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Feb. 13th, 2005 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blodeueddThere go by days and weeks when I mean to write but never do, finding after a while that what I would have posted for posterity doesn't seem quite so important anymore. Let it suffice to say that last weekend, spent in Montreal, was plenty of clean, geeky fun; I didn't much like Warcraft the computer game but Warcraft the boardgame was much more interesting, despite that idiotic rule about only being able to do one type of build every turn.
This week marked the arrival of a new group of four students, of whom I've been appointed guardian. :D They're very nice and hardworking, which is always appreciated. And when I asked them how their first week had gone, they told me, comparing my teaching style with that of their other teacher, that I'm "the intuitive one." It's hard to explain how heartwarming that was to me. There are adjectives to which I wouldn't be averse should they be used to describe me, such as classy or refined, but that I must in all honesty admit to not being (at least not in a broad sense), deep down in the core of my soul. And while I may not seem to have inhereted many of the witching genes from my mother's side of the family, I like to think that they slumber somewhere in the back of my mind. I'm quick to grasp new concepts and I understand my inner logic quite well, but sometimes I watch myself think and realise that oftentimes, when I arrive at a solution and work my way back through a logical path to explain it, I'm not entirely sure how I got there in the first place and I don't think it was the same way.
Some more food for thought, on sports. For the past few weeks, I've been playing soccer Friday afternoons, after work. Last week I happened to be the only one of the female persuasion there, as opposed to the other weeks, when there was at least another girl present. I know that many women would either feel intimidated or glory in the potential for admiration, but for me there was no particular feeling but total comfort with the situation: I'm not here to impress anyone, nobody's going easy on me, I'm just here to play. It felt so natural -- not that I'm ill at ease when other women are on the field, it just felt like being back in secondary school when I spent a lot of time hanging out with mostly guys. Back then, those guys were my friends and were rather afraid to accidentally hurt me, unsure as they were sometimes of their own strength, so I got away with more than I otherwise should have. Now, I'm playing with adults who don't act any differently when I'm around. Well, all right, I'm sure the jokes would be cruder in nature, but they wouldn't play any differently.
Perhaps my memory's been coloured by my last real first-hand experience with women in sports, namely my cégep badminton classes, in which only one girl (and there were over a dozen of us) was able to hold a candle to me, and I was only an average player. It's usually not very interesting to play against someone who's not as good at the game as you are, but to play against people who aren't really even trying -- that makes for boring sport indeed. I could have just stood there racking up points, but thought I ought to at least give them a chance. Yawn. Can I go play with the boys, now? I used to take delight in winning no matter the circumstances, but I've come to find that when the odds are uneven and in my favour, I loose interest, like playing Cranium with someone who isn't sure who Gandhi is. And when it comes to knowledge -- I feel like an elitist snob just writing this -- I feel even more disconnected because in my world, peopled by persons (so as not to repeat the word people) such as my parents and (most of) my students, who've travelled much and read more, it's even worse. I mean, come on, everyone knows who Gandhi is, right?
Ah, enough about that. How about some of my thoughts on what I hope will become a monthly occurrence, here in Yaourt Girl's lj land,
Mint na bokura (Wataru Yoshizumi), volumes 4 and 5: From the author of the much-loved Marmalade Boy, a story of teenage romance with basketball in lieu of tennis and cross-dressing in lieu of sort-of incest! All jokes about the rather improbably premise aside, (girl changes schools to follow her crush, her twin brother decides to do the same to keep an eye on her but is obliged to dress up as a girl and share a dorm room with a girl because the only free spot in the school is in the girl's dorm, all with the full knowledge and approval of the headmistress), this is quite a sweet story. Obviously, the cross-dressing situation leads to many a qui pro quo, but they're generally handled well and not drawn out interminably. One thing that seemed a tad unrealistic, to my Western mind, was the number of characters (and keep in mind we're dealing with 15-year-olds) saying what amounts to "I love you, you don't love me, but since I want you to be happy, I'll accept your decision and hope you find joy with someone else. In the meantime, I'll hang back and quietly love you from afar, only hoping that one day you'll feel the same way for me." For one or two characters to be this way I would buy; for everyone but the Rokutanda stand-in to be so selfless seems a little far-fetched. Then again, I suppose that in Japan, where harmony is always to be preserved, it's not such a stretch. At any rate, it's a fun read, the characters are well-drawn and volume 5 ended with a cliff-hanger: Noeru (he's the cross-dressing twin) has not managed to avoid puberty and his voice has broken! *gasp* Will his cover be blown?!
