2010年7月22日木曜日

The Big Blue image by wikipedia
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咲き盛るさくらはなびら 夕暮れの
   水の底よりわが見るごとし
Looking up at many petals
on a cherry tree in dusk
I feel as I remain on my feet
at the bottom of blue water


This verse sure be out of season, as about three months have already passed from the full bloom of cherry blossoms.
Yet, I clearly remember the feeling of my standing at the bottom of water and seeing the floating thousands petals above me.

" The Big Blue"( Le Grand Bleu) is a film directed by Luc Besson, based on a story of Jacques Myol, a reputable diver.

Long time has passed since Jacques and his childhood friend, Enzo, dived together. Now, Jacques is an aloof man who loves to communicate with dolphins rather than with men.

Enzo has succeed to find out a long lost friend, Jacques, and invited him to compete in diving again as in their childhood that Enzo dreamed for long time.
For Jacques, diving is the best way to communicate with his old friend, and Jacques' lover, Johana, keeps an eye on the two, being a little embarrassed with faint jealous for them.
And there is always extending blue of ocean behind the three.

The film was released in 1988, and I watched a rental video long after from the release.
I rent it being attempted by the title, and then was enchanted with the whole story as well as the fascinating, translucent blue colour.

The final competition between the two went too far.

And, no one knows whether it was Jacques' illusion or not that at last he met a dolphin that invited him further.

Now I looked up at the sky to find any pods of dolphin-shaped clouds but I only saw some cumulus which are floating and waxing across such a big sky blue.

Sheer summer has come.




by palomasolar, Flickr

2010年6月26日土曜日

Trapa japonica


There is a small reservoir in area of my taking walk, ten minutes on foot from my house. In early summer, some tiny leaves appear here and there on the water surface. And each time I walk by, I notice that water space of the reservoir gets narrower with these leaves which grew in size and increased in number. They are leaves of Trapa japonica, Hishi in Japanese.

ここ数日訪れぬ間に菱の葉は水の面(おもて)をなかば覆えり

I came and saw
after a couple of days
half of on the aqueous surface
has been bespreaded by Trapa japonica
,
The extension of the territory of the leaves ends up to cover fully of the water surface about in fortnight. And they begin to bloom quite small white flowers. They are too tiny to stand out in sunlight and look icy and shimmering in moonlight.
*
Several years ago, I happened to see an exhibition being held on the first floor of a library, and there I saw a nut of Trapa japonica, which has four inflections and one of them perpendicularly points upward, being exhibited next to an iron ninja star. It tells me that the nuts are origin of ninja stars which are thrown or littered by ninja who wants to do offense or defense against opponents.

I myself, have never noticed this plants bear nuts on the reservoir near my house, and just after the flowers bloom, they seem to fade and sink to disappear. In fact it looks that the fade-out is quicker than the growing, as I have seen in these years that after several days of their zenith their green colour turns to darker and suddenly on some day I can observe nothing but water there.

The way of growing and fading of Trapa japonica is supposed to be opposite to that of freezing and of making sheet of ice on a pond; ice sheet is made almost in a day or so and melts little by little taking time, in some cases the parts of melting ice look like the leaves just after appearance on water as the photo shows, on the contrary Trapa japonica grows day by day and vanishes almost abruptly.
by Anisha_Creation, Flickr

2010年6月13日日曜日

Never Let Me Go
てらてらと温室育ちの葉の光る

部屋にクローンの物語読む

I'm reading a story about clones


beside a potted hothouse plant


which interior light makes glimmer


fishily and bloodlessly


June is rainy season in Japan, though climate is unstable in recent years, actually it is rainy today. Now I am writing this listening to CD "Misty" by Ohta-san (Herb Ohta);the pieces of music bring in here some breeze with floral scents.

Here, let me introduce "Never Let Me Go", by Kazuo Ishiguro, which is heart rending story begun with some memories of narrator, Kathy, of her childhood with her friends, Tommy and Ruth. They passed their time of childhood in a dormitory called Hailsham. Superficially their lives have no difference from other children's, except that Hailsham was isolated from outer world, and children's creation, drawings and crafts, were taken away by Madame who made her visit once in a while. All of children there believed that their arts would be shown in Gallery after taken by her to outer world.

