Repairs

Nothing runs forever. Everything requires maintenance. At some point, every appliance goes askew. This is, unfortunately, what occurred the last several months in our bungalow on North Talman Ave.

When the nightly news reports on the economy one of the benchmarks is “Durable Goods”. These, as opposed to consumables, are products that do not need to be replaced often. By often they mean every three years but for most of us ten years is more like it. Washers, dryers, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and cars are a few of the devices that are expected to make our lives easier while we toil away at work to make enough money to buy, repair, or replace them.

A reason I went into medicine was that I hate to see people (and things in general) die prematurely. I was one of those kids that took everything apart. Sometimes the things I took apart, at least in earlier days, never found their way back together. Through trial and error, I have become much better at fixing things, and have learned to restrain myself from “fixing” things that do not need fixing.

When people or machines malfunction, finding the correct information to diagnosis and then to repair them is critical. This is the philosophy behind medical school, internship, and residency. It is to instill the fundamental knowledge needed to find the correct information to base an opinion on.

One common complaint of medical students is why do they have to learn anatomy, physiology, microbiology, etc., etc. in such detail. My answer to that is, there is never a time when less knowledge is better than more knowledge. The brain is a sponge. It soaks up all the data presented to it and in the process alters its neural circuitry to create interconnections.

Many diagnoses seemed intuitive. I wondered to myself where did that come from. But I knew that at some time in the past I was exposed to a particular packet of information that my mind was able to draw upon when presented with a particular set of circumstances.

Louis Pasteur wrote: Fortune favors a prepared mind. In this, I am a firm believer. When it came to tests, I understood that if I knew the material it would not matter how squirrely the questions were, I would still pass. And so, when our home’s durable goods started to malfunction I decided to search for a cause.

In the past, the search itself constituted a major effort. Just to find the proper manual was a challenge and then to interpret it another. And if I was able to diagnosis the problem, purchasing the part needed was the next hurdle. Then along came the Internet. I have owned some obscure pieces of equipment: an old German motorcycle and a slightly younger Swedish sailboat to name two. Both presented challenges to fix in pre-internet times.

The first appliance to hiccup was the dryer. Now this dryer has put in its time, probably close to twenty years. It was even submerged under 18 inches of water when basement flooded and, after it dried out, struggled on for five years more. But finally, it stopped making the odd noises that it started making after the flood and died. It had had a good life and served us well, so we were prepared to let it go and be reincarnated into a toaster or a car door.

And since it was written off, the childhood trait of dismantling things to see how they work came calling. Charlotte had a better idea. She consulted The Great Google and to both our surprise found, for all practical purposes, an infinite number of references to this dryer. After reading and looking at diagrams, we started to watch YouTube videos.

There were three men, some better spoken than others, extolling on the diagnosis and repair of this dryer. We both decided it was the motor after the first timid attempt to repair it failed. Apart it came, and not without some difficulty, the motor extracted.

Chicago is blessed with a fine appliance parts store (Fullerton and Damen). To their amazement, they had one motor on the shelf. I jumped in the car, fought through a maze of traffic, and found myself with $160.00 invested in appliance parts.

I took a deep breath, watched the “put-it-back-together” videos again, and went in the basement. There it stood almost daring me to fix it. I plunged in. I cannot say there were no difficulties but in the end, I popped the dryer’s top into place satisfied that I had done all I could do.

At some point in the process, I had told Charlotte to please give me some space. In fact, I drew a line in the sand and demanded she stay behind it. I admit this was not charitable on my part, but in my fervor to revive the dryer, it seemed the reasonable thing to do.

Now was the time to plug it in. No sparks went flying. This was taken as a good omen. Then I depressed the start button and nothing happened. Not only had I not fixed it, wasted $160.00, and worse alienated my wife in the process; I was deflated. Then I heard a quiet voice — from behind the line in the sand — say, “Are you sure you reconnected the door’s safety switch.”

I had not and so I did, and it started. And this is when I thought of Rikyu’s statement, “One should abandon feelings of embarrassment and ask people questions: this is the keystone to being adept.” Chanoyu has taught me many things over my years of study but I never imagined it would affect my approach to repairing a durable good.

(Thanks to Gretchen Mittwer for her superb translation of Rikyu’s Hundred Verses.)

December 2015

Communication

Seventy years is but a speck of time, but think of the momentous change that has taken place since 1945. Countries have been reconstructed. Enemies have become friends. Economies have cycled, boom and bust. Vacuum tubes have been replaced by transistors, ships by jets.

The world has shrunk. In ten hours, we can be in an utterly different culture. Satellites connect us with ongoing calamities in real time. Has this drawn us closer together, it is hard to argue against it. Are we better for it, the answer is undoubtedly yes.

