Little Old Men

March 26, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 11 Comments 

Lit­tle Egret hunt­ing in the Noh River, Chofu, Tokyo, Japan, 2004

When­ever the Barn Swal­lows swoop past my head for the first time in the year I know that Spring has re­turned for sure. On my way along the river to the sports club yes­ter­day the liq­uid chortling and twit­ter­ing of this first har­bin­ger of Spring spun out of the grey, rainy air like cot­ton candy, a taste of what was to come. The next mo­ment the dare­devil eye drop of its lean, in­digo and rust body, wings cut­ting the air like scis­sors, flashed past my head and dove to within a finger’s breadth above the water’s sur­face. It banked and dis­ap­peared in the bend of the river.

All the along the river birds were prepar­ing for the Spring Bash, every­one break­ing off into pairs. The pairs of Green Winged Teals kicked the wa­ter in tiny sam­bas, the males com­plete in their Mardi Gras emer­ald green mask. A fe­male Car­rion Crow (sim­i­lar to the Amer­i­can Com­mon Crow, and smaller than the more nu­mer­ous and Raven-​​like Jun­gle Crows) chuck­led as she ten­derly tended her new nest of twigs, in clear view among the bare branches of a Beech tree. A pair of Com­mon King­fish­ers, both flash­ing metal­lic turquoise, perched be­yond sight of one an­other, but stay­ing close to the tiny nest bur­row in the mud em­bank­ment and keep­ing to their cus­tom­ary soli­tary habits in spite of pair­ing. White Wag­tails square danced among the rocks while Spot Billed Ducks tan­goed amidst the wa­tery grasses. A Great Cor­morant, dressed like a black­jack, fla­men­coed right through the crowd, un­able to make quick turns. And in the cham­pagne cloud of blos­som­ing Cherry trees a con­tin­gent of White Eyes turned min­uets, their wispy chirps giv­ing voice to the Cherry trees’ ardor.

And off to the side, hunched like an old man, stood a Lit­tle Egret, his yel­low feet in odd con­trast to the swirling grey wa­ter and cold rocks. The wind stirred the bil­lowy fronds of his coat­tails and, al­most de­jected, he pulled his long neck fur­ther into his shoul­ders and eyed the darker depths of the wa­ter for morsels. While every­one else danced, call­ing up sun­shine that still didn’t have the strength to break the hold of Win­ter, the Egret re­mained a re­al­ist, look­ing at the present with still and un­com­pro­mis­ing eyes. I crouched down along the bank of the river and tried to mimic his im­mov­able spirit, but like all hu­mans my mind wan­dered and took off with the dancers. Soon I was up and walk­ing again, off to other, more press­ing matters.

Standing in the Rain

March 20, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 15 Comments 

Moun­tain Aza­lea bloom­ing on the slopes of Sasaone, Oku-​​Chichibu, Tokyo, Japan, 2000

One thing I’ve been miss­ing is that sense of raw ex­pec­ta­tion that in­fuses wild places, that pre­science ex­ud­ing from the in­ter­ac­tion be­tween un­seen, but watch­ful pres­ences, where even the wind takes on the per­son­al­ity of a liv­ing en­tity. In the city this only rarely man­i­fests it­self and it is a rare gift when it happens.

Lately I’ve taken to run­ning to my sports club and then walk­ing home, both along the banks of the Noh River, which runs north­west and south­east through the west­ern half of Tokyo. Though most of the river has been en­cased in a con­crete cast, earthen banks, re­sem­bling Eu­ro­pean tow­paths, run along the sides, with stairs lead­ing down to them for those who want to walk their dog, watch birds, or just go for a run. Hardy grasses, reeds, and scat­tered trees flour­ish where the wa­ter stills or doesn’t of­ten reach, and among them all sorts of wildlife, mostly birds, carry out their lives. When you walk along the banks, down be­low the busy pas­sage of the hu­man world above, you get an al­most pal­pa­ble feel­ing that the aware­ness of the crea­tures around you arises out of a con­nec­tion to a past mem­ory that char­ac­ter­ized the whole land­scape all around you in years gone by. It is their world you have en­tered, and with each skit­tish crea­ture wad­dling away or burst­ing into the air you fur­ther sense your dis­en­gage­ment from the sym­bio­sis of the or­ganic world.

