July 07 sum-up

[flemmings]

July reading list is Kurotsubaki 6, Kaze no Toride 2, Rainy Willow 10 & 11, Jingai (bought five and a half years ago- eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume), a few pages of Soseki, nothing in English that springs to mind, and, umm, half of Papuwa 12. The interesting half. The silly half I sped-read.

But sometimes sleeping in the open
I think back when I had you.

No point in trying to convey what it's like to meet again, for half an hour, the people who filled my mind to the exclusion of almost everything else twelve or thirteen years ago. Twelve or thirteen years: that ought to be prehistory, and of course in a way it is. Reading Papuwa now is a side view into another life, something that happened so long ago I've almost forgotten it- The One I Was. Like childhood in its way. Here is young Magic, and here are the twins, and here is Luzar (and here is an A/U Servis called Rai which is another bit of time-travel, to Channel 5 in the late 90's. Eight years. Time is truly the train there's no getting off.) Reading them I see, out the corner of my eye, the summer sun on the cabbage fields of Heiwadai and the scattered two storey haitsu that lined the roads between them and the occasional old wooden house (shack, we'd call it) with its back yard and little garden plot and the bats bobbing in the green evening cool as I bicycle over to the liquor store (well, the liquor 7-11) on Kanpachi; the liquor store I believe was down the road from my residence on the unnnamed main drag that ran past the station.

I found a journal I kept briefly early in '97, after some of the shock of return had faded; repeated constantly is the line, It was real; it happened. Hard to believe in the reality of Over Here, so inimical to the reality of Over There that the two truly can't exist in the same head. But it was real, it happened; and sometimes it was wonderful. The happy highways where I went, and ocasionally still find myself walking down again.

Comments

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

after some of the shock of return had faded; repeated constantly is the line, It was real; it happened. Hard to believe in the reality of Over Here, so inimical to the reality of Over There that the two truly can't exist in the same head. But it was real, it happened; and sometimes it was wonderful. The happy highways where I went, and occasionally still find myself walking down again.

I have an inkling, that I may know of what you speak of! After 10 years in England, coming back was a shock even bigger than first going away and arriving on foreign soil.

Some happy times indeed and almost whimsical from the point of view of 'Now!'.

I loved how you have put it!

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I suppose I've had a bit of that with my re-plunge into Wagner's Ring. I ate, slept, lived and breathed that music from fifteen to eighteen, then felt rather embarrassed about it from my mid-twenties through my thirties. I've just had the chance to listen to Keilberth's 1955 Bayreuth Ring, and...it's all coming back to me, is the best way I can put it.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

That's cool! Did you know, one of the original design goals of mp3 was to be able to fit a complete performance of the entire ring cycle on an audio CD?

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that, but learning that makes life a little better in general. Thank you.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

**Ten years in England???** Dear god, I was only half that in Japan. Yes, I can believe the culture-shock going was bad, and the reverse culture-shock coming back was worse. To say nothing of your poor abused system, going from tropics to (shudder) there. At least TO does or can do all the muggy extremes Tokyo does, so I was halfway prepared.