Shiki's Strings & Small Things (Summer 2022)

SHIKIS STRINGS & SMALL THINGS A PUBLICATION OF OVERLOOKED AWE

Summer 2022

FEATURED

WALKING HEARD ON THE STREET FAIRY TALE ARE YOU DEFICIENT? REVIEW: "HOW SHOULD WE LIVE?"

CONTENTS

SHIKIS STRINGS

18 Flash Fiction

12 REVIEW: HOW SHOULD WE LIVE?

01

9 AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: Lloyd Alexander

4 Editor's Note 7 LOCAL SPOTLIGHT: Finding Reprieve (parks!) in the City 13 13 & 14| Young Poets in Town This year's promising young writers are about to shine 21 HAND'S ON: Making Baskets Learning how to make lovely things with recycling 06 ESSAY: What feet were made for Explore feet, bikes, Boston, and even hearts 32 REVIEW: How should we live?

Soon-to-be-adapted into a feature by Miyazaki, this Japanese manga has its points 11 | 12 SHORT STORY: Boy Named Thunder

by Staff 33 MUSIC: TENDER & 7TH

by Samantha Adams

20 8 Local Spotlight: Greens in the City Get to know five out-of-the-way tree sanctuaries in the city that will give you a place of rest on your walks through Boston

28 | 2 QUOTES: SHAW, MORRISON...

STAST |

SHIKIS STRINGS

writers, designers, editorial team Editor-in-chief C.J. Williams

Creative Directorr Design Edito Copy Editor Contributing Writer Contributing Writer Contributing Writer Contributing Artist Staff Writer Contributing Photographer Contributing Music Contributing Illustrator Contributing Illustrator

C.J. Williams C.J. Williams Lisa Williams Jacqueline Tetrault Aithne Melnikov John Whitehead Emily Williams C.J. Williams Adam Jones Emily Williams J. Davis

EDITORIAL OFFICE

Boston, MA 02135 +1-857-302-0466 | shikis_strings.smallthings@yahoo.com

STaST is published by Drunk Elves Publishing Remote | +1-857-302-0466

www.shikisstringsliterary.wordpress.com

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Editor's Note

02

21

From deep-digging ponderings to the skip-beat of consicously curled words in poetry, this issue celebrates renewal in unexpected places.

36

48 I was recently in a desert. From experience, I can tell you that most off-the-cuff remarks regarding deserts will call them dead places. People drop adjectives such as waste, dry, barren, or describe God-forsaken stretches of uninhabitable riddled with dust and scorched by unendurable sun.

But what you rarely hear is the report of someone whose feet have taken them through deserts, whose toes have briefly become rooted in red rock and dust, whose skin has crinkled and cracked under the searing sun -- but also soaked in light-without-which-no-life-would-be. They have golden, weathered air. Far from dead though, they are lively with a deep-root life.

One thing you may notice, if you ever visit a desert, and choose not to skim through, but to steep, is that there's green there too.

And it digs into the earth with wily, tenacious, clinging roots. It is receptive,, as a cactus develops a skin that holds water and yet receives sun. It opens itself wide to an unendurably open, giving sky, and endures.

I challenge you, reader, to consider deserts. It is possible that the deeper joys and strongest life, the wildest wonder and wildest joys, are where our ribs lie exposed, our skin crackles, and surrenders to what seems too much sun, too much air, too much life... Then again, maybe that's only possible if your roots can stretch like those of a desert tree, or your skin clasp even the briefest spit of moisture.

Our contributing artist, Emily Williams, is water-colouring from the far West -- San Diego.

Her portraits, but mainly her landscapes, lend the eye an intensity of sight: Where she paints water, the colours and deep movement of her lines draw not just the eye but the bone and heart. She has been featured on many walls, though has yet to invest in the willy-nilly of professional galleries, and the viridity of her imagery aligns like horizon over sea with our theme of green and renewal.

To commission a piece of art, or purchase an origial featured you can connect with Emily via email | kittenword@yahoo.com

C.J. WILLIAMS Editor-in-Chief

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Flash Fiction

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WISH YOU WERE HERE

Story

A take on heart health in flash fiction by a local writer and wonder-wanderer who respects her elders and spits out whatever doesn't sit right,

By J.C. Evers

Heart health, grandad used to tell me, is not about arteries. He'd tap his breastbone, hork up a wad of spit, and pitooie into whatever was nearby. (Once he hit the neighbor's dog, and Miko growled and yipped and the neighbors growled worse, but grandad didn't care.) I got a strong heart, boy, he'd say. You know why?

Knowing what you did and not changing, just wallowing, he snuffled. Don't you ever dip in that swamp. And don't follow your grandma's d---ed stupid family's example. They're whiners.

I rubbed my thumb over the stained tabletop, getting sticky in the spots of never-wiped-spilledsyrup. Grandad shifted.

He'd tap my chest then and laugh.

Why? I'd say, and what's an artery?

So he said an artery was the thing that got into the heart with blood, and people thought food clogged them up, but oh no, it wasn't donuts.

After all, he ate one--or five--every morning with his black coffee and a side of burnt toast.

