Kumi Yamashita, Clouds, 2005
Kumi Yamashita, Building Blocks, 1997
Kumi Yamashita, Glider, 2002
Kumi Yamashita. I’d love to see her works. As deceptively simple as they may seem, I do reckon that the conceptualisation and execution was/is terribly elaborate and meticulous.
After two (2) posts on this blog, it has come to my attention that my grammar has gone to hell. Which pisses me off, period. So, your command of grammar does suffer from lack of usage. It doesn’t matter if you read a lot, if you read even the most inane stuff like nutrition labels or post office catalogues, the truth (oh, the truth comes in many forms. I used to think that math was the closest you could get to something being absolutely true, but math also leaves you and I get bitter and shall deny it its credit) is if you don’t write on a regular basis, it is only a matter of time that you start writing in msn-speak. It is slightly worse than sms-writing, so you know how bad it really is. Of course, this is only probably only true for me. However, if you have ever thought in smileys, you are in deep shit too.
Sometimes, I write tremendously long sentences about something because it is more fun to. Short sentences are overrated, and require a coherent mind, which I possess intermittently. Well, but what fun is anything, if you can’t will for it to be exactly the way you want it, even if it is very evidently not. What joy is there in writing, if you can’t twist words to fit your own expectations and realities. I am glad that I didn’t go into journalism. Everyone should be too.
Am having difficulty deciding if I should use contracted forms. And because I was wondering whether to use a comma after an “and” in the above paragraph, I googled and found this, whose example on whether a serial comma resolves ambiguity cracks me up.
Use of the serial comma can sometimes remove ambiguity. Consider the possibly apocryphal book dedication quoted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden[14]:
To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.
There is ambiguity about the writer’s parentage, because Ayn Rand and God can be read as in apposition to my parents, leading the reader to believe that the writer refers to Ayn Rand and God as his or her parents. A comma before and removes the ambiguity.
This seems to have become a disclaimer post. Then, I guess I shall also not deny that the main reason behind having a blog stems primarily from the fact that I miss writing. And thinking. I should think that it is a very valid reason, given the evidence thus far. It is rather unfortunate, but I think for me, both activities go hand in hand. If I don’t write things down, they either settle somewhere where my memory can’t reach (and therefore, I can’t mull over them and decide what they really are, besides sentences on a page, or images on a wall, or etc) or they roll into one another to form this huge mess from which disentanglement is impossible (and therefore, I can’t deploy them when it comes to battles/arguments). Do I really know what I’ve just written? I shall make a better attempt soon.
Edit (condensed): To ease inertia.
It’s true, that. That everyone I know has, at one point or another, wanted to go to Japan. A nice unhealthy percentage of those people has already visited the country, but that hasn’t exactly stopped anyone from wishing upon themselves a second, third, or fourth trip. I’ve been there twice, once on a ‘backpacking’ trip for three glorious weeks, and the other on a company vacation (Tokyo for five days! Ahhh.). And, I really want to head there again. Preferably tomorrow, or next week, though all realistic signs point to next year or even the one after next.
Tokyo – Kyoto – Osaka – Kobe – Tottori – Fukuoka – Nagasaki – Kagoshima – Okinawa – Fukuoka – (flight) – Sapporo – Wakkanai – Hakodate – Akita – Sendai – Tokyo
That, including stops along the way in smaller provinces and cities, will be my very ideal itinerary. Frankly, I feel happy just looking at it. Granted my friend and I did travel to a few of the above places during our last trip, but three days is too short a time to explore a city properly. Ahhhhh. And I do think that a Japan trip will help kickstart my long journey back to basic Japanese literacy. Trying to book a ryokan (Japanese-only website, without a listing on other reservation portals) two days before you arrive, on a payphone in a hostel, with more coins than you’ll ever need in a different country and yet fewer than what’s required for a two-minute phonecall, in halting Japanese, does get you beyond a “Sorry, I don’t speak English” greeting, but racking your brains in a what-is-that-damn-word-for-arrival style while your friend tries her darnest to find more coins (because seriously, repeating the entire conversation, if I did get hung up on, will not be fun) is a feat best not repeated. That being said, you don’t need to know the language to travel around Japan, but it is certainly much more useful if you do. Especially when it comes to googling destinations that haven’t been written about much on English sites and in travel books. Even accommodation options open up. Am I convincing myself? Yes.
頑張りましょう。Ha.
Hmm. At some point (actually, yesterday), I decided that if there is ever a Masahisa Fukase show in Japan, I will then plan my trip to coincide with the exhibition dates. But it seems like there was already an exhibition held earlier this year. Am rather bummed.
Since new year resolutions never do stick for me, or rather I pre-empt disappointment by not making them at all, I’ve decided to make christmas resolutions. Quiet little promises that shall work their way to fulfilment, preferably through minimal effort on my end but failing that, through honest sincerity and a selective memory.
1. Get my driving licence
2. Make more photographs
3. Make more drawings
4. Read more
5. Travel more
Save for the first one, they are pretty non-specific and non-committal. Well. Well, I’d like very much for my stuff to be shown somewhere, and I think we’re at an impasse where they think I don’t spend enough time on them and where I think they are right. And so, I spend too many hours thinking about that problem, and then too many subsequent days drafting up an ideal(-ised) solution.
6. Overthink less
On a slightly separate note: I don’t think I’ve ever re-gifted, but here’s how to get away with it if you do or are planning to.
