Robins

From the vantage point of my postage stamp size backyard, this spring has been an odd birding experience. There has been a pair of ducks landing on the roof. Then there was the enormous hawk that landed on the power line after missing a pair of pigeons. The pigeons had spent weeks unabashedly courting each other on the roof of the two-flat across the alley.

Another change has been the recurrence of crows. In the past, there were large flocks, which hung out on the tops of the largest maples. There are only a few now but they definitely shake up the neighborhood. They stalk (and eat) the small birds and baby squirrels, and in return are stalked by the local red tailed hawk. I will hear cawing and look up to see several crows dive bombing the gently soaring hawk as it winds its way across my small piece of the sky.

Of course, there are the chattering families of sparrows who chased away the dainty goldfinches and there are a few starlings. An occasional woodpecker shows up to do some woodwork but they never seem to stick around. There used to be wrens in the shrubs but no more, and there is the rare hummingbird.

This year the most visible drama has been the robins. Robins seem to be appearing earlier and earlier each year. The snow — what there was of it — had barely disappeared when I saw the first of them hunting their prey in the backyard’s frozen ground.

For the first time a pair of robins decided to build a nest on one of our yard’s metal sculptures. It hangs just below the eave in the center of the garage that faces the house. It started with a few strands of dried straw and ended with a substantial mud reinforced basin.

To my surprise, after it was completed the mother robin deserted it. It could be that it was unstable or that the entrance to the garage was only about six feet away. She had started it while we were away visiting and so, she had the backyard to herself for the first few days of the construction. I waited for her to come back. She never did. I took the nest down and mixed it in with the other rotting plant life in the compost bin.

That was in April and now it is the end of May, and though I cannot be sure it is the same robin, she is back with her baby in tow. Mom looks a bit worse for wear. Her baby hides in the lower branches of our large blue spruce. Baby can only fly a few feet off the ground at this point, which is perfect for hiding in the lower branches. Her hiding place is given away by a loud intrepid chripping. It is annoying and I suppose that is the point. As much as mom tries to ignore it, she cannot.

The pattern seems to be that mom forages for herself for a while as the chirping increases in volume and repetition, and then, grub in beak she seek out baby’s open gullet and feeds her. On occasion baby comes out of hiding and chases after mom, not being able to resist the tasty morsel.

A robin is a meticulous forager. Standing erect, they move about 6 or 8 inches at a time, once stopped their heads will tilt to one side or the other. I had assumed (never a good idea) that they were looking into the grass and they may be, but realize now that they must be listening. They start to dig with quick jabbing motions of their head and beak until a juicy white grub appears between their beaks — gulp!

She then moves the next 6 inches, and the next, and on and on. It starts before I wake up and ends as the sun goes down. Earlier in the season, the big bright males were fighting for dominance. I do not see them anymore. They must have moved on to populate other regions, leaving the mothers and babies to fend for themselves.

I am not an ornithologist, so I may be getting some of the details wrong, but the gist of this article is that it got me thinking about Buddha nature. I have read the books, and tried to emulate it in the practice of chanoyu and in playing the shakuhachi. I can safely say that none of the above has gotten me any closer, but watching the lives of the robins play out in my backyard has provided me with a valuable lesson.

I can tell that they do not complicate their lives with introspection and expectations. They live it as it comes. If the first nest does not work, they move on to the next. If there is no grub in the first 6 inches, then there may be one in the next. If the big black crow gets the first blue egg, they lay another one.

There is a certain truth in the robin’s way of life and that truth has always existed even if the robins and my backyard have not, and even if I am not here to notice it. I guess this is about as close as I am ever going to get to comprehend Buddha nature, and I have the birds in my backyard to thank.

June 2016

Library

It is late on Monday night as I write this. Tomorrow I am driving to Denver, CO to attend a college graduation. While I am on the road, the deadline for this commentary will have come and gone. In moments of inspiration, I can compose an extra commentary or two. They will quietly sit in a Word document on my MacBook until needed. I am not an obsessed writer, so having them there will allow me to relax and not worry about deadlines for a few weeks; but this is not the case this month.

