Punk (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
runpunkrun) wrote2022-03-21 11:05 am
runpunkrun) wrote2022-03-21 11:05 am
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the journey itself is home
I just found James T. Kirk winking at me from between the lines of a text written more than three hundred years ago. I was reading about Bashō, a Japanese poet who lived during the Edo Period, when I came across this, from the opening paragraph of his travel journal Oku no hosomichi:
I don't know if Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the writers of that scene, were familiar with Bashō's work, but it seems an almost impossible coincidence that Jim, the captain of a boat, always pushing out into the stars, an eternal traveler, wasn't echoing the words of Bashō, a man similarly lured into a life of wandering.
{also posted to Tumblr}
Months and days are eternal travelers, as are the years that come and go. For those who drift through their lives on a boat, or reach old age leading a horse over the earth, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is their home. Many people in the past have died on the road, but for many years, like a fragment of a cloud, I have been lured by the wind into the desire for a life of wandering.Jim must have read that and recognized himself in it because, as we learn in this unfilmed scene from the 2009 Star Trek movie, he makes a reference to it in a message to Spock, a message Spock will carry with him in a locket, long after Jim is gone:—Bashō (1644-1694)
translated by Stephen Addiss
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you...I know I know, it's illogical to celebrate something you had nothing to do with, but I haven't had the chance to congratulate you on your appointment to the ambassadorship so I thought I'd seize the occasion... Bravo, Spock — they tell me your first mission may take you away for awhile, so I'll be the first to wish you luck...and to say...I miss you, old friend.Perhaps Jim was setting off on that final journey as he recorded this, just as Bashō, getting older and already in poor health, was beginning a two and a half year journey from which he might not return. Bashō made it back; Jim didn't.
I suppose I'd always imagined us…outgrowing Starfleet together. Watching life swing us into our Emeritus years...I look around at the new cadets now and can't help thinking...has it really been so long? Wasn't it only yesterday we stepped onto the Enterprise as boys? That I had to prove to the crew I deserved command...and their respect?
I know what you'd say — 'It's their turn now, Jim…' And of course you're right... but it got me thinking: Who's to say we can't go one more round? By the last tally, only twenty five percent of the galaxy's been chartered…I'd call that negligent, criminal even — an invitation. You once said being a starship captain was my first, best destiny...if that's true, then yours is to be by my side. If there's any true logic to the universe...we'll end up on that bridge again someday. Admit it, Spock. For people like us, the journey itself...is home.
I don't know if Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the writers of that scene, were familiar with Bashō's work, but it seems an almost impossible coincidence that Jim, the captain of a boat, always pushing out into the stars, an eternal traveler, wasn't echoing the words of Bashō, a man similarly lured into a life of wandering.
{also posted to Tumblr}
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I've always loved that line—for people like us the journey itself is home—and now that I know where it (probably) came from, and the connection it draws between Jim and Bashō, I love it even more.
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Me too. It's making me think about what else they have in common. I've long noticed Bashō will always mention a flower if there's one around, especially if it's small or homely (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scytale's pointed out that Bashō seems to really like poems about not noticing flowers), and now I can't help but think of Kirk, on an alien planet, stopping to smell a flower just to experience it:
Spock seems taken by Jim's actions too.
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Now that I think about it, there's a kind of theme in Bashō's work around not seeing things, whether it's people not observing the smaller flowers, or Mt Fuji or another scenic spot being too hazy to see clearly, or being distracted from an aesthetic view. It's interesting that what you don't or can't observe can also be part of the process of seeing / being present.
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He does look handsome. I was struck by just how much he looks like Zachary Quinto there. You can very much see the inspiration behind casting Quinto as reboot Spock. They look quite similar from certain angles.
That's a good point about Bashō's work. He has a lot of poems about hazy views or clouds hiding the moon, in a way that almost makes it seem like a respite from the expected, like, "Oh good, don't have to view the moon or Mt. Fuji today and can think of something else, like this lake."
I'm still working my way through Bashō and His Interpreters and it's becoming clear that Bashō also likes to reference things that aren't physically present by alluding to other poems that use a classic image, whether it's a certain mountain or tree or flower, so that thing isn't present in his poem, but if you're in the know, you can see it (or its absence).
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I think a lot of the haiku poets refer to things in that elusive, elliptical way. I was reading a collection of Japanese travel writing called, "Travels With a Writing Brush," (Penguin) which introduced me to the concept of utamakaru: places people visit because they're referred to in poems, which means that people would KNOW things were there or a certain mood was meant by the place name, even if nothing else was mentioned at all in the poem. I love the multitudes that haiku contains!
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Vising a place just because it was mentioned in a poem is such a fannish thing to do. Like going to LA or Vancouver to see a building that was once in an episode of your show.
And then, of course, you gotta write your own poem in that spot.
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:D
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<3
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We knew Jim liked to read, and now we know one more thing on his bookshelf.
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I'm so glad I was in the right place to see it!
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<3 <3 <3
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These were not two of my fandoms I ever expected to collide.
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And, in a way, they have.
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They have!! Oh, that made me a little teary.
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<3
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It was so strange to read that passage and realize someone had been there before me and thought of James T. Kirk when they read it.
Also very strange to think that one day, two hundred years from now, James T. Kirk would read the same words.
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And we're lucky you're here to connect the two, 200 years earlier.
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The feeling I had when I read that passage could only be described as an epiphany: a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.
A full-on lightbulb-over-the-head ohhhh moment.
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It's such a lovely, and lonely, sentiment, and a testament to Bashō's talent that James T. Kirk found it five hundred years after it was written and still found it meaningful.
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Yes, it fits so well with the man we know. It's easy to picture Basho on his bookshelf next to Dickens and, as fandom would have it, Surak.