Off the Cliff

In something of a State, reason unknown unless it's the State of the world. Tax refund has shown up in my account, so that's good.

Finished Days at the Morisaki Bookstore, sentimental Japanese novel but well translated, which the last translated novel I tried (Tell Me How You Live) most certainly was not. It's a good translator who can turn all those Japanese set phrases (Itte kimasu/ O-kaeri nasai/ O-hisashiburi) into something that doesn't  clunk.

Currently rereading Monstrous Regiment, which might actually be one cause of the present wanhope. Must start on The Fox Wife, another of those 'fifteen people are waiting' books.

Mh well, that was interesting. Clouds parted just enough at the beginning to make people believe they'd actualy see the eclipse and then rolled back in. Even so the err 'whatever you call the 99% point' we got here was pretty Tartarean apocalyptic: sky went  a pre-serious-storm purply grey, street lights came on, birds shut up. But it wasn't any four minutes that I could see. Two minutes later the light was back, SND's fairy lights turned off, birds went back to their mating calls. Still, much more satisfactory than 2017's 90% 'pale afternoon' eclipse.

I was thinking last night that I'd heard nothing about the latest Hyakki Yakki, supposedly bought for me on March 10 by the company that buys these things.  Was resigned to not seeing it in this life, but this morning comes an email from Buyee: book has arrived at our facility please choose delivery method. Yes well. Buyee doesn't offer my preferred SAL delivery: they pretty much force you to choose between DHL and sea mail. The exchange rate is very much in my favour, but still. The book cost me eight dollars; shipping is more than four times that. Ouch.

They also think the series is called Hyakki Yagosho which had me doubting my sanity and my eyesight for a bit until googling said that yes, the voiced g is a possible reading of the kanji but no it's not the one Ima Ichiko uses, and it's still a long o. Faith restored. 

(Am reading a YA novel set in Korea about, basically, Korean youkai, and I have to say, one reason I prefer Japanese is that Japanese only has five vowel sounds while Korean has more than I can count and, for sure, more than I can hear. *But also*, Korean insists on voicing its consonants. And the bias of an English speaker is to unvoiced: k is elegant, g is not, ch is elegant, j is not, t is elegant, d is not, p is elegant, b is a peasant. Li Po and Tu Fu are elegant poets, Li Bai and Du Fu are clodhoppers. And a kitsune in Korean is a gumiho, which, well, is too close to gummi bear for comfort.)

Of course it takes me this long-- up to vol.6-- to realize that the web will provide me definitions of Japanese phrases much faster and more informatively than the wordtank or my many many paper dictionaries and phrasebooks.

I must also note that in Ima Ichiko's Taisho/ Shouwa world, no merchant's wife can bear children. All heirs are byblows from geisha mistresses. It's one of her Things, like boys disguised as girls and occasionally vice versa.

Slept into past noon without waking once, which means a good ten hours plus. No idea what this narcolepsy is about. Dreamed that my family had moved into a new house but while I was away during the morning (I knew where I was away at when I woke up but have since forgotten) my parents had moved all my furniture into a small bedroom that I didn't like at all, because there were other bedrooms on the the other side of the central stairway that were larger. Also the drawers had all become wonky from being moved and some of them I couldn't get open. Couldn't find my own clothes to go out in (to the same place I'd gone that morning) and wound up having to wear a dress of my mother's from the 40s or 50s, with lace ruffles and ruffly ankle socks.

We couldn't use the front door, my father said, because the lock was broken, but there were actually two front doors, side by side, and as I was standing there an Asian woman came and unlocked the second one. She had her little son with her and said she was the new fourth floor tenant. This led to much dialoguing between my parents and my younger brother about was she really the tenant and did the house actually have a fourth floor, and by the time they figured that yes, there was a fourth floor,  the woman was so put off she decided not to rent the apartment after all.

