nature

sunday morning with akazome emon

I can no longer tell dream from reality.

Into what world shall I awake.

From this bewildering dream? ~Akazome Emon*

Akazome Emon (956-1041) was a member of the great group of women poets, roughly contemporary with Murasaki and the author of the Eiga-Monogatari, the story of the supremacy of the Fujiwara, an unusual type of book for a Japanese woman to write at any time.

*cited: Trans and Edited by K Rexroth and I Atsumi. The Burning Heart Women Poets of Japan.

sunday morning with amy tan

“…she must have seen herself recently in a mirror? But the way we see our reflections from changing angles allows us to edit out what we don’t like. The camera is a different sort of eye, one that sees a million present particles of silver on black, not the old memories of a person’s heart.”*

*cited: Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses, pp. 244-245.