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