Troglodyte

December 26, 2003 | Laughing Knees | 25 Comments 

An­i­mal tracks high­lighted in the snow just af­ter an ice storm, Mikuni Pass, Shizuoka, Japan, 1993.

I want to apol­o­gize to every­one who drops by here for not be­ing around for a long while. This time of the year al­ways gets to me, es­pe­cially since I live far away from my fam­ily and I haven’t seen them in years. Not only does the Christ­mas sea­son just have no coun­ter­part here in Japan, see­ing that it is quite hard to re­ally get close to Japan­ese peo­ple, to be ac­cepted as one of them, I also end up spend­ing a lot of time alone, most es­pe­cially dur­ing this season.

I don’t like to share the more per­sonal as­pects of my pri­vate life here on the blog, in part to pro­tect peo­ple who are im­por­tant to me, but also be­cause I be­lieve that some things ought not to be handed out to just any­body. There are some things go­ing on in my life that I try to glaze over here, but they are big things that seem even big­ger dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son. Since it will be yet an­other Christ­mas and New Year’s alone I’ve been try­ing to com­pen­sate by pulling away from the blog a while, so as not to think so much. With 2 weeks va­ca­tion ahead of me it would be bet­ter if I got out of the house and cleared my head a little.

One thing that has been both­er­ing me again is the ef­fect of blog­ging on my time and my men­tal life. When I last put an en­try in it had got­ten to the point where any idea I hap­pened upon or even some small anec­dote in my day would im­me­di­ately trans­late into how I could use it in an ar­ti­cle in the blog. I even dreamed of top­ics and ways to write sen­tences in my sleep!

I knew then that I had to break away, if just to quiet the noise in my head so that I could open my eyes and see the world around me, not the com­puter screen. With quite a pe­riod be­hind me now I can say that my mind is quiet again and I’m tak­ing time to get out there.

I know that the ten­dency to im­merse my­self in the blog rises out of too much time alone and no friends. When you find your­self wan­der­ing the city streets, feel­ing lost, con­stantly whis­per­ing to your­self that you will be okay, then the voices that sur­round you in the blog world of­fer great com­fort. All of you out there who have grown into some­thing ap­prox­i­mat­ing friend­ship, thank you.

So I must strike a bal­ance, con­tinue to re­lease the words that well up in me for this ephemeral place, and to get out there and find my home. I can’t con­tinue to live like this. I must find substantiation.

I hope every­one is find­ing their way through the hol­i­days. To those who are lucky enough to wrap them­selves in a win­ter warmth, cher­ish it and give it to who­ever else needs it. To those who suf­fer a kind of silent grief, hold on. The dark­ness will pass. And don’t for­get to look up and let the fab­ric of your spirit clear it­self among those clean, un­touched stars. These long nights al­low us a win­dow into whole of our world and all its possibilities.

Good night.

Hussein’s Capture

December 15, 2003 | Laughing Knees | 9 Comments 

I just find this whole thing dis­gust­ing: the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment and me­dia gloat­ing (and pur­pose­fully por­tray­ing him un­kempt and look­ing like a crim­i­nal) over the cap­ture of Sad­dam Hus­sein. While the Iraqis have every right to hate him and bring him to trial, the Amer­i­cans have no right what­so­ever to judge him or try him. To this day Hus­sein has done noth­ing to the Amer­i­cans and is not guilty of any of the crimes that the Amer­i­cans ex­cused them­selves into go­ing to war over. Things be­ing the way they are, the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment is go­ing to drag him around like some ragged dish­towel and de­clare their “vic­tory”, but still not ad­dress the cen­tral is­sue of the il­le­gal­ity of their be­ing in Iraq in the first place.

What stirs my ire most is this re­cent es­tab­lish­ment of an “in­ter­na­tional tri­bunal” within Iraq, to “try war crim­i­nals”. Nat­u­rally the war crim­i­nals are go­ing to be Iraqis and other Arabs and Mus­lims, not the Amer­i­cans them­selves. Of course, the Amer­i­cans ig­nore the fact that an In­ter­na­tional Court has al­ready been es­tab­lished, pre­cisely for the pur­pose of try­ing war criminals.

