Eyes Open Wide

July 31, 2003 | Laughing Knees | 2 Comments 

For those of you who might be in­ter­ested, I now have a photo gallery to go along with the blog. It’s still a work in progress… I have a lot to learn about pro­cess­ing dig­i­tal pho­tographs, and some of the pho­tos may need re-​​doing. The site it­self is also just rudi­men­tary for now. I have too much other work to do right now to fid­dle much more with the gallery for now.

The Four Winds Gallery

En­joy!

A Gift

July 31, 2003 | Laughing Knees | 4 Comments 

Girl wad­ing along the shore of Bre­tagne, France, 1989

It’s been quite a few days since I wrote any­thing in this jour­nal. I want to apol­o­gize to any­one who has been check­ing in to see any­thing new and was dis­ap­pointed. I haven’t been feel­ing well all week, what with the del­i­cate bal­ance of my di­a­betes de­cid­ing that it would com­mence its sum­mer va­ca­tion with­out me.

And that is what di­a­betes is… an equi­lib­rium of outer cir­cum­stances meet­ing with in­ner work­ings. Get­ting the dis­ease has, of course, ir­rev­o­ca­bly al­tered my life and my re­ac­tions to it have ranged from rage to de­spair. Most peo­ple when they think of di­a­betes think of the scare scenes in movies, so of­ten de­picted as oc­cur­ing when some hap­less di­a­betic just so hap­pens to be at the wheel of a car and blacks out. I’ve never blacked out, though there have been a few hu­mil­i­at­ing mo­ments when I mis­cal­cu­lated my in­sulin dosage and, hav­ing fallen asleep, woke up sweat­ing up a river and shak­ing so badly that wa­ter would spill from a glass I was hold­ing. Luck­ily I was never alone when these in­ci­dences hap­pened, but I won­der what I would do if ever some­thing like that caught me while I was up in the mountains?

But re­ally, di­a­betes, in its day-​​to-​​day man­i­fes­ta­tion, is no worse or bet­ter than man­ag­ing your body in the same way that any­one who cares about their health would try to main­tain them­selves. If any­thing di­a­betes is like a strict coach, do­ing good by you when you treat your­self right with bal­anced food, ex­er­cise, rest, and right at­ti­tude, but pun­ish­ing you when you trip up and act stu­pid. The symp­toms that di­a­betes throws at you can re­ally open your eyes at times, and re­mind you just how sen­si­tive your body is to changes and things which aren’t good for it. I cer­tainly will never for­get the im­por­tance of ex­er­cis­ing my legs and feet reg­u­larly af­ter some ex­cru­ti­at­ing cramps that woke me from sleep scream­ing in agony. Those cramps in a swim­ming pool have noth­ing on these cramps… these are the kings of cramps!

Be­cause di­a­betes fol­lows you day in and day out every day of your life and never once loosens its grip on your throat it is hard to put thoughts of it aside. Like any hu­man I have my mo­ments and I just want to lie back and turn into a couch potato, for­get about ab­stain­ing from the ice cream or potato chips or beer. At such times walk­ing into a con­ve­nience store, or pass­ing a pizza de­liv­ery store weak­ens even the hard­est won pa­tience. I want to EAT!

You would think that all this would leave me bit­ter and re­sent­ful. I ad­mit that at times, like when I can’t co­or­di­nate my fin­gers to write clear let­ters or I miss steps as I walk up the stairs, anger flares up, but usu­ally it’s learn­ing to ob­serve and un­der­stand my­self bet­ter. The amaz­ing thing is that di­a­betes has taught me to quiet the pall of anger that I used to carry around for so many years. I guess it helped me un­der­stand that there is noth­ing re­ally so im­por­tant or ur­gent as the tick­ing of my heart. And, for those times when the pain is great or the fear of not hav­ing enough food when my blood sugar has plum­met­ted, re­ally re­mind you of the pre­cious­ness of each moment.

I don’t know how long my health will hold out, if di­a­betes will one day claim vic­tory over the equi­lib­rium and take my life, but for now I want to cod­dle the daily spark that flick­ers in here and live each day as it comes as best I can. That is per­haps all we can hope to do. Noth­ing is cer­tain, and there are no guarantees.

Dewdrops

July 26, 2003 | Laughing Knees | 1 Comment 

Alpine wild­flower “Rho­di­olo rosea”, liv­ing at 2,000 to 3,000 me­ters, Ki­tadake, Shi­rane Range, Ya­manashi, Japan, 1994.

