Creatures

Creatures surround me in Japan. They have no blood or sinew to move around with but they are everywhere. There is nothing creepy or supernatural about them. They are just there, as the birds that reside in the trees and bushes of my backyard are, even if I cannot see them. Out a bus window, when an elevator door closes, in subterranean walkways, up the side of buildings; I am aware of them.

They are piled up in arcade games, hang off cell phones and backpacks, stand guard at temple entrances. They advertise on the side of shopping bags, enforce rules on roadway signs and adorn bento boxes. They are corporate logos and live on the front grills of cars.

The creatures can be sacred and profane, cajoling and demanding, edgy and cute, entertaining and menacing. And I mean “and”. What I have noticed about the Japanese is their comfortableness with the singularity of duality. I lack a better way to describe it.

Here in the USA life is more cut and dry. We have only two parties (usually), we like things simple, just give us two choices and that is enough. Be dam-ed with the complexities of the world. We want it one way or another and are comfortable with this even if we know it is a gross misrepresentation.

Think of our beloved city of Chicago. We are going to have a mayor not named Daley. And though we know this is for the best, deep down inside I am sure even strident opponents of the Daley regime are nervous. They had a well-defined foe in him. It was they against him, but those days are over.

Of course this duality does not exist for all creatures. Some are painfully cute and others, well, I know to give them a wide berth. They may be comfortably evil, but they are evil none-the-less.

I see “cute culture” in all walks of life in Japan. In cityscapes and on mountain trails, whether state sanctioned or anarchistic. It is hard to miss it walking down the streets of Tokyo. It seems a large part of the society participates in or consumes it in various ways.

I am part and partial to this. When I look around my house I see everything from trolls to saints perched on various precipices. Recently after my mother died I was sorting through her things and came upon several of my father’s beloved objects. He always had a small troll (who’s hair he had closely shorn) hanging from his keychain. In opposition to his worship of false gods my mother had a small icon of her namesake St. Teresa close by.

I suppose there is a certain duality in this but let’s get back to Japan. One thing I notice is that most the creatures are fuzzy save for one and that is the only reptile I see represented, the frog. Froggy is everywhere.

Somehow I missed froggy on my first trip to Japan. My senses were overwhelmed but not this time. This time I saw frogs on top of frogs with more baby frogs clamoring all over them. At one particularly large example I asked out loud to no one in particular, “What does this all mean?” and a friendly fellow traveler explained the play on words.

Frog or kaeru has the same pronunciation as the Japanese word for return. So frogs, because of this lucky coincidence, are lucky. They represent the returning of things (family, friends, money), which have gone or have been given away, as well as people or things returning to their place of origin. A frog croaks and brings good luck to travelers.

I guess we have St. Christopher who continues to show up on dashboards even though he was defrocked years ago. I tend to think I am above the fray but I am reluctant to take the St. Christopher medal off my trawler’s pilothouse wall. Why tempt faith when you have someone, be it an inanimate object, so willing to help you navigate through life’s shoals.

Volume 5846 (4), 3/18/2011

22

February is hard to imagine in t-shirt and shorts. Its relentlessness is the rub. Once it gets going there is no stopping until spring and even then, it reluctantly succumbs to the earth’s precession.

February is the reason Florida exist. It is hunker down time. It is a time of strained backs and unexpected heart attacks. It is also inspiring. Inspiring northerners to work hard for southern condos, Caribbean cruises, hot tubs, theatre tickets and subscriptions of all types; and inspiring introspection.

And so, I sit at the kitchen table listening to the Hammond B-3 of Jack McDuff on the radio. I hear predictions of 22 inches of snow before the blizzard blows through sometime tomorrow afternoon. I notice from the corner of my eye that it’s 12:22 and that the adjacent outdoor thermometer reads 22 °F. I first think how lucky I am to be warm and cozy, and then I realize there it is again, 22.

Numerology is not my thing but this winter the number 22 is significant. Twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit has stared at me from my car’s thermometer for weeks on end. For so long I have become acclimatized to it.

As if on autopilot I shed my heavy winter coat for a lighter one, even though 22 °F still awaits me each morning. My blood has thickened. I am heartier. What would have killed me in July, I now find a mere inconvenience. I try to remember the physiology, but forget it and just enjoy my newfound warmth.

Twenty-two is a magical number this year. The second year that increased jet stream gyrations suck frigid Artic air into Texas and turn the warmth of the Gulf into feet of snow burying the eastern seaboard: gyrations that ruin many a vacation and freeze a state full of oranges.

I am skeptical of the weeklong build up to this storm, but in the end admit that it is a brilliant blizzard. There have only been a few in my lifetime. That is if you ignore the winter long blizzards of 1976, 77, and 78. Those inspired me (a mailman at the time) to go back to school and get off the street.

Today is 2/2/11. Ummm … two 2’s, and then two times eleven get you another twenty-two. Okay, I have to stop. I cannot have cabin fever yet. It has only been a few hours. I am sure I have at least 22 books to read and probably twenty two hundred songs to listen to. I must get to work entertaining myself, but then type 22 into Google. This is a mistake.

It is a number and a year. It is highways in Canada, America, India, Iran, Israel, Japan and Vietnam to name a few. It is a bus route in New Jersey and an episode of The Twilight Zone. 22 is a construct of the human mind, a mind that needs language to represent the physical and emotional world.

Recently in Japan it was pointed out to me that our 150-letter text message limit is a limitless 150 words in kanji. With 150 words another world can be created but I won’t today. I will lightly lunch and at 2:22 have a shot of espresso, suit up and go out to attack the approximately 22 inches of snow that has blown into much higher drifts. All the while dreaming that next February I will find myself somewhere that is 22 °C.

Volume 5842 (4), 2/18/2011

Sounds

1

It is seven-thirty in the morning a block south of Shinjuku Station in Tokyo and I am ordering a tall wet cappuccino at the local Starbucks. It is a bit more challenging than I thought. The “wet” does not translate, so I compromise—a good thing to do in a foreign country—and get a latte. My order is passed on in a singsong manner and I retreat to a corner to wait.

The drink requests get more and more complicated as people crowd in. I hear venti this and grande that, macchiatos and frappuccinos, and every other combination imaginable. In my pre-caffeinated stupor I listen to beautifully perky voices repeat the drink orders in one long aria.

An American businessman next to me winces when the choir hits its final high note and says, “It is really too early for this.” I think he probably drank too much sake last night, but keep it to myself. Starbucks at home will feel dour after this.

2

Three weeks fly by. I travel south and north, and south again across the vast city that is central Honshu. From Miyajima to Nikko I speed past cities, riverbeds, rice fields, factories and Fuji-san while enveloped in a mere whisper of sound. I pass through tunnels at 250 km/h with nothing more than a quiet whoosh.

While waiting in Utsunomiya for the MAX (an indescribable white, yellow and blue two story bullet train) to take me back to Tokyo I hear birds chirping. This is new. The only birds I have heard in Japan thus far are the large crows that rule the skies. I’ve been wondering where all the songbirds are hiding. But here, waiting for the shinkansen I find myself searching for the illusive birds I can hear but not see. They call to each other from across the station’s platforms. I fix my gaze on the rafters and see only speakers and realize that Japan’s sound engineers have synthesized these birds to keep me occupied.

Instinctively my shoulders relax and my heart rate slows. I take a deep breath and smile. It is another of the intriguing things that make Japan so interesting. Then the atmosphere abruptly changes. The birds are banished by a new escalating sound. I straighten up and pay attention, immediately aware of my environment and the task at hand: getting on the train in one minute or less.

Chirping birds morph into a dissonant ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong-ding that progressively becomes more frantic. Above the din a regal chime precedes a clear voice describing the route of the not yet visible train. As the train nears the station the sounds change to a rapid-fire high-pitched ping, but only for a few bars. The ding-dong remains, calmer now. I have been alerted, really warned, that the train will soon appear.

There is a short burst of pinging once the train is in sight. As the brakes squeal the ding-dong sets the pace for the orderly shift of people and goods. Thirty seconds into the transfer the ping restarts and does not relent until the doors close. The station’s conductor begins cajoling people to get where they are going and to do it now. Of course I am only speculating. I do not understand Japanese, but the meaning of these auditory clues seems universal.

The conductor makes one last visual check, turns a key and horns blare like half time at the United Center. The pinging’s volume ramps up—nothing can stop this train from leaving. There are multiples ahead and astern. It must move to keep the inexorable rhythm of modern Japan in step.

Suddenly, like Charles Ives’s Central Park in the Dark, all the sounds occur at once in a grand fanfare and it is over. Metal rolling on metal and the whirl of the electric engines that power this remarkable creation take center stage. For a short time visuals take over as the train accelerates towards its destination.

