Chapter 26 Nothing Has ExistedWill Exist Forever
Nothing Has Existed or Will Exist Forever
I thought that this unusual reaction from two such different people might mean that the Japanese are wary about giving directions to a foreigner because they don’t want to risk your getting lost if they don’t know the address.
The workshop was probably in one of Kyoto’s backstreets or in an industrial estate on the outskirts of the city.
That was the most reasonable theory I could come up with, but the taxi driver I stopped just as he was leaving Pontocho Street added a third degree of weirdness to the matter of the address.
He stuck his head out of the window and took the postcard.
When I pointed at the address, he put on his glasses to read the small print.
Two seconds later, I was standing there holding the postcard while the taxi driver was flapping his hand in a way that clearly said no. Before I could even ask why he didn’t want to take me, he drove off leaving me more nonplussed than ever.
I wandered back to the ryokan, pensive, with my hands in my pockets. So this isn’t an address that people don’t know. Everyone knows what this place is and what happens there. It must be a really awful place if it scares a taxi driver and a guy who listens to the Sex Pistols.
I started to feel overwhelmingly drowsy as all sorts of implausible theories ran through my head: it could be an infamous brothel, or an onsen where yakuza gangster bosses met, or even a nuclear-waste storage site of questionable security.
These extreme—or rather, absurd—possibilities, were no help at all in figuring out who had sent me the postcards.
To cap it all off, just before I went back into the ryokan, a black cat shot past me.
I dismissed all premonitions of bad luck by reminding myself of what Groucho Marx said: “If a black cat crosses your path, it means that the animal is going somewhere.”
As I walked past the reception desk, I was about to show the tiny woman the address on my postcard, but in the end I didn’t.
If that atelier was some kind of shady place, she might call the police and then I’d have problems explaining how I’d come to receive the postcards.
Yes, it was best not to ask. I’d spent just half a day in Kyoto and now the only thing I wanted to do was sleep.
I got undressed in no time and flung myself onto the futon, which no longer seemed so hard. In order to stop thinking about the wretched postcards, I went back to the first essay I’d read about wabi-sabi.
Everything that exists in the universe is in constant movement and always changing.
Nothing is eternal, nothing has existed or will exist forever, and everything has a beginning and an end.
Wabi-sabi art can embody or suggest the essential, obvious feature of impermanence and thus lead viewers into a state of serene contemplation which comes with understanding the fleeting nature of everything that exists.
Once aware of this transience, we see life from another perspective.
A man may be moved by the sight of a simple flower in an old bamboo vase when he realizes that it reflects life and our destiny as human beings.
Experiencing with Gabriela that “everything has a beginning and an end” had been quite painful, but right at that moment, in that austere room, I was all for transience.
Visit a couple of temples in case anyone asks you about Kyoto and then get a plane home. It’s been a mistake to come here, and it would be an even bigger mistake to stay on.
That was what I told myself as my eyes were closing.