Off the Cliff

Dreamed I was at an apartment/ dorm room/ residence in Japan and my mother, brothers, and sister came to visit. Mom asked how things were going. I complained that I had fruit flies. 'They come from Belgium,' my mother said. 'Yes, that's what someone else told me too.'

Many decades ago, almost before the advent of email, I had a letter from a young man in one of my APAs talking about one of my fics. 'I finally got around to reading your story. To my surprise it was actually quite good!' (direct quote,  were you wondering.) Then he went on to say, in effect, 'Now tell me more about what you liked about mine.' I wrote him back advising him that this was perhaps not the best line to take with, well, anybody. I thought I was being straightforward but not unkind, but I ran it by my sister just in case. Who said 'No, you absolutely cannot send that. You have no idea how you sound.'  This phrase has haunted me ever since because no, I don't have any idea how I sound. It's like an Aussie friend in Japan who was traumatised back into monolingualism when it finally hit her that in Japanese it's not so much the way you say things-- as in English your tone of voice can soften your expression,  for instance-- it's what you say, and she didn't know if she actually knew the right form to say stuff. Like, were her verbs and verb forms giving unintended offence or not? (Someone else harrowed my soul by recounting a run in she'd had with the head of her company. He'd said something and she'd asked why? But she'd said Nande?-- just that, which would be brusque and bad enough. But even worse, nande is familiar Japanese that she'd learned from homestay, used within your in-group or to inferiors, and never ever in a million years to a superior, let alone the head of the company. I think that for once I was shocked into silence.)

Am recalling this because there's someone who regularly crops up on my FFL and whose comments, and responses to comments, are what my Brit-influenced soul registers as gratuitously ungracious and abrasive. Yes, they're American, but from an area that I understand to usually prefer roundabout phrasing. Maybe they've outgrown their roots. Or maybe they just don't know how they sound. Or maybe they really are a jerk. What I *know* they are is a fandom gatekeeper, so you pays your money and takes your choice.

Have finished nothing this week except maybe a Dr. Priestley, and maybe not even that. Read on, desultorily, in Madame de Pompadour, and (rationing myself) in Diana Wynne Jones' Unexpected Magic. I'd wondered if there were in fact two of her story collections, because I remembered none of these until I got to Little Dot and her encounter with the closest Puccini got to shriek opera. Len Iggmy son of Trey, etc. Also the latest Charles Finch, with a bunch of people waiting for me to finish it. 

Will get back to not!Spirited Away eventually.

Physio says the recurring and random pain in my foot might be a nerve gone wonky and advises cushioning on the sole to take pressure off. Evidently these things will go away on their own so all I need is patience.

Recycle tomorrow and having gone through most of my surplus manga, I began throwing out paper. Stacks and stacks from the late 80s and 90s, APA articles and Japanese lessons. And no, they will not come in handy some day. I give up on Japanese grammar: kanji are enough to be going on with if I ever get back to them.

But someone somewhere mentioned the book they learned ancient Greek from, a reading course that seems to give you basic grammar at the end of each section but no vocabulary at all.  It's on archive.org and delineates the post-mortem adventures of a boy called Themistocles and, well, I discover that google will define the words for me even if Chrome won't give me the Greek alphabet to do it in. Keyboard will only switch to one language other than English, and I need mine for Japanese. But I might take Japanese off the downstairs tablet and see if Greek will work there because downstairs is where I'd be reading Themistocles.

Otherwise have finished only a Charles Lenox, the latest Flavia Albia, and a couple of mysteries by Cyril Ten-names. Have Walpole and Leonardo desultorily on the go and more Cyril on the tablet,  though it seems I like Burton more than Rhode, when I thought it was the reverse.

Library holds continue to trot in with no regard for 'four weeks wait' notices. Thus Murderbot 3 appeared yesterday, which is a problem since my hold on Murderbot 2 was still showing umpty many weeks wait. But amazon gave me a credit for my delayed envelopes so I got 2 for about five bucks. At which point library tells me 2 is in transit. Oh well. Cancel that and proceed with Artificial Condition. Only it appears that what I thought was no.3 is actually no.4 and the real no.3 is 'eleven weeks wait.' (Really, Murderbot titles are as bad as Dick Francis' for confusibility.) Do I believe them and buy the kindle edition for 15 bucks, or do I trust that it will come in before my no.4 is due back at the library?

