Renew

The sun disappears early from the sky as the earth creep towards the winter solstice, a harbinger of the time when it will begin to renew itself. When I was a kid waiting for Christmas, it was a slow painful time. These days and nights, I am not so anxious. Time can pass as slowly or as quickly as it likes, I am only along for the ride.

Whatever is running the show has been attentive enough to provide me with the physical attributes to sense and to comprehend what is going on around me. I can see, hear, touch, and taste my morsel of the universe; and I can use the information gained to make judgments about the world. This all requires thought, reflection, and a bit of discernment.

To live in the higher latitudes contributes to such thoughts. As the cold and dark seeps through my insulated defenses, I begin to ponder. The sirens of places I never thought interesting work their way into my thoughts. Drawn to the warm salty water I spent my first 9 months in I cajole Charlotte to scour the web for the cheapest airfare south. But this desire to flee south is only part of the story. I now have the time to think.

Thinking is an odd concept. Plenty of neuroscientists are trying to decipher the mechanics — the anatomy and chemistry — of it. I doubt they will ever find where the soul exists or how one thought leads to another.

Thinking begets thinking. The brain is plastic, it response to a workout. But I try not to deceive myself. I realize that thinking by itself may not bring happiness or prevent Alzheimer’s. The universe is not a compassionate place. There are no guarantees. No quid pro quo.

Concentrating on this makes my brain ache. I can feel the neurons firing off their little packets of neurotransmitters across my synapses. I admit that these are just the musing of an over educated individual with time on his hands. But still, each day I challenge myself to focus on detail, to try to understand, to see what there is to see, and to listen to what there is to listen too.

I look forward to the few minutes longer each day the sun remains in the sky, even with winter’s feeble light. I long for the green to reappear in my north side neighborhood’s canopy.

But despite the light, spring is a long way off. There is still time for thought. There is still time to renew the connection to my inner universe. There is time before I cast off the yoke of thought, and move into a more physical existence aided by the warmth of a renewed sun.

December 2014

Feelings

From Illinois to Kentucky to North Carolina to South Carolina: from prairie to foothills and sinkholes to ancient mountains to bottomland. They each have their own feel, texture, and ambiance. Its difficult to describe pulling over into a rest stop just inside of South Carolina and knowing that I am someplace profoundly different then the mountains I have just driven thru.

The colors are green and not yet of autumn. The pines are tall and sparse with a Florida like understory; the sky is blue like the bluest eyes I have ever looked into with only a bit of haze to make the coming humidity palpable. There is still warmth in the sun. The terrain looks parched without being so. The feel is quieter, slower, the people are fewer, the accents more lilting, the dogs tired. I know these are clichés. So be it, the world is full of them and if not malicious, they pack a lot of information into a small space.

I write this on a front porch in Sumter, SC. The sun is at about 2:30 in the sky and the quiet has just been disturbed by a gust of wind that rustles the trees. The greenery is lush with only a bit of russet on the tips of certain leaves. This place, if nature were given free range, would be jungle in a few years. In the north we encourage growth, here just the opposite. Every plant, bush, and tree is either trimmed or overgrown.

A thick bamboo grove and a patch of kudzu twice the size of my Chicago bungalow is across from where I sit. I want to wander through the grove but I am not from here and there is a prominent “Private Property” sign displayed, so I will tread lightly. The feel of this place is warm and soft and cushioning, and I do not want to become accustomed to it. I believe this is what snowbirds sense: a constant state of wonder.

There is hushed road noise, and the occasional roar of prodigious amounts of jet fuel burned by F-16’s taking off from the air force base to the north. I can hear squirrels rustling in the wheel barrel where a bag of sunflower seeds was inadvertently left. There are a few odd birdcalls, and the incessant soprano, baritone and bass of the three dogs next door. They are attentive to every movement, whether real or imagined, in their foliage obscured compound.

Here the streets blend seamlessly into the sandy soil. No curbs or sidewalks delineate boundaries. The pine trees are tall and magnificent, and leave room for the naked crepe myrtles and the waxy magnolia to flourish beneath. There are tall stands of luxuriant native grasses, and there is the suffocating quilt of kudzu. There is the good and the bad. Take it or leave it the land seems to say.

