I SHOT AN ARROW INTO THE AIR 

                                                                              (fm journal archives)

I shot an arrow into the air, it would be falling to earth sometime later I didn’t have a clue where, since it was a 60-pound-pull recurved bow and I (like the several friends who were there that day) was an invincible 16 years of age, so launched the arrow with all my strength straight up into the gusty autumn day, where the dot disappeared at about 250 feet over a cow-empty pasture-- and who at that age could have foreseen the fact, let alone cared, that an arrow can suddenly be gone up there like that, somewhere high over several heads? WOW!

     Now this was life, this was adventure-- until the realization that the pointed killmissile would in a few seconds be coming down somewhere of which we were all integral parts. I had been tested by the world before and I had survived, but this was different: I had no decisive role to play here, as I’d had with the sudden effortless grab of a high tree limb, the lightning flick of a steering wheel or a quick reflexive grip on a bridge girder. Those of us out there under that lethal umbrella of arrow that would be landing any second were now all in the same pasture, over which we were running like mad in every direction, because where the hell to?

     The wisdom of foresight belongs to those who survive, as teenagers often do for one reason or another; at the time, on the scene, none of us had any spatial or directional preference, really, because by this late moment before imminent death from above, “where” had no more meaning than “when”; even an Olympian couldn’t run far and fast enough (300+ meters in 15 seconds, at a retroguess) through deep grass dotted with slickery cowpats.

    What’s more, we had no idea where the overhead streaking microdot of death - were it even visible - would land; anywhere was the answer: any point you are running toward was where: how the hell could you know? That was god’s department. 

     But you’ve got to do something, it’s just not teenagerly possible to stand there awaiting the descent of death with so much space around, instinct insisting you at least make it hard for death to find you, plus you feel it even more if you just stand there, with time to imagine the high-speed metal tip penetrating its fated target, but you have no steel umbrella or tank lid, so running for your life is the best bet and at that age you do run well, so at least during those precious seconds remaining before skydeath you run zigzag in all directions, as away from all fears...

     What a condensed life metaphor it is in retrospect, an invisible arrow now descending as fast as it shot off on its arc, while we all live on until. It was life or death right then and there for me and Mick, Jackie, Teddy, George, Paul, Marty, maybe Charlie and a couple other guys but we all survived, at least that day; we must’ve learned something from it, to use as we went on to disappear into our own skies...  

     But then, after so many tingly seconds had passed and we were all still alive and unhurt: Where’s the arrow, let’s do it again!   

     When you reach elder, you get to wonder how you made it this far...

GLORY DAYS

Haven't seen a monkey around these parts for months now; much of the time it's almost as though the thieves have slipped my mind, but I guess the planter part of me is always on watch, because the other morning when I was behind the house selecting a net to put over the new lettuce that one of the crows had developed a taste for, I glanced out back with an instinctual feeling and saw an elderly female monkey limping up the road alone (not a screech for miles around, so she wasn't a scout; anyway, scouts don't limp). She stopped a moment to gaze into my early garden, where, thanks to careful planning, nothing was growing that monkeys like.

She stayed hunkered there in the road, resting and engaging in some form of monkey contemplation, then began limping off toward the property across the way, where the pickings were even slimmer-- zero, to be precise. Looked like she had a bad hip, maybe age, like me; maybe sciatica like me. Her many kids were all gone off on their own; she too was an empty nester. As to the whereabouts of all her former 'husbands,' Who the hell knows? she'd likely respond, if anyone cared enough to ask.

As she hobbled away, she paused and turned to look back at my garden once more, and it seemed to someplace in my heart that she was feeling a monkey version of nostalgia, perhaps wistfully recalling all the fine dining she used to enjoy in her golden years as a wandering young mountain beauty in one of the elite troupes that patronized my establishment in those days. 

The longer she gazed, the more she seemed to be wondering what had happened to all those yesterdays-- so far gone, yet so immediate, for the past has its own gravity-- in her case, of savory summer days with their tender onions and crisp cucumbers, their crunchy potatoes and other monkey delicacies I used to have on the menu at my Fresh Organic Simian Cuisine Emporium, where every ape who was anybody used to hang out with wild abandon in the golden light that lit the skies when she was a girl... 

Was she visiting once more the dining palace of her memories that she had come all this way alone to behold before she-- not retired, but maybe there's an Old Monkeys' Tree somewhere that they go to, way up in the woods there. I've never seen such a place, but as any animal expert will tell you, there's an infinity of things we do not know about monkeys, which I can back up with 20 years of personal experience.

