Off the Cliff

Finished Strange Houses and then went to the internet to find out what I just read. Internet was mostly reddit, whose black-out spoiler redactions do not appear when highlighted. But a lot of people had the same suspicions as I about the architect jumping at once to 'murderous child killer cult' while other people noted that that's just the way Japanese horror rolls. Which, fair enough. And also noted that what's important is once again the things not said, sigh. But the general impression was that everyone but the narrator and the architect are lying and what's actually happening is a conspiracy, yes, but not the one we think. Although people did seem to think the weird cult thing was true, which to me is, ok, if you say so. Do not think I'll be reading more of his work.

I know better than to go for a blood draw on a Monday especially a Monday when I've just lost an hour of sleep, but it's going to rain all week and then snow. So out I went at 10 new time and came in to a posted 45 minute wait. But I waited, and then waited some more when they called my name because they said the room available was too narrow for me. Told them I could walk without the rollator but they were all No no just wait. And when they called me again I went without my walker just to show them. But the nurse got my vein first try,  no having to use the other arm as in December, which is either her being more skilled than the other or my veins being pumped up from my water drinking. Whichever, I am grateful.

Could have done without the two large guys who barged into the elevator before I could get off it as I was leaving. Men, said Jessica. And am now headachy and am going out to dinner with bro and s-i-l tonight, but again, nobody made me get my draw this morning.

Someone on the FFL was reviewing The Man in the High Castle and remarked on the odd English used that was supposed to suggest either a second language Japanese speaker or a rendering in English of what people were saying in actual Japanese, neither of which sounded likely to them. I noticed none of this when I read it so many decades ago, so I got e-book from the library to check. (Because I'm not going to go squinting at the high shelves ha-ha in the bedroom where I know I still have a copy.) And yes, the English of the Japanese characters and the American people speaking to the Japanese is indeed odd, sorta kinda like a second language speaker. What I misremembered from the 80s was that the book takes place on the west coast and not in the New York that my 80s mindset automatically placed Japanese expats and tourists. Still sent it back after a few chapters because brane still will not, and got Albert Campion short stories instead.

Loblaws tempts me with its premade beef stroganoff meals. Bought one and ate half (880 calories for one meal being excessive). Woe is me. I like pepper on my pasta and suffered in Japan because the Italian restaurants never had pepper on the tables. Hot sauce, yes. But the pepper on this is laid on with a heavy hand and I have no sour cream to ease its bite. Do not, do not, understand people who like their food to hurt. Doubtless all to the good, since I don't need pasta, but am sad still.

Met SND out with her new pup, name of Oliver. The theory is he's part chihuahua but his markings are, I'm told, more Jack Russell terrier. To my untutored eye he looks like nothing more than a miniature beagle. J says one can do DNA tests on dogs now: always a market. I'd only do that if I suspected herd dog DNA so as not to be surprised by herding behaviour.

Spring. After weeks and weeks of only crocuses and snowdrops, daffodils and tulips come up in sunshiny spots. A cherry is blooming down on Barton. I am moved to do some dusting and mopping and furniture polishing upstairs, to take advantage of the bright unfiltered sun before the trees burst into leaf. But I also rerereread Agatha Christies: zoomed through Lord Edgeware Dies and Curtain and Cat Among the Pigeons. I owned a copy of the latter as a twelve year old and read it so often that I have much of it memorized.

Had a pleasant dream the other day of being back in Tokyo and out at night with Finder Jean and Mary senpai, on a broad street that was partly University Ave here and partly some unnamed boulevard seen from a taxi, back in 2001, with Fearless Leader. In the dream we were, as ever, heading for an archetypal Tokyo bookstore, but I believe some people stopped us and talked us into taking their baby.

Let me say to have it said, I hate  waiting for people to call me back. I never did like it but in my current socially feral state, the thought of the phone suddenly ringing when I'm not prepared gives me the cold grues. I hope my doctor is on vacation, and I bet she is because it went immediately to voice mail. Don't care if my hernia is bulging (and anyway, half of that is fat because that's where those twenty pounds went on.) I don't want her calling me.

Anyway. Finished The Magician's Daughter which was excellent reading, and am now dithering between Raising Steam, which I have read once only and now I see why, and The Shepherd's Crown, which is good at the beginning but one must stop at the right place, and you don't know the right place u til you've passed it. So instead I'm time travelling via Peter Hunter Blair's Anglo-Saxon England, bought half a century ago in uni and now out of date.

But it's still essence of '72, the Brit.Mus and Sutton Hoo, Widsith and The Wanderer, even if also dry as dust. No matter. On he goes about the Icknield Way and off I go to google and the ancient and heavy god is it heavy out of date atlas, that gives me a detailed map of England so I can  find where the Chilterns are, and Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire and Wiltshire, and the fens and Hadrian's wall, all the bitsy pieces of English geography that I never got straight because lord there's so *much* of it. Amazes me that I can keep Japanese prefectures straighter than English counties. But that's probably because I don't have +/- 65 years of literary and historical associations with Tottori or Yamanashi. Whereas I saw  Shakespeare's history plays, Richard and the first three Henrys, at an impressionable age, so the names are familiar (oh saucy Worcestershire!) even if I haven't a clue where they are. I mean, from the looks of it, they're now mostly in the sprawl that is London. There's a reason I never had a mental image of the Home Counties, which are probably almost as depressing as Saitama and Kanagawa, the slop over of Tokyo. But still, but still: I wish I could go back once more and doubt I ever will.