Tommy always struggled with his uncreativeness and often resorted to temper tantrum. One of his teacher encouraged him ; "Turn the corner then it will bloom."

When they came to age, they were forced to move to another dormitory to pass their time as adult. They exchange many information there and these information make them confirm something special; They are clones and have duty as they donate their own organs. Meantime, their friendship between the three develops somehow. However their relationship, similar to love, sees the end by Ruth's death after complete of her second donation, and by passing bell of the forth complete by Tommy. This ending gives readers helpless sadness and unfocused anger.

At the close to the end of this story, it is found that Madame is belonged to an advanced humanitarian group, and the group is connected to a cutting-edge science group that has created clones. These groups are so called "trend": many of them are no more than old ones when climate has changed.

Such theme as "trend" and "victims" who are involved in certain epoch is seen in "The Remain of the Day", by the same author, as well.

Despite the tragedy, there are many picturesque scenes which I am fond of in this story; an acoustic restaurant in Hailsham, Norfolk where a classmate called " lost corner" of England, balloons in a bundle grasped by a man who is walking along the coast of Norfolk, and the shop Kathy goes to find out the same cassette of the lost one.

It is still raining. Now the CD by Ohta-san is playing the last piece of music. Can you imagine the title of this one? It is not the one that was packed in the cassette, the third number, but one by Jay Livingston $ Ray Evans, "Never Let Me Go".











Hunstanton, Norfolk

By mx5barry, Flirck

2010年5月30日日曜日


Mon oreille est un coquillage

by *Nina*, Flickr


サンダンカの花を揚羽の発てるとき かなたに海の見えし気のせり When a black butterfly left


from a scarlet mass of tiny flowers,


Sky blue seemed momentary to have done


turning into twinkling Ocean blue


My town has no sea, and the fact might make me long for sometimes to see it.When I look back in the past, I have noticed that my short travels often make me recall some memories regarding to sea with the feeling of wet sand, salt breeze, and sound of soft wave of the ebb and flow. I composed the verse reminding of the seashore in Okinawa.





海恋し潮の遠鳴り数えては乙女となりし父母の家


(There always sound of waves in a distance from my parents' house, and I grew up counting them in occasion) 


与謝野 晶子(1878~1942)Yosano Akiko


寄せかえす波のしぐさのやさしさに いつ言われてもいいさようなら


(So gentle the way of waves comes and goes, and I'm all right now if you would say good-by)


俵 万智(1962~)Tawara Machi


These are too famous to dare to translate, so I wrote just about the contents underneath of each of the two.


Yosano Akiko is a writer and poet ,who had ideas of Romanticism that became as a mainstream later than that of in Europe, and wrote sensational poems and writings. According to the book 「風景と実感」by 吉川 宏志(Yoshikawa Hiroshi),a contemporary tanka writer,"objectivity"was a term for appreciation some art, but Yosano Akiko took the term of the word for those who create or write.In other word, she turned over the meaning of "objectivity".


The tanka verse with colloquial expression by Tawara Machi is written in her maiden work, "Salad Anniversary", that gave great influence especially to young women as Yosano Akiko had done as an epoch maker.


by *Nina*, Flickr


Here I will write down a part of a famous poem by French poet, Jean Cocteau


わたしの耳は貝の殻 海の響きを懐かしむ translated by 堀口 大学Horiguchi Daigaku


Mon oreille est un coquillage


Qui aime le bruit de la mer (Cannes)


Ocean is mer in French, and mother is mere: In Japanese mother is 母,and ocean is 海.These letters embrace each other in the both languages. Is it accidental coincidence?

2010年5月24日月曜日

How do you do. I am Japanese woman who live in Nara prefecture in Japan since I've got married. It is a city surrounded by small mountains, a basin, and I was grown up in a city far from sea. But still I love ocean.
When I was child I was fond of gathering shells at a beach, univalve and bivalve shell especially with faint pink ones like girl's nails. But no nautilus, of course.

Now after I knew that nautilus has chambers,I'm interested in it, and I decided to borrow it as a name of my blog, because every blog has many sections like chambers.
In each of them I would like to write down my favorite things, books I have read, my Japanese short verses and translated ones into English, and thingss regarding to ocean if I could.

Thank you for visiting my blog.