Bro was by on Saturday to pick up mail, which was not tax stuff, since he's already done his taxes, but an application for some government program that my accountant deals with for me. Weird that Service Canada would send his T5s to the new address but not this. Governmental right hand not knowing what the left does, even within the same ministry. But that aside, bro says he does an hour of duolingo French every morning, which amazes me. Quite apart from finding Duolingo annoying and thinking my French is better served by actually reading French, I can't summon the discipline for even mild language study. It seems pointless now. I know I'll never go back to France and certainly never to Japan so why bother? S-i-l was doing Russian because she intended to go there before Putin happened and for all I know still intends to after history deals with him, but my s-i-l is not a Johnson.

My front yard is covered in easy care ivy, which is fine by me, but I notice that the ivy has deserted the front third of the yard. Maybe there's too much dead wood,  or maybe-- as I noted today-- the ivy prefers to grow up the birch tree instead. I was happy to let it do that because ivy strangles trees and that would solve my problem with the birch. But not if it's going to denude my front yard. So have pulled down a good swathe and will pull down more once I get the clippers out because it's climbed out of my reach and clings tenaciously to the upper trunk.

Was feeling hungry on my morning erranding and not disposed for my pricey restaurants-- accountants must be paid this month so economy is advised. Thus I stopped by the Tim Horton's down by the subway station and stood in the very long line and listened to the babble of conversation around me in, conservatively, about five different languages I don't know. The Korean grammas like to congregate there, but there were also a goodly number of turbans and saris, also what I thought were niqabs but couldn't be because Eid isn't till this evening. Although the possible niqabi may just have been with the white guy who was ordering. And this is why I really don't want to move away from this area.

People are going on about how Korean is so easy to learn because it's so close to Japanese and hey it's got an alphabet! No kanji! Anyone can pick up Korean! And I'm over here weeping because I don't care how beautiful and elegant hangul is, I don't care that the letters show you what shape your mouth is (lies, all lies)

a) all hangul look the same to me. As bad as the indigenous alphabets where < and  > are actual letters

and

b) I *need* kanji to know what a language is saying. This is like when I tried to learn Cantonese after a year of Japanese and had to stop because my mind insisted that Chinese had to have particles so I'd know what part of speech that word is (hint: it doesn't) and the word order is all wrong even though it's basically the same word order as my native language. Bref, Japanese has burrowed into my brain so deeply it's become a crutch

and

c) Korean *sounds* are different from Japanese. Especially the vowels. Especially those vowel&consonent sounds that don't exist in English. I know there's a version of Korean that sounds like Japanese-that-doesn't-make-sense, and evidently it's an accent not a dialect, but generally that's not the Korean I hear around here. Basically, I can't hear the Korean they speak around here. It won't resolve into syllables.

Anyway I'd rather learn Welsh or Maōri, if I could find a decent tutorial. Two languages that I will never have an opportunity to use.

The trouble with sleeping past 11 is that I can't roll over and go back to sleep as I can do if I wake at 9. Yes, well. Life is rough.

Of course I also woke out of a frustration dream of trying to get three babies back to daycare, at night, in a triple stroller, through the University College (UofT version) campus, gone suddenly baroque with steps that aren't there and narrow gas lit passages, also with steps, that lyingly promised to take me up to Hoskins and Trinity College (again, UofT version: universities in the Brit-sphere have no innovation with respect to either names or architecture.) Could gave done without that, especially as my Christmas Eve dream was a  charming cosy murder mystery. I believe the white-haired Miss Marple-ish sleuth was in fact the murderer.

Weather is mild but grey and dank, and is supposed to rain all week, which is par for the Dead Days but also dispiriting. We may see some sun on Saturday. I went out today since the PoP was only 56% and got misted on. Tony Korean restaurant was fairly full, even at 3 in the afternoon, but the Koreans make the most of their holidays. When they get them, because the big supermarket and greengrocers were open. Bought celery for future turkey salads but was so full from egg and beef donburi that I skipped dinner. 

