松陰庵尼寺

I

I am going out on a warm spring Sunday in search of... I'm interested in cracks and crevasses--backwaters that the thrust of time hasn't molded in the same way as the great in tune mass of Ferris wheel turnings. 

On a bridge over Yada river I stopped to watch some large carp(?) swimming gently to stay stationary and had a conversation with a cute older Japanese woman who also liked the river. She too was surprised by the size of the fish.

松院庵 Plum blossoms

Over the river I sniffed around the area that Yumiko grew up--trying to sense shadows across 25 years of change. The new buildings and Plexiglas car ports didn't see her playing here. Around the back side of the block an abandoned building, gate falling in, the yard a wild tropic chaos, an old sleeping Japanese wooden house, might have heard her voice...

Up the hill, nose pointing north with the Shonai river in my imaginative periphery, I circumnavigated a large wall for a whole block that looked like it had been left to go it's own way. When I found the fourth side and the gates I started taking some shots of the grounds of the somewhat mysterious grounds and a lady who live acroos the street told me that if I wanted to I could go in a take pictures. Here are some:

This is still in the city

Stone in the empty temple

Notice the curvy wooden beam

A quite old building with thatched roof

Not a person moved as I poked around wondering. Everyone had moved on past. The lady from across the street told me, "Yes, the main building is very old but that pine tree is very old." She told me that it was a nuns' temple and that she had allowed me in because she had been there but in the future I should not believe I could enter freely. I understood and appreciated her kindness and my adventurer's luck.

I wouldn't think that 松院庵 will remain this way for long but you never know what will happen in Japan. Things seem to move in illogical ways.

PS  We've been cleaning out our home for almost two months and one of the bottlenecks is that (because of the recycling regulations) trash it is very hard to get rid of. (This has the effect of causing people to accumulate all sorts of garbage.) That being said it is very easy for the culture to let go of old Japanese ways--beautiful wooden houses not repaired but torn down and little shops are replaced by bigger shopping centers. There are same economic engines and pressures everywhere, I guess. ではまたね。

Art Bike with Wings

Art exhibit at the end of the ride

 If I ran for president it would be on a platform of the simple intelligence of bikes. I had a good bike in NYC and used it with fever, crossing the Brooklyn bridge, shooting to the Grand Army Plaza farmer's market. It was my method of travel when we lived by the Lower East River in Red Hook, but Lynn Hill and New Hampshire distances put my biking in a moribund state.
Mr. Goe (real name) is a JAL pilot who was leaving Nagoya and had a lovely Land Rover bike that he was happy to sell me. Recently I've have been whipping around exploring Higashi ku and looking at the snow covered mountains that beckon in the distance. Today we would be happy with parks and an art show at the end.

With Kaime in front of me we made for Heiwa Koen (Peace Park-- which, as it turns out, is occupied to a great extend by the no longer living). We climbed a great hill and at a temple on the top there was a priest burning something (it reminded me of the ghats on the Ganges in Varanasi). Down at the pond we ate our lunch and watched some Japanese and  ducks fishing. (Of the two groups the ducks were more graceful, active and hopefully somewhat more successful than their human counterparts.

K plays for the ducks

 We pedaled back to Chayagasaka Koen (Tea Shop Hill Park) and Kaime climbed on the sundial.

climbing

 

.
From there we headed back down the hill and homeward where close to the Nagoya Dome at a College of Education there was art show by the students of Yumiko's old college art teacher,
We had to park our bike down in the subterranean labyrinths (but there were conveyor belts to help you bring the bikes back up on the way out.)

It was good to go to an art show again--it's been such awhile--and it was just minutes from our home by foot or bike.A nice aperitif  after riding up and down hill-- boy in front of me--through city streets, searching for that elusive Japanese view. Here were young artists full of ideas and passion doing it--learning to do it. It put me in a moving, curving state of mind--like surfing--that I like a lot.

It's doubly fun to look at art in foreign countries. Somehow the language element falls away and my local biases and prejudices are somewhat suspended.

Anvil Zone

Fish in a pond

Green and light blue plays

Right in the middle

The wind blows

About your lips

And dreamed

I heard a quiet time

In the anvil zone

Ever if ever

A line could hold

So much

And dreamed

I heard a quiet time

In the anvil zone

Ever if ever

A line could hold

Most dear to me

So much

 

Pulsing

Toward the middle

Rocking

Pulling,

Toward the abyss

Intermittent showers

Spirits in the next room

Cut the lights

Such simple strokes

A silhouette

Legs by early morning

I exhale pools

Blow out green and violet

And watch you crying

Colored world

Seems like a fine day today. Big interview at 1:30. I'd better go out and explore...日本。ではまた。

Mr. Murakami and the straw donkey

Perry in Yokohama

When I was working on the Dream issue for the Cold River Review I had a dream that was woven into a  Haruki Murakami novel. It gave me some confidence that I would be able to interview him for the issue. In Mr. Murakami's worlds the lives of somewhat flat heroes are layered through tunnels of the subconscious and the surreal. That played right into the fantasy that my dream had meaning to not only me but to him. But as many threads in his novels do the anticipation ended without any tidy resolution. Time past without the interview.The dream comes up again.
I'm looking at a picture of Admiral Perry's black ships. The Americans and the Japanese on the sea-saw. Freedom and individually on one side and conformity and cooperation on the other. The attraction of opposites. Inexorably drawn by the strong contrast.
For years I've had this recurring dream of being in Japan--usually I'm entering the complicated labyrinths of the subway systems. Usually trying to remember the way to get to a friend's and to also try to once again gain my footing in Japan. There are always little shops selling sushi and other Japanese delectables. "I must be in Japan again," I think to myself with both excitement and anticipation. So I most naturally assume.

the Tokyo system

Well, "I must be in Japan again," I thought outside a little shop in a larger store (mall?) as I had a déjà vu that was so strong I had to sit down to let it pass. I really lost track of what was what--a kind of spiral of some strange awareness that I only hear an echo of, crashing on me. How to decipher any of it.

shopping

Always the non in non-conformist, the one who gave the teacher pains, I find myself so inextricably drawn to this culture of rule, protocol, hierarchy, custom and conformity. Why?.
What is totally amazing to me is that this group mind works--(at least on one level) a well tuned Miataki machine.
On the way at 7:30 PM to teach I'm baffled by how the buses not only come exactly on time but that the bus stops have an audio announcement telling that bus so and so is going to be arriving shortly. In Japanese and English. 凄いですね。
While waiting for an interview in an overly hot room my flu/cold started really hitting me. I felt faint and dizzy, heart started skipping and palpitating. I was lost in a Murakami moment of torture, blood spurting all over, for all my demons we're getting in their punches. My body might have been sweating a little--maybe I had a fever--but inside I was truly being roasted. The only way out that I came up with was the sword of beneficence--chanting and smiling-- while I was being carved up.
I got back to Sunadabashi just in time to pick Kaime up from his school. Walking back home with him, talking and drinking Grape Fanta; the wind was strong enough for a good kite day.

Today I am sick enough not to go out but the demons are sleeping...mostly. (The dead body in the locker by the swimming pool woke me up even though it being there was totally reasonable.)