sixty-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:

Now we're really moving along by virtue of reposting, though I still haven't managed to let go of these explanatory notes, which makes for a better clerkmanifesto experience, at least I hope it does, but they are surely slowing me down too.

Today, curiously, isn't exactly a repost though. Before clerkmanifesto started I was writing some sort of pre-clerkmanifesto series. One was called "The Secret Secrets of Writing" which did much to help establish my tone going forward. I thought maybe I put these in clerkmanifesto at some point, but it doesn't look like it. Maybe I just linked to them in the early days? There are eleven of these, and though today is only the first in the series, I am right on the fence as to whether to run the whole series here. With ten more days of them they would take me almost all the way into our arrival in France! It sounds like a pretty good deal!

1. Writing is hard work

Well, typing is hard work. I don’t like typing. I particularly despise any letter I have to type with the little finger of my left hand. And I find sometimes double clicking on an icon on my desktop that allows me to write can be excruciating. But since I can do that with my pointer finger that’s less physical and more emotional. Likewise if I’m going to be writing in my spiral notebook retrieving my spiral notebook can be a pretty hard-core chore, like an afternoon of ditch digging condensed into 7 seconds. I dug ditches, so I know what I’m talking about. It Was On Kibbutz Yahel in the early 80s. That is in Israel. Not the 80s but the Kibbutz. Me and Jay worked together digging a very big ditch in sand for a tough, wiry Israeli who was distinctly unimpressed with the amount of work we got done. Jay had curly hair and was a bit dodgy just in general but he certainly seemed to me to be a reasonably diligent shoveler. We smoked a lot of hash once we figured out how to acquire it and got so drunk one night on cheap wine that I could not remember what happened that night. The funny thing is that 30 years later I can remember very few things that happened on any given night back then and so now the one night I cannot remember is one of the nights I remember the best. In fact, I’m pretty sure a lot of stray evening events from that time have just drifted over to conveniently have happened on that night.

What does this have to do with writing? Well, it is writing. Was it hard work? No, it was more like an accident that happened while I was planning to do the excruciatingly hard work of writing. Was anyone hurt in this accident? Only you can say.

This is Clerk Manifesta reporting again from the present. I am still in Kyoto with my darling wife. Today I have for you a series of pictures, quite a lot actually, of storefronts and housefronts and sometimes templefronts in Kyoto. I find the diversity and complexity of the building facades to be endlessly fascinating. There are some common styles, and there is an incredibly distinct and charming old Kyoto style too. The temples have a curious and strong consistency to them as well. But for the most part I am struck by the sheer eclecticism of Kyoto.

Kyoto is jam packed with different elements that create sometimes inharmonious and complicated streetfronts and facades. But they always have great moments of beauty, and complexity and simplicity can be right next to each other. I think I could take thousands of pictures happily of the fronts of houses and stores and temples in this city, though I do not know if most people could look at thousands of them.

I have taken these photographs and translated them into a style I rather like, as it simplifies the complex elements of real photography and reduces them just a little to make a nice set of comparable pictures. Maybe that is all a bit too fancy for what is really just a bunch of pictures of the fronts of buildings in Kyoto. I hope you enjoy them. I have a lot more than these, but I thought this would be a good starter set, and we will see if we have more later.