The Sea of Frogs Serenades for Me

May 30, 2007 | Laughing Knees | 12 Comments 

Be­tween my home and the uni­ver­sity where I work lies a stretch of rice pad­dies that takes me about 45 min­utes to walk (or 20 min­utes to bi­cy­cle). I came here in the mid­dle of the win­ter while the land still lay fal­low, the trees bare, and every­thing brown and dusty. The sense was of a land­scape gone dry and dead, and the state of the dy­ing town where I live didn’t help the over­all im­pres­sion that I had landed obliquely on the moon. Those first few weeks ne­go­ti­at­ing the dirt lanes on those early win­ter evenings, cou­pled with all the bag­gage brought from Tokyo, while be­ing fol­lowed by hol­low winds rolling off the coast, re­ally made the whole area seem like some sort of ban­ish­ment into the Gulag.

So when one evening as I walked home I caught the croaks of the first frog I’d heard in years, it was rather like feel­ing the first rain­drop in a year of drought. Just the sound it­self was green. Its voice arose from a hid­den em­bank­ment, full of con­fi­dence and ar­dor, and hung in the dark­ness right out of reach.

In the com­ing weeks the fields trans­formed as if by magic. Wa­ter flooded the empty plat­ters of dried pad­dies, flow­ing in like mer­cury in the burn­ing evening sun, while breezes scal­loped the sur­faces and prod­ded the sleep­ing frogs awake. I never would have thought the soil car­ried such a rich har­vest of voices, but within a month the fields had awak­ened and the whole world seemed to erupt with the din of frogs, mil­lions upon mil­lions of them, as far as you could lean your ear and out be­yond, where the wild reeds and rushes from last year rus­tled un­seen in the shadows.

The sound of the frogs lit up some­thing that I had not felt be­fore here. In pass­ing through the fields I found my­self slow­ing down more and more to stop and sim­ply lis­ten, even though it was al­ways af­ter work and dark­ness had al­ready fallen. With the neon lights of the mall strip road shin­ing in the cor­ner of my eye and en­hanc­ing the depth of the dark­ness all around me by vi­su­ally di­vid­ing my head from my feet, when I hun­kered down in the grass to lis­ten close, it was like drop­ping into a dark­ened pond of sound, all else drowned out. The ur­gency of the frog song, its rhythm and tex­ture, sang to some­thing in me as a fel­low liv­ing crea­ture, re­joic­ing in the ap­petite of be­ing alive. And a lit­tle, just a lit­tle, cor­ner of my sad­ness and lone­li­ness be­gan to melt away.

Farm­ers be­gan to peo­ple the fields, plant­ing rice seedlings in neat rows that sud­denly gave scale to the duns and rus­sets. And as if this was a cue the hills and copses all around sprang to life right along with the rice. In the blink of an eye there was green every­where, and first hints, then rashes, and fi­nally swaths of pink and red and yel­low as flow­ers raced un­der the skies. What only a week be­fore only shook in the wind, now bil­lowed and swayed to the same mu­sic play­ing in my head. The days drew breath and ex­panded, loos­en­ing their belts to al­low the light to spill out into the edges of wake­ful­ness, longer and longer into the ter­ri­tory of night time. The walks lost their aura of anx­i­ety and spend­ing 45 min­utes or more mak­ing my way be­tween points seemed to grow shorter. I ac­tu­ally be­gan to look for­ward to get­ting out of the of­fice and crunch­ing through the fields.

The frogs sing out­side my bed­room win­dow now. Spring has flour­ished. Each day more birds ar­rive, bring­ing with them new songs of hope. And new names: Great Reed War­blers, Com­mon Gallinules, Wood­cocks, North­ern Shrikes, and Blue Rock Thrushes.

