BGM: Boards of Canada - Happy Cycling
Today was a day off. This morning I read Shohei Ohoka's "Seijyo Press" completely with Thievery Corporation's music. It's a journal by him at his late ages, and delivers his keen eyes to manga, music, literature, and movies with strong curiosity therefore really wonderful. I had learned about him by Mieko Kanai's essays as a really gentle, and modest person (and he also shows his great anger when he sees terrible things). The journal also shows about his that character. TBH I have not read his works so much. Just I read and was beaten by the "Fires on the Plain" that had influenced even J.G.Ballard. I might have to read Ohoka's novels... yes, I write like this but we certainly says "If you run after two hares, you will catch neither". This is autism.
Today was the day for the meeting about autism. We did it on ZOOM, and a new member joined in it. A really great time. I did a presentation about Aphorism which I had already done at another meeting. The purpose of that presentation was, of course, I wanted to share how fun the Aphorism is. But also I wanted to introduce that Shiso city has such an interesting group which has this kind of meeting. I talked about Nietzsche's dangerous and anachronic quotes, and also Gloria Steinem's cool quote "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" which was based on feminism. Other members exactly showed their interested about them so I was really glad. Indeed, it was not related with autism, but I enjoyed it. Other members' comment also gave me various things. I hope we will do this meeting at offline again.
After that meeting, I went to the library and borrowed Natsuki Ikezawa's "The Navidad Incident: The Downfall of Matias Guili". Indeed, I have read at the fall of last year, but I wanted to read again. Nowadays I am reading this kind of the books I have already read. When I was young, I had tried to read anything of Kenji Nakagami completely. But, getting older, I started thinking that I have to "enjoy" the reading and that's the meaning of it. In other words, I can never read the books I "must" read in my life... I even think that it was a certain sin if I can't enjoy reading those books. But, probably because I started choosing books to "enjoy" at the first, or maybe because I just am getting older, I started reading "classic" books. In Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood", the person Nagasawa appears. He chooses reading classics and ignores new books. I have sympathy with him. I started thinking the classic books which are like milestones, which don't fade away even thought time passes,. are saying a lot to me.
I can't keep on doing just one thing steadily step by step till the end. My interest goes from here to where. A lot of things attract me so they would end incompletely. On reading, I am always attracted by various books so I read them in a "parallel" way. This evening I read Haruki Murakami's short novels and Natsuki Ikezawa's "World Literature Remix" with Boards of Canada's music. Recently I am feeling like a slump so I don't have the book which fits me. Therefore my mood goes randomly. I think that reading the collection of "Complete World Literature" which Ikezawa edited once would be valuable, so I choose the one of them, Jack Kerouac's "On The Road". TBH I have learned English literature at a university, but I have never read Kerouac's works. At this age, I read Kerouac as doing the homework of summer vacation hurriedly... that's life. Yes, it must be uncool, but an unique life.