L'Empire désorienté (Catherine Bergman): This is a collection of article-length pieces about Japanese culture, seen from the other side. Which is to say, the author, wife of the former Canadian ambassador to Japan and respected journalist in her own right, chose to examine the nails that stick out in order to understand those who don't. Women in politics, a journalist who just can't learn enough, a woman who dares speak up, a teacher who goes up against the government regarding what really happened during the second world war, people who fight the status quo. It's a fascinating read, both moving and frustrating. The more I learn about Japan, the more I both dread and look forward to moving there -- but that's neither here nor there, I'm going and it will certainly be interesting.
L'Ile des gauchers (Alexandre Jardin): England, the 1930s, a lord who's spent his whole adult life making himself into the perfect lover for his wife realises, just before he finds out she's leaving him, that he should have learned how to be a good husband, instead. What's a man to do? He packs up his family and takes them half-way around the world to live on L'Ile des gauchers, a small island in the Pacific, settled by people who decided that modern life had it all wrong and that the best thing a person could do was refine the art of loving one's spouse. The story is of how Lord Cigogne and his wife, Emily, discover the island's traditions and rituals, leading them to explore, deepen and strengthen their relationship through mutual trust, sharing, expectations and experimentation. What the author has to say about relationships, and how one should cultivate them, is quite reasonable and I found myself agreeing more often than not. However, after having finished the book, I can't help this nagging feeling that in wanting to explain what women want and how they should be treated, he (of course the author is a he and French, to boot) comes out sounding just the tiniest bit patronizing toward them. His fondness for the imperfect subjunctive is annoying and the fact that the couple's three children are barely mentioned at all once the family is settled on the island make Cigogne and Emily seem like rather irresponsible parents, for all that they're on their way to becoming Husband and Wife of the Year. Overall worth reading, but it left an odd taste in my mouth.
La Reine étranglée, Les Poisons de la couronne, La Loi des mâles (Maurice Druon): I already wrote a bit about Les Rois maudits, such as how I finished volume 2 in a day. I've paced myself since then and am now on book 6, but it's still gripping. A joy to read, except the parts that deal with Guccio Baglioni and his doomed love for Marie de Cressay. It's a credit to the writing that their love story is heartbreaking enough to have made me want to stop reading, so loath was I to witness their pain and the foreshadowing perhaps made it even worse, since I knew what was coming. Everyone, go read this. Now.
La Cité dans l'oeuf (Michel Tremblay): I love Michel Tremblay to death, but his fantasy stories leave me rather unsatisfied. He was pretty young when he wrote this, so I'll cut him some slack, but this can't even really be called a novel; it's a fevered hallucination with no resolution whatsoever, just a lot of disturbing images. Interesting, fairly well-written disturbing images, but still, there it is. Fortunately, pretty much everything else he's written is first rate.
Basara volume 12 (Yumi Tamura): Volume 12 of... 28. >_< We continue to follow the adventures of Sarasa, unlikely rebel masquerading as Tatara, her deceased twin brother. Once again, she's in a tight spot, trapped in an underground prison, seeking a way out. And what's this, Sarasa, you think that Shuri and the Red King might possibly be the same person?! Shokku! Who'da thunk it? The author seems like quite a funny lady, her little Tamu-Tamu Time bits and her anecdotes are always amusing. Volumes 13, 14 and 15 are sitting on my coffee table, waiting...
Fifth Quarter (Tanya Huff): This is not a sequel to Sing the Four Quarters, though it takes place in the same world, but No Quarter, which I read a few years ago, is the sequel. Vree and Bannon are brother and sister as well as being assassins. On a mission that should have been fairly easy, things go horribly wrong when the intended victim takes over Bannon's body, forcing him out and Bannon is forced into his sister's mind, sharing her body. When they realise what's happened, they set off after Bannon's body, only to find that getting it back will be harder than they thought it would be. It's fantasy without dragons and swords of destiny, though there's magic and wishful societal rethinking. One thing I really liked about these books is how sex is dealt with. It's something everyone does with whomever they please, talks about without shame and looks at the same as eating or sleeping. There are no sexual politics, women and men are equal in everything. What surprised me was how that whole premise made what is usually seen as taboo -- OMG, a guy thinks another guy is hot! A woman wants to kiss another woman! This man wants to sleep with everyone! -- not titillating because it's forbidden, but for the boring old reason that it's simply hot when a person looks at someone else with desire. That's how it should be, right? Oh right, I forgot. Think of the children!
