His Voice Lives On

March 29, 2005 | Laughing Knees | 20 Comments 

Some­thing about go­ing through the win­now­ing process of an ed­i­tor and ac­cep­tance of a writ­ten piece strength­ens writ­ing and makes you feel that the ef­fort was worth it. Hank Green, ed­i­tor of the on­line na­ture writ­ing mag­a­zine Wild Thoughts, has pub­lished a piece I wrote about my ma­ter­nal grand­fa­ther, one of the early in­spi­ra­tions for my love of the nat­ural world. Please have a look at the es­say, “Walk­ing With Opa, and then take some time to read some of the other stories.

First Kiss

March 20, 2005 | Laughing Knees | 11 Comments 

Late af­ter­noon sun­light cast­ing shad­ows amidst the sand dunes in Ore­gon Dunes State Park, Ore­gon, U.S.A.

Just when I thought all con­tact with old friends had some­how died away I re­ceived a let­ter from my old­est and dear­est friend three days ago. I hadn’t heard from her in more than a year. It was mainly my fault for hav­ing shut my­self away and frozen in time with my cor­re­spon­dence; the per­son who used to write twenty-​​page hand­writ­ten let­ters had fallen into silence.

That is the strange thi­ing with e-​​mail: the range of po­ten­tial peo­ple to keep in touch with has ex­panded dra­mat­i­cally, with in­stant con­tact pos­si­ble, but a per­son only has so many hours in a day and keep­ing up with every­one is sim­ply not pos­si­ble. Back in the days of writ­ing let­ters by hand, sup­ple­mented by the oc­ca­sional long-​​distance phone call, the num­ber of peo­ple to reg­u­larly write to was lim­ited to the list of peo­ple jot­ted down in an ad­dress book. Writ­ing by hand took time, and only a few peo­ple made the ef­fort to put that time in. The cir­cle of pen pals re­mained small, but ded­i­cated and the care with which we shared our let­ters showed up in such things as the choice of let­ter pa­per and en­velopes, in small trin­kets and pho­tos we in­cluded in the folds of the pa­per, like pressed dried flow­ers or four-​​leaf clovers, locks of hair from a loved one, feath­ers, scented glit­ter, or even, once, the ragged wing of a mourn­ing cloak but­ter­fly. Some of us put great ef­fort into get­ting our hand­writ­ing just right, of­ten us­ing foun­tain pens with flared nibs so that the ver­ti­cal strokes thick­ened and the hor­i­zon­tal strokes thinned. And af­ter all this work the let­ters took two weeks or more to make it around the world, some­times bear­ing the ef­fects of the real world on them in the form of wrin­kles and cof­fee stains and washed out ad­dresses. The let­ters them­selves some­times bore the ev­i­dence of the sender’s state of mind, from an­grily crossed out words and kiss marks to greasy fin­ger prints and tear drops.

A.’s e-​​mail let­ter ar­rived just when the down­turn in faith in these old friend­ships had reached its low­est point. Hand­writ­ten let­ters from friends or even fam­ily had reached an all time low… the last hand­writ­ten let­ter I re­ceived was last Au­gust when, af­ter I lamented to my fa­ther about the pass­ing of the tra­di­tion of writ­ing let­ters by hand, he sent me, just across town, a let­ter in sym­pa­thy. I check my mail­box reg­u­larly and, sad to say, more of­ten than not, it is empty.

I first met A. in 1974 in a sum­mer camp along the Elbe River in north­ern Ger­many, not too far north of my birth place, Han­nover. We were both 14 then. I was a gan­gly, shy boy with shoul­der length hair, a wide-​​brimmed denim hat with an azure-​​winged mag­pie tail feather, and bell-​​bottom jeans. A. stayed in the girl’s tent next to mine and I first no­ticed her talki­ing to the other girls out in the court­yard, her long brown hair swing­ing be­hind her as she pranced about, con­stantly run­ning. She was al­ways laugh­ing and had the most pen­e­trat­ing eyes, that, to this day, still stand out as the first thing you no­tice about her.

