Jumping

Maine’s heat wave broke. We were lucky that Mt. Battie, which lies northwest of Camden diverter the severe thunderstorms. There was a little rain and a lot of black clouds and distant thunder but the worst skirted by. More importantly, we did benefit from its cooling effect.

It was time for Carrie Rose, our 32’ Nordic Tug, to leave Camden. The first anchorage, Barred Island, was ruled out due to exposure to the NE winds that were to predominate for the next few days. Sir Tugley Blue, our cruising companions, suggested a well protected unnamed bay between Holbrook Island and Smith Cove, so off we went on an 18 nautical mile cruise northeast on East Penobscot Bay. 

 

The bay is approximately one mile from Castine. Castine is on the swift flowing (especially in an ebb tide) Bagaduce River, which is in reality a tidal estuary. It is a classy village and is home to the Maine Maritime Academy. Their large training ship, the State of Maine, cannot be missed.

 

Castine’s European history begins in 1604 and ends with the British leaving in 1815. Between those years, it was fought over by the French, British, Dutch, and Americans. For its remote location Castine has been the site of many battles including America’s largest loss of life in one battle before Pearl Harbor (474 men) during the ill fated Penobscot Expedition of 1779.

 

The turn from East Penobscot Bay is between the northern tip of Holbrook Island and Can “1A”, which protected Carrie Rose’s bottom from the barely submerged Nautilus Rock.

 

As an aside, cans are always green and nuns and always red. Occasionally, there are multicolored buoys, which usually demarcate a junction on the watery road of life. One such buoy, the red and white “CH” (it also has a bell) exists just north of us at the junction of the Bagaduce River and East Penobscot Bay.

 

Once past the entrance, the bay opens up, and I noticed many grey mottled black heads and noses of the local seals. They are most often solitary creatures but not here. I even saw one with a large silver fish in its mouth, a first.  

 

We motored straight in and set the anchor on the 17 foot mark on the chart. The tide eventually lifted us to 29 feet and in anticipation of this I had let out 110 feet of chain. Dave, from Sir Tugley Blue, came by on his dingy to invite us for dinner and to discuss the coming rainy days strategy. As I grabbed his line, a large bald eagle soared past us and perched onto a small shorelines tree.

 

The surface of the bay came alive with jumping fish that were no doubt being chased by the legion of seals. And then to starboard a pair of dorsal fins appeared, one smaller than the other. They surfaced several times always next to each other leading me to conjecture that they were mother and baby spending a pleasant afternoon gorging on the plentiful fish.

 

Charlotte and I took the dingy to the granite gravel beach for a walk and on the way passed close under the eye of the eagle. The beach is on an isthmus between our unnamed bay and Smith Cove. The dinghy’s varnished wood bottom scratched as we dragged it up on the beach. The flood tide is relentless and soon the dingy was floating again, so we took the hint and motored back to Carrie Rose. 

 

Now we had seen eagles, seal, osprey, porpoises collectively feeding on the jumping fish, so Charlotte named our unnamed bay, Jumping Fish Bay, a wholly appropriate name. 

July 2021   

 

               

 

Frantic

Prior to Covid I had an active social life: visits with friends and family, music venues of all types, restaurants to try, art exhibits and movies, music lessons, travel, small boat cruising, etc., etc. And then there was the tea ceremony world: lessons, demonstration, making and procuring tea ware, and always the next event or anniversary celebration and trip to Japan. When I look back at it some 18 months later, it was frantic.

 

Frantic is an odd word. It derives from the Middle English “frenetik” which means temporarily deranged, delirious. In my medical practice, I came to understand that a delirious patient was not long for this world. It is hard to put that in the context of the above activities. 

 

Chado (The Way of Tea) and the Zen Buddhism it stems from is about living in the moment. This moment will never come again. Experience it to the fullest, forget about the result of your labors and perform each gesture with mindfulness, and only then will tea be made and served to your guest with the potential of enlightenment.

 

Of course, this image of chanoyu as a quiet but intense spiritual practice belies the frantic preparation that takes place seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months before the tea is whisked and presented to the guest. New tea students, after being drawn into tea by a stirring demonstration, are often perplexed to find that much of the training entails the mizuya, the kitchen.

 

I suppose it is the same for my musical pursuit of the shakuhachi. The first introduction to playing is folk and children’s songs. They are short, just a few lines of characters long. The tempo is straightforward. The tune is recognizable and even cute as opposed to the heady repertoire later encountered.

 

There is a frantic rush, mainly on the student’s side, to progress. To discover and delve into the esoteric world of komuso monks freely wandering the countryside totally devoted to the music (with maybe a little spying on the side) and to nature. 

