WE ALL CAME FROM THE COUNTRY

I grew up in a city, under crowded circumstances, but when you're young everything is food of a kind. When I grew old enough to develop a natural taste of my own for a place that would feed my older soul, the country was where I found it.

Whenever I make the trip into the city from the country I feel a loss, I miss the sky, I miss the quiet, the space, the breath of trees, the way nature arranges things, she has good hands. I miss her native friendliness, her infinite language, her random acts of beauty.

In my youngest youth I’d always sensed what I later realized: that the big city was where we still yearn for the Eden that pulls at the tides of our hearts, that city folk use for picnics and vacations, summer homes when they can get them; but that knowledge did nothing to ease the feeling of being away. I couldn't wait to get home.

Now when I return home, the closer I get the quieter the air becomes, the calmer the people and the closer we are to the heartbeat of the earth, source of our destiny among the stars.

We all came from the country.

THE COUNTRY SIDE OF LIFE

When you move from the city into the country, a considerable number of municipally peripheral things suddenly come into your life in a big way, such as the moon and the stars. Also insects, trees and animals, not to mention the sky as a whole. As well general vegetation, and a welcome absence of the masses of concrete and asphalt and people that characterize city life, as do power and phone lines overhead.

The moon doesn't play much of a role in city life, except as a kind of urban add-on one sees occasionally that is played up in movies as an extravaganza backdrop, the moon coming up between the skyscrapers. City folks actually don't have all that much to do with the moon, let alone the stars, except in a mythico-cinematico-derivativo kind of way, isn't it mystical, they say in the park, that smattering of artificial countryside city folks resort to in their free time to evoke their roots with a distant wistfulness, as in a museum where you can touch the artifacts. And the sky---in the city the sky is pretty much an artifact too, the less significant part of what metropolitans call the "skyline." Isn't it impressive they say. Well, yeah, I guess so, if you like artifacts in your eye.

Out in the country the sky stretches all the way from here to there (not the city "here and there"; such words resume their original meaning out in the country). And of course the country is where birds actually live, and enjoy themselves. By birds I don't mean panhandling pigeons, but self-supporting warblers, wheatears, grosbeaks, ducks, thrushes, egrets, pheasants, finches, redstarts, hawks, swallows, wagtails, owls, the list goes on. Real birds. Not merely the species or two that can tolerate exhaust fumes for a discernable life span, like the trees the city inserts along the avenues.

And insects---not cockroaches, which can live anywhere, the pigeons of the insect family---but genuine broad-spectrum insects, buzz and hum and crawl, all going about their ancient business in their traditional ways in holes and hills and hives or just plain on the ground (there's actual ground out in the country) to the chirpings and trillings of cricket and katydid as evening comes, and through the night, the fragrant night, and then at dawn vast webs are strung with beads of dew and hung with warbler notes in the pink sunrise from way down at the bottom of the sky.

Then in the spring and summer eves and morns the oratorio of the frogs of course, in their timeless worship of all things high and low, which worship, in all its many forms, goes on all the time in the country but is pretty much extinct in the city, and then there's the occasional snake draped over a branch in the sun like this was the garden of Eden or something, not to mention glimpses of ferret fox boar stag raccoon monkey bear, and there are actual fish in the waters, waters which by the way in the country you can drink without even once thinking of wet laundry.

And fireflies, of a summer night! Or a rainy summer night, when the underneaths of leaves are lit by thousands of tiny lanterns as the firefly party goes on despite the downpour. Rain, too, in the country is different from rain in the city, where it is a wet bothersome thing serving no natural function (except maybe to water the park), only an artificial one when in the summer it sometimes brings desperately needed relief to what city officials and I guess everybody by now calls heat island syndrome, which is when the sun and the city work together to form a kind of sidewalk inferno. And I probably don't need to point out the difference between a city summer night and a country summer night, nor dwell at length on the differences between the other seasons as experienced in these respective locales, but I will.

In the country summer the nights are cool, there is tree breath everywhere and you can breathe its perfume beneath a sky broadcast with all the diamonds of the universe for you, and you sleep better too, since you're so much more at home, because we all came from the country. And when autumn arrives, who can describe what is more beautiful than all the masterpieces of all the museums in the world put together? This is the very beauty painters chase to the grave. And this isn't just oils on canvas on walls in museums next to the park; this is the real thing, you can go out and walk right in it for hours, and there's no admission fee.

