'he stands in the desert counting the seconds of his life' (postscript)

'I crossed the barrier gate of hakone on a rainy day.

all the mountains were deeply buried behind the clouds.'

- the records of a weather exposed skeleton, matsuo bashō. 

outside it is a greyish cloudy day. horsemouth has the window open at the top to air his room (mind you he is wearing two jumpers). 

on this journey (a 9 month journey made from august 1684 to the summer of 1685) bashō takes along a young man, chiri, as a friend/ as a kind of servant (he is the sancho panza of the expedition). the translation describes him, in, to horsemouth's ear, an infelicitous manner, as a friend indeed. horsemouth always hears this negatively as in the conjoined phrases.

'a friend in need is a friend indeed'  and 'a friend in need (is a pest)' 

it is the first of bashō's famous wanderings. bashō is already in his forties (he dies in his fifties). the copyist soryu (sorry horsemouth has failed to find the bar over the letter u letter) writing in the early summer of 1694 says;

'the only thing to be regretted is that the author of this book, great man that he is, has in recent years grown old and infirm with hoary frost upon his eyebrows.'  - postscript  to the narrow road to the deep north. 

bashō alternates prose and poetry (which is interesting) and there are illustrations (in horsemouth's copy). here horsemouth has rendered the prose as if it were poetry. the alternation is interesting. horsemouth may try it himself. 

horsemouth is used to historic japanese wanderings (at least in films) - zatoichi, shogun assassin, those ninja movies. later journeys will take bashō more time - for the narrow road to the deep north he was away for two and half years. 

last night horsemouth watched the C4 news and later the night of the demon (jacques tourneur's classic). horsemouth is getting to the point where he can join in with the dialogue. arguably tourneur made even better films ringing the changes on film noir. horsemouth keeps an eye out for them. 

er. today. horsemouth does not know. some more reading. some more walking about. it is due to be a little warmer all the way to the end of the month. yesterday he had planned to go get some oil and to check the cashpoint to see how his savings were doing but in the end he just went down to the estate shop. 

a black and white cat has just padded past. the 'k' is still sticky on horsemouth's netbook keypad (try typing that with a sticky 'k').