On “Borrowing Landscapes” and “Shared Consciousness”: Alec Finlay and Ken Cockburn’s Collaborative Projects Writing Through Matsuo Bashō’s Oku no Hosomichi

104 ON “BORROWING LANDSCAPES” AND “SHARED CONSCIOUSNESS”: ALEC FINLAY AND KEN COCKBURN’S COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS WRITING THROUGH MATSUO BASHŌ’S OKU NO HOSOMICHI Monika Kocot DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/2571452X.2023.66.7 Abstract: The article explores multimodal references to Matsuo Bashō’s philosophy of writing in Alec Finlay’s collaborative projects. In my discussion of Bashō-inspired texts, I focus on two forms of shared writing as exemplified in Alec Finlay and Ken Cockburn’s the road north book of poetry and a blog, both based on a journey through Scotland guided by Bashō’s Oku no Hosomichi that took place between 15 May 2010 and 15 May 2011. The theme of “borrowed landscape,” a term used in classical Japanese gardening, will be introduced in a comparative reading of the road north and Bashō’s Oku no Hosomichi. As will be argued, by “translating” Bashō’s and his companion Sora’s journey to Scotland (the Scottish North), Finlay and Cockburn attempt to draw up a new (mental) cartography. Keywords: Matsuo Bashō, Alec Finlay, Ken Cockburn, Zhuangzi, shared writing, borrowed landscapes, travel writing, road north, Scotland, Japan clearing the mind and sliding in to that created space Gary Snyder1 open the gate, borrow the landscape – it’s all yours! Alan Spence2 1 Gary Snyder, “Endless Streams and Mountains,” Mountains and Rivers without End (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1996) 5. 2 Alan Spence, Edinburgh Come All Ye (Edinburgh: Scotland Street Press, 2022) 7. On “Borrowing Landscapes” and “Shared Consciousness” 105 There is no strategy in borrowing, it is simply following what touches you emotionally. Ji Cheng3 Introduction The article offers a comparative reading of Matsuo Bashō’s4 travel diary Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) (1702) and Alec Finlay and Ken Cockburn’s the road north (2014), a journey through Scotland guided by Bashō’s Oku no Hosomichi.5 By The Road North I mean two collaborative projects, namely the book of poetry published in 2014, based on a journey that took place between 15 May 2010 and 15 May 2011, and also Finlay and Cockburn’s blog which in a way forms a separate project and which, in terms of its prosimetric form, approximates Bashō’s travel diary. While Bashō’s haibun consists of prosaic descriptions of a journey accompanied with haiku poems, Finlay and Cockburn’s travel-blog features not only haiku, but also longer poems, photographs of visited places, and audio-visual material. The Road North projects are, to use Marjorie 3 Ji Cheng, Yuanye, trans. Wybe Kuitert, in “Borrowing Scenery and the Landscape That Lends – The Final Chapter of Yuanye,” Journal of Landscape Architecture 10, no. 2 (2015): 39, DOI: 10.1080/18626033.2015.1058570. 4 Bashō (1644-1694) was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. He was a master of haiku, haibun (travel diary) and renga (collaborative linked verse poetry). His Oku no Hosomichi has become the classic work of Japanese nature and travel writing. Bashō’s poetry is internationally renowned. He has influenced whole generations of writers and travel-writers not only in Japan but also in the West. In recent Scottish literature, Bashō’s philosophy of writing has been openly affirmed and celebrated in Kenneth White’s poetry, prose, and essays, and in Alan Spence’s haiku poetry. See Monika Kocot, “Geopoetics and the Poetry of Consciousness: A Transmodern Perspective,” in Transmodern Perspectives on Contemporary Literatures in English, ed. Jessica AliagaLavrijsen and José María Yebra-Pertusa (London: Routledge, 2019) 178-203; Monika Kocot, “Kenneth White’s North Road Travelling,” in W drodze / On the Road – Perspektywy badawcze, ed. Anna Suwalska-Kołecka and Jakub Ligor (Płock: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Mazowieckiej Uczelni Publicznej w Płocku, 2019) 107-25; Monika Kocot, “Writing the Road: On Drifting and Travelling-Seeing in Kenneth White’s Geopoetics,” ANGLICA. An International Journal of English Studies 29, no. 3 (2020): 45-62. 