BGM: Peter Gabriel "Father, Son"
Today was a day off. I went to Aeon as usual. At 10 am, the Miraiya bookstore opened so I bought Tadahira Suzuki's "The Void Man" and Hemingway's "The Old Man and Sea" there. I read "The Void Man", and cried a little. This book is a non-fiction about Kazuhiro Kiyohara, who had arrested because of an illegal drug. The author tries to describe his footsteps from that scandal until now. I found that Kiyohara had no selfish or masculine character. He shows weakness and confusion, therefore I find that he must be charismatic paradoxically. I might be confused because of mass media, so I want to follow his real figure. People say that "I could be Kiyohara", but Kiyohara himself is a clumsy man. I should know the difficulty he has.
I thought about what 'glory' could be. Kiyohara was the person who showed his gifted talent in baseball and dedicated his career to it. I can't see how Kiyohara suffered and struggled because I have been just an ordinary person from my childhood. But I am interested in the fact that the 'glory' he got didn't erase that kind of difficulty. This might be a rude image, but the reason Kiyohara had played baseball might not be from those snob 'glory'. He might not care about material and snob 'glory' as money and women but just wanted to get excited with standing batter's box innocently. I guess Kiyohara must have such boyish senses.
This is just my story. I never live 'glory days'. With a lot of trouble, and thinking I could disappear soon... but now I can say I'm happy. Once I also adored the carnival mood in our daily life, but finally, I chose this steady life with gathering 'tiny and exact happiness' as Haruki Murakami says. But that kind of gathering 'tiny and exact happiness' can also be the way of living 'glorious days', can't it? Even Kazuhiro Kiyohara can't be always a superhero. He chose the way of living daily life steadily, struggling against the addiction in himself. I want to know what his 'tiny and exact happiness' can be.
At night, I read Ernest Hemingway's "Complete Stories 1". I won't say that Hemingway is a great storyteller even though his storytelling is good. His stories have a great and unique taste. That's the reason I love them. Probably because Hemingway tried to show the things he knows well or the things he has an exact passion for themselves. That brings a certain comfort to us. In other words, he was never the writer who showed any great imagination that enabled him to realize an 'unreal' world. When I was trying to write my novels, I also struggled with writing unreal things. Now I'm interested in writing about 'tiny and exact happiness'. This diary must be the result of that trial.