It's lies, he told me, tapping his nose. Lies and that burnt up life you made inedible 'cos you charred it with regret and self pity.

So why's the doctor say it's cholesterol in dad's heart? I didn't look up.

Grandad snorted. 'Cos he's an idiot. Any halfwit could see your dad's kneedeep in that swamp, and his heart can't take it. So -- he tapped me again now on the forehead. You got to know and do different. And eat your eggs and donuts. And spit out the burnt ends -- he spat ---And he left it at that. I tapped my own chest, listening to donuts, and grandad, and picturing what dad's arteries looked like, deep down in a burnt life.

What's self-pity? I wanted to know.

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WHY FEET WERE MADE FOR WALKING THOUGHTS & WONDER FROM THE STREETS

I used to walk by a woman at the bus stop, near the corner where all of the Fenway fans fanned

Eventually my mental lines got crossed with the toddler (shouting “Toes!”) and the woman (quipping, “Girl…”) and my

out after every game. When they were there, so

own feet, tracking miles a day on tyres and toes, flipping

was she still. When they weren’t, I could see her

over a bike body and down stairs and over potholes.

better. And she used to tap her forehead and say, “Girl, feet were made for walking.”

My feet were wildly good at walking. When I’d been born, they’d gotten started trying to push pavement and clock miles as soon as my head wasn’t too big to let them. They

And yet she always had a bicycle.

This inspired me to ponder.

I noticed that the toddlers who crossed my path, tied in a line to babysitters and day-school directors, were impossibly interested in their feet. They shuffled, looking down -- I don’t think it was at the pot-holes and hiccups on the Boston paving, they were too small to be affronted by the fun of crags and crevices for hopping -- they were looking at their feet.

Each day they tramped by as I shot over the asphalt on bike tyres. “Hey!” I heard the boy in the middle of line shout one summer morning. “Toes!”

Then I’d cross paths in the evening with the woman on the corner near Fenway, and she would tap her forehead, and again say: “Girl, feet are made for walking.”

sometimes used pedals and sometimes wheels or blades (only on rinks though), but they had started walking and still liked walking and everyone around me in Boston, disgruntled or grinning, feckless or frantic, seemed to have feet that fit walking.

I even regularly chatted with a fellow who camped out on the road that shot into the Newton suburbs. He rode a wheelchair like a Hell’s angel rides a Harley, but he kicked his feet at me when I’d pass. So I asked what he was most looking forward to one day, and he said, “Baby, someday my feet gonna walk like Jackson and make the clip-clap-flip-flap music of making tracks, yeah yeah. In heaven we all gonna walk.” Then he killed the poetry by asking, “Gotta light?”

But it struck me that if feet were made as clear as day for walking, that toddlers in wonder knew it,

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THOUGHTS & WONDER FROM THE STREETS

and women who wouldn’t walk but bike knew it, and a dude

What’s it do when it can, what’s a wondering toddler going to

in wheelchair whose luck or un-luck had put his feet out of

see, looking in at it, what’s a man even chair-bound going to

commission had feet that dreamed it, what was a the human

flimflam about -- we hear it in pop tunes and great poetry

heart for?

and in mom’s deep breathing --

Because the world seems to write in bold lines for any eye

It’s made to love, and be loved.

that what and who we are is right there in front of us, dust and muck and all. Over or under it, the thing wants to do

But feet and heart can both meet their making, walking in

what it’s meant to do; it yearns for what does it good, or let’s

Boston to Back Bay with a woman who pours out her story as

it be. No doubt (not no donut) Aristotle would argue that this

you listen, and laughs at your wonder, and slaps you on the

is telos, or ultimate purpose, which he describes as the point

back, saying, “Told you so, girl. Told you so.”

or meaning of a thing or being. He neatly connects it to that which fulfills. So, what you’re meant for is also the

Hearts are made for listening, attention, and maybe -- a little

fulfillment or attainment of what you’re built to be or do.

-- for walking, if they have feet to do it with.

When I next passed the woman and the bike, I greeted her first. “My feet’s eudonomia is walking!” I shouted.

“What?” she said, “Girl, your feet just made for walking, that’s all.”

“Same thing,” I grinned. “Do you want to walk to the Shrine with me? My bike tyres need a break.”

And the human heart -- what’s it made for?

What’s it do when it can, what’s a wondering

So she did.

toddler going to see, looking in at it, what’s a man even chair-bound going to flimflam about -

And the human heart -- what’s it made for?

- we hear it in pop tunes and great poetry and in mom’s deep breathing -It’s made to love, and be loved.

SHIKIS STRINGS

LLOYD ALEXANDER

8 | AUTHOR PROFILE

08

Alexander began writing his great American novel when he was... It was gargantuan. It was serious. It was Proustian and complex.

He eventually threw it all out, all thousand and some pages, and asked, "Who am I? What's my story to tell?"

When he began to write again, it was the story of a clumsy, impetuous young man in a world based in ancient Welsh myth. The tale tumbled out of his pen, a coming-of-age epic pierced by side-splitting humor and heartache and break that throbbed even when the last page was turned.

And its depth and enormity mostly lay in Alexander's authentic voice, and profound simplicity .

