Eight Clouds

I’m reading a modern translation of Kojiki by Umehara Takeshi. Kojiki was edited from 711 to 713, so this poem was perhaps made much before. Looking at Vincent’s Jamaica photos, I wanted to show this poem. But I feel differently from the Japanese translation by the author and also from an English translation I found in web. Since all of you are good at writing poems, I need your help. This is the way the poem is saying to me.


Eight Clouds


Eight clouds stand.

Arisen clouds form fences.

To hold my wife,

I make an eightfold fence

which is that eightfold fence.

Hiragana in Ballpoint Pen

I took this photo a few weeks ago to show you what I used to see growing up. I didn't see the cherry-blossoms tsunami as I see in recent years. From my home in Yokohama, I saw a few white spots every year at the side of mountains, and at the peak, they turned to very light pink. I want that sense of beauty back.

With the sense of simplicity in mind, I drew the names of my fellow bloggers in our most ordinary and flat writing system, hiragana.

First, this is Rebbecca. れべっか　　This name is passionate red to me. The red background I used is my fukusa that I use to purify tea utensils in ocha performances. The silk is very thick. About Rebb, I imagine a shapely mountain, the moon, trees, and a road to go up.


This is Luciana. るちあな　　あ is my most favorite hiragana. It is the first letter in hiragana and also in alphabet, A. It means life and love to me. 　


Dorraine! どれいん　　Dorraine is a beautiful name, but it's so non-Japanese, so hiragana does not do justice as I type. But when I wrote in the way I did, I felt better. The feminine side of どれいん came out. What do you think?


I tried to experiment the background with Vincent's hiragana name. Actually, I had difficulty to choose one. Other two backgrounds happened to come out beautifully, I thought. For those experiments, I used my furoshiki above, the multi-purpose silk cloth that I used for Luciana and Dorraine. The background below is a piece of thick silk also. I don't know exact name, but it's an ancient Tang style design. It is my cloth to hold a bowl of tea. The hiragana I wrote to describe Vincent, びんせんと, I tried to depict a solid, wise man!


This is Jitu, じつ. It's only two simplest letters. It's young and energetic as a bamboo. The background is another silk furoshiki I love. It's probably 30 years old, but it's still one of my treasure.