Contemplations of a Closet Curmudgeon

Surrounded by books,
I delight in the world of
Words and ideas.
The more I read, though, the more
I find I have more questions.

I had to set The Essential Shinran aside for a bit. I should probably read more on general concepts of Buddhism before taking that one on. However, I'm about a third into Eric Rath's Food and Fantasy and I'm completely fascinated by his descriptions of ceremonial Japanese meals and how certain foods are purely decorative or symbolic and served without being meant to be eaten.

I'm headed off to Mists Cynagua War shortly so I will not be able to post tomorrow's tanka until Sunday. That is, assuming I remember to write one. I've been informed the "Clan Makita" boys (Pallidus, Raj & Dafydd) are attending and Dafydd has already threatened to ply me with sake and chili. NOAA currently says a 30% chance of showers...

I probably shouldn't've done it, but the lure of Moe's on a free Sunday morning with no obligations was irresistible. ( Nattering about books. )

 

The new Bern helmet was sitting on the porch in front of Steve's apartment when I got home last night. 

I actually had to shorten the chin harness, unlike the Bell "Bellisima," which was let out as far as it would go. Fit is comfortably secure and did not produce a headache on the 8 mile jaunt I took this afternoon out to Alameda Point and back.

The padding is a huge improvement. In addition to a thin Cross-of-Lorraine arrangement (jpg courtesy of http://wl33.com/2010/05/bern-helmets-get-serious-about-safety-and-style/) inside the top of the helmet, there's a relatively cushy ring of padding all the way around. All of it attaches to the polystyrene inner shell with patches of Velcro and a couple of snaps, so you can pull it all out, wash it with a mild soap and water when it inevitably gets stanky, and re-insert it. I was riding into the sun beginning at about 4:40 PM PDT without sunglasses. The narrow visor is low enough on my head that it actually did what a visor is for and protected my eyes from the glare. A glance at my reflection as I passed a shop window on Lincoln confirms that it's very Big And White and Shiny: the vents are mostly in the top, so there's a lot of unbroken surface.
    Big and Black and Dull.              Big and White and Shiny!

Given horsefriend2 's warning about incompatible paints and plastics, I wasn't surprised to find a warning in the little booklet in half a dozen languages that came with it that boiled down to Do Not Modify This Helmet!  Yet, the hang tag on the chin harness included a decal with Bern's logo on it that practically begged to be stuck to the exterior (even though there's a smaller Bern logo already on the thing) and there are several labels affixed to the interior shell. Clearly some adhesives are more equal than other. Bike-helmet-compatible reflective decals seem the best option if I want to gussy it up at all.

(Note to self: I need to find a white or light colored jacket for those occasions when I'm likely to be out on the bike near dark.)

Anyway, I put the Bell in my backpack and rode out to Cycles of Change at the Point and donated that sucker. It'll fit someone else. Came home a slightly different route than usual, just 'cause. Felt good. Still haven't taken her out of first gear.

James had been promising to send me "some books" he doesn't have room to keep. Four of the five boxes arrived this afternoon. There was a fifth box, but it was addressed to one of my neighbors. I walked down and left it on their porch. I did not see my fifth box at their house, so I emailed James with the tracking numbers of the ones I did get and hopefully the USPS will get the last box here in the next few days.

Holy bibliomania! Only one title duplicated anything I already own, and that's on the Unicorn Tapestries. Mostly Japanese-interest stuff, with some other things mixed in. I need to sit down and go through them at some point, but wow, what a haul.

 

Thanks to reynardine  for the tip about Sasuga Japanese Books. I just ordered McCullough's translation of the Kokin Wakashu on discount, then figured I might as well bite the bullet on Tanegashima at Amazon.com. This was the book I found a 30-plus page preview of on Google Books that was sufficient to help me flesh out a timeline for my east-meets-west class and I really wanted to read it. Also ordered used copies of a Heibonsha publication on namban art and a comparative history text on encounters between Europe and other cultures in the early modern era for cheap.

I got a phone call this morning from my nephew. Not much of a conversationalist on the phone, I suspect the concept feels like the person he's talking to is not really there. Anyway, it turns out he read a book in school on the Civil War and that's how all this got started. He did sound excited and rather disappointed that he can't have his "soldier coat" Right Now!  And of course, after I've bought the fabric and the buttons he wants a "general" coat.  I can rationalize some junior officer insignia for a shell jacket, I suppose.


The apartment looks like a blast zone, but I just did not feel like staying inside today. I had a bowl of oatmeal and went up to Moe's in Berkeley, where I acquired copies of The Book of Incense and The Kimono Inspirations. I also found a copy of The Art of Japanese Paper for only $9 across the street at Shakespeare & Co.

