Saw it! Very good, even Kimura. Tokyo Tower was beautiful in the dying light. We thought we saw a UFO. Passed some true architectural oddities on the way there, including the Tokyo Masonic Lodge and a red-bricked cylindrical tower with no doors. Tuesday was the Icho Matsuri. German sausages, Sanuki Udon and Beer. And the Meiji Emperor's memorial museum. Alternate histories. Watched Mystic River. I am not sure the ending really works. Looping guitar lines spiral through my room. I bought an RC-20XL. 16 minutes!
Here's a story I wrote in about 1 hour Monday night. The challenge from Misaki; 3 kanji; 矢、木、真珠。 Arrow, Tree, Pearl.
Hatsumode
On January 1st I was alone. In the morning I woke early; perhaps 4am, it was still black outside. I ran a hot bath and scrubbed myself clean of the night sweat soaking my sleeping robe. An old crumbly bar of yellow soap, scented with eucalyptus. The water was steaming; I filled the cypress bucket and poured it over my aching shoulders. I shaved in the cracked, steamed-up mirror glued to the concrete wall. Cut my neck, let the blood run down the drain in a crimson spiral. I dressed in a warm wool robe, carnadine orange, with a wide black sash. I took my knife, and my grass-tree staff, and my wool hat from beside the door.
Outside the wind was bitter as I made my way to the little shrine behind the house. I passed by the old street man’s leaning shack. Even he wasn’t up yet. Very quiet. My wooden shoes on the bitumen, the distant crowing of a cock. Just me and a few ugly old crows, hopping around the garbage piles and glaring at me sideways. Down the alley smothered in pot-plants, a turn right at the stone wall of the tiny graveyard, and then the stone steps of the shrine before me. No one here yet. Perhaps I am the first of the year. As I slowly clattered up, the stone guardian dogs seemed to howl as the north wind blew a flurry of long-dead pale leaves and urban debris in a vortex to carry me through the gate the color of my robe, of my blood.
At the fountain I washed my hands in the ice water spewing from the corroded bronze dragon’s mouth. The water a little pink as the warm blood from my neck trickled down through my sleeve. I touched the red-green water to my lips, blood-rust and verdigris.
I bowed to the ancient cedar girded in the white rope as thick as my thigh, then turned to the tiny building at the far end of the yard. Approaching with my clattering shoes, a cloud of diseased pigeons exploded, then blew away like smoke. I tossed a coin the same color as the dragon into the offerings-box, and gripping the rope, this one black as coal, shaking the bell, I prayed. To the god of War. The dove is his messenger. With blood in the soil, the crops grow tall and golden.
One old man stirred nearby in a small out-building. “Happy New Year,” he growled in a voice like that of an ancient toad recently woken from countless years under the mud. I approached and said “How many of these New Years for you, then, father?” He just grunted as if to say “more than enough” and gestured at the wares spread out on the table before him. A few assorted charms, talismans, wards, amulets, tokens and postcards. A fairly paltry collection to ward against bad luck, or jealousy, or demons, to bring wealth and fortune and love and children; to past tests, to win promotion, to hit the jackpot. “I need something stronger.” I said, indicating the wall behind him with the staff in my hand.
He glanced up at me for a moment, then with a sigh heaved his old bones off his stool and moved to the wall. It was covered in arrows, white and red, tasseled and bound with charms and wardings strong enough to bind and imprison the terrors of the world.
“Whatcha tryina kill?” He grunted.
I said “My love.”
He paused for a long moment, then turned back to me. “Your love?”
“An old love.” I said. “It won’t die.”
“By all the gods, son, that’s a tough one. That kind of thing don’t die easy, you know.”
“I know. I came to the god of war, of death and new life. Where else could I turn?”
“Hmmm.” His eyes became vacant. “OK. Wait. There.” He said, indicating the place where I was already standing.
He slowly made his way off to the main shrine building, entering through a side door I hadn’t noticed before. I followed him with my eyes. The pigeons had returned, were pecking around the sandy yard. I thought “what on earth can they find to eat there?” and then the side door swung open and the old man trudged back to the shop, grumbling all the way, carrying with some difficulty a long, flat box of dark wood.
He cleared a space on the table and gently clacked the box down. The sound was heavy. “Here you go.” He said. “This be what you need.” And he opened the box. Inside, on a bed of old crimson silk, lay a white wooden arrow, a full 3 feet long and with a vein of orange-red spiralling like the blood in my shower from one end to the other. Three feathers, white, red and black. The arrowhead a sharpened milky-white stone, viscous and cold in the early morning light.
“This is mother-of-pearl.” He gestured to the arrow. I wasn’t sure if he meant the arrowhead or the whole thing. “Is that its name?” I whispered, reaching to pick it up. He ignored me and continued, easing himself back onto his stool. “Used to kill love. There’s an old story that goes with this.”
He took out a slightly bent cigarette from a crumpled packet of Parliaments and offered me one. I shook my head slightly. He lit up and continued:
“Once upon a time there was a Lady of the court in this city, who fell in love with a Soldier, and he fell in love with she. Of course they couldn’t marry because her father wouldn’t allow it, but the soldier was a great warrior, filled with a burning passion and a fiery anger, and always and forever he sought to win fame and reknown. From a hundred bloody campaigns he returned victor, and eventually he rose, through feats both brave and barbarous, to a position of power, close to the local Lord. The two lovers had met in secret for years, but finally the Soldier was granted land and title, and the Lady waited eagerly for his proposal, practicing everyday her courtly archery, as was her wont. But the proposal never came, and the Soldier-Lord moved on, marrying a Princess from a foreign land carrying his rage over the seas. The Lady was shattered, and crafted this arrow in secret. From the ash-wood of her dowry-chest she cut the shaft, from a pearl stolen from a sea dragon’s treasure-room she honed the head, and the feathers she plucked from the three birds of the gods, necks cut in ritual before dawn beside the sea: dove, rooster, and raven. Then one day, standing in the very place you are standing now, she shot the arrow far into the air, as high as it would go, and it nigh disappeared into the sun. But down it came, the arrow, at the exact same spot she was standing, and struck her clean through the breast, and she was no more. And so you see this arrow is the killer of old loves which will not die.”
I looked down for a moment at the spot I was standing on. Under my foot, stuck to the bottom of my clog, was the wrapper of a candy bar. I looked up and said, with a dead face, “How much?”
The old man smiled, and as he did so, his eyes disappeared into his mirth.
