River Flowing By

February 23, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 5 Comments 

Bam­boo grove along my daily walk, Su­sono, Shizuoka Pre­fec­ture, Japan, 1994

Spent the week­end in a small town north­west of Tokyo, sur­rounded by moun­tains and de­lin­eated by the slow pass­ing of the Chikuma River. Snow usu­ally blan­kets the area at this time, but this year, in spite of all the lo­cal cars clad in snow tires, the wind bore tid­ings of spring. I walked to the hot spring inn wear­ing only a t-​​shirt and long-​​sleeve shirt, sleeves rolled up. Even the moun­tains in the back­ground had thrown off their usual cloaks of snow and bared their ams with but ragged patches of snow.

All morn­ing yes­ter­day I sat on the banks of the river, watch­ing the wa­ter roll by. Lit­tle and In­ter­me­di­ate Egrets at­tended the shal­lows and were later joined by Grey Herons, Green Winged Teals, Com­mon Gal­in­ules, and a danc­ing white cloud of Great Knots, large sand­pipers new to me. On the op­po­site bank a pair of Black Kites mated while eyed by wary Car­rion Crows. Mal­lard Ducks laughed amidst the reeds. The sun cleared the crests of the moun­tains be­hind and gave a golden patina to the en­tire river valley.

Since this is the same river ap­pear­ing in the 2002 Japan­ese movie “Let­ter from the Moun­tain”, nat­u­rally the morn­ing here re­minded me of the scene where the pro­tag­o­nist cou­ple are sit­ting in the door­way of the lit­tle shrine, gaz­ing at the river be­low. And it re­minded me of the poem, Ame ni mo Makezu (Un­bowed by the Rain), by Kenji Miyazawa, that was quoted in the movie:

The warm sibi­lances and in­ter­spersed frica­tives of the Japan­ese orig­i­nal can­not be ad­e­quately trans­lated into Eng­lish, but the spirit of the poem steps forth in any trans­la­tion. A sim­ple life, unas­sum­ing, ap­pre­cia­tive of what one has and gen­eros­ity to those in need, joy in the very en­clo­sure of the place one lives in and de­pends upon for sus­te­nance, these are the el­e­ments that, when I first saw the movie, so brought out a weep­ing at some un­fath­omed bi­o­log­i­cal mem­ory that I had to sit for quite a time in the movie the­ater af­ter the pro­jec­tor had long since been switched off.

What is joy but the re­moval of sor­row? What is sor­row but the mem­ory of wholeness?

Rivers carry all the stories.

Tracks

February 16, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 9 Comments 

Wall of clouds to the south, Shizuoka, Japan, 1995

It’s one of those mo­men­tous times in life when all the strings of the doily of life con­verge. Big de­ci­sions have to be made, whether I want to or not, and while I stand here in the clear­ing all the snow around looks fresh and un­touched. Whichever way I go there will be new tracks. I love be­ing the one to stamp into the new snow, but all the same it’s not a lit­tle scary. And not with­out its sorrow.

Since I was a boy be­yond mem­ory two main themes al­ways re­it­er­ated them­selves into the ar­chi­tec­ture of my thoughts and feel­ings: na­ture and art. The ear­li­est light of my con­scious­ness re­curs with im­ages of leaves and in­sects and the smell of soil. Most of my hap­pi­est mem­o­ries oc­curred in places sur­rounded by trees or hills or liv­ing things. The sounds of wind and wa­ter in­fused the mu­sic in my mind, like a green con­cert hall, the or­ches­tra still warm­ing up. When­ever I wa­vered, when the fragility and un­cer­tainty and cru­elty of hu­man in­ter­ac­tion shook my con­nec­tion to this ephemeral and ever-​​changing boat that I call my­self I could al­ways step out­side and go for a walk. There was a rec­i­p­roca­tive du­al­ity there that felt like one; the world and me. There was never any doubt in it.

Art has al­ways done the same for me. Writ­ing and books; paint­ing and draw­ing; pho­tog­ra­phy; singing, writ­ing lyrics, play­ing gui­tar and vi­o­lin, and lis­ten­ing to all the world’s mu­si­cians, from crick­ets to Pe­ter Gabriel and Kiri Te Kanawa; movies and an­i­ma­tion; cook­ing; gar­den­ing; pot­tery; ar­chi­tec­ture and in­te­rior de­sign… Some­how all these ac­tiv­i­ties de­fined the pas­sage of time and ef­fort for me.

