Desert Flowers

May 23, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 23 Comments 

Fe­male Japan­ese Grass Lizard (Taky­dro­mus tachy­dro­moides) sun­ning it­self on the wall of my apart­ment, Chofu, Tokyo, 2004

Funny how the mind works. Af­ter quite a spell of feel­ing pretty good about my­self and the win­dow into my own heart, sud­denly this enor­mous feel­ing of close de­spair hit me for a week. Every­thing around me sud­denly seemed too much, noth­ing was lov­able or nur­tur­ing or whole­some. Even the words that I at­tempted to wran­gle into some kind of mean­ing­ful di­a­logue about the world seemed to co­a­lesce into bee­tle browed grum­bles about any and every­thing. Wor­ry­ing and seething over things hap­pen­ing in far­away Iraq and Amer­ica… What an ex­haust­ing week.

Then, while rid­ing the train and do­ing my usual read­ing I came across this quote from David James Duncan’s “My Story As Told By Water” :

“Aren’t one’s men­tal en­er­gies a bit like a knife-​​scoop of mus­tard and one’s ge­og­ra­phy a bit like a piece of bread? Isn’t it true that if your bread is thou­sands of miles across, you’ll be spread­ing your mus­tard mighty thin? The world, it seems to me, is aw­fully big, a hu­man is aw­fully small, life is aw­fully short, and most of our plates are mighty full for our per­sonal ge­o­gra­phies to ap­prox­i­mate the in­ter­na­tional or na­tional ge­o­gra­phies. When hu­mans go global with their ge­o­gra­phies, bad things hap­pen to their thinking.”

He goes on to talk about the ne­ces­sity for us to wrap our minds around what we are ca­pa­ble of grasp­ing, that any more than that we risk los­ing touch with what make us what we are. There is a lot more than that, of course, but it hit me then and there on the train that one thing I lack is a true sense of dwelling in a place. Not just ex­ist­ing some­where, but ac­tu­ally be­com­ing wholly in­volved with the func­tion and sym­bio­sis of a habi­tat, in­clud­ing more in­ti­mate re­spon­si­bil­ity over the food that I eat, deeper knowl­edge of the crea­tures that live around me, and a stronger pres­ence with a sup­port­ive com­mu­nity. There is none of that here where I live, at least with me as a for­eigner, more or less out­side any spirit of neigh­bor­hood good­will that so far I have not seen to ex­ist any where around my home.

These last three weeks have be­gun to awaken me to new goals and pos­si­ble fur­ther er­rant steps in this hap­haz­ard track I’ve wan­dered down all my life. First it was a re­al­iza­tion of a need to delve deeper into fem­i­nine ways of see­ing the world, now it is an ac­tive search for a real place to call home. Quite a few peo­ple have crit­i­cized me for search­ing for “a per­fect place”, chastis­ing me with the worn phrase, “there is no such thing as a per­fect place.” I’ve main­tained that I have never searched for heaven on earth, but rather a more or less con­stant state of deep in­volve­ment with a nat­ural place, that nu­mer­ous times through­out my life have culled a state of grace and joy while I in­ter­acted with such places… even dur­ing the hard­ships that of­ten ac­com­pany such places. Maybe other peo­ple can’t iden­tify with nat­ural things… but I know that when I walk in a healthy wood or along a wild river or even just wan­der an eco­log­i­cally bal­anced hu­man land­scape, such as some places I’ve seen in Nor­way, Swe­den, and a few small vil­lages in the moun­tains in Japan, the sense of com­plete­ness fills my soul. When I see plants and an­i­mals in abun­dance, liv­ing their own lives along­side mine, then I feel the world is whole and won­der sus­tains me as much as the healthy food I eat.

It seems other peo­ple have been go­ing through this sense of de­spair through­out the blog world. Quite a num­ber of peo­ple have been voic­ing doubt about why they blog and what sig­nif­i­cance it might have in their real lives. A lot of it has to do with the aw­ful things hap­pen­ing in the world and the sense that some­thing fun­da­men­tal is be­ing lost. The words in the blogs fun­nel around a empty core from which peo­ple seem un­able to es­cape. Hope seems to be evap­o­rat­ing with each procla­ma­tion the world lead­ers make.

But there are peo­ple push­ing back the en­ve­lope of fear and hope­less­ness, too. Denny, of Book of Life has held on to those things that give mean­ing to each of our lives, the “per­sonal ge­og­ra­phy” that David James Dun­can speaks of. And Charley Reese’s lat­est ar­ti­cle, “A Sense of Won­der” re­treats from Reese’s usual pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the darker things hap­pen­ing, fo­cus­ing in­stead on the joy that chil­dren ex­pe­ri­ence of the world, and how we must find the child­like en­thu­si­asm of the en­light­ened, de­light­ing in the sim­pler things, the liv­ing things, the magic that is the very ma­te­r­ial of ex­is­tence and the world.

I want to try an ex­per­i­ment: in­stead of keen­ing about the ter­ri­ble things go­ing on, let me try to re­dis­cover the old rhap­sody that I car­ried with me while I wan­dered the fields and woods as a boy. Be­neath the con­crete sur­round­ing me the soil still har­bors seeds and lit­tle crea­tures, all the lit­tle live things. There is my door, there the sky, there the cracks in the con­crete and the birds in the trees. It’s a start.

I used to sing a lot. Time to lis­ten to the melodies again and love the world. To, as Denny put it, be grateful.

What About Within the States?

