Proud – and a Little Ashamed of Being So

I’m not usually one to crow. I learned humility well and early, often with good reason. Tooting your own horn is unseemly. I am from a different age, I suppose.

But I am disproportionately proud of this one bit of calligraphy that I did for a level up test recently. So enamored of it, in fact, that it’s my wallpaper on my phone, replacing a picture of my beloved daughters. There’s something wrong with that.

They key is to write it exactly as the original. See below for the original

Not only the shapes, but the amount of ink, the depth of it. You need to run out of ink in your brush at the right time.

See below for mine.

Is it unreasonable to be proud of a copy? Art students copy the masters, no? Are MFA students proud if they copy a Picasso? Maybe. Maybe that makes me a student then. Proud of learning a lesson.

This is what’s written.

tsura yuki
mume no kano fukio
keru yuki ni utsuri
seba tareka kotogoto
wa kite wo ramashi

つらゆき
むめのかのふきお
けるゆきにうつり
せばたれかことごと
わきてをらまし

Which means

Plum blossoms poke through the snow. If the smell of flowers seems mixed, who can distinguish between flowers and snow except by hand?