Space

 

Two activities (besides writing this column) that consume me are chanoyu, the tea ceremony; and the shakuhachi, an end blow flute. They have a few common threads. The first is obvious, the second not so much. The first: both are a part of Japanese culture. Both have roots in China. Chanoyu, at least the type I practice, has developed for close to 500 years. The shakuhachi’s history is probably closer to double that. 

Chanoyu’s pivotal figure is Sen Riyku. Though chado (the way of tea) existed before him, he set the standard we follow today. The shakuhachi has no such person. There are “modern” teachers and virtuosos but they are only present from the 19th century on. The origins of the shakuhachi are shrouded in chants emanating from forest temples 900 years ago.

 

The second: space, is harder to describe. It is an ill defined term, and both physical and intellectual. There is outer space and the space alluded to in the phrase “Give me some space”. A person can be spaced out, and during the Cold War, there was a space race. Everything in the universe, no matter how large or small, is separated by space.  

 

I did not look up space in a dictionary. Slumped in my kitchen chair, I closed my eyes, and let my mind wander in inner space and let it search through my experiences that relate to space. Despite having an espresso, I did nod off. It is so quiet since Covid emptied the airspace over my house.

 

In chanoyu there is a moment, just after the kensui (waste water container) is moved forward, when it is appropriate to stop and compose oneself before making matcha. No teacher has told me how long to pause. It is a rare time to consider the years of study that lead up to this moment. A time to reflect, with courage and curiosity, if I should move forward and reach for the chawan to place it in front of me. It is a simple task with profound consequences.

 

And then there is the shakuhachi. It may say D, F, G, A, or C on the tuner but these are manmade constraints. Each pitch has infinite variability. Most musicians, no matter the instrument or genre, play a bit of Bach. Do any of them sound like the other? They play the same notes, but each performance is unique. 

 

I have a few shakuhachi works lodged in my memory. Can I ever play them the same; the answer is frustratingly no! Several have quickly played threads of notes. My old mangled hands have trouble moving from one fingering to the next, plainly missing a note or adding a wayward one. 

 

No matter how fast the notes are to be played, there is space between them. And that space can be infinitely divided. As I play each note, I search for the interval that will allow me to express each note clearly while adhering to the wishes of the composer. Often, when listening to virtuosic performances these passages are amalgamated into a blur of sound, but at the same time hidden within the shakuhachi’s breathy tone, each note is articulated. I search for that space in my playing. Not filling the empty space between each note is a hard won skill.

 

When I began to speak in public, it was pointed out to me that I was speaking too fast. I intentionally began to pause between each word. It felt and still feels awkward but is more effective. This is what I attempt to do when playing the shakuhachi. The wisdom is in the silence and not the noise.

 

Since chanoyu and the shakuhachi have developed for hundreds of years, I am not upset that my performance, for the lack of a better word, still develops despite the decades of practice. Of course, as everyday passes there is one day less to master my art. The truncated space left to me needs to be infinitely divisible.

December 2020

Treasure

I was recently looking through my treasure trove of photographs related to the Urasenke Chado Tankokai Chicago Association. What triggered this retrospective was an invitation to participate in the Urasenke Tankokai North American Chado Relay on Facebook. The Chicago Association was assigned three dates (10/8,9,10/2020) to post photographs and comments related to the history of the association, the various activities we participate in, and how we are coping with the pandemic.    

The first group of photos represented a snapshot of the association’s history. The first picture was taken before the association existed with Daisosho (the now retired 15th generation grand tea master) planting the seed that lead to the formation of the Chicago Association. Others show us preparing tea for the opening of the Parliament of the World’s Religion in 1993, and at the site of the original Japanese Garden that was built for the 1883 World’s Fair. 

 

There are pictures of our 50th Anniversary in 2010, an image of chanoyu while floating down the Chicago River in fall, and pictures at the Chicago Botanical Garden and the Japanese Information Center where in normal times we demonstrate tea several times each year. And finally pictures of Daisosho offering  Peacefulness through a Bowl of Tea in honor of the fallen at 9/11. The history presented in the photographs helps remind the association to remain true in our efforts to represent the finest of Japanese culture to Chicagoland.           

