A true story, presented in the style of a haibun, a prosimetric genre often associated with Basho, yet one that allows for a variety of forms.
Shikoku
Another day of cycling along the coast of Shikoku. Past a pack of curious macaques – seeing, hearing, and speaking no evil – I push on in the gloaming round the beautiful Ashizuri Misaki, until, well after dark, I reach a tiny village by the sea.
I set up my tent on the beach and go in search of food. There are no eateries I see, but there is a general store, closed it seems, though a faint light is visible through the glass-windowed doors.
I slide open one of the doors and call in a greeting. It’s alright, come in, a friendly voice replies – and so, with my foreign face, helmet and odd-looking bicycling gloves, I enter and peruse the aisles for snacks I might munch in my tent. Sardines, peanuts, dried seaweed and a can of beer – that should do the trick.
I make my way to the counter to pay, and call again to the proprietor, who has, in that trusting Japanese village way, let me roam the shop alone. She appears. Middle-aged, fresh from the bath by the smell of things, smiling. She is wearing something like a loose skirt, though I really don’t see that clearly, for she is naked from the waist up.
I remember those old National Geographics that my adolescent friends and I would rifle through in the school library, looking for the latest exposé from some exotic land where the people have a rather different sense of modesty from what we learn in Middle America. I smile back at her smile but immediately drop my eyes to my purse, where I pull out the coins for my purchase. She smiles again, takes the coins, thanks me – and that’s it. I walk out of the shop, ride my bike back to the beach, stare at the sea and sip my beer. Negative capability Keats called it: “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
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