This week marked the arrival of a new group of four students, of whom I've been appointed guardian. :D They're very nice and hardworking, which is always appreciated. And when I asked them how their first week had gone, they told me, comparing my teaching style with that of their other teacher, that I'm "the intuitive one." It's hard to explain how heartwarming that was to me. There are adjectives to which I wouldn't be averse should they be used to describe me, such as classy or refined, but that I must in all honesty admit to not being (at least not in a broad sense), deep down in the core of my soul. And while I may not seem to have inhereted many of the witching genes from my mother's side of the family, I like to think that they slumber somewhere in the back of my mind. I'm quick to grasp new concepts and I understand my inner logic quite well, but sometimes I watch myself think and realise that oftentimes, when I arrive at a solution and work my way back through a logical path to explain it, I'm not entirely sure how I got there in the first place and I don't think it was the same way.
Some more food for thought, on sports. For the past few weeks, I've been playing soccer Friday afternoons, after work. Last week I happened to be the only one of the female persuasion there, as opposed to the other weeks, when there was at least another girl present. I know that many women would either feel intimidated or glory in the potential for admiration, but for me there was no particular feeling but total comfort with the situation: I'm not here to impress anyone, nobody's going easy on me, I'm just here to play. It felt so natural -- not that I'm ill at ease when other women are on the field, it just felt like being back in secondary school when I spent a lot of time hanging out with mostly guys. Back then, those guys were my friends and were rather afraid to accidentally hurt me, unsure as they were sometimes of their own strength, so I got away with more than I otherwise should have. Now, I'm playing with adults who don't act any differently when I'm around. Well, all right, I'm sure the jokes would be cruder in nature, but they wouldn't play any differently.
Perhaps my memory's been coloured by my last real first-hand experience with women in sports, namely my cégep badminton classes, in which only one girl (and there were over a dozen of us) was able to hold a candle to me, and I was only an average player. It's usually not very interesting to play against someone who's not as good at the game as you are, but to play against people who aren't really even trying -- that makes for boring sport indeed. I could have just stood there racking up points, but thought I ought to at least give them a chance. Yawn. Can I go play with the boys, now? I used to take delight in winning no matter the circumstances, but I've come to find that when the odds are uneven and in my favour, I loose interest, like playing Cranium with someone who isn't sure who Gandhi is. And when it comes to knowledge -- I feel like an elitist snob just writing this -- I feel even more disconnected because in my world, peopled by persons (so as not to repeat the word people) such as my parents and (most of) my students, who've travelled much and read more, it's even worse. I mean, come on, everyone knows who Gandhi is, right?
Ah, enough about that. How about some of my thoughts on what I hope will become a monthly occurrence, here in Yaourt Girl's lj land,
Mint na bokura (Wataru Yoshizumi), volumes 4 and 5: From the author of the much-loved Marmalade Boy, a story of teenage romance with basketball in lieu of tennis and cross-dressing in lieu of sort-of incest! All jokes about the rather improbably premise aside, (girl changes schools to follow her crush, her twin brother decides to do the same to keep an eye on her but is obliged to dress up as a girl and share a dorm room with a girl because the only free spot in the school is in the girl's dorm, all with the full knowledge and approval of the headmistress), this is quite a sweet story. Obviously, the cross-dressing situation leads to many a qui pro quo, but they're generally handled well and not drawn out interminably. One thing that seemed a tad unrealistic, to my Western mind, was the number of characters (and keep in mind we're dealing with 15-year-olds) saying what amounts to "I love you, you don't love me, but since I want you to be happy, I'll accept your decision and hope you find joy with someone else. In the meantime, I'll hang back and quietly love you from afar, only hoping that one day you'll feel the same way for me." For one or two characters to be this way I would buy; for everyone but the Rokutanda stand-in to be so selfless seems a little far-fetched. Then again, I suppose that in Japan, where harmony is always to be preserved, it's not such a stretch. At any rate, it's a fun read, the characters are well-drawn and volume 5 ended with a cliff-hanger: Noeru (he's the cross-dressing twin) has not managed to avoid puberty and his voice has broken! *gasp* Will his cover be blown?!
