The Little People Are Real

October 29, 2004 | Laughing Knees | Leave a Comment 

Yeti feet

All my life the lure of the old sto­ries about dwarves and gi­ants and elves and ogres al­ways held a un­rea­son­ing fas­ci­na­tion that seemed all out of pro­por­tion to the ex­pe­ri­ence of daily life. Just what is it that draws so many peo­ple to love these old sto­ries? It is al­most as if some ge­netic mem­ory from a world far more eco­log­i­cally di­verse and in­te­grated than our world to­day stim­u­lates us to feel fas­ci­na­tion when we stir up pic­tures of these myth­i­cal rel­a­tives. And every cul­ture has them; all of us talk about the Lit­tle Peo­ple and the Mag­i­cal Folk.

So it is with great de­light (so much so that I jumped up from my chair in front of the com­puter and cried out “FANTASTIC!”) when I came across the news of the dis­cov­ery in In­done­sia of Homo flo­ren­sien­sis to­day (Other sites in­clude The Panda’s Thumb, Na­tional Ge­o­graphic, and Na­ture). Here is a three foot tall homonid who lived as re­cently as 13,000 years ago, dur­ing which they prob­a­bly had in­ter­ac­tion with Homo sapiens.

It is like dis­cov­er­ing that when chil­dren tell you that they saw a lit­tle man un­der the bed they were telling the truth. So the dwarves and gi­ants of the old sto­ries re­ally did ex­ist. Now we just have to find the dragons.

With all the hy­per ac­tiv­ity and mean­ing­less­ness of the Amer­i­can elec­tion cam­paign; with the on­go­ing suf­fer­ing of the peo­ple in Ni­igata (area north of Tokyo) sub­ject now to a week of un­re­lent­ing earth­quakes (over 100 quakes mea­sur­ing at least 5 on the Richter Scale, and 5 quakes mea­sur­ing at least 6) and more than 80,000 peo­ple evac­u­ated, half of whom are liv­ing on the streets with snow in the fore­cast; and with, un­til last week­end, more than four months of un­be­liev­able amounts of tor­ren­tial rains and mon­ster ty­phoons, this lit­tle bit of mag­i­cal news is a wel­come change. It’s good to see that there is still at least a bit of mys­tery and won­der in the world. I hope this dis­cov­ery leads to more un­ex­pected step­ping stones in our un­der­stand­ing of our­selves and our world.

Eavesdropping

October 25, 2004 | Laughing Knees | Leave a Comment 

On my way home on the train this evening I over heard two drunk se­nior Japan­ese busi­ness men hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion. It was in­ter­est­ing for sev­eral rea­sons: First, it seemed to rep­re­sent the two main faces of how Japan­ese are feel­ing about them­selves to­day, one a very po­lite and ami­able face, the other, much more rarely seen un­less the per­son­age hap­pens to be drunk, full of trep­i­da­tion and sup­pressed anger and frus­tra­tion. Sec­ond, be­cause one of the men was slyly di­rect­ing his com­ments at me, a for­eigner whom he imag­ined could not pos­si­bly un­der­stand their con­ver­sa­tion, their words rang against the bell of my own two-​​faced feel­ings about Japan right now. Third, their con­ver­sa­tion bud­ded di­rectly from the seed that Bush planted three years ago, dig­ging deep into the feel­ings the world’s pop­u­lace has about their own place in the world and how out­siders see them and how they see out­siders. To a dif­fer­ent de­gree I’m sure this same sprout­ing seed is grow­ing through­out the Mus­lim world, al­beit in much more ex­plo­sive and an­guished ways. But if a self-​​effacing Japan­ese busi­ness­man can feel like this, than just imag­ine what oth­ers feel.

I sur­rep­ti­tiously lis­tened to the two busi­ness­men while play­ing a game of Oth­ello on my cell phone…

“Have you been to the Kabuki-​​cho dis­trict recently?”.

The other man shook his head, his face tomato red with al­co­hol. “No, my dear sir, I have not,” he replied with ex­ag­ger­ated cour­tesy. “Spend most of my drink­ing time around Ginza af­ter work.”

“You should go. It’s still got quite a few good places left.”

“You mean you still go?”

