208 White Light

This is the moment I've always been waiting for. Relatively heavy snow had fallen on the city and one night turned everything into so snow-white. It's just annoying to someone (especially who is in charge of transportation business), but to me it's a blessing. It's hard to explain the feeling to know that snow is coming down to those who never experienced it in the childhood because the kids are previledged to fully enjoy the moment without caring for the mess that adults have to deal with.

So I am lucky. I had experienced years and years in snow and I know every aspects of the beauty when it snows. I have such a good memory of these moments. When it starts snowing, it rings the bell of excitement that something wonderful is beginning. Usually I stayed outside to enjoy the feeling and scenary as long as possible. I loved the quietness of the sound of snowfall when I was a child making a snowman with friends, and I loved the twinkle of the city light in dancing snowflakes when I was striding the street after school. Most of all I always loved the marvelous snowlight. I even sometimes think that every people should once in a lifetime live in the snowscape to actually experience the mysterious beauty of it. But, I know it's wrong because every corner of the earth you'll have different kinds of natural beauty from which you take precious moment. Mine is snow.

207 Script

One Saturday evening I was sitting in a cafe. It rained hard and it was a cold night. I was looking outside through the window covered with water drop all over. I saw only the ceiling light was shining and casting its reflection on the wet dark corridor. It looked like a winding runway. Few people was there in the cold rain but actually vague shadows of two person standing on the corridor were seen in the dim light.

Then I shot this photo and wondered for a while; if this is a script describing the opening of a movie, what kind of story could be followed?

Suspense or detective story, maybe. Romantic comedy, definitely No. Action, perhaps. Social film, unlikely. Fantasy, not so unlikely.

I wonder how the great writers begin the story with what kind of picture. The opening of a film may be important but, name the two or three movies you recently watched whose openings you clearly remember. It's hard (I am no exception). Maybe movies are to be well remembered at its climax or its ending. But I kind of like the movie whose opening is unforgettable.

206 Nobel Prize

Photo taken at Nobel Museum's global traveling exhibition,

titled “Alfred Nobel—Networks of Innovation,”

As a student who majored the History of Science I learned about Alfred Nobel and it was literally one of the historical studies of a scientist. Years later I had an opportunity to see the exhibition commemorating the 110th anniversary of the Nobel Prize and showing the several different approaches to the humanity of Alfred Nobel. 

I don't quite remember when I got to know the thing called Nobel Prize, but it must be somewhere in my childhood. I do remember that the Prize to me was something so stable and unshakable. It is still so, but the way now I recognize it is slightly changed. When I was a kid, the Nobel Prize, just like the Oympic Games looked so perfect and it was like a given paradigm of the world's culture and society. It may be still so--- but in learning that Nobel Prize was founded surprisingly based on a man's will and Oympics has its own complicated history and arguments, and to know today's world is changing rapidly in such an upheaval, I think the "given world" as we knew it is getting harder to be believed in.

The ultimate truth and righteousness are difficult to find even in the most appropriate field for it such as science or sports game. But as this is the age of change, perhaps we should sometimes welcome the change of recognition of the world. Interestingly, that's the way the scientist would find the new theory or the athlete would break the record.

205 Setting sun, setting moon

自然とはよくしたもので、冬になって緑も花もなくなって見るものがなくなってくると、今度は空が抜群にきれいに見えるようになります。空気が冷えるせいか、光と影がシャープになり、空が微妙な色合いで変化するのがはっきりわかります。それに星空も。これを楽しめるのなら少々の寒さも、という気持ちになります。

204 Holiday in D

It's been a long time since I last visited the town. In my college days I often went to shops and cafes and was satisfied with the fact that I would be distinguished for spending time in such a smart and spruce town.

Years passed and gradually I've become able to catch the senses and aura of the place as soon as I step into it, not spending whole afterschool hours. So free from the overstretching mind of youth and the bothersome affectation, a sunny winter morning I visited the place.

And it was a wonderful holiday. I got nice book/culture space and fine dining, saw the shining white mustang, found a cozy Finland cafe decorated with white birch, serving a really tasty drink with rare ittalas. Everything was in light and looked just beautiful.

203 Dream Job

Photo: Reuters 

Just after the new year's day I saw that LinkedIn had post a tweet; "Fill in the blank, My dream job is                 "
And I remember thousands of people already tweeted back.

Faster than I could think of anything deeply, at the moment I had made up my mind,

"My dream job is a jet pilot"

It's interesting because if the question is slightly different the way of thinking would be totally changed like this;

1. "My childhood dream job is              "
2. "My lifetime job is                "
3. "My ideal job is                "

1. One's childfood dream job I think is the most tolerate one and entitled to be as unrealistic as possibe. 2. Anybody who could instantly answer his/her lifetime job is very lucky. 3. The ideal job is harder to find than the dream job because sometimes dreams come true but rarely ideal could be realized.

My own childhood dream jobs are; astronaut, explorer, artist, photographer, film director, actor, writer, art director, journalist, editor, and NASA scientist. Interestingly, jet pilot wasn't among them. I don't know why but there might be something between natural childish dream and dream growing through the course of one's life.  

202 Saga

新年には「神話」を。

よく知られている通り、Starwarsの世界にはSFと西部劇、神話と東洋思想が反映されています。子供の頃ならいざ知らず、様々な映画を見てからふとこのシリーズを観てみると、よくこれだけの要素を盛り込んで、かつ映画として第一級のエンタテインメントに仕上げられたものだと何とも不思議な気がします。殊に最近の映画は台詞の一つ一つ、配役やカメラワークに至るまで、プロデューサーと配給会社の意向がすみずみまで徹底しているに違いないと思わせるのですが、Starwarsにはそれが全くなく、ゆえに残り時間を少しも気にすることもない悠然とした台詞まわしがあったかと思えば突然猛烈な空中戦が始まったりと、大作映画らしからぬ「マイペース」。評価の高い旧三部作と比べ、そのイントロダクションとなった新三部作は時にマイペースが過ぎて妙なリズム感に陥りはするもののどこか「神話とはこうしたものだ」と思わせる力があります。

「神話」に現代的でシャープな文学性を期待することはないですし、「神話」には編集者もいません。「神話」とは永遠で根源的な物語を鷹揚に語ってくれるものだとすると、「神話語り」を映画にしたStarwarsが他の映画と少し違う雰囲気を湛えているのはこのためでしょう。

宇宙空間に騎士物語を再現し、カウボーイアクションと禅思想、光速で駆け巡る銀河系の星々と親子の物語を結び付けて描く独特の神話はやはり見事です。

201 1-1-2012

Happy New Year

新年おめでとうございます

 New year has started quietly, a bit cloudy, morning sunshine is not so brilliant but enough to shoot my plants.

新年は静かに始まり、ちょっと曇り空で朝の光もそれほど明るくはありませんが、植物を撮るのには十分でした

A few minutes ago there was a quake again but even so the stillness was not broken

ちょっと前にはまた地震が、それでも静けさは破られません

Stay lucid and steady, I hope!

すっきりして着実な一年を！