display . But so then tell me, O honoured killer, where’s the wine after you drink it?
Probably I expressed myself badly.
Probably you did.
An owl flapped out across the open space at the far side of the abandoned garden, a shifting portion of that night’s shadows differing only in intensity from the other shadows surrounding it.
Hasegawa waited until he was looking at him again then said, Where’s the ‘you’ after the drinking?
Too easy! cried the recluse. But I can see why you’re still bewildered . He scratched himself then gaped at the rogue samurai like a wildwood bogey. Can you?
I guess not. Hasegawa returned his attention to the darkening bamboo forest. My life would be lonely if it weren’t for the solitude?
Those are just words.
I know it. But where are your words without you saying them?
You read that somewhere, said Mugen. You have a bookish stink on you.
It’s where I’ve been getting things recently. Things I trust.
Off dead men, Mugen said. You can’t see how it is? You writers get yourselves all tangled up in words. I’d rather be the shit-scraper hanging on a peg in a public latrine.
I guess that’s true enough, said Hasegawa, what you said, I mean. He grinned at him. The clever way you expressed it.
Still too easy, the recluse said. Words wobble. Fall over. Lie there looking up at you. He scratched at a sore on his arm, making it bleed, then touched his tongue to the blood. Non-words do too, he said.
So what should you do?
Piss it out! he shouted.
Hasegawa smiled. I used to want things. Then I thought I didn’t. Now I don’t know. He told the recluse bonze that he had been wandering in the back country for over a hundred days, seeking rigours for the body as a mechanism for measuring theresilience of the soul. But instead of wanting things, I found myself wanting to remember them, Hasegawa said. Then writing that down.
The beauty of the soul of the poet wanderer, Mugen intoned sententiously. Grass pillows and sky quilts. The sun in the morning and the moon at night.
Eating unripe berries and drinking out of muddy streams is more common, said Hasegawa. And worrying about bears. People said they still live up there, but I never saw one.
Nor had he met any person who’d encountered such a beast. He told the bonze how he went all the way around to the Western Coast Road, walking through the heat of the day and bivouacking wherever evening stopped him. Finally came to a place where I could smell the sea. Turned around and came back the way I’d gone. One direction as good as any other. So then I thought that if I –
Bear shit?
Bear shit…?
See any?
He hadn’t.
Recognise it if you saw it?
No. Probably not.
The recluse bonze nodded to himself and plucked at the unravelling hem of his black robe. What I know how to do is sit, he said. Learned it at the Great Virtue Monastery in Miyako. Big old buildings full of shave-pates all pushing as hard as they can. Backs straight. Feet tucked in. Faces so still and solemn it’d make a cat laugh just to look at us. Nobody could match me there.
I don’t doubt it, said Hasegawa.
Ask about me. They’ll tell you. Here’s an iron-ass bonze who will not move!
They remained silent for a long moment, the world outside lowering itself into a blackness that became one with the interior of the ramshackle hermitage.
I thought I’d write about things as I saw them, said Hasegawa . Mountains and rivers, birds and flowers. But all I could devise was the words that said what they looked like. Not what they are.
All right.
Hasegawa pulled up his water gourd by its cord and took a drink. What I wanted to say before is that the way of the samurai is no longer needed. The shogunate’s a bureaucracy. They worry about who they know and where they sit. Men who used to trust their blades now make entries in account books and are judged by the quality of their calligraphy. Men who used to fight and die in the rain and snow now gloat over dinner
Probably I expressed myself badly.
Probably you did.
An owl flapped out across the open space at the far side of the abandoned garden, a shifting portion of that night’s shadows differing only in intensity from the other shadows surrounding it.
Hasegawa waited until he was looking at him again then said, Where’s the ‘you’ after the drinking?
Too easy! cried the recluse. But I can see why you’re still bewildered . He scratched himself then gaped at the rogue samurai like a wildwood bogey. Can you?
I guess not. Hasegawa returned his attention to the darkening bamboo forest. My life would be lonely if it weren’t for the solitude?
Those are just words.
I know it. But where are your words without you saying them?
You read that somewhere, said Mugen. You have a bookish stink on you.
It’s where I’ve been getting things recently. Things I trust.
Off dead men, Mugen said. You can’t see how it is? You writers get yourselves all tangled up in words. I’d rather be the shit-scraper hanging on a peg in a public latrine.
I guess that’s true enough, said Hasegawa, what you said, I mean. He grinned at him. The clever way you expressed it.
Still too easy, the recluse said. Words wobble. Fall over. Lie there looking up at you. He scratched at a sore on his arm, making it bleed, then touched his tongue to the blood. Non-words do too, he said.
So what should you do?
Piss it out! he shouted.
Hasegawa smiled. I used to want things. Then I thought I didn’t. Now I don’t know. He told the recluse bonze that he had been wandering in the back country for over a hundred days, seeking rigours for the body as a mechanism for measuring theresilience of the soul. But instead of wanting things, I found myself wanting to remember them, Hasegawa said. Then writing that down.
The beauty of the soul of the poet wanderer, Mugen intoned sententiously. Grass pillows and sky quilts. The sun in the morning and the moon at night.
Eating unripe berries and drinking out of muddy streams is more common, said Hasegawa. And worrying about bears. People said they still live up there, but I never saw one.
Nor had he met any person who’d encountered such a beast. He told the bonze how he went all the way around to the Western Coast Road, walking through the heat of the day and bivouacking wherever evening stopped him. Finally came to a place where I could smell the sea. Turned around and came back the way I’d gone. One direction as good as any other. So then I thought that if I –
Bear shit?
Bear shit…?
See any?
He hadn’t.
Recognise it if you saw it?
No. Probably not.
The recluse bonze nodded to himself and plucked at the unravelling hem of his black robe. What I know how to do is sit, he said. Learned it at the Great Virtue Monastery in Miyako. Big old buildings full of shave-pates all pushing as hard as they can. Backs straight. Feet tucked in. Faces so still and solemn it’d make a cat laugh just to look at us. Nobody could match me there.
I don’t doubt it, said Hasegawa.
Ask about me. They’ll tell you. Here’s an iron-ass bonze who will not move!
They remained silent for a long moment, the world outside lowering itself into a blackness that became one with the interior of the ramshackle hermitage.
I thought I’d write about things as I saw them, said Hasegawa . Mountains and rivers, birds and flowers. But all I could devise was the words that said what they looked like. Not what they are.
All right.
Hasegawa pulled up his water gourd by its cord and took a drink. What I wanted to say before is that the way of the samurai is no longer needed. The shogunate’s a bureaucracy. They worry about who they know and where they sit. Men who used to trust their blades now make entries in account books and are judged by the quality of their calligraphy. Men who used to fight and die in the rain and snow now gloat over dinner
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