“The lake of my mind, unbroken by oars, heaves placidly and soon sinks into an oily somnolence.’ That will be useful.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
from Claw & Blossom
“Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It’s like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful. So stop eating yourself up alive. Things will go where they’re supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
I overslept something terrible today. Actually, I set my alarm for eight; late enough as it is, woke up and puttered around, but then fell back asleep.
I wanted to get some exercise and have been enjoying loading up my new pack and going for walks. By the time I was able to get my shit together it was three in the afternoon and brutal hot. Hiking on a hot summer day is good exercise anyway, so I decided to give it a go.
I drove over to White Rock Lake and since there is all new construction going in around the dam area, went farther north and entered at Emerald Isle, intending to hike down to the dam and back.
My pack was stuffed with as much weight as I could get in there, camera, books, and water bottles mostly. I had my sun hat and safety-glasses style sunglasses on, shorts and hiking boots – I looked plenty stupid and felt it.
They are working on the old road on the entire southeast sector of the lake, building a new, wide asphalt bike and jogging trail. For now, though, it is all torn up. The afternoon was killer hot and the sun scorching. There were very few people out, two women hiking with hydration packs and a scattering of sweating bicyclists, mostly guys, mostly shirtless.
I walked down to the area close to the dam, then walked out on to one of the old wooden piers to sit and rest for a bit. I’m terribly out of shape and the easy walk wasn’t so easy for me. I hesitated for a minute, the jutting, T-shaped dock doesn’t afford any shade and I wondered if I would be better off finding a tree. The green water looked inviting though, and I decided to sit on the end hanging my legs over. The pier is old – the wood gray and weathered, broad, brown nail-heads stick up on little pimples of wood, the area around worn away by sun and water.
It was dead calm but comfortable out there so I sat and read for a while. A fish roiled the surface, going after a bug or something, showing a flash of tan fin and a splash. A duck paraded back and forth. Two soft-shell turtles splashed off their nearby log and floated around, their dark necks and thin heads sticking out of the water, wondering when I would leave so they could get back to their basking spot.
I sat looking lakeward with the sounds of the traffic on Garland road behind me. The roar of rubber on tarmac, the occasional horn, thumping of untuned engines, and the treble chatter of car radios out of open windows. When the traffic let up I could hear the roar of water going over the spillway to my left. The waterfall gave the odd illusion, sitting on the dock above it, that the lake existed as a shelf above the ground; I was looking into the tops of trees and buildings sticking up above the water. In the distance were the geometric towers of downtown.
The water around me was calm, flat, green, and smooth, but looking toward the dam I could see patch of wavelets, glittering, jewel-like. As I watched the patch began to grow and move toward me. Soon, little ripples passed by where I was sitting and then a gust of cooling breeze. The water was then covered with little silver-blue waves, the sun glinting in thousands of fast moving stars off the sides of the water.
The burst of breeze moved on, the water calmed, but for a moment, it was beautiful.
from Lost Balloon
“I’m tired of living unable to love anyone. I don’t have a single friend – not one. And, worst of all, I can’t even love myself. Why is that? Why can’t I love myself? It’s because I can’t love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
My Difficult Reading Book Club has been cranking through Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 at a steady clip – through Book 1 and well into Book2. There was even a mention of our last book, The Brother’s Karamazov.
In today’s chapter Tengo is on a train going to visit his father. He is reading a paperback of short stories and finds one that resonates with him and his story. It’s a strange tale called Town of Cats written by an unnamed Russian author.
I wondered if the story actually existed outside of 1Q84. I did a quick web search and found that it didn’t – that it was made up for the novel.
I did discover, however, that the story was excerpted from the massive novel and published as a stand-alone story in the New Yorker. That’s cool.
So you can read it if you want a taste of 1Q84 without committing to the 900+ page tome.
“Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.”
― Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories
The knife plunges through the firm orange flesh
and slices a circle across the top of the head
It comes out like a plug
and I reach in and pull out
the wet stringy gooey sticky messThe kids poke the eyes
nose mouth
out with little metal saws
hunched over concentrating
on the horrible taskI take a big spoon
and clean the inside of the orb
scraping
the firm flesh
makes a hollow thumping soundWe build our little fires
inside the hollow heads
Place one on each side
of the front door
turn off the porch light
OOOO! see the yellow glowsmell the burning punkin
On the way to work out at the health club I ran into Candy and the kids coming out of Nick’s piano lessons. I spotted her getting into the MiniVan in front of Poteet High School and pulled in to say hello.