I fell in love with her, but was much too shy to make the first move. A ten-​​year-​​old boy named Di­et­mar, who slept next to me in my tent, full of bound­less en­ergy and ab­solutely nuts about soc­cer, no­ticed the way I gazed at A. He stood in front of me one af­ter­noon dur­ing the siesta, with his hands on his hips, frowning.

“So, when are you go­ing to talk to her?” he demanded.

I had been doz­ing so his words caught me off guard. “Huh?”

“Come on, any­one can see you’re nuts about her.” He sat down next to me. “Just go and talk to her.”

“What if she’s not interested?”

“You never know un­less you try.”

I glanced over at the girl’s tent, hope mak­ing my heart beat. “Yeah, I know. But…”

Di­et­mar lay down on his side and looked me squarely in the eye. “Look, how about this. You write her a let­ter and I’ll bring it to her.”

“What? You? What do you have to do with this?”

“Noth­ing. Just call me your lo­cal Cu­pid. Be­sides, I’m not sleepy and want to do some­thing. And the girls will let a ten-​​year-​​old boy into their tent.”

So I hun­kered down and hashed out a short let­ter in (awk­ward) Ger­man. Di­et­mar peered over my shoul­der and cor­rected the mis­takes. When I was done he snatched it from my hand be­fore I could re­con­sider, folded it in four, and dashed out of the tent.

Twenty min­utes passed dur­ing which my heart thun­dered in my ears and my hands turned to ice. I be­gan to think the whole thing was a stu­pid mis­take when Di­et­mar sud­denly slipped back into the tent, grin­ning. He held up a folded piece of pa­per. “She asked me to give this to you.”

I took the let­ter from him and opened it. I read.

What nice things to write about me. I would en­joy get­ting to know you. Let’s meet at din­ner and talk then.

And so be­gan my il­lus­tri­ous foray into the world of women.

We spent the two weeks to­gether danc­ing, go­ing for walks, hold­ing hands while watch­ing the evening movies, eat­ing din­ner to­gether, learn­ing to sail, run­ning in the foot races, in which A. beat every­one in the camp. Our dance song was “Lady Lay” by Michel Polnar­eff. I dis­cov­ered the won­der­ful scent of her, which even to­day lingers in my mind like a veil.

One evening we were stand­ing be­side the camp’s small lake watch­ing the sun set over the Elbe River. For once we were alone and we held hands tightly. I don’t know ex­actly when the urge over­came my hes­i­ta­tion, but our eyes met and we both knew what we wanted next. I awk­wardly groped at her el­bow, to which she grabbed my hand, placed it on her waist, and whis­pered, “Like this!”

We kissed. I re­mem­ber it as one of the soft­est, warmest mo­ments in my life, with the bright glint of the sun wash­ing be­tween our faces and for me, the whole world sud­denly con­sist­ing solely of A., her hair, her fin­gers, the soft give of her chest, the sweet­ness of her breath, her lips.

It was what I had al­ways imag­ined it would be.

But we only had two weeks. The camp fi­nally came to an end and we all had to re­turn home, first back to Han­nover on the bus, and, for me, on across the oceans back to Japan, A life­time away. The last I saw of A. that time was as she was greeted by her mother and sis­ter while my grand­fa­ther and grand­mother greeted my brother and me. The street car pulled us apart and the pain in my heart echoes even as I write this thirty years later.

We kept in touch. We wrote let­ters to one an­other every week for the first year, and grad­u­ally set­tled to about once every two or three months. Since the camp we met six times, the last time with my wife, when we stayed at her apart­ment. We’ve shared all our sto­ries, the loves in our lives, the losses and joys. Af­ter telling me about one aw­ful event in her life, A. wrote a let­ter ex­press­ing how she trea­sured our friend­ship and was glad that it had lasted through all the changes in our lives. The last time we met we spoke about those first two weeks to­gether and she shocked me with the news that she hadn’t liked me at first, but had grad­u­ally warmed to me through the per­sis­tence of my let­ters. She hugged me then and said, “But am I glad that you did persist!”

