チアキ

but if nothing amazing happens in your dreams, how can you tell if you're dreaming

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fallen in love with Japan again

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As if in reply, she set down her pen and removed her glasses with a flourish of resignation. She turned her head deliberately to face me. I wondered if I had somehow offended her.

"Are you familiar with the name 'Hokusai Katsushika'?" She asked.

"Not really. Friend of yours?"

She gave me the stink-eye. Not in a jocular mood, I guess.

"He was a prominent Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the 19th century. He produced many works but he is arguably most known for Fugaku Sanjurokkei, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, a series of ukiyo-e paintings that all depict the same mountain from different perspectives, in different seasons and various weather conditions. Few people know this, but there are more than thirty-six prints in existence - unique prints, that are not officially included in his portfolio. It's estimated that over a thousand prints were produced during his lifetime. Hokusai Katsushika was known for using a number of pseudonyms throughout his career under which he published a sizable portion of his work. From dusk to dawn, he would paint pictures of Mount Fuji. For days on end, he would labour over a single print without rest, only to discard it and start over again. It would be no great exaggeration to say that he spent his life painting that mountain. Now why do you suppose he did that?"

I shrugged, even though I knew all she wanted was the pause for effect. Right on cue, she continued.

"Because he was obsessed. He was searching for something in that mountain. He spent years wandering Japan, searching for the right light, the perfect angle to capture it from, but he could never show in his paintings what he saw in that mountain. That's why he made so many paintings. The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji were what he saw as his most accomplished failures - the ones that came the closest to describing the magic and majesty of Mount Fuji. He realised that even if no single painting could capture the mountain in all its glory, the combined efforts of thirty-six may just be able to graze it tangentially. The rest before it were simply practice - mere sketches in comparison - a mile-high pile of scrap paper on top of which those thirty-six may stand."

She paused for a bit to let her point sink in. And then her eyes lost their focus, as they do whenever she gets drawn in by a new idea.

"Do you know what makes a mountain great?" She asked, her voice lost in a daydream.

I didn't bother responding this time. At that point, nothing I said would've mattered anyway; she had it all figured out already.

"Transcendence. Perpetuity. Deathlessness. They've endured more years than any living human being, witnessed countless cycles of the moon, enough to intuit the celestial configurations and cosmic occurrences. Towering titans as old as the earth itself, they've seen war and famine and drought, having weathered all forms and degrees of calamity and disaster, scars etched forever into their stony sides. They are the fossilized heaps of history's debris, slowly changing but never fading - an unseen giant - a looming colossus in ponderous stride amid the shifting tide of human events. Wiser than any sage and more august than any sovereign, it rises, defiant, daring to point back at the heavens, unperturbed by the wrathful winds of conspiring deities voicing their contempt as it encroaches upon their lofty perch. Stretching steadily, trading winter and autumn's coats on its skyward odyssey - so many layers to be shed, so many faces upon faces to be deciphered. How many tellings would it take to uncover its immense past? The possible origins of each weary wrinkle just waiting to be fathomed, every crease and canyon bears the echo of an elaborate tale, a chapter of treasure buried just beneath the rubble, revelations written in invisible ink that remain hidden until coaxed forth by the appropriate conditions - herald held hostage at the mercy of the seasons."

She then closed her eyes, exhausted, and leaned back in her chair. She was a terrible listener, but boy, could she talk. I studied her face for a while, every inch the tired portrait of a tortured artist - a part she played to perfection. It all sounded very convincing, I'll admit; she may have even believed in some of it herself, but I just didn't buy it. If you ask me, there's nothing particularly great about a mountain; they're just meaningless mounds of rock and dirt that happen to be a lot bigger than the rest. That's all there is to it.