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.

Holiday, Schmoliday

Science has informed us officially, just in time for Christmas, that sometime in the next few hours or later the universe will collapse and everyone will die. That's the tabloid version. In hypothetical reality, everything in the universe will become heavier than it is now, as already evidenced in the tons of fad diets that are as everywhere as articles on cellulite, to say nothing of what we personally are actually seeing even now at our very waistlines.

To be more hypothetically specific, and to give you all a heads-up on this, everything in the universe will become billions and billions of times heavier than it is now (so there's really no point in letting out those pants) and everything will be compressed into superheavy and superhot balls (as presciently sung of by Jerry Lee Lewis, back in the fifties) that roll around heaven all day, and the universe will cease to exist-- at least in the form familiar to our world. Which, if you look at what we're doing to the place, may not turn out to be all that much of a change. 

Those scientists' humongous guesses may be just as right as the next guy's, but the labcoat denizens seem to have no sense of propriety as to this actual moment in the time and space continuum. 

At least they could have waited until after the holidays.

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

In Japan, December 25 is pretty much like February 26: a date of no particular importance to everyone in the world at the same time. Everybody in Japan goes to work and so forth; same as always, in the office where there is no eggnog. Of course just about everybody in the country knows that the 25th is "Christmas," that western religious holiday that's supergreat for department stores, parties and gift giving; for bakeries too, with all the Christmas cakes.

Which can't really be all that humbuggy, can it, but there's none of what I remember from my childhood as "Christmas spirit," the uplift of Christmas carols, ribbon candy, holiday spices, evergreen scents, jingling bells, Santas everywhere that look like Santa-- I saw a skinny Santa on a motorbike the other day, heading for work somewhere north of here, hat on his helmet, obeying the law-- had sneakers on too, no respect for a tradition from elsewhere-- as is naturally pretty much the case for alien traditions everywhere in the world.

Fact is, there aren't any religious holidays in Japan; maybe the closest is the birthday of the current Emperor, whose father used to be a god; it falls tantalizingly on December 23 and is, yes, a holiday, but everybody's back in the office on the 25th, a date that tends to lose importance after you've been here a few years, when like everybody else you're looking forward to the awesome New Year holidays, one of the two major chunks of time off in this country, that if played right can be stretched to last a week or more.

The Japanese don't have national holidays like Columbus Day, Christmas, Independence Day, Martin Luther King Day or Washington's birthday, either, having had no discoverers, saviors, founders, profound activists or iconic politicians. They tend to have more practical holidays, like Respect-for-the-Aged Day, Greenery Day, Coming-of-Age Day, Vernal Equinox Day, Children's Day, Marine Day (for the oceans), Health and Sports Day, Autumnal Equinox Day, Culture Day and such like, with a couple of Emperor's birthdays thrown in, one to honor the era of the previous emperor and the one aforementioned for the current Emperor. Apart from the imperial aspects, I think it's a good combination for national focus on worthy subjects.

Many of these holidays however are shifted to the nearest Monday, much to my lament-- not because of the base falsehood that I enjoy being in offices on Mondays, or even because in fact I abhor spending Mondays (and most other days) in offices, but because I do NOT work on Mondays anyway, and so cannot get them off. I know that sounds paradoxically Scroogy, when in fact I'm perceptibly sweet not very much of the time, but there's just no Christmas spirit around here, except for some jingly, snowy, evergreen memories...

And no, I didn't say Humbug.

HAPPY HOLINESS

To celebrate the holiday season and the visiting grandies, we decorated the tree by the stone stairs with all sorts of ornamentations that made a bright celebration out the big window. Yesterday, the festive days being over, while I was out working in the garden Echo began to take the decorations down. She removed them to the extent she could reach and asked me to take down the rest before I came in for lunch.

So just before the grandies arrived to share our noonday meal, as I was taking down the long festoons of gold, red, blue and silver beads and twinkly strings of all sorts, I had to put them someplace safe for the moment, so I just looped the red fuzzy strings and the blue and green twinkly frillies around my neck; then there were the ornaments, which were too big and many to hold-- not into the pockets of course, or down on the stone steps, so I hung them on their loops from my shirt front and pocket buttons, and kept on looping the bright other strands over my shoulders, so by the time the grandies arrived and I headed up the stone stairs with gold, blue, silver and red garlands of sparkle and frilly twinkles high around my neck, over my head and down over my shoulders, loopy festoons of bright beads of all colors reaching to my knees, big round shiny ornaments in both hands and dangling from all the buttons of my shirt, I had come to embody the holiday spirit itself, and as I made my necessarily stately holiday way up the stone steps and into the house there wasn't an icicle of humbug anywhere, so as I opened the door it was impossible to hold back even one of the loud "HO-HO-HOs" that suddenly emerged from that ancient place we all know in the spirit. That's what holidays are for: to bring out the happy holiness in us, each and every one.

As it is in delighted children.

WRAP YOUR GIFTS IN RECYCLABLE FUROSHIKI!

RecycleNow

The furoshiki is a gift in itself...

WITH HITCHCOCK AND DALI IN A DiCHIRICO

This morning, Echo being gone upnation for a few days to visit her folks, I woke as usual at around 5:30 and, this being a workday, got up to get ready to go to work.

With my eye on the minute hand as usual on workday mornings, I had some breakfast, shaved, dressed, did some time on the computer, packed my rucksack-- only 5 minutes' leeway, better get out there and wipe the dew off the motorcycle seat, let it rev a bit--

Did so, freewheeled down the mountain to the station, locked the bike, got out my ticket thinking it was odd there were so few bikes, cars and people here this morning, remembered (again) that school is out for the summer now, so no kids on the early trains...

Then I went through the unmanned early morning wicket, but that strange feeling followed me: there was no one ahead of me or behind me, there are always at least a few other commuters at 5-10 minutes before the 7:27 arrives, but today there was no one. Was this a holiday? It was eerie, I felt like I was in one of those paintings by DiChirico.

When I'd passed through the high archway into dimness, walked alone between the tall pale columns and climbed the silent empty stairs to the platform there was no one there either, maybe this was a real life Twilight Zone and I was the last commuter left in the world, casting a long morning shadow on a still canvas...

Was it all really this much of an illusion? What was going on? Did I have to commute today at all? Was this a holiday I'd been unaware of? That could happen, even though there are so few holidays anymore that don't fall on Monday, one of my days off... But even on a holiday (maybe even moreso than on a workday) there are train travelers... Japan doesn't have daylight savings time, so... And where are the trains that usually come by while I wait? Did they change the schedule? This WAS the right time; my watch says... HUH? 6:15??? What the...

In serving as a living metaphor for elastic time, while watching the minute hand I had overlooked the hour hand. As a result, minute by minute I had warped my sense of whenness, all unbeknownst to the attentive individual I usually am, until I'd fully psyched the poor guy out of quiet moments and into a blind rush: I had lost an entire hour in my own head, on my own time!

Having lived ahead for nearly an hour, then been instantaneously retroclocked for the same duration, the resulting mental confusion was interesting. I had been as convinced about those moments in which I'd been living as one is always convinced, at the deepest levels of the psyche, about every moment; it wasn't one of those slipshod things where you mistake the date and 'lose a day'; that's much more clunky and less traumatic than losing a self-created hour, which is more personal and immediate: should I go back home, should I just stay here and wait for an hour, maybe go somewhere and have a coffee, or should I just catch the next train that comes in, it was one of those Hitchcock vertigo vortexes in a Dali painting with my watch melting and me just a shadow casting a shadow, scratching my head while gazing ahead into what I'd thought was now.

I guess it's better I was alone…