Waves

Surfing down a wave in a 17,000 pound 32 foot piece of pointed plastic can be simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. The noise resembles a washing machine’s spin cycle. As I am lucky enough to have a functioning autopilot I stay ready to slide off my comfortable seat and disengage it to save our little ship. If I did not have one then I would have already anticipated what the following wave was going to do and started to correct for it.

Each boat responds in a unique way and each wave presents a different challenge. Waves come in waves. On the Great Lakes, my hub of experience, they come in series of sixes or sevens. Each series is characterized by increasingly larger waves. Occasionally one is demarcated by a large wave out of proportion to the others. Waves in the Great Lakes have a short period (the time between crest) of about 6 to 8 seconds, so it can be several minutes between series. And within that cycle there are even longer cycles, which generate larger waves. These big ones sneak up on you.

The Perfect Storm made us familiar with rogue waves. Of course I am not talking about anything on that scale. The waves on our fresh water lakes are known more for their steep close packed nature than their towering size. Our waves beat you to pulp with their quick repeatability, rather than engulf you whole like those of the oceans. That said, remember the Edmund Fitzgerald and beware.

If driving into them, we pound; if traveling across, we swing like an upside-down metronome. If they are behind, well, then we slow as we get sucked back into the troughs, and speed up as we are lifted and flung forward by the front of the approaching wave. Speed can increase from 5 to 12 knots in an instant. Some following waves quietly gurgle as they pass. Others pick up the stern to a point where gravity takes over and starts the boat careening into the wave that has just passed.

It is then that the boat does something usually the purview of young bleached blond men and women on exotic islands, surf. The boat feels lively and light as it skips along on the foaming water of the breeching wave. When the speed of the wave matches that of the boat, the rudder loses it grip and the boat starts to turn right across the offending wave. This (broaching is the technical term) cannot be allowed to happen.

If sideways to a sizable wave it can overwhelm and flipped the boat over on its side or worse. I turn the wheel as far to the left as possible, far enough to feel the rudder bite into the water and the bow begins to swing to the left. Of course I do not want to go too far that way either, so a bit before the neutral point I bring the wheel back to center.

All this takes several very long seconds and thankfully large waves, in most cases, herald the beginning of a new series with smaller waves in the forefront. I take a breath and recover my heading. Once in a stable rhythm the autopilot is reengaged. I sit back to wait for the next one to appear. It may or may not, so I keep alert.

I have been at the helm of many boats from square sided tubs to sleek double enders. From heavy cruising boats to ultra light racers. All behave differently. My present boat does not sail but powers through the water pushed in front of a large four bladed propeller with over two hundred pounds of torque behind it. It seldom exhibits any strain despite the conditions it finds itself in.

She — the boat — has a fine entry that flattens out to a shallow V and ends in a broad, billboard like stern. The tons of water that make up a following wave love to push it around, but thanks to a large rudder and a long deep keel it is not often bested.

The operative word here is often. Off of Michigan’s Little Sable Point this year an odd combination of wind, waves and terrain, both above and below the water, twist us in such a fashion to dislodge furniture, nick-knacks and anything else not Velcro-ed down, including us. It occurred with such a noise that I considered, if only for a second, the sanity of being out on the water.

In another boat, like our former Swedish sailboat Lenore, the wave would have simply parted at the stern and passed by with a whoosh. Lenore loved — more than me — strong winds and big seas. She had a hidden stern as fine and pointed as her bow. A boring boat in anything less than 15 knots of wind she became more comfortable as conditions worsened. Once her sail was shortened she would steer herself, managing tacks and gybes with ease.

Lovely she was, but slow and cramped and so Carrie Rose, the 17,000 pound piece of pointed plastic, replaced her in 2003. We traded ocean-crossing ability for the RV comforts of a coastal cruiser. A good choice overall, but a choice that has me wishing for her when the waves get their dander up and start to carry us downwind on another adventure.

October 2011

Rocks

Rocks are not a big part of my life in Chicago. There is the occasional one I dig out of the garden and sometimes I find myself admiring the fossils that reside in the stone that make up the buildings downtown. But that is about it. I found John McPhee’s Basin and Range interesting but geology was my least favorite science in college. I admit to a fascination with Japanese rock gardens and the Japanese veneration of particular rocks. Last year I sat at the edge of the Ryoan-ji dry rock garden in Kyoto and quietly soaked in the ambiance.

