tang dynasty times

the stillness of a chinese jar

 

青花瓷" 剑江
...工匠把心爱的江南女子
粘贴在瓷器的皮肤上
烧制成自己

Blue-and-White Porcelain" by Jiàn Jiāng
A craftsman's love of his southern lady
Painted onto the glaze
His soul fired in the kiln

The other day on facebook, my little sister Ting-Jen reminded me of the scene in an old Zhang Yimou film, The Road Home, when a traveling potter arrives in the heroine's village. Asking whether anyone has something needing repair, he is asked to mend a broken ceramic bowl. Even though it would cost less just to buy a new one-- and hey money was tight-- still in those days people knew that tending memories and taking care of things was a virtue（美徳). And so he skillfully repairs the bowl. That scene had struck me too, and I told my little sister that in Japan, I thought the spirit of craftsmanship is still alive and well. Having a heart to take good care of things (物を大切にする心) is related to concepts of divinity in things and to a natural piety. My best friend’s husband, for example, is really adept at repairing ceramics using gold lacquer and the repairs he lovingly labors over add to the interest or fascination of the the ceramic pieces themselves. 

After all, once upon a time ceramic vessels were not just things for storing water or for putting food and flowers in, but they were places where people could put their dreams and shared imaginings. Vessels were places for storing memories and in which to put your metaphors. They were even places were great jars were used in which to bury the dead. Like in Borneo, the dragon jars had characters and destinies like any Greek hero. They had charisma.

Craftsmanship is something Hubert Dreyfus (my intellectual hero) has written about for twenty years. Contrasting craftmanship with technology, he says:

To the extent that technology strips away the need for skill, it strips away the possibility for meaning as well. To have a skill is to know what counts or is worthwhile in a certain domain. Skills reveal meaningful differences to us and cultivate in us a sense of responsibility to bring these out at their best. To the extent that it takes away the need for skill, technology flattens out human life. (All things shining)

I think it is true that if technology aims to make things easier more convenient and efficient; craftsmanship--in contrast-- generates embodied skills, discernment and care; all things which used to be very central to the way people lived their lives. This still can be found in japan where 職人文化 (craftsman culture) is alive and where people continute perhaps to value quality. The existentialist--like the Confucian or daoist-- prioritisizes embodied know-how, and this is predicated on a worldview that does not emphasize a mind-body divide so that-- (as the brilliant Wang Yangming suggested) to know is to do and to do to is to know. This is what Dreyfus called embodied know-how. And he is bringing forth heidegger's old concept--borrowed from the Greeks-- of Poiesis, which itself harkens back to a world where sophia means both wisdom and skill and where poetry was thought to be a form of craft or a practiced skill which not only warms the heart but sheds a special radiance on the subjects it celebrates (Bowra) 

Steven posted on facebook, I wonder who will repair the stuff we have now, if they will repair it, and how they will do it.

I really think, sadly, the stuff we have today is not meant for repair--it is 使い捨てる (totally disposable). And, in the end, this is what Dreyfus--following Heidegger-- has been concerned with--as he frets that in the end, we begin to treat even our own selves as resources to be used and consumed, instead of being grounded in those things that really matter.

***

--Translation above with Jan Walls on FB (last line probably inaccurate due to my own 不足)

All the images from Andrew Baseman's amazing blog, Past Imperfect: The Art of Innovative Repair.

 

T.S Elliot below:

Only by the form, the pattern, / Can words or music reach / The stillness, as a Chinese jar still / Moves perpetually in its stillness. / Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts, / Not that only, but the co-existence, / Or say that the end precedes the beginning, / And the end and the beginning were always there / Before the beginning and after the end. / And all is always now. .
-T. S. Eliot Four Quartets

 

three poets and a painter--玉藻

He was not just the greatest artist in the Catholic world, but he was an art collector and a classically trained humanist who was knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England. Indeed, so sure was he of his place in the world that he painted himself with sword in hand before the knighting even took place!

I am reading Simon Schama's wonderful book on Rembrandt. And who should come out as shining prince in the book--not Rembrandt-- but Rubens. In the time-old method of understanding one thing but pairing it against its opposite, Schama in order to uncover Rembrandt, illuminates Rubens.