Then comes the country winter, with its majestic, sweeping calligraphies of snow just sitting there on silent show, gleaming with sunlight for days and weeks in tree- and stubble- and furrow- and grove-shaped whiteness-impeccable sculptures, and the blue-blue air is so big that the snow show is but a small part of it all, and not in the way, as it is in the city where pretty soon after snow falls and makes headlines it gets slushy and ugly or dangerously icy; country snow, soft and plush, is by contrast a big down comforter mother nature always throws over the countryside about this time, and whereas in the city the snow merely treacherizes pedestrians and vehicularians, and taxes the sewage system with often excessive volumes of what is called "runoff," in the country snow has actual natural functions, among others of insulating the soil from the chill of late winter and watering it in spring the way spring is in the country, for in the country spring is exactly where it belongs, its green songs up out of the ground swelling in time into chorales of wildflowers and all kinds of random demonstrations of the beauty nature can build if left on its own, the way it is out in the country.

FEET OUT IN THE RAIN

Out today into the wet, windy face of the lowering hurricane to get some water from the spring, stopped along the way at the country store for Echo to copy some documents on their old copier, and while I waited in the car all sealed up against the rocking wind and rolling rain I saw through my rain-jagged window an old farmer come out of the store with his purchase of a few packs of smokes, he must've been in his 80s, completely rain-garbed like farmers do when they harrow in the rain, but with his wife's shopping slippers on - men do that in Japan, put on whatever's handy in the genkan - and with a few weeks growth of beard, he shuffled along the storefront to the store ashtray, a smoke on his mind from the eager look of him, probably been out of cigs for a time, he slowly plumped himself right down onto the ground beneath the store eaves beside the ashtray, cracked a new pack of smokes, hung one between his lips and flamed it, took a big puff and breathed it away, relaxed back to the max, feet stuck out in the rain, wet slippers who cares, what the hell, rice is in the ground, everything's wet anyway except the cigarette, and that’s the thing right now, few pleasures remain at this age, during a hurricane...

Strange version of joy he was there in the blown rain, puffing away alone beneath the eaves, staring out into the storm, chillin' to the brim, both feet into the downpour.

ALL NATURAL

If you look at it like the back of a cereal box, the countryside is all natural, contains no trans fat, filler, artificial color, flavor or preservatives, is high in fiber and fully organic. A shocking difference compared to the urban cereal box.

In fact we don't really use those concepts out here; the words sound kind of funny in these surrounds, as we idle here in the shade of a thousand-year-old tree on the edge of a mountain glade listening to the stream's part of the conversation and thinking: high fiber? Bizarre. Trans fat-- what for? Triglycerides? Get out.

Even the house we live in is organic and high fiber, comprising mostly wood, and low in saturated fats. The only sugar we have is in the strawberries from the garden, the cherries, persimmons, apples, tangerines, wild grapes, raspberries and blueberries (all made with real fruit, btw, with no artificial colors or flavors; hard to believe in this day and age). It's a long list, all the stuff that grows out here (you just pick them off the plants), as compared to urbanity, which has no such list, but where cliffsides of cans, bottles, boxes and bags say the contents are made using, for example, "real fruit," which logically must mean something other than real fruit, since that would be called Fruit. Is there another kind? How did we get here? If this keeps up, we won't even be able to trust Wall Street.

Basically there's no need for those bizarre concepts out here, because out here we get the real deal. So no, there's no trans fat in the mountain stream, and yes the forest is high in fiber, the wild animals are unsalted, the fish are fully organic (unlike some city streams), there's no fast life here necessitating dietary and fiber info on the backs of boxes and sides of cans, no fast food (whatdidIjusteat?), none of the autoimposed nutritional dangers so common in the unfortunately less countrified regions where fiber is rare, concrete is big, asphalt is a fave and "totally organic" - whatever that might mean in those regions - if you can afford it, you have to buy it in a special supermarket, for a Price, whereas it's pretty much free out in the country and right at hand, since this is where it actually grows-- in fact those free sansai are just coming up now, the fukinoto, the taranome, the warabi, the koshiabura, all salt-free by the way, with zero trans fat, high in fiber, 100% organic and money free too...

Now if you'll excuse us while we take a slow walk around the mountainside among the sunbeams and harvest some of those natural goodies, then sit under the old tree by the stream and savor our wealth, join the big conversation...

BUGS

In this slow part of winter, as we're waiting for the big hinge to turn, I thought I'd take advantage of the brief lull to ramble on a bit about the fact that those who live in the city have few such educational experiences, but if you live in or next to the woods you soon get to know all the resident bugs on a personal basis (any day now) because they all come to visit you at one time or another, bringing family and friends to introduce to every aspect of your house and garden (the bug family is a big one), hang around your lights and meals and get personal, quickly wearing out what little welcome they might have, except in a few instances, like ladybugs, lightning bugs, crickets and butterflies.

So in the country, bugs become pretty thoroughly intimate with their human counterparts. The city dweller, by contrast, when buzzed by a bug on a bus for example tends to cringe away, hands waving, because the creature is a complete stranger and intruder, whereas the country dweller in the city recognizes it, because it or its relative has been to his house before, and he relates accordingly.

