Heart's Horizons

We selected some healthy looking, good-sized vines about a half-inch thick at the base where they rose from among the thick mountain bamboo to latch onto the trunks and lower branches of cedars and oaks, then lace their way into the upper reaches. I clipped the chosen vines near the ground (3 vines and a backup).

 Then we put on our strong gloves, grabbed hold of the end of each vine and pulled hard - 4, 6, even all 8 hands at a time - then pulled again, then again with a "Heave-ho," and again, leaning backward in the middle of the road, pulling hard, bending the low branches! Shaking the whole tree! Then bending high branches! Then pulling more slowly as the high vine began to come away, even bending the whole tree sometimes!

Working together, pulling another long vine down out of a big cedar or oak tree -- pulling harder and harder as slowly the whole vine surrendered, at last coming away until it was laying in the road and Trio had done that great thing, with the high tree, all the way up the tree and now they had to handle that 15-meter vine from high in those branches-- Kids LOVE to do really BIG things!

 Kaya, Mitsuki and Miasa were going to make Christmas wreaths.

A couple of weeks before, while we were doing some winter prep work out in the garden and surrounds, Mitsuki had said, mid-task, out of the blue - as the Trio seems to do these days - that she wanted to make a wreath. I asked her where that idea had come from. She answered "Christmas!" which answered my question well enough; one can't really expect grown-up-minded explanations from little girls, who live so much in their hearts.

 Since the Trio and I were finished enough with our prep labors I went and got the clippers, a saw, a big basket and 8 strong gloves, then we went down the inner road, where I know there are a lot of longstanding, well-developed vines of fujii (wild wisteria) and akebi (akebia trifoliata) among the trees and bamboo.

 Once the vines were down, the Trio trimmed them, coiled them, tied them with the tendrils and put them in the basket, along with shiny clusters of holly leaves that also grow by the road. They got some good evergreen branches too, plus some perfect pine cones from my pine cone stash in the shed.

Back home, they got the tree ornaments and some ribbon from the closets, then sat out on the deck with the scissors and all those bright things scattered around them. I showed them how to choose a length for the wreath size they wanted, how to coil the strong vine into a wreath size, how to fix it here and there along its length using the thinner tendrils, and that this was the way you could make baskets too - fujii vine is great for baskets - then I went upstairs for a while to do some editing and forgot about the time--

 When it was growing dark I came downstairs into a silent house, saw the Trio still outside working even in the the darkling cold, engrossed in the task of crafting their very first wreaths, absorbed in the art of it. I just stood there watching the design ideas flow, turned on the lights when it began to get too dark. The Trio went on working until they were content with their basic wreaths and went inside to fine-tune the decorations.

 Natural ways, natural tasks involving natural interests like the endlessness of seeds, branches and flowers, insects and animals - instead of only brief gadgetry - simply confirm that there is no substitute for the natural reaches of life, the wellspring of thoughts and imaginings that lead always onward, with no end but the heart’s horizons.

In that spirit, Happy Holidays to All.

TREE OF SMILES

I was out walking along the roadside the other morning scavenging for mukago, which I've posted about here and here and elsewhere, when I saw a mother lode of the silver-pearly goodies dangling down on the strings of their dried vines from the tall mountain bamboo that covers the land on the other side of the road from us. The plant itself vines its way up through the thick bamboo and canopies out across the top, using the slender bamboo stalks as an ideal support.

I knew that there were plenty of mukago up there that, if not harvested, would soon fall to the ground and get eaten by inoshishi (wild pigs) scavenging beneath (which, to any mukago fancier, is the true-life version of pearls before swine), so I started walking along the road and pulling on the hanging vines to tip the bamboo down to where I could get at the some of the treasures beaded among the leaves along the edge of the top.

So all the way along the road I was reaching and looking up, and at one point back in there I saw a bunch of big white smiles up there among the leaves of a low tree shielded from the road by the bamboo. It was an akebi vine threading the tree, and being secluded it was full of smiling fruit that humans along the road could not see (unless they tipped down the bamboo), and that the monkeys, for some delightful reason, had not yet found.

Since this wild fruit prefers monkeys as consumers and generally grows too high for humans to reach - as in this case - I went and got the high ladder and my clippers, and with a bag hooked to my belt climbed up to gather the happy fruit. Being up there among all those sweet smiles was very pleasant to the monkey in me. I clipped off the ready ones and some of the near-ready ones to see if they would ripen anyway, and to get another jump on the creatures that are still completely monkeys.

Though monkeys and laddered humans are the only large creatures that can reach the really high fruit, akebi prefer monkeys as their consumers, which explains why the fruit is designed the way it is, so that the eater can't separate the hard seeds (which resemble apple seeds) from the sweet, custardy flesh. That is also why akebi hide high up in the shadows and, when ready-to-eat, open up wide in a monkey smile, the monkeys then grabbing the magnanimous fruit and scarfing it then and there, subsequently spreading the seeds from the treetops throughout the forest as they go, whereas picky humans take the fruit home and spit the seeds into a garbage bag, which is new to the akebi evolutionary experience.