And when I venture into town, I am reminded of how crass I am. In Chicago, there are no preliminaries. We get to the point and are in a hurry to resolve, to compromise and go our way. Not so here. I force myself to say hello, to ask how one is doing, how the day has been so far, and how it is expected to go, and I have to do this sincerely, with true feeling in my voice and gestures.

This is the hardest part; after all, where am I going, what is my hurry, and why am I cranky. I remind myself to do the deep abdominal breathing I learned in a yoga class at the YMCA forty years ago. I try to relax my shoulders and not shuffle about. I might learn to do this instinctively if I lived here for years, but I am only here, in the Carolinas, for several weeks.

Is it worth it to keep up this charade, I think so. I was wrong to attribute the “feeling” only to the environment: to the sun, the clouds, to the soft breezes that rustle the palmettos. The feeling is an accolade to this people’s communion with their beloved land. If I try I might be able to carry this feeling home within me. That is except for the soft breezes.

November 2014

Ease

Ease, as in, to be at ease. It is the supposed reason for most vacations and now at my time of life, retirements. Ease, just like the void or mindlessness of Zen, requires an awful lot of unease and mindfulness to accomplish. I suppose there is a deep thought somewhere in there, but in actuality, what there is is work: hours and hours of labor with no guarantee of success in sight.

I think of this as I kneel trying to make a bowl of matcha. Seems simple I know. As Rikyu wrote in his One Hundred Verses (here translated by Gretchen Mittwer), “Know that chanoyu is a matter of simply boiling water, making the tea, and drinking it.” He also wrote, “To become adept at something requires liking it, adroitness, and the accumulation of training. It is the person with all these three who will realize mastery.”

In fact, I often think of the former while entering into the process of making tea only to discover, about 5 minutes into the process, how wrong I am. It is then that the later aphorism starts to resonate in my mind.

But maybe effort is a better word than work. Work implies a reward. I do this for you and you pay me, whereas effort is devoid of the concept of pay or reward. Granted, you may be rewarded for your effort but that is not implicit in the doing.

Effort is an ethical construct. It is something you decided to do because you decide to do it. It provides an internal satisfaction despite the outcome. Effort is done because you want to put in the energy. We know from the laws of thermodynamics that energy is not lost it is just transformed. Though, on a frustrating day at work this is hard to accept. It is probably why the afternoon coffee break was invented. In the hope of using a little biologically active molecule to kick start your brain and body to give a bit more effort towards the cause.

As we are told, the Buddhist priests that brought tea back from China to Japan in the 8th century, 120 miles across the Korean Strait, in fact, used tea for just this purpose. And this purpose provides such an important function that an elaborate culture developed around it. Thus, chanoyu has evolved over at least a half-century.

I think that success in tea, if such a concept exists, is measured in seconds. In the correct placement of the chawan and natsume; in the folding of the fukusa to cleanse the chashaku; in the whisking of matcha into a perfectly foamy lake; in the handling of the hishaku . . .

With all the above performed as the guest looks on resting on the firm foundation of the unseen labor in the mizuja. And that is another aspect of effort. It need not be recognized. When I was young, I wrongly assumed that my contemporaries who were surpassing me academically were somehow more gifted than I. That they possessed an inner trait — in the genes, though who knew about genes back then — that allow them to perform at a higher level. It took me many years to discover that effort was the key to success and that my genes were certainly up to the challenge.

Effort can transform into ease. How will you know, you will know by not knowing. The entire concept will no longer matter. Tea, or whatever pursues you have put your efforts into, will just happen, and seem to the outside world like you were born to do it. I think it is then that you can become a drunken bodhisattvas and wander in the mountains, from hut to hut . . . at ease!

October 2014

Rhythm

Chanoyu, the tea ceremony, is slow and methodical but once matcha is made and served, it is time to quicken the pace. This change of tempo is easy to overlook. A student of tea can spend years on technique before the need for rhythm becomes apparent.

It is akin to learning to play a musical instrument. For me at least, after playing the same folk tunes on my shakuhachi for years I am finally able to think about the time signatures. I cannot quite tap my foot and play but I am improving. This lack of rhythm is the reason, when I think back, that I did not exceled at sports that required coordination.

