The freezing rain came last night. Not in the huge fractions of inches we were originally supposed to receive, but enough to cause some school closures and a few multi-vehicle accidents. Overpasses have been closed. It was 36° when I went to breakfast this morning. Then I drove a mile north to work and it was 32° there. We had one yaupon tree hanging down into the driveway this morning from ice formation. I’ve been told you couldn’t kill these trees with a flame thrower, but I suspect this one will have to go—or at least be cropped back—because it’s unlikely to stand back up again. Do they make arboreal viagara?
My essay at Storytellers Unplugged this month is called The Value of Time Off. Comments welcome.
I’m reading Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino. Her previous book, Out, was a devastating novel about what can happen when things quickly spiral out of control in an abusive relationship, and the power struggles that go on between “partners in crime.” Grotesque again explores the plight of the Japanese female in a male-dominated society. The protagonist is the child of a Japanese mother and a Swiss father. Every time she meets a new man, she is compelled to imagine what their progeny might look like, selecting certain of their traits to dominate. Her older sister is considered beautiful beyond compare, the kind of beauty the narrator believes is only possible through inter-racial genetics.
Kirino’s books emphasize aspects of Japanese culture that may be difficult for gaijin to comprehend, especially the female perspective. She doesn’t paint a pretty picture most of the time.
I’ve read a lot of Haruki Murakami and have been impressed by how his Japanese characters live in a mostly generic, Western-accessible world. After spending a fair amount of time in Japan, I have been struck by how foreign their culture is to us. Murakami minimizes those cultural differences. The main character’s mundane daily life in Windup Bird Chronicles could take place anywhere, save for passing references to soba noodles and chopsticks. Even so, every now and then something comes up that takes me by surprise. In Kafka on the Shore, an illiterate character cannot write his name. Because of the ideogramatic nature of names in Japanese, this means that no one else can write his name down, either. They can pronounce it, but cannot transcribe it. It’s a subtlety akin to the concept of “tutoyer” in French, when people shift from a formal “vous” address to the more familiar “tu” in a relationship.
