sixty-nine

 

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:

Sorry, no new introduction to the old introduction today! Oh, wait, that's what this is. But it's so short it barely counts. So then, this is introduction two (one is above and has been going for 69 days!). Introduction three is below here and usually gets modified day to day:

I have decided to run an old essay series of mine that long ago did much to inspire clerkmanifesto. It is called "The Secret Secrets of Writing". If in my travels I am able to throw anything current onto clerkmanifesto it will be down below today's passage.

This is the seventh one of eleven secrets:

7. You must revise and revise again.

This means going through your work over and over trying to fix all its little problems until you realize it is impossible and you give up. Here is a little experiment for those of you who are thus far enjoying, or enjoying enough, my essay on the secret secrets of the secrets of writing. If you aren’t enjoying my essay this experiment isn’t really for you, but I do commend you on your tenacity. I don’t think I could stick with this sort of thing as long as this if I wasn’t enjoying it. As a reward I will tell you you can quit now. Really, you don’t have to keep reading. I was just kidding about the secrets of writing. There aren’t any. That’s why I said “secrets” three times. It was to be silly. But thanks for sticking with me so long and for giving me a fair chance.

Okay, so now that I’m here with just the enjoyers I’d like you to all stop reading here and go back to the beginning of this essay (1. Writing is hard work.) and read through to this point, then do it once more. I’ll wait here until you’re done.

Done? Good? Okay, I know you didn’t. I wouldn’t, that’s for sure, but had you actually gone back and read through this essay two more times I am confident you would not be enjoying it so much anymore. Besides being bored by the repetition, the flaws and flimsiness would start leaping out all over the place at your restless reader eyes. Counting from the time where I am writing this sentence fresh, in it’s first version, I have read through some version of this essay maybe fifteen or twenty times, and though that number will only go way up, as it is now the flaws are already leaping out at me in a staccato fashion. This causes me to frantically revise, which causes more rereading, which causes it all to fall apart even faster. So I am saying, yes! revise and revise again! But I am also saying that it is all hopeless and we are all doomed, which is actually a big secret of writing I was hoping to keep under wraps, but I guess it’s too late for that now.

Clerk Manifesto again, reporting from the present in Kyoto, where I am currently sitting in a mall connected to our main subway station entrance at Kitaoji Station. It is a fascinating place, but also a reminder that not everything in Kyoto is exquisitely beautiful, despite the glamour of my photos.

That very thought is the inspiration for these posters, glamorizing what reminds me of the malls of my childhood, and of the still active, but decrepit malls in the United States that I have so recently come from, except these malls, like all of Kyoto, are still wildly vibrant with people, commerce, and activities.

This is called Aeon Mall, and here are some enchanting travel posters inspired by it.

sixty-eight

 

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:

I have decided to run an old essay series of mine that long ago did much to inspire clerkmanifesto. It is called "The Secret Secrets of Writing". If you were thinking that old essays of mine are a downgrade from the usual everyday excitement around clerkmanifesto, I must almost sheepishly report that these are, er, really good? Better than usual maybe? Writers' late peek is just after 50 years old. I am sixty! I may never write such smashing literature again!!! So instead of mourning all this old material, well, maybe it's: Enjoy it while you can.

If in my travels I am able to throw anything current onto clerkmanifesto it will be down below today's passage.

This is the sixth one of eleven secrets:

6. Show don’t tell.

A gray drizzle falls on a dense confluence of narrow alleys in Venice. In a closed Japanese restaurant calm figures in a window that overlook a minor canal prepare for a  lunch rush that will not come. It is late February and the normally overcome streets of the city are merely busy and alive. Bundled tourists mill about making their discoveries in free and chilly joy. The Venetians are carefully dressed in fur and leather, the Italian tourists in sleek black leather and snug down, and the Internationals are swaddled in a wide variety of multi coloured hi-tech fabrics. Despite the grey drizzle a glowy Adriatic light manages to enrich the deep colors of wet stone and stucco, water and wood. A vigorous, grey-haired woman’s boot heel slips subtly on a wet, slightly rounded pavement tile and as it twists her lower body to the left she throws her arms wide to seek balance. Her husband of 28 years on that very day, still madly in love with her, manages to catch her around her waist, but in his instinctive action towards her a white paper shopping bag slung loosely on his shoulder slips off and drops. The densely decorated millefiori glass globe in the bag drops too, hits the solid ground with a great ringing noise, but, amazingly, does not break. Instead the giant ornament springs from the bag and from all its elaborate packaging and begins rolling hurriedly towards the Grand Canal. The couple, quickly recovering, shouts and begins pursuit. A gloved hand reaches for the ball as it races by, but it has already become wet and slippery on its dash through the glowing drizzle and along the saturated ground and the hand finds no purchase. The couple narrows on the rolling globe and it seems they might intercept it when a spirited child, running excitedly at the glass from a side street, nearly collides with them, and, though the three of them do a wild dance, none fall. Still, ground is lost in the chase.

A Viennese scholar in a new hat, resting on a stone wall on a Campo on the Grand Canal hears the commotion of a small mob and looks up to see the glass and its pursuers racing towards him. He springs to his feet and looks clear to save the day. Unfortunately, between him and the glass is a small group of pigeons. As the ball hurtles into them they burst explosively towards the scholar. The scholar, a veteran of Venice, is prepared for this, but his new hat is not and slides over his eyes causing him to clutch wildly at it and wobble sideways. The globe rolls neatly between his legs as he flings his right arm out to his bobbling hat, knocking it sharply into the wind which carries it into a roll roughly following the globe.

