Childhood follies

When I was a kid, I used to love reading "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. This short story depicts the passage of a particular day for a prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov in the Soviet labor camp in the Stalinist era. I liked the story so much that I read it again and again and yet again. Needless to say, I read the Japanese translation (by Hiroshi Kimura) at that time.

Towards the end of this novel, the protagonist is lucky enough to get hold of a piece of sausage from his fellow prisoner, Tsezar Markovich. Tsezar is rich, and from time to time receives a box of goodies sent from his family. Ivan Denisovich is poor, but he has his wits and enterprising spirits which occasionally earn him the bonuses.

Now, at the end of yet another long and laborious day, Ivan Denisovich is able to taste the delicious food that has become his.

"He himself took the lump of sausage — and popped it into his mouth. Get the teeth to it. Chew, chew, chew! Lovely meaty smell! Meat juice, the real thing. Down it went, into his belly."

(from the translation by H.T. Willets)

I was fascinated by this description of the joy to be discovered in the simple act of eating a piece sausage. Then I had to put imagination into practice.

In those days, they sold a small piece of "salami" sausage in the stores. When I got the feeling, I would buy a piece of salami,
and gingerly come back home. Imagining that I was Ivan Denisovich himself on the prisoner's bed, I would chew the sausage slowly, and then finally swallow it.

"Meat juice, the real thing".

I remember I repeated this ceremony many, many times.

Those childhood follies taught me, in essence, that there is glory and joy even in the darkest moments of deprivation.

I shall doubt myself today

I saw a bunch of people shouting slogans on the street. It is a free country, and people can say anything they like, but when people exhibit the signs of mental closure, it saddens and frightens me tremendously.

Nothing is to be avoided in this life than an absolute conviction that one is right. A grain of salt, a dash of self-doubt is all you need to breathe the air of life.

So I shall doubt myself today. And the wind begins to blow.

From twitter:

kenmogi
Hello world! I was born today. I greet you for the first time. How marvelous the things. Freedom is a greeting of the first encounter.

Contagious

On a cold day recently, I was walking past the streets of Yamagata, looking for a place to console my soul and fill my stomach. I had finished a full day of intensive work.

Yamagata is two and half hours train ride from Tokyo on the Shinkansen train. It is not a place which people would normally expect to be rich in the genesis of culture, high or pop. But I simply knew otherwise.

The internet has been here for 10 years, more or less. Yet people still have this funny idea that there are centers and peripheries. I have always revolted against the conventional thinking since my childhood, and I cannot really stand the misconception that you have to be in Tokyo, London, Paris, New York, and other "cultural centers" in order to lead an intellectually stimulating life. With the advent of the web, the tap for deep information is everywhere. The limits are inner, not outer.

The key is contagion. Once you get infected by a virus of passion, you can bring the vibe anywhere. The crucial point is in that first exposure.

As far as I have a very clear idea of what the manifestations of a true intellect and devoted artists are, I can go anywhere. I would be happy to live in a quiet corner, and have a feverish life culturally. The volcano that is inside me will be connected to the world through the broadband of senses. I and my close friends would be the center of the world.

I would like to be contagious, and get infected. Even if we are vehicles for memes, there is an infinitely rich life in it.

A massacre of possibilities

Today, the qualia journal celebrates 150 days of continuous entries, the streak starting on the 6th of June 2009.

Hooray!

I do not know why I have not done such a thing earlier. But then life is always like that, doing essential things too late too little.
Going through the every day is like trying to manage while being pressed against the wall. I am sure that by attending to a particular thing you lose track of others. Life is a infinite series of choices, forced, and sometimes out of rhythm, and yet you've got to keep your stiff upper lip.

Ken Shiotani, my best philosopher friend, once said that to live is like to experience a massacre of possibilities. You follow a particular trail, and at that moment precisely, an infinite number of alternatives perish.

I remember quite vividly the evening on which I and Ken Shiotani the fat philosopher talked about the inevitable mass death. I think we were talking about his former girl friend. We were on the river bank.

Imagining liberates

Recently, I received a very nice mail from a gentleman in Thailand. In it, he said some kind words about one of my books which has been translated to Thai. In the answer, I told him that to my regret, I have never visited the beautiful country so far, but hope to do so in the near future.

I know King Bhumibol Adulyadej Thailand, who has reigned since 1946, is ill. I can only imagine how the king's illness is affecting the Thai people. My compassion and best wishes for the Thai people.

As Ludwig Wittgenstein remarked, there's probably no private language. Intersubjectivity is the hallmark of any speech. On the other hand, each language defines a universe of its own. The English enshrines one, the Japanese creates another, and the Thai gives life to yet another cosmos in which there are numerous entities around.

