Waking Hours

A day has 24 hours, and this is invariable.  Waking hours, more or less two-third of them, are also quantitively fixed.  With my bed hours, set at seven hours regularly from 12:00 midnight to 7:00 in the morning, my waking hours are regularly 17 hours, also a fixed length of time.  But, experientially, the same 17 hours vary day to day.  Some days are short; others are longer.  We are, of course, all familiar with this phenomenon.  The day is short when we retire at the of the day with the work planned for the day left unfinished.  On the contrary, as it is likely with most of us, when we are done with the day’s work long before bedtime, the day is felt longer. When we don’t have much to do through the day, the day is even longer.  So,  during these weeks of pandemic quarantine, with free time aplenty day to day, I am accomplishing a lot less.  I should certainly be writing more; but I am writing less.  My journal entires are skimpy, even left blank some days, so aggravatingly on reflection, when they could be and should be fuller. It is a truism, certainly, that we generally accomplish more when we have too much to do and have to work and try to finish under pressure whatever we planned to do.  A deadline, given or self-imposed, is an incentive we can not do without.  Without a deadline, I spent days to finish this little piece of writing. 

06.22.20

単調

短調は、長調と同じくいいけれど、

単調は蝶々が恋しくなる状態。

05.24.20

Marion Faber

Marion Faber’s intelligence does not shine.  In her modest demeanor, it glows.  And, unintentionally, almost despite herself, it scintillates on occasion but only gently. 

I first met Marion when I interviewed her; she applied for a position at Swarthmore College in German language and literature, and I was one of the interviewers outside her specialty. In an instant I saw that glow and had no hesitation in recommending her, and she joined us. I also learned that we shared a parallel career course from UC Berkley to Harvard to Swarthmore, and, quickly, we became fast friends, discovering bit by bit our vast and varied areas of common interest in languages, music, art, and literature.  After my retirement from Swarthmore in 2001, I moved to NYC, and our distance widened but, her periodic visit of the city and my occasional trip to Swarthmore resulted in greater intimacy.  We came to know each other well enough that it was often unnecessary to say a lot as we understood each other without many words. 

In our interaction, if I bring up a subject she always had something to say about it and then querying words, and our discussion develops and then expands from one topic to another, and we have a wonderful time, a trite expression here but for which I have no better words. 

Marion was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on 27 March, and she passed away on 30 April.  I mourn her; or, rather more accurately, her living presence continues to dwell in my being, never to leave. 

05.03.20

Clean Plate 食べ残さず

Having spent my childhood during the years of dire food shortage, during and after the World War, I acquired the habit of cleaning up the plate to the very last bit of food on it, whatever food is served on it, whether I liked it or not, and the habit never left me all my life to this day of old age. 

私は世界大戦中と戦後の最悪の食糧難に育ちましたので、 食べ物は、好き嫌い問わず、何であろうとも最後のひとかけらも残さずに食べる習慣が身について一生離れず、この老年までも続けてきました。

04/01/20

Hallucinations

Somehow, lying on my back, I imagined getting up on my feet to go to the kitchen and imagination turned into reality. But trying to return to my bedroom,y somehow, I walked into an adjacent kitchen, a flipover of mine on the same 3rd Floor, (which, of course, doesn’t exist in reality). Trying to return to my apartment I then found myself in a room overlooking a 3-story art gallery. Down on the 2nd Floor I saw a sale of art works was taking place, and I saw that a receipt being written on a large brown paper had on it the name Tokiko, my wife, and the work was undoubtedly her handwoven picture from my apartment, I shouted and banged on the wall to get the attention of the clerk but no noise was heard. Then, I saw another package with a note on it also had her name, and I realized all the works being sold came from the walls of my apartment. When somehow I managed to return to my bedroom I saw women shuffling through my clothes, including those I was recently wearing and my bedroom was a