By C.J. WILLIAMS

"There is beauty simply in being among those you love, and with the things you love, and goodness too," says one character thoughtfully to Taran, who thinks he needs high deeds and epic accomplishments to give his life worth.

Alexander delved into his own heart, and found beauty and mystery, and the ability just to be. When he stopped seeking great things and someone else's destiny -- much like Taran -- he found the wonder of a story that has moved and healed hearts up to today.

NOMADIC

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MORE ON FEET: "THE ART IS IN TAKING PART" The Museum of Walking stands in London, spread as far as its workshops for walkers extends, is distinctly about feet.

Poetic feet and people's feet and the many feet of pages you may produce if you've walked while noticing your own thoughts and the things they snap on outside of you.

Online, some of the museum's standout features include a glossary of obscure phrases and verbs for the art of walking.

Every attitude of perambulation is described by these up-- from loitering to snaffle and snoodling; from Bterms y C.J . WILLIAMS the French-robbed-term flaneur to the neologism, New Photographs by World portmanteau Net-walking (a term that would used for an ambulatory business event).

Do feet always bring people together?

Founder, Andrew Stark, believes feet were made for walking, and walking for companionship, as well as for words.

However, feet - both poetic and pragmatically physical - can run into the wild blue alone.

09

In poetry, a friend remarked to me, this will appear as free verse. (This is his opinion and not universally true.)

In feet-wtih-toes, this often looks like heaven or Hell, the former, found in the wild-blue, is not the latter, which is found in the unwild empty grey of the backs of our own brains when we don't pull our heads out of our nether regions.

The Museum, returning to the subject, frames walking as art - an art which its tagline names 'the art of taking part.'

In one particular understanding, all art is the art of taking part; taking parts and putting them together more whole.

Feet and walking do this both in poetry, and souls, and the discovery of The Museum of Walking while walking was one of the highlights of our editorial team's season a few years back.

(A final complementary glossary to the Museum's collection of walking terms. Ours is looking at feet.

FEET: toes, tootsies, ground, plates of meat, trotters, dogs, heels, shoe-slummers, shirks, hoof, pad, flats, sloggers, legbums, gums.)

NOMADIC

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SHIKIS STRINGS MAD LIBS FOR MAD TIMES Athanasius taught math and Spanish. He hoped each__________ that he would not have to ______ both at the same _________.

But the________did not always conspire to favor his _____________.* Thus, on Monday* the _______* of January, he found himself in front of a ______* _______* of small _______* who both needed to learn how to _______* and to say __________ *in what was not their _________* tongue.

He ________*. Would life always throw him secondhelpings and ___________?* Before he could _____* rapidly, he realized a very small, ______* member of that earlier level of _______* was waving his ______* _______* in the air. He clearly had a ______* desire to play ______* and _____* in questions.

Athanasius ___* his _____* and said, "_______?"* "CAN WE LEARN HOW TO MAKE FIVE THOUSAND _________* of TACO SOUP WITH A BLACKBOARD?" bellowed the small ________*.

"What? No---" _______* Athanasius. small along with multiple other B yBut C . the J. W I L Lindividual, IAMS P h_______*, o t o g r aseemed p h s bto y ______* this kind of equation was what a ________* like Spanish and a ______* like Math were meant to do if ______* to each other.

10

1.NOUN _______________ 2. PRESENT TENSE VERB______________ 3. NOUN _________________ 4. NOUN__________________ 5. NOUN__________________ 6. DAY ON A CALENDAR___________ 7. ORDINAL NUMERAL 8. ADJECTiVE ____________________ 9. GROUP NOUN __________________ 10. VERB _______________________ 11. 3 SHORT PHRASES 12. NOUN____________________ 13. VERB ____________________ 14. PLURAL NOUN______________ 15. VERB________________________ 16.ADVERB ___________________ 17. ADJECTIVE_______________ 18. ADJECTIVE______________________ 19. BODY PART___________________ 20. ADVERB______________________ 21. ADJECTIVE ___________________ 22. ANCIENT HISTORIC PERSON__________ 23. VERB______________________ 24. PAST TENSE VERB________________ 25. NOUN_____________________ 26. SINGLE WORD REPLY______________ 27. UNIT OF LIQUID MEASUREMENT ______ 28. NOUN 29. VERB____________ 30. GROUP NOUN__________ 31. VERB ______________ 32. NOUN___________ 33.NOUN__________________ 34. PAST TENSE VERB______________ 35.PAST TENSE VERB______________ 36. ADJECTIVE_________________ 37. NOUN

Athanasiaus _____* again. This was going to be a ____________* __________*.

NOMADIC

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11

A BOY NAMED THUNDER & A GIRL NAMED PAIN A FAIRY TALE

When he was born, the daylight laughed -- but not for long.

When he was born, the stars winked -- but came up short.

When he was born, well, it was all that many years ago don't ask me to tell you if it's true. You should know, if you're listening.

quiet."

His mother named him Thunder, and his father ran off, and he grew up knowing the skies had no voice bigger than his and the clouds couldn't muffle his heart and his mother both loved and was wary of him.

"Now," he said. And off he went.

