IN PURSUIT OF A BIRD

You are in my brain,
I am in your brain.
I am in my brain,
You are in your brain.

I feel time flies faster than ever. Because I digest food slowly lately? Or am I already traveling around another sun, or another moon? I wish the orbit of my thought could be traced more precisely and the geography in my brain explored more in detail. Ethereal fragments of consciousness, along with earthbound urge, should be eventually put together into a meaningful whole. Is there a mastermind behind all of this mysterious integrating process?

I sent a letter to my friend with a wrong address. I didn’t know he had moved. Someone
tells me he has gone in search of a bird. Where?

    In pursuit of the swan, he arrived at the land of Harima by way of Ki, then
   crossing Inaba he came to Taniha and to Tajima. He followed the bird east-
   ward to the land of Chika-tsu-Aumi, crossed Mino, chased it through Wohari,
   past Shinano, and finally in the land of Koshi spread a net at a river mouth…*

The man in the topic was instructed if he found the bird, the child―an emperor’s son who was unable to speak―would be able to speak. But is it possible, at the present time, to wander over the Japan Island of the 8^th century? Let alone to find the bird? I’m told ‘past’
is a mirage, ‘future’ a phantom, and ‘now’ becomes ‘past’ from instant to instant―a flower never stays the same. But then what is the present time exactly? If there’s no ‘now,’ we live only in ‘past’? If so, no wonder he has gone looking for the bird into ‘past’…by the way, I sprained my neck while I was asleep last night.

Ki lies in the Ki Peninsular facing the Pacific Ocean. I once visited there on a school excursion when I was a child. Harima, far down south of Inaba, is the birthplace of my grandmother. Carried in a palanquin, crossing mountains, she married into a sake-brewing family in Taniha, my ancestors’ place. In Aumi is Lake Biwa, home to multiple birds. In mino comorants are nurtured to fish for humans. In Wohari I lived with my family for two years. Koshi is present-day Hokuriku, northeasterly coastal area. On my way to Shinano
on a sightseeing trip I looked out over the raging Japan Sea through a train window. What
has he been doing all the while? Where on earth has he flown to?―the one to whom I
sent a letter, I mean.

My letter must be carried around in a postman’s bag in search of his whereabouts. I hope
it’s not deserted in a box of ‘undelivered mail’ at a post office, since I forgot to write my return address on the envelope. My fatal fault. Once lost, a letter will never be delivered. I
may not know whether he has actually caught the bird or not, although I desperately wish
to know.

I have recently lost my voice, caused not by a laryngeal cancer, but from hypertension―I need to perform magic in front of old people in a nursing home. Most of the audience is suffering from dementia, but I am warned they are strangely quick-eyed in seeing through tricks. It is rumored they are trained nightly by particular owls to see through the darkness.
If only I could regain my voice, I might distract their attention to mumbo jumbo.

I wonder, however, if we should always expect replies to our letters. Emily Dickinson
wisely stored in her small casket the letters to her ‘Master,’ which has kept the world in perpetual suspense and contemplation. Thinking I might perhaps have forgotten to mail
my letter, I rummaged all drawers of my desk and cabinet―in vain. There’s no doubt that I posted it―The letter is in my brain.

Quoted from “Songs and Stories of the Kojiki” (trans. by Danno), compiled and recorded in the 8th century, Japan.

 original publisher is a glimpse of (http://aglimpseof.net).

WILD NIGHTS

                            Puffing and panting,
                            to the hilltop ascending,
                            what do I expect to see –
                            the flat surface of a writhing sea?

I wanted to prolong my stay downstairs a little longer so that she might be finished for
good in the bathtub upstairs―a horrifying dream. But instead I hurriedly ran up the stairs
to pull her out of the water―just in time―while she was still alive. Who was she that I had tried to drown? My indispensable opponent―a flagpole to fasten my tightrope to?

I was struggling for days to write a poem about a woman―without success. The woman appears in the mirror on the wall from time to time when I look at my reflection and sets
my nerves afire on conjuring. I just wanted to ask her how she had managed to escape
from her cocker spaniel and the Spaniard, who she said were untiringly stalking her. 

She is a big woman, followed by a lot of friends, but whenever I try to observe her closely the spaniel and the Spaniard appear and form a triangle with her. I usually lose sight of her in the ‘magical’ triangle, utterly lost in the thick mist. Incidentally, a few days ago I read a mystery in which a murderer is ambushed by the assumed victim.

You know what? However hard you try to flee from your giant or your fellow dog, you
can’t, because they’re a part of what you are. If you successfully dismiss them, your whole
system would eventually fail―that is my fear. There’s no taming one’s nature except practice―practice―practice. The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain. Who’s words?

I feel a current of humid air from the south and hear the calls of birds hurrying home. Cicadas have stopped singing―sign of a storm. Clouds are gathering. The sky will soon be entirely covered without a break―through which I may have a chance to peep into a world beyond, as vast and deep as a madness for flight. Yes, an easy breakthrough is rare.

It is blowing wild, sleet banging on the roof tiles, my old house creaking badly; in occasional flashes of lightning a pair of trees are revealed―the boughs in common, the trunks joined together like Siamese twins, tempest of worries howling across the hill,
sending shivers up my spine. Visibility becoming poor, how I wish for a clear night!

original publisher is a glimpse of (http://aglimpseof.net).

© Copyright, 2014,  Yoko Danno.
All Rights Reserved.