This from the Salon review:

They were night and day, Rubens and Rembrandt. While the older painter
was the soul of taste, a stoic and a devout Catholic, Rembrandt was a Calvinist vulgarian. “Rubens’s most ardent admirers … [celebrated] the Flemish painter’s commitment to discrimination,” writes Schama.“Rembrandt, on the other hand … had no idea when to avert his gaze.” Fittingly, Rubens died a painter-aristocrat who dabbled in diplomacy and was universally mourned. Rembrandt went bankrupt and expired penniless in a hovel just seven years after he had disinterred his wife’s bones so that he could sell the grave to stave off his creditors.

I mean, just look at the self-portrait of Rubens and his new wife sitting among the honeysuckles. Is it not the ultimate expression of marriage (fidelity and union)? So different from Japanese poses, but the hands really are very evocative of this very touching ancient European (Roman) gesture of *promising.* I love her bracelets too. And of course her hat, which seems somehow totally at odds with the rest of her outfit, doesn’t it? I do think they are charming and seem so in love... it’s a favorite of mine. If only I had met my knight when I was sixteen and he eighteen years older—just back from Italy and so handsome in mustard tights! And if only I was fonder of millstone collars. It is the dream of happily-ever-after...

And, you have to admit not all that many painters or poets dared to express happily ever after, did they? Marriage being seen more as a fortress besieged 围城 than as source of poetry and art.

Not for the faint of heart, more common has always been the theme of romantic love and longing of the non-conjugal sort where the promise was only ever at most an ambiguous promise to come visiting that night.

 

♥

 

Yesterday, my favorite poet (and someone very dear to my heart) Samuel Peralta made an adaptation of a poem by Fujiwara no Teika. Rubens had said that, "My talent is such that no undertaking, however vast in size has ever surpassed my courage.” And, I think Sam is himself Rubenseque in his talent and confidence to re-think and re-work a poem from one the greatest poets of all time. The great Teika. 

            こぬ人を                            On the Matsuo Shore
            まつほの浦の                     I wait for him
            夕なぎに                            Pining for him in the quiet of the evening 
            焼くやもしほの                    My longing burns me 
            身もこがれつつ                   Like the seaweed burned to gather salt (牡丹訳）

Truly, Teika was one of the great giants of poetry. And, in the same way that sam re-illuminates Teika, Teika himself was alluding to another very famous ancient poem from the Manyoshu (935) by Kasa no Kanmura:

            淡路島                         At Awaji
            松帆の浦に                  Along the Matsuo shore
            朝なぎに                      In the quiet of the morning
            玉藻刈りつつ                They reap jeweled seaweed
            夕なぎに                      In the quiet of the evening 
            藻塩焼きつつ                They burn the seaweed to gather salt
            海人娘女                      Fishermaidens at the shore
            ありとは聞けど             -- I've heard of them at least
            見に行かむ                  Though I am unable
            よしのなければ             To go and see for myself     ---　笠　金村　　(巻６－９３５）

 

                    

As a translator, I wanted (in my translation above) to retain the echoes from the earlier poem--of the evening calm and the shore but I also wanted to retain as much as I could the idea of longing (matsu in Japanese means pine tree but it also means to wait and to long for--so for a thousand years was the symbol par excellance of a pining women). As Sam says, this poem is so filled with sadness, absence and longing. But, more, what I think Sam's rendition (below) captured better than any is the second play on words, of moshio.  

【藻塩（もしお）】
海藻から採る塩のこと。古い製法で、海藻に海水をかけて干し
　乾いたところで焼いて水に溶かし、さらに煮詰めて塩を精製しま
　した。「焼く」や「藻塩」は「こがれ」と縁語で、和歌ではセット
　で使われます。「まつほ～藻塩の」は、「こがれ」を導き出す序
　詞（じょことば）です。

Moshio: Gathering salt from seaweed. In old times, after being soaked in saltwater, seaweed was dried in the sun. It was then burned to dry it before it was boiled to produce salt. In poetry, "yaku" (to burn) and "moshio" (gathering salt from seaweed) are associated with the theme of "longing" and are used in poetry as a set (ie moshio→　longing) 詞.

