August 22, 2003
(I posted this elsewhere, but wanted it hear as well.)
The fingers of a stoned bassist wrapped around my ankles, toying with me like a rag doll. One slip and I plunge face first to the ground twenty feet below. Urgent and trifling thoughts swim around my head at supersonic speed: Will he actually drop me (by accident or design)? Why is he doing this? He is an adult; adults don’t do stuff like this. During that dirt bomb fight my older brother Peter and I had when he got me in the neck and I picked up a rock to throw at him, did I throw it? If this idiot lets go, can I flip 180 degrees and land feet first like a cat? Are there any big rocks or broken glass in those bushes? Why are all these people going on like nothing out of the ordinary is happening? Why don’t they notice me? I hate them. I hate them.
They are laughing and smoking and stuffing their faces right there, at the air vent, while my long, straight, strawberry-blond hair stands on end—rather, points in the direction gravity wants it to go: down. Was my face as red as a beet or white as a ghost? Was I flailing like a maniac or frozen in fear? The large curl vent was located in the center of the tarred roof, which most often served as our private patio. Imagine a giant curved horn standing unnaturally on its mouthpiece, with a flattened bell and painted wasabe green. A serendipitous acquisition was bolted to the flattened part: a picnic table top rescued from a premature burial at the village dump (like our dog Cookie and other sundry items). All kinds of goodies were piled on it: cellophane packs of bar snacks and professional drink mixing supplies along side straight people stuff like burgers and dogs and buns and ketchup and potato salad and paper plates and iceberg lettuce with chunks of hothouse tomatoes and Thousand Island dressing. In the center of the smorgasbord sat Grandma and Grandpa’s antique crystal punch bowl, overflowing with sangria.
A cooler and some galvanized garbage cans stuffed with ice and bar bottles of Rheingold, Pabst, and Schlitz stood there portentously like the shrines they were. The cooler was twice the length of a normal “large” cooler, like the family car: an extra, extra long hearse-black four-door truck, custom built in Oklahoma and perfectly suited for taxiing merry pranksters and party supplies to ponds and lakes and beaches and forests and drive-in movies on hot August nights. A twenty-five gallon industrial lobster pot threatened to crush the barbecue grill it stood upright on; boiling water spiced with bottled beer and a family of lobsters shook the thing from inside out.
Uncle Denis, who to date still has the biggest, baddest stereo money can buy, was the purchasing consultant for our sound system: an elegant but ballsy unit, no frills but lots of loud crispy rock music and wood cabinetry. Yes, the tunes were loud, but not excessively (Dad, the consummate bar host, knew how to lubricate but not drown a party with music): Janis Joplin, CSNY, The James Gang, The Moody Blues, George Harrison, Canned Heat, and Dylan.
Ritchie the bearded bartender from Brentwood, Barefoot Mike, Bald Hank and Bitchy Bunny, “Lick you all over for 5¢” Mike and “Can do” Stew, Chatty Cathy, several Marys, Rat and Cat, cute little Kate and her three big sisters from Florida, Burt the Bachelor, our cats (Socrates, Friday, and Flug) and dogs, Obnoxious John, Lazy John, Big John, Kevin “Lord of the Rings” Clancy and “Little” Annie, and Saddle Rock and their groupies. The leader of the band, Jerry, would yell at his girlfriend while she shrieked like a lunatic from the apartment next door one summer, the last summer the group played at the bar. The place was indeed referred to as the band’s apartment, but later Barefoot Mike’s, Mik the Prick’s, and Montana John’s. The summer I was dangled over the side of the roof by my feet, the four or five Saddle Rock band members and their girlfriends were the ones crashing in that single room with attached bathroom. Dad erected a six-foot fence between our half of the roof and theirs (replete with swinging saloon doors), more to support the back side of the cabana (a prototype for a much grander architectural delight built several years later with hand-hewn logs and driftwood) than to provide privacy. Camping out there under the cabana, snuggled in old sleeping bags, musty throw pillows, and the ugly orange blanket that Cat crocheted for her two-year-old son and forgot at our place one night when she flopped on the couch after an evening of revelry in the bar, Peter and I would watch Creature Feature on Friday night and Saturday morning cartoons on his black and white 12-inch Zenith while munching beer nuts and potato chips with our dogs: Jimmy, Pookie, and Butterball.