For example, there's the hinged bug our cat caught once, that was fascinatingly iridescent down its beetly back, it seemed to be in three segments, maybe - including antennae - ten centimeters long, and that as far as I could tell rubbed the segment edges together to make a kind of intimidating hissing sound, which sure didn't intimidate the cat, but it probably works on other bugs, and it certainly worked on me, I wouldn't touch the thing, but if I meet its like on the subway at least we won't be unacquainted, whereas a city dweller being a complete stranger to such a creature might faint dead away (though bugs of this type tend to shun the city as unrewarding to their kind, which requires trees, genuine soil and relatives in ample numbers).

Bugs themselves keep no record of having met you; the social aspects all have to be taken care of on your side, so that a chance meeting isn't a total surprise (I never forget a face), as nearly all such occasions (excepting the cockroach et al.) are for the poor city dweller, who after all coined the verb 'to bug'.

Now back to prepping for the big hinge.

STONE SMILES

Here I am stonewalling again, building a dry stone wall - or rather, in this case, rebuilding a dry stone wall - for the first time in about 15 years. The wall was hastily built by the city fellow I was 15 years ago, so it didn't last well. A well-built stone wall should be able to last at least a thousand years, a duration more familiar to me now. I'm rebuilding the wall as the retaining wall for a new kitchen herb garden we're starting; we've outgrown the older small one.

It gets infectious, once you start building a stone wall, after you've learned how. It's like a puzzle, with all the pieces secretly scattered all over the place, and maybe elsewhere too. You keep your eyes peeled wherever you go, you develop an eye for rocks. Mainly, though, I'm dipping into the stony equity I've built up in one corner of our property, treasures I've dug up in getting the land to say vegetables and flowers instead of who the hell are you?

My stones are not the nambypamby perfectly lapidary sedimentary kind laid down gently by quiet valley streams over eons, that split and stack like Lego; mine were formed in primordial fires and planetary upheavals long before there was any need whatever for stone walls, so they are stubbornly hard and shaped the way they damn well want to be shaped, which makes my big wall puzzle interesting. Sometimes it takes hours, even days, of looking out of one eye while doing something practical, to find just the right stone (or close enough) for the uniquely shaped space available in the rising wall. I've got the first course of of big stones down and tilted just so, and am starting on the second course, which is when it begins to get tricky because from now on I've got to cover the seams, or at least not extend them straight up and down.

The big trick is to be as patient as the stones themselves, to think and act in rocktime, which was an unknown factor for me when I first came here from the city, where everything was right now and on schedule. I wanted my stone wall now too, so I got a city kind of wall. It didn't last long, due to a few other factors that must be considered in metamorphic stone wall building, such as rain, ice and the earth. Humantime hurry, apart from resulting in a wobbly wall, will also pinch your fingers and toes all the way down the line, to say nothing of what it does to your back.

But it's a pleasure learning to go and then going at a stone's pace, scanning all the stone faces for the one that smiles at you with the very shape of that gap you have in mind.

THE MONSTER OF PURE LAND MOUNTAIN

You hear them now and then up here, the footsteps coming toward you out of the forest... Let me move this lantern a bit closer--

As I was digging up some dinner potatoes in that countryside silence I was just talking about - it was getting quieter by the minute as the wind died down - I thought I heard what sounded like a large footstep on dry leaves-- then, after a long pause, another footstep; I turned my gaze from the dark depths of the soil and peered around through the darkening air, but there was nothing moving anywhere. I must be imagining things.

Country monsters are like that. They have to leave more to the imagination, there's so much more ground they have to cover to do their jobs. So they're more psychological than city monsters: a rustle here, a footprint there, some long golden hairs there, a legend over the mountain, a blurry photo, a yowl in the night-- pushing those secret buttons we all have.

Most of the big-time monsters - the famous ones like King Kong, Godzilla, Mothra and those guys - that get starring roles in movies and become international icons of monstrosity, are city monsters. Because of their size they need a lot of manipulable artifacts to keep them busy, which they can get in the big cities, with the tall buildings, elevated trains, power stations and so forth, so you couldn't get more obvious than they do in going about their business. They like the city because that's where all the people and peoplestuff is, all the goodies worth destroying, that city monsters can step on, crunch up and rampage though, throw around and roar at.

Roars and hugeness work well in the city, because they're right at home. Hugeness gets small pretty quick in the country though, where there's not much added value to destroy, and mountains plus other major largenesses can make King Kong et al. look embarrassingly toylike. Roars don't really work out here either; the natural silence just soaks them up like a sponge, with no concrete smotherage around for reverberation. As a result of their necessarily repetitive urban habits, you can read city monsters like a book. They're so predictable; no need or desire for subtlety. You want subtlety in a monster, you gotta go to the country.