I have found that part of aging is the ability to look back at the zenith and the nadir of my life. It is a thought provoking exercise to see why some things worked and others did not. Of course, what is done is done, but what was done lives on in memories and an their analysis can help explain a lifetime of decisions. There is value in this.

I try to pass on these revelations but to do this is awkward. It is rare for people not to make their own mistakes. How else would they learn from them? History is full of instances where the past was relived because the past was ignored.

As often happens about three hundred words into my commentaries I begin to wonder where am I going with this. After all, I started with chanoyu. Chanoyu is a dance, a dance with a beginning but no end. This also took time to appreciate.

I watched a fellow student make tea recently and thought of a real world example of chanoyu’s tempo. In the Canadian waterways that Charlotte and I have traversed over the last several summers, we traveled up to travel down. Our goal was to descend from Lake Michigan and Lake Huron’s 560 feet to sea level on the St. Lawrence River. As with many things in life, this was not a straightforward proposition. Several waterways took us up to 900 feet (and over a thousand miles) before sea level was reached east of Montreal.

We wrestled gravity and currents climbing through the lock systems. Once on the top, we flowed with it. It was not effortless. It still required skill and attention but as in chanoyu, informality accompanied the descent. The nights passed leisurely with the realization that the morning’s passage would be easier.

The journey down was more social, and similarly in chanoyu once the matcha is made and served the mood relaxes. It is time to converse and talk of utensils, flowers, ceramics, and poetry. Time to catch up with your guest and enjoy the moment.

So this is the rhythm of chanoyu, the waterways, and I think, life. This insight is an accomplishment to cherish.

September 2014

Geology

Geology was one of those subjects that failed to grab my attention as a youngster. Not that many subjects did. In college, they tried to hide it under the rubric of Earth Science but nobody was fooled. Same old boring rocks with unpronounceable names and worse yet, eons of dates to remember. Now sixty years mature and cruising in geographically interesting regions, I am finally attentive to my rocky surroundings.

There is nothing like being anchored in a secluded cove surrounded by the signs of obvious terrestrial upheaval etched in the rocks, even if it occurred a billion years ago, to start me wondering about what caused it. As Carrie Rose, our 32’ Nordic Tug, has cruised from Chicago south to north, west to east and now north to south she has traversed a flattened landscape the result of recent glaciers, then through one to two billion year old rock in Canada and New York, interspersed with 150 million year old sedimentary rock, and now sits in a marina which was once a slate quarry that dates to 450 million years ago.

I am not sure why the rocks have called out to me. Maybe it is because of the leisurely pace we cruise by them: 6 to 10 mph as opposed to 60 to 70 mph. Maybe because on the boat we live among them. It is easy to tell when we passed from the hard dustless environment of the granite of the Canadian Shield to the muddy rubble of the friable rock laid down layer by layer in an ancient river bottom.

Now we are mingling with rock midway between the two above extremes. It is layered in many places but much less prone to disintegrating into dust and mud. It crushes under foot like a hard cracker. And here and there, there are intrusions of smooth or volcanic rock that slid over the top or penetrated from deep below. Here on the Lake Champlain islands we can see how the rock bent and twisted in respond to the stress placed on it.

The owner of the marina informed me that the lake’s bottom around these parts is tricky to anchor on. That I will think the anchor has a good hold on the bottom but if the wind picks up it may not. It seems the mud and weed that the anchor grabs onto is only a shallow layer resting on smooth shale. The moral of the story is to anchor in a bay protected from the wind, and if the wind picks up or changes direction keep a close watch on the anchor. This I promised to do.

Soon we will leave Carrie Rose in Vermont for the winter and before venturing home spend a few days amongst the granite outcrops in NYC’s Central Park, and amid the canyons of buildings constructed of sand and limestone, and marble and granite brought in from as close as Vermont and as far a Carrera and beyond. The rock walls and floors in NYC have been selected, polished, and laid before me. It is like geology on the hoof and it cannot help but grab my attention.