 

This may be fanciful, but I have heard that certain groups of shakuhachi players only play one tune in their search for the truth. I find this hard to fathom as my book of sheet music becomes thicker. 

 

The past non-frantic year gave me time to rethink the value of my chanoyu and shakuhachi practice, and more fundamentally, of how I live my life. 

 

In chanoyu, there is ryaku-bon, the simplest preparation of tea. The utensils used fit on a small tray allowing tea to be made anywhere at any time. In shakuhachi, close equivalents are the doyo, children’s songs, and the minyo, folk tunes. Both the above provide examples of how to live a simpler post pandemic life.

 

I appreciate the pie-in-the-sky aspect of this. I am not a mendicant monk living in a wilderness temple making tea and blowing sounds into an ancient forest. I am a Chicagoan who in the future will endeavor to be not quite so delirious, so frenetic. Wish me luck!

June 2021

Tana

Rikyū (1522-91) is famous for codifying chanoyu, the tea ceremony. He was an innovator who popularized the aesthetic of wabi/sabi. For adherents of Chado, The Way of Tea, he is considered the founder. Though, now that I say this, he is a distant, almost mythical figure. At least for us in the west, we learn the basic chronology of his life but not many of the details. 

 

Much of what we do know was written years after his death, so there are questions of authenticity. But this is common with many historical figures and does not distract from his significance. 

 

One point of contact for us is a compilation of aphorisms mainly attributed to him. It is called Rikyū Hyakushu or Rikyū’s Hundred Verses (1). The verses resemble waka poetry in form. They were compiled by Gengensai, the 11th Urasenke Iemoto from works by Rikyu himself and from one of his teachers. 

 

The verses are mainly instructional, and of interest to students and practitioners of tea but a few have a wider context. They begin with: To have the mind to enter this path is, indeed, to have an inherent teacher. One must want to learn to gain an understanding of the art or craft being taught. I am afraid many a childhood piano lesson is squandered due to the student’s lack of interest. 

 

Another favorite verse is: In that chanoyu is possible as long as you have one kettle, it is foolish to possess numerous implements. If any of Rikyu’s dictums has been egregiously ignored this is the one. Chanoyu lends itself to collecting. There are multiple levels of formality and seasonal changes. Each requires a stash of utensils, and that brings me to the purpose of this commentary, tana or shelves.

 

Tana are shelves that are used to display tea utensils in the tearoom. While not a requirement for making tea, they are often used. Early in my study of chanoyu, in pre-internet days, the availability of tana and tea utensils was limited. And since I inherited the handy gene from my father, I endeavored to make several tana. Three were made from rescued southern Illinois hundred year old oak barn wood. 

 

At that time, I had no notion of the parameters that tana conform to, or just how many tana designs exist. When I introduced the tana to my teachers, certain peculiarities in my design were graciously brought to my attention. The orientation of the grain; the location of the nodes on the bamboo posts; the ratio between the width, height, and depth; the materials used and in the simplest of terms, their usability. 

 

As I think back, it was beginner’s luck that each of them, with a little forethought, worked well and brought a sense of the builder and of the land (Southern Illinois) into the chashitsu/tearoom. The provenance and knowledge of how to use them will need to be passed to the next user for it will not be written in a formal text.

 

And this brings me back to the multitude of tea ware. A book details each tana used in the Urasenke tradition of tea. It explains the appropriate use of each tana in terms of the season, the level of formality, the compatible utensils, and includes a photograph. Though the book is in Japanese, it is a visual treat for anyone interested in design, in architecture, in woodworking, and in fine finishes. 

 

The pandemic has given me time to ponder my tea life. I have made tea ware from the beginning of my study. When the tea season recently changed from Winter (Ro) to Spring (Furo), I saw an opportunity to go to my basement workshop and construct a tana. There were pieces of wood and bamboo saved for such a project. 

 

I had a design in my mind’s eye but confronted by the materials, and limited by tools and skill level, the final shape eluded me. Over the years, Professor Emeritus Shōsō Satō of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has inspired me with his vast knowledge of Japanese arts and crafts. He is a true Maker in the modern sense of the word, so when I am confounded I look to his example and carry on.

 

The tana took form and will soon be put to the test. Rikyu also stated: Keep tea rustic and, through your heart, give warm hospitality; for the implements, always use items which you have at hand. This I will endeavor to do.

 

(1) The quoted verses are from Rikyū’s Hundred Verses by Iguchi Kaisen with translation by Gretchen Mittwer. The book is available from Tankosha Publishing Co., Kyoto.

May 2021

 

Hopeful

It is 9:30 in the morning. The usual breakfast of tea and toast has been consumed, and the day is before me. It is Monday, a free day without chanoyu lessons (Tuesday) or shakuhachi lessons (Friday). Both, of course, are still on Zoom and Skype. 

