THE BIG PICTURE

So there I was back at home this evening following a longlabor afternoon of sectioning oak logs (ones I'd felled on Wednesday with H-san), to get branches and upper trunk segments of the right size for my next batch of shiitake logs, the rest to go for firewood. Got home worn out, unloaded the shiitake logs from the car and stacked them on the stones of the porch, not on the ground, so they don't get alienly inoculated by wild soil spores while I wait for the jumbo shiitake spore to come on the seasonal market.

Then because it's going to rain heavily tomorrow, I covered the treeshrugged firewood I wrote about earlier (no time for restacking today, busy morning, Echo off up north this AM to visit family) and did some other essential dayend stuff till everything was done, after which I shuffled tiredly up to the deck to go into the house and have some tea, chill out before dinner, when I realized I had to go around to the front-- I'd locked the house before I went out, and had only the front door key.

As I was plodding tiredly back across the deck and down the stairs, grumping in the base human way about the camel-straw troubles I have to go through, my motorcycle (parked by the corner of the deck) rose up in my field of vision and I realized I had to cover that too-- that was why I hadn't gone full-wittedly straight to the front of the house: I wouldn't have seen the uncovered motorcycle!

I knew this from the dialog that was echoing in my head: clearly a little godplay had gone on in wherever heaven is, an elder god saying to what sounded like a teenage apprentice deity:
"Brady forgot to cover his motorcycle again; make him absentmindedly go up on the deck and try to get into house that way so he'll have to come around the other way and see his motorcyle; then he can cover it before dark so it won't get rained on," and the teenager said:
"Me? Why me? Why do I get all the nothing jobs?"
"Because if you want to become a full-fledged god you'll do what you're told, that's why! If you don't, you'll wind up human again; is that what you want?"
"No, no, ok, I'll do it. Sorry, I-- I don't know what came over me."

Thus it was that I did what I did and was now ungrumped. I was made to cover my motorcycle cause it's gonna rain hard tomorrow, and the gods didn't want me to forget. So as I went around to the front door with everything now done, I sent some waves of thankthought heavenward so as to maybe ungrump that teenager, told her to hang in there. It helps to see the big picture.

THE GOD IN THE GARAGE

Down in the village on one of the corners across from our little train station is a small iron workshop, where I've noticed over the years that they fashion I-beams, T-beams and other made-to-order structural components, such as the one-off protective metal structure we had built to put around our woodstove where it fits into the wide space between the cedar logs that frame the pointy front to the house.

The workshop has stacks of steel plate in the workyard, men inside are often welding and abrading, emitting showers of sparks, stacking metal beams outside. Hard, practical work. But I didn't know they did more than that, that they had a more delicate, even spiritual side to their business.

Until last night, that is, when I was zoning home from the station in the dark on my motorcycle and turned that corner, where I saw that the door to the workshop-cum-garage was open, with the car parked in the drive; the interior high work light was on, as a sort of backlight, and there was no one around, in the shop or on the street. I looked in as I passed and had to stop to look some more.

The car was parked outside in the drive because there was no room in the garage. There was no room in the garage because all the available floor space was taken up by a fierce looking, three-meter tall guardian deity (kongo-rishiki: gate guardian) in unfinished bronze, one muscular arm raised to a fist in readiness for the battle with evil, the other arm down at an angle, stretched out taut in anticipation of a dirty move, the jaw shouting the silence that evil knows well; fangs were bared in a godly grimace, eyes glaring, brow knotted, legs rippling for action: there was a god in the garage, towering above the doorway, casting a long shadow over the car and into the street, the glaring eyes checking me out since I was the only one around. It was a spiritual experience to suddenly behold a life-sized deity in the neighborhood.

They hadn't cast the statue there, that's a big, fiery and hazardous operation likely done somewhere else, but the work had been brought here for removal of casting flashes and finishing work, the big god later to serve as a guardian deity for a wealthy new temple somewhere else, but for now he was fiercely guarding the garage and the village around. After a careful examination he let me pass, since I'm on his side. If only we could get one of these guys into politics.

I'll bet everyone in the village slept better last night, whether they knew why or not.