A new year.
On New Year’s Day, everything feels new: the air, the sky and our feelings.
The time flow is supposed to be the same, and nothing has actually been reset, but it feels as though all the water in a tank has been replaced. It is a strange feeling.
Especially in Japan, we have a custom to visit shrines and temples as soon as the year begins and pray for good health and well-being for the whole year. It is an action that seems to reset everything.
But the New Years in 2021 is exceptional, as we are being asked to move our visits to different time of the year to keep social distancing. And even more so on New Year’s Day, when people are thinking “This is the year to make it better!” “I have to do my best this year!” “This year, I ‘m a different person from last year!” etc., wishing to clear up all the bad things that happened last year.
However, strangely enough, the New Year flies by so fast.
You celebrate the happy New Year, the fist three days drinking Otoso (New Year’s spiced Sake), on the 7th of January, eating Nanakusa-gayu (herb porridge), and then comes the Coming-of age ceremony…and January ends in an instant.
There is an old saying in Japan, that January is the first month of the year and it goes (Ichi = one, and Iku =goes). February is the second month and it runs away (Ni = two, and Nigeru=runs away). March is the third month and it goes away (San=three, and Saru = goes away). This is quite interesting and quite true. It makes us wonder that time is actually moving faster than we think.
I have read in books about the idea that there are distortions, strains and twists in time and space, and that time and space are stretching and contracting in this vast universe. It is interesting, and I sometimes wish I could learn more deeply about what the scientists have to say.
Just as no one used to think that the earth was round, or that it was a funny story that the earth rotates, time and space may not be as simple as we think.
Such mysterious stories interests me, and when I hear that the present, the past and future actually exist at the same time, I feel that my dreams are expanding.
When I think about music which is something sensitive that cannot be seen, I suddenly wonder if sound can escape from time and space.
If that is so, I have a wish.
There is a part of me playing the violin praying, so that the sound could be heard by my deceased father and mother during their times of pain when they were struggling for life.
If time and space are twisted, all sorts of possibilities spring to my mind. Could the sound of Durany reach people who are suffering alone in pain?
See, time has moved forward while I was thinking and dazing about such things.
I start running again, not to be left behind!