Trafficking in Words
Funny that I used to imagine I’d have time to do everything I wanted if it weren’t for my day job. I could read and write to my heart’s content, pick up a new hobby or two, learn a language, cook several times a day, and exercise on the regs. This life of creative stimulation would let me indulge my every whim, at my own leisure. Several months after departing the full-time workforce, I’ve come to realize one thing: There is never enough time. Time is finite and fickle. In some ways, a pandemic that precludes the possibility of most social activities seems the perfect moment to dive into various long-term projects, PhD and otherwise. But dang, how do I find enough hours for this life of the mind, when the mind wants to meander down a million separate paths?
I’m on my third week of break between semesters, not due to start up again until April. It’s truly a luxurious amount of time, one that I haven’t experienced since… well, my first tour in grad school over a decade ago. I spend long days milling about the different spaces of our apartment, moving from desk to bed to table and back again. “Trafficking in words” feels like the most encompassing description of all my activities nowadays.
There are my editorial roles at Heichi and The Shanghai Literary Review, as well as a freelance gig with my former colleagues at Parsons School of Design. Through these endeavors, I slice and dice sentences and paragraphs, tame jags of punctuation, trim the overgrowth, all while repeating passages aloud like weird incantations. I guess topiarists must feel something like this.
I’ve also been translating some stories, thinking about other translation projects, reading others’ translations—both works-in-progress and finished books—and reading about translation, translators, editors. Just finished David Karashima’s Who We’re Reading When We’re Reading Murakami, which was an engrossing narrative about the early days of Murakami’s career and those who “discovered” him and groomed him for an English readership. It takes a village (and many a faxed memo) to propel an author into international fame. For some reason, I see Alfred Birnbaum and Christopher Doyle as spiritual brothers in my mind.
Some of you may know that I’ve been working on a novel. This has been a true statement for more years than I’d like to admit, but the most recent iteration of this project began less than a year ago. I’ve committed to finishing the full manuscript this spring so I can move into the next phase of Actualizing My Writing Career. It will be a happy day when I have some real news to share on this front. For now, I’m nearing the two-thirds mark on my first draft and have written more pages of this story than anything else in my life. It’s an exciting, vertiginous feeling.
Then there’s my academic work. My research director has given me free rein to spend a while gathering myself, my texts, see where it takes me. To that end, I’ve been trying to watch a broad range of films that I hadn’t found time for before, like early Jia Zhangke—I love his later work, but hadn’t seen Xiao Wu or Unknown Pleasures until recently. Also watched Bong Joon-ho’s The Host and Barking Dogs Never Bite, Tsai Ming-liang’s The River (oof), and a smorgasbord of films from Hong Kong and Japan.
Have also been reading lots of novels and short stories. The visceral horror of Han Kang’s Human Acts (trans. Deborah Smith), the flippant cosmopolitanism of Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baby (trans. Bruce Humes), the drug-addled, orgiastic ennui of Ryu Murakami’s Almost Transparent Blue (trans. Nancy Andrew). Returning to the last third of the other Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (trans. Jay Rubin). These among the stack of half-read story collections, novels I’ve yet to dive into. Did I mention I’ve already acquainted myself with the libraries at Waseda?
While I can comfortably traffic in English words in every possible direction, inputting and outputting, wrangling and rendering, this is basically everything I can’t do in Japanese. Oh yes, I’m in Japan. I can’t tell you the number of awkward, stilted interactions I’ve had due to my limited Japanese, an almost-daily reminder of my otherness. I feel like I’m trying my damnedest; the truth is I could be a little more damned in my trying. I’m attempting to read the manga 『きのう何食べた』, but it’s slow goings when you have to look up every other word. I have a number of podcasts, YouTubers, and audio lessons that I cycle through. I’ve enlisted the services of a conversation tutor. How I look forward to the day I can traffic in Japanese words. Or just make do on my own in public, damn. (Deferring this topic again for another time!)
Between the above activities, throwing clothes in the wash, hanging clothes to dry on the balcony, jogging in irregular shapes around Koishikawa and Kagurazaka, assembling the occasional piece of furniture, and cooking dinner every night, the day essentially evaporates in the blink of an eye. I’m in bed, then I’m awake—and at it again.
It’s an incredible privilege, though, to have the mental and physical space to work in this manner, even if time feels ever elusive. That much I haven’t forgotten. And I know all of these projects will become more concrete eventually, turn into things that I can point to and feel proud of. Remember that time? I’ll ask myself. First winter in Tokyo, stuck at home, amid a cascade of words, thoughts, stories. How wonderful that was.