The monk is eighty-seven. There's no fat left on his feet to defend against stones. He forgot his hat, larger in recent years. By a creek he sees a woman he saw fifty summers before, somehow still a girl to him. Once again his hands tremble when she gives him a tin cup of water. …
crow with no mouth
I wish I could convey, even a little, the pith and gist of Ikkyu, the mad zen monk also called Crazy Cloud. There is a sense, in the few reliable accounts of his life, of an improbable wholeness to him. In anecdotes documented in the temple records that chronicle both his enlightened activities, and the …
