Something About It
I could get used to this, sleeping in an extra hour. I've been re-reading Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa this last week. I mentioned it some entries back, saying I didn't own a copy, but that I'd borrowed it from a friend many years ago and read it with real interest as this is the book on which Kurosawa's Samurai Trilogy was based. Would I, could I read it again with similar interest today or would it be another dumb walk down an old road best forgotten? Maybe, if I ordered it from Amazon?
Well, so far, so good. I was still going strong last night three hundred pages in, Kojiro Sasaki having been introduced into the narrative and Musashi futzing around with Shishido Baiken who gets whacked before this is over. Most people in this book get whacked before it's over. As I grow older I forget the occasional name, the more complicated ones, anyway, like Sam and Bob, but I have never, even when I first read this book in my late twenties, been able to remember "Kojiro Sasaki". Why Musashi and not Sasaki? I can visualize the duel on the island, I can see them running across the sand silhouetted against the sun, I can remember in detail the face of the actor playing Sasaki, but I cannot remember the name. Kojiro Sasaki.)
Anyway, here today, reading Musashi past midnight last night, awakening without an alarm, taking a hot bath and having breakfast down the way at my usual cafe. Today. In Oakland.
People have been coming in to look at the Journalcon photographs. I downloaded the photograph below that Jill took in the hotel lobby on Sunday before I rode over with Jen Wade's group to the restaurant in the Haight. Thank you Jill. That's pretty much me, I think, shit eating grin and Nikon. Getting old and wrinkled, of course, but lighter with the passing months. I'd say I'm finding pushing sixty more disturbing than I'd hoped. Thirty, forty and fifty were major passages, I guess, but nothing much really changed. Nothing I admitted to, anyway. This sixth decade has been ending with a bang. I read long ago you become sharply aware of your impending mortality around sixty, but this awareness quickly diminishes and you get on with the day to day of living in good spirits. I'm ready for good spirits.
The weather remains warm and sunny. Fleet Week winds up today with a performance by the Blue Angels over San Francisco Bay. There's another playoff game in San Francisco, the Giants versus the Cardinals. I have not been paying attention. Life goes on in a whirl and I am not sampling nearly enough of it. Gotta think about that, as I seem to think about everything, gotta think about that and then do something about it.
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