 

The next post focused on how we are adapting to the many issues that Covid-19 continues to force to the forefront. Chado, despite its Zen trappings, is profoundly interactive. It is hard to do tea alone in a room and have it be meaningful. Chanoyu calls out for the participation of others. After all, most of what we do is centered upon the guest. 

 

Now that I have said this, I admit that sharing tea on ZOOM has been surprisingly fulfilling. Of course, it is cumbersome. It is hard to practice being a guest. The Internet cuts out. The sound is garbled. The camera needs to be moved. These are impediments, but I find that the connection with like minded individuals far outweighs the above inconveniences. The technology makes practice possible. And it has motivated me to use the dogu (tea ware) hidden in my closet to provide a little peace of mind by making a bowl of tea. 

 

The final post was a plea, with a few past and present photographs, to not forget the past or despair of lost opportunities, but cherish what we have done to bring people together through a bowl of tea. Chanoyu requires much preparation, much of it behind the scene, and it takes years of study, really a lifetime to appreciate the subtle beauty of each movement whether in the mizuya or in a chashitsu. And this hard fought skill and training should help propel us to continue study and to remain connected.   

 

The Urasenke Tankokai North American Chado Relay shows, how chanoyu connects the disparate tea communities. We have the multiple tea folk that had the inspiration to organize this virtual event to thank for the realization that we are not alone. So, in the end, for me at least, the message was to remain connected in whatever way possible, until we are free to gather once more. Stay safe until then, enjoy a bowl of tea, and don’t forget the okashi! 

October 2020      

 

Catastrophe

 

The Chado Urasenke Tankokai Chicago Association, of which I am the president, is sixty years old this year - 2020. We planned a celebration with multiple tea events and a trip to Japan, and then had to cancel due to Covid-19. The former in March just before the true enormity of the pandemic was known, and the latter in July when the catastrophe was full blown.

 

It was organizationally and emotionally difficult to cancel an event that involved guests from the entire country and beyond. Watching the work our members had put in unravel was painful. Especially, if it is possible to remember, this was done in March while there was still hope the virus would dissipate and all would return too normal. 

 

I am not here to rehash the management of the virus and its sequel, but to discuss our association’s response to it. The association wanted to bestow several unique gifts upon the attendees as a thank you for helping us celebrate our sixtieth. 

 

To this end, members, lead by a gracious and talented member who is a fiber artist, designed and began to construct a satchel for each guest, both male and female. It was meticulous work requiring screen printing, cutting, and sewing of material. Unfortunately, the process was never completed.

 

In addition to the satchels, we ordered over 100 kobukusa. Kobukusa have a unique place in the repertoire of tea gear. They are small squares (15cm) of ornate fabric that are magically made with a fold on one side and hidden seams on the other three. Both the host and the guest carry these with them during the tea ceremony; a practical gift that would have brought back memories with each use. 

 

A kobukusa is used when handling various tea objects, such as natusme (tea caddy), chawan (tea bowl), and chashaku (tea scoop) to name a few. I received one as a gift for attending the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the Urasenke’s retired 15th generation oeimoto (Genshitsu Sen XV) for introducing chanoyu to the western world. 

 

Its gold woven fabric is the background for palm trees, bougainvillea, mountains, and waves, and captures the joyous nature of the Hawaiian island where the celebration was held. When I use it, I smile and think of the island’s warm breezes and the camaraderie we shared. 

 

Those memories are why as I age my home becomes the repository of more and more knickknacks, and to take a clue from Marcel Proust, they are Remembrances of Things Past. In normal times, the clutter is derided but in a time of catastrophe, the memories these trinkets enliven prove their worth, too many memories to let go.

September 2020

Visitor

Visitor

 

Just about anywhere, if I am quiet, something happens. A little bit, or in this case, a big bit of nature turns up. Please pardon me, I know I have droned on about the backyard this year but for 2020, it is my cruising grounds. 

