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
