Crow Hates it When I Do Stuff

Out this afternoon in the clear cold mountain air, after a morning of uncertain rain that happy-ended with another of those perfect mountain-to-lake rainbows in full dayglow color that spoil us rotten out here-- another typical day in the mountains.

I was out in such a day with the big bamboo rake, intending to pull the tattered fragments of temporary firewood-cover plastic sheeting that had been blown off, stomped on, torn to tatters and tossed up into the plum tree by one of those the histrionic winds we get up here, that stormed through around dusk yesterday while I was in a big city office with no rainbow.

As soon as I opened the door to the deck I sensed that Crow had been waiting for me on his perch in the top of the big cedar out front, where he hangs out when he's got issues. Which is always. Sure enough, he was mumbling up there already, starting off on a grumbly string of tirades as soon as I came out and grabbed the big rake from where it was leaning against the deck rail, a procedure that clearly meant action on my part.

Crow hates action on my part. He's on my case whenever I start doing something outside, where he always lives and thinks he owns. When I began to walk down the steps from the deck, clearly with some intent or other - doesn't matter what - he started in, loud enough to make me think of earplugs, saying things like: "What the hell ya doin now, walker?" "Where ya goin down there?" "And what's with that rake, you gonna fix somethin?" "You think you own this place?" (jumping up and down on his branch) "You got no rights here, pal, I own all this!!" (I'm paraphrasing and editing here, for brevity and cultural clarity.)

The irony of Crow talking about rights was not lost on me. As I walked over onto the adjoining property (that really gets his darkness going), over which extended the plum tree branches that had caught most of the wind's plastic vandalism, Crow flapped all huffy over to the top of the utility pole right on the roadside there so he could be closer to whatever I was doing to his stuff, get a better look from an open platform, big beak yakkin the while. "Hey what are you doin over here, this ain't yer property either, it's mine! What the hell you up to now? You can't fool me, walker! I got my eye on you!" (Still paraphrasing; not that much nuance in Caw.)

As I reached up with the rake and began to pull down the nastily entangled ugly plastic fragments from the branches, i.e., actually doing something to achieve an objective, Crow hit the ceiling, so to speak. In an attempt to drown him out even just a bit, I started talking back (I often look like I'm talking to myself, but sometimes I'm not): "I only used this sheeting in a pinch, to cover the firewood; originally, I got it to make garden tunnels for early planting, but the monkeys made a mess of it (no real need to paraphrase here, this is pretty much word-for-word), so it's been sitting unused in the shed, and I--" "Hey, why am I explaining to you, Crow? You don't give a damn about plastic or monkeys!" "You don't own this property anyway! I own that property there, and I own this plum tree too; you don't, you're just full of caws!"

As I went on talking loudly, wrestling down the plastic and getting all the fragments into a bundle, something I said must've hit a nerve 'cause Crow took off in a big dark huff and flapped on down toward the Lake, I could hear him yelling for a long way; folks in the village were gonna get an earful.

It's a lot quieter up here now without a crow, and the plum tree looks a lot better without that plastic sheeting all up in it.

My plum tree.

On my property.

I do stuff here.

You Talkinna Me??

This morning I was out doing the usual early Saturday round of little chores that build up during the week. I'd earlier scattered the kitchen refuse atop the compost pile - now nearbelow the cherry tree - and was bucketing the last of the wood stove ash from the ash heap to scatter along the feet of the biwa (loquat) and natsume (jujube) trees, the blueberry bushes and the mountain azaleas that line the inner road, then to sprinkle the last of it all atop this morning's compost. 

The bucket was heavy with damp ash; I was just passing head down beneath the cherry tree when a blast of raucous sound from above made me look up. There in the branchy shadows blustered Mr. Crow, who owns this turf. Japanese crows can be uncomfortably loud even from a hundred meters away, but Mr. Crow was right there, yawping in my face. He wasn't flying away, as he normally would have done from this sudden proximity; he was staying put, hopping mad on a low branch: I had entered his dark presence just as he was planning his daily breakfast selection from the compost buffet, freshly laid out for him below. There was beaksome orange peel, onion skins,  tomato trimmings, cabbage core, tea leaves, broccoli stems, eggshells, you name it, all interlayered for Crow delight, what a feast it would be-- then I blundered into the picture and he became the essence of umbrage.  

