Purpose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Burgers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 2015

Impressions

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

Kyoto is best summed up with poetry.

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

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

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

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


A Morning in a Kyoto Hotel

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

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


Notes on a Morning’s Drive to Nagasaki

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

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

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

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

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

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


From Nagasaki to Fukuoka

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

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


Osaka to Ise

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

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

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

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

Then suddenly, Sun! and Blue!

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


Osaka, the final destination.

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

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

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

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

May 2015

Rescued

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 2015

Blue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 2015

Shaku

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 2015

Renew

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 2014

Feelings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 2014

Ease

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 2014

Rhythm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 2014

Geology

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 2014

Locks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July 2014

Absence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 2014

Purity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 2014

Snowstorm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 2014

Simply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 2014

Bleak

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

February 2014

Isolated

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 2014

Napping

I find myself nodding off these days. If I am sitting in any one place for too long it is bound to happen. Never one to relish sleep, I find I get about the same amount as I always have — 6 hours. It seems a waste of time, but now at the beginning of my seventh decade it is probably not enough. I try to adapt by sleeping longer but my body is not cooperating.

The earlier to sleep the sooner to wake; I lie in the dark and wait for the first glimmer of light to appear. Of course this works better in the summer. Now in December it can be a long wait and when it does come it is not the joyous light of summer but the subdued light of a sun hugging the horizon.

Once up the morning ritual begins: a shower, breakfast, email and weather checks, and then depending on the day a commute or not. I look forward to breakfast. I have always looked forward to breakfast and so do my caffeine receptors. It has been the same for years, a couple of pieces of whole grain bread with peanut butter and jelly, and if I really splurge some yogurt and a banana.

Certain things, trivial as they may be, have become ritualized. I am loath to change. I can’t deal with brunch — too much and too late. Like sleep it seems a colossal waste of time. Flexibility is harder to accommodate these days. I will if need be, but with loathing!

It may be time to consider napping. Several days ago in the middle of the afternoon I felt wasted, so with Charlotte’s urging I curled up on the couch under a down comforter and napped. Twenty or was it forty minutes later I awoke and shook off the drowsiness. The afternoon was more productive. It was better than nodding at the kitchen table and waking up with a stiff neck.

It is possibly time to adapt, even if in reverse. I watched my mother do this. In her seventies she methodically curtailed activities and responsibilities. We all chided her for it, but she paid us no mind. She was not sentimental about such things. Life moves on, has a certain rhythm. She’d taken care of enough ageing relatives to understand this.

And deep inside so did I. After all it is part of my calling as a family practitioner. Patients who were once engaging and independent sit napping in a chair as their son or daughter speak for them. It is the way of the world. Best not to fight just find a warm sunny spot, curl up and snooze.

Warm sunlight streams
Through the southern window,
A winter’s nap.

December 2013

Sunken

Winter to spring; spring to summer; summer to fall; fall to winter, and again and again the cycle repeats. From warmth to cold, furo to ro. Furo, the brazier, sits coolly upon a tatami mat between May and October. Ro, the sunken hearth, lies below the central tatami from November to April. In the chashitsu (tea hut) the source of heat is brought from the periphery to the middle. This is robiraki. It is what makes chanoyu (tea ceremony) eternal, relevant.

The ro’s heat is welcomed now not shunned. And along with heat it brings the introspection of winter. We are drawn to a deeper study. The frivolity of summer is gone, just in time before the warm breezes that rustle the greenery are taken for granted. We relaxed in its caress but knew it was foolish too. Nature reminds us, gently at first and then with strong northwest winds that bring the first hard frost.

Hats and gloves are dug out of their summer hiding places. Wool and down become intimate acquaintances once again. Walk out of work into snow and ice, and wonder why the snowbrush was ever taken out of the trunk. The ice encrusted windshield seemed so remote only a few days before. For whatever reason this naivety recurs yearly.

