Kurisageru [くりさげる]

[くりさげる] 　(v1,vt) to defer; to postpone

My flight to Japan left today without me. I suppose I need to regroup and come up with a plan, which doesn't exist at this point. More as things unfold ...

Maples on this mountain ...

この　やま　の
もみじ　も　けふは
かぎり　かな
きみ　し　かえらば
いろ　は　あらまじ

maples on this mountain
will shine no more
for when you are gone
how can they?

(Ryokan)

Hourousha

... in the autumn of 1688, in his mid-40s, [the Japanese haiku poet] Basho confided to friends that he still felt the world was too much with him. Exhausted from the incessant demands of students ... he said that he "felt the breezes from the afterlife cross his face."

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/02/bashos-trail/howard-norman-text/1

So in the following spring he set out on foot, wandering across the countryside of Japan.

This coming week I will set out, not on foot, but nevertheless making my way to and wandering around the countryside of Japan. Again.

The Japanese word is ほうろうしゃ ... hourousha, a wanderer. Whatever melancholy Basho faced, he found consolation in, as he put it, "the journey of a weather-beaten skeleton."

As old friends know, I've spent part of the last couple of summers in China and Japan. For others, see my blog archives to the right of this entry.

This year I'll take seven weeks to go ... well, I don't know where, yet. But I'll fly into Tokyo, get settled, and then venture out. Some likely stops include areas around and near Nagoya, Kyoto, Okayama, Hiroshima, Nagano, and Niigata. See the map above.

I vaguely have a few places in mind that I'd like to see, but they're not typical tourist destinations, and they're somewhat obscure and remote. Beyond that, I'll just see where the wind blows.

But I'll keep you posted and, as usual, I'll blog as I go. Feel free to come along.

としくれぬ
かさきてわらじ
はきながら

toshi kurenu
kasa kite waraji
hakinagara

another year is gone:
a travel hat on my head
straw sandals on my feet

(Basho)

Poetry, religion, life ...

"I have been asked many questions in my life about poetry, religion, life, and I have given precisely the same number of answers, but I have never, I repeat, never, satisfied a single interlocuter. Why? Because all questioning is a way of avoiding the real answer, which is really known already. Every man knows he must love his enemies, and sell all he has and give to the poor, but he doesn't wish to know it--so he asks questions." - R. H. Blyth

The eternal way

道 可 道 非 常 道
名 可 名 非 常 名
無 名 天 地 之 始

(老子)

tao ke tao fei chang tao
ming ke ming fei chang ming
wu ming tian di zhi shi

(Laozi)

the way that becomes a way is not the eternal way
the name that can be named is not the eternal name
the unnameable is the eternally real

つきみ

くらやけて
さわるものなき
つきみかな

kura yakete
sawaru mono naki
tsukimi kana

barn's
burnt down --
now I can see the moon

(Mizuta Masahide)

* Image by Chiura Obata

Wheat field with crows

"I began to paint again, even though I could barely hold the brush, but knowing exactly what I wanted to paint, I began three more large canvases . . . of large wheat fields under cloudy skies, and it did not take a great deal to express sadness and loneliness. . . . I believe these paintings say what words cannot." -Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

* Image: Wheat Field with Crows (1890)