But in the Northern reaches of Michigan and into Canada the rocks demand attention. The farther north Charlotte and I traveled from Chicago the more subservient the environment became to its rocks: telephone poles are supported by piles of rocks at their base because there is no soil to bury them, foundations that only go down inches rather than feet, and minimal top soil—most of it having been pushed to central Illinois by the glaciers that scraped this area down to bedrock.

Rocks define the North Channel of Ontario where Carrie Rose, our 32’ Nordic Tug, carried us this spring and summer. Our attention was directed to avoiding the multitude of barely submerged rocks that inhabit these waters. To keep from hitting them we used our eyes, two sets of charts, several local cruising guides, an outdated Garmin chart plotter, an even older back-up GPS and a newly purchased navigation program for my MacBook with another GPS plugged into its USB port. Believe me we needed them all.

After much travail I was able to load the computer with the current Canadian and U.S. charts. They display rocks that mariners have been charting since Admiral Bayfield made his way here in the early 1800s. But there is no guarantee that the charted rocks will be where they are supposed to be and that uncharted ones will miraculously surface. Every cruising guide on every page cautions this inevitability.

As I write this Carrie Rose is having a well-deserved rest in Petoskey, MI. This is the land of the famed Petoskey stone. These dusty grey stones have a lace like filigree pattern and are the coral remnants of an ancient sea. During past visits we bought a small bud vase and a Pandora charm made out of them. This year we decide to find our own and so, the bikes were taken off the boat, cleaned of spider webs and ridden down a path west of the harbor. At the first beach that appeared slightly remote we walk down the stairway to the beach. Once there, with heads bowed, we start searching. Within 30 seconds I find one, and then another and another. Granted these were not prime examples but after a little cleaning, sure enough they were Petoskey stones. I now understand, as one local told me, that the entire landscape from here to Mackinac Island is composed of them, just waiting to be found by naïve southerners like us. When we get back to the boat Charlotte sits sanding our treasure to bring out their hidden details. With this level of intensity she should have them gleaming by next year. A worthy pursuit considering she has just retired.

We left Chicago in early June to get to the North Channel of Lake Huron and cruise amongst its ancient rocks. The rock culture is intense there. Mountains of gleaming white quartz defy description. Your eyes want to attribute the whiteness to something else besides the rock itself, but you can touch it and feel the sun’s heat that radiates from its mirror like surface.

The celebrated islands in the North Channel are the Benjamin’s. They are a small group of islands in the shape of a C that are composed of pink quartz. It is not easy to get to them, nor is it easy to stay. Their poor anchorage is exposed to winds from many directions and its bottom, which has been scoured by thousands of anchors has questionable holding. To further complicate matters, most days it is filled with cruising boat vying for the few safe places to anchor.

To climb its treeless dome of exposed quartz is to commune with rocks as old as any found on the planet. For a Christian nation it smacks of animism. This is behavior I expect from the Japanese with their reverence of Shinto’s kami-sama, spirits associated with the natural world. Most of the national parks in Japan have Shinto shrines to provide for the spiritual needs of their visitors. But here amongst the fifty and sixty year old middle class of North America it seems sacrilegious.

Of course as luck would have it Carrie Rose broke down just as we entered the Benjamin’s. We were towed east to Little Current, the largest town on Manitoulin Island, for repairs. We linger there for two weeks waiting for engine parts and never setting foot on the coveted terrain we had been removed from. Instead we spent our time with the town’s friendly and caring people, and with the transient community that cruise this rock-ridden archipelago each summer. A couple we barely knew offered us the key to their behemoth Ford and encouraged us to take in some of the sites while they were away cruising. We accepted and went north into the odd landscape of the Le Cloche Mountains. Once the size of the Rockies these hills of white quartz are billions of years old and they look it.

I wish I could give you an accurate description. The land is an odd mixture of trees, water and convoluted, rounded stones folded upon themselves. The shear rock faces radiates heat, and foliage hangs on for its life, as do the cottages that are tucked into every crevasse. The energy the earth poured into this landscape for billions of years is tangible. I am unaccustomed to such intensity and it makes me nervous.

I sense the billion-year history of these rocks and think of my few meager decades. I leave the North Channel sobered. It put my allotment of consciousness in context. The time here on earth before I become an elemental particle again is the universe’s gift and I better not waste it!