Crapshoot weather. Will we have ice pellets, freezing rain, wet snow or rain rain tomorrow? Put down a sprinkling of salt on steps and walkway as a prophylactic to guarantee the last. And by luck, as I was doing so one of the Chinese nainais rattled by with her shopping buggy and collection of beer cans etc. My porch is dark so she didn't see the bag of cooler cans and the three wine bottles on the steps, but I was able to hail her and offload the same. Glad to be rid of those.

Am staying in tomorrow, whatever. Almost all Christmas cards are mailed and the remaining recipients are more New Years types anyway. Have also put in a grocery delivery for Sunday with the heavier staples and/ or stuff I go through fast, like soy milk and diet Pepsi. Which last I'm trying to wean me off of by substituting apple cider instead. Preferably watered.

Grocery deliveries feel like the prison world closing in once more. I got to the library and returned my one book in case snow and ice render the ways impassable, as they used to even when I was more or less able-bodied. Got raspberries from the corner greengrocers there, but foresee having to go to frozen pretty soon. And finally finally made it to the dollar store for a new pair of rust-coloured double thickness gloves, because my old pair is not only mismatched, one thick and one thin-and-freezing, but black, and I've misplaced/ overlooked them in my walker/ backpack three times this winter alone. Went out to lunch at the local, had my last pastry at the Bloor coffee shop, and hailed a cab because my joints objected to the incipient weather change and the oddly chill dankness. Had a nice chat with the fatherly Ethiopian driver, though it feels odd when someone in their 70s gets guys being fatherly, especially when he could be younger than me. Can't tell because he was a smoker and that ages the skin. Thus was able to get my statins from Blawblaws so no need to worry about that. (Of course my other scrip arrived half an hour later, as per email, but that one can wait.)

Because I never get head colds and my allergies usually involve stuffy noses, not runny, I've never been a tissue using person. But somewhere in the early pandemic I bought a box or two because toilet paper was being hoarded and now I can't seem to do without it. I clean my glasses with tissues, even though I have several handkerchiefs for the task. (Well, actually, left over from Japan that wots not of paper towels.) But there are three things I cannot keep track of: pens, bookmarks, and handkerchiefs. They slip down into the cushions of the sofa or fall down the side of the guest room futon or just... get covered up by stuff and only emerge weeks later. So for now, Kleenex it is. At least it's recyclable?

Heat melts the brain so I've forgotten what yesterday was like, only that it wasn't as hot as today. Only went out to put out the garbage and ask Mrs. Professor if she knew what the tall plants in the front garden are. She thought it looked like a savannah grass. Googling suggests that it is indeed quack grass and impossible to root out.

Today was the unbreathable pillow of heat kind of day so all windows were closed and fans on in both bedrooms and downstairs. Ran the window AC last night and for part of today, at a conservative 20C because the house will hold cold for at least two days unless we get to 35C/95F. Humidex was probably in the high 30s but I was having no part of Outside until the wind started to blow in the late afternoon. Did not blow in cool but did blow in dry, so I went out to the library and Baskin Robbins. I need to move and I didn't move yesterday because everything hurt too much.

Been reading Anne Granger mysteries. The Campbell and Carter ones go down quickly, one a day, only now I realize I forget almost everything about them, including Who Dunnit. Am also reading The Aosawa Murders, translated from the Japanese, which is a downer for no reason I can think of, except that it reads more and more like one of Ruth Rendell's psychological horror stories. I really liked it at the start since it's clearly set in Kanazawa, and the remarks on how the city is laid out took me back to my one and only trip there. My sister and I had a map and were confident we could walk from our hotel near the station to Kenrokuen, the famous garden. Ha ha ha no. Kanazawa is laid out with a view to making it impossible for invading warlords to get anywhere, and still defeats tourists. We eventually realized this and took a cab.

Had a much rescheduled (snow, cough) physio appointment at 10:45 today so was up at 8, after a dream where I was either Japanese myself or with a Japanese family, with twins, going to a funeral/ wake, but separately- which is unlikely- and happening at a jinja, which is impossible because AFAIK Shinto doesn't do funerals, period. (What did they do with their dead prior to Buddhism, one wonders.)

Anyway both the therapist and the kinesiologist (don't know what the difference is) are v. pleased with the state of my knee, even though I gather it will go on hurting for a while. I have more exercises to try and stop the lower back and hips from hurting which, who knows, may actually work in the fullness of time. I go back in a couple of weeks only this time I have to pay- $75 for half an hour, which is steep, plus cabs. Eventually I'll swap it over for the physio two and a half blocks away, but as I sussed out sidewalks from today's cabs, that won't be any time soon because large swathes remain unshovelled three weeks after the Big Dump.