As we stood there looking at each other for a powerful moment, there was no way I could tell her that things had changed because of monkeys like her, that now I only grow stuff that the beasts won't touch, though "beasts" may be politically incorrect these days, I don't know; humans are getting pretty fussy about the old ways, and are whipping up respect for everybody, but anyway, given the nature of the moment I felt I had to be nice and didn't think more than once about throwing a rock, even though respect is something monkeys couldn't care less about - it's always been a power thing with them: You do this or I bite you - and though she appeared to be leaving all that behind as she entered elderhood, you can never be sure; the future, too, has its own gravity... 

Then she turned away and we both limped off into the rest of our lives.

Slingshot

Speaking of RPGs and how viral they are, working their way into our collective DNA somehow, as childhood seems to become narrower, more circumscribed, less broadly dimensional-- Kaya, Mitsuki and Miasa do have their own little video gameplayers that they indulge in now and then in evenings or on rainy days (little kids running through meadows of lollipop flowers, gumdrop orchards with cute little animals), but while they’re at our house we keep them going in the physical world, handling tools and tasks, rocks and dirt, trees and fire, so they get a  good actual workout. Their bodies by now are straight and strong, growing like the thoroughbreds they are, their lives a blend of the actual and genuine imagination.

Got me thinking, though, that when I was a boy way back just after WWII (!) when 'virtual' was still but a rare and narrowly used adjective, the year-round hands-on toy was a slingshot. At least for the boys. Not for girls. Never saw a girl with a slingshot. Here in Japan, I’ve never seen any kid at all with a slingshot-- until the other day, that is.

The trio and I were working outside clearing brush and moving stones when I sensed Kaya walking along behind me in an odd distraction, staring closely at an oddly forked, wispy twig fragment with some rubber bands knotted here and there around it: it looked distantly like... like... I asked her what it was and she said that she was making a slingshot.

She had no idea that she was speaking to the upstate NY Tri-City Slingshot King, who reigned during the latter 40s and early 50s, when bicycle inner tubes were still made of actual rubber and could sling a marble right out of sight. My ever-ready weapon of increasing strength got me in some neat instances of trouble. I could put a marble through a car window at 50 yards-- not that I ever did, mind you, at all, ever, other than out of curiosity. By and large I was a defender of the downtrodden, apart from the occasional irresistible perfectly popping street light... it was a kid version of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, on a more civilized miniscale.

I remember being taught how to make slingshots by a mysterious elder slingshot master from the previous century (i.e., the 1800s) (!), who lives in my memory the DaVinci of slingshots-- not a relative, nor an acquaintance, don’t remember where, a neighbor of a cousin, maybe, but he knew his stuff, possessed sling lore dating back to when kids used their slings to get food for the table. He took the time to show me, went into mystic detail on how to make the finest slingshot: from when to find the perfect hardwood tree fork - oak is good, hickory, maple, cherry is good, too, if weight is a concern - to using natural rubber, found only in bike tire tubes (not car tire tubes) or big rubber bands, along with string and leather, cutting grooves into the fork wood to keep the rubber straps from slipping, and so for years I made my own slings, using old shoe tongues for the leather patch...

I realized that I had never seen a kid in Japan with a handmade slingshot, not in 40 years, and I would have noticed. Hadn't really thought about it to any depth all these years, but never ever have I seen a girl anywhere in the world with a slingshot, and here in Japan was my preteen granddaughter trying on her own to craft a slingshot for herself! I asked her where she'd gotten the idea but she didn't have an explanation, she'd just thought of it out of the blue. What the...? I had no idea slingshots involved DNA.

So what could I do at such a momentous moment but show her how to make a slingshot? We looked for and cut a good-looking cherry fork, I looped together some doubled rubber bands for the sling, cut a leather patch from the back of an old holey work glove I'd been saving for no logical reason, the old DNA being ever vigilant as to imminent slingshot possibilities...

Then when they twins saw the results, they each had to have one, so I got busy passing the lore on down the ages as it has always been passed down, and with the oaks just then shedding acorns all around there, the trio could get pocketfuls of excellent ammo and before going home they were even out in the dark, wearing headlamps, gathering acorns from atop the moss, filling their bags with great shot.

Miasa, the shy twin, had earlier put an acorn in her sling and took her very first shot, up into the sky toward the crown of our tallest cedar tree and launched that acorn right over the top! She was amazed, thrilled and proud at what she herself had done.

What actual joy in their eyes at such an occurrence in the real world, at their own hands! As opposed to the thumby joys in a gameplayer, hunched over, staring absent into dimensionlessness, young lives at a time...

