Skipping Stones

January 31, 2005 | Laughing Knees | Leave a Comment 

Last year’s cherry leaves still cling­ing to the branches

Af­ter seven days of in­som­nia, the last three of which I got no more than three hours of sleep, I fi­nally put my foot down and forced my­self to re­set my bi­o­log­i­cal clock. Two nights ago I strug­gled to keep my mind from spin­ning out of con­trol in the dark­ness, but to no avail, and so the snow­shoe­ing day trip I had planned for my­self fell through. I was just too ex­hausted to at­tempt walk­ing in the moun­tains… Prob­a­bly not even a good idea. So yes­ter­day I forced my­self to stay awake all day, no mat­ter how woozy I got, so that by the evening I could be ex­hausted enough to make it through the night.

It worked, sort of. It was a fit­ful slum­ber: I kept wak­ing to the pellmell ro­tat­ing of my mi­ind as it slid over var­i­ous stick­ing points like the tines of a mu­cis box. Dur­ing the week be­fore my mind was an amor­phous mass, all the anx­i­eties and self-​​doubts brist­ing with ur­gency, so that none of it made any sense, but sifted through with a kind of red alert alarm: “I have to get all this stuff done now! I have to make the big changes now! It can’t wait till morn­ing. I’ve put things off for far too long!”

Of course, by morn­ing the trou­bles had ac­cu­mu­lated to the point of mild in­san­ity. My heart and head throbbed and just try­ing to ac­com­plish daily re­spon­si­bil­i­ties served to nudge me into irate out­bursts. I couldn’t think straight.

Wak­ing last night, though, I waded into the pools of anx­i­ety and just stood there, tak­ing deep breaths. Calm­ing the wild-​​eyed horse in­side me. Whis­per­ing to my­self as if I were a skit­tish wild an­i­mal. Be­ing gen­tle to my­self and telling my­self that every­thing was okay. That the morn­ing would come and I could take a first step. The poind­ing heart­beats slowed, the fin­gers of cold air that seemed to have slipped un­der my quilt drew back, and the odd shad­ows around the room re­laxed into fa­mil­iar forms… a jacket, a bed post, a slip­per, a book…

It re­minded me of what one of my old­est friends, my first girl­friend, A., from Ger­many, a trea­sured friend since I was four­teen, said to me when I last saw her just af­ter my wed­ding: “I think you don’t feel safe in the world and that is why you can’t sleep at night.”

Howright she was. I rarely have trou­ble tak­ing naps dur­ing the day. Per­haps it is the free rein of my imag­i­na­tion that part­ners with the dark­ness and the wind out­side the bed­room window.

And then there is the silent pres­ence of my wife be­side me in the bed, to whom I can­not turn for re­as­sur­ance or con­ver­sa­tion. Too of­ten the so­lu­tion is to roll out of bed and tip­toe into the liv­ing room where I turn on the light so as to ban­ish the wraiths float­ing about. Or oc­ca­sion­ally to hud­dle in the dark­ness there, while my pet tur­tle eyes me from his rock, whis­per­ing to my­self all the mis­takes I have made, or all the wrongs I have com­mited, or con­firm­ing my cow­ardice over tak­ing a stance and chang­ing my life. Some­times I switch on the late night TV and be­gin weep­ing with the sen­ti­men­tal movies. A stu­pid, weak, in­ad­e­quate, pup­per of a man for not hold­ing up to the ex­pec­ta­tions and wishes of the women in my life. Or so I some­times keep telling my­self. What is it they want? Why do I have to con­tin­u­ally fight to re­main my­self around them? Why is it that my sense of iden­tity and joy has come to re­volv­ing around some other person’s whims? What hap­pened to that ad­ven­tur­ous and world-​​delighted boy who al­ways knew what he wanted and the way he wanted to live?

Per­haps, and more likely, it is the sheer grip I have on my own ex­pec­ta­tions of my­self and no one else can live up to those stan­dards. Not even my­self. I look over my shoul­der and re­call all the times my wife, my fam­ily, and my friends have told me that I am a dif­fi­cult man, some­one whom it is hard to like. An ac­cu­sa­tion that feels like ar­rows every time.