And ninety minutes after that I had a booster shot scheduled and to while away the time I went to the closest open restaurant which is both expensive and inferior, and had a cosmopolitan, a Black Russian, poutine with bacon, and a smores chocolate cake. Far more than I wanted, especially after weighing myself this morning and finding my metabolism has finally caught up with my diet and I'm five pounds/ 2+ kilos over my pre-op weight, but again, so what. I fancy it will be protein, veg and water for the next little while.

Did find the putative trilight curly bulb my bro gave me many years ago. Putative as in 50-100-150 watts, which is indeed a trilight, but that 150 is something less than an incandescent 100 and I still can't read by it.

I have happy memories of reading Takuboku's poems in Sad Toys and Romaji Diary lo these 30+ years ago, so I settled in for a happy reread. Alas, the Suck Fairy has visited and left her calling card. The poems may still be alright but Takuboku was a git even by Meiji standards. Self-absorbed, narcissistic, irresponsible, self-pitying, and of course a horndog. Actually, can I think of a Meiji intellectual who wasn't a git? No one comes to mind. Like, back in shogunate days guys, at least samurai guys, were trained to be devoted to their lord or their clan or duty or honour. Come Meiji and some people suddenly decided to be devoted to nothing but their own sweet selves. I suppose under both systems guys treated their wives badly, on the automatic assumption that women exist for men's convenience. But I don't have to read them doing it.

Turn back to Currelly and find him frolicking among the great. Petrie is a marvellous conversationalist but a dry lecturer. Weigell has a nervous breakdown from tunnelling into pyramids underground. Theodore Davis suborns 'dear old' Gaston Maspero.  And of course Currelly excavates at Deir el  Bahri, finding a gold-plated tomb, supposedly  that of Tyii except the mummy is a guy, and generally serving as the model for Radcliffe Emerson. Even back home, there he is hobnobing with people who in my day had become University of Toronto landmarks: Burwash (Hall), Massey (College), Gertrude Lawler (Building), McLennan  (Physical Labs). Like reading about Waley's young manhood: when there were giants abroad in the land.

You know, I don't think I've ever seen a copy of Yoshitoshi's Sotoba no Komachi for sale and I probably wouldn't have bought it in my giddy thirties even if I had. But that's really a wonderful picture. This is the great beauty Ono no Komachi, she of the famous hana no iro:

as the color of the blossoms
has lost its luster
to no avail
so I have passed through life
gazing at the rains

'heartless beauty mourns her futile life and her vanished beauty' etc etc.

Yes, well-- *look* at her. In Yoshitoshi's picture she's smiling. Possibly 'I can smile at the old days/ I was beautiful then' but equally possibly 'there's still beauty left around me and it ain't bad at all.'

The Guardian page has gone back to its former layout, DW has gone back to its former layout, the keypad has gone back to its former fonts, and Postsecret now loads on my desktop. There's no reason for any of this happening but I'm grateful it has, while resigned to it reverting to me-unftriendliness again any time without warning. (LJ however has gone to bitsy fonts.)

Have been reading a couple of books by a woman who went to Japan in 1978, married a Japanese oldest son, and set up housekeeping in the family mansion. Also reading an article on fudo, in which my former and late Japanese lit prof translates a large chunk of Ibuse's musings on pre-WW2 Tokyo. He moves to Ogikubo- or rather, in the casual fashion of the time, approaches a guy in a field and says 'Wanna sell me some land?' and the guy says Sure, and they decide the payment/ rent/ whatever (I think even in those days you only bought the use of the land for a set period of time) would be the contents of Ibuse's privy, since human manure is highly valued. At that time a trolley from Ogikubo to Shinjuku cost 2 sen and could be walked 'at a woman's pace' in two hours.' This confused me because, as I at length ascertained, I was confusing Ogikubo and Okubo in my mind.

Upshot of all this is that I dreamt I was back in Tokyo working for my old boss, who was away on a trip during which there was some problem at the office which was somehow simultaneously in Singapore, butwhen he got back I could start on my work of cataloguing a bunch of yellow-spined Ace SFF paperbacks.

Woke up today in early 1996, with Jean and Mary and the cats and ComicBox, which I suppose is down to today being the 25th anniversary of returning from Japan. Unlike everything else time-sense-wise, twenty-five years feels about a proper distance between Then and Now, but only because Plague and Crippledom have landed me in another dimension, one removed from even two years ago. If I could still walk, if I were still working, it might seem less than a quarter century, given that the teens of this century counted for maybe three years emotional time because nothing happened during them.