So since I couldn't use the front door I went out the back, which led to a nice walled garden with raised brick defined flower beds, which led to an opening in a wall or hedge,  which led to the outdoor patio of a restaurant. Most of the tables were occupied and all the guests and waiters were charming gay men including my former coworker Stephen, who was very surprised to see me. But I took a seat and was being very happy and then I woke up.

By a certain amount of triumph of the will-ing I succeeded in doing a chunk of stuff I'd put off in favour of sitting on beds and couches playing solitaire and reading TLSes. Unexciting necessities like dishes and laundry and making another jar of overnight oats, not anything one can take satisfaction from. But I did walk down to Bloor to buy a new Presto card in the optimistic hope of some day being able to use it at least the one stop from Bathurst to Spadina. Would love to use it to get to the dentist next week but as I suspected, that station has no elevators, and even the escalators require some stair use. Must shell out for pricey taxi. And of course Other Knee- and other ankle too- are as obstreperous as they were yesterday. Must get a new acupuncturist.

But since I was down by Bloor and the day was cold air and warm sun, I bought me a double ice cream cone from Basking Robin and sat and watched the world go by for a half hour. And very nice too. Then on the ay home checked the Local Playwright's wee free library and found a thick Japanese book, which turns out to be a translation of Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. Took it for the lulz: translations from English into Japanese always read very weird to me.

Tablet's Chrome's latest Neat Trick is to show my regular webpages (Environment Canada for weather, Guardian for news) in phone format, so no more at a glance and lots of scrolling down. OTOH the less I use the tablet the happier my elbows will be, and probably neck as well. Silver linings.

Continuing my subconscious raking up of high school memories, dreamed I was in Japan at my private students' place, just returned from a trip and so a tad jet lagged. In my dream I gave their teenage son the same name as my guarantor, which was, phonetically, the same name as Ardith's dog  (it was actually something ending in -ya) and misnamed my travelling companion, and corrected myself- No, it's Cathy O'Neill. Other details are gone, as indeed are the real names of my students. Because I never throw anything out I found them in my 2002 daybook, but the names are written in kanji and I can only guess at them because my readings ring no memory bells. Hideo and Kumiko, I think, though the name kanji book says Hidezo or Hidenari.

There are three kanji that essentially mean 'child' or 'infant' and because I constantly confuse them I made a note of them on the little papers where I write confusible kanji, like all the verbs for break smash crush destroy etc. Then in my review of the earliest kanji I come across a fourth one meaning child, and instantly try to write the other three just to be sure of them. In spite of reviewing them dozens of times since the fall, can only remember two. Go to check my papers and of course that's the one that's missing. Try various compounds hoping to turn up the forgotten kanji but no joy. Try English-Japanese online dictionaries with the same lack of success. Drive myself bananas for two days leafing through Essential Kanji, hoping it will leap out at me, and eventually give up. Am idly writing compounds today and realize that I did remember the third kanji- remembeted it yesterday in fact- but at the time I'd forgotten the second one.

Occasionally I wonder why I spend half an hour a day memorizing how to write kanji. It's not like I expect it to have any practical use. It's something to do, I suppose, in that I feel marginally less futile when I do it than when I don't. Like the leg strengthening exercises which, far as I can see, have no effect whatsoever on my leg strength and ability to walk. For a bit there my lower back seemed to be better but now it's in spasm again. Otherwise I'd be writing kani for an hour a day and resent the fact that I can't.

But I did figure out why my bank kept rejecting my password when I used the tablet. Hold a vowel too long and the tablet will automatically give it an accent. e becomes è. This wouldn't happen if webpages actually let you see your password when you type but no, it's there and gone because they assume everyone is touch-typing and watching the screen rather than pressing keys with a stylus like me.

