It is remarkable to me how little effort it takes to love the people who came before us. The promise of Elijah—that our hearts will turn to our fathers—it is so close. So strangely close, and so captivating once grasped.
I do graveyard research. As an archaeologist it’s kind of a pet hobby of mine—something I wish I could turn into my thesis or dissertation, but there are very few people in the world to whom I could defend my research.
Anyway. Right now I am building a database of certain monuments found in a quiet sea-side churchyard in southern Wales. It’s tailored to the focus of my research, but when I’ve done with that I am going to add in all the detail I can to my tables of names and relationships, and then I am going to post it online for genealogists to use. It’s the least I can do.
There are far, far worse places to spend the quiet sleep of waiting.
It is startling, though, to realize how very alive these people were. And how the joy and sorrow and pain and hope they felt can come welling up from the past with so very little effort on our parts.
This stone isn’t much to look at. But if you read it carefully, you’ll see that the mother died at 34 after seeing first her 12 year old eldest son die at sea—and then losing her next son at 15, also into the depths of the ocean. This happened all the time. Ships went down, people were lost—children died of fevers and people had to move on—somehow.
It wasn’t until I read the final entry on the stone, cramped into the very bottom space as it was that the full import of this monument hit me. The husband—who called his wife “beloved” and who had buried two sons and that same wife had lived to be 80. Somehow, he had survived the travails of ocean and mortality to die at an old age, while the people he obviously loved so much were long, long gone.
I find myself weeping for this man—long since dust. Someone who may not even have spoken my language—but someone who shares the beautiful, blinding humanity that is our greatest blessing and our greatest handicap.
I don’t know if these people have any living relations or if their family died with those two loved sons. But they are as real and precious to me as my own blood, and I feel responsibility—reaching over a century of time and six thousand miles of ocean.
Jacques is a shield bug--family Acanthosmatidae in the order Hemiptera, if I am not mistaken (thank you Wikipedia, no matter how much I mock thee...). He lived behind my door in my bedroom for two years. Why? I have no idea. Maybe he liked the company, maybe he had a wife and kids in the model Wright Brothers airplane box that has been back there for almost longer than I remember.
At any rate, he and I have been room mates for a long time. I have grown very fond of him, actually. Shield bugs are really amazing little guys—they belong to the same family as fire bugs and assassin bugs, but lack the ubiquity of the former and the nasty temperament of the the latter. I have never known a shield bug to bite, sting or stink places up--or to turn up in your bed, shower, shoes and clothing drawers.
Not my picture--copywrited to someone else, I am so very sorry. But—this looks almost exactly like my Jacques!
Anyway.
I was saying good night to mum and dad the other night and stopped in the hall to give my aussie (dog) a good scratching. You know how, sometimes, when you’re stepping on something and you can just barely feel that it doesn’t feel right? Well, I had that niggling sort of feeling but wasn’t paying attention. After a few seconds, though, it dawned on me that I was standing on something. Now, the scary thing in my house is that it could have been anything from a harmless insect to an extremely venomous spider.
Like, ew. Not my picture either. Unfortunately it's hard to tell whether or not this is the relatively harmless Giant House Spider who keeps your house FREE of Hobos, or if this is the Hobo itself, the sort that you really, REALLY don't want to find in your bed. They both spin the same webs, read the same trashy romances and go through guys like crazy.
This is not because we are unclean people, but rather because we live near a river and have insects roughly the size of tennis balls.
You do the math.
At any rate, I had instinctively not put my weight fully on that foot, AND it was under my disgustingly high arch, so whatever was under there was more covered than actually stepped on. I snatched my foot away and scooted my dog back--and saw to my horror that it was Jacques. He was lying on his back, his little legs curled up.
“JACQUES,” I shrieked, both alarming and confusing my parents. I got down and put my face to the floor. “JACQUES!” he had not been crushed, I was glad to see. In fact, he looked FINE aside from the fact that he had, so to speak, assumed the position. I gently prodded him and--he moved. In protest, it seemed, but he wasn’t dead yet! I flipped him over gently and he took a few steps--and flipped back over and curled his legs up. He wouldn’t get up, he wouldn’t crawl into my hand.