One day, when he was still young, but much older, he tapped on the windowsill as he passed by underneath (for they lived not in but not too far out of town, and he had been building scavenged-cobblestone-walls for their gardens).

"MOOOOTHER!" She shushed him, and nearly fell off her chair. She often did not hear the love in his thunder, she was so wary of its rattling boom. She did not today.

"I'm going to where my feet and voice don't throw things down," he said, "I'm going to see if I can be knocked down by anything. I'm going."

Which remark left him with a short, sharp ache in the heart, briefly, before he tipped up on his toes to dump a bundle of blooms in her lap.

But on the road to far-flung and the mountains and the wilds, there's more than what you find in town. There's things that hear thunder each day, and things that have weathered lightning, and things that don't just crack in the night, but in daylight too, and things that know and have known pain.

And sometimes pain makes things lame -- but also breaks and takes away the shell of shame.

So Thunder one evening came upon three men, one in black, one in grey, and one in crimson not as bright as blood, not as dull as dust, but somewhere in between. And between them they had a girl trussed up, and were quarreling in hushed tones about whether to stick her in the fire or to string her up -- or worse things.

"HO!" growled Thunder.

"So, so," said the woman, just a little sadly.

But they barely jumped.

"So!" said Thunder, and she teetered and nearly fell again.

"Well, go! Go then! At least it'll be

By C.J. WILLIAMS Photographs by

SHIKI | 11

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12

A BOY NAMED THUNDER & A GIRL NAMED PAIN A FAIRY TALE

"Ho!" he went again.

The boy, Thunder, realized they had not looked into her eyes yet, and now they did.

But they only shrugged.

"HO!" he went, like every cloud of a hound of heaven or hell.

And Crimson turned around and knocked him over the head.

"You'll need more than thunder to get our heads in a twist," he said.

So they trussed him up too.

And she gave them the silence of pain that could not be a tyrant; pain received, changed; held; released; pain like the steady rain that washes out dust and rust.

And pain like lightning that strikes and breaks and illumines a sky.

Grey and black fell back, flat on their behinds.

Only Crimson still looked.

But the girl lay still.

Thunder looked at her curiously from the ground where he lay, wondering why his voice had not been enough to rattle the men as it rattled his mother.

She did not look scared; nor did she look brave. She simply looked out of eyes that had both fire and water in them, light and dark. She looked at him.

And then blinked.

Next he knew the men were bending over her, and she spoke to them, and she told them what she knew.

It was pain, but not pain shot out and shot through with blame and fury.

"No, give me everything," he said, "That's not fair and that's not all you have, and we've been long enough waiting for to pull the life out of someone that can give us the threads to live forever."

Thunder then heard a silence that was not absence, but presence.

The girl said nothing.

The man said nothing.

But the man lived no longer than his next breath.

"It isn't death that man can't stand, nor noise -- but life," said she. And from there on, Thunder and the girl had many adventures But far-flung and long ago...those are for another time.

By C.J. WILLIAMS Photographs by

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RECENT: YOUR WORDS ARE GLASS

your words are only glass which is? only what I see through not what I grasp-I wish you spoke in music notes and perhaps spoke out-of-rote but spoke in sounds bone-sloped.

AITHNE MELNIVKOV POET | BOSTON

CAREER GOALS ...has always wanted to be a translator, or a CIA agent. She believes a section of her professional aspiration developed from her ancestry. Editor's Note: Poetry seems like it could fit the bill for the first goal, if not the second.

I wish you spoke marrow.

There's where blood is built, where harrowed red and white, stroma-hematopoietic and cellular cornerstones grown in-your words are less than skin which is? at least for walking in, filtering light and air and wind-Speak like Him: Word, flesh, what's in. glass is for seeing through, not looking in

RECENT: WALKING

MAIN INTERESTS Linguistics Dante Ballet Ferrets Astronomy Small trees Walking

you get to town in three ways: one, motored wheels -- but two, wheels and toes, blinding spokes that bicycling note that weaves the beat, bruising your seat but reveling in wound-up wild wind or finally and even t-- three!-feet; ai piedi repeat, repeat! one, two, one, two until you have been where you meant to go now and now and now.

I think I'll walk today I like being. ...and I'll be in town someday at this rate.

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JACQUELINE TETRAULT POET | NORTH SHORE

14 RECENT: VOCATION

You ask me what I would have you give me out of the bounty you plan to bring home.

All I truly want is your company, but you tell me to make more wishes known.

My sisters want you to make their lives sweet, restore the glory we have fallen from.

My own desire's easier to meet: It's your presence that makes this place a home.

Since you insist on granting me a gift, I'll ask for one: if you can spare a rose, that thorny flower that makes spirits lift with beauty blossoming amid such woes, grant one to me, that I may, by your leave, grow it and see what shape it may achieve.

POET BIOGRAPHY Jacqueline Tetrault is a writer and photographer from the Boston area. She has published numerous works of journalism and fan fiction, but also hopes to write books, plays and screenplays. Information about her work and links to her social media can be found at her website, www.jacquelinetetrault.com

MAIN INTERESTS Cosplay Theater Film Singing Psychology Mythology

RECENT: SEBAGO LAKE REFLECTION

I am here – again – in the place of happy memory, where sun and wind sand and water can touch me if I let them.

