Holiday Update 2024

December 31, 2024

To begin, a couple minor updates:

MINOR UPDATE #1: REGARDING ASIAN GROCERY STORES IN SASKATOON

My previous reckoning regarding the number of Asian grocery stores in Saskatoon was incorrect. I stated back in July that there were two. As Master Yoda once famously said, “There is another.”

K-Market is located in the quaint old town of Sutherland, swallowed up (Wikipedia uses the word “annexed”) by the city of Saskatoon in 1956. It occupies prime real estate on Central Avenue, across from the Makkah Halal Meat & Grocers and the Aalif Halal Restaurant. K-Market, as opposed to the more general Asian-ness of Great Asian Market (the GAM) and Market of Asia (the MOA), limits itself to products of Japan and Korea, with the emphasis on Korea (hence the K.) Their Japanese selection, however, does contain that most important of Japanese products: a drinkable brand of canned coffee.

CANNED COFFEE UPDATE!!!!!

I am a picky man. Before I was a picky man, I was a picky child. I do not like genres, I do not like varieties, and I do not like types; I only like particular things. It is not enough for coffee to be in a can. The coffee has to be in a can, and it has to contain that perfect blend of sweetness and mildness that is neither too mild nor too sweet, nor even not-mild-enough nor not-sweet-enough. In Japan, my favourite canned coffee was Georgia “The Premium” Iced Coffee. In Vancouver, my favourite canned coffee was Sangaria 炭焼珈琲. The Sangaria can contains the three words/phrases: 煎りたて、焼きたて、こしたて。 The first two, as far as I can tell, both mean “freshly roasted,” although the latter implies a flame or grill is involved, whereas the former is more like frying on a pan. Now, I don’t know enough about coffee-making to know whether you roast the beans in two ways, or if they were just looking for more ways to say their coffee was fresh. The third, こしたて、 means “freshly strained (filtered).”

I can’t find it on any of the images online, but I also remember it saying somewhere on the can, “こだわりの香りとコク” or something to that effect, meaning, “Meticulous[ly developed] aroma and richness.”

I went into the K-Market with suppressed expectations. I had accepted that my new lot in life involved an absence of certain Asian foodstuffs that had sustained me during my previous lot in life. However, the very first thing we noticed upon entering the K-Market was gai lan and yue choy, sitting side-by-side like the partners they are. The GAM and the MOA carry these vegetables too, but the K-Market is significantly closer to our house (an easy stop on the way home from work), so this was already a boon. As we continued along the refrigerated section, we found a few other staples: a wide variety of miso pastes, pickled daikon sliced in several different ways, and packages of natto from my “old haunt” of Mito, Ibaraki. My excitement was building. As we moved toward the refrigerated drinks section, I allowed myself that most dangerous of feelings: hope.

The top shelf contained a few types of Korean canned coffee. I ignored these, mostly because the bland branding of Lotte does little to inspire my confidence. Below was the gigantic can of OG UCC Coffee “with milk” “Since 1969” that so disappointed me several months ago. But then, next door, in a delightfully small and brown can, was UCC Blended Coffee ブレンド, adorned with those same recognizable phrases, “Meticulous[ly developed] aroma and richness,” and “freshly roasted.” I said to my wife, “Well, it’s got all the words I like…”

Friends, I am drinking a can right now. On that first visit, we trepidatiously bought only one, but I went back on Christmas Eve and bought three more. While my tastebuds still aren’t what they used to be, and normal coffee still tastes a little like dirt, I can tell that this UCC Blended Coffee ブレンド is the real deal.

MINOR UPDATE #2: FAITH HILL SOLVES A CROSSWORD

Since buying a printer, I have returned to my age-old pastime of completing the New York Times Crossword Puzzle every day. I fell off for a while there, mostly because I don’t like sitting at my computer as much as I used to. My computer is in my study, a secluded room away from the goings-on of the house. I much preferred doing the crossword at the kitchen table among the hustle and bustle, or while eating breakfast before work. Well, with our new printer — which we bought for grown-up reasons such as printing the materials necessary for a mortgage approval, but which is primarily used for printing the NYT Crossword Puzzle every morning — I can do just that. And, friends… I thought my happiness was complete before, so just imagine how I feel now.

Today (as I write this) is Thursday. Thursday’s puzzle always contain a gimmick, whether that is a rebus (a single square containing multiple letters), squares that Shrödingeristically read one way going across and another way going down, or answers that chaotically snake their way around the grid. Until you get into the swing of things, there’s no way to know what you’re going to get; the best way to clue in is to find an answer that you know is correct but simply will not fit. Today, I was faced with the clue:

Faith Hill hit with the lyric “It’s perpetual bliss.”

I immediately put a stroke through the number and went to triumphantly fill in the squares, only to find there were only four. Only four squares, to contain the two four-letter words “THIS KISS”? Something was afoot!

As a younger, less experienced version of myself who despised crossword gimmicks might have said,

“It’s criminal!”

As the older, more experienced, and dare I say wiser version of myself that exists now did say,

“It’s, ah, subliminal!”

To continue,

BALCKWELL HOLIDAY UPDATE 2024

The other day, I said to my wife, “My goal next year is to like books.” This is partially a joke: every once in a while I will catch her attention to tell her that I’ve made a great discovery about myself, which is always that “I like books.” However, there is another side to this resolution.

