betsuni
betsuni's Journal"Seeds" from Garrison Keillor's "Leaving Home."
"Bud took the snowplow off the truck Wednesday evening, being tired of driving around with it banging up and down. He said, 'It's sure to snow now, but it'll just have to melt. I'm through thinking about it.' My attitude exactly. I put away my parka in April and put on a jacket. If it turns cold, it's not my problem.
"Aunt Mary ... ventured downtown on Thursday. ... When it's icy, Ralph sends one of his boys up to her little house with her groceries, but she looks forward to when the sidewalks are clear and she comes down to shop, which she likes to do every day. She brings her five or six things to the counter and Ralph rings them up and says, 'Nine dollars and eighty-four cents, Mary.' She looks down at the little group of things and says, 'Nine eighty-four? Are you sure?' ... She can see all the numbers of the prices on the labels. But $9.84? For these few things? Two jars of Taster's Choice, a can of tuna, a can of pears, a can of corn, and a packet of marigold seeds. It's impossible for this to cost $9.84. She looks at Ralph. ... Ralph has acted in this play for years. He knows his part. He waits as she goes down the list again, adding it up slowly in her head. Then Ralph says, 'Ah! That should be $1.49. That's $9.74.' Well, that's more like it. 'I'm sorry, this is just one of those days.' She gets a quarter and a penny change. She puts the goods in her shopping bag. She walks home, feeling a little better.
"Down the block, at the Feed 'N Seed, Harold has set up the old wooden bins to put seed packets in that have arrived from the Milton Seed Co. ... The salesman, Ritchie, ... says to Harold, 'You got to build excitement, make a visual appeal to the passer-by, and your walk-ins, you got to make them think seeds the minute they come through the door.' ... But seeds are all the Feed 'N Seed sells -- that and feeds -- so if you weren't already thinking seeds you probably wouldn't come in... It's spring itself that builds excitement and makes a visual appeal to the passer-by, and if the prospects of spring don't excite you, probably crepe paper won't have a big effect. But Ritchie believes this is going to be it, the big year, the great garden boom, when Milton triples its tomato-seed sales -- big growth in the carrot-and-beet sector, cucumbers up this year, beans up, pole beans way up, gross national kohlrabi, eggplant .... He's on the road for Milton six days a week, crisscrossing the district in his '78 Rambler wagon. It's full of crepe paper, styrofoam cups, and burger cartons. The carpet is ripped and the floorboards are mulched with dirt from a hundred little towns. Old seed samples take root there ... and soon it'll go to a junkyard and sit. Corn and beans will grow up in it and muskmelon vines come out of the seats. ... And the most luxurious ones grow on the seat where he sat. It's all waiting for spring to happen."
Cherry blossoms and "Essays in Idleness"
"Should we look at the spring blossoms only in full flower, or the moon only when cloudless and clear? To long for the moon with the rain before you, or to lie curtained in your room while the spring passes unseen, is yet more poignant and deeply moving. A branch of blossoms on the verge of opening, a garden strewn with fading petals, have more to please the eye. Could poems on the theme of, 'Going to see the blossoms to find them already fallen' or 'Written when I was prevented from going to see the flowers' be deemed inferior to 'On seeing the blossoms'? It is a natural human feeling to yearn over the fallen blossoms and the setting moon -- yet some, it seems, are so insensitive that they will declare that since this branch and that have already shed their flowers, there is nothing worth seeing any longer.
"In all things, the beginning and the end are the most engaging. ... Are blossoms and the moon merely things to be gazed at with the eye? No, it brings more contentment and delight to stay inside the house in the spring and, there in your bedroom, let your heart go out to the unseen moonlit night. The man of quality never appears entranced by anything; he savors things with a casual air. Country bumpkins, however, take flamboyant pleasure in everything. They will wriggle their way through the crowd and stand there endlessly gaping up at the blossoms, sit about under the trees drinking sake and indulging in linked verse-making together and, finally, oafishly break off great branches of blossoms to carry away. ... As for blossoms, the single cherry is best. The double cherry was once found only in the old capital of Nara, but these days it is everywhere, it seems. The cherries of Yoshino are all single flowers. The double cherry is a peculiar thing, gaudy and distorted, and there is no need to have it in the garden. The late-flowering cherry is also unattractive. It is repulsive to see it crawling with insects.
