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31_days2007-05-07 01:48 pm
tongari.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2007-05-07 01:48 pm
[May 7] [Mushishi] i don't know
Title: i don't know
Day/Theme: May 7: would that I had discovered you, like America.
Series: Mushishi
Character/Pairing: Ginko, Tanyuu
Rating: G
The answers to each individual, existential issue of 'why am I doing this?' are never simple; those who can match this question with a single, one-sentence one-fact answer are usually, eventually, doomed. For example, Tama: "Because there will one day be a scribe born into the Karibusa family, and when it comes, I must save the child." More concise still, Tanyuu: "Because if I don't, I'll die."
(Worst of all: "I don't know.")
But, "I don't know," Ginko says, and it seems to him that with this you can head in two, opposing, paths: one that leads most swiftly to destruction (a place like a still pond, deep and dark and edged with quicksilver light), or one that leads on and on and on, a thousand miles across hills and deserts and weather good and bad. And even if you never find it, this final treasure you're looking for (although its shape and colour and name elude you), the hope of finding it some day is what stays with you always; is enough to warm you when it's raining and cool you when it's dry, enough to make you put one foot in front of the other when the road seems to have grown too long.
Even then he tries to find quantifiable goals; one thousand stories, maybe, or ten thousand, or a million. If all the stories in this world were exhausted before each target is reached, he thinks, I'm going to have to find some other world that holds more. Hope to be stretched out; one new discovery at a time.
"Ginko," Tanyuu says, when she thinks about this (although they've never discussed it), "wherever you are, I hope you remembered to repair your shoes."
Day/Theme: May 7: would that I had discovered you, like America.
Series: Mushishi
Character/Pairing: Ginko, Tanyuu
Rating: G
The answers to each individual, existential issue of 'why am I doing this?' are never simple; those who can match this question with a single, one-sentence one-fact answer are usually, eventually, doomed. For example, Tama: "Because there will one day be a scribe born into the Karibusa family, and when it comes, I must save the child." More concise still, Tanyuu: "Because if I don't, I'll die."
(Worst of all: "I don't know.")
But, "I don't know," Ginko says, and it seems to him that with this you can head in two, opposing, paths: one that leads most swiftly to destruction (a place like a still pond, deep and dark and edged with quicksilver light), or one that leads on and on and on, a thousand miles across hills and deserts and weather good and bad. And even if you never find it, this final treasure you're looking for (although its shape and colour and name elude you), the hope of finding it some day is what stays with you always; is enough to warm you when it's raining and cool you when it's dry, enough to make you put one foot in front of the other when the road seems to have grown too long.
Even then he tries to find quantifiable goals; one thousand stories, maybe, or ten thousand, or a million. If all the stories in this world were exhausted before each target is reached, he thinks, I'm going to have to find some other world that holds more. Hope to be stretched out; one new discovery at a time.
"Ginko," Tanyuu says, when she thinks about this (although they've never discussed it), "wherever you are, I hope you remembered to repair your shoes."