Memoirs of a geisha – arthur golden. Wow. This is an amazing book. Presented as the account of an actual geisha who lived in New York it is in fact completely fictional, but based on a lot of research into how geishas actually lived. The story centers around a young girl who is taken away from her family at an early age, to grow up as a geisha in gion. The okiya she grows up in has its share of hardships, centered around an antagonistic older geisha, but eventually the main character prevails. Central to the story is a thread of unrequited love, the trigger for why our heroine settles down to the life of a geisha. It’s a complete page turner, and the saddest part of the book is when its finished.
Month: June 2003
Way oop north (down south)
Just arrived in tropical Queensland, Cairns to be precise. The home of most northern backpacker style antics, and recently the drunken antics of thousands of Aussie marines returning from the Gulf. Ostensibly this is the dry season of the year, but I’ve yet to experience anything but rain so my tan’s still as pale as ever. Ah well, start scuba diving in a few days so that will be a bit of a moot point anyway once I get underwater. Cairns does have the most amazingly huge outdoor pool called the lagoon, which is filled with water directly from the sea. It was also completely empty when I got to swim in it due to the crappy weather, which was wonderful.
In other exciting news the old family home is up for sale. Get it while it’s hot!
What just happened – james gleick. This is a collection of essays written by the author of the books chaos and genius (both big favourites of mine). What’s interesting about this book is that the essays are written in the past with a view to how new internet developments will affect us. Sometimes the views expressed are still valid, but other times things have changed significantly which just reminds us how quickly things have progressed. Overall an interesting read, especially if you’re involved in the Internet field.
Location, location, location
My first antipodean post for a few months – yep, now I’m back down in Melbourne getting myself together for the next seven months or so down in Australia. This constant changing of towns leads to some quite weird emotional roller coasters, not helped by a lack of sleep on fourteen hour plane journies and timezone confusion. I also have no concept of when I should be eating lunch/dinner/whatever, so I just end up eating the whole time. Thank heaven for Melbourne’s proliferation of shops selling sushi rolls for A$2, as well as the amazing A$3 pizza offer at Bimbo’s on Brunswick for which you get a sublime pizza.
Back to the subject of location though. I’ve been noticing that whenever I arrive back in a town that I’ve been to before I feel like I’ve never actually left. So though it’s been almost three months since I was in Melbourne, and then only for three weeks, it feels like one lump of continuous time. This can be quite dis-orientating. If I stop and consider my memories of the last few months back in London they are there, but seem a lot less fresh than memories of time spent in Melbourne. How strange is that? I guess it’s to do with all the immediate associations I have around me pushing certain memories forward.
Another thing I’ve noticed is how air flight affects me. I’m not a great fan of flying as I’m sure many of you know, but seem to end up doing a lot anyway. The recent fourteen hour flight between San Francisco and Sydney is now my longest plane journey, although thankfully I managed to get a few hours sleep. As soon as I the plane starts to take off all memory of time outside of this flight seems to disappear, and all I can remember is this flight. Similarly the future gets very hard to focus on, other than that I’ll be in a plane. This leads to a feeling not unlike an eternity of hell, especially when the movie’s bad. Conversely as soon as I step off the plane at my destination the whole memory of the flight is pretty much completely gone.
Any pyschologists out there please feel free to offer explanations of this to the usual address.
In the meantime though big thanks to Alicia for the lift to the airport (as well as all the free wine tours), to Nam for a great party and to Dave for lending me his apartment in SF complete with addictive ‘Enter the Matrix’ game.
The last continent – terry pratchett. Bit of a mind relaxing re-read this one, as I have to admit to owning all the Terry Pratchett discworld novels. The basic pastiche this time is set around Australia, or the Discworld equivalent, with Rincewind wandering around causing some mischief but generally escaping with his hat intact. Some amusing observations on Aussie habits and fauna, but overall the story doesn’t really flow – more a collection of events tied together around putting familiar characters in new situations. Definately not one of his best – for that I’d recommend Pyramids, which is still my favourite, or anything else in the first ten or so of the series!
Nu toyz
Today was a fun day of not doing much of anything, after lots of fun days of doing stuff out in Sonoma with Mark and Alicia. Well, I say not doing anything but most people would class a day when you’ve re-booted your machine more than ten times during installations a busy day. All this restart action was due to some new toys turning up for my computer, as I take advantage of America’s relative cheapness for those sort of things. Mr Dell popped by to fix my keyboard, still under guarantee for another 26 days. Mr Amazon delivered a new 160 gig Maxtor drive and a USB 2/Firewire card, and I wandered over to the other Mr Dell’s house to pick up a new CD burner/DVD player (big thanks to uncle Tim there as well). Everything seems to working quite well now, apart from the USB 2 on the card but I’m sure that will come together at some point. It’s certainly nice to have plenty of space to store my photos and music on now though, yay!
