books

Books, books, books!

a tale of stranger fortunes

I am never, ever speaking about the weather, my mental health, my physical health, productivity, and level of creativity if any of those things are good ever again, because I just jinxed the living flip out of myself on all those levels, and then some. It’s miserably humid and rainy, I’m Extremely Sad™, my back is so painful that I literally cannot stand up for more than five minutes at a time, I have completed nothing since the sixth because of all those reasons, including my mother’s Mother’s Day gifts, which makes me feel like the biggest ass on the planet, and the most creative thing I’ve done lately is make two origami cranes.

Hopefully saying this is like…anti-jinxing myself and things will start looking up tomorrow. Or the day after, I don’t care. Can we at least do away with this BS back pain nonsense? Please?

Only good thing that’s happened: my brother broke up with his abuser. BIG YES. I mean, I doubt he’s escaped her hideous, nasty, malicious, manipulative little claws forever, but…who knows. We can always hope. I’m not happy that he’s alone, I’m happy that his abuser will now hopefully leave him alone…for a few weeks, at least. Vile cow. (Not sorry; I refuse to extend any respect towards that creature. I am sick to death of her, and people like her. I do not apologise.)

We have a new Pope! Or, er, I guess the Catholics do? I’m not quite sure whether the Pope is everybody’s big Catholic or just the Catholics’ big Catholic. Either way, he seems like quite a nice fellow, and he’s anti-MAGA (or as close as a holy person ever gets to being “anti-” something…again, the semantics!), so fingers crossed. It’s always just nice to have good folks in powerful positions.

(I also learned that the Room of Tears is literally called that because so many Popes end up weeping there, for many reasons. I don’t know why, exactly, but I did find that strangely touching.)

I’ve been deliciously devouring the McKinney translation of Shounagon-oneesama’s Pillow Book and have gotten to the parts I never reached before in my original interrupted reads, and…siiiiigh. ♥ She’s just…SO delightful. Ito wokashi, even. ^_~  I deeply enjoy Dr. McKinney’s translation “voice”, and I love that she chose to translate so much more of the text (or texts, to be precise — there are four main variants of the original text; the one that Dr. McKinney uses for the most part is the “Sankanbon”, considered one of the most accurate variants) than Ivan Morris did, and much, much more than Arthur Waley — not that I dislike either of their translations, mind you! Dr. Waley’s writing was poetic and beautiful, and I’ll always have a soft spot for Professor Morris’ translation, because it was so obvious in his translation and footnotes that he admired Shounagon, if not being outright fond of her — and it’s presumptuous of me, but I honestly have a silly dreamy thought that Shounagon would have been rather fond of him, as well.

And I’m so full of thoughts about Shounagon’s Empress…she seemed like such a sweet soul, and the love between her and the Emperor seemed so genuine. Plus, how close and happy her family was, and it was so obvious that Regent Michitaka was so, so proud of her — of all of his children — and he expressed himself in such a jolly, honest, playful way…it’s heartbreaking to think of how it all ended. I was planning to read A Tale of False Fortunes when I finish The Pillow Book (or even before), but I’m not sure how much more sadness I can take! Ah, poor Sadako…if only you could have had your fairytale ending in that life. ;_; 24 years is far too young to die, and far too young to shoulder all that tragedy all alone…aaahhh, I’ll have to change the subject or I’ll start crying!

Apropos of Japanese translations and whatnot: why do letters with a macron (ō, etc) look so ridiculously ugly in some fonts? Either the letter itself is weirdly bolder than a macron-less letter, or the macron itself isn’t aligned with the letter below it…it’s so frustrating! And let’s not even mention that ō itself doesn’t appear to have an ALT code that actually works? I suppose I can use a circumflex o (ô…ALT+0244, for the record) in a pinch, but using a macron for long vowels in Japanese transliteration is the universal standard, so why is it so ridiculously tricky to utilise?! ><;

the best things are usually red, like blood, like love

I finished Rumi and the Red Handbag by Shawna Lemay this morning and I dissolved into tears; I had my soul filled with light and was blinded with said light, and it was horrific and lovely and so, so beautiful. I was recommended it by someone who reviewed The Fairy Tale Museum, and you know how that made me feel. So. It was…like TFTM, and yet not. It had the same kind of beauty, but was more solid, less surrealistic. But I loved it, even so. Thus! Quotes and quotes and quotes.

“I had dropped out of a doctoral program and had internalised my identity as a failed scholar quickly. This new identity did something to me, compressed my spine, and all of the fear I harboured did not turn into fearlessness but rather an agitated despair. I often felt lost and dizzy and numb and stupid all in a rush. I became suddenly interested in all the nuances of my own dreams rather than with anything I had ever read, I was liquid where before I had been solid.”

“I knew I would always be distant from her, but this distance was immediate and irrevocably intimate, filling me with the most intense apprehension for random instants.”

“Secrets, anyway, are usually incidental. How you keep one is important, how you choose to live with it, let it alter you, matters. Perhaps is makes you a kinder person, someone more willing to forgive and understand. Secrets have that potential.”