Only two riveting minutes have elapsed. Of course the infrastructure is impressive, but more so is the collaborative system that accomplishes such tasks. It takes guts, and dreams, to build this collection of sci-fi trains. I am humbled and think next time I will spring for a ride on the N700. The fastest train in the fleet!

Volume 5839 (4), 1/21/2011

Grace

In the last five years my wife Charlotte and I have spent a month traveling in Japan. Throughout our wandering its people treated us, two naive Americans, with patience and good cheer, and in the process revealed their genuine character. Here are a few observations.

- In Tokyo where density is a cliché, we saw the well-tended trees and understood the people’s true spirit.

- On the island of Miyajima where the luminescent red torii stands in the Inland Sea acclaiming the natural splendor of Mt. Misen, we watched tourist walk out during low tide to touch the red gate and leave coins as talismans.

- Unexpectedly entering a city of gleeful, energetic people a short walk from the profound sadness of Hiroshima’s Peace Dome.

- With distant snow covered peaks in the background we sampled Takayama’s traditional sake and miso amidst its ever-present watercourses.

- Nikko’s cascading rivers and mountain mist that define the onsen experience, and the pride that the inhabitant take in the surrounding beauty and natural bounty.

- The Kenrokuen garden of Kanazawa where brightly uniformed attendants in conical bamboo hats use such care in sweeping the centuries old moss clean of fallen burgundy and golden leaves.

- Ancient Mt. Koya’s deep quiet in amongst the graves and massive cedars where families come to honor their departed.

- And sophisticated Kyoto, devoted to the preservation of Japan’s finest traditions. It is nestled in its mountain home much like Florence is in the Tuscan hills where my ancestors lived.

- Finally then to Konnichian, Urasenke’s garden of teahouses that represent the birthplace of chado, the way of tea. Where over four hundred years ago Rikyu and Sotan laid the foundation for the practice we follow today. And where the present 15th and 16th generation grand tea masters extended us a warm welcome and a willingness to pass on chado’s knowledge.

Of course each memory could be expanded on, but to what end. Basho’s brevity better serves to describe the experience. As we traveled we found ourselves planning for the next visit. Alas, we could spend 10,000 years and not see all that Tokyo has to offer, let alone the rest of Japan.

Japan is technology, infrastructure, design, and intellect. It is outrageously garish and incredibly subtle. It is exotic and down home comforting. It is regal in a Victorian way and unsettlingly modern. It is all these simultaneously. No better example of this than the Shinkansen.

I tried to photograph the scenery flashing by my window at 200 MPH. The attempt made my brain hurt and my body longed for its next warm soak. It took me too long to realize that photography was not the answer. I finally turned the video recorder on and let it run, hoping that once home slow motion will provide a sense of the fleeting images.

I write this 6000 miles further east then I was two days ago. My body is longing for a dinner of soba or udon or tempura, for a good beer and miso soup, and for the delicate pickles and rice that end each meal. It will take a few more long nights to get back to normal. But what will that be, now that we have experienced this other world.

We will remember Japan for its sweet, sincere people who treated us with such grace. And for the way their faces lit up when we announced we were from Chicago, and how they told us that they were coming—to see the Cubs of course!

Volume 5836 (14), 1/1/2011

Points

Bullet Points from Tokyo.
Observations from the village of Shinjuku:

• Chimes

• Squeaky voices warning of every danger

• Good Beer

• Japanese Wine, but not on the menu

• Sweets! Packaging!

• Pace—Fast

• Crowds & No Crowds

• Clean

• Bonsai-ed Trees

• Cute interactions

• Hawkers

• Where are all the young men?

• Black and grey with sprinkles of eccentric colors

• Walkable village within an enormity

• Officer Friendly

• Incomprehensible addresses

• Small door/Large room

• Fluorescent colors

• More Chimes!!!

• Land of Crows (Crows own the sky)

• Slaves to fashion

• Bunions

• Blue Christmas

• Hidden Fuji-san

• Density as a cliché

• Forests of skyscrapers

• Lovely department stores

• Small scale/Large scale

• Yes, sardines in a can

• And then Shikansen and gone…..

November, 2010

Eggplant

I do not relish eggplant. Of course I loved my mothers. She thinly sliced and coated it with egg, breadcrumbs, cheese and spices, and then fried it in olive oil. It was wonderful. But this has not been my experience with the eggplant of friends, relatives and restaurants: it is too thick, it is sopping with oil, and it is under or overcooked. Commonly it exists, like subatomic particles, in both states at the same time. I keep my distance.

That is until this year. Spring started out with a bang. April was already hot. Unlike the summer of 2009, which consisted of two warm weeks this year we had only two cool weeks all summer. The garden was premature. A month prior to Labor Day it had already yielded up a freezer full of pesto and tomato sauce and something new – eggplant.

Nature and the Japanese eggplant that my wife Charlotte planted in our backyard forced my hand. I needed to cook it because my 94-year-old mother no longer could. My past attempts had been failures. I just never knew how to start, but start I did for it is hard to ignore the fruits of three prodigious plants.

Several years ago I found a reasonably priced French copper saucier at a discount store. I bought it despite not knowing its purpose. This pretty copper pot sat taking up space on top of my stove with nothing to do. Then, when I brought the first batch of eggplant into the kitchen I knew it was the correct vessel.

Instinctively I moved the pan to the largest burner, turned the heat on low and poured in some of Alberto Passigli’s olive oil (another story). I added finely chopped Vidalia onions and a little salt. With the lid on I puzzled about what to do with the eggplant. I needed to make quick work of this, so I divided the banana-sized eggplants into four quarters and then cut half-inch thick wedges.

I know the prevailing wisdom is to salt eggplant to remove the bitterness, but being restless due to the shot of espresso I had just treated myself to, in it went on top of the onions. I did not mix the eggplant with the sautéing onions just yet. A little more salt and oil on top, and on with the lid to let the mixture steam. Next came carrots and garlic, and when the onions were caramelized I mixed it all up with fresh basil, ground pepper and a few dollops of Tabasco sauce.

All this chopping over an open flame worked up a thirst, so I had a glass of last nights wine and for good measure poured some into the pot. As I lifted the lid the smell of my labors became evident, the way only Italian cooking can.

Now I was confronted with one of those judgment calls that mark the difference between art and science: how long should I cook the eggplant. Fresh eggplant has a creamy color and a spongy feel not unlike the foam found inside of seat cushions. Once cooked, the flesh takes on a greenish-grey translucent quality. Having been the recipient of many a semi raw eggplant, I knew it would be a mistake to under cook it.

When it seemed almost cooked, I added a can of diced tomatoes, San Marzano’s I think. I could have used skinless fresh tomatoes or stewed or any other type. I decided not to sweat the details, remembering the whole point of this exercise was to cook the eggplant, and it was getting close to 5:30, the time Charlotte arrives home from work. So on went a pot of water for the pasta.

I had ten minutes to reflect as the penne cooked. I learned to be grateful for the memory of my mother’s cooking and the legacy she instilled in me. I learned to sauté the eggplant in oil first and not water. I learned that in 30 minutes it is possible to make a passable meal from ingredients out of a bungalow’s backyard garden. And as a bonus I had enough left over after dinner to freeze, so in February, 2010’s garden can be enjoyed all over again. What could be better than that!

P.S. Alberto’s olive oil is available at: http://www.zingermans.com/product.aspx?productid=o-pod.

Volume 5828 (4), 10/22/2010

Thump

Brilliant sunlight transforms into brilliant darkness. Looking south from Montrose harbor the blackness over the lake acts as a backdrop for the pure pigments of fireworks, which appear just to the left of a skyline dominated by the spires of three great spikes driven into the sky.

Outside my pilothouse window on this clear August night, the downtown buildings glimmer like stars and not with the steady light of planets. That is except for a horizontal strip of light on one black angular building. Tonight its light is white, but depending on the holiday, the charity or the triumph of our city’s sports teams the light becomes combinations of pink, orange, green, red, white or blue—all the colors of the rainbow.

Luminescent sodium vapors hit the water directly before me in cogent beams that fan out to meet my gaze. They are then dispersed by wavelets of a southerly breeze. The light is at rest, but somehow it floats northward in glimmering arcs of salmon colored light.

Along with light there is also noise. Boats interact with the water and wind: slap-slap, plop-plop, clang-clang and thump-thump. An ice cream vendor’s repetitive jingle, and the truncated voices of other boaters are carried across the water on warm humid air and add to the atmosphere. There is the steady drone, like white noise, of tires and displaced air from the cars on LSD with an occasional wail of two-wheeled mayhem.

Spiders come out at twilight to prepare their webs for a night of gruesome feasting. I take in the flag and secure the yacht club’s burgee. If the wind picks up in the night this insignificant piece of cloth will rattle the boat and wake an already wakeful skipper. This is not battening down the hatches. It is August and still calm, so I can afford to be a little laidback; soon enough the nor’easters will begin and require another level of preparedness.