I muse now over the possible viral effects of introducing a trio of uniquely empowered young females into the Japanese culture. One effect that the slingshot girls enjoyed realizing is that now they’re planting oak trees all over the countryside.

A Cure You Can't Refuse

As you get ever elder and a bit more solitary, ever more fixed on the path toward perfection of your fine-tuned ways, grandkids are an excellent cure. 

With no effort at all they get you out of what you didn't even know was becoming a rut, lift you back to the surface of the Big Road you've always been on - the road you now and then dare to call your own - and when you're back up at your natural perspective, with all those natural wide-ranging prospects arrayed before you and those naturally broad horizons beckoning, your eyes return to seeing what they have grown to see, your ears to hearing full scale; your nose sampling the air for even more reality, your feet stirring with the old stride, where did I put my highway shoes, and before you know it you're on the road again, at least in your head; but plans are simmerin' in there, are they not, had a fire goin' all along, you sly dog... 

But for now you just stand there, new in a new way, savoring the true surface, source of all directions...

Grandkids are great.

TRYING TO SEE

This morning was way over its head in the Spring mist, which is great because when you're moving about in a cool blanket of vapor you have to try and see farther, which would be better to do all the time, but being human we are often too deeply involved with shallow concerns...

Still, it’s always welcome to be challenged by a physical mist, as opposed to mists psychogenic, mediagenic, politicogenic etc., so there I was whiling my time on the train platform, peering at the mountains, trying for the summits, here and there on their faint green slopes a bright cherry or tulip tree exulting despite the curtain of haze; then I turned the other way and looked out over the Lake, the mythic lake, where dragons and silver live in the shimmers, the water surface that morning just disappearing not far into the mist, no one knows how far precisely, all silvergrey and cool, that dull bright disc up there making it all squinty if I looked too high so I looked low and saw that Lakeside rice paddy preparations are well under way, here in the lowlands-- some are even tilled and ready for the planting, their green shoulders smooth as velvet...

Then I heard what sounded like the whine of a weed whacker down there somewhere; I looked to see, and right about where the sound seemed to come from I noticed on the high shoulder of a deep paddy an obachan's (grandma's) walker cart (the commercial euphemism is "Silver Car," but I suspect the obachan underground has its own name for these wheels-- (obaguruma?)) standing there as out of place as can be: what semi-ambulatory grandma would walk her wheels way out there into the weedy unpaved, heavy labor workplace?

Nowadays, all the Japan ladies of a certain age, bent by the tribulations and deprivations of living and childbearing through and after the war, use these wheeled carts to lean on when they amble about the country ways or go shopping at the village stores, and to sit on when they need a rest. Odd to see one of those carts sitting out there...

The grandmas do take part in the work at harvest time, when they can be very useful with their decades of know-how and their long practice at focused energy, but now it’s all muscle time, so what can they do at this point-- and where is that weed whacker noise coming from? 

It was coming from around there... Then in the mist I saw the top of the head of someone above the paddy verge, just one person out there in the mist, working on a bit of a slope that hid whoever it was, the head moved upward, the shoulder was swinging - a weed whacker - then a bit more and it was indeed an elder lady, owner of that cart and bent of back... 

She must have brought that whacker all the way out there on her cart, started that gas-powered tool, bigger than she was, all by herself with a hefty pull or two or more, and was still swinging it back and forth, bent over as she moved up and along the paddy shoulder, working toward her walking cart, mowing down weeds, making way for rice. Those elderladies get more impressive every time I look.

Glad the mist made me try to see.

TERRITORY OF THE HEART

So then sometime down the time road there you are, going along as you always have, the way you went through youth, parenthood and age since you became an adult and had to begin making decisions of ever greater importance and complexity, all the way through study, travel, marriage, family, economy, kids leaving home--

And through it all, one big fallback has been the perspectives you gained from the words and examples of the elders met in your own life thus far; but in my case, it was only up to a point. For a while now, in terms of one aspect of life experience, I have been in no man’s land-- as solo as I can get, because I never had a father or a grandfather or any other who had resided in Japan, married into a Japanese family, had a son and a daughter, a daughter who also married into a Japanese family and had children.

It's hard to find the full foresight for this, so thus one day you run into the soft but impenetrable wall of the fact that as one-half of an international marriage and the singular chain of events that have led to this moment, you are an international grandparent, of grandkids who are more products of their native culture than their mother and way more so than I, and who completely speak another language than my mother tongue. With all the mystery that attends such a state. No Wikipedia entry for that. New territory of the heart...

Wondrous place.