 

So, today I have to come up with a plan. There is enough bread so I cannot fall back on that. There is enough wine and groceries stored to take us into May. It is too early and too cold to start picking weeds out of the garden. What’s a guy to do?

 

I wander to the front of the house where Charlotte is busy managing her father’s finances and look out the window. The same cars parked there for the last year are still there. The usual litter of fast food wrappings and smashed plastic bottles is absent, so no need to venture out front. Then I notice a slight rustle in the bare bushes below me. 

 

On closer inspection, I see a meticulous female cardinal. She is olive brown with a feathery crown and a striking orange beak. Then there is a flutter to the right, and it is another female, this one slightly smaller. Is this the child come back with its mother or a competing female, it is hard to know. 

 

Now the front windows have my attention. I sit and wait and hope to catch a glimpse of the striking red cardinal male. Instead, a plump robin scurries from under the bushes, and runs straight into a squirrel as it descends our doomed ash tree.

 

Thirty years ago, we moved into a neighborhood inundated with squirrels but over the decades, the forestry around the house has changed.  Many of the large maples rotted and were taken down. The next door neighbor deforested her backyard, and we removed a large stringy conifer that was mistakenly planted too close to the porch. And with the loss of the trees was the concurrent loss of squirrels. 

 

Last summer we spent quality time with the above critters. We got to know some of them individually. There was the put upon mother robin with a mass of unruly feathers that got skinnier as her child became plumper. There was the acrobatic squirrel with the chopped ears. And the pair of downy woodpeckers that had to fight the sparrows for their turn at the suet hung from the pergola. 

 

It is late March as I write this, and I think back to the warm days in February. I stepped outside into the sun and heard trumpeting geese as they flew low in two perfect V-shaped formations heading north. This was before the climate gremlins decided to dump five feet of snow in the backyard. The snow blower and me had quite a workout. Knock-on-wood, neither of us had a malfunction.

 

When we practice tea in Chicago there is conflict synchronizing our seasons with the seasons in Kyoto. Chanoyu and Japan take particular pride in the changing seasons. I have experienced this during three visits to Japan. The trips have alternated spring, fall, and spring; or in Japanese parlance, sakura, koyo, and sakura.   

 

It is Shubun now, the vernal equinox, and the middle of spring in Kyoto. Of course, here it is cold and spring has barely begun. Only a few hardy ground hugging flowers have immerged. So, when we discuss the factitious flower arrangement in the tokonoma during tea practice, which flowers are appropriate?

 

In Kyoto, there are myriad flowers and flowering trees to choose from. Not so in Chicago: possible candidates are scillia, crocus, or maybe if I am alert, a few forced bright yellow forsythia.

 

2020 was overwhelming and despite my initial hopes, the beginning of 2021 was equally so. I remind myself to be hopeful each morning, and watching the buds and green shoots break through the soil is part of this regime. Soon Chicago’s flowers and trees will catch up with Kyoto’s flora, and the tea conversation will move onto other topics . . . And I find this hopeful. 

 

April 2021

Morte

I have never been religious. As a child, I flirted with religiosity, captivated with what the priest was doing at the altar with his back to the congregation. Curious about the incantations in a dead language; curious about the wine and the water, the gold and the crystal; curious about the unleavened bread that was turned into the body of Christ and the meticulous care with which it was handled. 

As it turned out my first experience with wine (the priests had a wine cellar in the basement), and my first experience with lying (sneaking to the bakery on Lincoln Ave. before going to class) are probably the lasting memories. 

 

I was not cut out to be an altar boy. The Latin prayers were impossible for me to memorize and I never got in the rhythm of ringing the bells during the mass correct. I stuck with it until the mass lost its magisterial mystery by reverting to English and guitars. It was as if they had shown their hand in a game of cards and it was lacking.

 

I am not sure why I bring this distant memory up. What I am really thinking about is morte/death, the impossible notion of the pandemic’s dead. I watched death during my career and it was never easy. If anything I was astounded at how hard it was to die. The spark of life would in most cases linger on much longer then I imagined it could.

 

Of course, this was not the case with traumatic injuries. Despite the incredible energy of the hospital’s staff, it was impossible to reverse the inevitable. I would stand next to the corpse and try to recreate the events to understand what had occurred. A certain amount of introspection is healthy just not too much. 

 

Most of the time, the circumstances did not allow for navel-gazing. There were other pressing problems to address for the living. Time cannot be reversed but of course, you know this. 

 

At the time of writing this, there are approximately 400,000 dead from Covid-19. It is probably not a mistake to add another third to this figure. And this number only takes into count the mortality not the morbidity. Millions have suffered weeks to months of pain and suffering due to the infection, to say nothing of the despair of their families and friends.

