Watching

April 7, 2006 | Laughing Knees | 12 Comments 

Photo of a Lit­tle Egret I took about a year ago dur­ing a spring walk along the Noh River near my house. Some of you might re­mem­ber it.
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About three weeks ago I was re­turn­ing from a long run in the rain when I hap­pened upon two male Lit­tle Egrets stalk­ing one an­other. I stopped along the bank of the river and for half an hour didn’t move a mus­cle. Just when my bones seemed to be­gin to turn to ice, the Egrets started danc­ing. Slow fig­ure eights each, but never quite breach­ing the edge of the other’s floor­space, and all the while when one dancer ap­proached the in­ner edge, the other would swing to the outer. They held their wings half open, their necks straight and their beaks high. In si­lence. When I could no longer stand the cold, I moved and the dance broke up, each dancer tak­ing off with an sharp croak, and once again I was left with the hurry of the falling rain and my own shiv­er­ing mind.

Funny how the ca­coph­ony of birds re­sides in the realm of still­ness, whereas a sin­gle blink of a hu­man eye sends the denizens scat­ter­ing.
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This re­flec­tion was in­spired by New Zealan­der Pete’s lat­est post, “Be­ing Still”. Pete’s serene pho­tog­ra­phy and lyri­cal words is fast mak­ing his site, Po­hin­gapete, one of my fa­vorite places to visit these days.

The Alien Hordes

April 7, 2006 | Laughing Knees | 4 Comments 

I just love Mark Fiore’s an­i­ma­tons. His most re­cent post­ing, <a href=http://www.markfiore.com/animation/phobia.html”>Migraphobia, con­denses the whole is­sue of im­mi­grants into the U.S. into such a spare, hu­mor­ous plea.

Just last night a new stu­dent started in my hereto­fore can­celled Thurs­day classes… now un­easily re­stored for the time be­ing… and she is un­usual in my school: she is Chi­nese. Since she was the only stu­dent in the class we were able to open up a bit about our re­spec­tive ex­pe­ri­ences of liv­ing in Japan and how we feel about it.

My stu­dent told me about the dif­fi­cul­ties she en­coun­tered in try­ing to find a uni­ver­sity out­side China where she could study Eng­lish. Her first choice had been Canada, but she was sum­mar­ily re­jected. The only rea­son why Japan ac­cepted her was be­cause she had a cousin liv­ing here who could spon­sor her.

Once here im­mi­gra­tion has has­sled and hounded her the en­tire time, mak­ing life un­com­fort­able at best; at times she just feels like re­turn­ing home. She’s been here al­to­gether 6 years now, has got­ten, in two years, to the point where she can hold a de­cent con­ver­sa­tion and read Japan­ese well enough to start work­ing for a Japan­ese com­pany. It seems quite a few peo­ple go out of their way to make her feel un­com­fort­able with prob­ing ques­tions about her pur­pose be­ing here, of­ten link­ing the ques­tions to anger about the anti-​​Japanese sen­ti­ments run­ning high in China right now. She laughed about it, but I could see the bit­ter­ness in her eyes for the few mo­ments when they couldn’t meet mine.

Re­ally, why would a Chi­nese sub­ject her­self to liv­ing in an com­pletely un­fa­mil­iar place, ed­u­cat­ing her­self, and try­ing to make a liv­ing here if she hated the peo­ple so much? What is it with peo­ple and bor­ders, with pu­rity and difference?

