Sper să nu par din cale-afară de deplasat dacă spun că m-am săturat de prefeţele bombastice ale celor care încearcă să promoveze o carte. Uneori reuşesc doar să mă amuze.

M-am apucat oarecum de literatura japoneză acum vreo 3 ani. Încercam, cică, să-mi lărgesc orizonturile, he he. I-am citit pe Murakami (Haruki, nu Ryu), Tanizaki, Kawabata. Mi s-a părut că toate cărţile lor seamănă oarecum: dezrădăcinare, lupta vechi-nou, pierderea identităţii, la la la. Aşa că mi-am zis să le mai dau o şansă: Kobo Abe.

Lucia Popa, cea care ne spune două-trei vorbe despre carte, în pagina a doua, crede că romanul se referă, per ansamblu, la absurditatea condiţiei umane. Mie nu mi s-a părut, dar who am I to judge? E oleacă ciudat să crezi că toate romanele care au ceva kafkian în ele (deşi şi epitetul ăsta e supraevaluat) se referă la chestii adânci, impenetrabile, inextricabile şi alţi draci-laci. Din punctul meu de vedere, aria de cuprindere metaforică a romanului se circumscrie perfect greutăţii de a construi o relaţie durabilă între doi oameni, atunci când cel puţin unul dintre ei nu-şi doreşte acest lucru. Că doar de aceea cartea se cheamă Femeia nisipurilor, şi nu Lumea nisipurilor. Punct. Faptul că personajul principal este ţinut captiv într-o colibă ameninţată mereu să se prăbuşească sub greutatea perfidă a nisipului venit de nicăieri şi de pretutindeni nu cred că vorbeşte despre imposibilitatea de adaptare la lumea înconjurătoare, ci despre neputinţa de a putea coexista cu femeia cu care împarţi, forţat, habitatul. De unde extrapolarea asta? Mă rog, e doar un punct de vedere.

În rest, n-am ce comenta. Romanul e citibil, agreabil, metaforic în limite negreţoase şi uşurel fără a fi facil, totuşi. Numai că, încă o dată, mă enervează când încercăm să dăm unui lucru aparent banal conotaţii prăpăstioase. E ca şi cum, citind Capra cu trei iezi, am ajunge la concluzia că scena în care capra îl ademeneşte pe lup şi-l ucide arzându-l ne vorbeşte despre metodele de luptă şi strategiile de decimare a adversarilor politici în secolele trecute.

(Kobo Abe, Femeia nisipurilor, colecţiile Cotidianul, ed. Univers, 2007)

Seful laboratorului unui institut de cercetari sufera un accident nemilos, pierzandu-si fata (dar nu si vederea). Singuratea il copleseste, se simte ingropat de viu sub bandajele greoaie. Nici macar sotia nu pare sa-l inteleaga. Viata sexuala inceteaza, desi continua sa il obsedeze.

Peste lipitorile vinetii produse de arsuri isi pune o masca fabricata laborios, pe parcursul mai multor luni de delegatie. Reintra in contact cu sotia (cu scopul de a o seduce si a demonstra infidelitatea) ascunzandu-si identitatea. Purtarea mastii il elibereaza de responsabilitati. Rusinea dispare. Putea fi piroman, talhar, criminal, violator…

„In orice caz, chipul adevarat nu s-ar fi putut imbata asa cum a facut-o masca. Cel mai bun lucru pe care l-ar fi putut face chipul adevarat era sa se prefaca doar ca e beat.”

Dupa 5 ore de la intalnirea (cu masca) incearca sa-si violeze sotia din gelozie. Insa sotia cupleaza surprinzator, zorindu-l si brutalizandu-l, dovedindu-se astfel inviolabila.

Am extras doua idei interesante din “Chip strain”. Pe prima o gasesc indoielnica, iar pe a doua hilara. Oricum, citita in combinatie cu alte carti nu prea merge.

• “… cea mai pura forma de consumare a libertatii este, dupa parerea mea, satisfacerea dorintelor sexuale. Consumarea libertatii, oricat ar fi ea de pura, nu este importanta prin ea insasi. Importanta rezida mai degraba in capacitatea de a genera libertate.”

Asta ar insemna ca cei incarcerati ar avea parte de cea mai pura forma de consumare a libertatii.

• “Deoarece incercam sa nu fiu tocmai lipsit de amabilitate, nu-mi era greu sa inteleg ce simte masca, sa pricep de ce a intors spatele incendierii si crimei. In primul rand, masca constituia in ea insasi o violare grava a obiceiurilor lumii… Pe scurt, cel mai bun lucru ar fi sa se treaca la fabricarea in masa a unor masti complicate, ca cea pe care o folosesc eu si sa presupunem ca opinia publica le va accepta cu timpul… Identificarea persoanei nu-si va mai avea rostul, fotografiile de la politie si-ar pierde orice valoare, iar pozele viitorilor parteneri de viata vor fi rupte in bucati si aruncate la gunoi. Strainii se vor confunda cu cunostintele si se va prabusi insasi ideea de alibi. Incapabil sa-i banuiesti pe ceilalti, incapabil sa mai crezi in altii, va trebui sa traiesti intr-o stare de incertitudine, o stare in care relatiile umane au dat faliment, ca si cand te-ai uita intr-o oglinda in care nu se vede nimic… Daca se va incetateni obiceiul de a-ti schimba masca mereu, cuvantul “individ” va deveni de-a dreptul indecent, fiind mazgalit pe zidurile WC-urilor publice… Oricat de mult ne-ar fascina mastile, societatea va ridica baricade rezitente impotriva perversiunilor individuale. De exemplu, se va interzice cu desavarsire folosirea mastii la locuri de munca cum ar fi: birourile publice, in institutii, la sediile politiei, in laboratoare. Mai mult decat atat, actori foarte cunoscuti vor solicita drept de proprietate faciala pentru mastile lor si se vor ridica impotriva reproducerii libere a acestora. Sa luam un exemplu si mai la indemana: familia – sotul si sotia trebuie sa promita ca, pentru dragostea pe care si-au jurat-o, nu vor purta niciodata masti disimulante. Tranzactiile comerciale se vor defasura probabil intr-o noua maniera: inainte de inceperea negocierilor, fiecare va ciupi pielea de pe fata partenerului. In cazul interviurilor s-ar putea incetateni obiceiul de a intepa fata solicitantului cu un ac pentru a scoate doua-trei picaturi de sange si a dovedi ca este chip real. In cazul interogatoriilor de la politie insa, atingerea unei fete devine o problema ce trebuie rezolvata in instanta pentru a se constata daca actul in sine a fost justificat sau politistii au impins lucrurile prea departe si o serie de specialisti, oameni ai legii, vor publica dizertatii legate de acest subiect.”

El (personaj fara nume, fara chip dupa primele 60 de pagini) da citire unor caiete scrise pentru o ea (pe care a incercat s-o violeze). El sufera un accident cu oxigen lichid, avand cicatrice faciale cheloide si incepe prin a povesti (justifica) o perioada in care preocuparea principala era realizarea unei masti. In urma accidentului, ochii si conturul buzelor raman neafectate. Cu toate acestea, impactul unui chip hidos pare obsedant.

Am inteles la ce bun o masca si la ce bun un anumit tip de masca chiar si pentru un asiatic. Cand vezi fete de asiatici in fiecare zi si cand acestia reprezinta peste 90% din total, atunci devine firesc sa cauti un anumit tip de masca pentru o fata mutilata.

Kobo pare preocupat de relatia dintre imagine si personalitate, in sensul ca personalitatea este subordonata imaginii.

Titles: The Face of Another & The Box Man

Author: Kobo Abe

Where bought: Amazon.co.uk

Why bought: Fan of Japanese fiction, heard good things about Abe.

Review:

I have put these two books in a review together as they both demonstrate fully the reason why Kobo Abe is the greatest exponent of the quirkiness and uniqueness that makes Japanese fiction so appealing to me. There is something about these novels that makes it unimaginable for me that they could have come from a Western mind. Japanese fiction has played a larger and larger role in my influences, and has become more what I seek out in favour of others. When people asked me why I had taken so keenly to reading Japanese fiction it was a question that always seemed to leave me stumped. But I think it is something to do with the way a language shapes a nation. To look at South American fiction there is a real sense of the singular latin spirit that runs through its language, and even the nuances of North American English seems to bleed through into its fiction when compared with British English.

And so we are brought to Kobo Abe. These two novels share a spirit of absolutely wild leaps of imagination and such unapproachable complexity of ideas that they could only have come out of the Japanese language that is embodied by a similar complexity and poeticity of expression.

Both concern male protagonists existing on the edge of society, each for a highly bizarre reason. ‘The Face of Another’ has its lead wearing a grotesque mask as a result of an unexplained event in his past. In ‘Box Man’ the world is viewed through a small gap cut in a cardboard box that the protagonist always wears.

What makes both these novels deserving of praise is that despite initially facing an apparently impenetrable wall of weirdness in the premises, by halfway through you will have become well-acquainted with the bizarre worlds you are being presented with, and by the end you will find yourself fully immersed into the characters’ warped psyches. What is more important though, is that even though the you are guided over the barriers of abstraction by Abe, he never lets you forget that they are there. You are faced with constant elevations of strangeness and so though you are allowed to enter into Abe’s weird worlds, he never allows you to settle into comfort.

