Gunter Grass's THE TIN DRUM is just an amazing amazing read. I'm not done with it yet, but every chapter feels like a tiny journey, and the voice of the narrator is such a joy to read, every line is like a fiesta. It is like watching an amazing linguistic acrobatic performance. He takes you to great heights and strange places, and offers a unique and unforgettable view of the world as this strange, grotesque, magical place. I realized this about really amazing writers, they have this hynoptic hold on you page after page after page. And their voice lingers, and your view of the world you are in is colored by it, so that after reading a chapter of THE TIN DRUM on BART, when walking through the Stockton tunnel to work, and on seeing the black magnetic tape of a tape casette strung all along the handrail of the tunnel, I felt this incredible joy. They looked just like silvery black streamers, dancing in the currents of exhuast fumes that flows through that tunnel, and against the wet, dirty, and balck concrete ground, they were a celebration of something, I couldn't put my finger on it what. Even the homeless man I saw on my way to work, using a rusty razor blade to remove fungus growth on his feet, attains this strange magical property.
Ah...that's what great writing does to you.
By: Nippy | Friday, September 23, 2011 at 1:12 AM | | 
After sending Li off to the USA hostel where she will be picked up by a bus to Yosemite, I walked to work. Up three steep blocks up up up hill, past the Grace Cathedral and the Fairmont Hotel, there standing at the highest point, I could see the bay—blue green in the sun, and the thin layer of fog floating above that glimmering blue, and the mountain standing above it, looking like it is a mountain in the clouds.
Today, is going to be a good day.
By: Nippy | Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 12:54 AM | |
What is it liking meeting an old friend again after five years to find that you and I have both changed? I don’t know. It is a complicated question, and the response is equally complicated. Five years is a long time. It is half a decade. The time passed and the experiences that happen over the course of time cannot be so easily captured in a meeting again. It is not a caricature of two people running towards each other embracing. Time has not stood still, and our experiences have shaped each of us in unique ways. Things never fall neatly together, like jigsaw puzzles made to fit. You realize old compatibility that drew you two together may be quite strained, or that opinions that didn’t seem to differ that much (differences no bigger than a tiny crack) had over the time widened to a gulf.
Then what? Where do things stand for old friends. Old friends; New people. I don’t know. I guess like all things, it is a matter of getting to know some one once again. It is to try to remove assumptions or presumptions that you understand someone, because no one truly does. We all travel alone, our paths (like in that old poem by Robert Frost we love) diverge and we go on our own way. Meeting again, sometimes we find that we have come closer than before or farther away. We may find ourselves standing under the same tree or across the river from each other.
But all this is another fact of life, like how people come together and are separated. Like how things grow and die, or how things are built up destroyed and built up again. It is not sadness or even estrangement I feel. It is this very quiet acceptance that I am different now and you are too, but it is also that wonderful understanding that no matter how far away you are (across a river or over a mountain) I still recognize you my old friend. I still do.
By: Nippy | Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 6:44 AM | |
You'll realize (or at least I did some time ago) that it is never the beautiful philosophical deep thoughts that characterize everyday life. It is always the petty. The incredibly petty. And the little irritations. Believe me, I have murderous rage against these petty irritations. I detest my boss right now. I really do. Cheap bastard.
By: Nippy | Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 3:20 AM | |
I almost cried just now. I'm serious, but I'm glad I didn't. Went to the UPS store inside Fairmont hotel after rolling the trolley with that big package uphill and was told that dropping off any package inside a hotel cost $5. It wasn't only because I was taking into factor my cheap boss who would get pissed over the $5, but the fact that it was just plain unfair. Why should I, after rolling that heavy ass box uphill pay you snobby Chinese fatso sitting in your air-conditioned office $5 for doing nothing. He told me, "all UPS stores located inside hotels charge $5 for drop off because these UPS stores only serve hotel guests" and that the next closest UPS store is 4 blocks down on Mason and Sutter. Inside, lounging in the lobby are all these rich white people having their afternoon glass of wine. I rolled the trolley one block stood at the top of the steep hill on Mason and California and looked down. It was a steep decline. I would have to go downhill 4 blocks with the heavy box on the roller cart. I tested the weight of the box by taking three small steps. It was so heavy, I would have rolled downhill if I was stupid enough to take the UPS asshole's advice "It's good exercise for you." He had said it with an ironic smile.
To top it all off, some asshole in a nice expensive car was trying to get into the hotel and stopping for a pesdestrian with a heavy box and clumsy cart was just too much to ask of him. I was sweating and struggling with the cart and box and really I would have cried. But there, just one block away was a UPS truck. I managed to roll the cart downhill and got to the UPS truck just as the driver was starting the engine. I asked him, my voice already trembling from the frustration and the urge to cry if he would be so kind to let me drop off the box with him, when he nodded, I almost cried again.
Well, what is the moral of this story? Not much other than the fact that rich people live in an entire different world. Or maybe the same world but on a different plane. Just now, I had felt so poor, so indignant and for inexplicable reasons, so humiliated. It is ultimately a matter of $5. It is $5 I was asked to pay for a service no different than anywhere else, but it is $5 to pay for not being priviledged. I think, that was what sucked the most. It is $5 to pay for not being rich enough to live inside a Fancy hotel to use the service of a UPS store no different than any other. If it is not for the kindness of the UPS driver, I really would have started to cry. Sometimes, that is all that makes the world tolerable.
By: Nippy | Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 5:57 AM | |
My last argument with Lee began with his saying: The U.S did not lose the Vietnam war. The U.S withdrew. North Vietnam did not win the Vietnam war. They successfully defended themselves.
By: Nippy | Friday, September 02, 2011 at 2:34 PM | |
