After watching what has happened when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States, it is disconcerting to learn that the huge approaching Typhoon No. 14 is bigger and stronger than Katrina. We’ll find out in the next two days what the typhoon will bring. Already, two days before the typhoon the vanguard clouds dropped torrential rains that flooded many areas of Tokyo. The annual increasing strength and size of typhoons and flooding are probably early signs of what we can all expect in the years to come.
I’m sorry I’ve been off the blog for so much time. For a while there my computer was completely down as my main hard drive decided to give up the ghost. Luckily all my data is backed up. I had “fun” for about a week learning how to install a hard drive, reinstalling all the software, and rearranging the desktop system so that it would work with my working style.
I’ve also been outside a lot, getting myself in shape, and spending time with people face-to-face. I’ve even started writing hand-written letters again. It all feels so analog. I don’t expect to give up the blog, and I hope to start up writing regularly again, but I also want to be careful with how much time I’m at the computer. I just don’t want to let the experience of the real world slip by; there is too much to see and experience!
Laughing Knees 
11 replies on “Typhoon No. 14”
Good to see you back online, although it’s good to hear you were out & about in the “real world” in the meantime. Hurray for handwritten letters! 🙂
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Glad to hear you’re still kicking. You sound happier, albeit worried. I’m sorry you went back to comment registration, though. 😦
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After a long silence in which you’ve been missed, I’m glad to hear you are still well, better even. This typhoid though sounds very scary, hope everyone will survive far better thatn Katrina – take care.
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14 passed by West Nowhere in the wee hours last night, yet all seems well out here. We still have gusts upwards of 50 kph, but it isn’t as bad as we expected. Last night on the news they warned of rainfall approaching 40 cm, but we only had about half that. Overall, it was a nice show, but not too scary.
I stood on the front step this morning and watched the wind tearing through the trees while it pushed a foggy mist of rain horizontally through the valley. The river that usually meanders through our village has come to life as well, churning with the downflow from the mountains that surround us.
I love a good storm: it awakens something in me…
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I guess we were all lucky here in Japan. 14 has been throwing tantrums here in Tokyo, ramming fists into the walls of my apartment, but nothing as bad as I feared. Now that it’s veering off into the Japan Sea things might quiet down a bit. I heard that the western part of Kyushu got 900 ml of torrential downpours, though, so all has not been lucky for everyone. The good news is that few people were killed or hurt. The bad news is that the typhoon season has only just begun. I wonder if Americans are taking into account that another Katrina might very well show up in the next few weeks? Is anyone planning now for the possibility?
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Dave. yes, I’m sorry about the comment registration. I hate it, but I hate spam even more. Every time I turn off comment registration the spam comes bowling in and I’m beyond wanting to have anything to do with it.
Steve, I love storms, too. It’s wonderful watching something so much more powerful and relevant than I am. Reminds me of just how picayune my presence is here on the planet. Also reminds me how petty all my vanities are, like my belongings and aspirations and convictions. I think the news always gets it wrong… they talk as if the planet has somehow done something wrong to us, but really it is we who live at the mercy and pleasure of the earth.
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Best wishes with the Typhoon. I think you’re right, storms will be getting worse every year.
Blogging is a paradox. It’s a window to so much reality, but it’s not reality in your own life. I will have to set a schedule, like working, to control my tendency to lose myself in the blog world.
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You’ve hit on the great challenge between blogging and life. Can they co-exist?
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Sometimes I really wonder about that, Patry. There were about three years when it seems that’s all I did. I found that I was thinking about blogging every where I went, to the point that anything that happened out there in the real world became a subject for my next blog entry. I even dreamed blogging at night!
I’m finding now that I feel much more settled inside myself and much closer to what I call the “real world” (the natural world is real, the biological human world is real, the aspirations we have toward a society of “progress” are not real) when I stay away from the computer. Physically and mentally I do better, too. More and more I feel that a life of fullness and fulfillment can only work if one concentrates on how little one can get by with, not with how much. And as much respect for and conscious integration with the biological world as we can possibly learn. And is there ever so much to learn.
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Oh dear, “the aspirations we have toward a society of ‘progress’ are not real” sounds so final and hopelesss. I hope our aspirations are as real as the physical world or we are in deep trouble, aren’t we? Well, I guess we are, but I just can’t give up on the hope of a better, kinder, more sane world, even if I don’t always see the evidence of that. Blogs like yours and others, which are like lights shining in the darkness, help me to keep that hope alive. I understand if you feel this was taking too much of your energy, but are you sure you have finished saying everything you wanted to say? I, for one, miss your voice. I suppose you have considered just a monthly or bi-monthly entry? In any case, hope you are well and happy. 🙂
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Hello Inlandchi. Yes, I know I’ve been off for a long time. I keep intending to come back (and to make some major changes to the site), but I find that it has been difficult to get myself to commit to hours in front of the computer these days. Whenever I stop by the site and see all the hundreds of hours spent writing all those words I wonder what I’ve been doing it for. There are real people out there (like you, and some of whom have become real friends in the real world) whom I value a lot, but at the same time in the last few years in my personal life in the real world I have next to no friends at all (due a lot to living in Japan and other circumstances, like working at night when everyone else is meeting each other), so I’ve been trying to get out and be part of the real world again. No matter what people in the blog world might argue, the time in front of the computer will never come close to making up for what I need and want from meeting people face-to-face and from the holistic experience of just being flesh and blood.
Having said all that though, I intend to ast least start writing more regularly in the blog soon. I’m redesigning the site and hope to redefine my objectives more clearly with the new design. I also hope to showcase more of my artistic endeavors in the renewed site, so hopefully that will be something worth looking forward to.
Thanks very much for writing and reviving my connection here. When you fall off the map in the Net, you really fall off the planet, it seems!
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