My second school trip to Fuji and my colleague had managed to find a 3 star hotel with 5 star views of the mountain across Lake Kawaguchi. We arrived in the evening, Fujisan a deep blackness against the sky.

rising early

five star views

of fog

Nothing really prepares you for the immensity of a city the holds 30 million people. On the fifth floor of a YMCA building in central Tokyo, I gaze out the window, straining to find a feature beyond the mass of concrete and glass.

Tokyo skyline

as far as the eye can see

buildings on buildings

©️sbwright2023

The trick, I told myself, was to laugh at those embarassing memories of my teenage years that always seemed to ambush me unawares. Laughing at them, at myself, seemed to create some persepctive.

my teenage years

all the thickheaded things

not caught on camera

©️sbwright2023

When we first moved to the farmhouse, we rebuilt the chook pen. It was decided that we’d get a rooster and raise some chicks from eggs. Some feed, some hay and let nature take its course. Soon we’d be rolling in eggs, or so we thought. The rooster we got for free (what a deal) a great white charger of a chook we called Wellington. Wellington had his way with one of our Winedot hens, and then come spring, we hatched three cute chicks. They all turned out to be aggressive pricks of roosters. Being vegetarian, we spared them the chop. Instead, we got eight years of alarms at 3 o’clock each morning.

awoken

the lingering echo

of the rooster’s crow

©️sbwright2023