I was near tears by this point.
My mom had come onto the scene and had taken stock of things by this point and got down next to me in her pajamas. She somehow coaxed Jacques into her hands--don’t ask me, I think it’s a mom thing. Maybe I can figure it out someday--and he seemed to revive some. She handed him over to me, and he immediately took a nose-dive off my hands to the hard floor.
Cliff jumping, anyone?
Mom took him in hand again and kept him this time. I felt quite the louse, but was determined to know what was wrong. “Maybe he needs water!” I was frantic. But you know, little bugs DO need water. Watch the firebugs in your bathroom sometime--the drink from those tiny beaded droplets with their long probosci. Mom followed me into my room, where I dribbled some water on her hands. Jacques did NOT like that. He was not thirsty, thank you very much, and made no bones of letting us know as he scrambled to get away from the couple of drops that fell into mom’s palm.
Unfortunately, that’s the limit of my knowledge for insect first aid. Mom put him in my hands again, and this time he seemed inclined to hang on. I took him carefully into her room, where she and dad keep live plants year-round, to see if he’d rather be in there. He was really lively by this point, acting quite as if he hadn’t scared me half out of my skin by playing dead in an expanse of hard wood floor. After about five minutes I coaxed him onto a long thin leaf of a spider plant (named so NOT because it houses spiders, but because of the arachnid-shaped runners it puts out to make more of itself) where he actually seemed quite content.
Not my picture either. A running theme? Maaaaybe. This is almost exactly like our plant.
Exhausted by the excitement, we all went to bed.
I have not seen Jacques since. He may have transferred his affections to my mother, he may have made a bid for frozen freedom out the window, or he may still be happily clinging to the plant, out of sight. At any rate, at least I did NOT step on Jacques.
On a slightly more serious note:
To all of you who took the time to comment on my last blog entry--thank you. I am honoured to be the recipient of your thoughts and considerations. I’m hoping to respond to you all individually, and I am actually going to print the entry and all of the replies out and put them in my journal. I won’t risk losing such precious words of wisdom and love to the black-hole of the internet.
And on a slightly less serious note: Here’s the latest art. Some serious, some not so much, some simply bizarre. And if any of you have odd jobs that need to be done that might involve this mighty pen of mine--let me know, will you? I’m thinking I might have to resort to eating my notes and using my textbooks for warmth since my car took it into its head (engine?) to blow up.
I'll give anyone who's interested details on these--goodness knows I love to brag about my characters.
I want you to fill in the blank. So many things can go there depending on your place in life. Many of the young people I know who are teetering on the cusp of adulthood would finish with something to the effect of "I can do what I like." For other people it's things like "I shouldn't have to do that." or "it's my responsibility.".
For me? For me it's coming down to "I should be able to deal with this." or something to that effect. I feel like I have no right to talk about these kinds of things because I only recently have become an adult (if I really am one. I have severe doubts sometimes). I have no children, I live with my parents, I have a job and an education and comparatively few things to think about that should keep me awake at night, staring into the darkness and wondering what on earth I'm going to do.
But—I feel like life is one giant game of dodgeball, and there's really not a lot of space between missiles, never mind the fact that there's usually at least seven or eight coming at you at once.
How many of these emotions did I feel in their infant stage in my childhood? I didn't know that growing up would cause them to flower so terribly.
So many things happen. So many things change and this Margaret weeps for things that will never be the same, things that seem like they have lost too many pieces to ever be whole again. We are so close to the Divine in moments of pure joy and grief and hope. I want to savour them, I want to grasp them in my fingers until I understand their shape and know their parts. But instead I set them aside to be considered later because I have to go to work or because my body realizes it's been 20 hours since I last slept. Or because the dishes need to be done or the dog needs out or my room is finally so ugly I cannot bear to walk into it.
Sometimes I set them aside because they are too blinding, too poignant and piquant. It is too much work to be the child of a God so perfect, so powerful, so loving in a life that leaves no time for stillness. I think I create my own chaos. I am not a peaceful person.
Where there is nothing to gnaw and worry, I will chew on myself—like an animal in a trap—until I have something ragged at which to and tear and over which to weep. Isn't there enough sorrow in the world without making my own? At least I can deal with my own sorrow. I can't fix India. I can't give parents back to orphaned children or restore the miscarried child of a grieving woman. All I can do is vacuum and try to be kind and do my best not to wound the people who love me best.
I'm an adult, so I should be able to deal with this.
As the sun sinks into the west over Tokyo and the land of the Rising Sun, I cannot help but think that leaving this place once again has cast a pall over my life, just as the darkness slowly spreads from the east. The ancient peoples of Japan were right to call it as they did: “Nippon” written with the kanji for “sun” and “origin.” This is a land beautiful and bright beyond measure, fairly overflowing with a rich history and tradition that cannot help but stamp the hearts of those who visit here, however briefly, with an indelible mark.
I envy the people who are lucky enough to call this place home—all the while aware also of how lucky I am to live also in the country I am privileged to call home. The world is a dark place and every land has its own dark underside, but I am starting to understand that things really can be seen from the old, over-tired cliche viewpoints of half-empty and half-full. Thus I can look at a place like this, or a place like my home, and love it dearly and see all the things that are wonderful about it without making myself blind to the darkness. It is a marvelous and powerful thing to love a place or a person wholly, knowing that they are as imperfect as anyone or anything else—especially myself.
And so as I bid farewell to Japan once again I cannot help but worry that that this will be the last time I see this glorious land of dream-like beauty—just like I did the last time I left. However, there always is a last time, despite the best laid plans of mice and men. A last visit to a Book Off, a last handful of Mochi, a last rough-and-tumble with the Endo boys, the last sight of the stately and unearthly lines of a pagoda high on a hill among the trees. A last view of the Sakura, now shedding their blossoms in a late snow-shower of fragrant pink petals, the last grove of secretive bamboo and tiny delicate maple leaves.
I just pray that this will not be “Sayonara no toki” for me.
Keep yourself well, Japan, as you have kept yourself for nearly two thousands years.
I went back to Uji today. It sounds funny, but I can’t even begin to explain the feeling of homecoming. I only lived there for a month, and yet the whole city has this feeling about it that is so powerfully in tune with my own heart. Byoudoin especially. Frankly, I didn’t take any pictures because there is no way for an image--digital or analog--to carry the strength of the kokoro there. It is very old and is one of the few ancient sites that has been spared the ravages of fire over the long years, and so it is still there in its pristine beauty, looking almost exactly as it did in 1049 when Yorimitsu (?) turned it from an inherited manor into a temple. And it wasn’t even new then. It’s modeled to be what the “Pure Land” or the Buhddist heaven is supposed to look like. And really? My vision of heaven isn’t much off. At any rate, trying to describe it here is as useless as it is trying to take a picture. The funny thing is, the feeling I have there is as powerful as the feeling I get at the temples of my own religion, but it’s different. This really is something more of an echo than the strong stuff I feel at someplace like the Salt Lake temple, but there are pure strains of HOME in it that make my heart yearn for something I don’t even know how to define.
We ran into these loud and cute old men at Byoudoin who were speaking gorgeously southern Japanese, known as Kansai-ben or Osaka-ben. In my opinion, such Japanese is much nicer and easier to understand than the standard Tokyo-ben or any of the northern accents or dialects, so I found myself rather indignant in class when I would have points deducted from my score when I would slip into a southern accent. At any rate, one of them spoke English fairly well and was all prepped to tell us ALL about Byoudoin--only to find out we (or at least I--this was Sasaki’s first visit) already knew it! The Japanese people I have met all seem delighted that I not only am familiar with things but can add my own comments to a discussion about something like Heian era architecture or the role of the Shinsengumi in the Bakamatsu. At any rate, he asked us where we were from and the minute I said “Utah” he was like “MORMONS!” and I was like “Yes!” and then he was like “Salt Lake City!” and I was like “Yes!!” We also saw a group of Chinese monks touring Byoudoin, complete in their amazing dusky orange robes, prayer beads and shaved heads. It was amazing. It was all very delightful.
