I stood in the middle

of the massive walkway of Washington D.C.’s international airport, responding to the details of the scene around me, of the wild flurry of face colors and outbursts of random expressive dialogues. I first wanted to flee to a corner, but decided to just walk the course. I had not realized how deeply I had been internalizing my immediate environment overseas, my brain now scrambling to adjust to the flux between the quiet, mundane and (dare I admit?) homogenous feel of the noticeably harmonious processes and events at Japan’s airports and accommodations, to the in-your-ears, in-your-face haphazard scrimmage of mayhem that I had arrived at here again. I started forward thinking, “It’s not really quite as big a difference as all that. You’re just being overly sensitive right now...” I could not wait to be in safety again in meeting my family.

I went home to Tennessee for Christmas. Actually, I arrived home just a couple of days before we set out for Arkansas for Christmas. It was a family first, possibly to become a tradition if things played out well. The trip there gave me the opportunity to look around at all the space Americans take for granted. From the plane, I remember finally thinking of a decent example of imagery to help explain what it is like to view the suburban neighborhoods of the two countries from the sky: about a thousand of a Monopoly boardgame’s small green plastic ‘house’ pieces being crammed together to represent Japan, and a sporadic dotting of the land with the large red ‘hotel’ pieces for the States. Having said that even, I am not sure I could really give the full impression in just words.

We rented a large three room cottage sitting just on the shore of Lake Ouachita, looking out with several other cottages across the expanse of a mirrored sky and mountain range vista. My mother, a dear friend, my younger brother, my older brother, my sister-in-law, my nephew, and my niece. We decorated the house to where we could have made Christmas postcards out of the picture of the living room. My mother stirred up inticing aromas in the kitchen. Our friend looped an Eric Clapton blues and country concert on the television. My sister-in-law took turns with my older brother tending to the little ones. He traded places occasionally with my little brother in keeping the fireplace alive. I stepped out onto the back deck to watch the predusk mysts crawl up the hillside evergreen branches to pass over the mountaintops. In spite of all the family activity indoors, the mysts gave me an eery feeling - as if for a moment something in me believed it had not yet left Japan. I recognized it as that part of me that sometimes plays games, beckoning me to glance closely at a natural scene nearby and guess whether or not I would recognize it from Japan or the States; until giving it a closer look, there are times that I doubt I would.

Feeling a bit playful, I wrote everyone’s names on their presents from me in Chinese/Japanese characters. The process of selecting the characters, feeling lucky enough if I can find a combination that might express a coherent thought and still be aesthetically attractive, and feeling enlightened to find one that further actually describes something I see in the person I am creating it for, is one that I enjoyed more than I thought I would. I felt doubly happy to find within me no expectations toward anyone else’s appreciation (although I was told it was indeed appreciated), just joyful to have taken the time for myself to try to communicate something to others both in how I think of them and in how a certain lingual portion of my mind now operates; the work was a greater reward than whatever reception it entailed.

Having taken that selfish moment for myself, I worked harder to pay close attention to where I was, what people were doing and saying, to not let the gestalts of my second home overseas distract me from what was actually happening around me now. My older brother introduced me to Alex Grey through an illustration book and video, and the three of us with my younger stayed up until the early morning hours discussing our impressions of this type art and relevant matters. We also talked about our intention for their visit to Japan, which was finally revealed to my younger brother as his graduation-to-be present. Even after my older brother keeled over into bed, the latter two of us stayed up the rest of the night to talk about our lives and futures and to clean the living room.

I have missed these conversations. The point to which I am inseparably attached to my brothers often goes unrecognized through our long periods of silence between us. I wonder at times if I have ever really tried to express this attachment to them, or if that is necessary. In any case, I look excitedly forward to the possibility of their visit, which will encompass a large variety of adventures I have been planning (but not overplanning) for us.

Sitting in a cheap Mexican restaurant branching from a motel we rented on the way back to Tennessee, my last night in the U.S. for now, I thought about the extension of our family in Mexico (calling it that by another case of inseparable attachment to two Mexican exchange students who lived with us in Tennessee years back) and other extensions spread all over the continent (an international web of attachments). I wondered if my family could ever see my stay in Japan as I see it, just an extension of the web to the other side of the globe, no more separated, no less attached. Perhaps some of them do.

I hugged them each in the airport before the security check, reminding myself to embrace them in the manner of embracing the fact that this could always possibly be the last time - not in the order of making predictions but of never taking anything like this for granted. I would not think to consider this if I did not love them as deeply as I do.

I have almost never seen Japan

from an airplane during daylight hours before. At night, the assorted lights decorate the horizon and emanate a warm beacon of welcome to returnees. In the day, the origin of those lights shows itself. It was breathtaking to me - in the worst way. What were tens of thousands of modest twinkling lights, coming together to form a massive display of Tokyo’s hospitality and sense of togetherness, became thousands of grey, mostly featureless buildings and other city accessories covering the landscape as far as one’s eyes can see.

I glance at the other passengers staring out their windows, gaping at the sight of their own city, and I wonder what they are thinking. Amazement? Horror? Comfort?

I had also still never seen Fuji-san in person before, and I scanned the sight below for it. One or two mountains looked promising at first. Then, from the side of my tiny window, something monstrous slowly creeped into the scene. I simply could not believe the awesome size of what I was looking at, and it made me forget the ugliness of the prior subject for a moment. Mt. Fuji towers above everything, a sky-reaching formation that dwarfs the entire rest of the island’s topography, like a pillar to the heavens. Its snowcap shines with the brilliance and intimacy of the moon. It was immeasurably more inviting than any number of lights the city could offer.

I finally noticed that a heavy smoke was billowing ominously from the sides of the mountain, not unlike clouds seeping out of the cracks from some magical world beneath the earth. The sun shining fiercely on all sides, I thought that it must be steam, evaporation of the snow. One might otherwise mistake it for pre-eruption volcanic activity, that is how much of this steam was pouring from it. I was surprised it had taken me as long as it did to notice it, and became horrified again at what it was suggesting. Starting from immediately outside the mountain’s circumference, the grey boxes covered every inch of land, crowding around the stage to watch the rising stage smoke of the performance high above. Fuji-san is surrounded by an apparent plague of concrete. Imagining the skin of a mammoth creature, I thought to myself, My god, it looks like cancer.

I hate to paint such a picture of any part of a country I have come to endear, but this critical point must be realized of it: Japan threatens itself with forgetting, and forever losing, itself to a development project it no longer needs and is letting continue in dangerous excess.

Having made it

to Osaka by plane, I took the rest of the way home (which took nearly all day) by trains along the shore of the Seto Inland Sea. This sea has come to hold a lot of memories of this country for me. I gazed at the path I took during a ridiculously long bike trip to Himeji (from Osaka) on the way to Hiroshima over three years ago. I remember having stopped then at the entrance to the Seto Bridge crossing into the south island of Shikoku, which at the time seemed distant and mysterious to me, thinking, ‘I wish I had the room on this trip to go there...I promise I will someday,’ bowing to the island before continuing on along the shore. I now live on that island... I guess I fulfilled the promise after all, however unintentionally. I smiled as the train approached the the turn to cross the bridge.

It was just turning 6:30 when I got home, collapsing on my unmade futon in the middle of the room, leaving my bags in the doorway. My good Japanese friend, M---, had mailed me while I was on the trains, reminding me that we had a promised arrangement to visit Konpira-san, an old mountain that features shrine a bit south of the city, for our traditional New Year’s shrine visit and prayer, called hatsumode (初詣). I had nearly forgotten it was New Year’s Eve. I slept for four hours in my clothes before my alarm sounded to go to the station to meet him.

We talked nearly the entire train ride, my brain on Japanese auto-pilot while the rest of me fought to wake up. Things around us grew darker and darker as the train wound its way into the rice paddy acreage toward midland Shikoku. We arrived in Konpira welcomed by red candle lanterns that lined the sides of the river and streets. People shuffled excitedly in small groups in all directions, trying to decide where to be for the midnight climax or how to get there in time. M--- and I headed upriver of the majority of the crowd toward a temple set at the foot of the mountain that still had a good view of the valley town. The toll of the temple bells began ringing just as we neared the long flight of entrance steps, and I immediately began counting them.

By tradition, the bells are rung 108 times. I have heard different explanations for why, but the one I have found the most interesting (and is probably the most accurate) is that it is derived from the Buddhist notion of shikuhakku (四苦八苦). The shiku part directly reads as ‘four sufferings,’ standing for life, old age, sickness and death (生老病死, shouroubyoushi), which after seeing in four different men is what drove the Buddha (Shakyamuni, or the Gautama Buddha) to seek enlightment and thereby realize his Buddhahood. They are the four attributes to living that characterize our humanity and from which we can never hide or run away from. The hakku part reads as ‘eight sufferings,’ symbolizing four more sufferings that accompany and thereby magnify the four base sufferings, being the suffering from separation from those we love (愛別離苦, aibetsuriku); the suffering from the meeting of people toward whom we grow bitter (怨憎会苦, onzou’eku); the suffering from the inability to attain what we desire (求不得苦, gufutokuku); and the suffering from our inescapable attachment to the five elements comprising us physically, mentally and emotionally (五陰盛苦, go’onjyouku). In a more colloquial use, shikuhakku has come to mean being in a really painful or stressful situation.