May 21, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 5 Comments 

An­other ques­tion needs to be asked: all those Sep­tem­ber 11^th sus­pects who were se­creted away in the States and who have not been men­tioned in the news for a very long time now, what hap­pened to them? Are they be­ing abused, too? Is any­one go­ing to force an in­quiry into this, or is it just too un­palat­able for Amer­i­cans to pon­der? If there is noth­ing to hide, then why are they be­ing held in secret?

Holding Back Tears

May 21, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 8 Comments 

Bloom­ing rape­seed plants along the edge of the Noh River, Chofu, Tokyo, Japan 2004

It’s been a week of shuf­fling through the dun­geons. I guess the fa­tigue of too much work, weeks and weeks with no other peo­ple to just talk to, lit­tle time out­doors (let alone amidst any­thing green), a cough that won’t let up, and news so bad that it’s hard to come up with words any more, have com­bined to bring on this enor­mous sink­ing feeling.

Chris from Creek Run­ning North had rec­om­mended David James Duncan’s “My Story As Told By Wa­ter” so at the be­gin­ning of the week I started read­ing it on the train com­mutes to and from my evening work. The writ­ing is sub­lime and gritty, and has a way of shak­ing up per­cep­tions like low rum­bles of the earth deep be­neath me. Dun­can writes about con­nec­tion to place and how these places and their in­hab­i­tants shape you. The metaphors he uses strike with such con­crete im­me­di­acy that nu­mer­ous times on the train I felt my­self men­tally reel­ing, and had to close the book to re­gain my balance.

What I didn’t ex­pect was the book’s im­pact on my emo­tions. Dun­can re­lates a child­hood that seemed al­most to recre­ate my own, of­fer­ing a world of rivers and in­ti­mate for­ays into the bushes and creature-​​laden hide­aways that re­flected the wan­der­ing among rice pad­dies and through the woods, hunt­ing for in­sects and birds, that took over my whole un­der­stand­ing about what the world is about when I was a boy. Like Dun­can I have never been able to square the mind­less paving over of the forests and moun­tains and rivers, the cav­a­lier at­ti­tude about such pre­cious trea­sures as wa­ter and air, and the ap­a­thy and fear to­wards other crea­tures, with our grand hope of “civ­i­liza­tion”. To me the world is dy­ing. Our mo­not­ony and steril­ity, our cru­elty and ut­ter stu­pid­ity have turned the world into a gray play­ground and cesspool, and all that I love so much has grad­u­ally gone silent. Liv­ing in the heart of Tokyo doesn’t help, of course. I dwell in the midst of all that I de­spise most, far, far from that green ten­dril and the “sphere of eyes” that Dun­can talks about, that never fail to awaken love and joy and all the other states of vi­tal­ity, like fear and won­der, that make you feel alive.

The book slipped, like a nee­dle, so sur­rep­ti­tiously un­der my skin that I found my­self knocked to the edge of con­trol all week. When one of the train lines I take to work was de­layed by an hour due to an ac­ci­dent and the plat­form grew so crowded with com­muters head­ing home like me that one man was pushed over the edge down to the tracks, I had to grit my teeth and find a nook within my mind in which to take a deep breath. I kept re­peat­ing, “Damn it, I hate this! Damn it, I hate this! Damn it, I hate this!”, over and over again, like a litany to the devil. “What the hell am I do­ing here? I don’t be­long here. This is madness!”

Or yes­ter­day, while head­ing to have a quick din­ner up the street from my school, when I no­ticed a pair of barn swal­lows alight upon the tele­phone wire above my head… I looked up and there they were, tak­ing a brief respite across from their nest hid­den un­der the eaves of a build­ing. But it was just them, in the mid­dle of this tu­mult of con­crete and hu­man waste, not an­other vis­i­ble liv­ing crea­ture around. All I could think of was mem­ory and how these two crea­tures con­nected to a time long be­fore, when this very lo­ca­tion must have har­bored trees and fields and rivers and glades full of in­sects. I paused in my walk and stared at them. When the male mo­men­tar­ily lifted his scissors-​​like wings, and like a weight­less dancer lifted from and let down to the tele­phone wire, with such pre­ci­sion and ef­fort­less­ness that it came across like a ca­ress, I nearly broke down weeping.

It felt the same as see­ing the home­less old man, while thou­sands of com­muters scur­ried by, kneel­ing down on a piece of card­board, care­fully plac­ing to one side the shoes he had removed.

The same as the young toad that had been crushed to death by a pass­ing bi­cy­cle, its tongue lolling out and in­nards glued to the pave­ment, that I lifted and car­ried to a nearby bush.

The same as the jolt of pain I felt the other day when I came across the empty lot near my house, and found that its griz­zled old flow­er­ing dog­wood had been chopped down, an as­phalt park­ing lot in its place.

These days it seems as if noth­ing but pain and loss and care­less­ness have taken over the whole world. As if noth­ing mat­tered but a hu­man agenda. As if the world, when it fi­nally suc­cumbs to our de­sire to build it in our im­age, would only then find completion.

If it is true that the body finds ex­pres­sion and whole­ness by par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ebb and flow of the di­ver­sity of liv­ing things, then I no longer know who I am. Or where I am. It is strange liv­ing dis­em­bod­ied from the very cir­cle of earth that I tread upon day in and day out.

Panther Security Hole

May 20, 2004 | Laughing Knees | Comments Off 

For those of you us­ing the Mac I just came across this in­for­ma­tion about a huge se­cu­rity hole in Pan­ther (OS 10.3). Read about it here: Ma­ma­mus­ings and here Mak­ing Light. When you try out the harm­less ex­am­ple of the se­cu­rity com­pro­mise that they of­fer, you will want to make the fix im­me­di­ately. It’s pretty scary. This is the re­ferred to pref­er­ence pane for mak­ing the fix.

Thanks Per­i­cat

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