It was rain­ing when I started home from the sports club the other day. The first rain since the start of win­ter and a much needed slak­ing of the soil’s thirst. The work­out with weights and the long push with the stair­mas­ter, and af­ter­wards the soli­tary soak in the great Japan­ese bath, left my mus­cles ra­di­at­ing with heat and, in spite of the chill of the wind and the rain, walk­ing along the path stirred up ex­hil­a­ra­tion. The air smelled green with new leaves and bit­ter with earth. The wind scythed in the sky, muscling at in­vis­i­ble im­ped­ances, bull­roar­ing, knock­ing, bel­low­ing. Shiv­ers of wavelets raced across the river’s sur­face, as if in­vis­i­ble wings were dart­ing by.

There is an old cherry tree lean­ing out across one sec­tion of the river and that day its branches car­ry­ing the first knots of swelling blos­som buds. I stopped and just stood there, let­ting the rain drop its cur­tain of si­lence all around me, while I watched noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar. Some Spot-​​billed Ducks. a pair of newly ar­rived Green-​​Winged Teals, a stately In­ter­me­di­ate Egret, and a self-​​conscious Great Cor­morant splashed in the grey wa­ter, each in their own world, watch­ful. A bare bank of clay, into which a Com­mon King­fisher, bril­liant turquoise in the sun, had bur­rowed, stood un­mov­ing, no hint of any life.

And that was it. Just me in that place with the wind blow­ing, rain pat­ter­ing on my head, and birds mind­ing their own busi­ness. No grand ad­ven­tures or dra­matic in­ter­na­tional crises. Just me and the river. But it was enough… For that small in­stant I felt con­nected to every­thing and whole. Com­pletely empty of my­self. It was an echo of the world as it wants to be.

Exhuberance

March 17, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 7 Comments 

Carp in the Noh River, March 2004

The mag­no­lia out­side my win­dow is burst­ing forth with clouds of white blos­sums. This is the fourth time to wit­ness the joy of its vi­tal­ity, though, in typ­i­cal Japan­ese gar­den­ing men­tal­ity, the gar­den­ers have chopped it down to but a frac­tion of its for­mer glory. It is a prun­ing phi­los­o­phy that I can’t un­der­stand; most of the time trees in Japan­ese gar­dens are so man­i­cured of their nat­ural form and grace that half the year the trees stand around like de­jected sticks. A huge zelkova along the way to work, last year tow­er­ing 30 me­ters over the cor­ner, with a mas­sive um­brella of sway­ing leaves, was lopped of all its branches a few days ago, so that now it looks like a naked pair of legs stick­ing out of the side­walk. This kind of chop­ping up oc­curs all over Japan, and while I ap­pre­ci­ate a well done tra­di­tional Japan­ese gar­den, I also think there is a time and place for the gar­den­ing prac­tices to be em­ployed. When you ran­domly re­duce an en­tire neigh­bor­hood to match­sticks, not only do you get a pretty stark look­ing place, but you rob peo­ple and the soil of shade. Tokyo, with­out all the trees it once had, must surely have heated up quite a bit since neigh­bor­hoods went con­crete. And be­sides, I just love the sound of wind in the leaves.

For all that, na­ture is pop­ping up every­where. The bar­rel cac­tus on my win­dow sill started flow­er­ing for the first time since I got it 8 years ago. Twenty buds a’ringing the crown of the bulb. The flower is sup­posed to turn bright ma­genta, but per­haps the cac­tus is test­ing my abil­ity to ap­pre­ci­ate things that cook slowly.

On the trains pas­sen­gers sit with tears in their eyes and white cot­ton face masks while suf­fer­ing un­der the pall of Japan­ese cedar and cy­press pollen. It sounds like a cho­rus as one per­son lets go a vol­ley of sneezes, and is promptly backed up by an­other per­son across the car, and re­peated fur­ther down the train in rapid succession.

Yearly the hay fever epi­demic grows worse, all due the thought­less plans of the gov­ern­ment right af­ter the war, when they de­cided, in an ef­fort to reestab­lish the country’s lum­ber sources, to plant the en­tire country’s de­nuded hills and moun­tains with one vast crop of cedar and cy­press. No thought was given to the ef­fects this would have on the fu­ture, in terms of al­ler­gies; loss of top­soil (cedar and cy­press, while able to cling to the steep, rocky slopes of Japan, put down shal­low roots and fail to hold the soil down), with the re­sult­ing land­slides, mud­slides, and silt­ing up of the rivers; and dev­as­ta­tion to the en­demic an­i­mals and plants. Now, forty years later, the trees have ma­tured, and while most of Japan’s wood is raped from other coun­tries, the cedars and cy­press have started to re­pro­duce in one gi­ant, pollen ex­chang­ing orgy. When I lived in Shizuoka Pre­fec­ture um­ber clouds of pollen would writhe through the air like swarms of lo­custs, all be­ing blown, gath­er­ing in size as the swarms from other pre­fec­tures ac­cu­mu­lated, to­ward the catchall basin of the Kanto Plain, which Tokyo has ba­si­cally overrun.