Goodwill Store. A door appeared now then on an empty wall of the bedroom and I walked in to find the gallery again but no one heard me (like silent movie characters). Trying over and over, I finally got the attention of a gallerist and was able to tell him that all those works of art from my apartment are already legally willed. He then replied that he understands, etc. Now, the reply came in a novel way of texting. He writes on a large brown paper, maybe 3’ x 4’ which he presses on the glass wall separating the gallery from me and a light cellophane-like plastic sheet with his text flying in the air and stuck on an empty  wall to allow me to read and it flies away back to him. [I shall call it <CelloTexting>.]  trying to get back to my kitchen I ended up in the room corresponding to my main room on the other side which was a lounge with a small alcove with a stage where a rehearsal was taking place. I sat on a bench in the dark side room adjacent to the stage and watched the rehearsal first, watching with great interest the woman scene designer working on the stage, and then the performance itself, for which   I was given a first row seat, almost on the stage. I beckoned the director to move my seat a bit away from the stage and he complied promptly but by means of . At some point I managed to be back in the lounge, but none of the people there, all of them actors resting, could hear me or even see me, though I needed a help getting out of the theater to the lounge. I just sat in the lounge idly and finally two people appeared on the fire escape outside the large glass wall, peeking in. They disappeared, having climbed up higher, and when they returned I recognized the woman as Liz Mackie with a man I didn’t recognize. As they peered, I shouted and waved and I was not heard but seen and Liz came in with the apartment’s super and immediately she called an ambulance and took me to Weill- Cornell. She said then it was the 9th Floor where she found me but she later told me she and the super found me in my bedroom. The hallucination continued in the hospital. I was seeing elaborate drawings that filled the wall on my room, like 9 or perhaps 12 square grids depicting Nativity scenes in narrative sequence, others on the floor and ceiling, and also those sheets no one else saw.  Finally after three days or so the drawings and the cellophane sheets disappeared. 

The Great Fall 12/26/19

    Right now Monday 6 January 2020 I am at the Upper East Side Rehabilitation Center after five days at the Cornell/Presbyterian Hospital.

     The day after Christmas, 12/26, after I chatted with a friend on the phone, I lay on my bed for a nap at 4:00, woke up at 7:00 and went to the bathroom. There as I got up from the toilet I lost my balance and fell on the floor. Fortunately I was still conscious and I was not totally immobilized. So far so good.

     But I could not locate my iPhone. I had returned an alert device because it was too elaborate and had not ordered a simple button as yet to replace it, and I was careful to have the iPhone next to me. With no access to it I could not call 911, nor any friend nor any neighbor and the door knob was  too high to reach to allow me out in the hallway.

   So, I decided to try crawl back to my bedside. I was on the floor supine and could not turn around to face down. I used my shoulders and legs to inch along  the tight space to reach the bedside but didtn‘t find my IPhone there. This took all night. Frantically, i went around all the possible places in the apartment for three days and three nights without water, nor food nor sleep until presumably I collapsed.

     Liz Mackie with whom I was chatting before the nap knew of my recent weakening of balance, and, having failed to reach me by phone, came all the way from Brighton Beach at the southern tip of Brooklyn, and found me on the floor unconscious (actually hallucinating wildly), and called an ambulance to Weill/Cornell. She found my iPhone at the bottom of the washbasin sink where it slid down from its rim where evidently I had it resting instead of down to the floor. So, there was no chance my seeing it, not to speak of grabbing it, from my position 3 ft. off the floor.

     Five days at the hospital I regained my strength except for the muscular pain that stabs me when I move the body. Now at the Rehab I will receive Physical Therapy. I am on the two-week stay-in program. Except for the lower back pain, I am well, sleeping well though in short spurts of an hour or two and I am eating well, too. 

Happy end, almost.

I am grateful, too, that so many friends helped me with many errands of all sorts and looking after Vif my cat.

Kaori Kitao 🐂 01/06/20

Waiting

People waiting for a bus anxiously try to know when the next bus is arriving. They look up repeatedly at the lighted marker or google the bus checker on their iPhone.  Some step out on the road to look for a distant sight of an oncoming bus.  If the notice reports that the next bus arrives in seven minutes and it does not, they get irritated. The fact is that one comes when it comes.   If the wait is seven minutes, one only comes in seven minutes, supposedly, no sooner, no later.  This is the essential nature of anxiety.  All anxieties are superfluous.  A watched kettle never boils, we say; but it always does eventually.  It boils over dry, if we don't watch it; the bus we were waiting for came and and it went without me.

12/18/19

Winter - 冬

Brrr. It's so cold.  But one good thing about winter is that spring is around the corner, to think optimistically.