 Once again, after a mere thirty years, I come across someone who thinks an 'access' of some emotion ought to be 'excess'. Which it isn't, but you might have to read French literature to know this. As in, I first encountered the construction in the translation of Claudine at School, where she has 'a sudden access of stupidity.' What was the French original? Probably accès, because Larousse will give you the medical definition of 'sudden and transient disorder, usually violent.' But English is quite happy to follow, because there it is as definition no.2, literary, 'an attack or outburst of an emotion.' (Really, there's a point where 18th century French reads exactly like 18th century English, because both were modelling themselves on Latin; and then alas the vernacular took over and I could no longer read French writers.)

Good, that's settled. Now back to the conundrum in Cohen's Here It Is: what's the meaning of 'list' in the line 'and here is the love/ that lists where it will'? Always assumed it was a variation on 'the wind bloweth where it listeth' (which is the Gospel of John, surprise surprise, because I thought it was OT: mind, read the whole chapter and it's very much John being umm transcendental John again.) But list there, which this keyboard keeps rendering as its cognate lust, just means 'pleases', 'as it will', which thus turns Cohen's line into that rhetorical device whose name I've forgotten, saying the same thing twice. (Tautology, and you wouldn't believe the googling it took to find that.) Ergo it must be a different list, but which one? Lean to one side? Surely not itemize? Or did Cohen simply misremember, or misunderstand, John?

Do I want to read a translation of the Aeneid into 16th century Scots? It's prime Life is Too Short territory- I have enough trouble with Dunbar, god knows-- but I'm really seriously tempted. Though I'm sure the edition that's just come out is hideously expensive, libraries,  solely, for the use of.

Also those quality of life articles that say an essential to happiness is deep and meaningful relationships, or at least deep and meaningful conversations. Meaningful is as you define it, so I can't speak to the former, but I don't think I've ever had the latter with anyone but a therapist. Pleasant conversations, enjoyable conversations, yes those: but I notice that in the ones I remember I did very little of the talking. Other people's stories, other people's ideas, none of my own. Are those deep and meaningful?

Weather here is warm but pleasant. Went out to library, to Ninetails coffee shop with its beautiful androgynous Japanese baristas, and the new banh mi place at the end of the street. Was trotting home with my banh mi when I espy Josie from up the street standing with two rollators at the house cattycorner from me. One rollator was her own and the other was a freebie and she was debating how to get it back home. And since I'm semi-mobile, maybe, at times, I offered to take it over to my place and come back. Which did, but by that time Josie had also acquired a silver tray and some china odds and ends. She doesn't have a basket on her walker and I do, so shou ga nai, I ended up taking her finds up to her place, walking back to my place, taking her rollator up to her place, and walking back. She has a ramp to her front porch so I didn't have to do steps but the ramp (built by her sons) is unnervingly bouncy and I'm still not steady on my feet when in shoes, which is depressing. Did however score a Psmith book from the clean-out. I gather someone's surviving parent died and daughter was emptying the house of stuff no one wanted, like school texts of Shakespearian plays.

Finished Half a Soul, first of Atwater's regency fairytale. Enjoyed it but the author and her editor (if any) has no notion of the difference between will and shall. I know usage may differ by region (in Scotland at least) and by person for sure, and I'd have to think to tell you what the rules are: but my ear says that Atwater gets it wrong and it's like fingernails on the blackboard.

Nice as it would have been to be carted off to a rehab place where people brought me meals in bed, I reflect that most of the pain of the last ten days was muscle aches, and nothing worked for those but Robaxacet and hot beanbags. Which I wouldn't have had, or had so conveniently, anywhere but at home. So all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

Have so far reverted to my wonted ways as to order in food. Wanted to try Malaysian stuff, since Indonesian is hard to come by, got mie goreng, thought it had no flavour to speak of. Wonder if nasi goreng tastes different? Had it ohhh fifty years ago in Holland, but will probably not be able to reduplicate *that* experience, any more than the Vietnamese food here tastes anything like the divine Vietnamese food in France.

