Posted on March 20, 2011 | 
As above so below … the equator.
Tonight, shortly before midnight, our cold dirtball of a planet stands up to the sun without slant. It’s the spring or vernal equinox and equilux—shunbun no hi, in Japan—a day to honor the ancestors and visit family graves, a day of dead love. This year it comes at the end of a week of natural disaster and man-made near-apocalyptic horror.
Of course I want to call attention to this day as a celebration of nature and a dire warning about remembering that we are a subset in a much larger equation.
So, from haiku poet Sakyoku, who died in the 18th century at the age of twenty-one:
Ara kanashi
hana no higan o
shide no tabi
—Sakyoku
Translation by Clément:
Oh, how sad
flowers of the spring equinox
journey deathward.
—Erin Orison, DEAD LOVE/the Daily Slice