"When a large vessel filled with water is pierced with a tiny hole, though each drop is small it will go on relentlessly leaking until soon the vessel is empty. The city is filled with people, but not a day would go by without someone dying. ... Be they young, be they strong, the time of death comes upon all unawares. It is an extraordinary miracle that we have escaped it until now."
Yoshida Kenko, "Essays in Idleness" (1330)
"During their brief explosion, the cherry blossoms are said to represent the aesthetics of poignant, fleeting beauty: ephemeral, delicate in their passing. The way to celebrate their poignancy, naturally, is to drink large amounts of sake and sing raucous songs until you topple over backward. It is all very fleeting and beautiful. ... In addition to Cherry Blossom Viewing, you have Moon Viewing, Snow Viewing, Wildflower Viewing, Autumn Leaf Viewing, and Summer Stargazing. As a service to readers, I have prepared a handy chart listing each phenomenon, the season in which it appears and the correct way in which to observe it:
Cherry blossoms Spring Drunk on sake
Wildflowers Summer Drunk on sake
Harvest moon Autumn Drunk on sake
Autumn leaves Autumn Drunk on sake
Snow on ancient temples Winter Drunk on sake"
Will Ferguson, "Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking Japan"
The Diary of Anais Nin, March 25, 1932:
"Late at night. I am at Louveciennes. I am sitting by the fire in my bedroom. The heavy curtains are drawn. The room feels heavy and deeply anchored in the earth. One can smell the odors of the wet trees, the wet grass outside. They are blown in by the wind through the chimney. The walls are a yard thick, thick enough to dig bookshelves into them, beside the bed. The bed is wide and low. Henry called my house a laboratory of the soul. ... Enter this laboratory of the soul where incidents are refracted into a diary, dissected to prove that everyone of us carries a deforming mirror where he sees himself too small or too large, too fat or too thin, even Henry, who believes himself so free, blithe, and unscarred. Enter here where one discovers that destiny can be directed, that one does not need to remain in bondage to the first wax imprint made on childhood sensibilities. One need not be branded by the first pattern.
"Fred, Henry, other friends, and I at the cafe. Talking, discussing, arguing, storytelling until the lights went out in the street, the night was dispersed, and a dim, shy, sienna-colored dawn entered the window. The dawn! ... Henry thought it was the dawn itself that was a new experience. I could not explain what I felt. It was the first time I had not felt the compulsion to escape ... . At a party, at a visit, at a play, a film, came a moment of anguish. I cannot sustain the role, the pretense that I am at one with others, synchronized. Where was the exit?
"Henry's responses to all things, his capacity for seeing so much in everybody, in everything. I had never looked at a street as Henry does: every doorway, every lamp, every window, every courtyard, every shop, every object in the shop, every cafe, every hidden-away bookshop, hidden-away antique shop, every news vendor, every lottery-ticket vendor, every blind man, every beggar, every clock, every church, every whore house, every wineshop, every shop where they sell erotica and transparent underwear, the circus, the nightclub singers, the strip tease, the girly shows, the penny movies in the arcade, the bal musettes, the artist balls, the apache quarters, the flea market, the gypsy carts, the markets early in the morning. When we come out of the cafe, it is raining. Rain does not bother him. Hunger or thirst only. Shabby rooms don't bother him. Poverty does not bother him. You drink a fiery Chartreuse at a zinc counter. In life he follows his impulses, always. The only thing which surprises me is that he has no desire to meet other writers, musicians, painters, his equals. ... 'No,' says Henry, 'What would they see in me?'"