I just stood there staring at him; he just hopped there, flaring and glaring. Then he raised his head and let out another blast, whoa loud under that canopy of leaves. Crow had never confronted me directly in this way, or this close up; only a couple of meters separated us. This was a bit too near even for my taste. I stared at him some more. He tilted his head and fixed me with his blackest eye: was I gonna get the hell out of his face or what.

For me, the next move was clear. I'd been waiting a long time-- about 35 years, actually. "You talkinna me??" I said, in my best Nooyawkese. He looked dumbfounded. "You talkinna me??" louder this time, more ominous, more threatening, half a step forward, just like De Niro, except this was for real. The big crow beak hung open in dark disbelief, like he could not believe his ears; like he'd seen that movie too! And I was using that very trope, out here in the -- semiwild, which was Crow's alone! What was Crow culture, then, if this was also an element of the human... whatever?

I seemed to sense a deep rift in the crow cosmos; a psychic shock wave passed through me. Crow looked here and there to his heavens for affirmation, as though he'd just read all of Nietzsche or its corvine equivalent. He gave a little croak upward. Forget about the select breakfast buffet. Human and Crow had just had a cultural exchange. We had crossed a line; there had been a merging of artistic elements. If this got out, things would ever be the same. 

The question now was, would Crow tell the others, or would he keep this bright secret for his own? Mumbling to himself, he flew off into the upmountain forest, likely to a distant higher branch of contemplation where he could be most alone-- as though he had to think about it. I'm sure he'll keep it all to himself, like that whole thick slice of bread he got not long ago. He'll never share this historic experience with another crow; crows don't do such things. 

But humans do.     

NUCLEAR POWER GUINEA PIG

Headline: Shiga studies impact on Lake Biwa from possible Fukui nuke accident

I've written about this fact before, but it's seldom floated in the standard mediastream and so gets forgotten even by the Japanese: Japan, for its narrowness, size and seismicity, is truly the world's Nuclear Power guinea pig.

As you look at the map, simply center that big green circle on Tokyo, and the cities of Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya (urban area population exceeding 60 million persons) and Kyoto (a few million more), not to mention priceless Lake Biwa (centrally just below the Takahama-Mihama cluster!) are within a short breeze of over 30 nuclear reactors!

Given the world-witnessed occurrence of the statistically impossible event at Fukushima, the potential result of this situation is truly beyond rationale. Yet these millions carry on, living in the shadow of another series of statistically impossible events that would pretty much bring an end to Japan: for most, if not all, of those who survived would have to be evacuated. To... where?

As much as I love and worry for Lake Biwa (where I live), things would be so much worse (especially if they ever start the Monju reactor) than what the authorities' experts are intently studying...

ON LITTLE PINE BEACH

On Wednesday afternoon I took the beach-hungry beasties to our favorite secret beach, called by us Little Pine Beach, where on that ultrafine calm blue feather-clouded day the four of us got out of the car at the end of the long narrow road to the sand and water about a hundred meters or so away. When I turned around after getting my bag from the trunk, there in the far distance, arms raised in glee, were three tiny silhouettes already screamsplashing into the calm water...

I headed at a slow pace along the hundred meters or so to the beach, and when I was almost there remembered the beach mat in the trunk so turned and walked the hundred meters or so back to the car, got the mat and walked the hundred meters or so back to the beach where I realized that since school was in session, the season does not begin for about another month and there WAS NOBODY ELSE THERE WE HAD THE ENTIRE BEACH TO OURSELVES!

As I spread the mat amidst the joy I couldn't help but notice that beneath the many little pines were strewn about seven million pine cones, perfectly seasoned for starting fires in a woodstove, and there's only one household I know of around here that has any such need for pine cones. Everybody else uses nuclear power. Even better, these were free pine cones, with no meltdown.

