Irritation Almost Overflowing & Dan Brown's "Lost Symbol"

イライラが危険な状態かもしれない。

きのうの朝、寝言がはっきり聞こえて目が開いた。「なめんなよ、こら！」「こ」は「ご」に近く、「ら」は巻き舌の発音だった。

言った相手は中学校で席が隣りだったこともあるヤマグチくん。こいつは、「君のお母さんから『よろしく頼む』と言われた」とか、英語の授業で理解不足のこの生徒に「この学期（多分、２年生の２学期）は関係代名詞がわからんかったら意味がない」などと言い、きわめてうっとうしい存在だった。

こいつが今だに記憶から消えていないようだ。

イライラの本当の原因はもちろんヤマグチくんではなく、孤独感、疎外感、不安感だと思う。言語を扱う人となってもう何年にもなるが、やればやるほど自分の周囲にある言語環境と、どうしてもそれに関連せざるを得ない在留邦人環境に対する情けない思いが大きくなる。仕事を別にしても言語と無縁の生活を送ることは不可能で、たまたま自分の仕事と深く関係する英語が公用語である当地の、とりわけ華人の、そして多くの在留邦人のいい加減さが情けない。この言語は当地国民の多く、またほぼ全員の在留邦人にとって第２言語だが、それは自分にとっても同じである。

当然、言葉が発せられる場所には人がいる。何とかもっといい文章を作りたいと常に思っているところに、当地国民の「pidginized (dumbed-down, that is...) English」は無用どころか、悪だ。

在留邦人の事情はもちろん異なる。日本人の言語は日本語だし、日本人の他言語についての運用能力欠如は理解できる。ただ、心底から情けないのは、英語を第１言語とする国に何年もいた後、「とりあえず英語国」のこの国でさらに何年も過ごしている人たち。

前回も登場してもらった「彼（Fuck you, man）」が典型だろう。おそらく悔しまぎれに、「（英語はできないけど）ラテン語はわかる」と平気で言う人だ。彼の専門にはラテン語が使われることがある。ただ、それは単語レベルの話であって、文法や構造を持った言語としてではない。また、言語ツリーにおいて英語はラテン語の下部にあって、「ラテン語がわかるのに、何で英語がそんなにヘタなのか」ということになる。さらに、ラテン語の語彙が現代英語でどう使われているのかについてもまったく知識がないのだろう。情けないヤツだ。

結局、孤独感と疎外感は自分で招いているものだろう。だから余計に情けない。そして不安感は、仕事の先行きを心配する気持ちと、母親の状態を見てから感じる自分自身の老い、そして人生最後の数年に現れる記憶と認知の消滅を原因とする不毛感が源なのだろう。

 

I’m finishing “Lost Symbol”
by Dan Brown. This is certainly not the kind of book I usually read. It was a
gift from someone, who is still so nice to me. I had been hesitating to open the
book especially because it was written by a best-selling author. (If it is
still selling ten years from now, I may decide to read it.) I started reading it
because I had no new other book to open. Interesting story. But Dan Brown made
an error, which is almost fatal to Japanese readers. He gave to one of the main
characters, the director of the CIA’s Office of Security, the name “Inoue Sato.”
“Inoue” as a given name. Impossible. Brown may know so much about anything
else, but not Japanese names.

Some reflection on 2013

2013 was a year when I think a lot happened, especially in its second half.

In April, I had a chance to visit Myanmar, which I had been thinking about going to for years because of my father’s stint there as a soldier. There it was almost all about work and sweat under fierce sunlight with the temperature over 40 degrees.  Yet I had a chance to have a brief visit to Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, burning my soles.

Then in July, I had my first visit to Japan in more than four years. Only to Tokyo for my work, yes. But it was definitely something to me. This trip led to two more visits there, eventually totaling more than five weeks, including three consecutive weeks from mid August to early September.

Early August, I received an email from brother, telling me that he was looking for a nursing home for mother whose dementia had progressed so much making it unable for him to support anymore.

I know I had been trying to avoid contacting my family because it was always bad news about this and that.

I had heard from brother in May by email, about my renewed credit card linked to my bank account in Japan. And it was my first contact with him since 2009, when I received a letter from him. The feeling I had when I read the email from him about mother’s condition was one of resignation. I had not talked to her for two years and at the time she was already strange though her stubbornness was still there with her. No doubt talking to her a few times back then reinforced my hesitation to initiate to contact her.

Soon after she started her life at the nursing home, she got hospitalized contracting pneumonia, potentially fatal at her age.

I decided to see her, and it became reality in October, by which time she was discharged from hospital.

Brother and I arranged to meet at the nearest station from his place, and instead of going to see mother straight away, he invited me to his house. It was more than 10 years since our last meeting. His was an old-fashioned Japanese house, not very tidy I found but not uncomfortable either. There and through our walk to the nursing home, he briefed me about her condition though he had given me some information by email.

“She is now wheelchair-bound and needs diapers,” etc.

It was a shock for me to see her in a wheelchair. I remember asking her on the phone a few years ago, “Are you using a stick (to walk)?” She said, “I need no such thing as a stick.”

More shocking was the fact that she didn’t recognize me at all while remembering having a son whose name is the same as mine. Four years since our last time made her a different person. That empty stare. She was talking like a small child.

I had scanned some old photos to show her not really trying to bring memories back to her but to “entertain” her in a sense. It seems it was a good idea.

I was back with her the following day too. We talked about the same set of photos again.   

I was back in Tokyo in late October for the last stretch of my more-than-five-week job. A three-day holiday during this period allowed me to have another visit to see her. I showed her different photos and she recognized a few and told me about them. Still, for her, I was a visiting guest, not her own son.

Returning here after concluding my job in Tokyo, I had several jobless days. Then an avalanche of work started coming down on me. It lasted for a month.

On December 1, I attended a wedding party of someone I’d known for more than a decade and about whom I’ve written here once or twice. After the party was officially over, drinking was still going on and he was drunk, behaving in a disgraceful way. Mimicking a sex act with another idiot, he was saying, “Fuck you, man,” one of the two phrases he had learned while in the US. (The other is “You know…” The man stayed there for seven years.) To me, it sounded “I’m stupid.” Back in September, he said about me, “He starts speaking in English when drunk.” No, I’m not that superficial toward my first and second languages, far more principled. It is this guy who begins speaking in English: “Fuck you, man.” Shame on you.

At the party, I met Him too. I should’ve left there earlier before “Fuck you, man” started. But I stayed on until late. He also did, because I believe He wanted to be with me. I, by then drunk, was with a group of a few people. He was sitting almost with us, looking at me from a short distance without uttering a word. It was scary.

On December 31, I stayed home though almost every year it is a day when I go to CC. One reason of not going there was that I wanted to watch another episode of “The Second Russian Revolution” and another, probably bigger, reason was that I wanted to avoid seeing Him who most likely was there, looking for me.

Very quiet these days, and I spent my time by re-reading two books, “Inventing Japan” and ”Wages of Guilt,” by Ian Buruma and reading two books by Kondo Koichi, and editing “The Story of English” and “The Second Russian Revolution,” which I had finally found on YouTube. I had been looking for these documentaries, both made in the early 1990s, on Amazon.com and other online retailers, believing such excellent TV programs were available in the VDV format.

Last night, I watched the last episode of 2RR, “Coup”. I have yet to start watching TSOE.

Two days ago, I opened again “America’s Boy” by James Hamilton-Paterson, the first book I bought here over 13 years ago.