Whatever, this last week has been ferocious for achey pains. Rollatored to the laundromat with knees howling all the way. And of course there were half a dozen people hanging about inside, including a maskless woman doing a massive wash, so I spent most of the time outside in the not-warmth.  She had a mask, of course, she just wasn't going to put it on until she was ready to leave. Do we wonder that the city's cases are over 1,000 now and the province over 3,000? Our dilatory premier has mandated a 'brake' for the province, which merely means imposing on all of Ontario the restrictions that have been in place in the city since January: which have accomplished bupkis, obviously. Agreed that people are being suicidally negligent in their behaviour, still: what's needed is for workers who are sick to be able to stay home and get paid for it. They had two paid sick days which dear Doug the Businessman's Friend transformed into three days unpaid. And so: factories and big box stores and food processing plants are all driving the numbers up and Doug is closing hair salons. Oh wherefore, Nature, didst thou conservatives frame? They are inimical to just about everything.

(In the words of the old joke, I have no head. Can't imagine why us Olds are supposed to become more reactionary with age. I'm farther left than I was fifty years ago, because better informed.)

My clean life resolution lasted about two days. It's obvious I'm not going to survive this winter without gin, because the acupuncture, muscle relaxants, anti-inflams, stretching and heat packs aren't even touching the knee pain. Oh, and we're under strict lockdown again, ho hum, as announced by a presidential (sic) alert at 10 a.m. this morning. What president are they talking about, I want to know? But this is nothing like last spring's lockdown: daycare still open, health services ie acupuncture still operational, etc etc. So far no big deal. Of course they should have done this two months ago when cases went over the 1000 mark, but oh no, bad for business, so now our cases are well over 3000. ACAC = all conservatives are cowards.

Belatedly:

Last finished?

Siegal, Love, Medicine and Miracles
-- not exactly woo-woo, so am hoping visualisation actually helps arthritis because for sure nothing else does

Reading now?

Everything I was reading before: The Burning Page, Oku no Hosomichi, Japanese textbook. Also Gwen Raverat's Period Piece, available on gutenberg, not the best interface but better than nothing. These Edwardian ladies, as described by Raverat, are so much like their Heian counterparts. Raverat's aunt never made a cup of tea in her life, or mailed a letter, or went anywhere without at least her maid in tow. Actually, the court ladies did at least do things for the empress, putting them one up on the Edwardians. But no wonder Waley's Genji reads so stuffed parlour/ ring for the maid/ sit around all day and die of boredom.

Next?

Dunno. I think I might be in the mood for some Oliver Sacks.

Transpires that misdelivered Amazon package wasn't a scam but an actual mixup. It was supposed to be a crossword book but the labels evidently got switched. Useful of- and, clearly, necessary for- the delivery types to take a photo because otherwise I wouldn't have put two and two together.

Morning lie-in dream had me at my brother's house which I think was still the other half of mine but quite different in configuration. Bro was changing the paintings on the wall as one does in a new season, but they were all virtually the same landscape except for small details. Neighbour's kid popped her (short cut dark-haired) head in at the window, rather to my surprise because we were on the second floor. Her dad came in by the door to pick her up. Neither was anyone I could identify. Bro mixed me a cocktail, which was dark green. Dreams are what I do instead of socializing these days.

Books finished?

Three slim volumes of Japanese love poetry in translation: Ten Thousand Leaves, The Ink Dark Moon, and The Burning Heart. Nice to have the Man'yoshu and its notes, though I think for once Miner did it better in the Introduction to Court Poetry. Komachi and Izumi Shikibu just don't translate well, especially out of context, which renders The Ink Dark Moon not so useful. Mind, I also finished Izumi's poetic diary in Miner's translation and find she doesn't work that well in context either. Passionate love affairs in Heian involve a great deal of moping about on her part and ridiculous jealousy on his, which rather makes one wonder why anyone bothered. And Heian poetry in general is untranslateable, so yeah.

The Burning Heart gives a nice selection of poems but Rexroth doesn't include any of the Kamakura women poets of the Kyougoku school that I rather liked.

Basho's Narrow Road in Miner's Japanese Poetic Diaries. Who also works better in Japanese and isn't quite as clever clogs with the language as the court poets.

Ovidua Yu, Meddling and Murder
-- another Auntie Lee Singaporean set mystery. Fun, but jeez the life of foreign domestic workers sucks.

Reading now?

Have to press on with Kafuka because I may not be able to renew it. Someone has a hold on it but I can't tell if it's active or not.

Brower trans., The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu
-- with copious grammatical notes and diagrams and such, all very necessary but also underlining the fact that Heian prose is clear as mud. Not fun reading.

Rexroth, A Hundred Poems from the Japanese
-- exercise bike reading, mostly to have it read

Reading next?

One book waiting at library, two more Ovidia Yus in transit, a Vinyl Detective in ebook. Shall get to them in good time but right now I have to read forty pages a day of Kafuka and as the action gets hinkier and more Murakami by the page, am not sure I want to.

To celebrate the moment, and because my new card came yesterday, I ordered in for dinner. So did everyone else, it seems, because in the ten minutes I stood on my ill-lit front porch,  wearing white so I'd show up even if my house number didn't, two other Door Dash deliveries arrived for two separate houses across the street. My guy called me because, like many people before including myself on occasion, he or someone had writen my 543 as 534. I'm inclined to blame the map Door Dash likes to use, which showed my house to be on the west side of the street where the even numbers are. Though when I checked it again, they had me on Manning, the next block over.