But let us not go there yet. Let us bask in the banality of summer. It has taken three months to get to this point and soon summer will mature into fall.

The moon has risen as I write this. Initially I see it interspersed amongst the sailboat’s masts at the east end of the harbor. Its pale reflection plays on the water and as the waning gibbous climbs above the horizon it changes from orange to yellow and finally, into white.

I often study the moon’s surface. Sometimes with eyes alone, and other times with the help of binoculars and telescopes. I am familiar with the shadows cast by its mountains and craters. The moon is a study in grey except when it is full, and then it is the reflected glory of the sun.

As my little wind-blown ship wanders on it’s mooring, the now risen moon once again beams its light straight into the boat and into my soul. I turn off the overhead light and bathe in the moon’s splendor. It is a privilege to be in the middle of a great city and be directly connected to nature. The waters of Lake Michigan allow for this. Without it I would be marooned.

This has happened to me in the past. I spent years inland in study with no recourse to water. I would dream while reading of sea voyages great and small. Trying in vain to reconcile my conflicting goals, wishes and desires. I envied those I read about. They did what they wanted despite, or maybe because of, the consequences.

Now at this stage of my life I am determined to stay tied to the watery world. Here in the harbor with land’s worries just a short row away, I decide they can wait till tomorrow. Tonight I bask in the lake’s breeze and if it holds steady, I will spend the night without dreams, all the while being in one.

Volume 5823 (4), 9/17/2010

Obfusgate

The world seems an increasingly confused place. Maybe confused is not the correct word. Complicated sounds good but it is a little too simplistic. Obfuscate, a word that threatens to obscure my whole point, seems most appropriate for the meaning I am trying to convey, but where did a word like that come from? It is certainly not a word I commonly use.

In 1973 I was a 19 y/o college dropout wandering the Middle East and Europe. My short experience in college made me realize I was not prepared for higher education. I decided to learn how to read and write; skills I had managed, despite a mainly Catholic education, to almost completely by-pass. To that end I started to keep a journal and made a point to read anything I could get in my hands. Not always an easy task in Israel, Greece and Norway.

Despite the content, I read, paid attention to the grammar, and looked up every word I did not know the meaning of. It made for hard going, I had a lot of catching up to do. I still do this today, and one constant over the last thirty-seven years has been my yellowing copy of The Penguin English Dictionary Second Edition complied by G.N. Garmonsway. I have kept it close by since I bought it at Blackwell’s, Oxford’s famous bookstore, for one pound. It might be the best investment I ever made.

But now back to our obfuscated world and a recent example that comes to mind. My golf-loving brother-in-law came to visit and after driving all day up from the South he needed to find out the standings of the PGA tournament. He headed for our backroom where the flat screen television resides, grabbed the first remote in sight and started pushing buttons. In horror my wife and I ran into the room to disarm him before disaster struck.

Though I am sure many of you will relate to my tale; some background is needed here. Due to our total inability to make sense of our audio-visual equipment (something akin to my parents struggle with their VCR) I bought a universal remote and then paid a young technician quite a hefty sum to program it. After multiple visits and a new receiver, his efforts were successful, but now we lived in constant fear that an errant push of a button would transport us back to the dark days of four remotes with Post-it notes outlining the proper sequence of keystrokes.

He was not to be deterred and went for each remote in sight. Voices were raised, but family has no privilege here, and he had to be subdued. We gained control after a tense stand off. Once order was restored his big sister had a heart-to-heart, while I hide the other three remotes. Finally he was able to sit back and watch catapulting white balls as much as he liked, which I can report he did for the entire weekend.

This is what I mean by obfuscate. The obfuscation (confusion resulting from failure to understand) of things that were straightforward in the past is the preoccupation of contemporary culture. Here are just a few examples.

Think of your phone, Internet, cable or satellite services. Think of the choices of audio formats: MP3, CD, DVD, not to mention the renewed interest in long-playing vinyl records by the young who are searching for simplicity. Think of going to buy a new flat screen TV and think about when it is time to sign up for your healthcare and retirement plans.

This plethora of choices is masquerading as progress. Don’t get me wrong here; I love my gadgets as much as the next person but I will admit to certain weariness with it all.

Rikyu said in his Hundred Verses (here translated by Gretchen Mittwer), “To learn how to make good koicha (thick tea), you must make it time and again and get a good sense of it.” How then can there be time to get a good sense of the world if our time is spent trying to understand that, which is meant to confuse.

Volume 5820 (4), 8/20/2010

The Beat

The beat has changed. I know this because of my vantage point on Carrie Rose at the mouth of Montrose Harbor. All summer I listen to powerboats full of partygoers coming and going. The pace quickens as the summer moves on. It does not take much to discourage this reverie, and restore peace and quiet: a few clouds, a temperature below 85 and they disappear. But while it is warm and sunny their presence is hard to ignore.

I have been sitting here on one boat or another for 15 years, and only just this year—2010—do I notice that the primal rhythm has changed, become simpler. It is as if the more complex our society becomes, the simpler its rhythm.

This is not universally true. Anyone who listens, or tries to listen to modern classical music can attest to this. I am speaking here of popular culture, or at fifty-seven, what I perceive it to be.

I cannot say I like the new beat any better than the old, but I can say that my foot starts to automatically fall in with it, as do my hips. Not a pretty sight I know, the latter moving somewhat reluctantly these days unlike the gyrating twenty-something’s passing by.

Over the years from my perch I have listened to Sinatra, folk, rock, heavy metal, grunge, a lot of Jimmy Buffet, and now, I am not sure what to call it without sounding foolish, maybe hip-hop or rap. For all I know these terms are passé.

It is an unadorned beat felt in your gut. The beat appears to be the focal point despite the lugubrious voices that accompany the music. Change the words and keep the beat, and I doubt it will alter much on the boats that parade by on any warm summer afternoon.

Prior to the sun reaching it's zenith the boats quietly depart, only to exuberantly return around happy hour. I can set my clock by the regularity of it. As I see them return I often treat myself to a glass of wine, and sit back to watch the show. The beat may or may not continue on into the night, the only requisite being a Monday off.

I am not singling out power boaters here. After all I am one, but it is only powerboats that exhibit these traits. Sail boaters are too busy husbanding their electrons to spare the watts needed for such sonic displays. And display it is. No different than a peacock, though it seems to be the women of our species that are most involved. Though we are an equal opportunity harbor and there are plenty of boats with rainbow colored flags strutting their stuff.

Is the beat universal, I think yes. Is the beat drowning out ethnic beats, I think yes to that to. Despite the popularity of world music, my impression is that ethnic music may be more popular in the west than in the countries of origin. But then again I am no expert, just an observer with an opinion.

Several years ago the Japanese consulate helped sponsor traditional art forms. The one that sticks with me, because of the beat and the tayu (the voice), as unfathomable as it was, is bunraku. I cannot begin to describe the impact the music made on me, and how utterly different it was from what I am accustomed to.

The tayu performed with such vigor, such intensity and with such feeling that only an operatic soprano or tenor can compare. It left me speechless and in tears even though I had only a vague sense of the words. This has happened before: Puccini’s operas Turandot and Tosca, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, to mention a few.

All these grab at my soul. I can understand Puccini’s affect on me. He was after all from Lucca, my father’s ancestral home in Italy. But bunraku, where does that come from. It does not matter. Culture transcends borders, and that is why I do not try to suppress my foot tapping and my hips swaying with the beat of music I will never relish.

The visuals and sounds fade as the boats move back into the harbor but the beat remains. It is as if they are deserting the beat. Leaving it to mingle with the other sounds in the harbor and to linger in my mind.

Volume 5816 (4), 7/23/2010

Golden

Iron, clay, wood, paper, bamboo—all have intrinsic properties bestowed upon them by their unique molecular structure. This is true of everything, but I was thinking of chanoyu, and the structure of the tea world and our place in it. From Kyoto chanoyu filtered down to Chicago fifty years ago, and it has been my great fortune to be part of Chado Urasenke Tankokai Chicago Association for one-half of its history.

Through the guidance and leadership of Diasosho Hounsai and Oiemoto Zabosai, the past and present grand tea masters; their knowledge past on by remarkable teachers, both present and in our memories; and by the practice of dedicated students, the association has been connected to the wider world of tea beyond the Midwest. It is in these relationships that community is nurtured. Through every small act in the mizuya, and through every gesture in temae, we are drawn closer together.

Much has changed over the years, but the basic tenets of chado—Harmony, Respect, Purity, Tranquility—have not. These principles allow us to bring the practice of chanoyu into our daily lives. And so, in the spirit of one time, one meeting, we welcomed guests to share in our golden anniversary.