Walked to the laundromat with my rollator and it... didn't hurt as much as before?  What pain there was, was elbows mostly. So maybe those flexor stretches are doing something? My plaint that doing strengthening exercises for eight or nine months has no results is countered only by the hip flexor exercise: where you lie at the edge of the bed and let that leg trail on the floor while bending the other knee to your chest. Time was, lifting the trailing leg back up used to be difficult, and now I can do it no problem. But it seemed very little result for so much work. However am chuffed at the idea of being able to get out even after the snow falls... if I can, and today wasn't just an unachy day. And the elbows still *hurt*, and will hurt worse walking over bumpy ice. But that consideration is for later,

Finished? 

The Dark Archive, especially with the coda saying We're near the end of this, guys. Sigh.

Kipling, The Knights of the Joyous Venture
-- someone on tumblr was saying 'Look, clots, if an unrepentent imperialist colonialist can put a Chinese sailor on board his Viking ship, what's your problem?' I might cavil at the unrepentent bit, but yeah: not only Asian sailors (with unlikely names) but female pirates mentioned in passing as well. Except it seems I never read that part of Puck of Pook's Hill, so now I have. Not sure if I'll read all the rest of it: much perefer Rewards and Fairies.

Reading now?

Rankin, Exit Music
-- Rebus, as ever, and Big Ger Mcafferty, sigh, but mindless reading anyway.

Picked a Japanese book from the gomi, Bijinesu Koushou Jutsu/ Business Negotiating Tactics, aimed at poor Japanese having to negotiate stuff in English. Reading the introduction and explanations because they use watercolour business vocabulary that I never got a handle on. Am not likely to remember them now either but it does reinforce the kanji study.

Rickman, The Bones of Avalon
-- not a fan of the Merrily Watson series- definite lack of a there there/ neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring-- but figured a semi-mystery about John Dee might go down better. Maybe it's because this is an ebook but so far... there's still a lack of there theres.

Next up?

Really tempted to reread The Magician's Nephew. I wasn't as bowled over by Piranesi as some-- in spite of having all my ascendants etc in Pisces, I am stubbornly an earth-and-wood Capricorn when it comes to water, esp sea water, which basically I do not like and do not trust. But The Magician's Nephew does it just right: bound water in pools in a forest, to say nothing of orchards on top of hills.

Must contact the library system and arrange for home delivery during the winter season. Can have a bunch of my holds deliveted to me and picked up for the duration. 

Dank, grey, chill not cold. At least I got my Asia-going cards mailed. Since four weeks isn't nearly long enough in these latter days, they must be New Year's cards, and will with luck arrive around the Epiphany. And why does the arrival of the Three Wise Guys get called by the term for a sudden enlightenment, one wonders.

Last finished?

Wanted cozy mysteries so, having been reminded of the existence of Imogen Quy, I read the first two Imogen Quys. I had completely forgotten the plots in the nine plus years since I read them last, which is a nice way to read mysteries, but still disconcerting. I mean, *nothing* rang a bell in either book.

The Diary and Poetic Memoirs of Murasaki Shikibu
-- Bowring's translation makes her sound marginally less wet than whatever other translation I read her in, but Bowring's notes inform me that half the time any passage can mean its exact opposite, depending how you take it: largely, depending on who you think the unnamed subject of the sentence is. Am reminded forcibly and again of Seidensticker's comparison of Heian prose to the transcripts of the Watergate tapes. Without tone of voice and inflection, sentences in both often make no sense at all. Also the usual Japanese 'you have to know what it means to know what it means': the courtiers and Nixon's cronies did, so they did.

Reading now?

Ovidia Yu, The Frangipani Tree Mystery

Flann O'Brien, The Dalkey Archive
-- biking reading. I suspect that, just as there's a generation of American writers- or two, or three, or mumblety many- who want to be Ernest Hemingway, so there's a generation of  Irish writers who wanted to be James Joyce. Either that, or all Irish writers think alike. (Irish-Irish, not Anglo-Irish, who are another kettle of fish entirely.) Which is to say, you try me, Mr. O'Brien, you try me grately.

Ima Ichiko, Hyakki Yakoushou 28
-- which I shall be working at for a while yet.

Next up?

Mh, well there's the other Ovidia Yu.

