Bobby Chiu at Imaginism Studios.

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I now have a secure job until mid-2012, a payrise, annual leave while I'm in Japan and five nights until we leave.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book came from the library with a post-it note on the inside cover: "This book is brilliant". I couldn't decide whether that was cute or annoying until I actually started reading, and now I completely understand what would push someone to resort to a post-it note. This book is brilliant!

David Mitchell is my new favourite. I have been trying to dissect the gushy love I have for this book but it comes out as a list of clinical words and concepts reminiscent of Mrs Chamberlain in my high school english lit class. Character building! Place setting! Literary devices! Things that put people off reading, and things that aren't necessarily apparent unless they're done particularly poorly, or perfectly. And in that case, they're often invisible.

Not so with The Thousand Autumns. It has the pace and plot of a thriller and the kind of robust and humanly flawed characters that are more real than the host of people you brush past in everyday life. There are the kind of parallel plot lines that can be dangerous for someone with a memory as pitiful as mine, but they are so luscious, and each as interesting as the other, that it works. Every time a chapter ended, I'd grit my teeth with a 'no, fuck you!' and then turn the page and 'ohhhh, yeah! argh!'.

It evokes the mindset of both 'the West' and Japan as Japan was grudgingly opening its doors to trade in the late 1700s, and Holland and England were combing the globe for more trade partners to wrangle with. Both sides with their racism and lack of comprehension of the strange and foreign values of the other. And, the individuals cutting through it, connecting with each other on a human level.

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The Thousand Autumns is set in Japan at the turn of the 19th century, on the trading post of Dejima, Nagasaki. Jacob de Zoet is a clerk with the Dutch East India company, and the book charts his dealings and relations during his time there. The characters are perfect, with their simmering tension and backstabbing, history and motives.

It is set among politics of the relations between the Dutch traders stationed in Dejima, the Japanese interpreters and people with whom they came into contact. It's humorous without being funny, and very fun to read.



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The long way home

There is an incident near Johnston St, and we must all get off the tram. An overly made up fat woman huffs at the inconvenience and hauls her self up to waddle toward the door. I walk toward the incident, thinking about counsellors and roadkill, reiterating to myself that it's not morbid curiosity but a geographic necessity to follow this road in this direction. I map escape routes and decide to walk the last 4km home because I've got nothing more pressing to do and my psychologist spent the duration of our relationship telling me to stop and smell the roses.

A baby birds with translucent skin and a suede little beaklet lies in the middle of the footpath, a trail of ants winds around it, devouring cell by cell and disappearing under the fence. I can't walk past, and cross the road. A cat is dozing and I call it over, but it rolls and lazily bats a paw toward its face. I am patient, and it comes over in its own sweet time. Dogs aren't like this, but the only evidence of dogs on this street are the ball throwing implements in the garden next door. The cat has freckles on its eye rims and a thoughtlessly positioned blotch that runs from its nose to its left eye. It sees something invisible and shies away, wherein I lose my patience and meander on.

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Housemate number two is playing through playlists for her party tonight and they're giving me the kind of tingles that only 90s pop can. She's dancing with the beautiful lanky foal that leaves her waiting for hours and turns up with cupcakes just as she's finished taking off her tear-ruined make up. All these songs are for girls by girls and I wonder whether that ache is ever going to go away. Cider is flowing today and all the bags of chips are already open.

The Julian Assange rape saga

"American politicians might use their time more productively working out how a 23-year-old army private had access to so much confidential material and was able to copy it and hand it over to WikiLeaks."

From Malcolm Turnbull's article in The Age this morning. A very good point that I hadn't considered. But as an aside:

"Certainly there are some, not only in the Australian's legal team, who argue that a rape accusation based on the details of the allegations in the public domain – some of them placed there by the women themselves – would be highly unlikely to come to court in this country. "

From The Guardian. They would be highly unlikely to come to court in this country, too. But I don't know how to think about the issue. How rape has become an issue in the Julian Assange thing, and what it means more broadly.

On one hand, rape claims must be taken seriously regardless of the celebrity status or lack thereof, of the accused. On the other hand, the accusations toward Julian Assange reek of that exact sentiment being abused for political gain. While taking seriously charges laid against somebody of public import could serve to normalise rape trials and highlight (or, more to the point, ensure that) nobody is above the law. In reality, it appears that the opposite happens; claims against those in the public eye are trivialised and the women vilified for lying, and seeking fame, attention and money. For being attention seeking whores, and how dare they! And then there are the people available to come out and publicly defend the character of the accused, and their charity work, contribution to society, the arts, public life, and/or whatever else. Which all too often ends in a denigration of the character and reputation of the women.

It is disgusting that a rape claim is being used to bring Julian Assange into custody, to muddy his character and by extension, his organisation and actions. If that is what is happening, and it seems like it is. Which ever way it falls, it feels like a great big conspiracy. Rape is a revolting, horrific crime. To use charges of rape makes it difficult for anybody to challenge the timing and the way that they have been brought about. To do so can imply or be made to look as though they are holding somebody in the public eye above the charge of rape. It shifts attention away from the other thing going on here, which is desperately scrubbing around to find a charge that could be levelled against Assange. Rape is one sure to turn the tide of public opinion against the man.