It is not that I worry much. To my knowledge, I have only missed one deadline and that was out of the shear silliness of retiring. I failed to recognize that time had taken on a new rhythm. Missing the deadline was more confusion than delinquency. But I am in the rhythm now. I do not need to be inspired to write, just focused. I need to give my mind permission to roam. And that is what it is doing as I write this — roaming.

For reasons unknown to me, one of our two bedrooms has been deemed mine. I do not sleep there but use the closet and most of the shelves in the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that line one wall. It is my library.

The books on the shelves reflect my interests, some as far back as high school. There are many stories of small sailboat adventurers. There are health related books including chiropractic, homeopathic, acupuncture, osteopathy, and mainstream medicine. There are probably more books than I need on bread and wine, and of course, there are the books about Japan. These cover poetry, architecture, art, history, and chanoyu, the tea ceremony.

Most of the books were collected before the Internet and many have been with me for fifty years. Some of them took years of searching in one used bookstore after another. Nowadays the Internet provides an efficient but much less fun search. To find a book after years of searching is like discovering a golden nugget.

The used bookstores are owned by some of the most colorful people I have met, and most have an aloof but beloved cat lurking in the stacks. A well run used bookstore offers possibilities that unlike Amazon are not driven by algorithms but rather by chance. I never know what new interest will be kindled (pardon the pun) as I comb through the rows of books.

My library feels like these bookstores. The books are loosely organized into topics but there are outliers. I am literally on my toes when searching for a specific title. It is a good stretching exercise. As I look over the titles, many that I have never gotten around to reading, a new passion for the topic flares. I have to concentrate not to get distracted from the task.

So, when I am writing and need to do research, I can walk the few feet to my library. I rely on my paperbound resources more than Wikipedia, and have developed long relationships with many of the books. I trust them. Their presence is comforting.

I have a suggestion for this years graduating class, despite the sexiness of electronic gadgets, start your own “brick and mortar” library. Become familiar with it. Take joy in the books even as you pack and unpack them for the umpteenth move. Fill them with notes, highlight them, make them dog-eared; make them your own.

A personal library can be an inspiration, and a good tool whether rushing to make a deadline or when inspired to write late on a Monday night.

May 2016

Disputatious

There is a prominent but fractious figure in chado that receives scant mention except when it relates to a specific design of dogu (tea ware). This figure inherited — if that is the correct word — Rikyu’s post of head tea master to Hideyoshi after Rikyu’s suicide, I am speaking of Furuta Oribe (b.1544).

Rikyu and Oribe were caught up in the momentous cultural and political changes. There are three main characters in the unification of Japan: Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu. It occurs in the Azuchi-Momoyama Period (1568-1600), and is an amazing story of shifting alliances, conquering armies, remorseless murder of vassals and their families, and the complication of foreign powers in both a mercantile and religious sense.

Oribe was unorthodox. Unlike Rikyu — a townsman and a merchant — Oribe was a samurai and a daimyo. He was one of Rikyu’s Seven Sages that carried on chanoyu after Rikyu’s death and became tea master to the Hideyoshi.

A sure way to get a rise out of demure tea folk is to use a piece of tea ware that is based on Oribe’s design. They have a distinctive look. The chawan will be deformed in some way, usually with purposeful indentation in the rim of the bowl. The color scheme is flamboyant with spattering of bright matcha green over a dirty white glaze with obscure markings in brown or black. It is as refreshing as it is distinctive.

Rikyu is celebrated for his restrained sensibility. A Raku chawan is like fashion’s “Little Black Dress”, elegant and refined. But Oribe took license with the form. He innovated and broke with tradition. Not only in tea ware but also in how he used tea spaces, mixing soan (the thatch hut) with shoin (reception rooms), and introduced the display of both calligraphy scrolls and flowers in the tearoom.

Most of the books I consulted on Japanese history made scant mention of Rikyu and did not address Oribe’s role. Oribe was a student of Rikyu (an inept one if I read correctly) and as I stated above, one of the Seven Sages (all military men) that Rikyu anointed to carry on tea after his death. He became tea master in all but name to Hideyoshi. When Hideyoshi died, he then became Ieyasu’s (the 2nd Shogun) tea master, and eventually the tea teacher to the third Shogun, Hidetada.