I've ordered from these guys before but don't remember them being so generous with their portions. Granted I always order at least two dishes to make it worth their while, I still had a large bowl, looked at what remained, and thought 'Well, that's dinner sorted for the next four days at least.'

To work off some of the excess (pad thai noodles, hem hem) I did an extra 45 minutes on the bike machine. Turns out  Handel's Royal Fireworks  is the perfect music for this. Didn't even notice the time going by. That's half because I was reading my phone part of the time, and when I wasn't I was doggedly plowing through The Burning Heart, which is Kenneth Rexroth and a Japanese woman translating women poets of Japan. Granted the book dates from the 70s, and granted Rexroth or his co-translator have some satisfyingly nasty things to say about that dweeb Yosano Hiroshi- '(he) was a typical emotional exploiter of women. He attempted to disguise these proclivities with romantic nonsense about the spiritual glories of clandestine polygamy'- when we get to the classic poets who are translated by Rexroth alone, one finds this note on Izumi Shikibu:  'There survives a book of her poetry and her diary, one of the masterpieces of Japanese literature. Most of her poetry is erotic: she seems to have spent a life largely devoted to making love.' Yeah, sure, just like Catullus' life was largely devoted to making love, or Diana Rigg's. Like, we know Izumi Shikibu had a daughter and served at court. It wasn't all men all the time, even if men like to think so.

The book is falling apart and I'd happily trun it- Rexroth is so not my translator any more than Miner is- but I have no other translations of Yosano Akiko, so...

However, in other come-by-chance news, it seems Ovidia Yu has a series of detective stories stsrring a teenage girl in 1930s Singapore. Have put holds on two of them and shall pleasurably await their appearance.

An oddity I noticed many years ago when I was making meringues (so long ago that I forgot what those things are called and had to google 'egg white sugar'.)  Ordinary eggs held a stiff peak just fine but free run/ organic eggs were much more sensitive, liable to deflate at a moment's notice and especially if you added even a hint of vanilla. And now hardboiling them, no matter how much I bring them to room temperature before cooking, no matter if I let them heat with the water, no matter if I whisk them away after five minutes and plunge them mmediately into cold water, they're impossible to peel without removing chunks of egg as well. Worth it to have happy hens, I suppose, but still annoying.

Last finished?

Carter, Waiting for the Wind
-- and now need to go back through and note the poems that resonated when I was reading through. Also to see if certain of Earl Miner's poets are there because I don't remember these Princess So-and-so's turning up There was a Tameko and a Chikako I noted in passing, who might be one of the princesses, given how names worked back then.

Yokomizo, The Inugami Curse
-- translated Japanese detective story. Has annoying bits like the detective immediately sussing out everyone's character from their expressions. 'Take sat with a taciturn haughty expression that revealed his disdain for all while Tomo, looking somehow cunning and insincere, shifted his eyes ceaselessly from place to place.' 'Kokichi ... had what at first looked like a mild-mannered air, but the restless eyes, identical to his son, revealed the evil in his mind.'  'Of the three half-sisters, she was the most attractive, but she looked the most  venomous of the three as well.' I know Christie and others do this too, but it grates less in one's own language. And hell, the Japanese do at times seem psychic in their evaluations of foreigners at least, so maybe they can do it with each other in spite of their seemingly (to us) expressionless expressions. But otherwise quite the twisty page turner, and I have Yokomizo's other book on hold at the library, 84th of 84.

Reading now?

As above, Earl Miner, Japanese Court Poetry

Kafuka draws near a close, or rather, vol 1 of Kafuka draws near its close, and I don't have vol 2. Shall treat myself to the English translation.

Have given up on Villon and started La Dame de Kyoto by Gabriella Magrini, which is translated from the Italian and hence an easier read than a French French book.

Next up?

Piranesi, which I keep forgetting I have. Must put it out where I can see it or I shall go on forgetting I have it.

Cholesterol meds are famous for causing muscle aches, also for having a nocebo effect ie if you think they're going to hurt you they're more likely to/ One day may be a little early for the effect to, well, take effect, but boy was last night an owie night, as today is an owie day. I haven't had alcohol for two weeks and I haven't had sugar for ten days, but I took my last bottle of lemon tonic and had a g&t this afternoon. No matter what I think, gin really doesn't ease the pain, but oh that sugar rush was so nice. I'm actually ok doing without pastries but I do jones for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
( Reading Wednesday )

 Well, since there's no one to talk to, I shall sleep in in the morning and converse with the people in my dreams. Thus I found myself very happily at a hotsprings ryokan with Finder Jean, maybe Petronia as well, and several other people, packing up to go home; then I rolled to my other side and was at work, talking to S about distancing measures for the toddlers, none of whose names I could remember, alack.

