貴方の声が道しるべ

[dorchadas]

一羽の鳥が鳴いている
名前のない空に私を探して
優しさで編み続けた
ゆりかごで明日へいこう
晴れの日も雨の日にも
あなたを守るために

"Your voice is my guidepost / A lone bird is crying out / searching for me in the nameless sky / The kindness I've woven / into a cradle will bear me into tomorrow / On clear days and rainy days too / So I can protect you."

I've listened to that song roughly two hundred times in the last day, so it's definitely on my mind.

I went to the discussion about Violet Evergarden, my notes about which I posted here, and unlike the time when I went to the discussion about Your Lie in April, this time I broadly agreed with everyone's else opinion. We talked about the beautiful art--here's one of the standout parts, where Violet walks on water (very briefly)--the emotional journey that Violet makes over the course of the show and how her almost-robotic demeanor in the beginning serves her later growth, how glad we were that the Major didn't come back at the end and undo most of her development, and how great the music was. I'm in agreement with all of that, and now I want to track down the light novel the anime was based on. I've heard it's full of anime bullshit--in a pseudo-European setting, Violet Evergarden fights with an eight-foot-long axe named "Witchcraft" with which she can deflect bullets--but you know, some anime bullshit is par for the course, I guess. And it'll be good Japanese practice.

Earlier this week I saw on Twitter that there was an exhibit at the Art Institute called The Mezzotints of Hamanishi Katsunori closing today, so after work on Thursday I went to the Art Institute's free day. I didn't get any good pictures of his work, but you can see some examples here. Apparently mezzotinting is layering black over the canvas and then scraping it off gradually to lighten certain areas. Maybe that's why some of them seemed almost three-dimensional, popping off the canvas in a way that I definitely couldn't capture with my iPhone camera. The art is part of the museum's collection, so maybe it'll rotate out on display again soon.

I did take this picture elsewhere in the Japanese art section of a sakura tree. It's that time of year:

Sadly, I don't know the title or the artist.

Tomorrow--today Japan time--they're release the new Imperial Era name. I'm actually kind of in suspense. It's going from 平成 (Heisei, "Peace Everywhere," from a Chinese classical reference, apparently), to...who knows. 昭和 was also about peace, so maybe it'll be another peace reference? I can't wait!

Live update, as I am writing this: 令和 reiwa. Maybe "Peaceful law"? It could be "Commanded to peace," but that seems harsh for an era name.

My book club has been reading Sin in the Second City, about a Chicago brothel at the turn of the 20th century. The most mind-blowing part of the book is the claim that the verb "to get laid" comes from the Everleigh Club, the aforementioned brothel, about which patrons would say they were "going to get Everleighed," and after the club's closure the Ever was dropped and the spelling changed. I always figured it was from "to lay down"! Language is amazing.

That's everyting that happened lately. I spent most of this weekend watching Violet Evergarden--I left it all for the last minute and had to watch the whole thing last night and this morning--went to Starlight Radio Dreams on Friday, stopped by [Bad username or site: @ twitter.com name=]'s apartment briefly on Thursday to eat some of her surfeit of dessert, and otherwise there's not much to report.

Less week seems more laid back at the moment, but we'll see!