August 2014

Locks

I will try my best to describe a lock for those that have never guided a boat through one. Most folks from Chicago have been through a lock if they have been on a river cruise and I imagine many others have had similar experiences. But here I will talk about the type of manual locks we have passed through on the waterways of Canada.

Yes, I said manual. Except for a few locks, the Trent-Severn and the Rideau Waterway’s locking systems are manually operated. These waterways were built in response to our (meaning the good old USA) aggression and visa-versa for the English during the formation of our republic and their Canadian Commonwealth. The waterways were built to get men and materials into the continent after the War of 1812. I might have the history a little off but that is the gist of it.

The British government reactivated Royal Engineer lieutenant colonel John By and sent him to the New World with orders to complete the Rideau and the Trent-Severn out of the wilderness of what is now northern Canada. Though from my reading of it, this area was not completely wild. Many people had already settled here. There were enough skilled workers that he was able with varying degrees of success to hire contractors to do the job.

He brought with him a small contingent of miners and sappers, the equivalent of the Army Corp of Engineers and the Sea Bees. The land was surveyed and plans drawn up to create a navigable waterway through a series of dammed river, existing and created lakes, dug and blasted canals, and interconnected rivers. And sure enough in the end, he did it.

Of course, it was over budget and time. He returned to England in disgrace and died a few years later. So much for creating four hundred miles of passable water and close to 100 locks out of granite, mud, malaria-ridden marshes, and rapids!

Carrie Rose is docked to the “up” side of Davis lock #38. It is by all accounts the most remote lock on the Rideau. Though as I look around there are five boats tied to various docks and one canoe with its inhabitants tucked away in their tent. The lockmasters house is in front of me and the shoreline has several small rustic cottages attached to it. I can see the lock gates 50 yards to my right and about a half a block away to the left is the weir. Bridging the two is the arch of the original earthen dam that the colonel built.

The lock, dam, and weir are a compact grouping built to circumvent the rapids that once raged here. The lock is fed from the lake that the dam created and the weir is like a safety valve. It is either opened to allow the abundance of spring water to flow downstream or closed to keep the lake full as the summer drought progresses. Of course, this is not an all or nothing proposition. Depending on the need the flow is regulated with large timbers that are either pull or lowered into the weir’s gate.

Yesterday as we approached the opened lower lock gates, I could feel the effects of the fast running downstream water. I am still getting used to dealing with flow and eddy of currents after spending most of my boating career in, for all practical purposes, current less Lake Michigan. This has been a particularly wet year in Canada and the current is strong. Carrie Rose is heading into it for now until we reach the zenith of the Rideau system at Newboro Lock #36 and then the flow will be behind us, pushing us towards Ottawa.

The Davis Lock gates were open because we were travelling fourth of four boats from the last locks at Jones Falls. Locks come in all sizes, though on the Rideau they are standardized. What is not standard though is how many in a row there are. Jones Falls is a series of four locks: three in a row, a turning basin, and then one more. It raised us approximately 60 feet in the hour and a half it took to negotiate it.

As I turned Carrie Rose away from the raging torrent of water coming from the lake above, there was the lock. It is often the case that locks, for being such an imposing structure, are demurely hid away around a bend. The other three boats were almost secured to its walls, so I slowed and glided in using my bow-thruster to steer.

The lock walls were dripping and covered with moss and tiny plants. They are dark with over 150 years of use but the limestone blocks still show the signs of the artisanship that went in their formation. I can see the marks of the various chisels and hear ping as the metal hit the stone.

The lockmasters have made the process of locking easier by the use of black rubberized cable attached to the top and bottom of the wall. I get Carrie Rose close enough to the wall so that Charlotte can grab onto the aft cable then I stop and step out from the pilothouse to grab a forward cable. We wrap a dock line around them and back to the boat’s cleats. This is not a time for contemplation. The lines need to be adjusted as the boat rises to meet the water level above.

The lockmaster and an assistant close the gate behind us. They crank open valves at the bottom of the lock which open to let the water flow in. There is quite a bit of turbulence when rising, so the staff lets the water in slowly at first. Once we are level with the water above, the gates are opened. We may head off to the next lock or tie up here to spend a night or two. We will do this forty-nine times on the Rideau and be lifted a total of 464 feet.