Lee asked me if I had remembered to buy some pumpkins for him and, of course, I had forgotten. After a hard workout I drove to soccer practice and switched with Candy, she went out to eat with some friends. I made a deal with the kids and after practice we went to the grocery store to pick out pumpkins to carve.
They spent forever choosing two from the big bins. Nick searched for the roundest, most perfectly shaped fruit while Lee simply chose the biggest he could find. I also bought two metal knives, dull, with saw edges, designed to be safe for children to carve Jack-O-Lanterns.
We set up in the garage, newspaper on the floor, big bowl to collect pumpkin guts and seeds, big spoons, and a towel to clean slime off our hands as we worked. I helped them get started but Nick and Lee did most of the work themselves, cutting and cleaning.
Nick did fine, his Jack-O-Lantern was good. Lee, though, made his a work of art. He went in the house and produced a drawing he had done earlier with the design he wanted for the face. Lee proceeded to sit there with that knife and sculpt the design faithfully in the firm flesh; working quickly with confident strokes on the 20 pound gourd (Nick’s weighed 11 pounds, they insisted we weigh them on the vegetable scales in the store when we bought them).
I found some candles and matches and illuminated the lanterns, turning off the outside lights for the full effect. My timing was perfect, Candy came driving up right then and we dashed inside so she would be surprised.
Tania Hershman Twitterhttps://twitter.com/taniahershman
“Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
I wasn’t prepared mentally for the cold or for the snow. We were right in the snow belt that forms from the lake effect in Buffalo and it freaked me out that when I’d walk along the road my feet would actually be above the cars due to the six foot deep snow that piled up there. The building where we worked was right next to the hotel, which was near the airport, and we didn’t get rental cars – which made it tough to find entertainment in the evening.
One night a small group of us – I was the only one from Dallas, but there were two women and a guy from Atlanta – and another guy from California – sitting around the hotel bar (the hotel bar was actually a Playboy Club – there’s a blast from the past) griping about the fact we didn’t get cars and had nowhere to go. We talked about how none of us had ever seen Niagara Falls and how it wasn’t very far away. At that point I actually had an idea, “Hey, wait, there’s five of us… somebody can take a shuttle over to the airport and rent a car for one day – we’ll split the cost. We all travel a lot and have car discounts – we could get a compact for thirty bucks or so – divided five ways… that’s pretty cheap.” Everyone brightened up and the guy from Atlanta volunteered to go get the car.
One problem was that by the time he was able to actually pick the thing up and drive back it was well after midnight. The other problem was that three was a pretty severe blizzard, even for Buffalo, swirling around that night. We were from Georgia, Texas, and California… what did we know.
We piled in and set off. We didn’t know where we were going and were forced to navigate with the car rental map through a swirling opaque mass of flakes. Somehow, we finally found Niagara Falls, New York – though it took a long time, maybe hours (my memory fails on some details).
“No, not the American side,” I said, “I want to go to the Canadian side!” With that comment our odyssey became international.We reached the bridge sometime around three AM and I couldn’t help but notice that there was a good two feet of snow on the road and no tire tracks. We were the only ones crossing that night. Traction was good, however, so we headed on across. There was an interesting conversation with the border guard, “Where are you from?” “Well, I’m from Texas, they’re from Georgia…” that sort of thing. She didn’t approve of us being out in the weather, but I don’t think she wanted to hassle with us or get out of her little heated shack so we were allowed to go on. As we entered Canada the blizzard stopped and only a light few snowflakes continued to drift down.
The falls were incredibly beautiful. I had seen many photos of the falls of course, but they were all taken in the summer. I had no idea how it looked at this time of year. The American side was completely frozen into a wall of ice. On the Canadian side the water poured free into enormous fingers of ice pointing upward, thrusting against the power of the water. The river below was solid ice with a white layer of snow covering it. The most amazing thing was the famous whirlpool below the falls. It was invisible beneath the ice but a huge, perfectly round disk of ice was free and rotating slowly in the middle of the river. The whole scene was incredible and beautiful. You don’t see that much ice in Texas.
When we drove up the whole falls was lit with powerful spotlights, making them clearly visible in the dark. While we were watching they were switched off for the night. The falls became even more beautiful at that point. There was so much snow on the ground and the clouds were so low that the whole area became lit as clearly as daylight with that strange city snow-light you see in the winter. I was transfixed.
