Author: Nada Gordon

NO.

Ben Friedlander’s student, Rachel Lee, who wrote an insightful paper on Swoon, excerpts her paper here in a lovely capsule review. Thank you, Rachel!

Nick has just blogged the da Vinci quote I would have blogged if I were blogging the things I’m supposed to. I am too fatigued to write about the events I experience here all the time — the demonstration, the da Vinci show, the Enough reading, the looks on the faces of the weary people on the F train, clutching their propaganda tabloids, etc. Or what. Is that it? Fatigued?

Elsewhere.

I was often lonely and sometimes woke up crying in the middle of the night, but it was worth it.

Summer: lounging on the tatami in a clean yukata, drinking chilled barley tea, the big glass doors open. Watching the iron wind chimes on the balcony, and dragonflies speeding here, there.

Humidity. Formality. Dreaminess.

On festival days the public address system played traditional music with fife and drums, or gagaku. Some kind of music was often piped in to the shopping street as well.

I am very sure that the carp in the pool at Gotokuji shrine miss me, one of their most fervent admirers. It was said that one of the carp resembled a human being.

One of the many interesting things about life in Tokyo: the neighborhood public address system. It would remind the citizens of public holidays and tax days, and would periodically run tests to ensure its seemingly inviolable efficiency. The echo across the neighborhood, competing with the voices of crows.