September 2011

Coasting

I thought we had enough time, is a common refrain on Lake Michigan. At present I am sitting through the third thunderstorm of the last three days. I thought I had enough time to get to our destination by today but I did not. Prudence dictates I remain in the harbor and it gives me some unexpected time to look around and absorb the scene. In the last few days I have seen a cast of characters pass through the different harbors I have been sequestered in.

The best were two elderly gentlemen in a small open sailboat of British design who are sailing, weather be damned, south along the east coast. After seeing what they have been through I feel like a wimp for staying put through these few “inconsequential” major storms.

Then there was the couple that spent the last eight summers cruising the Great Lakes in their large traditional (read slow) ketch. They go where they want, when they want with no strings attached.

A fellow Nordic Tug owner whom I have met at rendezvous’ appeared late yesterday in the heart of the worst of the worse weather. I “caught” him as he turned into his slip with the wind blowing his little ship a beam. Once tied up he described fighting progressively higher winds and seas as he approached the harbor only to turn back three miles to rescue a disabled sailboat.

This reverie could go on but I will stop. The storm clouds have move on to reek havoc over the horizon and blue sky has returned, as have the tourist that fled at the first sign of rain. There is a bit of going native about cruising even if every harbor town is full of ice cream and t-shirt shops. I have hardly seen a soul on this trip up the eastern shore, that is excluding the fishermen three miles out from every harbor mouth,

I have had the lake to myself. This was most evident while passing through the Manitou Passage. A lonely stretch of water bounded by South and North Manitou Islands to the west, and Sleeping Bear and Pyramid Points to the east. It is primordial compared to other areas of the lake I have experienced. The forces and the time involved in shaping this terrain, both above and below the surface of the lake, occupy my thoughts as I negotiate through the various nuns and cans, and lighthouses that mark the passage.

I get the same feeling when I focus my telescope back in time from the moon, to the planets, to the Milky Way, and to our local group of galaxies and beyond. My mind relaxes, shedding filters that are normally in place and roams. It is a common thread for most voyagers. It is why you can meet people as you wander and instantly fall in sync with them.

At least for me there is superstition involved in this. When I was growing up my Sicilian mother (bless her soul) enforced many different entreaties. The oddest being that opening an umbrella inside the house meant a family member would die. I am sure I killed off a few of my dear aunts due to my inattention. My traveling companion Charlotte is a good antidote to this line of thinking. She always speaks the obvious in any situation. I seldom do, fearing I will tempt faith. I am not convinced this is a good practice but I have silenced my objection to it.

One thing that differentiates coasting from other types of boating is housekeeping. Besides charting and never ending maintenance someone has to shop and cook, wash the dishes and make the bed, and do the laundry. Granted the grass doesn’t need to be cut or the garden weeded but the above more than makes up for the lack of those chores. This is why charter captains and their pampered guest exist.

Maybe one day I will succumb to be pampered but not today. Today I will swing in each beam sea, drive into whitecaps and squalls, ghost through early summer fog and wait out weather in a safe harbor.

Coasting involves pairing down to the essentials, no end of endless horizons and fellow travelers that are not so much about the trip as they are about the spirit of the trip. So when I really think about it I do have enough time, because how much time does it take to absorb the spirit of a place.

August 2011

Crossing

I am sure there is a gospel song called “Crossing to the Other Side” but that is not what I am about here. I am about crossing Lake Michigan from west to east. It is always a judgment call when to leave and I usually get a case of irritable bowel syndrome before setting off. It shows I take the venture serious.

The best times in the past have been the morning after one of our hell raising storms. The world, or at least the atmosphere, calms down for about three days; its energy spent. Then the cycle begins over again.

At times like this the lake is flat and oily. Not much good for sailors but just right for Carrie Rose to glide along soaking up the miles at 8 knots. And there are a lot of miles to soak up on Lake Michigan. The shortest crossing is about 45 miles, the longest 100 plus. I wonder how many Chicagoans have crossed the lake in small boats. It must be thousands. We should have a club like the circumnavigators do, but this is a topic for another day.

Once I get there, mid lake is an interesting place, or maybe phenomenon is a better word. It has a crystalline quality as if the air has had all contaminates scrubbed out. It is sweet and it glows.

