THE EARTH-CHURNING PRE-DAWN CLASH OF THE MIGHTY TITANS

Just at the edge of dawn this morning, from deep in the fathoms of firewood-splitting tiredness where I was casually exploring the fascinating streets of a wonderfully appointed dream city - an astonishing experience in itself, when viewed from our pinpoint of time in this ‘waking’ world - I was suddenly thrust alert into this pinpoint world upon hearing in the forest outside a mighty clash of titans - going on, as it seemed to me, much like the battle I’d heard a few years ago when two fully antlered bucks went at each other in a fierce dawn battle for turf, sharp tines slashing the air just outside that same bedroom window.

I got up and squinted out into the dimness to behold the source of the massive sound that was tearing apart the country silence - maybe the guys battle generally in the same place - but no: all was calm there, not a leaf was moving but for the lightest dawn wind; no, the big ruckus was over there! - I went toward the sound - No, it was definitely back where I'd just been! So I returned to that window, outside which there still were no heavily muscled Spring bucks churning up the undergrowth, but boy you could hear them: what a racket! Where was it coming from? How could such a massive battle go unseen?

I dashed across the hall to the other side of the house and looked out-- I gotta get a sight of this before it ends... From there I could hear what sounded like the clacking of antlers, but there were no deer out there either, gasping and slashing for dominance-- all that noise with nothing happening was the weirdest aspect of it... A mystery, up here in this quiet place where you can see everything from the windows...

So as the racket went on close by outside I went downstairs (surely one of the horned warriors must be injured by now and about to yield!) looked out a north window toward the paddies - no battling deer - then out the east window toward the Lake - no grunting, thrusting antlered titans over there either, but the crashing noise of their massive clash continued as before; I was going to have to actually go outside - put myself in the line of ire, so to speak - to find out what was happening.

So, bracing myself, I went to the big glass south door in the kitchen, beyond which the vast collision was clearly under way, pulled back the curtain to get at the door handle-- and there, right on the other side of the shatterable pane, just an antler's length away, was the entire scenario unfolding all over the deck: a battle-sized pile of trash (from a stuffed bag we’d forgotten outside last night), with a big and way surprised Dr. Crow at the center, pinning me with dark eyes for one of those interspecies moments that last as long as dreams do, his beady gaze seeming to say to my fuddled mind: Heh-heh-- Sure fooled the hell out of you, hey? Before big black wings flapped him fast and far away, leaving behind in the brightening dawn a vast and mighty pile of the trash of titans.

ABOUT PLANTING BAMBOO

The possibility of using bamboo as a protective element in the garden (not to mention decorative and otherwise practical purposes) has been mentioned in PLM comments now and again, but because of my own local experience I've always had reservations about the idea; however, there appears to be a solution, as offered here:

"I have read that commercial kiwi growers, owing to the sensitivity of the kiwi vine, are obliged to plant large hedges around their plots to protect the plant from excess wind and weather, but I don't know what they use for the hedges. Personally I am a fan of bamboo, a superbly useful and attractive plant, also very hardy (at least, most varieties are) and if you plant a "clumping" variety and not a "runner" it won't invade your garden and ruin your carrot patch. I have a fine stand of Black Bamboo (bambusa nigra) that hasn't spread more than a few inches in 15 years, and I generally cut four or five 10 foot canes from it every year for use as lash-ups and trellis supports. A nice curtain wall planting of this bamboo would not only make the place look beautiful but cut down the wind problem and provide you with lots of material to harvest along with your veggies; if you cut the newly sprouted growth, you can even eat it, too! There are plenty of other plants to consider for windbreaks, though." --JB Reynolds

[Excerpted from Lehman's excellent (and free) forum newsletter]

LIFE'S GREATEST HITS

It’s that extravaganza time of year, that speed-of-light time with the cherry blossom fireworks and the perfumed air, when Spring is getting serious about returning with a bigger show than ever, and around here that means the paddies are being readied in their turn, all down the mountainside.

Flooded one by one, faceting the mountain to set the stage, the skymirrors are then left idle for a heartfelt length of time while the rice seeds make their ancient way to planting size, but despite all this activity with all these focuses, these Spring days do not belong to the farmers or to the rice; these days belong to the frogs. All the frogs. Big frogs and little frogs, of all the froggy dispositions in the land about.