On a pleasant September or October evening after playing kick ball with neighborhood friends or skateboarding or putting pennies on the tracks at the station or something like that, Barefoot Mike comes bounding into our apartment and, white-faced, bleary-eyed and shaking like he had his finger stuck in a live light bulb socket, and announces that Rat killed Cat and some guy the night before. Maybe from Mike that night or from Newsday or my mother, I learned that Rat had been drinking in my dad’s bar (just under our apartment!), then walked to his place in North Sea, got his hunting knife or a kitchen knife, came back to town to Cat’s place to her and her lover, and cut their hearts out. Rat spent six years in jail for this gruesome murder, then started hanging out at the bar again like nothing happened. A busty, hirsute woman with a provocative proboscis found him irresistible, I speculate not because of his long, stringy, greasy dirty-blond hair, his horn-rimmed glasses, or his pointed ugly rat’s face. The rest of us found him a repugnant demon. But no one wanted to be the one to ask him to leave. After a couple of months of no one (but his new girl) coming anywhere near him, he disappeared.
Who knows why we had parties on the roof. The original structure of the building, built at the turn of the nineteenth century, was a perfect box, maybe 40’ X 40’ X 40’, three stories tall, with a full basement. The first floor addition, built during the 1940s, stuck out from the building, about 20 feet on the side over the bar’s “living room” and in the front and back but less on the Polish Hall side. Imagine the shape of an inverted carpenter’s T when viewed from any one side, or if you prefer three dimensional objects, think of a giant upside down mushroom with all strait lines and square corners and no curves.
Across the street was a half acre of groomed lawn — the natural repository for bar empties, which me and Peter exchanged Saturday on Sunday mornings at Three Finger Joe’s for pieces of Bazooka bubble gum (that is, if Frankie, the stock car driver’s son from across the street, didn’t get to them first). The spot was energized, not by the minimalist landscaping job it had received from the village land maintenance crew, but by the nature of its location: on the corner of Elm Street and Powell Avenue, pinned between the train station and three bars (cultural institutions) and smack dab in the middle of one of two routes to down town and between the walking route connecting the village’s two Black neighborhoods: The Hill and The Ave. You could play volleyball and frisbee or hide and seek there, but since it was public land, consumption of alcohol was prohibited, unlike Agawam Park down town, where locals were prohibited from playing with Frisbees or balls, but rich tourists could drink booze on Summer Jazz Nights.
Why not the back yard? That was even bigger than the triangular patch of land across the street. Well, because the part of the back yard closest to the building was a hard-packed, lumpy spent coal and broken glass parking lot; the yardage behind that was Atlas’s exercise area. Atlas was let out to pasture there behind the bar, not because he was too old or weak or small (12 years and 18 hands tall) to pull the Hansom House carriage but because his owner (i.e., Dad) could only maintain so many interests at one time; properly caring for an English riding horse was not one of them. That task was left to Peter and me, who were about as interested in shoveling horse piss barn straw, scooping oats, and filling the water trough (first breaking the ice on top) on winter mornings before school as we were in doing homework or cleaning the bathrooms in the bar on Saturday and Sunday mornings. (In all fairness, there was a bonus or two to having a horse, beyond the status he brought us as the only family in the village with a horse. After putting oats on the fence, while he was standing there munching on them, three or four or five of us kids would jump on his back. The last to fall off was the winner — usually me, if anybody wants to know. Also, the bails of hay we were supposed to feed him were great fun to make forts out of and jump onto from the barn roof.) The backyard eventually evolved into the preferred party place: a sort of English garden and volleyball park, which was developed to the extent that it once served as the venue for the Pernot Long Island Volleyball Classic, 5¢ beer nights for throngs of college students, and a few alternative mixed media events which blended fusion music, performance art, and graffiti.