One forgets names at my age, but when the name in question belongs to a clerk at the Kimi Ryokan back in 1991 perhaps no wonder. She came from an island in Indonesia and said it was the name for November in her mother's dialect. Since there seem to be as many dialects in Indonesia as native languages here, that's not much help. And if I'm remembering correctly, her parents came from different islands and on her mother's island there was a female form of the language quite distinct from the male. One wonders how her parents communicated, though I think by then Bahasa Indonesia had been declared the standard. Anyway, she married a Scots guy and mentioned how her mother-in-law called her Rrrita. From which I deduced that her name was Nofrita, which is a real Indonesian surname, 'origin unknown'. I know the origin: it's November in an obscure women's dialect on some island in the archipelago.

Because I never saw all of ST:TNG, I never heard Patrick Stewart retelling the story of Gilgamesh and therefore I never knew until last night that the accent in Enkidu comes on the second syllable, not the first.

Dear God but Piranesi is oogey-making reading. Like a bad dream or the faintest recollection of something else I read somewhere else but can't trace. For no good reason I think that something else is certain scenes in Hamabe no Kafuka, which doesn't read at all the same in English as in Japanese. In Japanese it's all quite straightforward, almost commonplace, because the language is, even when everything else is surrealistic. In English it's both oogey and menacing, and I'm not sure if that's due to the removal of the language scrim- which normally makes things look more resonant, not less- or the translator's word choice. Am not good at noticing stylistic choices in English unless they're anvil-to-the-head stuff like Lovecraft.

 Took till nearly the end of August for me to register that there are no nightly fireworks because there is no Ex(hibition) this year which means there will be no air show either, which last I am grateful for.

Weather has gone warm and muggy again after that brief and intermittent cool down last week. Autumn will come eventually, but meanwhile my joints hate me.

Jean de Florette is all about brital murderous peasants, so I went searching for something more congenial and am now reading Arsène Lupin. His vocabulary is, oddly, more obscure than JdF's in spite of the latter's all landscape all the time.

 Someone on the FFL uses the legal phrase time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, very much in a nonlegal setting. Natsukashii: it was one of my father's bywords. And while it originally meant 'before the reign of Richard I', in Ontario it has now been reduced to a paltry 10 years.

To have it here where it will stay, unlike tumblr and FB.

Via mooncustafer, the ultimate list of utterly insane old money names . "If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction." But there's the 正真正銘/ realio trulio John Jacob William Waldorf Astor, so Plesanton Conquest Jr and Peachy G Harrison must be real too.

Peachy. Peachy. I feel like Vimes faced with his new dwarf recruit.

 Young Master Boswell has just caught a dose of the clap and is sequestered in his rooms, medicating himself with I dare not guess what and reflecting with satisfaction on his genius and his prospects, how he can join the Guards and have his own regiment, or join the bar and become a rich lawyer: that is, when he's not feeling low and fixing to die. I am sequestered at home medicating myself with anti-inflammatories, and in  neither of Boswell's frames of mind exactly. Certainly not the 'what a fine fellow am I' one.

But a little scratchy nonetheless. Partly the continuing nonappearance of Purolator. Partly the acrostics I armed myself with last winter to while away my convalescence, which are doing a bad job of whiling away my sequestration. (The oddity of the clues and their answers. Everywhere = on all hands. Roundabout, going astray = devious. Constantly wanting more = insatiate. No cigar, guys.) And partly my loose end reading of Ellis Peters mysteries.

I know she has her kinks. In every book there must be a pair of young lovers. The he lover may vary but the she lover is a teenager of glowing beauty, utter poise, and fine insight into the nuances of social interaction, the psychology of her boyfriend, and the emotions of absolutely everybody. I do not believe people like that exist, let alone sixteen year olds. But I'm at a loose end and can't be having with doorstoppers just now. Left to my scratchy devices, I might go through the entire Brother Cadfael oeuvre except that I can't be having with reading on the tablet either. Hurts my eyes, hurts my elbows. So one more book and then... well, I have batteries now, so I might go back to Murakami.

