Ebb Tide

July 31, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 7 Comments 

Sea bird nurs­eries in Orkney and the Shet­lands. Ful­mars with chicks. The Orkneys and the Shet­lands, Great Britain, 1995.

This will not make world head­lines and most likely will not trig­ger most peo­ple around the world into a mass hys­te­ria, but when I read the news in the In­de­pen­dant yes­ter­day about the mas­sive drop in sea bird pop­u­la­tions in the North Sea, I couldn’t help but feel a great chill sweep through me akin to the shock I felt when first hear­ing the news of the New York tragedy. In fact, as I sat con­tem­plat­ing the reper­cus­sions of what is hap­pen­ing in the Orkneys and the Shet­lands, and broad­ened my per­spec­tive by con­nect­ing the dots be­tween what is hap­pen­ing there to all the in­ter­con­nected ecosys­temic fail­ures around the world, a slowly dawn­ing hor­ror spread through me like a pool of blood. Global warm­ing is no longer just con­jec­ture. It is no longer the day af­ter to­mor­row. It is hap­pen­ing right here, right now. And the con­se­quences to us are truly ter­ri­fy­ing; they make the New York tragedy look like a gar­den party in comparison.

And of course, there will be lots of de­bat­ing whether there re­ally is any dan­ger at all, whether the data is slanted, whether the loss of the seabirds will have any bear­ing on us fi­nan­cially or in dis­rupt­ing our merry lives. The fo­cus will re­main on Iraq and the Amer­i­can elec­tion and our global habi­tat be damned. It’s al­ways about just us, and al­ways we dis­as­so­ci­ate our­selves with any re­la­tion­ship to the res­pi­ra­tion of the planet. We like to think of our­selves as as­tro­nauts within our own homes.

I trav­eled to both the Shet­lands and the Orkneys in 1995. I sat on the cliffs for hours gaz­ing at the teem­ing mil­lions of Ful­mars, Guil­limots, Black Guil­limots, Ra­zor­bills, Gan­nets, Cor­morants, Puffins, Kit­ti­wakes, Arc­tic Skuas, Great Skuas, Arc­tic Terns, Great Black-​​Backed Gulls, Glau­cous Gulls, Com­mon Gulls, Her­ring Gulls, and Shags and feel­ing ut­terly over­whelmed by the sheer clouds of wings and metropolis-​​like ver­ti­cal cities on the cliff sides. To think that by next year this will have van­ished, like a great hand sweep­ing across a clock face, de­fies be­lief. It is like my heart has been raked over and my own ex­is­tence and cul­pa­bil­ity questioned.

Here in Japan, a sup­pos­edly tem­per­ate cli­mate, this sum­mer the days are trou­bled by daily trop­i­cal storms, ex­actly how the Philip­pines, a trop­i­cal coun­try, re­ceives its sum­mer cos­tume. Morn­ings beamed into by a beat­ing sun, fol­lowed by af­ter­noons of thun­der­ous show­ers. This is not Japan at all. The gods must be play­ing the wrong game up there among the clouds. Could it be a shift in val­ues? Are the re­gions play­ing mu­si­cal chairs and roles re­versed? Am I go­ing to have to learn to grow ba­nanas and pa­payas now? Or will the Great Ocean de­cide to clean house and in­un­date the low­lands with an an­gry bath that will have us run­ning for the hill­tops in our shov­ing, thought­less billions?

How much longer will the pas­toral last? If the struc­ture of the world we know falls into chaos, how long, for in­stance, will I sur­vive with­out the med­ical elixir of in­sulin to keep my di­a­betic blood from con­sum­ing me? (a few days, per­haps? A month, as my body slowly eats it­self to death and I crash into a coma?). Will we be left alone among the heat waves, to con­tem­plate our mass stu­pid­ity and fi­nally, but too late, take the blame for our irresponsibility?

Or can we learn now, be­fore our broth­ers and sis­ters who sus­tain us van­ish, that there is no hi­er­ar­chy and that our ape-​​like mo­ti­va­tions cou­pled to im­mense power makes for a time bomb that we must learn to de­ac­ti­vate now, or we all perish?

Peo­ple want soft words and com­fort­ing sce­nar­ios. They cringe at the the idea of the ro­mance dis­in­te­grat­ing. But the nat­ural world is as real as the hard knocks of the real hu­man world. They are, in fact, one and the same. So when are we go­ing to wake up and man­age our home (the “eco” of ecol­ogy and econ­omy) the same way that we are so com­pelled to do in our worka­day lives? When will the nat­ural world be­come our work and our liveli­hood? When, if we can imag­ine it so, will we be­come an­i­mals once again?

