Off the Cliff

A pleasant evening with the Little Girls last night, who are not as little as they used to be. M seems always to have grown another inch every time I see her, even if it was only six weeks ago, and L has suddenly added a mental year or two. She's moved into the front bedroom, formerly her parents', meaning she has maximum floor space for all her tiny plastic toys, books, notebooks, pencils, and you name it. "L, when you get up in the night to go to the bathroom, how do you avoid stepping on all those sharp edges?" She gave me a haughty eight-and-a-half year old stare. "I have excellent night vision," she informed me. "And my room is very bright because of the street lamps." This is true; but then she decided to lower the blinds, leaving the room in darkness, and I cleared a path to her bed so her parents wouldn't puncture their feet when they came to kiss her goodnight on their return.
( JS&MN )

Tore through eleven volumes of Ze in four days, more or less, including re-skims of 10 and 11. (And Shoui was adopted by Kotoha's parents, so yes, they're brothers.) Very satisfying, and these days very rare, to be able to lose myself in a series like that, one that precisely scratches an itch I wasn't aware of. I wonder where manga fandom is happening now? Probably through scanlations, I suppose.
( Thoughts on Waki )

Partly anent all this, I was cruising the fiction section of the local used bookstore and realized why I have little use for mainstream fiction. It's all about the experiences of ordinary people in relationships: marriage, affairs, whatever. Which is foreign country to me. I have no idea what it's like to live with someone you're emotionally involved with (or, depressingly in the case of many male authors, *not* emotionally involved with.) The idea, as presented in English fiction at least, has all the appeal of working for a large corporation. It's so dreary. Why would anyone *want* to?

Which I suppose is why I go for genre. Genre does romance: high-flown, overblown, operatic, and always far too simple in its resolutions. But satisfying, goodness yes. It isn't like that, it can't be like that, but how nice to read a fantasy where perfect love is perfectly possible.

1. Ruthlessly pruning the cherry tree doesn't seem to have discouraged it from producing fruit in the least. I can see hundreds of little green nubbins just waiting to ripen and fall rotting to the ground. Two doors up has a scare-raccoon alarm, a rather annoying shrill beeeep that sounds every minute or so. I assume it discourages the raccoons, but it also seems to discourage the squirrels (good) and birds (bad), so I can't expect the neighbourhood fowls to strip my tree for me. Ah well. Maybe last night's near-frost will blight the fruit, but I rather doubt it: we're in for 25 and 27+ highs the next four days.

2. Read the last two volumes of Ze on Thursday, all happy in the sunshine of a forgotten world, and then the first four volumes last night. And um well- some answers were OK, some suggest she forgot her own settei between books 1 and 11 (Kotoha is Shoui's cousin once removed, not his older brother, and I don't think his father stuck around to train him in kotodama use.) And while it's all 'oh magnificent Rikiichi, how we still miss him', and while Waki does seem to play the Mitou family's emotions like a violin to get them to be decent to their kami, we're still dealing with a pair of amoral mass murderers. Not sure why I still like this series so much, but I do.

3. Four years ago almost to the day I got up one Saturday morning and had my knee give out beneath me. Same thing happened yesterday, only I had a slew of appointments and a shift. Made it through the day with the help of brace and anti-inflammatories, but am annoyed. These physio exercises make things hurt worse. Acupuncturist says alas that that's the way of it and be patient and some day I may be able to walk again without a cane or, even better, a bicycle for stability. *I* think I'm headed for walker-land.

It has been A Week, and isn't over yet. But still. I came home late last night after class, opened front door, and a box fell out from between that and the screen door. 'Huh? Can't be my bk1 order; SAL takes 2-3 weeks and they only got the thing filled last week sometime.' No, not my bk1 order. Two chubby red dragons, one holding a treasure bag and the other a treasure ship is it? They are currently brightening up my front room study. Thank you rasetsunyo!
( Continung... )

I wanted to reread some DWJ because well obviously. But she's not a happy writer, and my experience with Fruits Basket last weekend suggests that my internal digestion is too delicate these days for anything dark and edged. Nonetheless yesterday I went to the library where I recalled seeing at least three books of hers I hadn't read. Only one was in-- other people having the same memorial urges as myself, maybe?-- and I got it as a break from this month's English reading of improving Buddhist literature and self-help handbooks.

The book was Enchanted Glass and I liked it very much. Nice adults, competent people, and a happi endo. Very manga-like and very un-DWJ. (Dead grandmothers are manga to me. Ze and... Kohri no Mamono, was it?)

My copies of Ze 9 & 10 came last week. Left them in the package; I was reading Pratchett and Ze has a certain mhh undeniable insistency to it. In a weak moment I opened it last night, reasoning that a single tank wouldn't take that long. Single tank because I'd already read vol 9, I just couldn't find it anywhere in the house and so, disgruntled, bought it again. My misty memory of reading it back in '09 was that I'd need it for reference when dealing with the fallout of the big honking spoiler at vol 9's end.
( Anyone familiar with Ze can see what's wrong with that statement )

So that was four volumes of Ze in two days (one was a reread.) Like 100 Demons, the last ep in this one makes me want to rush out and get a subscription to whatever magazine it runs in. Will not, because tank reading is so much more satisfying (and three tank reads are even better) and anyway there are scanlations in Chinese of the next chapter if umm I feel like working my Chinese, which right now I don't. Right now the grammar book sentences are about my limit.