Swallows In the Rain

May 22, 2007 | Laughing Knees | 17 Comments 

Okay, time to come out of my stu­por and join the rest of the world cel­e­brat­ing spring right now. It’s hard to gel ex­actly what is go­ing on in­side my head and heart right now into some­thing in­tel­li­gi­ble, be­cause I my­self still seem to re­main out of touch with my­self. I’ve spent so much time alone for the last few months, es­pe­cially these last two months, with my school be­tween se­mes­ters, and now full-​​tilt into the spring se­mes­ter, that at times the rest of the world doesn’t seem to re­ally ex­ist any more. The lone­li­ness and iso­la­tion is get­ting to me, badly. I’ve thought of­ten of writ­ing some­thing here, but the thought of sub­ject­ing oth­ers to my per­sonal com­plaints kept switch­ing off any ideas I might have come up with for posts, that I could never get a word down. And the longer I put it off the harder it was to say any­thing worth­while. Try­ing to talk about how I’m feel­ing to those close to me, like my fam­ily, just makes me feel that they will worry need­lessly, see­ing as I’m here in this ghost town (lit­er­ally, most of the busi­nesses have closed up, and walk­ing around the town sub­jects you to street af­ter street of shut­tered and rust­ing shops). And since I have not felt wel­come (ex­cept for a few peo­ple) or in­formed at the job I moved out here to take, not even the com­fort of work­ing with col­leagues helps to off­set the lone­li­ness. The at­mos­phere of the job it­self is heavy and se­cre­tive, with more than an in­or­di­nate num­ber of peo­ple wary of voic­ing opin­ions or of­fer­ing to par­tic­i­pate in ac­tiv­i­ties. I’m still try­ing fig­ure out what keeps peo­ple there; the only thing I can come up with right now is money. I end up es­cap­ing the of­fice, walk­ing along lonely roads back to my town, and ar­riv­ing at an apart­ment that re­minds me every day of be­ing cut off from friends and fam­ily. The in­ter­net has be­come a place of so­lace, where at least there is a lit­tle in­ter­ac­tion with oth­ers and I’ve met some peo­ple with whom I can daily dis­cuss hob­bies and laugh a lit­tle. But it’s all vir­tual; I haven’t ac­tu­ally met or touched some­one for sev­eral weeks.

So maybe cabin fever and iso­la­tion bring out two things I’ve been think­ing about al­most as if they both might re­con­nect me to real things, cer­tainly the draw of the sen­sual: sex and traveling.

I’ve never writ­ten about sex here, and I rarely read about it in other people’s blogs, al­most as if every­one ac­tu­ally never thinks about it. It’s weird, re­ally, be­cause with­out my even try­ing it col­ors a great part of what goes on up­stairs every day, es­pe­cially when I spend this much time on my own. When there is al­most no pos­si­bil­ity for it, it’s cu­ri­ous why it wells up more of­ten than when splashed in front of me in plain view every sin­gle day. Is it an in­stinct, a will­ful de­tour from what we hu­mans so fool­ishly call the more im­por­tant as­pects of so­ci­ety (like watch­ing peo­ple blow each other up on TV or stuff them­selves with un­nec­es­sary amounts of food), or bless­ing, or a curse? Sex has shaped our bod­ies and minds, acts as a sta­ple for why we make de­ci­sions and how we feel about oth­ers, mud­dles even the most res­olute her­mit, and takes up every sin­gle free space in the en­vi­ron­ments all around us in other creature’s lives. Sex is every­where and yet we’ve de­vel­oped shame about it.

Let me be hon­est, though no one asked me to be… I do on oc­ca­sion pe­ruse sex sites. It’s not even a ques­tion whether a lot of oth­ers do, too. I have no in­ter­est in or feel­ings for peo­ple abused or shown be­ing hurt or forced to do things they don’t want to do, but I will al­ways feel that noth­ing is more beau­ti­ful in the world than a hu­man body, es­pe­cially, for me, a woman’s body, even my beloved moun­tains, and see­ing it is some­thing I can’t live with­out. Why that is I can’t re­ally ex­plain. Some peo­ple might call me a dirty old man (in Japan­ese “sukebe”) or tell me that I can’t see women for any­thing other than sex ob­jects, but that is from peo­ple who refuse to know me or al­low a man to be com­posed of many facets. The hu­man body fixes it­self in our minds as deeply as the joy of eat­ing good food or rec­og­niz­ing the good­ness of a baby. I used to get scan­dal­ized by pic­tures of peo­ple hav­ing sex, but af­ter see­ing it more than I ever imag­ined I would, I’ve come to see it as some­thing as nat­ural and beau­ti­ful as a sun­rise or a flower. I no longer get bent out of shape when I see two peo­ple in the act, joined. Even the feel­ings about nude men has changed. I am by no means gay, but I’ve come to re­al­ize that there is a part of me that finds men at­trac­tive, maybe it’s my fem­i­nine side, what­ever, but I see it more as an abil­ity to now see peo­ple, women and men, more for what they ac­tu­ally are, than for what every­one around me ex­pects me to see. The Greeks seem to have been able to see male bod­ies for their own beauty, while gen­er­a­tions of west­ern so­ci­eties af­ter­ward all seem to be stuck on the idea that only women can pos­sess erotic beauty, and that any male who pro­fesses be­ing able to see the beauty in an­other male must by de­f­i­n­i­tion be ho­mo­sex­ual. As if be­ing ho­mo­sex­ual was some­thing evil and fear­ful and un­nat­ural. And as if the male body was some­thing ugly in it­self. Very strange. Why do women get all the beauty and men noth­ing but brutish pic­tures? Where did this at­ti­tude de­velop that men must con­form to this rigid, ankle-​​deep, emo­tion­less car­i­ca­ture of be­ing human?

