The House

In two days, we will be moving to our new house.
The feeling of excitement didn't emerge until this month after we started attending details such as choices of curtains, furniture and lighting. It has been a long and tedious search, yet as the list of to-do's is getting short, the more colorful the image of the home becomes.

A couple of months ago when the house was still under construction, I did 3 sketches for the parking space outside the garden. The original plan that came with the project was rather plain and uninteresting: the entire space would be simply covered up underneath a thick layer of cement. I understand the convenience that a cement space would promise: much time would be saved from the labors of, perhaps, weeding, cleaning, watering, etc. However, I quite reisit the idea of living next to a lifeless space of cement for the future 30 years. My obstinacy then invited a challenge to visualize what I wanted.

Giving colors and shapes to ideas on paper was certainly much more affordable than making them real in reality. In the end, a fourth choice was made after budget and practicality were considered. When we visited the house last week, it was pleasant to see a bit of nature between plates of cement that we could afford to preserve.

None of the sketches was in use in the end, but it was from that moment my imagination about the home was set free.

Photo: National Geographic

Ball Lightning

News about natural disasters has been flooding in since the beginning of the summer (or much earlier). I have just seen some pictures of a wildfire in Russian, which ravaged the landscape before anyone could possibly react.

I suddenly recalled a natural phenomenon that I learnt from my Russian colleague: ball lightning. We were talking about weathers in the countries which we had visited. Her preference to minus 30 degree Celsius in Siberia than 30 degree Celsius in Japan was quite unbelievable to me. She then went on talking about a natural phenomenon, ball lightning, that is exclusively Russian. The cause and the formation of a ball lightning remain enigmatic to most scientists even today. It looks like a fire ball, basically. Its appearance, itinerary and explosion are never predictable, but dire consequences can easily be imagined. She once witnessed a ball lightning flashing into and exploding in a chimney, and the iron chimney immediately melted into a small solid chunk.

I then remembered a film that I saw with my brother about 10 to 12 years ago, Burnt by the Sun, a Russian film. Throughout the film there is a mysterious fire ball floating around in the air; no explanation is provided and no function is specifically depicted. I remember my brother simply ignored my attempt at understanding the fire ball from a psychoanalytical viewpoint. We were fairly puzzled, or perhaps just me.

When I brought up this experience, the colleague confirmed my speculation: the fire ball in the film is a ball lightning. She then suggested that the unpredictability of the ball's presence and its trajectory seems to serve as a metaphor for the surveillance of the Soviet Union under Stalin's dictatorship. No one knows what is going to happen, and everyone is watched closely.

It really made my day to have a long-term mystery solved. I can't wait to go back to the film to see how this new piece of information would shape a new understanding of the story for me.

The Cement Garden

by Ian McEwan
Vintage, 1997.

Raphael's 'Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn'

Shortly before the beginning of the new academic year of 2010, we went to a exhibition featuring the collection from Galleria Borghese in Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. One of the major artworks of this exhibition is Raphael's 'Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn'. Before seeing it in person, I was not entirely sure if I would like it, or if it would just be another painting by a Renaissance master to me.

It is an oil painting of 67 * 56 cm, hung on a corner in a subdued light. It was an immediate amazement when I turned around the corner to see it.
The azure color of the sky in the background (which cannot be seen in the picture here) was alluring, and the immaculate and rather expression-less face of the young woman was equally mysterious.

The artwork also had an interesting history itself. Before 1935, it was accredited to another painter, and the unicorn, which was invisible then, was covered up by another image of, as I could recall, books. After the 1935 restoration, the unicorn was revealed, and such a discovery has led scholars to believe that it was done by Raphael.



There was a steel ball outside the museum.
I miss the big bean in Chicago!

House Hunting

Our house hunting adventure began at the end of March and concluded in early May. Considering the nature of the purchase, it was a quick decision, so quick that it took much longer afterwards for the feeling of excitement to emerge.

At first, we were looking for a flat, a 'mansion' in Japanese or 'apartment' in America, for a combination of reasons, such as price, security and convenience. It was my first-ever experience to visit property sites, and every small arrangement that was employed to present the properties was simply fascinating. The visits usually began with a video-viewing session in small cinemas located in the reception halls. The videos presented an imaginary narrative about an ideal life that was to be shared by every household. Usually, it told a story of a young family: the father returned to the house in time from Shinjuku through a conveniently connected railway, he then enjoyed a fun time with his families in a nearby enormous space of nature, parents and child shared a fun time together in beautiful sunny days. Enchanting and appealing such a life was portrayed, but idealized view as such could be difficult to appreciate when an detached viewpoint was taken. Sometimes, I couldn't help smiling at the over-polished images of life and kept wondering if that was 'the' happy ending, or why it was the 'only' ending for every one.

However, I have to admit that this 'happy ending' thing has also enchanted me since I was little. In my childhood, I was always very fascinated by posters and fliers from estate agents; the neat and clean space that was drawn in advertisements always managed to seize my attention. I remember searching through piles of newspapers, collecting fliers, cutting the images of beautiful houses and apartments, and pasting them onto my sketch books to create my own ideal home. I love dolls' houses, too! Making doll's houses and creating familial relationship between the small figures that I possessed was always a pastime that I tirelessly turn to in quiet afternoons. Before I could afford to purchase model houses for the toys, I made cardboard houses and paper cars for them; I cut and tailored old clothes into dresses for their parties. That was my obsession before I was old enough to understand the concept of happy ending, and before some of my imaginations took form in reality.

Among the flats we saw, one was in a residential complex that contained more than 700 units; another, 500. Despite the fact that they were all fashionably designed, modernly furnished, and popular among first-time buyers in Tokyo, the thought of living together with another 699 or 499 families itself was somehow unthinkable to me. Living within such a big community perhaps guarantees a constant companionship; however, to make such a gigantic community machine function probably involves far more complicated orchestration that I would want to face.

Consequently, we said goodbye to the flats and redirected our search to detached houses. We were accompanied by suit-wearing agents to a variety of properties, houses still under construction, houses completed but yet sold, and houses refurbished for a second owner. I found it a peculiar experience to be regarded as 'valuable' customers. Most of the time, we were driven around, and the cars that we got on varied depending on the range of house prices that we had requested to see (I guess). One time, we had asked to see some items in a favorable residential area, which was a little bit beyond our means. We were picked up right in front of our flat by a posh-looking car, and the agent drove us around in a beautiful neighborhood. It was a quiet and sunny day, perhaps the first summery day this year. While I was sitting in the car listening to the conversation of a unfamiliar language between K and the agent, all of a sudden I recalled a Czech film, Autumn Spring.

For all these eight years after I watched this film, I have been remembering the way that the hero kept himself entertained in his retirement life. Putting on suits and ties, the hero and a friend, two retired gentlemen, pretended to be interested and wealthy buyers of expensive castles or villas. They succeeded in fooling estate agents around with props of expensive limousines, costumes and meals that they hired.

Although we meant to search for a property, I couldn't help feeling amused at the mischief of the gentleman, drawing a rather far-fetched parallel between the pleasure that he obtained and the amazement that we were thrown into, linking his desire to seek for fun in a monotonous life and our wish to compose a new rhythm for the life in the future. The time that he stole from the estate agents was devoted to his secret enjoyment; our agents' time was spent to no avail if we abandoned the choices that they had offered. I am probably too sympathetic with the estate agents at this point, given that they are usually known to be voracious. Whenever I tried to suppress my own amazement and astonishment at the high prices or luxurious interior furnishing in order to maintain an integrated look of a 'potential' buyer, I felt little difference from the mischievous gentleman.