Wind Eyes

April 30, 2005 | Laughing Knees | 21 Comments 

Look­ing at spring through win­ter and autumn.

With all the time I’ve been spend­ing be­hind the com­puter screen, holed up in my stu­dio, or sit­ting chair-​​bound teach­ing my evening Eng­lish classes, it seems that of late look­ing out of win­dows con­nects me to the go­ings on outside.

I hardly meet peo­ple any more. My wife is gone by the time I wake in the morn­ings and she’s asleep by the time I get home from teach­ing. So I find my­self ghost­ing around the rooms, wan­der­ing hall­ways while mum­bling to my­self, the ac­tion of my jaw re­work­ing the sounds in my head in an au­to­nomic en­deavor to cre­ate a du­al­ity: You and I.

I find my own com­pany com­fort­ing at times and per­haps I’m lucky in this way in that I can en­dure weeks of soli­tude and still float above my own in­san­ity. All the stuff that rings in my head re­ally does, to me at least, ring a bell, and no mat­ter how still I sit a whole world re­volves within that lit­tle dome. For the most part I rather like my­self and love to seek out my own company.

But not al­ways, though. When the con­nec­tion be­tween fin­gers and ob­jects sud­denly grows ten­ta­tive the os­cil­lat­ing phan­tasm that re­sides be­tween the blind­ers of my body loses its sub­stance and form, and like smoke, tends to dis­si­pate amidst my emo­tions. Lone­li­ness is vis­ceral, it hungers for flesh and bone.

Back in 1987 a friend of mine took me to see May Sar­ton speak at a church in Maine. It was a cold au­tumn evening and the de­serted streets of the town brought the chill closer to the layer of my pea coat and in spite of walk­ing with my friend I felt dis­en­gaged and out of wa­ter. The church door opened to a warm glow of lights and the hub­bub of lis­ten­ers ea­ger to hear Sar­ton dis­pense her wis­dom. And when she ac­tu­ally walked onto the daïs, the spot­light catch­ing her with a glare in her eye, she sat there squint­ing out at every­one, and per­haps not see­ing them very well. She seemed re­luc­tant to speak and held a copy of “Jour­nal of a Soli­tude” as if the name of the book could say it all, and that if we would just read it, as she had in­tended, then she could safely re­treat to her fire­light and car­pets and chair by the win­dow. But she was kind… you could see it in her eyes and the way she smiled… and let not a trace of such yearn­ings fal­ter in her voice. She spoke. She re­lated her de­ci­sion to break with ex­pec­ta­tion, with her fam­ily and safety, and take to liv­ing alone and chron­i­cal­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence. I watched her from the mid­dle of the crowd, there, this hale, soft-​​spoken recluse, look­ing more at home with her­self and more en­gaged than most of the peo­ple in the au­di­ence. And I thought, “Wow, she’s found a way in!”

By be­ing alone the win­dows speak to me. Every morn­ing, pre­cisely at 8:15, a lone, brown-​​eared bul­bul, a grey clown of bird that flies like a flicker and screeches and cries and chor­tles like a blue jay, whips up to the branches of the zelkova sapling out­side my win­dow and de­fies me to ob­ject. He cocks his eye and nib­bles at the new buds, car­ing not a toot that I am rather en­am­ored of the zelkova and would pre­fer that no one hin­der its growth in any way. To make cer­tain of my hu­mil­i­a­tion the bul­bul, pre­cisely at 8:21, drops to the fence rail where he lets out a jet of white poop, right on top my russ­ian vine. And then, in that im­pu­dent way of bul­buls, he glances back, flicks out his pink tongue, and shoots off, leav­ing a vac­uum in the morn­ing stillness.

