Most of the birds, however, were not caught. They came to a safe landing on top of the sand by the river, and as their feet touched the sand their bodies curled in, flattening like melted snow, spreading along the surface like molten copper fresh from a blast furnace, their forms clinging momentarily to the sand, turning light and dark, light and dark, until finally blending in without a trace.
The summer came so early that year that it might almost have been called spring -- it was a kind of present and everything one did had to be thought out differently. It was cloudy and very calm. We and our luggage were the same as usual, and so were Old Charlie and Old Charlie's boat, but the beaches were bare and forbidding and the sea looked stern. And when we had rowed as far as Newness Island the iceberg came floating towards us. It was green and white and sparkling and it was coming in order to meet me. I had never seen an iceberg before. Now it all depended on whether anyone else said anything. If they said a single word about the iceberg, it wouldn't be mine any longer. We got closer and closer. Daddy rested on his oars but Old Charlie went on rowing and said: "It's early this year." And Daddy answered, "Yes. It's not long since it broke up," and went on rowing. Mummy didn't say a thing. Anyway, you couldn't count that as actually saying anything about an iceberg, and so this iceberg was mine. We rowed past it but I didn't turn round to look because then they might have said something. I just thought about it all the way along Batch Island. My iceberg looked like a tattered crown. On one side there was an oval-shaped grotto which was very green and closed in by a grating of ice. Under the water the ice was a different green, which went very deep down and was almost black where the dangerous depths began. I knew that the iceberg would follow me and I wasn't the least bit worried about it. I sat in the bay all day long and waited. Evening came but still the iceberg hadn't reached me. I said nothing, and no one asked me anything. They were all busy unpacking. When I went to bed the wind had got up. I lay under the bedclothes and imagined I was an ice mermaid listening to the wind rising. It was important not to fall asleep but I did anyway, and when I woke up the house was completely quiet. Then I got up and dressed and took Daddy's torch and went out onto the steps. It was a light night, but it was the first time I had been out alone at night and I thought about the iceberg all the time so that I wouldn't get frightened. I didn't light the torch. The landscape was just as forbidding as before and looked like an illustration in which, for once, they had printed the grey shades properly. Out at sea the long-tailed ducks were carrying on like mad, singing wedding songs to one another. Even before I got to the field by the shore I could see the iceberg. It was waiting for me and was shining just as beautifully but very faintly. It was lying there bumping against the rocks at the end of the point where it was deep, and there was deep black water and just the wrong distance between us. If it had been shorter I should have jumped over; if it had been a little longer I could have thought: "What a pity, no one can manage to get over that." Now I had to make up my mind. And that's an awful thing to have to do. The oval grotto with the grating of ice was facing the shore and the grotto was as big as me. It was made for a little girl who pulled up her legs and cuddled them to her. There was room for the torch too. I lay down flat on the rock, reached out with my hand and broke off one of the icicles in the grating. It was so cold, it felt hot. I held onto the grating with both hands and could feel it melting. The iceberg was moving as one does when one breathes -- it was trying to come to me. My hands and my tummy began to feel icy-cold and I sat up. The grotto was the same size as me, but I didn't dare to jump. And if one doesn't dare to do something immediately, then one never does it. I switched on the torch and threw it into the grotto. It fell on its side and lit up the whole grotto, making it just as beautiful as I had imagined it would be. It became an illuminated aquarium at night, the manger at Bethlehem or the biggest emerald in the world! It was so unbearably beautiful that I had to get away from the whole thing as quickly as possible, send it away, do something! So I sat down firmly and placed both feet on the iceberg and pushed it as hard as I could. It didn't move. "Go away!" I shouted. "Clear off!" And then the iceberg glided very slowly away from me and was caught by the offshore wind. I was so cold that I ached and saw the iceberg carried by the wind towards the sound -- it would sail right out to sea with Daddy's torch on board and the ducks would sing themselves hoarse when they saw an illuminated bridal barge coming towards them. And so my honour was saved. When I got to the steps, I turned round and looked. My iceberg shone steadily out there like a green beacon and the batteries would last until sunrise because they were always new when one had just moved to the country. Perhaps they would last another night; perhaps the torch would go on shining at the bottom of the sea after the iceberg had melted and turned into water. I got into bed and pulled the bedclothes over my head and waited for the warmth to come back. It came. Slowly at first, but little by little it reached down to my feet. But all the same I had been a coward, and all because of two inches. I could feel it in my tummy. Sometimes I think all strong feelings start in the tummy; for me they do, at any rate.