While I could talk about Abe’s consistently beautiful descriptions, the vivacity with which he creates the worlds his protagonists reside in, or even the carefully poised dark humour that runs throughout his work, it is impossible to escape the uniqueness of these novels when praising them.

At heart neither is more than a glorified character study. There is little semblance of plot events or storylines. Instead Abe is happy to lay bare the feats of his imagination for you to immerse yourself in. But none of that matters, as you cannot help but be transfixed by the way Abe weaves the words together on the page.

I seek out different and strange novel and yet I have still never found anything quite like these two novels. In a world in which everything seems to tend towards homogeneity, these novels are a rare wonder that should be treasured.

QuickLink to SearchToBuy (Face)

QuickLink to SearchToBuy (Box)

N-am citit nicăieri o descriere atât de bizară a unui nud femionin ca în „Femeia nisipurilor” a lui Kobo Abe. O carte de un absurd ciudat, care mie unul mi se pare că n-are nimic în comun cu pesimismul congenital al universului kafkian. La Kafka nu există nici o salvare. La Kobo Abe însă există o licărire… legenda îndepărtată a unei familii care a scăpat de sub bolta de nisip. Şi da… ar mai fi legenda resemnării: prins în nisipurile mişcătoare, nu poţi scăpa decât stând locului. Din absurdul vieţii poţi aşadar să evadezi,. Dacă pur şi simplu trăieşti. Dar e cam greu când raţiunea şi prejudecăţile ei nu te lasă. Femeia nisipului este, cerd eu, întruchiparea pântecului, în care nu e loc de silogisme şi teorii. Nu e loc nici pentru cărţi şi nici pentru teorii. Acolo e viaţa. Aceasta e scăparea din absurdul lui Kobo Abe… şansa de care vorbea undeva şi Umberto Eco.

Kobo Abe’s The Box Man is about a man who lives in a box. He is paid to destroy his box and then sits around watching a fake box man and and his nurse/mistress. I don’t really have anything to say about this one. I found the voice annoying and confusing. It’s impossible to tell who is who and whether the narrator is actually narrating about himself or someone else or what the hell is going on. That’s kind of the point, this blending in and blurring of anonymous lines, but when the narrator is dead for a while chunk and you aren’t sure whether to take it seriously because you aren’t sure if he’s talking about himself or the fake version of him, then it’s all kind of a mess. I could have just been in entirely the wrong mood for this one.

Some Brie-head interviewed over here at ShatterColors Literary Review. I guess he edits the magazine or something. So he’s interviewing himself in his own magazine?  And he publishes himself in his own magazine? Hell, I don’t know. I’m tired after running a hill workout. Then I read this, making me more tired. He’s one literary dude, though. Very literary, no doubt.

Robert Scott Leyse (14 bucks he prefers you use all three names) says some really un-sightful things here.

Like he says that he attended a “writing event.” Sounded like he had a hell of a good time, too. In his words, I thought, “What does a gathering of clowns spouting pretentious rubbish and thirsting to have their asses kissed have to do with writing?”

Touche, Robert Scott Leyse. “Thirsting to have their asses kissed” is an excellent image, or maybe just a mixed metaphor/dating service for burros. Either way, I love a man who can recognize a clown in disguise (or were the writers wearing their red noses and giant shoes?).  Reminds me of the grandmother in Flannery O’ Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Grannie wears very clean underwear and knows exactly how to identify “Good Men.” Only takes her a few minutes, too. (Unfortunately, she is soon executed, along with the entire family she leads directly to their collective doom.)

I’ll just jot down this epic poem here, la-dee-da….

One problem I have with Robert Scott Leyse is that the people I meet at “writing events” are scared of clowns. Also they are self-deprecating, witty, humble, interesting, well-read, grinders at the page after page, and know how to drink a shit-load of quality ale. (Those that don’t drink beer I maybe never meet.)

Possibly we attend different conferences?

As an editor Robert Scott Leyse prefers, “love stories, at whatever stage of a relationship…”

Hey! I do too, maybe. So good call, maybe.

Then Robert Scott Leyse reveals his true internal thrumming, as he drops the dark and stormy nights of his intellect onto flash fiction.

Egads! Run for the big tent, you clowns!

On flash fiction (you can hear the disgust steeping in his bottom lip like a tobacco chaw): “It’s a writing exercise, useful in learning the virtues of succinctness of expression. As for it being a viable form… Basically, some corner-cutting smartass thought, “Hey, why waste these writing exercises? Why not doll them up in fancy terminology — call them ‘flash fiction,’ ‘flashers,’ or ‘impromptus’ — and persuade people they’re real stories? That way, I’ll be able to churn out three or four or five of them a night!” Needless to say, I neither read nor publish writing exercises.”

I adore that last sentence. Cutting, shall we say. In fact, fuck it, all short forms are actually writing exercises, especially those damn sonnet things. I mean how can 14 lines be “viable”? Yo, parable, fable, mythology, psalm, and all you annoying hieroglyphics, please go away or at the very least add a whole lot of words, OK? Can we get some more words, seriously? Back up the fucking WORD truck, beep-beep-beep. MORE, MORE, like in a legislature or a contract.

And, yes, you pegged me, Robert Scott Leyse, since I do write and read flash fiction, I am indeed a “corner-cutting smartass.”

[But Impromptus? That sounds like a type of water dwelling dinosaur in a children's book. Dude, don't bring that one out in public, just a friendly tip.]

Speaking of “corner-cutters,” and since I just spent a semester with a grad student researching a bit of the inexhaustible history of flash fiction as a genre, other corner cutting clowns would include:

Margaret Atwood, Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes, Dave Eggers (a ton here), David Foster Wallace, Tara L. Masih, Pu Songling, Kim Chinquee, J. G. Ballard, Jim Harrison, Kobo Abe, Primo Levi, Angela Carter, Max Steele, Barry Graham, Umberto Eco, H. H. Munro, Don Delillo, Mervyn Peake, Anton Chekhov, Kurt Vonnegut, Andrei Bely, W.B. Yeats, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Luigi Pirandello, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, John Steinbeck, George Orwell, Ander Monson, Mark Twain, Marianne Gingher, Wu Jingzi, Dubus (x 2), Vladimir Nabokov, Oscar Wilde, Molly Gaudry, Agatha Christie, Dr. Seuss, Jaroslav Hasek, Samule Beckett, Jeff Noon, Matt Bell, Aesop, Deb Olen Unferth, Patricia Highsmith, Emily Bronte, Franz Kafka, Italo Calvino, John Updike, Jill Christman, Julian Barnes, Richard Wright, Sherman Alexie, Sara Teasdale, Shane Jones, Diane Williams, Jesus H. Christ, Blake Butler, Maya Angelou, W. G. Sebald, Edmund White, Thomas Pynchon, Raymond Carver, Carolyn Forche, Djuna Barnes, Virginia Woolf, Buddha, Dorothy Parker, Tao Lin (oh, fuck him [I kid]), Carol Bly, Russell Banks, John David Lovelace, Krishna, Richard Brautigan, Ezra Pound, Scott Garson, Michael Kimball, Jewel, Robert Olen Butler, Gertrude Stein, Alexander Pushkin, Joseph Young, Emile Zola, Ursula Kroeber Le Guin, Michael Martone, Hart Crane, Tania Hershman, Joyce Carol Oates, John Edgar Wideman, Rose Terry Cooke, Plato, Katherine Anne Porter, Kate Chopin, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez.

hanging out, corner-cutting...

I could go on, but it gets ridiculous the number of authors in the canon, and outside the canon, and shooting from a cannon (a la Hunter S.), that have worked in this genre, and didn’t I just say I was tired, and also I need my typing finger for clowning tomorrow morning.

I just got to clown, yo.

Wouldn’t want to be with that “impromptu” crowd, anyway, would you? What’s next, you start valuing other forms of brevity, like say oysters, shots of bourbon, sudden kisses, short films, or the well-cut diamond?

A writing exercise? Flash fiction is to a writing exercise as a haiku is to a pretzel. Something. I disagree, Robert Scott Leyse. And what if a flash WAS a writing exercise? What if someone wrote a story in the shape of an apartment building (Georges Perec) or as a travel guide (Martone) or I don’t know a freaking examination. On and on…or can stories only be one way, “love stories, at whatever…” etc.

[A red fox just loped across my backyard. Is it limping or loping? I mean loping is like attitude. Limping you probably got car-struck crossing highway 69]

Oh hell, I digress, and if you read this blog you know where I will digress to, like a ship drifting to harbor…1.) preheat oven. 2.) slice corn tortillas. 3.) Add cheese and “impromptu” toppings.

Well, I just had some kick ass nachos. It felt good. It didn’t take long, they are often listed as appetizer…so eat my board shorts (those are the very, very, very long shorts, sir, I think you will like them), Mr. Robert Scott Leyse.

(BTW, here is an exam, a writing exercise, as you would say.)

Well, what can you do? Not human at all, is it, the flash fiction above…drivel, really.