5 In their reading of Bashō’s travel diary, Finlay and Cockburn rely exclusively on translated texts, in particular Back Roads to Far Towns, Basho’s Travel Journal (translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu). Similarly, my knowledge and understanding of Bashō’s Oku no Hosomichi, and other travel diaries, is exclusively through translated texts and academic articles written in or translated into English. Monika Kocot 106 Perloff’s term, “written-through” experiments which attempt to draw up a new (mental) cartography, as Finlay and Cockburn “translate” Bashō and his companion Sora’s Japanese journey to Scotland (the Scottish North). But more importantly, they are extraordinary examples of “shared consciousness” where the term “shared” is understood as a collaborative writing (and reading) experience but also as a creative dialogue with tradition and past voices. One could argue that by initiating an intertextual game with Bashō’s travel diary, a genuinely inspiring example of “shared writing,” Finlay and Cockburn enter the realm of a truly multidimensional and multimodal “sharing.” Bashō’s travelogue is divided into fifty-three stations, each referring to a particular place on the road North. In this article, I discuss Station 13 (Crossing the Shirakawa Barrier) and 14 (Visiting Tōkyū at Sukagawa) and show how they are creatively rewritten by Finlay and Cockburn in their blog and the road north book. One of my aims is to show that in the process of re-writing Bashō’s haibun, Finlay and Cockburn practice the technique of “borrowing landscapes”; one can see that particularly in the photographs taken at each station and featured on the blog, but metaphorically speaking the theme of “borrowing landscapes” permeates the book and the blog in their entirety. “Shared Consciousness” and “Borrowed Scenery” Alec Finlay describes the area of his creative process as “shared consciousness.”6 As Stewart Smith aptly notices, this sharing “incorporates both Finlay’s collaborative and generative practice and his creative dialogue with tradition and past voices.”7 In his article, Smith mentions two of these voices. One is the voice of the poet and “avant-gardener” Ian Hamilton Finlay, and the second belongs to the poet, songwriter, and folklorist Hamish Henderson. From Ian Hamilton Finlay, Finlay the son “gets a grounding in interdisciplinary practice and avantgarde poetics,”8 but also his “commitment to wonder”;9 from Henderson, he gets 6 “Interview with Alec Finlay on Navigations,” Animate Projects, January 2013, https://animateprojectsarchive.org/interviews/alec_finlay. 7 Stewart Smith, “Basho Borne on the Carrying Stream: The Word-Mapping of Scotland and the Ecopoetics of Wind Power in Alec Finlay’s The Road North and Skying,” in Environmental and Ecological Readings: Nature, Human and Posthuman Dimensions in Scottish Literature and Arts (XVIII-XXI c.), ed. Philippe Laplace (Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comte, 2015) 217, DOI: 10.4000/books.pufc.9183. 8 Smith, “Basho Borne” 217. 9 Robert Creeley, “Foreword,” in Ian Hamilton Finlay, The Dancers Inherit the Party (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1996) 10. On “Borrowing Landscapes” and “Shared Consciousness” 107 “the idea of a social art and an open-minded vision of Scottish culture.”10 In his review of Alec Finlay’s Question Your Teaspoons: Stonypathian Memories, Calum Rodger notes that Finlay’s poetry “establishes a dialogue with the past, augmenting old voices with phenomenological reflections from the imagistic [...] to the corporeal [...], breathing life into both by means of quiet reverence and unadorned formal exactitude.”11 We could easily apply this observation to the road north. Alec Finlay himself admits that he is “drawn to a tradition that equates poetic forms with natural elements,”12 therefore it is not surprising that he decided to enter into an artistic dialogue with Matsuo Bashō’s travel diary, which in itself is an extraordinary example of nature writing and shared writing (Bashō’s creative dialogue with the tradition and past voices of Japanese and Chinese literature). In the road north, Finlay and Cockburn trace Bashō’s journey (all fifty-three stations) and lay it over Scotland, in order to “make connections and open up new lines of thought.”13 As far as the blog is concerned, they even come up with a name for their practice of composing short poems in situ; they call it “Bashoing,” “writing in places”;14 as Finlay puts it, they are poems written “in the space between Bashō’s text and our locations”:15 When we were out Bashoing, our mode was sitting and scribbling, writing verses within a small rectangular frame rubber-stamped on a parcel-label. The method was clear by the time we arrived in Perthshire for our first week, searching for the “Shirakawa Barrier,” the threshold – literally a gateway – to the Highlands, where Basho heard peasant women singing rice-planting songs and recognized that he was about to enter an ancient culture.16 This practice brings a heightened sense of play between poetic forms and natural elements – copies of the poems are left in situ, and they become part of the landscape. 10 Smith, “Basho Borne” 217. 11 Calum Rodger, “Poems of the Infra-Ordinary: Alec Finlay’s Question Your Teaspoons,” Glasgow Review of Books, 28 May 2013, http://glasgowreviewofbooks.com/2013/05/28/ poems-of-the-infra-extraordinary/. 12 Alec Finlay, “Overview: còmhlan bheanntan | A Company of Mountains,” Company of Mountains, http://www.company-of-mountains.com/p/overview.html. 13 Smith, “Basho Borne” 220. 14 Finlay, “Overview.” 15 Alec Finlay, “Twin Peaks,” Alec Finlay, 12 March 2013, http://alecfinlayblog.blogspot.com/ 2013/03/a-company-of-mountains.html. 16 Finlay, “Twin Peaks.” Monika Kocot 108 More importantly, however, both writing and reading these haiku-like compositions requires “borrowing landscapes,” and that provides room for interpretation for the reader. I would argue that as a rule Finlay and Cockburn’s poems and passages in prose give the readers a chance to respond in their own way. This is connected with the fact that, similarly to Bashō, they find rich potential in “empty space” (yohaku). As Hori Nobuo points out, Bashō “was very well-aware that there are limits to the power that words have to express truth and perceptions of the world.”17 He provides a definition of empty space by Tosa Mitsuoki, a painter of Bashō’s era: Do not fill up the whole picture with lines; also apply colors with a light touch. Some imperfection in design is desirable. You should not fill in more than a third of the background. Just as you would if you were writing poetry, take care to hold something back. The viewer, too, must bring something to it. If one includes some empty space along with an image, then the mind will fill it in.18 This empty space, which makes the mind of the reader (free to) complete the image, is important for another reason. In the twenty-first century, when the emphasis is placed more and more on ecological living and ecocritical reading, Finlay’s poetic language makes it possible, as Morgan suggests, to fulfil its potential as “the brilliant, vibrating interface between the human and the non-human.”19 His work constitutes what Louisa Gairn calls “an ecological ‘line of defence,’ providing a space in which the reader and author can examine their relationship to the world around them.”20 The most important aspect of the process seems to be the act of “sharing consciousness,” seen not only as the co-creation of poems, but also as being together, being one with people met on the road, and as the joyful affirmation of nature. This is how Finlay writes about Bashō and Sora: The practice that Bashō and Sora followed, combined religious observation, folk custom and the everyday civility of sharing poetry and tea with friends 17 Hori Nobuo, “Bashō at the Center of Creation,” trans. Cheryl Crowley, in Matsuo Bashō’s Poetic Spaces. Exploring Haikai Intersections, ed. Eleanor Kerkham (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) 28. 18 Nobuo, “Bashō at the Center of Creation” 28. 19 Edwin Morgan, “Roof of Fireflies,” in Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, ed. W.N. Herbert and Matthew Hollis (Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2000) 192. 20 Louisa Gairn, Ecology and Modern Scottish Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 156. On “Borrowing Landscapes” and “Shared Consciousness” 109 and strangers. They also spread Bashō’s school of renga – linked verse poetry – and composed tanzaku [poems written on a narrow strip of paper] with ink & brush, left as gifts along the way.21 In a similar fashion, Finlay and Cockburn are often joined on their travels by other artists and writers, but also folk singers, musicians, and ecologists. I will come back to this issue in the context of Station 14. Bashō’s travel-accounts are extremely inspiring for Finlay and Cockburn not only in terms of the prosimetric form, but first and foremost because of the philosophy of living that informs his writing. As Cid Corman notes in the introduction to his translation of Oku no Hosomichi, [m]ost of his [Bashō’s] poetry (and this is within the tradition which he himself was shaping) evokes context and wants one. The poems are not isolated instances of lyricism, but cries of their occasions, of someone intently passing through a world, often arrested by the momentary nature of things within an unfathomable “order.”22 In the road north, the “commitment to wonder” that Finlay takes from his father is intuitively joined with what Bashō called “the ah! of things.”23 It is interesting to note that while, as Smith puts it, Finlay and Cockburn “are literally deterritorializing Bashō from Japan,”24 their creative practice can in fact be viewed as quite Japanese in terms of aesthetics. Apart from the mindful way of being with(in) nature and with others which characterizes Finlay and Cockburn’s projects, one can notice another parallel. Everywhere Bashō goes, Corman writes, “one feels a sounding made, the ground hallowed, hard won, endeared to him, and so to us, through what others had made of it, had reached, discovered.”25 Finlay and Cockburn share a similar need to connect with the past voices, to engage with “what others had made” of these places. For instance, the blogs for 21 Alec Finlay, “Twin Peaks.” 22 Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu, “Introduction,” in Matsuo Basho, Back Roads to Far Towns, Basho’s Travel Journal, trans. Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumo (Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2004). 23 Mono no aware, the “ah!ness of things,” is a feeling for natural loveliness tinged with sadness at its transience; it is “sadness tinged by joy, joy tinged by sadness.” Robert E. Carter, Becoming Bamboo: Western and Eastern Explorations of the Meaning of Life (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992) 92. See also Kenneth Yasuda, Japanese Haiku. Its Essential Nature and History (Boston, MA: Tuttle Publishing, 2011) 38, 39-40, 43, 80. 24 Smith, “Basho Borne” 220. 25 Corman and Susumu, “Introduction,” Back Roads 10. Monika Kocot 110 Station 15 and “Ken’s Dunira” from the cycle of poems on Shirakawa in the book show their creative dialogue with both Bashō and Ian Hamilton Finlay (and his Little Sparta). By activating and re-affirming the poetic legacy of the famous “avantgardener,” Finlay and Cockburn make their project more and more Japanese (and Chinese) in terms of the aesthetics of “borrowed landscape,” so often practiced by Finlay the elder (especially in Little Sparta).“Borrowed landscape” or “borrowed scenery”26 (shakkei in Japanese and jiejing in Chinese) is the ancient technique of incorporating a distant landscape into a garden setting so that the faraway view becomes a seamless part of the design. Shakkei was practiced in Japanese gardens as early as the Heian period (794-1185 AD), and it played a key role in Japanese garden design during the time of Bashō – the Edo period (1603-1868). Gordon Cullen notes the framing aspect of verticals as “netting”: “the device of framing brings the distant scene forward into the ambience of our own environment,” and he adds that “this serves to link the near with the remote.”27 In his haiku poem on shakkei, Alan Spence writes: open the gate, borrow the landscape – it’s all yours!28 But is it really as simple as Spence suggests? Specialists agree that applying shakkei successfully to one’s garden involves more than simply framing a view: it requires a careful analysis of the landscape to create a multidimensional composition that integrates the “borrowed scenery” in a poetic way. In his highly informative article on Ji Cheng’s Yuanye, the oldest extant – and, it should be emphasized, Chinese – text on “borrowed scenery,” Wybe Kuitert notes that scenery, or jing, “must also point to another, most important ingredient of garden making: our own receptive perception of scenery where perception is not limited to the visual only.”29 Kuitert 26 Teiji Itoh, Space & Illusion: In the Japanese Garden, (New York: Weatherhill/Tankosha, 1981) 15. 27 Gordon Cullen, Townscape (New York: Reinhold, 1961) 39. See also Bob Scarfo’s comment in Landscape Architecture As Storytelling: Learning Design Through Analogy (New York: Routledge, 2023), Chapter 5: “Netting is experienced more to your right or left providing momentary glimpses as you move along a narrative progression.” 28 Spence, Edinburgh Come All Ye 7. 29 Wybe Kuitert, “Borrowing Scenery and the Landscape That Lends – The Final Chapter of Yuanye,” Journal of Landscape Architecture 10, no. 2 (2015): 32, DOI: 10.1080/18626033. 2015.1058570. Further references to this article are given in parentheses in the text. On “Borrowing Landscapes” and “Shared Consciousness” 111 proposes jing as “landscape,” understood “as a topographic and conceptual plenitude of abiotic, biotic, and anthropogenic processes, including human perceptions of it” (32). He also suggests that the translation “borrowed scenery” does “not seem quite right” (33), as jie should be understood as “describing an activity, such as ‘borrowing’ rather than ‘borrowed’” (33). But there is one more aspect usually ignored by Westerners due to their dualist worldview: “Jie is about recognizing the world out there with its man-made and natural phenomena as an agent or even as an actor, enticing man, the garden designer.” (33) Therefore, Kuitert continues, jie “is not only borrowing, but also lending” (33). When one thinks about Finlay and Cockburn’s photographs of the landscape and of the poems left in situ (and how they become one “body”), Kuitert’s argument does make sense, and it actually provides a new way of looking at Scottish poetic interaction with landscape, as what Kuitert would call “landscape in interaction” (33). I will explore how this dynamic operates in my analysis of Stations 13 and 14. But if, as Kuitert proposes, borrowing from the landscape goes together with the landscape that lends, then “both the garden maker and the landscape are interchangeably either the object or the subject” (33). Kuitert notes that it is only poetically-minded people who understand the idea of the landscape “that actively communicates its spectacle as something inspirational” (33). In Cheng’s last chapter of his Yuanye, devoted solely to jiejing, one finds passages like this one, “roll up the blinds to invite the swallows that will shear the light breeze now and then,” or one which activates a parallel between the landscape and entering a painting: “the mood matches the pure and the remote, the hills and valleys convey such feelings […]. Thoughts beyond the vulgar world suddenly arise, as if one enters a painting to travel inside it.”30 So to come back to my question concerning Spence’s poem, it might be that for some artists “borrowing scenery” is quite easy. What seems crucial is, to use Cheng’s words, “simply following what touches you emotionally.”31 Interestingly, Kuitert notes that borrowing and lending is not only about space (distant landscape, neighbouring landscape, upward landscape, downward landscape) but also about “catching an ephemeral and dynamic beauty at the right moment – in its full process of daily or seasonal change” (39). Bashō was certainly a master of “borrowing scenery” into his poems, and Finlay and Cockburn follow in his footsteps. In my opinion, Finlay’s collaborative projects offer room for us as readers to experience what it means to borrow a landscape both physically and metaphorically, or even both at the same time, because Finlay and Cockburn tend to initiate the game of non-duality. 30 Cheng, Yuanye, qtd. in Kuitert, “Borrowing Scenery” 36. 31 Cheng, Yuanye, qtd. in Kuitert, “Borrowing Scenery” 36. Monika Kocot 112 Bashō, Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu) and the road north It would be difficult to discuss Matsuo Bashō’s writing without making references to Daoism and Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu). And it would be equally difficult to discuss the idea of sharing and reinventing the landscape in Scottish travel accounts by Finlay and Cockburn without at least mentioning certain aesthetic features present in the Scottish travelogues but having their origins in the Zhuangzi. We cannot forget that Bashō was a revolutionary mind, and many scholars agree that he used “the Daoist classic Zhuangzi to reinvent the poetic significance of landscape in his travel journals.”32 As Peipei Qiu puts it, Bashō’s geographical imagination is shaped not simply by the material qualities of space, but more importantly by conceptions based on broader cultural, aesthetic, and philosophical frameworks, particularly the aesthetic of shōyōyu (Chinese xiaoyaoyou, carefree wandering), which is highlighted by the Zhuangzi and reiterated in Chinese poetic tradition. Bashō’s adaptation of the shōyōyu spirit to the recluse/traveler theme of his kikōbun: the spirit of carefree wandering and its association with Chinese recluse/travel literature provide a new meaning, giving context to his travel poems and journals.33 In the road north, the landscape is also perceived through the eyes of a traveller in the shōyōyu spirit, and one could even say that Finlay and Cockburn’s poetic vision is tinted with Daoist colour. But the aesthetic of shōyōyu is not the only one in operation. When discussing their experiments, one needs to remember that they enter the territory of Japanese literature but at the same time move within the realm of Daoist aesthetics of zōka (Chinese zaohua) in the spirit of Bashō. Zōka means to create and transform; in the Zhuangzi, it means “both the working of the Dao – the natural way in which all phenomena come into being and transform – and the accomplishment of the Dao (the existence of all things and beings).”34 The notion is used in Chinese literary theory to “imply the natural and spontaneous creative process or the unsullied outcome of such process.”35 In Oi no kobumi Bashō writes: 32 Peipei Qiu, “Reinventing the Landscape: The Zhuangzi and the Geographical Imagination of Bashō,” in Matsuo Bashō’s Poetic Spaces. Exploring Haikai Intersections, ed. Eleanor Kerkham (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) 61. 33 Qiu, “Reinventing the Landscape” 61, 63. 34 Qiu, “Reinventing the Landscape” 67. 35 Qiu, “Reinventing the Landscape” 67. On “Borrowing Landscapes” and “Shared Consciousness” 119 “overtones of silence are more powerful than insufficient language.”65 Corman and Susumu put it in simpler terms: “what Bashō doesn’t say moves at least as much as what he does. One knows his silences go deeper than reasons.”66 Having crossed the Shirakawa Barrier, Bashō composes his haiku, by opening his ears to the “landscape of the ordinary” and by discovering the extraordinary beauty in the simple rice-planting song sung by the villagers. In the first edition of the book, Corman and Susumu’s translation differs from the one quoted above, and it looks as follows: fūryū’s beginning Oku’s rice-planting song67 In the notes section, they add that fūryū – the untranslatable term which literally means “wind-fluent” – left in its original form is “reflective of Japanese taste for the natural and immediate and humble as well as evanescent, as graceful.”68 This mind-opening haiku praising and “borrowing from” the natural beauty of a simple song becomes the beginning of the first of three poetic sequences (renga) composed by Bashō, Sora, and other renga participants. In The Road North blog post, Finlay shares the following insight: “Folded in with the Oku, they [places] opened to synchronicity – when Basho saw geese and we needed to see geese then there were geese, calling over the bay of ób Ghabhsabhaig.”69 As if seeing things in their suchness – triggered by the interplay of their here with Bashō’s there – brought Finlay and Cockburn closer to experiencing oneness that transcends notions of time and space. As if they experienced another meaning of “landscape that lends” or “landscape in interaction.” But does it mean that their version of Shirakawa is similar to that of Bashō and Sora? 65 Qiu, “Reinventing the Landscape” 69. 66 Corman and Susumu, “Introduction,” Back Roads 8. 67 Bashō, Back Roads 47. 68 Bashō, Back Roads 163. Apart from Corman and Susumu, only Makoto Ueda uses the term fūryū: “the beginning / of fūryū – a rice-planting song / in the far north.” David Landis Barnhill foregrounds the beginning of all art (“the beginning of all art – / in the deep north / a rice-planting song), while Nobuyuki Yuasa opts for the beginning of poetry (“the first poetic venture / I came across – / The rice-planting songs /of the far north”). 69 Finlay, “Twin Peaks.” Monika Kocot 120 As Finlay and Cockburn leave their Edo (Edinburgh), their idea is that the Shirakawa Barrier corresponds to the Lowland–Highland divide: somewhere in Perthshire. But the blog post which follows clearly suggests that the Scottish Shirakawa will have many counterparts: […] after looking here and there for the right pair for Shirakawa, Ken realized that the crossing into this other state of mind lay everywhere about us, reflected in the still Mirror Pond of Dalchonzie Power Station, sheltered under the cool ash of Invergeldie, and inscribed in the beech trees of Newton at the entrance to the Sma’ Glen.70 The first long poem in Our Shirakawa section of the north road book provides even more geographical and mental affinities: People ask us the way to Shirakawa Barrier and we reply: take it easy, the Shirakawa Barrier is everywhere […] lovers’ beeches’ gully-carved hearts and initials are Shirakawa, an intimacy between settlement and elsewhere […] any clicked latch of a gate that makes a space for things to come is Shirakawa71 In this Scottish counterpart of Sora’s poem, we clearly see that Shirakawa is more of a state of mind than a geographic reality. Interestingly, in the blog post version, Cockburn’s poem is preceded by one of Gary Snyder’s translations from Cold 70 Finlay, “Twin Peaks.” 71 Finlay and Cockburn, the north road 31-32. On “Borrowing Landscapes” and “Shared Consciousness” 121 Mountain Poems, so we might say that apart from providing a historical reference to, or “borrowing from,” one of the most renowned pieces of Daoist and Ch’an nature poetry by Han Shan, Cockburn initiates a double intertextual game on the nature of non-dualist travelling and interbeing: “Men ask me the way to Cold Mountain Cold Mountain: there’s no through trail In summer, ice doesn’t melt The rising sun blurs in swirling fog. How did I make it? My heart’s not the same as yours. If your heart was like mine You’d get it and be right here.”72 Cold Mountain is the poet’s name (Han Shan) and a place of his meditative dwelling. His invitation to “get it and be