Floating World
Jeanne Heuving
1.
To begin with Puzzles of Islands, a floating world of sea, earth and sky. Elongated islands adrift in elongated waters. A depiction carved into wood, daubed with nori paste, brushed with ink, pressed into damp paper and left to dry. In Edo Japan, wood block prints, ukiyo-e, depicted the Floating World—a life of art, stylishness and extravagance—gaiety, hedonism, and transgression—that contrasted with the humdrum of the everyday. There were courtesans and geishas, landscapes and blossoms. In medieval Buddhist Japan, ukiyo meant a transitory life of grief. In Edo Japan, ukiyo signified an ephemeral life of pleasure. Ukiyo-e were its visual
depiction, done with a brush rather than a roller. The transparency of ink made for pastel colors and tonal variations, jeweled tinctures. In these ukiyo-e, oceans and epochs away from the island nation of Edo Japan, the inks turn toward the opaque, casting upon the shadowed, American landscape dashes of surprising color. In Cool Deep Pools, white ovals dance on an ocher field under the burning sun with their blue centers, not quite turquoise but not sky blue or navy, a chance offering. Since Japan is an island onto itself, we don’t need to say what we think about things since the other person will understand. In the United States, the landscape is a continent.
Explicitness runs a course of saying onto exhaustion and then over-saying into an enigma brought to a rare pitch. The realization is a gathering of things into the unity of a prehension. The unity of a prehension defines itself as a here and now, and the things so gathered into the grasped unity have essential reference to other places and other times. Everything is everywhere at all times. Every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location.
2.
To begin with a visible passage that seems familiar, as if a return. The return at first wide, the entire width of the print, and then abruptly narrowing, ending in an escarpment of mountains. A sun in a band of yellow turning to amber, white hot with an orange center, a ragged periphery tinged with umber, as if a lion’s head. Fast currents pick up speed when blocked by islands, barraging rocky shores and separating into braided streams with white caps. In the same direction as the tides, the currents become impossible to resist, such that rowing in a boat one is pushed in the opposite direction than one intended to go, and finds oneself released into an open
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sea. Indifferent Waters is directionally complex. A foreground of seemingly rippling waters, scuds of white on blue, meets an articulated band of mountains or perhaps just dirt, heralded by a band of cliffs, and then of sky and clouds, a deeper blue than the water, perhaps rain clouds, shooting down, lightning in the west. Small wisps of clouds separated from the larger cloud masses known as messengers foretell of rain. Everything is jutting and angling, except for the lapping waters. The Way Through is Hidden is the way of heroes. Not as a world might begin, not as a cataclysmic fury, not as stars colliding, smashing bright suns across the firmament. But soft as
breath, breathed out. It begins as only it can begin as infinitesimal space in time. The cat nearing death with a first time lion’s cut to relieve him of his matted fur that he no longer able to pretzel his body could not groom revealed long legs hidden by silky fur, we thought short due to his compensatory stoop, a waiter with pantaloons we had joked, now shown to be an adolescent track star out of proportion with himself. I used to call him Mr. Silky.
3.
To begin with The Way Through is Hidden. The door, carved into rock, as if into a monolithial chamber, with other block structures pushing at it. Beyond, pyramids and trapezoids, all detail wiped out by blinding light, the off-white paper undyed by ink. Evenly spaced horizontal lines create the expectation of a horizon, hidden behind the thrusting and jostling construction. Elongated, broken clouds reveal a blue tending toward the turquoise and a ground of diagonal plinths taunts the idea that there is any way through. Batset, fierce protector and lioness, settled in a temple on an island in the Nile, two channels of water surrounding the island and making for a
lake. Cooled by the waters, Batset was transformed into a gentle cat, much revered and loved by the Egyptians. The city, pr-bꜣstt, the House of Batset, rose up and around the temple and looked down into it, so that its entire labyrinth of vestibules and alcoves could be seen from without. Owned by royalty, cats were sometimes dressed in golden jewelry and allowed to eat from the plates of their owners. Once did I see a slip of earth by throbbing waves long undermined, loosed from its hold;—how no one knew. But all might see it float, obedient to the wind. Might see it, from the mossy shore dissevered float upon the Lake, float, with its crest of trees adorned on which
To begin with Puzzles of Islands, a floating world of sea, earth and sky. Elongated islands adrift in elongated waters. A depiction carved into wood, daubed with nori paste, brushed with ink, pressed into damp paper and left to dry. In Edo Japan, wood block prints, ukiyo-e, depicted the Floating World—a life of art, stylishness and extravagance—gaiety, hedonism, and transgression—that contrasted with the humdrum of the everyday. There were courtesans and geishas, landscapes and blossoms. In medieval Buddhist Japan, ukiyo meant a transitory life of grief. In Edo Japan, ukiyo signified an ephemeral life of pleasure. Ukiyo-e were its visual
depiction, done with a brush rather than a roller. The transparency of ink made for pastel colors and tonal variations, jeweled tinctures. In these ukiyo-e, oceans and epochs away from the island nation of Edo Japan, the inks turn toward the opaque, casting upon the shadowed, American landscape dashes of surprising color. In Cool Deep Pools, white ovals dance on an ocher field under the burning sun with their blue centers, not quite turquoise but not sky blue or navy, a chance offering. Since Japan is an island onto itself, we don’t need to say what we think about things since the other person will understand. In the United States, the landscape is a continent.
