nnozomi

Re current events

Same like before, I’d like this (my particular corner of DW, not complaining about other people’s) to be a place I can think about other things than US politics etc. etc. I’m trying not to be an ostrich, I don’t want to know everything that’s going on but I do want to do what I can; if you think there’s something I should be doing, let me know about it. Otherwise, to quote Tove Jansson, “…if rocket-propelled missiles are eventually going to blow us to smithereens along with everything we’ve done, I want to be as calm and happy as I can now and work in peace.” (Kenahora I don’t think the immediate issue is rocket-propelled missiles, but mutatis mutandis.)

I’m sorry about all the posts I haven’t managed to comment on; like I said, if you’ve posted I’ve read it and thought of you, for what it’s worth. Will try to be better from here on.

Visited my mother last month for a week or two; stressful for reasons that are no one’s fault, but could have been worse. Apart from seeing my mom and eating (way too many) delicious things, some of the good moments included buying a couple pairs of reasonably priced jeans in a great hurry without trying them on, guessing wildly at the size (I don’t understand US sizes any more, if I ever did), and finding that they fit almost perfectly; getting to meet a DW friend in person and hang out for a leisurely chat, a rare and lucky coincidence of travel timing; hearing a performance of the spectacular Bartók piano quintet, one of those where-has-this-piece-been-all-my-life moments (the program said it’s an early piece influenced by Brahms, no wonder I liked it so much); and on the way to the airport to go home, finding out that the cab driver hailed from Shanghai and getting to chat in Chinese for an hour (he was very patient with my terrible pronunciation, and apart from some regional words like the Chinese transcription of the local Chinatown neighborhood, I actually understood him okay).

Latest farmboy Chinese vocabulary:
薰衣草: lavender (as in the plant)
美滋滋: delighted, thrilled, on cloud nine
如释重负: relieved at having set down a burden or fulfilled a responsibility
有难度吗: what, like it’s hard?
私吞: to embezzle (literally, to swallow privately)
饭撒: This word delights me. It’s made up of 饭, food, and 撒, to scatter/discharge/distribute, so it literally means “scattering food” (think feeding birds, etc.); the two characters are pronounced fànsā, so that in both content and sound they approximate their English meaning: fanservice.

Writing and translation: I think I was right to let my Yuletide assignment percolate quietly away in the back of my brain for a while; today I discovered I have a plot outline which feels like it should be writable in…maybe 3-4K? Very self-indulgent indeed but also in line with my recipient’s requests, so knock wood it should work out.
Original thing also proceeding, very very slowly but still on the rails, and I’m more pleased with the most recent part when I read it over than I was when I was writing it. I don’t know why I’m still having so much trouble giving AGENCY to A, though. Maybe because she doesn’t know exactly what she wants to do either? I’m doing my level best right now to help her figure it out…
Still playing with bits of Chinese translation and working on the Japanese pseudo-romance novel: I’m surprised at how short it is, I don’t think it’s going to come out to more than 50K-odd in rough draft. It’s so fun to do, though. I could get addicted to this sort of thing.

Reading: A new YA novel in Japanese by Hamano Kyoko, whose work I generally enjoy—airy and sweet, with a sad edge but hopeful endings, and more or less avoiding the pestilential Japan Sentimental tendencies which so many writers are prone to. This one is basically Feminism 101, Japanese context, for middle schoolers, through the medium of three ninth-grade girls and their respective single mothers; it gets quite didactic at points (I am not the intended reader, on account of I already know what power harassment and mansplaining are, among other things), but manages to hang on to the realness of the characters enough to be a good read. Would really like to know what actual teenage readers make of it.
Rereading, for the first time in quite a few years, Marilyn Hacker’s novel-in-sonnets Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons, about finding and losing a new love; I’m an unthoughtful and uneducated poetry reader, I read everything like it was prose, but there are so many delicious lines. “I can’t say, ‘When you coming over?’ yet./Until we get at where we’re going to,/I need as much hugging as I can get.” “It’s what in this bright world I would like best:/Your mind on my mind; your breasts on my breasts.” “’Mom, how come things never are/as good as I could make them up to be?’/’There’s still ice cream on the Île Saint-Louis!’” “Baby, the rain must, April rain must fall/--and I would just as soon stay home and wait/the storm out, wait for you to get to me/your way.” “What’s happened to your letters? Is the mail/clerk in love with you and hoarding them/to read, herself, in bed at 5 AM?”

Photos: A cat on watch over its colleagues’ naptime (do they take it in turns?), a very old ad uncovered by construction, a tipsy drunk-hibiscus, some berry things, some turtles and reflections, a shrine (between the building, the camphor tree, and the kimono lady this photo turned out almost stereotypically Japanesque, but I just like the windows), another view of the camphor tree plus the edge of a torii, and a full moon with bonus train station.