But no way would (or could) I ask the girls out of the water when the swimming was perfect, even to gather also perfect pine cones just lying there waiting to be claimed by this lucky winner of the Pine Cone Lottery. No questions from the press, please. So I alone jumped right on the pine cones, but I only had my small back pack and a little plastic bag of the kind they make that holds maybe two pine cones, go figure. And it would rain before I could get back here on the weekend... What's that old saying about Lord, thy pine cone-covered beach is so vast etc.--

So I walked the hundred meters or so back to the car and was lucky to find some large plastic bags that we sometimes have in the car for wild vegs, fruits and herbs, walked the hundred or so meters back to the beach and commenced harvesting pine cones by ones twos and threes in the mango gold of the late afternoon as the girls splashed in the shallows and a powerboat roared aimlessly back and forth offshore, playing music of the kind that requires volume to offset some central emptiness, the roarers seeking in the midst of nature's beauty to somehow drown out her insistent presence in a dull version of fun that seeks distraction from what it will not see and does not want to understand. Unlike the girls, who in their bigger world were fashioning beach toys and houses from bamboo and sandpiles, having deep fun with water and earth-- no boat, no motor, no fuel, no blasting along the surface, no costly layers of separation from what is, bottom line, the ancient part of ourselves.

And so as the girls played in all that majesty I bent to my task about 500 times, wandering not bent/bent/not bent/bent along the shore beneath the pines, gathering only the finest cones - one becomes a pine cone gourmet of sorts after a few years - strewn there by the hurricane of a few days ago and normally soon raked away and burned by the beachkeepers, but the season hasn't begun so I was doing them something of a favor, and I must say I haven't seen such a fine crop of pine cones in all my years here, they were that golden amber of the fresh unweathered kind-- I got 8 big bulging bags full.

Later, after a cooling loll on the shady sand, as it approached time to leave - me wearing my white hemp pants, orange NYC t-shirt under white shirt w/long sleeves rolled and straw cowboy hat with the silver concho on the front - I gathered up three big bulging bags of pinecones in each hand and headed back the hundred meters or so to the car through the narrow alley. On the way, I passed three young Japanese males heading for the beach, who, upon beholding way out here in the middle of nowhere - japanopublicly speaking - a tall, long-white-haired elder gaijin striding along in white pants, white shirt, orange NYC tee and conchoed straw cowboy hat, carrying... three big bags full of pine cones in each hand... it changed their worldview somewhat.

When I walked back the hundred yards or so to the beach to get the other bags of pine cones and carry them the hundred yards or so back to the car before coming back the hundred yards or so to the beach to gather up the girls and their stuff and walk the hundred yards or so back to the car to head home, I saw the young men still standing there on the sunset beach like the enigma in a De Chirico painting with some loud rap music drifting over the water, puzzled to have come to a long beautiful beach empty but for three little girls, and additionally puzzled at major pine cone haulage by a strange foreigner from NYC... It was an odd day, I could sense them concluding at their unsought insight into the inspirational sources of the surrealists. It got even more surreal when I took the three little girls away with me.

Life can get interesting on Little Pine Beach.

NOTHING GETS HEADLINES LIKE A WORLD RECORD

I'm not a fisherman myself, so I don't fish the Lake, but for decades now there have been ecological alarms and an overall negative view of the largemouth bass 'infestation' of Lake Biwa, with signs everywhere saying "DO NOT THROW BASS BACK!" beside boxes where you can put the bass you've caught if you don't want them (likely because of all the negative press, bass are not yet considered good eating by the Japanese, but we enjoy their deliciousness when Keech visits and goes fishing), while bass tackle shops are sprouting all along the shores. Things will likely change bigtime, now.

All that negative 'local problem' stuff never made world headlines; but a world record that lasted for 77 years, now that's another fish story. Like I always say as of a minute ago, if life gives you a largemouth bass, fire up the grill (btw, I live on those mountains in the background).

"Lake Biwa catch for native species has dropped from more than 8000 tons in 1972 to 2174 tons in 2000 while experts estimate catch of exotic species (black bass and bluegill exceed 3000 tons (Ref. 45327). Social and ecological problems have been experienced recently pertaining to the 'black bass problem.' (Ref. 55372). Considered to be one of the most damaging alien species in Japan"

ENOUGH TO BE AN ISLAND

Out on the Lake there is a tiny island just a few meters wide, on days like today sitting on the surface like a thick, dark cookie on a silverblue baking sheet. I've passed close by it on boats and am always surprised by its tininess-- it seems to grow bigger in the mind.

I have also seen at the Lake Biwa Museum, in a scale geological model of the Lake bed, how that mini-island - like most of the larger islands that dot the Lake - is but the point of a tall needle of once-liquid volcanic rock, eons ago thrust upward from the core of the earth, reaching now through far deeps of water to barely touch the surface enough to be an island. Likely the island was once much higher than the cookie it is now, and will disappear below the surface before too geologically long. These molten facts are reflected in the mountains around the Lake, which comprise the timeworn caldera of an ancient volcano.

Most days that little island, because of its size, is invisible; even the slightest haze or shadow of cloud erases it, to say nothing of water-reflected light. But on certain rare days like today, when water, air and light combine in just the right way, the Lake appears to end about halfway across, as natural currents turmoil the near waters and tranquilize the far, and there the island appears: not atop the water, like the usual island, but floating in the sky, high above the apparent surface of the Lake.

If I didn't know the true distance to the far shore, that floating island would be as inexplicable as any other miracle around here.

THUNDERSTORMS

Thunderstorms rise up in distant jeweled towers all around the far shores of the the striated rose and gray Lake, all quiet on this shore but for the insect song, the high chatter of swallows bathing in the last of the sun, flashing the white of their underwings, bursting now and then into clouds of aerodynamics... The rising columns of clouds insist into the sky, like insect song into silence, like clouds of wings into empty air-- they are each and every moment's thought of the earth, working things out, balancing all, earth and sky negotiating like sea does with shore, like birds do with air, like we do with our employers-- wait,,,,what??

From the Archives: April 6, 2002

MEANDERING

Coming back from the local country dentist (who is a very good dentist by the way, and cares much about his patients as individuals, unlike the high-turnover blurry dentists in the assembly line at the big clinic way up in a high building in the heart of the city), I decided not to take the main and faster highway back home, but to meander a bit in search of the kind of moments one can only come upon in mid-meander, and so took the narrow winding road along the Lake.

I would thereby also get to see the old thatched-roof cottage again, where the beauty of its aged wood and the stone path to the door were discreetly revealed by elegant bamboo fences and the gracefully sloping arms of ancient red pines, and I could feel that old spirit, one of those last embers of the old Japan, like sitting close to a fading loved one, moving closer to a dying fire.

It was a beauty of a day, more like spring than early February, the Lake on my left meandering too (large bodies of water pretty much do as they wish), along the very road, elbowing in where it could its sapphire beauty. I tended to go slowly, it's impossible to meander at high speed, and anything more than an amble is a waste of meander. So I often had to pull over to allow passage of folks bizarrely in a hurry on a slow road, likely in haste as well to get through life itself.

Then I was at the turnoff for home, and hadn't seen the old cottage, so I turned around and went back. In its discreetness, the shy place sometimes evades the seeker with the mildest distraction. I looked carefully, but still couldn't find it; then I found that where it had been was now a pile of dirt and rock and torn-up moss with a caterpillar tractor beside it, all surrounded by a temporary fence.

The centuries-old red pines were gone, the moss-bordered stone pathway was gone, the thatched roof was gone, the old house was gone. I felt my throat close up, it was very like a death I was feeling, that I would never see that old house again and wonder at its history and be inspired, or admire the beauty of its building, sense the strength of its long long time right there before me now.

Likely there would be a quick new factory-made lakeside cottage going up there soon, take a couple of weeks to build, model B perhaps, maybe model D. Thus do souls starve and die, in worlds without spirit.

ISHIYAMA-DERA

Some photos from our recent visit to Ishiyama-dera, one of our favorite local places, posted on before...

THE DIME OF THE MOOD

Ah, ah, the first clear and temperate sunset in many months. I am out here near sunset admiring the finesse of the sky with that fine rare blue it can achieve at such times, like the robins use for their eggs, the crafty avians. And just that tinge of rose, that drives painters wild trying to replicate with brushes and pigments on canvas, with a only hint of that same rose, cast like a sheer veil of light over the dark rocky shoulders of the foothills in their ancient compromise with the pale blue lake...

The simple offhand mastery of it is astounding at every glance, on every side... The dark green spikes of trees, the rose tint-- how it roils at the edges of the mountains even where they turn to rosy snow...

And the islands out there, with their pale golden stripes of residence along the lower edges... No boats today though, for, splendid as it might be for sailing in the moment, the weather at this time of year can turn on the dime of the mood of those now pink clouds...

The tension is delight to the soul.

