Iceberg

My husband and I talk about a variety of things everyday. We do all sorts of things together. Watch "Harold and Maude"(1971). Discuss global warming. And the scary educational advertisements by AC (look it up on youtube). Swim at the pool. Go to amusement centers. Search for and photograph fungi, insects, and other living things. Go to the Nagasaki Biopark.

Anyway, today, I was talking to the Kyoto Sensei (Vice Principal) at my junior high school, and we were contemplating what would happen with global warming. This week 24 children died on the East Coast of the US because they were left in cars in the heat. How horribly stupid of their caretakers.

I was wondering about the climate change and how it would affect different areas of the world when he mentioned the caps melting. Now, this is a common belief, that the caps will melt and raise the ocean levels. However, my husband is convinced that this will not happen. He says, "Take a cup of water with ice in it. The ice melts, the level doesn't change. The world is just a big version of this." OK, I can understand this about The North Pole, because it is all ice. But Antarctica lies on a land mass. Just a bit of scientific contemplation...

La Trampa, continued

Do not justify anything. Do not exalt yourself. Be objective. Speak of people, of things, of the good and the bad, without additions, without deceipt. Relate your experience, what you have done, without using adjectives or seeking palliatives. Bread to bread and wine to wine.

Revise your life from beginning to end. And relate it. Tell the truth. Short chapters, curt. I sincerely believe that you don't know how to write.

La Trampa - A beginning translation

I have decided to begin the translation of my grandfather's greatest work, the novel "La Trampa", or "The Trap". The novel consist of 461 dense pages of Spanish literature, his life autobiography until he was encarcerated. This includes the years during the rebellion in Cuba, the fall of Batista and the rise of Fidel Castro. The Bay of Pigs. His debauchery and use of women. His love of his country and family. His escape in the night from death. Days of starvation on a raft. I do not know how good I will be at this, but it is something that I have thought of doing for years, and now is as good as ever to start. If you are interested in seeing pictures of him or his paintings, look him up on the internet.

"LA TRAMPA" by Manuel Penabaz. Zoom Publishing, Miami 1983. Library of Congress Card No. 83-50033.

Youth is for making history,
old age for telling it, and childhood for listening to it.

This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Manuel Penabaz Solorzano, and to my son, Manuel Ranulfo.

IN THE WAY OF A PROLOGUE
My dear Manolo,
I received your letter. Thank you for remembering me. I am very surprised at your rapid conviction. Not because I think you are innocent, but after looking into a street full of criminals, it is difficult to comprehend the velocity with which they took your case. I do not understand it.
Of course I will aid you in what you request.
As for the book, having analyzed it, I reccommend the following. Write the truth. Write it all, fall who falls. Do not attempt to justify yourself and do not embellish anything. Do not write literature, because you know nothing of that.

The Windblown Seed

A log set to drift...
An insect in a typhoon...
A seed carried to another land...

Sets root
as only it can
and it can only
survive in another land
where its leaves might grow strangely
or its flowers face another hill
against a sun
from another angle

But it sets root
into the earth
determined
by destiny
Set out to live
Punishment
and blessings
Life
as only can be seen
from this angle

Grow
Grow little seed
into that sun
into that mountain
It is the same air
the same sun
and the same Earth
in perspective

10-05-12

My husband took me to one of Kyushu's amusement parks, Mitsui Greenland during spring break. This is a picture of the place next door, Ultraman Land.
I thought I would talk about some of the things that are poplular in Japan today. The boys love Ultraman. They also love another show that reminds me of Power Rangers, called KamenRider. The stars are insect or crustacean heroes and villains. The third fanaticism is with insects, especially large beetles. I wrote about them last year in this blog. My husband says that the children consider these insects heroes also.

The wave is going up

Life has those ebbs and flows... this time the wave is going up.

We have been going to look at the fireflies at night. They are sooo beautiful. They fly toward the car in a sparce wave, and then when we turn off the lights, they fly away, startled perhaps. They are so numerous, and the mountains are so steep that they are like a curtain of tiny soft lights, moving across the nightscape. The fireflies will only last until the big rain, Tsuyu, when it rains nonstop for a month.

We got our bathing suits in the mail today. Now we can go swimming at the pool. Ordering things online is much cheaper.

We are watching "The SOund of Music". It is a lovely movie, not at all boring or cheesy. I think it is a real piece of art. My father, Norbert, was born in Austria. It really gives a lovely view of the landscape and some traditions.