Before all that, the second floor roof was the most natural spot for spontaneous summer barbecue parties. The very top roof, the third floor roof, could in theory have been an ideal location for partying: a 40’ X 40’ flat chunk of space 40 feet in the air, overlooking the entire railroad plaza. But only someone young or dumb enough to balance on the fire escape handrail long enough to sling him- or herself to the roof before plunging to the ground could make it up there. That, and there was no guardrail around the perimeter to keep party people from stumbling to the second story roof to their deaths. In fact, besides my wife an me and my buddy Bret, who clawed our way up there decked out in Halloween attire when in graduate school years later to hurl water balloons at plastered patrons in the parking lot, and besides me and my brother Peter, who went up there to sneak cigarettes when in elementary school, I don’t know anyone else who reached that altitude.
Glen, who looked like the Frank Zappa of 1969 (which I thought looked pretty cool), once consumed a libation spiked with LSD at the Mad Hatter. The things he saw, that if he knew in advance were coming, might not have had such a deleterious affect on his demeanor that summer, in as much as whatever mind he had, got turned inside out and stuck there. He was a comparatively quiet person — I think I liked him not being a loud asshole, like so many of the others¬ — who transformed into a monster before my eyes and became an expediter for an epiphanal loss of innocence experience: adults don’t know everything, the right things, or even how to act; they are just larger, hairier, more violent versions of kids; they are just as stupid, irresponsible, and selfish as kids.
I cannot say that I really knew Glen, that I had more than a superficial understanding of his personality. But, at that moment, anticipating imminent blackout, maiming, and death, I perceived (as children are want to do) what was going on inside his head: not much, and thus nothing to focus his attention on the seriousness of the situation. It was his bassist’s fingers that knew what to do; they knew that when the set is over, the guitar gets laid gently on the ground — as I was set back on the roof. The adults who witnessed the episode were laughing.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Kyoto Conferencing, Chapter Three: Turning Japanese
Three: Turning Japanese
Lorraine, before I get to the point, I’ve got to tell you this one: I’m in Osaka now, at Starbucks, across from my hotel, the Hotel Monterey. Hold on, it gets better (worse?): I’m sitting in a courtyard-like area, at the edge of a plaza in the center of four or five flashy skyscrapers. The Monterey is the aging granddad among these upstart punks, but it has a bit of character, where they’ve got flash (and size!). The environs here look like one of those plaza areas at the base of the skyscrapers in L.A. or Seattle or I guess a lot of other cities west of the Rockies. The climactic conditions now (8:00 p.m.) are perfect, the calibrated waterfall spilling its guts into a symmetrical hole in the ground behind me, the polished granite facades of the skyscrapers, and the ... how can I say? ... oh, I don’t know ... the periphery of the station area ... are humming like a fecund beehive after dark on a hot summer night, all making for an excellent circumstance for lonesome little me. By the way, by the looks of this neighborhood, the Japanese economy isn’t doing all that badly, despite what you might read in the newspaper.
I just got back from a great day in Kyoto. Maybe you read about it? And since I have a reasonably drinkable cup of joe and a solid writing surface before me (cascading water behind), I am now going to do something which occurred to me earlier today: introduce you to our good friend Andrew. Here goes: Lorraine, this is Andrew; Andrew, this is Lorraine, Colleen’s mom.
Andrew is one of the first humans I met in The Burg – on campus to be specific. I walked up to him and introduced myself, which is definitely out of character for shy (unsociable? private?) me. I did in fact accost him because he looked like a hippy: long hair and beard, handmade accessories, tie-dyed shirt, Birkenstocks, and a hemp shoulder bag. I was looking for some pot (ganja? reefer? weed? – I didn’t know what the locution in those parts was at the time); I like a little puff every now and then, and living in Japan I hadn’t sampled any in a particularly long time. He probably thought I was a criminology major (doing research or looking for a snitch), given the number of such students on campus, also because of my buzz cut and otherwise all-American wardrobe: Levis, T-shirt, and sneakers. It didn’t take him long to figure out that I wasn’t as square as I looked and me to learn he wasn’t as loose as he looks (for one, he didn’t have any Mary Jane). He is a complex, kindly person. And elusive. And moody! And like me, he’s one of those paradoxically outgoing yet private people – maybe that’s the glue that binds us.
Andrew is a tall man – 6’3” I think – with a good sturdy build, healthy though not muscular per se. Dirty blonde hair, sometimes kept very short, like mine, and sometimes on the long side, and a very fast growing beard; he can go from a close shave to a bushy beard in about a week. I’m telling you, his beard will grow right before your eyes. Sometimes when it’s long, he’ll put a braid or two in it, which suits his demeanor well, which is, among other things, fun-loving and adventurous.