 

In the past the grounds have been the billion year old rocks of the North Channel on Lake Huron, and the Trent Severn and Rideau canals of Canada; Lake Champlain and the Hudson River; NYC and the coast of New Jersey; and the Chesapeake’s estuaries. It has been Downeast Maine’s rocky coast and the adventures associated with negotiating the Bay of Fundy’s tides and currents. 

 

Every one of these is worthy of comment, and when I can pry myself away from the present dilemma, their images occupy the free space left in my mind. On occasion, that something that happens drags the natural world, even in the middle of a metropolis like Chicago, into view. 

 

In July, the backyard’s west facing patio began to heat up despite deploying a large sun blocking umbrella. During the day, an elm shades the east facing front room making it a cooler place to put one’s feet up. But as five o’clock nears, the back of the house becomes approachable. 

 

I move the garbage picked white plastic chair onto the grass. A thirty foot blue spruce (planted a few weeks after moving in) provides shade. At first, I sit straight to read but after a few paragraphs slump and begin to nod off. I give in to the languor of the warm summer afternoon.

 

It is nice if there is a breeze. The wind chimes make cooling sounds, and the meter high plants and vegetables rustle creating white noise that almost negates the air conditioner’s buzz. The backyard fills with bird songs.

 

Sparrows are noisy little creatures that are given to hysteria; I typically ignore their outbursts. I might raise an eyelid if they are particularly boisterous and that is what happened this particular afternoon: screeching and then a whoosh directly off my bow. In the wake of the brown blur that had passed, came a batch of house sparrows in hot pursuit.

      

I turned to my left and there, two power poles away was a magnificent hawk being ravaged, verbally at least by the gang of sparrows. I lunged up the back porch’s stairs to retrieve my trusty Nikon SLR with the 18-200mm lens that I keep close for such occasions. I thought please stay put, don’t fly away until I can capture the moment. It did but not before moving a bit more to the left to put distance between itself and the noisy hoard.

 

In years of taking photographs, especially since the advent of cheap memory, I have learned to snap multiple pictures and not worry about the particulars of framing, exposure, back lighting, composition, all the things that are taught in photography 101 courses. Time is unforgiving, never to be repeated. Get the image while it is there and worry about the details later. 

 

And later I identified the hawk to be an immature Cooper’s hawk. Its immaturity (this is I anthropomorphizing) is the reason it let itself be bullied by the sparrows. Nonetheless, it was an impressive raptor standing well over a foot with perfectly quaffed brown and white plumage. It must have been stunned by the sparrow’s reaction, as it sat looking perplexed for quite sometime.

 

Eventually, at the sparrows urging it took off south and once more, they took up the chase. To watch this badass bird being put in its place by such a diminutive force was thought provoking. I am sure there was a moral in this, but the languor quickly set in and I resumed nodding.      

 

August 2020 

Value

 

It is a quiet morning. The few jets that now fly over us come in spurts morning and late afternoon. Most are large freighters with indistinguishable colors. They often fly different patterns due to the skies being clear of traffic. 

 

It makes me think how we took the value of our life style for granted. Since last fall I tried to suppress the feeling, let’s call it instinct, that there would be a reckoning. The chance that this level of bad behavior was not going to have consequences was remote. 

 

A good example is my own behavior the last few months. Like many others sitting at home baking became an outlet. Bread is my main go too, and so I retrieved the sourdough recipe and grew a starter. This in itself is not an issue. There is not much bad that can come from sourdough bread. 

 

But it did not end there. After watching Julia Childs and Jacques Pepin’s old TV shows, experiments with various buttered dough began. Some recipes are more elaborate than others. Some require a bit of technique, and of course that means much dough needs to be made to acquire the proper outcome. 

 

The diet in my home, since I am the cook, is sybaritic. There is no meat, poultry, or fish. Butter is used sparingly replaced by a fruity, spicy extra virgin olive oil sourced from a beautiful hillside above Fiesole near Florence Italy. There is moderate use of salt and spices. White wine with dinner is necessary but it takes two days to finish a bottle.

 

This discipline began to break down. I found myself buying butter, not to mention eggs, at a rate unheard of in the near past. I became anxious as the shelves of the local grocery became sparser and sparser. The lack of toilet paper worried me less than the empty flour shelf. 

