More Saigyo!

Full Moon with Geese, Ernest Coleman, The Cincinnati Enquirer

Such wonderful poetry this wandering Japanese priest wrote!

I wonder, though.  How was all this collected?  I raise this question because Saigyo died within the period of total upheaval in the capital.  This is probably where chronicles  were kept, by scribes or monks.  There was much burning and turmoil throughout these years towards the end of Saigyo’s life and it is amazing that his poetry, which….he wrote many verses…well, that so much survived.

Part of the answer is this:  Towards the very end of his life  (he died in 1190) he composed some of his very best poetry (at age 79).  There was now in his verse a sense of both his coming death and the surprise of continued life ! a wonder and a composure.  He sent a number of his poems to other poets for their judgment and put together the collection he called “Sanka-shu” or “Mountain-Home-Collection”.

Although there is a sense of Weltschmerz (psychological pain…weariness, sadness)  and self-pity in the suffering in solitude that his poetry displays, it is different from what we would encounter with certain poets in the Romantic tradition of the West.  There is a difference, though,  because Saigyo is a Buddhist and the ego-elevated perspective distorts reality.  What Saigyo’s verse celebrates is not the self, but the phenomena which is before him.  The self is no more important than nature.  Nature marches arm in arm with humanity in this present reality.

Saigyo’s vision comes from the Japanese Shinto traditional reverence for nature:  but also  that largesse in Buddhism which says that nature, or the various natural phenomena is “tomo” or companion to him.  All these things, man, poet, and flowers, plants, trees…all these things are participants with man in the wide and all encompassing Buddhism.  The moon, too…looking down upon humankind….always a factor of mystery and comfort and continuation.

Lady Nyo

——————————

Here I’ve a place

So remote, so mountain-closed,

None comes to call.

But those voices!  A whole clan

Of monkeys on the way here!

———–

(this one expresses the lonliness and solitude of his journeys to me)

The moon, like you,

Is far away from me, but it’s

Our sole memento:

If you look and recall our past

Through it, we now can be one mind.

——-

When, at this stage

Of world-loathing, something captures

The heart, then indeed

The same world is all the more

Worthy…..of total disdain.

———-

Why, in this world where

One here yesterday is off today

To the world of death,

Are more and more years and still

More and more months given me?

——-

The color of my

Body garments may have deepened

But my mind

Is still shallow, pale,

Unfit for such a step.

——

Deep in the mountains,

No call of any bird at all close

And familiar…

Just the spine-tingling hoot

Of that mountain owl!

———

In the portrait

Emerging on the moon I spied

Your face….so clearly,

The cause of tears which then

Quickly cast the moon in clouds again.

—–

We’re both afflicted

By drafts and wind, and spend our days

Getting up and lying down:

Young bamboo with still-weak core

And I, ill and disheartened.

Saigyo, Mirror for the Moon

People who know me or read this blog, know  I have been reading Japanese poetry over the past two years.  Mostly I lean towards tanka form, which is written generally  in 5 lines: 5-7-5-7-7.

My interest isn’t of  a long duration, but it’s growing deeper.  Recently I found a book I have had since 1990, “Mirror For The Moon”, published in 1977 about  the Japanese 12th century priest/poet:  Saigyo.

I must have read this around 1990, because it is highlighted heavily. It took 20 years for it to come to the surface of my mind.

Saigyo (an adopted name meaning “Go-west”) was of a powerful warrior clan, and until he was in his mid twenties he was a horseman and archer.  He  took Buddhist vows and became within a few short years, a wandering priest, giving up status and family to set out across Japan and ‘commune with nature.’  His poetry of 50 years tells us of his travels.

He lived for all those years in grass huts, in temples and caves.  His poetry grew into many numbers and we 0nly know of him because of this.  At times he would come back to the capital, and be invited to discuss and recite his work.  Somebody obviously was listening and collecting this  poetry.

These times were of great social upheaval in Japan.  The Heian Court, which had 500 years of rather peaceful evolution,  was upturned by the development of the Shogun institution.  Since he was born into a minor branch of the powerful Fujiwara clan, he was allowed exposure to the decadent court life in the capital city of Heian. (Kyoto now)

His waka is not the effeminate poetry of the Heian courtier poets but is born of long journeys in to the countryside and witness to the violence of a dying society.