The countryside calls for subtlety in terms of the frisson because, although fear is cheap in the city, it's rare and imaginative in the country, which is is the home of genuine silence, universal hugeness and mythical darkness, so country monsters don't need to be so pushy and destructive to make their point; they go for the mythos, like Kappa and Sasquatch. Frankenstein was a country boy too. City monsters are as obvious as Broadway and go directly for the PR aspect, whereas country monsters by and large prefer to remain unseen, aim for the shivery subtlety, like big footprints, Kappa rumors, crop circles and so on, a lot of nice stuff that smiley country folks can sell to smiley city folks from roadside stands along with the summer corn. Favorite old folk tales, like the headless horseman, always come from the country.

Country monsters don't need the crude oversized gargantuan approach, the bulk rampages and random devastation; all they require is a sliver of moon, a hooting owl, a rustle of wind or could be a fox through dry leaves, maybe the creak of a door, a fluttering curtain, footsteps on an old wooden floor, or just some innocent out digging up a few potatoes on a darkling afternoon in March after the wind's died down to the silence at the bottom of the mind - Stephen King lives in the country, you know - and the darkness is reaching the point that's perfect for footsteps approaching from the upmountain forest when the waning light plays tricks on the eyes - Edgar Allan Poe had a house in the country also, as perhaps you were aware - out in the country there's a different shiver system. The result is Bigfoot, Nessie, Yeti, goblins, the Honey Island Swamp Monster, Kappa, they've never even been seen, but we have a good idea what they look like, and they're there alright, usually just behind us, rustling leaves out in the dark, just beyond the mind's reach. Like now...

After staring carefully into the forest for a while I returned to digging and before too long I'd swear I heard it again, another footstep... it was coming from behind me, as country monsters do, and it was getting closer-- I must be imagining things, there was nothing there! Back to digging, found a nice potato and--there it was, from right over there behind the old cedar! I saw some leaves shoot out from behind the big trunk as the creature slid to a hiding stop-- then silence, complete country stillness... Whatever was hiding there knew I had seen it, there are bears around here you know, and wild pigs and stags, snakes too-- it was now or never: I knew I'd been right - I got a good grip on my pitchfork - there and then it made its move, showed itself at last as it moved relentlessly toward me, leaves flying this way and that: it was... it was... The Monster of Pure Land Mountain...

THE CITY AND THE BRAIN

In this eclectically growing scroll of electrons I am often diatribing about the city/country schizodichotomy, in an admittedly subjective, tongue-in-cheek kind of way, based on personal experience and predilection, but it seems there is a scientific basis to my fugues after all...

"Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so."

"The subjects were then run through a battery of psychological tests. People who had walked through the city were in a worse mood and scored significantly lower on a test of attention and working memory, which involved repeating a series of numbers backwards. In fact, just glancing at a photograph of urban scenes led to measurable impairments, at least when compared with pictures of nature."

Tell me about it...

TRUE DESTINATIONS

Some folks still think of life in the old-fashioned way, as a river flowing to a majestic sea, or as a long open highway leading to a wondrous destination, and either metaphor can still capture in a sort of word-amber what is becoming an increasingly packaged process. I can't help it; even though I don't commute much anymore, I still tend to get systematic.

I realize now that back in my commuter days, after commuting for only a short while I subconsciously began to view life, modern life, modern urban life, ok, my modern urban life, as more like a loop line. There was something manically repetitive about it, something worryingly cookiecutteresque, and every day I felt more and more like a cookie but it wasn't my recipe.

There was an unfamiliar aroma to my future, an artificial flavor I couldn't help sensing when I crowded onto the line and began my daily loop, soon falling asleep from the carbon dioxide level and waking up to look out the window only for the name of the station to see if this was where I was supposed to go, it was only a name I was supposed to go to, could have been any name on the line, depended on where the corporation was.

For a while it was one name, then I changed offices and it was a different name, there was something accumulatively deweydecimal about it, a catalog of places into which I was filing my numbered days, all linked by a macrocosmic infrastructure that took me where I had to be and then took me home again, whichever way I went.

It can take a lifetime to leave the loop line, if you ever get to want to. Lives lived in a standard place (however eclectic) at a standard pace (however frenetic) acquire a virtual quality, the buildup of habit and pattern and repetition forming layer upon layer of time after time slipping by, chronically laminating over the actual life until it resembles a sculpture standing on a platform waiting for a streetcar.

Time isn't as big as we think. Fortunately I didn't set out on this career thing until rather late in life, so I only commuted for a comparatively brief while until I departed for the countryside and the joys of actual solitude, part of which joy is talking aloud to yourself, finding out what kind of a conversationalist you really are, confronting the vast secrets to which you carry the keys. It can only happen off the loop line, where you wake into a morning like when you were born, and go out into the fresh new world with true destinations in your eyes.

(Mostly as published in Kyoto Journal #49)