Spring

Poem on a Theme of Snow

From heaven fall icy petals;
In the sky not a spot of blue remains …
The sun rises over the mountain peak.
The chill pierces my bones.
Silence prevails.

Muso Soseki (1275-1351)


Though this is a poem of winter, for this spring it rings true. It makes me think of the white, almost grey cherry blossoms of Tokyo’s parks. They too fell from the trees as soft icy petals and covered the ground like drifting snow.

It seems obscene to think in these terms after the past winter. After all, I am enjoying my newly remodeled backroom, looking out at flowers and green grass, and when I walk the twenty or so feet to the garage I am enveloped by the smell of the lilacs that have grown through our trellis from the next-door neighbor’s yard.

Just yesterday as a cold north wind blew, we spent the gray afternoon looking through the garden diary that my wife Charlotte kept for many years after we bought the bungalow. The first few years were bleak. Our cars were parked on a slab and our backyard is open to the alley. There is grass but no other plants. And our neighbor’s yards are devoid of any landscaping.

Now some fifteen years later, two twenty-foot pine trees keep watch over dozens of perennials, annuals and vegetables planted in laboriously enriched soil. The community of birds that now makes our yard their home is the reward for the tedium of work.

Every year the environment matures and changes as do the number and types of birds. Adding a finch feeder brought common house sparrows, red-headed sparrows, slate-colored juncos and the adorable common goldfinches whose plumage changes from a drab green in the winter to a bright yellow in the spring. As a hedgerow has grown along the fence between our northern neighbor—who after raising four children finally has the time to landscape her yard—house wrens appeared as if by immaculate conception.

They announced themselves one morning several years ago with a loud cry that could not be ignored, especially considering they start singing prior to sunrise. It drove me to my bedraggled copy of Roger Tory Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds. He describes their song as, “A stuttering, gurgling song, rising in musical burst, then falling at the end.” To that I say, amen.

The honeysuckle brings the occasional ruby-throated hummingbird. These are birds on a mission. They are not lingerers like the mourning doves who spend hours under the bird feeder searching for scraps left by the finches, or like the robins who crisscross from one yard to the next, back and forth all day pulling worms from their subterranean lair.

Hummingbirds have a buzz saw quality to them with manic wings that mimic the sound of the heavy jets that perpetually pass overhead on their way to O’Hare’s runway 27L. Their syringe-like beaks disappear into the orange flowers and sap up the nectar within.

They only hover for a few moments and then, engaging their warp drive disappear. Fussy eaters, they do not investigate all the flowers as the myriads of bees do. Maybe it is my presence that drives them away, but it is hard not to want to get close to them.

The birds put up with us. When we finally stop working and get a chance to sit, if we are too close to the feeder, we find out soon enough. The goldfinches enforce the unseen boundary. To put it bluntly, they are nags. Their usually pleasant song becomes guttural and dissonant until we reluctantly get ourselves up and relocate a few feet farther from their coveted thistle seeds.

It would be nice to think we are masters of our environment. We did build it, but this would be fooling ourselves. From the squirrels that are compelled to take one bite out of every ripe tomato and deposit it on our doorstep; to the skunks that waif through at night silently leaving their scent; to the raccoon that made its home in our attic insulation, it goes on.

We have had large hawks hunting woodcock; a baby robin abandoned in our large, now deceased, climbing rose; possums depositing their young; and raccoons expertly tearing the grass up as they search for grubs.

We have a constant battle to discourage dandelions, violets, creeping Charlie and crab grass. We are only beginning to appreciate my mother’s deft hand in keeping the grass and the garden weed free. In this she took after her father. He too was a master gardener. I am afraid I will never live up to the likes of them.

It is now the end of the third cold and rainy weekend of this spring. I am trying to remain positive, even as I sit in my wool vest with the furnace cycling hot water up from the basement to the radiators. I reassure myself it is past the frost date and the icy petals are only a literary illusion, but knowing that my chilled bones are real enough.

Anchored

For all my decades on the water I have only anchored a handful of times. The southern coastline of Lake Michigan provides very few opportunities to drop the hook; to do so with any regularity you have to steam hundreds of miles north to the prime anchoring grounds of the North Channel on the Canadian side of Lake Huron.

Several years ago my wife Charlotte and I commenced a search for a suitable boat to travel to these northern cruising grounds. In the end, the boat we bought, besides having all the comforts of home, was also equipped with not one or two, but with six anchors of varying styles and weights.

Our boat was bristling with them. They included a Danforth, Bruce, Fortress and the ever-popular CQR. Each anchor came with its gear: shackles, chain and line or as we call it, rode. Hundreds and hundreds of feet of it. All stored in the various inaccessible cubbyholes that are peculiar to boats.

The distances involved with cruising on Lake Michigan have overwhelmed us. This is especially true since we only have one or two weeks to escape and our boat averages 10 MPH on a good day. We have never gotten anywhere near the cruising grounds we planned to visit. The first season it was all we could do to get back to Chicago after picking up Carrie Rose, our Nordic Tug 32, in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.

There are a few areas to anchor in the harbors located every 20 miles up and down the Michigan coast, but for once in our lives we decided to err on the side of comfort. We spent nights secured to the dock and plugged into the marina’s electrical outlet to power our boat’s air conditioner and refrigerator. I did feel guilty for taking the easy way out, but being already beset by the novelty of the undertaking, the thought of acquiring another skill underway was too much.

The processes of acquiring the boat, and learning how to pilot and anchor it got me thinking about my journey, not as a scholar, but as someone who has been interested in Japan as far back as I have been interested in boats. My way of exploring Japanese culture has been through the 400-year-old cultural construct of chanoyu, the tea ceremony.

As a teenager and young adult I was adrift in Asian studies, looking for a personal connection to the culture. I knew that action, not merely words, was necessary for true understanding, and chanoyu has provided that for me.

I wonder what chanoyu provides for the Japanese people. What has allowed it to remain a living entity for centuries? I believe it is the tradition of stability. No matter how the culture changes, no matter how avant-guard life around it becomes, chanoyu provides a base for the culture.

What is art if not imitation? True, there is innovation, but most of what we create is rooted in the past. Talk to artists long enough, no matter how abstract their art may be, and they will begin to discuss their influences and how their present work, for lack of a better word, is informed by the past.


Anyone who has anchored knows it is an inexact science, open to vociferous opinion from old salts of all types. It is a process that exists in the real world of variable winds and currents. That so many variables exist in the seemingly simple task of throwing a weight off a boat makes me wonder how complex systems, such as chanoyu, survive the onslaught of generation after generation tinkering with it.

The Urasenke tradition of tea took the bold step of introducing their beloved custom to the outside world. How did they plan to control outside renegades from tampering with it. The arbiters of the tradition were confident in its value and not threatened by change. They knew that their securely anchored tradition would swing in the waves as the storms blow, but still be safe even if it had to ride out some uncomfortable moments.

Tea has taught me manners, introspection, respect—civility really. Tea has taught me subtlety and flexibility. These are traits I utilize when pulling into a new cove to anchor for the night. I take into account the depth of the water, the type of bottom, the changing weather patterns and the protection the anchorage affords.

Once the information is comprehended and the anchor is dropped, it is time to relax and lie down for a restful sleep, all the while keeping an eye and an ear out for change. After all being ready to adapt to new circumstances is what anchoring, and as I am just now realizing, chanoyu are all about.


Volume 5762 (4), 5/22/2009

Natural World

This year I celebrated the New Year four times: once thanks to the Gregorian calendar and three times thanks to tatezome, chanoyu’s first tea of the year. I drank multiple bowls of emerald green tea and ate the once-a-year tea sweet, hanabira mochi, three times. Each bowl of matcha made me think of my shortened time on this molten ball of iron we ride through the universe.

My point is, in the natural world time marches on. It does not stand still for any man, woman or child. All our interactions, whether personal or professional, follow this path. In the natural world the finite is infinite. Everything comes to an end and yet there is no finality.

Of course I am talking big picture here. We have all lost loved ones, lost a job and ended relationships. For us lucky enough to have 401K’s, we have recently lost years of hard earned savings, and daily people lose their right to live in civil society. On a universal scale there is no end to change.

Now past fifty, when I get an idea I have to act on it, if I do not it is gone. I tell myself to remember it, you might say I agonize over it, but I forget. These lapses of memory require me to keep a notebook, a voice recorder or post-it note close by. This, as I have discovered, is also the way of the natural world.

It is disconcerting to sense the loss of one’s faculties and physical prowess. Once while driving I spoke the most profound thoughts into a small digital voice recorder. When I sat down to listen I discovered that I had been pushing the pause button in the wrong sequence. The morning’s rush hour was all I recorded. As I said, “gone, gone, gone.”

As I type and edit this, I am staring at an elegant LED screen contained within a solid aluminum case that is reminiscent of an Ellsworth Kelly sculpture. In the half inch allowed by its design, electrons course through minuscule wires of precious metal to banks of transistors that bring coherence to my tapping on symbols developed over millennium.

On the monitor, with an image of the Kenrokuen Garden in Kanasawa on the desktop, several windows are opened. They represent my email account, websites helping me fact check what I write and trivialities such as shopping for a new grow light to turn heirloom seeds into plants.

Is this part of the natural world, I believe so. Manipulating the stuff of the universe created it. To do so we need a thorough knowledge of the environment we live in, and the deeper our understanding of chemistry, physics and biology, the closer we become to realizing our true nature.

Our species has inhabited a mere 200,000 of the four billion year history of our finite planet. When the time comes for our collective chapter to end I think the rest of the universe will not miss us. But while waiting, as I agonize to remember and reinvent my place in the world, I will continue to jot, record and backup all my errant thoughts. After all, no one has yet to find the asteroid with our name on it.

Volume 5759 (4), 5/1/2009

Trust

There is hope now. The winter will gradually subside. As I leave work instead of darkness there is light and only while driving home does the night gradually surround me. I trust that this will happen, and year after year I am rewarded by the fact that it does.

I base my life on natural cycles. Living in southern Florida for several years I became bored with the sameness of the climate. I longed for the tumult that I now, often as not, wish would go away. Oh, not to awake to another blizzard; not to huddle in my boat as a fifty knot squall blows; not to swelter in the toxic mixture of heat, humidity and pollution of a summer inversion.

I wonder, does this change keep me young or is it slowly leading to my demise. So far none of my friends, mostly fifty and above, have moved south to Promised Lands as many of my parent’s friends did. Maybe the fact that we traveled freely in our twenties allows us the freedom to stay put. In young adulthood we traveled for fun and enlightenment, while our parents, at least our fathers, traveled to fight a war.

My friend’s adventurous father, who would never go sailing with us, recounted stories of sleeping in a hammock off the bridge of his ship in the Pacific during WW II, only at the end of the war to be turned around and sent home via the North Atlantic in mid winter. His story became fuzzy when he talked about the crossing, but he was profoundly affected and determined never to set foot on another ship if possible.

This winter turned out to be an especially challenging one. The past decade of relatively benign winters seems behind us, and the same can be said for our economy and our politics. I live in the Fifth Congressional district and to say we have a checkered past would be a tragic understatement.

As I trust in natural cycles, I have reluctantly begun to trust in cycles of greed, mismanagement and fraud that envelop us every decade. Thankfully I missed the Great Depression, but lived it through my parent’s cogent discussions of living a life with few resources and their wariness, even with their modest means, of anything financial. Years of analysis are not necessary to figure out why I am an under-the-mattress type when it comes to money.

The scale of our present debacle rivals the vast atmospheric changes that take place in our Midwest home: frigid cold pressure systems that descend from Canada; moisture laden low pressure originating from the Gulf, and the North and the South Pacific, blown across thousands of miles, hitting or missing us depending on the vagaries of the jet-stream; and Nor’easters that scud down 300 miles of Lake Michigan only to slap us in the face just as we start to let our guard down.

But this is mother earth at work. It is hard to fault her for doing what she does; after all she was here before us, but not to fault the individuals, the government and the businesses that we entrusted to look out for our well being, as well as theirs, is beyond me.

Here in Chicago, with its reputation for ignored mass thievery, we are cursed and blessed with both sides of the coin. Only from a place that takes such joy in diversity, individualism and tolerance could our recent national leaders come from. I am not blind to the racism and the cronyism that has marked our past. It was, and is, despicable, but amongst and within this climate we have worked to rectify our wrongs. Granted it is a work in progress but at least it is a work progressing.

We are not languishing. We are not complacent. I have lived in many cities. None where two strangers can have a informed and heated discussion about Louis Sullivan and Mies van der Rohe, about Howlin’ Wolf and Buddy Guy, about Jane Addams and Studs Terkel, about Daley the First and Harold Washington. For better or worst we reinvent ourselves and more importantly are not scared to do so.

I am hopeful that my most recent trust has not been misplaced. Though if it turns out to be, I will get on with life. Do not take lightly that we are known as the city that works. It is our mantra.

Volume 5753 (4), 3/20/2009

Summertime

I am listening to Chet Baker as I drive south on LSD to my office in Dearborn Station. He was the infamous West coast trumpeter who died under suspicious circumstances in 1988, but now on this CD it is 1955 and he is a young man at his zenith.

His Quartet is in Paris on a European tour recording its rendition of George Gershwin’s Summertime. He plays in an alarmingly simple way. Each note is an individual, one barely connecting to the next. As I listen I am on edge, hoping that each note will sustain itself long enough for the next to emerge from his trumpet’s bell.

His sound is reedy and weak in a paradoxically robust way. I can almost hear him sing the words under his breath as he plays the familiar cadences of Summertime: Summertime, And the livin' is easy/Fish are jumpin'/And the cotton is high, Your daddy's rich/And your mamma's good lookin'….

Later in the session he does indeed sing and true to form, his voice mimics the sound of his trumpet with an odd timbre like a tinny bell. It is the perfect accompaniment to a hot summer’s night.

For me there is no better time to think of summer then during the winter. In summer I am too busy to think. The time to luxuriate in thoughts of bike riding, smelling roses and rooting in the garden is now, when the raw frigid wind freezes your forehead and makes your eyes water.

On cold winter nights as I lay my head on my pillow, I use remembrances of summer as a potion. I think about all I did from May thru September and my eyelids get heavy. The next thing I know I am another morning closer to green grass and blooming flowers.

Many of us try to recapture summer by jumping on a plane to Florida or other points south. It is a fraud. The warmth in Florida does not have the immediacy that it has in the North. Florida is mostly warm and warmer with an occasional surreal cold snap. So there is no big hurry. It is a lazy, laid back warmth, unlike our frantic northern warmth.

In the North you need to get on with it. Only 12 weeks separate spring from fall. It is work to realize our dreamy winter goals of summer. In March I start to pay attention to my schedule lest it fill with gatherings and picnics. I know this is curmudgeonly, but I selfishly need every hour, every minute and every second I can wrest out of the weeks that follow the summer solstice.

Chanoyu, with its seasonally related changes, portends the upcoming season. Preoccupied with surviving winter’s onslaught, I seldom anticipate the inevitable march to spring. As soon as I see forsythia replace willow in the tokonoma, my sense of the seasonal change is heightened despite the lingering snow.

The early change maybe due to Kyoto’s milder climate. There is just less winter to deal with in Japan. But in all likelihood the change is due to chanoyu’s obsession with preparedness. When I first began my training I underestimated the fierceness with which this is adhered to. Being somewhat lackadaisical, my sensei have instilled in me an anticipatory awareness. Nothing is left to the muse in tea and the muse is what summertime is all about: the freedom to be drawn into whatever reverie you desire.

As I sit in my kitchen with eight inches of snow covering the sculptures in the backyard, I cannot help but be drawn into the notes that Chet Baker so lovingly produced on that October in Paris. He followed his inspiration and made music so palpable that as I listen to it, I can feel a soft breeze across my cheek. Summertime, And the livin’ is easy…. if it were only now so.

Volume 5749 (4), 2/20/2009

Light

In 1905 Albert Einstein published five papers, three of which change physics and the world forever. He won the Nobel Prize for one of them, but not for the one we usually think of. Photons were described in the first; followed by evidence for the existence of the atom; that paper is followed by special relativity and finally E=mc2 is defined. It is the first of these papers that won the gold medal.

In between all this he is raising a family, he completes a doctoral dissertation and another paper that will be published in 1906, and he is working full time at the Swiss Patent Office. To top it all off he is only 26 years old.

In a later paper Einstein defines time and space within his theory of General Relativity. Somehow, as E=mc2 makes the immense energy that holds our world together understandable, general relativity makes the natural forces of time and space and mass real.

I think of this as I commute south down Lake Shore Drive on an especially stunning morning. After a week of rain, snow, ice and low scudding clouds the rising sun illuminates the downtown buildings with a reddish hue that second-by-second becomes an exhilarating bluish white.

To the East is the natural world and to the West is the world of commerce and art. I am part of both. The light of both worlds’ changes with the time of year, with atmospheric conditions and even, I suppose, with my mood.

Like a standing wave in a wild river there is a daily traffic jam at Buckingham Fountain. I find this serendipitous, for depending on the season the slow down allows me time to watch the sunrise, to inspect the fleet of anchored boats in Monroe harbor or to marvel at the man-made wall of lights that commences at Michigan avenue. I take advantage of the gridlock to take a deep breath and prepare to concentrate on the work ahead or to take stock in what transpired during the day.

Light, whatever its source, travels at 299,792,458 meters per second, give or take a few meters depending on the medium it passes through. But this hardly matters to me. What matters is that light can be focused through the plastic lenses of my eyeglasses, allowing my compromised vision to enjoy Chicago’s lakefront and skyline clearly.

What is our relationship to the light that inundates our world, and what must life have been like without the yellowish glow of tungsten, the sallow fluorescence of excited mercury vapors and more recently, the blinding halo created by LEDs. We build massive structures to power our denial of the night. Light has become so much a part of us that we are shocked to drive through an unlit section of the city. Can this be, this darkness… how is it allowed.

When I was younger I had to occasionally escape to darkness. Before credit cards and payday loans this meant saving a few hundred dollars, quitting my job and heading for the mountains, or as I did many times, seeking refuge in one of the last great wild spaces in the country, the Everglades. At one point after reading The Man Who Walked Through Time by Collin Fletcher, I even forbade myself the pleasures of a campfire in an attempt to immerse myself in the night.

On cloudless nights the icy light of the firmament would caress me as I lie on my back looking and trying to grasp the complexity of the Milky Way. I am wiser now about the intricate details of the universe, but I still grasp for an understanding of the information carried by the light that travels to the earth from the beginning of time.

I am not a mathematical genius. I squeaked through calculus by camping out at the professor’s doorstep and peppering him with endless questions regarding my solutions (or the lack of) to our assigned proofs. He was very patience with me and it paid off. After countless hours with paper and pencil in hand I did well in the class, and moved on, forgetting all but the most basic concepts of limits, derivatives and integrals.

The pathetic part of this is to truly understand the nature of light another language, one that I will never master, is needed. So I will have to be satisfied with my primordial reaction of awe as the eastern glow materializes and becomes a shimmering orb that courses through our sky, hardly noticed by most till it disappears to the west and leaves us wanting to begin another day.

Volume 5746 (4), 1/30/2009

Suffering

It is a beautiful spring day. Tulips have emerged from their winter dens and I finally feel warmth in the sun’s rays. To do some chores I jump in the car and I drive south on Lincoln Avenue. As I pass the local Dominick’s I glimpse a woman in the attire of the Middle East. A hijab covers her head, but I see her face in the shadows. The first thing I think of as I look into her eyes, the only thing I think of, is suffering.

In an instant I am reminded of my Italian heritage. My grandparents immigrated in the Italian Diaspora that saw millions pass through Ellis Island. We have all seen the eloquent black and white photographs of huddled women and their children waiting to be allowed onto the mainland of America. These were my relatives.

Almost all of my grandparent’s children were born in Italy with my parents being the exceptions. My grandpa Pasquale was from Collodi, a small hill town in Tuscany where the author of Pinocchio was born, and my grandma Viginia came from yet another small hill town, Aragona, located in southwest Sicily.

A striking remembrance of my youth is that none of my relatives, at least the ones who were born and raised in Italy, ever talked about the old country. Nor were they interested in going back for a visit. Despite their joy in sharing food and wine together they had a desperate air about them that I never could quantify.

Although none of them confided in me, I think their countenance was mainly due to suffering. America is populated by a multitude of ethnic groups. Many of which have one thing in common: suffering at the hands of despots, poverty, war, religious persecution, torture, slavery, and in the Japanese community, internment.

What are we to make of a country full of such desperate people. Desperate to find stability, desperate to ensure that their children will not suffer their same fate, desperate to find a country with a legal system not predicated on the whims of a ruling elite, and paradoxically, while searching for the freedom to live their lives the way they want to, they are also desperate for their children not to lose their traditions.

And herein lies the contradiction. Right-wing commentators speak hysterically about the loss of values due to immigration, but after a couple of generations most offspring are indistinguishable from the rest of us. Just as I have lost much of my “Italianism”, so have the students I teach lost their Indian, Chinese, Pakistani, Vietnamese and European traits. I believe that deep inside their ethnic identities still exist, but on the surface they are as good a consumer as the rest of us.

Our parent’s culture becomes important at the milestones of life: weddings, funerals, confirmations and births. It is then that cultural differences in mixed relationships begin to surface. It is then that now grown children become horrified with realization that they are acting like their parents. Suddenly the values they share with their ancestors become important and they search for a way to pass their culture on to their children.

In many situations this compunction skips a generation. The first generation in America strives to fit in, earn a living and educate their children. The second and third generations try to reinvent their parent’s culture. They are the ones who research the genealogy of the family and feel the need to travel to their parent’s and grandparent’s homeland.

The image of the woman in the hijab spoke to me of Dukkha, the first of The Four Noble Truths: that life is full of difficulties, suffering and impermanence. This notion seems an exaggeration. Certainly life does not demand suffering, but now in middle age I admit to palpably understanding impermanence. It has become obvious, painfully so. Maybe this is the message.

Still I think this is too grim an interpretation. Too grim even though I recall telling my father, with his cachectic face starring back at us from the hospice bathroom mirror, that there is no cure and no hope. This is the definitive reason not to waste one second drinking bad wine, thinking petty thoughts, wasting a sunny day or for that matter a rainy one. If we approach our life like this…well, maybe when our time comes we can pass without suffering.

Volume 5742 (15), 1/1/2009

Zeitgeber

There are only so many April showers and October harvest moons; only so many chances to be with friends and family; only so many seasons to pick a ripe tomato or go sailing on the lake.

Time is our ultimate luxury and our most wasted commodity. We get one chance at each twenty-four hours. The transience of commonplace occurrences is what makes them so precious. In chanoyu we refer to this as ichigo, ichie (one time, one meeting), and no cell, molecule or being is exempt.

Time can be measured in billions of years or a billionth of a second. For so long incomprehensible, these extremes of time are now palpable. We know when the dinosaurs were extinguished and when the universe was formed, give or take a few hundred million years.

We are technologically advanced enough to watch atoms move and can sense the distance from our phone to the geosynchronous satellites that bounce our voice to a friend's ear half way across the globe. We know it takes three days to get to the Moon and eight months to get to Mars, but oddly enough it is hard to know how long it will take to get to O’Hara airport.

Who sets the clock and who keeps the time? There is the notion of a zeitgeber or time giver. The father of biological rhythms, Jurgen Aschoff, first discussed it in 1954. He had been drawn to this idea of outside influences affecting our internal clock by how the sun acts as a compass for migrating birds.

Who are these “time givers”? Well, there is the Sun and the Moon, and more obscurely the internal clocks buried within our DNA. We have cesium clocks to correct the Earth’s erratic rotation and the steady decay of Uranium to map out the past.

In chanoyu there are the sixteen generations of Grand Tea Masters who have set the pace and the rhythm of the tea ceremony. To watch a Grand Tea Master make tea is a revelation. I can only compare it to listening to a Bruckner symphony with the dramatic changes in rhythm and tempo. Of course tea is much more subtle than an hour-long symphony played by one hundred musicians, but to an initiate, no less impressive.

As tea begins, other than for a moment of reflection, it continues to completion. Some movements in tea mimic the actions of an archer, while others are a slow methodical dance. Its steady rhythm waxes and wanes, changing in frequency and amplitude.

Our zeitgebers are our teachers and in turn their teachers were theirs. A continuous stream traversing over four hundred years: unbroken by self-imposed isolation, by the unification of the country, by the opening to the West, by war and then economic development, and maybe, more profoundly, by the discovery of the electron.


Time is also regulated by culture: the iambic pentameter of poetry, the complex beat of ragas, the flickering of film soon to be digitally supplanted. My young life's focus was at 33 1/3 as my parent’s life was governed by the 78’s they danced to. They were our tribal rhythms.

Throughout the centuries our collective attention span has shortened. Watching the reality soap opera The Most Dangerous Catch, I wish the images would steady for more than a few seconds. I grow tried of the hyperactive editing and finally turn the TV off. I like to think that my fifty-five year old clock can keep up, but it refuses.

The zeitgebers of today function in mega- and giga-hertz. We have evolved to think of time in terms of cell tower acquisition and how long it takes to download a favorite web page.

So this fall let us reconsider our relationship with time. Let us realize the fluidity contained within its relentlessness. For me chanoyu offers to reboot my sense of time and return it to, if not primordial, at least a pre-industrial state. I am thankful for this as I spend the last few days in the harbor wishing for the darkness to become light again.

(I would like to thank Dr. Thomas Glonek for the notion of the zeitgeber.)

Volume 5738 (4), 11/21, 2008

Angst

As summer evaporates into fall we collectively pass through boundaries. Tragically, the Cubs and the White Sox’s seasons are usually over, and we are left to anticipate winter and agonize over the latest Bear’s quarterback. This November we will have the long anticipated election to pick a new government after a protracted campaign.

I have a much simpler wish, one dependent on sun and soil, and not the vagaries of man. Often in vain I hope for a few more warm days to help ripen the tomatoes. I long to make one last batch of sauce to be relished on the coldest nights of the year. On those nights I defrost a container of “sugo” made from our garden’s bounty and pour it over freshly made pasta. It almost makes February tolerable.

And as the veil of night surprises me with its ferocity, I look for solace in other interests. In my twenties I built three telescopes in an optical workshop buried deep in the basement of the Adler Planetarium. I seldom use them due to the bright lights of the city, but I do keep up with astronomical advances.

Recently one in particular caught my attention; Voyager 2, one of a pair of plutonium-powered spacecraft launched in 1977, reached the heliosphere. The heliosphere is the furthest point that the sun's solar wind streams out into space. At this distant border the rest of the universe starts to push back.

Once thought to be a definitive border, it turned out not to be. Voyager is intermittently engulfed and then released from the wavering solar wind. The area of convergence between our solar system and the universe is known as the “solar wind termination shock”. It is here that the solar wind meets resistance, is compressed, heats up and is ultimately overcome.

Life is like this. We move along until we meet resistance. Then things heat up for a while and in the end we either overcome or are overcome. I have watched people succumb despite all our, and their, efforts. Some fight and some do not. Some are cheerful and resigned, some terrified and belligerent. Their families respond in many of the same ways. Dealing with these emotions is an art and not every practitioner is gifted at it.

Medical students are offered training in the management of difficult situations, but most have yet to pass through a shockwave themselves and thus discount it. They choose to study for the next microbiology test over the soft science of crisis management. It is hard to blame them. The struggle to get through the intense didactic portion of their medical training is a monumental feat in itself.

For chanoyu fall is a time of introspection. We remove the portable brazier (furo) and replace it with a centrally located sunken hearth (ro). When making tea we turn slightly towards the ro, symbolically moving closer to our guest. The color and the mood become more somber, and we begin to long for the moon.

The harvest moon (tsuki) has its own formal tea (tsukimi no cha). Once, in the backyard of a small home adjacent to the park running along the west side of the North Branch of the Chicago River, I sat in a beautifully manicured miniature Japanese garden and watched the tsuki rise over the trees as tea was served.

It was a magical moment in an improbable location. After such an event I begin to worry if I will ever experience such a moment again, but my angst is misplaced. I push at the boundaries and hope that the universe pushes back. It makes for an interesting life.

Volume 5733 (4), 10/17/2008

Joy

Track-and-field was my sport in high school. I did a little of each: running middle distances, and lobbing the discus and shot put. It is a sport that revels in individual performance while allowing the camaraderie of a team. I still enjoy following track, especially during the drama of the Olympics.

If you watched the women's 100-meter sprint this year in Beijing, you saw unfettered joy in the face of the young Jamaica sprinter as she handily beat a field of her elders. If any thing is infective it was her tremendous smile. I could not help but feel glee in my heart as she paraded around the stadium with the Jamaican flag draped over her shoulders.

Her joy was spontaneous, but joy is not always instantly recognizable. At some point we realize that pleasure may be cultivated to be savored on another day. Several of my friends are living examples of this. Both over sixty, one selected the oboe and the other the cello to study. Their new skill has brought them much pleasure, but not without hours of labor.

