Tuesday, November 07, 2006

"Autumn in Oregon is wet as Spring..."

It used to be that I had several friends who were very into manga -- Japanese comic books -- and one of them explained to me that the illustrators of these books had honed the use of onomatopoeia to a fine art. Every sound imaginable can be (and is) represented by a Japanese character -- "kurukurukuru" is the sound of a woman slurping her ramen noodles, "nyao" is the sound a cat makes, "doki doki" is an excited heartbeat. But one of the loveliest of all, to my mind, is the long, drawn-out sound of heavy sheets of rain falling: "zaaaaaaaaaaaaaa." That's exactly the sound outside my window right now -- not quite a hiss, but too full and continuous to be represented by our own onomatopoeia of "pitter-patter." I guess this is a Japanese rain.

NaChrisPrezMo continues apace. I've had to admit to myself that if I spent all my time on one large project I wouldn't be able to finish it in time for Christmas, so I've put it aside for now in favor of completing lots of other projects. I started yesterday on something really lovely for one of my sisters, if I do say so myself (and I do) -- just hoping she will like the color. Still trying to figure out good gifts for everyone on the list, though. Some are definitely more of a challenge to please than others, but I will persist!

5 comments:

Julie said...

Woo hoo, presents for me!!!

tlawwife said...

Ah yes the unfinished project pile. I have some of those too.

Anonymous said...

uhm uhm.. I'm working hard on handmade jewelry this year.. sorry for male friends!!

tlchang said...

Is it flooding where you are? Luckily, it is not here in my neighborhood, but is in many, many of the outlying areas.

Soozcat said...

Well, we've had mudslides and power outages in the county. Our cul-de-sac got flooded and the city public works people were out messing with our storm drain--and backed some of the stormwater into our dishwasher. I think I've mentioned how much I love doing dishes. Twice.