Stirred from the rain-softened mud, warmed by the sun and prodded by the primal mood, at dusk when the big silence falls, the male frogs begin their vocal warmups, and do they ever sing at this time of year, sounding their best against the plush background that is country silence, silence as there was the other night when I was coming up the road into the deeper deeps of quiet and darkness, all topped by the white spark of Venus above a thin slice of floating moon about to set behind the mountain, as the frogs tested their repertoires and began to sing with all that natural sincerity you get out here.

What an a capella group, performing in the Pure Land Mountain Amphitheater. If you stopped still to listen, and focused your ears, you could make out the individual frogs - the little one over there in a corner of a paddy trying out a rapid tremolo peep, and over there a veteran profundo laying down a thick, slow bass line, as a whole mountainside of song began to build, swelling and waning then swelling again, like a vast flock of birds turning and turning as one in the air, all the courting songs swirling together on waves in the night, serenading all the frog ladies with one of life's greatest hits.

The aftershow party went on all night.

MOUNTAIN LESSONS

Maybe it was sheer coincidence, but then again more likely not. The universe knows what it's doing and has a way of putting the lessons you need right in front of your nose or eyes or heart or foot as the case may be, though you generally have to be paying attention to note that it's not just a matter of luck that you took that particular turning, so when today I went out on the deck at precisely that time in the late afternoon when, as day was turning into night, all the soil that had been warming in the sun all day, all the vegetation that had been living in the light all day, gave a vast sigh at the peak of luxury and an invisible perfume of local satisfaction came wafting across the fields and filled the spirit of anyone lucky enough to have entered the theater of the air at just that moment, and today it was me. I just stood there nose up, breathing deep, sensing all the joy that all those plants, all that forest, all those ponds, all those fields, entire mountains and the Lake had been creating all day long and were willing to share with anyone who cared to join in. What food it was for the body roots. My spirit rose through the duff of my habits like a stem pushing up and out of the ground to bring a flower into the air.

HIGHER LAWS

Monkeys are puzzled by the human concept of ownership - as manifested in me, in this instance. Always cracks me up, that fuzzy look they get in their eyes as they have a shot at trying to figure out what I’m going on about while all they’re doing is enjoying the onion they were the first to discover, first to pluck from the ground, and that they are now holding in their paw and biting into, ergo they own it, so what’s the problem, dancing man?

Monkey legalities are clear cut, straightforward - no legal niceties in the wild - no liens, lawsuits, adverse possession, bad faith, no secret or hidden possession, no mortgages or deeds and so forth, all unneeded, since trust is not a cornerstone of natural justice, yet the simians are learning creatures, are they not, and therefore naturally involved in evolving beyond mindless brigandage, just as we ourselves once were (doubts of our success notwithstanding), so of course they will have a go now and then at expanding their minds, such as when they have a monkily owned onion in hand, are chewing on it and I pop up out of an opening in that big box over there, jumping up and down in my usual manner, throwing rocks, shouting and gesticulating wildly for some reason, trying to get something across that the monkeys can’t quite grasp, yet-- "That footwalker is so much in earnest, and so redfaced, there must be something to it..." is a thought that seems to zip through their mindspace as they gaze sidelong at me and then finally lope off with their onions, no sense hanging around a rock-throwing nonmonkey...

One might even think they are trying to evolve, given the slight evidence, such as of a conscience, until a gardening season later they steal another of my onions and try once more, fleetingly, to get their minds around this bizarre concept that the hatwearers apparently embrace, that onions far away from them are in their possession, even when in a monkey's grip! Could anything be stranger? Or more different from the keystone of monkey law, to wit: I’ve got the onion in my paw and I’m eating it; could anything be more owned? A philosophy shared, to a much greater extent, by many of our fellow moneyspenders, DC and Wall Street being handy examples.

So, in evolutionary reaction, I have stopped growing onions; but for who knows how long, since this could cause a setback in simian legal evolution. Just imagine the pretty balance there could be to the world one day, if we could get the monkeys and the bankers into the same high court...

