2022/01/03 English

BGM: Belle And Sebastian "Like Dylan In The Movies"

Today I worked late so had a little time in the morning. But I don't know how I spend the time. What should I do... I thought that I wanted to watch "THIS IS US", which I had stopped watching again. But I couldn't in the end. I want to watch various dramas but can't see what I should watch. I want to watch "Dear White People" and "13 Reasons Why", which had also stopped watching again. I have to watch things by the voice of my mind. I can stop anytime if it isn't good. So I should take it easy. Thinking by my head leads to nothing so I want to move by my inspiration.

At last, I read Shinji Miyadai's movie reviews at AEON this morning. I saw that families came here and enjoyed shopping. Oh, the family... I thought if I had my family. Of course, it is a waste of time because I can never be a good father, but I thought that "Is this life OK?". As a character in "Fist of the North Star" says, I have no regrets in my life. I feel that I might be able to live better or happier. But I don't want to deny this life.

Once I couldn't work like ordinary people. So I couldn't earn enough money. I thought that it was because of my failure. I couldn't be a good father so I had to give up. Before marriage, I could never be in love with someone forever. I couldn't live alone by myself. Now I can accept the fact that I am an autistic person and the environment that someone helps my long life. But once I had blamed myself because I couldn't live like others. I couldn't join in the sameness with others...

How many books I read, how hard I make practice, I am just a part-time worker... I thought so (or I believed so). I couldn't accept this because I was afraid. I declared that I was a "working poor" man on the internet. A barking dog seldom bites... today I talked with a friend in Kyusyu about the movie "American Utopia" I had watched yesterday. It was a wonderful time. If I get satisfied with various things in real, I rarely want to bark on the net. Therefore I might be happy "now".

2022/01/02 English

BGM: Talking Heads "Road To Nowhere"

The morning I watched Ava Marie DuVernay's "13th". A person said that this movie is a must-watch to think about the discrimination for black people or Black Lives Matter itself. I thought that this has a good clue to think about them exactly. Thinking about the risk of being brought in jail, blamed, and hated just because of the difference of color of skin. Yes, it is irrational. It might have any little problems but I felt that Netflix has the great power of having great documentaries like this. This year I will keep on watching this kind of good documentary.

In the afternoon I took a nap and watched "Departures". This movie is the one my friends who are learning Japanese had praised as an amazing one. Watching this, I thought what has to be my job. The main character's job is an encoffineer who treats the bodies. Just because of that work, he had been blamed and hated. I also might hate him instinctively if my friend was doing that kind of job. It might be because I want not to see the bodies or death itself. This year, who will die, and what will it bring to me? Of course, this is not suitable for the beginning of the new year.

The night I watched Spike Lee's "DAVID BYRNE`S AMERICAN UTOPIA". Once before the era of subscription and YouTube like now, I thought that Talking Heads's music was difficult and too high class. Now I can enjoy it easily. I think that the attitude of mixing tribal music into a blue-eyed sophisticated one and expressing it as great entertainment is interesting enough. It becomes the opinion for the scene of this corona age (Of course, the corona was out of David Byrne's concern because it was before corona age). He or Europa itself has such great basic power.

Today was a day off so I watched three movies, so I felt really tired. Always I wonder what kind of movie I should watch. There are a lot of movies to be chosen, and they had never the final reason to be watched. Therefore I trust my hunch and watch something. Movies make me think about various things. About reading, I'm still facing Shinji Miyadai's "The World Is Basically Chaos". I will spend my time at the beginning of 2022 with this kind of book about movies. A little "movie boom" might have come in me. I would check Nobuhiko Kobayashi's books about movies if the libraries opened again.

2022/01/01 English

BGM: Motoharu Sano "Angelina"

Recently I have been away from movies so I wondered what I should watch at the beginning of this year, and at last, watched "Asakusa Kid" on Netflix. This movie is about the half-life of Japanese comedian Takeshi Kitano. This movie tells me about the depth of doing creative things and the relationship between a teacher and a student in the world of comedians. I thought that I have not read Nobuhiko Kobayashi's book "Definite: The Japanese Comedians". I had an idea that I should read this book with this movie, then I can enjoy the depth of the world of comedy itself. I have no money, but do I have to buy and read it? This is the question I have as the first question of 2022.