This got me thinking about my daily existence. Why do I do things; why do I get involved; why do I nurture relationships; why do I do any of it? It should be obvious, it should be for the fun of it, but I will be the first to admit that I often do not have a clue. Nor am I sure I want to delve into it too deeply - it might ruin the joy.

Today (Sunday, August 17, 2008) I did several pleasurable things. I shared a nice cup of Darjeeling tea with my wife as we sat and read the Sunday papers. I met with my tea ceremony friends to work on a little bag called a shifuku. And I gently rocked in the swells as the sunset brilliantly lit the white hulls of the boats in the harbor.

All I did was wake up to put this day in motion, but as I write this I know that is not the whole story. In fifty-five years I spent twenty-seven of them in school, twenty-five years involved with the tea ceremony and have been on one boat or another since the age of eleven. In short, I have spent a long time cultivating joy.

I think this explains my reluctance to sleep. What must I be missing as my mind cycles through the stages of sleep? Unlike most of my colleagues, I enjoyed the never-ending call of medical training. In two days I would put in a forty-hour workweek and still have the whole week ahead of me. It was like living an extra life.

Was it worth it? It definitely was. A little adversity builds character. Just think who ends up being the most interesting at any event. Usually the people you think will be the least: the old-timers quietly sitting and watching the exuberant youth.

Once initiating a conversation with them you will hear of a career, a war, or a passion that has captivated them. You will hear a lifetime of experiences joyously retold. Granted their families have heard it all before, but that does not diminish the tale. It is the rich patina of a fine antique or the dust and mold on an aged bottle of wine. These are traits to be coveted and not white washed.

The Japanese culture has an affinity for mining the knowledge of their elders. In 2005 I traveled with our group of tea enthusiasts to Japan to cerebrate the forty-fifth anniversary of Chado Urasenke Tankokai Chicago Association. I was somewhat surprised to watch the interaction between the youngest and the oldest members. It was more than just respect; there was a real joy in their relationships.

My appreciation of the way of tea deepened as I watched them. A friend, upon reading an initial draft of this commentary, wrote to me that maybe joy is like a bowl of tea: complex flavors, warm and comforting while providing the space and time to savor memories. I cannot imagine a more fitting description.

Volume 5729 (4), 9/19/2008

Pizza

It was the fall of 1978 and I was newly enrolled at Southern Illinois University. Of all the new experiences I was about to have little did I know that not one, but two pizzas would soon enter my life. I had returned to college after a three-year stint with the USPS. My experiences as a letter carrier, during three of the worse winters on record, inspired me to a higher calling.

With the help of a fellow postman who had attended SIU years before, I was introduced to an interesting community in Carbondale, Illinois. Through them I found a roommate who came complete with a sweet mutt who turned out to be pizza number one. Please bear with me and I will explain.

My roommate had moved to SIU destitute. When we were introduced he was living in his car, and showering and eating at friend’s houses. He had the contradictory traits of good-natured optimism tempered by down-on-your-luck pessimism. In one breath he would express his utter hopelessness with life, and then some how infuse it with a joy for his passions of Busch beer, marijuana, art (for he was an accomplished technician, but frustrated artist) and backgammon.

Earlier in the year he had fallen for a puppy, but could only keep her if he landed a job at the local pizzeria. He did, and thus Pizza was christened and found a home. Pizza had a caring, but troubled disposition. Where this stemmed from I could never be certain. Was it the precariousness of her owner’s life or the fact that she lived in a car for the first year of her life - I will never know.

He eventually moved in with me and Pizza became my sidekick. Pizza and I had our issues, but we loved to wander through the forest. We explored all the natural treasures of Southern Illinois: Little Grand Canyon, Fern Cliff, Giant City, Panther's Den and Garden of the Gods to name a few.

She led the way, clearing the trail of varmint for me, and I checked her for ticks when we returned from our adventures. For me she was the pet I never had and I introduced her to the world of wild non-urban scents. As a busy college student, it was great to have a companion without all the responsibilities of owning a pet.

And now on to pizza number two. The kind you eat, not the kind with a wet nose. It was in a cramped off-campus apartment that I first experimented with making bread and pizza. With my mother’s one-of-a-kind pizza as my inspiration, I just seemed to know how to put one together.

I drew on my memories of Christmas Eve when after midnight mass we would rush home to create our own personal pizzas. My mother would have all the fixings laid out before us and we could make any kind of pizza we wished. I can still smell them coming out of the oven.

So I would like to share with you an adaptation of my mother’s pizza. It is my way to show appreciation to a Japanese culture that has taught me to respect my elders and my heritage, to recognize that each meeting and yes, even each pizza or hike in the woods, is a once in a lifetime event to be cherished.

There is a lot of room to play in this recipe, so please feel free to improvise and let me know how it turns out. Enjoy!


Momma’s Pizza

Dough: One package rapid-rise yeast,
One cup warm (not hot) water,
One teaspoon salt,
Two tablespoons olive oil,
Two tablespoons yellow cornmeal,
Two tablespoons stone ground whole-wheat flour,
Approximately two cups all-purpose white flour.

Mix the yeast, water, salt and oil. Then add the cornmeal and whole-wheat flour. Mix and slowly add the white flour till the dough is moist, but not sticky. Put in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 45 minutes. Punch down, divide in half and knead. Let rest and then spread out on two oiled cookie sheets.

Once done, coat dough with oil and add chopped stewed tomatoes. Cover them with shredded mozzarella cheese and then sprinkle the pizza with oregano, salt and pepper, and Parmesan cheese. If you decide to add vegetables, sauté them first, and of course you can add meat, but I am vegetarian (another trait developed at SIU), so you are on your own here.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and cook for approximately 20 minutes. Then open a bottle of a nice young red wine like Dolcetto d’ Alba and feast.

Volume 5725 (4) 8/22/2008

Tiramisu

I am at a bakery on Harlem Avenue purchasing a cannoli cake for Easter dinner. My mother requested it and for those of you who did not have the privilege of growing up with an Italian mother you may never know how ephemeral of a delicacy a cannoli is.

The cannoli outside the home rarely does well. I have seldom been to an Italian restaurant that did a cannoli justice. That is except in Italy. In Italy food takes on the utmost priority. All else is sacrificed to it.

While I ordered the cake a large, obviously Italian-American man with a dyed comb over enters the bakery and quickly places his order. He has the confidence of a long time patron. I ask if he has just ordered a tiramisu cake and he nods yes. He has had many of these and then he mentions the cream puffs I have been staring at are particularly tasty.

My mother use to make these I tell him and soon we fall into a quiet reverie about the past. We talk about the regret of lost parents and about a childhood of wonderful meals. We have both come to realize that not everyone is blessed with the great cuisine our mothers, grand mothers and aunts provided for us.

A couple of days later when I come to pick up my cake a younger version of the above gentleman walks in and begins an animated discussion with the staff. Unaware of the intricacies of cake design he is having trouble answering the questions necessary for the building of a custom cake. After much haggling with the young girl behind the counter, a more authoritative woman enters the fray.

Her first question to him is what is the cake for. It turns out the cake is for his birthday. With much conviction he relates how tired he is of the incipit cake that has been provided for him in the past. He is no longer willing to tolerate such mediocrity. This year he will have a cake of his own choosing or none at all.

As I bear witness to this young man's heartfelt fervor, I think whom else but someone steeped in the culinary conviction of an Italian-American would take such an interest in flour, water, butter and sugar at such a tender age. I think how proud his mother will be when she sees the cake. She will realize that her baby boy has finally grown into a man. It will be taken as a sign of maturity.

I notice he has no wedding band on his finger and realize his actions today will seal his faith. If he has a girlfriend she will soon be his wife and if he does not, a wife will be found for him. The far ranging implications of his actions may never be known to him, but no matter. They reveal a level of sophistication that I am sure he does not recognize.

This starts me thinking of the process of socialization. Chanoyu has a role in this. To an outside observer Tea appears to be a fussy way to make a beverage, but to a practitioner, at least to one who has spent time studying, making tea is only a small portion of the knowledge contained within Chado, The Way of Tea.

I recently received a copy of A Chanoyu Vocabulary; 1650 words and phrases that represent the nomenclature of Tea translated for the English-speaking world. In the forward Genshitsu Sen, the retired 15th generation Grand Tea Master, talks of his life long mission to bring peace to the world by sharing a bowl of tea.

How could this be? It seems too simple, almost naive, but Genshitsu Sen is not naive. He was pilot in the Japanese Navy when WWII ended. He has, in his own words, traveled overseas more than three hundred times, and spoken of and served tea to many world leaders. In light of this he has recently been appointed the Japan—UN Goodwill ambassador.

All this accomplished through the proper serving of something as simple of a bowl of tea, and the fostering of the four guiding principles of Chanoyu: harmony, respect, purity and tranquility. These principles are hard to find in our hectic world. Tea helps us to incorporate them into our daily lives.

For this we can thank the sixteen generations of tea masters and especially Genshitsu Sen who made the decision to share the culture of Japan and his message of peace with the rest of the world. He had the courage to come to America to begin his quest in 1951, only a few years after WWII ended.

I am hard pressed to believe that any of the protagonists in our present conflicts will be so magnanimous. Maybe if we sit them down with a bowl of tea and a slice of mom's cannoli cake we may get some resolution to our present dilemma.

Volume 5722 (4) 7/25/2008

A Day In New York

Large chains securing beat up bicycles,

The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Blue Note and Dizzy’s Place,

The Mary Griggs Burke Collection of Japanese Art,

Tremors on Broadway,

Money, money and more money.


There is gravity to entering a co-op in New York City. Demure doormen with the countenance of railroad conductors scrutinized us as we approach their turf. Once inspected, we are allowed to enter the vestibule.

I begin to imagine myself a fraud and pray that I have given the correct name. With phone to ear, the doorman quietly announces me to the unseen party and I wonder if I will be thrown out onto the street.

It seems all are suspect at this preliminary stage, but I am grudgingly acknowledged and another of our uniformed interrogators silently accompanies my wife and me as we ride up in the cramped elevator.

Awaiting us are three pieces of pottery from the age of the samurai. They are as large as the personalities that used them, and they are from a time before technology diminished us as individuals.

The size and presence of these vessels dwarfs the utensils I encounter today. To drink tea and draw water from such formidable chawan and mizusashi must be an empowering act, an act in defiance to Rikyu's wabicha. The chado of the samurai mimicked the life and death struggle played out in large scale, but performed on the small stage of the chashitsu.

But I am getting ahead of my self. What am I doing, where am I, what am I looking at and with whom am I interacting; all valid questions that I will attempt to answer.

Several years ago at my local library I came across a catalogue containing a selection of objects from The Mary Griggs Burke Collection of Japanese Art. The objects, which number in the hundreds, were collected by Mrs. Burke and her late husband Jackson Burke.

The collection consists of works of art in various media, but it was the tea ceramics that caught my eye. Chawan, chaire, mizusashi are all distinctive in their own way: one tea bowl with a sunken base and another with a hand print left over from its glazing, a tall narrow chaire, and a wonderfully misshapen mizusashi.

Shino ware and works by Ninsei represent the highest level of design and craftsmanship in the world of Tea. They are beautifully pictured and described in the catalogue with a scholarly yet surprisingly readable text.

As we are greeted in the foyer of the Burke apartment I think back to the foreword written by Mrs. Burke herself. It is a loving remembrance of the childhood influence of her mother and of her adventures growing up in the Midwest interspersed with travel to Asia. It is a story of collaboration between herself and her husband, both sharing a love of Japanese culture.

Their collaboration was so fruitful that the spaces we now find ourselves in were redesigned to house the collection after the Burkes’ zeal for collecting outgrew their primary New York City residence.

Gratia Williams and Stephanie Wada, curator and associate curator, welcome us warmly. After an initial greeting - we have been corresponding through email for two years - my wife and I are led into a gallery that displays Buddhist and Shinto statuary along with a striking clay funerary figure called a haniwa that dates from the sixth century.

We are shown some handsome lacquer objects, one decorated with silver and gold wisteria leaves on a deep black ground. This yuoke (hot water ewer) was used in the late sixteenth-early seventeenth century during kaiseki meals for pouring hot water into rice bowls to refresh the palette, and to savor the essence of the rice.

Coincidently the Japan Society is having an exhibit of the work of lacquer artist Shibata Zeshin that we were able to view the day before. Some of the most spectacular works displayed in the exhibit are from the Burke Collection. They are in pristine condition as if they were recently produced and not one hundred years old. Among the Burke pieces are a stacked lacquer food box from the middle to late 19th century. Objects like this represent the apogee of lacquer ware.

I feel ill prepared and thankful for the comprehensive tour that the Japan Society's docent had provided the day before. It is then that we are asked to enter the Burke chashitsu. Shoes off, we creep in and there before us lie objects formed from clay in the sixteenth century.

What can one say about these rough-hewn vessels: Whose hands held them, drank and ladled water from them; In what quiet tearoom four hundred years ago did men discuss them, as we do now?

Did these men set aside their meticulously forged swords to enter that room? What fortunes were spent to commission them from the then famous potters and how were those fortunes made. Were they won in battle or obtained from the blood, sweat and tears of the peasants.

These three pieces pose many questions for me and make my imagination run with images of kimono-clad samurai deep within fortress palaces. Maybe this is too romantic of a vision, and the chawan, mizusashi and chaire had much more mundane lives. No matter, truth some times lies in the mind of the beholder.

What we do know is that they are made of the earth of Japan, shaped by a ten thousand year old legacy handed down from father to son, influenced by the Chinese and Korean cultures and fired for days in hillside kilns. Ultimately to be used for that one time, one meeting, that is so illustrative of chanoyu.

Volume 5718 (4), 6/20/2008

Spectacle

I have become accustom to subtlety: The quiet ring of water simmering in an iron kettle, A faint hint of incense when entering a tearoom, The rustling of tabi on straw mats, A fine misting of water that slowly evaporates on flowers and leaves.

Years spent surrounded by the trappings of the tea ceremony has left me ill prepared for the spectacle of modern sport. Sitting in $120.00 seats at The United Center, watching what I have been led to believe is an especially lackluster Bulls team, it is difficult to take the entire spectacle in.

I ask myself, what could this place have been like when Michael Jordon was playing? Prior to the game I stood and watch people of all caste stand in hysterical reverence gawking at the statue of Mike gliding over a vanquished opponent. Tiberius could not ask for a more fitting tribute.

As the game proceeds I wonder why even have a game. The most enthusiasm shown by the fans is for the Dunkin Donuts race displayed on mega TVs hovering, Blade Runner like, above us. And as in the movie there is even a blimp the size of a small delivery truck purposely gliding through the stadium.

It turns out I win, or I should say the coffee cup wins the race and I am assured a free cup of joe. I will probably never avail myself of it, but it does get me into the spirit. I try to relate, but it is hard when you have spent the last twenty years kneeing on tatami mats. No cheering, just a hushed enthusiasm; no sirens, just quiet banter.

Tea is ephemeral. There is no core of TV, radio and print press lined up to report on every nuance. Once over, tea exist only in the minds of the participants and in that sense there is certain fragility to it. And though you have the physical memory of the utensils, it is hard to grasp their reality.

We try to understand even as we hold the objects. They are as much concepts as physical beings. That may be why we find it so hard to comprehend the nature of a Raku chawan even though it be in our hands. There is an uncertainty inherent in it bespeaking the fragile nature of time and substance.

What are tea utensils but a little clay, a bit of bamboo, a slip of minerals fired on earth, raw iron molded into vessels? They contain the beauty and the spirit of their makers. They are their history of use. They develop character as they age, just like the people who use them to draw closer to the pure essence of life.

Life is about experience and not about living through others even if it be in surround-sound and HDTV. I fear the flash of the electronic media has duped us. What have we done, what have we experienced that is not second hand?

Life is a balance between action and contemplation. In the ebb and flow of tides there is a slack moment when all lies still. In tea we have a moment, when the chawan is in place, where we stop just for a second to breath deeply and consider what we are about to do.

It is harder to do this than you might imagine. Much nervous energy has been spent preparing for tea. There is momentum and then, even though there are others in the room, you are suddenly alone with your thoughts.

It is only a bowl of tea you think to yourself, but you know what you are about to do represents the entirety of humanity. It represents the development of culture. It represents our interaction with the outside world. It represents our ties to nature.

But back to the hilarity of the Bull's game, for had I never gone would I be drawn into this path of introspection? So my advice is to go to a game. Go stand before Mr. Jordan’s image and gawk. Go have a beer and a brat, and cheer to your hearts content. Join in the spectacle of sport and then plot the quiet spectacle of your life.

Volume 5713 (21), 5/16/2008

Wine

There is no reference to Japanese culture in this commentary, but my thoughts on wine have been shaped by my study of chanoyu, the Japanese Tea Ceremony: the subtlety of taste and smell; the Zen concept of ichigo, ichie (one time, one meeting); wabi-sabi, the appreciation of the minute details of the objects used to make tea; the tea itself, which is simply leaves as wine is simply grapes; a feeling for nature and the changing of the seasons; a love for the gardens that surround the tea room, and the hills and valleys that contain the vineyards. I could go on, but I will let the words speak for themselves.

Even though I am of Italian descent, I am partial to French wines. My affection for them started about six months into my internship. Needing to self-medicate after a particularly stressful day, I decided to treat myself to a glass of the rich restorative wine from the Southern Rhone region.

I am not sure what drew me there. Maybe it was the shape of the bottle or maybe it was because these big reds were as yet undiscovered and at pre-euro prices, cheap. Each night thereafter I made it a point to sample wines from the different towns that make up the land on either side of the Rhone River: Gigondas, Vacqueyras, Tavel, Rasteau and of course, the most famous town of all, Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

What a treat to come home to dinner, have a glass of wine and watch Seinfeld reruns with my wife Charlotte. But then disaster struck as the tannins from these reds leached into my gut and produced the kind of heartburn that should send you to the emergency room, convinced you are finally having your first well-deserved heart attack.

To make matters worse I had just spent the last five years building a small wine cellar in the basement: actually a few dozen bottles of red resting in a rickety bookcase. But they were good bottles, the best I could afford at the time, full of the syrah, grenache, carignan, cinsaut and mourvedre grapes that make up the wines of Southern France.

Thus denied of the pleasure of my crimson stash I was forced to consider white wines. Severely depressed at first, the white wines from Burgundy, Loire, Jura, Alsace and Bordeaux proved a revelation. I quickly recovered and found myself haunting the shelves looking for that one bottle that would prove life altering.

Most whites are insipid, but the above are buttery. Your mouth springs to attention and though there are no tannins to vasodialate the small blood vessels of your face, after several sips your worldview definitely improves.

It will not serve any purpose to recite the bizarre vocabulary used to describe the taste and smell of wine; the numerous terms used to delineate the sensuous experience of swishing an ounce of liquid around in your mouth.

A liquid created by the interaction of the sun, the water and the minerals in the soil surrounding their deep roots. It is a taste that is exclusive to one time and one place, akin to tasting the earth and the sky.

A simple wine has one note. Not necessarily good or bad, but a single note is not music. The more of it you drink, the less interesting. It is drinking for drinking’s sake, and what fun is that.

A complex wine demands attention and may at first be overwhelming. “What is this!” your mouth exclaims. The harmonics resonate and keep your interest as you decipher each sip. It is not unusual to find people that can remember a memorable bottle of wine for a lifetime.

At a young age, once I got over my taste for Boone's Farm Apple wine, I became quite curious in the interesting labels staring back at me from the shelves of our local liquor store. They were classically designed with odd typefaces and engravings of chateaus with unpronounceable names. They spoke to me of a far away and unattainable world.

I am in the habit of saving the labels of wine I enjoy. I carefully peal them off and etch the character of the wine into my memory. I derive great pleasure from paging through the old dog-eared labels that hang inconspicuously from a clip in my kitchen.

Years passed before I was able to decipher their meaning. I am still self-conscious of the pronunciation when asking for a specific wine, and have used the French language expertise of my niece Cassidy, even knowing that I will suffer humiliation due to my Chicago accent.

The sacrifices I have made in pursuit of what is after all only fermented grape juice. But what juice, what tastes and bouquet, what warmth deep in your core, and what shared experiences. After all what is life for if not for this?

Volume 5709 (24), 4/18/2008

Yurei

Everyone has a ghost story. If you do not believe me just ask the next person you see. It may be in the first, second, or third person, but they will have one. I have a few even though I think most of these stories are the result of too much garlic and red wine.

When I catalog my experiences there are a few more then I expect. One from my mother-in-law's childhood in Sumter, South Carolina, one from a drunken night in the dorms at Cambridge University, there were basement spirits in Las Cruses, New Mexico and ghosts around the campfires deep in the Western wilderness. I can even remember poltergeist at a friend’s house in Sauganash.

All these stories are unique, individual to the teller and the tale. There appears to be no common thread, but then I happen on a book about the faint spirits of Japan, the yurei and quickly change my tune. Lafacdio Hearn, a lecturer on English Literature at The Imperial University in Tokyo, wrote the book in 1899 called In Ghostly Japan. He devotes fourteen chapters to the telling and the interpretation of classic Japanese ghost stories.

His book starts with an eerie non-attributed Japanese poem--Think not that dreams appear to the dreamer only at night: The dreams of this world of pain appear to us even by day. I think you will agree that this is a sobering introduction to any topic, let alone one about ghosts.

Unfortunately for me I began to read his book late one night close upon the Hour of the Ox, the early morning hour reserved for Japanese ghosts and goblins. The book commences with a Bodhisattva and a young patron ascending a cloud-shrouded mountain in what I assume is to be a search for enlightenment.

To the horror of both the young man and myself only a mountain of his skulls awaits him at the summit. I am not sure what the point of this story is. It seems unusually cruel, but then it is a ghost story after all.

One day while reading about Japanese pottery I learned that Japan has one of the oldest, if not the oldest ceramic traditions in the world. Over twenty thousand years in the making. A culture this old has had ample time to develop a richness of culture that we in America can only guess at, and hence the number of phantom classifications that exist in Japanese literature.

In my short reading on the subject I come upon no less than 25 unique paranormal beings and I am sure there are more. They are represented by white kimono clad humans, non-human phallic-nosed goblins, fanged and horned demons, and mischievous foxes. They run the gamut from harmless sea ghost to dead vampire babies, from vengeful aristocrats to impish children, and even haunted lanterns with eyes and long tongues.

These ghosts exist for many reasons. Some become eternal due to improper burial rites, some because they have no family to care for their spirit after death and some because of violent deaths. Some haunt the places where they died or were buried. Some stalk their murderers and some look after their beloved.

There is a notion of exorcism, of fulfilling the restless spirit’s needs. There are the yearly festivals of Obon and setsubun. The former a festival to pay tribute to the dead held in July or August, and the latter a casting out of evil and welcoming in the good held in February. These festivals are so popular that foreign tourist are discouraged from traveling to Japan during these times because of the congestion caused by the whole country traveling to family reunions.

I like the thought of the shiryo-yoke that protects the living from the dead, the segaki services that care for the dead that have no living relative to care for them and the o-fuda, the religious texts used as charms or talismans to ward off ghosts.

I like the thought that all ghosts deserve respect, and mostly I like the thought that I have only begun to scratch the surface of understanding the ancient Japanese culture.

Volume 5705 (21), 3/21/2008

Ghosts

Cedar Key is a bit of a backwater. The Gulf of Mexico is the only outlet, that is unless you turn back, which of course is what most people do. John Muir, its most famous visitor, did not.

Feverish with malaria he paid his way onto a schooner and traveled to Cuba. But this story is not about him; it is about the ghosts that inhabit this tiny patch of Florida's West coast and The Island Hotel where my wife and I hid out for five days.

It is not surprising that ghosts inhabit this dwelling. From the first, as I walked through its double French doors it seemed destined to be so. The hotel has a certain lush decrepitude that only exists in the South. The fact that its ghosts are, if not benevolent, at least not malignant, fits right in with my first impressions.

Poltergeist is part of the story. It appears the thirteen or so ghosts that occupy the hotel are fond of unplugging cell phones, stealing socks and changing room numbers, but there is some thing more than random movement. A presence is often felt: some times in the guest rooms, in the kitchen or in the lobby, and most certainly in the basement depending on which ethereal personages is feeling frisky that day.

I say day because like most Northerners I think of ghost as nighttime creatures, things that sulk and are to be feared. This is not the case south of the Mason-Dixon line. The South has a rapprochement with ghost. They are tolerated and even encouraged, and in the process become eccentric if not already so.

Day or night it does not matter, the apparitions frequent the premises at all hours. Sipping an overflowing glass of chardonnay at the bar, ghost tales begin to surface and a long time waitress is summoned to impart her experiences in thirty years, and five owners, of working at the hotel.

The hotel has served many functions since being built in 1859 as a general store and post office. Requisitioned for a Civil War barracks probably saved it from being torched by the Yankees. Over the years tales of prohibition stills and brothels have entered its lexicon, as has the mysterious death of one of its owners and its survival in the face of apocalyptic storms.

The most renowned owner was Bessie Gibbs. Bessie made the hotel's restaurant nationally famous for seafood, started an art fair, acted as mayor for a time and tragically died an invalid in a house fire.

Now I am no expert, but venturing an opinion I think the more experiences a structure has the better chance for ghosts. Not every structure has ghosts, so there must be some code that governs which abode becomes a sanctuary for the departed.

Molly, our waitress, had herself seen a ghost and was not fearful. The ghost, as told to us, appeared unexpectedly and then in the blink of an eye evaporated. The most common apparition mentioned is a mute youngish lady dressed in the drab garb of Little House On The Prairie.

Between the waitress and the bartender we learn that guests have summoned the owner to their rooms due to interlopers only to find they have disappeared, and front desk staff have tried to register guests only to have them vaporize.

It seems the only place in the hotel that is immune is The King Neptune lounge with its beautiful crystal blue painting of King Neptune clutching one mermaid while another pours him a martini out of a conch shell. As one long time patron stated, this used to be a very rough, working man's bar, and this may be why the ghosts, feeling at risk for their safety, started to ply their mischief else where in the facility.

Our teller of tales had the supernatural nature of the hotel confirmed by a guest made sensitive to the presence of such energy after being struck by lightning. This lady was searching the country to find some acreage with the least electromagnetic radiation. She had become painfully sensitized to it since her accident and found she could no longer live comfortably in our electronic world.

The spirits also extend out into the town and surrounding keys. A not so ghostly "Croc man" (the islands substitute for Sasquatch) is said to live amongst the gators and snakes, and feast on them. Florida being what it is, I imagine I see quite a few croc men wandering the docks and driving pickup trucks, but that might just be the jaundiced eye of a Yankee speaking.

The obsession with ghost on this key is probably due the lack of distracting electrical amenities. Here in the hotel no plasma TV blares out the latest scandal or sports report, we have no choice of movies in our room, and no clock radio or phone are to be found.

Curiously, our cell phones cease to function while crossing over the wetlands, rivers and bayous that separate this raised patch of coral and oyster shells from mainland Florida. This is odd because I distinctly recall passing several cell towers hugging the road on the way in.

It has been blessedly quiet here. Quiet enough to hear our own thoughts for a change. Quiet enough to hear the birds before seeing them. Quiet enough to be surprised by contrails in the sky and quiet enough to regret driving out of this world into the perpetual noisemaker that present day America has become.

Frankly, as I see it, ghosts do not stand a chance of competing with modernity, so hopefully the Island Hotel will remain a sanctuary for as many of them as choose to float in the space between the real and the imagined.

Volume 5699 (21), 2/8/2008

Revelation

I listen to books-on-tape while driving. The stories are my salvation, especially now that traffic has become more and more snarled. I am drawn to the male equivalent of gothic romances, but I have managed to get through most of the world’s great literature that I neglected as a wayward youth.

The other morning while piloting my Subaru through a premature fall blizzard, I found myself listening to a hard-boiled detective story without a detective. An artist/thief/computer nerd was playing the role that is usually reserved for the gumshoe.

For some reason this character made me think of the lack of interest exhibited by the young for things mechanical. My youth was spent in garages. It did not matter whether it was the depths of winter or the dog days of summer, my friends and I took a wrench to any car, motorcycle, mini-bike, or go-cart we could get our hands on.

As I listened to the computer gobbledygook in this story I had a revelation that the computer is the new garage. Granted, instead of nuts and bolts, it is bits and bytes. Instead of wrenches and screwdrivers, it is disc drives and RAM, and Intel, not Briggs and Stratton makes the engines, but in a digital sense these are mechanical.

People have replaced grease under their fingernails with tendonitis from clicking a mouse eight hours a day. That this should have surprised me gives me cause for concern. Conservatism is not something I readily admit to, but it crept in without my knowledge.

I have determined to get off my high horse and recognize that times have changed. After all, your computer needs to be defragged more often then your car needs a tune-up. I wonder why I did not come to this conclusion sooner. The famous myths of the computer world all begin in garages.