 

One treat after another was produced, all flaky and sweet and delicious. There were a few mistakes but they were learned by and the trend to richer foods did not abate. 

 

Then one evening with back-to-back Julia and Jacques tutorials on soufflés the zenith was reached. I should have seen it coming but my mind was cloudy with butterfat. The next morning with recipes flying out of the printer and post-it note tabs protruding from multiple cookbooks a plan was hatched. Tonight a simple but elegant cheese soufflé would be served for dinner. 

 

Eggs are not a part of my usual repertoire. I do understand their utility and the fascinating chemistry behind it. What I don’t like is messing with them. I will hold my nose on occasion to make a frittata with left over pasta and vegetables but I am usually chastised for not using enough of them. 

 

A soufflé is a dish whose very structure demands eggs. I failed to realize that I had succumbed to the allure of heavy cream, organic eggs, fresh creamery butter, and fine white flour. I had succumbed to the tyrants of technique and outcomes. 

 

About this time, my left foot, toes to be exact, began to ache. Years ago after a long hike the soreness did not fade away, and I asked the x-ray tech in my office to snap an x-ray. Sure enough, in plain sight the second toe showed signs of arthritis. I was in my late fifties and if this was the worst of it, I considered myself lucky. 

 

So, when my foot started to ache I chalked it up to the osteoarthritic joints. I thought my shoes were too tight and changed to a more broken in pair for daily wear. Then I decided that using the exercise bike in the basement was the aggravating agent and I cut back to every other day. Finally as I lay down to sleep the weigh of the bed sheet seemed excessive.

 

I determined that first thing in the morning I would take a full history and perform an exam. I would look at my foot, something I had feigned to do. There, on this nearly forty years a vegetarian’s left foot was reddish swelling across the metatarsals.

 

This could not be, but it was – gout! How many times had I diagnosis this in other poor souls, and ordained the value of a low fat and a low protein diet. Denied them beer and dairy. How many times had I inwardly smirked while writing a prescription for a powerful anti-inflammatory, and ordered a test for uric acid blood levels. The memories came flooding back.  

 

And though doctors that treat themselves have fools for patients, there was no refuting this. I searched the medicine cabinet for a drug other than Tylenol and in the corner, hiding behind a large bottle of ignored multivitamins, was a small plastic container of ibuprofen.

 I popped two rust colored pills into my mouth, walked into the kitchen, and extolled on the value of brown rice and vegetables. My behavior had bested me, to say nothing of the soufflé! 

July 2020

Excuses

For someone who has been involved in Japanese culture for many years, I am woefully deficient in Japanese language skills. There is no excuse; nonetheless, I will spend the next few paragraphs making them.

My parents were fluent in Italian. They decided not to hinder their children’s education by confusing them with another language. And as most readers of this understand, it had to do with assimilation into mainstream American culture. They watched their families struggle to fit in, and were determined not to let it happen to their children.

Other than Italian, it was in high school that I was confronted by another language. This time it was Spanish. I still remember the first three sentences in the textbook. That is as far as I progressed. When I think back, in all likelihood I passed the class due to social promotion more than academic achievement.

My father, a kind soul, was diagnosed with dyslexia at the ripe old age of sixty five. And to continue with my excuses, I think I inherited a touch of it. My academic career was long and in the end successful, but I felt like I put in twice the hours as the next person to get to the same place.

Now with that said, I can get to the reason for this commentary, shakuhachi music notation. Yes, that’s correct. Can I think of a more riveting topic you ask, and I am prone to agree but read on.

Many will be familiar with guitar tablature, written for guitarist that do not sight read the various dots, lines, and other squiggly symbols that make up western music notation. Tablature shows where to place fingers on the fret board, and which strings to pluck or strum. It is a visual representation of a guitar’s playing surface. Many legendary jazz and rock guitarist cannot read music and so rely on memory, intuition, tablature, and pure talent to play.