Not bad for a system completed in 1832. Alas, it was never used for military purposes and its commercial usefulness was short lived. But as a source of recreation, it is incomparable.

July 2014

Absence

The absence of something is something. And that something is sometimes felt more acutely than if that thing were here. I think of my long departed parents. When they were alive and in front of me they did not often enter into my consciousness but now that they are dead they often sneak in.

I admit that my mother’s does most often. Every time I cook, which is every day, she makes her presence known. My father is not around as much. I do not know if this is because he has been gone longer or if he was not as forceful a presence. Both are true. But that said my father surfaces more while I am on the boat or in the basement working on a project. I suppose this is not surprising. They continue to affect me the way they did when they were alive.

And their dead presence, for lack of a better phrase, is more of a gap or chasm. They still offer suggestions. I can see the expressions on their faces. I can just pick out the hint of my father’s sarcasm and the I-don’t-know-what of my mother’s voice. She was more definitive in her speech, but then my home was matriarchal.

I find myself responding to them. Don’t worry; I do not do this aloud. It is more of an internal dialog. There is also nothing surprising in this. At least I do not think so. It makes me wonder about friends that have lost infants and children or lost their parents at a young age. The chasm is there but there is no voice to fill it. This must be painful in its inability to be resolved.

My profession leads to similar musings. In decades of practice many patients have died. Some of them after a fleeting encounter, but many after a decade long relationship. I learned early on to discount this least I go crazy. But forensic questioning starts on my part even if the reason for their death is obvious. And as I do this, a parade of deceased patients passes before my eyes. I try not to hinder their passage. They flow by one-by-one. It seems the only healthy thing to do.

In the millisecond they are once again in my consciousness it is odd that the entire experience is relived. The mind is an amazing chunk of protoplasm. I have heard it said that the brain is the most complex construct in the universe and that is probably true. All this happens in an instant and at this stage in my career I barely take notice.

This reliving is also a repository of knowledge. It is my biologically limited search engine. I think of a word or a set of symptoms, and let it free to roam through my interconnected neurons. I need some peace to do this. It does not have to be long but needs to be undisturbed. I have never had a phone in my exam rooms because of this. I turn my ringer/buzzer off now that we live in a world of constant distractions.

But I ramble. My conjecture is that absence is not the lack of something but is something. It is where everything we know comes from for if we began life filled up there would never be room to fit “us” in. Each of us is one-off and custom-made. And as we go through life we fill up the space that we are allotted and then in the end it is wipe clean. It may have helped fill another’s or it may not have, but that is the luck of the draw.

I have drawn parents and patients into my available space. It has created who I am for better or worse. It effects how I process every experience. It makes each day different and welcoming. Even in my sleep I hope that the sun will hurry up and rise, so I can get up and start trying to fill the finite space left in my mind. I try to fill the absence that I know will never be filled. I try to get something out of nothing. It is quite miraculous that in the end all we leave is absence.

June 2014

Purity

Let’s face it, in chanoyu things — and by that I mean people, places, utensils and everything else — are clean. And I mean clean, in obsessively clean. Of the four tenants of chanoyu the third, Sei, focuses on cleanliness or so I thought. It really translates as purity but I think, as is usual, that I may have missed something in the translation. I wonder if cleanliness is more a part of the second tenet, Kei/Respect.

We clean out of respect for our guests, for the makers of the utensils and for the memory of all that have come before us in the four hundred year history of chanoyu.

Hands, natsume, chaire, chawan, chashaku….all are ritually cleansed. There I said it again. Before they are used they are cleaned. So once in the chashitsu it is not necessary to clean them, but it is necessary to purify them. Of course, I cannot take credit for this intuition just for realizing it after many years of study. Making tea is the tip of an iceberg of such depth that a lifetime of study barely suffices to understand all there is to learn.

But let’s get back to Sei/Purity. There is the outward manifestation and then there is the internal dialog it engenders. When preparing koicha/thick tea the chaire/thick-tea container is purified in an intricate way. I am not sure I have the skill to describe this but I will try. The purification is performed with a fukusa. A fukusa is a square silk cloth about 11” on a side. It spends most of its life folded into 16ths tucked away in an inner fold of a kimono.