But the really neat part is how one gets 108 from this (and this part was actually explained to me by one of my junior high school students). You see, ku is also one of the readings for ‘nine’ (九) in Japanese, and so shikuhakku can also be read as ‘four nine eight nine’ (四九八九), from which we get 4 * 9 = 36, and 8 * 9 = 72. Finally, 36 + 72 = 108, which is apparently congruent with the number of earthly desires described in Buddhist texts. I have no idea who thought this all through, but it reminds me a little (though perhaps not on the same scale) of the word-embedded mathematical relationships in the Hebrew language. Anyway, the bells are thus rung 108 times in respect and mindfulness for those in suffering, including (to a far lesser recognized extent, I think) ourselves.

I used to approach the concept of suffering in Buddhism with a lot of skepticism, feeling that it did little else but denounce life as just a grand play of suffering and pain, as nearly all religions do to some degree or other. In recent years, however, I have to come to recognize that, outside of the stricter sects (again, found in just about any religion), the suffering mentioned in Buddhism seems to point at more than anything a potential for suffering. Life is not inherently a world of suffering, but can be made one, inflicted by others or (perhaps most importantly according to the teachings) by oneself. It is therefore less about that there is sickness and death and so on, but in how we approach these fundamentally human events. That is how the Buddha died (in Gautama Buddha form) even in having become the Buddha, for he recognized the illusion by which we paint the event as ‘death’; thus, the Buddha died and did not die (-- recognize any parallels with Christianity here?...). It still leaves a lot to consider about those countless around the world who have been victimized and made to suffer by political decisions and big corporation money scheming, maintained by residents and consumers in ignorance of their day-to-day decisions. (Coincidently, the Chinese character chosen to represent this past year of 2007 was 偽 [gi], which basically means ‘deception’or 'fraud,' in response to these very violators of the country and world’s peoples.) Some of the truly mindful, I think, see suffering as a product of the mind yet nonetheless a substantially real and embodied matter of infliction by interaction with internal and external forces. Thus, ‘illusion’ or not, we are still all obligated to be mindful and do something about this suffering mess we have created or are in the very least perpertuating throughout our daily activities.

I thought of this as I stood at the edge of the temple grounds overlooking this quiet marginal region of the Takamatsu area. The final bell tolls sounded and left us in several minutes of silence.

お正月一日に見た夢

I have a lot more I'd like to share about my holidays -- I just haven't written it yet. So, for now, I'll just post what I dreamt the other night...

In Japanese culture, one's dreams on the night of the first day of the new year (that's a mouthful) can hold important omens for the new year and oneself. I haven't gone into a whole lot of overanalyzing of the dreams I had, but I wrote them down as soon as I could after waking. They're here for anyone who's interested, until I get the rest of what I want to write into blog form...

壱

Two small dragons barely escape beyond a hidden door in the wall of a severely flooded house. Arrows strike the door where they swam just moments before. Outside the door, the two begin to quarrel.

“There’s no hope. It’s over. The country will soon go to ruins.”

“It’s not over yet,” the older one says. “There is still hope. I have something to show you.”

The two press together under a jingasa hat that surfaces just above the water and make for the other end of the house. Beyond the porch under which they hide, archers continue to shoot at and ransack the house. As the two of them swim slowly out from beneath the porch, they see a small drop, now a small waterfall from the flood, toward the east extension of the house. Under the water shines the light of a single room. The older dragon moves them toward it.

A group of children are pretending to be soldiers on just this side of the porch, and they playfully shoot their smaller versions of arrows at the hat as the approach. A couple of them, unlike the adults, immediately recognize that something is swimming beneath the seemingly lost floating hat. A robust child takes one of his arrows and ducks it into the water beneath the hat to strike at the victims from below. The arrow pierces the breast of the older dragon, who cries and sinks away. The other takes an arrow the child has dropped and strikes from the water up into the child’s neck. The arrow misses all vitals but visibly wounds the child, who attempts to cry out, finds himself unable to voice anything, and immediately scrambles away from the scene. The dragon turns to help his senior, only to find him sunk, dead, at the bottom of the drop.

弐

There is a grand stage with no curtains, that opens to no audience. The strong air of countless deaths hangs here. In a past age, we see men come here - willingly or forcibly we cannot be sure. They stand almost naked with their hands tied behind them, but they do not struggle or fight to flee. An unseen presence watches from the impenetrable darkness back stage; but it shows no signs of controlling or urging them forward.

One of the men onstage looks upward as something too fast to be seen descends upon him, snatching him up before drawing back to its invisible overhead origin in a flash of light. The man begins to shout something before he disappears, but it is indecipherable.