I smell the watery clay, but not the woodsmoke I once thought characteristic.

The sun still sparkles on the calm lake water, which changes in companions can’t help but color.

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15. KARUMI principle of lightness "The essential, most often, has no weight." Antoine de Sant'Exupery

so ash trees pry into the sky with fingers flaming unburnt: this - snow's light, turning

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12. HEARD ON THE STREET, OR "I HEARD THE KID SAY" shasei and the suave art of eavesdropping

When I move to a new pla ce, I find the bus lines, and I take all the buses..all of them. At lea st once.I took all of Boston's buses.

I still stayed.

Sometimes I pretend I'm riding a ferris wheel made of bon es.

4 YEAR OLD IN A STR OLLER ON BOSTON COBBLES

90 YEAR OLD WOMA N, BRIGHTON

Cities are places where souls go to die.

It's not a rat's nest. My hair is happy.

It had a party.

OLD MAN TO HIS GRANDDA UGHTER IN BACK BAY

7 YEAR OLD AT THE 57 BUS STOP TO HER MOTHER

Oh look! A dead rainbow.

6 YEAR OLD CHILD HOPPIN G OIL SLICKS ON MARKET ST.

one for a penny two for a buck three if you're ready four, bad luck eavesdrop on many drop on the eaves laugh to Kilkenny let other folk grieve

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TSUNE-DOKU

THE PILE OF BOOKS YOU'VE ACQUIRED AND WILL READ SOME DAY, OR AND ALSO KNOWN AS OUR STAFF'S BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS According to Japanese scholar (and one-time Tokyo Bureau chief for the Washington Post), T.R. Reid, "tsune" + "doku" = "to pile up reading materials that you intend to read." But what may not be so obvious is that the Japanese is also a clever visual pun: etymologically (and visually in the Kanji) it stacks up, for the words atop each other create a stack in the same way books will on your nightstand.

We hope to stack you with fun puns as well as books to lighten your wonder and wit.

Read on.

selections from the to-read and reading stacks TITLE The Unseriousness of Human Affairs

TITLE The Beatryce Prophecy

AUTHOR James Schall

AUTHOR Kate DiCamillo

QUIP Highly serioues subjects dealt with by the light,

QUIP Trauma that turns of up in a medieval-esque fable, where

unserious but solemn essaying of Fr. Schall.

hearts are all wounded but being intertwined, refind their hope.

TITLE The Beatryce Prophecy AUTHOR Kate DiCamillo QUIP Trauma that turns of up in a medieval-esque fable, where hearts are all wounded but being intertwined, refind their hope.

TITLE Foolproof, and Other Mathematical Meditations AUTHOR Brian Hayes QUIP Nothing is foolproof but wonder, and Hayes brings wonder to the art of numbers.

TITLE The Dark is Rising AUTHOR Susan Cooper QUIP Welsh legend mingles with semi-modern England, and a small boy discovers a deeper identity, and the rootedness that roots out fear.

16: REVIEW "HOW SHOULD WE LIVE"

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BY JOHN WHITEHEAD Can a junior high school student’s experiences open the door to understanding humanity?

How Do You Live?, by Genzaburō Yoshino, answers that question with a resounding “yes.”

A Japanese young adult novel first published in 1937, How Do You Live? is editor and philosopher Yoshino’s attempt to teach young people various life lessons. He originally considered writing a textbook but decided a novel would be a more effective teaching tool. The book chronicles the life of Jun’ichi Honda, a 15-year-old junior high schooler from an affluent background over the course of an academic year. During this time, Jun’ichi, nicknamed “Copper” (more on that later), goes to class, plays with his friends, gets into some trouble, and constantly reflects on his experiences. He shares his reflections with his uncle, who serves as a paternal figure in Copper’s life after the death of the boy’s father. The uncle responds with lessons and advice for Copper—and for the reader.

How Do You Live? was translated into English for the first time only last year. The translation, by Bruno Navasky, allows English speakers to evaluate Yoshino’s attempt to teach through a novel. How successful is the book as art and guidance?

I would judge How Do You Live? to be a charming, sometimes moving work that contains many valuable insights that people of any age would do well to take to heart. I would also say the book does not wholly succeed in blending its purely entertaining and more didactic elements. All too often, the book seems to fall into the trap of lecturing, albeit in a relatively engaging way.

A series of loosely connected episodes in Copper’s life make up the structure of the book; most of these are followed by a chapter with the uncle’s commentary. Each episode illustrates a lesson Yoshino wants to drive home. For example, when Copper looks down upon a bustling Tokyo cityscape and contemplates how the city is filled with innumerable people (“like water molecules”), each with their own lives and concerns, his uncle comments about the importance of empathy, leading the boy to understanding that one is not the center of the universe. (The boy’s appreciation of this point, the uncle declares, makes him like Copernicus, hence the nickname “Copper.”) When Copper visits a workingclass schoolmate who must help out in his family’s storefront, his uncle gives him a lesson on poverty and economic inequality. Contemplating a Buddha statue leads to a discussion of art history and cross-cultural exchanges. And so on.