No, no, know.

Now?

I am going to go relax in the bath.

I will not! For me, a hot shower. I said hot.

And quick.

And good.

*

Beer prices are going up. (again)

Here’s what the D-bag at Budweiser says: “The environment is very favorable, we think.” (He means for price increases.)

Here is the D at MillerCoors: “We have seen very strong pricing to date this year, and we are projecting a favorable pricing environment moving forward.”

Can you believe people who work at a brewery talk like this? I am done with these fools. Can you smell the cynicism in the voices of these guys? It’s micro-brew only now (was heading percentage-wise that way anyway). I mean I feel like I am buying my beer from an attorney, and he’s laughing right in my face. Going home and telling his wife about all the suckers he found today in his “pricing environment.”

*

Kind words from The Prettiest Girl in School about Eggs here. Thank you for reading!

*

S

If Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes can be compared to Franz Kafka’s The Trial, then THe Box Man is redolent of Metamorphosis. I was tols to expect The Box Man to be a more challenging book and that much is true. It takes the form of a man who has taken the decision to live his life inside a cardboard box. That is to say that he moves about the city as a tramp, but wearing a cardboard box over his head. The box itself is a masterpiece of design with holes for vision, but veiled to protect the identity of the wearer, and even shelves built inside. Two things are particularly remarkable – firstly, that he is not the only box man, but there are a number of box men around the city . Secondly, that being a box man is what would these days be called a lifestyle choice. It is something that he chooses to be, and chooses not to be as well.

First published in 1973, it feels as if it was written much earlier. It’s a classic of surrealism, written sparsely (as is the case with much Japanese fiction) and is about many things: insiderness/outsiderness; identity; the public world/the private sphere; voyeurism; fetishism; the mediation of reality/human contact; conformism, and much more besides. It is certainly a challenging book, but it is rich and vital reading for anyone interested in Japanese literature and it makes sense of the tradition that moves through Murakami and on to the new generation of younger writers. It is also a book that will warrant a second reading.

In April I was at a conference on ‘The Fairy Tale after Angela Carter’ and I was fortunate enough to meet up with Marc Sebastian-Jones from Macclesfield who lives and works in Tokyo, teaching English at university. We talked at some length about Japanese literature, specifically about Murakami (both of them) and the new generation of writers, such as Natsuo Kirinoand Hitomi Kanehara. He told me that to fully appreciate where these new writers were coming from, then I had to read some of the clasics of twentieth-century Japanese literature. It seemed like sensible advice and he insisted that I start with Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes.

Having read it I can see exactly what he meant and certainly you can start to see where the influence of Kafka and surrealism comes in. The book concerns an entymologist who goes off to a remote village in the dunes in search of a rare insect. He finds himself imprisoned by the villagers in a house with a young widow, unable to escape by climbing up the fragile dunes and destined to spend all night clearing the house of the sand that falls on it all day long. It tells of his despair and growing acceptance of (and dependence on) his situation.  It reminded me very strongly of Kafka’s The Trial with the same strong mythological echoes. Reading this has certainly informed my reading of other Japanese literature, so thanks, Marc, for the advice.

I hope that this message is getting through to the United Nations!

One of the best things about blogging with WordPress is that I can see what is being looked for behind the scenes.  This is valuable information to me in terms of trying to work on this intervention I am working on.  I have seen foreign words pop up on occasion and today this did!

“世界和平” in het engels

Why might that be important?

Because this is someone translating in two different languages!  This is what they were looking for!  I used the Google translator at the link here:

“WORLD PEACE IN ENGLISH”

They were using Chinese and Dutch to ask this question.

It used to be that in the 70’s English and French I believe were the most common languages in the world.  However?  What are the most commonly spoken languages in 2009?

In order to begin working with the dyad as a method of Socratic Dialogue across cultures and nations we first have to be able to understand what is being expressed?  In order to understand the wounds I have been speaking about.  I see WWII as a defining moment in world history.  Most of the current world leaders and diplomats understand that because they know of it as lived history?  And so, if we reframe that event as the scariest thing that ever happened to the world?

How might we understand warfare and nuclear in 2009?

Now, as I said yesterday, this wound can be traced through three generations along kinship lines — Grandfather, father, son.  We would need to understand each culture’s role in WWII.  Where were they?  What wounds are being carried?

Who was whose ally?

As I was researching North Korea yesterday — the history can be seen through these three generations — Grandfather, Father, Son.  “Father” in this case can be traced in the Wikipedia article here.

“The peninsula was governed by the Korean Empire until it was occupied by Japan following the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. It was divided into Soviet and American occupied zones in 1945, following the end of World War II. North Korea refused to participate in a United Nations-supervised election held in the south in 1948, which led to the creation of separate Korean governments for the two occupation zones. Both North and South Korea claimed sovereignty over the peninsula as a whole, which led to the Korean War of 1950. A 1953 armistice temporarily ended the fighting; however, the two countries are officially still at war with each other, as a peace treaty was never signed.^[7] Both states were accepted into the United Nations in 1991.^[8] On May 26, 2009, North Korea unilaterally withdrew from the armistice.^[9]“”

As we think about “seeing through” a culture via a different lens than our own?  I want to talk a little about Jung’s concept of the shadow.  The shadow is the unseen thing that is being carried.  This could be why we are seeing what we are in the moment.  If you think about this country, in such an ancient part of the world?

Can you imagine what they have carried since WWII?

Not only did Hiroshima happen, but, Hiroshima happened next door?

Can you imagine what “Grandfather’s era” was in contrast to “Father’s era” and now “Son’s era.”

Hiroshima happened before my lifetime.

Since Hiroshima what emotions are being carried by the world from that event?

Sadness, rage and tears?

And FEAR.  Now the only way that we can approach this is through DIALOGUE!

Truly.  This is the only way we are going to be able to make a breakthrough.  It really is.

If that was the most powerful weapon in the world who would want it and why?

Could it be that their father carried the emotional wounds from WWII?  These have been transfered as values to the son!

Of course!

A country would be building up a military so that their power could protect them.  This is why I wanted to use Kobe Abe’s novel as an intervention.  Every world leader I think either has a father alive or is old enough to be able to process what is being held from that war.  All of these people have seen the pictures from that war.  Or have they?

How does each culture view their place in that war?  That is what we must look at.

Europe and America will be holding a different set of emotions than Korea, China and Russia hold.

But?

There is also the whole rest of the world!  What is the role of South America, Canada and so forth?

All of the NATIONS all across the world?

One of the reasons that Ban Ki-Moon is so seminal in fostering this dialogue is because he holds a key to this part of the world and the history of WWII.  He would know as well as Japan how Hiroshima affected cultures there.  He would be able to dialogue in the dyad groups from the WEST?

If I think about the role of the Beloved Leader as “Father” in Korea?  And I look at the article I saw yesterday in the web and I see how much NATIONALISM is important to Korea since it was split?  We are talking about a wound from just after WWII and then going forwards.  One of the most telling things I read yesterday was about the FATHER!

Here is the wiki on that:

“North Korea is a single-party state under a united front led by the Korean Workers’ Party.^[10][11][12] The country’s government styles itself as following the Juche ideology of self-reliance, developed by Kim Il-sung, the country’s former leader. Juche became the official state ideology in 1972,^[13] when the country adopted a new constitution, though Kim Il-sung had been using the ideology to form policy since at least as early as 1955.^[14] Nominally a socialist republic, North Korea is widely considered by the outside world to be a de facto authoritarian/totalitarian Stalinist dictatorship.^[15][11][12]Kim Jong-il, son of the late president, Kim Il-sung.”

This concept of Juche?

It would seem to me that this came directly from the events of WWII.

Juche means self-reliance.  And North Korea is self-reliant.  They have had to be sine 1900.

“The exact history of Kim’s family is somewhat obscure. The family was neither very poor nor comfortably well-off, but was always a step away from poverty. Kim was raised in a Protestant Christian family with strong ties to the church: his maternal grandfather was a Protestant minister, his father had gone to a missionary school, and both his parents were reportedly very active in the religious community. According to the official version, Kim’s family participated in anti-Japanese activities and in 1920 they fled to Manchuria, where he became fluent in Mandarin. The more objective view seems to be that his family settled in Manchuria like many Koreans at the time to escape famine. Nonetheless, Kim’s parents apparently did play a minor role in some activist groups, though whether their cause was missionary, nationalist, or both is unclear. ^[2]

Kim’s father died in 1926, when Kim was fourteen years old. Kim attended Yuwen Middle School in Jilin, where he rejected the feudal traditions of older generation Koreans and became interested in communist ideologies; his formal education ended when he was arrested and jailed for his subversive activities. At seventeen, Kim had become the youngest member of an underground Marxist organization with less than twenty members, led by Hŏ So, who belonged to the South Manchurian Communist Youth Association. The police discovered the group three weeks after it was formed in 1929, and jailed Kim for several months.^[3][4]

He joined various anti-Japanese guerrilla groups in northern China, and in 1935 he became a member of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, a guerrilla group led by the Communist Party of China.”