Men’s fukusa are usually a deep purple. Women have more choice when it comes to color. Once taken out in public it needs to be carefully inspected. Held at each corner it inhales and exhales slowly as we do. This is called, yoyo-sabaki or four-sided folding. When I do this it seems as if the earth is slowing on its axis. I breathe four even abdominal breaths, and begin a process of transforming it into a shape more conducive to purifying the small ceramic tea container and its lid.

What was once an eleven-inch square of 2-ply silk is now a little packet of energy. Silk is inherently springy and if it gets away from me this golf ball size bundle will open like a parachute. It focuses my attention. First the far side of the lid is wiped then the near in two straight horizontal motions. Next in a fluid motion one fold is allowed to open against the side of the chaire. The chaire is now turned — not too fast — counterclockwise for three revolutions.

A simple thing to describe on paper is a devilish thing to do in reality. But chanoyu is a culture of doing. We make tea for our guest. We do not film a perfect performance and show it to them. And as with any human endeavors, whether it be as simple as tying our shoelaces or as complicated as space flight there is always the risk of failure. To be human is to learn by our mistakes and even if we do not, well that is a lesson in itself.

The utensils in chanoyu are carefully, specifically chosen for the guest. In the USA it is true that we do not always have access to a multitude of choices but nonetheless the spirit exists. And because of the above, once tea has been served it is appropriate for the guest to ask to see certain of the utensils. So once again the chaire will be purified.

This is not a chore. It internalizes Sei/Purity. The process brings order to my psyche. It allows me to appreciate where I stand in this world of contradictions. For only then can I be aware of my inner nature and only then can I truly offer purity to my guest.

May 2014

Snowstorm

Heavy and wet the snowflakes drift down from the sky like they have their own parachutes. The snow started around twilight, so I spent the night wondering just how much of it would stick. I woke to find a white layer an inch thick on the grass and the garage roof. The sidewalk must have retained enough heat to melt the snow but then before the sun rose the resultant water froze. It was cold with sun streaming crisply through the clean morning air.

Cold but not so cold as a month ago because this cold was ephemeral, after all it was April 15th. No matter how cantankerous the weather gets this is only a temporary set back. Maybe setback is too pessimistic a notion even after an intense winter of unrelenting ice, snow, north winds and darkness. This snow was the icing on the cake of spring. It means we made it through another winter.

This morning the tulip’s greens are 6” tall. The delicate Japanese maple by the looks of it made it through its first winter in our backyard. We feared for its life having not seen it for months buried under three feet of snow. Robins with bright orange chests call and spar on our power line, and the next door neighbors roof. And on my way to work I saw several snow covered boats in the harbor.

The local birds have gotten feisty. I miss the goldfinches. Sparrows have displaced their sweet song and golden transformation. But the sparrows in their own way are endearing. They have tenacity and heaven knows they are social to a fault. At the top of their lungs they congregate to gossip in the bramble between our northern neighbor and us. The dog two yards south is kept off balance, rushing to the shrub the sparrows inhabit when not at our house whenever let out of his house.

It was easy to keep track of the local mammals this winter. Their tracks littered the white wasteland of our 20 by 30 foot back forty. I was prescient last September when I bought a new snow blower and insulated the back stair’s storm door. That door was meant as a temporary fix until one day I came home from work to see that a new concrete patio engulfed the doors. I had forgot to remove them before the concrete was poured and so they were made permanent.

The doors have quite a few gaps and each time I opened the basement door to the crawl space I expected to be surprised but I was not. No creature sought refuge in the relative warmth of this dark subterranean space. I am not sure if that disappointed me or not.

The day wore on and snow lingered on the roof. The clouds went from blanketing to almost cumulus. Grass looked a little greener and the tulip’s buds sneakily appeared deep within their green leaves. In the few hours I had been to the office and visited the dentist to have yet another crown-replaced nature had been at work. This amount of growth is a far cry from peak growing season when a zucchini can grow a foot in an afternoon but I will take what I can get.

I suppose that’s what April is all about: spring clouds, green grass, budding tulips and birds singing their hearts out. It just took an April snowstorm to get me out of my funk.