He writes of long, meditative contemplations of the moon.  The moon has a lot of significance in Japanese/Buddhist culture, more than  we understand.  The cycles or phases of the moon have some precise meanings to these poets, and it is best to allow his own work to lead us into his beautiful poetry.

He also expressed sympathy and empathy for the peasants he met and lived around and especially for the fishermen and women divers.  Their lives were very hard, and they were quite a contrast to the decadent Heian couriers writing tanka.  His poetry at times expressed his feelings about these people who were not portrayed by court poetry, and in general, were not portrayed by artists at all.

Loneliness was a recurrent theme in his life and poetry.  Buddhist monks were not  celibate, and  Saigyo had ‘encounters’ with nuns and courtesans on his travels.

I will follow his  poetry with some beginning pieces of my own.  In no way am I comparing my work to his, but I am seeing his profound influence.

Yesterday, I joined the Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society under the gracious welcome of Mr. Hisashi Nakamura, the head of this international tanka society.  Anyone interested in tanka should check out this marvelous site. Having access to a ‘world bank’ of tanka is wonderful.

Lady Nyo

SAIGYO  (1118-1190)

Not a hint of a shadow

On the moon’s face…but now

A silhouette passes–

Not the cloud I take it for,

But a flock of flying geese.

————

Limitations gone:

Since my mind fixed on the moon,

Clarity and serenity

Make something for which

There’s no end in sight.

———–

Next to my own

It would be good to have

Another’s shadow

Cast here in the pool of moonlight

Leaked into my hut of bamboo grass.

———-

We would together

Make the journey, I on land

And it in the sky,

If the moon comes out to stay:

Empathy both ways.

——–

(A few of my own poems.)

TANKA (two)

The moon floats on wisps

Of cloud that extend outward

Tendrils of white fire

Burn up in the universe–

Gauzy ghosts of nothingness.

——–

Shooting star crosses

Upended bowl of blue night

Imagination

Fires up with excited gaze!

A moment– and all is gone.

_______

(and one more….)

——

The full moon above

floats on blackened velvet seas,

poet’s perfection!

But who does not yearn for a

crescent in lavender sky?

———-

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2009

“O Absalom”

Murder of Absalom

O Absalom!

O Absalom,

Ensnared by long hair in the

Boughs of  an oak,

Pierced through the heart three times

Yet your nature was  only to please.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

I,

Pulled into  mysteries

Now abandoned by love

given over to lust

Charged with stolen rapture

Dizzy as a drunk dervish,

One hand upward to Heaven

One hand spilling to Earth

Skirts stiffened with sins hard as stone

Corrupted over a life time and now-

Flayed on an unending mandala.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – –

Mystery of Life,

Unstoppable desire.

O beautiful Absalom,

We float upon a divine river

Entangled in the reeds of human wanting.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

This is our nature,

This our calling while

Flesh answers to flesh.

What quarter be given when the heart is

Overwhelmed by passion’s excess?

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

Lie still — let the waters cleanse our loins,

Mud of the banks soothe our wounds,

Let our blood mingle with the floating grasses,

Our hearts sink beneath the surface.

Let the rivers of Babylon

Carry us away.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2010

Lords of the Winter Sky

Painting of a young Red Tailed Hawk, Jane Kohut-Bartels, 2003

I’ve watched two Red Tailed Hawks fly from tree to tree this morning, right over my chicken yard.

It would seem this would be a disaster- in- the- making for the chickens, but as huge as these birds are, they can’t lift a chicken.  They hunt by other manuvers.

This last summer we caught a young (he was so stupid) RT who landed in our chicken yard and then didn’t know what to do.  Our dogs cornered him and our son rescued the bird and put him in the cat house (minus cats…) for a couple of hours to see what was broken or insulted.  The bird was fine, and we let him go after a few hours.    He was a dark shadow soaring above the now-darkening mass of kudzu and a haunting specter had we not just held him in our arms.

The mature birds, and these two this morning were….will fly down from the 120 foot Live Oaks and settle down quietly.  The hens know, and seem to have a plan ready.  They cluster and get silent, and any straggler hen is the one that gets jumped upon.

Red Tails are big and rather clumsy birds.  They have a wind span to 6 feet and weight about 3 lbs.  That’s not a lot of weight. I’ve had chickens that were easily 4 lbs.