Up in the forests

the shock of smoke -

but it's cherry blossoms

JOURNEYS OF THE SPIRIT

In the morning there are trees everywhere, as though they crept up on my consciousness during the night. They shine green in the window, welcome me into the day. Warblers warble in them. Sunlight twinkles through them. Out in the morning, the farmers are at work early, readying their paddies.

Yesterday the farmer who owns the paddy across the road spent most of the day fortifying the paddy wall, using the long hoe made for the purpose, in a rhythmic dance with the earth. All the paddies in their eachness fit together like perfect facets on the vast green gem they make of the mountainside. The farmer's work is thus a matter of beauty, as compared to the manufactured concrete or metal paddy wall units more modern farmers use to achieve the same purpose.

The traditional mud wall has to be tended more often, like any work of art, but the rice no doubt appreciates the attention in some vegetably emotional way we know nothing of, is more contented rice, and so offers more content to the consumer. The farmer as well is no doubt the better for it in body and mind, lives better, sleeps better, has better generations, and is less out of pocket.

I can imagine the rationalizing arguments for the new ways: how they save time, even though they cost way more than mud and must at some point be discarded and replaced. Commerce, as a science, knows nothing of the spirit or its journey through time, a journey that is impossible when time is money.

THE MYTH OF THIS MORNING

Tuesday morning came wrapped in a fog like the one in which Japan got started way back before history, and who knew what was going to happen this time. It was far thicker than the standard fogs you see on all the folding screens, that obscures less important details of famous events; it was a MythoFog of the kind that was there when Amaterasu Omikami and her troublemaking brother got to stirring up the ocean, resulting in Japan, among other things.

The morning's similar potential was not lost on me when I set out from the house on my Mythic Motorcycle and began to roll downmountain into eternity or the morning train, whichever pertained, wending my way through what might lead to a whole other country and culture or who knows what in this day and age, nobody really bothers to intuit that stuff anymore, all the mythothings that can get started on a godly whim...

We have conventional non-mythic fogs up here all the time, living closer to and sometimes inside the clouds as we do, but when we head on down to the flatlands we soon enter clear air, morning fogs hereabouts generally being temporary affairs that evaporate soon after sunrise. This fog, though, had a lot more going on, it seemed to get more mythic as I plunged down the road into the fog of meaning, which wasn't damp like the usual fog, even though it was cold like the hand of history on your neck, with more frisson than those fogs they attempt in the horror movies or that Dickens and Bronte wrote of to such great effect, so in my head there was a Victorian quality blended with some Japanese godplay in a complexity that is hard to describe...

In brief, the portent was major. As I slowly rolled down through the deep gray and blessedly monkeyless silence (they know what's going on), curving left and right, back and forth, all the way down, something in me kept expecting some kind of mythic event. It would have been a lot harder if I didn't know the road, but even so I had to go slowly in case a Japanese deity appeared... Can you imagine the scandal of a collision with a foreigner on a motorcycle, that would be one for the holy books...

Finally I got to the station where I was not surprised to find that it too was in the fog - in fact right at the bottom of the fog - and it too was silent-- no train sounds, no announcements of delays or cancellations-- Was I really here, this was my hand before my face was it not, no sound of other people walking and talking, no godsilks rustling, there seemed to be no one around, sometimes I'd hear what could be a footstep, but who really knows in the early phase of a myth, so I locked up my bike as usual, got out my ticket, felt my way through the mist blanket to the ticketwicket, wicketed my ticket and there was no one on the other side, all was silent, wrapped in the muted strivings of the gods...

I climbed the stairs to the platform, which disappeared before me; I walked on as usual, in faith that there was a platform there, I too became invisible like the mountains in front, the whole range of mountains right there in front was invisible, and the Lake in back, the big Lake just there on the other side of the invisible platform was invisible too... We were all invisible now, a state it is well to take seriously...

In the myth of the moment I went and occupied my conventional waiting spot there at the heart of The Fog of infinite hearts, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, and there I waited in what once was time for what once was a train, but there was no train... Still no train... Then some other hopeful commuters appeared like miracles out of the fog, spiriting past me to their trainwaiting spots; we waited in our collective invisibility.