The shakuhachi also has tablature. It uses the iconography of katakana and adds its own set of squiggly lines. The music is written vertically, and read from right to left. Each Ro, Tsu, Re, Chi, Ri denotes a note and the specific fingering to play it, but it is more complicated than that.

Shakuhachi is a pentatonic (5 note) folk instrument that developed a chromatic (12 note) repertoire. Covering ¼ to 1/2 of one or several of the five holes, and altering the angle and the speed of the air blown into its peculiar mouthpiece accomplish it.

To make matters more complex, a shakuhachi is a piece of bamboo harvested from a grove, and each varies as only a natural substance can. Modern shakuhachi makers go to great lengths to standardize their creations. But there is a tradition of rough sounding flutes played with great aplomb. The sound they produce may lack the sophistication of the newer flutes but in the right hands is evocative.

To hear a flutist blow one flawless note after another in contrast to another’s wild abandon listen on YouTube to Rodrigo Rodriguez and Watazumi Doso Roshi respectively. Their uncompromised commitment to each note is overwhelming.

Music is intangible. It is beyond a score written with dots on five lines or written in katakana right to left. Practice is of course important for without technique the rest is futile. For me though the score is a place to start, and as with chanoyu a great teacher is a necessity.

So, I humbly ask if mastering Ro, Tsu, Re, Chi, Ri may excuse me from fumbling over the simplest Japanese phrase and pronunciation, even after all these decades.

June 2020

Urgency

Over the years that I have been studying chanoyu, I have seen several gyotei sensei make tea. Gyotei sensei are the professors of tea. They spend a lifetime in study, and pass down their knowledge to the tea community.

I am amazed at how matter of fact they are. By this, I mean they simply make tea. There is no flourish, no anticipatory movements, no fussing around, they just make a bowl of tea. If some tea spills, they clean it up. If there is a disruption to the flow, they keep going.

When their guest has drunk, they efficiently clean up and move on to the next task. This lack of pretension is what attracts my attention. When I make tea, I anticipate the next step, and because of this, whatever I am doing at the moment suffers.

I have thought about this for many hours, and not only in terms of chanoyu. In daily life, this quandary also comes up. Why does work not go smoothly; why is it hard to sound a high E, or to play a simple blues riff, why, why, why.

On occasion, without warning I begin and end chanoyu without much contemplation. This is dumbfounding. Somehow, my mind let it happen without informing me. It is as if I was given an amnestic drug at the beginning, so I cannot go back and evaluate the process. I have to accept that what is done is done, never to be repeated.

Still it is odd to have the subconscious take over, after all aren’t I supposed to be in charge!

In D.T. Suzuki’s Zen Buddhism, there is an interminable discussion of “no mind” or “no thought”. The circular dialog between teacher and student goes on for pages. It reminds me of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?” comedy routine.

Suzuki’s essays were written between 1949 and 1955. I first read them during my senior year of high school. The book cost $1.95 back then, which should give a clue as to the year I first encountered it. I have returned to these pages many times. I know this because the pages are marked with asterisks, underlines, and boxes surrounding particularly confusing phrases.

It is maddening not to have intuited what is obviously an important question for me: how do I simply let go and be. There is a sense of urgency as I stand up, and start walking towards my library to search for another book in hope that it has the answer. Halfway to the bookcase, I turn back; my intellect is not going to help.

The gyotei sensei’s seamless tea may be the best answer to the question. And, at least for me, continuing to heat water to make a bowl of tea may be the best solution.

May 2020

Ventilators

A ventilator is a complicated and intimidating device. There is a reason that there are only a few critical care specialists in the world. They are also the only contraptions that have a chance of saving an acutely ill respiratory compromised patient.

I dreaded the time spent in the ICU during my medical training. As a student, the management of respiratory compromised patients perplexed me. The doctors, and by proxy the residents and fellows that worked under them, seemed to protect their knowledge in a metaphysical way.

On rounds they did not teach but pronounced the dictums of acid-base balance, of patients being “wet” or “dry”, of respiratory rates and tidal volumes and of FIO2’s. And this was done while facing a device that looked similar to a MOOG synthesizer with dials and knobs, with flashing lights and toggle switches. I had to repeatedly remind myself that to the right or left of this hissing throbbing device there was a patient struggling for their life.