I feel in the mood for a thumping great book, so maybe Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell? Or maybe Sei Shonagon with Morris' notes beside me.

Oh, seriously? I've been reading that title wrong for what? five, six years now? It's Umibe no Kafuka, shore, not hamabe, beach. Helps to actually look at the kanji occasionally.

Next door's music as well as the tedium of peddling a balky machine for thirty minutes straight has the upside of reintroducing me to a bunch of CDs bought in the 90s and rarely listened to since. These include several boxed sets of Dance Music Through The Ages and Best of Bach, bought to drown out my neighbours at International Women's House in Heiwadai. When I came back here it was no longer necessary to drown out my neighbours and, since I prefer silence to anything when I'm studying or reading, silence is what I opted for. Also my bought-here boombox, though a lovely Sony made in Japan beastie, in relatively short order (6 years) became picky about what it would and would not recognize, and the boxed sets were first to go. This made me sad because I still listened to the opera ones. But now, Renaissance dance music is just fine for bicycling to, though it really is a bit monotone.

Balky bike machine is why I can't do anything else except bike. Stop paying attention to where my feet are and it sticks. Otherwise I might be biking for hours.

Cold and rainy again, and I realize that this year I won't be able to turn down the thermostat and go partake of someone else's heat for five or six hours a day. So I turn down the thermostat and layer up, starting with the insulated longjohns I've contemplated throwing out for several years now because long underwear is far too hot once you're inside any Canuck interior. Never throw anything away: you never know when the world will turn upside down and you'll need it again.

A very mild tum upset yesterday gets me to the weight I'd gloomily figured I might hit in four weeks, just before surgery. It won't last, but in celebration I ordered in Indian food and wisely ate only a third of it. My cheekbones are shyly beginning to emerge amid the squirrel face, so vanity is satisfied as well. And of course it would be nice to drop another two kilos if possible, just for neatness' sake.That would be 16 pounds less pressure on the joints. Of course, by that calculation, I've lost 60 pounds  of pressure since January but you can't prove it by my mobility.

Last finished?

Introduction to Court Poetry and Hamabe no Kafuka part 1.
-- don't know what to do about Kafka. Couldn't wait to finish the Japanese so I could go back to the translation, and now the translation feels off and I want the Japanese, but I won't get it any time soon even if I were to buy it from honto.jp. Dou shiyou, dou shiyou.

Coupla Hazel Holts, easily swallowed mysteries

Reading now?

Still with Piranesi, not liking where it's going at all.

Miner, Japanese Poetic Diaries
-- next up in the classical Japanese litrachure back reading

Robert Lowell, Imitations
-- next up in the 'get it off the shelf' poetry purge. Lowell was a git and his Introduction shows it.

Next?

No idea. I'm beginning to have deer in the headlights reaction to impending surgery, which rather shortens the attention span. Console myself that there's even odds it won't happen, as Covid cases keep on mounting and the hospital continues not to have its act together.

There's a down side to the kanji study, which is that I start to review them in my head as I'm falling asleep, and then get wound up because I can't remember the radical of one I reviewed today, or the reading or the meaning. I can look them up on my phone in the dark but the wp is like molasses, and if- as is invariably the case- I misremember any of the foregoing it's an exercise in extreme frustration. Mogi no gi 擬, not benshou no shou 償. And so on.

Finished?

A Hazel Holt mystery. Somehow felt I needed the next one, and because the library didn't have it I ordered it from Indigo. I now have my credit card number memorized and must seriously stop using it.

El Cid from Medieval Epics. Tells me no more than the recap in Medieval Myths but is a lot bloodier. Have put ME back on the shelf because I'm not in the mood to do this all over again with Roland and Siegfrid. Though reading the introduction to Roland I find there's a bit of a mystery to Roncevaux. Roland died, not in a battle against 400,000 Sarcens, but in  an attack on Charlemagne's rearguard by Basque warriors as he returned from a Spanish campaign  against the caliph of Cordoba. On the way back he sacked and burned Basque cities, and the Basques attacked in retaliation. It was a skirmish rather than a pitched battle, that still cost the lives of many nobles and all Charlemagne's booty from his campaign. But why was the baggage train in the rear of the army when it should have been in the middle as was usual? Wikipedia has nothing to say on the subject. Overconfidence, military SNAFU, or simply not knowing the terrain through the mountains, maybe?