At work, when classes are slow, there is al­ways a lot of time to gaze out across the gap be­tween my school’s build­ing and the build­ing across the street… a dis­tance of about five me­ters. My class­room win­dow looks di­rectly into the win­dow of a manager’s of­fice, and like a tele­vi­sion va­ri­ety show the life of the peo­ple over there daily un­folds. The man­ager, whom I’ve never met, of­ten glances across the gap back at me and it is as if, dur­ing these last few years, we have come to know one an­other by sheer pan­tomime. Both of us have wit­nessed the drama of our in­ter­act­ing, how­ever minutely, with other peo­ple, and, put to­gether, each of our win­dows tells a story. I’ve seen the man­ager shout at some­one on his cell phone, pace back and forth across the room wor­ry­ing about God knows what, sit­ting with his feet up on his desk while drink­ing beer, un­dress to his un­der­pants and walk about the room as if no one could see him, sit for sev­eral hours smok­ing a cig­a­rette and never once mov­ing, and read a manga while in a busi­ness meet­ing. Never once have I seen him smile.

For his part he must have seen the times I’ve laughed with my stu­dents (which is al­most daily), sat drink­ing cof­fee while writ­ing notes, the se­ri­ous con­ver­sa­tions that my stu­dents and I have had about dif­fer­ent sub­jects, per­haps even the time when I broke down cry­ing in the mid­dle of class three days af­ter the New York tragedy when one of my stu­dents in­no­cently asked why the whole thing both­ered me so much, or the time when I col­lapsed, think­ing I had had a heart at­tack, later find­ing out that my anx­i­ety over my up­com­ing visit to the States af­ter nine years ab­sence had me wound up a lot tighter than I re­al­ized and this had tripped the mus­cles around my heart.

I’m not sure I will ever dis­cover the elixir for re­main­ing com­fort­able around oth­ers for long spells. Soli­tude has dri­ven and called me ever since I can re­mem­ber, and I fol­low the siren like a star-​​struck lover. What I find at the end of every lit­tle ex­cur­sion I take alone into roads and lanes and trails doesn’t al­ways bring out a kick, jump, and a smile, but the hun­ker­ing down, gaz­ing about, and ab­sorb­ing that sense of lungs filled to ca­pac­ity with air has hap­pened of­ten enough that I keep re­turn­ing for more. I’m not sure if it is the plea­sure that is the prime mo­ti­va­tor for seek­ing out lone­some ex­pe­ri­ences, but there is some­thing to be said for ar­riv­ing wher­ever it is you set your mind to, no ques­tions asked.

Greying Hairs

April 23, 2005 | Laughing Knees | 11 Comments 

Barb wire fence chok­ing a sapling at the edge of the royal gar­dens in Takao City, Japan.

It seems that a lot of peo­ple around me these days are talk­ing about get­ting old or get­ting older. I’m quite sure that this is not a new phe­nom­e­non, so it must be that I am just more aware of it than I used to be. Cer­tainly when I glance in the mir­ror every morn­ing the white hair seems to have pro­lif­er­ated like wild grass in the lawn; I turn my head for a mo­ment and when I look back the shadow seems to have trans­formed into a ghost of it­self. I keep won­der­ing, “Why white?”. Surely it would make more of a fash­ion state­ment if our hair aged the way leaves do: turn­ing bright red or yel­low with the com­ing of au­tumn. Just imag­ine all that fiery pas­sion in the af­ter­noon of life, and so daz­zling in the evening sunlight!

Every morn­ing I con­tinue to shave. In fact, now I have hair grow­ing along the rims and sprout­ing within my ears, gathering-​​rosebuds-​​while-​​ye-​​may within my nos­trils, and, with over­tures to ly­can­thropy, the fur hath anointed me back­sides, yes in­deedy. My el­ders have long in­di­cated this path of degra­da­tion with the com­ing of age, but I never sus­pected it would mean bush­whack­ing through ever wilder forests of hair. And that seems to be just it: the op­po­site of youth is hair!

A friend of mine lamented to me not long ago that un­til she had turned 41 last year she had never fret­ted about get­ting older. She had even de­rided me for my pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the fu­ture and what it held for me, say­ing that Japan­ese weath­ered age bet­ter than for­eign­ers be­cause they ac­cepted it. I wasn’t sure if that was en­tirely cor­rect, see­ing as so many Japan­ese con­stantly bring up their age at so­cial gath­er­ings… young women are of­ten called “get­ting old” when they turn 23… but I thought maybe my friend had a point. Then she turned 41 and she said, “This is the first time I feel I am tip­ping over to­ward the other side.”

