adventures in japanese literature–the flower of sublimation

From Ishida Rokurô's depth psychology analysis of Ishikawa Takuboku

A book of lit-crit from Japan in the 1970s- is not complete without a chart of either a baffling and cryptic variety, or a soothingly grid-like abstraction or a nenpyô, or lengthy chronology featuring a year-by-year account that resolves such questions as “what color was Soseki’s dog, purchased in 1911?” or “when did Hayashi Fumiko leave her sixth elementary school?”  Meet Exhibit A, of the former variety–the flower of sublimation.

Sure, the Lacanians had their equations and formulae, but left much to the imagination. This illustration breaks down the psychic topography of ISHIKAWA Takuboku, one of Japan’s most noted early 20th century poets. He is typically known for his socialist fervor, living passionately and dying young like many Meiji-era poets, of tuberculosis; also, for writing many tanka, or short poems (commonly, if sort of wrongly, known in English as haiku). But Ishida, a psychoanalyst medical doctor, gives insight to what drove all of Takuboku’s (we are allowed to call him by his first name because he is beloved) artistic endeavours–not politics, but doomed love. Here is how it blossoms.

The upshot of depth psychology, as Ishida practices it, is you use literary materials and texts to gather a portrait of an artist’s psyche. Character and persona and narrator and author end up being inter-changeable, and life and work inter-mingle. Basically, the volumetric space that is someone’s inner mind is the source of all meaning, and that person rarely if ever grasps his or her own contents or traumas, though that 3-D space compels him/her to act in a consistent manner all through life.

Above ground is conscioueness; the fertilizer-looking underground part is the unconscious. Each petal represents a result–an aesthetic product, or character trait–of sublimation, routed through the “complex,” as indicated in the text box at the bottom. These are comprised of (from the top, clockwise) unrequited love, religious philosophy, Socialism, longing, furusato/hometown, and new-style education. And the “complex,” in turn breaks down into individual, society, nature, and child-spirited-ness.

When I say,
I believe that a new morning will come,
I do not lie, but ….

from Sad Toys

square and flat no more

Harold Gregor, Ilinois Flatscape 101

I stopped by a couple of museums today, to case the joints on the last day of a couple of exhibitions. My second stop was the Museum of the American West, for the shows on “maverick art” and “bold caballeros/noble bandidas.” (The latter should be up for a couple months more.) The maverick exhibit–a mix of avant-garde strands of trad arts, vernacular arts, and frontier-y things–had a good number of landscape paintings, among which was this landscape, rendered as if from an airplane, in the dimensionality of an aerial view, in these strange bright harvest colors.

Harold Gregor was a renowned figure in my town, which despite its apparent sleepiness, has an undertow of skilled and cerebral materialist artists working in and around it–painters, ceramacists, woodworkers, other craftspeople. This piece was an interesting transition piece between old-school Illinois representation, and that of today. It reminded me of  JB Jackson, basically the guy who founded vernacular landscape studies in the US. If you have ever listened to The Magnetic Fields’ The Charm of the Highway Strip, you have listened to a concept album modeled on the thinking of JBJ. JBJ had some salty words for my stomping grounds. Basically, he said, “people come to resemble the landscapes they live in. The midwest is square and flat.” It figures, the salt, he was from New England.

This season’s red-blue intrigues in my home state, mingling upstate and downstate elements, have brought some new geometries to my eyes, apart from the 2-D flatness. Here, a roundup, more or less inorganically mixed (oops, betraying my metaphoric downstate roots there) set of new shapes…

–the cone:

I have literally been kept up nights by Michael Pollan’s account of how ag policies in the 1970’s, under the Earl Butz regime, have changed the food landscape. Actually, the story goes back to the 1850’s with the advent of commodity corn and the grading of corn in ways to make yield the sole criterion for which growers grew…but anyway. Above a “portable escalator” (57) that carries corn into the piles that are currently all over the prairie, with so much surplus corn. These policies, and new technologies of mono-culture farming, have made yields like crazy, but have made it harder to make a living, or to use all  the stuff. Thus, high fructose corn syrup. Given that the US population only increases about 1% a year, in most years a sorry rate of growth, food manufacturers have to keep finding more uses and desires for corn products to keep up consumption and profits. Don’t even get me started on how all this number 2 corn is destined for its biggest consumer, cattle–who are supposed to be ruminants, or grass-eaters, actually, and who do not suffer a corn diet easily.

–the wave:

…to be continued

435 los feliz

monday monster mash

You’re not really big in Japan until Godzilla stomps you. All the smog and particulate of this week’s fires has put me in a rather kaijû state of mind.