But I never willed my­self to be this way. I never set out to cause oth­ers to find me dif­fi­cult. It is like sit­ting in a tree and watch­ing my shell per­from some other person’s play. From up here all I can con­firm is that I feel as vul­ner­a­ble as any­one, as hu­man as all of you out there. It doesn’t mat­ter that I am a man. Or that some of you are women. Or that the way I per­ceive the world or act within it is any less strange or dif­fi­cult or in­com­pre­hen­si­ble than that of any­one else.

I feel sad all the time these days, 24 hours a day. Even when I am laugh­ing with my stu­dents or with my wife it is sur­rounded by sad­ness. I just can­not shake it. I read other people’s blogs, record the on­ward flow of their lives, lis­ten to the range of ac­tiv­i­ties and re­la­tion­ships and in­ter­ests, and I get more and more down. I am jeal­ous. I feel that I am trapped and haven’t a clue how to get out. I try to think my way out of it, but the log­i­cal ar­gu­ments can­cel one an­other out. I try to adopt a “pos­tive” at­ti­tude as so many peo­ple (who al­ways seem to be in an up­ward swing of their life at the time) keep harp­ing for me to do, forc­ing my­self to joke around and laugh, be­ing silly when I don’t feel silly, or switch­ing to in­tel­lec­tual ar­gu­ment mode, so as to keep from feel­ing any­thing. From peo­ple who don’t know me, haven’t taken the time or had the in­cli­na­tion to know and spend time with me over the years and see the whole, in­stead fo­cus­ing on one lit­tle in­ci­dent or stray com­ment that sums up, to them, who I am and what I am like.

And it seems it has been this way a long time now. Few peo­ple have watched me strug­gle with these past few years, at least not in­ti­mately. Al­most no one has spent phys­i­cal time with me, sat with me, shared times of quiet or laugh­ter or eat­ing to­gether or just walk­ing to­gether. Not even my wife. And so I’ve been break­ing down, slowly but surely. Lone­li­ness and si­lence can softly rip you apart.

My in­en­tions are good, but I never men­tion the leaks in the hull. I haven’t opened up about my break­down on this blog so as to pro­tect oth­ers and keep them from wor­ry­ing. I kept re­peat­ing over and over that keep­ing quiet was a good thing, a strong and ma­ture thing. That there was noth­ing to be done about it any way.

but I am not do­ing well. talk­ing about my anx­i­ety over the demise of the nat­ural world, while just as true, is partly a cover up. The truth is that I have tramped into the age of 44 and I look around and find my­self al­most com­pletely alone. I am not happy with the work I do for a liveli­hood. My mar­riage has stalled and I can’t even find pro­fes­sional help, here in Japan, to see how to save some­thing of it. I spend most days speak­ing not a word to any­one, un­til I head off to teach Eng­lish to stu­dents and col­leagues who see me as no more than a re­source, some­thing so ironic that I have to laugh. Those peo­ple who I know are my close friends and with whom these years apart have no ef­fect on the bond of our friend­ship, seem shores away, al­most like dreams from an­other time.

So the forced re­set­ting of my bi­o­log­i­cal clock was a nec­es­sary first step. Tak­ing first things first. It is time to stop feel­ing sorry for my­self and con­cen­trate on those things that I can af­fect. Like car­ing for my di­a­betes. Like par­ing away all those cob­webs of am­bi­tions and dis­till­ing a few skills and po­ten­tials that would cul­mi­nate in work that I would find ful­fill­ing. Like think­ing about my own needs for now and get­ting them right. Like be­ing hon­est and forth­with about what is re­ally im­por­tant and dis­card­ing any­thing that wastes time or feels un­wor­thy. Like slowly rekin­dling the old friend­ships, look­ing for those whom I have lost, and find­ing new ones. Like stop­ping just talk­ing and ac­tu­ally do­ing. Like start­ing life again at 40.

I’m not sure wh I needed to write this post at this par­tic­u­lar mo­ment. Just needed to get the load off my chest, I guess. For any­one read­ing it, please tkae the self-​​recrimination with a grain of salt. It is a cast­ing of one stone to skip across the lake’s sur­face. I have many more to fol­low, some of which might skip a lit­tle bet­ter, oth­ers worse. But just wanted to let you know that upon writ­ing it I feel a lot bet­ter. The steam is let­ting off the cof­fee and I can heave a big sigh. And the sun out­side al­ready looks just a tad bit brighter. this dark cloud will also pass.

