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Rainy Wednesday Reading
Hi, DW, it's been a little while. Nothing really exciting happening over here. Mostly cold weather turning to warm weather and virtual job hunting. Job hunting + social anxiety = not fun, but I'm managing. My mom's being... pushily helpful but also helpfully pushy about it, and she isn't nagging me (progress!!) so that's fine. I think I got a little depressed for a bit (I feel like I've been sleeping too much) and I couldn't even go out to the grocery store because Z's car wasn't working until just last week and it was too far to walk. But I've succeeded in exercising more the last few weeks and I'm visiting the park more often, which I think is helping. It's delightfully drizzly out today and the grass is juuuust starting to turn green again here.
Oh, and I also saw R again on Sunday - he took some professional headshots for me and I helped him out with a shoot. Most interesting thing that's happened all month, haha. That and my mom sending me a random box of tropical fruit; I am impatient for those pink pineapples to ripen so I can see how they taste!
I finished my figure skating Swan Lake review. I think my next big fun-time project will be to finish the last edits on my obsessively detailed YOI timeline so I can post it, and then probably some work on original writing.
Currently Reading: The World of the Shining Prince, which is a book on Heian Japan history and culture. On the one hand, interesting and provides details that I haven't picked up from my other Heian reading, such as exactly how the Fujiwara came to power and what they did besides 'marriage politics'. On the other... it was published in 1964 and it shows. Not as much as the 1961 book on Tibet, which gave me whiplash when the authors went from hating on Tibetan Buddhism to hating on the English government for not defending Tibet against the Chinese government's invasion and colonization (which it is, no matter what the propaganda websites I've blocked say). But it does get Really Weird and sometimes kind of nasty in the religion chapter, in particular around Shintoism and the concept of syncretism.
Look, I realize that I have a very different background WRT these things than someone of the author's time (or your typical white American my age, thanks parents) and that 2021 is a very different year. But I feel that if you're deep enough into a culture to be able to read and translate old Japanese and Chinese, you should be able to set aside some of your preconceptions and stop going 'it's so strange and odd that they didn't see any conflict between Buddhism and Shintoism and Confucianism!'.
That being said, I was pleasantly surprised at how the author defends the ideal of a Heian man - wearing makeup, into incense and poetry, compared to the beauty of women, cries all the fucking time to show he's a sensitive soul - as being equally as valid as the 'manly man' ideals in the west.
Also, the first introduction had me rolling my eyes a lot. It's basically the original author's student defending him as Actually He Was Really Progressive And Not Sexist, Really, He Was Never Sexist Towards Me. I sense there is background conflict I don't know about, but I'm here to read about history, not you stanning your advisor.
To Read: Probably next will be either the other Japanese history book I got recently, or Lucinda Ruh's autobiography.
Oh, and I also saw R again on Sunday - he took some professional headshots for me and I helped him out with a shoot. Most interesting thing that's happened all month, haha. That and my mom sending me a random box of tropical fruit; I am impatient for those pink pineapples to ripen so I can see how they taste!
I finished my figure skating Swan Lake review. I think my next big fun-time project will be to finish the last edits on my obsessively detailed YOI timeline so I can post it, and then probably some work on original writing.
Currently Reading: The World of the Shining Prince, which is a book on Heian Japan history and culture. On the one hand, interesting and provides details that I haven't picked up from my other Heian reading, such as exactly how the Fujiwara came to power and what they did besides 'marriage politics'. On the other... it was published in 1964 and it shows. Not as much as the 1961 book on Tibet, which gave me whiplash when the authors went from hating on Tibetan Buddhism to hating on the English government for not defending Tibet against the Chinese government's invasion and colonization (which it is, no matter what the propaganda websites I've blocked say). But it does get Really Weird and sometimes kind of nasty in the religion chapter, in particular around Shintoism and the concept of syncretism.
Look, I realize that I have a very different background WRT these things than someone of the author's time (or your typical white American my age, thanks parents) and that 2021 is a very different year. But I feel that if you're deep enough into a culture to be able to read and translate old Japanese and Chinese, you should be able to set aside some of your preconceptions and stop going 'it's so strange and odd that they didn't see any conflict between Buddhism and Shintoism and Confucianism!'.
That being said, I was pleasantly surprised at how the author defends the ideal of a Heian man - wearing makeup, into incense and poetry, compared to the beauty of women, cries all the fucking time to show he's a sensitive soul - as being equally as valid as the 'manly man' ideals in the west.
Also, the first introduction had me rolling my eyes a lot. It's basically the original author's student defending him as Actually He Was Really Progressive And Not Sexist, Really, He Was Never Sexist Towards Me. I sense there is background conflict I don't know about, but I'm here to read about history, not you stanning your advisor.
To Read: Probably next will be either the other Japanese history book I got recently, or Lucinda Ruh's autobiography.
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Good luck with the job hunt. <3
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