I went to a library and borrowed Natsuki Ikezawa's book "Nautical Chart and Logbook. I've read this book for the first time when I was a college student, about 25 years ago. This kind of book which has a "long friendship" with me is rare for me. I've read Natsuki Ikezawa's critical theories and essays because I don't like his novels but these non-fictions. "Nautical Chart and Logbook is a book that contains long critical theories about books. His philosophical thinking and scientific knowledge work in this book very well. I'm not a neat reader like Ikezawa. I've not read "classics" well and also forgotten so many books I've read. I respect him as a reader.
I've read Toshiyuki Horie's "Like looking for words by pendulum" and "Forgetting days at a riverbank"... I spend these days reading books. What does the act reading mean? The act is to follow a basically consistent logic that is written on paper. Why do I keep on doing such a thing? This question is the one I was asked and couldn't answer. But I do that because it is just pleasant for me. Growing up through reading or learning knowledge... these are just "followed" or "optional" reasons I think (I won't say these are wrong, but "attached" reasons I believe). It's just pleasant, or my inspiration says now is the time to read them. So I read books.
I also borrowed Richard Brautigan's "June 30th, June 30th" and "A Postcard from Chinatown" from the library. Both are collected poems and I remembered that I had been recommended to write some poems by a woman. Poems... I respect the authors like Fernando Pessoa, Paul Auster, and Mieko Kanai who wrote poems. Natsuki Ikezawa is also an ex-poet. I like prose and the articles as book reviews and the journal like this show themselves as my poems. But it might be funny if I write poems following these authors. But whose poems I should follow as a model?
Philip Forest's "Sarinagara" is one of the books I love. He is a French critic and it is a novel which is written about Issa Kobayashi and Souseki Natsume. The book Japan through a French person is expressed well. I remembered this book and borrowed "The Complete Japanese literature" which are edited by Natsuki Ikezawa. The volume of Issa Kobayashi and Basho Matsuo, Japanese haiku poets. Oh my gosh! Today I wrote just only about books! I have to say this. There are a lot of activities which are more pleasant than reading books. This is obvious. Or I should say we can grow up ourselves by various activities except reading. But I don't know any other way to bring myself up so I read books.