The 1954 version is one of my all-time favorites, a one-size-fits-all pirate crate of postwar Japan. From the opening eyeball (from a later film in the series, actually), it’s looking right at you, all bloodshot and googly, saying “well, now what?” A procession of puzzled answers emerges. It’s got curmudgeonly old men who grumble about losing tradition and issue dire warnings about human hubris, angry housewives (the chief instigators of the real-life peace movement, after the Bikini Atoll bombings and the Lucky Dragon incident, in which fishermen were nuked by ash fallout from US testing) demanding their right to know, mustachio’d scientists giving testimony with gadgets and footprint measurer, and nosy reporters from the mainland snooping around southern islands to report back to mainland news organizations. Also, Emiko, an ingénue with a heart of gold who is the daughter of an élite scientist, as well as the mad crush of a certain mad scientist with an eyepatch, though she will later run off with a lowly garbage-man, on her own romp wreaking postwar havoc, with class-crossing true love as her means of destruction. The scientist with a murky R&D background of wartime research, Serizawa, invents a device, the oxygen destroyer. This gadget is reputed to be the last hope for saving Japan from the wrath of the radioactive one. At the fatal hour on the high seas, poised to let loose with the destroyer in scuba gear, a broken-hearted Serizawa dives underwater and commits mad-scientist harakiri–he cuts his lifeline and sacrifices himself for the good even greater than true love, doing in the monster and saving the country’s skin.

The last (and only) roar you hear after the BOC song is one sample of the musique concrète style of Ikufube Akira’s amazing tape score for the film.

post-vivum

As opposed to post-mortem.

This is what I am calling an anatomy of something that you do in order to find out what makes that thing live.

See above (also: “victory, comma symbolic,” and “victory, comma pragmatic”). Tomatoes that I was not sure were going to make it, but that pulled through, kind of late in the game, to head into full bloom just yesterday on Election Day.

back on line

Monday morning came early, today, but the train was late. I turned in my badge–my parking pass for work–last month, and vowed to become a greener-and-improved commuter come August. I had padded my way up to the Glendale station this weekend, to see the scene, and check the times. It was shuttered, basically, except for a few schedule flyers, some vending machines, and a stack of flyers on a glass case containing trains, advertising an upcoming meeting of the Glendale Model Railroad Club.

It’s only a fifteen minute walk to the station. Or I’m guessing a five-minute skate, as I judge from watching the skatekid who emerged off the train just in front of me, as he bombed down under the railroad, down Los Feliz, facing down the traffic, crouched, his hands clasped behind his back. I was all hoped up for my inaugural ride on the Metrolink, but a bit crestfallen when, 20 minutes after ETA, the train still had not arrived. It was only because I happened to be standing next to a guy from Amtrak PR who had a direct line to the Burbank railyard that I knew it would be coming along, eventually. I had time to read my student’s near-final draft on her summer research paper, purple in some prose, and get plenty sunburnt.

The rest of the trip to and fro was a bit more/less eventful, the bus leg to school very friendly and fast, the return trip back along San Fernando on the train full of the commuter intrigues I know and love from other cities–peering at the crowd, considering where to sit, the rush of suits and heels and backpacks going places, the glorious mass anonymity of it all. The overheard conversations, about tripping up a guy on his purported travel details (by the girlfriend), and the x-ray technician who spent Saturday night taking pics of a woman whose teeth got busted by another woman wielding a beer bottle in a bar fight. As always, I am amazed at the number of people who 1) relate their credit card details out loud and 2) cut their fingernails while on public conveyances.

So, all in all, a success of a commute–cheaper, pretty relaxing, a bit longer, but includes a nice walk on either side. The LP version of what I have been doing is a bit longer, but would include:

–lots of reading and writing, primarily the book

–trying to outwit massive ant infestations. They got really random crazy before the earthquake, but are generally just kind of spazzy, intermittently in deluge form

–going up to Montreal for a couple weeks, and after being locked out of my apt, making some calls to Malawi, being taken in by hospitable friends, and getting sick, had a pretty good time catching up with people, though it is never long enough

–there, ending the live music moratorium with an amazing show at the Sala, organised by the friend of friends, by Las She Devils, mostly from Buenos Aires, and their bigger-band version, Las Kumbia Queers. Las She Devils played some genius covers, including one of my favorite earnest/randy teenager songs, The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks.

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refreshments

In these sultry times near the equinox, a girl’s thoughts naturally turn to…beer and snacks. The heat is bringing back memories of the last extended stint of writing-induced hermitude I had, a hot hot summer in Kyoto in 2005. I lived next to a Korean neighborhood, so I got used to the evening ritual of shuffling out to the beer machine in my slippers (yes, outdoor slippers), dropping in a couple of coins, and having a very refreshing long swig of beer before, or during, the time it took to look and see if any haphazardly parked bikes got cleared out by the cops that day, and get sweaty enough to want to take a shower again. So, the very onset of such heat reminds me of Korean food, and beer, and vinegar, just because it is always tasty to eat vinegar in hot weather.

