Phantom Tokyo- The Other Side |
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sometime later Here it clouds and greys again. And six years ago was a very warm day, almost hot, the last Harumi event. Full of cosplayers and gaming djs, both a newish phenomenon in those days, and not much I wanted for myself. Saying good-bye to the huge shadowed space of Higashi-kan and the open stretch of the Harumi site itself, that for two and a half years (a blink and it's gone stretch of time from where I stand now) had provided me with all the fantasies I needed, often generously and mostly reliably. Dreams for sale, cheap. At a ballpark estimate Sabina's sister is about 40 years younger than I am, but I find myself agreeing with her completely, though it requires remembering back to when I was exactly her age and reading the Vicomte de Bragelonne myself. Feels like time travel. But she's right about Aramis and Louise de la Valliere; and she's right about Guinevere too. Sasuga Sabina's sister. 01:19 p.m. (Went down to do laundry, heard water running, the solidly soldered on Tuesday internal shutoff was leaking. Will cut sad story short- now have a quarter inch of water in my front basement. Isn't the mortgage company responsible for fixing this?) Reading LotR makes it easier to read Arslan, marginally. They reflect each other a lot, not least in their oh-so-external view of women. Marks still go to Tolkien in that regard, though I haven't finished the book yet to see what if anything Tanaka will do with Tahamine the fatal beauty who destroys empires. Like, what does *Tahamine* think about the fact that everyone who sees her becomes murderously infatuated with the need to possess her? So far she comes across as simply conventional. Does the male response annoy her or does she use it in some fashion or does she just go along wee-woman placid because that's how fatal beauty works, shrug? 'Oh here's my next husband killed my last fiance/ husband sure OK why not.' As for the deadly boring fight sequences- Tolkien's are probably no longer than Tanaka's, but I know the vocabulary in Tolkien. Also it's people I care something about who are fighting in Helm's Deep, not a bunch of faceless and unnamed bodies seen dying in grisly fashion from the battlements. Marks to the Englishman again. However Tanaka can be read relatively painlessly in small snatches while scanning the Homura ep from GFantasy++. And scanning, an activity both deadly boring and fraught with hideous anxiety (at least with my oft-crashing scanner) is bearable if one is reading a page or so of Tanaka while it's happening. So we get win-win here. very late The thing about holidays- you can fart around and write your own stuff and fece il gran rifuto and answer e-mail and lie down and listen to the walkman and go out to buy popcorn and come back and eat it and read LotR- and you still have hours left at the end of the day and nothing to do but work. So I'm now halfway through my Arslan translation. The one stupid thing I did today was go look at ff.net. I know better, but I did. With the usual result. 'My stuff sounds like this I'm never writing again.' 'My stuff isn't as good as this I'm never writing again.' Fortunately the story still wants me to work at it, so I do. No-one may ever get to read it, mind, because it's so BTN I can't stand it (shut up Peason larfing- I mean, metric or imperial, TTG, it's BTN, it *is*) and I'm embarrassed by it, but it still holds me, in a kind of translation-puzzle fashion. Let's make these two characters who say very little at all in the manga sound like themselves in English. Brain-teaser. 12:34 p.m. The weather here is now what the weather was in Chiba five weeks ago, and I find me being terribly nostalgic for that weekend. Yes I was tired and I was cold and I didn't get enough sleep, but still... something about the soft grey landscape outside the window and the impossible LotR landscape on the TV created this happy mental Otherwhere that still lingers. Especially as The Two Towers isn't being nearly Peter Jacksonish enough at this moment to make me happy. ^_^ But Easter is always a strange and otherwhere kind of holiday anyway. Partly the season, partly the month. April is the weirdest and unchanciest month of the year to me, as if it doesn't happen in the same kind of universe as the rest of them. The weather changeable and irrational, as all change of seasons are, but winter to spring most of all. Verging on the violent- hail, thunderstorms, snow, heat, and all of them to be taken as normal. The gentle and much-welcomed changeover from summer to fall, and the even more gradual and logical change from fall to winter, isn't in the same league at all. April to me is what Hallowe'en was to the medievals- dangerous and unlucky, bringing stuff back that should have stayed buried. My mind gets into odd places, gets restless and unhappy, and the long ago calm rationality of Christmas seems like a dream. 