#SWEETHEART MEMORY PICTURES MOVIE#

The rest of the time you can read, write, whatever you want. 'Every day you stand on top of a mountain, make a 360-degree sweep, checking to see if there're any fires. 'No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.' Kerouac spent three lonely months in a cabin on top of a high mountain, working as a fire lookout. Her favorite lines were from the fire lookout section of Lonesome Traveler. Whenever she ran across lines she liked, she'd mark them in pencil and commit them to memory like they were Holy Writ. She carried a dog-eared copy of On the Road or Lonesome Traveler stuck in her coat pocket, thumbing through it every chance she got. She always had her literary Idol of the Month, and at that point it happened to be the out-of-fashion Kerouac. Sumire was absolutely nuts about Kerouac. The first time Sumire met Miu, she talked to her about Jack Kerouac's novels. She always dressed well, in a refined way, with expensive yet modest accessories, and she drove a 12-cylinder navy-blue Jaguar. She was born and raised in Japan and studied at a music academy in France, so she was fluent in both French and English in addition to Japanese. Miu was Korean by nationality, but until she decided to study Korean when she was in her midtwenties, she didn't speak a word of the language.

I don't know her real name, a fact that caused problems later on, but again I'm getting ahead of myself.

At least that's what everyone called her. The woman Sumire fell in love with was named Miu. I'm getting the order of events mixed up. If there were a photograph of Sumire taken at that time, I know it would be a valuable record of how special certain people are. She detested having her photograph taken - no desire to leave behind for posterity a Portrait of the Artist as a Young (Wo)Man. I'd love to show you a photo of her, but I don't have any.

#SWEETHEART MEMORY PICTURES MOVIE#

She'd get so engrossed in her thoughts at times that she'd forget to eat, and she was as thin as one of those war orphans in an old Italian movie - like a stick with eyes. She smoked too much, and you could count on her to lose her ticket every time she rode the train. Start her talking, and she'd go on nonstop, but if she was with someone she didn't get along with - most people in the world, in other words - she barely opened her mouth. Sumire was a hopeless romantic, set in her ways - a bit innocent, to put a nice spin on it. I think it was the right move, but if I can be allowed a mediocre generalisation, don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection. Staying there any longer, she concluded, was a waste of time. Unsurprisingly, then, just before her junior year, she just up and quit. She found the college totally out of touch, a lukewarm, dispirited place, and she loathed it - and found her fellow students (which would include me, I'm afraid) hopelessly dull, second-rate specimens. Nothing could come between her and her faith in literature.Īfter she graduated from a public high school in Kanagawa Prefecture, she entered the liberal arts department of a cozy little private college in Tokyo. Her resolve was a regular Rock of Gibraltar. No matter how many choices life might bring her way, it was novelist or nothing. Almost.Īt the time, Sumire - Violet in Japanese - was struggling to become a writer. This is where it all began, and where it all wound up. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The tornado's intensity doesn't abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and all, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand.

An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains - flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. In the spring of her 22nd year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life.

Sweetheart memory pictures