The Chicago Association commemorated its 50th anniversary this year with a celebratory luncheon on May 23rd. It was held at the Hyatt Regency across from the Chicago River in the heart of the city. The event began by welcoming each guest with a sweet made by one of our members. Guests were then served tea from a Misono-dana with a large red nodate parasol at its side to help provide the feeling of a warm spring day, which it turned out to be. After tea the guests were asked to view a slide show and video of our history.

A commemorative tea was presented with Ishikawa Sojin Sensei and Ishikawa Soko Sensei from the Deputy Corps of Gyotei at Urasenke Konnichian, and Kayoko Soka Hirota Sensei (the recently appointed Chief of Administration at the New York Branch of the Urasenke Foundation) as guests. Our wish for all present was to symbolically share in the partaking of tea with our honored guest to commemorate the many who have contributed to tea in Chicago, both past and present, and to look towards the future.

We were privileged to have Consul General George Hisaeda make opening remarks, as well as words from David Mungenast representing Japan House at The University of Illinois. Sojin Sensei then offered an appreciation from Diasosho Hounsai and Oiemoto Zabosai. A musical interlude from the world-renowned pipa musician Wei Yang followed lunch. We were also pleased to have the past president of the association from 1988 to 2000, Dr. Edwin Miller, in attendance.

The luncheon was preceded by a two-day seminar taught by Ishikawa Sojin Gyotei Sensei with Ishikawa Soko Sensei and Kayoko Soka Hirota Sensei assisting. Because of the generosity of the Consul General George Hisaeda, and Consul and Director of the Japan Information Center, Akira Tajima, we were able to hold the seminar at the Japan Information Center. Friends from California, Kansas, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky attended the all day classes.

With iron, clay, wood, paper and bamboo we practiced, learned and celebrated together for several warm spring days. For me, Ishikawa Sojin Sensei concisely summed up my wish for 50th when he said, “We always have to be thinking about the guest.” “The main point,” he said, “is the relationship between the host and the guest.” With this in mind I asked all to stand at the luncheon to toast the golden anniversary of tea in Chicago … Kampai!

Volume 5812 (4), 6/18/2010

Transfiguration

Stelly lies magnificently surrounded by flowers, confined in the place of honor at the front of the parlor. Entering at the back, over the shoulder of her father, a beautiful—not yet full-term—infant gazes at the gathered. One spark of life replenishing a spark gone out; is this interrelationship of spirits god, or is there no need for labels.

In need of consolation, I think of the Buddha. I think of change and impermanence, of sickness and death, and of seeking. We live in a world driven to find answers to the unanswerable. Why bother, better to spend time more concretely: time with friends and family, time on boats and bikes, time in cluttered basements full of half completed projects.

Now that the wind has warmed and the bird’s songs have increased in tempo there is also time for the garden. No need for an alarm clock this time of year. Our feathered friends are up before dawn; making up for a long winter spent huddled in the next-door neighbor’s blue spruce. Courting English sparrows (not my favorite bird) put on noisy aerial displays that rival those of the Blue Angels.

The backyard’s dingy grey soil is streaked with the green and purple of garlic, hostas, tulips, peonies and of course, a multitude of weeds. The grass begins to grow like tuffs of poorly cut hair. After being covered by a foot of winter’s mushy snow the soil is now dry and cracked. I feel the need for rain, as do the plants. When it finally rains—days and nights of cold drizzle—all growth ceases. Every thing is on hold, waiting for the sun and then with an explosion of growth, winter is over. It does not matter what happens now: another snowstorm or frost is irrelevant.

This spring has been especially vibrant. Buds galore: white and purple and green and pink. I hear on the radio that this is more evidence of global warming. A silver lining, and then I think about the new pest appearing in the garden and my glee is tempered.

Soon I will be fifty-seven. Long enough to have seen a few cycles come and go. Long enough to recognize patterns and to expect change. I continually look over my shoulder for the next squall. My diligence is not misplaced. Man-made or natural calamities are never far behind.

In the end all is transfigured: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We cope and we succumb. My days are full of such revelations. I watch people knowingly speed towards their own end. It is, as above, a recognition of patterns. What can I say to convince my patients to recognize the danger, but at this, sorry to say, I am a failure. Uncontrolled blood sugar and cholesterol, sky-rocketing blood pressure, miserable diets, no exercise, substance abuse; is it ignorance or lack of common sense. I think not. It is habit and up bringing, and I suppose stubbornness.

In this you have the makings of a disaster. From healthy vibrant souls to dissipation, but this is too negative a tone for spring. We have four months of hope and growth ahead of us. Four months for raspberries, pole beans, basil, tomatoes and zucchini. They grow from tiny seeds under grow lamps in my front room into large flourishing backyard plants.

We have four months to store the hope and energy of spring and summer: four months of cleansing thunderstorms and deep humid heat; four months of fluffy cumulus clouds and gentle southeast winds; four months to transform ourselves from cold and grumpy into warm and elated.

It is the same every year even if is not expected in the frigid darkness of February. So now we live with memories and expectations. Memories of a once cheerful soul now departed and expectations that a similarly cheerful soul will emerge from her father’s back to bring the same joy into the world—our world.

Volume 5809 (4), 5/21/2010

Leaving

The sun is only a red glow beneath the eastern horizon. Still moist air covers the boat with dew. The wet mooring lines slip through the hawser holes and as they fall away, we bid farewell to the boats that make up our floating neighborhood. The only witnesses to Carrie Rose’s departure between the red and green towers that mark the harbor’s mouth are the fishermen that line its perimeter.

Once in Lake Michigan’s swell our anticipation wanes, replaced by an awareness of the noise and vibration generated by a nine-ton Nordic Tug. Lenore, the sailboat we owned for a decade, was much different. Sails would be raised and adjusted for the appropriate heading, and then off with the engine. Its racket replaced by the sound of wind and waves, and by the boat’s creaking.

This creaking may be why boat owners drink a bit too much. It is in a futile attempt to block out the noise and get a good night sleep. When on board most skippers spend the night in a state of suspended animation, subconsciously listening for any change in the boat’s distinctive sound. I was nearing thirty when my body informed me that drinking to excess was no longer allowed. I conceded and so, when on the boat I am destined to spend the night on call.

It is reminiscent of internship. At five in the afternoon, as opposed to five in the morning, I would pass through an imaginary harbor mouth onto the floor of a foreign place that was, moments before, familiar turf. A hospital at night has rhythms not unlike the lake. Sometimes it is smooth as glass, sometimes choppy and sometimes, large rollers plummet the shore. Plus, there is always the possibility of a squall.

A night intern has a small cell to retreat into. It is analogous to a boat’s cabin. When given the chance, I would settle fully clothed into a corner berth and try to keep the various implements of a uniformed intern from prodding my weary flesh. On calm nights a boat generates white noise that helps initiates sleep. Not so in the hospital. Hospitals exude a sickly fluorescent hum. The attempt to calm a stimulated mind seldom works before the next crisis materializes.

In both cases the modern world is left behind for a primal one. One ruled by meteorology, the other by biology. Neither of these cares for our comfort. This, I think, is why superstitions abound in boating and medicine: never leave the harbor for an extended cruise on Friday; never ask why the beds are empty in an emergency room. Either will bring the wrath of nature, or man, down upon the unlucky protagonist.

No matter the context, eventually we have to leave our comfort zone. We can do it with style or be dragged kicking and screaming. In quiet times I think back to the individuals I have known. Many whom I thought were the least encumbered, turned out to be quite the opposite.

As an example, 1980 found me in a small Iowa town. My classmate Louie (from New Jersey) asked me to help him tend bar. We were Italian-American males separated from our mothers with no reliable source of Parmesan cheese. It was disheartening and because of it we bonded. It was agreed that he would work M-W-F and I, T-TH-S. The tavern was filled with local art and imported beer. It was an oasis of sorts, popular with college kids on the weekends, and thirty-year-old professionals and their staff during the week. Slowly, I noticed the same faces staring back at me on my regular tour of duty.

On occasion Louie and I would trade nights. This distressed the patrons. Unbeknownst to us, our ministrations were unique enough to develop a following. It was then that I realized they were never going to leave, no matter how unpleasant they perceived their circumstances. Leaving was not a choice for them.

Sobered by this, I determined to live a life unafraid of leaving. Leaving the comfort of harbor, home, religion, diet, and profession. Of course, on occasion I have ignored the impulse. But there it will be, hovering in the background of my ill-considered decision until made right.

A harbor mouth is a cliché unless you have left through one and broken your tie with the familiar. Once accomplished, you are forever armed with the knowledge that leaving accelerates time and makes the past irrevocable. Only then are you able to comfortably watch the red of the setting sun silhouetting the buildings to the west without longing to leave.