Displaced persons need to communicate in familiar ways, and in familiar languages. They do this to create new, and to preserve existing communities in a faraway place. In this America is unique. For all the consternation about immigration, America continues to welcome people. In my neighborhood on Chicago’s north side, I see a new church, restaurant, or grocery store open to serve the needs of the immigrants from the latest conflict.

I come from an immigrant background. Both my maternal and paternal grand parents travelled to America in the 1800’s. The Statue of Liberty welcomed them and as far as I could tell, none regretted the decision to leave their homeland. I am aware that each ethnic group has its unique history, and that each group is welcomed, or not, differently. Some easily fit in, while others continue to struggle after generations.

It is important to keep the channels of communication open and to have a forum to distribute the news of the old and new countries. News, whether it is business, political, or cultural; whether it be profound or purely gossip; is vital to the health of the emigrant population.

My mother, a first generation Italian-American, was fluent in Italian. Throughout my childhood, she subscribed to Fra Noi, an Italian-American newspaper that serves the same function for Chicago’s Italian-Americans as The Chicago Shimpo does for Japanese-Americans. I remember her at the end of a long day sitting with a cup of coffee reading the Italian language section at the rear of the paper.

Fra Noi was (and is) populated with ads for lawyers, funeral homes, specialty food shop, restaurants, and the many festivals that take place during the year. Most are centered on the Catholic Churches that continue to provide comfort and support as the Buddhist Temples do for the Japanese community.

I have no Italian or Japanese language skills, but this has not stopped me from visiting both countries. It has been a pleasure to travel to Japan three times, spending a total of seven weeks immersed in the culture. And it was my good fortune to discover Chado, The Way of Tea, thirty years ago. This is the reason I can share these thoughts with The Chicago Shimpo’s readership, and for that I am profoundly grateful.

For seventy years, The Chicago Shimpo has provided an invaluable service documenting generations of Chicago’s Japanese-Americans. Without it, much of this history would have been lost. And without it, the relationship between Japan and the United States, and between the evolving generations would be diminished.

Communication, whether it is ink on paper or pixels on a screen, is what makes for a civil society. It keeps communities alive and flourishing. The Chicago Shimpo has given us the gift of hindsight and helps as a template for the future.

Thus, we have the farsightedness of the originators, and the tenacity and self-sacrifice of those who have come after them to thank for the seventy years of The Chicago Shimpo.

Southwest

Lake Michigan off the coast of Chicago has some interesting quirks. To begin with, it is relatively deep as inland coastal waters go. No worries about going aground here unless you are in a super tanker. But maybe I should start out by saying that my intimate knowledge of the lake comes from spending an inordinate amount of time sailing on it.

While everyone else was in Little League, playing golf, or studying I was bouncing around in the waves trying not to get seasick. I am not sure why, but the seasick part did not deter me from getting back on the water. So now, fifty years from when I started sailing on Lake Michigan I still am.

But back to the quirks, when the wind is blowing from the southwest it has certain characteristics that winds from other directions do not have. A southwest wind blows across farmlands, subdivisions, industry, and Chicago’s bungalow belt before it collides with the manmade cliffs of the central city.

Try to imagine the above characteristics, and add to it the warmth and humidity that a southwest wind inherently brings with it and you get an idea of its feel. A southwest wind is thick and rowdy, and it is gusty at Chicago’s shoreline. The city’s wall of concrete, steel, and glass breaks the wind into an infinite number of vortexes, which combine in odd ways.

This keeps a sailor attentive, never knowing from moment to moment what the wind is going to do. With experience I learned to shorten sail before venturing onto the lake. A sailboat needs a certain amount of sail area to move through the water. Since most boats will only reach a certain speed, the more wind there is the less sail area is needed. If there is too much sail presented to the wind the boat gets blown on its side and goes sideways instead of forward.

The lake outside the Montrose Harbor entrance tends to be tumultuous. The southwest wind piles water up against the northern concrete shoreline that jutes eastward. With nowhere to go, the waves bounce back south and hit the rocks that work their way south to Belmont Harbor.

The Montrose Harbor entrance is tucked into the corner. The wind is in our face as we make our way out of the harbor. The sails flap wildly until the entrance is cleared and the boat can be pointed more east than south. The sails fill, the engine is turned off, and we pick up speed — if it were only so simple. Because the nature of a southwest wind in this particular place is gusty it can be overpowering one moment and absent the next, and its direction can vary from south to west.

To shorten or reduce a sail is to reef it. Reef is an Old Norse word meaning to rend. Reefing a sail is much easier to do at the mooring in the harbor then out in the wind and waves. So, this is what we do.