I can't do that tomorrow since I must be up at 9 so as to be ready for the electrician at 10. How lucky my street doesn't allow parking until that hour. But to offset today's sleep till 11:30, I've taken an ativan to induce drowsiness before 3 a.m. Ativan does lovely things to me so long as I don't expect, or worse, need it to. So I am happily mellow and cheerful and optimistic about the future, with all my frets and pains ironed out. Of course, if I was facing the knee operation tomorrow and a fortnight stay in some facility, it wouldn't do anything at all. But for now, what I have vaguely in the back of my head is an impression of deep blue nights by the sea in Japan, waves roaring domestically and a coolish wind blowing. Anyone's guess where that came from, because for sure it's not a real memory of mine. But I'll take it.

 Second Etsy mask arrived, as well as half a dozen filters. Home made masks are very stylish but don't fit as well as the paper professional ones, always slide off my ears, and are harder to breathe through. This didn't stop me ordering three more, of course. I used a shoelace to to keep my first mask in place, and it worked well enough until the moment the shoelace simply disintegrated. But I have more laces tucked away, and I believe more sturdy than the others.

No point in doing Reading Wednesday. I continue to read All The Things and seem to get nowhere with them. City of Yes is trying to be semiotic and clever, but because it's Canadian is merely obscurantist and adolescent. *Of course* there's a  pretty young Japanese woman and *of course* the author or protagonist or both sleeps with her, even though she's his student and has a boyfriend, because as any fule kno, what exists in Japan exists for the use of the Gaijin Male,  because why else would it exist? (Also permit me to doubt the  girl's grandmother calling up the hero to say, 'No sex! No sex, Hiroko, NO SEX!')

Meanwhile I wish I had A Vindication in paper, because though I can keep the characters straight for once (easier when they're legitimately historical) screen reading continues to tire my eyes, that can manage only about twenty minutes at a time. Which with this work translates to about fifteen pages.

Meanwhile I have recourse to Brother Cadfaels and wish I didn't. In her Wexford mysteries Peters has a fine array of murderers, but either I'm having an unlucky streak here, or her killer is always the charming young man in the case. Being able to spot whodunnit  even before it's dunn rather reduces the pleasure of readinng.

I was under the impression that there existed a Cocteau something (ballet? short story? operetta?) called Le Jeune Homme Droit Se Marier (The young man must get married). Being a Cocteau piece, having to get married is a tragedy for the young man. Evidently I invented the whole thing because google is silent on the subject.

But La Jeune Femme Doit Se Marier is the obvious subtitle of Tanizaki's novel, which I've just finished rereading after some 30 years or more. Pace one of my professors at the time, I don't find the novel so detailed that I can envision every room in Sachiko's house. But it's certainly detailed enough about their lives and inner states. And that perennial Japanese bugbear, the neighbours, and What Will People Say, and what will they say at the main house, and people are laughing at us, and and and. It may be normal in that society but to me it looks like the definition of neurotic. One would think the Americans can't come soon enough but of couse the attitude persisted long after the Occupation.

And yet, there are head-scratchers even here. Neighbours saw Taeko and her Osaka bon walking by the river, oh horror. But a few years later when it's proposed to pack young bon off to China as doltish equerry to the puppet Emperor there, Sachiko wants Taeko to go with him, very much without benefit of marriage, because that will somehow put an end to any prospect of their getting married in the first place. And that's not scandalous at all, of course.

What never occurred to me thirty years back was that Yukiko didn't want to be married in the first place and what we'd call her passive-aggression and they called her old-fashioned Kyoto nature was the only weapon she had to evade the unpleasant state. One feels for her in that situation, but lord is she eminently slappable so much of the time. Because there *are* other options available. She's just too much of a lady to take them. This doesn't make it into the film, of course, where Yukiko flirts with her brother-in-law and is given a fairy tale ending- gets to marry that tall actor who plays in Suzuki Seijun's films*, whereas in the book it's a tubby middle-aged guy with a short temper. But of course the film is mostly about the kimono and the largo from Xerxes, with which I am now thoroughly ear-wormed after looking at clips on youtube.

*it seems to be Matsuda Yuusaku, but I can't reconcile the saturnine moustached guy in Kageroza with the pretty-faced tutor in Family Game.

Oh the grateful warmth of a space heater in a chilly house. I won't even say 'on a chilly evening' because it wasn't all that much- certainly less than midday when I went out in fall jacket and wool scarf, and at once wished I'd either worn a fleecy as well, or just caved and put on my winter coat. And gloves. And rain gaiters, because the misty rain did succeed in getting me wet by the time I reached work.

But now I have heat without having to limp downstairs and turn on the furnace and then feel too hot in the night and not want to go down and turn it off again. I would never live in a smart house where I, or any random hacker, could regulate things from my phone. But I could really use one of those Japanese all-in-one units that heats, cools (or overcools), and dehumidifies the bedroom at need. Maybe if I win a lottery...

I'm reading Winter's Tale still, and only just realized why it has a hundred year break in the middle, and also that Halprin was writing about the year 1999 in the early 80s, but since it isn't the *real* New York it doesn't matter that the zeitgeist is all wrong. Oh, and did anyone call this a fantasy when it first came out or did they figure that since it was by a guy it must be Seeryus Littrachure?

