Reflection Along with the Music, Movies, and Novels

Came back home nearly 10pm today. Ate dinner and then played with my cat. The first page on the Internet browser made me feel refreshed.

“Outrage” directed by Takeshi Kitano was very impressive among the movies I watched for the last couple of months. Miura’s acting intriguing most among the other actors. That is politics, the things taking place from the beginning till the end.

These guys are all bad and realistic (if not real)

I am listening to Sibelius’ symphony number 3 as I am writing this post. What a pleasure this music is to my ears. His pieces are not so much dramatic like Beethoven’s or Mahler’s music. Compared to Sibelius, even Bruckner’s symphonies sound much expressive and aggressive.

It's no longer the summer sky up there

Among the seven symphonies composed by Sibelius, I love the 3^rd, 4^th, and 6^th most. I start thinking I feel so close to this composer because I was also born in the cold, norther area. His music makes me get more closed and introvert in the cold winter season. Spring comes, and there is the sound of water steams from a river. It is such an enjoyment when I feel I can see the grass grow under the chilly sky, surrounded by the mountains. This eventually makes me think that Michigan is the perfect place for me to work and live.

Illustration by Kunio Sato

I was reading a short novel, “The Restaurant of Many Orders” written by Kenji Miyazawa. I don’t know how many times my parents took me and my sister to the Kenji Museum in Hanamaki City, Iwate Prefecture. It was always a fun place every time I visited there. I had not been a passionate fan of his, but when I turned forty or so, I suddenly started to like whet he wrote. “The Restaurant of Many Orders” is even read in a Japanese elementary school class. Two gentlemen from town are walking around in the woods. They are nicely dressed and civilized. In this rural area, they are now lost the way when they come across this strange restaurant. "Plump parties and young parties especially welcome." People living on the IT (including myself) should be like these fellows. Be aware so we won’t be cooked and get frightened unexpectedly.

Windshield view when driving the suburbs of Ann Arbor

This coming Friday I will be running for the Ekiden (駅伝), a relay running race. Thirty-nine teams are registered. I will be running 0.7 mile. I hadn’t run at all for decades until I started to work here. But I now enjoy jogging 2 or 3 times a week. What a difference.

“Apple is continuing its efforts to produce a car” the news reports. “The company is still working out whether it will make a self-driving car, an electric vehicle or a combination of both.”

Downtown Plymouth, one of my most favorite weekend driving areas

Volkswagen is said to cheat on diesel emissions, and the U.S. directed to recall nearly half a million cars recall, saying the automaker illegally installed software in its diesel power vehicles to evade standards for reducing smog. 

When one tries to be more effective or capable than others, or to stick to the rules regulations (in a wrong way), we may likely get caught by this type of trap. We people of the IT era in the 21^st century might also be sharing this risk every day. The popular motto we hear such as ”Customer First”, “Safety First”, or “Family Oriented” can bring us to the opposite side without knowing it. Just like the two sides of a coin. For some reason, this idea kind of reminds me of the Heart Sutra (般若心経), saying that form is emptiness, while emptiness is form. Form does not differ from emptiness, while emptiness does not differ from form.

Hello Kitty and BS Domo-kun are the 2 major J characters I often see

And then I think about the Sibelius’ symphonies. Now I am listening to the 4th Symphony. Branches are cut off from music, and the air comes in to fill the remaining symbolic notes that are hanging.