The compelling thing about medical training is that I knew, eventually, I would be in a position to make decisions regarding the myriad of things I was exposed to in the first four years of training. This did not always hold true but I could not discount the fact that it might be true. Because of this, I strove in the time allotted to each specialty to learn as much as I could to be as prepared as possible.

In this regard, ventilators hold a special place in my memory as an intern. The time came early one morning when the resident running the ICU decided he was desperate to sleep after being awake for several days. I was briefed on the future needs, as best as he could assert them, of the patients inhabiting every bed in the ICU. And then he left.

I stood there as if naked amidst the quiet chaos of the ICU, and thought that after a decade of intense study I was a complete fraud. That I had learned nothing of value in that time to help me help this cadre of patients survive and flourish. Of course, when in a situation such as this it is best to contemplate these thoughts inwardly and not to demonstrably breakdown.

I turned and surveyed the room. I noted the clock on the wall, only 5 hours left before rounds started. I said to myself, with the help of the superb nursing and respiratory tech staff, I could do this. I walked to each room, examined each patient, and studied their chart. If I had questions, I sought out the assigned nurse to discuss their patient’s care.

At first time passed glacially, but then events began to unfold and decisions were made. Before I knew it, I felt the resident rest his hand on my shoulder. When I finished my report, he thanked me. It was the last day I ever had responsibility in an ICU. I moved on to my next rotation, and never looked back except in a nightmare or two over the years.

April 2020

Chatter

It is mid March, and I am sitting in my mother-in-law’s backyard. Her yard happens to be in Sumter, South Carolina, and it is early spring here. The camellias have recently shed their blooms and now the azaleas follow with shear magenta flowers that have a slight violet trim. Well defined dark rich green leaves surround the ephemeral flowers.

Each morning when I walk out the back door onto the deck I find it covered with a fine yellow dust. In fact, everything is covered with the dust that emanates from the multitude of budding trees.

The backyard is not a quiet place. There is the sound of car tires and loud accelerating diesel pickup trucks, but the sounds that grab my attention emanate from several pair of birds.

This being a smallish town and me being away from home, there is not much to do. So, I unpack my binoculars, find the bird identification book I gifted to my mother-in-law, and begin the frustrating attempt to identify the noisy avian.

The different birds seem to trade off in the calling for a mate. The most obvious birds are the cardinals. They have beautiful clear tones that occasionally end in a nasal slur, and they seem to have a more varied vocabulary then the cardinals that hang out in my Chicago backyard.

The closest tree has a high pitched chirping coming out from amongst the leaves. There are warblers about the size of the leaves and of a similar shade but duskier. For me at least, warblers have been the most difficult birds to identify. They pass through quickly, snapping up wayward insects on the fly.

Suddenly, I spot a large dark silhouette high against the bright cloudy sky. Its thick wings contrast with a blunt tail. It must be a hawk. It is another bird I fail to identify.

The cardinals finally quiet and another equally loud couple takes over the aural landscape. I begin to search. It takes a bit of time. The sounds are echoing from different angles. But I have been a birdwatcher since I was a teenager so I know to calm my breathing and wait.

I take the binoculars from my eyes and scan the foliage for movement. Then, two Carolina wrens reward me. They are the largest of their species. There is a compelling give and take between them. It keeps me watching despite my aching arms, and reminds me of the call and response between jazz saxophonists and it goes on for about as long.

The wind picks up and even though the sun peeks through the clouds, it starts to drizzle. The neighborhood begins to quiet and I start to pack my belongings. After a February sequestered in a Chicago bungalow and with COVID-19 cutting off other venues of distraction, I am loath to go back into the house.

Wait! There is a Baltimore oriole or is it an orchard oriole, but it has a rapid chatter, so it is probably the Baltimore. And now the cardinal has started up again in the tree right above my head.

I guess a few raindrops never ruined anyone’s day!

March 2020

Digital

The world has become digital. I attempt to keep up but I am running out of steam. Well, not really steam but interest. I remember adopting email, and then I remember the moment my beloved receptionist compelled me to text. Its efficiency surprised me.