Oribe, a renowned military leader and a supporter of Tokugawa Shogunate, miscalculated the effect of his communication with the opposing side during the siege of the Osaka Castle. Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered him to commit suicide, and then had Oribe’s family and thus his lineage destroyed. This made me think how valued that Sen Rikyu’s family must have been to Hideyoshi that it was banished and not decimated after Rikyu’s death, and then quickly rehabilitated.

Kumakura Isao, in an article he wrote in Tea in Japan: Essays on the History of Chanoyu, quotes a five-line verse that describes the tea of four tea masters from the Tokugawa period. The first line of the verse is “Oribe is disputatious…”. It is a rarely used word meaning argumentative, awkward, and contrary.

It is my contention that Oribe is remembered, out of the many tea men that came after Rikyu’s death, not just because of his unique utensils but also because of his contrary genius. May we all be so daring!

April 2016

Auteur

Mike Nichols, the famed director of movies and plays such as the Graduate and Spam-a-Lot, sits dressed in black answering unheard questions. He is brilliant and confident without the slightest pretention. And he has a wicked sense of humor. At one point in the interview, he lashes out and firmly states that he is not an auteur, something that he has been accused of by his critics.

What is an auteur? I reach for the dictionary on my phone, read the definition, and realize that I have always wanted to be one. An auteur is an artist that has a distinctive style. I am not sure why Mike Nichols denied the label. It does not sound like a put down but maybe in the film world it is a derogatory term.

I wondered what my style would be when I first started to write. Did I need to invent one? Then one day I realized I had a style when I decided it needed to be changed. Does everything we do need to be innovative or is it okay to leave our distinctive stamp on it.

I mean a Rothko is a Rothko. Maybe his earlier works look different but not his later paintings. To the uninitiated, they are hard to tell apart. His studies of color are worth tens of millions. I wonder would he be upset at being called an auteur.

We all have a style, something that distinguishes us. The poor souls in my neighborhood that spend their lives outdoors have style. It could be their carts or their collection of bags or a stooped walk. I have learned to spot them wandering as I wander my north side bastion of Chicago. Few individuals have no style or distinction.

Of course, much time and effort is devoted to trying to stand out. Hair color, tattoos, garrulous cloths, enormous watches, 8 inch heels; I know, I know I am jealous. I am just too conservative and frugal to devote the time and money that it would take. An artist friend of mine, though dressed in black, always has a slightly quirky pair of eyeglasses on. In fact, I look forward to meeting him just to see what the new pair (for there is always a new pair) will reveal about him.

Whenever I get new glasses, I am determined to emulate him but fail. I suppose that is what makes us different. I cannot force myself out of my middle class rut to splash a little color or distinctive design somewhere on my body.

But then I am not completely without distinction, in my role as president of Urasenke Chicago Association (a group dedicated to chanoyu, the tea ceremony) I wear a kimono. This certainly puts me in the minority of Chicago males and maybe of most males in Japan. A kimono certainly makes me stand out in a crowd even if the kimono I am allowed to wear is a dower affair. It is like the pin striped suits that bankers and funeral directors wear.

Though, through none of my own doing, my obi stands out. An obi is a sash that is worn around the waist to keep the kimono intact. It was presented to me as a gift from a gifted tea master. I would have never thought to buy it. It is flamboyant with its gold ground and multiple pastel colors. One side has a linear design while the other is fleur de lis. But I enjoy wearing it and will never go back to the drab brown or navy blues of the past.

And I enjoy the attention I receive because of it. The black transparent jacket that is also part of the outfit shrouds it. Some attention to detail is required to see it. This means that I am being watched and so it reminds me to pay attention to my posture and my behavior. It is a good lesson in humility that a piece of fabric can and does take precedence over the whole of my personality.