A. is mar­ried a sec­ond time now, and has a child, whom I haven’t met yet. I hope to meet her hus­band and son some day. I look across the oceans and can frame a life there, some­one whom I’ve met only a few times in a long while, but who re­mains one of the dear­est and most en­dur­ing of friends. It isn’t of­ten I can say this about peo­ple whom I’ve met and be­friended. A.’s friend­ship re­mains a trea­sure that I value above al­most every­thing else in my life. If I were to lose it life would be a much bleaker place.

A toast and great em­brace to you, A. Thank you for be­ing there for most of my life.

Murder of Crows

March 11, 2005 | Laughing Knees | 13 Comments 

Hen Spot-​​Billed Duck in the last mo­ments of her life.

Part of the fifty strong flock of Jun­gle Crows await­ing their opportunity

For the first time in months the air was warm enough to go out in just a T-​​shirt. If I lifted my nose I could smell the per­fume of flow­ers in the wind. Gray star­lings, ru­fous tur­tle doves, and brown-​​eared bul­buls filled the still-​​bare branches of the trees and the rooftops with their chortling and cries, all get­ting ready for the hun­ker­ing down of spring. Grass lizards poked out of the cracks in the gar­den wall to sun them­selves and a lone sul­phur but­ter­fly flut­tered past the back door and nosed through the or­ganic clut­ter of my un­kempt gar­den, amidst the only green­ery in the im­me­di­ate neigh­bor­hood. The first hint of warmer months to come was get­ting off to a good start.

With my di­a­betes act­ing up lately, mak­ing me feel more ex­hausted than usual, I opted out of my usual 10 kilo­me­ter run, and de­cided in­stead to go for a long-​​overdue stroll with my cam­era. I packed a shoul­der bag with sketch­book, ex­tra pens, my pocket note­book, a tele­photo lens, a pair of binoc­u­lars, and a choco­late bar for low blood sugar emer­gen­cies. The ex­cur­sion had no par­tic­u­lar itin­er­ary; I just wanted to get out to stretch my legs and have a look­see. Like the birds the warm wind was mak­ing me anx­ious to get out­side and explore.

Any di­rec­tion would have been fine, but al­most with­out think­ing I found my­self be­side the Noh River. For four years now I’d been watch­ing its chang­ing char­ac­ter, al­ways heav­ily im­pacted by the com­bined en­croach­ing of the apart­ment build­ings and hu­man pop­u­la­tion along its crowded and concrete-​​contained banks. I passed this way more out of ne­ces­sity than for any abun­dance of nat­ural things in the wa­ter and riverbed.

The wa­ter ran an­kle deep as it does most of the year, a bare trickle. Flocks of spot-​​billed ducks and mal­lard ducks pad­dled in the deeper pools, keep­ing eyes out for peo­ple toss­ing bread crumbs. The smaller pin­tailed ducks that had win­tered among the other ducks since last No­vem­ber had taken off for parts north, in the more com­fort­able climes of Siberia and Kam­chatka. The vast win­ter flocks of the gray star­lings had re­cently be­gun to break up into the smaller mat­ing groups. Dusky thrushes still dashed along the grassy banks, though within a week or so they, too, would set off for the north. Amer­i­can painted slider tur­tles, pets that had been re­leased from cap­tiv­ity af­ter they had grown too big for their care­tak­ers, basked on stones at the river’s edge, and huge gray carps pa­trolled the murky brown riverbed, lazily muscling among the doz­ing duck flocks.

My whole morn­ing had been spent in front of the com­puter so it took a while for my eyes to ad­just to notic­ing po­ten­tial pho­tographs. For the first part of the walk I mostly just drank in the fresh air. Other pedes­tri­ans, many of them sneez­ing in­ces­santly from the clouds of cedar pollen that yearly in­vades Tokyo from the sur­round­ing moun­tains, jogged and quick-​​walked along the foot­path along the river, so I de­scended to the trail along the river­bank it­self and waded through old dried stands of reeds. My shoes caught in the stiff bracken, some­times trip­ping me up, but it was quiet here and I could stop with less self-​​consciousness to ex­am­ine the tiny flow­ers and the frit­il­lary but­ter­flies that flashed their col­ors here and there.