おお寒い、寒い。でも冬のいいところは春の来るのが鼻の先と、これ楽観的見地。

12/17/19

Insecure

Secure means stable as well as safe.  Approaching 87, I am finding my balance weakening.  I am getting unstable and prone to fall, a bit unsafe, ot secure as I used to be. 

12/10/19

Learning from Others

We can learn from others by imitating admirable behavior and avoiding despicable actions.  A Japanese saying puts it concisely: Correct your manners by watching those of others.  

There is a similar saying of Biblical and Mosaic origin, known as the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31).  I find this saying puzzling; what I like being done to me may be displeasing or even repulsive to someone else.  This saying, in short, is decisively prescriptive.  

The Golden Rule, also so known, in Confucius’s Analects, while similar, is passive; it states prohibitively: What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.  Do and Don’t mark the distinction.  Interestingly, Rabbinic Judaism in the words of Rabbi Hillel, matches Confucius: Do not do to others what you would not have done to you (Tobit 4:16). 

All this had been debated at length through the centuries from Kant to George Bernard Shaw and beyond.  The Japanese saying, significantly, is peculiarly Japanese; it is directive but passively and reflectively.  

All this reflection came about as I remembered how Mother habitually said these words: Correct your manners by watching those of others.  In my rebellious youth, I may have ignored them, but so long as I remember I had them deeply incised in my heart and as I matured I accepted them seriously. Reflecting in old age, I could say proudly that through my life I followed them as best as I could, except, being a contrarian by nature, I often rejected what was considered proper among those I observed and chose my way away from it or against it. 

人の美点、弱点を観察して、他人から学ぶもの多くあります。この観念を簡潔に表現した日本の格言に「人のふり見て我が振り直せ」というのがあります。

これと似た様な表現が英語にもありますね。キリスト教、更に遡ってモーセの掟で、『自分にして欲しいことは、相手にもせよ」（マテオ  7章12節、ルカ 6章31節）。でも、奇妙なのは、自分に気に入ったことが相手には不快なだったり、嫌だったりすることもあるでしょう。つまり、この表現は決定的に行動を規定するものです。

この黄金律といわれるもの、孔子の「論語」にも出てきますけど、逆に禁制を表してます。「己の欲せざるところ、他に施すことなかれ」。つまり、「しろ」と「するな」の違いです。面白いことに、ラビ・ユダヤ教（ダビデの末裔を称したファリサイ派のラビ、ヒルレルの言葉）には、「自分が嫌なことは、ほかのだれにもしてはならない」とあります（『トビト記』4章15節）。

これは、この数世紀、カントからジョージ・バーナード・ショウ、その以降に至るまでいろいろ議論されてきたことですけど、日本の格言は、指示はするけど受動的及び思考的で、その点目立って日本的です。

こういう事を考え始めた動機は、「人のふり見て我がふり直せ」とは母が口癖の様にした言葉でしたのを思い出した事で、これは記憶にある限り胸に刻み込まれてます。反抗期の頃には無視したかもしれませんけど、成人するに従って熟考すようになり、老年になって、一生忘れずにできる限り実行してきたと自慢して言えると思っています。ただし、生まれつき天邪鬼の私のこと、一般に賞賛される物事、行為をしりぞけ、しばしば意識して、そのれから外れた道或いは反対の方向を選んだものでした。

08.26.19

Listening with the Body

When I watch a dance performance, I follow the dancer’s movement by twitching my muscles to mimick the dancer but without moving my limbs so as not to  disturb my fellow viewers.  In other words, I watch not just with my eyes but with my whole body.  

Similarly, when I attend a live music performance, I also work my muscles and thus listen to the music with my whole body, not just with my ears, as the performing musicians obviously do, too; I follow them in their bodily movements as I do when I watch dancers. 

It is not uncommon today among those who claim to love music to listen to the recorded or broadcast music while being engaged in a task of one sort of another — writing, reading, painting, cooking, doing whatever chores being done.  I do, too, sometimes when I have the radio on and music happens to be playing.  But when I put on a CD, I have to sit and follow the music with full attention, for only then I can say that the music was listened to, not just heard.  It should not be surprisingly, then, that I consider attending a live performance with its visual componens the only valid way of listening to music; recorded music is a partial realization, as a photographic reproduction of a painting is to the painting itself.  Once we learn to listen to music fully with our whole body, it becomes hard to just let it be heard aurally.  It always amazes me at concerts that the audience almost invariably sit tight with their head fixed straight as though in a church. I cannot help moving my head slightly to focus on the changing sources of the sound, strings here, winds here, and percussion over there, and discreetly move my right hand with the bowing hand of string players as I once played violin as a child and cello later.   As I listen, I become partially a participant in the performance.  Participatory listening is more natural to jazz than to classic music; and yet, even at jazz clubs, I notice in amazement that the audience for the most part sit perfectly still.  Yes, there are some who get up and dance in total participation. 