“Well, yes, oc­ca­sion­ally. My son lives near there.”

“Your son? The one with blonde hair?”

“That’s him. Gives me hell when I tease him about the hair. Now what busi­ness does a Japan­ese have walk­ing around with blonde hair, you tell me?”

The other man leaned over and smiled. “You shouldn’t say mean things about your son. It’s not seemly.”

“Ah, you’re right. You’re right. But it makes me so mad.”

“What, that he has blonde hair?”

“No, no. That he lives near Kabuki-​​cho.”

“But I thought you said it is still a good area.”

“Well, yes, there are still a few good places left there, but my son shouldn’t be liv­ing there.”

“Why ever not? He’s got to live somewhere.”

“True, but that’s not a place for de­cent peo­ple to live.”

“Is he a de­cent person?”

“Of course! He’s my son, isn’t he?”

“Yes, yes. That he is. That he is.”

“It’s just that peo­ple don’t watch out for one an­other any more. These Tokyo peo­ple don’t talk to each other any more. You live some­where and you don’t even know your neighbors.”

“Things are chang­ing. They’re al­ways chang­ing. It’s the way of the world.”

“But it wasn’t like that thirty years ago. Neigh­bors made an ef­fort to be there for each other then. Like back in my home­town in Kyushu.”

“You from Kyushu?”

“Small town out­side of Fukuoka. You’re from the coun­try, too, aren’t you?”

“Sort of. My fam­ily moved around a lot. Tokyo’s been the longest.”

“My son is be­ing sent to Hokkaido next year.”

“Ah, it’s start­ing then, is it? The years of mov­ing around for work?”

“Yes, and his com­pany doesn’t have drink­ing af­ter work. It’s all work un­til late at night, with­out even a lit­tle chance to have some fun. I say he ought to quit a com­pany like that. What’s the point in work­ing if you can’t en­joy a lit­tle of the fruits of your labor?”

The other man nod­ded solemnly, grunt­ing his agree­ment and sway­ing a bit too far with the jolt of the train.

The first man con­tin­ued, “Some­thing is re­ally wrong with the Japan­ese people.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, first you got them all stam­ped­ing to the cities and for­get­ting who they are and where they come from. Then they start only think­ing about them­selves and for­get­ting what it means to live as neigh­bors.” His voice rose a notch, caus­ing the woman sit­ting op­po­site his friend to look up from her stack of com­puter print­outs. “And fi­nally they start let­ting for­eign­ers roam the streets as if they own the place. I’ve noth­ing against for­eign­ers, but this is Japan and they should re­mem­ber that this is a coun­try called Japan! Why would they choose to come to a place like this?”

The other man squinted at the first man with some con­cern. He reached over and pat­ted the first man on the lap. “Whoa, whoa there old man, you’ve no rea­son to get so up­set. We’re all on good terms here.”

The first man de­flated and hung his head. “You’re right. You’re right. You’re al­ways right. I get an­gry too eas­ily…” He paused to re­flect for a mo­ment. “That’s what my wife says, at least. I get an­gry like an old dog. That’s why I’m glad it’s you I am talk­ing to now. You’re an old dog just like me!”

They both burst out laugh­ing, only re­al­iz­ing too late that they are mak­ing a lot of noise, and putting they’re hands over their mouths in em­bar­rass­ment. The sec­ond man leaned in and be­hind his hand whis­pered, “We re­ally are a cou­ple of old farts, aren’t we?”

They burst out laugh­ing again, slap­ping they’re knees. They laughed un­til they grad­u­ally fell silent. Out­side I could hear the clackety-​​clack of the traintracks.

The first man leaned for­ward and buried his face in his hands. He sat up, shak­ing his head slowly. “But se­ri­ously, I am very wor­ried about the fu­ture of Japan. Very worried.”

