midnight on the boulevard
jody9
Without end
Do I think of you and so
Come to me at night.
For on the path of dreams at least,
There’s no one to disapprove!
Ono no Komachi (c. 825—c. 900)
Ono no Komachi is thought to have been a lady-in-waiting of fairly low rank at the court of the Emperor NinmyÅ. Though her status was low, her beauty was legendary. She is said to have promised one young courtier that if he visited her each night for a hundred nights, she would become his lover. He missed their rendezvous one night; at the end of the hundred nights, she refused him. He took ill and soon died, heartbroken. Komachi, on the other hand, took many lovers over the next several years—but none were as earnest and sincere as the poor lad who’d died. Komachi grew old, lost her beauty, and was abandoned by her former lovers. She wandered alone, frequently visiting the 99 places she’d met her would-be first lover—never returning to the one location where he’d failed to appear.
Turn the clock forward 1100 years, spin the globe from Japan to Los Angeles. Imagine a modern-day Ono no Komachi sitting on a red leatherette diner stool, waiting for a suitor who doesn’t arrive. Imagine her irritation at being stood up, imagine her making an impulsive decision that will ruin both their lives. Come to me at night, she wrote, for on the path of dreams at least, there’s no one to disapprove. How easily is the path of dreams destroyed.
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