I signed up on Twitter because of the hullabaloo but quickly lost focus. I did not understand why I should give a flying you know what about the barrage of 150 words that endlessly occupied my phone. And due to my litigated-against profession, Facebook was never an option.

When the hospital and the physician group began to push email down my throat, I politely agreed and neglected to look at it. I still remember a medical student looking in horror over my shoulder at the number of emails never opened. He was tasked with erasing them.

Did I miss something important, maybe? My goal was to provide the best care I could, and I think on a one to one basis I did that. It is not an easy thing to do. Every patient encounter is bespoke. I like that word. It, in a Queen’s English kind of way, provokes a gravitas that “custom” fails to do.

The digital revolution forced me to do an audit of my mental capacity: to inventory the memory and the processing power available to my aging mind. I determined the limits, and then decided what was necessary and left the other behind.

I envisioned practicing to a ripe old age. Experience in many ways supplants vigor. The longer I practiced the more efficient I became. In training, we would be confronted by wizen old doctors who could tell a patient’s entire history by watching them walk into the room. I was becoming one of these soothsayers.

This is part of the craft and not a saintly power bestowed on only a few. It requires decades of attention to detail, careful history taking and examination, and then the ability to formulate a proper note.

The act of writing allows the mind to catch up with the data stream. It allows for the split seconds needed to devise a plan. And it stores much of the information gained in long term memory, so it can be drawn upon later.

Of course, the reader can probably see where I am going with this. See why I abandoned my calling younger than I had anticipated, and went off to invest the energy left to me onto other areas of interest. A digital world I could not ignore finally caught up with me in the form of the electronic medical record.

I knew I was in trouble during the first of two two-hour lessons delivered by the provider of the software. Four hours of disjointed instruction by trainers, who truly could not understand that they were replacing a system developed over hundreds of years with a wholly insufficient and cumbersome digital equivalent.

But strike that last word. There is not a thing equivalent to several blank pieces of paper and a trained mind. Simple things turned complex and complex things were ignored. The patient encounter designed to be helpful, compassionate, and believe-it-or-not fun, turned ugly.

I spent six years in strident effort trying to perfect a thing that I knew after the first several weeks of use was hopeless. The digital world had bested me. I gave up. It took years to not feel guilty about the decision. And I suppose by writing this I am admitting to myself that I am not yet over it.

What prompted this thought process was the Iowa caucus debacle. In a purely selfish way, I take solace in the apps failure to count a few votes in a state with less population than Chicago. It looks like the collective consciousness of the country has many of the same issues with digital that I have.

But I am not good at wallowing, so I will continue to download the next best weather app and to post my bread baking victories on Instagram. That is, at least until my neuronal network ceases to connect!

February 2020

Almost

When I began to play the shakuhachi every series of notes went allegretto, despite the expected tempo. I could not keep up: my head spinning with futile attempts to suck in oxygen. A half decade into concerted study, the notes are beginning to unfold in slow motion.

Honkyoku, the shakuhachi’s classic music, does not have a specific time signature. It is timeless and often seems to begin as it ends. Small dashes and indeterminate lines droop from each note to provide a sense of the rhythm, but typically, the phrasing is passed down from teacher to student generation after generation.

I think of the music as the forest breathing. And if I am being romantic about it, this is interspersed with the devotional chants of Buddhist nuns, monks, and priests. A honkyoku piece reflects the interplay between nature and the player, if that distinction can be made.

That the quality of the sound has no bearing in this is hard to grasp. I struggle for the correct timbre and cadence knowing that if I had a truthful spirit the notes would be superfluous.

I often relate a work to a season of the year, even if there is no such indication. Winter is pianissimo, until a blizzard blows in and shatters the silence.

Spring is allegro molto vivace. It goes from crescendo to decrescendo as the nestlings are fledged.

Summer’s moderato ushers in with a steady drumbeat of activities only to be broken by tympanic summer squalls that pass quickly.

Fall is nature in retreat. Unlike spring, the pace is not frantic but largo. The earth is changing again, this time reluctantly.

