Summer. The things I drank and ate. The sounds I listened to. The joys I embraced.

Thinking that all of these have carried me into autumn, I feel for a moment as if my body and soul were clear, blue, transparent.

But the truth is far from that. A metabolism that worsens year by year. Muscles barely left from a past that never cared for exercise. Flesh layered upon them.

A soul, a will, a drift, perhaps fate, moving this body every day.

And the setting that holds it. Human society. The natural world. The earth. The universe.

When I look at it this way, it is overwhelming.

To think that I am entangled in all these countless things, though of course that is true for everyone except newborn babies, and if you were to mix it all together, surely it would turn into nothing but black. What a thought.

So forgive me, you clear taste of sake I drank one summer night with a friend who photographs the bluest skies. You must have been poured straight into my black and vanished without a trace.

And yet, that thought makes me love monochrome photographs all the more.

Black too is abundant.

With a black pen, I want to write something.

In black clothes, I want to look sharp.

Perhaps black hair really is the best.

If in the end everything blends into black, still I wonder. Maybe some people live as vivid orange, as brilliant blue.

People who never wavered, never compromised, never let themselves be muddied.

If I were to drink with such a person, then surely a clear, transparent sake would be the only choice.