Borges' Library

o-shogatsu

My first impression of the Japanese New Year was of how very quiet it was. This was surprising at first, given how it is the most important holiday of the year in Japan. In the days preceding, people would return to their hometowns in great waves, emptying the cities. And as families gathered together in their homes, it was always as if the entire world had been blanketed in the hush of heavy snowfall.

The First Month-- in addition to its names referring to the coming of Spring-- 新春、猛春、開春—the old calendar term for January was “mutsuki” 睦月. Mutsu means "intimate, harmonious or friendly," so mutsuki signifies that this was the month "when people come together." It’s true, for even nowadays, oshogatsu is a time for families to re-connect. On the times I didn’t return home, I was astounded at the way Tokyo felt like a ghost town during the New Year holiday, when even Shinjuku Station slowed down.

The New Year in Japan is a time of quiet reflection and contemplation. Of course, in America, we make our New Year’s Resolutions, but for most Americans, New Year is more of a party. A celebration of what will probably be another great year.

The first dream 初夢
The first visit to the Shrine 初詣
The first bath 初湯
The first smile 初笑
The first glance in the mirror 初鏡

Along with spring, the self is also reborn and one should experience all the blessings in life as if they were happening for the first time. Contemplation underpins this holiday in a way I wouldn’t have been able to imagine had I not gone and lived there. And I love that. You look at your image in the mirror all the time. The First Glance in the Mirror, however, urges you to step back, empty your mind and really look. 改めてみること。Look again; look deeper, and look with a clear heart, explained my tea teacher long ago.

Mirrors have long played a religious role in Japan. Like many cultures, the Japanese thought they had the power to show a person’s soul. Symbolizing wisdom, one of the Three Sacred Treasures (三種の神器) of the Japanese Imperial family from the beginning of time in Japan has been a mirror. Mirrors are also a symbol of Japanese New Year in the form of glimmering white and transparent mochi. The most popular New Year’s decoration, kagami mochi 鏡餅、is just as the name implies in Japanese, “mirror rice cakes.” Long ago, they were solely offerings traditionally made at shrines and temples. White rice cakes like mirrors to reflect the image of god as well as the soul of the person making the offering.

In Zen literature, there is a recurring motif of an empty-mirror mind. As David Hinton says in China in his new book, China Root, “When thought stops, that moment of awakening, we are wholly present in life as moment-by-moment experience of incandescent perceptual immediacy.” To stand fully present in the moment looking out at the world with mirror-deep eyes. Now that is clarity to strive for!

 

 

 

The Universe in a Claypot!

Donabe are made from highly porous clays known for their heat retention properties. The clays for making donabe are --not surpassingly—also well-regarded for making teapots and tea containers. These clays include Shigaraki, Iga, Banko, and Mashiko. As a student of tea ceremony, I grew to love all of these types of pottery—but none more than Iga. Super porous Iga clay has phenomenal heat retention powers. The clay is said to “breath.” It does feel as if it is alive. Iga-ware is known for its fine webs of crackle and subtle color shifts from white-yellows to gray-browns. Iga-ware pots display something of the rustic humbleness of the finest “wabi” teabowls. In the crackle that occurs spontaneously in the firing, one feels the happenstance and great simplicity of nature. My tea teacher used to encourage us to look for landscapes in the surface of the teabowls.

In LA, we might not have long snowy winters, but we do have endless choices for eating hotpot. Not only do we have endless restaurants to choose from, even better, all the things we need to make hotpot dinners at home can be found right here in town. One of my favorites is a Japanese kitchen supply shop in West Hollywood called Toiro. Marie Kondo features one of their Iga claypots on her website. But I recommend visiting Toiro online. The choices for gorgeous pots and tableware will delight you. The owner, Naoko Takei Moore also sells high quality pantry items and has a cookbook to boot. All this dedicated to “your happy donabe life!” Now, who could argue with that?

The book is fun because there are classic and modern dishes. So far, I have been sticking with the traditional ideas--like the sizzling mushrooms and tofu in miso sauce, the ginger chicken and chicken in Ginger Amazake Hotpot, tonjiru, salmon hotpot, lotus root in lack vinegar.... and this year, I will be trying out her Oshogatsu menu--which looks amazing. 

Her book is gorgeous and full of history--and if you use it with her online recipes, you will be in business. Also her the items she sells at her shop are beyond beautiful--not just the donabe--which I love and have three. But the lacquer--and that is really what I have fallen most in love with. 

