Asparagus, by Haruki Murakami
my translation of the third story of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
Of all places on earth, we got lost in a field of asparagus. Our plan was to reach our village early that morning, but by the time we understood we were stuck in the vast asparagus the sun was sinking in the west. The passing wind carried a chill, along with the ominous scent of the asparagus.
In attempt to find our time and place I pulled a map out from my bag, but I learned nothing. No asparagus farm was listed there.
— What’s the point? I said. Even if we knew the way home, we’d never reach it.
My younger brother was lighter than me, so he climbed a tree that rose from the asparagus. He clung to its trunk with one hand, just like a monkey, and squinted into the distant horizon.
— I don’t get it, I can’t see nothing, he said. Not even lights.
— How’s that possible? my younger sister asked, tears in her eyes.
— It’s ok, don’t worry at all, I said. You all gather firewood for the night. I’ll see if I can dig us up a ditch, find some ground water.
As instructed, my siblings worked to gather sticks of dried asparagus, covering their mouths to prevent breathing its overpowering vapors. Meanwhile with a short shovel I started on my ditch. A dry, meter-deep ditch: it was hardly enought to be called a placebo, but what else did I have? Anything to soothe my frightened siblings.
The moon by now had risen in the sky, its light dyeing the mists that rose above the asparagus blue. Scattered birds now fell to the ground, began to flap their wings in terror. Soon—once the moon was all the way above us—they would be caught up in the roots of the asparagus. To think: a full moon on this of any night.
— Crouch your bodies low everyone, I said. Make sure your head’s under their gas. Don’t fall asleep. As soon as you fall asleep, the vines will grab you.
The longest night of our lives had just begun.
all right then, ill go to hell (2025-24 weekly post)
can you tell im bored of these weekly update posts? i am, and yet i have set a self-imposed limit on myself, thus i must follow it completely, thus i must do it on and on
or I can change it, maybe do it monthly for all but writing updates, which ill keep here
thus:
i revised a cigarette story for publication upcoming… check that here. that marks two cigarettes stories in print (or virtual print). maybe ill put a page out for them here
also: doing some translations as well. they are slow because im bad at them, but the more i do the less bad i will be. more posts on them soon (in a paragraph or so, i believe)
(weekly flash 2025-24)
mother no don't stop me in
my dance those are not clouds of
dirt or sand they are my
family my life and now my
legacy and when i run through
them i hurt my eyesants devlog 3
this is part of a series. see the previous post here
let’s take the issue head on: my attempt to write this as a pseudo-tutorial has failed. i find the writing style draining, boring, forced, etc etc. worse, the more i put it off, the further i get from when i wrote the first part of my little ants simulation, so there ain’t nothing there (or at least there’s less and less there), to build on, it becomes an exercise in bland uninteresting recollection, i would prefer not to.
thus a new beginning, more honest to what i’m actually doing when i write these: let’s look at my furthest draft of the code and reconstruct together what i think my ideas were
the code itself
we’re up to some 200 lines now, so lets put these into little tabs. explanation are after our little guy here, so scroll on by for more
0: basic functions
function _init()
-- allow mouse :)
poke(0x5f2d, 1)
cur_init()
ants_init()
food_init()
end
function _update60()
cur_update()
local click=stat(34)
--left click
if(1==click) then
sfx(0,-1,4)
ants_add(cur_x,cur_y)
end
--right click
if(2==click) then
food_add(cur_x,cur_y)
end
food_update()
ants_update()
end
function _draw()
cls(4)
food_draw()
ants_draw()
--ants_count()
cur_draw()
end1: cursor
function cur_init()
cur_spr=1
cur_x=60
cur_y=60
end
function cur_draw()
spr(cur_spr,cur_x,cur_y)
end
function cur_update()
--mouse loc
cur_x=stat(32)-1
cur_y=stat(33)-1
end
2: ants
function ants_init()
ants={}
end
function ants_add(x,y)
ants[#ants+1]={x=x,y=y,age=0}
end
function ants_loop(func)
loop_pixels(ants,func)
end
function ants_draw()
ants_loop(
function(ant)
pset(ant.x,ant.y,0)
end
)
end
function ants_move()
ants_loop(ant_move)
end
function ant_move(ant)
local movement=rnd(100)
if(95<movement) then
ant.x=ant.x+1
elseif(90<movement) then
ant.y=ant.y+1
elseif(85<movement) then
ant.x=ant.x-1
elseif(80<movement) then
ant.y=ant.y-1
end
ant.x=loop_screen(ant.x)
ant.y=loop_screen(ant.y)
end
function ants_age()
ants_loop(function(ant)
-- basic rand change to die
if(ant) then
local dead=
flr(rnd(2000-ant.age))
if(0==dead) then
del(ants,ant)
else
ant.age = ant.age+1
end
end
end)
end
function ants_count()
local text="ants: " .. #ants
print(text,2,120,6)
end
function ants_eat()
-- we actually loop the food
-- to easy unset it
food_loop(function(food)
if(food) then
local eat=pget(food.x,food.y)
