itinerant

Japan: getting into the mood

itinerant — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:25:00 GMT

For this trip I’m consulting Fodor’s, and National Geographic, instead of the usual Rough Guides and Lonely Planet. And to get into the mood for Japan I opened Kurosawa’s Something Like an Autobiography, and went up to page twenty-five today. He was born in Tokyo, and till where I’ve read he describes himself a crybaby, but he reveals himself as determined and exceptionally hardworking as a boy. On a normal day when he was in grade-five he rose and walked an hour and twenty minutes to reach fencing school. The sun came up while he walked back home hungry for breakfast with a task waiting to be performed before reaching home—an enforced visit to a Shinto shrine. After breakfast he went to school and came home after sunset, after calligraphy classes, and some time spent at the home of a favorite teacher.

He says his childhood home had the set and mood of a samurai's.

Writing this, I have a sudden urge to go see the Daiō Wasabi Farm, location of Kurosawa's Dreams

to tokyo and kyoto and…

itinerant — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:44:00 GMT
It isn't so long ago that I went to Istanbul, and although—to enhance my experience—I read Orhan Pamuk ahead of my departure and Pierre Loti while in Istanbul, the memories of the time spent there are fading, leaving behind static images of this and that. From the half-day spent in a gray Balat, for instance, I remember most the two skinned heads of lamb (their eyes intact in their sockets) that stared at my white walking shoes from behind the glass on the bottom shelf while I tried to get directions from the butcher. He had no English, I had no Turkish.

I went to the palaces of the dead great; and called on them where they are interred. I saw objects that belonged to men greater than the great: The beard of the prophet, the tooth of the prophet, the sword and the bow and the tunic of the prophet, the gleaming staff of Moses, the sword of David, the skull and one arm of John. I’m surprised they didn’t awe me when I saw them; now they are a dull memory. The palace, the harem, the chambers of the princes, the peacock throne, the tiles—the Topkapi took all of one day, but the memories are lifting off my mind.

I gazed at the living Istanbullus from behind cafe windows. They have coalesced into a blur.

Why go far to see things most of which I’ll forget? No more reason than that I feel good while I’m there. People are suddenly more interesting and I catch myself staring at them and I don’t feel guilt from it; history ceases to be boring; I notice better the smells and the breeze and the sway of the trees and the course of the moon. Coffee tastes good. I read better.

Joy happens during the experience. In a week I’ll go to Japan for two good weeks of walking.

Shanghai: Huai Hai to Sinan Lu

itinerant — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:05:00 GMT

When the seventh tout asked to sell a watch to me I raised my voice. I was surprised that his aggression vaporized at that minor inflection and he stepped aside, but after I’d gone ten steps he hurled at my back all the English he could muster: “fucking!” I forgave him after some minutes over a cappuccino in a cafe on Sinan Lu where even the chair on which I sat was antique and was price-tagged for sale. Near Huai Hai, where it happened, touts once sold fakes comfortably in an informally designated fake market, and now the market is pulled down and those who have only fakes to sell must try other methods.

From Sinan Street, and from other small establishments near it, they hatched the plans and conducted the several revolutions that founded the Chinese republic and made it communist. Just when I arrived they closed off the entrance to Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s former residence to let in a long VIP convoy. So I walked on down the street to Zhou En Lai’s former residence, which they say was his residence in name only, but his close comrades and other comrades who dealt with foreign diplomats and the press, and visiting comrades from across China, they all lived there. Down in the basement is his black car, which was registered 00070 when it served him, a lovely beast with a lunging snout and hollow (dimpled, some might say) cheeks. Its radio-antenna rose from the brow and fell backward, like hair slicked back. Not all may call a Buick a beast; I don’t know cars so well.

The Buick is restored by Repair Factory Number Three of General Motors, Shanghai. Inside the house, which is (of course) a museum, there is a picture exposing the fact that America allied with KMT to widen the civil war. Learning a little of olden-day affairs, of western people in Shanghai’s Concessions, the thought drifted in my mind that maybe the Maoists did a damn good job in uniting their nation and restoring its dignity, but that’s all I’ll say—politics I know very less and anyone can whittle me to the ground in a political debate.

When I returned to Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s the convoy had gone and my respect for the fathers of the Republic had risen enough and so I was moved by the man’s achievement. My grief for the Last Emperor (which persists from when I watched the movie) melted somewhat, seeing the simple life of Sun Yat-sen in that house. Now, writing, my remembrances are of the charm of his wife (her picture on the wall, in which she’s at a table with a book, pensive), the grace in her letters, and her flowing elegant handwriting. I’m retiring thinking that this couple lived a good life. Their marriage lasted ten years, ending with his death when she was thirty-two, when he was fifty-four, or perhaps fifty-eight.

Shanghai: arrival

itinerant — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:47:00 GMT

I couldn’t see the lights of the city when we came below the clouds, but only water, which streaked across the windows and wriggled and fell and formed again, and among those stringy lines some larger bubbles stayed and quivered till they were taken down. After we landed we taxied a long time and I went into fresh reverie and when I emerged from it I saw the tarmac smooth and shining in water, as though it was flooded a foot under it, but it was only a thin film that gave the illusion.

The doorman was tall in his long coat, like the columns of the porch around him, and I marveled at the splendor of the man while he removed my bags with the languor of the bored and the confident. The taxi driver wasn’t so impressed and he began to leave with my last bag still in the boot and the doorman lifted the bag and banged the lid with the full use of his strong arm, not for a moment pausing his regal flow.

He did peer a moment into the dark of the taxi to check if the offense he had returned had hit its mark.