After about half an hour an announcement came vaporing out of the soup that the express train - which doesn't stop at our humble rural station - was about to come through, the one that, 10 minutes before my usual train, comes roarblasting past at 80 miles an hour only inches from the platform, quite a stimulus on a normal morning...

But I couldn't hear anything, standing there right beside the track, maybe the muffled bleat of one of the goats that lives on the property down there beside the Lake or a goddess was doing something, then came a rumbling like a giant slow pushcart grinding along a hard road and the morning express came pushing into our part of The Fog, rolling through at about grandma bicycle speed, interior all lit up in the foggy dim, the folks in the cars like passengers in an airliner going through clouds, staring out the windows with big eyes at seeing ghostly commuter figures there in the air on what must please god be a platform, waiting for a train... or maybe they were rapturing their way to heaven... Imminent myths can do that to a collective mind in transport...

Our own train finally came pushcarting out of the generative fog - it was crowded by now - stopped before us, opened its doors, took us into its light, closed its doors and rolled on slowly through vapors that diminished like the past as we grew older nearing the big city and buildings became visible; turned out that a well-developed civilization is still out there...

Need I point out that what was about to happen, mythwise, is still about to happen, fog or no fog, so be ready...

HIGH POINTS IN THE MUCH ADO

Much ado about everything under the sun and moon, been taking the Trio of Brio for chunks of time so they can get some gardening experience etc.

Also as time and events allow I am gradually assembling a Pure Land Mountain Kindle Book, working title Monkeys & Onions, getting closer to what might seem a reasonable size and resonant compilation, during a time of rich firewood cutting bucking and splitting, when home.

The Trio helps with that too; surprisingly hardworking, they love heavy extended physical tasks like splitting firewood, also stacking same. In between which starting the garden, digging, planted spinach, radishes, lettuce, radicchio, some first tomatoes, some zukes, more chard, shallots, strawberries, herbs dill fennel basil thyme, mints etc. - no flowers done yet - snap peas, soon some tromboncino and foreign variety of zuke for which I had to battle the govt seed folks but prevailed.

Nearly stepped on the first frog he was so invisible.

Deer got into the garden somehow; have to figure that one out.

Our well is now producing ultrafine water, liquid diamond to a thirsty man.

Finally put up (above the Monsanto page) my ongoing Fukushima page, atop the Archive section in the sidebar; latest link there is possibly imminent Tokyo evacuation due to reactor No. 4 (no way for that not to sound sensationalistic).

Haven’t been on the blog for nearly a week except in thought, been meaning to post but time is a laser, just had to post this zipblip about it all in a few spare moments early this morning after planting some tomatoes carrying some wood and now about to go pick up the Trio for an afternoon of garden labor--

So much to write about, so vast the sea of happening and all I got is that keyboard up in the loft up in the house...

Which reminds me those rain gutters need cleaning, rainy season coming on, better do that -- Soon as I can --

And the woodstove clean the woodstove...

BEANS DON’T GRAB MY BAMBOO

Just out this blustery morning checking the bean plants, now about 30cm high and beginning to reach about, so into the soil beside each of them I inserted a selected mountain bamboo tip about a foot tall, after trimming off the multiple little branches down to an inch or so, providing a nice little sequence of easygrabbies up which the little bean plants can climb and hold against the wind to do their beanie max, but after 1 week I can see that they don’t care, they don’t give a damn, beans have no gratitude. But I knew that.

For some reason, the new beans ignore this valuable gift and just go scrabbling along, blown this way and that, looking for what, I don't know, an escalator? Is this a characteristic of modern young beans or has it always been like this? An even more disturbing thought is that maybe they’re like me when I was their age, all the obviously advantageous wisdoms and facilities around me and I ignored them for pennycandy fluffstuff I don’t even remember. Are there teen beans?

Gardeners can’t help but plummet down the rabbit hole of such thoughts when they behold the natural world from up close, first-hand, dirt-knuckled. They look at other gardens, as I do, in my local wanderings, here and there noting the little tricks gardeners use, like one I saw several days ago, of tying a tangly handful of upside down broomstraw to a stake above a bean plant for the beans to grab onto and climb.