A sailboat needs the power of the wind to make its way through the confused seas. To adjust to the changes in wind speed and direction, and the changing sea state requires experience and a bit of chutzpah! In many respects, an underpowered boat (remember we reefed the sail) is as bad as an overpowered one, but knowing what we know, that the wind will become stronger, the sail area remains the same.

In a southwest wind, we steer for the Harrison-Deaver Crib 2.75 miles offshore, and some seven miles distant from the mouth of Montrose Harbor. If we venture too close to the downtown skyline the wind becomes, for a lack of a better word, squirrelly. The more off shore the steadier the wind becomes, so we try to head towards Michigan City, Indiana knowing we will never get there.

Heading for the crib the boat has the wind on its nose or close hauled in sailing terminology. Once heading back to Montrose the wind is on the port or left stern quarter and this is called a broad reach, the most efficient and comfortable point of sail.

On the best of days this short sail up and back from the crib encapsulates what sailing is all about: tactics, logistics, upwind and downwind sailing, a spectacular scenic background, unpredictability and the satisfaction of piloting a boat well. And did I forget to mention camaraderie, I shouldn’t have.

Lake Michigan’s quirks (believe me the list is much longer) are what make a barren coast so enticing to sail for a lifetime. When I look back at the inordinate time spent, I think I should strike out inordinate and replace it with rewarding or useful or well spent. For a sail in a southwest wind is certainly all those even if it is a bit quirky!

September 2015

Dodged

Time to get out of Dodge. Well, really New Jersey across from Manhattan where Charlotte, I, and Carrie Rose, our 32-foot Nordic Tug, spent a week. Our destination is the Chesapeake Bay, but of course, any cruise is step by step, and our next step was south on the North Atlantic along the New Jersey coast.

In this part of the world and I imagine most parts of the world tides and currents have to be dealt with. Trying to figure them out is like celestial navigation except not as precise. I purchased a book listing the tides and currents for the east coast. It is a book of tables and small print. And it is a book of suppositions about currents. To keep its bulk down the tables refer to other unrelated tables. There are many abbreviations, small print, footnotes, and confusing relationships between data points.

It reminds me of nephrology. I can understand it if I squint and read every word and not let one thing I do not understand pass until I understand it. We have not found a local, or longtime cruiser for that matter that feels comfortable predicting the current. Today we got to our destination — Manasquan Inlet — at precisely the wrong time. The tide was at its high point and current was running out like gangbusters.

Let me backtrack. We pulled out of Jersey City, NJ with the current in our favor. The Hudson narrows here and in fact, the Verrazano Bridge is called The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. When a big tidal river like the Hudson narrows in the vicinity of lower Manhattan; Ellis Island; the Statue of Liberty; a major sea port with the tug, tows, anchored barges, and moving tankers, car carriers, and bulkers; and add to this the local ships, water taxis, and ferries; not to mention the various security agencies and the local fisherman it creates maelstrom of activity. I could keep adding to the list but it is making me dizzy.

The above craziness ended as Carrie Rose passed between two incoming ships: a car carrier and a tanker. I am not sure how we ended up in the middle of the eighth largest suspension bridge with a fully loaded tanker from Liverpool and a behemoth car carrier from who knows where on either side, but it worked.

Now the Hudson opens up wide. The channel markers fan out into the distant Atlantic Ocean. We had decided to take a sharp right and head for Great Kills harbor to wait out the rough weather. It seemed like we would be there for a week according to NOAA weather radio.

I listened repeatedly for a glimmer of hope. No such luck, expect maybe today. There were Small Craft Warnings, still it did not sound that bad. It was early in the day. We decided to go have a look, so I turned Carrie Rose’s bow away from the land and for the first time towards the ocean.

As it turned out, just going to look turned into just keep going. Carrie Rose headed south around the Sandy Hook light and down the coast of New Jersey. Neither of us had anticipated this, so no route existed in the iPad or MacBook Air, our main navigational aids. We scrambled to enter the appropriate waypoints and in the process discovered that our destination was close to 50 miles away.

Northeast winds are the bane of Chicago’s boating world and it is the same here. The only difference is in Chicago there is a fetch measured in hundreds of miles and here thousands. The wind freshened and the waves grew. It is hard to estimate their size. The radio said two to fours but I can tell you that CR was lifted and surfed down them close to 14 mph. Not scary, nerve racking is a better term. Carrie Rose has been in worse on the Great Lakes, but there is something different about these.

They came out of the NE, which was good. Carrie Rose does well with waves on her stern quarter. Then they morphed into an odd combination of NE and East. I turned off the autopilot and took over the helm. I can steer a straighter thus more comfortable course and I can take advantage of the following sea to speed us along. To my right I watched a large powerboat that was skimming the shoreline disappear into the inlet. It confirmed the point on my chart. I headed for it.

