Ballad of a Dying Town
2017-Jul-06, Thursday 09:06![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Listening to the latest episode of Vidjagame Apocalypse yesterday and they had a brief section about Night in the Woods, the adventure game about snake person angst, and included a cover of one of the songs from the protagonist's band:
I played it forschoolpsychnerd and gave a summary of the premise as I knew it, since I knew she'd understand. She's from Paducah, and as a child she had the goal to just get out in the way that I think a lot of kids from rural areas do. I'm from the Chicago suburbs, so it never affected me the same way, but I know people who lived in those dying towns before they moved away. The factories have closed, the malls are ghost towns, and people work retail because that's all that's available and mark off the days on the calendar. I mentioned that the protagonist and her friends hang out at the hardware store for lack of anywhere else to go, and schoolpsychnerd nodded sagely.
I'm leaning towards buying the game based on how much I liked that song, honestly.
Lamb burgers from the usual meat vendor--they knowschoolpsychnerd's name now--along with purple cauliflower. The golden beets and lamb's quarters are from the same vendor. The goatzarella on the lamb burgers isn't from our local farmer's market, but it is still farmer's market cheese--it's from Portland, when we went to a wedding there.
Not visible is the yogurt I'm eating, topped with blackberries from our CSA. Sweet and firm, some of the best blackberries I've ever had.
Ice cream is store-bought, and the topping is a raspberry sauce made with farmer's market raspberries. We usually eat chocolate for dessert and that's harder to get at a farmer's market, but maybe we could have a cake or something at some point in the future?
For class, we were supposed to discuss an article but Aya-sensei forgot to email me, so we just chatted for an hour (and I did okay!
). We're doing the article next week, though--an essay by Hirano Keiichirō entitled 無常ということ (mujou to iu koto, "On impermanence"), about the changes Kyōto has undergone, efforts against that, and what the "real Kyōto" is anyway.
One part stood out to me:
I haven't finished the essay, so I can't answer those questions.
I played it for
schoolpsychnerd and gave a summary of the premise as I knew it, since I knew she'd understand. She's from Paducah, and as a child she had the goal to just get out in the way that I think a lot of kids from rural areas do. I'm from the Chicago suburbs, so it never affected me the same way, but I know people who lived in those dying towns before they moved away. The factories have closed, the malls are ghost towns, and people work retail because that's all that's available and mark off the days on the calendar. I mentioned that the protagonist and her friends hang out at the hardware store for lack of anywhere else to go, and schoolpsychnerd nodded sagely. I'm leaning towards buying the game based on how much I liked that song, honestly.
Lamb burgers from the usual meat vendor--they know
schoolpsychnerd's name now--along with purple cauliflower. The golden beets and lamb's quarters are from the same vendor. The goatzarella on the lamb burgers isn't from our local farmer's market, but it is still farmer's market cheese--it's from Portland, when we went to a wedding there.Not visible is the yogurt I'm eating, topped with blackberries from our CSA. Sweet and firm, some of the best blackberries I've ever had.
Ice cream is store-bought, and the topping is a raspberry sauce made with farmer's market raspberries. We usually eat chocolate for dessert and that's harder to get at a farmer's market, but maybe we could have a cake or something at some point in the future?
For class, we were supposed to discuss an article but Aya-sensei forgot to email me, so we just chatted for an hour (and I did okay!
). We're doing the article next week, though--an essay by Hirano Keiichirō entitled 無常ということ (mujou to iu koto, "On impermanence"), about the changes Kyōto has undergone, efforts against that, and what the "real Kyōto" is anyway. One part stood out to me:
人が死ぬように、建造物も壊れる。人が移り変わるように、風景もまた絶え間なく変化する。そうした存在の絶望的な不安を慰める為にこそ、不変の聖所としての神社仏閣がかくも膨大な数築かれなければならなかったのではあるまいかWhich I would translate as
Much like humans die, buildings will crumble. Much like people change, the scenery will ceaselessly change. Surely to console that desperate existential dread, is that not why we must build temples and shrines in such huge numbers as eternal sacred spaces?At what point does preservation become killing something and preserving it in amber? At what point does change destroy that which came before and make something completely new? I'm sure the people in the dying rural towns, both here and in Japan, would prefer there had been a bit less change, even if younger people are moving to those towns sometimes.
I haven't finished the essay, so I can't answer those questions.
