Echoes

I was never much of an anime person. But Studio Ghibli… I don’t know how anyone couldn’t love that. Especially Princess Mononoke. Maybe it’s different in the original Japanese version, but in the English dub, the wolf god Moro’s voice is so haunting, so beautiful. Low and smooth a rumble a coo. “You know you could always jump, boy. End it all,” she says. “The trees cry out as they die, but you cannot hear them,” she says. “Now my poor, ugly, beautiful daughter is neither human nor wolf,” she says. Sitting alone in my room and watching it on a dim computer screen, I have to pause and rewind to hear it again. My poor, ugly, beautiful daughter. They’re the kind of words that you have to chew slowly, keep on your tongue and savor. My poor, ugly, beautiful daughter. And then… “You know, that boy wanted to share his life with you.” That boy wanted to share his life with you. That boy wanted to share his life with you. How calmly she says it, sliding cool and clear, but slowly, melodically, a numb cocoon enveloping a cold wave sweeping a soaring soprano shade suspended over silence. I don’t know why, she’s so very different from me, but those words from her great jaws… they’re a comfort somehow, lulling me into dreams under murmuring tides or warm, heavy snow. They’re the kind of words that I want tuck into my pocket and carry with me. As I brush my teeth sit in the car stare at the lonely trees waving their fingertips. As I tie my shoelaces scrawl down my homework walk up crumbling concrete stairs. I forget them for a few weeks, and then they echo back from my footsteps in early mornings ebbing laughter empty hallways. That boy wanted to share his life with you. That boy wanted to share his life with you.

Over all the World

over all the world there spread
a quiet, evergrowing dread

‘never long the roses last’
warned the voices of the past

and in her heart she knew it well
for gently had the petals fell

as golden boats upon the wind
peachy whispers that they sinned

she kissed their tails and waved goodbye
but what could she do more than sigh