L'Empire désorienté (Catherine Bergman): This is a collection of article-length pieces about Japanese culture, seen from the other side. Which is to say, the author, wife of the former Canadian ambassador to Japan and respected journalist in her own right, chose to examine the nails that stick out in order to understand those who don't. Women in politics, a journalist who just can't learn enough, a woman who dares speak up, a teacher who goes up against the government regarding what really happened during the second world war, people who fight the status quo. It's a fascinating read, both moving and frustrating. The more I learn about Japan, the more I both dread and look forward to moving there -- but that's neither here nor there, I'm going and it will certainly be interesting.
L'Ile des gauchers (Alexandre Jardin): England, the 1930s, a lord who's spent his whole adult life making himself into the perfect lover for his wife realises, just before he finds out she's leaving him, that he should have learned how to be a good husband, instead. What's a man to do? He packs up his family and takes them half-way around the world to live on L'Ile des gauchers, a small island in the Pacific, settled by people who decided that modern life had it all wrong and that the best thing a person could do was refine the art of loving one's spouse. The story is of how Lord Cigogne and his wife, Emily, discover the island's traditions and rituals, leading them to explore, deepen and strengthen their relationship through mutual trust, sharing, expectations and experimentation. What the author has to say about relationships, and how one should cultivate them, is quite reasonable and I found myself agreeing more often than not. However, after having finished the book, I can't help this nagging feeling that in wanting to explain what women want and how they should be treated, he (of course the author is a he and French, to boot) comes out sounding just the tiniest bit patronizing toward them. His fondness for the imperfect subjunctive is annoying and the fact that the couple's three children are barely mentioned at all once the family is settled on the island make Cigogne and Emily seem like rather irresponsible parents, for all that they're on their way to becoming Husband and Wife of the Year. Overall worth reading, but it left an odd taste in my mouth.
La Reine étranglée, Les Poisons de la couronne, La Loi des mâles (Maurice Druon): I already wrote a bit about Les Rois maudits, such as how I finished volume 2 in a day. I've paced myself since then and am now on book 6, but it's still gripping. A joy to read, except the parts that deal with Guccio Baglioni and his doomed love for Marie de Cressay. It's a credit to the writing that their love story is heartbreaking enough to have made me want to stop reading, so loath was I to witness their pain and the foreshadowing perhaps made it even worse, since I knew what was coming. Everyone, go read this. Now.
La Cité dans l'oeuf (Michel Tremblay): I love Michel Tremblay to death, but his fantasy stories leave me rather unsatisfied. He was pretty young when he wrote this, so I'll cut him some slack, but this can't even really be called a novel; it's a fevered hallucination with no resolution whatsoever, just a lot of disturbing images. Interesting, fairly well-written disturbing images, but still, there it is. Fortunately, pretty much everything else he's written is first rate.
Basara volume 12 (Yumi Tamura): Volume 12 of... 28. >_< We continue to follow the adventures of Sarasa, unlikely rebel masquerading as Tatara, her deceased twin brother. Once again, she's in a tight spot, trapped in an underground prison, seeking a way out. And what's this, Sarasa, you think that Shuri and the Red King might possibly be the same person?! Shokku! Who'da thunk it? The author seems like quite a funny lady, her little Tamu-Tamu Time bits and her anecdotes are always amusing. Volumes 13, 14 and 15 are sitting on my coffee table, waiting...
Fifth Quarter (Tanya Huff): This is not a sequel to Sing the Four Quarters, though it takes place in the same world, but No Quarter, which I read a few years ago, is the sequel. Vree and Bannon are brother and sister as well as being assassins. On a mission that should have been fairly easy, things go horribly wrong when the intended victim takes over Bannon's body, forcing him out and Bannon is forced into his sister's mind, sharing her body. When they realise what's happened, they set off after Bannon's body, only to find that getting it back will be harder than they thought it would be. It's fantasy without dragons and swords of destiny, though there's magic and wishful societal rethinking. One thing I really liked about these books is how sex is dealt with. It's something everyone does with whomever they please, talks about without shame and looks at the same as eating or sleeping. There are no sexual politics, women and men are equal in everything. What surprised me was how that whole premise made what is usually seen as taboo -- OMG, a guy thinks another guy is hot! A woman wants to kiss another woman! This man wants to sleep with everyone! -- not titillating because it's forbidden, but for the boring old reason that it's simply hot when a person looks at someone else with desire. That's how it should be, right? Oh right, I forgot. Think of the children!