As with most things there are rituals involved with casting off. If I am not coming back for a while I take the bridle off my mooring. Otherwise, by the time I get back it will be covered with green slime, ugh! I make a note of the time and the engine’s hours. The GPS’s are warmed up with the appropriate waypoints entered. Carrie Rose passes her neighboring sailboats and heads out between the green and red towers at the harbor mouth. Once clear I increase the RPM’s to 1700 and off I go, trailing Chicago’s skyline.

It takes a long time to lose sight of its cliff face of buildings but after a cursory look, I look forward. Depending on the time of day I negotiate through a gaggle of sailboats and then pass the defunct Wilson Ave. water intake crib with its contingent of cormorants patrolling the surface of the lake for tasty morsels.

In deeper water, some 5 to 10 miles out I catch up (pardon the pun) with the fishing fleet. When I first started cruising I would try to avoid them. Altering my course while still distant but somehow I always ended up right in their path or in the path of their multiple propeller seizing fishing lines trailing off the stern. Now I know better. I keep steaming along, knowing that most times their cryptic trolling pattern will move them out of my way by the time I reach their first noted position.

Then it is wind/water/sky in differing doses depending on the day. As you can imagine it is never the same twice. I settle in and monitor the horizon, the radar, and engine temperature and oil pressure gauges. I listen to every tappet’s clicking, monitoring for any change in tone that may portend disaster.

I have neglected to mention a device that I have invested countless hours and treasure in, the autopilot. It is a Simrad AP24. I only say this so those interested can look it up and marvel. Once free and clear of most obstructions I turn it on and sit back. The autopilot keeps me on course with a minimum of effort; this is an illusion. I know this because steering a boat on a single heading requires much anticipation, skill and in challenging weather a tremendous amount of concentration.

On this day the winds were diminished but still from the north, as they have been for weeks. So, of course I knew it would be a rollicking ride across a beam sea and I was not disappointed. Carrie Rose is a wonderful boat but has a wicked roll. There is nothing gentle about it. She gets up on one side and quickly snapped to the other. At times like this I wish for a seat belt. The ride just got worse from mid lake until I entered the St. Joseph-Benton Harbor breakwater.

It is disconcerting to be wallowing in the open lake and then abruptly change to the flat water of the harbor channel: to go from open water navigation to close quarters maneuvering. To complicate things further — though less now that I have experience to draw upon — I am often somewhere new. I change from tensing every muscle to stay in my seat, to tensing every sense to get into my assigned slip.

Sound like fun? Well, not always but more often than not, and in the depths of February these are great memories to relive. Maybe I will write that song and get Kris Kristofferson to sing it!

July 2011

Prepare

Today is the 11th. It has been 6 days since I started my leave and I am now just getting around to a nap. In those 6 days I put the finishing touches on my new dingy (four coats of varnish, rowing hardware, garboard drain), worked out how to hang it from the davits, tucked away the garden with weed suppression cloth and mulch, helped a friend bring his boat to the harbor and put up its two beautiful wooden mast, paid an enormous credit card bill, said goodbye to friends, packed and then move everything — and I mean everything — to the boat where I seemed to start the process all over again.

It has been a blessing that the weather prevented us from venturing across the lake. There is never enough time, but at some point enough is enough and you have to leave. Lists have there place but only if you are willing to disregard them. I have spent a lifetime reading about other people’s adventures. A common theme is that they depart before their lists are completed. And this is usually after years of study and hard work.

Any task requires triage. There is a compelling scene in an episode of MASH where one of the surgeons needs a third party to tell him that the patient he is trying to save requires too much attention and that he needs to care for other less wounded soldiers. He could not make the decision himself but once nudged he moves on.

Some of us are better at separating the wheat from the chafe than others. Many people spend their allotted time in preparation and never leave. They delay, waiting for the perfect moment: for the right amount of money, the next electronic gadget, the perfect mate. It never happens and so, they stay put and watch others leave.

I am using a trip as a metaphor. I suppose if I were a better writer I would not have to tell you this, but if I had waited to be a better writer I would never be writing this. I wonder about the Lady Gaga’s of the world. Granted she is talented but so are many others and they never get anywhere. What drove her, what drives any of us?

I have often cajoled young medical assistants whom I find intelligent and therefore bored with their jobs to go back to school. None have taken my medical school suggestion but several have become nurses. To motivate them I tell them in four years they’ll be done, and if they do nothing they will be four years more frustrated.