In Tea I have had a similar dilemma. The status quo has been the status quo for over 400 years. Teachers and students are reluctant to veer from the tradition without definitive approval, but I do a disservice here too.

Each Grand Tea Master, and there have been sixteen, creates their own artistic and ascetic legacy for the times they live in. Gengensai, the Grand Tea Master during the Meiji era, in response to Commodore Perry’s Black Ships, designed a tabletop style to make Tea more accessible for the newly arrived Westerners.

The most recent Grand Tea Master of the Urasenke Tradition, Oeimoto Zabosai, has created, for much the same reasons as Gengensai, several new adaptations for Tea. This time not necessarily because of Westerners, but for a homegrown population more accustom to chairs than tatami mats.

He designed both a series of nestled tables that can be transformed into three tables for the preparation of tea, and a stand that sits on tatami mats allowing one to sit cross-legged. These innovations are a response to the times we live in. The tradition of Tea based on harmony, respect, purity and tranquility will not rise or fall based on furniture.

And so I wonder in what other areas of my life am I behind. What subtle (or not so subtle) prejudices am I harboring? When I was a teenager one of the things that bothered me was always being told why I could not fulfill my dreams. Granted some were a bit weird, but then many of them I managed to pull off.

Even with this background I have to try hard to be supportive. Life is about dreams, and daydreams are an essential part of the planning process. Without them life quickly goes by with few accomplishments and many frustrations.

This may sound peculiar, but growing up in the Cold War I continually heard of China and Russia’s five-year plans. Most of these schemes came to naught and the commentators always made them sound sinister, and they probably were, but I seem to have adopted this approach to life.

A little glimmer in my eye, a few words uttered subconsciously starts the process. All it takes is a word and the where-with-all not to edit. If the idea is high concept it will flourish on its own accord and in five years who knows what will come of it.

So be expansive, encouraging and non-judgmental. Embrace your and other’s dreams, and in the process don’t forget to get out in your garage and crank on a few nuts and bolts.

Volume 5697 (21), 1/25/2008

A Year Goes By

A year goes by through no effort of our own. The pages of the calendar, which at first seem numerous, diminish with great speed.

It is a convenient package for all our memories, some of which we toast to celebrate and some of which we drink to forget.

A year is a complicated notion: The Earth resides on the outer arm of the Galaxy, eight light-minutes from the center of the solar system and travels at 67,000 mph to be able to circumnavigate the Sun in 365 days.

It is a serious intellectual construct that we love to send off with fireworks, streamers and kazoos.

A year’s end is a convenient time to reflect on our past behavior and our future goals.

This year, let us keep in our thoughts all our fellow citizens and their families who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

A year goes by with white blizzards, yellow spring flowers, green tea and brown leaves.

This year let us commit to, as Sen Genshitsu the retired 15th Grand Tea Master says, “Peace through a bowl of tea.”

Happy New Year!

Volume 5694 (33), 1/1/2008

Inventory

Recently on a beautiful fall afternoon my wife and I were walking south on Clark. We had just visiting Aiko’s Art Material store where we purchased a piece of Japanese handmade paper and as we walked the crowded streets towards Belmont I began to wonder why I was so relaxed about theft here in my own city of Chicago.

In Europe I carry a small amount cash, a credit card and my passport all residing safe and snug, deep in a secluded pocket. When at home I rarely concern myself with such precautions, but in Paris, Florence, Naples or Rome I am much more alert. Old World cities seem to have ever-present warnings announcing that pickpockets are on the loose.

Before a trip I break out the travel gear and dust off my pants with the secret pockets. This is optimistically done in the hope that they will still fit after a year spent hanging in the closet. These thoughts compel me to take an inventory of what I am carrying on that afternoon’s walk if for no other reason then to see just what I have to lose. What follows is a list with commentary on that day’s stock.

My wallet (an odd looking contraption made out of high-tech sailcloth) has three twenty-dollar bills and a few singles along with a credit card, health insurance information, a driver’s license, and an antique silver dollar given to me by my mother who stated that I was in greater need of its good luck than her.

My shirt pocket has a Pelikan fountain pen and a new Streamlight LED flashlight. I bought this neat little light after a friend showed me his. I just had to have one, so much for not keeping up with the “Jones”.

Concerning telecommunications gear, I carry a pager, which I am sure has no value other than to allow the world to contact me at a moments notice. To deal with the pager, and the other complexities of my life, I have a Treo 650.

Within this complex little device resides the Palm system; a slot for a memory card; a camera with a zoom feature; and yes, even a phone. It can connect to the Internet for an extra fifteen dollars a month, but when I realized I was becoming the biggest bore at the party, answering every obscure question while staring into its tiny screen, I cancelled the service.

Nonetheless I have become sufficiently attached to my Treo that when I dropped and destroyed the last one, I did not hesitate to fork over $300.00 (after discounts and coupons) to replace it for a new model.

On that sunny afternoon I also carried an elegant twenty-five year old Buck pocket knife, and a pedometer hooked to my belt in the hopes that I may have taken a couple of thousand steps toward fitting into my travel pants this spring.

I have never worn jewelry. No rings, bracelets, earrings or gold chains adorn my body. I think of my pen and knife as such. A few months back I became enamored with a certain watch, but then realized that my phone keeps as good of time as I will ever need and decided to use the money to help pay off some of my mortgage.

As far as what was on my back that day, I was wearing Clarks on my feet, a pair of jeans, a nice flannel shirt and to ward off the cold, a fleece vest and bomber jacket.

Both the vest and the jacket were kindly provided by my employer as holiday gifts. At first I felt like a walking billboard with the company’s name embroidered on the front of each garment, but I have gotten over it and now wear them proudly.

If I add up the total cost of the stuff hanging off of me and residing in my pockets, I start to feel a little guilty. If I was stripped bare by European pickpockets and all the content fenced, I most certainly carry the equivalent of several years’ income for the vast majority of the world’s population. I find this a sobering thought.

When I get into a quandary about such things I fall back on what has sustained me spiritually over many years and that is Chado, The Way of Tea. Rikyu, the founder of Tea four hundred years ago, stated that chanoyu, the tea ceremony and the practice of Chado, is simply to heat water and make tea. This denotes simplicity to life. He demonstrated this by his gravitation away from precious, dare I say pretentious objects to common earthen utensil.

How should I incorporate this philosophy into my daily life? This is a central dilemma of living in a modern consumer society. Rikyu of course was a mandarin in his time. He was an advisor to Hideyoshi, the ruler of Japan, and therefore well connected.

The fact that Rikyu, and I, are comfortable allows us the leisure to contemplate giving it all up. If you are living on the margins of society such options are not available. One of Rikyu’s Hundred Verses states, “ In that chanoyu is possible as long as you have one kettle, it is foolish to possess numerous utensils.” These are profound words to contemplate.

(Rikyu’s Hundred Verses translation by Gretchen Mittwer)

Autumn Breeze

Exiled in California, a man dreams of his Midwest home. His vision is of a city that is the foundation of modern architecture, and of a river that once was defiled and now, though not pristine, is cleansed.

This man, Bob Brockob, an architect raised in the city of Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth, Oak Park, IL, dreamed of a leaf floating down the Chicago River on an autumn breeze. For several years he strived to clear his project through the various bureaucracies until finally, in October of 1992, his Leaf floated.

As he designed it, the Leaf was comprised of a stable platform made from three canoes decked with plywood. The outline of a teahouse (chashitsu) tops the craft, again of his design. The teahouse, constructed of white PVC plumbing pipe, is reminiscent of a famous four and one-half mat tearoom that resides in the Urasenke garden compound in Kyoto.

To complete the picture, the Leaf was fitted out with tatami mats, a flower arrangement, a scroll, a furo and all the utensils needed for chanoyu, the tea ceremony.

We gathered at the river on a cold windy morning. There we stood, just west of the lock that separates Lake Michigan from the Chicago River, and watched as a Buddhist priest loudly exclaimed a blessing on our enterprise. The sound of his voice rebounded off the skyscrapers. Then the event commenced with offerings of salt, sake and his ritualistic swordplay.

We stood entranced, amazed by the energy emanating from this white-clad figure silhouetted by the immensity of the Chicago skyline. He had only minutes before been amongst us, casually talking and now, well it is hard to describe, but we gained a new respect for him.

Finally the Leaf floated down the river. It was populated by five souls on a soon-to-be-epic voyage under the thirty bridges that transect the Chicago River as it divides the city into three separate landmasses.

Chicago is known as the windy city, historically for political windbags and not for the wind, but on that day you would be hard pressed to believe it. As the Leaf approached the Lake Shore Drive Bridge, the wind, compressed by the deep man-made canyon that the river courses through, made a futile attempt to repel the intruders. Two more souls with paddles were required to propel the Leaf on its westerly voyage.

Once in motion, the tea ceremony commenced as the floating chashitsu glided pass the gathered guest along the canyon's walls. Matcha was served to the Leaf's guest, and as the Leaf floated under bridge-after-bridge the utensils were purified and admired, the meaning of the scroll's kanji (True Emptiness) was discussed, and as Wolf Point was left behind to the North, the over riding principle of Chanoyu came to mind; ichigo, ichie (One Time, One Meeting).

As with many of the things our association, Chado Urasenke Tankokai Chicago Association, has done over the years this one began with some one coming to us with their dream. Be it the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Commodore Perry's Black Ships opening up Japan to the out side world or the marking of the start of The Parliament of the World's Religion, we helped to fulfill their dream.

So on that chilly morning, Japanese and Americans, Californians and Illinoisans gathered in a most unlikely spot to celebrate one man’s dream, and the grand passage of the earth around the sun that autumn represents and celebrated through a bowl of tea the universality of the human experience.

Impermanence

In our every day lives flowers are used to commemorate special events and as decorations, but in Tea they take on a different meaning: one, to bring nature and the seasons into the tearoom, and two, to represent the impermanence of life.

Tea flowers or chabana are much simpler than the elaborate ikebana arrangements we often see. In ikebana there are many different schools, each with distinctive styles, but as far as I know there is only one chabana.

As with most things in Tea there is almost limitless variation. Specific flowers are used for each month, for different levels of formality and for the vases they are to be displayed in. The arrangement of tea flowers even becomes part of the Seven Special Tea Exercises (shichi jishiki), collectively known as kagetsu.

Kagetsu is an interesting series of lessons where various tasks, such as flower arranging, the preparation of tea, and the placing of charcoal, to name a few, are designated to participants by the selection of tiny bamboo tiles (fuda) picked out of an intricately folded paper box (orisue). Each tile has a different marking on it representing the task to be performed by its recipient.

The lessons are as compelling as they are challenging because you have no chance to reflect and remember. The days or weeks you usually have to prepare are distilled into seconds. This represents a level of spontaneity not elsewhere found in Tea.

The task that I have always dreaded is flower arranging. It is not a skill we spend much time on in our lessons and not being floral in any sense of the word, I find it frustrating to arrange the flowers in any meaningful way. Give me a mechanical or woodworking task and I will arrange all the parts into a symmetric whole, but flowers are a different story.

If by chance I pick the fuda for flowers, I try to conjure up images of all the beautiful arrangements I have seen over the past twenty years of studying Tea. I try to think of the earth and the sky, of the asymmetry present in Japanese art, of the season of the year and of the vase the flowers will occupy.

To complicate matters, the flower arrangements in chabana are deceptively simple. Rikyu, the founder of Tea, tells us that the flowers for Tea should be arranged as they are in the fields. This leaves the thought open to the casual viewer that it is a simple task to arrange them; I know otherwise.

Hoping in vain for a tiny spark of inspiration to descend on me, I begin the process. Moving to the wooden tray located in front of the tokonoma, I pick up the small paring-like knife and begin to rifle through the flowers and leaves while looking at the vase that will contain them. There is only so much time in a day, so instinct takes over and I do the best I can.

That is what matters after all. I think of it as a way to get back to my beginner’s mind. Before all the years of study, when Tea was new to me and there were limitless opportunities. Of course there still are no limits and this simple exercise reminds me of that.

And this brings me back to one of the symbolic meanings of chabana, the impermanence of life; the temporary ever changing state we find ourselves in. As beautifully arranged as these flowers may be, they are but temporary. The arrangements are not kept, but discarded having served their purpose, as we are in the end.

Invitation

Some fifteen years ago my wife Charlotte and I moved into a traditional Chicago bungalow on the North side of the city. As many of you may know, Chicago has a belt of similar single family homes built crescent-like across thirty miles of the city. This went on from the early nineteen hundreds to the fifties. Many of these well-used homes are making a come back and being restored to their former glory.

Moving into our first house was a bit of a shock. First, it was much smaller than the sprawling two bedroom, two-bath apartment we had left, and second, it had a backyard devoid of greenery. The apartment had been in a lush neighborhood with a beautiful park just steps away.

This was not to last though. Between my parents and my wife, our back forty (feet not acres) was slowly transformed into a small urban garden complete with sculptures, my only contribution. Every thing from bones to old car parts surfaced as we tilled the soil and until my father, in a fit of cleanliness, threw them away we had amassed a large collection of castaway junk.

The clean up and landscaping allowed the backyard fauna to diversify. And as our next-door neighbor’s children grew up, she joined us in the planting making for a thick hedgerow along the fence between our houses. This also helped number of species to multiple. I now find my bird feeder requires more frequent fillings and the local cats need to be chased out more frequently.

There are the year round inhabitants (House Sparrows, House Finches, Cardinals, American Goldfinches, Mourning Doves) and the bi-yearly travelers (Dark-eyed Juncos, Monarch Butterflies, Robins, House Wrens, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds). Each competes for the pounds of seed I put in my one diminutive bird feeder. Through multiple experiments I have limited myself to Niger seed as this prevent squirrels, large birds and other varmint from feasting on my largess.

Once I provided suet and delighted in the colorful Red-Headed and Downy Woodpeckers that showed up to feast. They were compelled to peck their way through the tuff plastic to get at dinner even though the whole backside of the container was open. The Starlings on the other hand had no such compunction. They soon drove off all the woodpeckers due to their aggressive behavior and increasing numbers, and this compelled me to remove the delectable fat and bid farewell to our fluffy red and white friends.

We have in effect extended an invitation to a small subset of the natural world to come join us and in exchange we have received hours of entertainment, and a bit of enlightenment. I have often thought what if our whole neighborhood banded together to attract some wildlife.

Mayor Daley has done some of this. The greening of the city helped along by a milder climate has extended the range of many animals that previously only lived south of us. It is not unusual to see Turkey Buzzards circling overhead, to say nothing of the Canadian Geese that have found a permanent home in the Chicagoland area.

In the movie The Field of Dreams the voice says, “if you build it, he will come.” That is what we did and “they” did come. I would like to think that we purposely set out to do that, but I would be lying. In hindsight, with a little dumb luck and a lot of hard work, we accomplished a small nature preserve in our backyard.

This can be done in other aspects of our lives. An invitation in the form of a kind word or a simple act of civility will go a long way to soften our fast paced, self-centered lifestyles. I think this is why Chado leads you through a garden before partaking in a bowl of tea.

The path brings you down slowly. Allowing an appreciation of a gentler world inhabited by subtle stimuli. In doing so an invitation is extended to open your mind and let nature rush in. Even in a great urban center a connection to the natural world is just an invitation away

Connections

Disparate threads distinguish cultures. Economics, food, life style, religion, climate and geology all play into the mix. These differences may at times cause dissension between nations, but usually, as is my experience in Chicago, the differences foster curiosity and hence communication amongst individuals.

I know this seems unlikely when you consider all the partitioned acreage on the planet: North and South Korea; the occupied lands of the Middle East; China and Tibet, not to mention Taiwan; the northern islands of Japan under Russian rule; Cashmere caught between India and Pakistan. Feel free to add your own particular hot spot to the list. Of course most of the disparities are political; people have an innate connection to their land, and will resist any attempt to divide and conquer.

The French use the word terroir, in the context of wine, to describe the attachment engendered by one's homeland. Jay McInerney, the oenophile for HOUSE & GARDEN, defines this as "placeness". Though I cannot find it in my dictionary I think it maybe an even a better word to convey the love of the land.

Despite our love of country, we change the landscape. Having spent years sailing off the coast of Chicago, I have learned to steer clear of the center city while out on the lake. The buildings, built up over my lifetime, act as a mountain range.

The skyscrapers that are our architectural legacy change the wind in their lee for miles out over the blue-green water of Lake Michigan. The concrete, steel and asphalt that make up the core of the city form a heat sink that creates a perpetual inversion in the summer. Heat radiates out, stealing the lake's wind on particularly hot and humid days.

We adapt though, and it is this trait that is the hallmark of Homo sapiens. Whereas other animals’ flourish or flounder in response to change, we alter our environment to suit our own ends. We may not always be successful, and in fact our meddling may prove disastrous, but we are nothing if not pro-active.

Many years ago I visited Greece. Being nineteen at the time, I lived in close proximity to the land. My friend and I camped on a rocky outcrop rather than sleeping in soft beds. We spent thirty glorious days, and about twice that sum in drachma, swimming, hiking and generally exploring the tiny island of Ios. The landscape is denuded of trees. Wood is at a premium and guarded closely, robbing us of the selfish pleasure of a campfire on the beach.

Since then I have come to understand that the Minoans, inhabitants of Greece during the Bronze Age, produced this classic landscape by cutting down all the trees. In the process they destroyed their environment and themselves. Even the Greek philosopher Plato comments on the landscape stating, “All the richer and softer parts have fallen away and the mere skeleton of the land remains.”

So it turns out that the smell of the drought resistant herbs in the wind and the sound of the goat's clanging bells that are so seductive to tourists is a consequence of a lack of foresight on the part of the venerated ancients. Whether we are connected to them by blood or not, we still feel a connection to our ancestors.

Some thing in human nature makes us relate to Greece statuary. Why else would the Elgin Marbles be sitting in London; why would the British have cared? And why did the Taliban feel it necessary to destroy Buddhist statuary; what did they find so threatening about some thing that most of the world had no idea existed? There has to be a connection.

Now that we can sample DNA, the interdependence of our fellow humans and our animal cohorts has become undeniable. It can be seen in the conservation of genes between species and within various human cultures. Even the use of language by our closest primate relatives serves to connect us to the other inhabitants of the Earth.

So how is it that the Japanese and the Americans have stayed connected after a disastrous past? A past initiated by Commodore Perry's Black ships, by Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, by our WW II internment camps and by the early eighties trade wars.

Even after all the above, our people are closely connected and work hard every day to keep our relationship strong. We have many commonalities, but I cannot help but find our differences entertaining: steak vs. fish, Christianity vs. Shinto and Buddhism, a republic vs. a parliamentary government, and Mickey Mouse vs. Hello Kitty.

I like to think that Tea has some thing to do with this rapprochement. For most Americans, at least before sushi and anime became so popular, the tea ceremony was their first thought when Japan was mentioned. Granted nobody really knew the true nature of Tea, but still it was, and is, a compelling national symbol that until recently over whelmed all others.

It is hard for me to remember when I first became culturally aware of Japan. Was it a raku chawan or the compelling architecture of the chashitsu or maybe the deep rooted Zen philosophy of Tea that first drew me to it, I am not sure.

But I am thankful that the disparate threads have lead me to curiosity rather than ignorance, to involvement rather than isolation, to connections rather than segregation. What better way to live a life?

Paper or Plastic

The more I look, the more I see. Lodged in gutters, wrapped around parking meters and stop signs, tangled high in trees and power lines, stuck in hedges, and flying in the wind as cars drive over them. I have seen them wrapped around birds and fish, and like old cars they inhabit every ravine and rural homestead.

Ubiquitous is an apt description. What am I talking about, plastic bags of course. I think of them as the canary in the mineshaft; a harbinger of what awaits our culture if we do not take more care. That such weirdly ephemeral yet persistent wisps of plastic are so pervasive is downright creepy. These bags make me wonder what else is lurking in our environment.

Maybe I am disturbed about their presence because my sensibility was shaped by the hippie culture of the seventies, the Gaia Principle, Al Gore more recently and Chado, the Way of Tea, in particular. I take comfort in the fact that large cities such as San Francisco have banned them and so, I am obviously not the only person fretting about this.

I am as much to blame as anyone for this predicament. When confronted with the question, “paper or plastic” my response is usually plastic. As I say this, my mind begins to race with the implications of the decision. I picture the demise of the Arctic Wildlife Preserve and envision oil-covered birds washed up on every coast that oil tankers have disgorged their contents on.

Why must I confront global warming and the destruction of our environment just to carry my organic broccoli home? It seems our daily decisions, as mundane as they may seem at the time, have global consequences.

The study of Tea has some thing to say about this. Since starting my practice, Tea has surrounded me with natural, recyclable materials: bamboo vases, ladles and spoons; thatched tea huts; straw tatami mats; earthen and cast iron vessels of all types. Most of these can be crushed under foot or burned to ash without much effort and with no detrimental impact on the environment.

Despite its physicality Chado is a culture of ideas. In four hundred years it has not left much of physical presence, and though rooted in the past, Chado is based on the ephemera of the here and now.

Sen Rikyu, the 15th century founder of Chado, when asked to explain the essence of Tea stated the following seven rules: Arrange flowers as they are in the fields; Lay charcoal so the water boils; Keep cool in the summer; Stay warm in the winter; Be early; Be prepared for rain even if it is not raining; Be mindful of the guest.

So when I see the clutter it starts me thinking that we need images to guide our modern world other than those provided by Reality TV. So why not look to Chado for some guidance. Chado is based on four tenets: harmony, respect, purity and tranquility. No mention of tea in all the above, only personal responsibility and hospitality, intriguing isn't it.

Of course, to fully appreciate Tea it needs to be practiced. But why a "lay" public cannot study and enjoy Tea the way that I, who cannot play a musical instrument, enjoy the symphony, a jazz quartet or even Dean Martin's crooning. Well why not. We should at least try.

So the next time you are confronted with the choice, "paper or plastic", do not habitually respond. Search for a deeper meaning in your choice. Think of the four principles of Tea and apply them: harmony with and respect for our environment; purity in the sense of picking up after oneself and not leaving trash for others to clean up; and tranquility, which is what we are seeking after all, isn't it?

Conversations

New York is a city of conversations. Mostly gossip as far as I can tell: "I hear he's single again", "did you hear about their nanny", "her gallbladder was the size of a...,” well you get the idea.

These dialogs are either one sided into cell phones or spoken on the street between two passers-by; by lovers huddled in a quiet restaurant; by elegant Channel clad ladies of a certain age; by young mothers with babies in tow; or by metal and tattoo festooned art students.

Coming here after a thirty-year hiatus, I thought it would be all business and high culture, but alas New Yorkers are the same as the rest of us - mired in soap operas of our own making. After all, all politics is local and it seems the larger the city the more village-like.

People strive for community. Soon after moving into a neighborhood one will find a restaurant, a place of worship, a hardware store to frequent. Slowly relationships develop and unions are formed.

This is especially evident in the largest city of villages, Tokyo. Each enclave has it’s own police station and an indecipherable postal scheme. It was not till I trekked to Japan that I began to understand the addresses. They are approximate descriptions of where the dwellings are located, requiring local knowledge for the few final steps.

New York also has well defined neighborhoods: Soho, Tribeca, MidTown and Greenwich Village are but a few. Many have famous parks associated with them and these parks take on the character of the locals.

The sophistication of Bryant Park behind the public library, the musicians and street theatre of Washington Park in Greenwich Village and the stylized gardens of the Cloisters with palisades visible across the Hudson River.

The grand dam of them all, Central Park, incorporates all the above in a naturalistic setting. The sight of boulders and stony outcrops shocked me. Who would have thought such a natural environment could coexist in the mist of this megalopolis.

In Tokyo we stayed in a glorious room at the Palace Hotel. It's two large opening windows looked out over the moat that surrounds the Imperial Palace. The Imperial Palace is located in a large park complex right off the main train station and is only fleetingly visible.

Couples, families and large groups from the provinces stand with the Imperial Palace's small white structure visible over their shoulders, as the zeros and ones of digital images are stored away for posterity.

Alas New York does not have such an intimate view with such momentous implications. We have a more egalitarian society and would have to travel to Washington D.C. to stand on Constitution Ave. with the White House in the distant background to have a similar experience.

But our leaders are not royals and our culture is not yet five thousand years old. We tend to celebrate common people turned heroes or statesmen, as opposed to status earned by heredity. That said we do have our Kennedy's, Roosevelt’s, and the like.

My neighborhood is a bit of a village, an eclectic one. At our yearly block party we like to joke of the United Nations. Irish, Vietnamese, Asian Indian, Japanese, Cubans, Italians, Swedes and many more ethnicities mingle in the center of a car free Talman Ave. and partake in the magnificent feast displayed on plastic covered picnic tables.

Down at the end of the street, the alderman’s brother cooks corn-on-the-cob on the 40th Ward’s large rectangular barbecue while the neighbor’s Irish band’s music intermixes with the sounds of salsa farther up the street. We have an egg toss, a bike parade for the kids (I ride my ribbon covered recumbent), and climb all over the fire engine and pet the police horse if they come visit.

And so, in this way I have many conversations with neighbors I would never normally interact with, and all our stories bind us closer together. We become not the large demographic that government and corporations find so appealing, but individuals.

I revel in the odd combination of diversity and individualism that America is. Though frustrating at times, it is what gives us our strength as a nation, a state, a city and ultimately a village.

Commemorate

I have written several commentaries concerning Sen Rikyu in the past and focused primarily on Rikyuki, the commemoration of his death. Rikyuki is not our usual tea ceremony demonstration. No running commentary is provided and this lack of theatrics engenders a more introspective attitude amongst both the guests and the participants.

Each year when I sit down to review my notes; I get the chance to revisit the telling of Sen Rikyu’s tale. This inspires me and I spread all my books out on the kitchen table to see what else I can learn about his time in history. Inevitably my scholastics lead me to delve deeper into Japanese culture to get a better understanding of the man and the world he inhabited.

This March while giving the introduction to Rikyuki at the Japanese Information Center, a little voice at the back of my mind quietly said that it takes ten years to do any thing well. As I continued to speak I could not help but think of the relevance that statement.

Granted we consider ourselves experts long before a decade has past, but if we persist with our studies, the realization of just how little we knew at the start of our endeavors comes as a shock.

This conceit is necessary of course, for how else would we ever find the confidence to begin: to make the first bowl of tea, to see the first patient, to hold the first scalpel, and to suture the first head wound.

So with that said, I present a short history of Sen Rikyu and ask your forgiveness for my ignorance. I hope that his story will inspire you to spread your books out to journey back into medieval Japan. I look forward to writing next years commentary when I will doubtlessly be better informed.

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Sen Rikyu passed by his own hand in 1591, being ordered to do so by Togotomi Hideyoshi, the military dictator who unified Japan and for whom he served. Rikyu was the head tea master for Hideyoshi, a position akin to being a cultural minister.

When Sen Rikyu’s popularity began to out shine that of Hideyoshi’s he was ordered to commit ritual suicide. Once Sen Rikyu was dead, Hideyoshi is said to have anguished over his death for many months and refused to appoint a successor.

Rikyuki is the commemoration of the 416th anniversary of Sen Rikyu’s death. The Urasenke tradition of tea commemorates him because he is the founder of our school of chanoyu, as tea is referred to in Japan.

Sen Rikyu is also remembered for the transition to the practice of “soan tea”, otherwise known as “tea of the thatched hut”. This is opposed to “shoin tea” or tea of the Golden Pavilion, which served as a vehicle to display one’s power and stature.

Sen Rikyu was the product of several tea masters. They attempted to change the corrupted practice of tea in the early 16th century and ultimately succeeded, but not without the tragedy of Sen Rikyu’s death.

Juko, who lived from 1422-1502, is considered the father of the tea ceremony and is attributed to have said, “I have no taste for the full moon.” By this he meant that the moon, half hidden by clouds, is more moving than it’s full round image.

Tea at that time was centered on the use of Chinese objects rather than Japanese. Japanese crafts were considered inferior to their Chinese counter parts. Juko supplanted tea centered on an appreciation of Chinese objects, to tea based on Japanese utensils from the provinces.

He led to the rediscovery of art objects that are not completely perfect or ideal. A very popular author even today, Okakura Tenshin, in his 1906 book, The Book of Tea, describes this as “a worship of the imperfect.” We call this sensibility wabi.

Juko also instituted the tradition of using a 4.5 mat room for chanoyu and this practice was built upon by another tea master known as Takeno Jo-o who lived from 1502-1555, and who eventually became Sen Rikyu’s teacher.

Jo-o altered the tearoom to include the plain clay walls, bamboo-lattice ceiling and the use of unfinished wood for the tokonoma that we are familiar with today. Jo-o changed tea from a formal style to a style that reveals the informal beauty of the natural world. This concept, along with Okakura Tenshin’s “worship of the imperfect”, is known as wabi-sabi.

