My trivial thinking

When I was nineteen ... I lost the direction and light to go. It's almost like I was pedaling the bicycle desperately, which, though, had a broken chain. It might have been hopeless and also a little bit comical. Life might be a mass of the regret.

The Sense of an Ending is a novel written by Julian Barnes and was awarded the Man Booker Prize in 2011. Tony, Colin and Alex are good friends in their high school. A new classmate comes to the high school and they become good friends soon. He is Adrian who is smart and philosophical. In history class they challenge to answer their teacher, Old Joe Hunt, when the teacher asks what the history is. One of the themes of this novel is what the history is. When they finished school, they promised lifelong friendship, and went their separate way. Adrian won a scholarship to Cambridge. Tony read history at Bristol and goes out with mysterious girl Veronica. Tony introduces Veronica to his friends in London. But he is somehow hesitant about Veronica, and breaks up with her. Soon after that, Tony gets a letter from Adrian that he wants to get Tony's permission to go out with Veronica. Tony hurts them with a spiteful letter. Some time after that, Adrian commits suicide leaving a phi...

The Hours is a serious drama film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by Michael Cunningham. The original novel was inspired by Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. This movie begins with the scene that Virginia Woolf goes to the river to drown herself in 1941. In 1923, Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) is writing "Mrs Dalloway" while suffering from her mental illness. In 1951 Los Angels, a young housewife Mrs Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) is reading Woolf's novel "Mrs Dalloway" and has conflicted feeling in her everyday life as a mother and wife. In 2001 New York, Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) is planning a party for her friend Richard who is dying of AIDS. The stroy entwines three women's life sophisticatedly. Laura pretends a good wife and good mother, but she notices another herself in the back of her mind. She leaves her son at her friend's home and goes to a hotel to read "Mrs Dalloway", and tries to kill herself....

"It would be nice to go to some hot spring in autumn, wouldn't it?" I remembered that my younger daughter said so before. So we went to Kinosaki Onsen in Hyogo Prefecture with my family including married elder daughter last week. Because the crab season began from November 7th this year. The weather was not good, but we enjoyed sumptuous crab dinner at a comfortable ryokan, a Japanese style hotel. We also enjoyed the famous hot spring. Next day, after we went around some souvenir shops, we went to Nova, a coffee house near Kinosaki Onsen railway station. The coffee was good and the music was nice. I asked to the owner's wife what music was this. She showed us the CD jacket of the music. This was LANDSCAPES by Jan Lundgren Trio, a Swedish Jazz band. We stopped over at Amanohashidate on our way home. Amanohashidate is famous as one of the Three Views of Japan since old times. It means the bridge to the heaven. I've been there twice before...

Mrs Dalloway is one of Virginia Woolf's masterpieces and her first novel published in 1925. Some people would say this is one of the best novels through twentieth century. This novel is a depiction of a day for the party of Clarissa Dalloway on a day in June, 1923, in London. Woolf depicted stream of consciousness of Clarissa and some characters with contiguous sentences such as flowing water. Therefore, it is very difficult for English learners to understand. I managed to read this with using the Japanese version together. This novel begins with "Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." The visit of Peter Walsh who is her old friend and has returned from India leads them to their youth. Once Walsh loved her and there was another friend, Sally. Clarissa learned sex and society from Sally who was her old girlfriend with homosexual feeling. Clarissa eventually refused Walsh's love and married the reliable Richard. Walsh despaired and went to India. ...

We have a reunion with friends of mountain climbing at the end of October every year. I don't attend at this event every year, but I wanted to do this year because I've been depressed since the end of this summer. Once, about twenty years ago, more than 40 people gathered at Mawarime-daira campsite, the bottom of Mt. Kinpu, from all over the country. But this year the participants were less than 10 people. The event was held at Lodge Motive in Tateshina Highland Pilatus pension village. My mind was healed by the beautiful colored leaves and the chat with old friends. Lake Shirakaba