errata of minutia
So. I have received my answer to the question asked in my last entry: 19, or possibly 18. I will . . . refrain from ruminating further, at least here, and likewise will try to cease whining.
* * * * * *
There are no students today, and only a few teachers. It disturbs me that, as I sit here at the computer, I can smell the sickly-sweetness of a large amount of alcohol recently consumed. The nearest person in the office to me is a good three yards away; I suspect he is the source.
It reminds me, somewhat randomly, of a documentary I saw recently, on a Chinese man who left his family behind to work here in Japan, illegally. This has absolutely nothing to do with alcohol, incidentally, since there was none whatsoever in said documentary. Anyway, it was in Japanese, of course, but I could make out a good portion of it simply from inference. The Chinese man (I didn't catch his name) worked here for 15 years, and didn't see either wife or daughter for 13 years and 10 years, respectively. In China he and his wife were a part of the "lost generation," denied the chance to go to university by the Cultural Revolution, shipped out to the countryside to work on a farm. At some point he was able to go to Japan to study Japanese, but he was disappointed by the program and ran away from his language school in Hokkaido, going to Tokyo for work instead. He was a factory worker, then a janitor, utterly ordinary-looking and unremarkable, living in a tiny apartment beside the railroad tracks. He worked hard, he remained all by himself, and he sent all his money home so that his daughter could go to medical school in America.
There was a great deal of crying that went on over the course of the documentary, as the sundered family communicated by video and letter over the years, missing each other and talking about their difficulties. It was impossible not to be moved by their devotion and constancy over so great a span of time. I watched the small, balding man standing on the station platform again and again-- an utterly ordinary station platform, an utterly ordinary man, practically lost in the vast, swirling crowds of people, nothing whatsoever standing out. And yet that utterly ordinary man was living a tale of sweeping scope, a modern-day fairy tale of incredible pain, perseverance, and finally reunion and triumph. An ordinary man whose love for his wife and daughter had sustained him through loneliness and endless, grindingly hard work. An epic hero at whom no one would look twice.
And I wondered to myself, how many people? How many people are there out there with stories of the same sort, unrecognized, unrecorded, unobserved? How many extraordinary lives and events lie beneath the utterly mundane exterior that we see? How many of the strangers we pass, see, and promptly forget, are living such stories as would move the gods to pity and awe?
* * * * * *
And randomly, an article from the New Yorker on superhero costumes: Secret Skin. I first started reading comics when I was in middle school, and my choice was the X-men, though I no longer remember how the trend started. It ushered me into a longtime interest in comic books, graphic novels, manga, whathaveyou, though, so I am endlessly grateful.
* * * * * *
I recently subscribed (like any good sheep) to a poetry community, exceptindreams, found via the lj spotlight. Today's poem happens to be a favorite of mine.
Warning!, by Jenny Joseph
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me,
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
* * * * * *
There are no students today, and only a few teachers. It disturbs me that, as I sit here at the computer, I can smell the sickly-sweetness of a large amount of alcohol recently consumed. The nearest person in the office to me is a good three yards away; I suspect he is the source.
It reminds me, somewhat randomly, of a documentary I saw recently, on a Chinese man who left his family behind to work here in Japan, illegally. This has absolutely nothing to do with alcohol, incidentally, since there was none whatsoever in said documentary. Anyway, it was in Japanese, of course, but I could make out a good portion of it simply from inference. The Chinese man (I didn't catch his name) worked here for 15 years, and didn't see either wife or daughter for 13 years and 10 years, respectively. In China he and his wife were a part of the "lost generation," denied the chance to go to university by the Cultural Revolution, shipped out to the countryside to work on a farm. At some point he was able to go to Japan to study Japanese, but he was disappointed by the program and ran away from his language school in Hokkaido, going to Tokyo for work instead. He was a factory worker, then a janitor, utterly ordinary-looking and unremarkable, living in a tiny apartment beside the railroad tracks. He worked hard, he remained all by himself, and he sent all his money home so that his daughter could go to medical school in America.
There was a great deal of crying that went on over the course of the documentary, as the sundered family communicated by video and letter over the years, missing each other and talking about their difficulties. It was impossible not to be moved by their devotion and constancy over so great a span of time. I watched the small, balding man standing on the station platform again and again-- an utterly ordinary station platform, an utterly ordinary man, practically lost in the vast, swirling crowds of people, nothing whatsoever standing out. And yet that utterly ordinary man was living a tale of sweeping scope, a modern-day fairy tale of incredible pain, perseverance, and finally reunion and triumph. An ordinary man whose love for his wife and daughter had sustained him through loneliness and endless, grindingly hard work. An epic hero at whom no one would look twice.
And I wondered to myself, how many people? How many people are there out there with stories of the same sort, unrecognized, unrecorded, unobserved? How many extraordinary lives and events lie beneath the utterly mundane exterior that we see? How many of the strangers we pass, see, and promptly forget, are living such stories as would move the gods to pity and awe?
* * * * * *
And randomly, an article from the New Yorker on superhero costumes: Secret Skin. I first started reading comics when I was in middle school, and my choice was the X-men, though I no longer remember how the trend started. It ushered me into a longtime interest in comic books, graphic novels, manga, whathaveyou, though, so I am endlessly grateful.
* * * * * *
I recently subscribed (like any good sheep) to a poetry community, exceptindreams, found via the lj spotlight. Today's poem happens to be a favorite of mine.
Warning!, by Jenny Joseph
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me,
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.