Here is Sam's version:

Gathering
after Fujiwara no Teika

Dusk falls in Matsuo, late.
As the charred salt, wrung
From simmered seaweed, burns –
So smolder the ashes of this heart,
As I wait for you, as I wait

That nothing new is ever born is a fact. I think Rushdie is someone who has explored this in particularly interesting ways and in many of his books, there will be one character or another who claims that “Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old-it is the new combinations that make them new.” Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

And so in the same way that the Great Teika writes in allusion to the ancient Manyoshu poet Kasa no Kanmura, so too does Samuel Peralta light up Teika's poem to give it new life, in Modern Antiquity.

drifting boat, stormy sea

千山鳥飛絕，萬徑人蹤滅；孤舟蓑笠翁，獨釣寒江雪。                -- 柳宗元《江雪》

 

Snowy River--Liu Zongyuan

Over a thousand mountains, birds disappear from sight

Over ten thousand paths, peoples' footprints all extinguised

Floating in a small boat, sits an old man in a straw raincoat and conical hat

All alone fishing in the frozen river, snow falling

 

**

For many years now, Palinurus has been much on my mind. Palinurus at the helm--in fear and dread--dread of the water; dread of the waves, dread of the thick mists, and dread of that god damn boat that was all that kept Aeneus and his men from the cold waters below.

Is it not one of the great Western literary images par excellance? A boat drifting in stormy seas... Like Romeo bitterly complaining that he is "no pilot"--and so, alas, remains unable to steer his boat away from the tragedy of being utterly dashed up against the rocks.

Palinurus' boat is no Polynesian outrigger gliding gracefully, effortlessly on the water's surface-- headed south toward Tahiti-- no, theirs is a tiny boat full of gaping holes being tossed about atop cold, deathly waters.

Sometimes at night when I close my eyes, I almost feel the rise and fall of the swell.

And we all know what it is like to feel as vulnerable as Palinurus.

Others would gratefully succomb to the temptation of sleep. Release, as he called it. But not Palinurus-- for his promise was too great. And so he grasps the tiller--griped in fear and bathed in the mists of sleep.

You see, this is why I hate boats.

Sailing toward Athens across stormy Adriatic waters-- all I could think of was the limbless bronzes, sunk down at the bottom looking up at us. Laughing at our temerity. Yes, I pity Palinurus-- I pity his promise, I pity his occupation, I pity his fate. And, I loath the feckless waves.

Today, though, Ting-Jen had posted the poem and photograph by Dong Hong-Oai above on facebook.I wanted to try a translation of my own and in doing so I felt the image of the drifting boat on stormy waters to be turned on its head... drifting... for isn't Liu Zongyuan continuing in the tradition of Tao Yuanming's 採菊東籬下-- Plucking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence? The old man alone fishing in the snow is no depressing poetic cry lamenting his fate like in Romeo and Juliet. Quite the opposite for the image illuminates what is the serenity achieved by a lifetime of cultivation at the end of the hero's journey.

Drifting.

Fishing.

All alone in a boat, in the snow--with nothing but a straw raincoat and a conical hat.

Of being easily contented 易安.

I'm not afraid of storms; for I'm learning to sail my ship. -Aeschylus;

At the Borobudur, there is one stone relief depicting the buddhist story of the seafarers. I don't know too much about it--just that sometimes a boat (goard/egg/boat of salvation) is likened to that which carries a person to enlightenment. Googling "boats and buddhism" and "boats and daoism," I discover what is a really very different view of this literary image and metaphor. I would love to learn more--for now my favorite that I came up with is this below:

Life is like stepping onto a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink. Shunryu Suzuki   

Ára Bátur

butterflies love flowers 蝶恋花

 

 

 

醉花陰ー重陽　

薄霧濃雲愁永晝，瑞腦消金獸。
佳節又重陽，玉枕紗櫥，半夜涼初透。

東籬把酒黃昏後，有暗香盈袖。
莫道不消魂，簾卷西風，人比黃花瘦

Drinking Wine in the Shawdow of the Flowers-- the Chrysanthemum Festival

Wispy mist and thick clouds
The afternoon stretches on, endlessly in sadness
Sweet incense rises from a golden brazier
On this auspicious festival day—Chongyang.
As evening fall, the chills slips in
Through silken curtains to my little jade pillow

Sipping wine that evening—there by the eastern fence
The fragrance of the chrysanthemums filling up my sleeves, secretely, quietly
How can I not be distraught?
The autumn wind fills the curtains
I have grown thinner than the chrysanthemums.

 

 

Li Qingzhao--longing for her husband who was faraway on business, spent the day in bed-- drinking wine and composing poems, in the shadow of the flowers by the eastern fence (採菊東籬下).