What should the new year resolution be? I have been writing this journal for half a year and learned this. Any resolutions must be done and kept as a real activity. Then, you can get something like fruit. In other words, you need the power of keeping on doing that quietly. Also, you need the idleness which can allow it as "so-so is OK". I keep on writing this journal even if I can't write funny things as every day in my life. Doing something with less power, fewer efforts. Doing like that, a habit has been put in me and brings me great power. I had learned that last year.

What should I do? Do I have to learn French again? Or I should read Proust's "In The Search of Lost Time"?... Or this year shall be a year of movies? I can do nothing which needs some effort so I want to do easy things. Oh, what nonsense. Basically, I have never read books thinking "I shall read 100 books this year!". I am living with thinking "It's OK even if I couldn't read anything" so I won't trust any big purpose or dream. Ah, this character must last forever.

So I do activities not thinking "I shall be a blogger!" or "I shall write a novel!", but do as thinking "I shall write a review today!". That "Many a little makes a mickle" must be important for me. At least, this journal is a kind of that "mickle". I might have to forgive trying to do the efforts... Today I have watched the movie "Asakusa Kid". I have felt happy with this meeting at the beginning of this year. The hard-boiled life of Takeshi who always tries to learn the secret of comedy told me this. Quiet activities every day. That is perfect enough.

2021/12/31 English

BGM: King Crimson "Red"

Yesterday I had watched movies for a long time so now I want to watch another. Therefore, I started reading books about movies only. Today I read Shinji Miyadai's "The World is basically Chaos" a little. I like his movie reviews so enjoyed it. He doesn't write orthodox reviews. By writing reviews, he tries to think about why we have difficulties to live this society and answer how to survive it. That is the same of my concern which I had with the handicap to live on. At the end of 2021, I had read a book like that.

I was over 40 years old when I had started watching movies as a pleasure. Once I bought the musical press "ele-king", and I found that writers discuss various movies to criticize the music scene. I noticed that watching and learning movies are necessary to talk about music (or culture itself). So I decided to watch them which I had never watched. So, it is just an "instant" knowledge so I won't say I am a cinephile. But some readers trust my articles about movies so I'm glad about that. Now I can say that I like movies.

Even if it is the last day of the year, I do work and write various ideas on my memo pad in English. One of the things I did this year must be writing a journal in Japanese and English. I couldn't see that I have been writing it till now (about half a year!). I don't trust the power of any effort. If the effort means some kind of hard discipline, my activity as writing notes in English or a journal like this must be just an activity I just want to do, therefore it's never hard discipline. Just "do what you want" and that's all. I am old enough so I am getting to avoid doing something with making practice or doing the effort. I am basically a lazy person.

Steady efforts... Once I had watched the documentary "CODA" which was about Ryuichi Sakamoto. I was shocked because I had learned the fact that Sakamoto still does the practice of moving his fingers by watching it. As you know, he has achieved such great success and is a great musician. But the thing he does is just a quiet effort like that. I write articles or journals like this. I also do my work, read books, watch movies... I do them again and again. That refrain itself has the meaning of this life. I feel that happiness is this ordinary, quiet life. I will do writing and watching like this even in 2022. Life goes on.

2021/12/30 English

BGM: Little Creatures "Giants Are Dying"

Today I've watched two movies. The one was the documentary "Searching For Sugar Man", which was the one I had written about in my yesterday's journal. An American, nameless singer-songwriter Rodriguez's music caught the South African peoples' mind and achieved a marvelous hit by a chance. Why did the South African people like his music? And where had the person Rodriguez gone away? We say that the fact has to be stranger than the novels, but this movie tells the wonderful and strange fate has to be there. I have watched it many times but this watching also brought me tears.

Seeing the behavior of Rodriguez, I feel that the person who won't change in any situation is very strong and therefore brilliant. He might have to experience various situations. He had to forgive the activities as a musician, and spend the days as a physical work which he might not want to do. But he hadn't lost his sincerity and faced the work he had to do, and gone his own way. Watching this movie, I have learned that keeping the sincerity of living life must be important, and I have tried to do so. But, of course, I still have a snob desire so I sometimes think that "People in somewhere read my articles and make it as a boom". I haven't stood at such a high stage.

The second was Hirokazu Koreeda's "Nobody Knows". I like Koreeda's movies and have watched them several times. I have watched this once but this watching brought me something profound. Treating a very serious theme, he keeps on the serious and decent way of talking the story. He doesn't appeal the story to our mind directly, but tell us an important thing steadily. Therefore this movie is difficult but has the worth of thinking about it. I had lived as a jobless person once, who was out of the society or system. So I had to think about the sadness and pleasure of life which was out of the system (yes, there can be pleasure in a way).