Inlets are odd places. They are places of abrupt change. In this case, the bigger seas of the ocean are broken up into small pieces creating a chaotic mess. Though this is a large inlet, it is hard to make out until almost upon it. I could see two distinct jetties on the radar so I knew it existed, and then I saw the red and green lights that mark their ends: chaos on the outside, smooth as glass on the inside. Carrie Rose has 220 horsepower. I used them. With the throttle down, we cut through the maelstrom and into the smooth channel.

Now you have to remember we have never been here before. We have no local knowledge other than what we have gleaned from cruising guides. And since I was busy driving, Charlotte was busy (when not holding on) trying to gather data. I knew she was on the phone and then she said in a confident voice, “We are going to the Hoffman’s Marina gas dock and it is before the bridge”.

I saw the bridge nearby. My mistake was to relax for 30 seconds and in those precious seconds I failed to realize the strength of the current. As is usual for any crowded confined place on the water, there were fishing boats, some quite large, drifting with the current. I hit the autopilot button, grabbed my binoculars, and started to look for the gas dock. Saw it and saw two men who were waving me off.

Looking down at my depth sounder it read 3.0 feet…not good since Carrie Rose is 3.5 feet deep. More power, I turned into the channel, saw, and felt the current rushing in along the dock. One does not come into a dock riding with the current. One turns into it and so I did with the urgings of the dock master. The problem here was the current was also pushing me into the dock. I knew that if I did not do something quickly Carrie Rose would miss the dock and be swept into a narrow channel lined with large sport fishing boats.

My first response was to reverse to give me some room to maneuver but with the weird current, it did not work as expected. Again, Carrie Rose’s power came in handy. Throttle down for the second time, she came around and hovered off the dock as she slowly moved towards it. Then we were docked. This was a good stress test for my 60-plus year old heart.

The rest of the story involves Larry the dock master and owner of the marina guiding Carrie Rose into the slip next to the gas dock using lines and me at the helm to prevent the boat from getting swept away with the current. Once tied to the various piers, a complicated task in itself, I turned the engine off and calm reappeared.

It had been five hours since we left New Jersey expecting to travel 15 miles to a quiet backwater and ending up 40 miles in the middle of New Jersey vacationland in a busy marina next to the gas dock with an even busier channel next to it. And the bridge is for the New Jersey commuter railroad into Manhattan. It opens and closed all day announcing its intention with a siren.

And did I mention the marina’s restaurant within earshot, which had a live band playing the best of wedding music circa 1970 long into the night. And there was the floodlight on the fuel dock sending sunlight over Carrie Rose all night.

None of it mattered. We started down the coast and ended up a beautiful if noisy place, and now can ride the tides stationary while contemplating what to do next with our lives.

Purpose

Deep Bay is a northerly projecting finger-like body of water on the New York side of Lake Champlain. It lies a few miles north of where the ferries ply the water of Lake Champlain’s Broad Lake from New York to Vermont and back. They do this 27/7 in rain or shine, and in liquid or frozen water.

Deep Bay’s popularity with recreational boaters convinced New York to place seventy moorings in the bay, and now not having to anchor it is even more popular with boaters. Carrie Rose (really Charlotte) grabbed a mooring on Thursday noon. Deep Bay is protected from every wind direction apart from either side of south. With the wind forecast to blow from the north, we headed there.

Despite the forecast, the wind blew from the south. The bay was choppy with the occasional white cap. These kept a lively motion going until late in the afternoon when the wind calmed down. The clouds dissipated, quiet set in, and the air cooled making for a great nights sleep.

The east and west shores are studded with ancient pines and cedars clinging to walls of layered black slate. Except for the tip of the bay, there is no sign of human habitation. We had a peaceful dinner: French Chenin Blanc, spinach and ricotta raviolis in a mirepoix of carrot, onion and pepper with a dab of pesto for the sauce. I made rye bread a few days before and that, with sweet Vermont butter, capped off the meal.

Dishes washed, I settled into my favorite spot in the pilothouse. But it was so nice outside now that the wind calmed, that Charlotte suggested we sit outside before the mosquitos began to rule the night. Chairs out, we settled in on the back of the boat and that is when I noticed a multitude of seagulls above and within the tree line.

They seemed to be flying haphazardly, almost for fun. Repeatedly they missed each other by inches. They glided up, stopped abruptly, lost altitude, pointed their beaks down, gained air speed and with it lift, and then, did it again. This cannot be for fun. Wild animals are not as flippant as us. There is a purpose to their activities — they are not doing it for arts sake. Survival is their chief concern.

I retrieved binoculars, then a camera, and started to follow them. Damn, they were catching mayflies on the wing. Once I realized this, it was obvious. I could plainly see them spot a lumbering insect, fly up under it intersecting it with their beak, and gulp, the tasty morsel was had.

