limitless

Autumn Flowers and Moon, by Sakai Hōitsu, 1761-1828

Autumn Flowers and Moon (detail), by Sakai Hōitsu

Today's art comes from Sakai Hōitsu (1761-1828), a Japanese painter and producer of woodblock prints. He worked in various styles, including Ukiyo-e, but is best known for reviving the Rinpa school of painting, that had as one of its characteristic features the use of gold leaf to make up the 'ground' of the painting. 


Perhaps twenty
How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. -Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

Watch the full moon rise. 
Watch these roses in the garden bloom. 
Be lifted and rolled by waves at the ocean’s edge. 
Discover another as yet undiscovered country. 
        Perhaps twenty. Or forty. 

Write a line that moves and moves again. 
Make love to my love. 
Taste the sharp salt of her tears. 
Walk the banks of the river into which they fell. 
        A hundred and twenty. At least. 

Sleep and roll with dunes under a moonless sky. 
Wake to dreams of horses, or lions. 
Dance a dance that demands a lead, a parting bow. 
Dream a lion whose heart gave as he tended his roses. 
        Seven or so. Not more than that. Not twenty. 

Exhale the rich, bitter smoke of each year gone. 
Gaze into the native glisten of her eyes.  
Bite into a blackberry, wild-picked and ripe. 
Breathe in the finite dust of infinitude. 
        Perhaps a thousand more than twenty. 

Grace the peak of any real mountain. 
Reread Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, Blake’s Songs.
Plead for the salvation of this non-believer. 
Her hand in mine, tell my love goodbye.        
        Twenty? More likely one. Perhaps none. 

Autumn Flowers and Moon, Sakai Hōitsu