Like that, I enjoyed the movies and that was all of my yesterday's activities. I had started the habit of movie watching when I was 40 years old, so I still have to learn various things and not know them well. But, as Shinji Miyadai says, the world is rich and that world delivers me various messages as movies. I'm enjoying these messages by watching them. In other words, if I watch movies, I can go anywhere. I am not a cinephile who watches 200 movies a year, but I enjoy them and have learned various things. I want to write like this in 2022. But how can they deliver something to others? Haruki Murakami said that "The civilization is the delivery"...

2021/12/29 English

BGM: Rodriguez "Crucify Your Mind"

I'm still reading Yoshikichi Furui's "Karioujyouden Shibun". In this busy season, the person who reads such a book must be me only even if Japan is a large country... If I get bored of it, I read "The Song of Grey Hair". These books describe various death of various people. It also tells the life itself from that point. Normally, if we live more and more, death comes closer and closer. If so, we should think more deeply as we live more. Then, without turning our face away, looking at that death and keeping on living is a great way of spending time. After reading these books, I want to read "Shirowada" again. Of course, I want to read the rest of "Gödel, Escher, Bach".

It is needless to say but I am not a genius. Just an ordinary man. In other words, this world is wide enough to swallow a person like me. I had been treated as a strange or mad man for a long time so I might think that "I am a gifted, chosen man". It was Verlaine? The person who said, "The ecstasy and anxiety of being chosen, the both is inside me" (I learned this quote from Osamu Dazai's novel). But once it started, I found that I was a person who doesn't have talents. And it might be good. Being ordinary and put in this world is great enough.

Looking at the true size of myself, living the life with natural myself... once I denied that. I wanted to be a special, popular person... so I did foolish things on the internet. But now some people accept the true me, so I started having confidence in myself and loving it. Graduating from Waseda was once a burden for me, but now I think it was the important thing for me. But I never want to go back to that era. Now I have a lot of wonderful friends and that is happy for me.

Ah... I had believed that I have a special talent but this world didn't care about it... they never gave me money or honor... I strictly thought like that once. Yes, stupid days... even if the situation is not good, I should do the things I have to do without a rotten mind. Then, it would give me something (they might not money or honor). There is the thing that effort will bring to us. I thought like that today with singing Rodriguez's song "Sugar Man". I might have to watch the documentary "Searching For Sugar Man", which is a masterpiece about this strange and splendid singer-songwriter.

2021/12/28 English

BGM: Number Girl "YARUSE NAKIO'S BEAT"

I've read Fernando Pessoa's "The Book of Disquiet". This is the fifth time I've read it completely. I usually read this book if I don't want to read something anymore. These fragments Pessoa had written without a purpose seem his journal. It doesn't have a certain story. But the feeling of being tired is filled with this book, so it's comfortable if I am bored of living itself. Such a feeling of being tired... in other words, existence itself is already very troublesome? He seems trying to say so. He must be quite a smart and sensitive person.

And I started reading Yoshikichi Furui's "Karioujyouden Shibun" again. How many times will I read this book again and again till I die? The tales of the death of ancient people and the author's journal who lives now are mixed into it, so I sometimes get feared of this book's theme, in short, death. Memento Mori. Everybody will die. Looking at that fact seriously... and starting writing from that fact. He chooses to keep on writing and thinking, putting on his words little by little freely. That writing is still vivid. Reading this book, I thought the death someday I have to accept.

Reading Pessoa and/or Yoshikichi Furui... My reading goes on like that so I can't see where it will go and reach. I've read several books this year. Once I thought about the relationship between English and Japanese because of Yoshio Kataoka's books. Or I tried to approach the world of brain and science even if I am an amateur. I don't use these pieces of knowledge at my work. Just I read them freely and randomly so I haven't piled up them. It's just a terrible waste of time and energy... But that waste makes my life. If I wanted to make myself bigger or get something useful, I chose different books. So this is just a hobby.

I listened to Fishmans's "98.12.28 Departure of The Men" it has past a long time since I haven't listened to Fishmans often. It isn't because I started hating them. From their music, I have learned the truth that sublime things are in our ordinary happy life. And that kind of life itself is awesome... But I want to listen to different music and think about different ideas. Now I'm listening to ECD's "Sitten In The Park" which I had listened to at the last year's end. I will listen to his hip-hop again at the end of this year? I get used to this life which is basically a poor, modest, peaceful, and happy life from somewhen...