Sasaki and I also went to the Tale of Genji museum today. Three rooms and a twenty minute movie using Bunraku puppets. Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s masterfully done and worth every out-of-the-way step it takes to get there and every yen of the entrance fee. I wonder if I can find a recording of “Ukifune” anywhere. I would love to force you all to sit down and watch it with me. My english recording that I had been given to listen to was sort of wonky, so I turned it off and listened to the story in Japanese. Luckily, because I happened to have read most of the Tale of Genji, I didn’t get TOO lost.
The used bookstore (furuhonya) I used to go to all the time in Uji was gone. The building was still there, but it seems to have gone out of business. I was very sad. But all in all only one sour note in a day is a good way to go! (Touch wood.) When I inquired at Kyoto station after a used bookstore, the guy seemed to think I was talking about a bookstore with books about old stuff, not like a used bookstore (furu=old hon=book ya=store) and so was really confused, which is really strange because “Furuhonya” MEANS used bookstore! It’s not something I made up or something weird. It’s something Japanese people say ALL THE TIME!
When they’re looking for used books, that is.
Our bus driver on the way back to the Ryokan was really, really cute. I blushed at him shyly and Sasaki winked.
Too bad we’ll likely never, ever see him again.
The Imperial palace is, sadly, something of a disappointment. It’s a giant shoving loud tour group that’s not allowed to go inside anything or see anything cool, and the palace itself isn’t really that old. It’s been moved and rebuilt, so...NOT the same place where Hikaru Genji would have walked.
Oh well. I suppose it would have been difficult for him to walk anywhere, fictional character that he is.
I wish we had time to go down to Miyajima and see the Besso (manor house, so to speak) of Heikei no Kiyomori, the infamous antagonist of the Heikei Monogatari. He may have been a nasty human being who died of a terrible fever that was brought about by karma for all the baaaaaad things he had done, and a nasty father who drove his son Shigemori (*ahem*hotness*cough*) to die because he was torn between loyalty to his family and loyalty to his friends and leaders of the Minamoto clan, the bunch with which Kiyomori was trying to start a war, BUT (longest sentence EVAR) his house is gorgeous.
BUT we do not have time. So instead I will go to Harajuku in Tokyo one last time and try to persuade myself that I do NOT need a lolita dress, which I will probably buy anyway because all of my good sense seems to have evaporated.
Oh well.
The sad thing is...the Japan I truly love is long gone, lost in the currents of time that draw us inexorably towards a future that is uncertain and more than a little frightening to one such as I. All I can do is grasp at the pieces—pulling them from the earth and preserving them with loving care, drawing from them all that I may of a bright, peaceful age that may never actually have been.
No kidding. Not very far down, but down nonetheless.
That’s what I get for climbing a mountain after a 24 hour rain storm in shoes that are nearly bald because I can’t bear to get rid of them. (Hey, when you’ve finally found that perfect pair of tennis shoes it’s HARD to trash them, no matter how worn out they become!) At any rate, I slipped on the downwards path and ended up butt-down in the mud, completely humiliated. I like to think of myself as sure footed, but...or butt, shall we say?
It WAS a really cool mountain, despite the whole slipping part. A path ran up behind a buhddist temple that is right near our ryokan into the beautiful ancient trees. There is no place like it at home for me. Sasaki said that it reminded her a great deal of the eastern united states, but as I have never had the pleasure to see that part of my own beautiful country, I can make no comparison.
At one point along the path we passed a single stone torii that was standing at the entrance of a fenced in enclosure, only half visible between the trees. The thing was, there was no shrine within the enclosure, and I get the strong feeling that we had run across a very old Shinto burial--my fingers fairly itched to get down there and see, but I managed to control myself. The mud was horrendous already, and there’s few things worse in the world I can think of than corpse mud.
Our path up the mountain was conveniently marked by little cement markers painted yellow and helpfully incised with the kanji “yama,” which simply means “mountian.” Just in case we didn’t know where we were. I saw a buhddist begging monk at Kiyomizudera, also known as the pure water temple. It was really amazing--he was dressed as monks have dressed for something around 1200 years, holding a begging bowl as the Buhdda did before him, wearing a kasaboshi (one of those awesome umbrella-straw-hats) pulled low over his face and chanting sutras. I was captivated by it.
It is always a pleasant surprise to me to see and meet people who take their religions seriously. Too many people that I have met are either “sunday christians” or even “Christmas and Easter Christians” or the equivalent in other faiths. They claim a faith as their own and follow the rules on the holy days, but don’t really let it interfere with their daily lives.
I, as someone to whom religion is as important as eating or drinking, find this very puzzling despite the fact that it is the attitude seemingly adopted by most of the world. Anyway, I’m wandering off my point. It is so very neat to see someone like that--someone to whom also religion is food and drink. It gives me hope in an obscure way, though he and I could share nothing by way of common doctrine.
We met Sasaki-kun’s other host family whilst we were here--yet another st of amazing people. As we sat at their house on sunday evening and played games I was amazed to find that once again—the bonds of familial love transcend the lines of culture and language and take existence into a higher, more joyful plane. The spirit in that home of love and tolerance was so moving and was something of a shot in the arm to someone like me, who gets homesick after three days away from home.
That’s what happens when you have an amazing family with whom you can be the best of friends.
At any rate, the Shibas (name changed for the sake of privacy...) took us all about Kyoto in a rented car and bought us food and Omiyage (souveniers) and spoke to us in easy Japanese and were generally amazingly kind to two people so many miles away from home. Kyoto is freezing. Seriously, Sasaki-kun s about to die (she’s acclimated to Arizona) and I’m even feeling he cold through my frost-bitten Utah exterior. It seems that Kyoto is experiencing an unseasonably cold week--bad luck for us, we didn’t pack ANY cold weather clothes! In fact, I almost didn’t bring a coat at all! Ah well, I’m sure we’ll survive.
Or not.
No more moving food for us, thank goodness, just some really weird Okonomiyake that was a little heavy on the leeks and unlike any I had eaten before. I have high hopes of finding some NORMAL okonomiyake (something like a Japanese pancake stuffed with meats and vegetables. YUM.) before we leave.
Though I will be very sad to have to once gain leave this country behind me, It’s probably a good thing. Not only am I so exhausted I can hardly move, but I am starting to run out of all the money I’ve saved--which is not something I recommend.
Kyoto is an amazing series of beautiful temples and gardens one right after another, and it is also the home of some of my favorite events in Japanese history. Google “Shinsengumi” and “Bakamatsu” and you’ll see some of what I am talking about. Aside from those recent things, though, Kyoto has been the seat of Imperial power for pretty much the whole time Japan has been a country.
The nobles of the Heian Jidai (“Peaceful era” roughly 600-1200 AD) wrote positively heart-breaking Tonka and Choka (types of Japanese poetry that were the predecessors of the modern Haiku as we know it) about the capitol city in the spring, and how their hearts yearned to be there (usually these were written by exiled nobles who then either died of wasting fevers or chucked themselves into rivers in the approved Heian fashion). And frankly...though I didn’t know what they were going on about at the time I read them, sitting in a classroom six thousand miles and 800 years removed as I was, I now think I can begin to understand.
The barrier of the long years is very thin here, and seems as though it might fade away as the kagerou in the light spring rain beneath a rising moon. There is a timelessness in the shape of the sakura, and a whisper in the onion grass that calls a soul beyond the limits of mortal thought into a twilight that has been dead for a thousand years—and yet must and will continue to exist.
It is echoed in the mournful sound of the flute and the austere strains of the koto and the stone lanterns seem to flicker with it as the sun goes down, beckoning...
((Pictures will be added soon---ALL of mine from here seem to have vanished, which makes me EXTREMELY nervous. I'll put 'em on as soon as I find 'em!))