Googling about for info reminds me that the stupendous happenings of vol 8 were signalled as far back as vol 1. Thus I must reread vols 1-4 to see what else I've forgotten and what further hints may have been dropped about this and that and *mostly* the structure of the Mito clan, which I know I'm not going to be told. I was hoping for a leeetle more information on who the hell Waki is anyway and didn't get that either. Still, a very satisfying read; I wish there were more manga that could hold me like that.

Also, any similarities to West End and 12 Kingdoms are doubtless totally in my imagination.

How could you have an 18th century French society-- full of ducs and swordsmen and composers and painters, in silks and peruques and patches and powder-- where everyone is black?
( Cut for consideration )

--but not this year, apparently. My Gruesome reading continues unabated, a scant ten days after finishing my last fantoddy work. Started Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor and was totally todded a mere twenty pages in. (Possibly should postpone until next door comes back from wherever and I hear their comforting footsteps through the wall.) Yes I knew it was Like That because Ackroyd is Like That, and frankly I think London is Like That too. Horrible place (shudders.) But The Fall of the Kings is too complicated for my poor brane (can't keep people straight) and The Years of Rice and Salt is too heavy-- literally: weighs the backpack-- and I need to sit with my poor swollen summer feet up so they can deflate, which means reading through the To Read bookcase. Luckily serendipity brought me the perfect sweetness and light antidote to Ackroyd, not that I expect you to believe it. But a fast reread of Ze 4 and 5 has settled my stomach marvellously.

Which is good, because 6, 7 and 8 are in the mail to me.

For my own reference, the winged dragons on Nihonbashi bridge. (Yes, I know that means Nihon bridge bridge. Nihonbashi is also an area and I feel an intrinsic need to specify.) I'm reminded of Ima Ichiko's little squib at the end of vol 4-ish of 100 Demons: 'Sometimes I wish a bomb would drop on Ginza.' Sometimes I wish a bomb would drop on north Ginza and demolish the expressway there. What were they *thinking* of, to stick the thing right above Nihonbashi? I know there's no urban planning in Japan but you'd think someone would have thought.

Otherwise, to reassure my battered ego, I read Ze 5 last night. ( Cut for those who haven't yet or might some day )

I'm currently reading the Ze that kickinpants sent me, about guys who do it with animated pieces of paper, and that Chinese-set one of paleaswater's about the guy who falls prey to a peony. Truly, Japanese manga does alter the west's settled and disapproving notions about what constitutes a permitted, or even possible, sexual partner. If nothing else you're dealing with the culture's reflex animistic assumption that everything is a spirit, which means in our terms that everything is a person. Dogs? People. Goldfish? People. ('I wouldn't use the verb 'yaru' when talking about feeding fish. It's disrespectful to the fish.') Parakeets? People: and in 100 Demons they'll kill you if you put a foot wrong. Trees? People for very sure. Even here they're people. Look at the unsavoury personality of willows in various English fantasy writers.

Maybe we wouldn't write stories where people are raped by randy tree branches, but that's 'cause we're puritans. Minami Ozaki did because she's Minami Ozaki. (Me, I always figured there was a good kink story inherent in the Whomping Willow.) Since rocks are people too, especially in Shinto shrines, I confidently look forward to a manga about someone doing it with a rock. Actually I wouldn't be at all surprised if back in the day people did do it with rocks. There are enough of them around of the right shape. And if Ima Ichiko hasn't yet done a story about a rock spirit (hasn't she? memory is pinging lightly) she will, Oscar, she will. (I'm also flashing here to Marianne Dreams, about menacing rocks with eyes in them (and whatever happened to my copy, huh?) and Edward Gorey's Black Doll, that always looked like it was made of stones to me.)
( Christmas treasure )

I've been vaguely aware for the last six months or so of people saying WA4, oh where is the translation of WA4, does anyone have a translation of WA4? to which I respond FINGERS IN EARS LALALA I DON'T HEAR YOU. The trouble with WA4? It has this important untranslatable word I can't decide how to translate. The word might well be the 'kotodama' 言霊 that shows up on the third page of the story. The spirit/ soul of words and how saying a thing can make it real and a bunch of related animistic Japanese ideas. Except kotodama isn't the problem word. It's the 'tsumaranai' that also shows up on the third page and that I couldn't translate without a footnote so it's easier not to.

Equally I was desultorily translating a Yumemakura story but couldn't bring myself to go back to it. Partly a problem of how to phrase a longish quote from Konjaku Monogatari in middle English to parallel the medieval Japanese of the original and *not* sound idiotic when I translate Yumemakura's modern Japanese paraphrase right afterwards, and partly because translating = yuck boring and-besides-my-teeth-hurt. (They do. It does. Whichever. Ow ow ow.)
( And kickinpants gave me a manga for Xmas )