Naturally I was impressed by that and will try it, just like when I saw a farmer use some cut mountain bamboo tips with the branches trimmed back to a few inches stuck in the ground above his bean plants so they could climb easily what a great idea, so at once I cut some of the mountain bamboo that grows so prolifically around my house it’s a pain - plus I love free stuff - so I stuck it in the soil above my bean plants and they just bent right past it, ignored it cold, like they ignored my dangling strings, my jerrybuilt trellises, my rough braided twine...

Those farmers and I are using the same beans; I should see what they use for discipline.

stupid me

I blamed the chisel

when it was

the hammer's fault

CROW ADMIRES THE DAFFODILS

Crow comes gallumphing in over the garden, settles on the telephone wire that runs along the road up the mountain, turns his big beaky head this way and that like he's admiring all the exquisite natural objects that would delight any tasteful individual, any connoisseur of the lovely-- like the cherry blossoms up there, say, but there aren't any yet, the con doesn't work from the start.

So he looks down as though to admire the bright new daffodils there by the oak, but he’s really checking out my shallots. I happen to have observed that he flopwinged in from the north, yet is sitting on the wire facing north; he turned around after landing, who does he think he's kidding, does he really think I'm still new at this? He's checking out my garden while pretending to be a nonchalant dilettante of the sylvan environs, what a poseur; makes me laugh like a crow, and he does not like that, no, he is not pleased, fixes me with a dark gaze over a stern beak.

He's a big one for sure, eats well, he's probably the Baby Huey I posted about a few years ago, couldn't stop caaawing for his mama to come back and bring him some food, he was so alone and starving, the big baby, his weight bending the chestnut branch, he was bigger than his mother and kept her on the wing I tell you, now he's like a lounge lizard in a tux looking for an easy mark, but he must know me somewhat by now, which is maybe why he's putting on this act...

He raves over those lovely daffodils, all white and yellow, great fragrance, yeah sure, I can see his beady eye counting my beans, they're those snap kind he likes, but they're covered with netting drat, because I know about crows, he likes my shallots too, but also netted and also drat, the chard is uncovered but he hates chard and this access is a disappointment. The shiny onyx eye beading at me seems to cloud over, but he's remembering for later, I can tell; he enters corvine calculating mode, forgets where he is, that I'm staring at him, getting his number.

He's thinking that the netting may very well come off those foody beans in a couple weeks, leaving them ripe for the taking on Thursdays and Fridays - when I’m in the office - and those spring onions too; then there are those promising young strawberry leaves over there, with no netting either, puts that in his potential summer dessert column; plus that's a likely spot for tomatoes right there, melons over there, zucchini, hmmmm... All going into his dark memory maw, the way crows operate but he has no idea I know this.

He concludes unhappily for now that there are NO bean sprouts NO strawberries NO naked beans or beakable young onions - What food then is this moment? What nourishment, this empty frame of time? He gets carried away with the drama part sometimes. But the mask of discrete connoisseurship soon falls away and he starts looking further afield: is that another garden over there? Now he's flopping across the air to act nonchalant for some other gardener, hopefully a novice with little crow experience...

Better keep the nets over everything till I've eaten it all...

THE THIRD BRANCH

When the early monkeys came to that specific evolutionary fork in the big old tree of life and looked forward along the left branch, they saw strange things up ahead, like more intelligence, protoconscience, moralities all vague and misty, and said Whoa, let's not go that way - they had their reasons - so they chose the other branch, took the path more traveled and got to the upper canopy where they are now, which isn't bad, actually-- mostly the tropics.

Then when our own foresimians came to the same fork they looked to the right branch and saw all those monkeys jammed up ahead, said Damn, that is way too crowded, give me some space, so they headed left into all that shifting civiloplasm where they had some room to think and did, and here we all are with a long list of haftashouldy stuff eats up our time.

