MANICHAEAN
07-20-2019, 05:02 AM
It was a narrow fronted, poorly lit bookshop of rectangular shape, somewhere in the Sakuragi-Cho District of old Yokohama; and upon seeing inside, ceiling to floor shelves crammed with old books and manuscripts, he knew he was among friends.
For what are books, (or past friends for that matter,) but the conduit of thoughts and passions of those, giving up graciously, that which was most intimate. Here was the legacy of those, who, although perhaps achieving little or nothing in the material sense, had still sustained a curiosity to question and record that which was around them.
To one side, a high-level fan light beamed down an obtuse angled shaft of light onto a row of bound tomes. A dark mahogany table was positioned adjacent. The entire arrangement was as if he was being led and focused to choose, by some celestial illumination, a book, in this location, at this point in time.
It was a feeling he was comfortable with, and with some effort he lifted down one of the heavier books onto the table and let his right hands fingers arbitrarily select a page to open up.
He had not been aware of the small figure beside him; head slightly bowed, very old and formally dressed in black; as if in a supporting supplication role at some traditional act of worship.
The book had revealed Japanese characters, beautifully executed by brush strokes; flowing, complicated, yet maintaining a visual balance that exuded hidden comprehension.
“How do you read them?” he asked.
“Left to right, the other way around, or even vertically?”
The man gazed up.
“None of those,” he replied softly in an English that was both correct and without accent. We view the characters in their entirety and they form a picture, which each reader interprets to his own choice. You see, there is no alphabet, as in many other languages that leads one to formulate words and sentence structure.”
“Perhaps in reality we all live in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing is never said or done or even thought; but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs. One could reason from this for example, that any landscape, visually apparent is a condition of the soul.”
Outside in the street, one could clearly see the backdrop of the snow-capped dormant Mt Fuji volcano, where in Shinto mythology it was believed the god Kuninotokotachi was born when the earth was chaotic.
For what are books, (or past friends for that matter,) but the conduit of thoughts and passions of those, giving up graciously, that which was most intimate. Here was the legacy of those, who, although perhaps achieving little or nothing in the material sense, had still sustained a curiosity to question and record that which was around them.
To one side, a high-level fan light beamed down an obtuse angled shaft of light onto a row of bound tomes. A dark mahogany table was positioned adjacent. The entire arrangement was as if he was being led and focused to choose, by some celestial illumination, a book, in this location, at this point in time.
It was a feeling he was comfortable with, and with some effort he lifted down one of the heavier books onto the table and let his right hands fingers arbitrarily select a page to open up.
He had not been aware of the small figure beside him; head slightly bowed, very old and formally dressed in black; as if in a supporting supplication role at some traditional act of worship.
The book had revealed Japanese characters, beautifully executed by brush strokes; flowing, complicated, yet maintaining a visual balance that exuded hidden comprehension.
“How do you read them?” he asked.
“Left to right, the other way around, or even vertically?”
The man gazed up.
“None of those,” he replied softly in an English that was both correct and without accent. We view the characters in their entirety and they form a picture, which each reader interprets to his own choice. You see, there is no alphabet, as in many other languages that leads one to formulate words and sentence structure.”
“Perhaps in reality we all live in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing is never said or done or even thought; but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs. One could reason from this for example, that any landscape, visually apparent is a condition of the soul.”
Outside in the street, one could clearly see the backdrop of the snow-capped dormant Mt Fuji volcano, where in Shinto mythology it was believed the god Kuninotokotachi was born when the earth was chaotic.