Wim 🅾 on Nostr: After an invigorating afternoon on a wintery beach, I am sitting in the train from ...
After an invigorating afternoon on a wintery beach, I am sitting in the train from Irvine to Glasgow. It is getting dark outside and the reflections of the other passengers in the window are overlaid on the landscape. This makes me think of the opening chapter of Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country, where he describes just such a scene, but nearly a hundred years ago. I imagined that scene in muted tints bathed in the warm glow of the lights in the train, quite different from the actual scene before me.
As far as I can tell, most of the passengers are engrossed in their mobile devices. I muse that I am lucky not to carry such a device, as otherwise I might be using it as well, an so not observe this scene nor think of Kawabata's writing.
It is not quite correct to say that I don't carry a mobile phone. I have with me an old iPhone 4s, given to me by a colleague fourteen years ago. The screen has a long diagonal crack and the glass in the lower left corner is chipped. That was why I got it for free: it was a write-off; but it still works.
For a long time I didn't use it, but when after twelve years my previous phone finally died for good, I started carrying this one. I can make phone calls and send text messages if required, and use the Japanese dictionary app, that is all I need.
I don't have a Japanese novel with me so the phone remains in my pocket and I am happy to observe and think.
As far as I can tell, most of the passengers are engrossed in their mobile devices. I muse that I am lucky not to carry such a device, as otherwise I might be using it as well, an so not observe this scene nor think of Kawabata's writing.
It is not quite correct to say that I don't carry a mobile phone. I have with me an old iPhone 4s, given to me by a colleague fourteen years ago. The screen has a long diagonal crack and the glass in the lower left corner is chipped. That was why I got it for free: it was a write-off; but it still works.
For a long time I didn't use it, but when after twelve years my previous phone finally died for good, I started carrying this one. I can make phone calls and send text messages if required, and use the Japanese dictionary app, that is all I need.
I don't have a Japanese novel with me so the phone remains in my pocket and I am happy to observe and think.