Even though I have just tons of drawing to do on Dicebox
for the next several weeks, I took a break on Monday to do some concentrated
writing. It’s about the middle of Chapter 2, which means it’s time
for me to slap Chapter 3 into shape, finally fix those gaps and weak points,
incorporate various notes and snippets and so on. Not to mention staring to
take the several paragraphs that comprise Chapter 4 in my outline and start
framing them into a usable script. And I had some serious issues (issues pronounced
in the British soft emphasis way) with an upcoming scene in the current chapter.

I didn’t get as much done as I wanted, partly because my writer self
is a bit rusty. I mean, I do keep this journal, and touch up and massage the
dialogue as I go along, as well as augment the Dicebox outline. But after I had re-acquainted myself with what I had for a script for
Chapter 3, reviewed the outlines, incorporated notes and trolled by sources
books, I didn’t get much done past fixing what bothered me about Chapter
2. I finally went to bed aggravated I didn’t hit my über storyteller
zone.

Naturally, when I woke up the next day and got ready for work writer-Jenn kicked into overdrive and that was all I could think about. Also at work—instead of obsessively doodling in meetings, I kept making story notes, figure out elegant bridges between the action points of Chapter 3 and so on. Kinda drove me crazy—wanted to take a week and do nothing but writing and research.

Part of my research while writing is to scan many types of story in all sorts of media—comics, video, TV, books, magazines. I actually caught myself doing this last night, pulling books from the shelf, flipping through the comics we got at APE yet again and even flipping through the TV channels as I worked on drawing the next page of Dicebox. Now, none of this will directly influence or inspire anything in my writing, it’s meant mostly to observe and digest methods of staging and problem solving.

In this sort of mood, it was only a matter of time until I pulled down my copy
of Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari
Kawabata. They never fail to astound me with how quickly they sketch a situation
and complete a story and yet give me phrases and ideas that get stuck in my
brain.

Below is one of my favorite stories, Sleeping Habit. I was going to
just quote a section, but then realized I wouldn’t have to type much more
to share all of it.

Sleeping Habit (Nemuriguse)

Startled by a sharp pain, as if her hair were being pulled out, she woke up
three or four times. But when she realized that a skein of her black hair was
wound around the neck of her lover, she smiled to herself. In the morning, she
would say, “My hair is this long now. When we sleep together, it truly
grows longer.”

Quietly, she closed her eyes.

“I don’t want to sleep. Why do we have to sleep? Even though we
are lovers, to have to go to sleep, of all things!” On nights when it
was all right for her to stay with him, she would say this, as if it were a
mystery to her.

“You‘d have to say that people make love precisely because they
have to sleep. A love that never sleeps—the very idea is frightening.
It’s something thought up by a demon.”

“That’s not true. At first, we neither slept either, did we? There’s
nothing so selfish as sleep.”

That was the truth. As soon as he fell asleep, he would pull his arm out from
under her neck, frowning unconsciously as he did so. She, too, no matter where
she embraced him, would find when she awakened that the strength had gone out
of her arm.

“Well, then, I’ll wind my hair around and around your arm and
hold you tight.”

Winding the sleeve of his kimono around her arm, she’d held him hard.
Just the same, sleep stole away the strength from her fingers.

“All right, then, just as the old proverb says, I’ll tie you up
with the rope of a woman’s hair.” So saying, she’d drawn a
long skein of her raven-black hair around his neck.

That morning, however, he smiled at what she said.

“What do you mean, your hair has grown longer? It’s so tangled
up you can’t pass a comb through it.’

As time went by, they forgot about that sort of thing. These nights, she slept
as if she’d forgotten he was there. But, if she happened to wake up, her
arm was always touching him—and his arm was touching her. By now, when
they no longer thought about it, it had become their sleeping habit.

© Hite Kawabata. English translation: ©1988 Lane Dunlop from
the paperback edition put out by North Point Press, 1996, (second printing)

The above isn’t my ultimate favorite, I also adore God’s Bones
and The White Flower. But it does stay with me.

While searching for a good link reviewing or explaining Kawabata’s philosophy
of doing the Palm-of-the-Hand Stories, I came across people recommending
them for busy or lazy people and others who claimed they couldn’t get
them because they didn’t know enough about Japanese culture. The second
claim really flummoxed me, I mean, okay, not knowing about certain festivals might
be a hinderance and certain Japanese words like tabi might be puzzling,
but with most of the stories, including the one above, I see nothing so inherently
Japanese as to prevent one from appreciating the situation or story. In fact,
Kawabata was strongly recommended to me by friends who know less about Japanese
culture than I and yet love Palm-of-the-Hand Stories.

As to the argument that one can‘t appreciate his full intentions or meaning, that’s true for any story, no matter what country the author is from. In fact, I have no patience for authors who dictate the meaning of the story, the one, true, ultimate meaning and constantly beat you about the head and shoulders with the Theme (this holds especially true for comics). The story is different with every reader and their own experience, I doubt that every Japanese reader of Kawabata walks away with the same meaning or impressions from his work or even like his work. The emotion a story inspires in you is the right one, no matter what the author says. Usually where ever one meaning is lost another, unintended, is found. The very good authors accept that and leave it alone.