THE SANTA BARBARA/KAMCHATKA DICHOTOMY

Seems like the snow this year opted to fall in February and March, for some reason eschewing the springlike December and the mild January, reserving itself for heavy snowfalls every few days thereafter, just as we in the igloos were expecting outdoors to drop the icy act and not require so much firewood of us who are already making garden moves and re-stacking shiitake logs in our minds.

But as I’ve mentioned occasionally in these weathered musings, oftentimes it’s blizzarding here and beachweather only a kilometer away, which makes things interesting. Yesterday we drove into Kyoto for some shopping and a stop at the YWCA (where I exchange paperbacks now and then); it was sort of like leaving Kamchatka and a few moments later arriving in Santa Barbara.

This morning down at the train station after another night’s snowfall, as I stood looking around in the early sunlight under a clear cold sky, the lake blue, the mountains crisp white, patterned in geometric patches of lumbered areas, some of them almost vertical - I can’t imagine lumbering an almost vertical landscape - the view went on until blue of water and white of mountains met a sky-high curtain of dark-silver silk, strung across the lake: the shifting border of snow country. Beyond it the snow was falling heavily, obscuring everything; I was right at the edge of the high-pressure area; the border could shift this way any minute, and I’d be in the heart of a blizzard.

It probably will shift a couple of times before the day is out, putting us in and out of Siberia by its massive whim; maybe tonight it will swing north for good and we’ll be in Santa Barbara as of tomorrow, instead of Kamchatka.

OPERATING THE LOBSTER

To be perfectly honest, I've never even thought of operating a giant lobster-- who can perceive all the possibilities that life lays out before us? But when I saw that giant lobster sitting there, my inner child leaped at the prospect. Regrettably though, my outer adult was too big to fit into the crustacean. But then I've never thought about not fitting into a lobster either, so the disappointment was small one.

I'm speaking of the new Nephropida across the water, in that special section of the fantastic Lake Biwa Museum called the "Discovery Room," where kids can go unattendedly wacko while their parents collapse nearby.

Yes, in the Discovery Room there is now a giant lobster you can physically go inside of and, while looking out through the lobster's mouth, manipulate the levers in there to operate the giant claws and snap up a praying mantis bigger than my forearm, or a 20-pound pollywog - both at once, if you can swing it - those dainties are dangling temptingly right out there in front of your big bulbous eyes, just within reach of those long heavily jointed chitinous arms extending out from your spiny red carapace, deep in the imaginary sea where so much of the world's fun resides.

When we brought the grandgirls to the Museum on Sunday, Kaya headed straight for the lobster and got in line behind all the boys until at last she got to direct the beast, caught a loach or two and snagged a pollywog, but soon burned out on the deeper potential of the thing - sure it's cool, said her look, but lobster interest fades - she wandered off; then each of the twins had a go at the lobster, with about the same result. Of course they're totally children at this point in their lives, with quite a while to go before they begin to acquire their own outer adults and the restrictions/perspective that affords; still, their actions were a surprise to both of me.

Yes, the girls quickly gave up wielding those giant spiked arms with the gnarly grabbing claws at the ends!! They wandered off, stuck their heads up inside the fish tank and stuff like that, made some yarn pictures on the yarn boards, but their hearts weren't in those activities any more than they had been in the lobster.

As far as I could tell, their hearts kept pretty much out of it until they found, over in a far corner, the traditional Japanese kitchen of a hundred years or so ago, where they could do trad stuff like "slice" "daikon" and other "vegetables" etc. with a "hocho" (traditional Japanese kitchen knife) and put them in a big iron pot over a "fire" in an old-fashioned irori (fireplace) to make a nabe (stew type meal) for "dinner," and you couldn't tear the girls away from there, they made dinner over and over, fascinated at slicing not-even-real radishes with a not-even-real hocho, one twin at the edge of the girl-crowded space complaining initially to Kasumi that there was no room in the kitchen: “Mama, there's no room for me to make a nabe!”

While gazing upon that comfortingly homish scene, my outer adult couldn't help but be aware of his inner child's powerful desire to sneak away from this girl stuff and work that lobster big time.

Museums are there to teach us of the amazing aspects there are to the world and to ourselves. The lesson here appears to be that somewhere back in the history of girls there is warmth, there is comfort, there is nurturing; whereas somewhere back in the history of boys there is a giant lobster.