'Winter kept us warm' indeed- I always figured Eliot knew what he was talking about. And this year, I realize, is cognate with '96 and has been since March 1, when the two years went back in sync. Cognate being an old system I used to have to classify time, two years when the dates fall on the same days. And so I remember what I was doing six years ago today- clearing out my room and giving stuff to people who'd asked for it and thinking how empty the walls looked without the bookshelves that used to hold my djs, long since sent home seamail; and putting up all my Papuwa calendar pictures instead, old friends to ease the pangs of saying good-bye to five years of Japan. Season of endings. However, since weirdness and time-travel is in the air and nothing that happens has any real resonance, and also since I'm sleeping in the side bedroom again which is a dark and silent and nearly claustrophobic place that encourages burrowing into the brain (and I don't know how I managed to stay there for the first three years after I got back), Matsumoto and Tachibana are now quite clear in my head, and I know what they're saying to each other and I know what they're doing, at least enough to put it into words. Which is what I'm doing. Go me. 10:59 p.m. I'm not procrastinating here so much as making what Dante called the grand refusal. (No, I don't remember Dante well enough to quote him. I'm quoting Cavafy quoting Dante. ^_^) There are things I have to do. I am refusing to do them. On some kind of principle, though I'm not sure what. That whatever it is I have to do, even if I want to do it, I will not do it because I have to. Translating, writing Japanese letters, writing reviews, writing articles- this is my non serviam to the universe. I will not do them. I will play boring irritating free-cell instead to postpone the hideous moment when I have to do the things I'm refusing to do, which is naturally the moment when I will die, defeated by the horrible universe yet again.* Can you tell I hate it when I get into grand refusal mode? It's regressive to the point of idiocy. It's a miserable sulking three-year-old sitting hunched up and saying 'Won't' to all invitations to come and play. I have no idea why I do this, but my brother does it too, and he says it's because he was made to go to bed at 7 when all his friends were allowed to stay up to 8. Somehow I doubt that it's as one-to-one congruently simple as that. It feels like a general mindset, the Thanatos-favouring one. To live is to do? Good. Then I will Not Do, and sucks to you. Or You. Whichever. Thing is, it's a form of anxiety. What if I start doing whatever it is and it turns out to be, not a relief at the end of inaction, but even *more* dreary than playing free-cell? What if it is indeed a kind of death? The grey depression of doing something I don't want to do and doing it badly and doing it forever and ever and ever, like going to work at a job you hate. I used to feel like this before starting a lot of my stories. (The joy of my first fannish months in Saiyuuki was that this do-I-don't-I feet-dragging didn't happen. The stories *had* to be written. Often they had to be written so badly that they wrote themselves.) And sometimes in fact the story just sat there in an ugly uninspired lump, never coming together, never taking on life, assuring me that yes indeed all the other times were flukes but this time lady your luck ran out and you're not getting away with it ever again. I want to be writing. There's nothing worth writing. No stories in my head. But until I can be doing the thing I want to be doing I won't do anything. And sucks to you. Or You. Whichever. *(Anagke, the Greeks called it, Necessity, and they thought her a dreadful goddess indeed, "who takes her appointed sacrifice when and as she pleases.") 09:30 p.m. So spent the afternoon hauling babies. Uhh, baby. Uhh, Asha, a thumbnail scrap of a 6-month-old who inchworms her way across the floor cause she's got places to get to and never mind do the textbooks say she should be sitting steadily by now, she can't, cause if you sit her down she slides to one side and starts inchworming her way to where she wants to be, and never mind do the textbooks say she shouldn't be crawling at 6 months because she is. 'Forced ripe', her mother says they call babies like Asha in the Islands. 