The flavor of akebi is also unique in that there is none, because flavor doesn't matter to those who are still completely monkeys: sweet is enough. It's the only sweet fruit I can think of that has no flavor at all, which is interesting because as a result, the fruit's appeal to humans as well must rely on its sweetness alone. It is very sweet, therefore, but not cloyingly sweet, as the same degree of cane sugar sweetness, for example, would be.

Also part of the larger picture is that the melting creamy texture of the pulp strongly invites the eater to swallow the sweet mass whole, if one is a monkey (the seeds are too hard to chew) or, if one is a finicky human, to go through all the trouble of slowly swirling the mass around in your mouth, carefully keeping all the seeds in check while letting the custardy portion slowly melt away in a flavorless wash of sweetness that yet... does... taste... remotely... like something... you can't... quite identify as you swirl and ponder, the completed process of thoughtful consumption rewarding you at last with a mouthful of seeds that want to be swallowed.

All of the above factors, in addition to an ultra-brief shelf life, combine to explain why akebi is a traditionally appreciated, countryside sort of fruit that is rarely (if ever?) sold in stores. Every Japanese has heard of akebi, but few city folk nowadays have ever eaten one. Eating akebi is nonetheless a worthy experience in many respects. At several points in the process, by evolutionary design on both sides you are powerfully reflexively moved to just swallow the whole sweet thing, seeds and all, as it calls to the monkey in you, while as a creature of higher intelligence you are moved to consciously and with considerable effort not swallow, by maintaining a sort of a gustatory zen state.

Despite best efforts, however, the human akebi eater always swallows some seeds. They're designed that way after all, to slick right down there unnoticed. Then right away you keep finding another of the sly things (evolution is a sneaky enterprise) tucked away in one or another corner of your mouth, awaiting its chance for escape. There-- that's the last one: no, there's another one!

So I guess maybe the only way to fully enjoy akebi is to be a monkey...

WILD BREAKFAST

This morning on our usual mountainside walk we came across a yellow-leafed niche of mukago, which surprised us because this seems to be a bad year for them - I guess we found the mother lode. We picked a good handful to have with lunch.

A kilometer or so later we came across a couple of very heavily bearing wild kaki (persimmon) trees of the kind whose fruit, being small and very sweet, is usually dried for winter eating; so since these were wild and there was clearly too much for the birds and the monkeys before it all spoiled, and being myself of ancient simian lineage I just stood beneath that golden cascade of heavy-bent branches and plucked and began eating the ones at the summit of ripeness, golden orbs that were almost translucent, like the kaki in that famous old painting Six Persimmons by Mu Ch’i (above), as though a light were shining from within them…

Eating those persimmons beneath their tree, surrounded by its pendant branches, was like eating the way you eat in a dream, the way you do anything wonderful in a dream, your being filled to the breath with every reach of the experience, in this case the taste and texture and sweetness and lifeglow of a wild persimmon just plucked from its tree, its orange parchment skin peeled away to reveal amber flesh like solidified honey, and as I was ecstasizing over the savor of each bite, Echo found some ripe akebi just hanging there on their vine in the forest shadows, voluptuously open, revealing their pale white fruit ready to eat and so we dined al fresco the rest of the way on handfuls of fruit, our mouths reveling, when we found the last of the blueberries, swollen to their essence... what a magical breakfast, and all on nature's tab...

KING OF THE VICINITY

This afternoon, while taking a break from my daily gymnastics of painting under the back eaves of the house, where for some sections I have to be eight feet tall and other sections two feet tall, I took the time to enjoy my natural height by gussying up the happenstance hedge that borders the road (some of the plants (kinmokusei, azalea, tsubaki) were put there by the land's previous owner, some I added (blueberry, biwa, natsume) where something was needed, some are opportunistic (sansho, nanten)), and found that since my last check a horde of vines had infiltrated from the wild and were climbing up the sunny slopes of my hedge, casting its sun-hungry leaves in shadow!

I immediately took appropriate gardener's umbrage and began pulling the usurpers down, clipping them here and there to do so, and in the midst of the broad tangle discovered a very nice growth of young akebi vine (superior for alternative medicaments, baskets, natural rope and other crafty items), so began to take more care with what I was doing, clipping every couple of meters, and as I went along I began to resemble a fluffy pile of bright leaves with a head sticking out, so I discarded the nefarious vines (my call, admittedly based largely on what I do NOT know) and separated out the 3-meter lengths of akebi.

Rather than just leave them piled somewhere where I'd forget them, or coil them up and maybe spoil their utility by 'setting' the curve, I draped the akebi vines over my shoulders (so I could later hang them at full length under the eaves) and continued with my task, adding more and more akebi as I cleared up the hedge.

Thus it happened that I trailed a long train of imperially verdant robes when, as Monarch of the Immediate Vicinity, I concluded my visit and regally ascended the stone stairway into the royal garden, through which I passed in stately procession to a breezy fanfare and a largesse of leaves, with oak and cherry, peach and chestnut in careful attendance; thence I retired to tea in the palace, after carefully hanging my long emerald robes under the eaves, freshly painted not moments ago by the king himself.