Am also reading Once Upon a River, recommended by my Rivers of London FB group. Went very well with last Saturday's rain and cold, but I'm tired of rain and cold (after only two days of same) and reading has lagged. I am, in fact, unwilling to read on in either book, or to read anything else, which is why I finished nothing last week except a volume of double crostics. The draining sinuses and strangling cough don't promote enthusiasm either, but those aren't stopping for another two months so I'd better find enthusiasm somewhere.

Case in point: my travelling reading is a volume of Nagai Kafu's short stories, including the famous The River Sumida in the Seidensticker translation. I read that before I'd been to Japan and thought it well enough. After living in Tokyo, or to be more precise, after having been to the areas he talks about- Asakusa, San'ya, Hashiba- I'm enchanted by his deep sense of place. But then some article tells me that Kafu deplored the changes taking place in Tokyo at the time- the time being 1910, eighty years before my sojourn there, before the earthquake and the firebombing even. Makes one wonder what he actually liked: the flat low houses of the Edo period jumbled together on narrow lanes? Meiji photographs always make the town look unspeakably dreary, not to say muddy and/or dusty as per season. So at once I lose interest in Kafu's world.

Rightly so, perhaps. Here's an article about him, including good ol' Seidensticker echoing the sentiment that all the fun parts of Tokyo have disappeared, though Seidensticker's nostalgia is for the city that Kafu hated. Those two, going by Hoffman's account of Kafu and Seidensticker's accounts of himself, had an awful lot in common, with emphasis on the 'awful'.

(Yes, I know. What people are *like* has no connection whatever with what they can actually *do*. Except that with writers, unlike musicians and artists, yer basic small-souled meanness will show through, whatever they do.)

Antihistamines and muscle relaxants mean I can easily sleep ten hours a night, and do. Even if I'm up at a reasonable hour to relieve my bladder, I can always roll back to sleep, especially with cool air blowing in the window and the standing fan making a noise like distant waves. So I reswaddle me in my flannel loose sheet and my polyester duvet and sink back down, to dream again of that nonexistent bookstore along the main drag from Heiwadai station. This time there was some sort of conspiracy being run out of it, but then my phone's alarm woke me.

For a Friday before Labour Day, today was almost quiet. Tomorrow no doubt the Air Show at the Ex(hibition) will kick into sound barrier crashing high gear, but at least today we were spared hysterical children traumatized by jets roaring over the yard every five minutes.

It was in fact a classically beautiful August day, hot in the sun, cool in the shade, blue and green and breezy. In my personal mythology this belongs to Days of 2012, sun drenched late afternoons at the much missed Ginger restaurant, eating chicken satay and rice noodles, drinking Vietnamese coffee, and reading American Gods. So instead I had hisashiburi pasta and a glass of wine at the Italian restaurant (with the Sri Lankan chef) round the corner from work. But when I went to unlock my bike afterwards to go to acupuncture, my keys were gone from my pocket, onnaccountof a great big hole in same. They weren't in the restaurant nor by the bike, and odd I hadn't heard them clank when they fell, but there you are. Of course I had my back-up set, because I always do, but they're the ones with the bent bike key that sometimes doesn't work, and it's also the last of my duplicate house keys (well, barring those given to sibs and one neighbour.)

Resigned to buying a new bike lock, which god knows I need, and possibly getting a new front door lock as well, which would be a good idea because the knob doesn't actually open the door, I bumped my way down to the acupuncture studio at Dufferin and Dundas. (Toronto roads are the literal pits.) When I took off my bike clip in order to roll up my pants leg, my keys clanked onto the floor. So let's hear it for velcro bike clips. And I shall be doing a lot of mending this weekend, because it seems several pockets are in need of fixing.

The trouble with reading things on the tablet, aside from the comprehension scrim that distances even quondam familiar writers like Agatha Christie, is that the battery runs down. So I've had a paperback to read while the battery recharges. It's a damned thick paperback, with small print, and for travelling purposes as heavy as the tablet, making it one with much recent reading like Freedom and Necessity and The Bone People. Unlike those it's a reread from the mid-80s: Shiga Naoya's A Dark Night's Passing.

(And no, I'm not rereading it just because it's one of the books in Murakami's Kafka's library, because it might be Shiga's short stories there, and probably is.)

I remember almost nothing of the book, just that the protagonist spends an awful lot of time hanging out in teahouses with geisha, not enjoying himself much but apparently unable to think of anything better to do. That can't be the whole of a 400 page novel, I thought, but it's certainly the whole of the first hundred pages. When he's not getting drunk in the teahouses, falling asleep there, having a bath, getting drunk again, and essentially paying for the hire of two geisha for 24 hours or more (poor women), he's wandering off to eat in restaurants with various friends. The question of how he pays for this is only once addressed, and then he sells some of his books to cover one evening's visit. How he manages the rest of the time is anyone's guess. But back he goes, again and again, because he has to see this woman or that one so as to judge if she's attractive or not. He isn't going to start an affair with her because he avows that 'I know nothing about such things.' (One hopes he knows it'll cost him a great deal more than just hiring her to play cards, which is what he does a lot of). No, he's trying to find out how he *feels* about women. The book is hardly an advertisement for the discreet charm of the Taishou intellectual, because neither protag nor his friends have any at all. One can enjoy a self-absorbed bon vivant and man about town who's actually enjoying himself, but one who just moons around in vague and perpetual dissatisfaction is a bore. I don't say he's a Japanese Holden Caulfield- for one thing, he's much hornier- but he's just as much a dweeb.

