2010-11-15
…Though perhaps it does think such things.
I think it was the year before last.
It was on a holiday amid the full splendor of autumn, when I was strolling alone through Arashiyama,
I believe you know that there is an orderly residential neighborhood here.
At that time, a magnificent large dog was sitting majestically in front of a house where few people passed.
He was gazing fixedly, intently, with a look that could only suggest he was admiring, across the pond before him, the autumn leaves of Arashiyama, which seemed to set the entire mountain ablaze.
He paid no attention whatsoever to me standing before him, or to the tourists passing by in twos and threes…
Since he was a large dog, young women did not rush up to him saying things like “How cute…,” which made it all the better.
To me, he could only have been absorbed in meditation… philosophizing.
For a while, I, too, gazed intently at the dog’s bearing.
By all appearances, he was reflecting on his own life, the changing seasons… before long, snow would fall, cold winds would rage, spring would come, and then the hot summer would arrive…
How many times had this cycle repeated itself… as the seasons changed, he, too, had grown old… he was contemplating the time of his own death, which must eventually come.
That is how it appeared to me.
Note: When I finished writing this piece, a certain song began playing in my mind.
It was ♪Killing Off Our Friends♪ (The Coast).
The lyrics go, …we parted on the shore… at a turning, unsure whether to go right or left, we stopped…
We’d been killing off our friend. We’d been killing off our friend. We’d been killing off our friend.