The other man nod­ded and grunted agreement.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with the Japan­ese. Look at us. Here we’ve got this fool [Prime Min­is­ter] Koizumi. A fool! And we just go along with him: the Iraq war, the econ­omy, the use­less gov­ern­ment… If I were a for­eigner I would think the Japan­ese are a bunch of stu­pid gits.” He looked at his part­ner and shook his head. “I re­ally think so. We Japan­ese are a bunch of stu­pid gits!” He hung his head again, a deeply pained ex­pres­sion grip­ping his face. “There is noth­ing wrong with our genes, that I know, but all the same we are an id­iot peo­ple. We’ve got great genes though.” He looked up at his part­ner. “What do you think? Is there some­thing wrong with our genes? Have for­eign­ers got bet­ter genes than we do?”

The other man gripped the first man’s hand and held it. “My old friend, there is noth­ing wrong with your genes or with mine. Or with any Japan­ese genes. We are do­ing all right. Don’t fret your­self so. The world is just go­ing through a dif­fi­cult time. Every­thing will work it­self out, you’ll see. You just have to be patient.”

“I truly hope so.”

Here the first man glanced up at me and for a split sec­ond held my eyes, be­fore look­ing back down again and con­tin­u­ing his di­a­logue with his friend. “I’m glad that I ran into you here on the train. I’m so glad it was you and not my son. My son would have ar­gued with me and just made me feel bad. It’s al­ways like that. With you I can open my heart.”

The sec­ond man smiled and pat­ted his friend’s hand again. “That’s ex­actly the way it should be, no? You and your son, me and you.”

“And me and my wife. She would have kicked me off the train with all my whining!”

They both broke out laugh­ing again. The train ar­rived at my sta­tion and I turned to get off. The doors closed be­hind and from out in the cool night air I watched the two men con­tinue to trade as­sur­ances from in­side the warm glow of the train’s in­te­rior. The train pulled away, leav­ing me with a cu­ri­ous feel­ing of out­rage and em­pa­thy negated. Above, the moon shone. To­mor­row would be a lu­nar eclipse, the whole world party to the same shadow. I won­dered what the two men would say, sit­ting and drink­ing to­gether, watch­ing the night sky.

“It doesn’t look right through all this Tokyo smog.”

“But the tint­ing ef­fect is that much more ac­cen­tu­ated, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Hmm. Now that you point it out, so it is. So it is.”

Leafy Days

October 22, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 3 Comments 

Beech tree on Aizu-​​Komagatake mak­ing the first nod to­wards winter.

It wasn’t all rain over the last two months. A few in­ter­mis­sions did man­age to part the cur­tain of rain. Two days walk­ing in the Aizu re­gion north of Tokyo that I have rarely vis­ited sur­rounded me with the kind of glow­ing green and yel­low screens of leaves that I’ve been long­ing for all sum­mer. It was quite a sur­pris­ing area ac­tu­ally, a lo­cale cov­ered with a kind of cor­ru­gated blan­ket of hillocks and flat-​​bottomed vales which kept the scale of de­vel­op­ment down by the sheer pri­vacy of sep­a­rated val­leys, sort of like an over­turned egg car­ton. The train snaked through these val­leys as if en­ter­ing from room to room, and each room seemed more iso­lated than the one be­fore, un­til, when I ar­rived at Aizu-​​Kougen sta­tion, I felt as if I had time-​​warped into a Japan of thirty years ago: a sta­tion built of wood, a sta­tion mas­ter stand­ing by the ticket gate wait­ing to greet each pas­sen­ger in­di­vid­u­ally with a big, gold-​​toothed smile, and a bus stop out front that seemed to dis­si­pate into a rice paddy.

The bus took an­other two hours to carry me be­yond the reach of the trains into an un­spoiled rural farm­ing com­mu­nity that seems to have been largely lost through­out most of the rest of Japan. Just the ev­i­dence of the old trees pre­served along the road­sides and the hand-​​made way peo­ple hung bright or­ange per­sim­mons to dry un­der the great eaves of their houses or stacked rice stalks and rushes in cylin­dri­cal bales in the fields brought back im­ages of or­ganic con­nec­tion rural peo­ple used to live by in older Japan. The rivers and streams rush­ing by along the sides of the roads, froth­ing with white­wa­ter af­ter all the rains, held a kind of icy blue light that could only come from pris­tine moun­tain sources.