"How Should We Live" cont'd To the extent How Do You Live contains any conventional conflict or drama, it revolves around Copper and his friends dealing with a group of bullies at school. This conflict leads to Copper making a fateful choice. The choice and how he must deal with its consequences provides the climax of the book’s relatively low-stakes story.

Yoshino’s prose, as translated by Navasky, is simple and accessible, even when discussing complex ideas. While Yoshino did not write in an especially beautiful or lyrical way, he did have the knack of using just a few key details to summon up a setting or mood. Looking at the Tokyo skyline in the rain, Copper observes the way in which distant buildings “were gradually caught up in a haze of rain and at last became silhouettes floating between the sky and the vague dullness of the monochrome mist.” Yoshino captures a schoolyard after first snowfall: “The yard during recess was so busy that it looked as if it were boiling. Everywhere you turned was pure white, glittering, and so dazzling you could hardly open your eyes.” One early morning in springtime, the outdoors are “enveloped in mist, and in the faint light coming from nowhere in particular, everything still seemed half-asleep.” Reading such brief descriptions, I could picture the scenes.

Characterization is similarly spare but effective. Copper and his friends are drawn with a few broad brushstrokes: our protagonist is intelligent and thoughtful; of his friends, Kitami is bold and pugnacious, Mizutani is shy and sensitive, and Uragawa is awkward but good-hearted. Nothing more detailed is required, though, for this story; the characters make an impression and inspire sympathy.

The uncle’s commentary, which ranges from science to economics to history, also contains some excellent passages. His discussion of poverty is powerful and pointed. He reminds Copper of a summertime trip they took from the city to the countryside and goes on: But at the same time that we decided we could no longer endure the heat of Tokyo and departed for the seashore, dozens or perhaps hundreds of laborers were working under each of those [city] roofs, sweaty and dusty.

And then we had left the city behind, and we were gazing across the wide-open blue-green fields, and at last we felt that cool breeze and breathed a sigh of relief. But when you think about it, all those lush green rice paddies were built with the hard labor of peasants who could never escape on a summer holiday.

Actually, when you looked through the train windows, weren’t there any number of peasants, even women, scattered here and there, diligently weeding the rice paddies, up to their hips in water?

These sorts of people exist. They are anywhere you go in Japan—no, anywhere you go in the world, they form the greatest part of the population.

Every day, these people must endure all sorts of hardships. In a life in which there’s never quite enough of anything, it’s hard even to get treatment for an illness.

He offers similarly memorable comments on the importance of personal experience and reflecting on it, saying “there’s no point in telling you, ‘The world is like this. People’s lives are like that.’ There’s no way anyone can explain such things in a word or two to you…[People] live their different lives in [the world] individually, and I cannot teach you what that means or what value it all has. That is something you must discover on your own as you get older.”

"How Should We Live" cont'd

Yoshino’s style, with its periodic injections of the uncle’s advice, also has its drawbacks though.

Sometimes the prose becomes excessively twee or cutesy, as when the author addresses the reader directly, and not all the imagery works well. Late in the book, Copper’s reflections on how a growing plant is a metaphor for human experience are too heavy-handed.

Also, some of the uncle’s advice comes across as questionable. Copper and his friends’ enthusiasm for Napoleon causes the uncle to caution that while Napoleon was admirable in some ways (creating the Napoleonic Code of law, which influenced modern Japan), his career was in other ways “harmful to the proper advancement of society.” The uncle’s moral seems to imply that being a continent-spanning conqueror would be acceptable insofar as it advanced human progress. I cannot help but think that perhaps better lessons could be taught about Napoleon and his actions.

Above all, even at its most sound and insightful, the uncle’s advice is simply that: exposition and exhortation directed at the reader rather than being implicitly conveyed in the main story and its themes. This approach is at odds with good storytelling, which even at its most didactic, should ideally teach its lessons through events and characters’ actions instead of authorial monologues.

How Do You Live? is at its strongest in its later passages where the uncle’s advice fades into the background and Copper’s own choices take center stage. The pivotal episode with his friends and the bullies does have a clear moral theme, but this significance arises from what the characters do and their own reactions to events. Moreover, this episode has all the emotional weight and resonance of real experience. It feels precisely like the type of deeply painful situations we recall from adolescence that can remain with us well into adulthood. I could relate to the situation described in this section of the book, and I suspect many other people could as well.

The climactic section of the book also brings to the foreground the otherwise shadowy character of Copper’s widowed mother. A scene where she talks to her son about a crucial memory from her own youth and the ambiguous role regret plays in life is more touching than the uncle’s many commentaries.

While the mother’s words are no less didactic, they flow more naturally from the situation. They are integrated into the story in a way that mini-lectures cannot.

Despite its limitations, How Do You Live? works both as an engaging coming-of-age story and an intriguing series of reflections. The book is worth reading and pondering.

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HANDS ON

21

HOW TO MAKE ... A BROWN PAPER BAG INTO A BASKET YOU'LL NEED A brown paper grocery bag.

• A ruler.

• A pencil.

• Scissors.

• Paperclips.

• Patience.