So it happens that now and then, when I pause in my work at tilling and planting to grow some of my own food on my mortgaged soil, or at patching up my weathering residence, I watch the monkeys ambling houseless past my garden into the food-laden forest or sitting up in the arms of a tree comfy-munching on a natural snack that many humans say God has provided, and I think about the monkeys’ choice way back then, since now they can go anywhere, anytime, no 9 to 5, no visas, mortgages, suits, appliances or infidels... If I was back at that evofork right now on behalf of all humanity up ahead somewhere on the timepike, I think I’d check to see whether maybe there was a third branch we might have overlooked; you never know...

May as well think about it, since we wound up being able to.

ONIONS ARE A NUISANCE

It was a foggy Saturday evening in early Spring, the way early Spring gets up here when it heightens all the heartbreak. Like any green-thumbed shamus I was standing in my garden, my never quite finished garden, enjoying the fragrances that were burgeoning all over the place. Don't ask me about onions. Ok, ok, I was thinking about planting onions, anticipating that homegrown savor, when I should know way better than to plant onions up here.

Anticipating onions is bound to end in heartbreak, I know that too, but like a fool, again and again I throw handfuls of hope at dreams of the sultry bulbs and all they do is mock me with misty images that fade like the light in the dusk with their luscious come-ons, their tantalizing fragrances, their succulent textures, lead me on into dreams that don't even end in tears...

I was standing there lost once more in the dim reaches of unrequited vegetarianism when I heard a bunch of monkeys arguing. From somewhere below in the mountain forests came that horrible, grating sound all mountain onion fantasists abhor. When you've been up here long enough, you know that noise and what it means. You get to know it real fast if you love onions, it's not like anything else you ever heard, not like any other two creatures arguing, it’s a scrapy, whiny, selfish sound, a sound that knows no conscience, carries no morals or scruples at its heart, it is the sound of creatures that claim all onions, and it means they will be moving closer, they may be here any minute, they'd be coming for my onions, if I'd been fool enough to plant them again. Face it, onions are a nuisance.

Sure, I could wait around, grab some rocks, stand my ground, put up a nuclear-powered electric fence, but sooner or later I'll have to sleep, and then have to go away, do some shopping, buy some onions, go to a dentist, bank, post office... those monkeys may be redfaced but they're not stupid, they know things, they have savage skills, they know your habits and they can wait; they have no jobs, no place to be, no dental appointments no bank accounts, they just wait. You don't have that luxury, you're human: your life is not your own, you have a family, a job, a government, you have obligations, bills to pay, places to be, conscience, morals, papers to sign-- but not the monkeys, they occupy the other end of the responsibility spectrum. All your onions belong to them.

“But not this time,” you say to yourself in the dusk, pulling your hatbrim lower as monkeys argue in the distance...

A TRIP THROUGH THE VILLAGE

You drive down past the junior high school sports ground at the foot of the only cleared mountain slope faceted with rice paddies all the way up to where the mountain forests begin, roll on down past the public rice-polishing machine and the kitchen gardens left and right of the village houses - must be nice to grow onions, no monkeys down here - past the new log house across from the village hairdresser, then past the village doctor's office on the corner of the street that if you turn north leads to the workshop of the late Shimizu Uichi, a famed local potter, but today as you continue east the road slopes downward beneath the imminent annual pink rainbow of blossoming cherry trees that arch softly overhead, on past the metal workshop to the intersection, take a right onto the national lakeside highway, head past the two ancient boat-launching shrines, roll on past the marinas and the sailing school, then the nice old shrine by the small piney beach, with the kitchen gardens all along the narrow road back there-- you have to slow to 40 when you get past that shrine anyway, as it gets more residential, with the houses close to the road in the old-fashioned way, elderly folks walking with canes, kids bicycling along the narrow walk, and there's the famous old Arare senbei shop, then the gas heater shop and the sake store; the rest is mostly houses of the old kind that give the charm to these rural villages (our new neighbor way across the paddy slope says she moved here because she loved driving through that village, wanted to live near there).

