Dragon Box

Poetry and dragons and boxes. Nothing like some Japanese poetry to read just before finishing the ‘Dragon Box’.

As I wrote in the post “Ox in a Box”, I also covered this wooden box with mulberry paper and my glue concoction and then painted on it with tempera paints. This time there is nothing inside, just blue acrylic paint applied directly to the wood.

Dragon Box

From Okakura: The Awakening of Japan

“The Eastern dragon is not the gruesome monster of medieval imagination, 

but the genius of strength and goodness.

He is the spirit of change, therefore of life itself.

Hidden in the caverns of inaccessible mountains,

or coiled in the unfathomed depth of the sea,

he awaits the time when he slowly rouses himself into activity. 

He unfolds himself in the storm clouds;

he washes his mane in the blackness of the seething whirlpools.

His claws are in the fork of lightning,

his scales begin to glisten in the bark of rain-swept pine trees.

His voice is heard in the hurricane, which,

scattering the withered leaves of the forest, quickens a new spring.”