'Old soul,' we say. Gives you the look of a distinguished nuclear physicist attending a symposium and sighting a colleague. Courteously pleased but with other things on his mind. I wasn't supposed to be working and I wasn't working because Passover and the incredible cough has thinned the baby ranks to three, which Vicky could handle with both eyes shut. I was just hanging about reading Arslan while the babies slept and bouncing them when they were awake. My left shoulder, having gotten what it wanted, is perfectly happy thank you. 10:28 a.m. So my body hates me. I'm downtown underground trying to find what they've done with the approximately half of College Park (once alas the wonderful basement food department- yes, like the Japanese- of the terribly tony Eaton's College Street department store before the Eatons did what the Eatons did) that used to be here, when my left shoulder simply goes out. I wasn't doing nothing! It just went twinge, and now it's happily twinging away saying Get me to a chiropracter if you can wangle an appointment this close to Easter/ Passover. And it's like Look, I know you don't like doing Arslan and I know you don't like typing but sheesh, we gotta live. You'd rather be hauling babies instead? and my body says Yup. Bodies, I tell you. More trouble than dogs. What it wants is ativan and codeine, like I gave it last night, and to lie happily looking at the ceiling. And it can't. Bddddhhhh. We gotta go out and pay our taxes, body, and yes that *does* mean standing in line thirty minutes at the bank... unless of course... See what happens when you make me give you ativan and codeine? You make me forget I have two bank accounts, and though one is a mile away in the wrong direction over icy sidewalks with lineups out the door, the other is right on the way to work and no-one but us Korean businesspeople. Go me. Uhh us. Whatever. 01:28 p.m. Four hours later and I'm *two* pages from being 2/5 of the way through Arslan. The snow in these mountain passes is impregnable. OTOH the snow outside has turned to freezing rain. The did-it-himself plumbing system in the cellar needs to be replaced, the plumber says, at a ballpark cost of $2000 and soonish before the corroded pipes that for no good reason disappear into the floor start leaking water into the foundations. Shall I tell you my opinion of Italian concrete layers who do their own plumbing *and* their own carpentry? I won't. My brother next door has a lovely wooden handrail going up his stairs, the mirror to mine. I have a wrought-iron monstrosity that curves around and continues along the hallway as an iron balustrade. Iron balustrade not only is /not/ separate from handrail, it's not resting on iron runner bolted to the floor as is the easy way to install and (please note) deinstall iron railings. Oh no no no. We are dealing with a craftsman here. Original wooden floor is covered in thick sheet of plywood which is covered in turn with ugly industrial linoleum. And into linoleum and into plywood have been sunk little square holes just big enough to hold and anchor the uprights of the balustrade. This means you can't refloor the upper hall in *anything* without taking out the whole of the handrail and the balustrade. Twelve years I've been in this place and the former owner's Calabrian curse has not left it yet. May they bury him in concrete. 09:49 a.m. Vexation, vexation. Haul myself from sleep at 8 am in expectation of City water dep't knocking on front door, in the early-bird fashion of all city works, to tell me water is shut off so plumbers can come in today. 9:30 comes call from plumbing co just confirming today's appt so she can now call water dep't and tell them to come shut water off. They appear with commendable speed, to discover that street shut off valve on my property shuts off brother's supply next door, and my shut off is in the middle of his walkway. Return to find annoying 4 spam messages in inbox, but then discover the nine that got caught by the spam trap. Spring brings 'em out in droves. Receive the all-time steam from the ears line from yet another Entitled Fangirl, an international breed (this one is in Indonesia)- 'There are two vols of EC? I haven't read them. Where can I d/l them?' Wrote three answers to that, one of which sent her off to www.world-on-a-platter-with-a-pretty-pink-ribbon-around-it.com ('for all your fangirl needs'), deleted them, deleted hers, resolve not to think about it. If I were Snooze I could do a great sulfur-belching weblog piece bitchslapping all the Entitled Fangirls of the world, but I am not Snooze, a fact for which I thank God every morning. 'Lord,' I say companionably, turning to the east, 'I thank thee that thou hast made me me, and not Snooze.' It's snowing. I have spring allergies nonetheless. The universe continues to unfold as it should, as Pierre Trudeau said. OTOH I'm now six pages from being 2/5 of the way through Arslan. Go me, trudging through the snow of Mt Caradhras...