Pratchett, Making Money
-- been so long since I read this that I'd totally forgotten the plot. A nice palate cleanser.

Reading now?

The perennial standbys: Muromachi poetry, Claudine, and Kafka. Claudine wears on me. Want to swap her for someone else. Wonder if I still have that French translation of Tanizaki's Manji (Buddhist swastika)? OTOH Tanizaki is as likely to wear on me as Claudine. Oogey writer, that.

Next up?

I have Piranesi but I'm not sure I want to start it in my current scratchy state. Am having a rare attack of missing People, which I will deal with in the usual way, but that takes time.

Bicycle machine works OK with sandals. Now I'm wondering about the use 'every other day' thing. My impression was that you alternate workouts if they're really worky workouts ie heart pumping, sweat, all that jazz. I don't think this counts as that, largely because my feeble fingers can't screw the cog in far enough to get any high resistance on the machine, as also: high resistance is bad for knee. So after twenty minutes I'm a little warm, but that's it. Of course, back when I walked for exercise my heart rate never went up either, because I always walk slowly on my flat feet and twingy knees, but walking at a slow pace for an hour still counts as moving and my weight reflected it.

Also, if it's every other day, I know my internal child will say 'oh hell, let's do it tomorrow.' But every day means every day, like kanji practice, and I have the machine set up at the table I do my writing at, so...

One thing that will definitely be every other day-if-that is reading my new Japanese book, which finally consented to trot in two months after I ordered it (air mail in the age of COVID, sigh). 現代用語の 基礎知識 / Gendai Yougo no Kiso Chishiki/ Basic Knowledge of Contemporary Terms aka what the wakamono are saying this year. All wordtank, all the time. Which makes me think there might be something to the rumour that Murakami Haruki writes his books in English and then translates them, because his Japanese is grade school level easy compared to this. Anyway: I'm not likely to remember these terms but it's a good vocabulary workout just for the definitions.

 There's a lot of hinkey stuff in Murakami that I somehow didn't register when I read it in English back in 2011 but that necessarily impresses itself when reading more slowly in Japanese. While slowly reading polite Japanese, which is  like hacking one's way through an overgrown garden, cutting out all the excess verbiage and causative forms and verbs of giving to get at what's being said. (Polite Japanese, not prewar keigo, thank god, because that's like hacking through a jungle.) But there's one clanging 'oh no they didn't' moment that's really... guy, do your research.

Woman teacher is on a school outing, suddenly gets her period ten days before she should, sends kids off to look for mushrooms in the woods and takes herself deep into the forest to mop up with the handkerchiefs she has, because you always have handkerchiefs in Japan to dry your hands. Towels not provided in public washooms. Then she hides the bloody handkerchiefs where no one will find them and goes back to the group, still bleeding into her underwear, presumably.

No she doesn't let go of those handkerchiefs. She keeps them stuffed in her underwear because seriously, Haruki, periods aren't a single effusion of blood that then stops. Don't you know any women at all?

You need bloody handkerchiefs for a plot point? Find something else then. Mattaku.

 Sometimes I wish I'd gotten into video games. A more pleasant way of wasting time in a more pleasant Elsewhere than what I have now, though given what online solitaire has done to my elbows, I can imagine what hideous RSIs would result from holding a controller.

 The one thing that battles my sense of futility is reading Japanese, so I do that desultorily, Hamabe no Kafuka and the first Utena novel by turns. The latter is a fast read that taxes me not at all and therefore feels like it's accomplishing nothing. The former I want to read but am presently slogging through the military report part. Am tempted to go read that bit in translation and come back to the Japanese for the narration but I know I'd just keep on in English, so I don't. I slog on through Trustram Shandy instead, marvelling at how much time the eighteenth century had on its hands.