Here is a key wounding:

“As he aged, Kim developed a large growth on the back of his neck, a calcium deposit, or hok in Korean. Such growths usually result from childhood malnutrition. Its location near his brain and spinal cord made it inoperable. Because of its unappealing nature, North Korean photographers always shot from the same slight-left angle, which became a difficult task as the growth reached the size of a baseball.^[19][20]“

Childhood Malnutrtion.

“By the 1990s, North Korea was nearly completely isolated from the outside world, except for limited contacts with China, Russia, Vietnam, and Cuba. Its economy was virtually bankrupt, crippled by huge expenditures on armaments, with an agricultural sector unable to feed its population, but state-run North Korean media continued to lionize Kim. Kim Il-sung died suddenly of a heart attack in Pyongyang on July 8, 1994, bequeathing the country’s mounting crisis to Kim Jong-il. His funeral in Pyongyang was attended by hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom were mourning dramatically (there were reports that many people committed suicide or were killed in the resulting mass mourning crushes), weeping and crying Kim Il-sung’s name during the funeral procession. Kim Il-sung’s body was placed in a public mausoleum at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where his preserved and embalmed body lies under a glass coffin for viewing purposes. His head rests on a Korean-style pillow and he is covered by the flag of the Workers Party of Korea. Video of the funeral at Pyongyang was broadcast on several networks, and can now be found on various websites.^[21]“

How does Malnutrtion factor in since 1900.  As a wound that is held?  This is very important to investigate.  I would suggest as an intervention in that expanded dyad format from yesterday — Four trusted people as speakers, two witnesses that can be the listeners, Ban Ki-moon as the “truthteller” for the lived history of the region as a whole — the FRENCH because of the Arch of Triumph and two diplomats.  One from North Korea and one from South Korea.

It is very important that the language spokien is understood by all in the sacred circle, face to face!  And that any misunderstandings are cleared up?  Semantics play a huge role right now.  I just used the google translator to search the words PEACE.  It’s different across different languages and doesn’t appear in one language as we use it.  I’ll work some more with this idea, for tomorrow!

So, to go back to the original DYAD — here is who could be at ths one!

Four people who had formed the initial two dyads and listened to the wounds.

Two “listeners” who bore witness.

One French Diplomat who could speak about the Arch of Triumph and its meaning in France.

One North Korean diplomat who could speak about the Arch of Triumph and its maening in North Korea.

Ban Ki-moon as LEAD DIPLOMAT with personal understanding of the area.

Bring in HUMAN tranlators who speak KOREAN, FRENCH and ENGLISH to sit in the sacred circle.

This group should read the Kobo Abe so that they can understand Hiroshima.

What we want to talk about would be FEAR post Hiroshima and why a country is fierce about it’s own NATIONALISM.

Especially a country that had been split post WWII?  As it has.

We would also want to explore the wound of malnutrtion — this is key.  This is a wound carried by the father.  A very deep wound.  The concept of Juche in this case?  Where does malnutrtion fit?

When we do a reframe we explore through another lens in order to understand.

Why we have a chance at PEACE in this age is because we can use WWII as the defining event.  All the world leaders know about or carry that history — especially anyone who is in their late forties through their late sixties.  We want to look at the wounds this generation’s FATHERS have suffered such as that “Hok” and trace this back through WWI.

ps:  Somebody comes by on a daily basis from Mountain View California.  I’m going to assume you are part of the Silicon Valley Group?  I want you to know that I am an American trained at Pacifica in Depth Psychology and I know what I’m saying and doing.

Also, this model that I am laying out?

Can work in other situations where there is conflict at present.

I want to say how much I appreciate Mozilla, Wikipedia, and Google as I write this treatment plan.  I couldn’t do it without the tools you have built!

Truly!

hugs…

and…

“世界和平” in het engels

(to be continued…)

[edit]

My Vancouver Public Library copy, with the haggard, woebegone appearance of book that’s been around the block a few times. I wonder how many sets of hands have held it and how many minds absorbed the tale. If only a library book could talk…

Set in some nondescript up and coming Japanese satellite town, called F——–City, the lead character is a detective who has been hired by a woman, a demure, beer swilling enigma, whose husband disappeared six months ago, and the first person narrative takes us into a vertiginous underworld that seethes with barely restrained violence, and the author builds the tension masterfully.

The most memorable scene so far is one that is characteristic of the unique vision of Kobo Abe and his ability to coax the horror out of mundane situations, such as a late night visit to a strange self-serve restaurant where all your food comes from vending machines. The protagonist sits in the restaurant, killing cockroaches with matches, one by one, when a man interrupts him.

“I noticed I had already wasted over ten matchsticks chasing the cockroaches around and had gathered into a mount over twenty-four that I had killed. “Ah ha. They must be really good, they live on spilt sake. It’s true. Shall we give it a try?” Thinking he was joking, I remained silent, whereupon my companion suddenly stretched out his hand and before my eyes picked up several cockroaches, which he popped into his mouth. I tried to stop him, but he was too fast. A young man, apparently an employee, shoved me aside and swept the remaining dead cockroaches to the floor. “Stop it! It’s disgusting,” he said sharply, without raising his eyes, and passed on. The man who had swallowed the cockroaches, groping with his tongue between his missing front teeth, intently searched for something, his gaze restless. “Boy! This is salty,” he muttered, “dry as paper…toasted seaweed…really cheap, no mistake about that.”

I’m barely half way through and so far I’ve been exposed to tantalizing prose such as this! I can’t wait to hit the book tonight and see where the prodigiously talented Mr. Abe will lead my psyche. Further into the darker nether regions, I hope.

Z cyklu: Wielkie Ekranizacje, na podstawie powieści o tym samym tytule autorstwa Kobo Abe.

Pewien entomolog wyprawia się w poszukiwaniu szczególnego rodzaju owada.  Ten żyje akurat w środowisku piaskowym, więc facet przedziera się przez wydmy w poszukiwania robala. Robi to na tyle długo, że traci poczucie czasu przegapiając ostatni autobus do Tokio. Z pomocą przychodzi mu wieśniak, który proponuje nocleg w wiejskiej chacie. Mężczyzna przystaje na to i ląduje w przedziwnym domku u samotnej kobiety. Domek leży w piaskowym dole, do którego można się dostać jedynie schodząc po drabince w dół. Nazajutrz, przebudziwszy się mężczyzna chce wyruszyć na dalsze poszukiwania. Kiedy chce wydostać się na górę okazuje się, że drabinka została zabrana. Nasz bohater zostaje zamknięty w piaskowym potrzasku…

Rewelacyjny to film. Dramat o człowieku w sytuacji bez wyjścia (dosłownie . Ciężki, dławiący, przytłaczający niczym piach który sypie się w filmie każdym możliwym otworem.  O wolności, przywiązaniu, niemocy oraz paradoksalnej wolności.  Pełen symboli, przepięknie sfilmowanych symboli dodam.  Jest to także film o namiętności, która rodzi się w niewygodnych okolicznościach. A wszystko to w chateczce, która nieodgrzebywana z piachu może lada chwila się zawalić.

Czytałam książkę. Czułam ten piach na skórze. Czułam duchotę i upał. Przy filmie tak samo.  Historia pokazana jest bardzo wiernie, jedynie zakończenie trochę się zmienia, ale absolutnie trzyma to wszystko poziom.

Generalnie 5+.

Je vous jure que ce n’est pas le titre qui m’a attiré en premier. Bien sûr, derrière un titre comme celui-là, on ne pouvait trouver qu’un complot, qu’une conspiration. Mais non, l’incitant premier était le réalisateur, Teshigahara, le second était le scénariste, Abe Kobo. Le Traquenard est en effet non seulement le premier long métrage de Teshigahara, mais aussi sa première collaboration avec l’extraordinaire écrivain Abe Kobo, ainsi qu’avec le compositeur Toru Takemitsu. Quelques années plus tard, cette collaboration donnera un des plus beaux films du monde: “La Femme des Sables“. Ici, nous sommes en 1962 et Teshigahara n’a encore réalisé que quelques court-métrages et des documentaires déjà très impressionnants comme “José Torres”, portrait d’un boxeur porto-ricain de New-York ( réédité sur ce même dvd ). Il se lance immédiatement dans un cinéma ambitieux, par son scénario d’abord, par les thèmes abordés ensuite, et enfin par la maîtrise et l’exigence cinématographique qu’il apporte à l’image. L’histoire est assez simple au départ, un mineur ( c’est à dire un ouvrier des mines, pas un enfant ) et son enfant ( qui n’est pas ouvrier des mines ) errent de travaux mal payés en emplois précaires. Ils sont suivis à leur insu par un mystérieux homme en blanc, mélange étrange de Maurice Ronet et de Takeshi Kitano. Lorsqu’ils arrivent dans un village abandonné, uniquement habité par une marchande de bonbons, se met en place le traquenard échafaudé par le tortueux Abe Kobo.