How many mayflies does it take to satiate a gull, well, I will never know. I finally went to sleep but not before noticing that fish were also popping out of the water to grab the low flying flies.

I awoke to a boat covered in mayflies. Some dead, others dying, many with their wings stuck to the deck by dew. As I went about my morning ritual, clearing the boat of spider webs (and as many spiders as possible) I gently picked the stuck mayfly up by their fragile wings and launch the wiggling insects into the air to fend for themselves.

It is a selfish act. To rid the boat of them alive is easier then to clean them up when dead. Deep Bay, some 1300 miles by boat from Chicago, is an odd place to realize the natural history of seagulls and mayflies. To realize the purpose of the natural world and to give thanks for not being born a mayfly!

Burgers

Just as an introduction, I have been a vegetarian (except in Japan) since 1978. Vegetarianism has gone from a no recognition cultish status to an understanding and accommodating food culture in the 90’s, and now to bacon! The present “foodie” culture has turned its back on veggies. It is hard to find a substance that does not contain bacon. Jellies, jams, ice cream, chocolate, bread, and nearly every entrée at millennial kitchens have some derivative of bacon.

My mother-in-law lives in South Carolina and anything in their cuisine can be bettered by the addition of a little fatback. But do not get me wrong, each to their own, if fatback it be, then I am okay with that. The way the world looks at food has changed dramatically since I changed my ways. Food once thought toxic is now health giving, and food assumed wholesome is now thought to be toxic.

In my last years of practicing medicine, patients were increasingly looking for substances to be allergic too. It made for a frustrating relationship. There were no definitive tests for most of the offending agents, so most of the data (if it could be called that) is anecdotal. I grew up during the Cold War and then it was assumed that any oddity was a communist plot. Now many food stuffs, be they natural or not, are assumed to be part of a plot by multinationals to poison and profit from the populace.

These ramblings are triggered by a veggie burger. Yes, that’s right a veggie burger. How can such a banal foodstuff conjure up thoughts of the Cold War. This particular burger — stay with me here — was gluten, corn, yeast, dairy, egg, soy, and nut free. It proclaimed to only contain healthy fats. I got to thinking, what could it be made of. It also displayed little emblems designating standards it conforms to and social media it subscribes to.

The three inch by quarter inch disc was non-GMO verified, certified vegan and gluten free, and Kosher. It stated it was a Certified “B” corporation (whatever that is) and asked to be followed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. It had an OR code if more in depth information was needed on any of its ingredients, as if I needed further convincing of the company’s mission to make the world a better place through its veggie burgers.

I am not being cynical. The world has changed for the better since I was a kid. It is not as easy to get away with pure evil. There are too many eyes watching. The world’s governing bodies and many dedicated people respond to crisis after crisis. It is not always perfect or timely but certainly an improvement on the catastrophe the 20th Century was.

Between the resurgence of bacon as a health food and gluten, a lonely protein buried within a kernel of wheat, becoming the bad boy; food and our changing taste drive the world’s culture. The aphorism, you are what you eat, is more appropriate then ever. I never would have guessed when I flippantly gave up on meat in 1978 how profoundly it would affect my worldview.

I find my self out of the mainstream, not that I have ever really been in it. It might be that I am feeling the effects of my age; trying, at least in my mind’s eye, to make one further attempt to stay relevant. Deep down inside I know it is hopeless, I am never going to eat bacon. So, I should just shut up and be thankful that such a veggie burger exists.

June 2015

Impressions

My wife Charlotte and I spent three weeks in March and April travelling from Kyoto to Kyushu and back. Below are a few of my impressions, some poetic and some prose.

Kyoto is best summed up with poetry.

-Eleven floors up
From Kawaramachi-dori—
Aerobatic crows.

-White bread, hard-boiled egg, straight ahead jazz—
Kyoto breakfast.

-Temples flourish
In the cold and the mist—
Kyoto below.

-Thousands of Gods and Buddha’s—
A young boy looks up and asks his mother,
“How many gods are there?”


A Morning in a Kyoto Hotel

It is very civilized: roasted tea after a bath and warm soak, reading the neatly pressed Japan Times in the deep folds of a soft bathrobe while looking out onto the Kyoto foothills. And it is quiet in the morning. Commerce does not commence until after 8AM. The river glistens as it heads to the sea with a few joggers and
dog walkers filling out the scene. It appears to have rained as we slept in our cocoon.

-Snow on the mountain
Blankets ancient cherry trees—
The buds remain for another day.