 

Early in the pandemic, my household on Talman Ave. decided on caution. Several years back I contracted the flu, and spent 10 to 14 lost day on the living room’s only comfortable chair either shivering wrapped in blankets or sweating pared down to my underwear. It is times like that when I realize how finely tuned our biology is to keep us at equilibrium with the world until a minuscule demon enters our body.

 

When it came to death, my Italian family had well honed rituals. We always had a calendar with the bleeding sacred heart of Jesus in the pantry. The families designated morticians provided it. Many distant relatives died while I was a kid. We would get packed up and spend three or four nights running around the funeral parlor with our cousins. All the while, the departed would quietly supervise our shenanigans.

 

Emotions would ramp up the morning of the burial. Old women clad in black would begin to wail. Occasionally someone would try to hug their love one as the caskets lid lowered. Us kids were like the Greek choir in the back of the room giggling and receiving the designated enforcers evil eye.

 

As the years went by, people lived longer, and our extended family grew farther apart, these events took on less significance and finally ended. It seemed that grief became more personal than collective. 

 

My father funeral was an unplanned (by us at least) affair in a packed church complete with an opera company singing his beloved Italian arias. I am not sure about my mother, but my sister and I were overwhelmed by turnout. Riggio’s Italian restaurant was also overwhelmed with the hundreds of post funereal friends and family that showed up to pay their respect and have pizza.

 

My mother outlived the vast majority of her friends and over three years slowly faded away with dementia. Her send off was a quiet affair in the beautiful chapel at Villa Scalabrini where she spent the last year of her life under the care of a compassionate order of Italian nuns.

 

I beg your forgiveness for burdening you in this time of plague with yet another diatribe. It is February now and the days are lengthening. Each day that we are not buried in snow or wallowing in below zero temperatures is a blessing that brings us closer to spring, glorious spring! Spring is when the glass is have full, and if we have been lucky we can leave morte behind and watch the tiny shoots burst forth with life.

 

March 2021

Shame

Shameful moments are hard to displace. Memories surface at the oddest times, in random fashion, and then leave me in a hot flash. There must be a chunk of the brain’s white matter devoted to retaining each indiscretion. I believe I have comported myself well since my mother, Theresa, bore me in 1953. Though there are moments - decisions and actions - I regret. 

Shame drives many of our actions, whether right or wrong headed. This is happening to our country. The USA has been forced to confront the shame of our past: slavery, internment, unjust wars, and misogyny, to name a few. They hide undetected and occasionally surface to test the waters but seeing a storm develop, seek safety in a dark space once again.

There are few dark spaces to hide in any longer, so this will have to play out. I was going to say, it is gonna be ugly, but no need to look to the future when the present is starring us in the face. 

 

Many years ago, an old flame unexpectedly called me to request a meeting. I suggested we meet at Berghoff’s basement restaurant, a wonderful (and neutral) place that I sorely miss. After a few sips of beer and as lunch was placed before us, the small talk ceased and the real reason for the meeting commenced. Up to that point I was clueless as to why we were meeting, which was probably the original sin in the first place. 

 

She was there to apologize for her behavior twenty years ago. As I looked back, I was as much to blame, but nonetheless I quietly listened and resisted the urge to implicate myself. I do not know how much time elapsed but when I finally looked up there stood the entire black and white clad staff looking at us, the only people left in the restaurant. We quickly went our ways. It was an odd moment that shame had provoked, and forced me to evaluate my past behavior.

 

The country needs to reconcile, and it might not be a bad idea to do it over lunch and a beer. It has been done in many places: South Africa, Vietnam, and Europe after WWII. We need to do this before it becomes necessary to have a repeat of the Nuremberg trial.

 

In a way, the lies and conspiracy theories remind me of the hysteria before the Millennia. I certainly understood that there might be a software glitch but I failed to see how this was going to lead to the rapture. About three months before the end of the world, I received my new Visa card with an expiration date of 3/2003. If I had any doubts about the earth continuing to orbit the sun on New Years this allayed my fears.

 

And speaking of the Millennia, I have faith in the Millennial’s and in the generations that follow them to force their parents and grandparents to deal with their shame in a constructive, no matter how grudgingly, fashion. Who doesn’t want a better life for their grandkids, a life full of joy and not hate, a life full of hope and not shame. I’ll drink to that!

February 2021

Space

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

December 2020

Treasure

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

October 2020      

 

Catastrophe

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

September 2020

Visitor

Visitor

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

      

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

August 2020 

Value

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

July 2020

Excuses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 2020

Urgency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 2020

Ventilators

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 2020

Chatter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 2020

Digital

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 2020

Almost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 2020

Humans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 2019