A Moth Wing of Devastation

January 29, 2005 | Laughing Knees | Leave a Comment 

I think I am slowly los­ing my mind. It has been build­ing that way ever since the aw­ful events of the New York tragedy. Some­thing snipped on that day and as time has given me per­spec­tive I re­al­ize more and more that the way­ward­ness of my heart and soul cen­ters around an in­vis­i­ble de­spair, rather than on anger or right­eous­ness. As the in­evitable drums roll and boots keep march­ing past some­thing lurk­ing be­hind it all teth­ers it­self to my voice and pre­vents the proper words from form­ing. For three and a half years now it is as if I have been scream­ing in si­lence. And no mat­ter how many tears well up or doors I strike or cries of agony es­cape my lips as I watch the un­wrap­ping of ter­ri­ble things on the TV or printed pages or on the com­puter screen, the si­lence ab­sorbs it all in ut­ter in­dif­fer­ence. My heart is break­ing. I can’t take much more of this aw­ful truth. Part of me needs to be­lieve that we are still de­cent, but every day it seems to get worse. And the help­less­ness and im­po­tent fury are steal­ing away the cen­ter. On the one side it is this ut­ter mad­ness speak­ing words through cru­elty and vi­o­lence, on the other it is the break­ing of our beloved Earth.

I don’t know ex­actly what it is, but some­thing deeply dis­turb­ing has un­rav­eled the string that has al­ways con­nected me to mak­ing sense of my life and to liv­ing every day. If I look in­side I can sense the wild­ness of emo­tions and the an­i­mal panic. Some­thing isn’t right with the world or with my­self. The ver­tigo of tee­ter­ing on an icy edge never goes away.

Beth, over at Cas­san­dra Pages refers to the in­ter­view of Sey­mour Hersh. What he speaks about is noth­ing new, but the af­fir­ma­tion of an in­sid­i­ous doom that he cre­ates by bring­ing all the jig­saw pieces to­gether left the hair stand­ing on my back be­cause of how true it all rang. Then I glance left and right at the in­creas­ingly alarm­ing re­ports re­cently about the com­ing global sys­tems fail­ure, the chaos of hu­mankind fac­ing mass ex­tinc­tion, and the mind just lets go. It is so huge. Be­yond my abil­ity to com­pre­hend or emo­tion­ally envelope.

What am I to do? Re­cently I’ve been try­ing the only thing I can do… start small. Go out into my gar­den or onto the street, wade through the oceans of pain, and press my fin­ger­tip against the sur­face of tree bark or taste a snowflake on my tongue. I know it doesn’t make an iota of dif­fer­ence in the fate of this world we’ve so badly mis­man­aged, and most likely the tiny ad­min­is­tra­tions will be swept away in the flood of de­struc­tion, but if I must go then I want it to be on my terms, hold­ing dear those things which do still make sense.

As I jogged along the river bank near my house a few days ago I lit­tle girl rid­ing her bi­cy­cle ahead of her mother, called back, “Mama. If only I could take a trip to an­other coun­try! If only I could travel to those far­away places right now!”

Her voice still rings in my ear. A heart yearn­ing for en­gage­ment. I wish her all the best and cling to the tiny hope that her re­quest might come true, and that the winds of change bring scents of re­lent­ing. Of hands stayed. Of a missed beat and a re­sump­tion of real reality.

Walking As Prayer

January 29, 2005 | Laughing Knees | Leave a Comment 

Bam­boo grass laden with the first snow of the winter

I spent half a sleep­less night read­ing the long-​​distance walk­ing ac­counts of Chris Wil­lett. There is a lot of read­ing, but through so much of it I felt as if I were walk­ing with him, on much the same kinds of walks that I en­joy do­ing. His ac­count of walk­ing the Great Di­vide Trail es­pe­cially moved me, be­cause the ex­pe­ri­ence came across as so sim­i­lar to my own solo bi­cy­cle ride from Den­mark to Paris in 1988. While writ­ing my book about the ex­pe­ri­ence (I’m still look­ing for a pub­lisher… Any­one in­ter­ested in giv­ing it a read?) I had to face the con­stant mem­o­ries of how much time I spent alone, and how meet­ing other souls along the way made all the dif­fer­ence in the story line of the journey.