Notes on a Morning’s Drive to Nagasaki

Rain soaks the rice fields. Low ceiling and hills, or are they mountains hidden in the clouds. The train weaves its way through a countryside of compounds, industry, and green. Water is controlled: rivers, marshland, gates, canals, ditches, and flooded fields. We bank 10 to 15 degrees around the curves and the track sings out in a comforting rather than scary or disturbing way. It is raining — torrents of rain — which drench the train’s windows obscuring the view. It is impressionistic.

Cherry blossoms struggle to stay on the trees. I wonder if the rain keeps the bees indoor. If it does, they will have to stay cozy for the forecast is rain, rain, and rain. Suddenly, I realize that much of the terrain I am looking at has evolved over thousands of years.

And now the train is on the coast skimming the shoreline left to right, weaving around shallow bays and breakwaters. A gale obscures the offshore islands. Here and there, a few fishing boats are attached to breakwaters, but no pleasure craft are in sight.

The first terraced fields appear with ancient gravesites hidden within the folds of the hills. The schoolgirls next to me look like they are doing zazen, but they are probably napping: readying themselves for a day of study, activity, and striving to enter Kyoto University.

We are gliding into Nagasaki on a seamless track. No more clunk-clunk of the rails, just speed, tunnels; our ears popping from the pressure changes as we scream in and out of tunnels.

Homes are snaking their way up the valleys, crowding out the rice fields. The train is travelling as through a dark wormhole to another universe and I suppose we are too. To our second ground zero in five years.


From Nagasaki to Fukuoka

We pull out of Shin-Tosu on our way back to Fukuoka from Nagasaki, and I see the conductor by the JR (Japanese Railroad) ticket station make a formal bow: hands at the side. I see him for a split second for the shinkansen rapidly accelerates and it starts me thinking the way a mind can with multiple “trains” of thought.

What is he bowing to? Is he bowing to the train itself; to the crew; to the people within; to the designers and the builders of the train, track, and station; to his superiors; to the politicians who were enlightened enough to approve it; to the emperor who sits atop the pyramid; to the Shinto kami that allowed the natural world to be cleared so we can ride the rails. I suppose to all the above or so I would like to think.


Osaka to Ise

In Osaka, it takes being on the 31st floor to find tranquility. It is 9:00 AM and we are heading for the yellow train that will take us to Ise. This morning we had our usual Chicago breakfast of yogurt and bananas, tea and coffee, and surgery donuts; and not what we have grown use to: fish, squid, octopus, shrimp, miso soup, rice, pickles, tea, black sesame juice, salad, greens with tofu skin, etc., etc.

The Ise-Shima Liner is a holiday train. No grim faces here, no slumped heads, no closed eyes, just lots of cheerful banter. It helps that there is the possibility of the sun showing its face today after days of cold and rain.

Osaka is another city in Japan brought to an abrupt end by mountains. Against all the odds, the sakura are still in bloom, so our visit to the shrine may be extra special.

I think of few words to describe our trip so far: elated, engaged, honored, anxious, determined, relieved, exploration, gustation, weariness, grumpiness, renewal, and inspiration.

Then suddenly, Sun! and Blue!

We wander through the rivers, shrines, and rocks. We visit the ocean, and eat Ise soba. Apart from the main shrine, Ise is a quiet town. The second shrine of the complex was almost devoid of people but I think more impressive. Massive trees intermingle with the pristine shrines. Muted white granite stones demarcate their new building sites. Built from wood and stone gathered by the local populace.


Osaka, the final destination.

Osaka’s Castle Park felt like NYC’s Central Park with music of every ilk, bird watchers, multitudes of characters, cute dogs (and the only misbehaved cur in Japan), street food, boat rides, etc. The only difference was the amount of drinking under the what’s-left-of-the-cherry blossoms. The air was thick with roasting fish and the sounds of music. It was a free for all.

Osaka’s canal boat trip was underwhelming, as least by Chicago River standards, but no matter it was nice to get out on the water. Our subway pass was well used. We went this and that way. The Red, Green and Blue line crosshatched us all over town.

We tried to do more in Osaka but finally gave in and bought dinner at the “Food Mart” 32 floors below our hotel room. Before we ate, we packed deciding that Osaka was manageable by day but by night, well I guess we are too old!

On the last night in Japan, I start to think of things to do back home: make a tea bowl, a chashitsu, use my tea ware, walk, play the shakuhachi, and do something artistic every day. Japan was demanding, exhausting, and in the end, exhilarating!

May 2015

Rescued

Japan is a benevolent country. Its people are friendly and generous. So helpful, that I feel guilty about being in their country and being inept at the Japanese language. As much as this lack of language skill is a determent to navigating the various complexities and even the simplicities, what is worse is that it puts my host at a decided disadvantage. Once I have entered into a conversation that I sense will go nowhere, most Japanese are committed to see my request through whether they understand it or not.

