Volcano Fuji
New Year at Toro Village
Looking from Toro on the banks of the Abe river
Fuji's smoke curls upwards into the pale-blue heavens.
(Happy New Year Happy New Year)
The snow bathed in the morning sun glows alpine-rose.


Happy New Year Happy New Year.
How grassy is Wakamatsu's green.
How plump are the breast of little girls
Oh me oh my.


A giant pot.
Bursting fit to bust with hooch.
Serpentine beads all-a-sparkle.


Men and women alike hair everywhere.
Men and women alike drinking one after another from a huge Sue bowl
Oh me oh my.


If they venture outside their huts at dusk.
Fuji's pillar of fire
(Happy New Year Happy New Year)
Ascending straight to the heavens.

Kusano Shinpei, New Year 1971.

From Mt Fuji Selected Poems 1943-1986 by Kusano Shinpei that just arrived today in the post along with some thesis reading. I was working on a post about eggplants but I'll leave that till a latter date. Project Hyakumeizan recently posted another poem from the series.

Photos from the flickr group Mt Fuji by ever_green60 and yehkai, respectively.


Happy New Year!

returning slowly

2 weeks ago the Tohoku Earthquake struck off the coast of Japan causing a tsunami and ten of thousands of deaths and injuries. Its hard to imagine the anxiety, nauseousness and seasickness the aftershocks are causing those people in affected areas - let alone the grief of the lost of so many lives and the ongoing anxiety of the nuclear accidents at the Fukushima plant.


It's been hard to think about posting on Magnetic Glimpses at this time. I guess I do this see this blog as an ongoing artwork and sometimes its best to put art aside and respond in another way- which I have been doing on my more eclectic blog Tokyo Birdsong. 


In a very strange moment of serendipitous posting One Hundred Mountains the morning of the earthquake had posted an entry about Fuji. No sooner had I commented, that I noticed that my friend living in Osaka had updated her facebook status to say that there had been a large earthquake north of Tokyo. After several anxious days of watching the news with horror, Jules- a photographer (among other things)- posted to her blog a series of photos from that day's sunset at Kamakura with Fuji visible. I'm not sure if she did, but in some way, I took comfort in the beauty of the mountain.