In 2024, many, many novels let me down. There are a few reasons for this. The first involves bad luck: I just happened to select books that didn’t end up appealing to me. This happens all the time; it’s not a big deal. The second, third, fourth, and possibly fifth reasons involve the contemporary circumstances of my life.

THE CONTEMPORARY CIRCUMSTANCES OF MY LIFE DURING MUCH OF THE YEAR 2024

As loyal readers well know, in May of 2024, I moved from Vancouver, British Columbia to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Moving takes a lot of effort and thought, so it’s no surprise that other endeavors took a back seat for a time. However, there was more afoot than just a move. It had been decided that when we moved to Saskatoon, I would need to start working more. As the evening news likes to tell us, we are either in a recession, about to be in a recession, just leaving a recession, or doing all three at the same time. Just scraping by takes a little more than it used to.

Having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. By which I mean, tired of attempting to make money from my passions (writing and translating), I thought it was about time I found a career that had nothing to do with anything. It took a long time to figure out what I meant by that, and then a further long time to find someone who would employ me.

A large chunk of the year was spent grounded by such worldly concerns. The preliminaries of the move were immediately followed by the realities of the move; the preliminaries of finding a job were immediately followed by the realities of having a job. All of this made it difficult to properly immerse myself in works of literature.

My ability to write fiction suffered equally. As I searched for employment, I had to temporarily stop thinking of myself as a “writer of fiction,” as I tried on various potential hats. Could I be a plumber? A dock worker? A postal worker? A crane repair technician? I turned all these possibilities around in my imagination. When I ended up actually becoming a carpenter, I had to work out what that meant. Should I develop a passion for carpentry? Or would I rather not think about it at all beyond work hours?

Since I was no longer a writer of fiction, my exploration of literature became aimless. I no longer felt connected to the authors I read. I wasn’t converting what I read into new ideas. I was just reading. I was reading mostly because it’s just something I do.

I would grow bored of a novel after skimming the surface of several dozen pages. I wasn’t invested in the characters. I wasn’t tossing the novel around in my head during non-reading hours. Sure, some of the books I started just weren’t very good, but at the same time, I wasn’t being a particularly generous reader.

Hence, the non-joke second part of my resolution. Having settled my accounts here in the worldly world, I would like to return whole-heartedly to the world of literature. And the best way to do this is threefold: firstly, to re-read several of my favourite books and authors as a reminder of why I have this passion in the first place; secondly, to once again think of myself as a writer of fiction, who converts what I read and experience into new ideas; and thirdly, to re-open my avenue for exploring literature in greater depth…

Which means that, yes,

THE RETURN OF BALCKWELL’S BOOKS MIGHT BE IMMINENT

UPDATE REGARDING THE ESSAYS (THIS WEBSITE)

For the latter part of 2022 and the whole of 2023, I published a new essay on this website every other Thursday. After discovering that not one but two of my most loyal readers still thought that I didn’t have a schedule and just posted randomly, my enthusiasm for this pattern waned. This also happened to coincide with the above-mentioned move and job search. Thus, I did not manage to publish 26 essays this year. I only published 19. That’s probably a more reasonable amount, all told.

In 2025, I vow to publish either more or fewer essays than that.

TEN BOOKS I READ IN 2024 THAT I WOULD RECCOMEND

Usually such a list would contain more fiction, but as stated above, this year proved to be almost barren in that regard… Thankfully a few good biographies and some other non-fiction allowed me to round out the list.

• Laura, A Journey Into Crystal, George Sand
• A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick
• If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin
• The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, Jan Potocki
• Selected Poetry, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (edited by Richard Holmes)
• Coleridge: Early Visions, Richard Holmes
• Divine Invasions: The Life of Philip K. Dick, Lawrence Sutin
• Religion Within the Bounds of Mere Reason, Immanuel Kant
• Zen At War, Brian Daizen Victoria
• Political Descent: Malthus, Mutualism and the Politics of Evolution in Victorian England, Piers J. Hales

SIX BOOKS I RE-READ IN 2024 THAT ARE JUST AS GOOD AS THEY ALWAYS HAVE BEEN

• Amrita, Banana Yoshimoto
• Dune & Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert
• The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
• Essays in Idleness, Kenkō
• Demons, Fyodor Dostoevsky

UPDATE REGARDING MY NEXT NOVEL PIERRE & THE AMBIGUITIES, OR, KNIGHTS, SNAILS, & PLASTIC BOOGIE (WORKING TITLE(S))

Progress continues to be slow. As of this present moment, I have completed a full draft of the novel, and am approximately 7/18ths of the way through a second and/or third draft (my process gets confusing.) The novel has a structure, and contents within the structure, and it’s unlikely that any part of it will change significantly as I re-write the remaining 11/18ths. It’s all there; the only thing left to do is write the damned thing.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WOULD CARE TO KNOW?

If so, send me an e-mail. The address is emails[at]balckwell.online.

I’d like to say once again, that if you’ve read and enjoyed any of my work over the past year: congratulations, and thank you. The future of Balckwell continues to shine bright.

That’s all, folks!