Merely act­ing out the steps nec­es­sary for sur­vival, with­out ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the merit in every as­pect of the things around you or of what you ac­tu­ally do, never seemed to quite ful­fill the promise of wak­ing each morn­ing. Peo­ple who tell me they get bored con­found me… how can you get bored if you have imag­i­na­tion? Isn’t it the mind that de­fines the color of per­cep­tion? And isn’t that just what art is, the paint­ing in of the de­tails? Art, for me, pol­ishes the rough­ness in the old block. It is with imag­i­na­tion that you learn to see and by see­ing you un­furl the wings within your daily grind.

I have the op­por­tu­nity to once and for all com­bine the these two guides to my life. To not shunt onto an­other track out of self-​​doubt and fear. Writ­ing, draw­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, wildlife, con­ser­va­tion, a lifestyle as close to na­ture as I can hope to make it. But I’m not sure how to go about do­ing it. Do I stay here in Japan? Try Aus­tralia or New Zealand? Go back to Eu­rope? Or the States or Canada? Do I teach? Do I go back to uni­ver­sity (per­haps to study bio­geog­ra­phy or wildlife man­age­ment or some such)?

The first step has al­ready been taken. I fin­ished writ­ing a book two years ago, but it has yet to find a pub­lisher. It was the first ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment of the promises I made to my­self when I was younger: to live ac­cord­ing to the right vibrations.

A lot of this seems shrouded in clouds these days; I am not as sure of who I am as I was long ago, but I know what I miss most, and miss­ing some­thing that you love for too long re­quires the sac­ri­fices and de­ter­mi­na­tion of a lover. And I want to be a lover of life.

Phooey!

February 10, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 16 Comments 

Hang­ing out in the bam­boo grass of Ashitaka Moun­tain near Mt. Fuji, Shizuoka Pre­fec­ture, Japan, 1992

Well, so much for my tri­umphant Rocky an­tics. The day fol­low­ing my eu­pho­ria and ca­nine em­pa­thy ses­sion, I woke up to a blither­ing cold sweat and a stom­ach play­ing, “Pass the cheese, please.” I spent a lovely, sunny day star­ing into the toi­let bowl and wish­ing grav­ity were on my side. I wore a down quilt about the apart­ment like a north­ern king and spent too much time gen­u­flect­ing to the re­frig­er­a­tor, seek­ing some­thing, any­thing that would not of­fend my oh-​​so-​​vapid nose. Noth­ing do­ing. The mere whiff of any­thing hint­ing of nu­tri­ents sent my in­ner space into earth­quake mus­ings, so I fi­nally bowed to my body’s greater wis­dom and lay for two days, fasting.

Just when I thought the storm had passed, the vile lit­tle space in­vaders de­cided to try WMD’s. My fever aban­doned me to the ex­quis­ite world of pain, and af­ter four weeks of work­ing on my abs for that “leaner, straighter look”, found my­self hob­bling about the rooms bent over like a wiz­ened old man. “Good evening, my dear,” I was forced to croak to my wife, “Would you be so kind as to help an old pret­zel like me to lift a glass of wa­ter?” Needless-​​to-​​say, that night re­counted, for my wife, the sheer joy of the noc­tur­nal call­ings of wild crea­tures in the jun­gle… as she en­dured the grunt­ing, oof­ing, moan­ing, snort­ing, pant­ing ex­hor­ta­tions of this fit­ful boar, awash in a high fever, be­side her.

Yes­ter­day she ac­com­pa­nied me to the hos­pi­tal. The taxi dri­ver kept flick­ing ner­vous glances in the rearview mir­ror as this for­eigner in the back seat of his im­mac­u­late car made strange noises that didn’t quite sound like lan­guage. I must have looked like a none-​​too-​​distant re­la­tion of Mr. Hyde, with my dark, un­shaven face, cac­tus hair, and smudged mascara-​​look un­der my eyes. The hos­pi­tal had just opened and the young re­cep­tion­ists, clear-​​eyed and smil­ing (I was quite sur­prised when the en­tire front desk staff lined up and bowed a cheer­ful good morn­ing to all and sundry… I breathed to my wife… some un­con­scious at­tempt to em­u­late Mar­lon Brando up­river, no doubt… oh, the hor­ror, the hor­ror… that I won­dered if they were go­ing to sing and dance a scene from Seven Brides for Seven Broth­ers), greeted every­one with an en­thu­si­asm that surely made the venet­ian blinds wink and the pot­ted plants dance a jig.

Un­til one of the re­cep­tion­ists met me. She told us that, since this was our first time at this hos­pi­tal and that we didn’t have a re­fer­ral from my usual hos­pi­tal, we would have to cough up Â¥2,000 (about $22.00). I was in­censed (as much as I could be that wasn’t al­ready pretty much up in smoke al­ready) and must have slob­bered on the counter or some­thing, be­cause she stopped talk­ing and stared at me. Luck­ily my wife in­ter­vened and a ra­tio­nal pro­gres­sion of vo­cab­u­lary ticked out of her mouth. Both of them didn’t say a word, just silently en­dured my pres­ence and agreed on the in­her­ent boor­ish­ness of men.