The dreaded Other Side. I guess most peo­ple, like me, can­non­ball their way from the womb to­ward the zenith of bi­o­log­i­cal flight, be­fore sud­denly feel­ing that jump in their gut telling them that the el­e­va­tor is go­ing down. What makes it so holy-​​moly shock­ing is that the 40 years sud­denly seems like no time at all… we were just get­ting started!… and all we have left is per­haps an­other forty. A puny, if you’re lucky, eighty years. Just enough time to awaken to the grand vis­age of the world, won­der at it, get hurt by it, dis­cover that you can mum­ble at it and get some re­sponses, find an­other like you who de­sires to spend some of that time with you, learn how to ma­nip­u­late ob­jects within that world so as to gather more ob­jects from that world, per­haps glimpse for mo­ment wel­com­ing yet an­other like you into this world, look back and won­der what all the awak­en­ing was about, run down, and disappear.

And you think, “That’s it? All that an­guish and con­fu­sion and tax­ing my re­sources, for this?” You see all the other crea­tures in the world fol­low­ing the same end­less en­ter­ing and ex­it­ing, do­ing it in the lit­eral bil­lions, teem­ing the world with their pres­ences, and then lit­er­ally drop­ping away like flies. Fight­ing for scraps of meat. It just doesn’t make sense. Why would in­di­vid­ual lives strug­gle to pre­serve them­selves at all, if, in the end, they are go­ing to die any­way? Why not start with a sin­gle, undy­ing life form and stay that way for all eternity?

Per­haps birth and death have some­thing to do with ver­sa­til­ity. As my white hairs re­mind me every day, this is a dy­namic house­hold. Things change all the time. Per­haps in its very essence the world is a na­tion of sub­atomic belly dancers. To hold shape and cre­ate mean­ing from the chore­og­ra­phy of par­ti­cle square danc­ing… “round-​​and round-​​and-​​doeceedoe!”… the com­mu­ni­ties and as­so­ci­a­tions and com­pa­nies and non-​​governmental or­ga­ni­za­tions that re­sult from cell cit­i­zen­ship need con­stant read­just­ment to make up for the rav­ages of change. If you can give birth and then die away to make room for the re­newed leaves that fol­low, the scin­til­lat­ing, vi­brat­ing, eye-​​opening amoeba of life on Earth can weather the me­te­ors and sun flares and oxy­gen at­tacks and cat­a­clysmic earth­quakes and floods and vol­canic erup­tions and wildfires.

Di­ver­sity means re­silience with spare parts.

Per­haps then I should thank my lucky stars. As crea­tures go, 80 years is an eter­nity. And my white hair? Why albedo, of course. No, not al­bino! Albedo! I’ve got to do my part in re­flect­ing all that ul­tra­vi­o­let light back out through the ozone layer. Just think, if we were all to join heads af­ter reach­ing our for­ties and be­yond, what a per­fectly re­flec­tive sur­face we would rep­re­sent! And you thought that the old fo­gies played no part in the bal­ance of the universe!

Meandering

April 12, 2005 | Laughing Knees | 4 Comments 

Last of the winter’s camel­lia blos­soms fallen on last year’s leaves, Shi­rayama Tem­ple Hill, Takao, Japan

Spring is in full swing, with the cherry blos­soms bil­low­ing along the streets and in the parks every­where. It hap­pened all of a sud­den, sud­den be­cause just a week ago to­day we still had the heater on in our apart­ment. Two days later the air switched dresses and the next thing you know the sun was wear­ing gauzy pet­ti­coats of hu­mid­ity. And the dawn tip­toed in ear­lier, too, just be­fore what any­one might con­sider a sane hour for the alarm to go off.

It was just this pat­ting about to turn off the alarm that caused me to over­sleep my Sun­day wake up call meant for the day’s hike. I hadn’t got­ten quite enough sleep and get­ting up was not a top pri­or­ity, so I snoozed un­til about 9:00… by then too late for the longer hike I had had planned.