The summer before we moved to Japan this time around (August 1999, to be precise), the boys and I made a trip to New York to hang with the family there for a few weeks. Colleen had to work or had some other obligation to attend to in Ellensburg (or she didn’t want to come—I forget), so it was just us men. We had red-eye flights. Andrew drove us the 100 miles back and forth to SeaTac on the other side of the Cascades, because Colleen was definitely not interested in making that long mountain drive at three in the morning. At the end of the return trip, we come stumbling off the plane in the wee hours of the morning, and who do you think is waiting for us but a 6’3” clown in full regalia, holding a colorful placard saying “Welcome Home Zakary, Adrian, and Tommy!” Zakary and Adrian barely flinched; ironic little smiles flickered across their faces, which communicated something to the effect “Oh, Andrew’s here.” I squirmed then almost cried to have such a friend do such a thing for us. The boys responded so casually to Andrew because they know him well, like family. For one, he was their nanny one summer, when Colleen was working and I was taking an intensive Spanish class at U-Dub. He’s the one who said, “I don’t baby-sit. Number one, they are not babies. Number two, even if they were, I wouldn’t sit on them.” Just for the record: no, they are not babies, though I do believe he has sat on them one or two or three times.
I don’t discount that part of my own reaction was a response not only to having our close family friend welcoming us home at this ungodly hour wearing a clown suit, but also to the kind of clown he was: not your two-dimensional, unambiguously hilarious, slapstick, rib-tickling, fumbling clown, nor your pitiful send in the clowns, tears of a clown sort of sad clown; rather, he was ironic and brooding if not outright perverse looking. Frankly speaking, he was a bit scary. Like I said, Andrew is tall, certainly taller than your average clown. But not untypical was his clown suit – colorful, checkered, and satiny, though his was a bit grimier than the one your paid professional wears. And those weren’t oversized floppy clown shoes he was wearing but a pair of seasoned Birkenstocks. Yes, an earring or three, but no makeup or bulbous red nose. And he looked worn out from driving and wired on coffee. Of course he needed a shave. Yep, he was a little scary looking. But still, the hesitancy in Zakary and Adrian’s step on the way over to give him a big fat hug was barely detectable.
November 8, 2003, 8:30 a.m., Kyoto bound. On the Rapid Express, which takes just under 30 minutes from Osaka; not bad. Seeing as how it’s a Saturday morning, one might expect to get a seat. But, oh no, instead it’s hot and crowded in here. A reminder: yesterday, the weather was lovely: clear blue skies – not especially humid, as this part of Japan is want to be during certain seasons – and warm. I wore shorts and a T-shirt all day. Well, it looks like another shorts day today. Yes! Yesterday I changed out of my jeans in a Kyoto Station men’s room handicap stall; beyond being impeccably clean, it was roomy and un-awkward, unlike the regular stalls, which for starters have a hole in the ground where you’d expect to find a floor.
Andrew visited us two summers ago with his girlfriend Karen. The lovebirds and the Jaques family did not tour Kyoto, as they would have liked to, due to monetary constraints, I believe. Andrew is a historian (he has a B.A. and is working – and working and working and working – towards his M.A. in Japanese history), so he would have loved visiting Kyoto. I’m really sorry we didn’t. If we had, we likely would have visited some of the places I am going to today. Speaking of which, today I am like one strong young backpacker, moving at the speed strong young backpackers like to move. I don’t have a tour group today.
Andrew and Karen met at the Ellensburg Rodeo, in the beer garden behind the shoots. The country and western band was swinging, and the couple in question met then and there on the dance floor. On the one hand, it is quite hard to imagine a less likely pair of people line dancing to country and western music at a rodeo; on the other hand, knowing these two, it’s harder to imagine anyone more likely to be kicking it up in such a venue, given their dispositions: extroverted, kinesthetic, a tad exhibitionistic, and iconoclastic.
Karen used to be a model; this is what she says – often – at any rate. To my eye, she is what you would call good-looking but not stunning, though I can imagine that she might be photogenic given her coloring and height and so on. Now in her mid thirties, age and gravity have done their thing to her hips. Still, you can picture here being thin – long and lean – ten or so years ago. She’ll tell you that she’s big busted (which I thought wasn’t supposed to be a good thing for models), though to my eye she ain’t no bigger than average.
Now at the Konichi-in temple. It’s 10:00 a.m. I came here because my Lonely Planet tells me it is the home of a lovely Zen garden. 300 yen gets me in. The fellow at the ticket booth was soft spoken and kind. We chatted for a few minutes in Japanese and English. He didn’t look like a Zen monk, but he was about as mellow and unassuming as one. (He had short bushy hair and was smoking a butt.) Now standing at the entrance gate to the garden, Akechi-mon. “This gate represents Chinese style architecture of the Momoyama period; built by the General Mitsuhide Akechi (1528-1582) in 1582 for the repose of his mother’s foll [sic.] with a donation of one thousand gold pieces at Daitokuji temple. It was dismantled and reconstructed here in 1868” (sign in front of gate). It has a curvaceous, woody roof, which suits my taste just fine. Through the opening, a wall of shrubs and trees burst with autumn coloring. This is the peak of the autumn color season in Kyoto, by the way. In the foreground, at the base of this wall of flora is a lily pond with a single arched stone bridge at the far end. Unparalleled beauty and I didn’t even enter the joint yet.
Now in. Moss galore, bright red berries, and the most delicate Japanese maples in the universe. A number of large, docile koi (carp) leisurely lumber around the pond. They’re obviously Zen koi. This entire time the sound of a single drum beat and several tweety birds have been wafting my way. This next thing, I’m going to say, then I’m going to leave it alone, because it would appear to be relevant, though I’m not quite sure what that relevance might be; here goes: like my brother Mikel and your son Tim, Andrew is a drummer. The three of them seem to have a shared personality trait too, though I am not quite sure what it is. For one, they all march to the beat of an unconventional drummer. (And all four of us idolize the Clash.) There, I said it. Oh yeah, that would now be two arched stones which make up the bridge at the far end of the pond where I now stand. (Yeah, stand corrected!) We don’t get to walk over it, maybe so as we don’t ruin the lovely lichen and moss growing on it. The path winds around the pond, which ain’t round. Rather, well-rounded. A little waterfall adds a pleasant layer of natural noise to the moment. Now a gaggle of grannies who I can’t see punctuate the regular rhythm of the drum beat as if on cue from the other side of the wall. But there aren’t any benches or other dry places to sit down – and I want to sit down! I mean, I just want to sit down and soak it all in, for about like twenty years. Here before me presently is a pond "dedicated to the Goddess of Fortune on the island. Reflecting the yearly changes of scenery, the pond is lovely throughout the four seasons, particularly during the time of the falling leaves in autumn" (visitor pamphlet).
Oh my, every turn in the path brings another lovely view into site. I think I picked a perfect time to be here, because there is no one else around. I love it! A group now walks by. Ordinarily, I am one of the faster walking people you’re going to meet (I mean, duh, I walk about 10K a day); but this group of grannies blows right by me.
Presently passing through another curvaceous gate. This one has a mossy cypress roof. A koto or some other sort of stringed instrument and an occasional gong have joined the drum beat and the tweety birds. Andrew would enjoy this moment. Now at a medium-sized black shrine in a walled-in area. You don’t see many black ones. Above the front door to this black building, which we cannot enter but can see into, are three carvings: on the left and right are pheasants, in the center a dog-lion, all meticulously carved and colorfully painted, though time has caused the paint to fade. It is dark as hell inside the building. It looks like there’s some cool stuff in there; I wish I could go in. Oh, the back side of the shrine! The entire back is very colorfully painted – like those carvings up front. Interesting: the front part is black-black and the back is all color. Take the whole kit and caboodle and surround that by a clay wall topped with a mossy tiled roof, then you’d be here with me.
Now at the back of the Tosho-gu shrine, “the only building in the gongen style of architecture that still exists in Kyoto” (visitor pamphlet). Wow! Not like Sears Tower or Golden Gate Bridge wow; more like exposed roots and curvilinear trees and tall straight bamboo. Wow! All very green and undiminished in pulchritudity by the lush moss. Furthermore, given the season, splotches of vivid reds and yellows and oranges punctuate the light and dark greens and the baby blue sky.
Andrew would love it. He’s a real nature boy. He lived in a yurt for a year or maybe more alongside a river at the foothills of the Manashtash Ridge in Ellensburg. Cold river bathing in January and all. No electricity of course; just the nature around him. And his dogs and cats and bongos and accordion. And his girlfriend: at the time, a pretty young lass. She was maybe nineteen or twenty; he was maybe twenty-seven. Interruption: now the instrumentation has faded, a chorus of well-harmonized deep male voices begin chanting inna a Mongolian stylee; a chime gets tinkled every now and then. Funky monkey! Back to Andrew: he was taking care of Zakary and Adrian for us around those yurt days. I forget the lass’s name, but she was real nice. The boys liked her, and so did we. So did Andrew, but she left (for England, I believe), not because she and Andrew weren’t working out but because she was young and ready for adventure and he was committed to things in Ellensburg. Naturally, I have no flying idea why they didn’t get married and have two kids and a house like me and Colleen.
Andrew has had a bunch of girlfriends over the years we’ve known him – always earthy, mindful people who like both music and dancing to the beat of a different drummer. And suave dude that he is, he goes for the pretty ones. I think Karen was his last, or at least his last live-together girlfriend, or permanent squeeze, or significant other, or whatever they’re called. I wonder if something is wrong. I wonder if he is thinking more about boys than girls and is not saying anything to us about that interest. This is not the "wrong" thing I’m thinking about, because nothing wrong there in our liberal opinion, and we wouldn’t love or like him any less if that’s where he was going. I’m talking this way, because he doesn’t seem to have had a significant other of any persuasion in his life for quite some time – and that just ain’t like him. Or he’s not sharing such personal aspects of his life with us anymore. "Oblivious me" never noticed that Andrew might lean that way (despite the painted nails, braids, accessories, sari-looking wraps, and whatnot), though a mutual friend once retorted something like, “Yeah, Andrew was saying he doesn’t know whether he’s Phil or Philomena from one day to the next,” indicating bisexuality, when once I said something like “Andrew is one funky banana.”
No offense, Andrew, but Karen wasn’t our type. (Good for us!) We were automatically predisposed to liking her – because she was your girl – but she always talked about her Ex, a moderately famous funk rocker. I mean, you’re like our favorite person in the world, and she keeps blending comments about that bozo into the conversation. It may not have bugged you, but we thought it was disrespectful and insensitive, not to mention the fact that it meant she wasn’t putting you on a pedestal at all waking moments – which is fucked up. Nuff said.
Time to walk, because I’m starting to get a little chilly, sitting on this damp stone in the shade, wearing shorts and T-shirt. The carved wooden Buddhas over here in this smallish shrine look Japanese. Well, I mean, to me they usually look Indian. A bunch of funeral mourners pass by, wearing modern black garb. Maybe they’ve got something to do with that ceremonial-sounding music that I can’t hear anymore.
Now inside the main hall at the Konichi-in temple, which smells of old wood and incense – and my sneakers! Yes, we have to take our shoes off and carry them when we come in, and I’ve been walking around all morning, getting the dogs nice and hot and sweaty. There’s one of those signs again: “No Photographing.” Ha, no problem for us writers. I’m getting a tad burnt out on gushing about how impressive and awesome and lovely these temples and related structures are. Well, now I’m on the viewing deck, sitting in quasi-lotus position, admiring a spectacular garden: a huge expanse of fancy raked sand in the foreground, rocks and shrubs and trees in the background – choreographed to a T. This Tsurukame no Niwa is “a beautiful, dry landscape garden also designed by Kobori Enshu. The white sand represents a treasure ship and the ocean in which it is sailing. The tsurukame motif of stonework is arranged between the flat stones. Along the border, at the far end of the garden, there are several large stones, which represent the Horai mountain range. Beyond this several layers of shrubbery rise, which symbolize steep mountains and deep valleys” (visitor pamphlet).
