SEA-SIGHT: DAY THREE
northward the honshu coastline in an effort to honour the landscape with poetry
at isozaki port, the steady rhythm of the waters is broken here and there with the black steps of crooked stone. they play in a different key, and I am realizing all at once again the ocean’s knowledge of encompassment. how it has an answer for everything, adjusting with the elegance of liquid shapes, with one’s sight as it is being looked upon.
proximal to the shore is the sakatsura isozaki shrine, whose perimeters seem to be more mystical than most. giant camellia trees spike the path, their long fingers up-reaching and coercing the dull sun into hieroglyphs. we learn that certain cliffs have designations, and that it was two stones in tandem that first enforced the spirituality of this place. I read a very beautiful line in classical japanese about its origins, which I translate badly to f as: “midnight is looking towards the sea. light belongs to the skies.” I am struck by the human tendencies to fortify their patterns with narratives, and that once, the world was so mysterious, and so full of dreams, that two stones rising in twilight was enough to conjure a spiritdom.
I walk down a long barrage which is largely empty to sit at its edge, where gravity spreads thin and from certain angles, it can appear in the vision as nothing-but-water here. the waves strike a violent, symphonic chorus between the pylons shaped like giant children’s playthings, coming up to meet limbs, outstretched palms. a drop singes my lips. some are caught like crystal in the wary strands of my hair. a patchwork of salt.
a stop for lunch turns into a unrevealing of something decisively magic. it is something that I wished for greatly on this trip: that if one’s intentions were good, and pure, then the opportunities to acknowledge them will by full and multiple. so it is that in our long strands of driving, stopping wherever the thought strikes, never thinking much beyond the next stop—our encounters with the landscape has been one of unceasing trust, and we are rewarded by continual glimpses at rare and surreptitious beauties. the sand is fine at higashi-namekawa, and the waters are silken, as if used to a generous sun, which butters only gold, and brocade, and crystal, upon the surfaces of what it touches. the cliffs here stand sporadic in fierce recognition, stray trees with thin trunks that seem unfit for survival. wild grasses whose pods curl like beckoning fingers. the path just obscured enough to seem venerated. I am convinced that the coastline has written the legacy in a sublime alphabet, and these are the letters and words and poetics, this cursive that must be read with all senses intact.
an incredible sight: something has eaten away at the ground that a tree is standing on, but the roots cling to a portion of the stone still, even as the other half of it is revealed to the brutal light. it seems to be still-growing.
we are chasing the last light of day up a cliff whose seawall’s low incline makes it seem that the waters could climb its edges like a staircase. pine addresses the forest floor. at the top towards kawajiri lighthouse, we step over a rope that denotes the area as treacherous, to find the grace of a small cliff that pours out, looking over the mathematical motion of this coastline. it is blue, blue, blue. in the way that blue informs all other colours, taking what it needs and relinquishing what it doesn’t. the small yellow that soon wavers at the edges of things is the day’s last greeting.
