Writing in the vernacular
Bald eagles, crab fries, and Japan's Heian era
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Ok, enough intro … now onto some bald eagles by way of Japanese poetry.
I’m reading a book of translated poems: The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shibibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan. It was translated by the poet Jane Hirshfield, with whom I briefly studied, and Mario Aratini, a musician, weaver, and translator.
The two poets featured in the book, Ono no Komachi (834?-?) and Izumi Shikibu (974?-1034?), “are central figures in the only Golden Age in literary history in which women writers were the predominant geniuses: Japan’s Heian era, which lasted from 794 to 1185.”
One of the reasons why women rose to prominence during this time was simply language: they wrote in Japanese because they were never trained in Chinese, which was, at the time, the formal, business language, much as Latin was in the courts of the Middle Ages in Europe. In Japan, near the end of the eighth century, women in the courts “were given a means to create a written literature when a new system was devised for using Chinese characters phonetically to transcribe spoken Japanese.”
Concentrating their efforts on the vernacular, and free from male writers’ need to satisfy the requirements of foreign poetic structures and sensibilities, women could devote themselves to developing their literary potential to the highest degree in the poems, diaries, and “tales” in which they recorded both the public and the most private and deeply felt aspects of their lives.
With the ability to write in natural language, poems bubbled up, become a natural overflow, a consequence of their feelings, their lived circumstances, their daily encounters.
This pine tree by the rock
must have its memories too:
after a thousand tears,
see how its branches
lean towards the ground.
— Ono no Komachi
Tom Pluck (writer of the delightful & insightful What Pluckery is This?, among many other things) and I met at Conowingo Dam last Sunday to watch the eagles that gather there every year at around this time and shoot the shit and for several days afterwards, every time I closed my closed my eyes, I’d see the eagles, plummeting and fighting against a bright blue sky.
Where the eagles gather, so too do the wildlife photographers. I had my trusty handheld 300mm prime but it was nothing compared to what most folks had; it was a veritable array of camera-bazookas.
Tom marched me past most of them, further and further towards the dam, past a second set of gates, into an area I had always thought of as “the fancy people’s area.” (I’ve been twice before.) Later, he laughed and said he does this all the time with Sarah, his wife — it’s easier for him as a guy to put his toe over the line and then, if necessary, apologize afterwards.
We didn’t need to apologize though, we were fine. We took our place up by the dam with the fancy photographers. (Next to a real bathroom! If you go, I highly recommend skipping the port-o-potties and just keep walking until you find the actual bathroom.) We kept up a non-stop chatter punctuated by regular reminders to each other stop talking and watch the birds.
The nice thing about taking photographs with other photographers is you don’t really have to pay all that much attention, you just have to listen for the clicks. Or, better yet, the gasps.
it’s nice sometimes being the one who calls out, “Look! An eagle!”
The eagles swooped over us, catching fish, fighting, returning to the trees behind our lookout. If they returned with no food, it caused a fight. If they had food, it caused a fight. I love their funny chatter, surprisingly light and screechy for such a big bird. If they ever come up with a way of transcribing their language, they will have much to complain about.
After the eagles and taking a little hike along the “wildflower trail” — barren of wildflowers now of course, but definitely worth another go in spring — we had possibly the most mind-blowing fries-covered-with-something dish of my life in a nearby restaurant, the crab fries (and also a crab pretzel) at the Susquehanna Inn.
The waitress said she had been there eight years, but she had been a little hesitant taking the job. The place had a reputation for fights. “The bikers,” she shrugged. But the manager had her come take a look at the place and convinced her it wasn’t bad, and it’s just been a few fights over the years. The first Saturday after Thanksgiving, the bikers come in to have pit beef and go look at the eagles, and they stopped doing pit beef early this year and she was sorry they didn’t have a phone number to tell them they wouldn’t have the beef available.
I’m assuming they found something else to eat.
It felt good to be in communion with the bikers, who also loved the eagles.
Writing in your own voice, and finding others who write (or paint, or photograph, etc.) in their own voice. It feels like freedom. It feels like eagles, falling through the sky, grazing the water, and then up, into the treetops, that cackle, those complaints, that communal song.
Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
— Izumi Shikibu
Do you feel part of a community of writers, artists, birds, or otherwise? I’d love to hear your thoughts, and have a wanderful week.
"Writing in your own voice, and finding others who write (or paint, or photograph, etc.) in their own voice. It feels like freedom."
This describes perfectly how I felt when I first ventured into the world of the old Chinese and Japanese poets (I have The Ink Dark Moon myself). These were people writing about things they saw and experienced in a way that felt very similar to what I was trying to do, and I felt that connection across time and space and language and culture in a way that few things but art can provide. It's magical.
Re: all the cameras. Does that irritate you at all? To me it's come to feel like a taking without a lot of giving back. I see it out at Council Grove, my go-to sauntering place. There is a cavity in a big old ponderosa pine snag where great horned owls nest year after year. Every spring, when the owlets start poking their heads out, people with cameras and enormous lenses start camping out there and it kinda pisses me off. But I'm a cranky bastard.
Finally, I think it's funny that the cry most people associate with bald eagles – because it's the one used for them in movies – is actually that of a red-tail hawk. The real world squeaks and squeals of an actual bald eagle just aren't majestic enough, apparently. 😂
I loved this whole post sooooooo much. And this: “Writing in your own voice, and finding others who write (or paint, or photograph, etc.)...” That time period is FASCINATING- this is the first I’ve heard of it and it makes so much sense. Where emotion and decorum are freed, what can blossoms? Thank you for sharing - and go ‘merican birds and yer soaring freedom ;)