The doc­tor. too, couldn’t re­store my lost Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture show. He greeted me with a pale blue face mask ob­scur­ing his fea­tures (he did have nice eyes, I have to ad­mit) and a habit of rear­ing back from me when I leaned in to make a com­ment. With the avian flu scare and mad cow dis­ease and SARS and world­wide flu epi­demic I guess he had every rea­son to sus­pect some for­eigner who com­plained of “very painful in­testines, pos­si­bly due to a semi-​​satisfying meal (though the com­pany was won­der­ful) at a Mex­i­can restau­rant on Fri­day night”. He laughed, al­beit some­what with a hic­cough, say­ing, “Ah, you can speak Japan­ese! That makes me feel much better!”

In the end, it was sim­ply a stom­ach flu, noth­ing to no­tify Doc­tors With­out Fron­tiers about, or the CIA, or Jean Luc Pic­card. I am safely back in my cell, ready to stand up and sing, “The Boar’s Head”.

Maybe to­mor­row I’ll give Rocky an­other go for his money.

Howl!

February 7, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 13 Comments 

Full moon over Moose­head Lake, Maine, U.S.A. 1991

For the first time in al­most two years the strength in my body broke through the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of in­ac­tiv­ity and slow mus­cles. For four weeks now I’ve been keep­ing up a reg­u­lar suc­ces­sion of ex­er­cise, in part to pre­pare my­self for less en­cum­bered moun­tain walk­ing this sum­mer, but also to take con­trol of my di­a­betes and to just plain feel good about my­self. With all the heavy events and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the last two years, turn­ing 41, then 42, and now 43, seemed to weigh down upon my sense of vi­tal­ity, as if all the voices had pum­meled me into sub­mis­sion and I was about to join the flocks of flabby-​​midriffed house­bound­ers. So many peo­ple my age seem to have given up. They want life easy and handed to them on a plate. They feel they have earned the right to rest and atrophy.

But I miss the moun­tains. I miss swing­ing my legs and feel­ing the air fill my lungs and my legs pro­pelling me along the ridges. And I miss wak­ing with a jump out of bed. I feel that piece by piece the ela­tion at be­ing alive is blow­ing away on some tem­po­ral wind, like dan­de­lion seeds. That’s not how I want to grow older. I don’t want to suc­cumb to cyn­i­cal news­pa­pers, closed cur­tains, and pack­ages of potato chips. The en­gine that dri­ves me… that dri­ves us all… yearns for hope spring­ing eter­nal. Again and again.

So I’ve em­braced this phys­i­cal promise of reawak­en­ing the mus­cles, bones, lungs, and eyes, talk­ing my­self into rhythms, tweak­ing a de­fi­ance against grav­ity, push­ing and pulling at the im­mov­able. It is a kind of dance, and the more of­ten I rein­car­nate this re­sis­tance against en­tropy the more the move­ment re­in­forces it­self and my body awak­ens. It is just sleep that in­ca­pac­i­tates us.

Tend­ing my core with Pi­lates work­outs, yank­ing grav­ity with weights, bend­ing branches with stretches and cal­is­then­ics, and tour­ing my neigh­bor­hood with long lop­ing runs and walks, all leave a feel­ing of oc­cu­pancy, of claim­ing my place in space.

The ef­fort has be­gun to pay off. This af­ter­noon the weights lifted with less pull. My head inched closer to my knee. I breached the pull up bar five ex­tra times. And most of all the run felt like bounc­ing, al­low­ing me to spend more time ac­knowl­edg­ing the glint of sun­light on the river’s wa­ter than on the crash­ing of my feet.

On the way back to my apart­ment I passed a house where a huge Ger­man Shep­herd oc­cu­pied a metal cage (Japan­ese have a bad habit of buy­ing dogs too big for their tiny homes and of­ten leav­ing them locked up in cages). Right as I paced by, the nearby kindergarten’s 5:45 chime went off, a loud, canned ver­sion of Big Ben’s bells. At the same mo­ment the Ger­man Shep­herd be­gan to howl, sound­ing for all the world like a wolf. I stopped and watched him, his muz­zle raised to the air, eyes shut, lips pursed, and hoot­ing at the sky. With my re­dis­cov­ered mus­cles burst­ing with en­ergy I wanted to join in, to call to the hori­zon and re­gain par­adise, the pack rolling over the hills and tak­ing me away. Some­thing was singing in me and I wasn’t alone.

As if a silent start gun had gone off my legs re­sumed their walk home. This is just the be­gin­ning. The cage will melt away, and I will heed the call­ing of the wild.

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