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September 2008
Cherry Blossom
Oiwa looked down the dirt path and over the worn and faded wooden bridge beyond. Moonlight peered meekly from behind the mushroom mass of black storm clouds. In the distance, framed by the small gauntlet of paper lamps lining the opposite end of the bridge, one lone figure walked west.
The Kyoto rain had spread itself over the earth with discretion, but soon the goddesses of the storms would cry more loudly. They would shed harsher, larger floods of tears. The scent of the cherry blossoms would burst forth, and the lightning would turn the petals of the blossoms into the shining scales of a dragon. Then Oiwa would visit the man on the opposite side of that bridge, as she had come to so many others. When the sweet odor of the blossoms overtook the air the first time every rainy season, it made Oiwa feel alive again every time, at least for an instant. Then she'd float dreamily over to the nearest tree and reach her fragile wisp of a hand over to stroke the petals. Her fingertips would pass through the cluster of scented pinkness like air. How cruel that the gods left her with a sense of smell, but no way to touch or feel…Unless she used those senses to claim others.
The scent rose, moist and pregnant with fulsome sweetness, and lightning followed the symphony of aroma with its own blinding crescendo. Oiwa spun in the air a few metres above the now-muddy ground, her gamine arms encircling her gently-twisting dervish body like leaves on a bamboo branch. It was time. She glided forward along the pathway, elegantly and inexorably towards the bridge and the unsuspecting traveler trudging in the opposite direction. Oiwa opened her arms and floated noiselessly over the bridge, sleeves of her spectral kimono brushing against the dangling branches of the trees that greeted her after the bridge.
She was regaining her sense of touch, so she knew she was close to collecting another wayward soul for the gods. Her right arm even knocked a paper lamp from its bamboo post and into the brushes beyond the road. Her voice—the loud, whistling wail of the storm wind—raised, and the lightning now threw her arched and flying shadow over the wandering stranger's back. She smiled a ghostly smile as he turned slowly. Oiwa's eyes met those of the man. His face, dry and ancient as a Buddhist parchment, formed a smile that deepened the wrinkles around his thin lips. Oiwa smiled back. This one was wise. This one was ready. "Kiss me," Oiwa whispered as her arms encircled his slender reed of a neck. "With pleasure," the old man sighed as he died.
The above story was sent to me via email from my Muse. When I read the story, images of Oiwa the Japanese Ghost began swirling in my head and almost immediately, I grabbed a canvas and started painting. The painting is still evolving, but I thought I'd post its current state before I throw more paint at it and stand back to watch how Oiwa emerges. Cherry Blossom written by TwoPotatoThreePotato. Medium: enamel, acrylic, iridescent powder, charcoal on canvas.
Ten of Hearts: La Grenouille Charmont
Medium: Page torn from 1895 book "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush", ink, acrylic, photoshop.
Butts of Summer