It was too late to climb the first day so I found a road­side camp­ground and set up my tarp way back among a stand of wil­lows, be­side a vagetable gar­den of let­tuce, toma­toes, daikon radishes, and egg­plants that the camp pro­pri­etor kept for his fam­ily. Dark­ness de­scended like a ham­mer; no sooner had I turned off the stove and sat back to sip my tea, than I could no longer make out the for­est start­ing at the edge of the camp. The moun­tains sur­round­ing the val­ley loomed into the sky like the black backs of huge, sleep­ing beasts. I sat a long time at the en­trance to the tarp, look­ing up at the sky. Stars be­gan to ap­pear, with in­ter­mit­tent hands of clouds pass­ing in front of them, leav­ing patches of blind­ness in the vast ex­panse. Sir­ius shone like a bright eye for a while, look­ing down at me and un­blink­ing un­til the clouds won over and the sky ducked be­hind the gases.

Rain be­gan pat­ter­ing the tarp dur­ing the night, wak­ing me from dreams of the bak­ing red rocks of Aus­tralia. I lay in the dark lis­ten­ing to the tap­ping un­til it lulled me back into my dreams.

Dawn was a veil of mist that en­tered the con­fines of my tarp and hung over the slowly breath­ing earth like a poised egret, its grey net al­most in­dis­tin­guish­able from the grey shield of my tarp. I sat up, brush­ing my head against the dew-​​laden under-​​surface of the tarp, and the chill of the wa­ter droplets shocked me to full wak­ing. I rolled up my sleep­ing bag, stuffed away the un­used clothes, and set a pot of wa­ter to boil. Break­fast con­sisted of the ubiq­ui­tous cold gra­nola, its sweet­ness cloy­ing in the wa­tery green tea of morn­ing. I promised my­self to find a new meal to start the days with, some­thing more akin to the chloro­phyll and meat of the mountains.

By the time the tarp was rolled up and stuffed away and my pack hoisted on my back fat mis­siles of rain again sent the world into a re­peat of the white noise of rain­fall that had been over­whelm­ing most of the last three months. I strode along the road to the trail­head and started up along the flank of Aizu-​​Komagatake, whose sum­mit was lost in the clouds up above.

Two weeks of course made lit­tle dif­fer­ence in the state of my body and the go­ing, like my last trip, was tough, de­spite a lighter pack. First I felt the drag on my mus­cles up the steep climb, and soon af­ter could feel the pe­cu­liar heav­i­ness in my bones, clutch­ing of my brain, and de­rail­ing blur­ri­ness in my eyes that sig­nal the on­slaught of low blood sugar from my di­a­betes. It was a sur­prise be­cause I had eaten my usual dose of heavy gra­nola and the gra­nola, with its rel­a­tively low glycemic burnout, usu­ally kept me go­ing for hours. In­stead I col­lapsed on a log and chewed on an en­ergy bar un­til my eye­sight cleared and my mus­cles could spring up again. Sev­eral other hik­ers passed by, all of­fer­ing much too cheer­ful greet­ings for my cur­rent state and I could only fee­bly wave back at them. One Japan­ese man, speak­ing in un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally well-​​pronounced Eng­lish, boomed. “Hey, you go­ing up or com­ing down?”

“Not sure yet,” I replied.

“Well, it’s a good place to think about it,” he said and kept on.

The sun sud­denly broke through the canopy and in­un­dated the whole world in green and au­tumn yel­low bril­liance. All my dis­com­fort evap­o­rated. I sat up and gazed around and felt the back­boards of my eyes burn with new heat. That sense of be­ing cloaked by your sur­round­ings bloomed along the hairs of my skin, what the Japan­ese call shinrin-​​yoku or “for­est bathing”, and from that mo­ment the old ter­mi­nus of my love for the nat­ural world kicked in; I for­got my­self and in­stead ran on the heat in my eyes, all at once feel­ing the world with all my senses as if they were one beat­ing sense and I were just an or­gan act­ing to give these senses expression.

In­vig­o­rated and filled with re­newed joy I started up the trail again and took my time to climb while at the same time stop­ping now and then to just ab­sorb it all. The huge beeches had be­gun to turn cad­mium yel­low while around them Japan­ese maple, rowan, and lac­quer vines blushed bright red. The higher I climbed the brighter the world seemed to grow. When the for­est fi­nally broke and the first view out across the moun­tains caught me by sur­prise, I was ready to run and jump and click my heels.