I have learned that if I quickly withdraw my request, thank them, and move on, no one will feel beholden. But if I persist, then in most cases, they will feel the need to help no matter what. This scenario played itself out multiple times on our recent three-week stay in Japan.

Charlotte and I began our trip in the relative ease of Kyoto. Kyoto is at the same time a modern sophisticated city and a charmingly medieval one. They are used to foreigners. There are gaijin crawling down every small lane, inspecting every temple and shrine, and standing befuddled outside the ubiquitous curtained entryways; they — we — are everywhere.

For the most part in Kyoto we got away with English, but the farther south we ventured, the less and less we were understood. It caught us off guard, and it required the Japanese citizenry to rescue us several times.

Maybe I will try to a relate a few episodes, not in any particular order for my jet lag addled brain will not allow for that. One of the reasons we went south to Kyushu and then to Hagi was to see the origins of famous tea pottery. This led us first to Karatsu. It is a small town with a large castle perched on its highest point and it even has a street named after the tea bowls produced there, Chawan-Gama Street.

Though the town had a 100yen bus to shuffle tourist around we choose to walk. And walk we did. By the time we had walked out to the castle site in the late afternoon it was raining and our feet were aching, so why not take the bus back to the train station. The only problem was we could not find the bus stop. It must have been right in front of our faces but as far as we were concerned, it was invisible.

It started to drizzle so we stepped into a beautiful little shop at the base of the castle mount with our maps in hand. I had the bright idea of asking the shop keeper. He was somewhat older than middle age, nicely dressed in his grey cardigan sweater, and did not seem concerned when we came up to him wheedling multiple maps while blurting out, “bus stop”.

Calmly he surmised the situation and picked up the phone. After a moment of referring to the hieroglyphics on our maps, he had a conversation and wrote the gleaned information down. He gestured to the time he had written on the paper, and pointed to a corner on the other side of the street from his establishment. We thanked him, bowed deeply and left the shop befuddled. We walked to the area but there was no sign of a bus stop; so, deciding that it was not that far to the train station started walking. It began to rain as we crossed a bridge and took a right towards the station.

We were about three blocks into our journey when a spotless white Toyota Camry cut us off. The side window opens and it is our shopkeeper motioning us into his car. Without a moments hesitation we jump in the back seat and he hurries off as we both simultaneously say, “arigato gozaimasu”. Next thing we know we are in the train station slipping our tickets into the carousal with five minutes to spare.

Then there were the two men who finding us having a somewhat heated discussion with maps in hand, go out of their way to walk us to a road where their hand signals make sense. And the blue clad JR information woman that is so flustered that she cannot help us, calls down to the first floor to have an English speaking fellow employee intercepted in the parking lot before she gets in her car, to help us buy tickets and board the bus to Hagi.

The list goes on. The staff at the impeccable Japanese inn that put their three heads together and realized that we will never catch the bus if we waited for a taxi, then dragged a well suited gentleman from the back office to impel him to get the van and drive us to the station.

There was the charming Japanese couple, that have been living in Detroit for the last 44 years, who informed us that the slivers of speckled white translucent fish we have just eaten is fugu or blowfish. And the man on the shinkansen that after giving us the wrong information risks missing the train to track us down and guide us to our seats.

I cannot remember more now. I think the Japanese do this because in their hearts, while we are in their country, they feel responsible for our well being. And this benevolence is reflected in chanoyu’s second guiding principle, kei or respect. So, before we return I think I will either get a better navigation program on my phone or learn some rudimentary Japanese. Or we could just stay in Kyoto, not a bad choice either!

April 2015

Blue

Molecules scatter the sunlight blue, brilliant blue. It is the color of Lake Michigan — sometimes. It is the color of Chicago’s Germanic and Nordic immigrant’s eyes. It is the color of cold inspiration and colder winter skies.

It can be hopeful or not. It works both ways. Steely cold blue denotes no emotion, but blue skies in a Northern winter, despite the frigid air, reminds us that there is life beyond low scudding grey clouds.

Once a friend, who moved to Seattle straight out of Law school in the Midwest called in the middle of winter to ask if I had seen the blue sky recently. I assured him it still existed.

Chicago is the city of blue, “The Blues” to be exact. The black diaspora from the south lead to Lake Michigan shores, and brought with it an art form filtered through Africa and southern plantation fields. They road the iron horses fed on water and coal to the industrial north.

Here electrons were added to their humble music, and Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter, just to name a few, brought blues to the masses through their proxies.

The privileged women of the 1800’s brought their own version of blue from France. Feel the sea breeze; see the sails on the horizon and the fair weather cumulus dotting the blue sky of Monet’s Cliff Walk at Pourville. And a later collector allowed us to see Monet’s rendering of the Waterloo Bridge as blue sunlight scatters to illuminate it.