1. Cut down the seem of the grocery bag and cut to remove (and discard) the bottom, thus creating a large, flat, rectangular piece of paper.

2. Use a ruler and pencil to outline 16 strips: each should be 1 inch wide and 14 inches long. Cut them out. Do the same to create 5 or 6 more strips; each should be 1 inch wide and 21 inches long.

3. Fold all the strips in half, length-wise, so that each is 1/2 inch wide. Run the back of a butter knife along each strip of paper, pressing it down to make the folds tight and clean.

4. Create one more strip, 4 inches wide and 24 inches long. Fold in half lengthwise three times, so that it is about 1/2 inch wide. Repeat the butterknife exercise on this strip; you’ll have to press hard. This will be used for the handle.

5. Lay 8 of the 14-inch strips together on a table, vertically, tight and parallel to one another. Now weave one of the remaining 14-inch strips horizontally, through the vertical strips on the table, alternating over and under them. Weave in another 14-inch strip next to it, alternating under and over, but such that you are now going under the horizontal strips you previously went over and vice versa.

Continue until all 14-inch strips are woven together. Use paper clips as needed to help hold things in place. You should now have a square in the middle of the arranged 14-inch strips. Make sure they are packed tightly together.

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22 6. Cleanly fold and crease the portion of the strips that extends beyond the inner square, so that the strips bend upwards at a right angle.

7. Weave one of the 21-inch strips, all the way around the permitter to begin to form the sides of the basket. Be sure to alternate over and under. Overlap and tuck in any excess once you have come all the way around the basket. Repeat with another 21-inch strip, this time going over where you previously went under and vice versa. Repeat with the remaining 21-inch strips to build the sides of the basket. Try to keep everything tight and work out any slack. This gets pretty tricky; again paper clips will be your best friends.

8. Tighten everything up as best you can. If you wish to make a taller basket, cut out and weave in some additional 21-inch strips. When you’re done, fold the overhanging portion of the 16-inch strips down and tuck them into cross strips on the inside of the basket.

9. Tuck the two ends of the 24-inch handle strip into opposite sides of the basket, working it into the cross strips on the inside. This is mostly a decorative basket of course, but if you want you can staple or glue the places where the handle meets the sides of the basket so that you can carry (slightly) heavier things in it

SHIKIS

STRINGS

20:BOOK BLURTS

by C.J. Williams

1.

A good word, a good tale, is defined by its silences. More than that, the difference between a beautifully written book and an ill-written book are the presence or lacks of deliberate, attentive silences.

Tolkien ties beautiful silences into his prose. Kate DiCamillo’s transporting simplicity is woven of wise silence.

“The world is dark, and light is precious.

Come closer, dear reader.

You must trust me.

I am telling you a story.” ― Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux 2.

Writing well is not simply putting words down properly. It certainly isn’t putting words down seriously. Exceptional storytelling is a leap and a bound of words and situations taken and set down lightly. In other words, what I’ve learned from the best of the best is that good books are full of humor. Lloyd Alexander calls it giving the reader “time to breathe” and come back to themselves. Roald Dahl, I think, calls it reality. He writes it with the thrust of bare-naked reality. He busts sides with it.

And the best books bust our sides — our unnecessary sides, our guardingsides, our sides of self-importance, ignorance, and confusion.

“Above all,” Dahl once told an interviewer, a story — in particular one for children — “must be funny”.

3.

Good words say what they mean. Except when they very clearly don’t. In which case, they tell you they’re not saying it for a point.

A good writer, and storyteller, is silent long enough to know what he means, and brave enough to say it, and silent long enough to have attended to what he’s heard and seen in the world so that he has something to mean and to say.

Miyazaki, a Japanese filmmaker and animator, demonstrates this habit with startling grace. Roald Dahl bursts veins with dead-center-meaning-what-hesays. Any poet with craft does it. Basho (“In the cicada’s cry / There’s no sign that can foretell /How soon it must die.”); Dickinson (” I died for beauty, but was scarce / adjusted in the tomb, / when one who died for truth was lain / in an adjoining room. / He questioned softly why I failed? / For beauty, I replied. / And I fort truth,–the two are one, / “We brethren are,” he said.”)

23

Detail, but not distraction. Detail with purpose. Miyazaki paints and illustrates it to a degree I can never quite see in prose, because the visual is so moving. Yet Tolkien also puts it down.

Ursula LeGuin, L’Engle, Katherine Rundell (oh what a wonderful discovery her Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms is), and Cat Valente use painstaking pin-prick detail with purpose.

Detail without purpose or attention is distraction and clutter.

Most of all though, as I come to the end of my list and meandering wonders, good writing is made up of attentive silences. It is the one characteristic I pick out from each author, each creator, I adore. A good wordsmith and storyteller, whether in film or inked fiction, writes with attention to the empty spaces.

They leave room.

After all, a story is made up of the teller, the insides, and the listener. There must be space for each.