Mike Nichols could wear only black. His brilliance drew people to him. He needed no outward affectation. For me though, I am grateful for my showy obi. It keeps me working for the day when I can fling it into space confident of my asteurism.

March 2016

Fermata

Miles Davis was a unique trumpet player. In a time when Charlie Parker and John Coltrane were playing the hard driving multiple note passages of Be-Bop, Miles Davis played quiet notes here and there; weaving his way through a melody, just touching on the most pertinent notes.

It is an understatement to say he was restrained. I think of this while playing Kurokami on the shakuhachi. It is the first of the distinct shakuhachi repertory (sankyoku) to be studied. I have read to take each section, demarcated by breath lines, as its own entity. The pace is slow, probably 38 beats per minute on the metronome.

Kurokami starts with a HA-RO. The HA (C) is a grace note and RO (D) is the long note. Five notes follow this and I find myself rushing to get to the end to take the next breath, fearful all the time of running out of air before finishing the passage. The next passage is three notes with two repeats. I am already getting behind. Then the pace quickens with a series of closely packed notes. Now I am in trouble.

Though I manage to play the entire piece, I am usually light headed by the end and have not interpreted it with subtlety. I need to slow and take each note for the blessing it is. This is matter over mind when it needs to be mind over matter.

Chanoyu is similar to the above. There is a pace to the dance. Slow and steady then quick and decisive with slight variations within. It keeps it interesting. At the beginning of tea, once all the utensils are in place, there is a moment of rest or contemplation, a fermata, a moment for the training of a lifetime to click in and allow tea to be made without the “monkey” mind.

A fermata when placed over a note puts the regular counting of beats on hold. The time lingered on the note is a musician’s decision. Chanoyu has a similar moment. Its fermata is called izumai o tadasu.

It meant little at first. I would stop, try to get comfortable, take a deep breath, and move on. But it has become a moment where time takes on a new metric. Like in the fermata, it can be long or short. It is dependent on the practical need to adjust the kimono and posture, and then on the more ephemeral need to concentrate on the present.

I am afraid I have the same tendency to haste in chanoyu as I have in playing the shakuhachi. I try to think of Miles now when performing both the above. How he hit just the right note highlighting the song without obviously playing the rhythm. How he stops playing and listens before committing to the next note. How even in the midst of his sidemen’s passionate playing, he calmly stands and anticipates the truthful time to play. And how he is unhurried in a hurried world.

I found the fermata while studying how to read a score. It has opened up a new realm even if it is too late in my life to be instinctual about it. My neurons toil as they try to make the necessary connections needed to sight read. I am not sure if this will stave off or foster dementia but it has given me permission to put the regular counting of the beat of my life on hold and explore…lingering.

February 2016

Being

New Years has past, resolutions have been made — and probably forgotten. I’d like to suggest a revision. This year’s resolution should be simply, be in the moment. Make each moment count. This is what drew me to Chado, The Way of Tea. Chanoyu is about the details of making the best possible bowl of tea for your guests.

I have been privileged. What I have imagined, I have been able to accomplish. But in my twenties, I was at a dead end. I covered up shear laziness with, as it is now called, content. Day after day passed without any foreseeable change.

The “5 Year Plans” of the communist countries back when they were still waving around Mao’s Little Red Book and Das Kapital made sense to me. Secretly I began to formulate my own five year goals and I started to pay attention to the details. It was more a subconscious endeavor than a conspicuous one. No goal was every written down, nor did I inform anyone else of my plans.

Details are what count in a life. Good or bad, without them we are just empty shells. A life spent absorbing others content and not creating your own, well I do not want to contemplate that. Dreams are a good judge. Tumultuous dreams, disturbing dreams, Technicolor dreams, contradictory dreams; such dreams reveal the brain hard at work deciphering your content.

Rather than blotting the dreams out, I relished them. Granted I do not always think this at 3:30 in the morning waking up due to a particularly complicated dream. But I am grateful that my mind thinks my life is worthy enough to require this level of sorting out.

Of course, I cannot claim these thoughts as my own. They are a conglomeration of ideas gathered from D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, e. e. cummings, Sen no Rikyu, Basho, Bach, and Mahler to name a few. And my rudimentary understanding of Zen influences these ideas. Zen is a real life construct, even if it is full of contradictions.