Top Reads in 2017

It was a great year of reading! In addition to being completely bowled over by Emmanuel Carrère's The Kingdom; this year saw a lot of reading on topics ranging from climate change and dark skies to works  related to three classes I audited at Caltech this year (one on Galileo's Trial; one on Einstein; and finally one on Columbus and imperialism). Other topics of interest included, Scipio's Dream by Cicero; uchronia and early church history (inspired by Carrere)--as well as discovering a kindred spirit in the author Ilan Stavans--recommend his memoir to all translators. My Christmas gift-giving book this year was Wesley the Owl, which I absolutely loved! (Tons of links below)

Top Reads: My top read: Emmanuel Carrère's The Kingdom. Other notables: best non-fiction was Learning to Die in the Anthropocene; best fiction was Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson; biggest surprise of year was discovering the writing of Ilan Stavans and best science was Faraday Maxwell and the Electromagnetic Field by Nancy Forbes, Basil Mahon 

Biggest possible mistake was the Time Thief, by Terry Prachett.

And my Christmas gift-giving book this year was Wesley the Owl.

Most thought-provoking (game-changing): Vegetarian Myth and Learning to Die in the Anthropocene 

 

++

Year's Top Read: Emmanuel Carrère's The Kingdom was hands-down the most brilliant book I read in 2017.

More than anything, this work calls to mind Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov; a book which just happens to be my favorite novel of all time. The author himself referred to the Brothers Karamazov several times, so I suppose he was self-consciously modeling his work on Karamazov on some level.

But is The Kingdom, like Karamazov, a philosophical novel in the old tradition?

Or is it rather a memoir gone mad?

Critics call it "genre-bending." Carrère himself repeatedly insists that he hopes this will be his magnum opus (nothing wrong with this man's ego, by the way). Regardless of genre, this is a book written by a French intellectual about God and the meaning of life--And it is deeply moving.  

God, did you say?

His early church story is dazzling. And it set me off on a wild reading frenzy about anything I could get my hands on regarding early Christian history, which I know little about. Re-read "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter in Karamazov. Also inspired by The Kingdom, I read--and loved-- Amos Oz's Judas and Roger Caillois' Pontius Pilate.

++

My top non-fiction was Learning to Die in the Anthropocene.

Ostensibly about climate change, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene is really a Buddhist meditation on death. Convinced there is no rolling back the damage, the book is about finding ways of facing the end of civilization. And Scranton wants us to learn from Rome. We don't want to have to rebuild like those shipwreck survivors of the early middle ages trying to frantically recreate all the knowledge that was lost. And so much has already been lost. We must, therefore, make a concerted effort, he says, to conserve our ecological and our civilizational heritage. We need to look at the big picture. For such a short book, it really carried a big punch. I haven't been able to get it out of my mind all year (It was one of the first books I read in 2017).  3Quarks posts here and here.

I read about Learning to Die in Amitav Ghosh's Are We Deranged? (Also highly recommended!)

Lierre Keith's book, Vegetarian Myth was recommended by a friend and for me, it was also a game changer for me.

++

My top work of fiction in 2017 was Kim Stanley Robinson's Galileo's Dream. It was an absolute tour de force. The portrait of Galileo is inspired. As one reviewer stated so well, "This is a "warts and all" look at Galilei Galileo. 
I read this as part of an absolute flood of books on Galileo, read for a class I was auditing over at Caltech on Galileo's Trial. Professor loved the novel as well. 

My full review on the novel is here. Unfortunately, I can't find my copy of the book for the picture so I put Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140 in its place. Also read this year as part of my climate change in fiction reading frenzy, my review on that book is here.

++

Ilan Stavans was the biggest surprise of the year. I stumbled on his memoir, On Borrowed Words early on in 2017 and wondered: Where has he been all my life? His memoir resonated so deeply with my own experiences thinking and dreaming in a foreign language--and then imagine my surprise when I realized he had written on Columbus and Don Quixote as well--both being other classes I am auditing at Caltech. I wrote about his memoir in my favorite 3 Quarks post of the year, Romance of the Red Dictionaries.

And my review of his Columbus book is here. 

About Columbus, I read so many great books. My favorite in the end was Dante, Columbus and the Prophetic Tradition. 

Scipio's Dream being another major theme of the year (including the original work by Cicero and Macrobius/ famous commentary; as well as the novel by Ian Pears). 

I wrote about Scipio and Learning to Die in a 3Quarks post called Dreaming in Latin.