Despite all the insurance payments we make each month most things in life require a leap of faith. You can get educated up the ying-yang and still not amount to anything, but not likely. Besides, being well educated has its perks. For one thing most of the stuff that other people worry about you can disregard. There is nothing like calculus, chemistry, physics and biology to give you a firm basis in how the world actually works.

I guess I should explain what’s got me down this path. It is leaving the harbor. My wife Charlotte, after close to thirty years in the corporate world (because she went back and got educated for a life in IT), retired. And because I have always had ants in my pants, I took a leave from the office and we decided to cruise to Canada. The North Channel at least and maybe Georgian Bay in the northern waters of Lake Huron.

So we sit here in Montrose Harbor in the fog and rain of early June, and wait for a favorably day to cross to Michigan. It is often like this on the Great Lakes. The weather has a way of dictating the schedule. I have learned to listen to mother nature. And just how do I do that, well mainly on the Internet these days.

Prior to the Internet we were at the whim of the marine weather broadcast on channel 1. Listening to it was a bit like listening to the Chairman of the Fed: hanging on every word and searching for their hidden meanings. Now I can see the jet stream and the radar and the satellite pictures and data from buoys in the middle of the lake and read a synopsis of current and future trends. I can watch the next storms come off the northwest Pacific or be gathered up from the Gulf and flung at us by the jet stream.

It is not perfect but it is a whole lot better then it used to be. So I hope that after all this I am prepared. I think the fact that I can nap, subconsciously means I am. We will see. Remember there are no guarantees but that is not reason to try.

June 2011

Landscape

The earth is inconceivably old, so ancient that to allow ourselves — conceited moderns — to dwell on the inexorability of time, well, all the anti-depressants in the world might not be able to quell the anxiety. And in the context of the universe the earth is but a four billion year old infant.

Our nervous system is designed to deal with this. It is in the business of dampening our sensory experience. If you ever take off the dark glasses put on your dilated eyes by the ophthalmologist you have a sense of the overwhelming nature of our world. Any light, let alone the sun, will paralyze. It is the same for the temporal universe.

It might be better not to think of what this means for us personally. This is the job of religion. Most are founded on the premise that there must be more, this cannot be all there is. You mean we will never see each other again, there has to be a better place, where do we go when we go, what about our thoughts and prayers, and what about our stuff: written words, sculptures, boats, telescopes, children, relationships.

What about them? I doubt the earth cares. We, or at least I, need to get over it. At times I think I have, but dark thoughts still linger in the back of my cranium. After watching my father die a cruel sudden death and my mother a lingering one I thought I was liberated. Now I am not so sure. Each stiff morning I look into the bathroom mirror and evaluate my life. It is instructive.

It happens in an instant. I am amazed how quickly a life, at least mine, can be reviewed. And this is before I have even had a cup of tea. Once the shower’s warm water hits my body the moment is over only to be relived around seven the next morning. What I find interesting is, rather than being depressed by this, I look forward to it. This condensed reverie makes me feel alive.

The fact that I continue to care is comforting. I still have goals and fight the cynicism built up layer-upon-layer year-after-year. I feel secure in my positive moroseness. I welcome it. It scratches an itch that needs to be scratched.

And so this lead me to my inner landscape, or maybe landscapes, the plural is better as there seem to be many. How do I see them — I doodle. The sculptor Darrin Hallowell forbade me to say the d-word. I sketch. I draw. I do not doodle. And though I greatly respect him, I am not sure I agree. I am untrained and have had a similar style since I was a kid.

I know it is a weird habit. I do it everywhere and on anything. I especially like the white butcher block paper that so often covers the tables of Italian restaurants but I am not averse to marking up the agenda of quarterly meetings. I think I have done some of my best work while eating ravioli with marinara sauce. The vast expanse of white paper provides an almost unlimited palette except for wine glasses and the breadbasket.

It is an unthreatening surface unlike an 8 ½” by 11” sheet of paper, a blank document in Word, a page in a sketchbook or the white gesso expanse of a canvas. These require a commitment and invite criticism. To use them I have to expose part of myself to the outside world. Turn myself inside out as it were.