People practice by sitting in zazen for hours, by playing obscure notes on the shakuhachi, by whisking a bowl of tea, by slinging arrows towards nonexistent targets. It makes little sense and matters even less. The pixels I manipulate to write this can exist in different fonts but they still create words and meaning.

The plan, the details, and the doing are essential. The plan can be vague but the details should be vivid, and the doing, well that is the key.

These are momentous times. There are many distractions. Climate change, terrorism, failed states, police and neighborhood violence, technology run amuck are just a few. It can be numbing. Resist them even at the risk of being uninformed.

Spend 2016 being in the moment. Soak in life’s details. Dream complicated dreams. As it was said in the 70’s, let your freak flag fly. And above all, forget I ever wrote this!

Time

There is nothing new under the sun. Well, there is nothing new 90 million miles from the sun. I have reached the age where I can say this with some authority. Of course, there are many new devices, many new molecules, many new technologies, and we humans have a much better understanding of our own physiology and of how to manipulate it. I mean there is nothing new in our behavior.

There is certainly newness in the speed and the amount of information that comes our way. Most, even if it seems important, isn’t. But how are we to know that and so, every beep or wiggle of a device requires a response. A response even if the response is to ignore it. The brain fires off another couple of million neurons whether we answer or not.

It is tragic to grow up in the clutches of pervasive technology. With how absorbed the populace is with a life lived on a small screen I am surprised any one continues to shop. Why do we need things when we live a life through an LED screen. We can stay home and cuddle up to the warmth of a discharging lithium battery.

Do not think for a moment that I am not bound up in this culture, less than most but more than others. I remember my first brush with technology: a HP 12C calculator. What an esoteric devise. It uses RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) which makes calculating easier by eliminating steps.

Before that, I tried to program a Commodore computer with Basic, the language of the day. The storage was on a cassette tape. I learned early on that I was not interested the programing but in what it could do for me.

Several years later a friend dropped off his Macintosh for me to computer sit while he went to Jamaica for a couple of weeks. It was like a pet. It was certainly cute, it even purred. I asked for the instructions and he tossed me a quarter inch thick spiral bound manual that resembled more of a child’s book than the portal to a sophisticated machine.

I thumbed through the pages before turning it on and I have since regretted ever having to use a PC. Not that the Mac was/is without frustration but there was no looking back. My MacBook Air is one of several things that I usually try not to let out of my sight. It is used to write, shop, research, navigate, communicate, read, check the weather, and listen to whomever or wherever my musical taste lead me. If there were a fire, it’s what I would grab first…well, after my wife that is.

Now that is tragic. To have so much invested in a chunk of aluminum, lithium, and various other rare earths. After Google Earth-ing my entire summer cruise I actually thought do I need to burn the diesel, haven’t I already seen what there is to see. Should I sell the boat and invest in a faster processor and a 3-D screen.
Like I said, this is tragic. In the First Part of King Henry IV, Shakespeare’s character Hotspur says, when confronted by a messenger bearing letters, “ I cannot read them now. O gentlemen! the time of life is short; To spend that shortness basely were too long, If life did ride upon a dial’s point, Still ending at the arrival of an hour.” In English, to waste even an hour is too long.

It may be time for the world to make a New Year’s Resolution: Less screen time, and more face time. Get the word out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, Tumblr, and Pinterest…Tragic!

January 2016

Repairs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 2015

Communication

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Southwest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 2015

Dodged

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Purpose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Burgers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 2015

Impressions

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

Kyoto is best summed up with poetry.

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

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

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

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


A Morning in a Kyoto Hotel

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

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


Notes on a Morning’s Drive to Nagasaki

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

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

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

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

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

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


From Nagasaki to Fukuoka

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

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


Osaka to Ise

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

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

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

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

Then suddenly, Sun! and Blue!

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


Osaka, the final destination.

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

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

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

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

May 2015

Rescued

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 2015

Blue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 2015

Shaku

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 2015

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