Only a Blockhead

Light and dark

Watching the brand-new Criterion edition DVD of Days of Heaven reminded me how beautiful the light is at dawn and dusk. And how farmers--then as now--have only the daylight hours to work with, bookended with the pinks and oranges of daybreak and sundown.

Here in Japan, farmers used to divide the day in just this way: sunrise to sunset; sunset to sunrise. And these two were further divided into six parts—"hours" if you will--that expanded and contracted as the year turned. In winter, the six daylight periods were each shorter, the night ones longer.

We lost that connection with the cycle of the day and year when we left the land, measured our lives with rigid hours and minutes, and turned the night to light. We fill our hours of rest with bright pastimes, go to bed late and wake groggy. I work in an office with the lights on all day. I've seen many more sunsets than sunrises.

Midnight
Convenience store lit up like Christmas
Full moon high above

--Julian

Further reading:

An article on time in old Japan

Roger Ebert's as-always erudite review of Days of Heaven

For cinema otaku, Criterion's blog has a fascinating entry on director Terrence Malick's work on the look of the new DVD edition (scroll down to August 15, 2007: Striking Gold).

The sweetness of life

When there's sunshine to be slept in
I sleep in it
A body beside me
I embrace it
Wine to be drunk
I drink it
A song to be sung
I sing it

Unbidden joys
And all but the wine are free

--Julian

[This would explain why I can never build a good cellar of wine.]

Whiteley's

Whiteley's

—NC Tate

Even in Philosophy

23 MARCH 1909

Even in philosophy, the subject and the meaning of ideas are less important than the way they are linked, the elegance with which they are set into motion and developed, in short, than their play.  What is properly philosophical is only the play of ideas, just as what is profoundly pictorial is the splendor of lines and colors.  The interweaving of ideas in the field of philosophy is equivalent to the mixing that is essential to the creation of orchestral or pictorial compositions.

Victor Segalen in Essay on Exoticism: An Aesthetics of Diversity

—David

December

  After days of barely seeing the sun, the week has been magnificent. At 
dawn the last bright crescent of the waning moon hangs in a clear sky,
every morning a little lower, a little more delicate. The rising sun 
turns the eastern sky pink. Its red orb is reflected in the west, 
turning the snow on Mount Fuji pink as well. The ground is white with 
frost. Among the evergreens and rust browns, the yellow of ginkgo 
leaves is as arresting as the red of maples.

At noon, the sun is warm enough to dry laundry and invite sleep.

In the evenings, I sit under the warm kotatsu table, enjoying the 
first local mikan tangerines.


Sliver of old moon
High in the sky at daybreak
New moon on Tuesday

--Julian

Home

Home

—NC Tate

Alone with God

Raven200

Having finished Simon Raven's "Alms for Oblivion" series I am now reveling in the second of the "First Born of Egypt" books, where he writes:

Men say that to lead the religious life one should be free from the distractions of the world.  But if there are no distractions, if one is left alone with God all day long, as we were on that island, then one very soon realises how cruel and monstrous he is, how much misery and horror he has to answer for.  Which of us has asked—would ever have asked—to live this life of pain?  How dare God make such a life possible—and threaten to damn us if we seek solace from it in sin?  That is the sort of thing which one asks if one is long alone with Him.  So either one comes to hate Him, or, better perhaps, one ceases to believe in Him.

From The Face of the Waters by Simon Raven

My attempts to get others hooked on Raven's books have failed miserably.  How this is possible, when he is capable of tossing off gems like that one, is impossible for me grasp.

—David

Nine Books I Liked in 2007

They are in no particular order. 

They are not necessarily my top nine. 

They are nine books I enjoyed in 2007. 

See the list here and also find links to recommendations made by other Japan Times critics.

--David

After Dark

After Dark

Haruki Murakami

My review of Haruki Murakami's After Dark appeared in the Asahi Shimbun today.  Here's the concluding paragraph:

After Dark begins as a version of Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks," updated and shifted to Tokyo. Just as Hopper's painting was a realistic picture of a 1940s American diner, so Murakami's Denny's, with its "unremarkable but adequate lighting; expressionless decor and dinnerware; floor plan designed to the last detail by management engineers; innocuous background music at low volume," is a realistic representation of the sort of diner at which 21st-century nighthawks roost. Hopper's picture is powerful because it hints at something beyond what it depicts. This hint, however, is only effective because of the precision with which Hopper has painted his four nighthawks and their nest. Likewise, it is the precision with which Murakami presents the world we know that compels us to follow him into less familiar realms, and it is there, as with Hopper, that we begin to understand what drives nighthawks such as Mari into the night.

See what lead up to that conclusion here.

—David