To be born and grow up in one linguistic universe results in a unique world. Your neighbour is invisible, unless you make a conscious effort to immigrate. This blog itself is an experiment in that direction by somebody who started to learn English at the age of 12.

The mail from the Thai gentleman gave me thoughts. I imagined having been born and grown up in the country of smiles. I imagined being worried about and wishing the best for King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Imagining liberates, by putting more life to circulate in one's system.

Masahiko and Katherine

I was having a conversation with my best friend Masahiko Shimada at a public lecture in Tokyo. Masahiko is a famous writer. Masahiko opened the dialogue with a criticism of the global capitalism. Then our topic shifted to how we all invariably fail.

Failure comes from facing the truth. In our mind, across our hearts, there are elements which lead to demise of the protagonist if he or she is true to them. The world is after all an imperfect place. Following the inner voice inevitably leads to disaster. Heroes and villains fail alike.

The good thing is that there will be always reincarnations, in this life.

In this life.

On the way to the public lecture I suddenly remembered how I used to love the short stories by Katherine Mansfield. The qualia in "The Garden Party" resonated as I headed for the imagined kingdom of freedom and demise.

Original sin

On the airplane, I was thinking again about Glenn Gould.

In an earlier post ("Private language of music", 14th October 2009), I wrote:

I have a hunch why Gould refrained from playing in the public later in his career. The presence of attentive minds is a great stimulator. On the other hand, it sometimes stimulates one in a vulgar way. One would like to entertain, and therefore goes out of the way. A great art lies there, so it is not necessarily a bad thing. However, it is at the same time a distraction from purity, which Gould probably hated.
For a performer like Vladimir Horowitz, the audience is a godsend. Gould, on the other hand, thrived in the absolute privacy.

The crucial thing is that the very nature of music is transformed in the presence of others. We are social beings, and confronting others come so naturally to us. However, it also affects our existence. Maybe it is the original sin.

In a sense, Glenn Gould was trying the impossible. How to make music without the presence of an audience. It is like forgetting how one looked in the mirror. Knowledge has tainted our consciousness, and we simply cannot go back. The bliss of ignorance is never to return, not even as a momentary lapse, as in the unconscious there would be always knowledge.

Sometimes beauty holds a terrible truth. Gould's music is a Pandora's box.

Secretly mischievous

I was walking to NHK, and going through the Yoyogi park. Near the entrance, there is a shop where they sell beer, drinks, and miscellaneous things.

It was a find day. The sun was setting in the Western horizon. And I bought a color ball.

It is a soft ball made of plastic, something that I used to play with when I was a kid. I don't know why I bought it. The idea somehow captured me.

I threw and caught it with my hands several times, and then put it into my backpack.

Once in NHK, I behaved like a normal adult, pretending that something like a color ball never had anything to do with my serious life.

All the while, I felt secretly mischievous. With a color ball, when nobody is around, you can always go back to five year old.
Later in the evening, I passed the security gate at Haneda airport with the color ball in my bag. I winced a little, but needless to say, the alarm did not sound.

Now I am with the color ball in the southern city of Kochi. The freedom to be a little mischievous is still with me.

Despised and rejected

It was late, as I finally made my way towards home. I was alone in the street, with the hush of night surrounding my existence.
As often happens in such a situation, I thought of the miracle of our existence. I don't understand. Why am I here and now? How come there are these elementary particles flying all over the place, with natural laws governing them all?

13.7 billions years of physical abundance, and presto, we are here, as conscious beings, the enigma of the mind-body remaining unsolvable as in the days of Baruch Spinoza. The efforts towards the solution have not moved an inch.

I am not associated with any organized religion. However, at such moments I am convinced of an order beyond human comprehension, which we might refer to in the name of God, not necessarily meaning human-like, but some "entity" responsible for the whole thing.

Among those who consider themselves rational, the very idea tends to be rejected, as something that belongs to prejudices and superstitions of past times.

The Bible describes the life's processions of Jesus Christ with poetic precision of human psychology. The observation is keen and without mercy.

He was despised and rejected.

"He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering (Isaiah)."

What the Bible describes in this great passage about the fall of the savior has always been a source of inspiration for me.

What is essential and fundamental can be despised and rejected, as if it was worthless, something to be disposed of.

This truth, put to beautiful music by George Frideric Handel in Messiah, is something to be cherished and thought over when you approach an idea which tends to be ridiculed by the intellects of the day.

The next big thing

In life what you see in the periphery is often more important than what you observe in the central vision.

If your attention is stuck, then you do not have the flexibility to move your mind around, and capture what is transient and disappearing ever and ever.

Catch it if you can. The essential and important things often play hide and seek with your mind. There, in the corner of your visual field, the next big thing is secretly throbbing with excitement, for you to discover and make a contact of the soul.