Sen Rikyu was the son of an affluent merchant who went on to study tea and became Jo-o’s disciple in 1541. Rikyu’s style, derived from both Juko and Jo-o, was in opposition to the gaudy tea practices at that time. His tea reflects the natural environment as opposed to the cosmopolitan one that had influenced tea before and during the 16th century.

Rikyu created tearooms smaller than 4.5 mats and these rooms, being impractical spaces, had no other purpose than tea. The tiny tearooms incorporated a crawl-in entrance that forced the participants, no matter how distinguished, to bow low and crawl into the tearoom.

Sen Rikyu molded chanoyu into a spiritual discipline (chado, the way of tea) and this may be what ultimately sealed his fate. Rikyu and his predecessors created tea as it exist today, whether we are in a secluded natural setting or a large conference room.

Without Sen Rikyu none of this would have existed. His sons and today, the present 16th generation Grand Tea Master Zabosai Oiemoto, carry on the tradition of tea he started.

Sen Rikyu left the following verse at his death:

Over seventy years of life,
What trouble and concern,
I welcome the sword which,
Slays all Buddha’s, all Dharmas!

The sword which has ever been
Close at hand,
Now I throw into the sky.

Translation by Rand Castile

February

Now that February has past, I realize it brought the reality of living in northern climes front and center for me, as it has not for years. My hope that global warming would actually warm up Chicago seemed to be coming true: November, December and even into January we appeared to have dodged the usual winter debacle, but in the long run did not.

Even with the return of the frigid cold there were none of the expected survival condition that we experienced in the seventies. Back then, on my daily rounds as a suburban USPS Letter Carrier, I walked in trenches carved out of ten-foot tall snowdrifts, and when finally managing to get home did not see the light of day, or for that matter the mercury-vapor streetlights, for months while buried under the snow in my garden apartment.

The idea that these conditions can exist in a large city with almost unlimited resources is a testament to the power of nature. So the other Monday morning when I found myself sitting gloomily slumped in my chair, melancholic and enveloped in foul vapors, I knew there was more to it than just my usual funk.

It dawned on me then that it was February. The sun was beginning to rise earlier and set later, but I could not convince myself of that. February is a state of mind and though I am a fairly positive person, if I could erase a month from the calendar it would be numero dos.

In the month-to-end-all-months, the only bright light is the Super Bowl and if you are not a sports fan, the hilarity surrounding the game makes February even more depressing. The only positive thing I can think of is, it only lasts 28 days.

But before I digress entirely into the dark side of my soul, let me state that February does have some bright spots. For one our tea association, Chado Urasenke Tankokai Chicago Association, has a belated New Years celebration called tatezome the first Sunday of the month. I think of it as a gathering of family. It is wonderful to see our members so engaged in the process of planning and performing chanoyu.

And February also sets us aside from the less contemplative parts of the world. What is there left to do, even with all the modern distractions, on a cold Sunday afternoon but read a good book, watch an old movie or well, just sit with a cup of tea and contemplate.

February is downright character building and characters it does build. I can attest that our city is full of gloriously quirky individuals. February reminds us, as we say in medicine, of our morbidity and mortality. It says to us we are mortal, expendable, and better get on with ours lives and make the best of every fleeting moment lest they disappear forever.

This is the ultimate meaning of February for me. I doubt I ever would have understood if it had not been for the hands-on teaching of Chado, which stresses the here-and-now as opposed to practicing for some future gain. I have read many philosophical tracts on the subject, but I needed the stable under pinning that physical practice gives to words. For in the long run, words without practice ring hollow—so lets get to work.

Cadence

Every thing on earth and really the universe has a beat: sun spots vary in intensity every 11 years; comets come and go in decades long ellipses; hearts average 72 beats per minute; brains cycle through multiple patterns of sleep, temperature and hormonal levels over the hours, months and years.

Whether man-made or natural, we are stimulated by events as diverse as the permutations of the moon and the cyclical nature of the economy. Institutions also have rhythm. Corporate cultures vary and many a CEO has come to grief trying to alter their corporations entrenched patterns.

In my years of attending performances by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra I have seen most of the worlds renowned conductors. All are enthusiastic and all have their own rhythm. Some are detail oriented, some are more concerned with the big picture and others just let it all hang out.

Daniel Barenboim, the recently retired musical director of the CSO, would just stop conducting and stand at the podium (the best seat in the house) soaking in the sound. Others like Leonard Bernstein propelled himself into the orchestra sweat flinging off his brow, drawing greater emotional heights out of each of his musicians.

Sir George Solti embodied some of both these traits. With profound respect for the music and the orchestra, he conducted every last note, but with enough latitude to let the members of the CSO shine.

Chado, the Way of Tea, has a rhythm. The tradition, handed down from the introduction of tea into Japan from China in the 9th century, has stayed remarkably consistent. The rhythm varies with the time of day, the level of formality, the season of the year, the utensils used, and though this probably should not be so, the demeanor of the practitioner.

Each individual has their own path in life; some go about in a slow stately manner, while other are energetic to a state of mania. This cannot help but be reflected in their approach to Tea despite the urgings of their teachers.

As I watched the recently retired Grand Tea Master of the Urasenke tradition prepare tea, I could not help notice the subtle variation of his cadence. It brought to mind surging surf in the Pacific Northwest; the swaying of bamboo forests in the wind; and purple martins as they swoop and glide, twist and turn, catching their daily quotient of minute diaphanous prey.

There is something of the force and selflessness of nature in his movements. Tea after all is a choreographed dance passed down from teacher to student. It is an apprenticeship where we practice and occasionally get to watch our teacher make tea. To watch a master is a rare thing. To remember the details afterwards is almost always impossible.

For the host Tea begins as they slide into the tearoom and bow to their guests. It proceeds with cleaning the utensils, the ladling of water, and the whisking and serving of tea. Once completed everything is purified again and left as it was found. Lastly, one final bow and the host departs, leaving their guest to appreciate the time they have just shared.

All must be done naturally without flourish, but not pedantically and therein lies the art. The chashaku is cleansed with three stately moves. Tea is whisked slowly at first building to a crescendo and then slowly finished, not to disrupt its perfect mossy surface. The wispy hishaku is handled with the strength and decisiveness of an archer preparing to release an arrow into flight.

Despite all the vessels, cloths, ladles and scoops, chanoyu never comes to a standstill. How is this learned? Not from books or discussion, only from doing. Each master, teacher and student brings the experience of a lifetime to his or her Tea.

Think about the daily patterns of our lives. When young, life is about change. We rush headlong into new adventures. With age stability takes on a more important role. Change requires energy that is better put to other uses.

And thus the cadence slows a bit, becomes more deliberate. Both approaches are valid, necessary even. The risk taker is juxtaposed by the seasoned pro. Our actions reflect the knowledge gained over a lifetime.

From my own background, a new physician is conversant with recent advances in therapeutics and techniques, whereas the experienced healer knows when to leave well enough alone; either letting the body heal itself or pass from this world without interference. And so the cadence of practice, both in medicine and chado, ebbs and flows with the passing of time – how wonderful.

Another Year

What do we do in a year? A year, as the saying in Chado goes, of ichigo, ichie -- One Time, One Meeting; where each moment is precious and irreplaceable.

Do we do some thing momentous or do we spend it watching electrons dance across a screen.

Do we spend it with family and friends, nurturing relationships or do we spend it hunkered down in a fortress of our own making, protected from a cruel outside world.

Do we spend the year creating a nest egg or do we spend it helping to enrich the already rich with poor financial decisions.

Do we spend the year putting ourselves at risk or making ourselves comfortable.

Is there a way to distinguish this year from the last and are we busy with plans to make the next twelve months unique.

And why do we commemorate the New Year, a new year of birthdays, weddings, births and deaths.

Another year for light to travel from the known and unknown universe, revealing super novae, colliding galaxies, and the birth and death of stars.

Another year of medical research, another of deciphering the human genome and another year closer to cures for incurable disease.

Another year of another class of medical students, trained and released out into the world.

Another year on the water, soaking up the best and the worst that Lake Michigan has to throw at us.

Another year of art: of drawings and of sculpture. Both attempted in a futile effort to search for unobtainable solutions to unanswerable questions.

Another volume in the sixty-year history of The Chicago Shimpo and a few more words put down -- ink on paper -- from my neurons to yours. Remarkable that.

So Happy New Year, I hope you have some sparkling champagne or some cold sake to reminisce on the old and welcome the New Year in. 2007 -- the most miraculous year of all our years yet.

Treasures

Married for six months, my father went to war. He did not return for four more. My mother was a “Rosie the riveter” building cargo planes at a defense plant that after the war became O’Hare Field. The only details I have of his four year hiatus came late in his life, when the 50th anniversary of the WWII brought a few reminisces from the quiet veteran.

As a kid, my father and I watched every WWII documentary, that is when wrestling was not on. We were especially fond of Victory at Sea. It had a stirring sound track, and impressive black and white footage of large battleships crashing through larger waves, many going to their final battles.

The documentaries moved the time line on and as the war in Europe concluded, depictions of the Far East began. Images of the peaceful Pacific Ocean were intermixed with fierce island fighting. The inevitable images of kamikazes flying through streams of bullets filled our TV screen. Then suddenly all would become quiet, as a lone plane appeared high amongst the clouds over Japan, signaling the end of the blood bath that was WW II.

Usually steeped in the past, in 2005 while preparing for my first trip to Japan I started to read modern Japanese history. The more I read the more heartsick I became as I realized conventional bombing, long before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroyed many of Japan’s larger cities. To think of the lives lost and the culture destroyed on both sides is sobering.

In my travel to Japan and also to Italy I have driven into concrete filled towns, the result of quick post-war construction to replace the devastation of the bombing. Italy and Japan sport an odd conglomeration of buildings due to the destruction during the war. We really do not have an equivalent to this in America.

The hastily constructed buildings of sixty years ago put a human face on to what had been for me images on a screen and words on paper. It is hard not to think of the lost history and of the history that was never made by the soldiers, sailors and airmen who fell under juggernaut of the world war.

My wife has devoted many years to the genealogy of her family: one side Scotch-Irish with a little Heugonaut thrown in, the other Russian-Polish Jews. The former traceable for many generations, the latter disappearing into the pogroms of a world bent on the destruction of every Jewish inhabitant. Again, I think of the lives and culture lost. We will never know who was venerated and what was treasured. It was all annihilated.

Is it naïve, even foolish to treasure objects when millions of souls have been lost? In Chanoyu, the Tea Ceremony, one of the four tenets is respect. It is respect not only for people, but also respect for the objects they produce. We venerate and treasure these objects, not I think for their own self worth, but for the memory of the people that make, name, enjoy and ultimately pass them on.

Tea objects are made of fragile materials, made even frailer by the passage of time. Each has a history that makes them special. It is people’s relationship with these objects that make them note worthy; like finding a few notes of Mozart’s or a sketch of Leonardo da Vinci’s hidden away for centuries. The dogu, as we collectively call them, is a link to the past and a guide to the future.

The tea world is not a stagnate one, conservative as it may seem to the out side world. Gengensai, the eleventh Grand Master of Urasenke, designed a seated chanoyu, ryurei, in response to the growing Western influence during the Meiji period in the late 19th century. This century, the 16th generation Grand Tea Master designed three small side tables that fit together as the famed Russian dolls that cradle multiple dolls into one. The design encourages us, who do not have access to traditional tea surroundings, to actually do tea and not to relegate it to antique status; some thing hid away only to be admired from a distance.

These developments are in response to an evolving world that we hope will be peaceful enough to allow us to continue to respect, treasure and venerate the people and the culture of a another land. I like to think of my twenty-year involvement with Tea as a bridge to another culture. I know I will never fully understand Japan, but the effort allows me to better understand my own up bringing as an Italian-American living in the great city of Chicago.

How is this so. I would be the last to know, but an appreciation of another culture, with all the inherent difficulties helps me focus on my culture. It helps me treasure what I have and what I have lost. This interesting journey, started many years ago as a disenchanted teenager, has come full circle.

It would be nice to think that all these words, over several years of commentaries have helped both Japanese and Americans reflect on their cultures, and strive for better understanding and cooperation in concrete ways. At some point words need to jump off the page into one’s heart and on to the street. I cannot think of a better way to venerate and treasure all that have gone before us.

Perimeter

Recently a new Target opened in my neighborhood. It was long awaited; taking over a year to build at the site of several previously failed big box retailers. As I walk into the store I notice large white columns interspersed with the big red beach balls that have become synonymous with Target’s image. Unobtrusive as they may seem, I still need to negotiate around them and that act brings images of 9/11 to my mind. I instantly redirect my thoughts, but cannot deny their implications.

These barriers have appeared in all facets of my interaction with the environment: while walking past the federal buildings on the way to Symphony Center, in the O'Hare International terminal at the beginning of a long anticipated European trip and in many places where the absence of such barriers I cautiously note.

Living in a large city has taught me to quickly become complacent with most urban fashions and inconveniences. I understand that change is inevitable, but this feels different. The barriers are signs of a troubled world that I have no medicine to prescribe for and I think to myself, “this is a hell of a way to spend one's life.”

Many years ago at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Fly-In in Oshkosh, WI, a stealth fighter sat on the tarmac, glistening in the mid-day sun despite its drab camouflaged paint. The plane was impressive, but the Special Forces troops that set up a perimeter around it were even more so. Despite the hot steamy weather they were in full regalia with weapons drawn.

As far as I could tell there were three perimeters surrounding the plane; each demarcated by a thin rope suspended by thinner poles. You would need to negotiate all three to gain access, but these men left no doubt in my mind that if it came down to the billion-dollar plane or a mere mortal, the mortal would lose out.

But what is a perimeter but a threshold, an entryway into a different world. It may be a forbidden world, it may be there for our protection or for the protection of what lies inside. It requires a journey, be it long or short. It delineates space and as such, time.

Tea gardens (roji) also have perimeters, non-lethal ones of course. Every garden is different. Some are elaborate, leading deeply into the garden through many steps and dwellings before finally coming to the Teahouse (chashitsu). Others have a simple waiting station symbolically substituting for the complexity of the above.

Roji has a complicated morphology. It is a simple path, a passageway from the garden’s gate to the chashitsu. It is the dewy path of the Lotus Sutra, separating us from the reality of dirt and dust, providing a guide to a hermitage of pure spirituality. This path, as with many things over time, has become more intricate.

The roji is divided into two parts: the outer (soto) and the inner (uchi). Let me walk us through this dewy path as best as I can. Although I have been studying Chanoyu for several decades I have only experienced this walk several times. It will be instructive for both of us and will cement the experience in my mind.

In Tea guests arrive early, fifteen minutes is appropriated. It provides time to decompress from the humdrum of the outside world and begin to contemplate an inner one. We approach the roji through a roofed outer gate (sotomon), the most famous of which is the Helmet Gate (kabuto mon) at main entrance of the Urasenke School of Tea in Kyoto.

Water will be sprinkled around the opening as a sign that all is prepared and we may enter. There may be several paths to choose from. Our host has anticipated this and laid a river stone tied with a black cord on the stepping-stone of the trail not to follow, deflecting us in the proper direction.

The garden will also be lightly sprinkled with water as the outer gate was, to provide a feeling of freshness like after a summer thunderstorm.

We walk into the soto roji and enter a small area that is often combined: a porch (yoritsuki) and a waiting room (machiai). This small room is used to shed the dust of the city, change into new tabi and wait for all to assemble. It is here that we leave our worldly possessions.

There may be art objects to view, a tobacco tray and in cooler weather a small hearth with warm water to drink. I hear you saying tobacco, “what in the world is that for?” Well, a long leisurely smoke is not what it is about, but that is the concept. The tray is used to convey the idea of relaxation and contemplation, and is purely symbolic.

Once we are settled, we will be called from the waiting room and move through the garden to a sheltered arbor (koshikake) to await our host (teishu). We have yet to reach the inner garden; the arbor is located between the waiting room and the middle gate (chumon). The chumon separates the outer garden from the inner garden.

Here in the koshikake are small straw cushions (enza) for us to sit on and again we encounter a tobacco tray. Although the distance traveled is short, we are being drawn deeper into the experience. In a formal tea gathering we would come back here to wait during the intermission between the meal and being served tea, but today we will only rest here once.

As we quietly wait for the teishu’s silent bow bidding us to enter the teahouse (chashitsu), we are given a chance to contemplate the nature of the garden: feel wind on our face, smell moist earth and pine, listen to the chirping of birds, and watch insects moving through the dewy moss.

Once beckoned, we walk through the chumon and enter the inner garden (uchi roji); the focal point of which is a stone basin called the tsukubai. If it is a small garden we may have heard the teishu filling the basin with fresh cool water and placing the bamboo ladle that we will use to ritually cleanse our hands and rinse our mouth before entering the chashitsu.

In a final act of humility we will bow low to the ground to use the tsukubai and again as we enter the chashitsu through the small entrance known as the nijirguchi. The perimeter has allowed us to journey far in a short distance and penetrate into the pure world of the Lotus Sutra.

Perimeters delineate space. The bordered land can be welcoming or off-putting, but it is always special. We need not travel far to distant lands to seek enlightenment. We need only to recognize the outer gate. The inner world awaits us.

Rivers

This is my third day at Harborside Marina on the Des Plaines River. I had planned a more extensive cruise, but stopped short after a harrowing first couple of days spent dodging multiple thousand foot long tows (barge and towboat combinations like on the Mississippi River) and negotiating the thirty foot depths of Lockport and Brandon Road Locks.

The feeling I had before this cruise was similar to the weeks prior to beginning my internship and then at the start of my life as an attending physician. You prepare for years, but in no way feel competent to accomplish the task ahead. Momentum takes over and drives you forward despite your misgivings. A couple of months later it is hard to look back and wonder what the fuss was all about.

This journey downstream through the Main and South Branches of the Chicago River, the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal to the Des Plaines and Illinois Rivers feels similar. After having read extensively, studied the charts, talked to many boaters and years spent wandering around Lake Michigan, I finally decided to take a "practice" cruise south to see what all the fuss is about.

Well, the fuss is justified. Most of the inhabitants of the Chicagoland area have no idea this world-within-a-world exists. If it were not for this world Chicago would not exist. Or at least not on the scale that it does today.

The raw materials that keep the city moving, the streets ice free and our cars rusting; that keep the city warm or cool and bathed in perpetual light; that keep the new skyscrapers climbing. All this stuff and more floats in on barges pushed along by towboats from four stories tall to the cute little yard tugs that begin to appear the closer we creep towards the center of Chicago.

The scale of the industry is massive, as is the horsepower harnessed to move the vast quantities of coal from the West, sand from the shores of Lake Michigan, concrete from China, scrap metal from the alleys of Chicago, Midwest corn and soybeans, processed petroleum products and the waste produced in the process of keeping our megalopolis functioning.

Intermixed amongst this drab functional landscape are a few quaint sections of the old waterway: forested and meticulously lined with sand stone. The labor of the immigrants that went into creating this path from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico is evident.

There is a faint whiff of Chicago even fifty miles downstream. It is an odor I am familiar with from many days spent boating on the North Branch of the Chicago River and the legacy of the infamous reversal of the Chicago River.

Finally able to relax I sit in my favorite spot, the pilothouse of Carrie Rose, our 32 foot Nordic Tug, and read a few words then dose off for a few. I am gently awakened by the presents of a behemoth tow as it ghosts by.

I look towards it and haphazardly glance out a sliver of the port rear window: a spider sits suspended in its handiwork, waiting; a large horse fly lands on the stainless steel stanchion that surrounds the upper deck and settles in for I know not what; a yellow butterfly appears, as in the back ground a Great Blue Heron glides along the ripples of the river; a large fish breaks the surface of this no wake zone to create a disturbance that slightly rocks the boat.

All this happened in an instant on a lazy warm afternoon at the tail end of my 42nd year on the water. It is haiku like, but with too many syllables.

How could I have guessed that my interest in Japanese culture would lead to this at once inconsequential and significant moment of awareness. How do I say this. How do I thank a culture for providing me with sustenance over a lifetime.

For providing me with fast friends, with multiple experiences that I never would have imagined as working-class kid from Chicago, with the opportunity to speak to thousands of people and to travel to distant lands.

How do I thank the Japanese people for cherry and plum blossoms, sake and sushi, indigo dye and silk kimonos. What is there to say to the genius of Hokusai's 100 Views of Mt. Fuji and Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North.

What do I say to a culture whose trains run on time and fly like the wind. Whose simple food is designed like fine art and whose art celebrates nature in its most sublime form.

How do I thank my guides to the world of Chanoyu, the Tea Ceremony. Both Mrs. Hamano and Minnie Kubose, now sadly passed, and Joyce Kubose (very much alive) who for the last twenty years have taught me Japanese culture hands and knees on.

What can I say about the tea, flowers, ceramics, architecture, calligraphy, wood work, gardens and ultimately, the philosophy that ties Chado, the Way of Tea, together and without which my life would be sadly diminished.

What is there to say on this warm autumn day floating on the river, but a heartfelt domo arigato gozaimasu.

Meditation

First let me state that I do not meditate, at least in the conventional sense. I am not a cynic; just have too much nervous energy to sit. This has not prevented me from trying though. In high school and college I dabbled with meditation to no avail.

One night, determined to reach nirvana, I settled on my bed in the lotus position. Donning my headphones, I concentrated all my psychic energy (what there was of it) on the tip of my nose. I had read about this technique in one of the many pop-psychology books that were so prevalent in the 70’s. After what seemed like an eternity, I emerged from my self-induced stupor, promised to redouble my efforts the next day and fell fitfully to sleep.

Awakening early the next morning I felt good about my accomplishment. My mind was clear and any doubts of my purpose were set aside. Funny thing though, I could not shake the tingling sensation centered on my nose.

Rising from bed, I headed for the nearest mirror and was horrified to see a large red proboscis starring back at me. My efforts of the night before had left me with a grape-size carbuncle on the tip of my nose. The scarlet protuberance, unsettling as it was, convinced me of the power of meditation.

I thought it wise to stop focusing on body parts and instead began to practice meditation in motion: building boats, suturing complex hand wounds, welding steel into sculpture, sailing off the coast of Chicago and practicing Chanoyu, the Tea Ceremony.

All have been attempts at meditation, though I realize not in the formal sense. I think of my pursuits as adaptations to life in America and a busy career.

The more involved I get with various projects, the more amazed I am at the preparation that goes into right practice. For most professionals, be it medicine, law, science, religion or art, study goes back to childhood. We see only the tip of the iceberg.

How does this expertise come to pass? Book learning only provides the basics. A common complaint of students−that school does not teach anything practical−is completely understandable. Life, it turns out, is more of an apprenticeship and though facts play a large role, education is about problem solving and not purely memorization.

In high school and college we are afforded ample opportunity to practice. Schedules, financial aid, libraries, professors and even roommates provide case studies for the problems we will encounter as adults.

But what does this have to do with meditation. Meditation is the process by which facts, and the thoughts they engender, are organized. It relieves the brain from goal seeking, allowing it to choose its own path of inter-connectivity. It is the creative side of consciousness. It is intuition.

It took me years to understand that the mind is constructed organically, not machine like. Similar to the branching of trees or the spread of roots, to the flow of rivers and not canals, thus linear thought seldom reveals truth.

We say, "think out of the box", but the box represents our formal training, and as much as we may have suffered through academic training, familiarity leads to comfort and comfort to complacency. Meditation throws a wrench into the system. Even as practitioner’s sit and look peaceful to the out side world, inside they are pitted against Mt. Everest without oxygen to assist in their march to the summit.

Chanoyu presents this challenge. At first glance it is a beautiful pastime easily mastered, but with increasing mastery comes increasing complexity. Of course there are no guarantees, but if you persist with the meditative practice that is Chanoyu one day while seated before precisely placed utensils with fire drawing air through embers, tea is whisked, offered to your guest and tranquility envelops you.

Time & Place

If you have ever stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon and looked out across the great expanse of air that separates one canyon wall from the next, you will know what I mean when I say it has a certain grandeur about it. It is one of the few places that make the immensity of geologic time palpable. This and other places of natural splendor make us hope to savor them time and again.

Closer to home, I spend a lot of time on my boat in Montrose harbor. The harbor slowly come to life in May, peaks in mid-August and then quickly fades into September. I have come to cherish this yearly ritual. Seated in the pilothouse, I watch all the comings and goings, and allow my brain just to float. I do not interfere with or try to censor my thoughts. They just are and I suppose this is the Nothingness that Buddhist scholars write so eloquently about.

I have found the best time for “nothing” is Sunday afternoon when most of the weekend's revelers have docked their boats and are clogging the exits out to the city. The wind gets a little cooler and the sun, still high in the sky, casts an ethereal glow over the boats downstream; lighting up the colors as if backlit.

This is nature’s high-definition TV without the monthly cable bill. I used to leave early, mistakenly trying to beat the traffic. Then one day, realizing I was missing out on the best moment of the weekend, decided to let everyone else ruin their weekend stymied in the congestion.

We would all like to repeat these special times and places, and not just reminisce about them. One of the basic tenants of the Tea Ceremony, ichigo-ichie (one meeting-one time), in its simple way describes the impossibility of truly achieving this goal, but try we will and often come close to succeeding.

Chanoyu, the Tea Ceremony, creates a special time and place. As incongruous as it may seem to spend a lifetime of study to make a bowl of tea, the practice transforms time and place. Wherever it occurs, be it at a large recreational complex for Japan Day, at the Japanese Cultural Center tucked away in a large high-rise on Chicago Avenue or in a rustic thatched hut in a Japanese garden (a rarity for us), Tea alters time and place.

Ordinary as the venue may be Tea consecrates the surroundings. Why is this the case? It might be the intensity of study, similar to the thrill the Olympics brings to sports seldom seen outside of the four-year cycle. While we concentrate on football, baseball and basketball, the adherents of esoteric Olympic sports are hard at work quietly honing their skills. Tea practitioners spend a lifetime doing the same.

Practicing all over the world, guided by their teachers, waiting for the right constellation of event to come together for their inner skills to be publicly manifested. I remember my inaugural outing only six months after my first Tea lesson. It was at the annual meeting of the Urasenke Chicago Association that was held that year in a Japanese steak house. Not at all my idea of an ideal setting.

But as the time and place came together with the first drawing of water from the singing iron kettle a greater truth entered my soul and never left. Just like the Grand Canyon, there is a feeling of geologic time in Chanoyu. Maybe cultural time is a more fitting description. Chanoyu provides a sense of the immensity of Homo sapien’s time and cultural development on earth. A sense that with the hurried pace of change is becoming more fleeting day-by-day.

Elitism

Recently I did several things that most people living and working in the city do on a daily basis: eat in a cafeteria and take public transportation. I can hear you saying, "What is the big deal" and seven years ago I would have concurred, but not now. I am just beginning to realize that since completing my residency I have become increasingly isolated. It is as if I joined a private club and no longer need to deal with the rest of the world.

Of course I am exaggerating. Being a lowly Family Practitioner I am hardly in an income bracket that would allow me to completely separate myself from daily chores. I cut the grass, fix the plumbing, sit in the waiting room while my car is repaired and unlike the senior George Bush, know what a grocery check out looks like. But still, I have been afforded a few perks: the doctor's lounge at the hospital and a flexible schedule that allows me to leisurely drive my car to the office.

Most days, for a minimal charge, I sit and eat in a room reserved for physicians. Occasionally there are interlopers, but mostly we gather together and eat. The talk centers on medicine and the food, well most of us would consult our patients against consuming it.

When the lounge was closed temporarily, we were instructed to report to the hospital's cafeteria for lunch. There a long line of employees, many of whom have become my patients over the years, confronted me. I was alarmed at how uncomfortable I felt standing in the long gray coat that is the uniform of an attending physician. Had I become the prima donna we all railed against in medical school. I think not, but still I find just having these thoughts is instructive.

My next foray into the life of the city is on my way to meet my wife and visitors from Kansas City for dinner. Of course it is a Friday afternoon when my car's check engine light comes on. It is not a novel occurrence. Over the years of owning this German car I have learned to ignore the light and its accompanying chime extolling me to perform an "Emissions Workshop".

This afternoon though the light not only appears, but begins flashing in time with the surging of the engine. I pull over, hit the four way flashers and get out the owner’s manual. A reference to the imminent destruction of the catalytic converter jumps out at me, and I begin to plot where to park and how to get a tow while keeping my dinner engagement.

After several confirmatory phone calls, I find myself stepping into a crowded bus. The conveyance is populated with single mothers towing multiple infants and toddlers. A few stops down the road we are boarded by twenty or so well-dressed riotous teenage boys going downtown to the movies. To make matters more interesting a disheveled odiferous young man plants himself very, and I mean very close to me as we all squeeze back into the bus.

