The Cross-Shaped Mark
(thoughts on Rurouni Kenshin)
I drew a couple weeks ago. What did I draw, you ask. Well, I drew Rurouni Kenshin. All right, I know, he is not a living subject, maybe he never lived at all, he is only a character, who came to life by another human being.
Nevertheless, as the film is running on the monitor, he is opening up before my very eyes. At first, he is very comical with his tottering, and when he falls or is taken aback, an 'oro' is the least we could expect...
But there is much more to it. Look into his eyes, what it hides; everything can be found there that would be too much for three people: all the blood and the tear, the smile and the grinding of the teeth, peace and war. The mark will stay there forever, but this mark does not strike the eye of the shallow observer.
Not so the cross-shaped scar. All sees this. This talks about the assassin, who overthrew a world order; the people called him Hitokiri Battousai, and now he has disappeared to live his life as a wandering samurai, to live a new life.
But the wound speaks of his former life. It speaks the sword that struck down with hatred, to feed its blade with blood and man-flesh, because the master of the katana did not want to die, not then and not there, and not by an assassin.
And speaks the dagger that ploughed across the youth's face sorrowfully and weakly, in order to take the wage of much torment and many embraces, marking him with a never-healing wound for last, him, who killed her beloved (though he could not have known), then for whom she became beloved.
This way, the two bygone people, who loved each other and whose lives were brought to an early end by one and the same man, have becme the eternal burden of the Rurouni, and he must carry it, carry the memory of him being an assassin, and the memory of a love that could not possibly have been more delicate, and probably only the perilousness and sure bitter destiny was greater than the gentleness of that love.
The woman was called Tomoe, and she was like an iris: she smelled sweetest in the rain, even if that rain was of blood. Her tale could be told in a separate book; her beloved was assassined, then she got close to the murderer to take her revenge, being a device in his ensnaring.
But she could not do anything, her heart was attracted to the man, as the butterfly is to the candlelight, though she knew: she would get burnt.
She was impotent; she lived her love instead of the fake-love, and with the passing days, Kenshin also started to show his feelings. The day of the revenge had become the date of the day of betrayal, set by others as the death-day of the youth.
Tomoe betrayed Kenshin. She handed him over. But still, she saved her second lover and with her last strength, she used her dagger to cross the mark made by his former fiancé, then she died from the stoke of the sword meant for the Battosai.
Meanwhile, Kenshin pledged himself not to kill anyone after the new order had been set in.
Sad story. In such a case, your own lovesickness seems like a little droplet, and somehow you feel you must cry now; cry in place of the dead fiancé, cry instead of Tomoe, and weep for Kenshin and in the place of Kenshin.
And I am just drawing purple eyes, a melancholic glance, a cross-shaped mark, and I crumble away a teardrop in the corner of my eye, as the screening is over, though the room is still dark.
(thoughts on Rurouni Kenshin)
I drew a couple weeks ago. What did I draw, you ask. Well, I drew Rurouni Kenshin. All right, I know, he is not a living subject, maybe he never lived at all, he is only a character, who came to life by another human being.
Nevertheless, as the film is running on the monitor, he is opening up before my very eyes. At first, he is very comical with his tottering, and when he falls or is taken aback, an 'oro' is the least we could expect...
But there is much more to it. Look into his eyes, what it hides; everything can be found there that would be too much for three people: all the blood and the tear, the smile and the grinding of the teeth, peace and war. The mark will stay there forever, but this mark does not strike the eye of the shallow observer.
Not so the cross-shaped scar. All sees this. This talks about the assassin, who overthrew a world order; the people called him Hitokiri Battousai, and now he has disappeared to live his life as a wandering samurai, to live a new life.
But the wound speaks of his former life. It speaks the sword that struck down with hatred, to feed its blade with blood and man-flesh, because the master of the katana did not want to die, not then and not there, and not by an assassin.
And speaks the dagger that ploughed across the youth's face sorrowfully and weakly, in order to take the wage of much torment and many embraces, marking him with a never-healing wound for last, him, who killed her beloved (though he could not have known), then for whom she became beloved.
This way, the two bygone people, who loved each other and whose lives were brought to an early end by one and the same man, have becme the eternal burden of the Rurouni, and he must carry it, carry the memory of him being an assassin, and the memory of a love that could not possibly have been more delicate, and probably only the perilousness and sure bitter destiny was greater than the gentleness of that love.
The woman was called Tomoe, and she was like an iris: she smelled sweetest in the rain, even if that rain was of blood. Her tale could be told in a separate book; her beloved was assassined, then she got close to the murderer to take her revenge, being a device in his ensnaring.
But she could not do anything, her heart was attracted to the man, as the butterfly is to the candlelight, though she knew: she would get burnt.
She was impotent; she lived her love instead of the fake-love, and with the passing days, Kenshin also started to show his feelings. The day of the revenge had become the date of the day of betrayal, set by others as the death-day of the youth.
Tomoe betrayed Kenshin. She handed him over. But still, she saved her second lover and with her last strength, she used her dagger to cross the mark made by his former fiancé, then she died from the stoke of the sword meant for the Battosai.
Meanwhile, Kenshin pledged himself not to kill anyone after the new order had been set in.
Sad story. In such a case, your own lovesickness seems like a little droplet, and somehow you feel you must cry now; cry in place of the dead fiancé, cry instead of Tomoe, and weep for Kenshin and in the place of Kenshin.
And I am just drawing purple eyes, a melancholic glance, a cross-shaped mark, and I crumble away a teardrop in the corner of my eye, as the screening is over, though the room is still dark.