Enjoy the clumsiness

One of the things I am quite sure is that when I have spare time I know how to spend it.

Without money, left alone from the world at large, I would think of loads of ways to entertain myself. I am a proclaimed self-entertainer. I would never be at a loss what to do in the next few hours.

Recently, when I was on the road, I thought of another way of entertaining myself. Left hand drawing. I am a right hander, and have almost never used the left hand to draw or write. Maybe I was a bit drunk at that time. What happened was that while I was in a hotel room, I thought hey let's draw with my left hand. Let's enjoy the clumsiness.

Enjoy the clumsiness I did. Drawing with the other hand proved to be such a fun. Much better than these "brain drills" advertised in the media, like damn calculations and repetitive puzzles.

The degree of freedom involved in drawing is incredible. There is a whole universe in it. There are big bangs and white holes. Although at every step the clumsiness of the left hand tended to let me down, I weathered on, hugely enjoying the whole thing.

Stating the obvious, as the left hand is controlled by the right brain, using it can enhance the emotive hemisphere, which is a bonus to the fun.

My proposition is thus simple. Don't you ever be bored by life. There are numerous ways that you could entertain your own brain. The only limit is your imagination.


My left hand drawing number 3. Untitled.

Starry apparitions

As a kid I used to dream of starry apparitions.

I would be lying on the ground looking up at the night sky. While observing the twinkling stars, there is suddenly a great transformation of things. The lights become brighter, and the milky way literally turns into a ever changing river of white liquid entity filling and dancing in the overall.

Intriguingly, great wheels would appear and turn in the sky. From time to time, steam locomotives made of constellations would emerge and cross the visual field. All sorts of heavenly machinery would start appearing here and there, with their unique motions and styles of presences.

The scenery fills me with awe, and my excitement would grow uncontrollably until it invariably culminates in a gasp.

At that moment of shuddering sensations, I would regain consciousness.

I would find myself wide awake in bed, wondering whence these wondrous images came.

Although quite fantastic out of proportion and unpredictable in emergence, those visions of starry apparitions are cherished gemstones in the chest of my life's memory.

Bullet

From yesterday's twitter entry.

kenmogi
Have become the world's fastest leopard. 7C of the 9th in Shinkansen heading for Kyoto. Correction. Orangutan, rather than leopard.

I like to be idle on the bullet train. It is the utmost luxury given the hectic schedule that I am usually exposed to.

You close your laptop, and throw your legs out. You put the seat to the reclining position, then close your eyes.

The sunshine is emanating from mount Fuji. You become sweetly dizzy embraced by the gold. Memory of the past times resurge with a pang. You move in the chair a bit uneasily, as if to assimilate the upheaval in the psyche with the mass of your body.

While all this is happening, you are speeding at 300 kilometers per hour.

You have become a bullet.

A bullet conventionally kills, but this one nurtures.

It nurtures your idleness, until it grows out of proportion, shrinks again as the train arrives at your destination.

The magic is gone, and you are free to do whatever practical things you'd like.

The session is over.

Deviation

I usually take a morning stroll to a convenience store nearby, and pick up some morning goods. For the last couple of days, I have walked on to the park, and dashed up the hill that flanks the woods.

It is just a little deviation, which makes all the difference. In life, you turn 90 degrees and run from your path of everyday, and then you discover a new scenery.

It is not that difficult. All you have to do is to identify an unsearched domain. And then you delve into it. Even for a very brief time.

Within a moment the storm of contingency would rage. The conviction that you are here for no reason. You taste the throbbing sensation of knowing you could have been quite another, while loving and embracing the here and now.

From a recent twitter entry.

kenmogi
Mediocrity hurts. The remedy is the sky.

http://twitter.com/kenmogi

Flower petals in the wind.

At the end of another busy day, I went to Kazahana in the Shinjuku district. Kazahana is a legendary literary bar. "Kazahana" ("flower petals in the wind") is the poetic Japanese word for snowflakes.

I did not intend to stay for long, but simply had to drop by, psychologically needing the sojourn.

Earlier, I was meeting with the novelist Makoto Shiina. Mr. Shiina is one of Japan's great weapons of the literary genre. After Mr. Shiina left, I felt rather lonely, and was naturally drawn to my favorite hanging-out place. I was with an editor and a freelance writer.

On the day, I still had several things to do. The ongoing rain occasionally became strong. The sound of drops falling was a testimony of the nuisance once outside. Listening to the sound, we became gradually uneasy.

How many ups and downs of emotion one encounters during the course of a day. Science does not tell you still.

I know from experience that when you're down, with perseverance, things would eventually improve, the clouds in the mind clearing.

Earlier, I was weeping spiritually, inside. Before long, the tears froze to become snowflakes. The snowflakes then danced in the invisible air.