So a Red Tail can’t swoop down and kill a chicken like a falcon.  She has to kill from the ground.  I saw one Hawk fly on the ground onto a hen’s back and try to kill her.  I chased her off, but the hen just sat there, not moving.  I thought perhaps she was in shock, but uninjured.  The next day she was dead….still sitting there.  I think perhaps, deep in the memory folds of animals are their knowledge something of the food chain.

They know their place.  We should learn.

The Hawks this morning were a beautiful sight.  They flitted, if flitted isn’t too trifling a word to describe their flight….from closely-grown Live Oaks and played tag in these two huge trees in the backyard.  They were mature enough Red Tails to have the brick red tail feathers, so they must have been at least 2-5 years old.  They were so marvelously matched, and having them so close, even though I had a large glass window between us on the second story…..I would flinch when they flew by.  They were that close, or perhaps….they were that big.

My hens were protected by Gally ….whose formal name is Galahad, a big mook of a shepherd and Great Dane. He was a stray and just his Tyrolean bark declares this to be his property.

Years ago, when I first became interested in the wildlife of the South, I had a mailman who gave me some advice about Red Tails.

They taste like chicken.

Apparently, Red Tails were on the farmer’s menu way back then, and probably are still.  Since they are also called ‘Chicken Hawks’

you can see why  they would be good eating.

Lady Nyo

CHICKEN HAWK TALK

” Chicken Hawk Talk“

Chicken Hawk!

Leave my chickens alone!

I have worked hard for them,

A handmaiden of fowl.

Collecting beautiful eggs

The gift of the species

Naturally dyed

Pink, brown, blue-green and white.

Presented at Easter,

A symbol of the Lamb of God,

And the Spring of Life.

Leave my chickens alone, hawk.

I won’t even share.

I remember, two short years ago,

When I first saw you wheeling over the kudzu

Riding the thermals,

Not even graced with the brick colored tail of a Proper Redtailed hawk,

And I gasped at your splendor, a winged god

From the cosmos, glittering white ash against a cobalt sky,

And you landed one day in my birdbath,

Trying to look like a stone sculpture,

And just the flicker of your 8x eyes

Looked over the songbirds for lunch.

Jane Kohut-Birdtells

Copyrighted, 2009

Interview with Bill Penrose, Author of “Anne the Healer”

(Bill Penrose is a friend of over three years standing I met on a  website, ERWA (Erotica Readers and Writers Assoc). I don’t participate much there anymore because I can’t seem to get the submissions of others  on a regular basis. (I am told it’s a server problem on my end.) It was a good classroom for those years,  and I would recommend it to any beginning writer for what you learn.  Most of us benefit from our time there and go on and perhaps broaden our writing from erotica. Or not.

Bill Penrose was one of the best people to come out of the ERWA experience. He took me, a very raw writer, in hand, and gently mentored  and encouraged  until I  started to stand on my own.  There were others who did the same, Nick Nicholson for one, and I remain very grateful to these two fine friends and great writers. Bill also has taken on the publishing of my first book, “A Seasoning of Lust” and is soon to do the second, “The Zar Tales”.

Thanks, Bill.  You know…you know.

Lady Nyo)

Bill, this book is rather different from “Ancestors of Star”. It delved into Catholicism, faith healing and other social issues, like homelessness.

I was still searching for the right genre. I began this novel as my Nanowrimo 2004 project, and finished it about a year later. Finally, I grew tired of letting it sit on my hard drive and decided to put it out there, first on authonomy.com, and finally on Lulu.com . I think it’s a good story, but I wasn’t really trying to get a message across, only to entertain.

While I was teaching at Illinois Institute of Technology, I was close to several contrasting neighborhoods in Chicago, including Bridgeport, Chinatown, and Bronzeville. Each neighborhood had its own peculiar characteristics, but Bridgeport was most interesting because of its cosmopolitan, transitional character. It had traditionally been Irish-Italian working class, as well as the home of the Daleys and the center of the famous Chicago Democratic Machine. But with the recent dramatic influx of Hispanics, it was becoming more diverse every day. It wasn’t just the broad ethnic spread, but the class distribution. There were the very poor, even some who lived in tents made of plastic garbage bags and duct tape, and others in narrow homes over a hundred years old. The shops on 31st Street reflected the fascinating variety of the area.