Last year I had planned to go to Aus­tralia to walk the Lara­p­inta Trail, but cir­cum­stances left my wal­let as dry as the Out­back. Read­ing Chris Wil­lett, though, the fire is stoked again and I hope that this year I can ac­tu­ally make it out of my front door. I’ll shoot for Sep­tem­ber for a nice long walk in the desert. And with eight months to get in train­ing I should be in top shape for even the hard­est parts of the walk.

One day soon I want to try an­other long jour­ney like the six-​​month bi­cy­cle trip my wife and I took in 1995. For any­one who has never spent such a long sin­gle stretch of time out of doors, camp­ing each day, mov­ing at your own pace, and feel­ing your body harden in ways you never knew you could, it is hard to de­scribe the sheer im­me­di­acy and match that the hu­man body and mind finds when liv­ing close to its orig­i­nal state. We were meant to live out­doors. W were meant to spend most of our time with­out a roof over our head or walls to block out our pe­riph­eral vi­sion. We were meant to live with the roll of the sun and stars, the pas­sage of clouds, and the mo­tion cap­ture re­al­ity of flow­ers and trees grow­ing. And you can’t know it by read­ing a book or walk­ing in an ar­ti­fi­cial park. You can’t re­ally know the full pres­ence of the earth un­til you ac­tu­ally feel your­self crawl­ing across its sur­face, your mus­cles grow­ing in pro­por­tion to the pull of grav­ity and distance.

Ever since I can re­mem­ber jour­ney­ing and get­ting out­doors into all the mess has been like a ache of joy that I had to fol­low. Sit­ting every­day at my com­puter now, pac­ing back and forth in the generic streets of Tokyo (and ear­lier, Boston) it is as if I am deny­ing my­self my own pre­dis­po­si­tion. Maybe other peo­ple don’t find walk­ing alone in the moun­tains in a pour­ing rain all that ex­hil­a­rat­ing, but for me it is life it­self. I am never more in my el­e­ment than when walk­ing in the woods or on a ridge or along a seashore wrack-​​line. If only there was a way to make it per­ma­nent, and still have my fam­ily and friends and livelihood.

I go snow­shoe­ing to­mor­row. I hear the snow in the Nikko area north of Tokyo reaches up to your hips. And more on its way tonight. It ought to be a blast!

Cold Feet

January 23, 2005 | Laughing Knees | Leave a Comment 

Street lead­ing up to Takao Tem­ple and Mount Takao af­ter the yearend snowfall.

At the other end of the year right about now the sul­try Japan­ese sum­mer heat in­vades homes like a gi­ant, lazy, fat cat, nudg­ing its way through the doors and win­dows and pros­trat­ing it­self on the straw mats (tatami ) and linoleum floors with the sole pur­pose of drain­ing every­one of life. That is what, tra­di­tion­ally, Japan­ese houses are de­signed for, to in­duce as much breath­ing through­out the house as might en­tice the cat to dis­si­pate, a pas­sive ef­fort to en­cour­age Cheshire-​​ism.

It doesn’t al­ways work… my first floor apart­ment, not at all tra­di­tional ex­cept for the tatami in the liv­ing and bed rooms, acts like an iso­la­tion tank (in more ways than one!); you open the front door and an in­vis­i­ble wall of lugubri­ous­ness, sort of like that wa­tery in­ter­face you see in the jump gates of the tele­vi­sion show “Star Gate”, greets you… but the idea is sound: leave a space un­der the ground floor where the sun doesn’t hit and cre­ate a kata­batic air space, keep the floor over this space per­fo­rated enough for the free pas­sage of air, and cre­ate a heat sink space in the at­tic of the build­ing, to which warm air is sucked. The idea is to draw the cool air out of the space be­neath the house up into the at­tic, where it is sup­posed to dis­si­pate. And it works very well in tra­di­tional, thatched roof farm houses.

The trou­ble arises in mid-​​January, when the deep freeze sets in and that cold air space be­neath the house con­tin­ues to crank away nice, juicy drafts through the floor and tatami, es­pe­cially when my (noisy and much-​​disliked… I have yet to dis­cover ex­actly why it is nec­es­sary to move the fur­ni­ture around at 3:00 in the morn­ing every day) up­stairs neigh­bor cranks up his heater (which cre­ates a racket out­side my liv­ing room win­dow with the squeaky and mis­aligned fan drum­ming away) and does a fine job of heav­ing all my pre­cious warm air up into his place, and re­plac­ing it with the cold air from un­der the house. I didn’t re­al­ize un­til last week that the cold air ac­tu­ally streams through the tatami like spring wa­ter welling up from a sandy creek bed; I could feel the cold air pool­ing around my out­stretched hand.

