The Angst of Waiting

At this point in Strip, Sward is not yet a drug addict (Self knows that’s coming, though), so what’s here is merely angst: the angst of longing.

It reminds her of the angst of Detective Yuichiro Goda in Lady Joker, volume two (Apparently, no one on Goodreads seems as taken with Detective Goda as self, only referring tangentially to “outside characters” — ! His epiphany at the end! Goda made that book! She didn’t give a damn about any of the other characters!)

My whole life was nothing more than a kind of waiting. Waiting for my mom to come home, even though she never did. She’d sent me a package when I was five, and I’d waited for more. I waited for her letters where she would describe her world in detail, especially the different men in her life. I also waited for my dad — when he went to India to hang out with a swami, or the writers’ colonies in upstate New York and New Hampshire. Then there was the time he went to live alone at an art colony in New Mexico. Then Alina left and I watched him wait for her to come home and I waited for him to stop waiting. I waited for this terrible longing in me to go away, and I knew no one was coming back to fix it.

My grant was running out. I became a regular at the gyro stands, went to matinee movies, and walked the streets some more. I looked at women dressed like Audrey Hepburn who sat at the cafés drinking coffee, and I looked at people who passed me in the streets who seemed like they knew exactly where they were going and who they were.

— Strip, A Memoir, p. 63

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #234: MESSAGES

Thanks to Wind Kisses for hosting this week and for coming up with the awesome prompt, MESSAGES!

Here are a few “message” pictures from self’s archives, all places in California:

• sign inside a restaurant in Mission San Miguel Arcangel, California Central Coast
• sign in the lobby of the San Jose Convention Center during Adam Savage’s SilCon 2022
• Fro-yo cup, downtown San Luis Obispo
• Sign commemorating the original Facebook Headquarters, Emerson Street, downtown Palo Alto
• Traffic sign, Kasten corner of Main Street, Mendocino Village

Like the Shootout at the OK Corral

The cat-and-mouse between the President of the Hinode Beer Corporation and the dogged bodyguard Yuichiro Goda has been going on now for six weeks. In that time, Goda has worn out two pairs of shoes and ridden xx number of bullet trains in an effort to stay just three steps behind Shiroyama, at all times. Finally, the moment of truth is at hand. It’s been such an exciting game, but Goda’s boss wants results: Is the President of the Hinode Beer Corporation about to strike a deal with the extortionists (against the instructions of the police)? Goda is about to find out. He feels ambivalent about what he has to do, for in the weeks the men have spent together, a grudging respect has sprung up between them.

Shiroyama’s face still hadn’t moved a muscle, but an array of reactions glinted in his eyes. There was a vacancy, as if his thoughts were focused elsewhere. A matter-of-fact consideration, devoid of any deep emotion. Slight confusion at being confronted by this outsider showing his true colors. It was possible to glimpse a certain confidence in that look of confusion, and that confidence then turned to fury, dismay, superiority, and mercilessness, before shifting back to confidence, and Goda experienced each of these as if they were reflected in his own eyes. Shiroyama was not alone in being furious, dismayed, and merciless.

— Lady Joker, Volume Two, p. 177

Yuichiro Goda, MPD, First Investigative Divsion

What a character! The whole Lady Joker crime caper can go to hell. There is only one person whose point of view self is interested in reading about, and it’s Goda, the detective chosen to be the body man to the president of the Hinode beer company.

She wishes the narrative had focused on just him, instead of splintering into so many viewpoints: the president, the reporter(s), the criminal(s) etc. Because if you read this (hefty) tome by skipping over the sections not his, then what you have is a very enthralling character study.

Goda lives alone (of course). He doesn’t own a car. He stops at a grocery on his way home (he sleeps?) and buys bananas and milk. His supervisor doesn’t trust him and sometimes drops by unexpectedly. This is how the supervisor knows that Goda’s brother-in-law (or, rather, his EX-brother-in-law, since Goda’s 18-year-marriage has failed) sometimes drops by Goda’s apartment to vacuum, do his laundry, and iron his shirts. Goda’s brother-in-law reminds him to take better care of himself, then serves him delicious meals (“silken tofu from Kyoto, vibrantly green blanched spinach, grilled eggplant garnished with ginger and the finest silver dried herring measuring almost six centimeters in length”)

The reason for his brother-in-law’s most recent visit is that Goda’s picture has appeared in a tabloid: “When I saw you in that tabloid photo, it felt like something was insane. Besides, even though you’ve got a suit on like the rest of them, your shoes look different from a true corporate man. Your demeanor’s not the same. It takes a stiff brush to get the grime off the seams of your shoes.”

Do you see what self means? Isn’t Yuichiro Goda a fascinating character? Self wishes there were more novels written from the point of view of “body men.”

In this novel, his is only one of twenty viewpoints (sigh) which means: this will be a fast read. But, let her assure you, since she has taken the trouble to read ahead (just by a few pages), let her assure you: the best is yet to come.

Stay tuned.