Volume 5860 (4), 4/3/2010

Rikyuki

In the past I have written about Sen Rikyu, the founder of chado, or the way of tea, who we will honor on March 28th at the Japan Information Center. Rikyuki, the 419th anniversary of his death, is not a demonstration as much as it is a commemoration. There is no running commentary engendering a more introspective attitude.

Reviewing my notes for Rikyuki each year gives me a chance to rethink the telling of the tale and inspires me to get my books out to see what else I can learn about Rikyu and chado. This inevitably leads me to delve deeper into Japanese culture.

While rereading my speech for Rikyuki a little voice reminds me that it takes ten year to do any thing well. Granted we assume we become experts in a much shorter time, but if we persist in our study the realization of how little we knew at the start of our endeavors comes as a shock. This conceit is necessary of course. How else could we ever find the confidence to begin? So in that light, I present a short history of Rikyu and chado, and look forward to next year when I will doubtlessly know more.

Sen Rikyu passed by his own hand on February 28, 1591, being ordered to do so by Togotomi Hideyoshi, the military dictator who unified Japan. Rikyu was the head tea master for Hideyoshi, a position akin to being cultural minister. When Rikyu’s popularity began to out shine that of Hideyoshi’s he was order to commit ritual suicide. (This is just one of the supposed reasons.) Once Rikyu was dead, Hideyoshi is said to have anguished over his death for many months and refused to appoint a successor.

Sen Rikyu transitioned to “soan” tea (tea of the thatched hut) from “shoin” tea (tea of the Golden Pavilion), which served as a vehicle to display one’s power and stature. Rikyu is the product of several tea masters. Their attempt to change the corrupt practice of tea in the early 16th century ultimately succeeded, but not without the tragedy of Rikyu’s death.

Juko, who lived from 1422-1502, is considered the father of the tea ceremony and is attributed to have said, “I have no taste for the full moon”. By this he meant that the moon, half hidden by clouds, is more moving than its full round image. At that time tea was centered on the use of Chinese objects. Japanese crafts were considered inferior to their Chinese counter parts.

Juko supplanted this to a tea based on Japanese utensils from the provinces. He led the rediscovery of art objects that are not completely perfect or ideal. A popular author even today, Okakura Tenshin, in his 1906 book, The Book of Tea, describes this as “a worship of the imperfect.” This sensibility is known as wabi. Juko, along with wabi, instituted the tradition of the 4.5 mat tearoom.

Takeno Jo-o (1502-1555), another tea master, built upon Juko’s work and eventually became Rikyu’s teacher. Jo-o altered the tearoom to include the plain clay walls, bamboo-lattice ceiling and the use of unfinished wood for the tokonoma that we are familiar with today. Jo-o’s tea revealed the informal beauty of the natural world. This concept, along with Okakura Tenshin’s “worship of the imperfect”, is known as wabi-sabi.

Sen Rikyu (1522-1591), the son of an affluent merchant, became Jo-o’s disciple in 1541. Rikyu’s style, which was derived from both Juko and Jo-o, was in opposition to the gaudy tea practices of the time. His tea reflects the natural environment as opposed to the cosmopolitan one that had influenced tea before and during the 16th century.

Rikyu created tearooms smaller than 4.5 mats and these rooms, being impractical spaces, served no other purpose than tea. The tiny tearooms incorporated a crawl-in entrance that forced the participants, no matter how distinguished, to bow low and crawl into the tearoom.

Rikyu molded chanoyu into a spiritual discipline and this may be what ultimately sealed his fate. Rikyu and his predecessors created and have preserved tea as it is practiced today, whether in a secluded natural setting or a large conference room. The present 16th generation Grand Tea Master Zabosai Oiemoto, carries on in the tradition of Rikyu.

Rikyu left the following poems at his death. The first composed in Chinese, the second in Japanese.

Over seventy years of life,
What trouble and concern,
I welcome the sword which,
Slays all Buddha’s, all Dharmas!

The sword, which has ever been
Close at hand,
I now throw into the sky.

Volume 5800 (4), 3/19/2010

Silence

Silence — I pay a considerable amount each month to avoid it. Amongst my friends I am probably the least invested in telecommunications. I have basic cable that provides me with 300 channels, of which I watch three percent. I had a XM Radio, but cancelled it. I retain a smart phone with no Internet, and a landline to receive paid political endorsements and DSL.

There is the iPod touch in my briefcase and a couple of old iPods I know not where. Then there are the legacy components: CD player, cassette deck, tube amps, turntable and a reel-to-reel. Oh, did I forget to mention the newsletters, magazines, newspapers and books. It is a struggle to keep up.

My first memories of media are with Aunt Sarah. I lived above Aunt Sarah and Uncle Bob in the two flat that our families shared. Before day care existed, she did her best to watch her son John and me. It was not an easy job, but it was made easier in the mid 60’s when Uncle Bob bought a tiny black and white TV in a fancy wooden cabinet. The screen was the size of an open paperback book. It was my introduction to the warm glow of a cathode ray tube. I remember staying up late to watch the moon landing and skipping naps in the afternoon to watch Captain Kangaroo.

A few years later I got into the act by buying a baby blue AM radio. I taped it to my bike’s handlebars, and rode around the neighborhood listening to rhythm and blues beamed from the South Side of Chicago. These memories are part of me. I cannot deny their influence. They compete for space in my mind along with the present electronic chatter.

Creativity follows an ephemeral thread that begins with inspiration. It fights to be noticed above the foreground noise. With all the distractions the best ideas are the ones that get away. One day I had a revelation while watching Seinfeld. I noticed that he kept paper and pencil by the side of his bed. If an idea stirred him, he captured the errant thought before it escaped. This simple practice comforted me. I started to carry some type of recording device, stopped wasting my time trying to recall missed ideas and got to work imagining new ones.

A friend’s autographed photograph from Phillip Roth caught my interest. Roth is his favorite author and this was all the endorsement I needed to start reading his novels. They center on a fictional character named Zuckerman. We follow him as he struggles to become a successful author. At the beginning of the third novel he is financially independent, in chronic pain, divorced three times, and unable to write.

His creative process has waned. He cannot reconcile the isolation of his chosen profession. For him silence is maddening. It takes courage to seek out quietude and confront one’s thoughts. Introspection is not always welcomed. All kinds of thoughts can surface. They can inspire, confront, be demonic or heavenly, freeing or imprisoning. Take your pick.

I have a visceral understanding of this. In my late teens I pulled together three hundred bucks to buy my first car. With it I left on a solitary journey out west. My first stop was Las Cruces, NM to meet up with two high school friends who were spending the summer re-enacting Easy Rider. We covered vast distances in a month of wandering. Finally it was time for me to return home. We split up at the Grand Canyon. I turned right and they turned left.

The trip home lacked the anticipation that kept my mind occupied during the start of the adventure. I was left with too much windshield time in an old VW beetle that was slowly tearing itself apart. I will skip the details other than to say I got very squirrelly in the week it took me to get home. I never had to deal with only myself for so long. It was not pretty, but it served a purpose.

By the time I drove up to my house on Campbell Avenue I had gained confidence. I got the car home — no small feat in itself — and along the way work through many adolescent issues. It was not a complete success, but it was a start. I am still working on it, searching for that silent moment, whether it be staring out a windshield or sitting in a quiet kitchen after midnight.

Volume 5796 (4), 2/19/2010

Nature

Nature is a vague concept. For city dwellers it is a far off place to venture to. There should be adventure and a little danger involve in the trek. Nature is found in mountains and jungles and amongst ocean waves. Most experience nature second hand through the eyes of rutty explorers on PBS or The Discovery Channel, but I go about my day surrounded by it.

On the surface this is a ridiculous assertion from a person with tongue depressors in one pocket and a stethoscope in the other. Nonetheless I contend that interacting with nature’s most remarkable creation is as close to nature as I can get.

First thing in the morning I scan my schedule for new patients. I enjoy the initial interaction. It keeps my brain stimulated; searching for a feeling or a thought, call it intuition, to begin unraveling the mystery present in each person. The schedule seldom presents me with clues and when it does, such declarations are rarely the entire story. It is anyone’s guess whom, with what, will show up.

Nature is illusive. It creeps up on me as I walk between examining rooms. My brow furrows. I concentrate, thinking it will reveal itself, but it fades. I can feel, almost taste it, but it is just out of my grasp. Instead of frustration, I find the vagueness comforting. To be at a stage of my life where nature feels comfortable enough to hover close is more than I can hope for.

Moving quickly from room to room I wonder if this is a way to spend a life. Most of what I do is fill out perplexing forms, laden with questions begging answers that do not exist for the circumstances patients find themselves in. The forms demand to be completed. Instead of using skills learned through long study and hard experience to start the process of healing, I search for creative ways to dot the I’s and cross the T’s.

