Posted Monday, November 13, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

NIGHT BAMBOO

Standing out in the strong wind last night getting a good soft buffeting, listening to the air itself roar the way it does when seasons change, in the castoff light from the house windows I watched the same bamboo I always see as a wall of vegetation in the light of day when I look out the window or glance up from gardening or firewooding-- but now in the light upon the dark and as a figure in the picture myself I saw the bamboo as if on a stage, saw how it lived and moved in ancient understanding of the roar of an autumn night, it was a different beast, clearly alive now, collective in its singularity, truer to its nature there in the night world, where seeing is of no point and being is all--

I'd always thought of the bamboo in itself as individual stalks, this is the kind they make fishing rods out of, mountain bamboo, grows taller than a man but slender and densely crowded, too dense for any but wild pigs, ferrets and snakes to get comfortably through, maybe a fox now and then (the bamboo and the animals share a primordial alliance of noses and shapes) but now in the hurry of the night each light-paled stalk was on its own yet one with all the others, like a school of bright fish in the sea they were together, shifting and swerving, shining as one golden mass in the roiling ocean of the air, that ocean moving with and around them, 'together' in its deepest meaning, wind and stalk, air and plant, all one vast thought swaying, vibrating; both surrendering, both prevailing, the air moving on, the bamboo letting it go, holding fast to the earth, each earthstalk striving even in the night for the light of the day to come, in ancient and undying trust.

Posted Sunday, November 12, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

ALL TOO HUMAN

My initial reaction to the news was delight in the exposure of a dogmatically righteous hypocrite; then I read my brother's insightful take on the fall of Ted Haggard.

Posted Saturday, November 11, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

Posted Saturday, November 11, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

THE SUN JAR

Posted Friday, November 10, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

I KNEW IT!

As faithful readers of these meandering accounts are well aware, I have an ongoing problematic interspecial relationship with the local Macaca fuscata ("Japanese monkeys," as most folks call them - or "snow monkeys" - I call them hairy marauders, onion pirates, pumpkin purloiners, tomato pilferers, the list is long), who keep acting as though this entire mountainside and everything on it, except maybe my firewood (until they find out its value), belongs to them. Hard to believe that in some places in the world - as with the Trojans and their gift horse - people are trying to give these ruthless brigands fundamental human rights!

As a result of these increasingly adept behind-the-scenes maneuverings and strategic psychomanipulations on the part of the shifty simians, particularly the way they are beginning to use their "cuteness" and "humanness" to direct society at large - which I must point out has no onion patches high on forested mountainsides - it has become clear, as previously and frequently intimated herein, that the red-faced beasts are extremely crafty-- even extremelier than I thought.

As it turns out, their implicit (though carefully concealed from human eyes) use of timing devices, calculators, organizers and maps (and who knows what else they have up there in the forest) is only touching the surface. I have often mused about how soon the suitless simians would be wearing ties and commuting with the rest of us, taking away our jobs, entering government etc. Little did I know how close my musings were to imminent reality-- that there is in fact a simian plot afoot to take over not only my mountainside, but the entire world!

Naked apes beware.

Posted Thursday, November 09, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

Posted Thursday, November 09, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

HOW SWEET IT IS

How sweet it is, on an autumn day as clear as a baby's eyes, to be out there working with oak logs in the cool of the afternoon, following like a hungry scholar the noble nature of this wood that is the very heft and fragrance of integrity, savoring the sound like tiny crackling flames when at last the sections split into two, four, eight and then the music of oak when the splits are stacked like ingots of cloudy gold, how rich they look, how rich I feel, how warmly they tell of future comfort, tomorrows given to other pleasures, and at sunset the wealth of aching muscles that have served to surround me with gold, then to come indoors and find that on the other side of the world the Dems have taken the House and likely the Senate, that America is still the government of the people, insisting on a Democracy with an honest voice for all! A day immersed in integrity: how sweet it is!

Posted Wednesday, November 08, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

HERE COMES THE SUSHI SQUAD

Like the French with their Bordeaux and the Italians with their Parmesan, the Japanese are getting proprietary about Japanese cuisine. And rightly so, I say. There are no standards outside of Japan; restaurateurs in other countries can call anything Japanese, and do, for a premium price.