In other words, it’s an area where you almost expect unusual things to happen, much more so than in the homogenous suburban area where I lived. Although ‘Anne the Healer’ could have been set almost anywhere, it was a natural for the Bridgeport area.

Why did you write a novel about faith healing? Could you speak a bit on your own religious or spiritual convictions? How did you come to these?

I like to put a little magic in my stories. Life itself is magical in so many ways, so for me, it’s not much of a stretch to add just a little more magic, just enough to disorient and make the earth shift a little underfoot. I think it’s also important to merge it with the universal magic by making the special magic, e.g., Anne’s talent for healing, ambiguous. In other words, it should be possible to read ‘Anne the Healer’ without believing in faith healing or divine powers. Like the universal magic, it should be possible to interpret her healing power as self-delusion or coincidence.

‘Anne the Healer’ actually spun off from the character Mary the Healer in my first attempt at a novel, ‘The Sisters of Kali’. One of the Sisters, Mary Bell, discovers that she can sometimes cure sick or injured people by praying for them. At first, she is doubtful and then frightened by her mysterious power, with justice, because soon it takes over her soul and her life.

While ruminating on Mary’s character, I thought of other scenarios involving a reluctant healer, and wrote a short story, ‘Anne the Healer’, a tale of a brief liaison between a faith healer and Tim Hardy, a minimum-wage bookstore worker. I soon fell in love with Anne, but Tim was too passive to suit me. When I decided the story merited novel-length treatment, I made Tim a petty criminal with enough cynicism to doubt Anne’s talent, and later, when faced with evidence of her power to heal, plan to exploit her for his own purposes. But of course, they fall in love instead, Tim first.
I know that you are a scientist. Did you find that you were searching for different answers or was this not a conflict with your scientific views of life and death?

I never had a problem keeping science and spiritualism in my head at the same time. I’m not one of those scientists who claim to ‘leave God at the laboratory door’. Two people can look through a microscope at, say, a bacterial cell. One person will see an agent of disease, or perhaps a useful tool for the making of yogurt, or an intellectual puzzle to be solved. Another will see an actual miracle, the whole machinery of life packed into an impossibly tiny space, a spectacularly complex and beautifully constructed living device capable of reproducing itself, and involved in a vast web of interactions with the living and nonliving worlds. I find it difficult to do science without being caught up in the beauty of all things, from the mind-boggling structure of atoms, to the incomprehensible vastness of the Universe. The likelihood that these structures arose through a long process of variation and natural selection doesn’t dilute the miracles one bit. In fact, the more we understand, the more marvelous the Universe becomes.

Somewhere in ‘The Sisters of Kali’, my main character, Phyllis, says, “Miracles are everywhere. They happen every day, all around us. But we only question the new or different ones, the ones we haven’t become jaded with.”

No one has to believe in a god, or even a vague spiritual force, to appreciate Nature. Whether or not we attribute the Universe to a great spirit or to random chance isn’t due to the careful study of Nature, but something that comes out of our own character. No one really sets out to study the Universe in order to discover God or prove Her absence. They begin with the assumption that God exists, or doesn’t exist, and interpret all they see and hear from that perspective. Belief trumps facts every time.

I’ll go one step farther and say that the Universe is constructed in such a way that it’s impossible to prove or disprove the existence of a spiritual force. This ambiguity is built into the world, and it’s absolutely essential to the existence of Free Will. If we could solve an equation, or run a statistical analysis that conclusively proved the existence of God, Free Will would vanish instantly. Every decision after that would be conditioned on whether it would offend or please God. We’d have no choice but to try to discover what this new God wanted from us, and try to do things to satisfy Her demands.

You are not a writer who turns from the sexual issues in your books, but in “Anne the Healer” you handled this in a very different way. Why was that?

Mostly, I thought it would distract from the main story. I’d just spend a half year with two different critique groups who found the sexual interludes in ‘The Sisters of Kali’ too explicit, and intruded on the main story. In my current WIP, I’ve run into the same criticism, and I’ve decided to dumb down or dilute those scenes in the next rewrite.

Thank you, Bill.  What you write about Free Will expands my thinking on the issue.  I wish you had been my teacher in chemistry.  I think you would have made it all…’plain’.