Tea discoveries are discoveries of the best kind, and Soba Cha now makes me very happy. It does taste a bit similiar to Mugi Cha, better by a thousand times however, and with a scent so nice that I actually become hungry. (I kind of want to sleep in its steam) Ah, buckwheat, how are you so delicious in all shapes and forms.
An evening of this and Goshu the Cellist is a good evening to be had.
PS: I am presently slightly incapacitated due to The Flood, courtesy of Vancouver, BC.
After gigantic morning ritual*, I went to school in the afternoon and spent five hours working at a big desk in the quiet Sunday Ceramics studio. I left at nine, picked up some soup, and made my way home through white wafting fog. Now, I am sitting cross-legged on the floor with Marlene on my lap, eating soup, waiting for water to boil, and reading about Hokkaido Yuki Matsuri. And, around eleven ten, I will run out through the fog again to pick up Jarrett from work a few streets to the east.
*These days, my morning feast includes a slice of Rye toast with Almond Butter and Black Currant Jam, a slice of "Ancient Grains" bread with Nutella, a bowl of Vanilla Joghurt mixed with sliced Banana plus really good Granola (raisins removed as possible), and (to be eaten with the aforementioned), a portion of Flax & Nut Oatmeal. Can you tell how much I love seeds?
"Original japanese traditional 'Shino' glaze over white 'Kesho' work on very very dark clay. The tea would look like hidden fountain deep in snowy mountain when the thaw comes." -- HiDe ceramics
I believe this description makes it essentially impossible to not want to drink tea from this cup. Sheer impossible.
Out of the gray steel of imagination akebi vines entwine the spider web, wildrose bush, humus marsh everywhere, everywhere, such designs of arrogance (when more busily than noon woodwind music amber fragments pour down) how bitter, how blue is the anger! At the bottom of the light in April's atmospheric strata, spitting, gnashing, pacing back and forth, I am an Ashura (the landscape sways in my tears) Shattered clouds to the limit of visibility in heaven's sea of splendor sacred crystalline winds sweep spring's row of Zypressen absorbs ether, black, at its dark feet the snow ridge of T'ien-shan glitters (waves of heat haze & white polarization) yet the True Words are lost the clouds, torn, fly through the sky. Ah, at the bottom of the brilliant April, gnashing, burning, rushing, I am an Ashura (chalcedonous clouds flow -- spring bird, where do you sing?) The sun shimmers blue, Ashura and forest, one music. and from heaven's bowl that caves in and dazzles, throngs of clouds like calamites extend, branches sadly proliferating all landscapes twofold treetops faint, and from them a crow flashes up (when the atmospheric strata become clearer & cypresses, hushed, rise in heaven) Something comes through the gold of grassland, something casually assuming human form, in rags & looking at me, a farmer, does he really see me? At the bottom of the sea of blinding atmosopheric strata (the sorrow blue blue and deep) Zypressen sway gently, the bird severs the blue sky again (the True Words are not here, Ashura's tears fall on the earth)
As I breathe the sky anew lungs contract faintly white (body, scatter in the dust of the sky) The top of a gingko tree glitters again the Zypressen darken sparks of the clouds pour down.
How often might I have posted on this movie by now? I can still never believe how perfectly the music fits the images, every single time. This is the Hosono Haruomi of Happy End/ Yellow Magic Orchestra, by the way.
This is where I'd like to be right now, teaching myself how to cook in the middle of the house. In the morning, I'd be out and about in a dufflecoat.
I dreamt recently that the apartment I live in had a bathroom next to the kitchen, which is not the case in reality, and so I frequently get up in the middle of the night and stumble into the room full of boxes and litterboxes in order to take a shower. Space and distances seem upside-down and surprising. In Rome there is a private aristocratic house beneath the earth, so everything is very damp and dark with windows barely facing some dirt and grass. For the longest time, I wondered why somebody would demand his quarters be constructed beneath ground-level, until I realized that the earth had simply shifted. Last night, I dreamt that the apartment has just shifted over the years, or the rooms within it, leading to my confusion around the kitchen at night. I suppose I've just been watching far too many Korean melodramas!
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polarkreis's journal
We and our luggage were the same as usual, and so were Old Charlie and Old Charlie's boat, but the beaches were bare and forbidding and the sea looked stern. And when we had rowed as far as Newness Island the iceberg came floating towards us.