Good Grief

July 7, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 10 Comments 

Daisy­Win­nefred, of An­i­mated Star­dust re­lates a hi­lar­i­ous ex­pe­ri­ence with an off kil­ter het­ero­sex­ual. Her grace and hu­mor in an in­tol­er­a­ble en­counter cer­tainly are lessons in hu­mil­ity and kind­ness. I wish I could be so charm­ing and tol­er­ant. But, I guess, what else can you do in such a situation?

Re­minds me of a story my mother told me of when I was a baby in Han­nover, Ger­many. This was back in 1960 when Han­nover har­bored pre­cious few dark-​​skinned crea­tures and just see­ing a black or Asian was as rare as flamin­gos in the Black For­est. My fa­ther is a Filipino/​black Amer­i­can while my mother is a cream-​​skinned Ger­man. The re­sult­ing cock­tail is an olive-​​skinned mutt who can pass off as Mex­i­can, Nepali, Turk­ish, Iraqi, Brazil­ian, Ital­ian, In­dian, Span­ish, even Por­tuguese (all of which I have been mis­taken for). Suf­fice it to say that in Ger­many, in the small city of Han­nover, in 1960, I was pretty much an or­ganic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of an ex­cla­ma­tion mark.

Any­way, my mother told me, she and I were tak­ing our leisure in the hal­lowed walls of the hos­pi­tal where I was born, wait­ing for my checkup. There were a few ta­bles lined up against the wall for moth­ers to at­tend to their ba­bies and my mother stood be­side one, chang­ing my di­a­pers. An­other mother with her lit­tle, curlicue-​​haired, blonde baby was chang­ing his di­a­pers, so that he and I could be­gin our first jaunt into uri­nal bath­room com­par­i­son ri­valry. I’m not sure if I ini­ti­ated any un­due cause for at­ten­tion, but the woman leaned to­ward my white mother, gave her a run­down with her eyes, switched head­lights to­ward me, this swad­dled muf­fin, lightly browned, gave me the once down, glanced back at my mother, then me again, all in head-​​cocking ap­praisal, be­fore stand­ing up straight and in­quir­ing, in all earnestness:

“Please, tell me. How did you man­age to get that par­tic­u­lar shade of skin tone? My son’s skin re­mains as pink as when he was born. What do you do? Feed him car­rots? Do the car­rots make a great difference?”

It wasn’t my fault! I do hap­pen to like car­rots. I of­ten won­der now if my af­flic­tion could have been pre­vented with a bit more fore­thought on my part. A bit more whole milk, per­haps. Or maybe tubs of yo­ghurt. Marsh­mal­lows? Or how about Cool Whip?

Adapting the Fire

July 4, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 18 Comments 

Everyone’s com­ments have made me think a lot about my own at­ti­tude, and how my own at­ti­tude prob­a­bly helps in shap­ing my mis­ery. Though my love for na­ture is gen­uine, and I do need to find the kind of nat­ural en­vi­ron­ment that brings me close to a sense of bal­ance within my­self and the sur­round­ing en­vi­ron­ment, I also knew what kind of en­vi­ron­ment I was get­ting my­self into when I moved here (though this place is ex­cep­tion­ally un­friendly and de­vel­op­ing way too fast, with lit­tle thought given to the qual­ity of the neigh­bor­hood. My last apart­ment may have been too small, but, even in the heart of Tokyo, it was quiet and the neigh­bors were so friendly that we had par­ties to­gether and took care of each other’s chil­dren and pets). Aki’s com­ment par­tic­u­larly rang true with her in­sis­tence that it is how you choose to view a sit­u­a­tion that in the end de­ter­mines how that sit­u­a­tion af­fects you and the peo­ple around you. Her ex­am­ple of Nel­son Man­dela was pow­er­ful. Here was a man who had been locked up and abused for years, and still he man­aged to get out of it with hope and grace and re­spectabil­ity. In­stead of nur­tur­ing hate and re­venge, he in­sisted upon fair­ness and un­der­stand­ing and thus man­aged to end a state of af­fairs that was in­tol­er­a­ble for the black peo­ple of South Africa. And to re­lin­quish power, too! What a gen­er­ous and wise spirit!