The other side of the conspiracy is that rape claims are being used in this scenario that looks like a set up, but that we can’t really outwardly conceive of like a set up. Who is the winner in this situation? Not the women who have allegedly been raped, and not Assange. It’s pitting pawns against each other and skirting issues like freedom of information, and information in the age of the internet. Perhaps various authorities that have bought themselves some time?

We went to Daimaru on the weekend, where she bought couverture mice and fingered clothes by Australian designers that I wonder what happened to. She taught me to drink coffee without sugar and that two is safer than one. We went to Hudsons on Elizabeth St and sat in the sweltering upstairs area drinking caramel and hazelnut lattes, making up band names and fake gothic poetry.

The map of that place is etched in my head, with the places we were too young to visit, for girls older than us. The shops we went to, monitoring the metal section and which CDs had been bought during the week. Wondering who bought them, and where we could find them. Him.

I needed her then, and despite the distance between me and everybody else in those years, it was the closest I’ve ever been to another girl. I wished I was her, with her taste and sensibility. Orange was her favourite colour and all her things were her, to a tee. Psychology and dreams, basketball, and the way her dad liked Rush. I didn’t have a favourite colour or style or thing that I did. I did my homework and gritted my teeth a lot, waiting for high school to be over so everything could be less intolerable.

Choosing things required a thorough self-interrogation. What would that mean, and what would that say about me? It wasn’t that I didn’t know who I was. It was that I wasn’t part of anything, close to or sheltered by anyone. It was an uphill battle and a desperate need to build a shell that meant I didn’t have to nail my colours to a mast. You can’t straddle social groups without a breezy self ease that I used to think I would discover one day.

On dogs and other things

I know about things like high speed rail and the cycle of prison and homelessness. I know what it’s like to wish they would just kill themself and put us all out of our misery, because at least grieving has a process and is easier than watching and waiting. I know little pieces of big things and at work I’m a shell, alternately awkward and on-fire witty, pumping out swathes of documents and doing what I’m told. I wonder what it’s like to feel engaged at work. I am fascinated by the subjects that I work around, like I am fascinated by most topics, but this place doesn’t let me care. I think about who I am outside of work, and it’s nothing, either. I am a reader and a worrier. I read, and anxiously flit between obligations trying to eat enough vegetables.
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I have spent the last three weekends with my little dog by my side, returning her on Sunday night, when she moves seamlessly from baby to alpha, and the top of the couch. It’s interesting, being a some time dog owner. There’s something missing, not living with a dog, and something so lovely about being followed into the toilet and having visited three parks before 10am on Sunday morning.

This Sunday, she was set upon by a cat being chased by a toddler. It hissed at the child and in a blind instant was upon Mimi, twice her size and weight, clawing and screaming. She screeched and cried and I saw a flash of dead dog, but wrenched her away with only a few smears of blood on my arms. Hers. She was shocked and shaking and I was hating cats again, when the owners ran out and asked what the hell was going on. Your cat attacked my dog. Oh, she does that.
We carried on to Methven park where a group were gathered around a bunch of small dogs, and a tiny apricot teacup poodle on an old woman’s shoulder. Owners of small dogs are sure to have sympathy for small dogs being attacked by large cats. Instant friends.

These are my people, but I’m not really one of them. Dogs have been such a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember. My grandpa, Pat, healing ‘little beasties’ with splints for mice and nests for baby birds. Picking Lady up after she’d been hit by a car on Belmont Avenue, when I was so scared and overwhelmed that I couldn’t get close enough to even determine whether it was a log or Lady. It was Lady, and she was still so young. She had gone outside through a hole in the kitchen cupboard which was her dog hole at her house, but just another part of the building site that was ours, at the time. So unfair. And Camille next door’s dog, Carole the German Short Haired Pointer, running around the streets every day, unconfined and scared. I hated them because they wouldn’t even have known if she had been killed, and she was so scared that I could never even get close enough to make her safe. And Lady’s first visit was her last.

I overcame my fear of the Birkenstock shop in Centre Arcade today, and ventured through the lunchtime city rush to finally, actually, buy some of these:

They look relatively bike friendly, for the bike about town kind of trip, and I'm coming to terms with lots of things that have always seemed to belong in the domain of Things I Couldn't Pull Off. Not sure how these shoes ever fit into that category, but I often confront weird high school truths that have prevented me from doing/watching/listening to various things.

Unfortunately, not not unpredictably, I'm somewhere between a size 34 and 35. The 35 was far too big, and of course, the 34 is in the kids' section. And the ones I want aren't made for kids. That at least makes shoes a justifiable thing to buy in Japan, where my minuscule feet will be catered to.

In other news, D and I went to Veggie Kitchen tonight, which has a lovely vegetarian menu that isn't comprised of dishes using mock meat or meat substitutes. It's hard to find truly vegetarian Chinese food, which isn't extremely plain and/or mock, so this is one to remember. The hot pot had some sort of deep fried tofu thing on top, which looked kind of like deep fried tofu sushi without rice, and was amazing.

Everything is made on site, including their tofu and soy milk, and everything looked and felt home made. Which is a good thing, especially since I'm sure that all the dumplings I've ever had (bar those made myself) have come from the same supplier, regardless of where I've had them. They're yum, but they're the same, and not house made.