forty-three

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

As you read this I will have been retired for over three weeks. If all goes as planned my darling wife and I will be in Kyoto. Maybe the library will be a fading memory, maybe even a vague foggy lovely one. But as I actually write, I am entering into my last week of 31 years at the library. And while I am still at the library, library things still happen. So I try to appreciate them.

Sixteen years ago I tried to appreciate them, and with six days left I still try to appreciate them. 

I usually do. For the most part.

Today a longtime patron of the library, passing by the front desk, congratulated me on my retirement and then proclaimed how the Roseville Library really won't be the same without me.

"That's kind." I replied. "But there's always a new old-timer coming up the ranks."

Later I checked out a small stack of books to a woman. Apparently this was very quick process, because the women asked "That was so fast! How did you do that?"

For years I've answered that sort of question by talking about the RFID readers, pads that can pick up the signals from a stack of books. But not today. Today I answered "By using the skills built upon years and years of experience."

And for a now completely up to date post, we are in Kyoto and I have this:

Yesterday we went to the Modern Art Museum in Kyoto, just past a gigantic torii gate and over an extremely pretty canal full of herons, the kind I’ve only ever seen in ink scroll paintings. These herons were quiet and everywhere along the canal, and a joy to see.

The Modern Art Museum was a grab bag of delights and pleasures, which I’ve found to be true of modern art museums in various countries over the years. You never know whether you’ll see contemporary work, a focus on twentieth century pieces, a set collection, truly historical works belying the name of the institution, or some kind of random attention to local stalwarts from different movements that may not have reached worldwide notoriety. More than anything, it feels like a place where one might see anything.

My darling wife and I saw a collection, I’m not even sure what it was, a collective group of local contemporary artists. It was absolutely rich and delightful, diverse, and completely aligned with my tastes. It felt like the kind of art I was trying to make when I was younger, and here it was, everywhere.

The other exhibition featured Japanese ink kanji scrolls and porcelain over a thousand years old, along with some historic ink paintings. Some of the best scrolls were contemporary as well. The museum had a beautiful backyard pond with more herons, and a big, grand interior.

These are some random pictures of me from inside the Modern Art Museum of Kyoto: