Groan. Groan again. Darken room. Back to sleep. Groan. Wait for hunger pain to overtake head pain. Fold up futon (30 minutes). Open door to kitchen (10 minutes).
Two eggs, sunny side up. Salt and pepper. Toast with butter. Two coffees. Darken room.
Except that outside, the sun is making up for time lost in the snow yesterday. And there hasn't been any sun for weeks. Months. And the snow is melting. And just then the egg-grease starts to work it's magic. And then a whole day on the Dark Side of the Curtains is starting to feel less necessary.
So it's fresh air all the way to Nina-ji temple, where the snow melting from the roof sends a curtain of crystal drips down onto the pebbles in the trench on the ground, making the new best sound in the whole world. And where, as the drops gather and bulge under the eves, the sun refracts through them onto the timber behind in the new prettiest pattern in the world. And if you ride up the hill behind the temple into what the old maps say are fields, but are now houses, you come to a strange cluster of deserted huts and shrines in an empty hollow like the start of a ghost story, and a little further on to a broken stone staircase that leads up to a trail over Oouchiyama that brings you past a view down over the city to the tomb of emperor Uda (867-931, reigned 887-897), impossibly still under snow that hasn't been disturbed. And if, on the trail back, you look to the other side, away from the city, you see tiny huts and forgotten shrines all over the hills, usually invisible in the trees, now picked out by the snow that hasn't melted from them yet. And then it starts to rain and you coast down the hill for home, and on the way you find Senbon-shaka-do, that you've always meant to look for, and make it back in time to cook fabulous dinner, then get to Mu~ra to see Jazz and eat cake, of which more later.
New personal best recovery-from-crippling-hangover, then. It almost certainly had nothing to do with the eggs and everything to do with living in this extraordinary city.
Oh alright it was the eggs.
Two eggs, sunny side up. Salt and pepper. Toast with butter. Two coffees. Darken room.
Except that outside, the sun is making up for time lost in the snow yesterday. And there hasn't been any sun for weeks. Months. And the snow is melting. And just then the egg-grease starts to work it's magic. And then a whole day on the Dark Side of the Curtains is starting to feel less necessary.
So it's fresh air all the way to Nina-ji temple, where the snow melting from the roof sends a curtain of crystal drips down onto the pebbles in the trench on the ground, making the new best sound in the whole world. And where, as the drops gather and bulge under the eves, the sun refracts through them onto the timber behind in the new prettiest pattern in the world. And if you ride up the hill behind the temple into what the old maps say are fields, but are now houses, you come to a strange cluster of deserted huts and shrines in an empty hollow like the start of a ghost story, and a little further on to a broken stone staircase that leads up to a trail over Oouchiyama that brings you past a view down over the city to the tomb of emperor Uda (867-931, reigned 887-897), impossibly still under snow that hasn't been disturbed. And if, on the trail back, you look to the other side, away from the city, you see tiny huts and forgotten shrines all over the hills, usually invisible in the trees, now picked out by the snow that hasn't melted from them yet. And then it starts to rain and you coast down the hill for home, and on the way you find Senbon-shaka-do, that you've always meant to look for, and make it back in time to cook fabulous dinner, then get to Mu~ra to see Jazz and eat cake, of which more later.
New personal best recovery-from-crippling-hangover, then. It almost certainly had nothing to do with the eggs and everything to do with living in this extraordinary city.
Oh alright it was the eggs.
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