When I was a boy, un­til I was eigh­teen, I was state­less… I had no coun­try, no cit­i­zen­ship, no pass­port. Even though my fa­ther is Amer­i­can, the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment wouldn’t is­sue me a pass­port (in spite of the right of all Amer­i­cans to claim Amer­i­can cit­i­zen­ship for their chil­dren), be­cause of some ob­scure law that states that Amer­i­can cit­i­zens who were liv­ing out­side the coun­try when they were sev­en­teen can­not en­dow their chil­dren with Amer­i­can cit­i­zen­ship. My par­ents spent years in a panic try­ing to find a so­lu­tion through the Amer­i­can em­bassy, but no luck. I sus­pect it had some­thing to do with my fa­ther be­ing black and his mar­ry­ing a Ger­man (too soon af­ter the war, you see). Ger­many re­fused to give me cit­i­zen­ship, too, even though my mother is Ger­man and I was born in Ger­many, be­cause Ger­man law states that a child can­not re­ceive cit­i­zen­ship through blood ties with the mother, only with the fa­ther (could there be some kind of Aryan misog­yny go­ing on here?). I sus­pect there is some­thing in there about my fa­ther be­ing black, mar­ry­ing a Ger­man, too.

What­ever the causes, be­ing state­less is sim­ply no fun. You get no rights, pe­riod. I could be stand­ing in front of you, talk­ing to you, shak­ing your hand, and yet the gov­ern­ment would con­sider me a nonen­tity. An in­vis­i­ble prob­lem. You can’t travel, you can’t own land, you can’t work legally, you can’t get an I.D., you can’t get a li­cense, you can’t get health in­sur­ance, you can’t even get ap­proval for bur­ial if the gov­ern­ment (of what­ever place) legally de­cides to ex­er­cise its right to kill you if it deems you a nui­sance. Imag­ine that: be­ing phys­i­cally present, vis­i­ble to all, and yet erased from existence.

Now, I’m not com­plain­ing. Ger­many re­lented and through the help of a sym­pa­thetic con­sul I was granted (love the nu­ance of the word… granted… as in “deign to no­tice me”) Ger­man cit­i­zen­ship, and now I have one of the most flex­i­ble and use­ful pass­ports in the world. In the wink of an eye my stand­ing in the world switched from “null” to “one”. Sud­denly I coulda, canna, will have canna been some­one. Just like that.

There was a time when pass­ports didn’t ex­ist. Peo­ple wan­dered across the face of this world like mi­grat­ing geese, bor­der­less and, in the true sense of the word, free. When Bush or Blair spout inani­ties about “free­dom”, I won­der what they are talk­ing about? If a per­son, any per­son, can­not just up and leave for parts un­known and then ar­rive at the gates and let them­selves in with­out so much as a by your leave, what kind of free­dom is that? What do you call it when other peo­ple shoot you for ei­ther try­ing to leave or get into any other place on Earth? Who de­cided that we had to have these Machi­avel­lian walls and gates and re­stric­tions any way? It’s like liv­ing in a pret­ti­fied ver­sion of “Es­cape from New York”. Yes, the Sun shines even in here, but it is our Sun, not yours.

Mean­while I glance out my win­dow and there sits one of my fa­vorite char­ac­ters in my neigh­bor­hood, a young Brown-​​eared Bul­bul, who thinks noth­ing of sweep­ing into my lit­tle gar­den, screech­ing at every­one for about ten min­utes, and then flit­ting off to some other hap­less victim’s pri­vate space, to be­rate them for these fences and walls and shut­tered win­dows. The fat, ex­pres­sion­less tom­cat, who doesn’t bother to even twitch his ear in my di­rec­tion when my foot­step lands near him, rou­tinely comes high-​​stepping into my gar­den, scratches out yet more of the soil, and daily pro­ceeds to empty his vict­uals into the var­i­ous sand pits he has cre­ated. He cares lit­tle for fences and re­stric­tions, too.

What have we traded off? The hori­zon for four walls. The joy of wel­com­ing a neigh­bor into our home to of­fer them tea or cof­fee. The de­sire to fol­low the winds, and make good the yearn­ing to join those geese as they head out be­yond our imag­i­na­tion. A lighter pack and strong legs. The hu­man spirit?

Per­haps there’s no longer any turn­ing back, but you have to won­der what this planet and the gift of liv­ing on it are all for. I tend to imag­ine that we are here for life it­self and for shar­ing bless­ings for be­ing an in­te­gral part of some­thing so beau­ti­ful, and for that to be freely given and freely taken.