I fur­ther read some thoughts by Robert Bate­man, per­haps my fa­vorite wildlife artist, in which he speaks of the need for peo­ple to learn, as he did in Eu­rope, how to live within one’s cir­cum­stances. While I don’t in­tend to start an­other di­a­tribe against Amer­ica, I do think that the ex­pan­sion­ist, pi­o­neer at­ti­tude of Amer­i­cans to­day is in­ap­pro­pri­ate in a world so over­crowded, and that it is this at­ti­tude, in great part, which has con­tributed to the in­tol­er­ance that be­gan the Iraq war.

I have to look at my own de­vel­op­ment, too, when I speak of “na­ture” and our re­la­tion­ship to it. Be­fore I left Japan af­ter high school, to at­tend uni­ver­sity in Ore­gon, I loved Japan and Tokyo so much that I wanted to be­come Japan­ese. I saw no ug­li­ness in the city and the crowds and jum­bled de­vel­op­ment ac­tu­ally felt nor­mal to me; it was the world I had grown up in. Upon ar­riv­ing in Ore­gon every­thing felt odd and over­grown and fright­en­ingly over-​​spacious. For more than a year I couldn’t get used to the empty streets and never bump­ing into peo­ple. The stretched out lawns in front of people’s houses, with­out walls, and the vast con­crete waste­lands of park­ing lots seemed a shock­ing ex­ploita­tion of pre­cious land. The gar­gan­tuan in­vis­i­ble wall of wilder­ness, where bears and cougars and men with guns roamed, was so alien and vast that for years I couldn’t wrap my mind around it and never dared ven­ture too far into it with­out friends.

Liv­ing in Ore­gon for ten years, though, grad­u­ally eroded my con­cep­tions of space and hu­man­ity. Con­cen­trat­ing on courses re­volv­ing around the en­vi­ron­ment and lis­ten­ing to pas­sion­ate pro­fes­sors speak about the “loss” of this wilder­ness and the sup­plant­ing of old growth forests with hu­man plan­ta­tions, bi­ased my ideas about what was a fair as­sess­ment of “na­ture”, and what an ideal hu­man habi­tat might look like. The ideals were par­tic­u­larly Amer­i­can, home grown from a land of peo­ple used to great open spaces, abun­dant wealth, com­pla­cent in their ex­pec­ta­tions of land and stan­dard of liv­ing. When I be­gan study­ing ar­chi­tec­ture the mantras of rel­e­vance and re­spect for ex­ist­ing his­tor­i­cal prece­dents meant think­ing of build­ings like an Amer­i­can, build­ing with an Amer­i­can sense of size and per­sonal com­fort, ways of see­ing the built world that were com­pletely out­side of my own ex­pe­ri­ences in Japan and Germany.

I re­turned to Japan car­ry­ing this new load of cul­tural bag­gage, my eyes newly at­tuned to a dif­fer­ent wave­length of tol­er­ance and ex­pec­ta­tion. Whereas Tokyo, be­fore I left, had seemed beau­ti­ful in its de­tails and the peo­ple finely ac­cen­tu­ated for liv­ing within the en­vi­ron­ment that had shaped them, I now saw only seething crowds and a mess of un­kempt build­ings. And I hated it. Try as I might I couldn’t re­store the old faith in things Japan­ese and join the peo­ple in de­light­ing in the triv­ial trin­kets that so plague the so­ci­ety to­day. Part of what I sought had been lost dur­ing the so­cial shake­down of the Bub­ble Era and I was re­turn­ing to a dif­fer­ent world, but in large part it stemmed from my own changes. I had lost the Japan of my youth.

Per­haps this learn­ing process comes in big steps that you take at cer­tain junc­tions in your life. First was the pas­toral won­der of the world in child­hood, then the re­in­force­ment of ideals to reach for in Amer­ica, the plung­ing into re­al­ity in my post grad­u­ate pe­riod, an awak­en­ing to the enigma of ar­rival in my early mid­dle years, and now, some­thing new, a fur­ther step in awak­en­ing and change. It is an of­ten painful strug­gle, like the writhing of a moth pupa when some­thing dan­ger­ous touches it, but cleans­ing, too. Per­haps the step to be taken is not some har­bor­ing of re­sent­ment against the peo­ple around me, but to ac­tively take part in trans­form­ing the world I in­habit, to em­brace it and mark it with my own brand of charm and vi­sion. Cer­tainly sit­ting here fum­ing alone in front of the com­puter can’t spell an iota of in­flu­ence upon the neigh­bors. But if I were to of­fer some­thing to ad­mire and like, some­thing beau­ti­ful and open, with my heart ready to suf­fer the gaunt­let, then per­haps my own spirit will emerge free. Af­ter all it is a pact with hu­man­ity that I seek, not na­ture. Na­ture is there of it­self all the time; it is the va­garies of the hu­man ex­per­i­ment that so trou­bles me.