right here” is all about transcending the notion of space and entering the space “within.” In a similar fashion, Cockburn adds a comment below his poem saying that “Edo and Oku are states of mind too.”73 Instead of searching for Shirakawa signposts, Finlay and Cockburn send a very clear message that each place can be their (our) Shirakawa Barrier. Finlay’s blog post features a story surrounding a photo named “14 foxgloves marking the oku,” a pink “signpost” as it were: “When the winding path through the bracken opened, we each chose our way, it seemed, by a different wildflower. My oku was marked by foxgloves, nodding at the edge of the scree field. Ken’s by English stonecrop (Sedum anglicum), a stranger – like Fillan – fitting right in to the vein of the rock.”74 Both floral scenes might be viewed as instances of “landscape that lends” or “landscape in interaction.” The theme of “borrowing landscapes” is explored much further in “Ken’s Dunira” in Our Shirakawa section of the book where one finds various references to Ian Hamilton Finlay as “avant gardener.” The poem provides information on the white cottage, Drum na Keil, at Dunira, where Finlay the elder lived after the war. The walk to the cottage is Ken’s Shirakawa, and the images he focuses on are subtle allusions to Little Sparta and how it references this place: “I’m almost back when / a circle of tall trees / draws me into what’s left / of a formal garden // fluted 72 Alec Finlay, “Saint Fillan’s Hill,” The Road North, 16 August 2010, http://the-road-north. blogspot.com/2010/08/14-saint-fillans-hill.html. 73 Finlay, “Saint Fillan’s Hill.” 74 Finlay, “Saint Fillan’s Hill.” Monika Kocot 122 columns / picturesquely / toppled into deep- / ening grasses […] here there is no / canopy of sail / to break the horizon / of Mare Nostrum.”75 The notions of here and there become more and more ambiguous and liminal; the “feel” of a given space and the game of associative thinking/sensing is what really matters. In a blog post, Finlay writes that their Shirakawa is Saint Fillan’s Hill, and their Tokyu is Margaret Bennett, the Perthshire-based singer, storyteller, writer, and folklorist: As this was the hill we climbed together, Ken kindly agreed it could be our No. 1 Shirakawa. We’d already decided that, like Basho, we would mark the crossing in song […]. His moment of transition, beyond the capital, through Shirakawa and on into the hills, is our moment to hear an old Gaelic song.76 They ask Margaret Bennett to choose the most appropriate, and she makes a recording of “Gradh Geal Mo Chridh,” “Dear love of my heart, I would plough with you and reap.” In order to re-enact the experience of hearing the rice-planting song in Bashō’s diary, they play Bennett’s recording of the Gaelic song at the top of St Fillan’s Hill. There is, as Smith notes, “a sense of circular time to this pairing of Scottish and Japanese songs,”77 but it might also be seen as an attempt at going beyond time and space, towards the space within (our Shirakawa) where the sense of wonder makes us (writers and readers) one with nature. Conclusion Bashō famously said: “[D]o not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, seek what they sought.”78 Finlay and Cockburn choose various mind-bending techniques of searching for something that attracts them in Bashō’s equally innovative writing. The practice of shared writing, shared consciousness, or “Bashoing,” brings insights not only to them but also to their readers, making them more and more curious about the wondrous nature of simple, ordinary things, and this is something Bashō would be very happy about. After all, by following zōka and returning to zōka we come back to the core of our being. 75 Finlay and Cockburn, the north road 37-38. 76 Finlay, “Saint Fillan’s Hill.” 77 Smith, “Basho Borne” 225. 78 Qtd. in David Schiller, The Little Zen Companion (New York: Workman Publishing, 1994) 107. On “Borrowing Landscapes” and “Shared Consciousness” 123 BIBLIOGRAPHY Barnhill, David Landis. Bashō’s Journey. The Literary Prose of Matsuo Bashō. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005. Bashō, Matsuo. Back Roads to Far Towns, Basho’s Travel Journal. Translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu. Tokyo: Grossman Publishers, 1968. Bashō, Matsuo. Back Roads to Far Towns, Basho’s Travel Journal. Translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu. Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2004. Bashō, Matsuo. The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches. Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa. London: Penguin, 1966. Carter, Robert E. 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