Reflecting across time. Or maybe not.

Suddenly, Toyoko Shimotsuma from Mimi-Biji gave me some homework.

Mimi-Biji is a very popular room on the audio SNS Clubhouse where, from Monday to Friday, host Toyoko Shimotsuma invites book authors as guests to delve deep into the content of their books and the authors themselves.

This week's guest is copywriter Hiroko Sawaragi.
The author of "Writing in Your Own Words."
As you would expect from a copywriter, her talk on word choice and writing techniques is extremely interesting.

And so, I threw into the chat, "In Japanese tests, when asked to write the author's feelings, I used to think, 'How should I know?'"

Yes, as Hiroko-san says, it is important to imagine the author's feelings and intentions. I enjoyed and liked writing down my own imagination honestly.

However, I really hated being graded on it.
Because that grade is from the teacher's perspective! The author and the teacher shouldn't be the same.
I remembered that fuzzy, frustrated feeling.

Anyway, back to the story.
The topic given by Toyoko Shimotsuma on Mimi-Biji.

Matsuo Basho's
"The old pond, a frog jumps in, the sound of water."

How do you interpret this super famous haiku in your own way?
Think as if you were Matsuo Basho and "write in your own words."

Come on, let's do it!
Toyoko-san's quick, sharp kick.
Toyoko-san is a genius for being able to throw out a topic without a moment's hesitation! 🙌
I think so.

Since she went to the trouble of giving us a topic, I thought about it.
I love this kind of thing♡

I

was drawn to

"the sound of water."

Stillness.

The hustle and bustle are cut off, and
a sound as if a spotlight were shining only on that spot.
A small sound.

I thought, perhaps this expresses one's own introspection.
A small sound of water that you would normally miss.

Could that small sound be a resolution, a realization of one's own thoughts, or the sound of the heart taking a step forward?

It also bothers me that it's not a clean water spot.

An old pond.

My own thoughts thrown at a chaotic world.

No, is it the world that is chaotic, or is it me?
What could those thoughts be?
I don't know anything about haiku, and I don't know much about the era of Matsuo Basho.

But it's fun to imagine.
Basho-san, I tried digging a little deep, but how was it?

Are you thinking,

"That's not what I meant at all"?
Or are you going, "Tsk, tsk, tsk."
"You're still green."
Are you thinking that?
Is there something even deeper?!
In any case, thank you for letting me imagine a world that expands from 17 characters, transcending time.😊

And I am a genius for being able to imagine and write it down!🙌