It is time to substitute polenta for angel hair pasta, a rich marinara sauce for pesto. A fragrant Barolo supplants a cool crisp Riesling. Chestnuts are roasted and tomato plants pulled out of the garden. The hope for one more ripe tomato is futile. They gave what they could given the circumstances. Grass is sheared one last time. Lawn furniture is tightly packed into the crawl space. The snow blower’s fuel is topped off and it is tested in the hope that it will start when the blizzards come.

In chanoyu the chawan (tea bowl) become thicker, its side’s steeper the better to hold in the heat. Chabana (flowers for tea) go from brightly colored blossoms and wild grasses to leaves ablaze with yellow and reds.

Haiku change from Bashô’s The melons look cool/flecked with mud/from the morning dew to Buson’s Blowing from the west/fallen leaves gather/in the east (Haiku Volumes 3 and 4, R.H. Blyth).

Panes of glass replace screens. Air conditioners are covered. Boiler pumps are oiled and radiators are purged of air. And in Chicago we are waylaid by bridges forced to rise for boats coursing down the Chicago River to their winter homes.

It is both a glorious and frustrating time of year. Thoughts wander to warmer climes. Will it be Florida, the Caribbean, or further south to geography with no chance of an encroaching frigid Canadian high.

The wind becomes a bully. Pushing us around until intimidated, we give up and stay indoors. Of course this is not universal. For the coordinated, skating and skiing are relished pastimes. Children rejoice in the snow, sliding down any hill that presents itself. Fireplaces are lite and huddled around. Hot toddies are drunk. Trees are decorated. Gifts are purchased. Christmas is anticipated and flys by leaving January and February to be dealt with.

The night is dense. Sounds are as crisp as the air. Snow muffles the city’s din. It is the time of the ro, the sunken hearth. A respite from a cold world that resides just inches away.

November 2013

Claustrophobia

Japanese Ukiyo-e (floating world) prints have begun to make me feel claustrophobic. The more I see and study, the more rational this view seems to me. It was a time and place where the Tokugawa shogunate formulated strict controls over society and instituted seclusion from the rest of the world.

Tokugawa Iemitsu, shogun of Japan, issued the Sakoku-rei in 1635. It formalized Japan isolation spelling disaster for the Japanese Catholic community, preventing Japanese from leaving and Europeans from coming under penalty of death, and imposing severe trade restrictions.

It was a time (17th to 20th century) and a place (Edo), and many of the prints depict the Yoshiwara (the pleasure quarter) district’s inhabitants and the environs surrounding Mt. Fuji. It was also a time of despondent samurai and of a newly minted merchant class, of peace and at least for the samurai, boredom. And it was a time of royal hostages in Edo and distant Daimyo with their armies in the home provinces shaking down the peasantry to fund their forced dual lifestyle.

Many prints are of courtesans and actors, both of such low stature that the shogun edicts bypass them. At least in the prints, many of the faces are known by name. They are the cultural icons of their day and their images were collected like baseball cards by their fan clubs. It is an interesting mix of voyeurism and mass culture. A courtesan is most likely unattainable, whereas an actor can be seen for the price of a ticket at the local kabuki theatre.

Other prints are more geographical, like postcards with a theme. These are populated with common folk: carpenters, fishermen, merchants, porters, children, dogs, and fellow highway travellers. And to my point of isolation, multiple environs are depicted but all whirl around Mt. Fuji. It is as if nothing exists beyond its reach. It would be as if our lives vanished once the Wilson (Sears) Tower is no longer visible on the horizon.

I trust you understand that I am ignoring the whole and concentrating on my prejudices while gazing deep into the prints and in that way I am being selfish, but so be it. If you strongly disagree with me then I am elated. Elated that you care enough about these overused images — to the point where they have almost become invisible — to fight for your opinion.

As I look into and between the lines so carefully carved by unknown craftsmen, I see both a sequestered and an absolute world unto itself. It is hard to co-mingle the restricted with the expansive. That is one of the charms of these prints. This dichotomy keeps me coming back again and again. The uncertainty lends an air of universality, of mischievousness, of depth and of frivolity.