And very much more illuminating.

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/anne-the-healer/7805407

Lady Nyo

“Wind Chimes”

from autumn cottage diarist.com

How many nights

Have I lain awake

Listening to  chimes

Under the roof?

Discordant tones

Thrown wild  in the dark

Riding a vengeful wind.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2010

“Autumn Dusk” #2

Autumn Dusk, oil, Jane Kohut-Bartels, 2006

A stuttering wind blows across

Clouds tinted by the failing sun.

Brittle air softens —

Now a faded blue,

shade of an old man’s watery eyes.

A late flock of Sandhill cranes lift off,

Pale bodies blending in the

Twilight with legs

Flowing dark streamers,

Their celestial cries fall to

Earth–

Harsh, chiding rain.

The trees in the valley below

Are massed in darkness

As the waning light leaches

The color of nature,

Creeps from field to hillock

And all prepare for the

Rising of the Corn Moon.

Even  frogs in the pond

Listen between croaks

For the intention of the night.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2010

Some Tanka

TANKA

I can no longer
tell my dreams from plodding life.
Which world shall I wake?
Will it be within your arms,
bewildered by last night’s lust?

The act of writing
is a powerful gesture.
Women who write poems
weave tapestries of wisdom
and form up lives that endure.

This is the problem!
Never give your precious life
into a man’s hand.
Plant your roots in deep water.
Don’t let sweet whispers seduce.

In the beginning
I offered my heart to you.
You held it lightly.
Unseen, it fell in the dirt,
made bitter by its journey.

The wind bullies chimes.
What ghost would dare come near me!
I could strike a match
and set these dark rooms ablaze.
More than one would die tonight.

In my heart’s black depth

I kept our secret smothered

although today I suffered

the usual pangs

needing to hear it aloud.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2010

Ono no Komachi (834?-?)

Ono no Komachi

Komachi was one of the pillars of Japanese Heian era poetry. She served in the court in the capitol city of Heian-kyo (present day Kyoto).

Komachi’s poetry was extremely passionate, deeply subjective and complex.  She was  of a poetical society that  developed the form with  philosophical and emotional depth.

My study of Komachi is just beginning and it’s  better we allow her words to lead us into her world.

Lady Nyo

Ono No Komachi

Did he appear

because I fell asleep

thinking of him?

If only I’d known I was dreaming,

I’d never have wakened.

2.

When my desire

grows too fierce

I wear my bed clothes

inside out,

dark as the night’s rough husk.

3.

No way to see him

on this moonless night–

I lie awake longing, burning,

breasts racing fire,

heart in flames.

4.

Though I go to him constantly on the paths of dream,

never resting my feet,

in the real world

it doesn’t equal a single glance.

5.

The cicadas sing

in the twilight

of my mountain village–

tonight, no one

will visit save the wind.

—-From “The Ink Dark Moon”, Hirshfield and Aratani

“The Kimono”…and the blog.

The Kimono that started the book.

For  two years  I have been writing a novel that delves into 16th century Japan.  It’s basically a time warp, with a Japanese/American woman, Mari, who buys and dons a magical kimono and lands at the feet (literally) of a powerful 16th century daimyo.

Writing this novel meant an immersion into Japanese culture, and from just these beginning tentative stages, the poetry of  the character, Lady Nyo…developed.

After 32,000 words, the novel stalled.  I had written into the middle part of the novel, and it was flowing well.  Of course, there is always an issue of rewrite.  However, along the way I was pushed to study Japanese archery, cruxification, pottery and of course, Japanese forms of poetry and their usage. Most of this last was reading the poetry  developed from the 8th through the 12th century Japan.

I don’t think it was …(this stalling)…a question of nothing to write. I even have the ending, and I can’t wait to get to that!  It is something of a dream sequence, but I am my own worse spoiler on these things.

Back in the Fall, I made myself a promise: I would give over January on for the writing and FINISHING of  “Kimono”.  Things have been a bit jerky on that promise, but I am getting back  into the study and swing of Japanese history, culture and customs.

The ‘dead’ middle part of this book is because I came to an impass:  I didn’t have the necessary knowledge of things military in the Japan of the 16th century.  This was quite a difference between knowing ceramics and kimono styles and ichibani.  Armor, the different weapons, banners, that floated over armies to distinguish battalions and friend or foe, the sheer ‘ weight’ of all this was a bit overwhelming.

