is green crystal, the interior is a kind of stark white/pearl color which is both soft (in the carpet sense) and futuristic, reminiscent of a UFO. TV sets dangle on stalks from the ceiling, like anemone hunting for prey. Stairs lead to deep-set lounge recesses, where windows afford views of local landmarks, such as Roppongi Hills. It is all very cool, and I couldn't resist snapping off some photos on my keitai phone, even though I was reprimanded for it. 

We ended the afternoon at a cafe where Akiko showed me her iPod, a device I had never seen up close before. Scrolling through her Beatles collection over a Cafe Mocha, I had to confess her contraption made my own Sony MP3 player look a little bit silly, a little redundant. Such a shiny toy her iPod was, high-tech, but also organic... in many ways it was just like the organic high-tech Prada Showroom we had just explored, or a polished stone in a shrine that had miraculously come to life, and revealed its spirit to the world! Like the Tempe-Burger I had consumed earlier in the day, just like that Shizandra smart drug, this gadget seemed designed to lift your consciousness into a higher state of being. It wasn't Japanese, but it was still Shinto, and it was still Zen. It was not only Zen, but it was also a vision, and a visitor from the future. A future which, even now, is slowly dragging itself into manifestation, into being. The iPods are merely the vanguards of what is to come. Much as I hate to admit it, the vegetarians are probably much the same. Thus we have been warned. Watch this space for more!

101 Reykjavik (By Hallgrimur Helgason)

Every now and then you read a book or watch a movie which changes the way you want to live your life. It's the ultimate compliment to a work of art if it makes you want to start talking like its lead character, or model your own life on theirs. It doesn't happen very often. The last time it happened to me was when I watched Pulp Fiction in the cinema on a quiet sunny Sunday in Sydney, NSW, Australia, and I knew I had found something which connected with me. All those cheesy jokes and cheap suits and retro references! Such brutality, such splendid banality! From then, my way of living was forever changed. Recently I came upon a book which seems like an Icelandic version of Pulp Fiction, minus the gangsters and gore. Strip away Tarantino's violence and what do you get -- endless witty jokes about rock bands and TV shows. Life in the media age. This is the style of writing which dominates Hallgrímur Helgason's 1996 novel 101 Reykjavik. It is kind of like a Tarantino take on day-to-day life, like going to the shops for milk or hanging out with your buddies in the bar, and packed with thousands of reference-dropping commentaries. Ashing a cigarette leads to a reference to David Bowie, "ashes to ashes". Characters don't leave a house, but make an "Elvis exit". 101 Reykjavik is the kind of novel packed with so much 90s-style referential wordplay that, when you're finished reading, you think: "Hey, this would make a good movie." In fact, it has already been made into a movie, directed by Baltasar Kormakur, and starring Victoria Abril.

Smoking in the snow: 101 Reykjavik, by Hallgrimur Helgason.

Other reviewers have described this novel as the "pathetic narration" of an "emotionally retarded slacker whose most intimate relationship is the one he cultivates with his porn collection" (Baltimore City Paper Online.) A little bit harsh, I think -- the lead character, Hlynur Björn Hafsteinsson does indeed enjoy porn, like many folk, but that is no reason to crucify him. He is no doubt a voyeur, but I think Hlynur's absolute obsession -- his core obsession if you like -- is what he calls the "theater of the real". He likes movies, but not to follow the stories -- just to check up on what the actors are doing these days. In one scene he watches a video of live births in American hospitals. In another episode he sneaks into a bedroom where two young people are having sex, pulls up a chair and begins offering critiques! This is how he describes it:

I gradually realize this is the first documentary I've seen about the Icelandic species. And I've got to say it reminds me a bit of Icelandic movies. CHILDREN OF NATURE. There's no plot in it. No angle variation whatsoever. Looks like we're in for an epic feature. Talk about dragging it out. Start to think about the zapper in my inside pocket. Saw a nature documentary the other day about those cameramen who make wildlife movies. Some British pony-tailer who dug himself into a hole for a fortnight in the hope of catching a shot of a hare shag. But he didn't even so much as get a hard-on in those two weeks. Maybe I just don't have the patience.

The Guardian writes: "this lusciously deadpan narrative - dazzlingly translated by Brian Fitzgibbon - is more than funny. It is not so much peppered with gags as infused with a wild, anarchic take on the world that is caustically, worryingly truthful." According to this other site I found: "Hlynur (the protaganist) is a true product of our postmodern global culture. Well beyond slackerdom, he lives at home with his mother and depends on social welfare. He's a quick-witted and articulate young man, and there's nothing wrong with him -- other than a total lack of ambition, an off-kilter sense of morality, and a nagging set of existential woes. Against the backdrop of Reykjavik's storied nightlife and amid the swelling global presence of Icelandic culture, Helgason portrays with brutal honesty and humor a young man who takes uselessness to new extremes, and for whom redemption may not be an option. 101 Reykjavik is a spectacularly inventive, darkly comic tale of depraved and inspired humanity."

The story is basically this: Hlynur is living in Reykjavík, one of my favorite cities, with his mother, who later turns out to be a lesbian. His mother gets a sexy new live-in girlfriend, who Hlynur also sleeps with. "I guess now we're fucks-in-law," he muses. Apart from that, Hlynur's life revolves around going to pubs and parties, and regular trips to the unemployment office. One of the reasons I decided to buy this book was to get an insight into Iceland's storied nightlife, since I was unable to go out when I was there last. Once I started reading, I discovered that Hlynur lives an idyllic, if aimless life, just like me. But what is wrong with being lackadaisical, what's wrong with going with the flow? That's the trouble with the world, there are no many people with aims, everybody aiming for the top... I'd rather be a bottomfeeder, fill the space that others leave behind. That is my ambition, if I must be forced to use such a term. So, I guess I have this in common with Hlynur: we're both bottomfeeders. The happiness of the unemployment lines; our freedom urgent as a blue sky, as Hakim Bey might have put it. Corporate high-flyers will never understand the simple pleasures of being alive. They can have their money, and I will take my precious moments, wherever I can find them. One day I will be dead, and they will mean no more to me.

