Stop-Start

Slightly daunted by the task of reviewing and editing all my photographs, I’ve made a start by putting together a selection of pictures from Tokyo for folk to see.  I’m struck by how achingly beautiful it looks, especially in comparison with another damp and dreary day up here on the fell – and hopefully despite the poor quality of the images on youtube, a result of my rather rural internet connection I suspect.

I am full of cold with the shock of returning and the dip in the temperature, still not quite sure what’s what.  On Thursday I went along to vote – a week early.  I am as confused as this stop-start spring and the poor lambs braving wind, rain, hail and snow.  Hard to believe it’s nearly May.

The only thing on my patch that seems to want to catch up with the year is an old amaryllis I’ve brought indoors from the conservatory.  Every day it’s grown at least an inch.  I am crossing my fingers that a flower will appear and open into a kinder, brighter season.

Spring at Moorbank

It was very good to be back at Moorbank again this week, reassuringly unchanged despite its uncertain status.  Newcastle University’s support will come to an end on 30th November this year.  A detailed Feasibility Study has been submitted to the landlords, the Freemen of the City, and we are currently awaiting their response.

Meanwhile work continues, tidying beds, mowing grass, seed lists exchanged with other Botanic Gardens around the world and seedlings being reared in the glasshouses.

The four surviving renga lilies I’ve reared from seed are thriving much better on a bench at Moorbank than in my draughty cold conservatory.

The garden will be open during the upcoming Late Shows on Saturday 18th May 7 – 11pm and for the NGS on 22nd May 4 – 8pm.

It was very satisfying to see one of the cherry trees in bloom, squaring the circle of my time away.

Prunus kurilensis ‘Brilliant’

We’ve never, no, not for a single day,

pure space before us, such as that which flowers

endlessly open into.

Rilke, ‘The Eighth Elegy’

Cherry Blossom in Tokyo

Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden is a 15-minute walk away from Shinjuku Station, the busiest in the world.  I was staying halfway between the two.  The 144 acre green space belonged to a feudal lord of the Emperor in the Edo period (16^th/17^th centuries).  In 1879 it was officially named a Botanic Garden, primarily concerned with experiments in fruit, vegetable and orchid cultivation.  Even though it is now used more like a park (opened to the public on 21^st May 1949, redeveloped after most of it was destroyed in a World War II air raid), there are still many different varieties of trees (20,000 specimens) and shrubs, a French formal garden and an English landscape garden, a traditional Japanese garden and several tea houses and pavilions, as well as a splendid greenhouse (just finished last year) with some wonderful tropical plants and its own rock-hewn waterfall.  It has been a favourite place for cherry blossom viewing parties (hanami) since 1917.  All these layers played a part in my choosing to make Shinjuku Gyoen my base while I was in Tokyo.

It was my friend Alec Finlay who suggested I make a renga while I was there.  I loosened the form to allow me to write it as more of a journal, a record of my impressions.  The sections (divided by asterisks) represent the passage of the days.  The final part was written more formally at three different locations over the course of my final afternoon.  Fortuitously, the whole thing fell naturally into 108 verses, auspicious in Buddhism – the number of beads on a mala, used to count the reciting of mantras, or prayers.

Sakura is what the Japanese call the cherry blossom and this covers all the varieties, flowering at intervals throughout Spring.  I arrived just past the peak – they opened unusually early this year – but there were still plenty in bloom and people out watching, and picnicking when the weather was fine.  Ordinarily there is much carousing at a hanami party but this being a State garden, bringing in alcohol is forbidden and bags are searched on entering.

Cherry blossom is associated with clouds – a teaching on impermanence.  Watching the petals fall – hanafubuki – is thought to be even more beautiful and special.  If a petal lands on you, it is supposed to bring good luck for the rest of the year.  As far as I could see, it was impossible not to be covered with petals when a breeze blew.

Sakura marks the beginning of Spring and a New Year in Japan: this is the start of the academic and financial years.  The shops are full of diaries that begin in April and there is a wonderful sense of freshness and excitement that winter is finally past.  The whole family goes to see the cherry blossom – walk, eat, drink and take photographs.  To me it seemed like some sort of natural phenomenon and I was very happy to be part of it.

My journey started in January with the Chinese New Year celebrations in Singapore, talk of Spring and images of cherry blossom everywhere.  It seems fitting that it ended in April with my getting to see the Real Thing.