It is well to remember that until the rise of radio broadcasting at the end of the 19th century, music was exclusively live.  It could be heard in a concert hall or in private homes, customarily chamber music literally.  Live broadcast, incidentally, a curious contradiction in terms; isn’t it more accurate to say simultaneous broadcast?

I think we can say the same thing to some extent with talks, lectures, and discussions; when we listen, totally absorbed in what is being said, as we watch the speaker and her/his gesticulations, we also respond with our whole body and the substance of the talk registers more firmly in our mind.  This argues strongly for the value of live classroom learning. 

This argues strongly for the value of live classroom learning.  From the teaching side of the fence, I argue that professors who read from their notes fail to understand the significance of the bodily communication with the students by which the importance of bodily listening can only be taught and understood.

08.25.19

Friends

Time spent with a friend is always a bliss, and one could perhaps say, conversely, that when time spent with someone was onerous, that person was not a friend, but only an acquaintance.  This is certainly a trite statement, a truism insofar as the definition of the word friendship is affection, implying mutual trust and support.  Still, in old age, when loneliness tends to prevail, friendship assuredly delivers a sense of fulfillment — happiness.  

04.17.19

In the arms, on the back だっこ、おんぶ

小さな子供が、母親の手を握って、楽しそうにスキップしながら付いていくのをみるとると、あたし自身の子供の頃を思い出し心が温まります。お手つなぎは、手のひらを合わせるものという考えが念頭にあって、手首を握られると嫌がって振り放したものでした。そして、疲れてきて「だっこ」や「おんぶ」してもらったりした時の暖かい安楽感は忘れがたいものです。叔父の「肩乗り」は少し不安でしたけど, 高さの見晴らしがよく、初めて乗馬した時にその記憶が脳裏に浮かびました。

When I see a little girl with her hand in her mother’s hand go skipping along joyfully, my heart warms up watching her as I remember my own childhood. I believed that holding Mother’s hand meant clasping the palms together; so, I disliked having my wrist grasped and would shake my hand off.  When I got tired of walking and skipping, I would be carried in Mother’s arms (dakko in Japanese) or on her back (onbu) comfortably, and that warm sense of security is unforgettable.  Riding on the shoulders of my uncle was a bit scary but the view from the high point was wonderful, and I recalled the sensation when I got on horseback for the first time. 

06.13.18

Capitalist Farce

In this capitalist democracy, the poor is granted a full right and the rich deems to claim an equal right proportionate to the size of its wealth. Oh, what a farce. 

04/08/19

Growing Older

As a child, we yearn to grow up, delighting in earning one year, year by year, counting our age on our fingers when our birthday comes around. Growing older was exciting.  Many of us in our 20s experience trepidation as we approach 30.  Getting older becomes anathema as we get older.  Curious, isn’t it, that in old age, aging becomes innocuous, maybe even welcome.  This is my experience, anyway. Reaching 80, I started to find delight, again, earning one full year, year by year.  It is a delight in reflection rather than in anticipation, this satisfaction, looking back, of having spent a year in health and contentment, a sense of accomplishment even without any accomplishment to boast of.  At 86, I look forward to my 87th birthday.  It’s great.

04/07/19

2019: Turning Point

All these ten years, I went out every day and night, feeling that I had to see everything the city had to offer — arts, performances, and places; but that is impossible in this city of overflowing cultural places and events.  Before that, for eight years, splitting time between Swarthmore, PA, and New York City, I could see only what I could.  Having full time in the city whetted my voracious appetite limitlessly.  I wouldn’t say I now feel saturated.  But I am ready to start feeling that I don’t have to see everything, not even everything I want to see.  I am beginning to feel content seeing what I could, as before, but not by being constrained by available time or energy, but, for now, by exercising willful selectivity. At 86 I am finally a little bit wiser. 