My hay fever isn’t so bad, but I know many who hate Spring be­cause of it. What a strange world when all the life around us is hop­ping for joy at the com­ing of warm weather and re­birth, while so many of us cover our­selves up in misery.

But I in­tend to en­joy this Spring. My body agrees. I feel like danc­ing! Like dash­ing along the river. Like climb­ing a tree, or singing at the top of my lungs!

In fact, I think that’s what I’ll go do right now. I’ll leave it to your imag­i­na­tion which one I de­cide to do!

Mind Wrap

March 16, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 10 Comments 

Last win­ter view of Mt. Fuji from Mount Takao, be­fore the spring haze sets in.

I want to apol­o­gize to every­one for not be­ing around for such a long time. I mean to write every day, but re­cently I got in­volved with a huge project de­sign­ing the in­ter­na­tional brochure for Keio Plaza Ho­tel. For those of you who don’t know what the Keio Plaza Ho­tel is, just try pic­tur­ing your­self do­ing the brochure for the en­tire chain of the Ritz… and then hav­ing it be the first time to do such a big project. While it is ex­cit­ing and cer­tainly a lot of fun to be given ba­si­cally free rein to come up with a com­pletely new con­cept for the ho­tel (it’s hard imag­in­ing that I will be re­spon­si­ble in part for the im­age that the ho­tel projects to all in­ter­na­tional vis­i­tors who come to Tokyo and stay at the ho­tel!), and that I ba­si­cally have a bud­get to make most graphic de­sign­ers drool, I must say that the pres­sure is enough to whiten a few more ar­eas of my goatee.

The first night af­ter I met with the ho­tel pub­lic re­la­tions team and de­scended from the dizzy­ing heights of the Im­pe­r­ial Suite (the ho­tel is one of the biggest and tallest build­ings in Japan) down into the restau­rants, pass­ing some 1,450 rooms and 27 restau­rants, my brain was so fraz­zled by the sheer com­plex­ity and nu­mer­ous­ness of ser­vices and fa­cil­i­ties that I went into a panic. I lay in bed awash with too many im­ages and sen­sory over­load, and with the loom­ing tower of the ho­tel glar­ing down at me, de­mand­ing to know how I, this lit­tle blip of a graphic de­signer, would dare to pre­sume to grasp the con­cept of such a gi­ant en­tity. Some­where around 3:00 in the morn­ing I thought my sense of self was go­ing to go nova, and I en­ter­tained the thought of just giv­ing up, no mat­ter the shame, em­bar­rass­ment, and in­con­ve­nience I would cause to those I was work­ing with.

But then it oc­curred to me, damn, this is just a silly lit­tle pam­phlet, not the ac­tual plan­ning of the ho­tel it­self! And then I thought, it is only a ho­tel, not some baby whose life was in my hands. Just a hotel.

And that’s when, for the first time in my life when fac­ing what I imag­ined was a truly big per­sonal cri­sis, I con­sciously seemed to wrap my mind around a con­cept that seemed big­ger than I could grasp. I re­al­ized that that’s how ideas work and how a sin­gle mind could han­dle seem­ingly over­whelm­ing sit­u­a­tions if the mind it­self is given enough lee­way. I con­jured up the im­age of my hand wrap­ping around the ho­tel and squeez­ing it down to size. And it worked! The mo­ment the ho­tel be­came this lit­tle idea and the strength of the idea of sim­plic­ity stepped in, sud­denly my whole body let go of the ten­sion and I could feel my­self breath­ing eas­ier. Within ten min­utes I was fast asleep, the ex­ploratory half of my mind free to roam the cos­mos of invention.

I hope I can learn a les­son from what hap­pened and use it for how I deal with my life in gen­eral. Per­haps un­til now I’ve al­ways imag­ined my life is be­ing some­how much big­ger than my spirit, but I won­der if what I can imag­ine and what my trail though the years ac­tu­ally is are not ac­tu­ally the same thing. It is cer­tainly some­thing to ponder.

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