I have tried par­tic­i­pat­ing in adult meet­ing sites and while talk­ing to some of the oth­ers has opened my eyes to the great va­ri­ety and pos­si­bil­i­ties of how peo­ple in­ter­act with one an­other, in gen­eral it is de­cency and gen­tle­ness and friend­ship which I as­pire to and moves me when I get close to some­one, and the empty talk of sex over the in­ter­net just seems like an ex­cuse. So much of it seems made up of peo­ple who con­stantly think only of them­selves and use the anonymity of the in­ter­net to draw in the emo­tional needs of oth­ers. Some of the in­tro­duc­tions that I’ve seen women write of them­selves makes you won­der if the men they de­sire might have any kind of per­son­al­ity be­yond cater­ing to the women’s hunger, de­mand­ing to­tal loy­alty be­fore they have even met, in spite of the women them­selves breezily and openly try­ing out as many dif­fer­ent men as the in­ter­net time al­lows. I sus­pect the men on these sites tend to fol­low very sim­i­lar pat­terns, with sex and con­ver­sa­tion tak­ing prece­dence over friend­ship and long-​​term trust. Af­ter con­vers­ing with a num­ber of women I’ve de­cided that enough is enough and this is no way for me to try to meet peo­ple or spend my pre­cious free time out­side work.

In­stead dreams of travel keep welling up, some of them old dreams since I was in high school. In 1978, af­ter a month-​​long bi­cy­cle trip in 1977, at 17, around the north is­land of Hokkaido, Japan, I had started sav­ing up and prepar­ing for a round-​​the-​​world bi­cy­cle jour­ney. The route had been all laid out, start­ing here in Japan, cross­ing into China and mak­ing its way through Ti­bet, Nepal, In­dia, Pak­istan, Afghanistan, and des­ti­na­tions west. Afghanistan still held the imag­i­na­tion of ad­ven­ture trav­el­ers then and many of the places that to­day have been over­run by war, still al­lowed way­far­ers the op­tion of the over­land route. While I was naïve about many of the dan­gers of the world at that time, the dream filled me like wa­ter and seemed to give me purpose.

My fa­ther didn’t agree. He in­sisted that I fin­ish col­lege and se­cure an ed­u­ca­tion for my­self. We had a big ar­gu­ment and in the end I gave in and ended up study­ing for eight years at the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon, right into a mas­ters of ar­chi­tec­ture. Uni­ver­sity def­i­nitely shaped my out­look on the world and helped to ex­pand how I see things, but through­out the time there al­ways some­thing vi­tal seemed to be miss­ing and I never seemed to be able to find my own pace and sense of pur­pose in the same way that my dreams of travel and my love of na­ture al­ways had. Even to­day I feel locked in ill-​​fitting shoes, con­stantly re­peat­ing tasks and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that fail to make use of what I am best at. And I’m not sure why I never make the moves my­self so that I can se­cure the type of lifestyle and phi­los­o­phy that mean most to me.

One of the things I de­cided when I made the big changes last year was that I would try to get back to those things which make me feel whole when I do them. Life is too short to con­stantly be do­ing only things that make you feel empty. Per­haps I am lucky in that I know what makes me happy. This sum­mer, with a month off, I hope to set out on a long walk, per­haps along the Camino de San­ti­ago, or in the Aus­trian Alps, or maybe even Nepal. It has to be some­thing big­ger than the lit­tle walks I take here in Japan, some­thing ap­proach­ing the dreams of my youth. And I’ve be­gun dream­ing of some­thing even more am­bi­tious, too. Per­haps a bi­cy­cle trip around the world is not im­pos­si­ble. Can I do some­thing like that with di­a­betes, at my age? Can I dare to imag­ine a path around the en­tire world and to dream of a chunk of my life un­der the stars again? I just can’t imag­ine my­self stuck in an of­fice for the rest of my life, al­ways feel­ing bro­ken and hemmed in. I have to be­lieve that there re­ally are many ways to live a full life.