April 8, 2005
Another poem
For the April Guardian Poetry Workshop.
Henry Pulling’s Dahlias
I’d left my dahlias, unwatered, to die.
Called away on a whim by a not-maiden Aunt.
Rare spontaneity for a banking man such as I.
She had to keep running, though I wasn’t sure why.
Brighton, Paris, Madrid, then Istanbul we went.
I’d left my dahlias, unwatered, to die.
My Aunt was a smuggler but I didn’t pry.
I left her to her vices though I thought that I shant.
Rare spontaneity for a banking man such as I.
On the Orient Express, something stuck in my eye.
Living on pot and chocolate felt too delinquent.
I’d left my dahlias, unwatered, to die
But the man I’d been before her, I was forced to decry.
I followed her to Paraguay, as was her want.
Rare spontaneity for a banking man such as I.
Too much of my life spent bored, awkward and shy.
Now I’m embroiled in torridness but I dare not recant.
I’d left my dahlias, unwatered, to die.
Rare spontaneity for a banking man such as I.
April 7, 2005
Poetic Interlude
I wish my enemies were Russians
for the privilege of your naiveté
they played you like an instrument
set against that Europe
your Russia was a love story;
the thinking man’s erotic fantasy.
You wrote odes to odes on lunacy
but even the polarity was illusion
shifty spies confused the confusion.
That war was all in your head;
endless scenes of winter
intrigue. Your house with
picture windows and a fallout shelter;
mutually assured destruction.
Your history was the cinematic stuff
of fiction. The enemies were Russians
with beady eyes and edgy names.
Your symbols were comic book
red menaces and red phones,
iron curtains and star wars.
April 6, 2005
Just red
Graham Greene, Travels With My Aunt was excellent. I love Graham Greene. His books end so magnificently. This book is quite different from his others, as it’s quite whimsical, but has the same measured brilliance. Then Hiroshima by John Hersey. I think after visiting Hiroshima, the experience of reading a book about it is a bit paled, but still an important book that underlines the unnecessary agony of war. There is no excuse for such horror, no matter how great your intentions. And then The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time, which I’ve been putting off reading due to my illogical problem with adults reading hyped childrens books. Illogical indeed. This book was incredible with the most convincing narrative voice I’ve read in a long time and a gripping story I stayed up half the night obsessed with.
April 3, 2005
Books etc.
Okay then, I’ve accepted the fact it will be too expensive to get to and be admitted to EXPO so it seems that nothing will happen on the way to the World’s Fair. I’ve been reading the papers and I cannot claim understanding of the people who are “shocked” at the Pope’s death. In other news, the fascinating life of Amber Reeves, HG Wells’ mistress and feminist author in her own right. This article of interest primarily because it’s written by my beloved Margaret Drabble. This profile taught me about Laura Nyro and I think I’m in love. Women crime writers are bustin out all over in Moscow. This new book on Virginia Woolf sounds excellent. Tom Bissell’s amazing article about visiting Vietnam with his father, which I read previously in UTNE is in The Observer today. A survey of Canadian book habits here, with the truth that “Bookish people tend to be active people”.
April 2, 2005
An awfully skewed perspective
The Pope is dying. Politics aside, he is an eighty-four year old man. Terri Schiavo died. Politics aside, she was living in a vegetative state for a decade and a half. As far as I am concerned, the things that send people out weeping in the streets versus all of that which no one is too worked up about, show an awfully skewed human perspective.
April 2, 2005
A little out of touch
I saw Spiderman 2 and Fahrenheit 9/11 in the theatres this summer, though long after they were playing in the rest of the world. Did you know that apart from these movies, I haven’t watched a new movie in over a year? And then our video store closed, so I didn’t even get them as DVD releases. I am an avid magazine reader so I know new movies exist, but I couldn’t tell you much about them. What is a Napoleon dynamite? And that Spotless Mind movie with Kate Winslet where she has pink hair and sleeps on a bed on a beach? Not to mention, Sideways, which sounds sort of sexual to me. And what’s with Jude Law’s ubiquity? I am also sort of glad I didn’t see The Aviator. Anyway, the same goes for television- what’s this The OC business all the kids are talking about, and the blathering going on about Desperate Housewives? I can’t say I miss the television so much, though this is probably because I follow the Eastenders online synopses religiously. But I miss movies, and can’t wait to spend a week or three just watching at least one a day. The list of movies I’ve got to see is absolutely massive.
