There's a novel I read a few years ago - The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai. It's a very personal narrative, preoccupied with identity, dependency, isolation and history. The main source of this is protagonist Kazuko's first-person telling, but each of the main characters contributes significantly to an illumination of negative space in human existence. The novel is known for a few things, among them the first section in which Kazuko discusses a "true" aristocracy [a natural concern here, given Japan's post-war cultural and economic unravelling] gracefully embodied by her buddha-like mother. Kazuko is a passionate observer of her fellows, but it's from an alienated position that's constantly referencing modern social parameters. Kazuko struggles with this while her mother, in Kazuko's eyes, moves through life with all the poise of a tracking planet. The two are negotiating the decline of their family and country, and although Kazuko is in some ways fierce and inspired while Mother is dependent and frail, mother floats above the vacuum while Kazuko always trods a mundane monkey path.

     Anyway, what made me think of all this is that I was recently walking from 105 Chauncy Street to 178 Tremont Street, apparently performing some kind of inexplicit self-assessment, and I suddenly imagined a light switch switching up, down, up, down, up, down.

     Up: floats above.
     Down: trods the monkey path.

     Switching switching. Arg.

     And between the two often appears a question of dignity.


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