A second man goes and stands waiting on a one-board plank above a hole in the stage. From the underwater depths below, a shapeless red mass rises and rapidly changes shape to encapsulate the man, like a large deranged mouth that twists shut to incarcerate its victim. A face like that of an ancient dragon mask appears painted on its outside, its eyes glaring hauntingly forward at nothing. As suddenly as it appeared, the mass drops into the water and sinks to the bottom. As it buries itself in the sand, a voice inside can be heard crying, “This is it! This is the last chance!” It then disappears forever into the sandy bed.

Another man hangs perilously from his ankles by a rope dangling above the waters. It dips him down to about his midriff. We watch from his eyes, gazing down into the merky blue darkness, as another dark maroon shape begins growing larger in approaching him. It looks like a bloated twelve-armed starfish, spinning something shiny from its center. It stops a few meters away and shoots its central appendage forward, seemingly past the man’s line of sight. Then, the pain of the neck being severed from one’s shoulders dawns on him, and we see ourselves drifting slowly downward as the head falls away from the body, toward the gaping, featureless creature. We hear the man’s final thoughts, “It’s the last chance. Before its all over...”

From the darkness of the backstage, something seems to bow its figureless head. thousands of men continue to come onstage in this manner.

参

The stage is bare. It appears old and mostly unused; however, there is still something eery about it that reminds one of what it was before.

A black foreigner in a mustard-color kimono stands below where the audience is supposed to be, waiting. On the stage appears five or six other people: a Japanese man, a white curly-haired blonde, and several younger adults who appear to be their children. They peer down over the man in a heavy solidarity.

“All have come to us,” says the woman.

“All has come to us,” says the man.

They are the family of Manketsu (万決 - ‘a thousand decisions’). Their children are theirs more by adoption than by bloodline. Many appear ready to kill themselves, or kill the foreigner below if given the order to do so.

“Why do you choose us?” the man quietly demands.

The foreigner lowers his eyes for a moment, thinking of an appropriate answer. He finally thinks of something to say just as the woman breaks the silence.

“Perhaps you’ve heard of us without knowing it. After all, you surely don’t know the origins of such Westernized poetry as the child’s ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider,’ now do you?”

Confused, the foreigner looks up to see them all staring heavenward as the woman begins to rehearse what could only be the commonly silly rhyme hideously warped by an ancient Japanese tongue. Devoid of its familiar light and playful English rhythm, it falls into a deeper and deeper mystic frequency, like a mantra sung by a thousand hermit monks. A clearer sense of the poem’s true meaning begins to flash in his mind, beckoning images of things forgotten and things never meant to be understood.

The family onstage seems to wait for something to descend upon them, surrounded in an air of life-threatening urgency by the words, filled with an unbearable weight in dread of whatever is to come. The foreigner falls back, perplexed by the scene before him, as the earth all around him slowly shifts into a violent quaking.

>>><<<

All is black except for the bright white lines of a two-dimensional grid that lights up beneath my feet. I stand on one of the thicker jagged lines apart from and above the grid by a small distance. The grid bears a resemblance to a warped graph without value tags, and the line I stand on reminds me of a map’s train track depiction, though one without a beginning or end in sight.

I look out over the horizon of lines to just barely see a large dot connected by another thick formless line that runs somewhat in my direction. I travel effortlessly at great speeds over the one I am on, to eventually find the 45 degree-angle junction I suspected existed. Taking the new route, I see blurry flashing images to my right, that each for an instant fill the black void beyond my path - images of familiar places and people.

Coming to a stop at the dot that has only barely room for standing, I wonder what I was supposed to find here. The images over the horizon have stopped, and I stand simply waiting.

In this place between sleep and wake, I quietly recall that everything, without exception, is meaningful; it is to one’s benefit to acknowledge that before continuing to anywhere. At that moment, the space beneath my feet rises, like a topographical map gone three-dimensional. I am lifted higher and higher into the air on the peak of a giant land mass, whose sides are lined with more presently shapeless symmetry toward its base. The white dot extends out, seeming to melt toward the downward-sloped sides, into an elaborate snow cap. As it comes to rest in its growth, I find myself looking down from the crest of Fuji-san into the expanse below.

All around the mountain, against the deep green of trees at its base, thousands of tiny grey buildings form, sweeping outward, as though a light is dilating from the mountain’s center to show what lays beyond. I watch the progression of buildings move farther into the distance in all directions, occasionally running up against much smaller dead hillsides and shore lines. The mountain’s sides begin to steam and turn to bellowing smoke.

“This is what I’m meant to see,” I think as I become dissolved in the clouds of steam and am blown up into the invisible heavens above.

お終い