“I was born wary. I just was. And whenever I talked myself out of that wariness on the grounds that it was plainly foolish, I got burned. I got sent a flaming email or found myself backing away, slowly, carefully, having discovered something unsavoury.’

“And though I cannot put it into words at all, no not at all, at the time I knew I was experiencing something that changed my chemical makeup in some small but significant manner.”

A quote in a quote:
“How to set the direction of the soul? The soul’s compass? We began with the words of Simone Weil, ‘If the soul is set in the direction of love…the nearer we approach to the beauty of the world.’ Was this our goal? To approach nearer to the beauty of the world?”

“The idea of hoarding thoughts, holding so many threads of ideas like cupped water as you knelt, knees grinding into the finest gravel, thirsty by a mountain stream, did not terrify or oppress by instead exhilarated her.”

“And all those people who automatically disparage romances, I don’t trust them, you know? What are they afraid of? The small fantasies of millions of women? I wonder.”

“And here she laughed her sparkly etude and I thought of Chopin and white twinkle lights on late summer nights and sequins at a dull office party.”

“It is not how one soul approaches another but in how it distances itself from it that I recognise their affinity and relatedness.”

“And let’s not forget, cosmic snow, delicate and elegant, tinged with an otherworldly pink and blue.”

“I myself don’t want the disruption of those whose soul lacks luminosity.”

“Are we not ensouled? Are we not entwined? Have we not made a mark on each other, however slippery the soul might be? We do care for each other, we do!”

think of it as a world without end

I finished “The Fairy Tale Museum” by Susannah M. Smith, and I have no words for it. As I said on the bird hellsite, that wasn’t a book, that was an experience. I can’t explain it to anyone; you’ll have to experience it for yourself. So have some words from it, instead, to tempt you to do so:

“What are you doing, little fox?
With a sideways glance and a flick of its tail, the fox might answer, I am in the thicket, now and always. I am the jewel in the obscurity.”

“People say it’s about the journey, not the destination. Dialectical thinking has its limitations.”

“Same moon. Different birds. How is it that libraries are so beautiful? The square at night. Narrow streets behind the cathedral. Books in different languages. You get lost. You find your way.”

“I felt the whispers of thousands of stories pushing up against me.”

“Things are not as you have been taught.
What you thought was blood was a metaphor for vital energy.
What you thought was scary was simply important.
What felt haunting only wanted you to be present.
Your instincts have brought you here.
Nothing is broken that cannot be repaired.
Remember who you are.”

“I don’t want to live without the sparklers, the brightness. Without that feeling of lying flat on the ground, pressed down with barely any blood or breathing and barely even any bones. What good is living without that? Only TV and TV and TV.”

“She can feel the future with all its colours.”

“Use your imagination. Wear your crown on the inside.”

“As if there had never been any reason for unhappiness.
As if all you had to do was believe in what you wanted
and it would happen.”

“Is the castle off in the distance,
or is it just behind your sternum?”

“When I’m awake during the night I use whatever scrap of paper is nearby. I write words, scribble, and jot. I burn holes. I take whatever comes. I trust my unconscious. There are always coloured pencils and pens and boxes of matches in the cupboard beside my bed. I am never without my supplies.”

“Is surrealism unfashionable? Is psychological inquiry embarrassing? I don’t care. I don’t pay attention to trends. I do exactly as I please.”

“He sees the bushes at the edge of the field and senses the blue fox in the underbrush. Its silken body glitters with jewels, hidden at the edge of the park.”

“A voice in his head tells him: You’re building a city. Each poem is a spire. The spires cluster together. Soon bells will ring. He smiles. Knowing that the blue fox is out there winking in the dark brings him happiness.”

“…all those damn rock stars with their dreamy poet eyes and tattoos.”

“Sometimes when you live by yourself, you need a bit of company; you need to make something out of nothing to know you exist.”

“Listen here. Yes, you. Don’t sleep with a clock radio beside your bed. It isn’t good for your electrical field. Same goes for the cellphone. You may scoff, but I still dream my own dreams. Do you?”

“A diamond. His heart was that hard. And yet, it shines in him. He can feel it.”

“If a star shines in the forest and no one is there to see it, is there any coruscation?”

“She was everything good about me that I hadn’t yet become.”

“She drew lingering looks from men and women she passed in the streets. She was like that. A rare thing from another world.”

“I’m almost who I want to be.”

“You’d been let go for dreaminess and are out on a mid-afternoon lark. Sometimes a person’s got to put the stars back in her eyes.”

“You stand in the doorway on the edge of the night. The edge of your excursion. You wait until the pathway is deserted and then, with a sudden decisive movement, you turn up your collar and move forward into the glow.”

“This is where everything happens. This is where worlds unfold. You settle in, turn your face to the screen, and close your eyes.”

“I’ve held you in my mind as I’ve skated through multitudes, as I’ve gathered all these specimens and turned them slowly in the light.”

 

barely

 

“In men reason is strong and magic is weak. With fairies it is the other way round: magic comes very naturally to them, but by human standards they are barely sane.”

— Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell