PLACES OF CALM

From my morning perch before the beloved woodstove I take calm delight in the blizzard out there, all that blurry air roiling across the mountainside the way mountainsides make blizzards do, and wailing around the house the way houses make blizzards do.

Out in the deeps of the storm I observe that despite the wild roil, even the smaller birds now and then fly hellforleather through the blinding tempest in search of the odd seed or berry (bold red berries are a bright help in winter, as I see from the diminishing supply on our many nanten bushes around the house). And when, after winging across the white whirls of the open stretches, the flying featherbundles reach our tall hedge of evergreen kinmokusei trees they swoop beneath the lowest branches and swerve upward into the inner recesses as into cathedrals of calm, where they can sit and be out of the wind and the snow for a time, shiver off the rime, plan their next move across the maelstrom to wherever a stock of food might be, plot their next path through the storm.

After watching the first couple of birds do that this morning, I imagined swooping with the next few, up from out of the howl into the calm perches that the inner unleafed portions of the smooth kinmokusei branches so generously provide, perhaps for just this use by just these birds! Who knows what forms of natural "friendship" abide out there in the deeps of the real world, how far these homely allegiances go, and where they integrate like two hands clasping. Or how far back in time they reach, how they began to be-- seems as much like an interweaving of wild wisdom as a mosaic of chance that worked out well.

Plant and bird have been carrying on this way for far longer than the flash we call history, the birds over eons perhaps carrying seeds, or paying a small toll in fertilizer for the privilege of stopping to rest during the times of hardship both forms of life have ever gone through together, and there in the hearts of the trees the birds can enjoy the quiet that abides in a plant, in exchange for the motion that abides in a bird; plants seem to appreciate rhythms of all kinds-- they dance in the wind, as I observe from my cathedral of calm, up here at the fire in the heart of the storm...

It must be that in all storms there are places of calm to be found, havens in which to pause and renew, from which to prepare for advance, that in all paths of life there are ancient sanctuaries where the traveler can stop to rest, where there is calm, where there is no pain; for that is how we ourselves survive the storms of living, stage by stage, how we nourish an entire life before moving on to the next discovery.

PERFORMANCES

The way the kinmokusei trees moved in the freshening wind this morning it was clear that they knew spring was arriving-- only the first edge, but they knew. They were dancing. Their movements weren't stiff and grudging, the way they'd been only a few days ago, merely shedding snow; they were softening and sinuous, the early part of elegant. They looked greener too, each leaf filling with light, each tree more in sync with the earth and its airs, as though it was all music.

They even seemed a bit playful with each other, like newborn animals are. Watching them, I felt that feeling I get when watching kittens. Soon even the curled-up leaves of last year had joined in dancing to the wind; now that the snow was gone and the wind warming, it was party time. I was just a tourist, watching those local old-timers swirling in the air above the road, kicking up as though they were green again, not even touching the ground, like a bunch of human village dancers back in the day when villages danced like that in spring, whirling giddily, getting high, celebrating the newcoming...

Not long after that, as I was working in the garden tilling for a half-row of Inca potatoes - which look interesting ("Inca-no-hitomi is a diploid potato variety known for its yellowish-orange flesh, very high carotenoid content and chestnut-like nutty flavor" pdf link) - (only half a row 'cause I have to spread what's left of last year's compost pile before I can start tilling the other half) I looked up at the sky for an eye break and there, up in the gradual blue was the white crown of Mount Fuji - higher than the actual mountain - precisely created out of a bit of thick cloud floating by, the shading of the lower sky shaping the blue mountain itself in my mind's eye, the sky-Fuji slowly drifting toward the southeast where after a few moments it merged with a series of cloud dunes.

You really gotta watch it, there are performances everywhere.

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.