roadslides

in

Near the top of the main hill of the morning's run, scattered slides along the road, some bordered in red, some in their natural white. Seems that someone was getting rid of them and they ended up, as per usual, scattered and soaked. Not much light this morning, but I was able to pick one up and take a look: kids playing in the front yard of the house across the street from where I found them in that familiar 70s-80s warmth. The old man who lived there died a few months back and an estate sale yielded no new owners (or maybe it did); I remember him sitting on a lawnchair with his little white dog and waving to me as I ran past almost every day for several years until gradually he came out with a walker and then he stopped coming out at all.

SIX FOUR (I)

in

Nearing the 400 page mark of Hideo Yokoyama’s much-lauded crime novel and I'm a.) pretty sure that I like it and b.) not quite sure what I was expecting. It certainly wasn't an INSIDER-esque look at the relationship between the Japanese police and the media; perhaps something more along the lines of DRAGON TATTOO or even HIGH AND LOW (a favorite film; mem: still need to watch Spike Lee's HIGHEST 2 LOWEST). Expectations aside, I know like it well enough to have picked up Yokoyama’s other books in English translation (SEVENTEEN and THE NORTH LIGHT) – I'll just be sure to never read the back or anything about any of his work before diving in. Marketing copy expectations are a cruel temptress and, now that I'm over waiting for the kidnapping part to take over, I realize that I should've known better. Even though I did write my own copy for my own book all those years ago but hey, whatever works.