The moun­tains breathed clouds like hir­sute gen­tle­men wal­ruses loung­ing in a huge steam­ing pile, smok­ing pipes and puff­ing smoke. All around the clouds rose from the ravines and val­leys, climb­ing with a gen­tle un­con­cern to­ward the sky. Ravens flapped through them, and called across the tree­tops. I couldn’t stop tak­ing pho­tographs. Every other step had me halt­ing to peer into a bush or fin­ger­ing some tree bark or nos­ing up close to a mush­room. I tried to cap­ture the glow of sun­light through the translu­cency of a yel­low leaf, but the cam­era couldn’t cap­ture the in­ef­fa­bil­ity of touch and ephemer­al­ity. In frus­tra­tion I lin­gered longer and longer at each in­ves­ti­ga­tion, un­til the sun had climbed quite high in the sky. How to ex­press the ex­pan­sion in my lungs or the in­tu­itive­ness of spread­ing my fin­gers and dis­cov­er­ing in them the com­plete­ness of the still­ness of a tree’s life as it spread in glory above me? How to rein in time so that I could ex­ist out here with­out be­ing a stranger or an in­truder? How to step so lightly that my pas­sage is the the brush of the wind or the tra­jec­tory of a falling leaf? How to come home and so sink in that I am in­dis­tin­guish­able from the moun­tain and the forest?

So much time I spent lin­ger­ing that the halfway point at which I had to turn back came and went. I missed my chance to gain the mountain’s sum­mit. I could see the sum­mit just fif­teen min­utes away. But that would mean a half hour round trip and if I took it I would miss the bus go­ing home. War­ring emo­tions had me wast­ing more time un­til I forced my­self to turn away and head back down. I passed all the spots I had stopped at along the way up, some­times see­ing them in the dif­fer­ent light of the op­po­site di­rec­tion. The in­ten­sity of the light also re­versed as I de­scended. Like com­ing down from the roof. Step by step the rocks and roots slipped be­hind me un­til I reached the base of the moun­tain again and stood on the road, all sem­blance to joy re­placed by as­phalt and pass­ing cars and signs. The as­phalt al­ways felt too still and level, and that nag­ging self be­gan to speak again, telling me that I needed to make some­thing of my­self, fin­ish projects, re­de­fine the me that stood sep­a­rate from the world it lives in. It was safe and warm and nour­ish­ing here, but I al­ways for­get who I am here. My body seems to lose jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for why it is formed the way it is, eyes and legs seem­ingly ir­rel­e­vant now.

I headed home on the bus, then the train. WIth an­other moun­tain slum­ber­ing and unas­saulted be­hind, speak­ing alone to the on­com­ing skirt of win­ter. When next I come this way white might be the color of choice.

Autumn Rains

October 17, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 12 Comments 

Ris­ing mist an hour af­ter a huge rain storm hit my camp­site near the sum­mit of Mt. Kinpu dur­ing the night.

For more than three months it’s been pour­ing rain nearly every day through­out Japan. What I had promised my­self would be a sum­mer of co­pi­ous walk­ing along ridges, turned into days in my tent wait­ing out down­pours and a sum­mer washed away with thun­der­ing rivers and moun­tain sides giv­ing way. Dur­ing my climb of Mt. Kinpu in Chichibu, west of Tokyo, with a pre­cious two-​​weeks of va­ca­tion lined up, I thought per­haps that surely the gods were frown­ing upon me, see­ing that every sin­gle week­end since the first green blush of spring brought me up square against a wall of rain. It was as if some­one was try­ing to tell me that there were things left un­fin­ished back home and I had bet­ter sort them out be­fore tak­ing the leisure to go traips­ing around in the hills.