April 2014

Simply

A common refrain is K.I.S.S. — Keep it simple stupid. It is a noble pursuit, probably one powerful enough to devote a life too. But as with many an aphorism its brevity betrays its complexity. A common saying in chanoyu, the tea ceremony, is Ichigo, ichie — One time, one meeting. These statements come close to summing up the entire philosophical foundation of chado and maybe even Zen Buddhism on the unsophisticated level of my understanding.

That a lifetime of study is needed to realize the above principles does not belie the fact that unpretentious simplicity does exist and is attainable.

I have observed many people prepare tea in thirty years of studying tea; from two grand tea masters, many full tea professors and teachers, advanced students, mid level adherences such as myself and rank beginners. Once the fumbling stage has been overcome it seems the flourish stage begins. There is something of the ballroom dance in tea. The basic steps are mastered and then Fred Astaire starts to be channeled. Teachers are usually quick to squash this tendency.

My first teacher — bless her — was a wonderfully ebullient person. My tea began to look like a fencing match in a French B-movie. What did I know? Then because of her death I moved on to another teacher; I was nervous but smug in my abilities. My first lesson was a lesson in humility. My new teacher parried every flourish of mine with her hishaku handle (the cup had fallen off many years ago).

I came away from that first lesson dazed and confused. How could I make tea in the rigid fashion I was being asked, really commanded, too? There was no a place for my style, my interpretation in this ascetic style of tea. I floundered at first. I cannot put a time on it but it took years to relearn tea and that is a lot of knee time!

Slowly, painfully it occurred to me that my version of the practice of tea was hindering my further growth. I was too wrapped up in my performance to comprehend the nature of tea. Tea, as is nature, is simply there. The ospreys I watched hunting at the Canaveral Seashore in Florida a few weeks ago were not performing for me, they were putting food in the nest. Their shaking as they emerged from the water with a fish was not part of a dance routine. The way they turned the fish head in their claws was not part of an artistic statement. It is just what they do. No one had to choreograph it. We are not so lucky.

In 2010 a senior teacher from Kyoto came to instruct us and as I watched him I saw that he just made tea. If some matcha fell he cleaned it up. If a utensil slipped out of place he straightened it. If one fell he picked it up. When he noticed that some of the students had trouble standing he had the tea taken to them. To use an overworked word, at least for me it was enlightening.

So with amazement I watched him this one time keep it simple, and then understood that chanoyu is simply to make a bowl of tea and serve it with humility.

March 2014

Bleak

Twilight comes later these days but is still gone before I arrive home from the office. The alley is the last stretch of road before I reach my garage. Some years ago the city installed new lights. They changed from the sickly warm salmon color of mercury vapor to the cool white of LEDs. So now when I turn into the alley it is brightly illuminated and I find I miss the warm — sickly or not — light of yesteryears. Even the illusion of warmth is welcomed in February.

Since mid November the alley has been paved with snow, snow that is slowly turning salt and pepper with pepper predominating. It presents a bleak landscape with weathered utility poles, disarrayed blue and black garbage receptacles and the vagaries of neglected structures.

2013 was my year — the year of the snake. I came full circle and so did many of my friends. One day we were gainfully employed and the next gainfully retired, that is except for me. They slowly wander south to Florida and west to Arizona, and I think of this each time I turn down my decrepit alley.

Chicago has many strong points but February is not one of them. In my teens and twenties I bitterly complained about Chicago’s weather to my mother. I dreamed of warmer, more exotic climes. In rebuttal she would cite a long list of calamities Chicago does not concern with: hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, floods (for the most part), tsunamis, and her most dreaded nemesis, the ubiquitous crabgrass and alligators of Florida. I appreciate her point of view now that I am a property owner and a witness to many devastating natural disasters. But that said February is still a bit much.

Of course in a city chockfull of culture — if lethargy can be overcome — there are no end of distractions. Charlotte and I recently enjoyed the CSO with Maestro Muti and Yo-Yo Ma, celebrated Urasenke Chicago Association’s 54th tatezome, had a bowl of minestrone at Eataly, listened to an organ trio at The Green Mill, perused the Hiroshige Winter prints at the Art Institute and attended a friend’s cello recital followed up with a deep dish pizza.