See­ing Hussein’s coun­te­nance shown in such a mean-​​spirited and child­ish man­ner, paint­ing him as guilty even be­fore given a fair trial, lis­ten­ing to the glee in the Amer­i­can speeches, not to say hav­ing to watch as they stick their fin­gers into some­thing that is none of their busi­ness make me im­mea­sur­ably sad. I be­lieve deeply in “in­no­cent be­fore guilty” and in the es­tab­lish­ment of a fair court. The Amer­i­cans are mak­ing a sham of these prin­ci­ples and will prob­a­bly get away with it.

It is hard not to sink into cyn­i­cism and fury.

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Al­though I did see a Dau­rian Red­start singing atop the mag­no­lia tree out­side my apart­ment this morn­ing. “Tee-​​eet, tee-eet..tac, tac!”. Birds have such won­der­ful names…

Frodo or Aragorn?

December 15, 2003 | Laughing Knees | Comments Off 

For those of you into the Lord of the Rings, there’s an in­ter­est­ing dis­cus­sion go­ing on over at Pericat’s Un­lock­ing the Air, about whether the rewrite of the books for the movie works or not. Come join the dis­cus­sion and say what you think!

Poverty Speaks

December 12, 2003 | Laughing Knees | 12 Comments 

Small shrine at the base of an an­cient, black pine tree at Ose Point, Izu Penin­sula, Shizuoka, Japan 1994.

For years now there has ex­isted a kind of silent claw­ing at the air in my breast, the kind that led Henry Thoreau to re­mark upon when he penned the words, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet des­per­a­tion.”, in his most fa­mous book, “Walden”. Over and over again I have read Thoreau’s care­ful re­mon­stra­tions, spell­bound by the sheer mu­sic of his wis­dom and con­sis­tency of his in­sight (his book “Civil Dis­obe­di­ence” was the man­i­festo that both Gandhi and Mar­tin Luther King. jr. turned to when for­mu­lat­ing their ideas on peace­fully op­pos­ing in­jus­tice), and I vowed early on in my life that I would not al­low my­self to fall into the trap of miss­ing the rough hand of the real world, the nat­ural world, upon my soul. I sought hard for the sub­jects that would pave the path I took, read­ing the lit­er­a­ture and tak­ing on the ex­pe­ri­ences that culled un­der­stand­ing, un­til I was whit­tled into the kind of life that fit me, with the wind and trees, earth and sky weath­er­ing my face to the point where my body was in­dis­tin­guish­able from the place that I inhabited.

But it seems I’ve been spir­ited away into an­other world, a world where the po­ten­tial that sleeps within me must needs be drugged and can­not waken. Here I am liv­ing in the heart of the biggest city in the world, far, far away from hills that I dreamed of roam­ing, where dew clung to my hair and wool sweater, the gen­tlest whis­per of my breath hung in the dawn light. That is where I al­ways imag­ined mov­ing within, but some­how I ended up here. The daily fare is of thun­der­ing trains car­ry­ing hoards of peo­ple stuffed be­tween doors, of bread and ba­nanas and pale meat wrapped in crin­kling plas­tic, of rivers stink­ing of sewage and crows tear­ing up bags of refuse, of week­end af­ter week­end find­ing my­self, as if lead along by shift­ing, magic trails, back down­town amidst the con­crete, over and over again head­ing through the same stores, buy­ing the same, heart­less mag­a­zines and clothes, re­act­ing to peo­ple who all look the same, wear­ing their ties and lat­est fash­ions all picked up (not even har­vested) from the same, lurk­ing stores, no one dar­ing to cast them off, of cars and cars and cars and cars, of elec­tri­cal tow­ers strung from house to house, of de­serted streets as houses glow, un­mov­ing, at mid­night while the moon and the stars wheel un­no­ticed over the rooftops, of flick­er­ing, blue tele­vi­sion light, trans­fix­ing me and the ones I love so that we sit un­mov­ing be­side one an­other, of dis­tances stretched to break­ing with houses and build­ings and dams and lev­ees and wa­ter tow­ers and roads, roads, roads and bridges and fac­to­ries and sta­di­ums and wharves and ware­houses and shop­ping cen­ters and shop­ping cen­ters and shop­ping cen­ters and shop­ping cen­ters and shop­ping cen­ters, un­til the eye runs out of green to imag­ine, and no life ex­ists but our own, and our own lives seem to ex­ist only in the re­flec­tion in the win­dows of the trains at night, when hope passes through the dark­ness like street lights swoop­ing past.