De ce départ simple découle une histoire complexe d’identité perdue, de doppelganger inconnu, et surtout une cruelle et obscure conspiration. Fidèle aux livres inquiétants d’Abe Kobo et comme le seront les prochaines collaborations avec le réalisateur ( “Le Visage d’un autre”, “Le Plan déchiqueté”, ou bien sûr “La Femme des sables”) le complot est un mélange d’absurde kafkaïen, effroyablement logique, et d’ancrage flottant dans la réalité. Comparable ( et souvent comparé ) à Kafka, ou plus récemment aux fictions surréalistes de José Saramago, Abe Kobo a développé une œuvre littéraire déconcertante, quelquefois terrifiante, toujours troublante. Procédant par légers décalages, il transforme, de détails en détails, une réalité effroyablement banale, en un monde angoissant, dont la logique échappe aux protagonistes, victimes d’une oppression diffuse de leur environnement, et aveuglés par leurs pulsions individuelles.

Cinéaste nouvelle-vague, évoquant Antonioni ou Resnais, Teshigahara se place aux côtés de Kurosawa et Oshima, comme le représentant d’une avant-garde cinématographique intégrant un discours nouveau, mêlant réalisme social et fantastique, introduisant des thèmes nouveaux à l’époque, comme la dépersonnalisation des individus, l’aliénation, la manipulation, l’absurde (au sens existentialiste du terme) … Pour son premier film, il introduit une dose inhabituelle de réalisme politique, de lutte sociale, dans une histoire où les syndicalistes croisent les fantômes, et où la Mort roule en Vespa. Ajoutant un contexte très concret de critique sociale et de dénonciation politique à son synopsis fantastique, Teshigahara ancre son film dans un humanisme pessimiste qu’il conservera tout au long des séquences les plus fantastiques. En un sens, l’au-delà prend chez lui la forme d’une banalité extrême, la plupart des fantômes conservant les traits, les occupations, les obsessions de leurs derniers instants, de l’esprit à l’estomac (ceux qui sont morts avant un repas auront par exemple faim pour l’éternité, ceux qui ont mangé passeront leur mort à digérer.)

Rare (presqu’unique) personnage féminin, la marchande de bonbon annonce déjà la future “femme des sables”. Elle incarne l’impuissance devant la manipulation, la faiblesse face à la vie comme face à la mort. Victime et sujet d’un complot qui lui échappe, elle est, comme la “femme des sables”, un instrument involontaire dans un agencement criminel. Elle prend place sur l’écran dans une succession de scène de souffrance et d’abandon, à la chaleur, au sexe, à la peur. Elle se présente dès le départ comme un personnage passif, en attente, ses propres désirs réprimés, soumis aux décisions et aux désirs des autres, le fiancé qu’elle attend, qui doit l’emmener hors du village abandonné, le policier qui veut la violer, le mystérieux homme en blanc auquel elle obéit. Teshigahara fait de ce personnage de femme solitaire  une  incarnation de la sensualité,  un corps immense, généreux, disproportionné, qui traverse le film dans une robe mouillée, collée au corps par la sueur.

Mais cette femme n’est pas la seule personne perdue, dépassée par les évènements, et une machination infernale se met en place autour d’elle et des autres personnages. A leur insu s’échafaude autour d’eux un complot d’une perverse complexité, qui les rabaisse au rang de pions, de rouages, et dans lequel leur vie, comme leur mort, n’a de sens et d’importance que dans la mesure où elle emporte d’autres vies avec elle dans son écroulement. Chaque nouvelle victime voit sa mort lui échapper, en ce sens qu’elle n’a de signification qu’à l’intérieur du jeu de domino qu’est ce complot. Chacun croit présomptueusement être le centre du complot, sa cible, même si c’est pour des raisons mystérieuses, incompréhensibles, alors qu’il n’est au fond qu’une chose, une bricole insignifiante, absurde, dont la seule justification est d’entrainer dans sa chute le domino suivant. Extraordinaire vision de l’absurde, qui se révèle lorsqu’il est bien sûr trop tard, lorsque chacun est réduit au stade de témoin muet, de spectateur sans voix, pauvres fantômes incapables de communiquer avec l’autre monde, fantoches condamnés à l’errance, marionnettes jetées au rebut après exploitation, privées de sens en même temps que de substance.

]]> http://allaboutjeff.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/the-magic-chalk-by-kobo-abe/ Tue, 21 Apr 2009 03:07:32 +0000 allaboutjeff http://allaboutjeff.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/the-magic-chalk-by-kobo-abe/

Next door to the toilet of an apartment building on the edge of the city, in a room soggy with roof leaks and cooking vapors, lived a poor artist named Argon.

The small room, nine feet square, appeared to be larger than it was because it contained nothing but a single chair set against the wall. His desk, shelves, paint box, even his easel had been sold for bread. Now only the chair and Argon were left. But how long would these two remain?

Dinnertime drew near. “How sensitive my nose has become!” Argon thought. He was able to distinguish the colors and proximity of the complex aromas entering his room. Frying port at the butcher’s along the streetcar line: yellow ocher. A southerly wind drifting by the front of the fruit stand: emerald green. Wafting from the bakery: stimulating chrome yellow. And the fish the housewife below was broiling, probably mackerel: sad cerulean blue.

This fact is, Argon hadn’t eaten anything all day. With a pale face, a wrinkled brow, an Adam’s apple that rose and fell, a hunched back, a sunken abdomen, and trembling knees, Argon thrust both hands into his pocket and yawned three times in succession.

His fingers found a stick in his pocket.

“Hey, what’s this? Red chalk. Don’t remember it being there.”

Playing with the chalk between his fingers, he produced another yawn.

“Aah, I need something to eat.”

Without realizing it, Argon began scribbling on the wall with the chalk. First, an apple. One that looked big enough to be a meal in itself. He drew a paring knife beside it so that he could eat it right away. Next, swallowing hard as baking smells curled through the hallway and window to permeate his room, he drew bread. Jam-filled bread the size of a baseball glove. Butter-filled rolls. a loaf as large as a person’s head. He envisioned glossy browned spots on the bread. Delicious-looking cracks, dough bursting through the surface, the intoxicating aroma of yeast. Beside the bread, then, a stick of butter a large a a brick. He thought of drawing some coffee. Freshly brewed, steaming coffee. In a large jug-like cup. On a saucer, three matchbox-size sugar cubes.

“Damn it!” He ground his teeth and buried his face in his hands. “I’ve got to eat!”

Gradually, his consciousness sank into darkness. Beyond the windowpane was a bread and pastry jungle, a mountain of canned goods, a sea of milk, a beach of sugar, a beef and cheese orchard— he scampered about until, fatigued, he fell asleep.

A heavy thud on the floor and the sound of mashing crockery woke him up. The sun had already set. Pitch black. Bewildered, he glanced toward the noise and gasped. A broken cup. The spilled liquid, still steaming, was definitely a coffee, and near it where the apple, bread, butter, sugar, spoon, knife, and (luckily unbroken) the saucer. The pictures he had chalked on the wall had vanished.

“How could it…?”

Suddenly every vein in his body was wide awake and pounding. Argon stealthily crept closer.

“No, no, it can’t be. But look, it’s real. Nothing fake about smothering aroma of this coffee. And here, the bread is smooth to the touch. Be bold, taste it. Argon, don’t you believe it’s real even now? Yes, it’s real. I believe it. But frightening. To believe it is frightening. And yet, it’s real. It’s edible!”

The apple tasted like an apple (a “snow” apple). The bread tasted like bread (American flour). The butter tasted like butter (same contents as the label on the wrapper— not margarine). The sugar tasted like sugar (sweet). Ah, they all tasted like the real thing. The knife gleamed, reflecting his face.

By the time he came to his senses, Argon had somehow finished eating and heaved a sigh of relief. But when he recalled why he had sighed like this, he immediately became confused again. He took the chalk in his fingers and stared at it intently. No matter how much he scrutinized it, he couldn’t understand what he didn’t understand. He decided to make sure by trying it once more. If he succeeded a second time, then he would have to concede that it had actually happened. He thought he would try to draw something different, but in his haste just drew another familiar-looking apple. As soon as he finished drawing, it fell easily from the wall. So this is real after all. A repeatable fact.

Joy suddenly turned his body rigid. The tips of his nerves broke through his skin and stretched out toward the universe, rustling like fallen leaves. Then, abruptly, the tension eased, and sitting down on the floor, he burst out laughing like a panting goldfish.

“The laws of the universe have changed. My fate has changed, misfortune has taken its leave. Ah, the age of fulfillment, a world of desires realized… God, I’m sleepy. Well, then I’ll draw a bed. This chalk has became as precious as life itself, but a bed is sometimes you always need after eating your fill, and it never really wears out, so no need to be miserly about it. Ah, for the first time in my life I’ll sleep like a lamb.”

One eye soon fell asleep, but the other lay awake after today’s contentment he was uneasy about what tomorrow might bring. However, the other eye, too, finally closed in sleep. With eyes working out of sync he dreamed mottled dreams throughout the night.

Well, this worrisome tomorrow dawned in the following manner.

He dreamed that he was being chased by a ferocious beast and fell off a bridge. He had fallen off the bed… No, when he awoke , there was no bed anywhere. As usual, there was nothing, but that one chair. Then what had happened last night? Argon timidly looked around the wall, tilting his head.

There, in red chalk, were drawings of a cup (it was broken!), a spoon, a knife, apple, peel, and a butter wrapper. Below these was a bed— a picture of the bed off which he has supposed to have fallen.

