"Twilight Snow at Hashiba" by Hiroshige

By the falling snow
Three worlds are joined together
Water, earth, and sky

"Small Horned Owl on Maple Branch under Full Moon" by Utagawa Hiroshige

The moon swells, taut, like a great balloon lighting up the blue-streaked sky. It's shape echoed by the spots encircling the sleeping bird's eyes and the form of his curled body. I hear marbles crack and roll across the wood floor. Your grip must be tight, little owl, or else you'd roll right away into the lower branches embrace.

Two Views of Nihonbashi: Junichiro Sekino and Utagawa Hiroshige

The first print shown here is Nihonbashi by Junichiro Sekino and the second is Clear Weather after Snow at Nihonbashi Bridge by Utagawa Hiroshige.

I sit here pondering how to cross the divide.

I look above and listen to the revs of countless engines and the continuous whoosh of unseen cars overhead. There is a bit of yellow and blue, but all else is a grey hum. It is a place I have been to many times before and will be again. A place where everyone simultaneously waits, feeling small and powerless, but with a heightened awareness of an unceasing journey through space and time.


I shift my eyes to the image below, and I see more, but things are quieter. I am far away; a witness in the distance. This is not a place I've ever set foot. The sounds of nature form an auditory backdrop in the same way that the mountain and distant trees and sky form the visual background.

Again, there is blue, and hints of red, but mostly all is grey and bleached and impersonal. As with the other, there is the sense of a steady movement forward, this time more leisurely - footsteps, gliding boats - but every bit as ephemeral.

"We are ghosts, hungry for something bigger than what our lips are kissing." -Anis Mojgani 

"Fukugawa Susaki and Jūmantsubo" by Utagawa Hiroshige

A great eye overlooks the sea, the water's edge, the expanse of land that recedes into a soft mountain range. A great wing envelopes the scene, taking ownership of all that can be seen. In one sense, this world is great, so great, that every small being within it is diminished to the status of a non-entity. It is only up here in the sky, up close to the overlooking eye, that personality counts. But in another sense, this world is small, and precious, like a pebble found on a beach, slipped in a pocket, kept as a memento, and decades later still caressed and regarded as the most precious of objects. From up here, every tree is a bristle around the mouth of the Great Bird. Every wave, a feather's vane.

“Two Rabbits Under the Full Moon” by Utagawa Hiroshige

Sky like a cut-out.

Glow of moon shadow

Like the collar of a bib.

Waves of atmospheric blue

In the grain of the wood.

One rabbit observes while

The other sniffs the ground,

Ground covered with snow.

The empty spaces, so bright

They blend together

Erase the edges

We know are still there.

The empty spaces have volume

More substantial than

Anything else.