Two Blind Warriors

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Shintaro Katsu as the Blind Swordsman Zatoichi

I am thinking of two incredible blind warriors. One is from the Japanese cinema circa 1970s; and the other is from the literature of Edwardian England, around the time of the First World War.

During the 1970s I was a big fan of Daiei Studio’s Zatoichi films. At the time, Daiei owned two movie theaters in Los Angeles: the Sho Tokyo in Downtown L.A.’s Little Tokyo and the Kokusai on Crenshaw just south of Adams. Both theaters are long since gone.

Zatoichi was a blind masseur and gambler who also was a samurai-grade swordsman who could slice his opponents to ribbons due to his superior hearing ability. Between 1962 and 1989, Daiei produced some 26 Zatoichi films starring Shintaro Katsu. At the time, Daiei had some excellent action directors such as Kazuo Ikehiro, Issei Mori, Tokuzo Tanaka, and Kenji Misumi. Probably my favorite title was Zatoichi’s Fire Festival (1970).

Skipping to the other blind warrior, we have Private Investigator Max Carrados created by Ernest Bramah, a London tea merchant, who was also responsible for the Kai Lung stories, which can be described as fantasy Chinoiserie.

Max Carrados may not have been a swordsman, but his skills were no less incredible.In “The Coin of Dionysius,” a man named Carlyle investigates a Sicilian tetradrachm, taking it to the blind detective:

For a few seconds Carrados handled the piece with the delicate manipulation of his finger-tips while Carlyle looked on with a self-appreciative grin. Then with equal gravity the blind man weighed the coin in the balance of his hand. Finally he touched it with his tongue.

“Well?” demanded the other.

“Of course I have not much to go on, and if I were more fully in your confidence I might come to another conclusion—”

“Yes, yes,” interposed Carlyle, with amused encouragement.

“Then I would advise you to arrest the parlourmaid, Nina Brun, communicate with the police authorities of Padua for particulars of the career of Helene Brunesi, and suggest to Lord Seastoke that he should return to London to see what further depredations have been made in his cabinet.”

Both the Zatoichi films and the Max Carrados stories are highly entertaining, even if a bit fanciful.

La Biblioteca

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Los Angeles Metro Rail E-Line Train

It is Tuesday, but I’m already looking forward to my regular Thursday trip downtown.While I was laid up with my broken collarbone, I missed my weekly Mindful Meditation session at the Central Library. And I missed picking out books to take home and read. Finally, I enjoyed eating lunch at one of L.A.’s ethnic restaurants near the Central Library and taking the train back to my MetroRail stop.

Of course, I was never at a loss for books to read while I was healing at home. I have a couple thousand books on my Amazon Kindle as well as some 5,000 titles on my shelves. I like to joke that I made a deal with the Deity (or was it the Devil?) to remain alive until all my books were read. Right now, I am reading James Ellroy’s Widespread Panic and enjoying its look at the 1950s and 1960s in Southern California, with special emphasis on the naughty goings-on with Hollywood legends and Commies.

Fortunately, the mercury will probably not zoom past 90° Fahrenheit (32° Celsius) this Thursday, for the first time since I returned to my downtown Thursday trips. In the past few weeks, Thursday was the hottest day of the week in downtown L.A.’s Financial District.

After I post this blog entry, I will use Google to locate some new restaurants. I’m not looking for anything fancy, just something cheap enough to accommodate the legions of white collar workers who have offices in the area.

“This Is the End”

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Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now (1979)

As the monster heat wave continues, I keep thinking of the opening scene to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. In it, Martin Sheen is lying on his back in a Saigon guesthouse room, sweating as he hear the sound of a loud fan. And we hear the lyrics of The Doors singing “The End”:

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Well, it’s not quite THAT bad, but the continuing heat and humidity is something I have not experienced in the sixty years I have lived in Southern California. The heat has never been THIS relentless, with no cooler days to break up that monster high pressure cell that has been perching on the American Southwest like a vulture from hell.

It seems as if the climate news from around the world is all bad. High winds. Flood. Drought. Wildfires. Earthquakes.

There’s precious little we can do about the weather. I say: Make like a lizard. Wait and see what happens. Change is coming, but what the nature of that change is, no one knows.