I’ve been re-​​reading a book on Bud­dhist thought (“When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chodron) that fo­cuses on turn­ing to­wards one’s fears and de­spairs and al­low­ing them to fill your thoughts as much as you revel in plea­sure and joy. It is a pow­er­ful an­ti­dote to panic and hys­te­ria, open­ing your mind to its own in­ner work­ings and help­ing you to step back from con­stant im­pul­sive reaction.

Two years ago, in the midst of a dev­as­tat­ing per­sonal cri­sis and the world­wide mad­ness led by the United States, I thought my whole world was crum­bling. At­ti­tudes that I had taken for granted, friends that I al­ways thought would be there, health that I had al­ways counted on, debts, ca­reer goals, fam­ily sta­bil­ity, even my as­sump­tions of who I was and what I thought was im­por­tant, sud­denly made no sense any more. It was so bad that for sev­eral months I could barely talk to peo­ple be­yond the rote greet­ings, class­room rou­tines, and oblig­a­tory daily prac­ti­cal­i­ties. Some­thing had died in­side and no amount of self fla­gel­la­tion or pep­ping by in­dul­gence in ice cream or late night movies could lift me out of the pall.

At such times so of­ten peo­ple around you will ad­vise you to carry a more “pos­i­tive” out­look. The funny thing is that this ad­vice al­ways sprouts from those who are them­selves not ex­pe­ri­enc­ing much anx­i­ety at the time, and of­ten can­not per­ceive the shak­ing loose of seem­ingly solid foun­da­tions. Peo­ple in such a tem­po­rary state have con­vinced them­selves that all is well and that the world around them will con­tinue in its solid state. I have found that usu­ally peo­ple who are go­ing through the melt­down of pre­con­cep­tions, who are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing loss or pain or con­fu­sion, peo­ple who have of­ten known lone­li­ness or fear or self-​​doubt, tend to be those who most ef­fec­tively re­spond to and an­swer my ques­tions when my own world falls apart.

Per­haps the sharpest inkling I gained into be­gin­ning to com­pre­hend what it means to be alive, just to ex­ist, arose out of the Bud­dhist con­cept of all things hav­ing a dream qual­ity, that noth­ing ex­ists in per­ma­nence, every­thing is in flux. As Buck­min­ster Fuller put it, “I seem to be a verb.” View­ing my­self as merely gaseous, a tem­po­rary for­ma­tion of pass­ing clouds, helped me rec­og­nize the noise of my mind and the waves of emo­tions that wash back and forth within me.

I’ve al­ways won­dered why the sea shore calms me with its end­less mo­tion, or why the wav­ing and whis­per of trees in the wind seem to talk to some hid­den ear in my breast. And it must have some­thing to do with my own bil­low­ing flag of a soul. As the years tip­toe across my heart, I think of ag­ing and of the clutch­ing of mem­o­ries, won­der­ing at times which way to turn, back to­ward the pil­lows of child­hood or ahead to­ward the un­fath­omable wall. And it oc­curs to me to just stand still, let all these swirling tides do what they will.

Fol­low­ing such ad­vice, Pema Chodron’s in­struc­tion to be kind to my­self and al­low that the whole great gra­nola mix of joys, fears, hungers, con­tent­ed­ness, anger, lusts, plea­sures, and doubts are all grains in the shaken bag, has made a great dif­fer­ence for me. Some­thing died in me two years ago, but then some­thing new emerged. And while it is no less great a strug­gle, the fo­cus has changed.

For me the nat­ural world has al­ways taught me these things, though I have not al­ways been open to lis­ten­ing or look­ing. The nat­ural world is re­al­ity, it is what is. And that, in my own winged par­tic­i­pa­tion, is who I am, too.

Spittle

July 25, 2003 | Laughing Knees | 2 Comments 

Rip­ple pat­terns on Shi­rakoma Pond, Yat­sug­atake, Japan, 2003.

On my way home from work this evening a sweat­ing, smelly French­man, wear­ing a bright yel­low shirt and bug-​​eye glasses, his face a cloud of hoary grey and brown beard, de­cided that since I was an­other for­eigner wait­ing on line for the train, it was per­fectly nor­mal and ac­cept­able to just come up to me and start talk­ing as if I was his par­lor room guest. Never mind that I was read­ing a book or that there were any num­ber of purely Japan­ese pas­sen­gers shar­ing the same gen­eral vicin­ity who might just as eas­ily have been li­able to his at­ten­tions. I knew he was French be­cause he blithely told me so, in a bari­tone chat­ter of French ac­cented English.

