One of the most exquisite pleasures in Japan is the song of the uguisu. It's a bird sometimes called a nightingale, but my bird book calls it a bush warbler. The song is a liquid note held for a couple of seconds, then suddenly rising and falling like a hiccup at the end. It is entirely distinctive; common enough to be enjoyed by everyone; localized enough to make an encounter a memorable event.
Walking near trees, you hear bush warblers calling to each other. Listen for a minute and you notice that the first note of each bird is a slightly different pitch, and indeed each bird's timing and song is individual. It is a delicate and beautiful performance. Together with blossom, explosive growth, sunshine and rain, it speaks of spring.
A note, a rise, fall;
the bush warbler paints
the silent valley with spring
On a blustery morning
wind and rain silence
the bush warbler's song
--Julian
Fellow Blockhead NC Tate made me aware of the poetry of Durs Grünbein, whose selected, Ashes
for Breakfast
Did we know what makes the world go round?
That love tends to isolate
Seemed clear enough. Everyone kept it for himself,
His personal thorn, until the blood
Soaked through at the worst possible moment.
It was rare for anyone to remain uninjured.
More commonly, the pain transferred itself
To the other party. To be left
Was the worst evil, to be insentient in spring,
Stand like an amputee under the busted
Ferris wheel . . . The way the wind carried us
Into the treetops from which
We were later to fall with blissful cries.
(From Falten Und Fallen [Folds and Traps], 1994)
—David
. . . a new study by the Pentagon’s premier military educational institute has concluded the war in Iraq has become “a major debacle” and the outcome “is in doubt” despite the so-called surge. The opening line of the report says, “Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle.” The study was released by the National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research center.
From Daily Dreamtime.
More here.
—David
Now it could be objected here that a coded message, unlike an uncoded message, does not express anything on its own—it requires knowledge of the code. But in reality there is no such thing as an uncoded message. There are only messages written in more familiar codes and messages written in less familiar codes. If the meaning of a message is to be revealed, it must be pulled out of the code by some sort of mechanism, or isomorphism. It may be difficult to discover the method by which the decoding should be done; but once that method has been discovered, the message becomes transparent as water. When a code is familiar enough, it ceases appearing like a code; one forgets that there is a decoding mechanism. The message is identified with the meaning.
From Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Gödel, Escher, Bach is, for this liberal artist with little philosophy and less mathematics, a stimulating intellectual work-out.
—David
It was a magnificent day, the first after a time of cloud and rain. The green valley was filled with mist, shot through by the early morning sun. Down by the rice paddies, the air was clear. Weeds and flowers, mints and mustards and dandelions populated the verges. Sheets of red, purple and white shiba zakura--lawn cherry blossom in literal translation--spilled over the curbs of driveways.
Returning in the evening, the red orb of the sun grew as it neared the horizon. The outline of Oyama and its surrounding hills was an ink brush stroke across the pink grey sky. An elderly farmer hoed between rows of beans. In the gathering dusk uguisu bush warblers sang to each other from the woods and bamboo thickets that fringe the fields. The first red azaleas, buds this morning, had begun to open. High above in a clear sky, the moon was well on its way to full next Sunday.
It was the kind of day that promises summer.
--Julian
Psalm
George Oppen
In the small beauty of the forest
The wild deer bedding down --
That they are there!
Their eyes
Effortless, the soft lips
Nuzzle and the alien small teeth
Tear at the grass
The roots of it
Dangle from their mouths
Scattering earth in the strange woods.
They who are there.
Their paths
Nibbled thru the fields, the leaves that shade them
Hang in the distances
Of sun
The small nouns
Crying faith
In this in which the wild deer
Startle, and stare out.
I found this at Woods Lot, where there's always something good.
(And this seals it. I'm going to have to run right out and buy The Selected
—David
After a day of rain, there was a low sky early this morning, and below it the Samukawa valley and hills beyond were surprisingly lit, showing their relief. The top of Oyama mountain, in farmer's lore the source of local water, was suitably covered in cloud. The sun began to shine later and now it is painting the passing clouds in pink.
* * *
Today Undernews reported a story from the UK's Daily Telegraph. Six Masai warriers are coming to England to run in this weekend's London Marathon. Greenforce has written a guide to help them navigate the strange environment. About the people of London, it says,
"You may be surprised by the number of people that there are and they all seem to be rushing around everywhere. Even though some may look like they have a frown on their face, they are very friendly people - many of them just work in offices, jobs they don't enjoy, and so they do not smile as much as they should."
I work in an office and I'm sure I don't smile as much as I should, either. But on the way to said office this morning, I did smile, if that's the word, upon seeing the beauty of the hills.
--Julian
Once upon a time, Pinakothek reminds us, even working class folks read "not because they thought the books could help them get a better job but because they were curious. They were hungry—they wanted to consume the world." This seems to be less the case today. "How many people," Pinakothek wonders, "assume without thinking about it that reading is and has always been a pursuit strictly for the privileged? Would it be too much to consider a connection between the rightward shift in politics and the decline of self-motivated learning?"
Read the whole piece here, and take the opportunity to bookmark the blog, one of the most fun I've encountered in a while. That the blog is a treat won't surprise those who know that the man behind it is the incomparable Luc Sante, author of, among other things, Kill All Your Darlings.
(I should mention here that, perhaps not unrelated to Japan's natural socialism, one of the attractive things about the place is that self-motivated learning is not dead. It's rare to meet a Japanese of whatever class, whatever age, who is not taking lessons in something, learning a language, or reading in this or that arcane field. Sometimes, it's true, these endeavors are motivated by a desire for professional advancement, but often its just that they want "to consume the world.")
—David
Cherry blossoms and spring sunshine combine to create one of the great joys of Japan. They co-occur for a week at most, and the pleasure is only heightened by the brevity.
As winter ends, the blossom front sweeps up from the south. Here in Kanto, early varieties of cherry bloom here and there in mid-March, prefiguring the eagerly-awaited flood of pale pink at the end of the month. There are cherry trees lining roads and river banks, surrounding schools, clumped in parks, in temple precincts and gardens, on hillsides. Toward month-end, the first flowers open, and within a week, they have enveloped the trees in shimmering gossamer clouds. So prevalent is cherry that traveling by train you cannot look out of the window without seeing an oasis or ocean of pink.
In blossom week, Tokyo parks seethe with revelers, but here in the country you can enjoy a picnic closer to the solitary Ugetsu ideal. After deciding which tree or trees to sit beneath, assemble a ground sheet and some cushions. Cake shops and the basement of department stores offer a variety of sublime pink rice and bean confections decorated with flowers. Add to these tea, a can of beer, a glass of wine, a cup of sake, friends and the warmth of the day, and give yourself to the party. The sun shining through the blossom dapples and dazzles. A petal or two floats down. The breeze brings the laughter of another group of celebrants a little way away.
Cherry blossoms coincide with the start of the school and fiscal year. It is a time when new recruits join companies, and old recruits are reassigned to new duties. The astonishing flowers mark these beginnings until after a few days the petals begin to blizzard down in earnest and fresh green leaves push out to dilute the pale pink. The blossoms are a dream, a memory, and they will be back next year.
--Julian