Thankfully, this is not always the case. This day a friend/patient is waiting to see me in one of my little rooms. We reviewed his medication, I examined him and then ordered a few test to monitor the effectiveness of his treatment. We talk fleetingly about the biochemistry involved in his prescriptions (he is a chemist) and then he brings up Supernova 2007bi.

This often happens when we meet. It might not be this specific supernova or a supernova at all, but whatever it is, it is usually many parsecs away. This is nature represented by neutrinos, gamma and x-rays, dark matter, collapsing iron cores of massive stars, luminous dust clouds of nebula, and black holes that spin whole solar systems at relativistic speeds around and around their centers.

These are near impossible to imagine, but not impossible to measure. We have spent thousands of years observing nature. Our data collecting skill accelerated with the help of advances in engineering, material and computer science, mathematics and least we not forget, chemistry and physics. What we need now is time to interpret the details and come up with a grand vision. Even then, I cannot help but feel that nature will remain an ephemeral idea.

I am not sure why these premonitions appear at work. Are they trying to catch me off guard? When I get them I hope for lunch. Maybe then I can sit and think. This seldom happens. If I manage to get some time I scurry out the back door before things intercede. A pager is attached to my hip. It will lure me back if need be.

Once outdoors a core of old stylized buildings surround me. A range of empty high-rise condominiums hems these in. There are the local panhandlers on their designated corners. They recognize me, and though I have never contributed to their well being, they address me, “How’s ya doing today boss?” I nod and keep moving across a large eight-lane road that reluctantly permits me to cross. Then I walk into the heart of the city.

At times I have coffee and a donut for lunch or a sandwich or nothing, just walk. I wonder is there nature amongst the concrete, asphalt and Corten steel. Of course the answer is yes. Men and women, humankind, envelop me.

Depending on the season I study different aspects. It is winter now, so the pickings are slim. I analyze gait, but this is hampered if there is rain or snow. I glimpse faces, but here again if Lou Rawls Mighty Hawk is blowing, heads are tucked deep into collars and scarves are wrapped around and around necks.

I think of spring and what peculiar fashion will materialize. Last summer young women were wearing shorts with knee high boots. This winter, as if in opposition, young males are dressed appropriately from head to mid torso, then with shorts exposing hairy legs and the inevitable tacky tattoo. There are always the homeless layered in multiples of coats and blankets, seemingly afraid to discard any, least they not have them when times get worse. They dress the same no matter what the season.

I typically spend too much time wandering and must hurry back to the office. Deep thoughts are difficult to ponder with heart racing and breath coming in short spurts. I take different paths hoping for inspiration, but become distracted watching college freshmen shivering and puffing on their ten dollar a pack cigarette.

Nature pokes and prods at this city dweller all day, and even though it fails to reveal itself, I will it away … I have forms to complete!

Volume 5792 (4), 1/22/2010

Change

What a year. We have gone from utter despair to a ray of hope. Hope is heartening considering two wars, unstable energy cost, climate change, H1N1, economic collapse and the betrayal by legal, business and political leaders. In the past we have produced leaders of gigantic proportions to help set us on the correct path. Think of Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Not all their decisions were correct, many were flawed, but this is mainly hindsight. Any one who makes decisions is prone to failure.

One of my residency trainers impressed upon me that the only way not to fail is to acquiesce. I appreciate him more and more, even if he terrorized me those many years ago. In our residency clinic I would examine a patient, and use the findings to justify my diagnosis and plan. I had to think on my feet. Rarely do we have the luxury of time in medicine. There are schedules to keep, driven by the waiting room or by nature itself.

It was enlivening to report to him. Fear drove the encounter. I began to realize that he was not concerned with the specifics of my plan, nor was his vitriol personally directed at me. He could and did correct any mistakes before they impinged on the patient. He was there to train me to think, to problem solve and most important, to have the courage to make decisions.

I remember as a new intern dragging the student working with me by the ear as he tried to duck out of the encounter with our spirited mentor. I reasoned if I was going down, I was not going down alone. In medical training, as in politics, there is seldom a place to hide. At the start of the third year of medical school, even if you do not realize it, your every move is followed.

When you finally get the chance to throw a stitch in surgery it is at the very end when everyone is trying to finish and watching to see if you screw up; when you report to the attending on the hospital floor you are surrounded by classmates, interns and residents, all tapping their feet, waiting to move on to the next case. Wavering gets you nowhere. Speak with confidence and you will probably get hassled, throw the stitch and it may get redone, but your attempt will gain the respect of your colleagues.

You are finally on your own when you become an attending. The first few months are nerve racking with so many decisions to make. Suddenly what was a collaborative pursuit has turned solitary. There is very little backup for a physician. Your problems are your own to resolve.

And so this is the situation I see our new President in. He has asked for consul, absorbed the give and take, and made decisions. And as with medicine, he (and we) will live with the consequences of his actions. I applaud him for his collaborative nature. But I applaud him more for having the courage to make the tough decisions. I may agree or not with his ideas and how he has chosen to go about them, but I am pleased he has chosen not to hide, but to confront our problems head on.

The particulars will be fought over. This is hoped for in our system of government. With talk there is movement, and four or eight years down the road we will not be in the position of having to address the same issues as today.

My wish for this upcoming year is that we take stock and with introspection, not hysteria, have the courage to make decisions to change our lives for the better. Our country, our community and our relationships will benefit from this newfound commitment.

Volume 5789 (4), 1/1/2010

Niche

When I was a boy I would build my own little world in the bedroom I shared with my sister. Piling the covers over me I used pillows to support them and built a hidden cave in plain sight. It provided me with a niche—a place isolated from the goings on in our crowded apartment—where I could let my mind wander. I went on many great adventures while comfortably sequestered there.

Of course this was in a world where I had almost no access to content. We had a few books, an AM radio, a primitive record player, and a small black and white TV. No video games, cable, cell phones, iPODs, music downloads, You Tube, CDs, and on and on. If I was going to be entertained, it was up to me. Of the memories I have of my childhood, boredom is not one of them. My little niche served me well.

Niche is a complicated word packed with meaning. It denotes your place in the world. It describes the ecology of an organism. It is a definitive architectural space and an unplanned recess in a natural formation. It is an intellectual construct as well as a physical entity.

Chanoyu, the tea ceremony, is replete with niches from the tokonoma/alcove where the flower and scroll are placed, to the water filled recess in the tsukubai/stone basin used for purification prior to partaking in tea. There is the niche that the ro/sunken hearth is placed in for winter and then there is the ultimate niche, the chashitsu/tearoom.

If a niche can be thought of as a setback space, the roji/tea garden with its buildings is certainly a niche from the outside world. Entering the garden is an elaborate process. The passage separates us from our everyday life. We pass through gates, walk on undulating stone paths, and are guided by anonymously placed sekimoriishi/stones that direct our way.

Deep in the enclosure we sit and wait on the koshikake/waiting bench to be summoned to the chashitsu by our host. Once there we bend low to enter a dimly lit chashitsu through the nighiriguchi/half door. The room combines multiples of 90-degree corners juxtaposed with natural curves.

Before us are utensils with similar characteristics: some misshapen and roughly hewn, and some well defined and delicate as English porcelain. There is flawless lacquer intermixed with grainy unfinished wood. There is wrought iron and fine bronze. All displayed in their own niches.

In fact as participants we are confined to niches. The floor space is delineated by the geometric structure of the tatami mats. There are names for these spaces: temaedatami, kinindatami, kyakudatami, fumikomidatami and rodatami. One for the host to sit and make tea, one for the respected head guest, one for the accompanying guest, one is the path for entrance and exit, and one is where the ro is placed.

Many variations exist. In Konnichian, the garden compound at Urasenke’s headquarters in Kyoto, Sen Sotan, the third Grand Tea Master, designed a teahouse of the same name to retire to. The niche he created is a less than two tatami mats in size. Years later he re-retired and built the Yuin or Further Retreat tearoom, which is four and one-half mats.

But this is beside the point. If it were possible to invite all that read this to experience tea after filtering your consciousness through the roji, words would not be necessary. Sen Rikyu, the founder of chanoyu, stated in his Hundred Verses (beautifully translated by Gretchen Mittwer), “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.”

We all need to find our niche. It is part of maturing, part of being fulfilled. Without it we run the risk of frustration and despondency. It need not be high culture it just needs to be. It took me years to find mine. It started in the confines of my little niche spent not in isolation, but in creating and imagining another world.

Volume 5785 (4), 11/20/2009

Camaraderie

I am interested in a little known watery journey around the eastern United States called The Great Loop. It traverses six thousand miles of fresh and salt water in oceans, lakes, rivers and canals from Canada to Key West. The books I have read and the “loopers” I have talked to have a common thread. Once the initial discussion of equipment, logistics and finances is finished, the talk turns to the relationships that after all the diesel is burned, turn out to be the most memorable aspect of the trip.