Well, identifying the stoppage as a source of knowledge that was missing was comforting; it wasn’t an abandonment of the work because I had lost interest.  I was deeply interested in Japanese culture.  I just allowed myself to get waylaid.

Life can do that, but hopefully works for a purpose.

I will float a few chapters of “The Kimono” on this blog….because it pleases me to do this and it seems to please others.  And that is the point of writing to me.  In that order.

I am still going to post some information on the development of tanka and different poetry forms around the Heian Court of 12 century Japan.  But there is so much in there, and that is….hopefully, related to the novel.

I also have wanted to do a few interviews of other writers:  Bill Penrose, Steve Isaak, mostly.  But that takes some questions on this side.  However, Bill and Steve are great writers and they can handle an amateur’s interview.

I am mostly going to work on this book, and the blog will just have to coast for a while.  I hope friends and readers will find something to enjoy in these next few months on the blog, but I am going to try and keep entries  down.

The kimono I bought from Marla Marlett’s website is pictured above.

Lady Nyo

(Chapter 13 below. Forgive the lack of proofing.)

Kunu: state…territory.  Japan was made of 68 states, the Western daimyos fighting the Eastern.

Koku: is a measure of rice…like a bushel.  Wages to samurai and others were paid in koku.

Chapter 13

At the Hour of the Dragon, Lords Mori and Ekei were drinking the first of many cups of cha.

The morning dawned with peach colored clouds over the lake and raucous honking by resident geese.  It was cool this morning, though late spring, and the brazier did little to boil the water for the cha as Lord Mori poked more charcoal beneath the small fire. The brass kettle sweated with the cold water filled from a jug.

“Lord Tokugama will expect a report by the new moon.”

Lord Ekei’s voice was soft.  Except for the distant sound of waterfowl, there was little noise outside the castle except for the nightsoil men making their rounds. The buckets clanged against the old cobblestones as they dropped their poles to shovel manure from beasts  the night before.

“I know. He is expecting much detail.”  Lord Mori sipped at his cha, his face scowling into his cup.

“Our lord is expecting troops and provisions.” Lord Ekei blinked his eyes, trying to wake up.  It was still very early and the room cold.

“He asks much to put down a peasant rebellion.  It will just rise up again when the rains wash the blood from next spring’s soil.”

Lord Mori grunted into his cup, his face a mask.

“The problem” said Lord Ekei, pushing his point, “isn’t about what the peasants do, it’s about what the daimyos don’t do.”

“And what is that, my friend?”

“The corruption from the tax collectors breeds these rebellions.  Too much koku is taken from the fields and not enough left to live upon. Under heaven, there is nothing else to do but riot. Starving bellies are invitations to rebellion.”

Lord Mori grunted.  “This is the problem. Living in Edo for six months every two years.  The cost depletes the supplies.”

Lord Mori filled both cups with more hot water, blowing over the rising steam of his cup.

“Yes, yes, that is a large consideration, but until Heaven moves its bowels, nothing can be done about that.”

“A good strategy on the Emperor’s part would help. Or rather the Shogun. The effort to mobilize each daimyo in obedience to the court’s demands keeps us from each other’s throats.”

“I think we better do—“

Suddenly an overly large bird appeared at the window, and startled both lords.  It was big like a vulture and had a long red nose and dark iridescent feathers.  It was a tengu.

Shaking its feathers violently, a dust storm obscured it for a few seconds.  Then both lords saw a skinny priest, dressed in a filthy kimono appear. Both lords bowed respectfully from their cushions.

“Man, those air currents! They would tear a bird’s feathers from his body. Got a cup of sake around?  Travel dehydrates me.”

This tengu was a priest from the Yamabushi clan. He hopped down from the window, scratching the side of his face where a scrawny gray beard covered it.

“Lice,” he announced with a grin.

Lord Mori spooned some powdered tea in a cup, poured some hot water over it, carefully stirred and handed the cup to the scratching man.  He took it with a sour, disdainful glance at both lords, and drank it without ceremony, smacking his lips loudly and wiping his hand across his thin lips.

“Lord Yori, we are honored you have come to advise us”, said Lord Ekei with another bow.