I do not begrudge any of the above. I am privileged to live in a city that affords so many opportunities, but right about now I would trade any of them for green grass and an ice-free lakeshore.

In an odd dichotomy February’s harshness countermands the increasing light. I envy our Northern neighbors. As we (or at least me) sit here and snivel, they revel in the ice and snow. Friends in Door County bemoan the fact that in the recent past there was not enough snow, forcing them to curtail their winter pastimes. After all what would Wisconsin and Michigan be without cross-country and downhill skiing, snowmobiles, ice fishing and the artic like conditions at Lambeau Field.


Bleak could be a state of mind, an illusion. But try to tell yourself that when the cold seeps in despite thermal underwear, wool sweaters and down coats. I am a more introspective person because of February. Baking bread warms the house, books and magazines ignored all summer get read, the blues and classical music downloaded to the computer is listened to and I am writing this. So who’s to say that I will not emerge a better person for having lived through another 28.25 days of February.

Bleak February —
Lively sparrows and rabbits
Track in the snow.

February 2014

Isolated

Isolated by the extremes of snow and cold I adapted. The heavy coat saved for just such conditions gets dragged out of the front closet, as does my wool scarf and hat. The tall-insulated boots that spend most of their life in a basement corner are dusted off and treated with water proofing cream. Next I searched for my flannel lined blue jeans. And oh, did I forget to mention the new high tech Japanese heat retaining underwear.

The house also got the once over. Insulating shades were drawn. Clear plastic was taped around leaky windows and blow-dried taut. The snow blower’s fuel was topped off, and shovels strategically placed at the front, back and garage doors. The Subaru’s oil was checked and windshield washer fluid added. I made sure there were shovels and scrapers in each car.

The larder was inventoried. If deficient the staples were quickly acquired before the storms onset. After all this preparation my hands began to dry out, and fingertips and lips commenced to crack. Many different creams and emollients were used to prevent this painful consequence of a cold dry environment.

The onset of bitter cold began with snow as the high-pressure system from the north over powered the precipitating low. When two to three inches of snow accumulated, the snow blower catapulted it onto the frozen lawn or out into the street. This process was repeated eight to ten times before the storm ended. At first the snow was dry and crystalline. It offered no resistance to the puny machine. But the longer the snow fell the heavier it became until the snow blower’s few horsepower barely sufficed.

Then the sky cleared. Stars were visible for the first time in weeks. I sat in the kitchen and watched the external thermometer plummet degree by degree. It was a count down in reverse: 0, -1, -2, . . . -16 before stopping. The world was hushed. Everything outside, including the air, was on the verge of cracking.

I wondered about the creatures that inhabit the backyard. No birds’ chirped. No rabbits left their tracks in the snow. No skunks, possums or cats were seen. Everyone and everything hunkered down, and waited for the jet stream to push the artic vortex further east.

On the coldest morning the traffic was light. I drove to work thinking that smarter people than me had elected to stay home. Lake Michigan was phantasmagoric. Layers of steam and fog wafted unaffected by the near gale force winds. I wished for a camera. No matter, it would take more skill than I possessed to capture the lake’s image, but the image has stayed in my mind’s eye.

The clinic began slowly and gained momentum as the day drew on. At times like this the practice is transformed from primary to urgent care. It is a welcome change. Neuronal connections long unused get a workout. My brain struggles to perform. It can be exhilarating and tiring. My brain gobbled whatever glucose was available. I wished I had eaten a hardier breakfast.

This is happening in a cocoon. I was not alone, just isolated in full view of the world, or at least of Chicago. The first few days were acceptable. I worked, read, baked bread and made a dent in the pile of unpaid bills. But then cabin fever knocked on the door. “Come out and play.” it whispered, and I saw how our ancestors could have walked out of their cave and disappear into the snow.

I knew the worst of the weather would end soon. And sure enough, while still frigid, the next day was ten degrees warmer. A great weight was lifted from my shoulders even dressed in as many layers as the day before. Mother Earth had heard our pleas and relented. Isolated no more I rejoined the world but not without keeping one eye over my shoulder — watchfully waiting . . .

January 2014