A book came into the library for me, but there's no pickup slot open for  week. Worse, the books I took back nearly a week ago are still listed as being out. I'm glad there's library resources available, however limited, but since the buildings themselves are closed to all but staff, you'd think they might be better and returning and reshelving. Well, and sanitizing too, I suppose, though I'm still dubious about surface transmission.

And otherwise have lost a day, finally. Today is not Saturday and I have *not* been out in two days. Friday I did a grocery shop and indulged in asparagus and Ontario strawberries, my one consolation at the moment.

Went by the LCBO yesterday afternoon to find the line going down the block and around the corner, which scotched that plan. So went online looking at alcohol delivery Toronto and found a place that does just that. Was doing this on my balky and outdated phone, so somehow I wound up specifying cash payment, and then had to run to the ATM to get same. Returned to a voicemail from the outfit wanting to specify something about the order. And I *knew* that the woman was Japanese- knew it, knew it, knew it- and it was so natsukashii and I so wanted to talk Japanese with her. But I couldn't , for many varied reasons, so we clarified it all in English. Delivery came within the hour and the delivery guy had the classic Japanese physique and I couldn't speak Japanese with him either, but at least my body language was Japanese and that had to do.

But beause I'd only searched the website on Bombay and gin, I wound up getting two bottles of Bombay East, not Sapphire, and I've never had East. I hope I like it. But it's win-win, because if I don't I won't want to drink it, thus saving me many calories, now that my weight consents to dip again.

Quite apart from unburdening the knees and preparing for surgery, the reason why I want another five pounds off is this. I keep buying loose lightweight summer trousers, and they keep being either not thin enough material or not wide enough in the waist. (Also too long to bike in without catching the chain or even the pedal. Were the world as it was, I'd take four of them in to be cropped to calf length.) So I have effectively only one pair of hot weather trousers and Summer Is Coming (even if we're currently recording this-decade record lows.) Five pounds more and I'll have three.

To which end:

Not to be TMI, but the usual state of IBS sufferers swings between two extremes. For three months, thanks to a lack of work stress and coffee, I've been in the tidier of the two. Which is nice, but I'd like to be a little closer to normal, only nothing seems to work: not gallons of water or extra green leafies or mandarin oranges. Bought a bag of cherries yesterday, because cherry juice is anti-inflammatory, and, well, a handful of cherries seems to be what's required. So there's hope.

And when it does come, one is incredulous and amazed. But there it is, and I've checked it twice. My property tax installments have dropped by $40 a month. Now, the city giveth and the city taketh away, blessed be the name of the city, and next year they may bump it back up again. But for now I'll take that extra $240 and be grateful.

Reading Wednesday still chugs along slowly. Hamabe no Kafka goes nowhere fast, but now I've been reminded what's up with that librarian I take extra note of the very mundane details Murakami gives of his shirts and whatall. The proof of Murakami's mundaneity is that I don't have to look up any of his kanji, even though I began a desultory review of the basic 2000 and was distressed at how many I've forgotten in the last few years of non-reading.

Am also forging ahead with The Affair of the Mysterious Letter, reading on the tablet, and trying not to get too dizzy with it. The story would make my head spin even in paper-print. Add my cognitive handicap when reading onscreen, and we have utmost confusion, as well as a sneaking suspicion that a more intimate acquaintance with both Robert Chambers and the Lovecraftian corpus might render the book, if not more comprehensible, then at least more appreciable. I mean, it's great fun even if you don't get all the in-jokes, but I'm feeling the lack of a frame of reference here.

