40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty Five

Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
Yasunari Kawabata

A birthday present from Andrea Collins last year, Palm Of The Hand Stories is a collection of miniature tales written by Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata throughout his career, though most of these stories date from the 1920s, leading one to think that these stories are how Kawabata learned his craft. After making my way through the heft and density of Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day, I needed something lighter, smaller and more focused.

In general, the tone is evocative and minimalist, dreamlike either overtly or subtly. For Western referents, think Kafka sometimes, James Carver other times. But Kawabata’s work never bores me the way Carver’s does. As with any collection, some stories are going to fade as soon as you finish them, others may have an impressive element or reveal an unique approach to fiction, while a few rank as some of the most impressive short stories I’ve read. I suspect any reader would agree, though I doubt any two readers would agree on which stories fit which categories. For what it’s worth, my favorites may have concerned the ghost of an old man walking with the ghost of a young love. The two talk, realize that they are ghosts, discuss a bit about their lives, and then decide to inhabit a tree and are never seen again. Another evocative story concerns a woman remembering a shopping trip with her mother and her mother’s indecision over what cheap umbrella to buy, a memory made bittersweet by the ensuing destruction of WWII; a man driving a cart who befriends a little girl who attempts to hitch a ride.

Kawabata relies mainly on setting and mood to capture a moment in time or feeling, but he avoids huge changes, cheap twists and epiphanies. His theme seems to be relationships between men and women, the gap between what they want and what they have: arranged marriages are a recurring element. His characters are mostly quiet, slightly repressed and dreamy. Watchers and thinkers, rather than doers. They reflect on things and have feelings, but rarely are there life changing moments. This realization without much action serves to lend a mournful quality to the stories.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty Four

More Images from The Joyous Mysteries Pop Up Book


What are the Joyful Mysteries? Rev. Coerezza writes that the Rosary

consists of 150 Hail Marys, which with the recall the life (sic) of Our Lord in 15 mysteries, form a beautiful crown of praise to Jesus and Mary, His Mother. The first five mysteries are called "Joyful" : these show us the Virgin Mary as Mother of the Child Jesus.

The Five Mysteries are:
I. The Annunciation
"Surprise! You're pregnant!"


II. The Visitation of Our Blessed Lady to St. Elizabeth
As soon as Mary visited her pregnant cousin Elizabeth, the child in Elizabeth's womb was cleansed of Original Sin and Sanctified. He would grow up to be John the Baptist.


III. The Birth of Jesus in a Stable in Bethlehem


IV. The Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple
A man named Simeon made accurate predictions about the life of Christ, adding that sorrow was going to break Mary's heart, which is exactly what every new mother wants to hear.


V. The Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple


I have to admit, I didn't know any of this. I had no idea there was a structure to the Rosary apart from certain beads meant Hail Mary's and certain ones meant Our Father's.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty Three

Doggie On The Subay



Photos from my ride home tonight.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty Two

The Mysteries of the Rosary Pop Up Books

It was one of those finds that I knew I had to have, even though I knew I shouldn't spend the money. Sitting on a wooden chair in a used book store in Margaretville, NY, were three large (18" x 13") pop-up books detailing The Mysteries of the Rosary: Part 1 The Joyful Mysteries, Part 2 The Sorrowful Mysteries, and Part 3 The Glorious Mysteries.



I couldn't stop flipping through the books, taking in the rich colors on their thick pages which melded Catholic and greeting card art. The more I looked the more I wanted but they were only available as a set - as should be - and the price was too high. I'm terrible at bartering, one of the reasons I felt overwhelmed by Morocco. I'm more of a feel sad the price is out of my reach and walk away. I showed the books to my friends and said sotto voce that I really wanted them but couldn't justify the price but probably would. I knew I would never see them again.

I talked with the owner of the bookstore expressing my amazement and asking for more information about the books. She didn't really have any. What was the Salesian Catechetical Centre? Why in Hong Kong? Indicia seems to say they were published in 1967 but who knows? While talking with the owner, as I was getting ready to try and bargain, my friend Michele joined us. "What's that?" she asked. I showed her the books. "Oh, you have to get them. You have to!" So much for the strategy of acting like I wasn't that interested and buying them was doing the owner a favor. However, the owner did knock quite a bit off the price. Still expensive but much easier to justify.

