Days and months are travellers of eternity. So are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the earth till they succumb to the weight of years, spend every minute of their lives travelling. There are a great number of ancients, too, who died on the road. I myself have been tempted for a long time by the cloud-moving wind – filled with a strong desire to wander.

― Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches

I finished Bashō’s last major work, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, some time ago and briefly wrote my thoughts on it, but never published it here. The Narrow Road paints an epic and dangerous journey on foot through Edo Japan. It is written in the style of haibun that combines poetry and prose writing. For a slim book, it’s slow and meditative; it invites you to sit with it. It pensively carries you through the journey as Bashō meticulously but artfully describes the locales he visits, with each destination harboring its own unique soul. Narrow Road is a meditation on eternity. Each haiku and travel log is a “monument against the flow of time” (to quote Yuasa’s notes): they’re a series of vignettes that capture the distinct time and place of these sites while also highlighting their ephemerality. The transience of the world is eternal – forever fleeting, perpetually moving, and escaping our grasp. The threads unfurl as they are being woven together. “Every day is a journey, and the journey itself home.”