The current crisis leads me to having two early morning shifts in the next two days. I console myself for same with ativan which gives me, as well as sweet sleep, a lift in the spirits while waiting for sweet sleep to come, so that I forget that I must be up half an hour earlier than usual in order to do the exercises that allow me to stand up when I get out of bed. Tuesday morning, because of a dream I'd had that I was as limber as pre-65, I tried standing up without either stretches or knee brace, and it was a hallway's worth of Nope. What cheeses me is that this level of cripple only began in January, in spite of weight loss and a month's worth of good physiotherapy. Yes, prior to that knees were stiff and I was limpy on first getting out of bed, but it wasn't a case of 'can't put any weight on it at all.' Bah humbug, say I.

(OTOH, ativan sleep makes me much less crippled than after ordinary sleep. So much of it must be the muscles anc not just the joint itself.)

Two weeks ago or so my 97 year old aunt had what looked like a stroke, even though the wonders of modern medicine could find no proof of it. But inability to move one side of the body, speak, or swallow looks enough like a duck that we'll call it that. She regained a little movement in hospital but mostly spent her time sleeping. I was waiting for my cough to get better before going to visit her- *I* know it's allergies but hospitals aren't so forgiving- and had intended to do it Monday afternoon, which I theoretically had off except then I was feeling the daycare fever coming on me. So fine, maybe Wednesday. But Monday night my cousin emailed us all to say a room had miraculously opened up in a terminal care facility in the town where she lives, 40 miles away, and Aunt Margie was whisked away by ambulance Tuesday morning. So somehow I need to get to St Catharines, but does the GO system give me schedules? No, they want to tell me the next three buses leaving at the time I choose, but not what runs when through the day. They're giving my aunt 'weeks or months' so I need to do this soon.
( Wednesday )

I have reached those Agatha Christies where I remember whodunnit, alas, even if I remember little else. Still, summer reading is summer reading. I continue with Five Little Pigs and Murder is Easy.

But I did take my new Rainy Willow Store tankoubon to Starbucks today, sure that I could understand it from a few pages read. Mmm, no. Not when we're dealing with Chinese or possibly Buddhist legends. Futzed about with kanji apps for the phone, all of which are memory hogs and none of which had the kanji in question. Came home and looked it up in the Wordtank: it was there, but with no definition or compounds. Finally have it from mandarintools: 穆, meaning 'solemn', also used for the mu of muslim. Who the Rainy Willow's 穆王 is remains unknown.

Clearly I need to get an app for the tablet if not the phone, because the Wordtank must be coddled, but reports are varied for Jim Breen's app adaptation, and other hand drawing apps simply don't work for me. This is as good as mandarintools, but argh the wwwjdic layout sucks.

(Oh, OK. 穆王 is Zhou Mu Wang/ King Mu of Zhou, 10th century BC, who went off to visit the Great Western Mother and her peaches.)

1. Who says you never learn anything on FB? Someone posted a picture of the jerkface who shot a hibernating bear, and someone in the comments remarked 'Elender pisser.' So now I know the German for 'miserable prick/ asshole.'

2. Several weeks after the last vermin passed on (according to my nose) I have flies in the house. Thought it was fly- silly buzzer that dive-bombed the kitchen by day and the bathroom by night. Kitchen fly grew lethargic, so I caught it this afternoon and released it to the wilds- only to discover another lethargic fly in the evening, drooping on the living room table. Repeat. Came upstairs well-pleased, and discovered two more in the hallway, which I bashed with a broom. They disappeared somewhere to lick their wounds, and I begin to think about blocking up vents again. OTOH they're nothing like the real infestation we had at work when a squirrel died in the roof, so I shall hope this was pure coincidence.

3. Went to the local cafe, crowded as ever on a Saturday morning, but found a seat at the refectory table. Farther up the bench on my side two Japanese women were talking together in relatively comprehensible Japanese, being a little older than the rapid-fire twenty-somes who make me weep when I hear them. Still wasn't quite sure what they were talking about, which is depressing.

4. Yesterday and today were grey and white blustery November and almost warm enough for no gloves, with occasional shafts of silver sunlight breaking through. But the grey became greyer and the white vanished and I had my bike light on at 4:30. Now it rains, and they speak of snowflurries tomorrow.