I got so caught up in kneel­ing into the grass to take pho­tographs of tiny, vi­o­let flow­ers, that I lost track of time. Be­fore I knew it I had wan­dered a lit­tle fur­ther than I had in­tended and had to hurry to get back home in time to get ready for my evening job. I clam­bered back up to the paved foot­path above and upped the pace. A chilly wind had stirred up and clouds be­gan to close in from the west.

I was near­ing the last sec­tion of the river be­fore I had to turn away and head to my apart­ment when I no­ticed two jun­gle crows… the huge, raven-​​sized crows that have taken over Tokyo… ha­rass­ing a lone, fe­male spot-​​billed duck in the wa­ter. Oddly the duck re­fused to budge and in­stead sat hud­dled right in­side the flow­ing wa­ter. The crows pecked at it and at­tempted to pull away feath­ers. The duck swiveled its head in weak at­tempts to drive off the crows, but other than that it didn’t at­tempt to get away.

Con­cerned I back­tracked to the near­est emer­gency stair­way, de­scended back to the river bank, and made my way over to where the duck lay two me­ters from the edge of the river. It was too far to reach. The duck made no at­tempt to flee, though nor­mally spot-​​billed ducks al­ways put at least five me­ters dis­tance be­tween them­selves and me. The crows flew off to the tree­tops over­look­ing the river, join­ing a group of other crows peer­ing down.

I squat­ted by the river­side, watch­ing the duck and try­ing to fig­ure out what I could do. She was ob­vi­ously very weak; her head swayed un­steadily and when I moved she worked her bill in a silent mime of quack­ing, no sound com­ing out. Oc­ca­sion­ally she shook her head as if try­ing to clear her vi­sion or con­cen­trate, but then she would drift off again into list­less­ness. I thought per­haps the white plas­tic bag that had wrapped around her tail feath­ers might be the cul­prit for her predica­ment, but the wa­ter moved it away some­what and I re­al­ized that the duck must be sick or badly injured.

Just then the air above me erupted with the racket of a hun­dred or more crows caw­ing at me and at one an­other. I looked up and saw the air above the op­po­site bank of the river and above my head swarm­ing with the black wings of crows. For a split sec­ond it felt as if it were me they were af­ter and whose name they were call­ing. I glanced back down at the duck and a great sad­ness filled me. She watched me un­steadily, silently quack­ing at me to back away.

I didn’t know what to do. There is no an­i­mal res­cue that I have ever heard of in Japan that could have been called for just this sit­u­a­tion. Just to go home and seek the in­for­ma­tion would have taken so much time that when I got back the crows would al­ready have done their job. I con­tem­plated swathing the duck in my wind­breaker and bring­ing her home, but I knew noth­ing about car­ing for a wild duck. And what if she were sick? I eval­u­ated the wa­ter, only an­kle deep, think­ing that it would be so easy to just take off my shoes and wade bare­foot into the wa­ter to re­trieve her, but I didn’t budge. I glanced at my watch and re­al­ized that I had no more time to waste here; I had to get home and get ready for work. So I stood up and backed away from the edge of the wa­ter. Then I thought, I must do some­thing to re­mem­ber the sit­u­a­tion and how I felt. Draw­ing out my cam­era I knelt along the bank and took two shots of the duck. She quacked at me silently.

I walked back up the emer­gency stairs to the prom­e­nade above.

Look­ing back up at the crows I jus­ti­fied my ac­tions by telling my­self that the crows were do­ing their job just as they were meant to. The duck would be dead by the next morn­ing, her bones picked clean. The duck was too weak to sur­vive much longer and hope­fully the crows would play their role quickly. I headed home, glanc­ing back only once. In the glare of the evening sun re­flected on the sur­face of the river I could make out her sil­hou­ette, alone and wait­ing. I wasn’t there to help, and nei­ther were her flock mates. The whole world had aban­doned her.

Ex­cept the crows. They waited in the tree­tops as the wind picked up. Waited and cawed and watched me walk away.

