tashi delek etc.

February 10, 2002

Today's Reading
The Wild Geese by Ogai Mori, Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet and the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa by Clements R. Markham

This Year's Reading
2002 Book List

Today's Listening:

Charlie Parker

Erik Satie (Aldo Ciccolini recording)

Soundtrack to the movie Himalaya (to which I usually refer as "the yak music video")

I took this Which drink are you? quiz (which seems to have vanished from its URL) and I turned out to be a a Velvet Dress. A Velvet Dress? Guess French Roast Black wasn't a choice. 

Nancy had to go home early for a meeting of her social work support group so we left my house at 1:45 PM. She still missed the 3:00 PM bus. The traffic on 93 was almost as bad as yesterday. So at least she made the 4:00 PM bus and successfully met up with her ride at 5:30 but it was closer than it needed to be. So do I now have to allow two hours for the drive to South Station? This is insane.

Anyway, when I left the bus station I couldn't face getting back on 93 again so I took the Mass Pike to the Allston-Brighton toll booth and headed to Cambridge. There was no traffic in Central Square or Porter Square. So I figured I'd make the most of an opportunity to mess around in Cambridge for awhile before driving home (up Rt. 28). I browsed at Tibet Arts in Porter Square and discovered a book I'd been wanting to read since I read Edmund Candler's The Unveiling of Lhasa. Candler kept referring to a book he was reading about the travels of George Bogle and another one about Thomas Manning. So there it was on the shelf, both narratives in one book in a limited edition reprint. It had a price sticker from some bookstore in Katmandu with the price 520.0 stamped on it. It didn't say 520.0 what but I intuited it wasn't dollars. The Tibetan woman behind the counter stared at it for a long time, flipped it every which way, and did not find a price in dollars. I told her I didn't see a price in dollars on it but I really wanted the book. Finally she suggested $25 and wanted to know if that was OK with me. It's a fairly big hardcover book, limited edition and all that, so I figure it's worth that. Also in this same store I found the sound track to that yak music video Nancy and I liked so much. I couldn't pass that up either.

Next stop was Sasuga, the Japanese bookstore, where I bought a nice little edition of The Wild Geese by Ogai Mori. It's a novel about the mistress of a usurer, but that description doesn't do it justice. I like it for the early passages where the narrator is browsing in used bookstores in Tokyo. I'm odd like that. Anyway, I sat and read about half of The Wild Geese in an Indian restaurant where the waiter forgot I was there for long periods of time. Once I finally did get the check and hit the road again, the drive back didn't feel like such an ordeal.

Tashi delek.