Snow is the materialization of love that penetrates all life. We must observe the dynamics within, while falling, rising, and then falling again, like dancing flower petals in the wind.

Private language of music

I love the film in which Glenn Gould plays the Goldberg Variations. What a beautiful procession! Aria, 30 variations, and then aria again. At the end of the finger maneuvers, Gould holds his hands together in a gesture in which he appears to be praying. Then his whole performance impresses one as a dedication to the spirit of music, with a beautiful hindsight.

I love this set of variations from the great composer, J. S. Bach. The 30th variation, with its jovial start, always strikes me as if a huge plateful of delicious dish was being carried from the kitchen with great solemnity, to the shining eyes of the beholders.
I have a hunch why Gould refrained from playing in the public later in his career. The presence of attentive minds is a great stimulator. On the other hand, it sometimes stimulates one in a vulgar way. One would like to entertain, and therefore goes out of the way. A great art lies there, so it is not necessarily a bad thing. However, it is at the same time a distraction from purity, which Gould probably hated.

For a performer like Vladimir Horowitz, the audience is a godsend. Gould, on the other hand, thrived in the absolute privacy.
Gould's music is as close as one can come to the impossibility of the private language of music, sensu Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The school hike.

I love autumn when the sky is blue and high. My best stroll would be along a river bank, where the autumn flowers display their miscellaneous colors while swaying to and fro in the wind. Dragon flies would display their glistening of the wings in the crystal bright autumn sunbeam. I would like to walk very slowly, without goal, without aim, and breathe in the air as if it was a nectar for the soul, every minute, every second.

I particularly remember a school hike in the junior high, when we went all the way to the river from school. I was fourteen. Once on the river bank, we pupils strolled along the path, playing with cosmos flowers and autumn butterflies.

We all wore the tedious orange color school trainer, but even that fact did not hinder us from enjoying the walk. The issue was mainly about spatial distribution. Who walked where, with whom. The parallels of our existence filled us with inexplicable joys and pangs, rather like a short story by Katherine Mansfield, or a pointillism painting by Georges-Pierre Seurat.

I was foolish, and considered the hike as something that belongs to yearly regularities. I was unconsciously thinking that there would be many repeats of a hike like the one on that day. I was to learn later, only too late, that the onceness in life was to pass and gone forever.

I am bewildered even today how on earth the school hike took place on that particular day, like a miracle, without any photographic record to support my recollection. Only this vivid picture in my mind pointing to the now uncertain past stays alive.

They can't know.

"De Profundis" is a work in the form of a letter that Oscar Wilde wrote during his time in prison. In it, there is this beautiful passage.

--------------
The more mechanical people...always know where they are going, and go there...A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a Member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be.

That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it. But with the dynamic forces of life...it is different. People whose desire is solely for self-realization never know where they are going. They can't know.

----------------

One never knows where one is going, if one follows one's inner voice. How true.

There is glory in being lost. Not knowing where to go, one encounters the vastness of the universe face to face.

When friends and lovers meet

It is a remarkable aspect of human cognition that when something passes, it remains unnoticed for a long time. We recognize the golden time of childhood only when we have lost it.

Used to be that when friends and lovers meet, they would make appointments quite well in advance, designating subway stations and landmarks as the point of meeting. Then something would happen. When the time passes and the counterpart does not show up, anxiety and uneasiness would grow in the heart. Every minute that passes becomes a dance in suspension. And then, the final relief when your boy friend or girl friend appears around the corner. The sunshine has come out of the clouds again. O what joy!

Now, with the advent of the mobile phone and other means of communication, the torture and bliss of waiting is gone forever. With the SMS and emails and calls, you can "adjust" the meeting point in space and time anyway and as many times as you like. When you look back on how it was 20 years or even 10 years ago, you realize that an era has passed, for ever and ever.

Ken Shiotani, my beloved philosopher friend, is the only one that I know closely who does not possess a mobile phone. So I do have the now ancient joy of the suspense of waiting when I make appointments with Ken Shiotani. His manners of independence from the mobile network might be outdated these days. But he does remind me how sweet and fragrant the yesterdays were.

No award is premature

The decision of the Nobel committee to award Mr. Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was laudable. Some people might say that it has been premature. I disagree, considering the nature of the human mind.

With recognition comes self reflection, as recognition, by its very nature, involves the vision of the others. Recognition can and should be the basis for further development, within the context of the relations with others. With recognition one can step forward with increased courage. Mr. Obama is now likely to be more invigorated in his efforts to make the world a better place.

In elementary school, the teacher sometimes hands out awards. Considering that the recipients are very early in their "career" indeed, every recognition that a child receives is arguably premature. From the point of view of the development of the child, however, no award is premature.

It is nice to learn that the award committee of the world's most prestigious prize knows the human nature well.