If You Meet Yourself on the Road...

Dr. X posts this from the Hansen Access Road in King of Prussia, PA:

"My girlfriend had moved out, and I was set to go to Europe to think things over. I wrote a brief note to the landlord telling him where to stick his 'self-extending lease', and packed up the household - pots, pans, an iron, boxes of papers, my photographs and mementos, and my beloved library, all 500 volumes.

"A truck came and took the boxes to storage, until such time as I was settled in a house and had room for them again.

"That was in 1989.

"This week, thanks to serious efforts by my wife, the boxes returned, and now occupy our overstuffed garage. I spent a little time going through them tonight. As you'd expect, there's a lot of junk - clothes that don't fit (and shouldn't be worn even if they did), pots, pans, a 20 year-old iron...

"But after much rummaging I found what I was looking for. My first edition (1984) of The Sketchbooks of Hiroshige (with an introduction by Daniel Boorstin). No, not the hardcover edition that came out a couple of years ago - no no no...I'm talking about the collector's edition, the two-volume slipcase with fold-out accordion prints, printed by the Toppan Printing Co. of Tokyo. It cost me a day's pay in 1985, even with my WordsWorth discount. It was the one thing I regretted putting into storage (well, that and my college degree), and the first thing I got out.

"And it's in perfect condition, after all that time.

"I am an uncritical consumer of the woodblock prints of both Hiroshige and Hokusai, even those that are a little too precious for some tastes. But these sketchbooks are a completely different deal. They're pencil and ink, and were not intended for a mass audience. They're the private art Hiroshige made for himself as he traveled, and they still take my breath away.

"Take this one, for example, "A Long Bridge with Distant Pines and Cherry Trees". From the 'Commentaries on the Plates': A bridge at Arashiyama on the Kozu River in northwest Kyoto. The artist used opaque white over the ink to represent the flowering cherry trees. The bridge is still there, though a bit modified.

"Or this one, "Catching Fireflies", in which A girl uses her fan to gather the flies, which are then deposited in the covered cage with gauze walls and lid. The scene is set at an appropriate hunting site, the bank of a river, perhaps the one at Uji, famous for fireflies.

"She was there 18 years ago, and there she is again - awkward and beautiful - just as I left her.

"It brings to mind a verse from my college years:

"Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
"As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!
"When old age shall this generation waste,
"Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
"Than ours, a friend to man...

"Truth, beauty, whatever...I don't know if I can endorse all those poetic equivalencies. But I'm very happy to have my Hiroshige sketchbooks back."