A few snowflakes still fell as a delicate counterpoint to the awesome power of the rushing water. Everything was quiet with that stillness that a thick layer of snow brings. Quiet except for the roaring of the falls. We had the whole place to ourselves – there were no other tourists or sightseers out at that time or in that weather.
We didn’t stay long – our faces began to freeze and we piled back into the rental and headed back. When we reached the bridge there were no tracks on our side and still a single set going the other way.
from Reflex Fiction
““I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but I’m not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
In Miami I had to wait forever to get through immigration. In situations where a mass of people run up against the bureaucracy I have this ability to choose the slowest line. The sign said, “US Citizens Only” so I thought it would be quick flash of the passport – but all the people in front of me kept producing documents printed on tanned weasel skin, with a charcoal sketch instead of a photograph – which would cause the immigration agent to frown, walk around his little cube, and one-finger type stuff into his computer keyboard.
Crammed into this giant, crowded room were maybe fifty different lines and some crept while others (the ones that you aren’t in) seemed to leap. Everybody kept cutting through the lines. One group of teenaged missionaries from our plane cut through – moving in a giant, red-tee-shirted group from one line to another.
Somebody shouted out, “Hey, go to the back of the line.”
Their leader replied, “Excuse us, we’ve been helping the poor people in Nicaragua.”
“Good for you – now go to the back of the fucking line,” was the reply.
Finally, I reached the frowning immigration agent. He glanced at my passport and waved me through in less than two seconds.
from Ellipsis Zine
“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
The sun has set where we are camped. Set early because of the giant shadow of Boulder Mountain (13,528′).
But over my left shoulder is the huge triangular mass of Mount Antero. It’s still bright with the evening sun. It is barren, rocky, dun colored. The surface looks like speckled gravel, but I know these are huge car-sized boulders, not little rocks. Distance, height, perspective can be very confusing in the mountains.
From where I sit I look straight up a V-shaped channel – with two rounded mountain shoulders on either side. The channel is bare; I can see the violence of rock slides down its steep trough. The two shoulders have trees – they end right about at the highest treeline. The evergreens up there struggle. I see lots of brown dead sentinels; a lot of gray dead wood on the ground.
Above the shoulders the peak ridge itself cuts into the sky. The pointed main peak flanked by two rounded subpeaks. It is a world of steep rock, now turning orange as the invisible sun sets. The sky above is still blue- the deep purple blue of high altitudes (we’re camped at about 11,000 feet – we have over 3,000 more to go). Little clouds boil past; impossibly fast, impossibly close.
Tomorrow morning we will attempt to scale the subpeak on the right, after following the jeep road, the old mining road as far as we can. Sitting here, I don’t see how it will be possible. It is so high, so far, so rocky. I can see the scree slope which stopped me the last time. I’m now two years older, in no better shape. What makes me want to throw myself on that awful rock again?
“New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous.
But there is one thing about it – once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.”
― John Steinbeck, America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction
It was almost twelve years ago, I had only been working here for a couple months. I had only thirty minutes for lunch and I had only found one place I could get to and eat in half an hour. It was a little hole-in-the wall Chinese food joint down on Jupiter across from E Systems – the Egg Roll Inn. A handful of tables, twelve lunch specials in plastic letters on a board behind the counter, steam tables of prepared food, foam tricompartment plates and plastic dinnerware, little plastic packets of soy sauce, duck sauce, and hot mustard. Every city has hundreds of these places, not really very good, but cheap and fast.
I had received my allotted lumps of lunch special and steamed rice, divided by a soggy eggroll, when someone stuck their head in the swinging door, “Anyone in here drive a blue Ford?” he asked.
“I do,” expecting to be told my lights were on, it was an overcast day.“Your car’s on fire,” was the reply.
I ran out to find the front end pretty much engulfed. For some reason, the thought of calling the Fire Department never occurred to me. I guess I didn’t imagine that there was someone who would come put out my fire for free. The owner of the restaurant said he had an extinguisher and I went in to get it. The fire looked bad, but it was mostly burning hoses and belts and wasn’t hard to put out.
I returned the extinguisher and then had a moment that was actually worse than the fire itself. I was a bit shook up and sweaty from battling the flames, my vehicle a blackened hulk out in the parking lot, everyone was staring at me (most had walked out to watch the free entertainment) but there on the table was my untouched Moo Goo Gai Pan (today’s watery special). I decided to gather up as much dignity as possible, ate my lunch, then walked back to where I work. It was a calm day and on the entire walk I could look up and see a slowly dispersing column of black smoke from my incinerated car. It was embarrassing and sad.