05:37 p.m. When in doubt, blog. As if the descent to Avernus wasn't easy enough already... March is doing its classic thing of pretending to be November. Thin pale sun and benignly dramatic grey skies that won't actually ever do anything, just look dramatic. The winds that have blown mightily for three weekends past, and knocked down the oldest tree in the Annex, are silent at last. Meanwhile out my back window the branches of the cherry begin to fuzz and pop with little buds. Spring on its way, alas. Not a season I care for, leading to summer for which I care even less. Winter is cold and clear and above all silent, but spring and summer bring my Italian neighbours out all up and down the block with their shrieking grandkids and scolding mothers and surly husbands, and conversations on front porches with the guy across the way and four doors up on *his* front porch; and the young studs in their BOOM-BOOM-BOOM cars cruising slowly up and down the street. A story my Japanese literature prof, a Czech, told us once- the guy who discovered the cure for TB and won whatever prize it was that was given for it, a Nobel perhaps? being asked by an interviewer, Now that you've conquered the great scourge of the 19th century, what do you think people will die of in future? He thought for a minute and answered, They will die of noise. No-one I've told that story to has ever known what I was talking about, which probably proves him right. 02:35 p.m. (Anything not to do some actual *work*) Well into The Two Towers by now. The one thing I find with Tolkien and not ever with anyone else is his focus on landscape. Middlearth is a place that he can see perfectly clearly and describe to us in great detail. I can't think of anyone else who does that in fantasy. (Dick Francis does in his mysteries sometimes. It's kind of an English thing.) I don't myself see what Tolkien sees, just because (I think) he's describing English scenery as viewed by someone who has a vocabulary for it. Someone who'd go on walking tours, say. And NA city-child me hasn't a clue what much of this stuff means. Just as when I went to visit Frances in England and heard her talking about the birds who frequent her back garden- she can *tell* the difference between a chaffinch and a tit, let alone the differences between different chaffinches? Or when she told at that time no more than three-year-old Quentin to find me a dock leaf because I'd accidentally touched some nettles, and he did. Just a whole world and a whole vocabulary that I don't have, and a mindset that says knowing this stuff is important. So with Tolkien's hills and mountain foothills and valleys and dells. He's seen how the old rounded edges of mountains come down to meet the plain, and I haven't. Or if I have, I didn't have the words to think about it. But the landscape description makes the work seem totally grounded in a way that most disposable tissue fantasy novels aren't. The characters are high romance remote and external, but the country is /right there/. 08:14 p.m. Pervy Hobbit Fancier I am. I admit it. Legolas is pretty but oh my god that Frodo. That Frodo-- is shota done with seinen that works. I'm not a shota fan. Never could see the point of that fantasy, any more than I could see the appeal of big muscular men. But Frodo hits another button, and not even an erotic button. Intellectual, more. I spend my days among small friendly people with soft petal-skin and dewy big eyes and no inhibitions at all, who come and plunk themselves down in your lap without asking if they like you and who cling desperately to your neck if they don't want to leave you. (And who are happy to share any and all body fluids with you, like it or not.) This doesn't last forever. It changes somewhere between one year and fifteen months, just as the hemispheres of their brains get together and they start seeing the world the way we do. And talking. Don't discount language as a destroyer of infantile strangeness. But before that there's a kind of ur-personality to any baby- the person they are at eight months- who's only a very little like the person they'll be at three. Friendly, straightforward, unthinking, without pretences. Self-centered, yes, but also capable of empathy and I don't care what the textbooks say. I've been trying for almost twenty years now to conceive of a grown-up version of what makes babies so fascinating- an adult baby, in short- and not succeeding. I can do it with cats. Assume a human shape, give it fur, give it coaxing ways and quite genuine affection allied to a steely-eyed determination to have one's own way, give it no concept of morality at all, and you have a human cat. (And very scary the prospect is too.) But a baby? Assume an adult, give it soft skin and a round solid form- yes- but after