I grabbed a chai latte at Peet's and virtuously did NOT have a spicy ginger cookie with it. Hit the Michael's in Emeryville and found more of the metal monkey-with-the-peach charms to add to my token stash. I also picked up some wooden plaques to replace the "guests welcome" sign that was in the stolen sugoroku box.

The sky was doing interesting, stormy wintry things without actual precipitation, so I went the back way down Mandela Parkway to Jack London Square, parked on the Embarcadero next to the lot across from BevMo and pulled out my camera. You can see what I got here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/70104978@N00/sets/72157623475504552/



I do think I need to create an icon with this saying on it though: 

I think I'm going to give trystbat 's party a miss though. I just started some laundry when I got back, not realizing the time so I'm kind of in it for the duration right now.  And I just realized I haven't eaten since that oatmeal....

Fired off this morning via email:

Dear Mr. Tanaka (or whoever reads and responds to these inquiries in his stead):

I very much enjoyed last night's concert at Zellerbach Hall. You performed a new composition titled "Hayate" about a group of villagers who disguised themselves as demons and drove Uesugi Kenshin's army away without a fight simply with their drumming. As a lover of history, I would be very interested to know your source material for this story as I had never heard it before.

Many thanks, etc....

sengokudaimyo ? Anyone ever hear of this? Google turns up the following:
http://www.gojinjodaiko.jp/en_top.html

http://www.sohdaiko.org/reviews.html


http://www.hot-ishikawa.jp/f-lang/english/noto-area/event-detail.html#07

http://nohmask21.com/eu/gojinjyotaiko.html

Who knew?
***********************************************************************************
Good concert. Sacramento Taiko Dan, Jun Daiko (from Mountainview) and Wako Daiko from Japan also did sets. Serves only to remind me how much I suck and how badly I need to get over myself when I face the o-daiko.....
***********************************************************************************
layla_lilah and I had dinner beforehand at Jayakarta in Berkeley. layla_lilah actually lived in Indonesia and gleefully nommed her way through the nasi bungus special: rice, jackfruit, hardcooked egg, tofu, fried chicken and beef wrapped in banana leaves, while I had the udang saus mentega, shrimp in a savory brown sauce. Tasty, as authentic as it gets according to my dinner companion, and an excellent bang for the buck.
********************************************************************************************************************************************************
Juana had posted a note to SCA-West about having passed a bookstore called Abandoned Planet in the Mission that was going out of business and selling all their books at 35% off. I BARTED over and determined that either it had been picked over before I got there or it was simply a matter of what used books they ended up having in stock in the first place. The art and history sections were pretty small, compared to the fiction/literature offerings which took up half the shop. I didn't see anything I absolutely had to own and proceeded to another bookstore I'd passed on my way up the street.

Upon opening the door to Forest Books, I released a waft of expensive Japanese incense and Loreena McKennitt pretending to be Middle Eastern onto 16th Street. Airy, well lit, festooned with Tibetan prayer flags and earnest posters and flyers about Buddhism and community events, the selection was well organized, interesting, and I didn't have to worry about breaking an ankle on a rolled up carpet just to look at what was out on the display tables. I resisted a coffeetable book of Ansel Adams photos. I did pick up two paperback novels: Murakami's An Artist Of The Floating World and Barry Unsworth's The Songs of the Kings, then headed to the art section. Decent selection of East Asian art books, some of which I already had. Taped neatly into a plastic envelope was a souvenir tour booklet titled JINGU: The Grand Shrine of Ise. It being taped shut and priced at $10, I asked the proprietor if it was OK to open it before doing so. Nifty little book with full color photos of the Jingu shrines in Ise, including architectural details, parading Shinto clerics performing rituals, festivals and bugaku dancers in full costume.
While paying for my books, I asked the proprietor which Shoyeido incense he was burning at the moment because he had boxes for sale on the counter and I knew it wasn't the Gozan. He asked if I needed a bag and pronounced the Onyabag I pulled out of my purse one of the nicest reusable shopping bags he'd seen. I should send him the link....

Pleasing things:

Finding parking two blocks off Telegraph despite the fact they had it closed off north of Dwight for some street fair.

Finding a used copy of Tales of Times Now Past at Moe's for $6.

Finding a used copy of The Hidden Fortress at Rasputin's for $15 (List price new is $29.95)

Spending most of the rest of the afternoon watching several hours of "Walter Cronkite Remembers" on Discovery Channel. Bonus points for chuckling at the "Boom Dee Yadda" promos. Bonus, bonus points for noticing that the footage of the "flying" great white is actually of an orca.

Discovering that "True Blood" vampire  Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) has a more-than-decent singing voice.

Cherry Garcia.