Which gets harder to operate as we get older.

SECRET

The godly part of our soul that enables us to perceive beauty - not the artificial, localized kind, but the natural, unrestrained kind – is perhaps the greatest gift we are given. The beauty of the lake is telling me this at the moment, in the silent monologue of all its dusky shades and laminations.

We strive, in our mortal ways, to express even a pixel of that exquisiteness the lake shows always, and knows to its depths. The masters paint their efforts on a canvas or scribe them on a page and are perhaps renowned for centuries; the lake lies there for another 100 eons under sun, moon, stars, wind, rain and snow as though there is no moment but this…

That's the secret in all beauty...

ALL THE THINGS THAT AREN'T PINECONES...

Woodstoves and fireplaces can mean a lot of work if you clean your own chimney and chop your own wood, but the reward is more than the bliss of having a warm fire in your living room; it also inspires you to go out to splendid places you might not otherwise go to at odd times, and do there things you might not otherwise do.

Like yesterday morning, when Echo and I went to Omimaiko, the small but elegant peninsula with the long pine beach, slightly north of us on the lake (we can see the tip of it from our deck) where we walk, swim, picnic and watch fireworks at other times of the year, but this time it was to gather pinecones (excellent firestarters, and free). We'd gone to a different place further north the day before (nice beachside restaurant up there), but the trees in that vicinity are of a selfish variety and keep their cones to themselves. Even the wind didn't shake any down.

The big old pines on Omimaiko though, are much more generous, and their largish, well-dried pinecones were already scattered everywhere on the sand awaiting us, with no one else seeking the treasure just lying there like a spilled cornucopia. More and more folks here in Japan nowadays use atomic electricity to heat their homes, and are not inspired thereby in any noticeable way.

Anyhow, it's interesting being thus nicely coerced into gathering pinecones in the piney shade along a bright beach on a sunny, breezy morning, getting to know the trees and their territory first-hand, bending to pick up treasures here and there (getting to know the properties of your own back, as well) and acquiring a decent eye for a good pinecone (it's an art), learning to filter out everything that isn't a pinecone, which effort in its humble way is excellent practice for modern life and the attendant growth in multiplicity of things that aren't pinecones.

Like all the best undertakings, pinecone gathering also has the pleasant savor of eccentricity about it, as pertains to going around under trees while bent over holding big bags and putting pinecones in them. Passersby wonder at the sight; new conversations begin. Aesthetically attractive as pinecones are, they're generally not much use to anyone except kids, who love to gather them, throw them, stack them up in situ and take a bunch of the best ones home to find years later in the closet. So there's a being-a-kid aspect to it, too, which is always welcome to the kid that cores the elder.

In any case pinecones are not so attractive or useful as to have people walking around gathering them by the bagful as we were, the two of us alone, on that long beach; we soon had two big bags full to overflowing and then began to fill our pockets until all we had was our hands and they were full too, because as with any other bargain in life, once you get going on a superior freebie like pinecone firestarters to use on the coming cold winter mornings - when you bend to a cold stove in the early darkness and light a small cluster of pinecones beneath some cherry kindling and the flame catches, the fragrance rises, the fire grows to give you warmth and light - all vested there in the pine-tree largesse of amber cones scattered at your feet like so many treasures of the future, the little gifts take on a magical appearance and it becomes difficult to walk by a prime golden specimen just lying there looking at you with its arms spread wide and not pick it up, to walk right by a gift of the pine gods...

By the time we were retracing our steps back to the car, though, the wind had gotten a lot stiffer with the growing warmth, the pines were shaking and roiling their furry arms, having a grand green time and being even more generous, practically emptying their pockets in their delight at the day: the large underpine area we had already cleared was once again a gold mine of new-fallen pinecones that we had to walk through with pinecones already coming out of our ears. Interesting anguish, not being able to pick up another perfect pinecone!

But we have more empty bags at home...

SATOYAMA

Years ago on Japanese tv I saw a documentary by David Attenborough, called Satoyama, which centered on traditional village life in the reed country on the shores of Lake Biwa. We have spent much time visiting these and many similar places around the Lake, but I had no idea the entire documentary was available for viewing (in 6 parts) on YouTube.

I live in those mountains beyond the soaring hawk at the beginning.

At the beginning of the second part they make funazushi...