Peo­ple seem to yearn for some mea­sure of wealth pock­eted in the clink of coins and slip of pa­per bills. They grin when their fin­gers close upon these sym­bolic mes­sen­gers, their brains aglow with im­ages of shiny ob­jects, very much like the trin­kets jack­daws and pack rats col­lect, big houses, fancy cars, ex­quis­itely tai­lored suits, rare wines, and daz­zling jew­elry, shin­ing fan­tasies made real at the ex­pense of oth­ers and seem­ing the cul-​​de-​​sac of life’s en­deav­ors, the very rea­son for be­ing. It’s what seems to run the whole hu­man world and charge up the great en­gine, so all-​​consuming and un­de­ni­able that even moun­tains dis­ap­pear in the great, gaw­ping maw, land­scapes re­placed by sub­di­vi­sions and cal­cu­lated risks. This is called wealth, called “re­al­ity”, called “the bot­tom line”. A cathe­dral of soar­ing de­sires, the very roof a crys­talline struc­ture built of va­por and mir­rors, fan­tasy em­bod­ied in ac­quired tastes.

But I have never re­ally wanted these things, from the ear­li­est mo­ments when the light in my eyes be­came more than just ran­dom events, and took on the com­plex­ity and dance and method that the nat­ural world al­ways ex­udes. I will walk into a desert and be­come awestruck by life, as I kneel down on the cracked soil and per­ceive the lizards or cacti or scor­pi­ons or toads hold­ing on to ten­u­ous mo­ments. There is noth­ing re­ally so des­o­late or aban­doned as waste any­where in the nat­ural world, even the slopes of a black vol­cano, steam­ing, run­ning with hot lava. I have never felt des­o­la­tion in a wild place as I have in such burnt out dis­tricts as Brook­lyn or the wharves of Tokyo at night or the gouged out bleak­ness of the empty crags around the Ashio cop­per strip mine, north of Tokyo, that, al­though closed down over one hun­dred fifty years ago, still evokes some an­cient mem­ory of what Hell must look like.

I am not a rich man. I have a few lux­u­ries, such as a com­puter, a tele­vi­sion, and a dig­i­tal cam­era, but for the most part my life hasn’t been a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with ac­quir­ing a lot of things and thirst­ing af­ter a big house or ex­pen­sive car. Rather, what has al­ways filled me with un­end­ing joy and a huge sense of well-​​being have been things like a great place to walk, or the sight of gnats danc­ing in a shaft of sun­light on a winter’s day or that won­der­ful feel­ing af­ter a hard climb when your lungs set­tle down, the sweat cools, and for a mo­ment you can rest and gaze over the val­ley be­low. As long as I am not too hun­gry or thirsty, I am dry and warm, and per­haps a friend or two to keep me com­pany, what more have I ever needed? The time to ap­pre­ci­ate liv­ing on this planet, to learn how it op­er­ates and moves, to lis­ten to my own heart beat­ing it­self. When I think of the times I’ve been hap­pi­est in my life al­ways, al­ways it has been not when find­ing some­thing new to stuff into my pocket, but when I felt as if I was owned by the world it­self, an in­sep­a­ra­ble jig­saw piece in the joy of some­thing hugely, but com­fort­ably, greater than I am, when I had noth­ing to say be­cause every­thing was as it should be. My wealth comes in sun­light and rain, in the taste of a hand­ful of moun­tain spring wa­ter, in find­ing a lucky space to shel­ter in the rain, in the com­pany of a fel­low walker or watcher who can nod to me with­out a word be­cause we both un­der­stand the preg­nancy of the mo­ment, in the flag of white breath on a frosty morn­ing, in the ache of mus­cles as I knead some dough, in the silent steam­roller of dawn ap­proach­ing, in a cup of tea, in set­ting a but­ter­fly free, or in singing as I stride along a ridge. These are my mea­sure­ments of wealth, what I will most miss when I must fi­nally turn away and die.

And I miss these things now, with all my heart, with all my soul. I miss lov­ing a place, hav­ing it draw me un­til I be­long to it. I miss the sense of re­spon­si­bil­ity for my sur­round­ings and for those peo­ple who in­habit the place with me. I miss what it re­ally means to be hu­man and alive and free. My heart aches with loss and empti­ness. This is poverty, the path that leads to de­spair. This is where I never thought I would be.

I’ve started to take steps to haul my­self out of the pit. It be­gins with a shed­ding of skin and un­nec­es­sary bag­gage. It be­gins with re­mem­ber­ing what is im­por­tant. It be­gins with tak­ing a deep breath, hold­ing it, and let­ting go.

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