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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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Fuji Mums
Max and I went over to the used bookstore on Sunday before dinner at The Big House so that I could buy a few books about Japan. I picked up a copy of 36 Views of Mt. Fuji (not the Hiroshige prints, but the memoir by the American woman whose name escapes me at the moment even though I devoured her book in one sitting), and a copy of Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (and a Google search for Ruth Benedict draws up the factoid that she was also the poet Anne Singleton), and another copy of a book called Survival Guide to Living Overseas which is nothing so much as a guide to seeing American culture in contrast to other cultures (that is, seeing American culture through the eyes of other cultures so as to understand the role of culture in living in another culture--which makes no sense, but is important to understand as a concept I think). As we were leaving, Max helped a woman out with a box of books she had brought in in the hopes of selling them. As a reward, she gave him two books about Japan: One was written by an Italian man named (I think) Maraini (and translated from the Italian by Robert Mosberger) who was held as a prisoner of war in Nagoya and who spent several years after being released traveling around Japan. Its American edition was published in 1959 and it has the strangest photographs in it, temples and gardens mixed with post-war Tokyo strip clubs, geisha, and rockabilly Japanese prostitutes negotiating with seemingly clean-cut American servicemen. It's called Meeting Japan and is very interesting. The other is a novel only glancingly about Japan called Shinbumi (I think). I won't bother with that one. I met Mayflower for coffee yesterday. She's finished with her MS and is going through the decompression period where she doesn't know what in the hell to do with her life so she shops. And I'm going through the "oh my god i'm moving to another country" thing and I don't know what to do with myself so I drive around listening to music and I go to the gym and I freak out in my own little ways. I had a point when I began that story, but now I'm not so sure. Max brought me flowers this morning, Fuji mums and a card reminding me that it sometimes gets bumpy when you're trying to break out of ruts.
More lies:
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