Then just when things seem to settle down the bus driver fearlessly barks out a command for the young couple, who boarded during the chaos and slinked to the back without paying, to pay up or get off. At this point in the drama, being fairly close to the elevated train station that is my destination, I bail and walk the rest of the way to the Brown line.

So again I hear you saying, “What is the big deal”. Is he some kind of rube from the country? It is just a bus ride and to that I say, the fact that I am even thinking in these terms is a big deal, at least for me.

Why am I relating this tale to you and what in the world does this have to do with the usual topic of these commentaries, Chanoyu, the Tea Ceremony. Chanoyu in its most traditional setting has a unique feature called the nijiriguchi, the crawling-in entrance. It is a low door that compels all who enter the tearoom to bow low as they enter.

It is a subtle but profound equalizer of people and may be one of the reasons Sen Rikyu, the founder of Chanoyu, was commanded to commit seppuku by Hideyoshi, the ruler of Japan whom he served. The nijiriguchi forced Hideyoshi to humble himself every time Sen Rikyu served him tea and the humility that necessarily accompanies this act is what I feel in danger of losing.

So from now on, as I enter the doctor's lounge, walk into a patient's room or slide quietly into the tearoom I will bow slightly as homage to the nijiriguchi. After all, is that not the whole point of Sen Rikyu’s teaching; to bring the tenets of Chanoyu out of the rarified world of Tea and into every day life.

Intensity

Water concentrates energy. Traveling on it requires a level of intensity that is not known on land. It is not a function of speed. Most boats barely approach the trivial mark of 20 mph, but within this matrix enormous variablity exist. It requires fore thought and attention to detail not imagined by most terestrial travellers.

Of course pilots have these same concerns, but amongst the clouds they experience a freedom and lightness that only air can provide. The aqueous environment is more restrictive, requiring lots of horsepower, whether from sails or diesel, to negotiate the medium.

The purveyors of navigational equipment understand the intense nature of traveling by water and provide more and more sophisticated video game like gadgets. Even though it is impossible to keep pace with the technology, these devices are eagerly sought out and installed with the hope of a quick fix for any and all navigational problems.

Today officers on large ships are trained to occasionally look out the window at the real world to see if it matches the virtual one displayed on their flat panel monitors. It is as if the world is flat again and all the work of geographers has been for naught.

But most of the world was discover without sextants or chronometers. Explorers measured the height of the sun to obtain latitude and use it to guide their ships horizontally around the world.

Just as we board aircraft to visit far away places, our counter parts boarded sailing ships. We hear only about the tragedies, but like today’s airline pilots, many square-rigger captains had long careers circling the globe without mishap and any reading of history reveals our founding fathers regularly commuted to Europe on diplomatic or more pointedly, fund raising missions.

To have a hands-on understanding of this go to your main library and check out Captain Cook's log books. Here was a man that not only covered the globe from Australia to the Bering Sea, but was enlightened enough to do it without sacrificing his crew to the common killer of sailors at that time, scurvy.

You can relive his journey through his own hand. He is a succinct writer and a gifted draftsman. His charts and drawings are legendary and in more remote corners of the world, still used.

As Captain Cook brought intensity to his endeavor, intensity brings focus to any activity. Without it to transcend the routine of the everyday world, life becomes commonplace and boring. It is important to understand that intensity is not limited to the special moments in our lives. It can be brought to bear in even the most mundane tasks that have long ago become rout.

I think Chanoyu, the Tea Ceremony, exemplifies this spirit. After all, we learn that the Tea Ceremony is simply hot water for tea. What could simpler, what could be more mundane. But the intensity of study, preparation and practice is transformative. It makes me realize that the simplest task is worthy of all our concentration.

The world is made up of simple acts. The first shovel full of dirt begins a skyscraper. The preparation of canvas starts the process of a great painting. The application of pencil to paper, or maybe today the movement of a mouse, signals the start of a career. Each step informs the process. The smallest detail adds value.

The only down side to intensity is how the world perceives you. Gifted hard-working kids understand this. They are in many cases relentlessly harassed and bullied. Intensity sets them aside from the vast majority of their counterparts.

As I see it there is no need to be put off your game if you are not brilliant. Do not let IQ scores get in your way. Purposeful action combined with even reasonable skill at will get you far. Intensity, persistent, love of life and a curious nature will substitute for innate genius.

Japan Trip 2005

1

Clean, quaint and friendly is my first impression of Japan. It is 4:30 Sunday morning in Kyoto but in reality, at least in my mind, it is still 1:30 Saturday afternoon in Chicago. I am wide-awake, having decided to forego all futile efforts at sleep and write this.

And as if we were home, my mother has most assuredly come and gone from our north-side bungalow after performing her usual Saturday morning ritual of washing, drying and ironing our laundry; a task she has determined is her birth-right to perform and cannot be talked out of. If we were home we would have had lunch and since it is not boating season, be out shopping. But that is not the case this morning, a day later than it should be.

For someone who prides himself on knowing exactly where he is at all moments, I am hopelessly lost. This is the farthest I have ever been from home, some 10,000 nautical miles from O'Hare Airport, and a few obvious truisms, even cliché exist: to get here you have to be packed in like a sardine, without the olive-oil of course and jet lag is exquisitely real. But thanks to my wife Charlotte who took a great interest in our itinerary, I am reasonably sure things will work out.

For some reason after all the years wanting to come to Japan I found I could not focus on the tour books we procured. It had something to do with the names−not being able to pronounce them. I could not distinguish one place from another. I would read about a destination and though my comprehension is quite good, not remember a thing about it let alone the name.

That is not to say I wasn't instrumental in us getting here. Being the president, through no fault of my own, of a group of Japanese and American tea ceremony enthusiast is the main reason we are here in the first place.

Every five years Chado Urasenke Tankokai Chicago Association ventures to Kyoto to commemorate the death of the founder, Sen no Rykyu. This year, 2005, being the 414th year of his death and our 45th year as a group, is the first time I manage to get enough time and more to the point, money to tag along.

Kyoto is a visually simulating city, an odd mix of concrete and cedar, skyscrapers and sukiya teahouses, dilapidated and pristine. We have churches on every block Japan has ancient temples. These cedar structures have a rich dark patina undoubtedly the result of the acidic nature of the polluted air. Kyoto sits in a basin surrounded by low-slung mountains that occasionally pop into view between the narrow streets and I am afraid that just like Los Angeles and Denver this traps the noxious gases.

Walking through the neighborhoods I see Frank Lloyd Wright's inspiration, I see Florence's narrow lanes with shrines to the Madonna, I see Paris's artisan shop-culture. I do not feel threatened here, but wonder about the need for grates covering windows and secure front gates.

This is a town where you can be confronted with modernity and antiquity within a single step. Coming from the comforting complacency of Chicago's bungalow belt, this town is down right sculptural. Around every corner I see unintended art: a curvaceous jungle gym, a wood and wire scaffold surrounded by discarded tatami mats, round copper down spouts converging into one, elaborate wooden supports lashed to trees to keep them in their place. Each image burns into my mind and on to a memory chip for future reference.

A few days have gone by, most of which I have spent in feudal Japan where royalty never touch the ground except in the chasitsu (tea house) and sit higher than the rest of the rabble. A Japan where water for tea is still drawn from a well and warmed by charcoal, where the kimono is the mandatory dress and life is spent on your knees in elegant small thatched huts.

Of course Charlotte is not interested in kneeling for hours or sitting listening to unintelligible Japanese and thus has made great strides at shopping and familiarizing herself with Kyoto via excellent public transportation. After several days I finally take off my kimono, don a pair of blue jeans and jump on the #9 bus to head downtown to the train station. I get my first big whiff of diesel and feel right back in the 21st century.

Japan, for all its high tech persona, is remarkable quaint. At the Japan Railway (JR) desk three impeccably groomed, identical young women, who speak much better English than they let on, greet us. We are here to turn in our exchange order, validate the JR rail pass that will give us the privilege to ride in the first class green car and to make reservations for our in−country trek.

In America one grumpy clerk pecking away at a keyboard, while tickets shoot out of printer would do this. Efficient, usually−some thing to write about, never. Here in Kyoto there is one lowly computer that nobody refers to and a big book, with well-worn edges, full of maps and tables that is the focus of attention and is used to confirm every transit of our trip.

Suddenly we hear our clerk murmur, "Seems you cannot go this way due to the typhoon”. We look at each other and wonder if our trip of a lifetime is to be ruined and our lives put in danger. Silly us, we were worried about earthquakes and now a big wind is going to get us killed. People at home warned us, but would we listen.

Sensing our growing anxiety she assures us that due to last summer’s storm the tracks are out and disappears through a small corridor for a protracted length of time, finally returning with several small chits that turn out to be our tickets.

But sorry for getting distracted, I was really talking about our rail pass. The cover of this passport-size permit turns out to be an intricately printed and embossed image of Hokusai’s 1833 print “In the Hollow of a Wave Off the Coast at Kanagawa”. I watch with fascination, as the country with the most technologically advanced rail system requires their clerk to sit down and pull over a plastic basket to complete the transaction.

The basket resembles the ones used in Tuscany to collect fresh laid eggs. But unlike Tuscany, this one is full of stamps and inkpads. Five to be exact, the number needed to validate our pass. Each stamp individually adjusted for the appropriate date or number, painstakingly inked and placed in the proper box or on the proper line.

I calculate that at this rate, with a three person staff working from 8AM to 5PM, they will be able to process about 10 clients on a good day. I do not mean to be negative here. Japan runs wonderfully, at least for what we need done, with polite and efficient workers doing their cheerful best within a top-heavy bureaucracy.

Before we use our rail pass we travel with our Tea group on a couple of bus trips. Today Nara is our destination; Uji was yesterday. We are finally out of Kyoto cruising south surrounded by some thing other than apartments, factories and power plants. There are even a few small farms interspersed between the other buildings.

People are out tending their terraced fields. Women in straw hats are sowing seed; working with hoes to cultivate the land and occasionally a small tractor plies the fields. Plots are tiny and the equipment is of similar size−Tonka toy like. It seem impossible that the encroaching sub-divisions and industry will not swallow these postage stamp farms whole, but then Japan will have to import all their food.

We visit big and bigger Buddha’s until finally coming to the biggest. It looks to be about the size of the moon rocket I saw at Cape Canaveral, only wooden. And just when I start to think not another temple, we drive to a site where Noh is being performed on a stage at the front steps of the magnificently restored temple. I had wanted to see Noh on this trip and stood transfixed as one of our group leans over and whispers in my ear, “very little movement”. And she is right: very little movement, odd beat, all men, nasal mono tone singing, damsels in distress, sculptural kimonos and grand theatre.

Before we saw temples though, we backed into an invisible driveway on a country road and found ourselves in the front yard of the 16th generation chasen (tea whisk) maker’s home. They explain to us that parts of the house are six hundred years old and that the family has always lived here. With the next generation running around, the 15th and 16th generation chasen makers and 16th generation’s wife knelt and created a whisk while explaining all the steps.

They make it look easy, but then every thing everybody does in Japan looks easy. I think this is because their study is earnest and sincere. In twenty years of studying chanoyu I do not even come close to living up to their example.

Friday, the end of our first week in Japan comes quickly and as the bus nears Kyoto after a day of sight seeing, many of our companions begin to leave at various train stations along the way to visit family and friends in other areas of the country. It is sad to say sayonara to my tea friends, they have been wonderful traveling companions. Though most are expatriates, they have a love and a pride in their country that I have seldom seen in other places I have visited.

Chanoyu, the Tea Ceremony, provides a connection to the world they left behind. It provides a connection to the best of Japanese culture. I am surprised that tea culture, at various levels of sophistication, is reflected on almost every street corner, curio shop, train station mall, home, etc., etc. I can see it in the joinery work at the train station platform, in the plastic green ice cream cones in front of the sweet shops, in the conductor bowing as he enters and leaves the train car.

Before I left for Japan my teacher told me that I would come back with a deeper understanding of Japanese culture that would enlighten my study. This seemed obvious at the time, but it is difficult to put into words the profound effect it has had on me.

Simply, it is similar to when I first practiced chanoyu with kimono. Before I had ever worn kimono I just went through the motions that had been prescribed for me and afterward, well it all just made sense and the movements became instinctual, allowing the intellect to concentrate on other aspects of tea.

2

We finally get on our own and head for Koya-san. This we do with mixed emotions. While traveling with the group we felt in a cocoon, protected and looked after by our friends, but now we will have to face Japan and deal first hand with our lack of language skills.

Koya-san has a spectacularly eerie mountaintop cemetery with over 250,000 ancient and modern souls buried within a native forest of towering cedars. Dark, damp, lichen and moss covered with a hint of cedar and pine in the air, until the odor of incense points to the existence of the Buddhist temple at the end of the trail. Unfortunately we could not linger, we needed to hurry back through the forest due to dinner at the Buddhist Monastery, where we are staying, being served at six.

The next day after a night spent on the cold mountaintop our brains are muddled with blurry vision, stiff backs, sore muscles and indigestion running a close second. Koya-san did it and the Buddhist Monastery where we ate, slept and prayed at didn't help either.

The Buddhist temple takes in guests like the convents in Italy that provide shelter for the faithful on pilgrimage. It is a pilgrimage to get here. Four inner city trains, a cable car and two buses are negotiated to get to the top Mt. Koya.

All this train taking makes me realize that in Japan you do not just wait for a train, you find the specific sign for your train and car amongst all the other signs for all the other trains that will ever or have ever stopped at the station. Of course this takes entering into five conversations with various officials and unlucky by-standers before you are in queue at the proper place. And I mean in queue.

There is a protocol for when you can be pushy and barge on to a train and when you just get in line and wait. Any train with seats that sit fore and aft−be polite, any train where you sit facing each other−feel free to push and shove. But I admit, even in central Tokyo at the height of rush hour there is not a lot of bad behavior, crowding yes, but people still maintain a high level of civility.

I could not help notice the many commuters sleeping on trains; heads slumped on to the shoulders of their seatmates. You'd think you were in Italy where no one eats dinner until 11 at night, but then again no one is sleeping on trains in Italy lest hoodlums carry you and your loved ones away, but as far as I can tell no one is being hijacked here. More likely it is due to sleeping on tatami mats that has made this a country of insomniacs, only able to catch up on their sleep in public.

Next we move on to Kanazawa, an industrious looking city on the western border of Japan not far from the coast. The city has a strong history of tea and the making of tea utensils. When Charlotte put this on our schedule we had no idea that one of the Gyotei-sensei (professor) who was my teacher during our stay in Kyoto is the second son of a famous family of ceramist.

His family apprenticed with the 4th Raku generation and moved to Kanazawa in the 1600's to make tea utensils for the Shogun. The tenth generation of the family is still making exquisite ceramics and of course tea ware. Their trademark is a rich amber glaze call ame-gusuri.

During my teaching session in Kyoto, sensei asked where else I would go in Japan. When I replied Kanazawa he invited us to visit Ohi pottery to see the museum of his family’s pottery. I was to call when getting to town. I did, but unfortunately he was leaving to go back to teach in Kyoto Sunday night. He asked us to come to the museum for a visit anyway; his family would be there to greet us.

We arrived after spending a cold morning wandering around town. First we went to the Kenrokuen Tea garden that, well I am not exactly sure how to describe the breath of the garden with every leaf in place, every 400 year old tree’s limb supported by a complicated web of lashed on poles, the first fountain built in Japan and on and on.

Second we went to the market; all kinds of weird expensive seafood and thirty dollar melons. Third, a sweet shop that made sweets before there was sugar in Japan. Fourth and fifth and who can remember, but the Ohi family I will not forget.

After the usual confusion due to, what I like to call the Tower of Babel syndrome, we were shown to the museum and set free to wander on the three floors of mainly tea bowls dating from before our country was founded and a few other art objects. Once finished and not knowing what else to do, we returned to the front desk and were lead into the family’s tearoom for a sweet and a bowl of matcha (thin green tea).

There my teacher’s wife and his mother met us. While his wife made us feel welcomed and described the various treasures, his mother stood and stepped out for a moment. She returned a grand mother carrying our teachers beautiful plump six months old with jet-black hair standing straight up. This baby girl put all the other artwork to shame.

As you probably know by now if you have been reading my previous stories, you always have a sweet before having matcha. We had heard legend of the sweets in Kanazawa and then one suddenly appeared before us.

How do I describe this golf ball size morsel? It almost looks like a hollowed out gourd except maybe it is wrapped in some type of pastry or maybe a little basket or eggshell topped with tri-color ribbons. I would need to attend the Iowa City Writer’s Workshop to do this one little sweet’s description justice.

But let me continue as best I may. When you eat a moist tea sweet you divide it into three pieces with a small pick that is usually provided. I use a little metal pick I keep stashed in my kaishi. Kaishi are checkbook size folded stacks of thick white paper that are used to place sweets on and for general clean up purposes during tea.

Matcha was brought and served to us by sensei's wife. The chawan I drink from was made by the father of the present generation. It was black similar to raku bowls but was made in the style of Korean bowls with a wide mouth that narrows down to a tallish unglazed base.

The second chawan that Charlotte receives her tea in was more traditional, with a wide mouth and straight sides resting on a short stand. It has Ohi pottery’s signature amber glaze with circular curlicues shapes pressed into the bowls side.

The chawan, their hospitality and that baby girl are priceless memories. To be honored as such is truly the meaning of ichigo, ichie−one meeting, one time.

3

Off to the mountains again, Takayama is our destination today. I wait, camera in hand as the train pulls into the station, but this train does not look like the usual bullet train. Our reservation is for car #2 and sure enough the second car's entrance stops right at the allotted spot, so we instinctively board.

Please let me explain some thing here. When you arrive on the platform to board your train the work has just begun. Maybe this seems odd to me because as a nation we are not typically long distance train riders. We are in our cars or on planes or in cars driving to planes.

In Japanese train stations there are multitudes of signs specifying where trains and their cars will stop on the platform i.e., Train A /Car 1, Train A/Car 2. Given that the train stops for one minute and 8 second (believe me I timed it) at each stop, it is imperative that you be in the exact place to board, in queue of course.

The only people exempted from this standard practice are the ninety-pound, unmarried, twenty something females known in Japan as “parasites” for their proclivity at living off their parents. Highly coiffured with six-inch heels they prance to the front of the line, into the train like a gaggle of geese and drone on until finally exiting with a flair.

The signs are mainly in Japanese characters except for a few of the more modern stations that service the shinkansen, otherwise known as bullet trains. We have become adept at recognizing the shapes of the characters, but not their meaning and can usually find the proper place to board.

I find odd my sincere need to acknowledge every Westerner I see. In Chicago I can go months without ever looking up, but here there is an instant bond between travelers. Of course, you can tell the long time Western residents. They will never signal back, having I am sure with much effort, habituated themselves to the environment. Reminds me of waving to other VW Beetle drivers in the 1970’s when the car made its first appearance in the USA.

The other odd thing is this train of ours, the train that is to take us into the mountains, is spewing diesel from the top of each car. Seems down right primitive compared to the sleek electric trains we have been on, but once inside it is redeemably plush.

We settle in, the train starts to roll and it is then we realize we are facing backward. A bit disorienting especially as the train picks up speed. Our initial response is to turn the seats around to face forward. Turn the seats around you say? Earlier in the day when our train pulled into the station one way and left another, the entire car stood up and immediately rotated their seats in the right direction to face forward−lock step.

So now on this train, we stand up and rotate our seat, but notice everyone else is sitting drinking beer and eating lunch out of bento boxes. Maybe they know something we do not, which of course they do. At the next stop the train takes off in the opposite way and we are facing forward. No need for motion sickness bags on this leg.

Morning and breakfast come early in Takayama. Our meal is served on wooden trays with no less than thirteen different dishes used to present the various types of tofu, pickles, fish, roots, seaweed, broths, not to mention the prerequisite runny eggs, rice and yogurt with strawberry. Add these dishes to the plates used during dinner and we are probably up to thirty unique pieces of ceramics. Where do they store all this stuff in these tiny homes?

We walk up to the Old World Wisconsin of Japan to view rustic homes gathered from all over Japan−we should have taken the bus. We walk up to the ruins of a castle−we should have taken the bus. We take the bus down to the historic center of town−we should have walked.

The town lies in a basin between two high hills and it has retained its agrarian roots. Walking from store front to store front we are drawn on by the smell emanating from sake and miso brewers and by the artisans making everything from paper to dolls to fine lacquered pieces.

Takayama, the little mountain village is not really a village, it has grown up. We are in the old section of town, staying in a pricey ryokan (don't pronounce the “r”) otherwise known as a Japanese Inn. Think bed & breakfast with dinner, tatami mats and your own server. As every thing takes place in your room, someone is needed to rearrange the furniture every morning and night.

The fourth night on our own I reach my limit of raw fish. Well not just raw fish, but raw any thing that ever swam in the ocean or scurried on the ocean floor. Charlotte, a real trooper up to now, finally balked at the raw octopus with half its head, brains and all beautifully arranged in a fashion that only a Japanese chef can. We requested no raw fish for our next dinner and a Western breakfast due to our confrontation with the little creature. It packed a visual punch.

After two days, we board the train in Takayama and proceed to wind down the river valley toward the sea. Today it’s Tokyo or bust. Up in the mountains it is cold and rainy with the clouds obscuring our last views of the mountain scenery, but I imagine the weather will be different down on the coast and it turns out to be warm and sunny.

The Japan that I am seeing race by my window is a megalopolis. Just when I think there will be some wide-open spaces, the train comes out of a tunnel and there is another city. Of course I am talking with limited geographical knowledge, but in the onsen (hot tub or hot spring) a trekker from Montreal confided in me his disappointment with the wide gap between his image of an ideal Japanese landscape and its reality.

While we trekked around the outskirts of Takayama we saw great snowy peaks off in the distance and even warnings of bear. I imagine if one showed its face some one would figure out how to serve up the various parts, except maybe the teeth, claws and bone, for dinner and snacks with beer. Nature seems far removed, but the splendor of Japan lies in the small touches.

Traditional homes amongst the concrete, the container gardens sprouting from the stair steps of every home, the manicured pine and cedar trees reaching out from behind small walled-in compounds, the care with which every plate of food is arranged and served and for that matter the care with which every cash transaction takes place, the exotic to sublime flower arrangements in store windows and in all the small street side shrines so tenderly cared for.

These touches and the genuine congeniality of the Japanese people more than make up for the urban sprawl. I have traveled a bit and the Japanese rival the Irish for their gentle, endearing nature except it is present in a formal sense. By this I do not mean stuffy, but like the tea ceremony, it is codified and offered with the heart.

I sit on tatami writing this, looking out through windows placed at eye level in the shoji screens that line our space, viewing our room’s small gardens on either side, listening to water flowing into moss covered stone fountains from bamboo pipes.

The gardens are still secured for winter. The trees are fastened to stakes with handmade straw ropes; pine boughs are intertwined to provide some color and texture. This is presented on a ground of bark and bamboo fences, opaque to the outside world.

This is a world unto itself. It gives me an idea of just how isolated you can get in your little or large, depending on the size of your check book, compound. I feel comfortable here because it feels like I am in a boat.

A boat confines, but also offers the possibility of a wider world, a direct experience with nature. This room does the same, except offers a direct experience to an inner world that is just as expansive, if not more so and without the worry of the anchor dragging.

We have traveled a couple of hundred miles from Japan’s Alps to Tokyo and as we approach the capital of Japan, the coast becomes a perpetual city. Of course this is all I see from the train and each train we have taken, starting with the cable car at Koya-san, gets faster and faster.

Our train into Tokyo is not the fastest and it makes a few stops along the way, but on the last leg of our journey it picks up speed until I am feeling uneasy. As we accelerate, the tailored gentleman seated in front of me leans over his wife to shut the window curtain and I hear Mozart coming from his earphones.

This may help him alleviate the stress of traveling at these speeds while still on terra firma, but I find it hard not to stare out the window. I marvel at how much real estate is passing by and cannot stop looking even if it is unsettling.

Tokyo turns out to be a safe well-run city. We camp in a 5-star hotel overlooking the Imperial Palace and decompress for several days. My nephew Nick, who has been teaching English to the youth of Japan for a year in a half, shepherds us around.

We finally catch up with the elusive cherry blossoms and rub noses with the crowds that they attract. The white blossoms remind me of the last snowfall in spring; big fluffy flakes that disappear quickly into the warming soil.

Now I am sitting in a vehicle moving at three times the speed of the shinkansen, burning kerosene instead of electricity from a fast breeder reactor. We are over Montana dropping down into Chicago’s airspace and having fitfully slept across the Pacific Ocean I have the illusion of feeling refreshed.

Some trips are fun, some stressful, some life altering. This was all three, though in my present state of jet induced fog I doubt I can do justice to the task of recounting why.

Kyoto and tea culture, sumi (charcoal) warming mizu (water), potters and chasen (tea whisk) makers, four hundred year old chawan (tea bowl), industrial tea processing, one hundred foot tall Buddha, eight-course tofu dinner, the delight of friends, wearing kimono for days at a time in rain or shine, delivering a speech and a toast, living on tatami for a week, temple vegetarian cooking, fresh beer poured well, tiny purple raw squid that kept appearing at every meal and bowing, bowing, bowing. It was a real joy to spend two weeks with such gracious people.

Spirits

Japan is a country of spirits. I saw them everywhere: in temples, in homes and small street-side shrines, even in the guise of little cartoon-like creatures that are so pervasive. Though I have immersed myself in Japanese culture since a teenager, I do not think I would have come away with this feeling had I not lately traveled to Japan.

What differentiates spirits in the West from spirits in Japan is that most Westerners considered spirits malevolent. They are the things that go bump in the night and we are taught very early on in life, to run from them. As far as I can tell, even horrific demons in the East receive respect.

This recently came to mind while watching Miyazaki's Spirited Away. I sat in amazement at how a cute little girl bowed to one monster after another while I recoiled in fright. She refused to be intimidated and carried on with her mission.

There is a spirit in Japan, for lack of a better word, that I could not quite grasp. I felt it in my soul, but not in words; it is another world, an under current in the general culture. Not hidden like the occult in the West, but exposed. A part of the Japanese soul that is visible for all to see. The spirits live comfortably, just part of everyday life, as members of the family.

In the West our relationships with spirits are on more formal terms. Just think of the biennial sightings of the Virgin Mary in Chicago, once discovered the images are treated with a mixture of awe and disbelief. Communing with spirits is extraordinary here rather than ordinary.

That said my mother-in-law, Tillie, has recounted stories of a friendly ghost that resided in her house as a little girl growing up in Sumter, South Carolina. This being was just there, walking the halls and is spoken fondly of, as if it were the family cat coming and going as it pleased.

The veneer of Western civilization slowly lifted during my two weeks traveling in Japan. l began to see, maybe sense is a better word, layer upon layer of culture. This is palpable for me. I do not have to intellectualize it. In 1973 after vowing not to return to college until I acquired the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic, I spent six months in another ancient land with the trappings of the West obscuring the underlying culture.

Traveling the length and breath of Israel, from the Golan Heights to Ras Muhammed at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula, I sensed the presence of spirits. Once in Jerusalem at the Wailing Wall I walked into a passage surrounded by Orthodox Jews bedeck in tefillin, bowing back and forth as they offered up their Sabbath prayer.

As I made my way through this morass, feeling out of place amongst the faithful, I peered down a meter-square floodlit hole excavated in the temple floor, at artifacts crushed into thin layers like a fine Bavarian tort. The strong light faded before the bottom was revealed, but even then I appreciated that this represented ages and ages of the previous inhabitant's life work, now reduced to dust.

The layered deposits remind me of my first view of the Grand Canyon from Mather Point. Gazing across the canyon at the strata exposed by the cutting action of the Colorado River on the slowly rising land, I find myself awe struck. In Jerusalem the layers represent a continuum of thousands of years of civilization, in the Grand Canyon millions of years of nature.

Though most of the historic and geologic details are lost on me, this heritage is an intrinsic part of each and every person in the East. The knowledge, though not schooled in many cases, is a very comfortable part of every day existence in the Middle East and Japan.

I make a mistake by separating culture and nature. This is why, despite all my study, spirits do not come easily to me. Ideally Japan commingles its spiritual life with it intellect. Maybe this is the answer to my question why spirits are embraced in Japan rather than exorcized.

Before I landed, after ten hours traveling East across the Pacific, plans for a return trip were forming in my mind. The desire to immerse my soul and intellect in Japan is driven by my need to translate feelings into words.

Frugality

In over twenty years of participating in Chanoyu, the Tea Ceremony, I have had the pleasure of meeting many inspirational people. Amongst the most memorable was Minnie Kubose. Minnie Kubose devoted her life to her students, to her study and to the teaching of Chado, the Way of Tea.

If it were not such a cliché I would say she and her husband, Rev. Kubose, lived like church mice. Sitting in their kitchen I noticed how every morsel of food was savored. The most telling was how the overcooked rice on the bottom of the pan was cherished and saved for the next meal. It occurs to me this may be the Japanese equivalent of cracklings.