Fortunately, though I won’t be doing any world tours this summer, I can still do the world tour of the grocery stores of Los Angeles. And the east side is hopping with them. My current fave is the sleeperly-named Super King, an Armenian mega-market on San Fernando. Not for the faint of heart. Good produce and Turkish/Greek/Russian selection of hard liquor, very ecumenical; a lesson for us all. Closer to home, and bike-able, is the HK Market, my Korean market friend (HK for Hankook, no English links, sorry). Not only do they, like in Asia, mark down all the prepared food with about 2 hours to go before closing, but they have all sorts of yummy vegetables, many suitable for pickling.

All these excursions are all just a way of working up to the task at hand, the development of pickling skills during idle moments when I’m not working (as I actually am a lot, with various school mentoring things that, technically, senior faculty other people should be doing). The above illustration shows what “egoma” or “perilla” or “shiso” leaves look like when you treat them all kimchi-like for a day or so, by adding onion, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, red pepper. And enjoying, on a bed of rice, or with a nice cold beer–yum.

If I am cooped up much longer, I will probably run out of Korean produce, and start in on the tofu innovations. If you see me residing out on the lawn in a homemade organic tofu igloo come the dog days of late August, do not be surprised.

the melancholy of the tennis boy–more facts only a ‘Japanologist’ could love

Continuing with last week’s Murakami Ryû obsession, I came across something you don’t see often enough with US authors–cocktails named after their works! Something to strive for with the next great American novel. The conceit here is that Murakami’s late night TV blab-show, “Ryû’s Bar,” generated the drinks. Above, we have the Almost Transparent Blue.

Fair enough, very drinky sounding. Let’s see what’s in it: 15 ml eau de vie de framboise, 1 t of green mint, 60 ml of champagne. Seems a bit classy for all those orgy scenes, but maybe Ryû is just a cooler customer than I, and lord knows blue is not a naturally-occurring food color. (Here I’m not getting bent out of shape about orgies, but referring to the clichéd, un-humanish style of Murakami’s prose with the ‘unnatural label. And let’s not even ask about the draft version of this drink, shall we, as I mentioned here.)

What’s next? Well, cutting to the chase, a gin drink, the “melancholy of the Tennis Boy.” I guess the tennis boy is an old-school rummy. Also, this is the cougar drink of choice, say the jodhpurs below, when shaken, not stirred. Why not help him out by setting him up with some drinky stripes. His other ingredients include 1 t of green mint (liqueur, I am beginning to surmise), 10 ml of Pernod, 60 ml of soda.

And lastly–skipping, sadly over such drinky marvels as the “69″ and the “War on the Other Side of the Ocean,” we will truly know when we have bought the fascist farm when we all drink three squares of this, the “Love and Illusion in a Time of Fascism.” Mind you, this is a two-volume novel about survivalist high tech operators in the Arctic Circle in the time of millennial hunter and gatherers, that reads like the dry parts of the Economist. No psychology whatsoevah.

In case you are wondering, after the apocalypse, we will be drinking single malt Laphroaig Scotch and dark beer combos, 30 and 45 ml, respectively.

something midwestern this way comes

This morning my mom called me to tell me that a tornado had touched down nearby. Normally, this occurs if a tornado hits near home, in downstate Illinois. But this time she was calling from across town (LA). I hadn’t yet seen the front page of the paper, featuring this photo, but the freaky weather yesterday touched down in Riverside, not the farm country I associate it with. Apparently it hailed downtown. And Sherall, our admin coordinator in my office, reported a huge instant deluge while walking across campus that, unfortunately, poured on her and our new hire, who probably thought she was moving away from the volatility of midwestern weather.

I guess there are a number of reasons to be alarmed at the haywire qualities of this latest streak of climate change. But there is a certain uncanniness of tornado season that I must admit to enjoying. In retrospect, the tornado drills that we had growing up were certainly done under the aegis of spooky Cold War alarmism, with their mass ritual, infinite intervals of waiting for nothing to ever happen, suspended fear, and warning sirens. But they also had a delightful mood of conspiracy, tingle and petty triumph at seeing things were absolutely out of the hands of the people in charge. (Needless to say, we never actually got hit severely, otherwise it might have been a different story than all this child-time potentiality.)

I guess kids in California probably don’t grow up with weekly air raid siren testings, as we did, year round, and not just during storm season. (*Correction–my mom tells me it is one Tuesday a month, not every week.) This sound also worked to signal tornado warnings (not watches, that’s just minor vigilance level). At one school, we would bolt across the open field to the high school, with textbooks, and sit, I think in the gym, till “all clear” was called. At the other school, we would exit the classroom, line up by our steel lockers, sit cross-legged on the cold linoleum, and place the thickest of our textbooks in “chalet” shapes on our the backs of our heads, like turtles. As usual, we would snap to alphabetical order, in front of our own lockered gym clothes and sack lunches (in case of emergency). After a while, we’d get to go back in, or walk reluctantly across the big grassy field back to school.