“Mein hut!” He cries, and the Anniversary couple race past him after the globe and hat both. They are terrifically close now, but time appears to be run out on their rescue operation. The woman, who so recently bobbled so clumsily, now comes to a strangely balletic one-legged bouncing stop on the rim of the Grand Canal. The globe, more beautiful now, wet and spinning in the Venice air, than it ever was in the shop, fulfills some inner secret destiny of its own by almost gently tipping into the Grand Canal. The husband, who near the end had his hand just inches from the ball, straightens, attempts his own bouncing halt, but as he realizes he has left it all too late and would rather not risk injury on the embankment, flings himself up and out and, flailing, splashes magnificently into the green water. His wife shrieks, but, as he comes sputtering to the surface, begins slowly to laugh until soon, she can hardly breathe. The scholar’s hat only makes the humor worse by flopping merrily down onto the drenched man’s head. The man laughs now himself as the glass globe, completely unharmed, floats to the surface mere inches from land’s edge. A small crowd on the shore is seized with hysteria and it takes a surprisingly long time, with many relapses of contagious laughter, before the man, the hat, and the millefiori globe are all fished from the cold waters of the Grand Canal.

This little scene above is an example of me violating this cardinal rule and telling you instead of showing you. Ideally what I should have done was flown you to Venice in February and positioned you at an advantageous location on the Campo that in the one direction had a clear view up the street to the Japanese Restaurant near where the globe is first dropped, and in the other an unobstructed line of sight across the Campo to the Grand Canal. I would also politely request that, no matter how tempting, you not scoop up the glass ball even though it will be rolling just a few feet in front of you. Remember, you are here strictly to watch and learn. And what are you learning? Exactly! Show, don’t tell.

This is Clerk Manifesto reporting from the present, once again in the underground cave system of Clerk Manifesto. We are still in Kyoto, Japan, for a couple more days, but we have had to say goodbye to our favorite cafe, about which there will be more in some future written post.

For today, these are my inspirational posters and T shirt logos that I may one day be wearing, inspired by this best of all cafes. This is Kononeki Cafe in Kyoto, the best cafe we have been to. And let me tell you, my darling wife and I have been to dozens and dozens and dozens, maybe fifty cafes in Kyoto and they are brilliant, but Kononeki? Ah Kononeki, Kononeki is for all time.

sixty-seven

 

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:

I have decided to run an old essay series of mine that long ago did much to inspire clerkmanifesto. It is called "The Secret Secrets of Writing". If in my travels I am able to throw anything current onto clerkmanifesto it will be down below today's passage.

This is the fifth one of eleven secrets:

5. Don’t be afraid of writing badly.

My understanding, probably based on television shows, is that if you are afraid of spiders and no longer want to be an arachnophobe, you go to see a kind, gentle person who keeps just loads of tarantulas in their spare bedroom. There, in that spider wonderland, you gently acclimate to the spidery presence. Since I am afraid of spiders and have never undergone this delicate cure, the very phrase “Spidery presence” give me the absolute willies. However, supposedly, if I went to this beneficent, saint-like spider herder and spent regular hours with these miraculous eight-legged creatures that I shouldn’t fear because they are our friends and help control the number of nuisance insects in the world, if I hung out closer and closer with these spiders, I would, before long, be letting them crawl all over me while I blithely sipped cappuccinos and made Indiana Jones jokes.

Since this works, theoretically, so well with spiders, I thought I would take it as my model for helping cure my possibly damaging fear of writing badly. The idea would be to carefully jot down just a line or two of terrible prose and then breathe a lot and have warm drinks and tell myself kind things. Unfortunately it turns out that I am incapable of producing bad writing on purpose. No matter how wise and pure my intentions are the moment I sit down to write all my plans dissipate. It’s like a fever that seizes me without warning. I suddenly want to be funny, graceful, expressive, winsome and clear-headed. Yes, when I write, I can be boring, pedantic, egotistical, maniacal, cumbersome and obtuse, but I can’t do it on purpose! It just sort of jumps out at me, like a spider, causing me to shriek and flail and go hide in my room for a couple days trying to soothe myself. If a spider herder professional tried to cure people of their arachnophobia by waiting until they were feeling calm and comfortable and then  flinging spiders at them they would be disbarred from the Arachnophile Professionals Association faster than a black widow spider can eat the head off of her mate.

Coincidentally that’s just about how writing something awful makes me feel, the same way thinking about one spider eating the head off of another spider makes me feel. Nevertheless I do understand that both these things, cannibal spiders and bad writing, are part of the natural order of things. They are the way of the world, they happen, and I should not fear them, but instead should embrace them. Not literally though as I would get web and poisonous oozing spiders all over my shirt.

Hello again from the present. This is Clerk Manifesto down in the cave system below the already completed Clerk Manifesto posts composed back in August. I am even a little ahead of myself in these posts now, putting up some images that try to express the breadth and variety of Kyoto.

This is my third day doing that, so I may be scraping things out a little bit, and unfortunately repeating images. I do not know. So this may be it for this section of reporting the breadth of Kyoto through diverse pictures. Even as this posts, I think it is possible we will be leaving for Tokyo, so soon there may be new things to show.

But for now this is one last day of our variety of travel photos from Kyoto, a city of wonders, prettiness, and fantasy all at once.