With­out re­ally think­ing about where I would be head­ing I wolfed down a break­fast of tea and rice with natto (fer­mented soy beans… an ac­quired taste) and raw egg. Then I was out the door, just walk­ing foot in front of foot, with no plans, or even a map. A bright, al­most summer-​​like bril­liance lit up the neigh­bor­hood. The sky stared down with its big olé blue eyes, un­clouded by thoughts of rain and for once blink­ing away the usual smoggy grime. I saun­tered along, and hot, stopped to re­move my jacket, then con­tin­ued saun­ter­ing all the way to the train sta­tion, and hum­ming Tears for Fears’ “Call Me Mel­low”, a song that I haven’t been able to get out of my head for the past three weeks.

First I headed for the train that goes down­town, from where I had a vague idea about tak­ing the Japan Rail­ways train fro down­town Shin­juku out to Nikko north­east of Tokyo, but while stand­ing on the plat­form and eye­ing all those pas­sen­gers head­ing to­ward the big parks I sud­denly changed my mind. In­stead I tripped down the stairs and climbed back up to the op­po­site plat­form, to wait for the train there and just see where it took me.

Forty min­utes later I got off at Takao sta­tion… not the usual end-​​of-​​the-​​line Mt. Takao Trail­head sta­tion, but the big town just be­fore it, the one that I had gazed out at count­less times on my way out to the far off moun­tains. So many times I had glimpsed the hills sur­round­ing the town and won­dered if it was pos­si­ble to just head out of the sta­tion and fol­low the ridges all the way back to the big­ger moun­tains to the west. Idle thoughts, all those times, of­ten at the end of a week­end of grind­ing walks, and then too tired to do much more than wonder.

A moun­tain walker would scoff at the petty lit­tle stroll that the town could only of­fer, but to­day I just wanted to fol­low my nose and to hell with al­ways try­ing to prove my­self on higher ground. Why not kick along the curb­side like I loved to do so much as a kid, and take time to re­ally look at things?

It was lunchtime by the time I ex­ited the sta­tion so I trun­dled over to a “Moss Burger” joint, the lo­cal MacDonald’s off­shoot fran­chise that spe­cial­izes in high qual­ity ham­burg­ers and sal­ads, to sit a while and just munch on a bur­dock root burger and gaze out the win­dow at the Sun­day strollers. And they were out in force, fam­i­lies brows­ing the street­side stores and all head­ing off in the gen­eral di­rec­tion of the im­pe­r­ial gar­den north of town. Half of them wore sur­gi­cal masks in a fu­tile at­tempt to ward off the on­slaught of the hay fever epi­demic that plagued Tokyo. For the first time in months fa­thers walked about in t-​​shirts while moth­ers wore the bright col­ored, long sleeve shirts that spoke of sum­mer but warded off the harm­ful ef­fects of the sun while pre­serv­ing their “bi­haku”= “beauty white”.

Con­tin­u­ing my saun­ter­ing I crossed the train tracks and took the main road to­ward the hills that I could see at the other end of town. Along the way I watched an old woman wear­ing a white sun hat and a tiny back pack and hik­ing boots, bend down to the curb­side, grab a hand­ful of the pink cherry-​​blossom petal­banks that had ac­cu­mu­lated there, and toss it over her head like snow­fall. She fol­lowed the petals with her eyes, a big smile stretch­ing across her face, and gig­gled like a lit­tle girl. I stopped dis­cretely to watch her. Her laugh­ter echoed in my own chest.

Camel­lia blos­som rest­ing in the late af­ter­noon sun, Shi­rayama Tem­ple Hill, Takao, Japan

The road led fur­ther into the throngs of tourists vis­it­ing from all over to gawk at the cherry blos­soms. Bus­loads be­gan to pass me by, and the side­walk be­came more and more dif­fi­cult to fol­low, as strings of peo­ple bot­tle­necked at the street cross­ings and by the over­passes. Even­tu­ally the side­walk led to the gate of the im­pe­r­ial gar­den, where hun­dreds of peo­ple stood like packed cows wait­ing to pay the fee to en­ter the gar­den. It was hot and I hadn’t bar­gained for crowds of peo­ple so I stepped out of the crowd onto a side street. No one dis­turbed the still­ness there and the fur­ther I walked along it the more dis­tanced from the spring fever I be­came. To my sur­prise I found a neigh­bor­hood of small gar­dens and old, wooden, post-​​war houses, many of them run down and in dis­re­pair. Flow­ers bloomed every­where: in the gar­dens, on the rooftops, in planters by the en­trance gates, along the tops of walls, from win­dows, from planters hung in the branches of trees, the trees them­selves. De­lighted, I fol­lowed this lit­tle road around the chin of a knoll un­til I was out of sight of the main body of the town.