New Read: Lady Joker, Volume Two, by Kaoru Takamura

Self is crushing the reading list, this first month of 2023. Her next book is a Japanese crime novel, her first by Kaoru Takamura: Lady Joker, volume two, translated from the Japanese by Marie Iida and Allison Markin Powell.

Takamura is a crime novelist who is well-known in her native Japan. She has written thirteen novels, and has won the Japan Mystery and Suspense Grand Prize, the Naoki Prize, the Noma Literary Prize, the Yomiuri Prize, the Shinran Prize, the Jiro Orasagi Prize, the Mystery Writers of Japan Award, and the Japan Adventure Fiction Association Prize. Her first novel to be translated into English was Lady Joker, which received the Mainichi Arts Award.

The first character to really catch self’s interest, 14 pages in, is Yuichiro Goda. Here’s how he’s described in the list of Dramatis Personae:

• MPD, First Investigation Division, Third Violent Crime Investigation Team, Seventh Unit. Later joins Criminal Investigation Division, Violent Crime Unit at Omori Police Department, Assistant Police Inspector

He’s been given the responsibility of guarding Kyosuke Shiroyama, President and CEO of Hinode Beer, who’s the target of an extortion attempt by the gang known as the Lady Joker.

p. 14:

• As far as Shiroyama could tell, however, under his apparent neutrality Goda’s eyes displayed subtle shades of darkness — wondering what that prudent gaze saw, three steps behind him, made Shiroyama feel, if not uncomfortable, then at least unsettled. From Goda’s outward appearance or manner, Shiroyama had no inkling whether he had seen Shiroyama pick up the envelope on his lawn the day before yesterday, that morning when they first met. Just this very morning, in the car on the way to the office, Shiroyama had tried to trick him into talking about it by musing why the criminals had not appeared, but Goda, with a momentary pause, merely replied, “I’ve been instructed only to act as your guard, sir.”

Ah! A laconic leading man. Nice!

Stay tuned.

Declining Hometowns

The section self is about to quote follows many passages of analysis on the special case of West Virginia. There were a lot of things self wanted to quote, but she decided that felt a bit like cheap thrills. Instead, here are some conclusions the author draws from her close examination of the state:

There Are No Accidents, Chapter Seven

• If the economy declines in your hometown, you need to drive farther to find work, increasing your risk of accident by exposure at the same time that your hometown has less money to pave roads. You are also more likely to take more dangerous work in desperation. If you get into an accident, you are saddled with medical debt that directly affects your ability to pay state taxes so the state government can pave the roads. Even this example skips over many factors that can multiply risk: less-safe older cars, exhaustion and stress brought on by longer commutes and life in poverty, distance to medical care, and the fact that your income might be so low that you have to walk or bike to work, an especially dangerous condition. An accident can make you vulnerable to poverty, living in poverty makes you more likely to die by accident, and poor places do not have money to spend to prevent accidents.

Never mind states, let’s go down to the county-by-county level:

• Nationwide, the census area whose residents are most likely to die by accident is rural Lake and Peninsula Borough, Alaska, which is 76 percent Indigenous.
• The first sizably populated runner-up is Oglala Lakota County, with a population of more than three-quarters of a million people. It is entirely inside the Pine Ridge Reservation. It is one of America’s biggest and poorest reservations, a place of devastating superlatives: lowest life expectancy, lowest per capita income . . . a majority of homes lack water, electricity, insulation, and sewage.

This is heartbreaking.

Chapter Six, There Are No Accidents

When we tell a “human error” story — when we blame the jaywalker, the accident-prone worker, the nut behind the wheel, or the criminal addict — we are being duped into distraction from the ways that we can prevent accidents. And this allows the same accidents to happen again.

— There Are No Accidents, Chapter Six: Racism

Manila Book Launch: Growing Up Filipino vol. 3

When One of Thing’s Passengers is a Five-Star Chef

This book is a wild ride!

P. S.: “It” is the ship. “Niko” is Nicolette Larson, proprietress of the TwiceFar Station restaurant Last Chance (Self’s brain keeps thinking of the singer with the same name, which is distracting)

Perhaps a good baseline would be to serve the meal that it had planned, and then elicit their feedback as thoroughly as possible . . .

It said, “Tell me what you want to eat. Then tell me how you want it presented.” It allowed the place settings to sink back down into the table’s surface, then the table decorations and napkins as well.

Niko said, “Very obliging of you. I would like a class five plant-based protein soup, spiced with flavonoids, toasted coriander seeds, and ground cumin at a ratio of four parts to five, and containing chickpeas or another class four legume. With that I will have class twenty-seven not milk and a plain wheat-based bread in cracker form. A simple white porcelain bowl and plate with basic human flatware.”

— You Sexy Thing, p. 101

(London) Skyline

Self is in a nostalgic mood this rainy, gloomy Sunday in northern California.

Posting for Travel with Intent’s One-Word Sunday. The theme is SKYLINE.

Here’s Southbank by the Thames. Took these pictures leaving Shakespeare’s Globe after a play. The bridge is the old Blackfriars.