Irksome things: 

Dear City of Berkeley. 1969 was forty years ago. Feel free to get over it any time now. 'Kay? Has to be the first time I've ever been panhandled (and aggressively at that) at something purporting to be a street fair. P.S. A street fair with 20 vendors selling the exact same things is pretty damn boring. Nobody needs THAT many tie dye tee shirts.

The copy of My Costumes by Emi Wada is still sitting on the same shelf. It's still $200. I still cannot afford it.

Monterey Bay Aquarium's annoying and sexist radio spots for their new "Secret Life of Seahorses" exhibit.

I needed to get away from the contractors next door and their damned scissor lift, so I went to Moe's in Berkeley.

First stop, the second floor. Nothing I had to have in the Asian literature nook, but I did score a bilingual edition of Japanese Tradition In Color And Form with photos by Sadao Hibi, primarily because it had some excellent photos of two period hiogi. I also stumbled across a cheap, used copy of Susan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue. Since I'm about halfway through her The Passion of Artemisia and enjoying it, it was worth grabbing.

Upstairs I managed not to drool on the pages as I perused at $225 copy of My Costumes: Emi Wada. Wada-san is responsible for costuming a number of Kurosawa films, including Ran. (More recently, she worked on Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Mongol.) Gorgeous stuff and too rich for my library. I did, however, throw myself on a Japan Society edition of The Tokugawa Collection: No Robes and Masks at $50. While most of the costumes therein date from the Edo period, some of them are at least early 17th century and are clearly within the stylistic ball park of what I'm interested in.

BTW, anyone interested in a copy of Alan Kennedy's Japanese Costume? Moe's has it for $35.

[Error: unknown template qotd]

Oxygen.
Nutrients.
Books.

It's that important. It has been that important ever since Dad would climb onto the bed with a copy of English Lyric Poetry or The Nonsense Anthology or D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths. It's why I could recite Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" before I could read it. It's why I climb onto the bed with my nephews and read to them when I go visit - I've been pronounced almost as good as Pop Pop, which is high praise indeed.

I'm currently in the middle of Peter Carey's 2001 Booker Prize winner, The True History of the Kelly Gang, which I picked up used because it looked interesting and passed my "random paragraph test."  I try to alternate fiction and non-fiction. I just finished Arthur Herman's To Rule The Waves: How The British Navy Shaped The Modern World.  Next on the To Read Pile is A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns, Kitabatake Chikafusa's 14th century chronicle, the Jinno Shotoki, translated by H. Paul Varley.

So many books. So many, many, wonderful books!

But I submitted a couple of photos to the SF Chronicle's website and they seemed happy enough to take 'em.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/contribute/sn/photo?plckPhotoID=b93f935a-2719-459a-893b-d00a5da307c9&plckGalleryID=ebd3d576-0841-4ad1-b61b-ae24969a801a
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/contribute/sn/photo?plckPhotoID=99155e48-b1ac-40c1-b74b-7e5b87f2f93e&plckGalleryID=ebd3d576-0841-4ad1-b61b-ae24969a801a
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/contribute/sn/photo?plckPhotoID=c256498d-b4c3-4276-aae8-7a1079c8b210&plckGalleryID=5e261a99-201b-4fd4-a059-88e7360a0850

I had my tea and still felt cold and thought, "I know, it won't be cold on the other side of the hill." I drove up to Walnut Creek, turned the wrong way on Mount Diablo Boulevard, so I decided to stop at the Ross up there on the principle that it would not be as picked over as the ones down here. It wasn't, but I didn't really love anything enough to take it home. Went back down Main Street in the right direction. Woe, Bonanza Books is gone. So I hopped onto 680 and went up a couple exits into Concord.

Bay Books is still in the strip mall on Willow Pass Road. (Yay!) Found that budget copy of Northanger Abbey, the ceramics and pottery volume from the Heibonsha Survey of Japanese Art (and for $8.95 too), and, of all things, a paperback on the making of the miniseries Shogun. Most of the production stills are in B&W and the quality is at best so-so, but the costume design sketches and color stills were well worth the $10 I dropped on it. Costume designer Shin Nishida is shown sitting at a desk littered with books, one open to a page showing this painting of early Edo beauties!   (Look!.  A kosode with BUNNIES on it. And the woman in the dark kosode with the gold roundels, second panel from the left - she looks like me! Well, a bit.) And yeah, Richard Chamberlain did cut a fine figure in wafuku back in the day - even with all that fluffy 80's hair.

Took a spin through the nearby Cost Plus on basic general principle and picked up a bottle of sake that was in the wine clearance bin but had a date stamp on the label that didn't make me immediately set it down again. It can go for the HCM* party at Purgatorio.

Unfortunately, my headache is back.

It occurs to me that the person who was looking for a bagpiper for Purgatorio has not gotten back to me in more than a week.  I tried. I am not going to chase him down. Ball is in his court.