Unsheltered Sky

July 3, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 16 Comments 

Mag­no­lia vis­i­ble from my liv­ing room win­dow in April, just be­fore bloom­ing, Tokyo, Japan 2004. (Please take note: this is a Quick­Time file and is quite large_​ 3.4 MB_​ so you might want to re­frain from open­ing the file if your band­width is slow)

It’s been a month of losses. Losses in time, losses in money, losses in con­fi­dence, losses in trust, losses in sleep. And re­cently a great loss for my sense of bal­ance within my own home: the small, de­serted lot just out­side my liv­ing room win­dow, over which I would peace­fully gaze every morn­ing as part of my rit­ual of wak­ing up and feel­ing at least a lit­tle con­nected to the nat­ural world, was sud­denly con­verted into a two-​​story apart­ment build­ing. Within one day the only view of the sky that I have in my apart­ment was wiped clean of any fur­ther con­nec­tion to the hori­zon. And a dis­con­nec­tion to the mag­no­lia tree that I have been gaz­ing at every day for the past four years.

Here is what has been tak­ing place (along with daily pound­ing of ham­mers and screech­ing of saws) You can see the mag­no­lia tree in the back, be­tween the scaffolding:

Now my home is com­pletely sur­rounded by win­dows and walls. With the re­cently moved-​​in fam­ily on the other side of the apart­ment, com­plete with four scream­ing lit­tle kids (promptly wak­ing me each morn­ing at 5:30, ef­fec­tively drown­ing out the birds, and con­tin­u­ing un­abated all day un­til the first crick­ets be­gin to try their ten­ta­tive chirps), and my won­der­ful col­lege kid neigh­bors up­stairs who love re­ar­rang­ing the fur­ni­ture at three a.m., I feel as if the spirit of Tokyo has flooded my san­ity with its hordes of rest­less crowds. This also be­ing Japan, how­ever, you are ex­pected to grin and bear it, tak­ing it all down to “shoganai” (It can’t be helped). But shoganai it ain’t, be­cause my heart and soul re­mem­ber much freer pas­tures and greener grass. Cer­tainly I’ve never in my life felt this hemmed in before.

To make mat­ters worse, the ho­tel project I was work­ing on came to an end, fi­nally, only to leave me with the news that I will only be get­ting paid about half of what was orig­i­nally ex­pected. Still not sure about the lo­gis­tics be­hind this, but I sus­pect a disin­gen­u­ous spirit on the part of my bene­fac­tors. It’s been, to say it mildly, a crappy sort of day. Now it looks like I have to put up my dukes and fight it out for proper com­pen­sa­tion, though I have the sink­ing feel­ing that, as has hap­pened five times be­fore here in Japan, I will lose the round. If any­thing this ex­pe­ri­ence has con­firmed in me a great dis­il­lu­sion­ment with de­sign work and any sort of foray into ad­ver­tis­ing and such. I knew it when I started this project, but like money al­ways does, es­pe­cially when you re­ally need it, I lis­tened to the clink­ing of coins.

I do have to say, though, that tak­ing a run later in the evening, along the dark­ened pro­lif­er­a­tion of reeds and vines along the river, cleared my head quite a lot. Bats and toads and feral cats and a bel­low­ing Amer­i­can bull­frog greeted me along the path, re­mind­ing me of the sim­ple plea­sure of mov­ing and smelling the cut grass in the night air. And as I ran the knot of anx­i­ety and feel­ing of be­ing wronged evap­o­rated. Per­haps it was a good thing that the project ended with a flop. Af­ter all, it was never what I wanted to do in the first place. So I fin­ished the cir­cuit around my neigh­bor­hood and slowly came to a stroll. A gib­bous moon hung preg­nant in the sky.

Is it just me, or does every­one feel a pri­mor­dial need to live close to the sea­sons and to the breath­ing of the Earth? Does every­one else also feel an al­most un­ut­ter­able ache some­where in the in­te­rior when it seems as if your life is dis­con­nected from the very source of its heart­beats? Why can I just not feel happy with this citi­fied world that has heaved up around me? Why do I con­stantly, every sin­gle blink­ing mo­ment of the day, and on a deeper, sound­less level at night, feel that my life is un­bal­anced and shal­low and hun­gry? And yet I can sense the source of sat­is­fac­tion and joy some­where around the cor­ner. If only I wasn’t so groggy and full of fog. If only there was just me and the open door, all the stuff re­leased be­hind me.