On the train, contemplating the forest path in Hakushu’s poem, recall Basho, the title of his last travel diary, “narrow road of the interior.”
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, writes Dante.
Cold and windy, or dark and pathless, what is this forest in which we find ourselves? Or rather, where we lose ourselves, in order to find out way out of it? Going to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down on it, where do we hope to end up?
A destination needs desire. To reach it requires will. The wanderer has will without desire, to move without getting anywhere, but to keep moving. tells himself that his aimless errancy is better than the inverse, desire without will. That would be simply to yearn, boundlessly longing for what can never be reached. Perhaps he feels that to keep moving is more heroic, less worthy of pity. It is not.
Ueno is famous for its cherry trees, but the blossoms will not open for another week. People have already begun to claim their spots for hanami, blossom-viewing parties, laying out blue tarps,the same that the homeless use to construct their foursquare shelters, at the other end of the park near the train station.
Wandering around the pond, its obscene swan-boats, its small islands with dead reeds and sad birds, the gray slightly soiled quality of late winter, you feel lost.
March in Ueno Park – / even the night-herons hunch / down in their collars
Once you took refuge in the world, the this-ness and that-ness of it, the radiant actuality of its just being there. All these new sights and smells, all these flavors for you to sample, would once have distracted you from yourself. But now –
A tall man in bed / trying to cover himself / with a child’s blanket