When The Moon Sings - August 16, 2025

The end of July distinguished itself with triple digittemperatures.  August has featuredtemperatures twenty degrees lower and water varying from drip and drizzle totorrential downpour.  Neither encouragesoutdoor frolics and such frolics occur more often in younger folk anyway.  This has been an indoor stretch of time,saving the outdoors for only needful expeditions.

With the change of month came the ritual of calendar pageflipping.  July’s print, thoughskillfully done, never really drew me in. August did so immediately.  It’s ascene that reminded me of some places I have been, though I’ve never beencloser than a thousand miles from what it depicts.

We stand on the wooded banks of a river, some thirty feetbelow a road.  Above, in the middledistance a sturdy wooden bridge spans the river, allowing a road to cross.  We have come here in the early morning,perhaps just before sunrise.  Lanternsdot the road through the village on the far shore, mists have gathered betweenthe village and the mountain in the distance, and only the snowcap on themountain shows in much detail – the rest of the scene still fades slightly inlow light.

Since this is a picture, we cannot hear the water gurglingunder the bridge or feel the soft bite of spring morning temperatures or hearthe birds calling and insects buzzing. But perhaps we can if we’ve been similar places.  Humans rely on their visual senses much morethan the others, and pictures may awaken memories for the other senses.  The picture shows no humans.  Many of the most inspirational scenes omitpeople.

With imagination, we can walk along the river, perhapskeeping an eye for wildlife, perhaps skipping a stone, perhaps just letting thequiet and beauty of the scene sink into us. Having seen the picture, perhaps we make the resolution to go there andsee that in person.

We have enough information to geolocate it. This is NumaRiver and the town on the far shore calls itself Kawaibashi.  The mountain with the snowcap is MountFuji.  A short distance from Kawaibashi,the Numa flows into the sea, so it may be tidal – add salty smells to yourpicture of the place.  How nice it wouldbe to go there right now, away from torrential downpours and excessive heat.

Only one problem remains, though it’s a doozy. The picturewas created in 1947, in Japan. The mood the picture creates probably isn’tavailable because the scene has utterly changed. That area has grown andurbanized. I checked using Google Maps; a larger, taller ferro-concretestructure has replaced the wooden house at the far edge of the bridge. modernstreet lighting has replaced the lanterns beyond the house. I’m not sure, butthe bridge itself looks like it too had given way to some more modern and lasting,to accommodate modern traffic.  The townof Kawaibashi has been swallowed up by Fuji city, a booming place of perhaps aquarter million people.  Theseventy-eight years since the picture was produced has wrought too manychanges.  The picture no longer exists inreal life.

Humans process sensory information with a brain that readilyenvisions changes.  We perceive a thingand wonder what of it were different or how it could be made useful.  That sensory information is mostly visual.Courtesy of a late-night television show, I have learned that men are morevisual than women, according to a random female actress whose name I cannotremember. Perhaps we can debate that, but we are all more visual than any othersense most of the time.  Given theblessing of sight without reference to the other senses, the brain worksovertime to fill in with other sensory details that harmonize with how we feelabout what we see.

That Japanese scene is pretty, so my imagination gussies upthe other sensory information.  Thetemperature is cool, not cold, not even cool enough to require a jacket.  The insects that would feast on exposed fleshin Savannah somehow don’t exist in this part of the world.  The tang of the sea fills the nose, not thestench of things that decompose in tidal rivers.  The lanterns in the distance exist because ofhundreds of years of tradition, not the war-damaged utilities in Japan justafter the war.  The bridge is wooden forthe same reason.  Had I actually beenthere, I doubt the scene could live up to my imaginings.

The same is true of any art. George Bellows painted Blue Morning, an impressionist essay on thehuman-made chasm in New York City that became the foundation for Grand CentralStation.  Even though I know the area,the roar of traffic, the screech and thudding of construction equipment, andthe carbon-based odor don’t occur to me when I look at the painting.

The same is also true of literature.  An author who frequently references all ofthe senses will find the audience desperately searching for the thread of thestory.  The author must help us focus onthe sensory information that moves the story forward.  The most successful provide us with a storyand clues about the senses, allowing us to fill in with either our imaginationor experience.

This ability both blesses and curses us.  It has enabled us to make the world morehabitable – we do not current dwell in caves. But grander projects usually result in lesser results than weenvision.  In some cases, the envisioningwanders so far from what is possible that it turns of the best of intentionsinto disasters with long casualty lists. One improvement may result in problems that require other solutions, andlife becomes an unending game of whack-a-mole, with problems popping up fasterthan we can address them.

Public policy based on wishful thinking clearly has itsflaws.  But that’s too much to ask ofliterature or art.  When I awoke thismorning, before dawn, flashes of lightning streaked across the southeasternsky.  The midday temperatures will wanderinto the nineties, with a distinct possibility of a rainstorm with bolts oflightning overhead.  The usual insectswill punctuate the discomfort of the outdoors. Indoors, the August calendaroffers me a different environment, a relief that I can grasp with only ateaspoon of imagination.  That’s reallyall I want from it.