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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 a forest

Be a jellyfish and try being in an 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 Shakespeare translated into Japanese or Hafiz or Rumi into English… with a translator in love with Shakespeare 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 Places Uncategorized

books books books

Great coffeetable books? Sometimes instead of scrolling the screen, we just want a comfortable couch, pop our feet up on a coffeetable and take one of these into our hands. Physically turning a page, I love that tactile sensation of a piece of paper we move with our own fingers, maybe rubbing the edges or sliding the the corner turning a page, unconscious and yet intentional. Making sure I didn’t skip a page is such a quiet nothing-to-it motion ho-hum act. Before the bound manuscripsts and print pages in ancient Japan, the educated unrolled the scroll of rice paper thus, the writing moved from top to bottom, from right to left. Probably it all began as a letter, a message from one educated to another educated – those who can read and write were select elites. Now most of us are literate – most of us are educated ? – or so we’d like to think and thank goodness – and reading is no longer exclusively by the elites or the holy. For the most part, I like to believe knowledges is now shared democratically, not monopolized by the few powerful.

Now, we embrace the screen; but there’s something about holding a physical book in your hands, having it on your lap … the sense of unfolding slowly taking place right in your hands. Don’t think it’s ever going to go out of style … but okay, maybe for the priviledged who can afford to give it the time and the most precious of all – that being – our attention.

Some coffeetable books are as nightstand books… intriguing, aren’t they?

The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

The Big Book of Belonging by Thames & Hudson

Great Women Painters, Phaidon

Great Women Designers, Phaidon

My Tiny Atlas, Our World Through Your Eyes by Emily Nathan

The Monocle Book of Japan

How to Read the Wilderness by the Nature Study Guild

Atlas Obscura, An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders

by Joshua Foer, et al

Atlas of Improbable Places, A Journey to the World’s Most unusual Corners by Travis Elborough

Art – Facts Fasnicating Facts about Art, Artists, and the Art World

************ were the sampling offered **********

Where am I? A waiting room of sorts where waiting is no longer a pain.

Categories
Uncategorized

白洲次郎　Jiro Shirasu

勢いよく書かれた遺書にはたった二行

葬式無用

戒名不用

Jiro Shirasu

これまた…かっこいい！

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Uncategorized

凛としていてかっこいい！　letter after death

A Letter

このたび私　　年　月　日　　　にて
この世におさらばすることになりました。
これは生前に書き置くものです。
私の意志で、葬儀・お別れ会は何もいたしません。
この家も当分の間、無人となりますゆえ、弔慰の品は
お花を含め、一切お送りくださいませんように。
返送の無礼を重ねるだけと存じますので。

「あの人も逝ったか」と一瞬、たったの一瞬
思い出してくだされば、それで十分でございます。
あなたさまから頂いた長年にわたるあたたかな
おつきあいは、見えざる宝石のように、私の胸に
しまわれ、光芒を放ち、私の人生をどれほど豊かに
して下さいましたことか・・・。

深い感謝を捧げつつ、お別れの言葉に
代えさせて頂きます。

ありがとうございました。

年　月　日

茨木のり子の家　より

From Noriko Ibaragi’s Home

Noriko Ibaragi

Beautiful way to go Ibaragi Noriko, the poet…

She died alone as a widow and discovered at her home, two days after her death by a visiting relative. This letter was to be released after her death so the date and the cause of death is left blank. The cause of death was subarachnoid hemorrhage, a kind of brain aneurysm. She was 79, year 2006.

*******The Last Letter *****************************************

At this time ____ year ____month ____date

I am bidding farewell to this world.

This was written while I was alive.

My intention is for nothing like a funeral or a memorial. This house will likely to have no resident for awhile so including floweres, please do not send condolences. It would only unfold in rudeness in not responding.

Momentarily maybe muttering under one’s breath, “she too passed on”, just a mere murmur, an instant of rememberance is enough for me. The long years of our relationship is stored like a radiant rays of jewels in my heart, and that light had enriched my life.

I devote to you my deep gratitude and this appreciation is also my words as we part ways.

Thank you very much.

____ year _____ month_____date

最後までかっこよく美しすぎ…