Come to think of it, the whole reason I came to know many of the names of small towns around the state is from hearing long lists on the radio of tornado-warned towns, and hearing them singled out when it was safe to emerge from the shelter or basement. That and snow days, exciting for their own reason (a day off school, of course)!.

Yesterday in my neighborhood was about 30% of a tornado atmosphere. The sky was definitely getting there, but you didn’t have the charged mugginess, ozone smell, and heightened saturated color you get in tornado season, even almost in the LAT photo above–something like a cross between a storm cloud and Pepto-Bismol, and utterly beautiful over the green grass that hasn’t yet begun to turn crappy brown, the way it will stay most of the summer.

Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven captures some of this intensity and saturation. (Although apparently it is supposed to be set in Texas, so scratch that. I always thought the draft furnaces screamed “Chicago.” The most interesting part of the survey doc Visions of Light is actually about the 5-minute increments just before sunset in which Néstor Almendros systematically shot the landscape.)

Sômai Shinji’s Typhoon Club is also worth a sitting, if you get the chance at some art house. It’s one of the overlooked-eighties Japanese indie films lost in the hype for “edginess.” It’s about a bunch of high school students who get trapped in school during a typhoon, having the same effects as a tornado watch, but over more time–cloistered cameraderie, heightened sense of everything, boy/girl antics.

Not to be confused with the ridiculous Suicide Club of a couple years back. But definitely to be linked as the provocation for an inspired pink film about a bunch of people who make a suicide pact (one sobering “actual” suicide, and the rest very funny stories of the various loser paths that get them to such a state), duct-tape all the doors and windows, start telling their respective woebegone sagas, and because it’s a pink movie, discover their love of life by means of an orgy! In English it is called Ambiguous (ha!–take that, Canadian Customs!). But the very funny Japanese title, which genre deserves a post of its own, does not really fly in translation, but is a wonderfully deadpan and klunky-kanji-filled slogan starring the sincerest exclamation point you ever met, Obscenity Net Band –Let’s Go!

indicator species of Glendale Narrows

A series of weird activities has been afoot in the micro-climate of Atwater Village where I live. I live within spitting distance of both Griffith Park and the LA River, and often walk or bike around. The river bike path, the Glendale Narrows part, is especially pleasant at twilight–you see teenagers sitting eating potato chips riverside, yuppies on fast bikes with tons of gear zipping past, kids with training wheels, regular joes like me on their chop-shop bikes. I like it because you can zone and just ride, and observe the epic infrastructures of water treatment plant, huge warehouses, walls of graffitti.

I am not sure why I didn’t notice that major islands of the river have, apparently, been clear-cut of the thatches of Arundo and cottonwood trees in the last couple of weeks. (I’m not completely up on the Renaissance court intrigues of the Atwater Village Neighborhood Council, but people are pretty upset about it here.)

Saturday morning I had actually been pretty up-close-and-personal with those very trees, and stumps, since I spent a good chunk of time cleaning up the riverbanks, with a bunch of other people, as part of the annual Friends of the LA River river-salvage event. I had hoped that the haul would yield at least a good toaster oven, if not the Jacuzzi that was harvested a couple years back, according to Blake Gumprecht.

There was lots of free stuff on Saturday, and I am pretty sure I worked off my worth in free t-shirts. Actually, I don’t even want to think how many years out-of-school it will be before the phrase “free stuff” stops warming the cockles of my heart. But I had no sightings of real “urban indicator species” such as the shopping cart. Much of my haul was actually junk food wrappers and, perhaps not surprisingly, toilet paper. Yikes. There were other species missing, like birds. But when I heard about the recent wave of avian botulism, I was a little weirded out. It seems like a pretty big deal in the bird world, and while I am not technically avian, I might have fished around that muck a little more cautiously, had I known. I was kind of puzzled that neither the tree-cutting nor the avian botulism topic was evident at the event itself, but maybe there was a word-of-mouth thing I didn’t tap into.

Actually, I think the cleanup could do with a little more implementage–something sophisticated like dowel rods with hooks on them. The image that comes to mind is that picture where Walt Whitman is sitting in overalls on a chair, in his incredibly messy study, with a big hooked stick, staring at a pile of papers, wondering what to stab next.

As you go upriver, the scene gets a bit more epic in its mix of Hoover-Dam-type modernism and human structures. And sometimes you can see the river…I wouldn’t say undulate, but it sometimes moves.

(They clear-cut windmills, don’t they! Oh Glendale!).