Among all of last night’s drawing, only those he could not eat had once again become a pictures and returned to the wall. Suddenly he felt pain in his hip and shoulder. Pain in precisely the place he should feel it if he had indeed fallen out of bed. He gingerly touched the sketch of the bed where the sheets had been rumpled by sleep and felt a slight warm, clearly distinguishable from the coldness of the drawing.

He brushed his finger along the blade of the knife picture. It was certainly nothing more than chalk; there was no resistance, and it disappeared leaving only a smear. As a test he decided to draw a new apple. It neither turned into a real apple and fell nor even peeled off like a piece of unglued paper, but rather vanished beneath his chafed palm into the surface of the wall.

His happiness had been merely a single night’s dream. It was all over, back to what it was before anything had happened. Or was it really? No, his misery had returned fivefold. His hunger pangs attacked him fivefold. It seemed that all he had eaten had been restored in his stomach to the original substances of wall and chalk powder.

When he had gulped from his cupped hands a pint or so of water from the communal sink, he set out toward the lonely city, enveloped in the mist of early dawn. Leaning over an open drain that ran from the kitchen of a restaurant about a hundred yards ahead, he thrust his hands into the viscous, tarlike sewage and pulled something out. It was a basket made of wire netting. He washed it in a small brook nearby. What was left iin it seemed edible, and he was particularly heartened that half of it looked like a rice. An old man in his apartment building had told him recently that by placing the basket in the drain one could obtain enough food for a meal a day. Just about a month ago the man had found the means to afford bean curd lees, so he had ceded the restaurant drain to the artist.

Recalling last night’s feast, this was indeed muddy, unsavory fare. But it wasn’t not magic. What actually helped filled his stomach was precious and so could not be rejected. Even if its nastiness made him aware of every swallow, he must eat it. Shit. This was the real thing.

Just before noon he entered the city and dropped in on a friend who was employed at a bank. The friend smiled wryly and asked, “My turn today?”

Stiff and expressionless, Argon nodded. As always, he received half of his friend’s lunch, bowed deeply and left.

For the rest of the day, Argon thought.

He held the chalk lightly in his hands, leaned back in the chair, and as he sat absorbed in his daydreams about magic, anticipating began to crystallize around that urgent longing. Finally evening once again drew near. His hope that at sunset the magic might take effect had changed into near confidence.

Somewhere a noisy radio announced that it was five o’clock. He stood up and on the wall drew bread and butter, a can of sardines, and coffee not forgetting to add a table underneath so as to prevent anything from falling and breaking as had occurred the previous night. Then he waited.

Before long darkness began to craw quietly up the wall from the corners of the room. In order to verify the course of the magic, he turned on the light. He had already confirmed last night that electric light did it no harm.

The sun had set. The drawings on the wall began to fade, as if his vision had blurred. It seemed as if a mist was caught between the wall and his eyes. The pictures grew increasingly faint, and the mist grew dense. And soon, just as he had anticipated, the mist had settled into solid shapes—success! The contents of the pictures suddenly appeared as real objects.

“Oh, forget a can opener.”

He held his left hand underneath to catch it before it fell, as he drew, the outlines took on material form. His drawing had literally come to life.

All of a sudden, he stumbled over something. Last night’s bed “existed” again. Moreover, the knife handle (he had erased the table with his finger), the butter wrapper, and the broken cup lay fallen on the floor.

After filling his empty stomach, Argon lay down on the bed.

“Well, what shall it be next? It’s clear now that the magic doesn’t work in daylight. Tomorrow I’ll have to suffer all over again. There must be a simple way out of this. Ah, yes! a brilliant plan— I’ll cover up the window and shut myself in darkness.”

He would need some money to carry out the project. To keep out of the sun required some objects that would not lose their substance when expose to sunlight. But drawing money is a bit difficult. He racked his brains, then drew a purse full of money… The idea was a success, for when he opened up the purse he found more than enough bills stuffed inside.

The money, like the counterfeit coins that badgers made from tree leaves in the fairy tale, would disappear in the light of the day, but it would leave no trace behind, and that was a great relief. He was cautious nonetheless and deliberately proceeded toward a distant town. Two heavy blankets, five sheets of black woolen cloth, a piece of felt, a box of nails, and four pieces of squared lumbers. In addition, one volume of a cookbook collection that caught his eye in a secondhand bookstore along the way. With the remaining money he bought a cup of coffee, not in the least superior to the coffee he had drawn on the wall. He was (why?) proud of himself. Lastly, he bought a newspaper.

He nailed the door shut, then attached two layers of cloth and a blanket. With the rest of the material, he covered the window, and he blocked the edges with the wood. A feeling of security, and at the same time, a sense of being attack by eternity, weighed upon him. Argon’s mind grew distant, and lying down on the bed, he soon fell asleep.

Sleep neither diminished nor neutralized his happiness in the slightest. When he awoke, the steel springs throughout his body were coiled and ready to leap, full of life. A new day, a new time… tomorrow wrapped in a mist glittering gold dust, and the day after tomorrow, and more and more overflowing armfuls of tomorrows were waiting expectantly. Argon smiled. overcome with joy. Now at this very moment, everything, without any hindrance whatsoever, was waiting eagerly among myriad possibilities to be created by his own hand. It was a brilliant moment. But what, in the depths of his heart, was this faintly aching sorrow? It might have been the the sorrow that God had felt just before Creation. Beside the muscles of his smile, smaller muscles twitched slightly.

Argon drew a large clock. With trembling hand he set the clock precisely at twelve, determining at that moment the start of a new destiny.

He thought the room was a bit stuffy, so he drew a window on the wall facing the hallway. Hm, what’s wrong? The window didn’t materialize. Perplexed for a moment, he then realized that the window could not acquire any substance because it did not have an outside; it was not equipped with all the conditions necessary to make it a window.

“Well, then, shall I draw an outside? What kind of view would be nice? Shall it be the Alps or the Bay of Naples? A quiet pastoral scene wouldn’t be bad. Then, again a primeval Siberian forest might be interesting.”

All the beautiful landscapes he had seen on postcards and in travel guides flickered before him. But he had to choose one from among them all, and he couldn’t make up his mind. “Well, let’s attend to pleasure first,” he decided. He drew some whiskey and cheese and, as he nibbled, slowly thought about it.

The more he thought, the less he understood.

“This isn’t going to be easy. It could involve work on a larger scale than anything I– or anyone–has ever tried to design. In fact, now that I think about it, it wouldn’t do simply draw a few streams and orchards, mountains and seas, and other things pleasing to the eye. Suppose I drew a mountain; it would no longer be just a mountain. What would be beyond it? A city? A sea? A desert? What kind of people would be living there? What kind of animals? Unconsciously I would be deciding those things. No, making this window a window is serious business. It involves the creation of a world. Defining a world with just a few lines. Would it be right to leave that to chance? No, the scene outside can’t be casually drawn. I must produce the kind of picture that no human hand has yet achieved.”

Argon sank into deep contemplation.

The first week passed in discontent as he pondered a design for a world of infinitude. Canvases once again lined his room, and the smell of turpentine hung in the air. Dozens of rough sketches accumulated in a pile. The more he thought, however, the more extensive the problem became, until finally he felt it was all too much for him. he thought he might boldly leave it up to chance, but in that case his efforts to create a new world would come to nothing. And if he merely captured the inevitably of partial reality, the contradictions inherent in that reality would pull him back into the past, perhaps trapping him again in starvation. Besides, the chalk had a limited life-span. He had to capture the world.

The second week flew by in inebriation and gluttony.

The third week passed in despair resembling insanity.

Once again his canvases lay covered with dust, and the smell of oils had faded.

In the fourth week Argon finally made up his mind, a result of nearly total desperation. He just couldn’t wait any longer. In order to evade the the responsibility of creating with his own hand an outside for the window, he decided to take a great rick that would leave everything to chance.

“I’ll draw a door on the wall. The outside will be decided by whatever is beyond the door. Even if it ends in failure, even if it turns out to be the same apartment scene as before, it’ll be far better than being tormented by this responsibility. I don’t care what happens, better to escape.”

Argon put on a jacket for the first time in a long while. It was a ceremony in honor of the establishment of the world, so one couldn’t say he was being extravagant. With a stiff hand he lowered the chalk of destiny. A picture of the door. He was breathing hard. No wonder. wasn’t the sight beyond the door the greatest mystery a man could contemplate? Perhaps death was awaiting him as reward.

He grasped the knob. He took a step back and opened the door.

Dynamite pierced his eyes, exploding. After a while he opened them fearfully to an awesome wasteland glaring in the noonday sun. As far as he could see, with the exception of the horizon, there was not a single shadow. To the extent that he could peer into the dark sky, not a single cloud. A hot dry wind blew past, stirring up a dust storm.

“Aah… It’s just as though the horizon line in one of my designs had become the landscape itself. Aah…”

The chalk hadn’t resolved anything after all. He still had to create it all from the beginning. He had to fill this desolate land with mountains, water, clouds, tress, plants, birds, beasts, fish. He had to draw the world all over again. Discouraged, Argon collapsed onto the bed. One after another, tears fell unceasingly.

