If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us. The most precious thing in life is uncertainty.
Yoshida Kenko in his Essays in Idleness
I found these words written partly in longhand and partly in bad Pitmans shorthand on an Art Gallery of NSW brochure from 1989. I had obviously copied them down from an item in the Four Seasons: Introduction to the Art of China and Japan exhibition.
Finding this small treasure is my reward for beginning to declutter my office.