For my generation, who grew up with an abundance of food and some extra income to “feed” as the initiation of fast food took hold of the country, this frugality is hard to fathom. Thinking in terms of today, where much of the population is so bloated with junk food that we were forced to purchase a larger scale in my office to accommodate them, it becomes even more implausible.

Growing up in my house the battle cry at each meal was waste not - want not. If that plea went unheeded and the vegetable-du-jour was left uneaten, the less fortunate children of China were invoked to help guilt me into compliance. It seldom worked. I had trouble understanding frugality until I matured and began to realize the sacrifices my parents made to provide me with such a larder.

They had been born in America to parents displaced from Italy due to the deep-seated cycle of war and poverty. Though they would never admit to poverty, their lifestyle reflected their experience as children during the depression, as adults helping win WW II and later working in demanding low-paying industrial jobs.

I wrongly confused their frugality as stinginess. I now understand it stemmed from a respect for hard work and the privileges it provided us. Waste was unacceptable for them considering the long hours they spent laboring.

The concept of frugality presupposes respect for an individuals work. It could be the creation of fine art or the sowing and harvesting of rice. It is the notion that every grain of rice grown should be considered a miracle. That the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, along with the trace elements that make up this complex carbohydrate, gives each grain its own distinct identity and taste.

To get very far a field, all the constituents of rice are derived from cosmic dust, as are we. What could be weirder or more wondrous to contemplate than that? I think this is the wider meaning of phrases like universe in a grain of sand or on the head of a pin. Each structure, no matter how inconsequential, contains within it the elemental nature of the universe just waiting to be unlocked.

Natural beings are the epitome of frugality. As I sit and watch the goings on around my bird feeder this becomes apparent. It is filled with tiny thistle seed to help keep squirrels and larger birds away, but nonetheless the feeder collects a menagerie of critters. Sleek gold finches and matronly house finches scuffle to find a perch, while dark-eyed juncos and mourning doves show more cooperation feeding on the tailings from above.

All this activity unfortunately attracts the sinister black cat from across the alley. Despite our best efforts to dissuade this pest from our garden, a lawn full of feathers greets us several times a year.

We have tried wire fences, noxious chemicals, high powered water guns that have more in common with military assault rifles than squirt guns and contemplated murder in darker moments. But nature exploits every niche and sees to it that nothing goes to waste. I realize this is the natural order even if the drama played out in my backyard is by a well-fed cat.

So where am I going with this notion of frugality. Nature itself turns out to be the ultimate miser: the laws of thermo-dynamic state that matter cannot be created or destroyed but only transformed, Einstein’s equation E=mc2 defines an unimaginable economy, high-energy particle physics demonstrates the infinitesimal character of every particle of dust.

Japanese Tea culture instinctively came to understand these fundamental truths. Sen no Rikyu, the founder of the tea ceremony in the 16th century, changed Chanoyu from an ostentatious pursuit to the personification of frugality. Tea bowls molded of rough clay, huts constructed of straw, mud and reeds, ladles and scoops fashioned from strips of bamboo; the irony is that frugality is taken and turned into treasure.

Wavelets

A boat is an outstanding place to ponder, at least when not crouching in the bilge covered in oil. It is my idea of an artist colony for one. Similar to institutions that sponsor artists in stately old mansions high in the mountains or in the flinty woods of the northeast, allowing them pursue their work isolated from life’s mundane tasks.

Of course, on the boat I have provided myself with a grant to sit and look out of the pilothouse. No one has to recognize my talent, and I do not have to submit a portfolio for anonymous judges to review. Just sitting and looking is my preoccupation, and while on the water simple things become important. Things like the surface of the water.

Nestled in the harbor wavelets predominate my visual field. The lake requires attention to Mother Nature: wind, water, clouds and waves. It requires all my concentration for navigation and for monitoring the fickle weather. These tasks become the preoccupation when underway. There is seldom time for contemplation.

The harbor relieves me of such duties and allows me to think about smaller, dare I say more inconsequential details. A harbor is a refuge that tempers the weather and lulls us into complacency. This is lost on many new boaters, drawing them out into uncomfortable, even dangerous encounters with the lake.

In my early days of boating and occasionally even now, when passing the red and green towers demarcating the harbor from the lake; if the weather is foul a sick feeling in my gut brings the realization that I should have never ventured out in the first place. And to make matters worst, once out it can take an agonizingly long time to get safely back and snug in your slip. Believe me when I say this, it is from hard won experience.

My point here is the minutiae of every day life, the things that make up the environment we become habituated to. As I sit, absorbed in the scene at the end of a long boating season, the surface of the water is disturbed by steady droplets of rain, by diving gulls, alighting Canadian geese and preening mallards, and by the death throws of the last few remaining salmon.

Wavelets radiate out from the nidus of raindrops in two groups of perfect concentric circles. The circles interact with the other ringlets created by the chilling October rain and intersect with waves generated from strong northeast winds and from the wakes of the few craft that still reluctantly ply the increasingly cold water.

The infinite variation, mind boggling as it is, follows physical principle and I am sure a physics professor has written equations to explain the phenomena. For me the changing nature of the universe is reflected on the surface of the water. It makes plausible the cliché that monarchs flapping their wings in the Yucatan can change the path of a hurricane.

Because of my interest in Japanese culture, especially chanoyu the tea ceremony, I take for granted that all this detail is not to be taken for granted. Nothing is as simple as it appears and everyday, even every second, is our last never to be repeated.

If it were a bright and sunny day my musings would take on a different tone. But today with winter, and the isolation that it brings not far away, these ponderings open up a rich world of experience that is always at our backdoor, but usually ignored in favor of images provided by the travel channel.

It makes searching for paradise in far-flung places unnecessary and relieves me of the burden of expectations. Things are just what they are…glorious, whether sitting in the pilothouse on a cold raining fall day, shoveling snow in my alley on Talman Avenue or walking amongst the graves under a canopy of ancient cedars on Mt. Koya-san.

Aimlessness

The first task of the day, after a cup of cappuccino, is to round on patients in the hospital. For those of you who have ever had the misfortune of being in the hospital, whether as a patient or as a practitioner of the art of medicine, you know the seeming aimlessness of much that goes on within the confines.

Having worked and studied in many institutions over decades of training and practice, I still find myself in awe of the shear mindlessness of much that goes on. I chalk it up to corporate culture, each hospital steeped in its own tradition, carries on in its own way.

But I digress, in medical circles the students term for aimlessness is "scut work". Examples being never-ending histories and physicals, interminable note writing, fetching any thing from Swans-Granz catheters to donuts and coffee and the most annoying of all, didactic education in the form of morning report and lectures given throughout a day that is already seriously overbooked.

Years ago I read a famous book called Zen and the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel. This book, as I remember it, is basically a thesis on scut work and how the protagonist anguishes over the difference between his idealized concept of the teacher/master and the realities of his apprenticeship. There is much second-guessing by the main character that, without giving away too much of the story jeopardizes his relationship with his teacher.

The narrative is centered on his perceived privilege as a student. In medicine and I think in the Japanese sense of education, respect and privilege are reserved for teachers and earned by students. This contributes a vital link to the training process, producing confident, mature professionals that will some day replace their mentors.

Aimlessness is a fallacy for any serious student and thus the reason it is fought against so rigorously. But aimlessness, at least the way I think of it, is what teachers strive for. It is similar to the aphorism, knowledge for knowledge’s sake. I think of it as a koan: the more an idea is concentrated on, the less chance there is it of ever being understood; the less effort given to solving it, the more futile the attempt.

We have all spent hours, even days, memorizing our notes and taking exams, but as the hours pass it is difficult to remember what was so judiciously studied. Facts are memorized and forgotten, but concepts are absorbed and it is in this that aimlessness is invaluable.

In Chanoyu, the tea ceremony, there is a place, and I think an idea, called mizuya. It translates as kitchen or maybe pantry. It is the physical space where various utensils, and oneself, are readied for the preparation of tea.

For initiates and advanced students of tea much time is spent in the mizuya. The Thirteenth Grand Tea Master, Ennosai, wrote that the mizuya is the training ground for the tearoom. It was here engrossed in mundane tasks similar, in spirit; to the scut work performed by medical students that chado (the Way of Tea) began to infuse into my soul.

Students need to put time in, doing whatever work their teacher deems necessary. Of course there is no reason not to gripe. It is a fine tradition to be shared with your colleagues as long as you remember that the educational process, however chaotic, has been honed over hundreds of years and is probably the same training that your mentor endured and complained about.

It is the need to master commonplace tasks that makes chanoyu and medicine so hard to pass on superficially. Short cuts leave both student and teacher unfulfilled. The vast under estimation of just how much “blood, sweat and tears” goes into either pursuit is one of the main reasons that chanoyu and pre-med have such high attrition rates.

But one day if you persevere with your study, as you enter the mizuya the fragrance of damp cedar, bamboo and linen will become evident, it is a fragrance so infused into our minds that we would sense it even if it were not there. Once preparations are complete, tea is made and served as the earth takes another aimless spin around its axis.

White Noise

I write this sitting on the deck of my boat at the entrance of Montrose Harbor. It is a warm Sunday afternoon in August and I am trying to read. Out here in the sun there is a constant stream of watercraft passing before me, creating a monotonous din similar to the black boxes you can buy that produce white noise to help lull you to sleep.

As the day goes by transitioning through twilight and finally night, the boats are tucked into their slips, the boaters depart for where about unknown, the police chase the hangers-on out of the park and the sound of cars on Lake Shore Drive surface to replace the din of the passing vessels at the harbor mouth. It may be blasphemous to say, but noise emanating from the speeding vehicles on LSD is a good imitation of surf breaking against the pristine shores of Florida’s Panhandle or the barrier islands of the Carolina's.

During my recent trip to Japan I noted that the country is immersed in white noise. From the tinkling fountains just outside our room in the ryokan’s (traditional Japanese inn) we stayed in to the water streaming past every door in the quaint mountain town of Takayama or the rushing streams coursing through the metropolis of Kanasawa. There is some thing comforting and oddly motivating in the constant flow of cold mountain water in Japan’s cities and countryside as it searches for its final destination in the sea.

And the one thing I am most familiar with about Japan, chanoyu, the tea ceremony, has a multitude of sources for white noise. The sound present from numerous objects used during the preparation of tea: some natural, others man-made. I even think the faint hint of incense that lingers in the tearoom synergistically fosters the calming effect that white noise tends to produce.

There are several different schools of chanoyu and the Urasenke tradition, of which I am a member, has the largest presence outside of Japan. We visited the headquarters this year and took instruction in tea for two mornings from several gyotei sensei (professors). To better accommodate us, our group of thirty teachers and students is split into beginning and advance groups. The sessions are held in tearooms located in Urasenke's 400-year-old compound in Kyoto.

After being introduced to our instructors a short orientation is given and I settle in with my small class. I kneel as best I can in the tearoom listening intently and watching my fellow students perform the specific teas that were assigned to them. Though unable to see through the shoji screen walls, we are surrounded by an ancient manicured garden and the sounds of the garden, and the nature they represent, begin to filter in to my consciousness.

The quiet cacophony distracts me and I find it hard to concentrate on the lesson at hand, but I am not sure anyone else in the room notices my inattention or the sounds of the out side world. Voices identify themselves: birds, squirrels, insects and the rustling of the leaves from a warming spring breeze.

I am hearing, as water pours from the ladle into the chawan to start the purification process that begins the tea ceremony, a life and death drama begin and play out. A struggle between the magnificent crows that are ever-present in Japan and a mother squirrel protecting her off spring.

As I listen, matcha is whisked into hot water, placed on the tatami mat before a beautifully kimono-clad student and I have one of those full circle moments. Here, surrounded by the ultimate expression of human culture and sophistication, while just a breath away through paper-thin walls, nature in a raw expression of survival is playing out.

At that moment, as if on cue, the teacher abruptly slides the shoji screen open and the outside world rushes in. At once breaking the spell the sound has had on me and at the same time confirming my thoughts that we are rooted in the natural world and that for all our sophistication, we are not separate from nature and its consequences.

Words

Words come in many guises. They exist in a multitude of divergent images. Ancient cuneiform clay tablets and pixilated computer screens compete for our attention. But I am not concerned with grammar or meaning, more with symbols.

Oriental script is distilled pictographs, fractionated images from life. The first inkling of words I imagine as cave drawings that quickly became stylized. Our ancestor’s images and thus their thoughts are apparent. Images of their hands, the animal they hunt, their weapons and the gods they worship repeatedly appear. But when it comes to kanji, the Chinese alphabet, I find any attempt to casually decipher the characters futile.

I have recently tried to understand the different genre of Japanese script. Many years ago a friend, who spent half of the 80's teaching English in Japan and Korea and in the process became fluent in both languages, took an ad from a Japanese magazine and dissected it for me.

The complexity of the ad overwhelms me: hiragana, katakana, kanji and English are all combined to produce a visually stunning ad. We use many fonts in English, but a common script, whereas in Japan you are dealing with multiple alphabets.

While attending Southern Illinois University in the 1970's I became friends with a young women from Oman. She was working on a second master’s degree, this time in mathematics, trying to stave off an inevitable arranged marriage to her cousin.

In describing her path to SIU she related the political Diaspora her family traveled as they moved from Madagascar to India, finally settling in Oman. During her journey she learned French, English, Arabic and a smattering of other languages. I was very envious of her linguistic skills till one day she confided in me her difficulties forming thoughts.

I could not image why, she was very articulate. But to her, the lack of mastery of any one language confused her thoughts. She did not know what language to think in. Each language presented her with a different worldview.

Thoughts are made up of vocabulary, a lexicon of words and symbols. Which brings me back to cave drawings. How different our worldview would be if our alphabet were one of images as opposed to a series of straight and curved lines. It is the difference between Descartes and Gautama Buddha, between symphonic form and the ragas of India.

Perception within the same language is dicey; think of the bible or the constitution. Interpretations are constantly in flux. Now imagine transferring information between the east and the west. Many of us have experienced the translation of one kanji that can continue on for minutes to hours.

I regret my lack of language skills. I do not know if it is laziness or a lack of IQ, but I seem doomed to experiencing a culture without the ultimate inclusion of words. It separates me from the culture, but I try not to concern myself with this perceived deficit. The aphorism, one meeting/one time, behooves me to make the best of every moment. Life happens once, second by second. I do my best my best with the knowledge and skills I have and get on with the art of living.

We see, interpret and describe, reforming words as need be. Words are used to delve into the minds of the great apes. Once we have a common alphabet, composed of both words and images, it opens up their world to ours or maybe visa-versa. The popular press was shocked at how much humans and the great apes have in common. This use of words forced a reevaluation of the ethics involved with our interaction with these animals.

In a way, our Western language is once removed from the objects we describe. I think of the structure of DNA and wonder if the image of a double helix was known to the ancient Chinese what the kanji would look like. By the time we have a word we are several steps remove from the actual object. Somehow kanji seem more direct and thus contain more information, information that leads to speculation, interpretation and thought.

I will always cherish the memory of the pondering I naively initiated between Rev. and Minnie Kubose (my tea teacher) by simply asking what the scroll hanging in the tokonoma meant. The unintended consequence of which was I got to rest my knees for the twenty or so minutes it took to come to the conclusion that it would take another hour to really do justice to the topic.

So what is my point, for once I am not sure. I think I will just end with 言 (gen).

Ambiguity

One thing that fine art has in common is ambiguity. I cannot take credit for this idea. My teacher Darrin Hallowell, a fine sculptor, made this comment when looking at one of my little creations. We were discussing my latest sculpture at our end-of-semester critiquing session. I do not suppose that my art is fine but only comment how the work has evolved over the three years I have been taking his metal sculpture class at the Evanston Art Center.

I added a small detail to the edge of the base, an uncommon gesture in my pieces thus far. This seemingly insignificant addition, a small piece of scrap steel cut from another sculpture, drastically changed everyone’s impression of the work. #24 is the name of the sculpture, the twenty-fourth effort of my short career.

The addition changed the perspective, the form and how the eye relates to the structure. In other words, the whole is suddenly more than the sum of its parts. This is what ambiguity is all about. It is the itch you cannot scratch. Why this is so, well that is the question, isn't it?

Living in Chicago affords the opportunity to exercise one’s aesthetic sense. Every day on the commute home, while creeping in traffic, I look up to see Buckingham fountain and the skyline looming behind and think, what a wonderful place to be trapped. The majesty and power of the fountain and the skyline are juxtaposed by the raw nature of Lake Michigan.

Sitting in the car, I ponder of the Art Institute’s collection housed only a block away. My mind focused not on the famous impressionist works that have become so familiar, but the works of Klee, Kelly, Rothko and the Clarence Buckingham Japanese print collection.

What does this art mean? What is the artist trying to tell us? I plead ignorance. This ignorance, this uncertainty is what the human condition is all about, what religion and philosophy are all about. It is what makes them compelling.

The need for an inaccessible inner sanctum keeps us interested. Every religion and for that matter every social movement understands this. Think of the Kremlin and Lenin's tomb to see a modern day examples. To keep our interest the hidden knowledge can be accessible only to a chosen few, but the act of making art allows all of us a glimpse into that world. One of the first things a totalitarian state does is to suppress its artist to that end.

As a child attending Catholic school I sensed the sacredness of withheld knowledge and needed to get close to the mystery. This led me to become an altar boy and though I never mastered the Latin phrases, the mystery of the mass held my attention. Only when mass was turned around by the Vatican Consul in the 1960’s, expunged of Latin with the organ replaced by guitars, did I lose interest.

The ambiguity was replaced by cold hard reality and the art lost. So what does this have to do with anything remotely Japanese? I have often wondered what brought me to chanoyu, the tea ceremony and I think it is the need to recover lost ritual.

In my mind the Latin of the mass is replaced by Japanese; the chalice is replaced by a rough pottery tea bowl or chawan; the wine by the thin frothy tea called matcha; the host by the sweet served to guest prior to partaking the tea.

Of course you can draw the analogy just so far, but for me - though it took years to realize it - chanoyu fills the void left by the modernization of the Catholic ceremony. And what I find compelling is that chanoyu, though based on the principles of Zen Buddhism, is a secular discipline open to all.


The principles of wabi-sabi in chanoyu, rustic and elegant at the same time, contribute to the sense of mystery. What is it about thatched huts, rough earthen bowls and ephemeral flowers that hold such fascination? I will never know and that is how it should be.

Let physicist ponder the nature of the real universe. There is no need to unlock the nature of the artistic universe. The questions are unanswerable and should remain so. Let ambiguity prevail and steep your self in it, for it is part of the beauty.

Rikyuki 2005

Certain events focus our energy. In Japan for the first time, I am in Kyoto to attend Rikyuki, the 414th commemoration of the death of Sen no Rikyu, the founder of the Urasenke Tradition of Tea. I have been planning this trip for over a year and as with all trips time accelerates the nearer I get to lift off, leaving me sleep deprived for the first few days due to the all-night packing session I had promised not to put myself through.

Add to that jet lag, a fifty-year-old body that has some difficulty adapting to new sleeping arrangements and strange food, and despite all my efforts to focus on the upcoming events, I get lost in the minutiae of every day life. But as I approach the gathering point for Rikyuki at Urasenke headquarters, thousands of pastels colored kimonos suddenly appear and I am back on track again.

Being naive to the Japanese language, I take much of what is going to happen on faith. Before entering I am given a card with five perforated tickets denoting I know not what, but imagine five distinct events. This helps to focus my attention and gets me thinking about how long I will actually have to kneel, a major point of discussion during the planning stage of the trip.

It begins to rain and to the mix of spectacularly colorful participants, hundreds of umbrellas suddenly appear from nowhere. The background of earth tones and subtle shades of green enhance the color and design of the individual kimonos, no two alike.

We are guided through the Helmet Gate, the entrance of the Urasenke compound, the ultimate Japanese Tea house and garden. I think the rain, annoying as it is, heightens the experience. The fact that there are hundreds of people in front and behind us does not diminish splendor of it all.

A faint hint of incense is detected as we are lead into the main tearoom and see Zaboshi Oiemoto, the present Grand Tea Master, quietly pour hot water for tea. Behind him hangs a famous scroll with the image of Rikyu kneeing with fan in hand. This is the first of many priceless objects I am going to see, touch and be served tea in.

Rikyu and the subsequent 15 Grand Tea Masters have done much to diminish the ostentation of the original tea ceremony with the philosophy of wabi-sabi (rustic elegance) and have instead given us such icons as the Raku tea bowl and the thatch tea hut. For all the awe surrounding these objects, they are utilitarian and designed to be used. Chanoyu, the tea ceremony, means hot water for tea and the utensils are the vessels to achieve that end; no more, no less and there-in lies their greatness.

Once the ceremony for Rikyu is completed, the Grand Tea Master hands out certificates of achievement and the recipients are allowed to enter the shrine to Sen no Ryiku. As this is takes place the Chicago Association, who I have traveled to Japan with and I are directed to another room and receive the first gift of the day and the second ticket is collected.

After a short wait we move again and as the day goes by we use up all the tickets: one for table-style tea, one for lunch, one for tea given by the senior teachers and one for a final gift. It is a whirlwind of activity that passes quickly, so quickly that it is hard for me to recall the exact events.

I do recall having my own interpreter. He is an enlightened gentleman that quietly translates and guides me through the day’s events. I recall being served tea by the aunt of the present grand master and enjoying her informative explanation of the various utensils used to prepare tea. I recall being first guest at tea hosted by the senior teachers and drinking matcha from a 400-year-old chawan (tea bowl), and on and on.

When all the tickets are finally collected, I return to my hotel via one of Kyoto’s meticulous taxis driven by white-gloved cabbie. Urasenke is only three blocks from the hotel, but in kimono and zori walking would be a challenge.

Back in street cloths I wonder what I have done to warrant all the special attention paid to me this day. I think the teachers deserve the honors, not I. After all, what would we do without them to transmit the knowledge gained from 400 years of practicing tea?

Food

The staff of life for most of the world brings images of rolling waves of grain or terraced rice patties. In the western world wheat fulfills this role and for the east oryza sativa, rice predominates.

Go to any up-scale bakery you will find shelves of "artisan" bread. In fact, some of the best bread I have recently had was to be found in coastal northern Michigan catering to the well-heeled tourist on vacation.

Bread that is baked in brick ovens and raised with organic starters ; bread that is heavy enough to construct a bomb shelter with or so light and airy that it is a challenge to cut; bread that come in all sorts of shapes and hues that found with an almost infinite list of ingredients: any thing from cheese, nuts, seeds, fruit to all types of exotic grains. They beg to be devoured, being torn to pieces before ever reaching home.

But here I am thinking about Japanese food or at least my uninformed view of it, and as far as I can tell, bread has almost no part to play in Japanese cuisine. Coming from an Italian background, with its adoration of bread and the craftsmen that bake it, this is hard to fathom.

I am blessed with a mother who despite the fact that she worked, did the laundry and took care of the finances, always delivered to our table a wonderfully made meal in record time and did so night after night. She spoiled me and when it was time to start taking care of myself I just had to eat well and I seemed to know how to cook intuitively.

When I went away to college, I switched to a mainly vegetarian diet and started to discover different types of rice: fragrant basmati, nutty whole grain, silky long grain, gummy short grain and even Italian Arborio (I had not yet been exposed to sushi rice). Each one required different handling and at a time in my life when I had minimal expendable income, experimenting with all these variations of rice did a lot to keep me entertained.



Now I know what your thinking and you are correct, this is not the most exciting way to go through college, but over my years of higher education I made it a point to take time to cook a decent meal for myself every night. It was a time for reflection, relaxation and a time to concentrate on things other than biology, chemistry, anatomy and well, whatever –ology I happened to be cramming into my brain during the semester.

But I am straying from the topic. As a kid growing up in Chicago there was very little exposure to Japanese culture and none to the cuisine. When initially confronted by a bento box in the eighties, my first impression was of a Whitman sampler, a box of colorful candies. I did not know how to approach it, but thankfully had Japanese friends who were able to guide me through the maze of colors and shapes that constitute Japanese food.

The fact that all the food is cold struck me as odd. And then there is the problem of identification. It proved difficult to decipher the main course from the appetizers, the vegetables from the dessert.
The tastes are also confusing and to my uneducated pallet shifted from sweet to salty to sour. I was sure there were subtleties I was missing, but these were mainly lost to me at the time.

As time went by a few Japanese restaurants started to open in Chicago and one quite good one set up shop down the street from my home. The neighborhood I live in has yet to be gentrified, so when an interesting restaurant opens we go check it out.

It was during one of these nights out that a friend told me Japanese food is all about textures, the technical term being mouth feel. I am still not sure if he is right, but when I think about the different types of rice, tofu, sashimi, etc., he may have a point.

My friend is a big fan of some of the odd types, at least to my mind, of sushi and sashimi. Uni has always been big favorite of his, but to me the color and texture are difficult. When I look at uni I think of the saffron robes of Hindu priest and the texture, well I cannot make it out. I admit that I have never tasted it; some how try as I may to muster up the courage, I am incapable convincing myself to eat it.

So I started my exploration of Japanese food with more generic types of dishes: California roll, tempura, udon and have pretty much stayed stuck in my ways, ordering the same type of food except for several times a year at tea related events.

The biggest event of the year is tatezome, the belated New Years celebration that our tea group, Urasenke Chicago Association holds every February. We commonly have sweets and matcha (thin tea) during the presentation of the tea ceremony, then some sake and a bento box for lunch.

I sit next to my teacher at these events and after cracking the lid of the bento box start asking questions. I identify the morsels, compartment by compartment, asking what the food is, if not immediately apparent, and what special significant each one has and how it relates to New Years.

Long life, prosperity and good health are common themes, but each food and each presentation has a tale to be told. I think life must have been very dire and tenuous for most to require so many talismans for good luck and long life.

Given my memory and the complexity of the topic, I wish I recorded the explanations given to me of the contents of the bento box and their significance. The bento box’s culinary heritage reminds me of the way chanoyu, the tea ceremony, encompasses Japanese’s culture heritage. I guess I will just have to show up again at tatezome with my tape recorder and hope that my questions will be tolerated.

Process

The sun is still below the horizon as I change into the loose garb commonly known as scrubs. It is the fourth year of my medical training and I am preparing for the first surgical case of the day. As I walk through the deserted hallways of the hospital, I rehearse tying knots, I recite the names of surgical instruments and I think through the process, the step-by-step order of the operating room (O.R.).

Upon reaching the threshold of the O.R., I shed my outer garment, swallow a couple of power bars and instead of removing my shoes, as in chanoyu the tea ceremony, cover them. Before entering I don a mask and once in, move toward the center of a room that is about the size of an eight mat tearoom.

Introducing myself to the staff, I select my gloves and in a very stylized way take them out of their package and place them in the sterile field without contaminating anything - hopefully. This is all done under the watchful eye of the much-wizened nurses who like their tea sensei counterparts have trained many an initiate.

The wide-eyed patient is wheeled in and I move to help secure them for the procedure. The anesthesiologist works to sedate the patient while I pull the overhead lights in place. Once all is secure, the surgeon walks out to scrub and I follow. Follow is what I have done a lot of these last four years.

Medicine is still an apprenticeship and the teacher, or attending surgeon as they are called, receives respect from the whole gaggle of students, interns and residents. We try to anticipate and follow their every move. This goes without saying, much like in chanoyu we learn by direct observation of our superiors. The Japanese respect for teachers holds true in medical training, even if it has been loss in the wider world.

Now I scrub with arms up as if offering praise. Finger tips first, then fingers, hands, and arms down to the elbow for a good 5 minutes. Soap and water dribble off my limbs into the sink and we all become quiet and introspective. A seemingly mundane procedure, but process is everything. The goal is forgotten. We concentrate on the steps, not missing any crevice. The surgeon is first to finish. Not because he the fastest but out of respect, all others continue till he has completed the task.

Once back in the O.R. a little dance commences. Like dressing in kimono, I have several layers on. I am eased into the outer garment and the circulating nurse secures it. With gloves on, I head for the patient and place my hands on the baby blue sterile field. As in tea, there are definite but at the same time somewhat obscure boundaries. This is the source of much consternation for new students of either discipline.

In tea, hours are spent on your knees in the mizuya (kitchen) practicing the movements and learning how to care for the utensils. In the O.R., hours are spent on your feet unable to scratch that itch or bent in some odd position for hours holding a retractor and finally in suturing, stapling, drilling or whatever the task may be.

Again it is step-by-step. There is a rhythm to it. Somewhere someone may have given me a lecture about it, but I found that watching and listening with an open mind provided the best lesson. One day when you are finally asked to perform, just maybe, if you have watched long enough you will do it without ever having done it before.

I do not think I really understood process before my experience with tea and the O.R. The way the four principles of tea; harmony, respect and purity lead to tranquility. I have always known these abstract concepts had a basis in the physical world because chanoyu is after all, hot water for tea. It is a physical process and all talk and studying is, in the end, valueless without doing. The O.R. has been a defining experience for me. It is the real world with real consequences and the principles and practice of chanoyu fit in effortlessly.