'To cover my head now and have a good cry.' Aka vanity (ie futility) and vexation of spirit.

So I trot down to the bank this morning and end up reciting my woes to the bank manager. Should be simple enough to straighten out, says he, but we can't do it on our computers here, it has to be on your own device. Do you have a laptop? No, but luckily I do have a tablet. Go home to get it, come back, he's with another client. I sit until his no.2 comes asking can she help me. She can't, actually, and ends up handing me back to the telephone support guys. This time we manage to reset the password- I'm convinced it's because in defiance of logic and the facts I tick the 'I do not have a phone to receive my password' box, even though I'm talking on a phone at the time.

But my trading privileges were suspended in May pending an information update to my trading account. So he walks me through that and nothing needs changing till we get to 'State your annual income and net worth' which wants new figures. I enter them and oh here we go again the webpage won't accept them. Guy is puzzled. 'Try putting a dollar sign before it.' Nope. 'Try adding a decimal point and two zeroes.' Nope. Guy is increasingly perplexed. Calls up his own account, puts in new values for those fields, no problem. We go through the familiar routine: close browser, open browser, reenter webpage, reenter all info, reenter new figures, webpage won't accept them. After forty minutes he says he'll send me the forms, I can fill them out at home and email them back. My heart sinks, but I say OK.

Go to coffee shop for belated latte, open email, there yes indeed is a .pdf form. DL it, open, it's read only. Save it as .docx, open doc, there's a little edit button but tablet won't give me a keyboard. This 'fill in the form online' schtick only works if you have the right magic formula and the few times I've managed it I immediately forgot what the formula is. Close everything up and go for unsatisfactory acupuncture session. Then get my blood tests done so the day isn't totally wasted and go home to wait for bro to come back from the cottage so he can tell me how to fill in forms online. Still picking at the scab I turn on desktop, go to Investorline account, and try reentering my info. Get to the annual income line and a little voice says try leaving the commas out. And *of course* that works. But why did no one else know to tell me that's what you have to do?

No matter. Is done. Now can sell my paltry stocks, take my substantial capital loss to offset any gains elsewhere, and close the thing down, because I am so done with technology and banks.

And I still don't have my new bike.

(Also I see that the King James cttee's vexation of spirit should more properly be Donovan's 'try and catch the wind', which to me is a great falling-off.)

Hot enough today, but not the 37 and 38C of the late 80s, and the wind blew as well, so I won't complain. Humid, however, in a very nostalgic Tokyo fashion. When I went to hang tank tops out on the line, I discovered the lianas had taken over the back yard, so spent maybe twenty minutes with the clippers clearing the back path. After which I was soaked to the skin- which is actually the wrong phrase because the wet was *coming* from my skin, wasn't it?

And while we're at it, why are they called tank tops, a term I can never remember and must google every time. To me they're singlets and always will be.

House remains cool even with central AC off, but I'm at a hot weather loose end. I want the net to distract me, as I used to want TV to do when I had cable so many decades ago, and the net doesn't do that any more than TV ever did. Tumblr, FB-- not enough people are talking to meet my needs. I wish we still had active MLs as in the old days.

(Where are all these little flying insects coming from? My windows are all closed, y'all.)

I conclude that the only way to combat the inequity of early morning shifts and appointments is to get so drugged/ drunk the night before that one falls asleep at 8 pm, wakes three hours later, takes out lenses, turns off lights, and goes back to sleep again. Then I wake naturally at 6 something, which allows me to do exercises, have breakfast, take meds, and be at work at 8:30 or whatever. This worked like a charm last night: an antihistamine and a muscle relaxant and a long rainy day with cabin-fevered infings got me happily to sleep well before nine. But I doubt tonight will work as well, since I had the day off and spent it erranding and seeing doctors and acupuncturists. Though I *did* chop some more off the hedge as well as the honeysuckle vine down the street, which is 30% deadwood and is cracking the concrete hydro pole it's growing around, and which catches at my hair/ hat as I ride my bike down the sidewalk to where my street starts going in the right direction.