There a lit­tle river gur­gled along the side of the road. Houses kneeled at the very edge of the river, some spilling stair­ways down to its banks, some wad­ing out over it with small ter­races and slop­ing lawns. Crooked cherry trees and weep­ing wil­lows, still wait­ing to bud, and plane trees lined the banks on both sides.

It wasn’t all beauty and joy, though. All along the river plas­tic bags and dis­carded cans, rust­ing bi­cy­cles and tires, wads of toi­let pa­per, some tossed out mat­tresses, and once even an old re­frig­er­a­tor marred the river’s charm. Typ­i­cally Japan, this. For a peo­ple who take so much metic­u­lous care of their bod­ies, they cer­tainly are slobs when it comes to tak­ing care of their land.

The road en­tered a hid­den vale that only walk­ing up to this point could have re­vealed. It de­graded from as­phalt to gravel, then to sim­ply to dirt, dry and dusty now from more than two months of no rain. A cemetary lay just off the left side of the road, sur­rounded by dog­woods just bud­ding and the air golden with the haze of pollen and strands of spi­der­silk. Bird songs lifted from the quiet cor­ners and I saw my first Siber­ian Meadow Bunting flut­ing to any­one who would lis­ten from atop a newly bud­ding Japan­ese maple.

The road nar­rowed to a crum­bling path strewn with wind­fallen branches and un­mov­ing ed­dies of old leaves. At the end, nes­tled in the crook of the ravine, stood a di­lap­i­dated old house that had been aban­doned long enough that the win­dows had cracked and splin­tered and a sumac tree had grown through the rear end of the roof. The tim­bers had rot­ted through and car­pen­ter ants thronged like the cherry blos­som view­ers in the heat of the af­ter­noon sun. It was so still that in­stinc­tively the ten­sion lifted from some­where be­hind me and for the first time in a very long time I was un­self­con­scious enough with­out all the overly pry­ing eyes of Japan­ese cu­ri­ous and some­times dis­ap­prov­ing of a for­eigner in their midst to be able to stop and take a look at things the way I love so much to: slow­ing to a crawl and mim­ic­k­ing a pray­ing man­tis with in­cre­men­tal steps taken with the breaths of wind and then stand­ing still for un­counted mo­ments while peer­ing hard at things around me, some­times even get­ting down on my belly to see things from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. I lost my­self in the trick­ling of a tiny brook­let that had cre­ated a new path from the slope over­look­ing the house, watch­ing a wa­ter strider flick wavelets across a puddle.

Be­hind the old house a derelict shed re­vealed it­self. It was stran­gling on thick­ets of bam­boo and two flax pants grow­ing right up against its crum­bling wooden walls. In the cor­ners two old de­liv­ery bi­cy­cles hid in the shad­ows, their tires blis­tered away.

Derelict shed be­ing re­claimed by the forest

I dis­cov­ered pa­per wasps build­ing nests un­der the eaves, baby orb web spi­ders hang­ing mo­tion­less in the sun­light, blue bot­tle flies fiercely buzzing over the roof of the house, frit­il­lary, cab­bage, and sul­fur but­ter­flies… hardy species all… pro­tect­ing their lit­tle is­lands in the new sun­light, wolf spi­ders dash­ing up the blue painted out­sides of the house, and a lone inch­worm hang­ing from a thread more than 20 me­ters long from the tops of one of the sur­round­ing trees.