On a more determined note, we have had the Blue Flu when a disgruntled police force called in sick. For anyone who lives in Chicago knows the meaning of blue in their rear view mirror.

There is green also in Chicago, a river of it but as pervasive as the Irish myth is, I would still pick blue for Chi-Town. Of course, the flag has two bold horizontal stripes of blue. There seems to be some dispute as to their interpretation but I vote for Lake Michigan, and the Chicago River with its system of canals. That is why we are here after all. We moved the commerce of the east to the wilderness of the west, and in the process, this great city was built.

Blue is a state of mind. How can we be blue and elated at the same time? The Buddha had something to say about this. “Life is suffering”, he says and then explains a way out. Muddy Waters has his “mojo working” and Howlin’ Wolf got “dat spoonful”. As dreadful as life is there are alternatives.

I have sailed across Lake Michigan many times and noted a different world in the middle where no land is visible. It is a world of palpable blue above and below. The air is infused with blue. Instinctively I breathe deep, it becomes part of me.

Even on a calm day, for it is not always so, it is alive out there. The boundary layer between air and water does not exist. Or maybe it just takes the slightest of disturbances and it ionizes.

It is hard to forget this feeling. At times, I find myself dreaming of it, dreaming of blue light scattered through water and air. For there is a blue reality to this dream that requires action and cold inspiration.

March 2015

Shaku

What is long and cylindrical; has both ends chopped off; is made from one of the worlds most common plants; has a tendency to self-destruct; can take months to make a sound; is made by many of the musicians that play them; has nearly indecipherable music; and in the right hands sounds like the wind, like nature itself — the shakuhachi.

The most common size of a shakuhachi is 1.8 shaku. Shaku is an ancient Japanese unit of length, approximately one foot. Hachi is eight sun (another ancient unit) or tenths of a shaku. So, this gives you an idea of how long one is, about 21 inches.

I cannot remember how my relationship with the shakuhachi started. It was the late 1970’s and I was back in college after a stint as a letter carrier. I found myself at Southern Illinois University with few friends during the worst winter on record. As opposed to the endless amount of student loans available now, I lived frugally. Most of my time was spent in the bedroom studying. That is, except for the time in secular meditation, and in an exasperating nightly ritual blowing into a two foot long piece of bamboo.

So, how did I find this flute? Let me digress, remember, this was long before the Internet. In the library basement at Southern Illinois University, the beginnings of the Internet were percolating but there was no world wide web to go shopping on. There resided plasma monitors with remarkably poor resolution, which were connected to a system from the University of Illinois at Champaign, called Plato. I would reserve a ½ hour or so on a monitor to break up my evening studies and to work with several rudimental programs: simple anatomy and a typing instructional program that I never completed.

But this has nothing to do with the shakuhachi. Wherever I saw the ad (it might have been in the Whole Earth Catalog) I bought into its notion of blowing Zen and purchased one. It turned out to be in the key of D, not that I knew what that meant. I still have it. It might have cost $100. A large amount of money considering I was to spend the next five years living on an average of $2000 a year.

A shakuhachi is a pentatonic instrument in a chromatic world. It has the distinction of music written in katakana, top to bottom, and right to left. The notation represents how the five holes are covered, or not, and the change in the angle of breath blown across its slashed pop-bottle like opening.

An accomplished player can sound notes from near D above middle C on up for two, and even three octaves. To complicate playing it even more, since each flute is simply a piece of bamboo, they all have a different character. But in this case, at least for me, frustration has lead to endearment.

Back at the university, I spent a few minutes of my precious study time learning the unique music and trying to produce a sound on the flute. Now over 30 years later, I have rediscovered the shakuhachi. My stable consists of the original student grade bamboo flute, a maple replica from the 80’s, and a recently purchased vintage thick-walled Japanese flute from the 1930s.

Each one requires different technique and they each have a slightly different pitch. And as for character, the thin-walled flute is high and reedy; the wooden one is low and sonorous; and the vintage flute . . . well, I am not sure. Not sure because I do not possess the talent to play it to its full capacity.

I have been assured that if I devote my life to practice, in about three years, I should begin to show some promise. If three years is the estimate, I am probably looking at a decade. And as for the decades I have already devoted to it, I am close to mastering the Japanese equivalent of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ or ‘Go Tell Aunt Rhody’.

Breath control, timing, consistency, and stamina all need work. Then maybe I will think about artistic expression. Or perhaps the point is just to blow. Let the earth’s atmosphere circulate through my respiratory tract into and out of the flute.

I think of chanoyu’s expression ichigo, ichie (one time, one meeting), and then realize the shakuhachi’s is one breath, one note.

January 2015