Anyway, happy sunny day saw me getting opioids of choice from doctor and Zen Cho's latest from the one Indigo Books that had it, so I could use my Indigo book token from Xmas. (People don't call them book tokens anymore. You have to say 'gift certificate' now. When did that happen? And is 'book token' a Britishism? It's what they were called in the veddy English Toronto of my childhood.) Had less luck with my other efforts. Called the arborists who will get back to me eventually rather than same day, is the difference between booking in April and booking in June. And my attempt to return wrong kind of socket computer mouse for right kind was forestalled by store being out of mice. I deal with a local spare parts guy rather than big box, because he's local and a friendly maritimer and was a sanity saver when I was going through trauma eight years ago. More mice expected by Friday, by which time I may also have bought new Birks as well.

But first there's a 9:30 to 6 day tomorrow to be got through. Bed soon, I think.

The twins have lost their hats. The twins didn't have hats yesterday when they needed them but their father was certain they'd had them today, except they were nowhere to be found. Probably K&M tossed them into a black hole, being the kind of twins that are pillow-worded with 'terrible'. So just to double check I looked amongst the cubbies where the hats ought to be, and looked in the infant cubbies beside them, and then under the adult coats and paraphernalia across from the infant cubbies, because all these are at toddler height and toddlers waiting for diaper changes have been known to shuffle objects from one place to another. I found no twin hats anywhere but under the adult coat rack I did find a black knobbly thing which turned out to be my headlight-on-a-strap, not stolen from my pannier after all. And a good thing too, because the replacement one I had does not light no matter how many new batteries I put into it, and the strap somehow got severed as well, and was thus a total bust. So, happiness.

Crossed off the 'Don'wanna' list as well was renewing my Ontario ID card, useful thingy for people who don't drive. 4-6 weeks, said the uncivil servant. 'And if there's a mail strike?' I asked, since rotating strikes start on Monday. She shrugged, indifferent. Maudit espèce d'un petit fonctionnaire. (Hmm- does that change gender if the Babu in question is female?) Anyway, if I need ID befoe then, I still have my passport-- erm, here somewhere.

Comment on a DW friend's post introduces me to a book called Fluent Forever, which contains the clever idea of using visual flash cards and making eg 'le chat' a picture of a cat on fire because all masc nouns are on fire, while feminine ones are ice or what you will. This would work perfectly for French, whose genders I can never remember though I know the nouns pretty well. I hesitate to buy the book itself on account of it being akin to buying grammars and then never reading them, but I'm intrigued.

Mind, a hanzi book from a decade ago had a mnemonic for remembering the tones as well as the meanings of the chracters, but I never found it workable. Really I should get back to my Japanese and once again get kanji and vocab into order. Though I wonder if FF has tips for Japanese and Chinese as well.

Reading has been more Christies: Murder on the Links, Five Little Pigs (where I'd in fact forgotten whodunnit), and Sleeping Murder, Miss Marple's last but not, fortunately, because she dies in it. Witches Abroad for fun.

Still reading Zora Neale Hurston's experiences with Haitian voudoun, interrupted by stomach-churning accounts of Haitian revolution. Taking Rainy Willow 16 very slowly. Have also one volume of Dinotopia, which is charming but simple-minded.

I was very chuffed to get An Unkindness of Ghosts on my ereader at last, only to discover it's SF set on a generation ship whose society is modelled, as far as I can see, on the atrocious plantation one of the Old South. Better go back to Nalo Hopkinson because Hurston's Haiti was enough for me, thanks.

Yesterday I was supposed to have had the massage that lets me walk but I wasn't in the computer at the clinic. I was booked for Saturday the 7th instead. How could this be? My conclusion: when I made the appointment last Sunday, I said 'Book me for next Saturday' and the secretary is one of those people who distinguish between 'this' and 'next'. If you want Saturday coming, it's this. If you want the Saturday after, it's next. I of course use them interchangeably which, yes, often requires disambiguation. At least I get a massage on Wednesday- this Wednesday, or next Wednesday, or this coming Wednesday.

FB is holding posts for ransom again. 'Find friends to see more posts.' Even 'most recent' which is regularly interpreted to mean 'stuff from three days ago' cuts off after four or five. Nothing will drive me to twitter but oh lord.