Sakura Renga Journal

From the train
bamboo
and wild cherry

the sight of a pagoda
announces my arrival

in back gardens
trees pruned
cloudwise

flatlands
agricultural, rectilinear

already blossom
breaking
my heart open

an ‘accident’ creates delays
no mention of suicide

a deep bow
from the buffet guy
at the end of the carriage

spiked trees
pollarded, leafless

*
woken by rain
my first thought
cherry blossom!

even wet and jetlagged
my meridians lift

the umbrellas
of Tokyo
precision choreography

enormous black crows
raucous against pink

falling rain
makes the garden
more beautiful

lawns, ponds, stones
everything just so

for the first time
I see how dark
the bough is

the downpour easing
only the occasional petal

as many blossoms
as people
on these islands

paths dredged
with sugar pink

close-up
three, four or five flowers
on each stem

branches’ entrechats
a dancer’s grace

as soon as you walk in
voices call out
to greet you

the most photographed trees
in the world

in Restaurant Yurinoki
even the cake
is floral

soundtrack of cool jazz
unexpected, perfect

a man smuggles
whisky in
with his bento box

hanafubuki
cherry blossom blizzard

because we can’t talk
I offer what I hope
are my best smiles

ancient trees
swaddled and propped

stems are shedding
their petals
I’m not wearing enough clothes

wrapped in plastic
guards patrol the avenues

daffodils dying
a different spring
closer to the bone

no sense of the city
briefly elsewhere

*
the pergola roof
a bird’s nest
of clipped vines

boulders strewn with petals
spring snow

puddles echo
the outline of the ponds
or vice versa

ginkgo majestic
in its original home

stepping stones
invite you
to approach the water

so much on the ground
still so much on the trees

branches bow low
they so want to touch
us, the earth

reflections in the ripples
pixelated pink and green

crows cawing
command
the park’s four corners

no fresh clever way
to talk about sakura

a gap in the rain
the space
between two trees

like the traveller
it comes and it goes

a bottle
of hot green tea
soothes my hands

the crackle of my poncho
the keening of sirens

in the minority
western faces
wear their own lostness

always another view
to be discovered

there are the trees
and what the trees
make possible

in the absence of rain
everything changes

a spring
like no season
I’ve ever seen before

speckled membrane
skimming the ground

because it’s new
no one knows
what’s about to begin

the rain stops
the people appear

why’s it easier
to love away
better than home?

below a certain temperature
the mind seizes

if I sat here
long enough
I’d start talking Japanese

wind picks up
blossom lets go

a discipline –
staying faithful
to the cherry blossom

everyone still
watching the storm of petals

what falls
is only what’s necessary
to fall

the luxury
of not belonging

this garden
owned by a government
given to the people

one encounter
one opportunity

bearing the cold
for the pleasure
of warmth later

the colour of trust
unfolding

hooped railings
alongside the paths
are also clouds

dramatic and subtle
simultaneous

blossom
baby soft
just born

all the girls gorgeous
round-cheeked and straight-backed

4pm and a ringing of bells
a woman’s voice
the park is closing

the tannoy’s last tune
Auld Lang Syne!

*
the return
of the sun
an old friend

the garden alive
with voices, laughter

cherry blossom
in sunlight
universal happiness

the trees’ shadows
still in full bloom

that pink
darker, rosier
from a distance

a million moths
petals flying

sakura
and the people
are one society

my pages blessed
with the petals’ luck

stripped sepals
clustered tufts
flushed

the smallest children
already enchanted

two ants
forage
among the scatterings

the only response
joy, rapture

turtles bask
on the margins
of stone and water

carved from granite
the sunlit lantern

throats warmed
high-pitched birds chatter
hidden in the maples

billows of box, yew
fringe the pond

paper boats drifting
petals float
under the bridge

a single pine
on the peninsula

the tiniest blue tits
acrobats
on the tallest branches

grateful for the veil
of latticed shade

east meets west
the poet
is photographed

the pavilion roof
flows down, flicks up

out of nowhere
a white egret
alert, inquisitive

a shoal of fat carp
mouths agape

a pause between
two bridges –
where we live

old ladies painting
in sunhats and pinnies

sprays of yellow
compete with the pink –
pink wins

the heat summons
all of Tokyo’s insects

a fetid smell
the opposite
of sweet

a pale grey caterpillar
dangles from my hair

some trees
kept neat
a cherry hedge

her red kimono
embroidered with blossoms of gold

not a place
to be alone in
asking to be shared

meeting the sakura
a heart’s wedding

the leaves
will come later
irrepressible chlorophyll

clear-eyed this is
what hope looks like.

A 108 verse renga
from Tokyo,
Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden,
1 – 4 April 2013.

LF

Hanami!

Today the sun came out – and so did the people, catching the last few days of cherry blossom. I was able to do a proper Hanami Renga, which I will publish later…

…but now to the airport – the beginning of spring well and truly gloried in. I look forward to seeing what it looks like in my neck of the woods.

Sakura

Despite the rain, the cherry blossom in Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden here in Tokyo is very beautiful – all 1500 trees’ worth.

More hanafubuki than hanami today – watching the petals fall on the wet ground rather than picnicking beneath the boughs.

Part of the significance of the cherry blossom for the Japanese is the way it embodies transience, the ah-ness of things. There’s something melancholy about rain and it added to that sense of fragility and fleetingness.

Especially as I am nothing if not transitional just now. Dropping about ten degrees is one of the ways I’m feeling it. Moving from Autumn to Spring doesn’t sound as if it should involve getting colder, does it?