What does it mean to be a historian? Does it take a lot to become a good one? Are natural curiosity, good judgement, and passable writing skills enough? Can someone who is curious enough to ask interesting questions and patient enough to sit their arses down for hours every day doing tedious archival work and picking at sheet after ancient sheet of yellow paper write fascinating versions of the past? Are hard work and good imagination sufficient to reclaim from the darkness those little bits of light, hope, love?
Or is there something more that you need?
Can you really call yourself a historian if you cannot cry at the suffering of the generations before you? If the images of broken lives do not move you at all as you look down on them as specimens, objects of study, as mere material. If you can't see the pain, tears and suffering hidden behind every number in that neat table you included in your recent paper. If you can't hear in your mind the voices long lost, can't feel the fear felt long before you were born, can't imagine yourself in the place of thousands - millions - who were fed to the mincing machine of history...
Can you?
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среда, 2 октября 2013 г.
воскресенье, 3 апреля 2011 г.
Watching my baby sleep
There is no joy in the world greater than waking up next to your baby son, watching him sleep, turn in his sleep, rub his nose with a little fist of his plumpy hand. If somebody asked me "what is happiness?", I would describe this particular experience among the happiest moments in my life.
четверг, 25 июня 2009 г.
A nightly visitor
I was up late reading last night - this has become a habit lately - when a beautiful visitor suddenly drew my attention. My reading was lit by a desklamp - my wife was sleeping in the same room; she could not sleep with the lights on - and its soft, yellow glow had attracted a butterfly. It was not a moth, I am sure, but a small butterfly, white of colour, with beatifully drawn thin green lines on its tiny airy wings. The lines formed a pattern that was divided between the wings in perfect symmetry. The butterfly sat still on my desk, as if warming its back in the lamp light. I thought that it had probably gotten in during the day as I recalled my wife's words about a butterfly that had somehow made its way inside, although the window net had been tightly closed. "Maybe it was afraid of the rain," she had said.
There was something strange in this butterfly, some weird calmness one does not usually expect of an insect in the vicinity of a night lamp. It was sitting with its back to me, its beautiful little wings fully exposed, resplendent in the light. It was as if the butterfly sat there to draw my eyes upon itself, to make me aware of its presence in the room. I could see its tiny black eyes, no bigger than pinheads, reflecting the lamp - it appeared the butterfly was also watching me.
I have never been a superstitious man, neither have I taken mysticism too seriously. But I believe that even diehard materialists must have second thoughts in their lives, so I was not too unwelcoming to a strange idea that visited my mind out of the blue. To be precise, it was rather a recollection of a weird hypothesis I had read about somewhere long time ago. It said that the souls of late relatives, or loved ones, sometimes came to visit those still living in the disguise of nocturnal insects: moths, or butterflies. At the time I had liked the hypothesis, although never believed it; the resemblance of a specter to a light-coloured nocturnal flying insect with airy wings had seemed quite plausible - and reasonable - to me. After that, for a short period of time I had become mindful of butterflies, moths and other flying insects inside the house. But this was a long ago experience, and I had comfortably forgotten the whole thing, buried it deep cobwebs of my memory, well until the last night encounter.
A warm feeling arose deep inside me as I observed the butterfly. "Mother, is that you?" - I thought. And waited for a reply, believing, for a moment, that the butterfly would answer me. And had it answered, I would have not been surprised too, as I think about it now. Over my head, one the bookshelf, was my mother's photo in a frame as white as that butterfly's wings. The photo was taken on the day I saw my mother for the last time; she was seeing me off on a long journey, I was hugging her with a happy smile. I didn't dare to look up at the picture. I simply knew that my mother was smiling back at me, and I felt content with that knowledge.
There was something strange in this butterfly, some weird calmness one does not usually expect of an insect in the vicinity of a night lamp. It was sitting with its back to me, its beautiful little wings fully exposed, resplendent in the light. It was as if the butterfly sat there to draw my eyes upon itself, to make me aware of its presence in the room. I could see its tiny black eyes, no bigger than pinheads, reflecting the lamp - it appeared the butterfly was also watching me.
I have never been a superstitious man, neither have I taken mysticism too seriously. But I believe that even diehard materialists must have second thoughts in their lives, so I was not too unwelcoming to a strange idea that visited my mind out of the blue. To be precise, it was rather a recollection of a weird hypothesis I had read about somewhere long time ago. It said that the souls of late relatives, or loved ones, sometimes came to visit those still living in the disguise of nocturnal insects: moths, or butterflies. At the time I had liked the hypothesis, although never believed it; the resemblance of a specter to a light-coloured nocturnal flying insect with airy wings had seemed quite plausible - and reasonable - to me. After that, for a short period of time I had become mindful of butterflies, moths and other flying insects inside the house. But this was a long ago experience, and I had comfortably forgotten the whole thing, buried it deep cobwebs of my memory, well until the last night encounter.