Physicality

Chanoyu, the tea ceremony, is not often thought of as a physically challenging discipline. Unlike the other "-do", such as kendo, aikido, and judo, tea is thought to be a cerebral discipline. Granted it is not aerobically challenging, but the dance-like nature of tea requires much of the physical dexterity and coordination as the above-mentioned pursuits.

The study of tea comes full circle. As you begin training your concentration is limited by the length of time it takes for your feet to go painfully numb. Then an epiphany occurs, one day you realize that you have been sitting for an hour, concentrating and not worrying about when you will get to stand and stretch your legs. Your commitment deepens.

Years go by and despite that fact there is so much more to learn, your physical limitation become apparent. Unlike the start of training there is not much hope of overcoming aches and pains. You simply have to manage them and go on.

Slavishly you go through the motions, trying to get through all the steps in an elegant manner and widened your repertoire. Maturity and experience allow some time for contemplation, so your study takes on a new dimension. You see this in the best entertainers; Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett come to mind. Over the years they lost some of their range and clarity, but their art became more profound.

Tea has made concessions to age, disability and Westerners with the development of ryurei, the tabletop service, in the late 19th century by the 11th Generation Grand Tea Master Gengensai. Ryurei, though somewhat limited in scope, nonetheless provides an opportunity for continued participation in practice despite infirmities and makes the introduction of tea much less intimidating.

Tea in many ways resembles a small theatrical production. It requires setting the stage before each serving and depending on the situation, shoji screens, tatami mats, iron furo (brazier) and kama (kettle) and a multitude of other gear are needed.

For me this gear represents five of the basic elements: water, fire, wood, iron and earth. The iron furo with the crackling wood fire resting on wood ash, the iron kama filled with hot water, the earthen ware mizushashi containing cold replenishing water are but a few things that need to be brought in and set up before tea can commence.

During tea many of these vessels are manipulated and though the ancient founders of tea had impeccable artistic credentials, ergonomics was not one of their strong suits. I worry about my compromised back every time I lean forward to lift the iron water-filled kama from its perch.

For Westerners and I think many Japanese, the fact that anyone can kneel for an extended period of time, do tea and remain placid is an Olympian feat. Envy and marvel fill me as I watch our older members kneel with ease as I sit and squirm. At my best I was probably comfortable kneeling for slightly less than an hour.

The Japanese have a variety of small seats, to put it charitably, to help relieve the stress on their feet and legs. Unfortunately for larger frames these seats do little to stave off distress. I have gone so far as to design and construct my own. A brutish design made out of particleboard but it will work in a pinch.

There is no aggressive physicality in tea, no adversary to compete against, to motivate, to drive you on. It is an intimate study even when fellow students, teachers and guests, surround you. The physical nature of tea is an outward expression of an inner world of harmony, respect, purity and tranquility. Now if I can only get my feet to cooperate.

Sacred space

What is it about the architecture of the Japanese tearoom, the chashitsu, that makes it such a sacred space? The building itself is unprepossessing and rustic. It is how it interacts with its surroundings and how it is used that sanctifies this simple hut.

Sacred spaces have something in common, some thing almost too corny to talk about. They create in us a feeling of oneness with the environment. You feel it in the pit of your stomach, like a moving piece of music.

I have been privy to a few sacred spaces in my life. Sacred as defined by my own secular vernacular. Mather Point in the Grand Canyon, the Bahia Temple in Wilmette Illinois, the Tuileries garden in Paris, ancient summer cabins in the mountains of Norway, the end of the rainbow while traveling up to Mt. Rainer, amongst the rollers in a reefed down sailboat in Lake Michigan, deep in the Sinai desert on the summit of Mt. Moses, standing in the charred remains of the devastated forest on Mt. St. Helens, reaching the foothills of the Rocky mountains, walking through the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, standing with the Slaves while looking toward Michelangelo’s David, the smoky valleys of the Tuscan hills. All of these spaces conspire to mold your vision of the world, as does the chashitsu.

You cannot just get into the chashitsu. You have to take a journey first. You have to go through rights of purification. You have to traverse imaginary boundaries. You look out to distant mountains and cleanse yourself in a still pond. You sit and wait patiently to be summoned. The deep woods sink into your soul.

Then you are allowed to crawl through the chashitsu’s small guest opening (nijiri-guchi) into another world. Only then can the space be appreciated. The room is dim. Not lit by the glow of halogen lights we have become accustom to. There is a hint of incense and if you are lucky there will be a small crackling fire in the furo (hearth).

There is an almost imperceptible ringing, bell like, as the water simmers in the kama, the cast iron kettle. There are tiny flashes of color from the flowers and utensils but mostly you are surrounded by subdued earthen tones.

There is rustling as the guests slide about the room. It is the sound of tabi and silk kimonos gliding on straw tatami mats. Again there is a respite and the space sinks deeper into your soul; wood slides on wood as the shoji screen opens and chanoyu, the tea ceremony begins.

When the tea ceremony is over the host or hostess bows one more time and leaves while the guests are still in the chashitsu. The guests are once again left in silence to contemplate the nature of their surroundings and what has just taken place. They exit the chashitsu and retrace their steps, slowly acclimatizing into the real world.

It is not that the chashitsu is not the real world; it is just a finely crafted representation. It allows one to focus life’s experience on the head of a pin. The chashitsu represents thousands of years of Japan’s cultural development. And for some thing with such cultural weight it has little substantial structure. It would not take much to blow or burn a chashitsu down.

The longer I live the more I realize the impermanence of things: war, floods, earthquakes and fire, natural and manmade disasters. Everything changes. But I do not despair. It is the threat of impermanence that motivates us to retain, foster and pass on culture to our children and students.

This keeps bringing me back to the concept of ichigo, ichie (one time, one meeting). As ritualistic as tea is, you can never expect to repeat your experience. You get what you get out of each experience and do not look back.

Ultimately it is the next generation’s decision whether these constructs of the human hand and mind, these sacred spaces, are retained or discarded. One hopes that they have the fore thought and the comfort of a peaceful world to make the proper choices. But after all it is we that have trained them. We can either take comfort or be anxious about the consequences of the knowledge we have transferred to them.

So in fear of sounding corny again, let me state the obvious, get your children and students out to these sacred spaces. Get them the experience first hand, not virtually. The experience can never be passed on by high definition TV.

Formality

Recently while paging through the Japanese portion of the Chicago Shimpo, a small picture of the leaders of industrialized world caught my eye. They are standing in their suit coats, neckties off and collars open. Though they have different features, the one thing they all have in common is that none of them appear very comfortable with this lack of formality.

My guess is that this picture was staged, by a consensus of their publicist, to show that they are just good old boys having a good old time. Like old friends getting together to have a glass of wine, sake or vodka, smoke a couple of cigars and maybe play a game of poker using the various economies of the world as chips. This started me thinking about the levels of formality in chanoyu, the tea ceremony.

Tea deals with formality in many different ways. Utensils, dress, types of tea, sweets and flowers, as well as the specific procedures performed; all combine to create the appropriate level of formality needed.

One of the many things that surprised me when I first started studying tea was the practice, early in training, of using the daisu. The daisu is a stand used to display chawans (tea bowl) in formal tea services, some of which would only be performed to serve tea to the emperor.

Why teach this level of formality to lowly beginners who in their wildest dreams will never be asked to perform at such events. I think it is done to represent a world that we will never experience but should know exists. It helps to build a foundation and to test our skill in the manipulation of the daisu and the chawan resting upon it. But I have to admit I am only speculating, I am no scholar just an interested layman in the study of tea.

I always try to bring a little light heartedness to any discussion of tea. Tea is generally thought to be a very serious, even stern discipline. I think most people place tea at the level of formality of the Catholic mass. I try to explain to the uninitiated that tea can be as simple as inviting friends over for coffee or as formal as serving tea to an emperor.

During the informal preparations of tea, a sweet and then usucha (thin tea) is served in an atmosphere of congeniality with banter between guests encouraged. The conversation is kept to tea related topics. Gossip and politics are saved for the world outside the chasitsu (tea hut).

This contrasts with more formal ceremonies, where the serious and contemplative nature of tea is represented. The tea served is koicha, a thick mixture of tea and water that is shared in turn by all guests. The dialog is very scripted and reserved for only the host and first guest.

Formality in tea seems directly related to the Japanese sincere respect for teachers. As far as I can tell the lines between relationships are drawn very close in Japan. We in America tend to be a bit more flippant when it comes to our dealings between teachers and students.

A certain level of formality is necessary for the smooth running of tea and well, the world. In my own experience as a physician, formality helps me do a job that at times of dire circumstances requires authority and trust. Formality helps to codify relationships between doctor and patient, teacher and student.

Formality exists to help in the transmission of knowledge. It starts from the Grand Tea Master and works it way down to beginning students. Similarly in medical training where there is nothing more derided than third year medical students new to the hospital floors. All the scut or menial jobs are reserved for them. But these students and the students new to tea are the foundation for the structures above them.

Not much seen on television about the medical profession is valid but for the level of hierarchy depicted; the grumpy senior physician followed by his hand picked fellow, the senior resident down to the intern and then to the medical students. There are well-defined borders to each role and in this way medical training is similar to tea.

You never truly know how much you know or do not know till exposed to followers at differing levels of whatever discipline you practice. I am amazed at how much I have learned from the students I am supposedly teaching. They certainly keep you honest.

So next time you are watching the tea ceremony or for that matter sitting talking with your doctor, think about the formality imposed upon the relationship and see if you think it adds any value. See if you can imagine the experience without the boundaries imposed by our culture.

This brings me back to the world leaders and the formality they inherit with their position. Not only do they, with their open collars, look uncomfortable but also this disquieting feeling is passed on to the viewer. Formality is innate and built into every human endeavor. The structure of tea takes this into account and allows for respect and tranquility, two of the tenets of chanoyu, to take root.

Chado In steel

Please bear with my convoluted story. Back in 1985 I drew a small line drawing called Fjord. After pondering it, I thought it would make a great backyard sculpture. Now understand I have no training in the fine or the not-so-fine arts, but I stashed it away in a crevice in my mind for future consideration. I also had no backyard at the time to put it in.

Another thing stashed away in my mind was a desire to learn how to weld. Don’t ask me why, but I think it might have something to do with a life long fascination with large metal objects: push boats on the Mississippi, tugs, oceangoing freighters, and locomotives. Well you get the idea and I have always wanted to own my own steel boat after living on a wreck of a metal sailboat in my early twenties.

One day I received a flyer from the Evanston Arts Center. Instead of throwing it out as I usually do with these catalogs, I paged through it and noted a metal sculpture class. I have been intrigued by sculpture ever since first seeing the Picasso down on Daley Center. So here was a class offering to satisfy several of my fantasies: welding and art.

Who knew what to expect from a class like this; left brain/right brain, blue collar/white collar, macho/effeminate, dainty/monumental, stuck-up or down to earth. Not knowing any artists or being part of any arts scene I was entering new territory. On top of that, all I really want to do is build a metal boat, so what could I expect to learn from this class. I paid my money and got a slot after trying for about a year to get in and showed up with wimpy gloves, blue jeans, a flannel shirt and my trusty Swiss Army knife.

It turned out that the class was populated with a group of repeating students and a few new faces that were all very talented, helpful and from every walk of life: a house restorer, an architect, an engineer, a real estate broker, a vice president of a metal fabricating company, a graphic artist; a fun and diverse group. The teacher is a practicing sculpture born and raised on an island in Maine; you couldn’t get more down-to-earth.

We all got right into it; he could barely drag us away from the torches to give any instruction. Nobody even practiced, once he showed us the first thing, how to use an oxy-acetylene torch, everyone just started on his or her project. It was as if these people, like myself, had had these projects in mind for years and now finally given the chance to do something about it; well nothing was going to hold them back.

The most telling moment for me was when we had our class on using the arch welder. An arch welder entails every thing your mother ever told you not to do. You are informed very early on never to look into the sun, stick a knife into the toaster or a bobby pin into an electrical socket. You are also reminded to avoid stepping on the third rail (this being graphically reinforced on the nightly news several times a year), never play with fire and not to stand out in a field in a thunderstorm.

The arch welder epitomizes all of the above. Any device where you need to wear quarter inch thick leather gloves, a leather jacket that covers from your neck to below your waist, a mask that your can’t even see out of till you actually start welding and a respirator so you don’t breath in toxic fumes should give you and your mother cause for concern.

It is plugged into a 220V line and fuses steel with an arch of fire 10,000 degrees as the welding rod splatters molten steel that is 2700 degrees. The arch welder does something that you are never supposed to do - create an electrical short. It is something to be prevented at all cost. Needless to say it is an intimidating thing to try and learn how to use. I noticed that a few people never returned to class after using it. Though I had big plans for a sculpture, I wasn’t sure I wanted to include the arch welder after my first exposure to it.

The first way we had learned to work with metal was with an oxy-acetylene torch. There is something elegant about its setup. Everything is made of bronze with all kinds of beautiful little valves and intriguing dials. It has an interesting smell, sort of like the way gas leaking in your house smells. There is a beautiful blue flame within a flame when adjusted properly. And since it is much less rambunctious you don’t need most of the body armor that is required with the arch welder. So I decided that this was the tool for me.

The only problem was that I had gone off and bought 1/4” plate steel for my project and was fruitlessly trying to weld it with the torch. One of my fellow classmates, who had much more experience than I, informed me that if I was ever going to accomplish anything in this class I needed to go use the arch welder with such thick plate steel. With my tail between my legs I went into the room, drew the curtain that protects the rest of the class from the harmful rays and tried to weld my first two pieces of steel with the arch welder.

Now remember you can’t see what your doing at first. Before you start to weld you have to flip the helmet down which basically blinds you till the lightening starts. The rod that does the welding is about a foot long, as big around as a thick piece of spaghetti and is off on the end of this holder wobbling around. One gets ready, set, aims, flips the helmet down and strikes an arch. Usually instead of welding the pieces, the rod sticks and welds itself to whatever you are trying to join together. When this happens you start hearing an ominous buzz coming from the welder. You have connected the circuit and the circuit does not want to be connected. Things start to heat up and one-way or another you have to disconnect, usually by breaking the rod off. But I am nothing if not persistent, so I just kept at it till eventually I got the hang of it.

Pay attention to the steps, reveled in the process, respect your tools and have the humility to listen to your teachers and fellow students opinion about your work. Not a whole lot different than the practice of Tea. Measured, cut, grind and weld for two semesters and end up with three seven foot tall, one hundred and fifty pound sculptures called Fjord, #3 and Chado. What a way to spend the winter.

Details

I have spent much of my professional life looking at X-rays. X-rays mainly of the spine but also of the extremities: hips, knees, shoulders, elbows, wrists, and hands. All the articulating parts that make us function so beautifully. If there is one thing that I have learned, it is that everything on an x-ray is significant. X-rays are but shadows of the human form and every telltale smudge reveals something of the history of the skin surrounding the bones.

Attention to detail is the hardest part of interpreting x-rays to pass on to medical students. At first they are completely overwhelmed by the grayish glow that emanates off the viewing box; searching for some detail to see if the x-ray is even right side up. X-rays have different contrasts: air, water, fat and metal. These are made apparent by a finely gradated gray scale like the blacks, whites and grays in the majestic landscape photographs by Ansel Adams.

The first tendency when viewing a radiograph is to get very close and immediately try to home in on all the details. But actually just the opposite is most appropriate and therefore most efficient. Sit back, take a deep breath, relax and gander over the film as if you are looking out over the hills of Tuscany. Out onto the smoky landscape that Leonardo di Vinci depicted in his paintings. It is then that the subtle abnormalities in the x-ray start to show up and require closer inspection.

But my purpose here is to talk about attention to detail in chanoyu, the tea ceremony. In some respects tea is just the opposite of reading x-rays. The attention to detail comes before viewing the landscape. It seems sometimes that the only purpose of serving tea is to provide an excuse to immerse yourself in the details.

The steps become the compelling part of the whole process. Steps figuratively and literally. Despite my decades old involvement in tea I can never remember which foot goes first when stepping into the chasitsu (tea room) and which way to turn when coming towards or going away from the tokonoma (alcove). For some reason though, I remember never to step on any of the seams between the tatami mats. That is something at least.

There are the details of viewing tea utensils and the order they are displayed in. Is the chashaku (tea scoop) or the natsume (tea caddy) placed first or is it visa-versa. When do you bow in thanks to the host for making tea and when do you bow to the host to either asks for another bowl or say, please finish. Do you bow before accepting a tray of food or after accepting it during a chaji?

And during kagetsu, the ultimate in nerve-racking tea practices, where one draws little bamboo tiles to see who out of the five participants will make tea, place the sumi (charcoal), arrange the flowers or ultimately drink from the chawan (tea bowl). When does one take a tile out and which tile is it exchanged for. Where is the tile container placed when you go to retrieve the tea bowl.

And when should the first guest begin to ask question about the scroll and the flowers in the tokonoma. And, and, and…so many little moments, so many little ways to trip up. But, as I have found with many things, the mistake usually add up to something positive. The glaring errors usually become legend and do not detract from the overall impression.

Chanoyu is a flow of details. If you have ever been in the mountains, hiking in the wilderness and come upon a wild river, I think you have a sense of the flow of tea. Rocks, boulders, fallen trees, sharp bends obstruct the waters flow but flow on it does. These multitude of details all combine to make the vibrant river a collective despite all the imperfections in the riverbed.

I think of tea in the same way, as a continual flow of details from 400 years ago to the present. When making tea you might error in some of the details, but if you allow the flow to continue there is nowhere to lay the blame.

In fact I think Rikyu, the founder of the tradition of tea, anticipates this in his writings. He covers so many specific details within his aphorisms that tea becomes not just a simple procedure to memorize, but a process. A process that even with a lifetime of study may never live up to Sen-no-Rikyu expectations.

But Rikyu’s expectations should not be considered onerous. I find comfort in the fact that try as I may perfection is probably unattainable and so it gives me something to attain to. To be perfectly prepared is to never do tea. I think this may be part of the wabi sensibility that permeates chanoyu.

I recently purchased a book called Chado: The Way of Tea by Sasaki Sanmi. It is a 700-page tome packed with nothing but details. The book is broken down into months, and within the months, categories of foods, sweets, flowers, utensils and words that are most appropriate for each month are listed. The digestion of just one section, of one month seems impossible, let alone understanding a years worth of details.

In trying to get my hands around the ancient Japanese culture, I realize that without a little knowledge of the Japanese language, I can never hope to fully understand. But I will keep my up pitiful struggle and consider myself blessed whenever I manage to grasp a new detail to add my knowledge base.

Details, it all comes down to details in the end. Pay attention to the steps and your end goal will be realized. Whether that goal is interpreting x-rays or using hot water for tea.

Texture

One aspect of chanoyu, the tea ceremony, which is seldom discussed, is texture. From the moment you slide into the tearoom you are surrounded by multiple surfaces and will in the course of taking tea handle many objects. Of course this is an everyday occurrence, one that is so common we hardly ever pay attention to the different spaces we enter and the different objects we encounter throughout the day, except if they distinguish themselves in the extreme.

But tea alters consciousness. When preparing to make tea, once all the utensils are in place, there is a moment when the host stops to collect his or her thoughts. The room becomes quiet as the guest along with the host mentally prepare for the upcoming ceremony. At this moment you are transported to a higher level of awareness.

A similar moment occurs with the symphony when the conductor stands at the podium for a moment, with baton raised, before the concert begins. You can feel the focused concentration of the orchestra emanate from the stage. Then the world changes till the baton is lowered.

Ichigo, ichie (one time, one meeting), a basic tenet of tea, contributes to this heightened sensibility. This moment, with all the surroundings, is to be appreciated for what it is - nothing more, nothing less.

So what about texture, the first thing encountered when entering a tearoom is dim light shinning through the white frosted pane of a shoji screen as you touch the unfinished wood of the door. Most of the wood in the tearoom is unfinished. There is even, in some tearooms, a thick branch with the bark left on, vertically delineating the boundary of the alcove (tokonoma).

The walls have a fine earthen quality about them and the ceiling is made up of multiple layers of wood, thatch, and bamboo. The floor is a finely woven, cloth bordered reed mat, kind of hard usually; a characteristic that also alters your consciousness, focusing it to your aching feet the longer you kneel.

Once the preparation of tea begins your eye is drawn to dark gray iron, patinated bronze, lacquered wood, raw bamboo, finely painted ceramics and rough glazed pottery. White linen cloth is used to clean and dry utensils and the dyed silk napkin (fukusa), that is used so prominently to ritualistically purify the tea scoop (chashaku), is visible.

There are hard surfaces providing textures and then there are the powders and liquids: foamy green tea, a little mountain of green tea carefully placed in the tea caddy (natsume), the light grey ash placed in the brazier which is dusted with pure white ash.

Obviously water makes up a big part of tea. The vessels that hold water vary from wrought iron, bronze, bamboo to clay. The water differs from a cool-calm reflective layer reminiscent of an alpine lake to the hot bubbling surface of a hot spring. And these change as water is drawn from and replenished throughout the preparation of tea. There

even is the milky pool of wastewater left after rinsing the used tea bowl. Thus the tea hut is a microcosm of the outside world - separate but not isolated.

But tea would not be tea without people. An unused tea hut is a lifeless thing. I have been to plenty of museums with beautiful displays that just sit and I stand there wondering why Chicago does not have one of these perfect little tearooms. As the guests enter another set of textures flow in. Garments made of cotton, silk, and wool, either somber or exuberantly decorated depending on ones age, gender or rank adorn the participants.

The kimono is made up of multiple layers and accessories. The cotton inner layer only the wearer experiences, followed by a thin silk kimono that peaks out at the collar top and then the more substantial outer layer of silk or wool. Various strips of stiff fabric and cloth belts hold these layers together, girdling the wearer and concealing the human textures behind a beautiful cloak.

Finally, at least for now, there is the texture of the flower and the scroll placed in the alcove (tokonoma). How such a sense of greenery can flow from a small grouping of flowers, leaves and twigs I will never understand. As you kneel and bow before the flower arrangement (chabana) you can almost smell the chlorophyll and then the mustiness of the scrolls old paper becomes apparent as you turn to honor the words.

The old crinkly paper comes alive with black brush strokes and fire engine red stamps. These manipulations alter the texture of the rustic paper as it sits framed by finely woven fabrics. Two short ties hang from the top as a reminder that this scroll is only a temporary inhabitant, soon to be placed in a fitted wooden box to ride out most of its life protected from the sun.

Thus texture becomes part of the process that permeated the experience of tea. I think we realize this on a subconscious level and it becomes comforting. Almost like the little blanket with the silk edging we all carried around with us as children. Clutching it till it became so worn out that our mothers conveniently lost it one day.

Legacy

The Urasenke Chicago Chapter has been active for over forty years in the Chicagoland area; studying, practicing and demonstrating chanoyu, the tea ceremony. This has been and continues to be accomplished by the good will and self-sacrifice of many former and present teachers and students.

A lump forms in my throat whenever I ponder all the work and commitment shown by these folk over decades and I begin to wonder about the future of our organization. Where is the next generation of devotees come from and if they do come will they get here in time to continue the legacy.

More so than the devotees, where are the next teachers coming from and will there be students for them to teach. Now I know I am not alone in my concern for the future. Every church, temple, fraternal organization and recently even the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has had to consider what if they threw a party and nobody came.

Tea is a physically and intellectually challenging art. Over the years many interested people attend our functions only to be disappointed when there is no way to participate other than becoming a student. Watching and reading alone is not satisfying in the long run.

I believe that tea (chanoyu) and the philosophy it entails (chado) cannot be understood without the sitting, whisking, cleaning and listening that goes on during the practice of tea. Bookwork in itself will not cut it. Hand’s on practice is needed to reveal the truth behind tea, but ultimately even with all the hard work there is no guarantee of enlightenment.

Though I have never practiced zazen, I have spent the better part of my adult life reading and thinking about it. At some point I realized that study is futile without practice and tea is as close as I have personally gotten to the practice of Zen.

This is one case where the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. Quite the contrary, the parts are what count. The truth is in the details. I think this is what Mies van der Rohe, the famous Chicago architect, meant when he said, “god is in the details.”

It led me to surmise that chanoyu, simply hot water for tea, came before chado, the way of tea. But this is a suspect statement, even if in the practical world it seems to be the only possible truth. Therein lies the paradox. It is the stuff of koans. An absolute truth revealed by a boldfaced lie.

So what is my point, how do you pass on such a study in a world based on credit, celebrity and spin, where one obtains notoriety by outlandish acts rather than work? I am just not sure.

Least I get too depressing; I realize that our parents had the same concerns about my generation. I grew up riding my bike down to Grant Park to watch the yippies invade the city prior to the 1968 Democratic convention. My parents watched in horror as I sprouted more and more hair and espoused radical philosophies, but I ended up in a respectable profession and most of my cloths now bear the moniker of Brook’s Brothers.

At work, my partners and I have similar conversations about the upcoming members of our profession. We have decided to continue the legacy of our practice and share our very patience patients with third and fourth year medical students to help them experience the practice of medicine first hand.

Some days can be exacerbating with all the whining and complaining that goes on amongst them about things that to me seem trivial when compared to the problems presented in each of our examining rooms. But then students appear that make me envious with their knowledge, communication skills and compassion and they make the extra time and energy devoted to teaching worthwhile.

So I guess if we believe that chanoyu has something to offer to the world, which we do, it will survive and like-minded people will discover tea as I did twenty-one years ago.

With this in mind, I would like to extend an invitation to the young Japanese American community with an interest in rediscovering their heritage to investigate the role that chanoyu can contribute to that end. Chanoyu has allowed me the privilege to participate in another culture and through that culture pursue a direct spiritual path and through that, truth.

Rikyuki 2004

Sen no Rikyu passed in 1591 by his own hand, being ordered to do so by Togotomi Hideyoshi, the military dictator who unified Japan and for whom he served. The reasons for his death are many but I believe come down to power and politics.

Rikyu was the head tea master for Hideyoshi, something akin to being a cultural minister. It is also believed that he managed Hideyoshi’s personal affairs. Rikyu’s popularity began to out shine that of Hideyoshi’s and Rikyu’s commitment to his rustic style of tea, despite the wishes of his ultimate ruler, led to the order to commit ritual suicide (seppuku). Once dead Hideyoshi is said to have anguished over his death and for many months refused to appoint a successor.

Rikyuki is the commemoration of the 413th anniversary of Rikyu’s death. We, the students of the Urasenke tradition of tea, commemorate his death because he is the founder of our disciple of chanoyu and the developer of soan-chanoyu or tea ceremony in a thatched hut. Tea in the wabi sensibility. I like to think of wabi as rustic elegance, as opposed to the tea of the Golden Pavilion that was a vehicle to display one’s power and stature.

Rikyu was himself the product of several tea masters who had preceded him. They would attempt to change the corrupted practice of tea in the early 16th century and ultimately succeed, but not without the tragedy of Rikyu’s death. Tea at that time was centered on the use of Chinese objects rather than the use of Japanese utensils for the practice of tea. Japanese crafts being considered inferior to their Chinese counterparts.

Juko (1422-1502) who is considered the father of the tea ceremony is attributed to have said, I have no taste for the full moon; feeling that the moon half hidden by clouds is more moving than its full round image. He started the idea that tea, centered on the appreciation Chinese objects should be supplanted by tea based on Japanese utensils from the provinces. He led the rediscovery of art objects that are not completely perfect or ideal. Okakura Tenshin in The Book of Tea describes this as “a worship of the imperfect.” Juko also instituted the tradition of using a 4.5 mat room for chanoyu. Later this practice is built upon by another tea master known as Takeno Jo-o (1502-1555) who becomes Rikyu’s teacher.

Jo-o altered the 4.5 mat rooms to include the plain clay walls, bamboo-lattice ceiling and the use of unfinished wood for the tokonoma (alcove) that we are familiar with today. Jo-o brought tea from a formal (shin) style to reveal the informal beauty of the natural world.

Sen no Rikyu was the son of an affluent merchant who went on to study tea and meeting Jo-o in 1541 became his disciple. Rikyu’s style, deriving from both Juko and Jo-o was in opposition to the gaudy tea practices at that time. He changed tea to reflect the natural environment as opposed to the cosmopolitan one that had influenced tea before and during the 16th century.

Rikyu further refined his style of tea and in the 1580’s collaborated with other artisans to produce the first red and then the first black Raku tea bowls. He also created tearooms smaller than 4.5 mats. These rooms, being impractical spaces, had no other purpose than tea.

The tiny tearooms incorporated a crawl-in entrance (nijiriguchi) that forced the participants, no matter how distinguished, to bow low and crawl into the tearoom. Rikyu was molding chanoyu into a spiritual practice and the idea of a small interior space precluded the tearoom from ordinary use. Passing through the nijiriguchi further separated the participants from the ordinary world.