America is beautiful because of a lack of boundaries. For the price of gas I can get in my car and drive thousands of unhindered miles from shore to shore both east and west, and north and south. Japan is beautiful because of its confines: a central spine of mountains and an archipelago of islands. Both our geographies make us unique.

So, I will continue to gaze into Japan’s claustrophobic floating world with hesitancy and with longing. Ah, to be a fly on a shoji screen. To be able to linger and depart at will.

Narrows

Georgian Bay in Lake Huron has peculiar charts called strip charts. These are used to navigate its Small Craft Route. Actually not just Georgian Bay but the Trent Severn and Rideau waterways also have them. And I probably shouldn’t say peculiar. The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers has similar charts of our river systems. These charts are in a ring leaf binder and the pages are flipped as you travel.

Of course depicting the river is simple compared to Canada’s Small Craft Route. It winds itself through 10,000 Islands, which is also the name for this area of granite islands and pine forests. I have had quite a time familiarizing myself the geography. Somewhat disconcertingly it has taken being in the midst of it to finally grasps its intricacies.

Strip charts come in separate packets with varying numbers of sheets in each packet. For example I am at presently using sheet 3 of 5 of the Port Severn to Parry Sound packet #2202. Each sheet covers about 10 statue miles.

This brings up another peculiarity. When on the big water of the Great Lakes we navigate in knots and nautical miles. In more confined regions the units change to statue miles and the Small Craft Route is numbered thus. But here is the kicker; the speed limit (not that anyone follows it) is posted kilometers per hour. So I have one GPS set for kilometers, the computer is in nautical miles and the paper charts are statue miles!

But back to the sheet charts and as I said one chart follows the next. This sounds simple enough until you try to match them together. A thick red line traverses the chart when it is time to move on to the next. This red line shows the number of the next sheet and a letter (upper or lower case) in a white square box to further define where on the next chart to look. It could be anywhere. Let’s just say it is not a linear process and neither are the Narrows.

Tuesday we left Parry Sound heading east to Echo Bay and a rendezvous with the famous fish restaurant called Henry’s on Frying Pan Island. To get there we needed to negotiate several tight passages. They all were within the first few miles south of Parry Sound. The first was not really a passage but a very narrow canal under the bridge that connects Parry Island with the mainland. No problem here once I stopped aiming for the beach just to the right of it.

Canada does a good job of marking the path with many different types of navigational aids, the most common being the buoy. One of the rules of the road is Red, Right, Returning. This means that when heading into port from the sea the red is always on the right. In this labyrinth we find ourselves in it is a very fluid (pardon the pun) concept. So to add to the confusion, since we are heading for Georgian Bay the green buoys are on the right. To help me stay in the channel I made a wooden replica of a green can and a red nun that can be easily reversed. I have looked to it for guidance many times this year.

When the Narrows started in earnest we were fast approaching Two Mile Narrows. I had been lead to believe that the worst of the Narrows was to be further down but here was an impossibly skinny passage blasted out of pure granite. It also happens to be the first of many a blind curve. Suddenly multiple speedboats materialize coming full speed straight at us without the slightest effort to slow. I understand that I am the interloper. They have seen many like us pass through their territory, so I keep my course and hope for their better judgment.

Next is a no name pinch between Isabella Island and Channel Island. This leads to Three Mile Gap and then to the mercifully wide Five Mile Bay. Three miles into the trip I am finally getting orientated to my environment.

Ahead we picked out the gap between Gell Pt. and Leisur Lee Pt. While slowly cruising down Five Mile Bay both Sir Tugley Blue and a small boat towing a big inflatable dinghy pass us. One piece of advice veteran Canadian cruisers gave us was to stop or slow down if not sure of your location or are uncomfortable with the situation, so we did.

In my beloved Chicago there would be bravado of horn blowing and finger pointing. But this is Canada and even though it seems like they are trying to run us on the rocks everyone smiles and waves as they speed by. Only one rather large boat purposely plays chicken until I turn slightly away. He went by too fast to see if any gesture was directed towards us.