Reykjavik 101 unloads on you like a stand-up-comedian; it is dark and cynical at times, but relentlessly clever in the wordplay department. Here is a typical extract:

The Castle at midnight. Not exactly wicked. Despite the name, it is just a cellar. "The Dungeon" might have been more apt. You step down into the past. A dire bluesy little piss hole: a murky cave, phoney brickwork on the walls, complete with (fake?) swords and armour. Prehistoric rock music spurting through the speakers, a tinny sound, like the records have been dug up in some archaeological find: Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin. "Eye of the Tiger", as it happens, when we walk in, myself, Throstur and Marri. A trip down mythology lane. Feel like I am in one of those QUANTUM LEAP episodes. Ancient Greece, except everyone's wearing jackets. Bacchus behind the bar cracking his whip, the old master torturer, fat and furious, thrashing the mob -- eternal slaves to alcohol with blistering wounds on their backs -- impressively equipped: the beer taps like levers on the torture rack, the thumbscrews tightening each time they're pulled. He can afford to laugh with the arsenal he has behind him: Hot Shots on the shelf, Black Death. Juggling his bottles like guns, he levels them at his victims, metallic spirit measures screwed to the nozzles like silencers. Uncapping the beer bottles with his teeth, he hurls them into the room like grenades, shakes Molotov cocktails. Pours boiling acids into poisoned goblets, and the customers sign their credit-card slips like they were signing their own death warrants. A highly combustible situation.

One of the things I like about Iceland is that it is so small, it is easy to get the hang of it. If you have been to Reykjavík, if even for a weekend, you have probably visited half of the sites visited in this book. It is the kind of place where everybody knows everyone, and everybody experiments with everybody else's scene. After spending some time in the heavy metal Castle, Hlynur and his crew move on to a place with a totally different scene and style of music -- Duran Duran is being played. Can you imagine young people in England or America being so promiscuous about their choice of music? It doesn't happen. Later, Hlynur confesses a love of Lionel Ritchie's 80s ballad Hello. In Iceland they seem to give everything a try; they mix and match; it's a big melting pot of influences and creativity. There is none of the genre snobbery I was brought up with in Australia: "I like techno -- there's no way I am going to that headbanger crap!" contrasted with "I can't stand that techno shit. Give me music with a bit of guitar in it!" Anyway, here are some of the cooler extracts from the book, the ones which struck me as particularly funny:

We're in a queue in front of the K-bar. There's a new bouncer who obviously hasn't done his homework. Doesn't know us. I've never seen him before, apart from the tattoo on his neck. A little bit more originality, please...

Guildy is telling the story about when he met Bryan Ferry in Amsterdam. Good story. Good music. Good view. There's a kind of Polaroid atmosphere here. One that calls for instant developments. If only Rosie would shut up. He's still trying to open himself to me:

"But I've always wanted to get back into costume design. I've done everything in hair now, everything I could do really, and I want to get out of hair and maybe work in theatre or something..."

"Yeah," I say, and manage to establish some eye contact with the video presenter sitting beside me. It works. He's obviously used to this from his TV work. I think it's what they call a cue. One glance and he knows he's on, he has to say something:

"But you HAVE actually worked in the theatre before, have you not?"

Good. We've slipped into the chat-show mode at last...

I have only been to Iceland once -- it was in late summer. Very pleasant I thought it, if a little too windy at the time -- and it amazed me with the most amazing skies I have ever seen. I will always remember that crystal clear Icelandic sky -- the sun hanging like a jewel in the blue, the clouds whizzing by just hundreds of meters off the ground. One night I saw the aurora. Next time I go to Iceland (estimated late 2005 or early 2006) I want to go in the middle of winter, like January or something. I have already started my saving campaign. I want to see what real Arctic dark and cold is all about, and I want to stay a long time -- at least six weeks. Plenty of time for hanging round boozy pubs and hotsprings -- I can hardly wait!

Here is how Reykjavik in the winter is depicted by Hallgrímur Helgason:

Reykjavik on a dark winter morning: a small town in Siberia. Snow drifting in the glow of lamp posts under a dome of darkness, enshrouding a shivering salted sea of porridge and shorelines of milk curds. Masticated frozen mush around the darkness. The mountains -- heaps of ancient debris, forsaken refuse, a junkyard from heathen times, scrap iron from the Bronze Age. Hardened glacial diarrhoea, hideous mounds of mould, encircle this transient town of cards, a camping site littered with computers doomed to disappear in the next blackout.

One other site I visited (from Sweden) also provided this pithy review: "En ung manns seksuelle følelser går når han oppdager at han har hatt sex med morens lesbiske elskerinne, og at hun antageligvis er blitt gravid." I am just trying now to guess what that this means. How about: "A young man's sexual fantasies run amok after he has sex with his mother's lesbian girlfriend." After Hlynur does eventually has sex with his mother's Spanish lover, he ponders: "I guess that makes us fucks-in-law." It's a witty remark, but also full of pathos, when you think about it. And when you think about it, there's plenty of great wit and pathos in this book! And so there should be.