The mysteries behind the books hasn't been solved. When I first bought them, I did a google search for the titles, author and publisher and could not find anything. No copies available on amazon or abebooks or ebay. However, when I began writing this entry, I did a quick google search again and managed to find a webpage but little real info for The Salesian Catechetical Centre.

Regardless, I'll be posting some of the images from these books during the 40 Days of Lent. For now, here is Our Lady of Lourdes. I like how from an angle you can see the stagecraft of Mary standing on her paper pedestal that matches the background.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty One

More Drawings By Carl Jung






Images taken from The Red Book.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twenty

Well, on the plus side, I don't know of anyone who died today (and boy is writing that tempting fate) although it seems my email is down: I haven't gotten a message since mid afternoon. Usually my spam alone lets me know the system is working. Just as well. I don't know if it is a holdover from this weekend but I'm in a less than great mood though I'm not sure why. I don't really feel like posting anything, hence one of those writing exercises about not having anything to write.

I suspect I might be one of the few people who looks forward to winter and feels melancholy at the coming of spring and then summer. I suspect it is because I like the quiet of winter and dislike, and to a certain degree don't understand the noise of the warmer months. Okay, it's nice out, but why does that inspire you to play your crappy music louder? Perhaps if I lived in a quieter neighborhood I would welcome the warmer temperatures, but since 2000 I've lived on noisy streets. Perhaps I'm getting tired of the city.

I promise something better tomorrow, which aren't bad words to live by.

40 Days of Lent: Day Nineteen

Peter Bergman (1939 - 2012)

Oy. A day after learning about the death of one of my favorite visual artists, Moebius, I learn that one of my favorite audio artists, Peter Bergman of the Firesign Theatre, has died. Clearly it's not a good time to be someone whose work I like. Robyn Hitchcock: consider yourself warned.

Or are people leaving the planet any way they can before the Mayan prophecy about December 2012 comes true (which sounds like something from a Firesign Theatre record)?

What was the Firesign Theatre? I can't put it any better than Greil Marcus in the Rolling Stone Record Guide: "They were the first, and remain the only, comedy group whose primary medium was the stereo phonograph record itself; thus, their best albums stand up to literally hundreds of listenings. Multi-tracked, multileveled, multidimensional--one never gets to the bottom of them."

I got into them as a child because some Big Kids liked them. I heard about them from my best friend Steve Gutin, who heard about them from friends of his older sister Madeleine. I first learned of Monty Python the same way - I must have been all of 10 years old - but unlike Python, which I immediately got, Firesign's humor was much more elusive, i.e. it didn't make me laugh. But I kept listening, feeling like I was getting closer and closer to figuring it all out and because certain bits were such pleasures to listen to. Soon after they began to make me laugh. Then I started to figure it out.

Because they worked as a collective, 4 or 5 Crazee Guys, it's hard for me to pick out exactly what Bergman brought to the group, though it was on his radio show Radio Free Oz that birthed the group. I can't tell who is doing what voice on the records except for the times that David Ossman's smooth "Golden Age of Radio" tones or Phil Proctor's cheerful Leprechaun jests come through. But the one time I saw them live, almost twenty years ago, it was evident how integral each performer was.

Because their work was surreal and associative rather than linear, I believe listening to them taught me to think in a slightly different way. I began to understand puns, allusions and quick references better than any English class in school could teach me. Thinking in levels of meaning seemed neither alien nor a challenge. Accepting that an artwork didn't have to make "sense" so long as it felt right was something I picked up from their records, along with the attitude that things may be horrible but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be amused by them. I suspect that when people refer to the importance of marijuana use in conjunction with the Firesign Theatre's work, it is this attitude to which they are referring as much as their original audience's drug of choice.

Mr. Bergman had been suffering with leukemia and I wish him the peace he deserves. Part of what hurts when your favorite artists die is knowing there's no one around who can possibly replace them.