After that was an unpleasant week of phone calls; trying to get the title straightened out (I was woefully negligent in paperwork those days) so I could get a scrap dealer to take my car, I had to pay the owner for recharging his extinguisher, and had to make arrangements for getting to and from work until I could buy another car (I ended up buying a Renault Alliance – I can sure pick’em can’t I?). The money from the scrap dealer – minus the cost of the fire extinguisher – left we with enough money to buy two compact disks from the record store.
Not a horrible experience, but one annoying and humiliating enough to sink below the radar screen of memory. At least until the physical experience of firing off a cloud of dry powder brought it back. I was so embarrassed I never went back to the Egg Roll Inn. It’s still there, I doubt they’ll remember me after twelve years. I wonder if they have a vegetarian stir-fry? I don’t miss the food but maybe it would be worth a three dollar plate of limp broccoli to exorcise some demons.
from (mac)ro(mic)
“Do you know what breakfast cereal is made of? It’s made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners!”
― Roald Dahl
In surfing the web, I’ve come some people who record their dreams. I’ve never thought much about dreams, so I thought that maybe I was missing something. So for the last couple of weeks I’ve been writing down as much about my dreams as possible. Now I realize why I don’t do this. Looking at your dreams should help you find subtle things about you and your personality, open up your mind to thinking about aspects that you hadn’t examined. My dreams were as subtle as a sledgehammer. For example the last two:
In my dream I went to a baseball game with some friends of mine, three of us sat in one section while one friend and I sat in another section. My section had no view of the playing field at all, the actual game was around a corner, all we could see was the crowd itself. I spent the entire dream walking around trying to find a place where I could actually see the game, but was not successful.
In another dream I was supposed to drive to Massachusetts to visit someone. But before I left, a guy (I remembered who he was, I haven’t seen him in years) convinced me to fly to Pittsburgh (I’ve never been there) with him, the idea was that I could drive to Massachusetts from there. Most of the dream consisted of us driving around Pittsburgh lost, I remember he offered to take me out to eat, he tried to pay with a coupon the waiter refused to take, and we didn’t have enough money to pay for dinner. The dream ended with him leaving me in Pittsburgh, and I realized that my car was still in Dallas, and I had no way of getting to Massachusetts, which is where I wanted to go in the first place.
Dreams of frustration and stupid mistakes.
from Pithead Chapel
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
I dove in and am reading through Maruki Murakami’s 1Q84 for my Difficult Reading Book Club read.
Here’s a longish short story that we traded around at our last meeting.
and from my old online journal:
I think I was more excited about Christmas this year than the kids were. Seeing Nick and Lee and knowing how special Christmas is to children makes me so happy. I can still remember almost every Christmas when I was a kid. My sons are so appreciative too; they are spoiled, of course, but they enjoy everything so much and never complain about what they don’t get.
Another nice thing is that the kids are older now and they stuff they get – mostly video games and computer software – doesn’t take a lot of assembly. That makes it a lot easier on Santa; no staying up all night putting together basketball goals or stuff like that.
I woke up about five and couldn’t go back to sleep. I went out in the living room and set the camcorder up on a tripod aimed at the base of the tree and the pile of boxes arranged there. I read the paper, ate some breakfast, and waited for the little ones to get up. They started to stir and I ran out to the living room and started the camcorder going but they fell back asleep.
Finally, about seven thirty (that’s fairly late for my kids) they started to sit up and rub their eyes.
I asked Nick, “Are you getting up?”
“No, I’m tired, let me go back to sleep,” he said groggily and grumpily.
“Nicholas, what day is today?” I asked.
That made him mad at first.
“How do I know what day it… wait… wait….”
Then his face lit up and he snapped fully awake as his sleepy mind realized exactly what day it was.
“Lee! Lee! let’s go, let’s go!” Nick yelled at his groggy brother.
I dashed out ahead of them so I could watch the annual shredding of paper, the squealing and laughing and oohs and aaahs and looks of joy and amazement.I was worried that we hadn’t bought enough stuff for the kids. As they get older and their toys get more expensive the volume of crap inevitably gets smaller. I shouldn’t have worried, they were beyond thrilled.
Bill Chance 