Hawkins Point comes in view and the uneventful Five Miles Narrows, but the worst is yet to come. We have been told to announce our approach to the next narrows. In boating radio lingo this is called “securite”. On channel 16 you say, “Securite, securite, securite, this is the southbound 32 foot motor vehicle Carrie Rose transiting Seven Mile Narrows in 3 minutes.” Of course we also listen for traffic coming the other way. Instead Sir Tugely Blue call on channel 16 that it is a zoo in the narrows with 4, 5, no 6 speeding boats coming our way.

The entrance to Seven Mile Narrows is truly narrow and to add to the excitement has a blind curve to the right. Anticipating a melee I slowed and then stopped dead as six hurtling speedboats pop out the entrance like the corks from so many champagne bottles. I was thinking if I do not make my move I will never get through, so like merging left onto the Dan Ryan expressway I start to move forward. The last boat coming out sees me, decides it will lose in a confrontation and waves me through.

A half-mile, and thirteen buoys and day markers later it is past history. I take a deep abdominal breath and smile. Right about then with buoy 201 ahead marking another blind curve Sir Tugley Blue calls to inform us that he has just passed a 100 foot tug and barge coming our way. Not hearing a securite from the barge I keep moving and we exchange greetings in a spot that passes for wide in this part of the world.

Today it has been decided to stay snug in Echo Bay as our path east will be exposed to Georgian Bay’s 25 knot SW winds and waves. At anchor we sway between 240° and 310°. It is another day in the life of Carrie Rose.

September 2013

Bugs

I went to clean up in the Big Sound Marina’s showers on the morning of July 8, 2013. The door had been open all night with the light on and there to greet me were multiple types of moths. They were mainly ensconced around the light fixture but there was a fair representation of them scattered around the small concrete block room.

Other bugs had also been attracted to the light. There were those big mosquitos like non-mosquitos hovering about (I can never bring myself to squash them, they look so helpless). There were a few of the real thing. There were the ubiquitous gnats, some biting, others not. A few well-fed spiders lurked in the corners and several flies of varying sizes flew in but did not stick around.

Some of the moths fluttered but most had their wings held out flat against the wall. They were small: the biggest being less than an inch wide. I wished I had my camera. These wings of brown and black were symmetrical as far as I could tell. One was a mirror image of the other. They reminded me of the perfectly reflected shorelines I have seen in the silent coves of the North Channel.

But I was there to take a shower before the trip to Echo Bay that morning. As I lathered up I tried not to disturb the moths, imagining that none of these beautiful diverse creatures had long to live.

There is another side to bugs. One that is not so benevolent. These are the flying creatures that inhabit the isolated anchorages we frequent when not tied to a slip in a marina. The days belong to the midges or flies. Here too there is much diversity but not much other than that to commend them. The two most troublesome are the bee-sized horseflies, and the smaller and more ferocious spotted delta winged fiends.

Your average horsefly is so large and cumbersome that they are easy to avoid. Not so the delta wings. They are stealthy, lurching in corners before the attack. If I get a good bead on one they are usually easy to dispatch but often they beat me to the punch. A nickel size red swelling quickly appears at the bite and lingers for days.

None of these hold a candle to the North Country mosquito. This is obviously an understatement. I think the dread of mosquitos is part of the collective consciousness that Dr. Jung wrote so eloquently about. Charlotte and I have developed a strategy to keep them out of Carrie Rose. Each year we have to be reminded of its importance by a sleepless night of dive-bombing buzzing-in-the-ear mosquito assaults. They are relentless and more than ready to sacrifice themselves for one tank full of blood.

It starts before the light is doused. Some announce themselves with that characteristic buzz and other by the bite they leave. We start to kill them one by one. It is a war of attrition like the Russians and the Germans had in WWII.

If we have followed our mosquito abatement policies the few that get in are dealt with. If not it is a long night. Restless sleep eventually wins out even if we lose that nights battle. When nature calls requiring a trip to the head the process begins again. I lie in bed and hope for the first light of dawn to lift the curse. It is then that I try to regain the sleep that is forever lost.

August 2013