Walking West aan Zee – Hoorn – Formerum, watching fractals

Yesterday, I walked from our cottage at West aan Zee to Hoorn along the beach, an 8—or 9 km walk. There was a fierce wind in the back and some threatening rain.

I was impressed by the fractal-like figures in the sand, which formed 3D maps of unidentified countries (Which made me think about the barren landscapes of South America and Africa).

I had a great lunch at Kaap-Hoorn, roasted vegetables folded in Lebanese flatbread.

Continued to walk through the dunes and the woods to Formerum. Then, the rain washed me from the street, and I was picked up and brought home by car.

You can always find something unexpected. People dancing on the beach, this time.

Hoorn, Terschelling, a walking island and an ugly watch

What was a white beach in my youth – 45 years ago – now seems to become an illustration of a walking island.

I once lost one of the first digital watches here—a Trafalgar with red numerals that lit up only when you pressed a button. My father had gotten it from a colleague, who had gotten it as a business gift but thought the thing was too ugly—something like the one below. Very ugly indeed.

News not worthy

How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve?

Neil Postman

Convenience Store Woman in a normalized world – Sayaka Murata

Convenience Store Woman (Buurtsupermens) is about an Asperger-like girl in her thirties who works as a substitute worker in a typical small Japanese neighborhood supermarket from the age of 18.

She has excellent powers of observation.

The neighborhood supermarket is a place that is completely normalized, and recovery will soon come for you, too.

Life at the neighborhood supermarket is entirely predictable for Keiko, and she loves it. However, she meets deadbeat Shiraha, and he changes her life. Shiraha’s arrival throws her structured life into disarray and turns it into chaos.

Just in time, she realizes that she was born a Convenience Store Woman, and that is where she finds happiness.

It is a strange story about fitting into society by not fitting in, which seems to be a theme in Sayuku Murata’s work, as Earthlings (Aardbewoners) has a similar theme. However, that book is way more grim than the light-hearted style of Convenience Store Woman.

The Key – Junichiro Tanizaki

In Tanizaki’s The Key (Dutch: De sleutel), an elderly couple live somewhat detached lives from each other. Both keep a secret diary. They write about their lives from their perspectives, speculating about the other’s motivations. Both know from each other that the other keeps a diary. They both suspect each other of reading the other’s diary and leave messages in their diaries intended for the other to read. But both write they do not read each other’s diary. But only the reader knows that.

They lead a bizarre sex life with each other, with the man more or less voluntarily drugging the woman, and only in that situation can they genuinely make passionate love. After the man dies (during the act), the woman starts reading his diary (she writes in her diary). She continues her diary, and a bizarre spin ensues, where the truth turns out to be quite different.

The woman’s diary is reminiscent of Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book.