Sending him the poem, it is said that when he read it, so impressed was he that he vowed to not leave his room until he had composed a poem back of equal perfection. Refusing all food and all visitors for three days, he composed poem after poem. Later, he would incorporate her words with words of his own in a poem that a friend would remark about, "there are only three good lines in this one" (and those three good lines were, of course, the ones he had borrowed from his wife's masterpiece!)

She was the greatest poetess in Chinese history. And like all great poets, she sought to refine her emotions in elegant and edifying metaphors about nature. Lady Li loved flowers and by situating her emotions in seasonal images, personal emotions were therby refined and made universal. But at the same time, she saw things in the flowers themselves that were admirable and worthy of emulation; for not only are flowers beautiful and joyous but they also symbolize strength and nobility of character-- attributes that we can all learn from. Or, in the words of my ikebana teacher, when a flower blooms, it either blooms in its fullest capacity and with all its might, or it’s a dud.

No half measures for flowers.  --with Ting-Jen

Interesting article on emotion, nature and japanese Buddhism--here. Photo and video by the Great Ninagawa Mika

TED Talks-Gratitude and Flowers too

**

Be like a flower,  from Sri Aurobindo's The Spiritual Significance of Flowers

Be like a flower. One must try to become like a flower: open, frank, equal, generous and kind. Do you know what it means?
A flower is open to all that surrounds it: Nature, light, the rays of the sun, the wind, etc. It exerts a spontaneous influence on all that is around it. It radiates a joy and a beauty.
It is frank: it hides nothing of its beauty, and lets it flow frankly out of itself. What is within, what is in its depths, it lets it come out so that everyone can see it.
It is equal: it has no preference. Everyone can enjoy its beauty and its perfume, without rivalry. It is equal and the same for everybody. There is no difference, or anything whatsoever.
Then generous: without reserve or restriction, how it gives the mysterious beauty and the very own perfume of Nature. It sacrifices itself entirely for our pleasure, even its life it sacrifices to express this beauty and the secret of the things
gathered within itself.
And then, kind: it has such a tenderness, it is so sweet, so close to us, so loving. Its presence fills us with joy. It is always cheerful and happy.
Happy is he who can exchange his qualities with the real qualities of the flowers. Try to cultivate in yourself their refined qualities

  

Poetic Triptych (Yi Fan)

Translating poetry again with Jan Wallsand Tullio DeSantis. This time, three micro poems by Yi Fan--first by me (牡丹訳）, followed by Jan's version (王訳）. Tullio's ink drawing above, "Everything from Nothing," 1985.

**

青铜器 伊凡
远古的你 独领风骚
如今的你 演绎历史

"Chinese Bronzes" by Yi Fan (牡丹訳）
In great antiquity, you were the height of cultural excellence
Today, you decipher history

Bronze Ware" by Yi Fan （王訳）
You were the sole leader of excellence in high antiquity.
Today, you are deductive history


**

冬雨" 伊凡
凝固的隽语
纷飞的情意
溶化成滚烫而浪漫的诗行

"Rain in Winter" by Yi Fan (牡丹訳）
Magically solidifying into epigrams
Emotions scattering, melting
Into the burning heat of a love poem

"Rain in Winter" （王訳）
Congealed epigrams　
fluttering tender feelings
dissolve into piping hot romantic lines of poetry"

**


历史" 伊凡
流逝的故事
沉淀在岁月长河中
发酵

History　byYi Fan (牡丹訳）
Stories that flow downstream
Over time fementing
...In the sediment

History" by Yi Fan （王訳）
Elapsed legends,
sediment in the endless stream of time,
fermenting.

**

 

For more micro-poems see

Bitter Herbs (苦）
The Wind Whispers (立秋）
Translating Blue Green (汝窯 青磁)
Translating Poems with Jan Walls and Tullio DeSantis

A wonderful interview with Li Huayi(and Arnold Chang)

And don't forget to see The Quiet American and the Blackened Canteen!

