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Beautiful People

RIP one of my favorite poets

ShuntaroTanikawa … one of greatest poets from Japan passed away. He was 92. His Japanese language is so beautiful I never felt like translating his work – better learn Japanese and read and appreciate his poem in its original language I thought. But then, so many will miss out on his genius.

So I shall make an attempt out of love for his work.

宝だから

ほんとに大事なものはあるだけでいい

ほんとに大切なヒトはいるだけでいい

何でも誰でもあることいることで始まっている

朝　空がある　曇っていても晴れていても

昼　友達がいる　気が合っても合わなくても

夜　働く人がいる　君が夢を見ている間に

たまには人間やめてもいいんじゃないか

キノコになって森にいてみる

クラゲになって海にいてみる

コトバになって意味をやめてみる

声になってアンナプルナを呼んでみる

自分にもどってぼんやりしてみる

生きていれば毎日毎時が宝だから

目も耳も口も鼻も手足も忙しい

シニカルな大爆笑も宝石みたいに輝いて

谷川俊太郎

Treasure

Truly valuable things are good enough just existing

Truly precious person is good enough just being

Anything anybody starts from just being

Morning being a sky whether cloudy or sunny

Noon being friends whether we get along or not

Night someone’s working while you are dreaming

Once in a while maybe stop being a human

Be a mushroom and try being in the forest

Be a jellyfish and try being in the ocean

Be a word and quit having a definition

Be a voice and call out for Annapurna

Return to being yourself and why not space out

Every hour every day, each a treasure as long as we are alive

Being a live, our eyes, ears, mouth, nose, limbs are always busy

Alive, even a roaring laughter of cynicism

shines and sparkles like a treasured jewel

Shuntaro Tanikawa

It’s probably like reading Shakespear translated into Japanese or Hafiz or Rumi into English… with a translater in love with Shakespear or Hafiz, sure, it’s possible to do an adequate job but if you really really want to immerse yourself in that poetry … got to read them in the original language full of its quirks and charms. Read “Alone in Two Billion Light Years” (1952) in the original and feel the WONDER. First published when he was 21.

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Beautiful Things

That photograph

Here’s a link to information on NASA’s first photo of what the poet was referring to – the first ever photo was from 1946

https://explorer1.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/earth-from-space/

How does it make you feel ? How do you feel seeing this photograph. How do you feel being a creature on this Star of Water as referred by the poet. Indeed our star, our planet is about 70% covered in water; and coincidently our brain and heart is also about 70% … WATER

How do I feel when I see the first ever photograph of EARTH … mindblowing? or rereading the poem – yes, this. This.

All alone, glowing blue … out in the vast darkness, our star of water is …

Categories
Beautiful Things

One Photograph

Hushed

Star of Water rotates in laquar black darkness

no friends or family nor kin around, an isolated lonely star it is

Surprisingly, the planet earth rotates without so much as spilling any drop of its water

Striking is one photograph capturing such an image

Struck by epithany of sorts – blue star of water taking up residence, in space so isolated all alone

Compared to people in the old times who had not seen this photo, surely seeing this photograph should evoke a definitive change in our consciousness, our awareness shifts

an enlightenment, no?

but

our reaction described as nonchalant at best

Distanced just so from the sun, which apparently is why the water is retained as it swirls

spinning all the while a ball of fire at its core

such an impossible mystery

and a miracle is – this Blue Star

Memory of tremendous flood remains in our collective subconsciousnes

giving birth to the legend of Noah’s Arc

Yet if only the noble were chosen and the good selected, to survive the great flood, the current predicament of those children and grandchilden, Noah’s decendents, give doubts to the origin story

Never deviating its course from the orbit

Never once fallen off its course like a death star

embracing abundant lives full of fertility and yet

at all times a bit… lonesome

a loner is this Star of Water

humans, miniscule at a cellular level,

infinitesimal at a molecular level and yet destined to be integral to earth,

Seems no wonder, humans being lonely is stating such an obvious,

probably best not to state such an obvious truth

Noriko Ibaragi (translated by K. Tsuyama)