A warm feeling arose deep inside me as I observed the butterfly. "Mother, is that you?" - I thought. And waited for a reply, believing, for a moment, that the butterfly would answer me. And had it answered, I would have not been surprised too, as I think about it now. Over my head, one the bookshelf, was my mother's photo in a frame as white as that butterfly's wings. The photo was taken on the day I saw my mother for the last time; she was seeing me off on a long journey, I was hugging her with a happy smile. I didn't dare to look up at the picture. I simply knew that my mother was smiling back at me, and I felt content with that knowledge.
вторник, 19 мая 2009 г.
Lazy lazy lazy
I have not been so lazy in the last few months. I am so lazy today that I don't want to even think about anything. Maybe I am tired of everything, maybe I need a rest. Maybe it is because I can feel that something is wrong with my body, my head, my spirit. Or maybe it is because I am not getting enough sleep every night. I don't know. I am fed up with most of what I have everyday. And I want to change some things in my life, because almost everything I have now adds up to the current frustration. So I have to do something about it. But before that, I need a good rest.
понедельник, 11 мая 2009 г.
About my long-suffering toe
Last December I hurt the fourth toe on my right foot due to a bicycle accident - it struck the ground while I was trying to stop the bike abruptly. It was nothing too serious, but the swelling didn't go away for about a week, although the doc had assured me prior to that that the toe would be fine in two days. He even lectured me over a high-precision X-ray shot of my right foot on which I could see every tiny bone in minute detail - and make it clear for myself that the bone was not hurt, not even displaced. That the swelling was largely due to the damage to the surrounding tissue.
Months have passed since and I have almost forgotten about the accident. And a football match misstep made me remember the whole shit from the beginning. I lifted my leg high in the air and somehow managed to land it badly. There was a sharp feeling in the toe and the first thing that came to me was "not again, the fucking toe!" I played on, though, for an hour and a half. At home I was not very surprised to find the toe swollen. I know it's nothing too serious and not worth spending another 3000 yen on a visit to the doc, but still it struck me out of my inner balance.
Months have passed since and I have almost forgotten about the accident. And a football match misstep made me remember the whole shit from the beginning. I lifted my leg high in the air and somehow managed to land it badly. There was a sharp feeling in the toe and the first thing that came to me was "not again, the fucking toe!" I played on, though, for an hour and a half. At home I was not very surprised to find the toe swollen. I know it's nothing too serious and not worth spending another 3000 yen on a visit to the doc, but still it struck me out of my inner balance.
четверг, 7 мая 2009 г.
Blogging
What are the chances of landing a journalism job through blogging extensively? Does blogging help develop writing skills to the extent stipulated by job descriptions?
I don't know whether one day I will write for an English language media outlet or not, but blogging for me at the moment is merely a chance to reflect my experiences, to record my life somehow for future reference, to let my thoughts out and make them tangible, visible, comprehensible. Let some order into them. And if in the course of doing all this my writing skills happen to improve, I think I will have one more cause to celebrate.
I don't know whether one day I will write for an English language media outlet or not, but blogging for me at the moment is merely a chance to reflect my experiences, to record my life somehow for future reference, to let my thoughts out and make them tangible, visible, comprehensible. Let some order into them. And if in the course of doing all this my writing skills happen to improve, I think I will have one more cause to celebrate.
среда, 6 мая 2009 г.
I'm back
My long absence is over now. Life has been very tough on me recently, and the last thing I could think of in the last month was to update this blog. I am slowly recuperating, mentally. There are events in this world one cannot accept, although it is possible to comprehend them to some extent. I have tried to live through that in the last weeks and who knows how many more weeks I will have to fight off certain thoughts. But I am on my path back, that's for sure. Although the world is never gonna be the same.
I have started working part-time as a teaching assistant to one of the professors at the University. The job so far is utterly technical: setting up the computer-projector-speakers and, once in a week, microphones in class; helping the lecturer with showing PowerPoints by literally pressing the button after a signal; passing the cordless microphone from one student to another during class discussions. It's been mostly ok. This month I will also be taking care of one of the seminars, for which I am preparing at the moment a list of readings. I have to come up with a PowerPoint and show it to an 80-odd class of Japanese first- and second-year undergraduates. I am looking forward to it, although I am also worrying a little about the reluctance of the students to speak up in the public, of which I have already written. And will write more, it appears.
I have started working part-time as a teaching assistant to one of the professors at the University. The job so far is utterly technical: setting up the computer-projector-speakers and, once in a week, microphones in class; helping the lecturer with showing PowerPoints by literally pressing the button after a signal; passing the cordless microphone from one student to another during class discussions. It's been mostly ok. This month I will also be taking care of one of the seminars, for which I am preparing at the moment a list of readings. I have to come up with a PowerPoint and show it to an 80-odd class of Japanese first- and second-year undergraduates. I am looking forward to it, although I am also worrying a little about the reluctance of the students to speak up in the public, of which I have already written. And will write more, it appears.
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