There’s this absurd little thing called Purikura that Japanese school girls seem to go bonkers over. I’m bonkers for it as well, but that’s beside the point. Anyway, what it is is this crazy photobooth that takes a bunch of pictures all with different backgrounds and fun poses and things, and then sends you around the back to a little touch screen booth where you can decorate your pictures with all sorts of random stuff. Then the pictures print out all on this sheet about the size of a post card, tiny and cute and actually ready to be peeled off of their back because they are STICKERS.
There is nothing about that whole process not to like.
Sasaki and I have done oodles of Purikura. We can’t help ourselves--I think it’s in the female brain chemistry.
We visited a lovely graveyard today. It was attached to Sounzen Temple in Hakone. Bhuddist graveyards are really very interesting, and I have this thing for graveyards. I know that makes me sound psycho and weird, but it’s a reflection of the fact that I am an archaeologist, and EVERYONE knows that the best artefacts are to be found in burials. Everytime we pass a graveyard my fingers start to twitch and my eyes go blank. Sasaki described it as “having a psychotic brain melt-down causing me to revert to my primal digging instincts.”
I think she’s right.
The cherry-blossoms (Sakura) were in full bloom and it was just gorgeous--AND the graveyard had the graves of the Hojo family, the feudal clan that ruled the area during the Sengoku Jidai (also known as the Warring States era--roughly 1350 to about 1600) and that was AMAZING to see. My fingers were twitching like MAD.
We went down into Odawara to the castle there, which had been the seat of power for the Hojos in said Sengoku Jidai. The Sakura were in full bloom and the castle loomed up in stately splendor—a magnificent echo of the Japan that had once been. It is really an imposing structure and positioned very well for defense. It turned back army after army until the fifth Hojo Daimyo finally surrendered to the forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the new military leader who was in the process of uniting the war-torn Japan.
For those of you who have read the book which my mother and I wrote, the castle from which Chajiko escaped by tying all of her lovely kimono together into a rope was written with this one in mind.
At any rate, it was a relief to see it. I know that sounds funny, but I was feeling oddly smothered and homesick by the not-really-traditionalness of the ryokan and the fake “back to nature” of the Hakone tourist spots. To see the castle, reconstructed recently though it may have been, was a sort of balancing experience.
I think I discovered something very interesting about Japanese culture today. I mean, I was aware of it in the past, but only in a limited sense, and today made me realize that it seems to go deeper than I had realized.
In poetry if one wished to lend a sense of verisimilitude and legitimacy to ones poems, one would make an allusion to another work, usually a famous one, written by a great poet sometime in the past. By tying ones own words in with the words of a master by the use of such a reference, ones own poem became that much more “important,” for lack of a better term.
For example, the great poet Basho wrote something along these lines:
year-end reveling Still in pilgrim’s cloak must I walk my lonely road.
And I, in my desire to give my meagre efforts a sense of legitimacy, may pen something like this: the sparrow’s sharp song startles year’s-end revelers it is early yet
The reference to the year-end reveling calls to mind the poem by basho, which is something most readers would have known in the time when making haiku was still something that was commonly done as a form of entertainment, as well as for the purposes of art or literary exercise. At any rate, then with the reference to the work of Basho and the images his words conjure up to strengthen my own, the poem gains an entirely new level of meaning.
Am I making any sense?
At any rate, something I noticed in both Sankei-en and Odawara-jyo sort of clicked into place in my mind today. In Sankei-en, a lot of the buildings had been made around a central thing that had come from another important or significant building. A lentil piece, or a central beam, or railing banisters from palaces or temples. In Odawara, there was a metal capping-piece that had both marked and protected a nail that had come from the second house of the imperial family. What it seemed to me to be was something like what was happening in the poetry--using the pieces of something older and established to build something new, as if taking a piece of that reputation and attaching it to the new thing. I don’t know if it’s the same thing at all, but it came up in my mind suddenly as an interesting and rather startling parallel.
Tomorrow we get on the bullet train (shinkansen) and head to Kyoto, which is my FAVOURITE place in Japan. No joke. I adore it.
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