Comments on: A Time and a Place for Everything

By: M--

M-- — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:27:48 +0000

Conrad — “The risk of defacement only heightens the pleasure” The thrill of risk, eh? Can’t you guys just get motorcycles and leave the library alone?

Gawain — He loves green vegetables. I suspect him of malingering.

My dear P — “Mysophobe” indeed! It is not germs I fear, but destruction! May I note, too, that though text is sublime, lofty thoughts of several minutes’ duration do not necessarily require a printed page. Harumph.

By: paul

paul — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 04:47:21 +0000

Let’s see, Gawain. I lived and studied in Japan on a cultural exchange program for the second half of 1991. Outside of the fairly brief classes, I spent my afternoons and nights wandering anywhere my feet and an all-Tokyo rail pass could take me.

An image:

From the neon pulsations of Shinjuku, I started walking and found myself in a twisting, concrete tunnel, orange with mercury-vapor glow. I emerged into a neighborhood with many buildings in the old style, wooden posts and peaked roofs. I paused near a larger, rectangular house, caught by the sound of a shakuhachi.

Another:

I’d spent the entire night trekking the streets and ended up in one of the western suburbs. I sat down on a grassy rise to watch the sun come up. Below me was an apartment complex, at least a dozen buildings with eight or ten stories each. As I waited, the circadian rhythm of the complex brought it to life There was a swarming as the buildings disgorged their residents seemingly all at once, a formicating flow from towers to train. Even more than the packed streets and tiny rooms, this bored into my viscera a sense of the sheer mass of people living in such a relatively small area of land.

By: paul

paul — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 03:52:00 +0000

Ha! Conrad, thanks for your confirmation of the eminent sensibility of this most logical method for seeking value and enjoyment in otherwise wasted time.

My dear M—–, that’s exactly the point! We have no Nature at hand to admire, and must thus seek our own elevation. Why sit placidly, staring at tub or linoleum, dwelling on surroundings you obviously find somewhat distasteful, when you could be reading? (Anyway, some of us take care . . . no drop of water has nor shall touch those pages.)

Mysophobe.

By: Gawain

Gawain — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 03:48:08 +0000

Change your diet to include lots of fibrous green vegetables and you will have evacuations so fast and easy you won’t even have time to flip a page. I like reading in the bath.

When were you in Japan, paul, how long were you there, and what did you do there?

By: Conrad

Conrad — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 19:50:47 +0000

I’m a bathroom guy too. Mrs. Roth worries I’ll get haemorrhoids, but it’s nice and private. The risk of defacement only heightens the pleasure.

By: M--

M-- — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 17:02:01 +0000

Ah, my beloved, you miss the point. You are not reading in an ideal Japanese bathroom, “in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss.” Our bathrooms are tile and porcelain; hard, unyielding, and, dare I say, unwelcoming. To dally in such rooms a moment longer than necessary is an affront to the senses, a waste of precious time that could be spent reading in every other, more congenial circumstance — and in any other room.

And besides, your latest transgression involved Gombrich’s The Story of Art, a beautiful work, aesthetically pleasing in every way, with delicate pages and lovely plates. The bathroom is a wet place, fraught with hazards, any one of which could deface a page irretrievably, without a moment’s notice. There is, almost certainly, a smudge of toothpaste where you least expect it. Cogitation and reflection certainly do not require a corollary risk of disaster.

“Neurotic mysophobia” indeed! Fighting words, but so wrong-headed.