Anniversary of the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
"Everyone who experienced the tsunami saw, heard, and smelled something subtly different. ... The one thing it did not resemble in the least was a conventional ocean wave, the wave from the famous woodblock print by Hokusai ... . The tsunami was a thing of a different order, darker, stranger, massively more powerful and violent, without kindness or cruelty, beauty or ugliness, wholly alien. It was the sea coming onto land, the ocean picking up its feet and charging at you with a roar in its throat. It stank of brine, mud, and seaweed. Most disturbing of all were the sounds it generated as it collided with, and digested, the stuff of the human world: the crunch and squeal of wood and concrete, metal and tile. In places, a mysterious dust billowed above it, like the cloud of pulverized matter that floats above a demolished building. ... 'It was like a solid thing. And there was this strange sound, difficult to describe. It wasn't like the sea. It was more like the roaring of the earth, mixed with a crumpling, groaning noise, which was the houses breaking up.' ... 'What stays in my memory is pine trees, and the legs and arms of the children sticking out from under the mud and the rubbish.'
"For the first time in a century of human development, the land was in a historic, virgin darkness. No illuminated windows blazed upwards to obscure the patterning of the night sky; without traffic lights, drivers stayed off the unlit streets. The stars in their constellations and the blue river of the Milky Way were vivid in a way that few inhabitants of the developed world would ever see. 'Before nightfall, snow fell,' Kaneta said. 'All the dust of modern life was washed by it to the ground. It was sheer darkness. And it was intensely silent, because there were no cars. It was the true night sky that we hardly ever see, the sky filled with stars. Everyone who saw it talks about that sky.'
"'There were strange smells of dead bodies and mud. ... The men of religion began to feel self-conscious. ... 'The Christian pastor was trying to sing hymns, but none of the hymns in the book seemed right. I couldn't even say the sutra -- it came out in screams and shouts.' The priests lurched uselessly in the rubble in their rich robes, croaking the scriptures, getting in the way. 'And when we got to the sea -- we couldn't face it. It was if we couldn't interpret what we were seeing.' He said, 'We realized that, for all we had learned about religious ritual and language, none of it was effective in facing what we saw all around us. ... I realized then that religious language was an armor that we wore to protect ourselves, and the only way forward was to take it off.'
Richard Lloyd Parry, "Ghosts of the Tsunami, Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone"
"Moon bathing" from Nigel Slater's "A Thousand Feasts":
"The moon is full again tonight, a shimmering silver and ice-blue globe, bathing the tips of the trees in ghostly white light. I am in the hills near Kurama, but it is a light I've seen in the Hebrides, Lapland, and on the Cornish coast. ... 'Moons I have known' might be a good title for an autobiography and I would certainly label a few of them unforgettable, though that is possibly because of a state of mind rather than the state of the moon. More intrepid travelers than myself will have memories of their most spectacular waxing and waning moons, full, crescent or sickle, but mine exist mostly in my imagination.
"The appearance of the full moon comes with a cast that includes ghosts and werewolves, vampires and fairies, lunatics and late-night revellers, but also this extraordinary light. An incandescence that picks out the white petals of certain garden flowers ... . There is something nurturing about eating green leaves that have been planted according to the position of the moon. ... Vegetables, and in particular leafy greens, that are planted according to the rhythm of the Earth's movements. The notion of vegetables seasoned with as much magic as salt and pepper appeals to me.
"Unlike the punch-you-in-the-eye sun, the moon holds secrets. The most difficult photograph in my collection is a night seascape. At first glance, there is nothing to witness but jet-black. Lit by an expert, gently rippling waves slowly appear across the lower half of the picture. Then, gradually, a horizon, together with a sliver of the moon on the black water. Badly lit, as it is in my house, you can see almost nothing. I can't help but feel that this was always the photographer's intention, a picture that reveals itself to only a few. Tonight's moon is a good moon. Nothing bad could happen under it's sleepy, benevolent gaze. No elves and goblins are abroad tonight."
Setsubun (Feb. 3) Japanese festival driving away demons -- the red ogre is Trump.
Paper demon (oni) masks with packages of dried soybeans or peanuts are sold to take home, someone puts on the mask and acts scary and everyone else throws the beans or nuts at them yelling, Demons out! Good luck in! (Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!). I think everyone in the world should adopt this custom and scream TRUMP OUT! DEMOCRATS IN! while throwing nuts at Trump when his evil visage appears on screen. Just in case it helps.