However out of touch I am however, there is a List of Things I Now Know about Japan.
1) People breakdance every night in the covered arcades wearing crash helmets while they spin on their heads
2) The badasses drive either souped up mini-vans or 1970s Cadillacs
3) Loose kneesocks are the ultimate in rebel schoolgirl wear
4) Tokyo Disneyland has a park called “Disney Sea” beside it but no one can tell me what one does there
5) The number one children’s clothing company is called Miki House, the name donning socks, shoes, sweaters, pants and underpants (as I learn daily when young girls in dresses do somersaults in my class)
6) If something is “service”, it’s free. If you live in a “mansion”, it’s an apartment. And when you invite someone to your “room”, you’re really just inviting them to your “mansion”. A sundae is a “parfait”. Allergies are “allurgee”- and everybody is currently suffering.
7) Relating to the latter, blowing your nose is rude, but snorting it back is ok. (I fear social problems when I return to the real world).
8) Crews of volunteers clean up local public areas every Saturday morning wearing identical jump suits. In fact, any group of people doing anything wear identical jump suits.
9) Black vans with big red suns drive around regularly with loud speakers blaring, “Foreigners, get out…
10) The people who are employed to unnecessarily guide cars out of parking lots carry light sabres.
April 2, 2005
Literature is not a verb
Polly Toynbee on consumerist voting and the danger of eating politicians for dinner. This lot manage to make the politicians look noble. Regarding books, the golden age of kid lit. Some interesting ideas about storytelling- from Rana Dasgupta Tokyo Cancelled; this collection of stranded travellers sharing stories presents literature “as something that normal people do. If it seems fantastical that a collection of travellers might tell such stories then this raises the question of why it is so much easier to stomach the idea that Chaucerian illiterates might do so.” And then Ian McEwan’s Saturday– neurosurgeon-lit. Indeed, literature about a man to whom literature means nothing. New April poetry exercise here at The Guardian Books. Today we bought Paper Tigers by the Caesars. It’s an excellent album. And I continue to be quite overwhelmed/underwhelmed by recent events.
April 1, 2005
They are pleased to inform us
My mother called at 2:00 this morning, interrupting sleep and our plans for a day trip today to Kurashiki, to inform me that I have been accepted to the graduate program I’ve been dreaming of for about two years now. So that is the good good news, and I’m quite blown over by it.
Yesterday was a busy day. We finished our wedding invitations and posted most of them (so watch your mailboxes. You just could be an invitee!) We went to pick up the porcelain Hello Kitty in a kimono that I’ve been lusting after for months, and ran other errands. It was a beautiful day, and I was outdoors with just a hoodie for warmth. We went to Himeji castle where sakura (cherry blossom) season is just about upon us. The cherry blossoms are only buds at the moment, but lanterns deck the castle grounds, and it’s lousy with tourists. Next week it will be madness, acres jammed with drunken Japanese people under the blossoms with portable karaoke machines and copious sake. Hanami (cherry blossom viewing parties) is one of the most remarkable experiences I have had here and it’s wonderful to be here and experience it again. I haven’t been following the daily Sakura report (absolutely a weather report with flowers on the map rather than sunshine and rainclouds) on the Japanese news (it takes a mighty constitution to stomach the Japanese news), but apparently they’re due in a matter of days. And yesterday I lay down on the grass, and watched the blue sky turn above me, and after any long winter that’s quite a formidable experience. Anyway, we went to the gym after that. I am getting better at the gym, since the first day where I couldn’t read the changeroom signs and didn’t know which one to go into and cried. And went out to the izakaya last night with friends from work. I didn’t drink as my tuberculosis is acting up, but we ate so much and had a wonderful time. Always the double mark of a good evening.
March 31, 2005
A portrait by Haruka
Haruka, age 7, is my favourite student and had her last lesson at my school yesterday. She gave me this treasure as a parting gift. I’ve got a bit of the Sailor Moons going on!
March 31, 2005
Favourite Quote of the Week
from “Life of Pi” by Yan Martel, via UTNE,
~It is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside… The main battleground for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart~