Explicitness runs a course of saying onto exhaustion and then over-saying into an enigma brought to a rare pitch. The realization is a gathering of things into the unity of a prehension. The unity of a prehension defines itself as a here and now, and the things so gathered into the grasped unity have essential reference to other places and other times. Everything is everywhere at all times. Every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location.
2.
To begin with a visible passage that seems familiar, as if a return. The return at first wide, the entire width of the print, and then abruptly narrowing, ending in an escarpment of mountains. A sun in a band of yellow turning to amber, white hot with an orange center, a ragged periphery tinged with umber, as if a lion’s head. Fast currents pick up speed when blocked by islands, barraging rocky shores and separating into braided streams with white caps. In the same direction as the tides, the currents become impossible to resist, such that rowing in a boat one is pushed in the opposite direction than one intended to go, and finds oneself released into an open
sea. Indifferent Waters is directionally complex. A foreground of seemingly rippling waters, scuds of white on blue, meets an articulated band of mountains or perhaps just dirt, heralded by a band of cliffs, and then of sky and clouds, a deeper blue than the water, perhaps rain clouds, shooting down, lightning in the west. Small wisps of clouds separated from the larger cloud masses known as messengers foretell of rain. Everything is jutting and angling, except for the lapping waters. The Way Through is Hidden is the way of heroes. Not as a world might begin, not as a cataclysmic fury, not as stars colliding, smashing bright suns across the firmament. But soft as
breath, breathed out. It begins as only it can begin as infinitesimal space in time. The cat nearing death with a first time lion’s cut to relieve him of his matted fur that he no longer able to pretzel his body could not groom revealed long legs hidden by silky fur, we thought short due to his compensatory stoop, a waiter with pantaloons we had joked, now shown to be an adolescent track star out of proportion with himself. I used to call him Mr. Silky.
3.
To begin with The Way Through is Hidden. The door, carved into rock, as if into a monolithial chamber, with other block structures pushing at it. Beyond, pyramids and trapezoids, all detail wiped out by blinding light, the off-white paper undyed by ink. Evenly spaced horizontal lines create the expectation of a horizon, hidden behind the thrusting and jostling construction. Elongated, broken clouds reveal a blue tending toward the turquoise and a ground of diagonal plinths taunts the idea that there is any way through. Batset, fierce protector and lioness, settled in a temple on an island in the Nile, two channels of water surrounding the island and making for a
lake. Cooled by the waters, Batset was transformed into a gentle cat, much revered and loved by the Egyptians. The city, pr-bꜣstt, the House of Batset, rose up and around the temple and looked down into it, so that its entire labyrinth of vestibules and alcoves could be seen from without. Owned by royalty, cats were sometimes dressed in golden jewelry and allowed to eat from the plates of their owners. Once did I see a slip of earth by throbbing waves long undermined, loosed from its hold;—how no one knew. But all might see it float, obedient to the wind. Might see it, from the mossy shore dissevered float upon the Lake, float, with its crest of trees adorned on which
the warbling birds their pastime take. Food, shelter, safety there they find. There berries ripen, flowerets bloom. There insects live their lives—and die. A peopled world it is; in size a tiny room. And thus through many seasons’ space this little island may survive. But Nature, though we mark her not, will take away—may cease to give. Perchance when you are wandering forth upon some vacant sunny day without an object, hope, or fear, thither your eyes may turn—the Isle is passed away. Buried beneath the glittering Sea! Its place no longer to be found.
Floating World engages James Reed’s book of moku hanga prints, Dreams of Return. Other lines are taken from James’s poem, “Beginning”: “not as a cataclysmic fury, not with stars colliding, smashing bright suns across the firmament”; “soft as breath, breathed out”; “as only it can begin as infinitesimal space in time.” The final passage, beginning with “Once did I see a slip” is an incomplete quotation of Dorothy Wordsworth’s poem “Floating Island.”
Poet and scholar, Jeanne Heuving has lived most of her life in Seattle, with forays into Palo Alto, New Haven and Cambridge. She is engaged by the tensions between prose and poetry and seeks to amplify these in her work. Indigo Angel (Black Square Editions, 2023), made up of three books—Mood Indigo, Brilliant Corners and Air Time—takes its lead from different jazz modalities as these ray out into other arts, the natural world and human history. Heuving’s scholarly work includes Inciting Poetics: Thinking and Writing Poetry, co-edited with Tyrone Williams (Recencies Series, University of New Mexico Press, 2019) and The Transmutation of Love and Avant-Garde Poetics (Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics Series, University of Alabama Press, 2016).