that? It's the intelligence thing that's the block. People just aren't as straight-forward and open and utterly unselfconscious as babies are unless there's something really very wrong with their social development. Enter hobbits. Or Frodo. Or Elijah Woods. Whichever. Petal skin, check. Dewy big eyes, check. Round solid form, check. Friendly, straightforward, unthinking, without pretences, check check umm-maybe and check. And hobbits, or Frodo, or Woods' version of Frodo, have an innocence and egolessness that could only be found in a fairy tale, because 21st century adults don't do that any more. It's very winning. And because the body is adult, it's hot. Only of course- who could a hobbit do it with except another hobbit? Those hairy rough-skinned Big People- yuch. 01:02 a.m. New Aesthe update in place. Go me. (The reason I think I could write LotR slash in Tolkien's style is because I can write the Secret Diaries' style, and yes I know that doesn't follow.) Must refrain from reading blogs for a week or two. Pain. Wonder what to do instead- /finish/ the update, maybe? Get back to work on the long-neglected Arslan? Start the Nitta translations that need to be done before Ycon? Nothing really excites me in all this. Not even the idea of watching the Saiyuuki movie excites me. What *does* excite me is the Jan GFantasy that came in today. (I'm not the only one whose subscription finally kicked in just as Minekura left the mag. Lots of us got burned that way.) I had that ep at the end of December, but now I see it again- Tenpou sending everyone else back so he can take the monster on himself, boy's adventure style, and nearly getting killed except that Kenren naturally didn't do what he was told and came after him. And Kenren lecturing his commanding officer in a few choice otokorashii words and Tenpou being unusually subdued afterwards. "Well, we'll forgive you if you make it up to us in yakitori." "Alright, alright. That's fifteen people, yourself included..." (We won't ask how Celestials who don't kill and do use anesthetics to deal with earth monsters manage to have yakitori.) And I do so want to be writing a Kenten story again that might capture some of that feel. Sigh. Bed. 01:37 a.m. I have to stop calling Liandra names, like Thud and Pudge and Fatface. She's 15 months now and will very soon know what I'm saying. That she reminds me of my long-departed Jenny whom I used to call the same things is neither here nor there. I hereby resolve never to call Liandra anything but Liandra. Except possibly Bum-bum. Anyway she came over for the evening and spent it taking things out of her bag and putting them back in, interrupted by occasional attempts to chew Hakuryuu's wings, which I stopped. Very slow and steady. A change from the manic energy of say Helen. The thought of having Helen here and not in her safely Helen-proofed house is the stuff of nightmares. After she left I read a dj where Gokuu has become a girl and needs to buy a bra, which Sanzou does for him, and reread the dj where Sanzou jerks off to thoughts of Gojou and then when Gojou comes in puts his gun to his head in self-contempt and Gojou says If you want to die I'll kill you and as he's strangling Sanzou Sanzou says Su... ki da, and Gojou breaks down in tears and says Aishiteru and then they have sex. Theoretically neither of these djs should have worked for a minute, and both of them did completely. They both had very much the conviction of their authors' vision. Suspect both author's vision and conviction are more easily conveyed in visual terms, but maybe that's only the writer me doing the grass is greener thing. Stress produces story ideas. The story ideas look good only as long as whatever's causing the stress takes up all your time so you can't write them. Have been tormented for a month now by the urge to write an ExecCttee story that I tell myself in bed when waking up. I'm sure it sounds better in my head than on the page, which is one reason not to write it. Only, only-- there was that Tenken story that was so satisfying all last summer, so clear in its pictures that it didn't seem necessary to write it either. So that when I did put it in words finally I'd missed the critical moment when the pictures were clearest and I couldn't express their energy at all. Delay and you're lost. But write and you're lost too. Forcing a story kills it just as dead. So-- I guess you accept that seen stories have a limited lifetime. Enjoy while they exist and don't mourn when they're gone. Trying to embalm them in words gives you nothing but a mummy. But if it's a purely technical exercise- I may write that Gimli/Legolas story yet. That's pastiche, that is, and nothing to do with writing at all. |
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