Cui Jian below:

bitter herbs (苦)

 

"苦" 雪中梅
泪滴飘流死海
脊背的伤痛... 直刺
心口

 

Suffering  --Xue Zhongmei

My teardrops drift in the dead sea
Back pain piercing
Straight into my heart

 

Translating with Wang sensei again on facebook, the good professor not surprisingly translated the title of the poem as, "bitter regrets," taking the meaning of 苦 straight back to its ancient and very unsavory etymological roots:

苦 appears in the Chinese Classics (pre-Confucian era) already meaning "a bitter herb" (defined as 苓 [líng], which is defined as 茯苓 fúlíng Poris cocos (Chinese medicinal herb)). It's in the 詩經，書經，周禮 and 孟子, all pre-Buddhist, all associated with the taste of a bitter herb. 

Bitter herbs.

In Japanese, 苦労 (suffering) used to be written 劬労, which reflected the fatigue of planting crops ( 劬). So we see that in a world which radically de-emphasizes mind-body duality, we get a situation where back pain (caused by physical or emotional injury, it is not clear) can cause bitter suffering and at the same time we find ourselves in a situation where bitter suffering ("sorrows mounting") could be causing the physical symptoms of heart-wrenching back pain-- and this is all related to our being an embedded part of nature and to our seasonal activity.

So, Wang sensei translates the same poem thus:

Bitter Regret" by Xue Zhongmei
Teardrops drifting into a dead sea,
back pain... thrust straight through
to the heart's core

**

The conversation had started first thing this morning. And, I tell him, this is all utterly irresistable. It's right up my ally. For we are, after all, entering the time of lingering, longing and regrets-par-excellance.

Yes, Autumn.

His bitter herbs and teardrops floating in the dead sea reminded me of how the ancient Jpaanese, for their part, posited that the miraculous changing of the autumn leaves could perhaps have been caused by the tears of passing geese:

 

秋の夜の
露をば露と
置きながら
雁の涙や
野辺を染むらむ
Might it not be that
the dewdrops forming on Autumn nights
are only just that- dewdrops
And that it’s the tears of passing geese
which stain the fields red
- Mibu no Tademine
Kokinshu 258

Shimmering snow by moonlight, flowers falling like rain, windless summer heat, and the tears of passing geese. Reading this, a friend faraway responded with a poem by Du Fu- which I promptly re-translated (you know me) like this:

The Lone Goose

Neither eating nor drinking, the lone goose
Flies - remembering its flock, it calls out
The others--Separated by a myriad of clouds--
No longer remember this lone shadow

It stares far-off, as if glimpses of them still remain
Sorrows mount - and it almost hears them again....
As wild ducks, unconsciously calling out
Squawk and shriek in confusion...

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional--Haruki Murakami

If we accept that mind/heart is something utterly embodied, and not just that, but if we also acknowledge that so too are we embedded in the landscape, then yes, we inhabit a world where sad tears drift into the dead sea or shower down from the the sorrows of geese passing overhead, turning the leaves in the trees yellow, orange, red. Sorrows mount in the season, and as the sad season comes around again, I look and marvel at this drawing by Tullio DeSantis, called The Nature of Now.

The nature of now is Forever, he says.

I think so too.

 

This is not to posit a timelessness as much as it is to suggest a non-teleological circularity (Kala Time) in which we stand witness-- embedded, illuminated and inspired.

I call that the big picture.

** 

One more word about "suffering." So, assocated with the Buddhist concept of is 苦 that before embraking on this playful colloboration with Professor Wang, I doubted it could have even existed pre-Buddhism. But it did-- in the bitter herbs. But the Buddhist concept too, they say came from the grass. The grasslands of the Aryans, that is, who brought the concept with them into India.

Dukkha दुःख

"It is perhaps amusing to note the etymology of the words sukha (pleasure, comfort, bliss) and duḥkha (misery, unhappiness, pain). The ancient Aryans who brought the Sanskrit language to India were a nomadic, horse- and cattle-breeding people who travelled in horse- or ox-drawn vehicles. Su and dus are prefixes indicating good or bad. The word kha, in later Sanskrit meaning "sky," "ether," or "space," was originally the word for "hole," particularly an axle hole of one of the Aryan's vehicles. Thus sukha … meant, originally, "having a good axle hole," while duhkha meant "having a poor axle hole," leading to discomfort."

So, you are riding along in a carriage with a damaged axle and as you go, clappity-clack, clunkity-clunk.... the ride is not smooth. Indeed, it is unpleasant and very uncomfortable. And wikipedia explains, it is less that you are suffering in anguish as you are in a state of spiritual discomfort. Off balance. The word is also related to a hole, right? Like having a hole in your heart.