If I like what I have done, I tear off the red stained drawing and sign it (take ownership really). Once home it is filed away in a thick folder with many other similar scrapes. When I worked in steel I used many of these ideas to create at first 2 dimensional, and then through the prodding of my fellow students, 3-D sculptures. I learned I could only make what I could draw.

I call my style expressionless abstraction. Who knows what any of it means. I enjoy people’s reactions when they see the work. They try hard to make it concrete. To make it represent a thing, anything, from the real world. But sadly it is a little like trying to find Yankee Doodle Dandy in a work by Pierre Boulez. It ain’t gonna happen.

All of us have an inner landscape. For some it is so painful that they will do almost anything to suppress it. Think Michael Jackson, Diana Arbus, Mark Rothko, Virginia Wolf. For others they cannot keep it in. It gets expressed in every waking moment of every day. Think Picasso, Dickens, Bach, Ansel Adams. Their willingness and courage to share their inner vision, even if in the end it killed them, has left us with an incredible body of work. It fills the museums, libraries and concert halls of the world.

And here I speak of time again. The above artists occupy at most 500 years. I am not sure how far back we have examples. The cave paintings in France are still only 30,000 years of history and do little to fill in the billions of years. But this is a misunderstanding on my part. Our inner landscapes are the expression of all that time. Time well spent solving problems and creating new problems to solve.

Volume 5855 (4), 5/20/11

Months

I have frequented the Art Institute of Chicago’s Japanese print gallery for close to forty years. In all that time I doubt that I have seen the same print twice. The exotic prints fueled my life long fascination with Japanese culture. A recent show exhibited prints with hidden calendars. Many sequestered within the intricate folds of kimono.

The prints were made during the reign of the lunar year. To plagiarize the posted information there are long months (30 days) and short months (29 days) within a lunar year. The concept of the long month — dai no tsuki — got me thinking about how to react to the recent events in Japan: how to come to grips with the loss of a coast, with statements regarding the safety of plutonium-saturated soil, with a decimated fishing fleet and with the destruction of four nuclear reactors.

How do our collective psyche process the lost of life due to the recent seismic activity in Indonesia, Haiti, and Japan? Even a decade ago we could not relive the calamity minutes after it occurred. We would read about it in unadorned black and white text, see a few pictures of the aftermath, but not watch the ocean engulf towns, roads, cars and trucks. It is nearly too much to comprehend.

I admit to being risk adverse. I do not need to see tragedy to know it occurs. I blame this reticence on my medical training. While medicine is a fascinating study, it is also cruel. Injury and disease do not discriminate. We are prey to its whims whether as spectators or participants.

At least technologically we are better off than our ancestors. That is if the electricity and the “supply chain” remain intact. The world, or I should say our place in the world, is tenuous. The earth shakes and turns itself inside out with no thought of retribution. Motion is a constant no matter if on a quantum scale or on the scale of colliding galaxies. In the end it really has nothing to do with us.

At best we attempt to engineer safety into our constructs. At worse we ignore it. When the roofs blew off of the reactor buildings I thought of stored fuel rods. When I saw helicopters dropping water, I thought of how many it would take and how much fuel would be needed. And when I saw fire trucks spraying water into the buildings, I thought of the courageous workers who must know they have sacrificed themselves to protect their nation.

My wife Charlotte and I traveled from Tokyo to Hiroshima and back last year. All the time marveling at the beauty, the infrastructure, and the density that appeared out the window of our sleek train. And as I reminisce, I think of the vast population trapped a few hundred miles South of the epicenter of the earthquake. I find myself grieving for the people of Japan as I did for my nation when I watched the second plane crash into the World Trade Center.

In New York City last summer I had the privilege of seeing Hounsai Daisosho, Urasenke’s retired 15th generation Grand tea master, make a bowl of tea and place it on the altar of a recently restored Catholic church just a block from Ground Zero. It was a solemn moment imbibed with thoughts of the sacrifice our nation has made since that day.

And now transpose that event — the bowl of tea offered to make the abstraction of peace a reality — to another nation in need of peace to honor its dead and to rebuild its national treasure. If a bowl of tea can begin to do that, and I think it can, then let both our nations begin to rebuild their spirit.

It is time to rejoin our commitment to each other’s spiritual needs, to each other’s success, and to each other’s commonality. Many long months will be needed to reverse this tragedy, but all that have been lost deserve no less.

Volume 5852 (4), 4/29/11

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