if(eat==0) -- has ant on it
then
--make ant live longer
foreach(ants, function(ant)
if(ant.x==food.x and
ant.y==food.y) then
ant.age=ant.age-100
end
end)
--remove the food
del(foods,food)
sfx(1)
end
end
end)
end
function ants_update()
ants_move()
ants_eat()
ants_age()
end3: loop helpers
function loop_screen(pos)
if(128<pos) return 0
if(0>pos) return 128
return pos
end
function loop_pixels(arr,func)
for i=1,#arr do
func(arr[i])
end
end
4: food
function food_init()
f_sprite={2,3}
foods={}
food_can_add=0
end
function food_add(c_x,c_y)
--only add if not delayed
if(0<=food_can_add) return
sfx(2)
--reset delay
food_can_add=25
local s_offset=
rnd(f_sprite) * 8
-- loop the sprite to add
-- pixels
for x=0,7 do
for y=0,7 do
local pix=sget(x+s_offset,y)
if(0!=pix) then
foods[#foods+1]=
{x=c_x+x,y=c_y+y,col=pix}
end
end
end
end
function food_draw()
food_loop(
function(food)
pset(food.x,food.y,food.col)
end
)
end
function food_loop(func)
loop_pixels(foods,func)
end
function food_update()
food_can_add=food_can_add-1
end
the explanations
i like accordions. let’s do that again:
0: basic functions
this one's mostly straightforward: call the init, update, and draw functions of further tabs. in init, we poke to enable mouse use, in update we handle clicks, and in draw we clear the screen.
1: cursor
another simple one. in `init`, we set our cursor sprite, in `update` we pull in the x and y position of our cursor with inexplicable functions even _i_ dont understand (minus 1, for some sweet visual alignment tricks: it makes sure we dont hide our single pixel ants), and draw draws a sprite to the screen at that position. i think its neat. its simple. its a software sort of thing
2: ants
now we're doing something! we've got a lot here. if you've noticed, i have a tendency to order functions in a sort of least-to-most order, aka 'reverse', so let's describe them in reverse also, starting at the bottom of our code:
ants_update
the simple one: we call all the functions we write above. our ants will move, eat, then age and possibly die
ants_eat
our first hard one, in part reliable on some functions in our food tab (so read ahead!). in short, we have an array of pixels of ‘food’ as well as their x and y positions. we then read the screen data of the foods x and y coords: if its palette is 0, which is an ant, we 1) make the ant live longer by subtracting from its age value and 2) delete the food from the food array (see that tab bb). we also play a sound effect
ants_count
debug func: prints the count of ants to the screen
ants_age
we loop through our ants via the to-be-described ants_loop function and try to kill them via rng. essentially: the closer their age gets to 2000, the higher the chance they die. if they live, we age them by one, increasing their chance to die later
ants_move and ant_move
loop through and move our ants. this parts lame as hell right now, just randomizing the direction and checking to loop the screen. this’ll be a HUGE change point in our shared future
ants_draw
loop our ants and set their pixels on the screen. simple as hell
ants_loop
and you thought you might learn? no! we call a loop pixels functions on our ant, described elsewhere!
ants_add and ants_init
simple: we add an ant object at x and y in ants_add, we create a global ants array in init. this is real simple stuff, unfortunately
3: loop helpers
aint the most complicated things so simple also? `loop_screen` makes sure our position is on the 128x128 screen, `loop_pixels` takes in an array and runs a function on every member of it
why is these together, if so different? i dont’ know. i wrote this months ago
4: food
our last little bit of complexity, then we're through. You've got this, reader. I've got this, writer, too.
in init, we set up three variables. f_sprite holds a list of sprites that we can produce as food, foods holds all the food pixels we’ve set on screen (the same way we’ve set pixels for ants), and food_can_add helps us set a little delay so that we can’t just paint food across our screen
food_add adds food to the x+y off the cursor: first we made sure our food can be added by checking if our food_can_add is zero (or less---so we don’t have to worry about keeping the addable time to zero); if we’re good, we play a little sound, reset our food delay to 25 frames, then pick a sprite at random from our f_sprite variable set above. with that in place, we loop through the pixels of our food sprite and add them to our food array at the cursor location
food_draw loops these pixels to add them to the screen; food_loop makes looping these pixels easier
finally, on food_update, we count our food adding counter down one tick per frame
so: that’s a lot. its also a small bit messy, but oh well. ants are insects who live in dirt, we might as well attempt their lifestyles if we’d like to simulate
next up, back in the code for this, we’ll try to add an ability for our ants to scent out food near them and follow, as well as follow each others scents. let’s give it a go
apologies to everyone for occasionally misspelling it as ‘aunts’. i will not go back and fix this