Now at the Sanmon gate, approaching the Nanzen-ji temple. I’m calling it a gate, but it’s like no gate you’ve ever seen: maybe sixty or eighty feet tall, a couple-a-hundred feet wide, made of timbers that must have come from something like giant sequoias. People are up top; I think I’ll join them. Yep, I just sprung 1,000 yen to go up the gate and then into the main temple building and a few other buildings in the temple grounds. Unlike Konichi-in, this is obviously one of the Kyoto absolutely must do things; Tommy the genius has deduced this based on the hordes of tourists in the immediate environs. OK, up top now. Oh my, it’s so big! A gate? Rather, you might want to call it a giant elevated building. And made to last, let me tell you. I don’t have the kind of superlative lexical items at the tip of my tongue at the moment to do it justice, so just believe me when I say it’s super duper bitchin’. And the view from up here: yowee kazowee! The boys and I came here with Mikel and Naomi a couple years ago; I had to come back. From this side, I can see the Nanzen-ji temple, which sits portentously at the foot of the Higashiyama mountain range, so I’m looking at those showy, autumnal mountains too. From the other side ... just a moment ... OK, here I am: oh, nothing special. Just kidding – it’s the entire city and the Nishiyama mountain range all spread out before us, autumnal trees separating that business from us oglers on top of this gate.
One thing I notice is that I seem to be grooving on the little things – like the grain and texture of the wood, the materials these places are made of, and whatnot, more than your average tourist. I mean, on an up-close and personal level, where you can smell and feel the stuff, it seems to me no less impressive than it does at the macro level. Wow, looking into the building up here, which we can’t go in but can see through this here wooden grating, is a spectacular shrine: squatting praying Buddhas, and so on and so forth. The entire place, except for the floor and parts of the ceiling, are colorfully and delicately painted. The natural raw wood and the painted stuff juxtaposed side by side do each other a complimentary, esthetic favor. And the Buddhas are colorfully and meticulously painted too. Usually they are painted simply, or not at all, or maybe covered in gold leaf. I said that last bit like I knew what I was talking about – which gets me to thinking I might want to do some research (light research) on the topic. Research complete: The Sanmon gate of Nanzen-ji temple “symbolizes the three roads to Buddhist liberation. The original gate was destroyed by fire several times. The existing gate was constructed in 1628 by Todo Takatora. In the center of the gate can be seen a statue of Buddha with a jeweled crown. The statue is accompanied by 16 Arhat wooden statues. This gate is also famous for a Kabuki scene featuring Ishikawa Goemon and is well known as one of the three biggest gates in Japan” (backside of 1,000 yen entrance ticket).
Down for a break, about halfway to Ginkaku-ji temple (the “Silver Pavilion”) from Nanzen-ji, which along with its garden is really spectacular and really famous. I was enjoying a writing break, so you don’t get a description of these things. Today’s snack-lunch is the same as yesterday’s: an energy bar and a fill-up on water. You see, I am not eating a regular sit-down lunch because I am dieting (and economizing). I’m not fat, but I exercise a lot and I just can’t seem to flatten this gut as much as I’d like (who, me, vain?). Being away from home, I can avoid sit-down meals with the family. And thanks to your daughter's good cooking, a guy just can’t help taking seconds if not at least a large single serving. To her credit, Colleen cooks healthy dishes with lots of tofu, fish, and veggies, spiced with fresh herbs and so on and so forth. She didn’t used to be such a good cook, but since I became the full-time money-earning person and she the full-time house person, she has made amazing progress. Andrew is also a good cook. His specialty is baking, and he’ll make a couple of loaves of tasty bread every week and an occasional pie or quiche and other such goodies.
Andrew is quite smart and conscientious, bordering on the obsessive sometimes. He looks like a relaxed, laid back hippy, which he is, but he is also a studious, responsible community-minded individual. He is so community-minded and responsible in fact that he ran for city councilman this past election cycle. Andrew, Green Party candidate, took 43% of the vote, while his Republican rival took 57%. Remember, Ellensburg is on the conservative side of the Cascade Curtain; there is simply a preponderance of conservative, middle class white people in the Burg. And there are cowboys and cowgirls galore, as you know. A number of the overall population don’t care for people who are different from them, like the international students at the university (mostly Asian), the growing Latino community, and the few blacks and other people of color who call Ellensburg home. Forget about gays, artists, and other whackos.
