#58 - Prancing Spring-Like and Askew

The Strength in Length; Tips to Self; Art Walk; Time Machine

Hello, my friends,

Apologies in advance for a shorter newsletter this week. Monday was a holiday and Michael had his tonsils removed yesterday so my usual writing schedule has been disrupted. I’ve had some idea of doing a flash fiction piece a week, but today (and probably the next issue) will not contain fiction. I suspect this isn’t sad news for everyone since, like my sumo talk, some readers surely also skip the stories (though only the former has been confirmed; no one has told me that they skip the fiction…yet). I do have stories around, but they need some attention before I release them into the wild. So here are some quick bits and some art.

“Family Doctor” (1940) by Grant Wood

The Strength in Length

A little earlier this week I finished reading Yasunari Kawabata’s gently-plotted tribute to Kyoto’s traditional life, The Old Capital (1962). As I was flying through it, I remembered how mellifluous my reading experience had been with Kawabata’s other well-known novels, Snow Country (1935–1937) and Thousand Cranes (1949–1952). What was the commonality? Why were the master novelist’s books so fast? Then I realized what it was: His paragraphs are so short! Because they tend to linger around one to three sentences (like little prose poems), my eyes are able to careen down the page, ingesting a lot of text in one go. For example, the first paragraph of the novel:

“Chieko discovered the violets flowering on the trunk of the old maple tree. “Ah, they’ve bloomed again this year,” she said as she encountered the gentleness of spring.

That’s it! Not many words, but plenty of signification. The final paragraph of the novel, too (I won’t print it here), is only five short sentences.

Between short paragraphs, dialogue, and paragraphs with short sentences, Kawabata (in translation) moves reader’s along swiftly. Yet, unlike an author like James Patterson, who also makes use of short paragraphs to keep reader’s moving, Kawabata doesn’t make me feel rushed; his emphasis is as much about what’s happening now as what will happen next — a paradoxical combination of page-turner and an invitation to linger.

I’m keen to examine these writing techniques more in other Kawabata novels. I don’t recall that he used the same approach in his attempt at modernist pastiche, The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (1930), or in the faux reportage of The Master of Go (1951). While I don’t have any Kawabata on my reading list from April - June, unless I decide to devote the following quarter to gigantic Tale of Genji, I’ll likely add another one or two Kawabata novels. I do also have his short story (flash fiction, really) collection, Palm-of-the-Hand Stories on my shelf and may read that. Time will tell.

Tips to Self

If I was going to write some reminder to myself on how to succeed at life, here are some that I would include:

• Sleep more.

• Eat healthy foods immoderately and unhealthy foods in moderation.

• Stay away from people who don’t actually like you.

• Know what is “enough”.

• Do not simply do what you can, but what you should.

• Exercise in your own way.

• Spend time a little time every day sitting in the sun doing nothing.

What would you add to this list?

Art Walk

Here’s some art I find interesting and why:

“Green” (1951) by Ellsworth Kelly. I dig the mid-century vibes I get from Kelly’s work and I dig this color and the texture produced by the paint meeting the canvas.

“Hilda Welcomed” by Stanley Spencer. It’s just so beautiful the way Hilda is loved.

“Guests” (1991) by Oleg Holosiy. The realistic style mixes with ghostly outlines to create an intriguing subject, not the least because it feels like we’re lurking in a corner.

“A Birch Grove” (1880) by Arkhyp Kuindzhi. Every traditional artist schooled in Russia and surrounding countries necessarily takes Birches as a subject at least a hundred times. I’ve saved a lot of birch paintings because they so often come out well.

“Self-Portrait with Roses” (1914) by Ferdinand Hodler. I also bookmark odd portraits. In this one, it’s the curious expression that captured my attention, as if the artist has interrupted himself at work. “Yes?” the raised eyebrows say, “What can I do for you?”

Time Machine

Here’s what I wrote in HMF a year ago (in issue #5):

• Burger Me This: One of my pet peeves, when restaurants ask how I’d like my burger, even though they can’t carry out my wishes.

• Getting at Those Toxins: Health hippies keep talking about getting rid of toxins. What are these toxins exactly?

• Camping Thoughts: My first time camping and the crash from the night before.