With a repertory that can be counted on one hand, none are mastered. A few brief honkyoku tolerate my complete attention. Others linger on and challenge my competency.

I begin with a plan and great expectations, then midstream they are forgotten. Notes squeal then burrow deep. Fingers refuse to conform. Time is too short or too long. Breath runs out and leaves unexpected gaps.

For all that, after the last note it is difficult to disengage the mouthpiece from my lips: the music still beckons. And though the echo has faded, the sound continues.

Slowly my heartbeat fills the void, and it feels as if I am about to blow into the shakuhachi again for the first time. This is frustrating and thrilling at the same time. To know some forty years ago, what I know now would be joyous.

But then, now I can keep up with the notes . . . almost!

January 2020

Humans

These days when the newest wiz kid app developer or start up billionaire is interviewed, and the use of their product is questioned, they respond by stating that it is uniquely designed for humans. This takes me aback. I begin to wonder whom else would it be designed for.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) must be further along than I realize. Are these applications designed to be used by modern day R2-D2’s. I comprehend that my concept of robots, with or without AI, is colored by the black and white images I saw on TV when I was an impressionable youth.

I suppose I need an up-to-date definition of what a robot is. Can I equate AI with robots, are they one in the same; do robots have to have an arm to manipulate the world or can they do it by manipulating our minds to do their bidding.

AI, at least in my imagination, inhabits faceless servers, and is imbedded in the cloud and on our phones. It navigates through the Internet’s neural network, and it see’s through those odd looking goggles where people experience the virtual world while wandering around sparse rooms as molecules do in Brownian motion.

Though I often feel like a Luddite, I have been part of the internet since before there was an Internet. In the mid 1970’s, Southern Illinois University’s library was my chosen spot to study. I would leave the apartment after dinner and cross a gravel parking lot; walk up and over the train tracks (careful not to be run down by an errant freight train) to the Greek fast food joint for a cup of their bitter coffee.

This cup would be sneaked into the library where I set up shop and sipped while I studied anatomy, chemistry, and higher math. At about nine, my limit for absorption was reached, and I would head for the basement lab that contained odd neon screens with a resolution of about four dots per square inch. Here resided PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations): a pre-internet network developed at the University of Illinois.

A reservation was required to use the terminals and I always scheduled a 45 minute session. This was a reward to motivate my diligent study until the library closed at 11:30pm. If I remember, the programs offered were geared toward higher education, but it had other functions that we now equate with the Internet.

I most often used the learn-to-type tutorial. I never learned to type other than the laughable hunt and peck that I write these commentaries with, but I did get a sense that there was a wider computer based world out there.

My next interaction with the web was from the editors of the Whole Earth Catalog. In the far off fantasy land of California there were enlightened individuals who communicated about intriguing things on a network that was the progenitor of user groups and chat rooms.

I longed to be part of that world but never managed to ingratiate myself. I considered myself too ordinary to be of interest, though in reality I lacked the motivation to investigate how to connect. Maybe I thought it would entail too much typing.

In those years, when I had some free time I opted to take long walks in the woods and spy on birds rather than lock myself in a room with a screen. Remember those days!

Back then the assumption was that these electronic innovations were to be used by Homo sapiens. I am not sure that this is true any longer. Each day brings news of ways to replace humans. The bank teller is replaced by an ATM. Stores are now busy training us to check out and bag our own goods.

Automobiles are so capable of driving in rush hour that their drivers are free to nap at the wheel. And then there are the drones, which will soon deliver packages and transport us above roads crowded by automatous delivery trucks.

The world moves on whether we like it or not. I watched my parents struggle for years to program a VCR. I like to think that I am better equipped to manage change but I also realize that I have lost the ability to record and play back video images.

For my part, if I can quickly get the latest app to work I may be interested, but if not I am perfectly happy to do without it. There is always the shakuhachi to practice, a wood working project to finish, or a couple of YouTube videos to watch. And I think I will try to stay awake while driving.

After all, I am proud to be human; it must be better than being a nematode. But then a nematode does not need to update its software or delete thousands of emails!

December 2019