Olden memories
so brisk
in their fading,
this moment soon to follow —
shadows on the snow ~bckofford
Thank you for joining me as I wandered through the photographs posted on this blog throughout 2018 and shared the contemplations that accompanied them.
May each of your steps throughout the new year be accompanied with love-filled companions and joyous moments.
image submitted in response to RyanPhotography’s mid-week monochrome – mwm – 11 challenge.
The last part of the Diary [Sarashina Diary] is concerned chiefly with accounts of pilgrimages and dreams. She married, who and when is not recorded, and bore children. Her husband dies, and with his death the spring of her life seems to have run down. Her last entry is very sad: “My people went to live elsewhere and I lived alone in my solitary home.” So we leave her “a beautiful, shy spirit whose life had known much sorrow.” ~Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan
Image and excerpt from Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan submitted in response to Traveling at Wits End’s photo challenge: the journey home.
margaret’s home.… Nikon D750 f/5 1/400s 72mm 320 ISO
Nikon D750 f/5.6 1//400s 300mm 640 ISO
When spring escapes
freed from being huddled in winter’s sleep,
the birds that had been stilled
burst into song.
The buds that had been hidden
burst into flower.
The mountains are so thickly forested
that we cannot reach the flowers
and the flowers are so tangled with vines
that we cannot pick them.
When the maple leaves turn scarlet
on the autumn hills,
it is easy to gather them
and enjoy them.
We sigh over the green leaves
but leave them as they are.
That is my only regret–
so I prefer the autumn hills.
~Princess Nukada – 7th Century (K Rexroth I Atsumi, The Burning Heart*)
*note: Princess Nukada lived in the later half of the 7th Century. She was the daughter of Prince Kagami, wife and the favorite of Emperor Temmu.
looking at the mountain
looking at the sea…
autumn evening
~Issa (www.haikuguy.com)
Nikon D750 f/4.5 1/400s 58mm 250 ISO
None calls upon me, or remembers me in my mountain village.
On the reeds by the thin hedge, the Autumn winds are sighing.
~The Sarashina Diary, A.D. 1009-1059 (Diaries of Old Japan)
Tokiwa Mountain’s
pine trees are always green–
I wonder,
do they recognize autumn
in the sounds the blowing wind?
~Ono no Komachi (J Hirshfield & M Aratani, The Ink Dark Moon)
Nikon D750 f/5.6 1/400s 135mm 400 ISO
… You press your mind, your forehead, against the beginning of a book, the cool cover of it, appreciating its impenetrability. It is rectangular and thick, heavy enough to stop a bullet or press a leaf flat. It will, you think, never let you through. And then you begin to lean into it, applying little attentive pressure, and the early pages begin to curl back with a soft, radish-slicing sound, and you’re in. You’re in the book. The thick, segmental chapters fan out into their component pages, and each turned page dematerializes itself, once read, into the fluent, cajoling voice its words carry. …When you reach the last sentence, there rests under you left thumb a monolithic clump of paper through which, it seems, you could not possibly have traveled. ~N Baker (preface), A Book of Books
I am like dew on the grass–
And pitiable wherever I may be–
But especially am I oppressed with sadness
In a field with a thin growth of reeds.
~The Sarashina Diary, 1009-1059 (Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan
a meditative journey 
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