Here's Setsubun festival at a shrine with Trump & oni friends driven out by a Shinto priest with an arrow and then bean-throwing.
A new death, an old birth, and a walk through two historic Nakasendo post towns in Nagano prefecture, Japan.
The Nakasendo is one of the old official highways between Tokyo and Kyoto, the central mountain route, and some of the post towns have been preserved. Tsumago is first on the video, tourists can walk along the old trail to Magome. I've been there many times because my husband Sam was born on a snowy day in January in one of the first Western-style buildings constructed in the area, not far from Tsumago (was originally a government office, post office, prison, ended up owned by Sam's family until it was moved and is now the Mountain Historical Museum next to the Fukuzawa Momosuke Memorial Museum in the main town of Nagiso). I think it's fabulously historical to be born in what's now a museum. Family ancestors rest in the cemetery overlooking Tsumago and there's a monument for the war dead. Sam's father's older brother's name is on it, died in a Siberian prisoner of war camp in 1946.
Sam went to the funeral of his elderly aunt yesterday, who was also from those mountains. The old towns make it easy to imagine what life was like ninety years ago, thinking about the past. Sam just came home from his aunt's house to say goodbye to her children and grandchildren before they return to the cities and found out the New Year's lottery ticket auntie had him buy for her and promised to spit with him had won ¥3,000. Not much, but she would've been incredibly excited! So now that's Sam's birthday present on a snowy day in January.
Beautiful thatched-roof house villages in deep snow and a snowman festival, Japan's Snow Country.
UNESCO world heritage sites, the villages of Shirakawa, Ainokura and Suganuma in Gifu Prefecture.
Snowman Festival in the little mountain village of Shiramine, Ishikawa Prefecture.
New Year's Eve visitors, from Suzuki Bokushi's "Snow Country Tales" (1835):
"The New Year always finds us still buried under the snow. It is packed hastily onto the elevated snow pathways that run between the houses, higher than their roofs in many places, and naturally many slippery dangerous spots are bound to appear. One New Year's Eve I set out with my friend, Tokakishi, to pay a visit ... . As the talk wandered pleasantly from topic to topic, my host's wife addressed a question directly to me: 'I've heard that in Edo ...on the eve of New Year ... demons are bound to make their appearance that night.'
"The thirteen-year-old daughter ... interjected: 'Have you ever seen a demon?' 'Sure I have. Quite a variety of them exist, believe me,' Tokakishi replied. 'In general, demons are either red or blue. Those with white faces are a little less frightening and are called white demons. The roly-poly black ones are called black demons. Now if demons are around and about on New Year's Eve even in bustling Edo, you can be sure that there are plenty of them here for our snowy New Year's Eve. Why, one might be peering into the window at this very moment,' he hinted darkly, and glanced up at a high window that was directly above where the three women were seated. ... Just then there was a great crash as the window behind them burst open and an avalanche of snow came thundering into the room, carrying with it a dark figure. At this the women shrieked and threw themselves prostate on the floor, shaking in terror.
"And now, as all stared at the strange creature buried in the heaps of packed snow from the collapsed pathway outside, they recognized the little blind masseur Fukuichi (whose name, you must know, means 'Good Fortune'), a frequent visitor to their home. 'Well, if it isn't Good Fortune!' they all shouted, laughing -- as Fukuichi did, too. But the daughter and the daughter-in-law were of one voice: 'We thought you were a demon! How dare you scare us so.' ... Fukuichi ... said to Tokakishi, 'I've composed a poem. Would you write it down for me?' Fukuichi's verse went like this: Out of the lucky direction, Fukuichi, the little blind man comes tumbling --with a foolish thump on his rump. But the poem could also be read to mean: Out of the lucky direction, Good Fortune! -- A rice barn appears with the festive pounding of rice cakes sounding. Everyone was immensely entertained by this, and they applauded Fukuichi ... as the sake cups were passed around again."
A big thorough cleaning before the New Year is essential to the celebration in Japan, but I choose to put it off until the lunar new year according to the old calendar, or keep finding other cultures' New Years and postponing it indefinitely.
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