This is the most Japanese looking Christmas tree I've seen. I saw it yesterday at Kyoto Station.
There are hundreds of restaurants and cafes in Kyoto Station. All of them were packed and there were people queued outside every one. I ate some ramen at the mall across the street where I had trouble finding an empty seat in the food court. People sure like to eat out in Japan.
On the long train ride to and from Kyoto, I read from a Dostoevsky short story collection. It seemed Christmasy somehow, not just because one of the stories I read was "The Christmas Tree and a Wedding." Which isn't much of a Christmas story, actually.
I also read one of my favourite works of Dostoevsky, a short story called "White Nights" about a lonely, introverted young man who strikes up a passionate friendship with a seventeen year old girl he meets in the street. This section seems remarkably to describe many internet denizens:
"There are, Nastenka, though you may not know it, strange nooks in Petersburg. It seems as though the same sun as shines for all Petersburg people does not peep into those spots, but some other different new one, bespoken expressly for those nooks, and it throws a different light on everything. In these corners, dear Nastenka, quite a different life is lived, quite unlike the life that is surging round us, but such as perhaps exists in some unknown realm, not among us in our serious, over-serious, time. Well, that life is a mixture of something purely fantastic, fervently ideal, with something (alas! Nastenka) dingily prosaic and ordinary, not to say incredibly vulgar."
"Foo! Good Heavens! What a preface! What do I hear?"
"Listen, Nastenka. (It seems to me I shall never be tired of calling you Nastenka.) Let me tell you that in these corners live strange people—dreamers. The dreamer—if you want an exact definition—is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort. For the most part he settles in some inaccessible corner, as though hiding from the light of day; once he slips into his corner, he grows to it like a snail, or, anyway, he is in that respect very much like that remarkable creature, which is an animal and a house both at once, and is called a tortoise.
In his solitude and dreaming, the speaker in "White Nights" conjures a world and the world is, most of the time, the only reflection he has. Just as the internet provides anonymity or a greater amount of control over how one is perceived, leading to the person achieving a strangely amorphous sense of self. That quoted translation is the old Constance Garnett translation. The book I have, translated by David Magarshack, translates what Garnett renders as, "is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort," instead as, "is not a man, but a sort of creature of the neuter gender." The original Russian is, "не человѣкъ, а, знаете, какое-то существо средняго рода," which Google translates as, "not a man, but, you know, some sort of neuter creature." Garnett died in 1946, my book was printed in 1992, it's hard to say which way the political influence may have swung the thing but it looks like Magarshack is closer to the original meaning. It makes sense, too, since the narrator's discussion of himself greatly concerns his relationships--or lack thereof--with women.
What I admired most about the story is just that it's about two people really talking. Really opening up about their ideas, desires, hopes, and concerns. It's been years since I've known someone I could do that with. Both in college in the U.S. and here in Japan, most of the people I've met are so guarded, so busy figuring out the opinions they're supposed to have, the things they're supposed to say. It's exhausting.
The ending of the story is bittersweet. The narrator may ultimately get his heart broken but Nastenka is never villainised. If you put yourself in her shoes, it's hard to imagine a better way for her to behave. I remember the first time I read it, years ago, leaving it with the firm feeling that I would rather be alone than be someone's backup choice. I still feel that way.
Twitter Sonnet #1651
Across the frozen ground's a dozen dogs.
The brothers met about a lonely flame.
A tangled path diverged in icy bogs.
A fuse ignites beside the captured dame.
The shreds of plastic trashed the winter coat.
The extra scarf confounds the angry kids.
A million hands could hold the leaky boat.
A paper cup secures but zero bids.
Forgotten geese could fill a plate of food.
A time for leaves invites the tree to grow.
Elastic pants result in dampened mood.
A broken wire carts the fallen snow.
The famous pine was taken ev'ry way.
The rabid dancer's racing ev'ry day.
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