Once in the tearoom, one is left to contemplate the relationship between the practice of tea, your fellow participants and the utensils used. Because of your entrance into this other world you are free to appreciate the subtleties of sound, smell, movement and taste that would be overwhelmed by the outside world.

The world that Rikyu and his predecessors created, exist today every time we practice tea or perform tea for the public. Whether we are in a secluded natural setting or a large conference room. The phrase, One Time, One Meeting (ichigo, ichie) expresses the ideal of the way of tea. It refers to making the most of the current moment regardless of the circumstances.

Without Rikyu none of this would have existed, at least not in the form we see it today. His sons and today the present 16th generation Grand Tea Master, Zabosai Oiemoto, carry on the tradition of tea he started.

Rikyu left the following verse at his death:

A life of seventy years,
Strength spent to the very last,
With this, My jeweled sword,
I kill both patriarchs and buddhas.

I yet carry
One article I had gained,
The long sword
That now at the moment
I hurl to the heavens.

The Quality of Teaching

I have had a few memorable teachers in my life. First my parents who taught mainly by example, day-to-day stuff, unrelentingly stable and consistent. A high school music teacher whose intense love of the music overcame all his personal oddities. And a series of older men with whom I worked with at various jobs as a teenager who passed on their sadness due to failed expectations with the admonishment to live life now, in the present. There was no pie-in-the-sky for these men whose lost opportunities were palpable.

I use this as an introduction to my memories of Minnie Kubose a remarkable teacher who was my second teacher in the Urasenke Tradition of Tea. Minnie was involved with her church, community, students and with her own personal study of Tea. She was committed to passing on to her students her love and knowledge of Tea.

Even though she seemed delicate, she was fierce in her pursuit of truth through the practice of Tea. There was no room for compromise and to that end she devoted herself not only to tireless study but also collecting the multitude of objects needed for her students to practice.

Many times when I thought it would be perfectly okay to give in on some seemingly small point, I knew it would never happen. As I knelt in the tearoom making my case, my legs getting numb, I usually wished I’d never challenged her vast knowledge and artistic sense of Tea.

I do a bit of teaching myself, about a subject of which I am passionate and I am always treading the line between inspiration and alienation. Often I find myself tending more toward the latter of the two. But not Minnie, she somehow managed to juggle many of the two opposites involved with teaching: teacher vs. friend; disciplinarian vs. colleague; scholar vs. student; serious commitment vs. lighthearted fun.

She was able to strike a balance and I think this was so because her students became her family, at least that was the way it felt to me. She spent a lifetime in devotion to others. Seemingly frail due to chronic lung problems she continued to teach till it was no longer possible.

And so we gathered November 9, 2003 at the home that she and her late husband Rev. Gyomay Kubose used to welcome their many students and guest for Minnie Somi Kubose’s First Year Memorial Tea Gathering.

Minnie had an amazing collection of the utensils, which are used for the practice of tea. Many were gifts but most purchased, all with the thought of providing her students with the most well rounded study of chanoyu.

Tea was served Sunday in two tearooms, Koso-an, a traditional 8-mat tearoom and a table style tearoom with chairs. Koso-an, which in English means Fragrant Grass Hut was built in 1969.

Koso-an had an especially poignant scroll/kakejiku from Rev. Haga Akegarasu, the teacher of Rev. Gyomay Kubose, stating “Ten billion people have ten billion mothers, but my mother is the best”, and an incense holder/kogo which was made by Minnie during a trip to Japan in 1971 at the Akahada kiln near Nara. It was hand built by her with a design of the Buddhist wheel on the top.

In the table style tearoom there was a fresh water container/mizushashi in the shape of a treasure pouch with an Unkin design of spring cherry blossoms and autumn maple leaves. It was one of Minnie’s earliest utensils purchased in 1941 by her first teacher, Kuriyame sensei. And an incense holder/kogo with the design of a rabbit representing the year that Minnie was born.

The memorial was open to all that brought friendship and richness to her life. I am sure that she would be very pleased and honored to know that all had come to share a bowl of tea in her honor. Joyce Kubose, Minnie’s daughter, is carrying on the tradition of teaching chanoyu with the legacy left to her by her mother.

Cha vs Coffee

What is it about tea. Coffee I understand, coffee is all about stimulation. A very mild form granted, on par with South American’s chewing coca leaves to deal with the rigors of the high altitudes they live in. The altitude we live in is our modern culture, which makes demands on us that interfere with the rhythms of nature. Coffee in all its guises, from an ounce of espresso to the mocha grande latte with a couple of thousand calories, all serve the same purpose; to light a little fire under our butts; to kick start the old brain; to stimulate conversation and thought, but contemplation I think not.

Tea serves another purpose. Of course it wakes billions of people each day, but tea eases you slowly into the day as opposed to suddenly jolting you into existence; the QEII versus the space shuttle.

Why this is so I am not sure. It may be due to the chemistry; theo- bromide as opposed to caffeine. It may be due to gentle hills covered with mossy green plants as opposed to mountain terraces covered by trees. It may be the processing. Tea is dried, fermented leaves or simply leaves unprocessed as in macha, while coffee is a bean. A concentrated little bundle of tannins, organic chemicals and oils which are pick, dried and roasted at the very least.

Green tea especially is one step away from solar energy. A direct connection to the sun—leaves as oppose to seeds. I think this is why tea, from its earliest day to now, is considered medicinal whereas coffee is a vice.

The first Grand Master of Tea, Sen no Rikyu took tea from its early ostentation and gave it a more rustic feel. From the Golden Pavilion to a thatch hut. From a way to measure wealth to the Zen concept of nothingness.

Maybe tea is different because tea requires some thought in the preparation. You can get a reasonable cup of coffee from any of a multitude of machines. All mostly automated but I have yet to have a cup of tea from a machine that passes for the real thing. It usually taste metallic and stale. Even in places that pride themselves on the quality of their beverages, you are pretty much left to your own devices when it comes to tea. Recently at an omnipresent donut shop they put the tea bag in a cup of boiling water and when I ask for cream just added it to my paper cup, tea bag and all.

Then there is the notion of time. Someone should invent a silicone-based timer that is triggered by hot water and ticks off the appropriate 4 minutes. Being somewhat obsessive compulsive I always have the timer on my watch set for 4 minutes. I stand awkwardly among the multitudes of harried coffee drinkers for my tea to steep. It is amazing how long 4 minutes can last.

When I think about brewed versus steeped; well which would you rather be. Brewed conjures up thoughts of being boiled alive but steeped makes me think of soaking in a hot spring.

The contemplative nature of the evergreen bush camellia helped create the world that Chanoyu represents. A way to bring art and culture in to your life and a way to share it with friends. Though the philosophical and political arguments going on in every coffee house are important, the philosophy of Tea that Sen No Rikyu set into motion 400 years ago is still present with us today; Harmony, Respect, Purity and Tranquility. Tea usually enlivens a more gentle relax banter.

My understanding is that in feudal Japan the chashitsu (tea room) was a type of no mans land. No weapons or talk of war. It offered a little bit of privacy in a very crowded world.

So next time you sit down to have a bowl of macha, green steeped tea or some fermented English Breakfast tea contemplate the role that nature plays in the liquid presented to you. Solar wind filtered through the atmosphere, collected by chlorophyll in the green leaves, fed by the water and minerals that make up the soil and remember the 15th generation Grand Tea Master’s wish: Peace Through a Bowl of Tea.

No`da`te

The image of chanoyu performed out of doors (nodate) is a delightful one to most onlookers. It is usually held in a beautiful garden with a manicured lake in the background. The table is black, accented with orange cords and is set off by a very large, richly red umbrella. It is a methodical dance carried out in a slow stately manner.

Women in floral kimono’s flit around like so many butterflies. Going from one flower to the next, gathering nectar. The seated guest, one imagines as cognoscente of a private privileged world. Never too hot or too hurried.

For me at least the reality of nodate creates feelings of apprehension bordering on queasiness. Chanoyu is a well-practiced, organized discipline where the practitioners devote hours, days, even months to preparing for an event. Besides practicing the specific tea to be done, there are menus to decide on and decisions as to the most appropriate scroll, utensils and flowers to be used must be made.

To complicate the situation further chanoyu is practiced predominately while kneeling in the comforting geometric surrounds of the chashitsu (teahouse) on a square of four to eight tatami mats with very definite borders. The vistas in the teahouse are internal rather than majestic. It is a way to garner a little peace in a very chaotic world.

One thing most people do not notice while watching chanoyu is that things balance: the chashaku (tea scoop) on top of the natsume (tea caddy); the ladle on the furo (portable brazier); the cover of the mizushashi (water jar) lying slightly to the side. Most of the objects are light as a feather, barely weighting an ounce put together.

Though tea in the great out of doors is as much fantasized by tea folk as by anyone else, the thought is tempered by, well by the great outdoors: sun, heat, bugs, lack of electricity and water, uneven surfaces, rain and worse of all, the wind.

The women and men in kimono wilt and need to be revived; bees are shooed off the sweets; extension cords found; water is carried in by the bucket full; wedges even out the tables and the rain is waited out. But the wind is most troublesome. If only some of utensils were made of cast iron.

Every thing seems to take flight including all the ash in the furo which coats the precious objects with dust and it is especially obvious on the black mirror-like surface of the table-impossible to ignore, difficult to clean.

The worse of the offending utensils when it comes to the wind is the most obvious of all-the umbrella. This was designed perfectly to take flight and in accordance with Murphy’s Law it usually starts to soar in the middle of tea. It is such an expensive and fragile device that it keeps everyone on edge till it is taken down.

In the true spirit of chanoyu none of this ever deters anyone from nodate. Fret as everyone may, no one ever says no. They just say where, when and for how many. In practicing chanoyu one develops a real can do mindset. People are presented with a problem and they go about solving it. I hear very little whining from tea folk. Their years of training and the example of their teachers prepare them to be positive and practical. So everyone steps up to the challenge.

Learning chanoyu is a bit like my medical training in that you are never alone. Every thing you do during the years of training is done in front of numerous people with different levels of expertise. There is no way to cover-up your missteps and thus the cloak is pulled off and one gets used to many pairs of eyes watching your every move.

It is also a bit like bringing a boat into a dock. Bystanders and fellow boaters alike are watching, critiquing and analyzing your every move. We all begin to “feel their pain” and in doing so become a stronger community.

So even though nodate seems like a walk in the park to most, it teaches strong lessons in perseverance, adaptability and provides many opportunities to practice one of the four tenets of chanoyu-humility.

Chanoyu As Ceremony

A few years back Sen Soshitsu, the 15th generation Grand Tea Master of the Urasenke tradition of Tea stated in an article his wish that chanoyu be referred to as just that, chanoyu and not the tea ceremony. I did not comprehend the significant of his request at that time but on further reflection it is beginning to make sense to me.

Chanoyu, I have found, is used as the center or showpiece for many activities. It seems to be bedazzling in an odd sort of way. Participants in beautiful garb, exotic utensils (rustic as they may be) and the flowers and scrolls lend themselves to well, lets just say spectacle.

Chanoyu holds a certain allure for westerners. It is one of the only parts of Japanese culture, other than comic books and sushi that seems accessible on a superficial level. To many Catholics, and I imagine other denominations that have the mass as their primary mode of worship, chanoyu is familiar even if they do not comprehend it at the time: the tea bowl as the chalice, sweets as the host,
tea as the wine, the flowers and scroll in the tokonoma as the statues of the saints in the alcove. It puts Japanese culture in a familiar surroundings. Even the use of Japanese in a call and response way during chanoyu reminds me of the use of Latin by the church many years ago.

And as the mass is used ceremonially, with many people only participating during holy days, weddings and funerals, so chanoyu is used. We have done tea during festivals, to honor visiting dignitaries, to herald the start of a world religious conference, but rarely do any of the events lead to a deeper understanding of the philosophy behind chanoyu. Chanoyu is viewed in these circumstances as one would go to a concert or watch a ballet company go through its motions - a temporary amusement.

Several years after I started studying chanoyu I made a switch from the physical aspects of chanoyu to the intellectual basis of Tea. Of course my knees still hurt and I needed as much practice balancing the sumi in the basket, but I became aware of the four principle that chanoyu is based on. It was curious, what did harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility have to do with the kneeling, whisking and drinking that seems so much of what Tea is about.

The utensils and environment of Tea are but the outward representation, though inseparable, of the ultimate truth that chanoyu is striving for. Chanoyu is a way to live your life, a way to interact with and participate in the complexities of the world on a real time basis. Hence the saying often repeated, ichigo, ichie (one time, one meeting).

There are no cover-ups in chanoyu only truth. The way to practice is to be honest and transparent. Now I am not so naïve to imagine that the world actually runs this way. Individually we all have many faults but structurally, as a philosophy I believe chanoyu transcends our petty attempts to use chanoyu for our own ends.

Harmony-Wa, Respect-Kei, Purity-Sei and Tranquility-Jaku; these principles keep us centered. My second teacher, Minnie Kubose, was a living example of this. There was no way, though I often tried in the grips of paroxysmal muscle spasm to shortcut my practice. I never succeeded and usually only prolonged my misery. I did not understand the agonizing that Minnie and later her daughter Joyce would go through over every detail till I understood the intellectual basis for chanoyu. In fact I am still working on the details, not being quite as meticulous about things as I should be.

Chanoyu has taught me that there are no shortcuts in life. You have to put your time in and be aware of your surroundings. This is the basis of luck. Not the arrangements of the planets or the use of lucky charms but the fact that you are aware and truthful with your self and ready to capitalize on the opportunities presented to you.

So next time you get to see the “Tea Ceremony” remember the Grand Tea Master’s wish - to put the four principles of chanoyu into action in your daily life and of course, enjoy the beautiful dress, the rustic utensils and the sweets and tea.

STUFF

Part of getting involved with any culture is appreciating and acquiring stuff, stuff that is particular to that culture.  I am Italian-American and when I think about it I have five espresso machines, grow garlic, oregano and basil in the garden, order olive oil and vinegar from Alberto who lives in a small town outside of Florence and should be collecting all my mother’s mothers’ aphorisms. She tells me these approximately three times per week, the most recent in honor of my 50th birthday. It is concerned with the fact that after fifty you wake up with a new ache and pain every morning.  The unfortunate part of most these pearls of wisdom are that they are usually true.  Thanks Ma. 

Once I became interested in oriental culture, it took quite awhile to differentiate between the different Asian cultures.  I find that most objects I come in contact with are Chinese and seldom Japanese that is if you exclude Sony’s. The Japanese stuff I do manage to find is usually very well made and expensive.  There are a few stores in Chicago that I have bought many a Christmas present in, but mostly Japanese stuff is hard to find. 

When I started taking lessons in the Tea Ceremony I was overwhelmed by the amount of stuff there was.  These objects are the stuff of legend:  scrolls, flower vases, ceramic and cast iron vessels, whole rooms, and that pen ultimate Japanese treasure, the tea bowl.

There is a dilemma in the practice of Tea in the west if one is trying to use the traditional utensils or dogu.  It is almost impossible to have all the utensils and would be very expensive to obtain them.  The utensils you get here might not even be appropriate in Japan, but because they are the only things you can find, they get used.

My wife Charlotte and I wander around the country and whenever we are out-and-about, Charlotte will take me into whatever antique or junk store she can find.  We snoop around and look for things.  She looks for some priceless antique to take to the Antique Roadshow, while I am looking for tools but also I keep an eye out for objects that I might somehow use in the practice of Tea.

I have always thought that we, practicing Tea in the West, need to create our own Tea culture and provide our own utensils. With that thought in mind I am always looking for something that might substitute for Japanese dogu. In my quest for western dogu I have done everything from making tea stands out of recycled barn wood from Southern Illinois to purchasing American crafts and antiques, which I perceived, would substitute for the Japanese utensils.  This usually turns out to be a mistake.  I have collected some very interesting objects but most have not been usable for Tea. 

There are a couple of concepts that are prominent in Tea and in Japanese fine arts—Wabi and Sabi.  I have translated these to mean rustic elegance.  It is the difference between a beautifully crafted Wedgwood teapot and a raku tea bowl that at first looks to the untrained eye like it was thrown together haphazardly.  The difference lies in their use and in the aesthetics.  I have tired to use Western objects in Tea but they usually do not work.  And by work I mean they are too tall, too short, too wide; there is no place to comfortable to hold on to them, they get to hot, there is no place for the lid or there is no lid.

At first glance some of the structure of a Tea room and the utensils look down right a-symmetrical and random, sort of like a raku Tea bowl, but once put together and used as a cohesive unit, they function perfectly.  I do not know why this surprises me because all of this stuff has a 400 plus year history of development and design that follows the Zen principles of fukinsei and kanso (asymmetry and simplicity), plus a history of crafts persons working in tandem with the practitioners of Tea to make objects that are elegant in form and function. 

In a world of general consumer goods, I have always thought that Sony from Japan and HP from the US have this aesthetic down.  Besides the way they work, they are usually beautiful objects.  Ergonomically made to function intuitively, being made out mostly of plastic, they are made with attention to texture, color and feel such as Sony portable CD players and the HP 11c calculator.

Then we come to the packaging of Japanese stuff.  It is very exciting to receive a gift from Japan. I know that opening it is going to be a compelling experience regardless of what it contains.  Layer upon layer of complicated textures and designs on beautiful paper.  Even in a box of cookies there are multiple sleeves of paper with much writing.  I only wish I could understand them. But as with many things understanding might take some of the mystery away.  I am assuming some of these sheets of calligraphy are ingredient lists: flour, sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oil, MSG, etc.  It is probably better off not knowing what they say and retain the illusion.

Tea utensils are stored in wooden boxes, wrapped in their own silk napkins and closed with a colorful ribbon. The boxes are made out of a light in color and weight, open grained wood with meticulous joinery and handwritten calligraphy adorning the top stating the provenance of the object. 

My experience is that most Japanese stuff is not out in the open but packed lovingly away and living in their handsome wooden boxes out of sight, waiting for the time to come out and see the light of day for some special purpose. In the Tea Ceremony a lot of time and effort is devoted to the different dogu that is chosen for each event. The dogu is picked specifically for each occasion, time of year and guest. They may be family heirlooms or valuable antiques and you may never see them again.  This unlike most Western homes where our nick-knacks are always on display.

A protocol exists for when to use, how to handle, describe and appreciate Tea dogu.  With most of these objects it requires some knowledge to appreciate them.  Important facts such as which generation of the crafts person produced it, from what region does it come from and did someone special, such as a Grand Tea Master, give the object a name.  This information always offered during Tea.

One of the more interesting tea proceedings is called Chabako.  It consists of a series of tea ceremonies from the very simple to more complex and presents an opportunity to collect multiple little objects.  Chabako refers to a box, which I think was originally developed to transport the necessary utensils for Tea in a small self-contained package. All the stuff is contained in a small box about three quarters of the size of a tall box of Puffs.  The box is made out of clear wood held together with complicated Japanese joinery.  They can be unfinished or lacquered, always has a lid and many times another small shelf inside.

Inside live the natsume (a small tea caddy), chawan (tea bowl), chakin (small linen cloth) and its porcelain holder, chasen (bamboo wisk) and its wooden container, chashaku (wooden scoop) in its cloth case, and sweets in a porcelain vessel.  The chabako is carried into the tearoom on a round lacquer tray to where a cast iron teakettle rests.  So you get my point.  You can go on and on searching for and acquiring stuff, in fact you can make a life’s work out of it. 

Chabako was one of the first types of Tea ceremonies I was exposed to and having some wood working skills I made two boxes to fit my collection of tea gear it. One being as bit to big and crudely made, the other constructed much better (experience pays off) but probably a bit too small. That brings me back to one of my first points, that even if many tea utensils look somewhat rough hewned, they are designed to very exact tolerances. When I made the boxes myself and was able to measure “real” ones, I still was not quite able to get them exactly right.

The acquisition of Japanese stuff has filled every corner of my home, much to wife’s dismay.  Being that we do not own any curio cabinets, my stuff is distributed throughout the house on every available shelf.  The boxes, the dogu should be living in, fill all the closets and all the stuff, instead of hiding, is out collecting dust and providing me with a wonderful visual palette, along with our painted saws from Southern Illinois. 

Thoughts On Japanese Culture

As far as I can remember my first exposure to Japanese culture was in my parent’s home. Not that I ever noticed much interest in oriental arts from them, but amongst their collection of nick-nacks there was a shelf on which lived a small collection of Japanese and Chinese objects. My father also obsessively cleaned two white Chinese porcelain figures that were on the mantle piece. These were dusted religiously to the point that he was always gluing the broken fingers back on to them. To this day I still have them, glued fingers and all, on my mantel.

The shelves contents included an oddly shaped colorful Chinese spoon and a bamboo figurine that depicted a cormorant fisherman in Japan. It took me years to figure out what these characters were actually up to. There were several other objects, but in a house with very few books this collection occupied a large part of my imagination. All the other nick-nacks had familiar shapes and decoration but not these. They were a kind of puzzle to me.

Many years went by. I attended Catholic grade school and two years of Catholic high school. There was no mention of oriental culture in either of their curriculums. But, despite our best efforts to keep the high school open it closed and I attended the local public high school. There I was exposed to, lets just say, more alternative thoughts, read my first book, Catcher in the Rye and somehow was introduced to the British author Alan Watts. Through him I discovered Zen Buddhism. After devouring all of his works I felt I needed a more direct connection. This led me to a study of Chinese poetry, D.T. Suzuki, R.H. Blyth and the work of the haiku poets. I even tired my hand at writing haiku; those 16 syllables gems that freeze a pin point in time, a nano-second, though mine were more like an afternoon.

Anyway, like the infamous computer in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe, I was in Deep Thought for years. I even purchased a shakuhachi that I played late into the night in my college apartment to try and settle my mind before sleep. The more I read about oriental culture the farther away I seemed to be getting from the ideal, from a true understanding. It seemed that all theses westerners that had obtained some status with their honorific Japanese names were grasping something that I was not.

I finally understood that to understand a culture you have to participate in it. I had to do something, not just read and contemplate my navel. I could not just experience it intellectually but had to experience it physically. I needed a way into it, and there enters all the –do’s: Judo, Kendo, Akido, and for me Chado.

Other than reading the pop classic Shogun and watching the mini-series of the same name starring Richard Chamberlin, I had never been exposed to Chado. (Chado is also known as Chanoyu or Japanese Tea Ceremony.) In western culture it is somehow linked to geisha’s, samurai and the images of Hiroshige’s wood-block prints of the Floating World. But one day on a early Sunday afternoon in the Spring of 1984, I found myself in the front room of a 3-flat on Sheffield Avenue in Chicago, fumbling with a fukusa, the silk napkin that hold such an important place in the practice of Chanoyu.

Never having any ability at sports. Never being able to ice skate, roller skate or ride a skateboard because of a complete lack of coordination and balance, I somehow took to the physical aspect of the Tea Ceremony. I was able to pick it up almost instantly. That is other than the kneeling! After taking the four introductory classes twice in one year I was asked by the teacher’s senior student if I wanted to become a student of Tea.

From an American point of view where teachers are often held in low regard and even the lowliest of students think they know more than their professors, I did not grasp what being asked to become a student really meant in Japanese culture. I assumed I’d take a few extra lessons and then just get on with my life. Tea would end up just like the shakuhachi, which is carefully wrapped up and sitting on a shelf in my dining room.

The Japanese concept of the relationship between the teacher and student is much more comprehensive than in the west. Teachers hold a very important place of respect in Japanese culture. Once deciding to enter into a relationship with a teacher, one is committing to a lifetime of studies, knowingly or not. This relationship is not just to learn some specific discipline, that is almost beside the point. The relationship, the study is away towards a certain level of spirituality. It is a gateway or a stepping-stone to a spiritual path.

Now I may be belaboring the concept of spirituality here, I do not think of it in religious terms. In Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugene Herrigel, the point is not to get the point of the arrow into the center of target or to gain some higher level of spirituality; the point is to be totally aware and committed to the process. To the reality and truth of each moment and if one is successful in that, there is no other alternative than the arrow hitting home.

The goal in the study of the “Way’s” is not to obtain a honorific name; to hang another title on one’s self. It is to practice and in practicing, become worthy of it. So in my frivolous beginnings at trying to adopt Japanese culture, I ended up developing skills in how to interact with the world. In every interaction that I have throughout the day this “Way”, I came to realize through the actual physical preparation of tea, has completely altered my perception of the world and how I interact with it.

Wearing Kimono

Some twenty years ago, after a lifetime of interest in oriental culture, I discovered Chanoyu, the Japanese Tea Ceremony. At the time I was living Wisconsin and well let’s just say bored. I found myself driving back to Chicago every weekend to take a Tea lesson. The study of Tea at first is very cryptic. You are expected to do things that make no sense. One of these is the way you walk in shuffling short steps.

Years went by and I dutifully moved in the prescribed way. My first teacher, an exuberant woman almost childlike in her enthusiasm for the Japanese culture arts, continued to enforce the choreography that is Tea. And probably because she spoke limited English no explanation was ever forthcoming. When she sadly pasted my new teacher began a discussion with me, of all people, about getting a kimono. I had never imagined I would be wearing kimono. I barely had a suit. So where does a guy like me get a kimono? By this time I knew enough that the usual flamboyant kimonos that you see on women in the movies and in the few stores that sell them would never do. And then there is the question of size.

In Western terms I am perfectly average: heght-5’9”, weight-170lbs, waist-38” and inseam-32”. But in my Tea world I am, well not Michael Jordan but close. Many times over the years while standing with a group of Tea ladies it is commented on how tall I am, great for my ego but bad for procuring a kimono. Right about then one of my classmates, who was much larger in girth than I, was moving to San Francisco to a new life and offered me one of his kimonos. It was a dark brown cotton garment that as I know now is a bit like wearing your sweats to a wedding, but nonetheless I was thrilled to accept it.

This started a completely new chapter in my study of Tea and Japanese culture. It turns out that the kimono is only one part of the ensemble. With the help of my teacher’s daughter, newly returned from studying Tea in Japan, the search was on for the remaining items: obi, hakima, two inner garments, tabi, shoes, etc. One by one the articles were obtained. The inner garments and hakima from my teacher’s trip to Japan; and the obi, tabi and shoes from a local shop.

Now there is not a class in wearing kimono offered in Chicago. Most of the practitioners of Tea are women and the few men that do practice are well men, not given to overly detailed description. So when it was time to attempt dressing myself, other than a few instruction sheets given to me, I was on my own.

Alone in a room with a mirror the first three layers went on, left over right. Then the first hint of a cool breeze whistling around my thighs was the first many new sensations. Most men will understand when I say that this feeling is not the most comforting, but carry on I did. Next came a sash to hold the three layers in place and over that the obi is placed.

If you can pardon a small digression here, I have sailed on Lake Michigan since childhood and cannot help but compare many of my experiences to sailing. Parts of Chanoyu involve knots, very intricate ones and the kimono is no exception. The obi, a four inch wide ten foot long piece of stiff material, is not the easiest thing to imagine a knot in. But a type of square knot is tied into it. The obi and knot, once wrapped around my waist and tied, becomes the foundation for the kimono’s stability.

If it is too loose you are terrified to do anything least it fall apart and run the risk of the kimono becoming completely inoperable. Not the most comforting of feelings, especially if one is seeking tranquility. If too tight, as I would find out one afternoon in front of 100’s of people at Japan Day, you are barely able to breath or move without grimacing.

I could go on but wearing a kimono is a bit like life, a real balancing act. If it is too tight it is completely uncomfortable and restricts you. If too loose you are terrified to do anything least it fall apart an exposure you for who you really are. But if it is just right and balanced one hardly even thinks about it.

Back to my original point, why am I walking like this? The first time I wore kimono, stood up and walked it was a revelation. Suddenly I realized that the movements I had been making, all the short little steps, the kneeling and standing were being taught in terms of these yards of cloth that make up a kimono. It is as if Chanoyu is choreographed to deal with the peculiarities of kimono.

More years have gone by and now gainfully employed, one of the first things I bought was a custom made silk kimono which proved to be as much as a revelation as my first cotton kimono.

Wearing kimono has made me very aware of other people’s garb. From the young Grateful Dead hippy want-to-be to the Sikes on Devon Avenue. Whenever I am about to comment on someone’s dress I always stop and think about what people are thinking of me, this bearded Westerner appearing in his kimono. So, in this way kimono has taught me respect.

Wearing kimono, with the way all the different pieces need to fit together for it to function, has taught me harmony. And, as one learns to care for and store the various parts of the kimono purity is realized. If it is all on, done right with the right mindset a certain feeling of tranquility washes over you. After all, the four tenets of Chanoyu are Purity, Respect, Harmony and Tranquility and I think without the kimono one would be hard pressed to fully realize them.