Sentence of the Day: Ben Macintyre

Yes, dear blog readers, your eyes are not deceiving you. Self finally, finally finished reading Con/Artist: A Memoir. It only took 10 days! At the end, Tony Tetro still owns four luxury cars. He found a second home in Puerto Rico. He vows: “In a few months I will return to London and visit the British Museum.”

Onward!

Self is only a few pages into her next read, her first Ben Macintyre book in aaaaages, The Spy and The Traitor. And it is already enthralling.

The main is a KGB operative named Oleg Gordievsky who, upon receiving his first foreign posting, in Copenhagen, decides to test the limits of his freedom by going to Copenhagen’s red-light district and entering a sex shop. Faster than you can say KGB-Operative-Enters-a-Sex-Store, he ends up walking out with three homosexual magazines, which he takes great delight in showing to his wife.

• Either PET (NOT the KGB, the Politiets Efterretningstjeneste — the Danish Security and Intelligence Service) was monitoring Copenhagen’s red-light district or the Danes were shadowing Gordievsky, because he was spotted entering the sex shop and buying homosexual porn magazines.

OOPSIE!

For the first time in Western intelligence files, “a question mark appeared alongside Gordievsky’s name.” Spotting an opening, the Danes thenceforward regularly threw young Danish men Gordievsky’s way, trying for “homosexual entrapment.” LOL

Prompted by his apparent taste for gay pornography, the Danes had set a honeytrap, one of the oldest, grubbiest, and most effective techniques in espionage.

PET could not understand why the honeytrap failed.

Stay tuned.

citysonnet’s Colors and Letters Photo-a-Day Challenge, 18 February 2023

Today’s challenge is a color: MANGO!

Which happens to be a favorite color of self’s. She recently bought a rose with this color (Golden Opportunity). She bought it in January, bare root. She can hardly wait for it to start blooming. A bougainvillea she bought last year, from the Palo Alto (California Avenue) Farmers Market is this color. And her beautiful Moonlight Romantica rose (also bought last year, from Regan’s Nursry in Fremont) has blooms of this color.

The bougainvillea and Moonlight Romantica pictures are from last year; they’re still looking a bit bedraggled after weeks of nonstop rain.

Full list of challenges for February is here.

Six Word Saturday: Last Day for These Twitter Employees

Twitter was a mainstay of downtown San Francisco. After Elon took over in the fall, scenes like these were common. He ended up laying off 70% of the workforce.

Posting for Travel with Intent’s Six Word Saturday.

The Blue Room, the White Room

My first introduction to the work of the late Santi Bose was at a gallery in Manila called Sining Kamalig. That’s where I saw the Blue Room. I begged my parents to give me the painting for my seventeenth birthday.

A few years later — surprise, surprise! — they bought the companion painting, the White Room, for me. I brought both paintings to California with me. They are among my most treasured possessions.

mixed media, early Santi Bose. Posting for Travel with Intent’s Six Word Saturday

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

The Clairvoyant Interloper

Following the sections from the Yuichiro Goda point of view are sections from the Kyosuke Shiroyama point of view, which is fortunate because the next most interesting character in Lady Joker (after Yuichiro Goda) is Shiroyama, the President of the Hinode Beer Company.

Shiroyama opened the door to show Kurata out of his office. In the anteroom, Goda stood in his usual spot, and bowed as he opened the door for Kurata. Once he was gone and Goda had closed the door, Shiroyama said, “I’m staying the night, so you should go on home. Tomorrow, please come here at the usual time.”

Shiroyama had attempted to maintain a normal tone and expression, but Goda’s eyes quickly took in Shiroyama’s entire mien and he blurted out, “You look white as a sheet.”

Over the last seventeen days, the straightforward quality of Goda’s gaze was unerringly the same. You spy, Shiroyama thought — and yet even now Shiroyama gave in and assented to this clairvoyant interloper.

— Lady Joker, Volume Two, p. 91

Elegiac Stephen King

Self is hugely employing Fairy Tale. She knows how much she is enjoying it because she’s slowed down her reading pace: in January (with ten days still to go), self had been spending an average of three or four days on a book. Until now.

There is something poignant about the father-son relationship, about how King takes the time to show it repairing itself after a cataclysmic loss. Only a few pages in, self was vested in the boy, in his life. King takes his time showing the boy’s life beginning to take shape and then — he’s such a sly writer — in the MC’s senior year, something happens: he helps out an elderly neighbor.

How can such a simple thing be the hinge of an entire life? Well, this is Stephen King, so maybe there’s something fable-like about it. The MC, Charlie, takes care of the neighbor’s dog, Radar, and they begin to bond. Self loved this passage:

We went out back, where I knew I could get four bars on my phone. I sat on the steps and Radar sat beside me. I opened Safari, typed ‘sharpening with a whetstone’, looked at a couple of videos, then went to work. It didn’t take long to put a pretty keen edge on the scythe.

I took a picture to show Mr. Bowditch, then biked to the hospital. Found him sleeping. Biked back in the late afternoon light and fed Radar. Missed baseball a little.

Well . . . maybe more than a little.

— Fairy Tale, p. 63

(Except — there is that padlocked shed in the back, DUN DUN DUN. Self may just find herself screaming outta here when the hero eventually confronts the thing inside that’s making mysterious scratching noises)

Garden Art: Chinese Character for ‘Longevity’ – Posting for Six-Word Saturday

Took this photo from inside the house, and through a window screen. Plus, it was raining. Hence the slight blurring.

The neighbor was aiming empty bottles at our shared fence, and I had just peeked around the curtains to see if I could catch him at it. I saw the pictograph and thought: I wonder if that would make a nice picture?

Posting for Travel with Intent’s Six-Word Saturday:

Six-Word Saturday: Watching ‘Derry Girls’ in Northern Ireland

Self visited Northern Ireland for the first time in April. She spent a month in an artists retreat called River Mill. The other residents were teachers, writers, photographers, film-makers. A few were from Belfast, others from England, and yet others from Dublin. What joy to be with fellow artists after three years of pandemic lockdown. We all promised to keep in touch.

In the evenings, we had dinner together, then gathered in the living room to watch Derry Girls.

Posting for Travel with Intent’s Six-Word Saturday.

Weekend Sky, Dec. 24, Mendocino

Friends in New York City have been telling self about the sudden drop in temperature.

All clear here, on the northern California coast! Feeling lucky.

Posting for Hammad Rais’s Weekend Sky challenge.