Something rustled in his pocket. It was the newspaper he had bought on that first day and forgotten about. The headline on the first page read, “Invasion Across 38th Parallel!” On the second page, an even larger space devoted to a photograph of Miss Nippon. Underneath, in small print, “Riot at N Ward Employment Security Office,” and “Large-scale Dismissals at U factory.”

Argon stared at the half-naked Miss Nippon. What intense longing. What a body. Flesh of glass.

“This is what I forgot. Nothing else matters. It’s time to begin everything from Adam and Eve. That’s it—Eve! I’ll draw Eve!”

Half an hour later Eve was standing before him, stark naked. Startled, she look around her.

“Oh! Who are you? What’s happened? Golly, I’m naked!”

“I am Adam. You are Eve.” Argon blushed bashfully.

“I’m Eve, you say? Ah, no wonder I’m naked. But why are you wearing clothes? Adam, in Western dress—now that’s weird.”

Suddenly her tone changed.

“You’re lying! I’m not Eve. I’m Miss Nippon.”

“You’re Eve. You really are Eve.”

“You expect me to believe this is Adam— in those clothes—in a dump like this? Come on, give me back my clothe. What am I doing here anyway? I’m due to make a special modeling appearance at a photo contest.”

“Oh, no. You don’t understand. You’re Eve, I mean it.”

“Give me a break, will you? Okay, where’s the apple? And I suppose this is the Garden of Eden? Ha, don’t make me laugh. Now give me my clothes.”

“Well, at least listen to what I have to stay. Sit down over there. Then I’ll explain everything. By the way, can I offer you something to eat?”

“Yes, go ahead. But hurry up and give me my clothes, okay? My body’s valuable.”

“What would you like? Choose anything you want from this cookbook.”

“Oh, great! Really? The place is filthy but you must be pretty well fixed. I’ve changed my mind. Maybe you really are Adam after all. What do you do for a living? Burglar?”

“No, I’m Adam. Also an artist, and a world planner.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I. That’s why I’m depressed.”

Watching Argon draw the food with swift strokes as he spoke, Eve shouted, “Hey, great, that’s great. This is Eden, isn’t it? Wow. Yeah, okay, I’ll be Eve. I don’t mind being Eve. We’re going to get rich—right?”

“Eve, please listen to me.”

In a sad voice, Argon told her his whole story, adding finally, “So you see, with your cooperation we must design this world. Money’s irrelevant. We have to start from everything from scratch.”

Miss Nippon was dumbfounded.

‘Money’s irrelevant, you say? I don’t understand. I don’t get it. I absolutely do not understand.”

“If you’re going to talk like that, well, why, don’t you open this door and take a look outside.”

She glanced through the door Argon had left half open.

“My God! How awful!”

She slammed the door shut and glared at him.

“But how about this door,” she said, pointing to his real, blanketed door. “Different, I’ll bet.”

“No, don’t. That one’s no good. It will just wipe out the world, the food, desk, bed, even you. You are the new Eve. And we must become the father and mother of our world.”

“Oh no. No babies. I’m all for birth control. I mean, they’re such a bother. And besides, I won’t disappear.”

“You will disappear.”

“I won’t. I know myself my best. I’m me. All this talk about disappearing—you’re really weird.”

“My dear Eve, you don’t now. If we don’t recreate the world, then sooner or late we’re faced with starvation.”

“What calling me ‘dear’ now, are you? You’ve got nerve. And you say I’m going to starve. Don’t be ridiculous. My body’s valuable”

“No your body’s the same as my chalk. If we don’t acquire a world of our own, your existence will just be a fiction. The same as nothing at all.”

“Okay, that’s enough of this junk. Come on, give me back my clothes. I’m leaving. No two ways about it, my being here is weird. I shouldn’t be here. You’re a magician or something. Well, hurry up. My manager’s just probably fed up with waiting. If you want me to drop in and be your Eve every now and then, I don’t mind. As long as you use your chalk to give me what I want.”

“Don’t be a fool! You can’t do that.”

The abrupt, violent tone of Argon’s voice startled her, and she looked into his face. They both stared at each other for a moment in silence. Whatever was in her thoughts, she then said calmly, “All right, I’ll stay. But in exchange, will you grant me one wish?”

“What is it? If you stay with me, I’ll listen to anything you have to say.”

“I want half of your chalk.”

“That’s unreasonable. After all, dear, you don’t know how to draw. What good would it do you?”

“I do know how to draw. I may not look like it, but I used to be a designer. I insist on equal rights.”

He tilted his head for an instant, then straightening up again, said decisively, “All right, I believe you.”

He carefully broke the chalk in half and gave one piece to Eve. As soon as she received it, she turned to the wall and began drawing.

It was a pistol.

“Stop it! What are you going to do with that thing?”

“Death, I’m going to make death. We need some divisions. They’re very important in making a world.”

“No, that’ll be the end. Stop it. It’s the unnecessary thing of all.”

But it was too late. Eve was clutching a small pistol in her hand. she raised it and aimed directly at his chest.

“Move and I’ll shoot. Hands up. You’re stupid, Adam. Don’t you know a promise is the beginning of a lie? It’s you who made me lie.”

“What? Now what are you drawing?”

“A hammer. To smash the door down.”

“You can’t!”

“Move and I’ll shoot!”

The moment he leaped the pistol rang out. Argon held his chest as his knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor. Oddly, there was no blood.

“Stupid Adam.”

Eve laughed. Then, raising the hammer, she struck the door. The light streamed in. It wasn’t very bright, but it was real. Light from the sun. Eve was suddenly absorbed, like mist. The desk, the bed, the French meal, all disappeared. All but Argon, the cookbook which had landed on the floor, and the chair were transformed back into pictures on the wall.

Argon stood up unsteadily. His chest wound had heal. But something stronger than death was summoning him, compelling him—the wall. The wall was calling him. His body, which had eaten drawings from the wall continuously for four weeks, had been almost entirely transformed by them. Resistance was impossible now. Argon staggered toward the wall and was drawn in on top of Eve.

The sound of the gunshot and the door being smashed were heard by others in the building. By the time they ran in, Argon had been completely absorbed into the wall and had become a picture. The people saw nothing but the chair, the cookbook, and the scribblings on the wall. Staring at Argon lying on top of Eve, someone remarked, “Starved for a woman, wasn’t he.”

“Doesn’t it look just like him, though?” said another.

“What was he doing, destroying the door like that? And look at this, the wall’s covered with scribbles. HUh. He won’t get away with it. Where in the world did he disappear to? Calls himself a painter!”

The man grumbling to himself was the apartment manager.

After everyone left, there came a murmuring from the wall.

“It isn’t the chalk that will remake the world…”

A single drop welled out of the wall. It fell from just below the eye of the pictorial Argon.

-Translated by Alison Kibrick

Innanzitutto: io non sopporto le liste tipo “le-cento-cose-che-devi-fare-prima-di-avere-un-ictus” e la ragione va da sé.

Immaginate dunque la mia espressione nel leggere quella <<1000 novels everyone must read before die>>,  stilata dai critici di <<The Guardian>> e pubblicata lo scorso gennaio; certo non può passare inosservato il fatto che, per la stragrande maggioranza, si tratta di opere inglesi e americane, e -diciamocela tutta- neanche di così grande valore.

Per curiosità, ho cercato i testi di autori giapponesi.  Il primo nipponico a comparire è Kobo Abe con The face of another (Tanin no kao), nella sezione Family and self, seguito da Teach us to outgrow our madness (Warera no kyōki wo ikinobiru michi wo oshieyo; da noi conosciuto come Insegnaci a superare la nostra pazzia) di Kenzaburo Oe.

La presenza più massiccia si registra nella categoria Love, con The Remains of the Day (Ciò che resta del giorno) del nippo britannico Kazuo Ishiguro, Beauty and Saddness (Utsukushisa to kanashimi to, Bellezza e tristezza) di Yasunari Kawabata, Norwegian Wood (Noruwei no mori, da noi conosciuto anche come Tokyo Blues) di Murakami, Diary of a Mad Old Man (Futen rojin nikki, Diario di un vecchio pazzo) di Junichiro Tanizaki.

Tra i libri di Science fiction and fantasy, troviamo soltanto The Unconsoled di Kazuo Ishiguro; nulla in State of the nation, Comedy (in compenso, è citato libro della saga di Don Camillo), Crime e War and travel.

E Genji, direte voi? E perché Mishima e Akutagawa non compaiono, mentre Stephen King sì? Eh, sì, lo so: la vita sa essere ingiusta.

E la classifica di <<The Guardian>> ancora di più.