The Kinpu walk was the first ven­ture out of doors since my big de­sign project ended, and be­ing out of shape from too much com­puter wor­ship grav­ity played havoc with my knees and wind. I ended up thirty min­utes from the sum­mit in a small clear­ing of larches and huge, rounded boul­ders. Most of the larches had been blown clean of their lives so that when dark­ness fell and no one dis­turbed the spooky still­ness, the skele­tons of the trees seemed to close in around me like gob­lins. I was us­ing my home­made camp­ing ham­mock set up with a tarp, and though the sys­tem worked as I had hoped, per­son­ally I just didn’t seem to fit in very well with the cloth wrapped around me like a taco. I ended up low­er­ing every­thing to the ground and sleep­ing with my eye cocked up at the vo­lu­mi­nous sail of the tarp breath­ing over me.

Just when I was be­gin­ning to re­lax with the tiny noises, like drip­ping leaves and creak­ing branches, and to drift off into slum­ber, the tarp flexed, then stretched as a wind bar­reled into camp, fol­lowed by a vol­ley of rain­drops. Within fif­teen min­utes the storm was howl­ing over­head among the fin­gers of the dead trees and the naked rocks out­side the copse of trees. Luck­ily I had picked a good site, with only ten­drils of the storm swirling among the tree trunks and a brace of rhodo­den­drons block­ing the brunt of the wind. I dragged my­self out of the sleep­ing bag, switched on the white arm of my head­light, and found my­self star­ing into a soup of fog.

The roar of the storm and the omi­nous sway­ing of the trees kept me awake the rest of the night. I lay read­ing Tim Cahill’s “A Wolver­ine Is Eat­ing My Leg” and stop­ping to pon­der the men­tal­ity of those who will­fully ven­ture out into such predica­ments as the one I was presently en­gaged in. I mean, there I was, the storm and the dark for­est beat­ing down on my courage like a ham­mer, lone­li­ness en­velop­ing my ear­lier smirk­ing at the self-​​sufficiency of my back­pack, and wor­ries about the ex­posed ledges I had to scram­ble past in the morn­ing nag­ging at my con­fi­dence, and I had to ask my­self, “Ex­actly what plea­sure am I get­ting out of pack­ets of freeze-​​dried food, a flimsy skin of ny­lon be­tween me and the gods, and shoes sop­ping with dew?” As the dawn grad­u­ally en­light­ened me to the true na­ture of the storm, I hud­dled in my rain jacket on the log be­side my tarp, brew­ing café latte and spoon­ing through cold gra­nola with milk. When a war­bler flick­ered onto a rhodo­den­dron branch right be­side the tarp, look­ing for all the world as if I had plun­dered his back­yard, I raised my spoon in greet­ing, only to be cold-​​shouldered by a warber’s equiv­a­lent of a huff, with which he flit­ted off into the fog.

I had five days ahead of me, but the storm didn’t let up, rain was pelt­ing down, and the wind was en­gaged in a wrestling match with the boul­ders. I broke camp and started head­ing to­ward the sum­mit of Mt. Kinpu, but halted in my tracks. I must have stood there for fif­teen min­utes, un­de­cided, oc­ca­sion­ally peer­ing ahead and then glanc­ing back. I took in the grey trees, the an­kle deep mud in the path, the tips of the trees bend­ing in the wind, and some­thing in­side me drooped. Not to­day, I told my­self. Not while I had doubts.

So I turned back and started down the moun­tain. The first part had me brac­ing against the punches of the storm, lean­ing on my trekking pole as I ne­go­ti­ated the slip­pery boul­ders and tan­gle of tree roots. My rain jacket and wind­shirt were off by the time I reached the lap of the moun­tain where I could re­lax a bit and make a steady de­scent. I stopped be­side a hoary old larch to pack away the rain­wear when, like open­ing a pack­age, sun­light sliced through the clouds and in­un­dated the for­est with the first bright light in days. It was like steam­ing gold. I stood trans­fixed, as if a tight shirt had popped open, be­fore I could gather my wits and fum­ble my cam­era out of its bag. Streams of sun­light cast through the branches. And I was breath­ing with each breach in the clouds.

Five hours later I was walk­ing along a log­ging road sweat­ing from the sun, the sleeves of my t-​​shirt rolled up, and late sum­mer in­sects singing be­side the road. I looked back and saw Mt. Kinpu laz­ing away among the sum­mer clouds. Maybe the moun­tain god, like me, just needed some re­lief. What­ever the rea­son, even a short walk like this would prove to re­main with me a long, long time.