[fic] The Scientific Method
Title: The Scientific Method
Subject: Ginko (and various others)
Note: the last of the 30_friends sets! yay. section breaks are the relevant themes.
(a night in)
An observation: mornings are harder to deal with when sleeping indoors. After a night in, the first thing he wakes to is not daylight or the smell of approaching rain, but the well-worn scent of tatami, or the warmth of still air. There are only reasons to linger.
Drowning in a river of light is no harder than being trapped in a routine. It is easy to get used to things; Ginko does not want to know if it is equally easy to tire of them.
Better to move on while one can, he thinks. It's not entirely about necessity.
(fair trade)
A hypothesis: travelling with the nomadic mushishi taught Ginko more about business than it did about relationships, so it is unsurprising if he sees things in terms of transactions. He first made Adashino's acquaintance because collectors are a source of income; his arrangement with Tanyuu originated as one of mutual benefit.
Isaza understands, but he too is a mushishi, and Ginko does not expect anyone else to share this view. "Why not stay another night?" Adashino asks; and while it is not really that Ginko feels as if he is imposing, it makes for a better explanation than the truth.
(secrets and lies)
A fact: Ginko remembers nothing before that long walk, not even in his dreams. It is not a matter of being secretive, when he fails to explain his white hair or missing eye or anything that happened before the abrupt end of his provenance.
Not that anyone asks outright. Adashino wonders, of course, but is still too polite to voice his obvious questions. For Tanyuu, the other stories are enough. And Isaza has never seemed to find it strange.
As Amane said: that distant past is dark to everyone. The only lies that he tells about it are to himself.
(hidden treasures)
A result: Ginko has learnt that the regular gatherings of mushishi are not simply chances to replenish one's supply of news and of kouki. Here are names and faces which are worth sparing the time to remember, addresses to which one can write but is not obliged to.
So even if he leaves with no purchases, he does not leave with nothing. Amid the bargaining over mushi-tobacco and various artifacts, there is a less obvious form of barter: What can you give me for my presence? A smile, some words, remembrance and recognition; unforced interaction which ends with no debts.
(platonic love)
Some possible conclusions: that observation does not always bring results; that not everything can be classified; that knowledge is not the same as understanding. Sometimes - on an afternoon spent resting in the shade, perhaps, or an evening struggling through snow - he thinks that there might be a name to this, to whatever keeps him tied to this same handful of places: a fishing village, a rock-strewn grassland, the other end of a linked cocoon. But for once it is not a name he feels obliged to discover.
He moves on. There is always the possibility of going back.
Subject: Ginko (and various others)
Note: the last of the 30_friends sets! yay. section breaks are the relevant themes.
(a night in)
An observation: mornings are harder to deal with when sleeping indoors. After a night in, the first thing he wakes to is not daylight or the smell of approaching rain, but the well-worn scent of tatami, or the warmth of still air. There are only reasons to linger.
Drowning in a river of light is no harder than being trapped in a routine. It is easy to get used to things; Ginko does not want to know if it is equally easy to tire of them.
Better to move on while one can, he thinks. It's not entirely about necessity.
(fair trade)
A hypothesis: travelling with the nomadic mushishi taught Ginko more about business than it did about relationships, so it is unsurprising if he sees things in terms of transactions. He first made Adashino's acquaintance because collectors are a source of income; his arrangement with Tanyuu originated as one of mutual benefit.
Isaza understands, but he too is a mushishi, and Ginko does not expect anyone else to share this view. "Why not stay another night?" Adashino asks; and while it is not really that Ginko feels as if he is imposing, it makes for a better explanation than the truth.
(secrets and lies)
A fact: Ginko remembers nothing before that long walk, not even in his dreams. It is not a matter of being secretive, when he fails to explain his white hair or missing eye or anything that happened before the abrupt end of his provenance.
Not that anyone asks outright. Adashino wonders, of course, but is still too polite to voice his obvious questions. For Tanyuu, the other stories are enough. And Isaza has never seemed to find it strange.
As Amane said: that distant past is dark to everyone. The only lies that he tells about it are to himself.
(hidden treasures)
A result: Ginko has learnt that the regular gatherings of mushishi are not simply chances to replenish one's supply of news and of kouki. Here are names and faces which are worth sparing the time to remember, addresses to which one can write but is not obliged to.
So even if he leaves with no purchases, he does not leave with nothing. Amid the bargaining over mushi-tobacco and various artifacts, there is a less obvious form of barter: What can you give me for my presence? A smile, some words, remembrance and recognition; unforced interaction which ends with no debts.
(platonic love)
Some possible conclusions: that observation does not always bring results; that not everything can be classified; that knowledge is not the same as understanding. Sometimes - on an afternoon spent resting in the shade, perhaps, or an evening struggling through snow - he thinks that there might be a name to this, to whatever keeps him tied to this same handful of places: a fishing village, a rock-strewn grassland, the other end of a linked cocoon. But for once it is not a name he feels obliged to discover.
He moves on. There is always the possibility of going back.