We only have one tiny elec­tric, in­frared heater to heat the spaces. Our Dutch oil heater started smok­ing last year when I turned it on, and we haven’t been able to af­ford to re­place it. Nor­mally this lit­tle heater is enough to warm up the small room it is placed in, as long as the door is kept shut. If it gets a lit­tle colder we use the spare sleep­ing bag and our fleece jack­ets. We’ve also cov­ered the liv­ing room floor with a closed cell foam sheet and two lay­ers of fluffy car­pets. And nor­mally that works… for when we are awake and spend­ing time in the same room. It saves on electricity.

But when I am work­ing in my study, the cold works its way through the floor boards and sends me run­ning for my big, mid­win­ter down jacket. When I breathe out white breath bil­lows across the com­puter screen. Some­times my fin­gers are so cold that I can barely type on the key­board. And since in­frared fil­a­ment heaters are dan­ger­ous to keep on at night, the prepa­ra­tions for sleep­ing at night re­sem­ble pitch­ing camp: dress up in fleece lay­ers, don my fleece cap, fluff up two lay­ers of down pil­lows, prop up the closed cell foam ground mat against the three lay­ers of cur­tains to stop the draft, slip un­der a thick fleece blan­ket and lie on top of three lay­ers of fleece sheets un­der­neath, and fi­nally pull the huge down quilt over us. If some­one would walk in on us at night while we slept they would come across a huge lump on top of the bed, with no ev­i­dence what­so­ever of in­hab­i­tants. Even our breath­ing is ab­sorbed by the pro­found­ness of the layers.

Wak­ing up pro­vides a won­der­ful ex­er­cise in will power. You open your eyes and won­der if it is light or dark out­side be­cause the cur­tains are so thick that no light passes through. You ten­ta­tively reach your hand into the world out­side your co­coon of warmth, in­stantly rec­og­niz­ing this en­vi­ron­ment is hos­tile, not un­like that of Mars. You pat around un­til you lo­cate the bed light, switch it on, and let out an ex­per­i­men­tal breath: snow­fall… ice storm … white­out … You imag­ine hav­ing slept all night on a block of dry ice. And that is pre­cisely what your foot tells you when you poke it out and set it down on the floor. The temp­ta­tion is to pull it right back in, like a snail’s eye stalk, but it’s time to get ready for work and you want to beat the crush of the Tokyo rush hour trains and you’d also like to get in a mug of tea and check the e-​​mail… so out you jump, danc­ing about the tatami like an Irish dancer, rush to the toi­let, let out a yelp as you bare your bot­tom, dance back out to the shower, turn on the gush­ing, smok­ing river of heat, dash to the kitchen to set the ket­tle to boil, pop two slices of bread into the microwave-​​oven, and scam­per back to the shower for a few min­utes of re­vi­tal­iza­tion. You turn up the wa­ter heat high enough to turn your skin bloom­ing red be­fore break­ing the bath­room door open just long and wide enough to snatch the towel and slip­ping it into the sauna of the shower stall. Dried off you can safely ne­go­ti­ate the sub-​​arctic tem­per­a­tures and dis­miss the imag­i­nary pen­guins tot­ter­ing about the hall­way, to do your shav­ing and pre­pare the tea.

But it doesn’t last long. Like the shad­owy ghouls in the movie “Ghost”, the cold creeps back again and uses the soles of your feet to reac­quaint you with the con­cept of stack ven­ti­la­tion. So back you go to mouse danc­ing, slap­ping on lay­ers like a pan­cake artiste, un­til all con­tact with the out­side world is re­duced to the cir­cle around your face and the in­con­ve­nience of your fin­gers. You stoke your core with pip­ing hot tea and toast spread with a thin film of but­ter, and then you’re off, into the pur­veyor of all this de­fen­sive­ness: the out of doors.

But of course, it is warmer out­side than in­side. As you march away to­ward the train sta­tion you un­but­ton your coat and let the morn­ing sun­shine take a peek in. You don’t look back; the suc­tion it­self might be too much.

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