But heart is a vessel, and so I suggest to my friend the painter that mindscape must be heartscape. It cannot be brainscape. As it is always lanｄscape. And landscape in Chinese and Japanese is heartscape→ 心境

**

Playfully colloborating with friends on facebook again:

Translation with Jan Walls. And always quietly inspired by Arnold Chang; Art: 上、 "The Sound of the Mountain" by Jeff Fuchs. And 中、ink drawing "Forever" by Tullio DeSantis. 下、Simon and Garfunkle below.

 

 

 

the wind whispers (立秋)

Deep in a bamboo grove, I sit alone
Strumming my zither and chanting a poem
No one knows I'm here
Except for the moon, brightly shining down on me -- Wang Wei

Of the four seasons, it is autumn alone which can be felt before it arrives. After a windless, blisteringly hot summer, toward the end of August, the arrival of autumn can be felt as surely as the warmth of the sun.

And, how does it arrive?

Autumn arrives first by the sound of the wind (says the ancient poets). It is ever so slight, something heard more than seen-- the stirring in the wind of the leaves in the trees.

"Autumn is coming," it's all people talk about.

 

秋来ぬと目にはさやかに見えぬども風の音にぞおどろかれぬる　　　
--藤原敏行あそん

Nothing meets the eye
to demonstrate beyond a doubt
that autumn has come--
yet suddenly we are struck
just by the sound of the wind
--- Fujiwara Toshiyuki no Ason

 

立秋-- acoording to the ancient calendar, we are already in Autumn. Divided into 24 solar terms （節気), the ancient calendar is used throughout East Asia-- from Vietnam to China, from Korea to Japan. So no matter what the outside temperature is like, August 7 or 8th marks the start of autumn in that part of the world. The solar terms are further divided into 72候 and the first five days of "the start of autumn" are known as a "cool wind blows" 涼風至

And almost like clockwork, a cool wind has been blowing here in Los Angeles. Yesterday, sitting under a big oak tree waiting for Adonis to get let out of summer camp, I sat listening to the leaves rustling in the wind. At Heaven's Gate, I only wish I knew how to whistle (長嘯)

天門一長嘯、万里清風来(李白)
At Heaven’s Gate
I chant a poem
And the wind from 10,000 li away
Sweeps over me; washing away the worries of my heart

 

***

Ah, the trials of translating: 長嘯→ to whistle, or sing, to sigh or to chant, to sing or croon

Here is the great Sam Hamill's translation of the Wang Wei poem at top:

I sit alone in the bamboo dark
whistling and playing my zither.
And the woodsmen do not understand
...how this bright moon chose me to shine on.

 

And here is a Victorian translation, which was first published-- the illustrious Wang sensei tells me-- in the late 1890s:

Beneath the bamboo grove, alone,
I seize my lute and sit and croon,
No ear to hear me, save my own,
No eye to see me, save the moon.

--Herbert Allan Giles

Finally, back to blue, here again is Samuel Peralta's poem in Evergreen-Blue with Tullio DeSantis' divine vision, The New Universe. 

 

Aquarelle

The oars dip in silence, gentle
As the soft light over the waters
Or the ripples slowly spreading

From the shadow of the shore.
Far away the leaves are falling
Into an autumn that is you

And me, our lives gently touching,
Here and beneath the waters,
Like a moon and sky that sets

An evergreen blue. 

 

 

 

 

translating poems with jan walls and tullio deSantis

梦 --喻仁恩
...

重新开发一片网络
以超人而神秘的遥感
捕捉黑洞中的亮点

 

Dream-- Yu Ren'en
Once again, a net is unfolded,
With super powers, and remote control sensors
It flips on the spotlights of a black hole

 

 

 

++

Eight years old, Adonis wakes up and tell me, "I dreamt I was playing wii last night. Do you think I am still dreaming? " I tell him that I also had been dreaming. Dreaming of two fishermen sitting in a boat on a languid river. Casting out their nets, one net is all tangled up, and so in the heat of the early morning, the two sit there, trying to untangle what has come to feel like an unending challenge of knotts. And in the dream, as two fishermen sit untangling nets, they talk of old poems and about how lovely the North Star looked as one friend was dreaming of the other last night.  

Art: Tullio Francesco DeSantis  (上、New Universe; 下、North Polar Stars)
Poem: Yu Ren'en   ♥♡     Trans: Jan Walls & Peony