04/06/19

2018: Year of Effort

This was the year of continuous effort.  It was the year of slow but steady recovery from the elbow injury suffered in a fall in November last year and the ensuing surgery.  I regained nearly full use of the right arm a full year later, as promised by the surgeon.  But the recovery process involved weakening of the body, owing to the weeks of reduced physical activity; and my stamina declined and the balance on my feet also got less firm.  Through the year I felt that I aged three years in this one year. Simple tasks I had been taking for granted became difficult, like reaching up to the higher shelf and stooping to pick up something on the floor, standing too long chopping and stirring when cooking, even getting down and up from the chair.  I dutifully continued the PT exercises, and the progress, though slow, was steady month by month. By August, when I walked out on the street, I was able to take broad steps and move more briskly than indolently, allegro assai, no andante. 

I saw light at the end of the tunnel by the end of the year. 

12.31.18

Caravaggio, Caravaggesque

A painting depicting Judith Beheading Holofernes, found in an attic in France in 2014, surfaced in auction recently as a long lost Caravaggio, so attributed by experts (ArtNet News, 28 February). 

One should not judge without seeing the original.  But my immediate instinct, on the basis of the reproduction, is that it is No Caravaggio. I don't know why the so-called experts look at the brushwork and details with close attention, and they are not to be disregarded, but not at a large picture, so to speak.  I find the composition and the chiaroscuro in this painting unconvincing.  

The difference becomes immediately clear when we compare this painting with Caravaggio’s own, 1598-99, now in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica in Rome. 

In the recently attributed painting, Judith’s hands are hard to see; in Caravaggio’s own, her bare arms are centrally placed with her right hand gripping the sword and the sword inserted deep into Holofernes’s neck.  The viewer's eye is thus immediately drawn to and held in Judith's action.  Her expression is calm and determined.  In the attributed work, the servant breaks the relationship between her mistress and the victim, so powerfully depicted in the work of the master.   Then, Caravaggio’s reputed dramatic chiaroscuro, of which definition Caravaggio changed in practice from a mere light-and-shade, that is, chiaro + oscuro, to theatrical illumination, makes Judith the unmistakable protagonist.  It is noteworthy, too, that Judith, clad in white here, is robed in black in the less competent composition.  The dramatic chiaroscuro becomes prevalent in Caravaggio’s work after 1600 regardless of the subject matter. 

While a good artist can occasionally produce less competent work, these two points, the composition and chiaroscuro, disqualify the recent discovery to be considered Caravaggio’s own.  

We may further observe that Artemisia Gentilleschi who also painted Judith Beheading Holofernes in 1620 (The Uffizi), fully understood Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro, though she resorted to a different compositional strategy by having the servant helping her mistress by holding down the victim and thus clustering the three figures into a single powerful dramatic action. 

03.15.19 

Forgetting the Forgotten

As we get older, we get forgetful.  This is familiar to us all, old or young, firsthand or secondhand. It becomes harder and harder to remember names and words, often embarrassingly, in the middle of a conversation.  It is also well known that matters of immediate past are more easily and quickly forgotten whereas matters from our remote past remain intact and often vivid.  Of late, approaching 86, I am experiencing forgetfulness on still another level.  

I forget what I had forgotten.  It is not failing to remember what it was that I had forgotten; it is obvious that what had been forgotten could not be remembered because it had been forgotten. It is failing to remember, not what it was that had been forgotten, but the fact that I had tried to remember something but could not.  For example, I stop washing the dishes, dry my hands and walk to the computer to look up something, knowing that I would not remember if I had waited until I finished the dishes, but, reading the computer, I don’t remember what it was I was going to look up.  Later, settling down at the computer, I have no memory of the earlier effort to look up something, not even its urgency. 

When I think of looking up something, which happened possibly by chance what I had tried earlier to look up, I should remember that it was what I had earlier tried to remember to look up but had forgotten, but I don’t.  I had totally forgotten that I had already forgotten before. This is forgetting the forgotten.  It should annoy me; but, curiously, or rather obviously, it doesn’t.  Forgetfulness is a bliss. I have a glimpse that dementia, in every point of progress, may well be liberating. 

12.31.18

Funny

Funny is a funny word because there is nothing funny the way the word is used here. 

11/28/18