Ara Pacis

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The Family of Caesar Augustus (3rd from Left)

Early in his multi-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon summarizes the contribution of Caesar Augustus:

The principal conquests of the Romans were achieved under the republic; and the emperors, for the most part, were satisfied with preserving those dominions which had been acquired by the policy of the senate, the active emulations of the consuls, and the martial enthusiasm of the people. The seven first centuries were filled with a rapid succession of triumphs; but it was reserved for Augustus to relinquish the ambitious design of subduing the whole earth, and to introduce a spirit of moderation into the public councils. Inclined to peace by his temper and situation, it was easy for him to discover that Rome, in her present exalted situation, had much less to hope than to fear from the chance of arms; and that, in the prosecution of remote wars, the undertaking became every day more difficult, the event more doubtful, and the possession more precarious, and less beneficial. The experience of Augustus added weight to these salutary reflections, and effectually convinced him that, by the prudent vigor of his counsels, it would be easy to secure every concession which the safety or the dignity of Rome might require from the most formidable barbarians. Instead of exposing his person and his legions to the arrows of the Parthians, he obtained, by an honorable treaty, the restitution of the standards and prisoners which had been taken in the defeat of Crassus.

In present-day Rome, there exists a fitting symbol of Augustus’s peaceable intentions. I am referring to the Ara Pacis, or Altar of Peace, which presents Augustus and his family in a religious procession. Here are no swords or helmets or military cloaks. According to Adrian Goldsworthy in his biography of Augustus, the image symbolizes “the harmony of the family and the assurance … offered for the future.”

“We’ll Be Dining in Style”

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“Catullus” Painted by Polish Artist Stefan Bakałowicz

As I am reading a biography of Caesar Augustus, I thought I would present a delightful poem by Catullus (84-64 BCE):

Fabullus, provided the gods favor you,
in a few days’ time we’ll be dining well.
For your part could you bring a decent

sizable meal, a fair-fleshed girl and
also, the wine with your wit and laughter?
If you can manage these, dear friend,

we’ll be dining in style, for right now
Catullus’ purse is a nest of cobwebs;
for your noble efforts you’ll get the

most pure friendship, and all things
sweet and agreeable. I’ll have a perfume
that is my girl’s, it was given her by Venus

and the Cupids. It is so sweet, Fabullus
that when you smell it, you’ll wish
you were nothing but nose.

High Tech Hell

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Los Angeles Metro Rail E-Line Train

Yesterday, I took the E-Line train to downtown Los Angeles, encountering on the way a whole slew of tech gremlins that threatened to put the kibosh on the trip.

To begin with, I parked my car at the Expo Bundy station lot. Payment was by credit card at a parking machine which featured an LCD screen. Since Los Angeles summers are extremely bright, and the sun was shining onto the screen, I had to guess what the machine was trying to tell me. Eventually, I made it through the process—even though, for some reason, the system did not remember the car license plate number associated with my TAP card.

Then I had to go through the turnstile. Whoops! The system didn’t recognize my TAP card, so I had to sneak a free ride on MetroRail. After spending time at the Central Library, I took a DASH bus to Union Station, close by the headquarters of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). They checked my card, told me I still had $2.00 in stored value on my card, and added an additional $20.00 at my request.

I had tried to re-charge my TAP card the day before in Santa Monica, but “the system is down,” so I was directed to a machine at the Santa Monica MetroRail station. Of course, it was down.

Whatever happened to those days when high tech held such promise? Now doing simple everyday things lead to unwelcome interactions with badly designed machines programmed by people who have no idea how to interact with a human being. Did no one ever think of checking that LCD screens are illegible in direct sunlight? Did no one think at all?

Keema

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I did not use Swasthi’s Recipes for my own keema recipe, but I chose the picture because it kind of looks like my own recipe. Generally speaking, Martine does not like the dishes I cook to please myself, probably because hot chiles are involved; and her digestion is too delicate to admit any hot peppers to the mix.

So, from time to time, I cook what looks and sort of tastes like an Indian curry, but without any of the hot stuff. This is one such recipe, and it’s actually good enough for me to like it. On my personal serving, however, I add red pepper flakes to give it some heat.

Turn the flame on your range to high. I begin with about a quarter cup of sunflower seed oil into which I have dropped some black mustard seeds and some coriander seeds (jeera) when the oil is hot enough to sizzle.

I slice one large or two small onions and add them to the oil.

For meat, I use one pound of Kroger’s ground turkey, preferably 80% fat free. (If it’s 90%+ fat free, it doesn’t taste as good.) Break up the ground turkey.

Salt to taste. At this point, I add a couple of large dollops of combined Indian garlic and ginger paste. Also: several tablespoons of turmeric, ground cumin, ground coriander, and Hungarian Szeged paprika.