I began to think of friendship a few weeks ago while my wife and I visited two dear friends from my college days. They live in the Pacific Northwest surrounded by mountains and deep blue lakes and evergreen forest. They are also surrounded by a loving expatriate community from the lower 48 that is drawn together by a love of their newfound home and by an obsession with the Chicago Bears.

As we gathered with them I noticed members of the group asking my friends if they were going to see them at church on Sunday. Now, we have been friends for over twenty years and I never heard of them attending church. As unlikely as it appeared, I wondered if there had been a conversion since our last visit.

Not wanting to interfere I hesitated to ask, but curiosity got the best of me and I blurted out the question. A positive response would not have been a problem. Each-to-their-own is my motto, but it turns out that on game day they convene “church”, collectively sharing in the tragedy and elation that comes from being rabid Bears’ fans.

Celebrating with local delicacies and potent hooch they have built a community not an exclusive club. Although I am an outsider with no interest in sport, I was welcomed with open arms and sent away with big bear hugs.

Over the week of our visit several of the congregants invited us to a superb vegetarian dinner and then on a day with a rare clear blue sky we helped press homegrown apples for cider. All were in attendance, and took joy in the work and fellowship.

How do we quantify these relationships, whether short or long term. Some friends we retain from school, some from work; some are old flames and some are friends of old flames; some friendships are made through adversity and some through good fortune; and some just because—no other reason needed.

I have been lucky: caring parents and a supportive spouse, health and curiosity, the good fortune to live in the land of the free and the privilege to have lived with diverse cultures. To top it off, I have spent as much time on the water as in the library, and for whatever reason, was chosen to train in medicine.

The amity of the people that have fostered me, and their participation in my joy and sorrow is inestimable. The insight and the experience that leads to fellowship is not a random act. There is an art to it and a common interest can accelerate the process.

Tea is such a thing. I appreciate the strong bonds that have been formed with my fellow students and teachers. The first real heartfelt losses for me were the passing of my teachers. It was only after the death of my father that I began to understand the strong emotions I felt at their deaths.

I have started to comprehend the consequences of my choices. They shape a life and of all the decisions taken, the ones to pursue friendship have been the most fulfilling, for if not for camaraderie what good the journey.

Volume 5780 (4), 10/16/2009

Seeing

It was not until my late teens or early twenties that I began to see. Before that I was too preoccupied with my soap-opera-ish life to see the world around me. Then one day I began to change. It started in Israel. I was nineteen years old and working on a kibbutz when a departing friend, in an attempt to lighten their backpack, gave me a birding guide. It turned out to be a perceptive gift.

I still have the book. The simple drawings and formulaic text drew me in. I searched for the pictured critters and unbeknownst to me started my life list of birds. It occupied me in lands where no English was spoken. Stopping for the night I would set up camp–I spent six months of my year abroad in a cheap tent–and then venture to explore the local fauna.

I saw shag in Scotland, white stork in Israel, ptarmigan on Vassfjora Mountain in Norway and mute swan in England. I saw dunnocks, willow tits, white wagtails, magpies and hoopoes. The ritual of birding comforted me as homesickness set in. I resisted returning home, but one wintry afternoon found myself back in Chicago.

It may have been England’s grey winter that finally turned the tide. Rebuffed by a global oil crisis and left with no source of income I was forced home instead of to Spain, as was my plan. The birds, oblivious to my economic shortcomings, simply headed south as the days shorten.

I have much to thank them for. Nearly every significant thing I have done since is contingent on receiving that book from a near stranger. The process of looking for and identifying birds taught me how to silence the commotion in my mind. Through birding I learned concentration, comprehension and how to study. The knowledge that flowed has been empowering.

My father was instrumental in my learning to see. He was not an educated man, but he was an interested one. He had an infectious enthusiasm. I would be taken to Chicago’s lakefront to watch smelt fisherman or to walk through the harbors examining boats as we went. He had a gift for engaging strangers in conversation and our mini expeditions were revelatory for me. We, or I should say he, would talk to anyone be they fishermen or ship captains. In his disarming way he picked their brains and I listened to them express their passion.

One place we visited was The Adler Planetarium. There in the basement behind a large window was a shop where telescopic mirrors were made. One difference between my father and me is that he never pursued the things he showed an interest in. He worked long hours providing for us; he golfed on the weekends; he drove my mother wherever she wanted to go; and he took meticulous care of his home and car.

I am different. I have done very little of the above, but I have done, or at least tried to do, all of the things that interest me. Two of those things are astronomy and telescopes, and so, they became my next path into the nature of seeing. When I finally had the chance, I made three mirrors in the basement of Adler Planetarium. Three telescopes followed and a new way of seeing was open to me.

Birds are one thing, but planets, stars and nebula are another. We are spoiled by images from the Hubble space telescope. To look into a beautiful telescope like my eight-inch Newtonian reflector is a disappointment at first. The images are small and shaky.

Before you can see you must first let your eyes become sensitized to the dark. This chemical process cannot be rushed. It takes place in the rods that make up most of the retina. Twenty minutes is good, but a couple of hours are better. Stray light will quickly reverse the process, so you have to be careful.

The best star gazing in the Midwest is when it is clear and cold. Astronomers wait for frigid Canadian high-pressure systems to sink down and cover us with dense stable air, the kind that makes airplanes sound as if they are right over our head. It provides a direct view out into the universe and the sky becomes three-dimensional.

The moon looks as crisp as a starched white shirt. The planets are palpable. Globular clusters resemble Star Trek’s hyperspace, and stars are the color of the rainbow. There is so much more to see with the enhanced light collecting ability of even the smallest telescope. All this comes at a cost. There is cold and boredom, clouds and technical glitches, but if you persevere your worldview will never be the same.

The visual lessons I have gleaned from birding and astronomy translate into a love of the radiographic image, and in my line of work I see many x-rays. X-rays are shadows and every gradation of grey is significant.

My examination of an x-ray starts by standing back to get an overall impression, just as you would with a large painting. I squint my eyes to see if any areas stand out. Then begin a closer inspection. Working from the outer border into the center, I examine soft tissue and bone. If I see an abnormality I leave it until I have surveyed the entire x-ray. Only then do I go back and focus on the variants.

We have to learn to see. It is a skill that needs nurturing. Seeing is not random, there are steps. As you gain experience you realize that glossing over them to save time, cost you time.

When I started my quest to see I had 20/20 vision, a full head of hair and a slim waistline. This has changed, but what has not is my desire to see the world as it is. With its beauty and ugliness, its splendor and banality, and not make distinctions. If I can continue to do so I will rest peacefully with the hindsight that eyeglasses, grey hair and a protruding belly brings.

Volume 5776 (4), 9/18/09

Collaborate

Dmitri Shostakovich’s 5th symphony is a remarkable creation. The first movement’s quiet reverie has an edginess that betrays the underlying anxiety. Low staccato notes exchanged between the piano and the bass anticipate a new theme. Abruptly, with a crash, the mood is transformed into a compelling, if sinister march. Despite misgivings I follow it lockstep, willing to do whatever it demands, but as quick as the march appears it dissipates only to reappear, teasing, pleading to remain.

As I listen I begin to comprehend why Shostakovich found himself out of favor with the Communist party apparatchiks. Prior to WW II and during the Cold War he was accused of “formalism” and while many of his friends and colleagues did not survive the purges, I suppose even for Stalin the permanent disappearance of Russia’s greatest living composer was hard to justify.

Shostakovich would compose music in line with party doctrine for a while and then, trying to follow his artistic vision fall out of favor. The cycle continued until Stalin’s death in 1953.

His dilemma is evident in the first movement. The performance requires heartfelt, even sentimental lyricism. It requires military discipline. There are virtuosic solo performances and passages where the orchestra plays as one. There is quiet and there is bombast.

To perform it successfully requires collaborative skills. In forty years of listening to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, I have witnessed many of the world’s great conductors perform it. Most recently, under tumultuous skies at Ravinia, I heard Christoph Eschenbach’s glorious rendition. He is an elegantly detailed conductor. You can see notes flow from his baton.

Maestro Eschenbach has a gripping biography. Born in 1940, in what was then Germany, he was orphaned during WW II and adopted from a refugee camp while ill with typhoid fever. He begins his training in piano at the age of seven and debuts as a conductor in 1972.

Perhaps it is his history and his career as a pianist that provides him with a unique insight into this hour-long colossus. His interpretation was free of expectations. Now that the Soviet Socialist Republic is no more perhaps the Fifth can be put in the proper historical perspective without the prejudice that existed when it was first composed.