Un hombre (Eiji Okada) busca insectos en una región aislada y desértica de Japón. Es profesor, entomólogo. Pierde el autobús, el último autobús del día que vuelve a Tokio. Los lugareños le ofrecen hospitalidad en el pueblo: “Me encanta hospedarme en casas particulares“, dice el hombre. Le llevan a una casa excavada en la arena. Hay que descender por una escalera de cuerda. Una mujer (Kyôko Kishida) vive allí, sola, le prepara cama y cena. A medianoche, el hombre se despierta y observa a la mujer cavando, fuera. Si no cava, la arena inundará la casa. Por la mañana, cuando despierta, ella duerme. Su cuerpo está desnudo y cubierto de una fina capa de arena. Entonces quiere marcharse, pero la escalera ha desaparecido. La música martillea mientras el hombre trata de ascender por las paredes de las dunas. Tarea imposible pues, si continua, perecerá bajo la arena que se desprende de la ladera a medida que lo intenta. Se espera que el hombre permanezca en el agujero, esclavo y para siempre, unido a la mujer. Para recoger arena que se sube en cestos que se venden en una cooperativa. Ilegalmente, más barata, para la construcción de vigas, pues contiene demasiada sal para ser apta. El hombre se ve forzado a trabajar en la sima, por su propia supervivencia, de lo contrario la arena terminará por targárselos. La mujer sigue allí, forma parte del paisaje y de su existencia. Él buscaba la soledad con su afición, lejos de la ciudad y la ha encontrado.

Las situaciones que narra la película tienen diferentes lecturas. Hay abundante contenido erótico en el film; al fin y al cabo, además de trabajar para sobrevivir, su vida en el agujero se reduce a dormir, comer  la ración que se les facilita y al sexo. La mujer ofrece su cuerpo a cambio de una servidumbre de por vida a un hombre errante que quedó atrapado en su tela de araña. La relación que se establece entre ambos está muy bien descrita, aunque no explique los motivos fehacientemente. Al principio hay cierta desconfianza mutua, pero ella va invadiendo la vida del protagonista de modo tan lento como implacable, de la misma forma que lo hace la arena en el inhóspito lugar. La primera vez que aparece cierta tensión sexual es durante una pelea por el agua, pero el tira y afloja se mantiene a lo largo de la película por medio de la hostilidad, el primer inconformismo convertido más tarde en resignación y la esclavitud a la que están sometidos ambos en su hábitat común. Es una de las relaciones afectivas más absurdas y extrañas que jamás se han visto en el cine; relación que Teshigahara desarrolla magistralmente con una habilidad asombrosa a la hora de filmar escenas inimaginables en un entorno tan pequeño, pero que reflejan a la perfección la cambiante atmósfera, a pesar de las circunstancias, que se da en esta relación.

También puede entenderse la película como la metáfora de una sociedad indiferente, donde las individualidades poco importan. De hecho, los protagonistas carecen de nombre, han sido retenidos por la fuerza y no pueden escapar. Forman parte de la escena del mismo modo que la arena forma parte de sus vidas y, igual que ésta, sus movimientos están determinados por la necesidad natural de supervivencia. Las voluntades, los deseos, tienen poca relevancia. La frase en la que él le pregunta a la mujer “¿Excavas para sobrevivir o sobrevives para excavar?” recoge bastante bien el contenido filosófico de la película. Lo cierto es que toda ella recuerda mucho al mito de Sísifo (La Odisea), castigado a empujar una piedra enorme cuesta arriba por una ladera empinada, pero antes de que alcanzase la cima de la colina la piedra siempre rodaba hacia abajo, y Sísifo tenía que empezar de nuevo, desde el principio.

La película, a pesar de las situaciones que describe, está narrada con grandes dosis de realismo, a la vez que es deliberadamente lenta, y relata la vida en las dunas a través de innumerables sutilezas con las que el espectador conforma su idea de la cotidianidad de los protagonistas. La fotografía (Hiroshi Segawa) subraya constantemente el clima de desasosiego que vive el hombre hasta que, casi al final, termina por aceptar la situación. Entonces Teshigahara recurre a otros elementos para desatar la tensión: La escena del foso de arena convertido en escenario de violencia sexual mientras los aldeanos les rodean con sus tambores y máscaras practicando antiguos rituales; o esa otra en la que ruega le devuelvan a la casa, atrapado entre las arenas movedizas; o la escalofriante escena de la huida, cuyo mezquino objetivo resulta ser ver el mar, son una buena muestra de la inquietante tensión que, sobre esta fábula, sabe crear el cineasta.

El guión pertenece al escritor nipón Kobo Abe, y está basado en una novela homónima que él mismo había publicado unos años antes. Kobo Abe siempre se declaró incondicional admirador de Kafka y, aunque no he leído ese libro, viendo un film tan extremo y desafiante como este, no me cabe la menor duda de ello. Porque, además de radical es enormemente absurdo, y la angustia que logra generar consigue, como en el caso de las narraciones del checo, mantener su pulso in crescendo. Una experiencia tan única como extraña, tan hermosa como hipnótica. En ningún momento queda claro si la mujer está en el agujero por voluntad propia o fueron los lugareños quienes la obligaron a estar ahí. Lo que es evidente es que ambos están cautivos, al margen de que uno lo acepte como natural y otro intente huir constantemente de su destino. Comparten el trabajo y no pueden escapar de él. Tampoco deben, porque de su trabajo depende, además, la comunidad. Y, tal como le relata la mujer una noche mientras cenan, por extensión, dependería de ello el resto del mundo. Consuelo ciertamente poco tangible, pero dadas las circunstancias, el único posible. Más vale tener ese que ninguno para tratar de mantener la cordura, porque sus vidas, al igual que ocurre con la arena, seguirán su propio proceso, el establecido como natural, en el que podrán variar los términos pero no el acuerdo ya que, como sucede con la naturaleza (simbolizada por la arena), la vida termina desarrollándose al margen de la voluntad de quienes traten de abrir caminos para cambiarla.

I googled it and I was surprised to find over 400.000 results. It seemed like such an obscure book…but what do you know? There’s a movie. Supposed to be a good one too, written by Kobo Abe as well – which is probably fine in the way that it keeps the tone of the book. But while I occasionally try Japanese literature – I’m not going anywhere near Japanese cinematography.(Call me prejudiced, but I’m quite sure I won’t enjoy it.)

The book – it’s a 200 page metaphor really. Influenced by Kafka (but not getting anywhere near the master), Kobo Abe manages to create a bleak atmosphere, as unsure as quicksands. The plot thread is quite straightforward: Niki Jumpei, a school teacher with a passion for insects, wanders in a village situated in a desert area in search of some new bug specie. Night falls, locals offer him shelter in a single woman’s house which, by the next morning, will prove to be a trap. The house is in a deep sand pit and is one of the rim houses, keeping the desert from swallowing the whole village. Thus, night after night, the woman is committed to removing buckets of sand from the pit, to prevent her house from collapsing. The trapped man (and by no means the first) is nothing more than free labour. As the initial shock and surprise of his imprisonment wears off the fear and desperate attempts to escape follow, before his will is crushed and he starts his existence as one of the sisyphean villagers.

The woman – unnamed – changes as Niki’s perception of her changes: from captor to victim, from despise and fury to pity and understanding. He can’t take in her unwillingness to fight and leave the village until he realises that the sand pit is all she knows, that “freedom” doesn’t mean anything to her and that her biggest aspiration is to have a radio. Fighting his new condition gives way to adjusting to it as the woman will first serve him as a hostage in dealing with the village elders, then as a sexual partner and finally as a life partner. Years will pass (7 years after Niki’s mother submitted a missing person’s form he is be declared dead) until the woman’s extra-uterine pregnancy causes the villagers to rush her to a doctor leaving him the rope stairs that will, for the first time, grant him his freedom. After all this time, his reactions is almost of indifference – what will to change his condition he had is long gone. His cage has become his home.

But the main character is, in fact, sand. Sand insinuates in everything – food, house, skin until it takes over. The village is practically governed by this eternal sand -  a forever changing prison. Niki’s initial scientific eye and curiosity towards it, turns to accepting it as a superior force and, in dedicating his life to such a meaningless task as shovelling sand, he shows the true futility of everyone’s life.

Jag ritar alldeles för lite nu för tiden. Istället lyssnar jag på Bollywoodsoundtracks, tittar på alla filmer jag inte sett men velat se, surfar på flickr, och sist men inte minst jobbar på Galago. Eftersom jag har ett arbete som ligger så nära det nu går att komma utan att sitta mitt i smeten är jag ju ganska nöjd och sitter lugnt i båten ett tag till. Det är skönt att ha lite normal inkomst. Men, jag har lite projekt på gång, och projekt planerade i teckningsväg. Hur det nu ska gå, jag vet inte. Förra året reste jag som aldrig tidigare, och fann min kärlek som jag dessutom förlovade mig med! Så, mycket hinner hända. Idag ska jag arbeta lite med en Galagogrej, men innan jag sätter igång tipsar jag om några saker jag vill att du, kära läsare, ska ta till dig:

1: Suna no onna (Kvinnan i sanden), av Hiroshi Teshigahara, japansk film från 1964. Jag hann bara se halva igår men den lever upp till förväntningarna. Manus är skrivet av Kobo Abe som även först skrev boken med samma titel. Boken tillhör en av mina stora läsupplevelser.

2: Ladda ner soundtracket “Jawani Diwani” genom att kopiera och klistra in länken nedan. Sen har du lite underhållning i lurarna en tid framöver. Musiken är vinyl-mp3ad från den underbara music from the third floor.

http://lix.in/-3a4e6f

/Marcus