A look through the bro­ken win­dow of the front door of the house re­vealed rooms aban­doned with many of the for­mer dwellers’ be­long­ings still scat­tered about: a cal­en­dar of a young woman in a skimpy bikini ad­ver­tis­ing Kirin Beer, a pair of rot­ting slip­pers, a ce­ramic tea cup, two floor pil­lows cov­ered in dust, and a sticker of Hello Kitty plas­tered to a pa­per closet door. A dank, acrid odor rose from the floor and gave the in­te­rior a slightly sin­is­ter feel, in spite of the tran­quil­ity of the area.

Af­ter mak­ing a round of the house I started back down the road the way I had come. Ear­lier I had spied a side path lead­ing up along the hill over­look­ing the road so I went back to find it.

This path took me up over the lit­tle vale through a cedar for­est, to one of the ridges I had seen so of­ten from the train. i was sur­prised that there was not an­other soul around. The wind blew with a moan through the trees and lent the end of the day a mourn­ful feel­ing, so that when I found a glade atop the hill sur­rounded by a coun­cil of old chest­nut and beech trees, still naked against the sky, I had to sit down and take a deep breath. I was so happy and lonely at the same time.

The trail led over the top of the hill then back around to a clear­ing where an an­cient and griz­zled old cam­phor tree, its trunk a mass of cracks, wrin­kles, and growths, stood guard over what must once have been a shrine to the de­ity of the hill. The tree was so badly in need of prun­ing that peo­ple must have quit com­ing this way long ago. The trail led back down the hill from here, pass­ing through stands of bam­boo and camel­lia and even­tu­ally end­ing up be­hind a an­cient tem­ple so old it was housed in a pro­tec­tive wooden lat­tice­work house (the old­est tem­ples in Japan used no paint and of­ten had thatched roofs). All the ar­ti­fi­cial trap­pings of a usual tem­ple had been re­moved ex­cept the two guardian dog stat­ues and the stone en­trance lanterns. A huge cherry tree branched out across the tem­ple square, aching with white blos­soms that no one came any more to see. Japan­ese of­ten say that view­ing cherry blos­soms, while beau­ti­ful, is also pro­foundly sad, even fright­en­ing. Stand­ing there alone in the last rays of the sun, in a place that no one had set foot in for many years, while not far away hun­dreds of peo­ple thronged to see cherry blos­soms with more star sta­tus, I could feel the sad­ness and fright of be­ing aban­doned, of beauty left un­no­ticed, of some­thing that must once have been loved left here to fall to ruin. Part of me re­joiced in this re­turn to na­ture, but I couldn’t help but see that we weren’t fol­low­ing along. This was na­ture mak­ing a come­back, but with no re­spect on our part.

I bowed to the tem­ple and also said a silent thank you to the Shinto hill de­ity still re­sid­ing up by that old tree. Then I took the steep, bro­ken stairs back down the hill to the level as­phalt roads be­low, from where I slowly made my way back home, my eyes filled with si­lence and the heat of life per­sist­ing even through our ef­forts to re­main immortal.

Old stovepipe pro­trud­ing from the roof of the old aban­doned house

I Am Not A Tree

April 7, 2005 | Laughing Knees | 11 Comments 

Old cop­piced beech tree on the way up to­ward Mount Jinba

Yes­ter­day morn­ing three men sud­denly ap­peared at the my gar­den fence, climbed over it, and started dis­man­tling the fence. I just hap­pened to no­tice this as I was work­ing on the com­puter in my study, glimps­ing move­ment and hear­ing men’s voices just out­side. I rushed to the liv­ing room door, threw it open, and de­manded what they were doing.

“We’re go­ing to put in two sewer pipes just on ei­ther side of the gar­den,” they replied, as if it was the most ob­vi­ous thing in the world and what was I mak­ing such a fuss about?

“You’re go­ing to what? Who are you and what right do you have to just walk into my gar­den unannounced?”

“We’re work­ing for [some or­ga­ni­za­tion I had no clue about… I just as­sumed it was my ever in­sen­si­tive land­lord]. We were told to come here and put the pipes in.”

Sput­ter­ing with in­dig­na­tion I nearly shouted, “You don’t just come barg­ing into my home and start do­ing con­struc­tion work! You con­tact me first and make an ap­point­ment! You have no right to in­vade my pri­vacy like that!”