Oh yes, and speaking of surprises. A mistake is a surprise by another name. But when my friend mentioned the book Time Thief was one of her favorite books, I mistakenly assumed it was the book by Terry Prachett--not the mystery by Tony Hillerman!!  

What to do?

++

In history of science: This year, I read an uncountable number of science books. I audited a class on Einstein at the Caltech Einstein Papers Project and we read so many wonderful books (I loved especially Quantum Generations, which I forgot to write a review about--but highly recommend). Also noteworthy was Isaacson's biography on Einstein. I also loved Einstein in California, which was published to coincide with the Skirball exhibition. For my Galileo class, I read even more, and there were so many great books! Especially noteworthy was Heilbron's Galileo biography and this one on the trial by Shea and Artigas. I also loved On Tycho's Island by Christianson and Kitty Ferguson's very readable book, Tycho and Kepler. 

3 Quarks posts included, my top comment-generating post of all time (challenge people's preconceived notions and they get agitated): The Galileo Trial and Faux News from the 17th Century and my post on galileo, Kepler and SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT: Shut Up and Calculate --Oh and this one on Tycho Brahe: On Tycho's Island.

I wrote this on Einstein's Brain.

Also to prepare for the eclipse I read these eclipse books--the American Eclipse being particularly noteworthy. 

Thinking about it, Paul Bogard's book The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light should probably be included as one of my top reads of the year--since it was so deeply meaningful to me. I picked the book up at Moab National Park and the ranger at the cash register told me I was buying an important book. It really is. I might even go out n a limb and say if I could recommend one book to you, it would be this one. 

I wrote about it at length here, in RIVER OF HEAVEN" (天の川)

There are a ton of links at the bottom of the post. Tyler Nordgren is a really interesting thinker and I cannot recommend enough his Guide to Astronomy in the National Parks. Finally, I haven't written my review on this one yet but Michael J West's book on the telescopes on Mauna Kea is wonderful!!!

So--drum roll..... 

Of all the science books I read this year, one stands out for me. Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics
by Nancy Forbes, Basil Mahon. You can read my review here. 

++

And last but not least:

My gift-giving Christmas book this year was Wesley the Owl. 

It reminded me a bit of the the TV show, Durrell's on Corfu (and the books by Gerald Durrell who also loved animals so much) in how totally uplifting the story was. Indeed, we are living in such sad times that like the famous Wendell Berry poem about the Peace of Wild Things, this story really did make me feel hopeful. Just reading it, I could feel something like the poet described of:

"For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

The author had to struggle through an illness and it was heartbreaking to imagine what she was going through--but she had these friends who would do seemingly anything for her and then this glorious owl, who adored her more than anything in the world. My favorite parts of the book, in fact, involved those quiet moments when she looked into his eyes and described the peace and quiet she felt. In fact, she said, his eyes led her to God. It is such a beautiful story of a magnificent and dignified creature and a deeply compassionate and intelligent lady. 

Anyone interested in Caltech will love the tidbits about Feynman and life on campus at a time when physicists worked nude or someone could walk around in a medieval jester's costume and still command respect. She described the trolls who live down below in the labs and her descriptions of the biologists were really engaging. I loved the book and really recommend it to everyone (am buying it for Christmas gifts this year). 

My favorite quote of all:
'Live your life not by staying in the shallow, safer waters, but by wading as deep into the river of life as possible, no matter how dangerous the current. We have only one chance at this life.'

Last year's Christmas book was Pictures and Tears, by James Elkins. I re-read it last week and loved it even more the second time! I wrote at length about it here, in Eyes Swimming with Tears.

What a great year in reading!!!!

 

 

 

Persimmons in Winter

Kigo (季語) is a Japanese word or phrase associated with a particular season; especially in poetry. And "persimmon" (柿) is one of the famous kigo for autumn.

While originally coming from China, persimmons were imported into Japan very early on; where the growing of the fruit--and especially the unforgettable sight of persimmons hanging from the rafters of farmhouses in the cold autumn air to make dried persimmons-- has become a quintessentially Japanese practice from ancient times.  (古事記や日本書紀の中に記述が見られる).

Persimmons have been associated with the sound of temple bells tolling (in particular of the great bell at Horyuji Temple in Nara).

I love this haiku by Shiki (one of my all-time favorite poets)

柿くへば鐘が鳴るなり法隆寺

Biting into a persimmon

The great bell tolls

--Horyuji Temple

 

Gabi Greve has multiple translation options for the poem on her site.

