Only a Blockhead

Fall

Some past posts to celebrate 10 years of Only A Blockhead; this from late October 2010.

Fall. The harvest is almost in—one farm down the road still has the rice drying on poles in the paddy fields. It’s being soaked with the rain from the passing typhoons, and will dry again with improved flavor.

Fall is above all a comfortable season. That means a great deal because the Japanese summer is so intense with impossibly humid heat – something to stand.

Fall is the blessing of a temperature that suits the body. It’s a season for both sport and exertion, and for relaxation and reading. A season for enjoying a cornucopia of delicious things to eat such as pumpkin – the dense, sweet kind; “sanma” Pacific saury, a fish that’s grilled and then served with grated daikon radish; jade green gingko nuts grilled on the thinnest skewers; mushrooms... (the list goes on).

--Julian

Autumn Story (2013)

For raking leaves a neighbor gives me eggs

which I drop:

Omelet tonight.

 

--Julian

Colors of the season

This post from 2010 began with a quote from country singer Tim McGraw.

 

                                                “Here’s turning heartache into art.”   Tim McGraw

 

October orange

Persimmons hang from branches;

Scent of osmanthus

 

October red

Rice paddies banked with spider lilies;

Scarlet sunset

 

October blue

Pale sky with scudding clouds;

Relationship's shattered shards

 

--Julian

Rain

An approaching typhoon puts me in mind of another post from 2008.

Rain fills the valley with a roar, defining ragged spider's webs, absorbed by pine needles. Leaves shiver and drip.

The wind picks up with a hiss and rush. The rain slants and drifts like smoke, then beats down on the orchard. The crows stay in the shelter of the trees, and smaller birds chatter and chase each other through the air unmolested. A single frog croaks.  

The matte, gray-white sky is leached of brightness. Barely visible clouds pass over apace. And it rains and blows all morning and into the afternoon and continues yet.

--Julian

Wednesday Morning, 6 a.m.

A post from October 2008 to celebrate 10 years of this blog

This morning the sky was pink and the sun broke the horizon as a blood-red orb. Fifteen minutes later, it was a blinding ivory sphere above the treetops.

The green valley is brushed with rust. Last weekend it rained and it blew and the grass is littered with leaves. On the roadsides, Goldenrod and Susuki grass, blooming side-by-side, advertise the season. 

On the edge of the bamboo forest, orange persimmons hang heavy on their branches. Under the eaves, spiders adjust their webs. Lizards and mantis haunt the walls.

The wind bell hangs silent.

--Julian

Before the silence of winter

Past posts to celebrate 10 years of Only A Blockhead; this from 2009

In this season when the last of the rice, harvested and hung on poles to dry, is threshed in the paddies under brilliant sunshine

when great banks of purple, red, and white cosmos daisies bloom

the last suzumushi bell crickets trill in the dark of the October evening before the silence of winter

 

--Julian

Kinmokusei

Some past posts to celebrate 10 years of Only A Blockhead. This from 2007

In the last week, kinmokusei—Sweet Osmanthus—trees, bushes and hedges have begun to blossom with tiny yellow flowers. They are the opposite of, say, camellias, whose showy scarlet blooms have no scent. Kinmokusei flowers are relatively invisible, but their sweet and heavy scent can eddy some distance. You smell them, and look around for the source. I would catch a whiff outside the front door and wonder where it came from. Embarrassingly, it was several years before I realized there was a kinmokusei tree right in front of the house.

Yesterday I walked out with some students to the bushes on campus. One young woman from Hokkaido had never smelled kinmokusei before as it doesn't grow in that colder climate. For another, the familiar scent carried him back to his garden at home in the country. For me, the scent mostly reminds me of toilets, an unfortunate testimony to the popularity of kinmokusei-scented air-fresheners.  

Kinmokusei is potent. As told by another teacher, a student had lingered by a bush on her way to school. In the classroom, some friends said she smelled nice. She wasn't wearing scent.

--Julian

One day

Celebrating 10 years of Only A Blockhead, a collection of seasonal snapshots from past years

 

Fall morning

Spider's web under the eaves

Shines like silk in the sunlight

 

Wheeling flocks of sparrows

glean the bare paddies

now that harvest is done

 

Brown sheaves of rice hang on poles

drying in the sun;

First snow on Fuji

 

Kites circle the sky

Nervous crows swoop and caw

The smoke of a bonfire

 

On a wet afternoon

Spider lilies bloom

unvisited by butterflies

 

Equinox Sunday:

Wafting through the graveyard fence

Incense and laughter

 

Dark at six

Full moon high and bright

In the cool air crickets are trilling

 

Sharp cracks break

The silence of the night:

Acorns dropping on garage roofs

 

--Julian

akibare

To celebrate 10 years of Only A Blockhead, a picture of the current month from 2007

October is a month of often beautiful days that have their own term in Japanese: akibare, a word meaning “autumn” and “fine,” and which conjures a cloudless blue sky and warm sunshine, together with the sights and smells of the season.

    sheaves of rice hanging to dry in the paddies, turning from green to brown

    dragonflies – blue, yellow, red – darting and hovering

    burning leaves, fragrant as incense

    the sweet, heavy scent of kinmokusei sweet osmanthus

    ubiquitous spider's webs, with yellow female in the center and tiny male off in the fringes

    clusters of gangly purple cosmos daisies

    prickly brown chestnut husks littering the ground

The persimmon trees are losing their leaves and keeping their fruit – a shock of orange in the deepening browns and yellows of the countryside.

--Julian

"Preying" mantis

Some past posts to celebrate 10 years of Only A Blockhead. This from 2007.

Sunny fall morning:

A hunting mantis

Reflected on tatami

 

--Julian