His fol­low up words to me were, “You are from Eu­rope, aren’t you? I can tell.”

Now just how could he tell that I was Eu­ro­pean? I look like a Mex­i­can or Iraqi or In­dian or Turk, or pos­si­bly Span­ish or Por­tuguese, but at first glance peo­ple would tend to gen­er­al­ize to­ward Third World ma­te­r­ial. It couldn’t have been my clothes, be­cause I was wear­ing a very Amer­i­can type of un­der­classed chino pants with short-​​sleeved shirt and mis­matched, bright, flower-​​embroidered silk tie, a com­bi­na­tion that I sus­pect any real self-​​respecting Eu­ro­pean wouldn’t be caught dead in. And it couldn’t have been my ac­cent, be­cause, if he deemed it at all nec­es­sary to ac­tu­ally lis­ten to my re­ply, he would have fil­tered in a very Amer­i­can twang with un-”u”ed col­ors and un “ae”ed airplanes.

He pro­ceeded to launch into a story about how his friends in Paris had held onto his apart­ment for two years af­ter he’d left for Japan with his new­found Japan­ese wife. “Uh… Ex­cuse me?”, you may ask with com­plete cred­i­bil­ity. Af­ter all, sto­ries usu­ally come at­tached with ref­er­ence and prece­dence. But he bull­dozed on with his story, jump­ing back and forth be­tween France and Sene­gal and Brazil and Hong Kong and Ger­many and nat­u­rally Japan (but not Amer­ica be­cause the food is aw­ful and not Ko­rea be­cause the peo­ple hate Japan­ese), all places he claimed to have graced with his long-​​term presence.

The train pulled into the sta­tion, the doors opened, and the wait­ing pas­sen­gers filed in and took their seats. I stepped into the car and bee-​​lined for the cen­ter of the seats, to avoid the tip­pi­ness of late night Japan­ese after-​​drinking com­munuters who tended to lean all over you if you sat near the ends of the seat. To my dis­may the French­man po­si­tioned him­self right along­side me, and pressed pretty close, what with the train ac­cu­mu­lat­ing pas­sen­gers like a flood­ing tun­nel. Now this French­man reeked of male bac­te­ria and con­tin­ued to bab­ble non­stop as sweat poured down his face and into his beard and spit­tle flew from his lips onto my un­sus­pect­ing shirt and face.

Why am I be­ing so mean to this man? Well, let me tell you.

First he started on the Ko­re­ans, re­lat­ing anec­dote af­ter anec­dote about how every Ko­rean he had met in his life had pro­ceeded to en­lighten him with how much they hated Japan­ese and what they would do to avoid let­ting any Japan­ese even come within arm’s length. When I at­tempted to open my lit­tle mouth to ex­press how many Japan­ese friends of mine went out of their way to go to Ko­rea and make friends there, he shook his head vi­o­lently (spit­tle leap­ing un­par­don­able gaps) and told his Japan­ese wife’s story of be­ing shunned by Ko­re­ans in her French class.

He took the next step of en­light­en­ment and pro­ceeded to down­dress all Africans. “They are a dan­ger­ous peo­ple. Killing every­one all the time. Just barbarians.”

Then it was Arabs in France, and on this sub­ject he proved a grand mas­ter of irony and sledge­ham­mer sub­tlety. “The Arabs in France are a bunch of de­gen­er­ate, mur­der­ing, thiev­ing, un­e­d­u­cated crim­i­nals who should all be put in jail. And you know what the prob­lem is? French law. Un­like Amer­ica, where every­one is al­lowed to carry guns, in France only the bad peo­ple can get hold of guns, knives, and bazookas (“Bazookas?” I tried to ques­tion with up­raised eye­brows, but there was no re­sponse).” “France would be a bet­ter place if every­one could carry guns and kill those bas­tards and get them out of the coun­try. And those blacks and Gyp­sies, too. Every­thing went to hell when the Iraq war started. Arabs tak­ing over the whole world.”

So much for the lily white im­age of in­no­cent French peo­ple. To my im­mense re­lief he stum­bled off the train one stop be­fore mine and con­tin­ued to bab­ble his way right out of the train, never think­ing to ask my phone num­ber or e-​​mail ad­dress. All I wanted to do was wipe off my shirt and face and step off into the night, where the air was fresh and clean and my Arab-​​looking face could soften a bit. And to clean that stu­pid grin off my lips… a gri­mace held in an­i­mated sus­pen­sion as dis­be­lief, dis­gust, and di­ver­sion bore the on­slaught. I was too tired to do any telling off.

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