Nonetheless I'm enjoying the book because of all the place names. Shiga's Sugamo is certainly not mine, though his Ginza might have been, and my tramping grounds in Shinjuku and Ikebukuro were, I think, pretty close to farmland in the 1920s; but the older shitamachi sections near the river seem pretty much the same. Yes, Taishou houses were all wood and not the stucco and plaster I saw almost thirty years ago, but the feel of these neighbourhoods- Ueno, Akasaka, Hongo- sounds the same.

And since the tablet recharged, I was able to finish The Affair of the Mysterious Letter this afternoon. How I wish for a paper copy so I could leaf back and trace those vaguely noted King in Yellow references, and possibly compare them with the original, supposing I still have my copy of that. Or maybe I should just leave it all as the fantastic mishmash it reads as, pointless of disentanglement, given that the action is of the 'runaway cart rattling downhill' school: you can't follow where it's going or where it's been, you can only hold on as it swerves hither and thither and gains speed, and trust to avoid a crash at the end.

But I do suspect it of having inspired one of my dreams last night, a baroque Buddhistic cartoon in the style of Avatar the Last Airbender, with much emphasis on the intricate designs on the characters' robes.

You know who else (besides every classical Chinese poet in existence) writes rhymed verse that invariably gets translated as blank in English? Rilke, that's who. His stuff is just so resonant as free verse, with a few assonances and one explicit rhyme:

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing

that it's a total surprise to read the original, strongly rhyming

Herr, es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.

Befiehl den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gib ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein.

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.

Does this sound like Housman or not? My German is next to nonexistent, so I can't say. But it seems people have tried to render him in rhyme (some examples are here, not to weary you with them) but hardly successfully to my mind. I mean, they may capture the German perfectly for all I know, but they don't work as poems for me.
( Memeage )

And here we are, the twelfth of May again. Thirty years ago on this date I landed in Japan for the first time. Splendid days, those two weeks of discovery. And two years later- which was still a lifetime then- I came to dirty muggy humid Tokyo for (certain values of) good. Ie I spent the first four months telling myself 'I'll go back home next week.' Well, it worked.

Today is as unlike those two days as it's possible to be, unless it was actually snowing. Bumped the heat up to 20C and kept falling asleep all day, while the wind rattled the panes and rain plopped onto the window AC and petals began to scatter in the garden. Eventually forced my aching self out to the store for soy milk, but mostly stayed in the side room where all the comfy flannel-covered pillows are, and did double crostics.

I've had a copy of As I Lay Dying in the living room for the last three years, having started it one February and then forgot it. Rousted it out and started again, got a third of the way through easily enough but had an uneasy 'this cannot end well' feeling, so went and googled it. How lucky I stopped where I did because oh the oogies that await. Shall dispose of it and its accompanying Sound and Fury in some wee free, and return guiltlessly to genre.

The outrageous winds of early April are again outrageous this year, and how could they be else, given climate change and condos downtown? To add to the misery of wind gusts to 70 kmh, the outfit that replaced my flat last week did it in such a way that the wheel rubs against the brake pad and squeals. Maybe I shouldn't have them tune the bike after all.

Why am I always stiffer after a massage? Tonight I can barely walk.

Once again the dates fall on the same days as in 1996, and today is the Wednesday I came back to grey sleety comfortless Toronto from Japan. But the days and dates were also the same in 1985, and so I can finally remember the date of my father's death which has eluded me for close to 35 years. Friday April 5, not the 4th and not a Saturday. Felt like it, because it was Good Friday and hence a holiday.

Have read virtually nothing this week. Two early Sayers, when Peter was a first class twit- Whose Body, where he's eminently slappable and his mother is horrible; and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, which has the line I thought was in Christie, about 'good servants never knock.' They just sashay into your bedroom as you're fapping off to the porn of your choice, and never turn a hair. Can't read anymore Wimsey. Even in Bellona he's being recast as St Peter.

I have An Unkindness of Magicians on the go, in paper after the ebook completely confused me with the ungendered names. Still not sure I really want to be reading such very unlikable people. I manage to get a bit farther with City of Brass until a Napoleonic Egyptian girl says 'I can relate' and then the book loses me again. Started an omnibus edition of the Katy books, particularly What Katy Did at School, because that was a fave when I was 13 or so, but can't take it now. Something very fantoddy about it, and I Would Rather Not. Mind, April in certain avatars will fantod anything, especially when the cold sun and blue skies yield to the warm and grey, which will be happening soon.