With thanks to Todd Lambert for the reminder...

FAR BEYOND MAJESTY

Late afternoon is the time of sky when the light is entering its golden phase, when the trees and grasses shine undaunted into the face of the sun, as if to say, in strong green words: I am a masterpiece. There is a great and unsung pride manifest in what we are pleased to think of as mere vegetation.

Then as sunset nears, all the air itself realizes the transition and rises over the sun-warmed lake, as the cooler mountain air floods down in replacement; the whole mountain, lit aslant by the hovering sun, becomes the bed of a vast river of cool air, rushing down in cosmic obligation. To sit in that river, feel that flood, after splitting firewood in the hot sun for two hours, is like whitewatering the grand canyon while sitting still, all in the country of the soul...

Those same dark leaves lift into paleness at the first touch of the downmountain winds and gleam white in the setting sun - clearly they have an old local relationship - they carry their vastness in their seeds...

The repose of the mountains in such settings as this, shaded green, gray and black in the summer evening sun and breeze, is often described as 'majestic,' but there is more in those ancient faces than aristocracy can ever aspire to; it's a matter of interaction with eternity, not immediate lineage or ambition.

Then when all the air is balanced at last, from out of the overmountain light come galleons of windblown pink clouds, sailing over the mountains as slowly and stately as on a tropical lagoon, wending across the calm of the sky toward unknown shores...

And when all up there is yet light, as the earth below grows dark and cool, the dragonflies enjoy the same calm air, their dashing silhouettes clearly visible -- way up in that silence they zig and zag in the way of their kind on glassine wings, like thoughts in a blue mind, with no aim but to be...

Then comes the full moon, laying her tapestry of light over the darkling land, revealing lineaments we are blind to in the day... who has not stood out in that vapor of silver, lain over all with the touch of a goddess, and not grown thereby?

We can do no better in our dreams...

Across the lake,
around the neck
of Sleeping Buddha Island
the houses gleam
like a necklace
in the last of the sun

PRICING THE OUTDOORS

After days of heavy rainy-season rain, except for when I was in the office (yesterday heavy and continuous rain through which I gazed at my stacks of logs to be split), here I am on another sunny day in the office, recalling how the lake looked this morning not long after I awoke at around dawn into the thick silence that falls like a sky-sized blanket when a monsoon rain abruptly stops-- and way up there on the mountain the residual mist makes the atmosphere visible, imparting new depths as it dissipates with the rising light...

I stood at the big glass doors that front the living room and sipped my tea while watching the sky clear and the lake turn blue, starting with a ragged hole of golden sunlight opening over the middle of the cloud-gray water, the hole widening as the clouds broke up, into crumbly tufts by the time I was freewheeling downhill through the scattering mist to catch the train that took me to what by the time I arrived was a warm sunny city.

That morning scene recalled to me this snippet from an article by Barbara Ehrenreich:

"I need to see vast expanses of water, 360 degree horizons, and mountains piercing the sky -- at least for a week or two of the year. According to evolutionary psychologist Nancy Etcoff, we all do, and the need is hard-wired into us. 'People like to be on a hill, where they can see a landscape. And they like somewhere to go where they can not be seen themselves,' told Harvard Magazine earlier this year. 'That's a place desirable to a predator who wants to avoid becoming prey.' We also like to be able to see water (for drinking), low-canopy trees (for shade), and animals (whose presence signals that the place is habitable.)" The Rich Have Priced the Outdoors out of Everyone Else's Hands [Except where I live. RB]

I do like a broad expanse of landscape, especially above water, though it's been a long time since I felt like either predator or prey. As to "animals whose presence" etc., the deer (that I would have sworn had all moved way upmountain by now) just ate all my chard and all the leaves off my bean plants, acknowledging in their deery way my small efforts at making the place more habitable.

DAY'S END

Here at the end of day, wide lake the precise color of a blue chalcedony ring my brother made long ago in another world, one last sweep of sunlight streams through the notch in these mountains for a few intense moments, lighting the stairways of young rice paddies stepping down the mountain, filling my eyes with more than vision, lighting a glimpse of the font of beauty as bright as the final bloom of a dying ember, but of life being born-- in moments, a picture of faith in purpose, all the way to sunset...

Shishi (dog-lion)
guarding the gate

at Hachimangu Shrine
in Omihachiman