Category Archives: memories

To all the Rooms Ive loved before

So the other day I was flipping through one of my old boxes of letters and and pictures from years past (which reminds me that there are still some of you who owe me letters from the Great Michaelpanda Spring Letter Exchange 2007 *wink*) and I ran across some pictures of an old apartment I used to live in. This is my current apartment... read on for old ones This got me to thinking -...

Full Entry » || Comments (13) || Posted on: 10/13/2007 10:14 PM || [Back to top]

Public Drunkenness at 50mm f1.8

Whatever I thought it would be like, I'm pretty sure I didn't think it would turn out like it did - my mind going over the laundry list of things I had to do to get ready for work tomorrow, my heart heavy with the thought of having to walk to work in a wool suit in the hot sweaty mugginess of the Japanese rainy season, my eyes just moments prior flicking over train schedules to find the fastest route home after getting off at Tokyo so as to avoid time consuming transfers and giving myself a chance to catch a few precious hours of sleep before having to get up the next day. Here it was, my little moment which I had dreamed of long ago, and rather than feeling euphoric, or overjoyed with hope or optimism as I had expected, it instead felt oh so very... real...! But not real in that way that excitement tinges your tongue with feathery touches of alkali, or real in the way that hope swells your heart such that you think it will burst from your chest, but rather real as in the damp, sweaty, somewhat downtrodden leaden-ness of the everyday grind. Maybe not as real as waking up one day to find yourself a lonely bald fat low-level manager of a box plant and suddenly realising your youth is gone, but definitely real in the way that you realise you are now, at this very second and this very age of 27, engaged in a day to day struggle not to end up that way. It wasn't a sad feeling, the lack of euphoria, but just surprising that achieving one's dream - no matter how small - would feel so completely run of the mill. After all, what I was doing at that moment wasn't particularly unusual, and now that I thought of it, I had done this very same thing - eat an eki bento on a bullet train late at night - quite often in the past few years. I began to wonder: was this all there was to life? (silly I know, but I thought that). Were we lied to when told that achieving our goals was to rewarded with feelings of accomplishment, when in fact all it felt like was more of the same? Or perhaps, more disturbingly, had I set my dreams and sights too low?

Full Entry » || Comments (16) || Posted on: 07/02/2007 08:20 PM || [Back to top]

Lindsay, the Telemarket-stalker

What is this book, you might be asking yourself? Well, let's look at the cover: The Complete Fake History of a Bunch of People Who Don't Actually Exist I'd like to think of it as the first entry in a series of books entitled "Hey, so I heard you've got a stalker - the Michaelpanda Stalker Prevention Series". What am I going on about? Allow me to explain. You see, while it may be hard...

Full Entry » || Comments (12) || Posted on: 05/24/2007 11:22 PM || [Back to top]

I walk away...

Moving to Tokyo(ish) was the right decision, I know. But it's hard to think of closing the door on a 3 year chapter of your life. I don't mind moving - I've done it regularly ever since I can first remember. After a while though, it can get tiring - the constant making and breaking of friendships, the tenous web of human interconnection... stretching, lingering, wavering, breaking. The sadness of going different ways. I made...

Full Entry » || Comments (3) || Posted on: 08/19/2006 09:34 PM || [Back to top]

Killing Time...

sitting, back primly poised, hair impeccably parted to one side, cream colored leather Coach handbag tucked to one side, keitai strap dangling loosely out one of the side pockets, makeup perfectly done, as always, beautiful lips pursed ever so slightly as manicured nails flicked pages of a book from one to the next, eyes moving ever so slightly through expertly applied mascara lashes, each iris twitch scanning top to bottom, right to left, page to page, ponytail bobbing slightly as each echoing shift of the train's bulk rippled through the ground, through the wheels, through the floor, through the bench, through her body before manifesting itself in one tiny quiver, momentary separation of individual hair fibers, rippling shine reflecting the brilliance of the azure and topaz sky flitting by in the rows of houses cycling by in the background, melody line of children's Doppler laugher fleeting by for split seconds as suffused imagery of suburban bliss melted into a motion streaked blur of background behind us, parallaxing through windows and the smell of earth and coolness of autumn air cascading down inverted metallic slats of the old fashioned sun screens pulled down over half opened train windows, and I remember ginko leaves - beautiful, gorgeous stunning ginko leaves swirling through the air, striking yellow against austere brown branches silhouetted against topaz skies

Full Entry » || Comments (6) || Posted on: 03/09/2006 10:25 PM || [Back to top]

Bring your panda to work day.

So I took most of last week off, which was quite nice, though it turned out to be one of those "working vacations", which is to say that despite lofty initial plans of heading out to exotic foreign locals (well, okay, Hokkaido to visit my kittah friend, but anyway...) I ended up spending most if it in the same old rainy dreary 'hood, trying to "keep it real" as I am oft wont to do....

Full Entry » || Comments (1) || Posted on: 09/27/2004 07:28 PM || [Back to top]

A tragic turn...

Things have been stressful here for the past couple of days; a less than pleasant ending to my winter vacation. First of, as many of you have no doubt noticed, my images haven't been displaying. This seems to be due to the fact that my web host has either a) had a catastrophic server failure or b) gone out of business without bothering to inform me. My website is completely dead, I don't have FTP...

Full Entry » || Comments (1) || Posted on: 01/05/2004 03:31 PM || [Back to top]

Orbital

There are times when I find myself missing Madison. Old... Not often, mind you, but sometimes, in the snowy, wet mush of winter, the melting water pouring leadenly down stained and cracked concrete slab houses, heavy snowflakes landing with a moist smush on corrugated tin roofs of entirely disposable housing units, the slush of cars and scraping of dragged umbrellas on the streets... New... ...the calls of legions of identically suited hosts and miniskirt sporting...

Full Entry » || Comments (1) || Posted on: 12/27/2003 03:31 PM || [Back to top]

Humpday

I hate the tuesday-wednesday-thursday stretch. Wednesday sandwiched inbetween those two unsufferably long days, an exhausted panda wearily tripping home from work at 9 pm on tuesday, shuffling bleary-eyed through wednesday and getting up at 7 on thursday to work another one of those 13 hour days again. The best thing after a long day - a long soak in the (tarepanda) tub! I've been going through a "ho-hum-Japan" phase lately. I think it's at that...

Full Entry » || Comments (1) || Posted on: 11/19/2003 03:31 PM || [Back to top]