On a more sociable note – big thanks out to Alicia and Mark (and Riley the dog) for fun days out in Sonoma. Yesterday was the finale, starting at 10 with a wine tasting at Reynolds Family winery with one of their off road tasting tours. Alicia had very kindly sorted out this as a freebie with Derek for the radio station where she works, so I got to tag along. Much drunkeness and good wine, food and champagne followed. The Reynolds wines are very nice indeed. It’s probably worth noting here that knowing your wines is pretty much a major obsession in this part of the world – everyone I know here will get into a deep comparison of the merits of different vineyards and vintages at the drop of a hat. The biggest repeated hint seems to be the $2 bottles of Charles Shaw merlot, which are actually very drinkable, but not one to serve your potential in-laws.
Brownian motion
You may recall last year that lil’ ol’ American fiasco that was the Enron situation. In summary, the insider dealing in electricity futures led to an energy crisis on the west coast, with many places suffering from planned ‘brown outs’ where they lost their electricity due to a lack of supply. People at the time blamed mis-management, greed and the impact of a new dealer based market but I believe I have found the real culprit…. leaf blowers.
There is something in the American psyche that loves to use hand held giant hairdryers to push dry leaves ineffectually from one part of their drive to another. It’s probably the same gene that likes hunting and guns, or the one that likes super-sizing. Leaf blowers have got to be the most wasteful, stupid and downright evil creations. How hard is it really to get a brush, sweep the leaves into a pile and then put them in a bag? Not only is it better for your health and the environment, it also cuts down your electric bill and means that the leaves are actually picked up rather than just blown onto your neighbour’s drive where he, in turn, will blow them back onto yours.
In next week’s rant: Why Eminem should be the next president.
Jitterbug perfume – tom robbins. Another surrealist philosophical romp from the writer of ‘even cowgirls get the blues’. The theme of this one crosses from perfume to immortality, through spirituality and beetroots, all blended together with the usual spice from mr robbins. A great read, and doesn’t go meandering off as much as cowgirls does towards the end.
SF Ho’
Over in San Francisco now – staying courtesy of the loverly Mr Hoare near the Mission. My flight here was relatively un-eventful apart from some major turbulence. It’s always a bit unnerving when the captain keeps asking the stewardesses to strap themselves in during the flight. Luckily though I had three seats to myself, although somehow still managed to fail to fall asleep which after the amount of sleep I hadn’t had in New York you’d think would be easy. Ah well.
Been catching up with lots of ex-Quidnunc folk out here. Everyone has pretty much managed to get themselves re-jobbed, even in the current less than favourable tech climate which is wonderful. In fact driving into SF from the airport you’d be forgiven for thinking that the dot com boom was still in full effect, as every billboard on the way screams about some new product or other in the tech sphere. SF is pretty much the only place you’ll see motorway adverts for obscure J2EE connectivity tools I believe.
State of the nation
Strictly speaking I ain’t gonna talk about the ‘nation’ of the US of A, but just about New York City. I love this town in so may ways. I’ve just had a great evening down Max Fish catching up with folk and it’s been lovely. Before that I had a wonderful, busy day seeing other friends who I don’t get the chance to see often enough. So what’s the beef?
Well it’s this… A lot of people are thinking of leaving New York at the moment. It’s been a while since 9/11 and the economy has at least stopped it’s tumultuous plummet towards nul points, even if it’s not exactly booming any more. The truth is that many people seem to have lost the belief that New York is an avatar of success and generator of wealth, at least in the circles I move in. People are feeling pressured to live, rather than enjoying the hey day of hard work with good rewards. Now, hard work is stated up front as a minimum requirement to get a job to just survive. And you know what? That’s arse. Pure and simple. People need enjoyment to live their lives. If their jobs don’t provide satisfaction to some level then they look elsewhere and the job becomes an impediment rather than part of a well rounded life. Consequently unhappiness sets in.
This is a bad thing.
Creativity and societal growth can happen anywhere, and maybe it’s simply that the time is not now New York’s, but to my mind NYC is a symbol of all that is good and creative in the US. Yes, money plays a huge part in what happens here, but the truth is that amazing things are made here and people burst with ideas that get proper support to grow. If that doesn’t happen any more then something wonderful has been lost. A symbol that helps not only the US, but a lot of the western world flourish becomes tarnished and less powerful.
Not only is general creativity in flux, but human aspects of relationships seem also to be stiffled. In the same way that people aren’t investing their financial holdings in the stock market, emotional holdings are being held back for ‘safer’ engagements. Physical interactions happen, but more for the physical comfort fuck aspects than deeper emotional aspects. The art shows here are rife with sexual imagery, with little of the deeper ‘love’ type emotional ties visible in their offerings. Even if the choices of art galleries is not indicative of the current emotional tides then the behaviour in bars is much more obvious – there is a predatory aspect in place that is palpable. People want some form of contact and physical will do, spiritual and emotional can wait for the moment for better times.
Most likely this is all part of life’s long term cycles of creation and hibernation/recovery. Over time New York will again regain it’s glamour, and not just on a superficial level. For now though, dealing with the emotional fall out of earlier events, and probably the ‘business first’ focus of a new mayor will continue to take its toll. I’m glad that I got to see New York at its best over the years that I lived here, and know that it will be great again when the time is right. Just a shame that it’s struggling a bit at the moment.