ここはどこ、わたしはだれ

[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.

Be safe and well.

Comments

[trobadora]

Thank you for sharing the Chinese vocabulary! 饭撒 is completely delightful. And I'm fascinated by the name 薰衣草.

Yor photos are gorgeous as always, and wow, those berries are so pink!

[clevermanka]

Holy wow, congrats on the jeans. That's some incredible good fortune!

and also: I LOVE THAT construction/ad photo 😍

[scytale]

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.

Aww that's so fun! I love how much food is a metaphor for fandom, in multiple languages. ;D

Love the cat and the slumbering cat friends and the train station! Also WTF at those berries -- those are real, right? I went on a googling rabbithole and found out about coralberries and Callicarpa (which I don't think they are -- the first looks like it has wrong leaves, the second is more purple?). But omg so many pretty berries in the world. Thanks for sharing!

<3 <3 <3

[chestnut_pod]

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 -- this is so funny and clever! I love it. I am a little pecking bird.

[umadoshi]

<3 <3 <3

[tinny]

饭撒

Oooh, that makes me think of I Ship My Adversary, where there's a lot of sprinkling fluff and sprinkling sugar/honey/sweet foods, which probably was an attempt at translating this! I love translation-adjacent stuff. <3

’m an unthoughtful and uneducated poetry reader, I read everything like it was prose

<3 I'm not sure if that's reassuring for me or not. :D On one hand, I absolutely expected you, as a person with immense linguistic knowledge, to just *get* poetry. On the other, I never really before thought about the fact that to 'understand' poetry, there's rules and basics and history that everyone needs to learn about it (well, no more than the basics of meter and rhyme they taught us in school, anyway). Food for thought, anyway! And those quotes are really fun indeed!

pics

Love the kitties! And the berries have a striking color! O_O The turtle+water pic has some vertiginous properties, with the side looking like a building, and the trees and clouds reflected in the water. Awesome.

[sakana17]

有难度吗

I can imagine at least half of them saying that. It's so them.

饭撒

I love this so much. :D

Beautiful photos! I especially love the cats, the old sign revealed, and the full moon. Those berries don't look real, wow, what an amazing color.

[nnozomi]

I'm fascinated by the name 薰衣草.
Yes! You'd think it would have 紫 in there somewhere, but no.

and glad you liked the photos! <3

[nnozomi]

Definitely lucky that my haphazard eyeballing of the jeans actually worked! and yeah, that is one neat ad, I hope they don't destroy it. :)

[nnozomi]

<3 <3 <3

[nnozomi]

I love how much food is a metaphor for fandom, in multiple languages. ;D
Yes! It really makes sense.

I went on a googling rabbithole and found out about coralberries and Callicarpa (which I don't think they are -- the first looks like it has wrong leaves, the second is more purple?)
ooh, neat! You're a much better researcher than I am. I think one or another version of Callicarpa might actually be correct, but it's hard to tell from the color in pictures...

[nnozomi]

I am a little pecking bird.
We all are :)

[nnozomi]

I can imagine at least half of them saying that. It's so them.
Isn't it? I think it was Yiheng I remember saying it, but yeah, a lot of them might. (You might could use the same English for Zhou Jun's 这也叫活儿吗 too...)

and glad you enjoyed the photos <3

[nnozomi]

there's a lot of sprinkling fluff and sprinkling sugar/honey/sweet foods, which probably was an attempt at translating this!
Oh, nice! I know Chinese slang uses 糖 for couply sweetness, so there's definitely a bunch of associated metaphors.

Food for thought, as you say, re poetry. I'm definitely not a person with immense linguistic knowledge, you're too kind as always. I don't know--I always think of poetry by definition as kind of...using the words, meter, rhyme, metaphor etc. etc. to create some kind of effect distinct from its component parts? and I definitely can neither do that myself nor read it reliably, but I also don't know if that's how actual poets think about it, so in short I don't have a clue ;) but I still read it sometimes.

And glad you liked the photos--I love reflections in water. <3

[geraineon]

I am very charmed by 饭撒 as well! Thank you for introducing this word~

Glad you got to meet a DW friend in person. And mm, visiting family can be stressful... My U.S. to Asian size conversion is mostly, if it's M in the U.S., that's L or XL in Asian size. So I tend to buy one or two sizes smaller.

working on the Japanese pseudo-romance novel

Oh, what novel are you working on? If that's something that can be shared, of course! Otherwise, I can live in suspense. XD

Love the photos! <3

[nnozomi]

I am very charmed by 饭撒 as well! Thank you for introducing this word~
Isn't it fun?

My U.S. to Asian size conversion is mostly, if it's M in the U.S., that's L or XL in Asian size. So I tend to buy one or two sizes smaller.
Yeah, the jeans I was looking at were marked in numbers which had nothing to do with the numbers in Japan (also, as you say, I think the sizes are skewed larger in the US), so I just eyeballed wildly...

Oh, what novel are you working on?
It's a book by Miura Shion called ロマンス小説の七日間, The Seven-Day Romance Novel; I think I've posted about it a few times in the past but I don't seem to have a specific tag for it. About a translator trying to finish the romance novel she's translating on a tight deadline, while her own personal life gets weirder and her translation starts going off the rails too... It's delightful. (This is not, like, a professional contract, I'm just working on it for fun; it may never ever be published but I'm enjoying the process.)

<3 <3

[yaaurens]

I'm finally sitting and listening to that Bartok quintet, and definitely feel the Brahmsian influences. Not sure if I went in blind that I would peg it as Bartok (at least not yet, I'm only about a fourth of the way in) but I'm enjoying it for sure! Thanks for sharing!

[halfcactus]

Congrats on the successful real-life Chinese conversation!

The cat naps are so cuuuuuute. Also I really appreciate you naming all the flowers/trees you can identify (since I never know the names of things)!

[nnozomi]

Very much my pleasure! Yeah, it's not very Bartoky, but it falls heavily into the, mm, mid-Romantic Brahms style that does the trick for me.

[nnozomi]

Thank you! The cats were adorable. I often don't know the names of flowers etc. either, but I've found that when I post photos someone or other around here often digs them up for me! <3

[yaaurens]

I need to get back and finish it - I was right in the middle of the third movement when our power went out!

[mumblemumble]

饭撒: This word delights me.

Me tooooo. Coming from sakana's post with the out-of-context farm handsiness, it's even more delightful. 😄

The moon + train station picture is so neat! Love the composition and colors.

Sending you good thoughts and <3!

[nnozomi]

Oh dear! The downside of modern recorded music lol. I hope the power stays on in future.

[nnozomi]

Coming from sakana's post with the out-of-context farm handsiness, it's even more delightful. 😄
lol yeah, there's context and context! :)

Glad you liked the moon picture! I don't know anything about composition, it just happens to me if I'm lucky ;)

*hugs hugs* <3

[yaaurens]

It was such a random outage! But now I have to get my brain back into paying attention to music mode instead of just background music mode, blah.

[china_shop]

Belatedly: I love the poetry excerpts and the photos. (I have so many of your posts open -- read, half-read, intended to be re-read and commented on... I'm about to ruthlessly pare my tabs for the new year, but I wanted to say hi, hi, I am reading, even if I fail at actually interacting a lot of the time. <3

Happy New Year to you! <33333

[nnozomi]

glad you liked the post! no worries about commenting unless you feel like it; I'm often just the same with your posts but I always read them and look forward to seeing how you're doing <3 good luck for the new year!