TIDES OF DAYS

   

The longer I've lived here, the more I've come to delight in that brief time of Spring when the wintered mountainside becomes more and more facets of blue sky as the paddies fill, until for a brief time before rice planting, from certain perspectives - like my front doorway - the sky is all over the ground.

Then come the little astonishments of lifetimes, like the early Spring morning when you walk out of the house into a mountain mist and behold upon that long watermirror the pale-green rows of just-planted rice shoots, stretching away into the soft wall of cloud right at your door... You can’t help but just stand there looking, letting the sight fill you with the miracle of magnificence just plain happening, in this day-to-day way.  

On the blue days, across that magic mirror glide the clouds that come sailing over the mountain like big baroque pearls, while hawks and swallows dive to snatch food from their reflections; at evening the calm of the mirror is broken into widening rings by a now-and-then rain, or rippled into memory by sudden evening breezes that shiver the silver light. 

From the morning train along the Lake, through Spring and Summer you can see the day-by-day changes all along the line, as the tides of days turn the land to sky that soon turns to rice leaves, the fields growing day by day into perfect levels of deep green blades that reveal the wind as they grow taller, until they begin to nod with the weight of their gold...

LIFE WITHOUT BRAKES

As I was driving back from town this morning, the trailer truck ahead of me that might have had no brakes because it had no brake lights recalled to me that day in Spain when I was fixing the brakes on the SEAT, had the brake system completely dismantled and found out I'd need a special wrench to finish the job, so without a second thought I jumped in the brakeless car and drove the long narrow winding dirt road out to the local winding paved road, then along that winding upward over the mountain and winding down to and through the village, thence along the faster highway to the narrow roads of the nearest town where there was a hardware store, found a parking spot on the street nearby, pulled over brakeless to the curb and parked, went in and got the wrench, then drove home again and finished fixing the brakes.

From the vantage of 30 years later I couldn't believe I'd been willing and able to do such a thing without a qualm, and survive to recall it.

The past is fuller of miracles the longer it gets.

ENOUGH TO BE AN ISLAND

Out on the Lake there is a tiny island just a few meters wide, on days like today sitting on the surface like a thick, dark cookie on a silverblue baking sheet. I've passed close by it on boats and am always surprised by its tininess-- it seems to grow bigger in the mind.

I have also seen at the Lake Biwa Museum, in a scale geological model of the Lake bed, how that mini-island - like most of the larger islands that dot the Lake - is but the point of a tall needle of once-liquid volcanic rock, eons ago thrust upward from the core of the earth, reaching now through far deeps of water to barely touch the surface enough to be an island. Likely the island was once much higher than the cookie it is now, and will disappear below the surface before too geologically long. These molten facts are reflected in the mountains around the Lake, which comprise the timeworn caldera of an ancient volcano.

Most days that little island, because of its size, is invisible; even the slightest haze or shadow of cloud erases it, to say nothing of water-reflected light. But on certain rare days like today, when water, air and light combine in just the right way, the Lake appears to end about halfway across, as natural currents turmoil the near waters and tranquilize the far, and there the island appears: not atop the water, like the usual island, but floating in the sky, high above the apparent surface of the Lake.

If I didn't know the true distance to the far shore, that floating island would be as inexplicable as any other miracle around here.

BEING MIRACLES

Climbing up the mountain road these Spring evenings at the hour of not quite dark, when all the sky is like a throw of velvet reflecting a distant light, almost as if you could reach up there and trail your hand among the tiny, brightening stars...

At about this time the sun-warmed earth, still damp from recent rains and now blanketed with the cooling air of day, sends out from all its secret palaces the richest of its fragrances, that ride on the air I rise through as I climb... All the perfumes are there, if you have the time...

Who knows how they come to be, these spices of life for each inhalation - cinnamon, oregano, thyme, it is a long list - it holds a hint of chocolate, of tea, there is apple, gardenia, mushroom, living earth, coffee, musk... The moments I pass through are rich... The night is an ancient acquaintance...

For whom does the night send out its secret perfumes, but those who can sense them? And why is it so? In the night, as in the day, it is to say in fragrance that all is interwoven, that none are apart. In each of these nights we are given to sense the miracles around us, all the more finely to perceive and enjoy the miracles of ourselves.