Anyway, it is cold.
But maybe this coldness is good.
I’m suddenly re-reading “Tsurezuregusa” (Essays in Idleness).
Sometimes, I want to read it again without any reason. Hideo Kobayashi once said that “Tsurezuregusa” is a digest version of Montaigne’s “Essais” (perhaps a slightly different expression), and I see the resemblance.
In other words, it is a viewpoint from a “recluse.
Lately, I want to __. I want to do something, or I want to do this, but after a day, I often change my mind and decide that it is too much trouble.
I know I don’t have to go out of my way to put this into words, but somehow I think I may have entered a period of downsizing my desires. Or, the stage of sorting out one’s personal affairs.
Not having things, throwing things away, and throwing away superfluous relationships. In other words, a retreat.
Novels, in themselves, are a mass of desires (fame, money, and glory), but I am gradually becoming able to separate these desires from writing. If I were to say that I have given up, that would be the end of it.
The reason I started this Note was also as a PR tool to let people know about my work. At that time, I think there was still a glistening desire for self-expression that clung to the backs of the articles I wrote.
However, I also began to realize that it was not linked to the sales of my works, and it became difficult to write blogs and essays on the premise that they would be read by others.
I understand how Haruki Murakami felt when he said, “If I continue writing essays for a long time, I feel as if I am becoming empty inside (“Let’s try one thing, Murakami-san,” Asahi Shinbunsha).
However, if I think too much about what an essay is, or what an essay is, it becomes a difficult topic, so for now, I have shelved the idea of writing essays as a means to introduce my own works, and I have begun to think that from now on I will just write sentences as I go along (a common pattern). I am not a fan of Montaigne, nor of Kamo Choucho.
Neither Montaigne nor Chomei wanted to gain popularity or authority in the secular world. I am not trying to gain popularity or authority in the world. I am trying to find my self in this world,” they wrote similarly, and of course I am not far behind them, but I might continue to write Note with that feeling, though I might change my mind about that too.
Well, if I continue to write a bunch of nonsense, and that’s why I have zero followers, I guess I will have to….
I think I might be able to write essays when I become a recluse, a hermit, in the true sense of the word.
Remembering my first dream after 10 days