And so Andrew and Karen met in the heart of enemy territory, as it were. Karen is bisexual – she said so anyway, I think five minutes after we met her. Karen shaves her head; she is pretty, so she can get away with it. And she is black.
My resting place here is on a stone bench next to the brook that runs along Tetsugaku Michi (Philosopher’s Lane), the famous walk my guide book suggests I take. I guess a lot of other people have the same guide book. Speaking of which, as you know, you don’t want to judge a book by its cover or people by the way they look. I say this because I am both thinking about Andrew’s appearance and was about to say something like: “Not very many of the folks strolling down Philosopher’s Lane look like philosophers to me.” Yep, another mouthful of water (after removing my foot), then off to Ginkaku-ji, because they may very well be more philosophical about life than me, who cogitates upon the subject fairly often.
No way, not now anyway. There are simply too many people. The crowd streaming up the hill to the temple looks like the rush hour crowd at the station. My guide book tells me that if I am feeling spry, I might want to take the 2.2 kilometer hike up the mountain behind the temple. I know there won’t be that many people and I am trying to shake the flab. OK, I can’t lie – well, not now anyway: I like hiking up mountains and I knew this one was here. Only, I thought I would give the temple the once over before climbing up. Hopefully, the crowds will thin out before I get back down.
It always happens this way: no matter how healthy I’m feeling – and I’m feeling strong these days – I always get puckered out going up a mountain. But there are old women and young children and a group of blind people (!) going up – and they give me no choice other than to make a show and pass them by straight to the top without resting. And let me tell you, the 2.2 kilometers are up, up, up – no level spots. Since we quit smoking a year and a half ago, I feel great. In fact, the lungs are rocking and rolling like a finely tuned machine – like the Triumph 900 cc motorcycle (!) brother Mikel is handing up to me when we move to Maine, and like son Tim’s Vespa scooter. I believe it was you who expedited that loan, so that I could commute from Balboa to UCI for classes and so that Colleen and I could buzz around Newport Peninsula like Roman Holiday-makers. We’re talking summer fun in Sunny Southern California. Thanks for that one, Lorraine.
The mountain climbing payoff is of course the view from the top. The climb itself is not intrinsically pleasurable. I mean, it is hard and it hurts and you sweat like a pig (me anyway). Colleen hates mountain climbing/hiking but she’ll go with me and the boys occasionally, mostly to contribute to bonding and doing family things together. And this is what an actively nurturing, concerned, responsible parent Colleen is: she charges up mountains with us to provide a certain model or image of women to the boys and to show them that there are really fun things that you can do in the great outdoors – because even though it may not be all that intrinsically pleasurable, it can be substantially more satisfying than playing video games for the tenth day in a row or obsessively engaging in other such lazy-ass indoor pastimes. To tell the truth, the boys will tell you they don’t exactly love mountain climbing either, though you wouldn’t know it if you saw them run up one – laughing and joking and looking for critters and back at me and Colleen.
Lovely, quite lovely! Well, it is a bit hazy today, so perhaps crispy clear yesterday would have been better. Still, it is like summer: hot and humid; you even come across those big fat summer insects – like spiders with four-inch leg spans – in these here hills. I am not lying, I’ve seen them. And I just gave myself the monthly buzz cut a few days before this trip. Uh-oh: what’s this going to look like going back to work after a week of being on a “conference trip” with a sunburn on top of my head? Andrew can be witty; I bet he would have a clever answer.
Well, here is a big temple and a big pagoda, and they aren’t even on the map. The sign here says ... “Kurodani Temple Japan
Andrew is moody – like Colleen. That’s not what attracted me to either of them initially, by the way. Lorraine, I don’t know if you are, even after knowing you all these years. But I suspect not as you are so circumspect. This is another thing that they have in common: Andrew is now teaching in the same department at the university that Colleen taught at for six or so years. He teaches American History and conversation skills classes to the Japanese students there. I’m making something of this issue of what things Andrew and Colleen have in common, because they do when we're all together. I think they do in part because they think it makes me happy; more likely, it is like an on-going joke or a game – like license plate spotting (spot the quirks and other personality traits Andrew and Colleen share.)
Back on the express train to Osaka and still can’t get a seat, though it’s 5:30 on a Saturday. And I'm pooped.
I love you,
Tommy
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