5. I bought a chunk of Happy Beef of some description- all I know is it had a bone in it- and cooked it up in the crock pot last week. Having learned my lesson, I sauteed the onions and celery beforehand and parboiled the carrots. The russet potatoes I cut into chunks and just threw in, because we know that russets will go to mush with a mere five minutes of boiling and ten minutes sitting. Set timer for ten hours and went to bed. Next morning house smelled of... Worcestershire sauce, actually, of which I'd put two splashes into the four cups of stock. Very disappointing. Even more so was the just-done meat and the hard as rocks potatoes. Where is the melting beef and the veggie mush that oven slow-cooking gives you? So cooked it another four hours, which sort of softened the beef and sort of rendered the potatoes edible. I think the higher cooking temp may be what's needed, because for sure the lower one just doesn't work.

Had some of it tonight with mashed potatoes: the five-and-ten method that let me mash with a fork. The one thing I can say is that I have enough beef gravy to keep me forever, but maybe I should thicken it with some flour or cornstarch. Does flour keep in the fridge? I so rarely use it that it's a waste to buy a bag of the stuff.

...for which English has no words but others do.

Best unpacking of natsukashii I've ever come across.

Finished 1Q84. A long and satisfying book, and how rarely one can say that these days.

I have other things to read, but none of then are the Elsewhere I just came from, and I feel a bit let-down. That's the problem with long and satisfying reads. Mind, there's not much I have to say about the book now it's done. It was the experience of reading that was so pleasant.

Pulled another old book from the basement boxes, translation of a classic Edo work, Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige (東海道中膝栗毛), called in English Shanks' Mare. From which title my dear readers may deduce that the translation was done by an Englishman of my great-grandmother's generation (born 1867) whose language may therefore prove elusive to a later generation. Or maybe not. But leafing through it I'm struck anew by what's been lost when stripped-down Americanized English became the standard international lingua franca. For there, behold, is the perfect translation of oyaji: gaffer.

1. Am given to understand that Royall Tyler translated Genji without using the usual sobriquets (like, yanno, 'Genji'.) Always wanted to see how that worked in English, or if it worked, but was reluctant to fork out for the full text. (There's one available on ebay for about $30 Canuck, plus $23C shipping. Truly, even a 1200 page paperback doesn't cost that much to send up here.) Discover there's an abridged version available at BMV and cop it for a fast $7 plus tax. Then discover that the abridged version uses the sobriquets.

(I know the word as 'soubriquet', and I assure you I haven't been reading 17th century French either. But the net is unanimous that the correct form is sobriquet.)
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ame ya aranu
aki ya mukashi no
aki naranu
waga mi hitotsu wa
moto no mi ni shite

Is this not the rain, and this autumn, the autumn of old? Am I the only thing that stays the way it was?

It's October, it's raining, ash leaves fall like snowflurries, maples glow golden under the streetlamps: and I'm not going to New York to see paleaswater as I did in '10, and incandescens isn't coming here as she did in '12, and the fall feels a bit incomplete in consequence.

Tuesday night I dreamed about H and her family leaving, all of us in tears and H a good ten years younger than she is, and their golden retriever running away and having to be corralled (except in RL they have two youngish... beagles, I think) and then riding with them part of their way, but we were in train tunnels that passed through bookstores, the larger than life shelves right by the windows, and the titles of Japanese books were flashing by and I thought 'Oh I wanted to read that one- and that-'

Woke to a cool placid Autumn Preview morning and daegaer talking about the Gaiden and suddenly it was a dozen or more years ago in the calm happy days of fandom. Realize now that one thing that makes fandom calm is having one's attention focussed on fictional people and situations, not RL ones. Also the using another language thing. Time was I needed to have my dictionaries all handy here by the computer. Not any more.

(The H dream followed one about petronia and her elegant Chinese friends, probably inspired by the cover of Full Fathom Five.)