They just looked at me as if I was an­other one of those in­sane for­eign­ers, an al­to­gether far too com­mon at­ti­tude among Japan­ese. One of them, car­ry­ing a shovel, stomped over my rose­mary bushes and brushed past me, ig­nor­ing the glare I gave him. He bent down, lifted away my com­post pile, and tossed it over the other end of the fence. He started digging.

The thing is that my Japan­ese is just not good enough to han­dle such un­fa­mil­iar le­gal sit­u­a­tions, es­pe­cially when I am so hop­ping mad that I can barely get my Eng­lish out. I didn’t know what to do. What were the proper so­cial ex­pec­ta­tions here, since people’s ideas of pri­vacy and ac­cept­able be­hav­ior are so dif­fer­ent from Amer­ica and other places? If it was my land­lord who was re­spon­si­ble for this, how could I keep my ad­van­tage as a ten­ant and whom could I turn to if some­thing il­le­gal had been committed?

Be­ing un­sure I let the men go about their busi­ness and called my land­lord. He knew noth­ing about it and told me he would look into it, say­ing that it was prob­a­bly the ward of­fice, putting in pub­lic utilities.

“Yes, but with­out con­tact­ing me about it?” I asked.

“They were wrong to do that,” he admitted.

I had to go to work so I didn’t have time to stay around to see what the men were up to. When I re­turned I found the fence re­placed, but two huge white con­crete man­holes planted in ei­ther side of my 2 me­ter by 8 me­ter gar­den. My rose­mary had been ripped out of the ground, one of my zelkova saplings chopped down, all the plants on the ground tromped over, my shi­itake mush­room seeder log left ex­posed to the sky, and my planter shelf up­ended at one end of the garden.

Some­thing broke in­side me. I stood gaz­ing at all of this and for a mo­ment I hated Japan and all Japan­ese. I just had enough. All the un­end­ing con­struc­tion around my house for four years straight, with al­most no days of peace, all the un­friend­li­ness of the neigh­bors and their in­con­sid­er­ate bang­ing and con­vers­ing very loudly in front of my bed­room win­dow at five in the morn­ing and things like flood­ing my apart­ment with wash­ing ma­chine over­flow from up­stairs and not even com­ing down to apol­o­gize, all the mo­not­o­nous at­ti­tudes and pre­dictable be­hav­ior and ob­ses­sive con­cern with things cute and pub­lic pro­pri­ety and stay­ing within the lines on the note­book pages, all the times I’d been cheated by part­ners in my free­lance work, while be­ing sub­jected to racial disdain…aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I felt like de­stroy­ing some­one else’s home!

Then it all col­lapsed into sad­ness and a kind of ex­hausted numb­ness. I’ve had enough of fight­ing and find­ing fault and us­ing my mind and heart to shore up de­fenses and at­tacks. I’ve had enough of war of any sort.

In the light of day I stood out­side gaz­ing at the gar­den again to­day. All I could think was I had to leave. Soon. Find some way to make enough money to fi­nally pull away from here. The av­o­cado tree stood at one end of the gar­den, the re­main­ing zelkova sapling at the other and I won­dered how I would be able to keep them safe, bring them with me. But I couldn’t of course. They would have to take their chances in this gar­den of changes that has erupted around them since I planted them five years ago. I wish now that I hadn’t planted them; what a waste of hope and love and life.

What do you do when you try so hard to nur­ture seren­ity in your life and lit­tle things like this keep crop­ping up to chal­lenge what you love? I know I’ve been pulling away more and more into my shell of a life, meet­ing peo­ple less, be­com­ing reclu­sive and mis­trust­ing, so I won­der if this is the bang­ing on the door that I re­ally need to get my at­ten­tion and start en­gag­ing life head­long again. When did I ever be­come so fear­ful? Noth­ing scared me so much when I was younger. Change had al­ways been a wel­come de­vel­op­ment, a chance to breathe fresh air, meet new peo­ple, and rein­vent my­self. Just how do trees do it, last­ing through the ages, look­ing on at all the fa­mil­iar things be­ing ripped up, and never once winc­ing? They surely must have more for­giv­ing eyes than I do.