No matter who is the conductor, I seek it out. It is a work that begs to be listened to live, direct from the baton, the lungs and the muscles of the performers straight into your core. The fact that this performance stirs the soul is what sets it apart as a successful collaboration.

I have been blessed with many fulfilling collaborations through my study of chado, the way of tea. We try hard to learn the skills and the spirit of tea. Whether serving tea to dignitaries at a grand function, or making tea amongst ourselves in a makeshift chashitsu in a Chicago backyard while honoring one of our own, we strive to seamlessly perform our tasks.

Although Sen Rikyu, the founder of tea, stated that chanoyu is simply a matter of making and drinking tea, the skills needed to make tea can include carpentry, metalwork, cooking, flower arranging and a multitude of other equally important responsibilities that as a whole require a life time of study and even then may never be mastered.

Each serving of tea is an individual and begs for interpretation. Not unlike what conductors bring to the performance of the same score. We find ourselves in a unique environment with different requirements and have to adapt. The stress creates the opportunity for an artistic moment.

Success is never guaranteed. The slightest change, the smallest detail can be the difference between humdrum and memorable. Chanoyu and great orchestras have a certain élan, a confidence void of swagger that comes from a pure heart and a devotion to the task. This selfless participation is the essence of collaboration.

Volume 5773 (4), 8/21/09

Cruise

My discovery for a fulfilling life is to observe and, if lucky, to describe every detail that surrounds me. This seems a simple task, even a trick, but once commenced soon becomes exhausting. If taken serious, it is difficult to relax least a detail is missed. Some writers excel at this. James Joyce and Herman Melville are prime examples.

Reading Joyce’s words from beginning to end (well almost, Finnegan’s Wake is to be delved into rather than read) the books become progressively mired in detail. Mired to the point where Joyce alone can comprehend the language. Granted there are cadres of Joyce scholars who have put in the time to learn his language, but without years of study most lay readers have to take much of what they read on faith.

In Finnegan’s Wake the detail is so extensive and personal that Joyce invents a peculiar lexicon to express his meaning. The tome, for novel is too trivial a word to describe it, is an endless loop of inside jokes that, I’m afraid, is mostly lost on me.

Herman Melville is another detail freak. His novels prior to Moby Dick are wonderful tales of seafaring made more compelling by their autobiographical nature. But as with Joyce, his greatest achievement is overwhelmed by detail. For Joyce it is the intricacies of Dublin and its inhabitants. For Melville it is oddly, whale anatomy.

Maybe my obsession with detail is the “glass half empty” mentality I am prone to. If I miss it, it no longer exists. Or maybe, from a different vantage point, it is the only way to prove to myself that I have tried to know all that there is to know. If looked on this way, the attention to and the knowledge of detail just might constitute that heightened state of awareness known as enlightenment.

As a teenager I thought enlightenment was some thing that came from without. This was the popular wisdom of the day; think of Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception and Timothy Leary’s Turn on, Tune In, Drop Out.

During my twenties I began to understand that enlightenment has nothing to do with comfort or happiness, with location or relationships. Though I did, I did not have to travel west to seek it out in the grander of nature. No sequestration in a mountain cave is necessary. Even as a young adult I realized that Chicago, other than for the traffic, is a perfectly fine place to work on the project.

Granted this goes against conventional wisdom. One is lead to believe that it is easier to reach an enlightened state in La Jolla, CA rather than on Talman Avenue in Rogers Park. The foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, an ashram in India, a mountain retreat in Taos or Vermont would be nice. But even the fact that I am using the word “nice” negates the argument.

If anything, perfect surroundings can be a hindrance. I fear the feeling of awe with the natural wonder can be confused or misinterpreted with the feeling of awe within oneself. My trick is to deal with what I have. As in all things, the most important part of the trick is to work at it, which of course is no trick at all.

So, stop paying the cable bill, leave the iPod at home, turn off talk radio and stay out of the mall. Retreat into everyday life without retreating, realizing that there is no limit to what enlightenment can be. It can be a point of sail on a particularly challenging day. It can be a sunset on a Greek island. It can be not hitting the wall during a marathon. It can be the whisking of a bowl of matcha.

The question that started me on this train of thought is, why cruise? This is a pertinent question to ask while sitting in Northport, Michigan’s harbor for five days waiting for the offending Canadian low to move to the east. There is time to ponder when the barometer drops to 983 and sits unmoving for days.

The answer then might be the dream, a way to live out Odysseus journey. It might be the preparation. It is common to meet boaters that have spent entire lives in preparation, never to leave. It might be the mastery of skills: seamanship, navigation, weather, rope work, systems maintenance and an overlooked but crucial skill, spousal relationships.

Probably it is the common purpose and the camaraderie of the cruising fraternity, all looking for that elusive enlightening experience. Waiting for the moment when the self dissolves and becomes one with the universe. Fleeting as it may be, the discovery that it in fact exists is enough to fuel a lifetime of searching for detail and for the next anchorage.

Volume 5768 (4), 7/17/2009

Spring

Poem on a Theme of Snow

From heaven fall icy petals;
In the sky not a spot of blue remains …
The sun rises over the mountain peak.
The chill pierces my bones.
Silence prevails.

Muso Soseki (1275-1351)


Though this is a poem of winter, for this spring it rings true. It makes me think of the white, almost grey cherry blossoms of Tokyo’s parks. They too fell from the trees as soft icy petals and covered the ground like drifting snow.

It seems obscene to think in these terms after the past winter. After all, I am enjoying my newly remodeled backroom, looking out at flowers and green grass, and when I walk the twenty or so feet to the garage I am enveloped by the smell of the lilacs that have grown through our trellis from the next-door neighbor’s yard.

Just yesterday as a cold north wind blew, we spent the gray afternoon looking through the garden diary that my wife Charlotte kept for many years after we bought the bungalow. The first few years were bleak. Our cars were parked on a slab and our backyard is open to the alley. There is grass but no other plants. And our neighbor’s yards are devoid of any landscaping.

Now some fifteen years later, two twenty-foot pine trees keep watch over dozens of perennials, annuals and vegetables planted in laboriously enriched soil. The community of birds that now makes our yard their home is the reward for the tedium of work.

Every year the environment matures and changes as do the number and types of birds. Adding a finch feeder brought common house sparrows, red-headed sparrows, slate-colored juncos and the adorable common goldfinches whose plumage changes from a drab green in the winter to a bright yellow in the spring. As a hedgerow has grown along the fence between our northern neighbor—who after raising four children finally has the time to landscape her yard—house wrens appeared as if by immaculate conception.

They announced themselves one morning several years ago with a loud cry that could not be ignored, especially considering they start singing prior to sunrise. It drove me to my bedraggled copy of Roger Tory Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds. He describes their song as, “A stuttering, gurgling song, rising in musical burst, then falling at the end.” To that I say, amen.

The honeysuckle brings the occasional ruby-throated hummingbird. These are birds on a mission. They are not lingerers like the mourning doves who spend hours under the bird feeder searching for scraps left by the finches, or like the robins who crisscross from one yard to the next, back and forth all day pulling worms from their subterranean lair.

Hummingbirds have a buzz saw quality to them with manic wings that mimic the sound of the heavy jets that perpetually pass overhead on their way to O’Hare’s runway 27L. Their syringe-like beaks disappear into the orange flowers and sap up the nectar within.

They only hover for a few moments and then, engaging their warp drive disappear. Fussy eaters, they do not investigate all the flowers as the myriads of bees do. Maybe it is my presence that drives them away, but it is hard not to want to get close to them.

The birds put up with us. When we finally stop working and get a chance to sit, if we are too close to the feeder, we find out soon enough. The goldfinches enforce the unseen boundary. To put it bluntly, they are nags. Their usually pleasant song becomes guttural and dissonant until we reluctantly get ourselves up and relocate a few feet farther from their coveted thistle seeds.

It would be nice to think we are masters of our environment. We did build it, but this would be fooling ourselves. From the squirrels that are compelled to take one bite out of every ripe tomato and deposit it on our doorstep; to the skunks that waif through at night silently leaving their scent; to the raccoon that made its home in our attic insulation, it goes on.

We have had large hawks hunting woodcock; a baby robin abandoned in our large, now deceased, climbing rose; possums depositing their young; and raccoons expertly tearing the grass up as they search for grubs.

We have a constant battle to discourage dandelions, violets, creeping Charlie and crab grass. We are only beginning to appreciate my mother’s deft hand in keeping the grass and the garden weed free. In this she took after her father. He too was a master gardener. I am afraid I will never live up to the likes of them.

It is now the end of the third cold and rainy weekend of this spring. I am trying to remain positive, even as I sit in my wool vest with the furnace cycling hot water up from the basement to the radiators. I reassure myself it is past the frost date and the icy petals are only a literary illusion, but knowing that my chilled bones are real enough.