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25

25: "SHASEI "

I WANT TO SEE MOUNTAINS

BY E. WILLIAMS

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26

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27. WHAT OUR READERS ARE READING the wonder of cross-pollinating with the word

UNPOPULAR OPINIONS DOROTHY SAYERS

THE RETURN OF DON QU IJOTE G.K. CHESTERTON

ANAM CARA

MAN WHO WAS THURSD AY G.K. CHESTERTON

ROSALINE'S CURSE KATHERINE CAMPBELL

SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION THOMAS MERTON

JOHN O'DONOHUE

are you reading something swift and savvy? something that sparks wonder? something that you think will stick to your ribs for life? drop us a line with the title and your reflections, and you might land on our pages.

SHIKIS.STRINGS_SMALLTHINGS@YAHOO.COM

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27

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27.LOCAL SPOTLIGHT: GREENS IN THE CITY Finding quiet, curiosities, or crooked nooks in cities around the world. (past spotlight featured bookshops).

Overlook Park on Corey Road . this tucked-away spot of greeen boasts a wooden playgroun d on one side of the street, and ham mocks and hillslope on the other.

READER

Chandler Pond & Gallaghe r Park. A loop around the water, an oasis in the city; picnicking is pleasa nt and easy and the benches face tow ards the water, letting perambulato rs enjoy the startling shock of sun rise and sunset on the small pond.

EDITOR

The Garden inside Bosto n Public Library -- the courtyard, rather: small, pillared, in summe r overflowing with fountain and greenery, this quiet space within the main library often hosts readings and concerts in fair weather.

EDITOR

We welcome submissions from fellow city-explorers. Boston is our stomping ground, but we'll print your x-marks-the-spot play or rest stops whatever urban or less-urban townscape you frequent!

SHIKIS.STRINGS_SMALLTHINGS@YAHOO.COM

SHIKIS STRINGS

28

29

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as

brightly

before

as

handing

possible it

future generations.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

on

to

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Are you deficient?

STAFF

One in three people today — regardless of demographic — is deficient in this vital nutrient. Did you know? If not, you’re hardly alone. Not only are most Americans and Western Europeans critically lacking this life-sustaining nutrient, most are also just as ignorant about the fact that they’re missing it, as well as ignorant of the consequences of going without.

“It blew my mind,” said Ashley*, a 35 year old woman and mother of 3 from Worcester, Mass. “I mean, I knew I was constantly dragging. But who isn’t, I thought, in this world?”

The reality that a majority of people don’t get this vitamin more than once daily could account for the this young mother’s closing remark.

Another individual we spoke with, a 25 year old graduate student Boston University, was similarly floored; but not totally surprised. “Obviously,” he told Shiki Staff, “I mean, our lifestyle, like, literally cuts it out of the daily intake…routinething, right?

30

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Maybe as much attitude as lifestyle, another bystander we approached, Aaron, who runs a construction business out of his backyard in Belmont, Mass., laughed in our faces.

“You think that’s news?” But then he paused, “Stick me with a pin and crash my truck, you’re right. No one thinks that’s worth stopping to plug in, not when there’s inflation and gramma’s sick, and you’re parked your car in the snow-emergency lane and it’s another flipping Nor’easter coming down the pike.”

You might at this point be tallying the number of stories you’ve read in the past few years about lack of exposure and depleted soil; even the so-called “SAD” diet (common eating habits of the modern Western adult). If so, you're in the same boat as Ai Jei, 40, who listed off in quick succession the top 10 nutrients and minerals modern agriculture has robbed from our crops.

“Vitamin K,” she rattles off, “Magnesium, nitrogen. Copper, zinc.

Hm, livestock: omega-3s?”

But Ai, a researcher at Dana Farber, still hadn’t put her finger on this one.

31

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32

The responses probably only drive home the urgency of raising awareness of this deadly deficiency. Research has shown low and missing levels of it contribute or cause a ream of diseases and disorders in the human organism: from depression and heart disease to cancer and chronic autoimmune conditions like celiac, Crohn’s, Lupus, and more.

Yet at this juncture, even our centers for higher learning continue to promote lifestyle choices and attitudes about health that keep the population both in the dark and perpetually out of luck in getting a proper level of this missing building block.

Curiously enough, the test to determine if you’re one of those one in three is simple.

Are you deficient? Are you lacking Vitamin P? Just ask yourself this: When is the last time you spent a significant amount of time in pure unproductive play?

You might want to ask your 5-year old. But if research trends remain consistent, even 5-year olds don’t stand a chance of keeping above the statistics in the battle to defeat this silent killer.

As Ai Jei anecdotally proved when we left her: “My daughter in kindergarten, I need to pick her up now, or we’ll be late for study school after school for Chinese, and then for ballet, and if we are late tonight, she’ll have to catch up on the weekend, and the weekend is already booked with interviews for high school.”

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END PAGE

FINAL NOTE SPEAKING OF NOTES

MEDITATIVE MELODY HTTPS://YOUTU.BE/MSFD 0JKKNCG

7TH MAGDALENE TENDER

Adam Jones IS A POSTULANT AT OUR LADY OF GRACE SEMINARY.HE STUDIED MUSIC AS AN UNDERGRADUATE, SERVED AS FOCUS MISSIONARY IN RHODE ISLAND, AND BRINGS A BOYISH JOY TO MOST EVERYTHING.