It's still a narrow road, about as wide and curvy as it was a thousand years and more ago, when it was the only central way from one sea to the other via Kyoto, a way crowded with traffic of commercial and noble retinues, along which road folks of all classes also came out from Heian (later, Kyoto) for the summer coolness of Lake and mountainsides combined, went to famous old beach places like Ogoto and Omimaiko, where they could party, watch fireworks and stay cool in the hot times, which folks still do, come from the sunbowl of Kyoto over the mountain pass - what a journey, though, in those old woodwheeled oxcart days, jarring over the stony roads with the noble ladies' luxurious sleeves hanging out beneath the screens; slow travel, and dangerous; they had to have a retinue of guards...

They'd stop and visit the old and far-apart temples along the way, the ride would take them days and nights and days and nights over a distance we traverse in half an hour or so by train or car - though I'm driving a shorter distance this morning - you gotta wonder as you move along this way in the brightness, looking out the window and visualizing these things, what it must have been like to live that slowly, with no alternative in sight, but here I am already, just on time for my dentist appointment...

ONE YEAR LATER

“I dreaded finding my mother’s body, lying alone on the cold ground among strangers,” Mrs. Arai, 36, said. “When I saw her peaceful, clean face, I knew someone had taken care of her until I arrived.

That saved me.”

*

Tsunami Stories

*

Children of the Tsunami - BBC

(w/English subtitles)

PAIN IN THE ACREAGE

Artemisia vulgaris L. var. indica Maxim can be a real pain in the acreage if it takes over. Which like any weed it is always trying to do. I know, I know-- I'm being a bully, I'm being unfair in so crassly calling such a wonderful plant a weed, it's--well, the thing is, yomogi is a nice weed, I have to agree. It even looks gentle and unassuming, like a short friendly sheepdog with a splotchy green coat of droopy leaves. It grows all over the place in Spring-Summer; the garden is practically covered in green sheepdogs by mid-June. Need some yomogi? Just stick out an open hand and close it. If you're at my house you'll get a handful of yomogi; if you're elsewhere, who knows.

Yomogi spreads like a slow green fire, and would definitely be a noxious weed were it not so easy to pull up and so darned not-noxious at all, not to mention uniquely fragrant, in fact-- ok, downright useful, and in so many ways no less, and plants that grow wild in that quantity are just not supposed to be useful, it never happens; throughout life one wonders (mainly in childhood, when such questions are less subject to prompt resolution, and then again in the gardenhood of latterly life, when specially grown thoroughbred plant varieties too often wither and die as if cursed, and one cries to the garden gods in greater measure the question one first asked as a child, to wit): why don't plants we love grow like weeds do? Well, yomogi does grow like that, ergo the love thereof is somewhat iffy. Just goes to show you can't have everything, even when you do.

This yomogi I speak of in such rampantly weedy terms is mugwort, Japanese mugwort - mogusa, to be locally specific (hence, moxa, as in moxibustion) - in addition to being the yomogi of excellent tempura and yomogimochi (q.v.). What other not-really-a-weed type plant has the range of uses yomogi has, from profound medical to profound comestible, and gets away with looking and growing like a bona fide weed, yet puts into the Green Meanie Club those who would call it a weed?

Back when I had a big pain in the-- when I had sciatica and plunged a thick glowing toke of moxa onto a shochu-marinated biwa leaf placed right atop the sore region, the heat went in and in, and took the place of the pain, and left me grateful throughout. Still am. Yomogi is my friend, actually; I love yomogi. Who called it a weed? It's one of my best green friends!

Yomogi rules!!

MOVE OVER, EVIAN

As ever younger readers of these slapdash chronicles may remember, I have posted a few items about going up to clean the mountain forest stream from which we get our water via a system of tanks and pipes and gravity, and which requires outdoor maintenance because the stream, being alive, is naturally fidgety with gravity, topography, meteorology etc. Streams can get oppressively scientific; plus, like anyone else this one gets seasonally feisty and thrashes around in its bed on occasion, moving big rocks around; washes down tree branches and leaves, so the collector gizmo has to be checked and cleared weekly by residents taking turns, in addition to regular overall maintenance.

And like any system, this one has been showing its age. Mainly built about 50 years ago, it has been tweakily updated ever since but isn't going to be economically viable for much longer, and will sooner more than later have to be replaced in toto for quite a sum, so the committee decided to investigate the possibility of drilling a well at less cost.

We called in a geologist specializing in mountain aquifers, who explored and assessed the heights above us at the true foot of the mountain; there he selected a likely spot for drilling. We then contracted with a local well-drilling company to test-drill down to 60-70 meters, which we figured should be sufficient to reach water and our budget. They drilled that deep, but no water.

The subcommittee then gave them permission to double that depth, which was about as far as there could be water that we were willing to pay to reach. So they drilled down to 140 meters and struck water, which then had to be tested. The water testing lab said that this was the highest quality well water they had seen on this side of the Lake; they recommended that we bottle and sell it.

I can see it all now: Pure Land Mountain Spring Water ("It's Sacred!"), "Straight from the Gates of Nirvana!" "Holier than Evian!" Nah. Think I’ll just chill some, make some tea... In any case, water more sacred than Perrier will spring from our taps in April.

No more cleaning the stream, though; I’ll miss that, going up there mornings in all seasons, following the stream edge up through the forest, to do some work on behalf of my neighbors...

I suppose I could always lend a hand at Pure Land Mountain Water Enterprises...

GRASSES OF THE FIELD

In this still evening the air is soft-- yesterday's cold, but with a new warm edge we can feel in our animal selves as the barely rain falls. The long wild grasses now draping the mountainside, grasses that wore the color of dying leaves back in autumn, and in winter - where they edged from the snow - were dead grey, this evening have a remarkable goldenness that reaches from within, a power they have always carried, that isn't life, exactly, but isn't death either - that says in the darkling hours that life is returning, that there is no edge to being: simply wait-- new life is here, has never left.

Even in what we deem death there are things to be done in ancient, hard-learned ways; thus the grasses glow in the early rain: they have evolved, seeded, grown, seeded again for this purpose too, among the countless others, and teach us of our own purposes, in lives we might view simplistically as regrettable aging toward regrettable cessation. For us, as for the grasses and all that lives, there is function everywhere along the line of life-- before, alive and beyond. As in the grasses of the field, the line is always reaching further than we can ever know at any once; in our way through life we are immeasurable, especially within.

Nodding gold in the faintest breeze, the blades go on glowing until all is dark, for now...

A MODEST PROPOSAL

Come on, Monsanto, shine your light! There's no need to keep being voted the worst corporation in the world year after year! If GMOs are as wonderful for humanity as you've insisted dozens of times a day in courts around the world for the past 20 years or so, then stop going to court to keep the public from knowing that your patented wondergenes are already in their food and children! If GMOs are even half as great as you say, you should be fighting to label everything GMO! A GMO label should be a HUGE selling point, right Monsie? So get that love out there for everyone to share! Hey! Where'd everybody go? Why are my tomatoes glowing? What's happening to my hands?

Monsanto's Minions Attack CA's Right to Know About GMOs

Here’s my ongoing Monsanto links page, clear evidence that Monsanto is being illogically litigious and irrationally secretive...

ICICLES, EDUCATION

Kaya came over to visit the other afternoon and ran toward the house with more than her usual supernova of excitement, not because she was about to run inside to play video games, because there aren't any in there, or to do puzzles or draw pictures or write letters which she loves and can do for hours; she was overjoyed at spotting some big icicles dangling from the high eave that she couldn't reach, and then on the rim of one of the rain barrels she found a gleaming, straight, clear and thick icicle that she could get hold of and break off and lift up and look at from all angles - icicles held up high are filled with blue sky, as she demonstrated to all - then she had to find a worthy place for the shining crown jewel of the vicinity, she couldn't just throw it away or take it into the house and admire it by the woodstove, but where could she put it that would do justice to its beauty?

She searched and found the perfect spot on the front of our car, where the long diamond would fit snugly yet stand upright, pointing to the sky like an icicle should, to a child's way of thinking, like a diamondy thing from a story, and lo and behold, there stood the soul of fantasy, right on the front of our formerly just plain car, now turning into diamond. Clear and real was the magical ice, and the light it carried, so valuable and desirable, but shortlived, so all the more lookable at. When at last we went inside we could still see it from a window: a diamond full of sky, shining there in the dusk.

Almost goes without saying that Kaya is bored with school...