Don't forget that Horyuji's bell resounds like Big Ben, one of the notes reminds us. Indeed!

Some of the translation play up the "when" (the moment when the poet takes his first bite is when the bell resounds); while others compare the deep tolling sound in the cold autumn air with the astringent taste of the fruit.

The post about a discussion that took place on a translation site ends like this (fascinating for translators especially!)

By now the process had been rolling for more than seventy-two hours. Under the heading 'Nuts and Bolts' the points raised might be summarised as:

1/ The tense and condition of the verb 'eat', its physical nature and abstract connotations
2/ The actual and symbolic nature of the sound of the bell
3/ The type and taste of the persimmon eaten
4/ The nature of the juxtaposition bell-fruit.
5/ The most effective image order
6/ The inclusion of the word 'temple'

The heading 'Translation Issues' would group some concerns such as:

A/ Literal, word for word, substitution vs. the translation of concepts
B/ Capturing tone
C/ The inclusion of phonic effects
D/ The uses of ambiguity
E/ Layering the meaning.
F/ The degree of context needed

Clearly then, Haiku Forum members were poised on the brink of a magisterial synthesis which would yield the definitive translation of Shiki's masterpiece.

Susumu Takiguchi:

" In order to understand Shiki's "persimmon/Horyuji" haiku really well, one must visit Horyuji around 25 October, take a rest at the tea house, eat persimmons and wait for the "tsuri-gane" bell to toll. Short of that, one should at least eat persimmons."

 ++

A universe of meaning contained in that one short haiku! I love that last sentence too, "at least one should eat persimmons when translating the poem!" 

I was eating persimmon bread when I did mine at top--not sure I like it as much as the translations I happened on today but that's okay.. 

Last year, I stumbled on this wonderful persimmon bread recipe and C baked it twice last year and --being behind in everything these days-- we had our first batch this morning in mid-winter! Bon appetite!

++ 

Thank you so much, Jiayan for reminding me of the documentary Red Persimmons (Film Journal entry)

 

 

 

 

 

The Yule Book Flood

A library can sometimes function as a kind of calendar. Like a Gothic cathedral, libraries are always greater than the sum of their parts; and so it is probably safe to say that they can be many things. Traditionally in Japan, for example, reading and bookshop displays were at times tied to seasonal events; poetry anthologies were always traditionally organized by season and sharing a summer poem in the fall, for example, could be considered as being in less than the best taste. The book-loving Japanese even have a season set aside when reading is said to be the most enjoyable.

秋の読書 "Autumn is for reading..."

I miss that.

And so with joy, we have included an Icelandic cultural import into our holiday seasonal calendar of events. The "Yule Book Flood."

What is jólabókaflóð? Jólabókaflóð, or “Yule Book Flood,” originated during World War II when foreign imports were restricted, but paper was cheap. Iceland’s population was not large enough to support a year-round publishing industry, so book publishers flooded the market with new titles in the final weeks of the year. While giving books is not unique to Iceland, the tradition of exchanging books on Christmas Eve and then spending the evening reading, is becoming a cultural phenomenon. In recent years the meme has spread on social media, and bookworms around the world are cottoning on to the idea. If you’re wondering how to pronounce jólabókaflóð, the phonetic pronunciation is yo-la-bok-a-flot--

But at our house, we just call it the "book-in-fluggin."

The above quote if from the read it forward site and the author humorously (but quite accurately) contrasts the quiet custom of exchanging books on Christmas eve to signal the coming of Christmas to our situation in the US:

Here in the United States, the beginning of the holiday season is signaled by the unceremonious swapping of Halloween candy for holiday decorations in grocery store aisles around the country on November 1st. Only by the grace of God will you not hear Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” before Thanksgiving. 

There is a wonderful quote by Italo Calvino that I have always loved.

“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”

And so we push back against the consumer coopting of the holidays. First, by taking Advent back-- setting it aside as a time to light candles and enjoy a lot of quiet evenings reading (and waiting) by the fire. We try not to get the tree till the end of advent and really try not to get pulled into all the frenzied hyper consumerism that has become Christmas in the United States. My absolute favorite tradition these days is the borrowed custom of the Yule Book Flood. Thank you Iceland! I have a beautiful jólabókaflóð basket that I put out at the start of Advent (when I put the Advent wreath out and the candles) and we wait and watch the basket fill up with books!

Now, that is magic!!!

Picture of Santa and Freeman Dyson inspired by my bibliophile comrade-in-arms AJ

And Wesley the Owl inspired by the wonderful book