Finished Tremain's Restoration, an English version of The Radiance of the King. Still left me with a lowering feeling for reasons I haven't yet analyzed.

1. Who says you never learn anything on FB? Someone posted a picture of the jerkface who shot a hibernating bear, and someone in the comments remarked 'Elender pisser.' So now I know the German for 'miserable prick/ asshole.'

2. Several weeks after the last vermin passed on (according to my nose) I have flies in the house. Thought it was fly- silly buzzer that dive-bombed the kitchen by day and the bathroom by night. Kitchen fly grew lethargic, so I caught it this afternoon and released it to the wilds- only to discover another lethargic fly in the evening, drooping on the living room table. Repeat. Came upstairs well-pleased, and discovered two more in the hallway, which I bashed with a broom. They disappeared somewhere to lick their wounds, and I begin to think about blocking up vents again. OTOH they're nothing like the real infestation we had at work when a squirrel died in the roof, so I shall hope this was pure coincidence.

3. Went to the local cafe, crowded as ever on a Saturday morning, but found a seat at the refectory table. Farther up the bench on my side two Japanese women were talking together in relatively comprehensible Japanese, being a little older than the rapid-fire twenty-somes who make me weep when I hear them. Still wasn't quite sure what they were talking about, which is depressing.

4. Yesterday and today were grey and white blustery November and almost warm enough for no gloves, with occasional shafts of silver sunlight breaking through. But the grey became greyer and the white vanished and I had my bike light on at 4:30. Now it rains, and they speak of snowflurries tomorrow.

5. I bought a chunk of Happy Beef of some description- all I know is it had a bone in it- and cooked it up in the crock pot last week. Having learned my lesson, I sauteed the onions and celery beforehand and parboiled the carrots. The russet potatoes I cut into chunks and just threw in, because we know that russets will go to mush with a mere five minutes of boiling and ten minutes sitting. Set timer for ten hours and went to bed. Next morning house smelled of... Worcestershire sauce, actually, of which I'd put two splashes into the four cups of stock. Very disappointing. Even more so was the just-done meat and the hard as rocks potatoes. Where is the melting beef and the veggie mush that oven slow-cooking gives you? So cooked it another four hours, which sort of softened the beef and sort of rendered the potatoes edible. I think the higher cooking temp may be what's needed, because for sure the lower one just doesn't work.

Had some of it tonight with mashed potatoes: the five-and-ten method that let me mash with a fork. The one thing I can say is that I have enough beef gravy to keep me forever, but maybe I should thicken it with some flour or cornstarch. Does flour keep in the fridge? I so rarely use it that it's a waste to buy a bag of the stuff.

Onto a Vast Plain

Rainer Maria Rilke
translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

Book of Hours, II 1
( Cut for German )

...for which English has no words but others do.

Best unpacking of natsukashii I've ever come across.

Sunny March topos: blue and bright. And cold. The sleepies have me: still putting in ten hours at a stretch.

Books finished?
Nothing but that Motohashi Keiko on the (bright sunny but warm) weekend.

Reading now?
A few dozen more pages of A Distant Mirror, a few more (single) pages of The Death of the Necromancer, a bit of McKinley's The Blue Sword (because its limited third has a distinct voice, unlike Necromancer), some more stories from The Green Man. Nothing much inspires, alas.

Next?
Looked at Helen Waddell's The Wandering Scholars last week, might go on with it if attention will focus. I studied Latin from the age of twelve and took university courses in it, but it never struck me as a language anyone might actually *speak* until it hit the middle ages. (I remember Plautus and how impenetrable I found him. 'This is colloquial Latin? Colloquial Latin makes no sense.') Verse-wise, only Catullus was comprehensible, to say nothing of poetic; the tricks of the other poets turned what was supposed to be glorious verse into double crostic word puzzles. Could never see the beauty in that. So I'm bemused at these churchmen and scholars extolling this or that Roman writer, with quotes Waddell tosses off and doesn't bother translating. At least she isn't quoting Provencal or Occitan verse, or not yet, which puts her one up on her confreres who wrote about Chinese poetry.