Garden of Evening Mists (Entry 4) Some Passages

Highlighted passages.
Things that hit me while I was reading.
Page numbers are from my paperback book.

1. Memory. So  much about memory. As we sit in stillness, our minds are able to stir up memories of way past, or of recent past. Light falls on them and we can observe them with the advantage of time passed. So we might see them differently that when in the midst of the painting. Healing can happen. Understanding. Learning. Or maybe just plain acceptance. 

I post this passage first. It still resonates with me. 

(page 294) Memory is like patches of sunlight in an overcast valley, shifting with the movement of the clouds. Now and then the light will fall on a particular point in time, illuminating it for a moment before the wind seals up the gap, and the world is in shadows again.




2. Sometimes I can see sound left behind from words or music or laughter. Can't you? Not really see as in physical, but it is so real that I sense it so strongly. I see it. Here Yun Ling leaves her office for the last time. The watercolor is her sister's work. 

(page 9)  Carrying my briefcase and the watercolor, I walked out of the courtyard. In the sky above me, the last line of prayer from the mosque drifted away, leaving only silence where its echo had been. 

3. Memories again. But spoken so poetically. It's a poem Aritomo recited for Yun Ling. 

(page 16) Though the water has stopped flowing, we still hear the whisper of its name. 

4. We all know we can never totally empty ourselves of our past and start new. We must do the work to grow. Here Yun Ling reads that the Japanese gardens under Zen Buddhism's influence allowed for reflection on faith as they were less cluttered, towards emptiness. 

(page 81) I put the book down and closed my eyes. Emptiness: it appealed to me, the possibility of ridding myself of everything I had seen and heard and lived through. 

5.  From what I can tell, shakkei (borrowed scenery) generally is the concept of designing your garden to interact with the outside landscape... emphasizing, reflecting, building upon what you wish. 

(page 110) Shakkei. Aritomo never could resits employing the principles of Borrowed Scenery in everything he did, and the thought comes to me that perhaps he may have even brought it into his life. And if he did so, had there come a time when he could no longer distinguish what was real and what were only reflections in his life? And will this also happen to me in the end?

6. Reminds me of John Lennon's "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."  

(page 136) Pull every breath deep down into you. Feel your body expanding as you breathe: this is where we live, in the moments between each inhalation and exhalation. 

7. Rebirth, change, the rhythms of the seasons. Thank you Shelley.

(page 138)

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

        And the nursling of the Sky;

I pass through the pores, of the ocean and shores; 
 I change, but I cannot die
For after the rain, when with never a stain 
 The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, 
 Build up the blue dome of Air  
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph 
 And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, live a ghost from the tomb, 
 I arise, and unbuild it again.

8. He did it. He applied the Shakkei of Japanese gardening to our design of our spirits, of our souls.  

(page 143)  'A garden borrows from the earth, the sky, and everything around it, but you borrow from time," I said slowly. "Your memories are a form of shakkei too. You bring them in to make your life here feel less empty. Like the mountains and the clouds over your garden, you can see them, but they will always be out of reach."

9.  Mono no aware, another Japanese gardening concept. A beautiful one. The awareness of the impermanence of life. Which makes the present ever so more precious. 

(page 163) "That point in time just as the last leaf is about to drop, as the remaining petal is about to fall; that moment captures everything beautiful and sorrowful about life."

10. Aritomo knew he was to heal Yun Ling's memories. He knew he was to nurture, to teach, to connect. To draw out the memories so she could forgive the Japanese (as best she could) and forgive herself (for leaving Yun Hong.) This was Aritomo's part. When it was done, he was to move on. The garden was finished, and Yun Ling needed him no longer. 

(page 284)"I often feel I am on a ship, heading for a destination on the other side of the world. I imagine myself in that blank space, between the two points of a mapmaker's calipers."  "That empty space exists only on maps, Aritomo."  "Maps and also in memories."

11.  Another concept. The charting of our lives. Making sense of our lives. We are all trying to do it. Compassion for our fellow travelers.

(page 307)  Are all of us the same, I wonder, navigating our lives by interpreting the silences between words spoken, analyzing the returning echoes of our memory in order to chart the terrain, in order to make sense of the world around us?