While that mix is cooking, I wash a cup of Thai Jasmine long-grained rice from Trader Joe and drain, repeating the process until the water is clear. Dump the rice into the meat and onion mixture and add 2 to 2½ cups of water. Stir well.

Cut up a few ripe tomatoes and chop them coarsely.

The rest of the ingredients are frozen: I like to add several handfuls of frozen mixed vegetables, frozen peas, frozen lima beans, and frozen Potatoes O’Brien.

Cover, lower the flame, and stir every few minutes to keep the mix from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Seven Men at Hamnavoe Market

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A Street in Stromness on the Orkney Mainland

George Mackay Brown (1921-1996) spent most of his life in Stromness, Orkney, which he always called by its original Norse name of Hamnavoe. If you want to go to the Orkneys, either you fly to the small airport at Kirkwall from Aberdeen or Wick; or you take the ferry from Scrabster (just west of Thurso) to Stromness.

I have been to Orkney twice. The first time, I stayed in Stromness at the house of an old couple named the Linklaters. Dinner consisted of potatoes prepared two or three different ways. At that time, I met George Mackay Brown after I stepped outside from the local Stromness bookstore bearing several books by him.

Here is a poem about seven men who, years ago, went to the market in Hamnavoe and what happened to them.

Hamnavoe Market

They drove to the market with ringing pockets.

Folster found a girl
Who put wounds on his face and throat.
Small and diagonal, like red doves.

Johnston stood beside the barrel.
All day he stood there.
He awoke in a ditch, his mouth full of ashes.

Grieve bought a balloon and a goldfish.
He swung through the air.
He fired shotguns, tolled pennies, ate sweet fog from a stick.

Heddle was at the market also.
I know nothing of his activities.
He is and always was a quiet man.

Garson went three rounds with a negro boxer,
And received thirty shillings,
Much applause, and an eye loaded with thunder.

Where did they find Flett?
They found him in a blazing circle,
All flame and blood, a new Salvationist.

A gypsy saw in the hand of Halcro
Great strolling herds, harvests, a proud woman.
He wintered in the poorhouse.

They drove home from the Market under the stars
Except for Johnston,
Who lay in a ditch, his mouth full of dying fires.

Astonishing Strides

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Food Vendor at a Bangkok Night Market

It is strange to be suddenly confronted by truth in places that one had not thought to look for it. Such was the case this evening when I encountered it in a little-known mystery novel set in Bangkok. The Sonchai Jitgpleecheep novels of John Burdett have been a recent preoccupation of mine during this hot and seemingly endless summer in Southern California. Then, like a Buddhist burst of contemplation, there it was a fifth of the way through Bangkok Asset, the sixth novel in the series:

Man has made astonishing strides recently in all things inessential. The price we’ve paid is enormous. Stuck with an infantile description of reality that cannot come to terms with death or even lesser challenges, the eternal infant must torture himself for lifetime after lifetime, probably without end.

This is what happens when one is a serious bookworm. The truth is out there, even in seemingly unusual places, like genre series novels.

Sometime this month, I’m going to tackle the Collected Stories of William Faulkner. For some reason, I’ve always liked to read Faulkner during the hottest month of the year. I might suddenly find some pearl of wisdom that stands out, or I might not. On the other hand, I might read some arrant piece of trash an find myself at the edge of a cliff that stretches to the horizon.

A Month of Heat and Humidity

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For the entire month of July, Southern California has been enduring not only a heat wave, but a humid heat wave. Granted that the temperature farther inland has been much worse than what I have had to endure living a scant two miles from the beach as I do. When it’s 80° Fahrenheit here (27° Celsius), it’s well over 100° Fahrenheit (38° Celsius) in the valleys and deserts.

My brother Dan lives in the Coachella Valley, where the mercury has topped 117° Fahrenheit (47° Celsius) at times. No wonder that he is considering a move to Northern California.

In the sixty years I have lived in Southern California, I have never experienced anything like this. It is quite evident that the entire world is in the grip of some strange weather conditions. The fires in France and Spain are like nothing I have ever seen in Europe. And the constant humidity from tropical storms wending westward from Mexico have sent waves of humid air circulating over the Southwest.

Every day, the weather forecast is virtually the same, even looking forward for the next seven days.

I don’t know where all this is heading over the next ten or twenty years. Certainly no place good. We seem to have left the Little Ice Age that began in the 14th century in the rearview mirror. Maybe the earth has decided to give us up as a bad lot and condemned the human race to become crispy critters. No doubt we had it coming to us.