Rambling- old roads

[flemmings]

Spent some time Saturday googling Tokyo cemetaries trying to find pictures of Aoyama Reien for a story, and did, but always in cherry blossom season. Whereas I saw it at this time of year, my first Tokyo autumn happily exploring the city. My search turned up a lot of natsukashii names and at least one Hey, how come I never got *there*?? "Zoshigaya Cemetary: 10-min walk from Higashi-Ikebukuro Stn on the Yurakucho Line"? My stomping grounds. And look- everyone's buried there: Hearn, Soseki, Kafu. The Pere Lachaise of Tokyo, it is. (My regular cemetary was Somei Reien, a small walk or even faster bike ride from Sugamo, cause that's where Touyama no Kinsan is buried.)

Birthright

Lord Rameses of Egypt sighed
Because a summer evening passed;
And little Ariadne cried
That summer fancy fell at last
To dust; and young Verona died
When beauty's hour was overcast.

Theirs was the bitterness we know
Because the clouds of hawthorn keep
So short a state, and kisses go
To tombs unfathomably deep,
While Rameses and Romeo
And little Ariadne sleep.
-John Drinkwater


Tenpou is an outstanding officer- resourceful, courageous, responsible. Quick-witted as well: Goujun never has to tell him anything twice. His private life is equally exemplary, blamelessly devoted to books and tobacco. Tenpou's only failings are, possibly, taking too much personal initiative in the field and, perhaps, attending too little to personal hygiene at home. Compared to the other officers, that's mere eccentricity. Goujun knows himself to be blessed in having so gifted and gallant a soldier for his marshal. Which is why he ignores the little voice in his head that says 'If it looks too good to be true...'

Comments

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

Tenpou sounds intriguing...

[incandescens]

That is a neat drabble. And also a lovely poem. (quotefiles the poem)

[summer-queen.livejournal.com]

I managed to find Soseki's grave my last trip, though Hearn's escaped me. I must've tromped past it 5 times in my effort to located the exact plot. It's a lovely cemetary (and would've been more so, had it not been 40 degrees that day).

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

What an intriguing thought about walking through cemeteries. I like that idea.

I like the poetry and the drabble too.

*munch, munch* - see even if I can't eat for real for another 5 hours I can feast my brain on these! *munch, munch*

Thank you for sharing!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

He is. The oddest combination of cold calculation and rash derring-do. Or *maybe* a combination of cold calculation and rash derring-do: we think he's calculating, we've seen him be rash, but his mangaka is holding her cards very close to the chest with him. No one knows what game Tenpou is playing (or has been playing: the series is coming to its foreordained climactic conclusion) but her and her chara.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Surprised you haven't come across the poem before. It's in de la Mare's Come Hither- err, along with several hundred other poems, admittedly.

(Oh. Finally googled de la Mare and discovered this: "He worked in the statistics department of the London office of Standard Oil for eighteen years." A lesser man would have been crushed by that.)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

40 degrees in Tokyo doesn't improve anything except possibly the semis' mood. Vaguely I recall that particular kind of heat, the one that turns you into a wrung-out washcloth: limp and wet.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Keep zan mentally fed month. I shall do my best. No truly, I don't know how you do it: I had to skip a meal yesterday and was at once dizzy and headachey.

[incandescens]

I think my acquaintance with de la Mare is a bit limited, apart from his best-known poems.

(Did you know that Isaac Newton was not only Warden of the Royal Mint in his time, but also a believer in alchemy? Now there's a story that needs writing.)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

If only because there seems to be a cause and effect at work. The Warden of the Royal Mint has a scheme to turn base metals into gold.

[incandescens]

Though according to history, Newton himself was very much against counterfeiting. (For obvious reasons.)

Clearly (ah, "clearly", that mainstay word of conspiracy theories) it was to conceal his own nefarious projects.