We Are So Small

March 6, 2005 | Laughing Knees | 13 Comments 

A short while ago Jack Nicholson’s movie “About Smith” fin­ished and for quite some time af­ter the cred­its fin­ished rolling I sat very still. It wasn’t just Nicholson’s ge­nius for un­der­state­ment and fa­cial ex­pres­sion that made the movie so funny and tragic at the same time, but per­haps the way it brushed up hard against many of the feel­ings I’ve been go­ing through my­self in the last three years. At the very end, when he’s speak­ing in his mind to his spon­sored fos­ter child in Africa, and he says, “We are all so very small. I am a fail­ure. I can­not think of any­one to whom I’ve made a dif­fer­ence in my life.” I had to grit my teeth to keep from blub­ber­ing all over the place.

But it’s true. Lately it seems so much that days and weeks and months, and now years, go by with a grow­ing sense that the threads that had at­tached to var­i­ous peo­ple I got to know when I was younger are all snap­ping. And the older I grow the less my pres­ence seems to mean, (truly mean, not just po­lite ges­tures) to any­one. Daily the sense that the years will pass and my time alive will have moved no one flick­ers at the back of my mind. I mor­bidly won­der some­times just who would bother to come to my fu­neral were I to die to­mor­row. My fam­ily, yes, but pre­cious few others.

And so much of this state of af­fairs rests on my own fail­ure to be there for others.

Back in 1995 when my wife and were bi­cy­cling around Eu­rope for six months for our hon­ey­moon we en­coun­tered a man in Swe­den whose charisma re­mains as po­tent to­day as the day we met him. His name was Boudewijn Wegerif. We had been cy­cling through a wilder­ness area sur­rounded by spruce for­est as far was we could see, down a straight road with not a car or soul to dis­turb the still­ness for most of the day. It was hot and when we came upon an old stone well we joy­fully set our heavy bi­cy­cles down along the verge of the road and helped our­selves to some of the ice cold wa­ter from the well bucket. The well sat well back from the road and we wor­ried a lit­tle about be­ing out of sight of the bi­cy­cles, so when sud­denly we no­ticed this big, bearded man wheel­ing what looked like a baby car­riage up to our bi­cy­cles and stop­ping to ex­am­ine them, our heads popped up. He waved to us and we went down to meet him.

It turned out that he was walk­ing from Kiruna in North­ern Swe­den down to South Africa, walk­ing for peace and love and a so­ci­ety of sus­tain­abil­ity and less re­liance on a money econ­omy, or, in his words, “Love’s Vic­tory Over the Debt and Guilt Cross of the World”. The sun had burned his bare arms and face bright red and he was sweat­ing, so when we of­fered him a swig of the cold well wa­ter he beamed us a big smile. We took to talk­ing and for half an hour we con­versed about set­ting up and liv­ing in gen­tler and more earth-​​friendly com­mu­ni­ties. His en­thu­si­asm was in­fec­tious, so much so that even af­ter he con­tin­ued down that long, hot road, I couldn’t stop think­ing about him.

What was es­pe­cially strange about the en­counter… ac­tu­ally about most of that trip… was that part of the goal of the jour­ney was for us to find a com­mu­nity with which we could be­come a part and to change our lifestyles from the hec­tic ur­ban runaround to­wards some­thing with more co­op­er­a­tion and at­ten­dance to the land. One af­ter an­other we seemed to meet just the kind of peo­ple we needed to talk to, in the odd­est and most un­likely places. Boudewijn Wegerif, I later found out, was quite well known in Eu­rope and his 2 and a half year walk to Cape Town, South Africa was pro­duced as a doc­u­men­tary film called “Long Walk Home” by the South African Broad­cast­ing Corporation.

Yes­ter­day I dis­cov­ered he died last year. Though I had only met him for an in­stant, the news shook me. Cou­pled with today’s Nichol­son movie, Wegerif’s death and the gen­tle in­flu­ence he had on so many peo­ple made me think about just how I might be able to make a dif­fer­ence in people’s lives.

Be­cause it is not too late. And there is no rea­son what­so­ever that I should give in to sad­ness. As Wegerif asked the peo­ple who read his web site, “What mat­ters to you?”

No mat­ter how small we may be, the spark still makes a difference.

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