A crow picks up a dead frog from the asphalt. Witnessing the gruesome sight, I am overcome with an unexplainable joie de vivre; a warm, bubbling feeling, askew from the occasion.

　　When Empress Tachibana-no-Kachiko tried to reach the hearts of men with the teachings of the Buddha, her words were outshone by her dazzling beauty, which to the vulgar man was more interesting than high concepts of morals and existence. Thus it came to be that her corpse would have to do the talking. As her dying wish, there was no funeral - instead, her body was thrown on a public street to rot away and show in no ambiguous terms the impermanence of the flesh.

　　My story starts on Monday. As I commuted to school, riding my mamachari bike as usual, in the middle of the road was a frog. Splattered, juicy, fresh out of the world of the three-dimensional living and into the flat realm of a Looney Tunes, graceless death. I feel sorry for the little feller and am visited by a brief mono no aware, the sort of pathos one feels when in Japan. But I am almost late for school, which counts as being quite late for school in these lands, so I pedal to the metal and go back to my own world.

　　Every day of the week, on my way to and fro school, I would look for Mr. Frog, making sure I would not accidentally run it over and give my tires any unwanted lubrication.

　　On Tuesday, most of his guts were gone, or at least their water content, making for a more uniform 2D composition.

　　On Wednesday, the colors started to fade away, and the overall mossy green gave way to a pale, desiccated white that better reflected no one was home anymore.

　　On Thursday, frog and tarmac started to become one. The color was an in-between of creature and concrete, but still the distinctive, unmistakable shape of my week-long friend stood there, amidst peak summer temperatures, exposition to the twelve-o'clock sun - which actually spans from 7 to 17 at full blast -, and the occasional traffic that further inculcated his remains on the ground.

　　Friday came, and with it the fateful episode which prompted me to write this. The weather was hot, but not scorchingly so, a first in many, many weeks. Going to school, nothing worthy of note had changed about Mr. Frog. But, on my way back, as I rushed to my dormitory in order to get ready for my part-time job bus commute - a 10 minute window I cannot miss -, I as usual tried to pinpoint the frog's location. It was very easy, as a huge black dot marked the spot. A crow, such an interesting creature that I get to observe up close in my everyday Japan life. Not so common in my home country.

　　The crow picked at the ground, craftly scraping something out of it with the mastery of a Makudo black belt. 'Twas none other than my friend, hard as cardboard, lean as one as well, looking like a smoked snack you can fetch at the nearest konbini. Frog in beak, the bird took flight to the roof of an abode close by, landing right beside its traditional crest ceramic tile.

　　And so I watched from my bike, getting closer to the crime scene at an insufficient speed, as this dead creature to which I had unconsciously grown attached to was taken away. Heading to school and silently greeting my flat friend on the floor? Quoth the raven, with its mouth full, "Nevermore."

　　But as I made sense of the unexpected scene unfolding in front of me, a deep sense of joy took over. I was observing my once helpless, useless, meaninglessly killed buddy find a purpose long after his departure. Serving the world one last time, as aliment to the ones left behind. A wasted life redeemed, I was happy for him, for all I ever knew him for was pavement decoration. Out of nowhere, the circle of life made itself evident, vivid. I was aware and my aware turned to yorokobi.

　　Something about mortality has a solemn beauty to it, even to someone scared to death of it, such as my Atheist self. It is inevitable, therefore I am always glad to find in memento moris some shade of positivity. Which brings us back to ancient Kyoto.

　　We are once more at Katabira-no-Tsuji, where the empress gracefully ungracefully expired. Her deed became legend, her lesson resonating through centuries. Buddhist monks turned her into an icon of mortality, often portraying the beautiful lady under the grim light of 九相図, Kusouzu, or the Nine Stages of Decay, a collection of pictures that show the human body from its final moments of life all through its entire consumption by the elements. It is a monument to the temporary nature of all that exists, an invitation to reflection on the importance of spiritual peace in order to overcome our dread over entropy.

　　It is a piece of work I have been aware of for a few years now, and I still have to pay pilgrimage to the train station at Kyoto where the event took place. I do not know if there are even any commemorative traces of the episode at the spot, and I am not one to travel much, but eventually I will go there and find out on my own.

　　For now, I am glad to have experienced such an unforeseen event that makes me itchy enough to put it into proper words like this. That crow could have chosen any other time for claiming its snack, but it chose the 30 seconds during which I crossed the froggy path on that day. A Summer memory to keep as Autumn FINALLY starts to show its mercy. I have had enough UV for this year.

September 13, 2025