“Well, beats hanging around  Haight-Ashbury.  Had to appear as a pigeon to fit in, and all there was to do during the day was beg for breadcrumbs.  Did look up skirts at muffs, though.”  He laughed, a coarse, wheezing sound.

Lord Ekei suppressed a smile, and Lord Mori didn’t a grimace.  They had dealt with Lord Yori before.  His antics were well known.

Lord Yori lowered himself to a cushion and rubbed his hands over the brazier. “You got any sake?  Spring is a bad time for travel.”

Lord Mori clapped his hands twice and within several minutes a servant appeared with three cups and a brown bottle of warmed sake, placing them on the low table between the lords.  Lord Mori poured three cups and offered the first to the Lord Yori.  He drank it fast and held out his cup for a refill.

It would be a long morning with Lord Yori and it best be spent drunk.

“My Lord Yori, our Lord Tokugawa  in Kyoto has called upon the daimyos of the western borders to send troops and supplies to put down a rebellion of peasants in Mikawa providence.”

“Yeah?  Well, being a vassal is tough. The nature of the beast.  Too many kits and not enough teats.”  Lord Yori followed this statement with a loud burp.

“You want my advice? You got bigger problems closer to home.  I hear from some other birds Lord Kiyami is looking at your southern border with a covetous  eye. That’s a dicey mountain range there, and if he controls those trade passes, he can hem you in. Adding a kunu to his territory would be a feather in his cap.”

He punctuated his statement with a belch.

“If this is true, my lord Mori” said Lord Ekei with a slight bow, “then you will have to organize two campaigns at once.  That would be very costly, neh?”

Lord Mori eyes narrowed and he grunted. “I am sure gLord Yori’s information is impeccable,” he said with his own bow to the disheveled priest.

“You bet your nuts it is”, said the priest sharply.

“Is this information you have read in history books, Lord Yori,” asked Lord Ekei?

“Can’t read, never learned” said the priest in a raspy voice. “Some things don’t make the history books.  Sometimes pillow talk is more….ah…reliable.”

Both lords considered his words.  It was not beyond the pale. Men talked to women, and men talked in their sleep. Either way, information was obtainable.

This news of Lord Kiyami’s interest in his territory disturbed Lord Mori.  It would be a very bad position to be hemmed in at that mountain range.

“Perhaps there is a need to change plans,” suggested Lord Ekei to Lord Mori.

Lord Mori looked at both of the men sipping their sake.

“Do I dare go against the desires of Heaven to thwart the schemes of Lord Kiyami?”

Scratching his scrawny beard absentmindedly, the Yamabushi priest coughed.

“You might be looking at a new portion of Hell if you ignore him.”

“If he hems you in, Higato, you will not be able to serve the needs of Lord Tokugawa in anycase,” said Lord Ekei.

“Let me suggest, my lord,” said the priest with a little bow, “that you think about a spy or two in the household of Lord Kiyami.  This could glean you some important and timely information.”

“Yes, Higato, this is excellent advice. We need to know his future plans, even if he is to seize your southern territory soon.  How many forces he would deploy for this.  He also would be called upon by our Lord Tokugawa for his support.  He will have some of the same considerations we have.”

“Good.  I agree.  A couple of well placed servants should do the job.”

“I would further suggest, my lord, that you place a spy in his guard.  A samurai that can be trusted with such a task.  Perhaps an unknown captain of your own guard.”

“Again, I agree.”  Higato Mori nodded to both men.

“Now we must consider the problem of what daimyos to call upon for support. Surely we have allies, Lord Ekei?”

“Higato, without a doubt that our Lord Kiyami will be also looking with the same eyes as we.  Perhaps a visit to one or two would set things better for us.”

“If I may be so bold,” said the priest scratching at his skin inside his kimono, “I agree a visit be made soon.  One never knows the plans of another man, especially at a distance.”

Lord Mori picked up his cup and glanced at his advisor, Ekei, sitting across from him, and fell into deep thought.

This priest has much sense for an old crow.  Perhaps he should be the spy in Kiyami’s household?  Could he dare presume upon the favors of such a man?  Well, we are all three Yamabushi, so there should be something of favor there.  Perhaps this has possibilities.  Perhaps Ekei will be able to answer to this.