I remember when the kids were little, on one of our trips to the US they wanted to have some Japanese food, so we went into a Japanese restaurant in Brooklyn Heights where we ordered the tempura and were served our bowls of misoshiru with a spoon(!). We sat there staring at the soup and at each other, waiting for the rest of the meal (the misoshiru is eaten together with the meal in Japan), until the American part of my brain noticed that the waiter was standing at a discreet distance waiting for us to 'finish the soup,' which in the West is the first course.

So we finished the misoshiru solo, which was odd to me, but completely bizarre to the kids. Then the tempura came, in a huge four-compartment lacquered box of American portion size, with giant, heavily over-fried tempura in one corner, non-sticky rice(!) in the opposite corner and vinaigrette salad in the other two corners! The kids and I looked at each other in amazement: salad with tempura?? We ate as much as we could of this odd meal, all part of the learning curve, but I avoided Japanese dining in the US for years after that, until Keech and I took my brother and his wife to a 'Japanese' restaurant in Palm Springs.

So at last, the Japanese have taken heed of this widening unscrupled tide of soggy makizushi, too-thick sashimi, excess wasabi, zarusoba on a plate and non-sticky rice: Japan's Agriculture Ministry will now certify authentic Japanese restaurants in foreign countries so as not to have their "brand" diluted, and so that folks in foreign lands can be assured that they're actually eating the Japanese-style food they're paying for. Which is the way it should be, since the real thing is exquisite and worth the price.

However, as a long-term resident in Japan and inveterate seeker here of such renowned foreign cuisine as genuine New York pizza, an authentic range of ice cream flavors and true American pies, I ask: Where, then, are the Pizza Police? I see no Ice Cream Commandos! Whence shall come the Pie Enforcers?

Cuisinal justice wields a two-edged sword.

Posted Tuesday, November 07, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO?

"It should surprise few readers that we think a vote that is seen—in America and the world at large—as a decisive 'No' vote on the Bush presidency is the best outcome."

"Meanwhile, America's image in the world, its capacity to persuade others that its interests are common interests, is lower than it has been in memory."

"There may be little Americans can do to atone for this presidency, which will stain our country's reputation for a long time. But the process of recovering our good name must begin somewhere, and the logical place is in the voting booth this Nov. 7."

Posted Monday, November 06, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

WAITING FOR THE FULL MOON

Today the long brown road led to village shops and walnut cakes, yakimono galleries, mailing a package to mother- and father-in-law way up north in Shinshu (old name for Nagano), then on to other mountainsides, egg farm, forests, acorns, persimmons, gathering firestarter pinecones on the pine beach beside the big blue lake with little white sailboats beneath a big blue sky with little white clouds, a farmer in the distance walking slowly along the road behind his tiller, nodding at his neighbors as he goes, farm market vegetables, turnips, long white radishes, spinach, ginger, onions, gourds and the smiling faces that grew them, sliced funazushi laid out like pisces atop fresh rice, a new house behind the old fence up the road, straight the rows in the fallow fields, armfuls of kindling satisfactorily stacked by the door to the stove, crows calling in the autumn haze, sips of the taste of Merlot-- all wrapped in the slow cooling turning together into fall; tomorrow, logs to buck and split for next winter...

Posted Sunday, November 05, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

WENT OUT POOR

Went out late last night for a clear-sky, full-moon walk up and across the mountainside where the view feeds the reaches of the eye, with the mountainside cast in silver all around us, like the lake at our feet, that beneath the rising moon was silver washed at first in flames of rose, then golden amber and finally, as the moon came into her own on high, trailing veils of light, the lake was lit with sparkles as from a giant bowl of yellow diamonds. Came home rich.

Posted Saturday, November 04, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

If you want to become a yabusame ite (archer), enroll here...

Posted Friday, November 03, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

A GOOD DAY FOR ZEROFISH

Posted Thursday, November 02, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

MORE BOAR LORE

Wild boars have been getting some bad press around the world recently, in stories ranging from organic spinach farm contamination, to raiding gardens and attacking humans. Inoshishi (wild pigs) are part of the lore around here, too; I haven't heard of anyone being attacked, but they do raid gardens and rice paddies.

However, inoshishi are a popular food out here in the countryside, where restaurants feature inoshishi-centered meals, so maybe things balance out more in Japan than elsewhere... Still, every time we go for a walk around here on old mountain roadways through the woods, we come across places where the inoshishi have been freshly nosing up the shallow mosses to find worms, bugs and grubs, and occasionally we see a pertly bouncing tail in the forested distance as an inoshishi trots briskly away, well warned of our approach.

Oddly, however, I have never seen inoshishi in my garden, or found signs of them rooting up any of my vegetables. I guess the monkeys have those rights around here.

But things may change next year, which will be The Year of the Boar...

Posted Wednesday, November 01, 2006 by Robert Brady [Permalink]

BLACK IRISHMAN

When I lived in Spain back in the 70s I was amazed to see, every now and then, someone who looked very much like me or a relative of mine. I was told there that, as one of the so-called "Black Irish" (black hair, blue eyes, pale skin) I was probably a descendant of one of the survivors of the Spanish Armada, many ships of which had been wrecked upon the shores of Ireland.

Decades later in Japan, via the internet I found out it was more likely that Celtic ancestors from the Iberian Peninsula had, many millennia earlier, settled in what later became Ireland, and that the few Spaniards who had managed to survive the wreckage of the Armada and make it to shore in Ireland had been stripped and slaughtered right there on the beach or were later caught by the English or their allies and executed. Very few escaped alive, and likely none remained in Ireland.

In that connection, via the rootsweb.com ny-irish mailing list, I came upon this astonishing first-hand tale of that very event:

Captain Cuellar's Adventures in Connacht and Ulster (Author: Francisco de Cuellar)

Francisco de Cuellar was aboard the last group of Armada ships wrecked in Ireland, on 25 September 1588.

As a sample, his description of the Irish he encountered in the region of the MacClancy clan:

"The custom of these savages is to live as the brute beasts among the mountains, which are very rugged in that part of Ireland where we lost ourselves. They live in huts made of straw. The men are all large bodied, and of handsome features and limbs; and as active as the roe-deer. They do not eat oftener than once a day, and this is at night; and that which they usually eat is butter with oaten bread. They drink sour milk, for they have no other drink; they don't drink water, although it is the best in the world. On feast days they eat some flesh half-cooked, without bread or salt, as that is their custom. They clothe themselves, according to their habit, with tight trousers and short loose coats of very coarse goat's hair. They cover themselves with blankets, and wear their hair down to their eyes. They are great walkers, and inured to toil. They carry on perpetual war with the English, who here keep garrison for the Queen, from whom they defend themselves, and do not let them enter their territory, which is subject to inundation, and marshy. That district extends for more than forty leagues in length and breadth. The chief inclination of these people is to be robbers, and to plunder each other; so that no day passes without a call to arms among them. For the people in one village becoming aware that in another there are cattle, or other effects, they immediately come armed in the night, and ‘go Santiago’ (attack), and kill one another, and the English from the garrisons, getting to know who had taken, and robbed, most cattle, then come down upon them, and carry away the plunder. They have, therefore, no other remedy but to withdraw themselves to the mountains, with their women and cattle; for they possess no other property, nor more moveables nor clothing. They sleep upon the ground, on rushes, newly cut and full of water and ice. The most of the women are very beautiful, but badly dressed (got up). They do not wear more than a chemise, and a blanket, with which they cover themselves, and a linen cloth, much doubled, over the head, and tied in front. They are great workers and housekeepers, after their fashion. These people call themselves Christians. Mass is said among them, and regulated according to the orders of the Church of Rome. The great majority of their churches, monasteries, and hermitages, have been demolished by the hands of the English, who are in garrison, and of those natives who have joined them, and are as bad as they. In short, in this kingdom there is neither justice nor right, and everyone does what he pleases."

Fascinating, reading of the savagery and kindness of 500 years ago, that got us to this day...

CELT, the Corpus of Electronic Texts, Online Resource for Irish history, literature and politics, the source of this tale, brings tears to Irish eyes.

Now there is justice, now there is right.