Coming Home in Winter

A light atop the mountain guides my eye to the ski area.
The thought of people wintering up there
takes me back to an ancient bus
sitting halfway up the slope of Daisen,
where old men sit drinking tea to keep warm
as they wait to put chains on the tires of the city buses
that bring tourists up to the lifts.

Celestial light too,
bathes blue the path through the trees up to my home.
I remember how a woman told me
of bears awakening from their slumber
by the unseasonable warmth.

I begin to whistle as I ascend the steps.

On the turntable: The Byrds, "Untitled"

Sunday Papers: Gary Snyder

"In North America we don't have cathedrals and architectural monuments, [...] we have these wilderness areas."
--The Etiquette of Freedom


On the turntable: Massive Attack, "Heligoland"

Cerrillos

Settling into to our new place just north of Santa Fe was much more labor intensive than I'd expected. It took some work, attempting to shoe-horn our possessions into our little casita. Despite paying the same rent, we have about half the size we had in Kyoto. And although we got rid of perhaps 70% of what we once owned (a fact that still depresses me a great deal), it still doesn't fit. Whereas in Japan, I longed for a house with lots of wall space for decorating, here I miss the clever way that the Japanese filled those little nooks and crannies to hold last year's omiyage.

Space saving devices were the answer. But again, being new in town, we wasted a lot of time simply figuring out who sold these things. We hoped to find shop a little closer to home, but we grew to accept the fact that everything was at the south end of town. So we'd often head down Cerrillos. If Santa Fe's downtown is seen as a lovely desert wildflower, then Cerrillos is the stem that nourishes it. If Santa Fe is considered "The City Different," then Cerrillos is the "City Distant," for that seems to be the general consensus in the moneyed homes up in the hills above the plaza. Cerrillos is outland, far from the faux 17th century stylings of tourist sites, with the box stores, strip malls, fast food, and the usual trappings of 21st Century Anytown, USA. It is also where the less moneyed (read: original inhabitants) live, since they can no longer afford anywhere else.

It seemed we did a trip down there daily for the first three or four weeks. I grew to loathe it as every journey took at least three hours there and back, most that time wasted sitting in traffic at too many red lights.

But those trips served as a re-introduction, of sorts, to the current state of US, as it is presented by retail. I began to look at Walmart as a modern take on Breugal. I was surprised that tattoos and piercing seem normal on staff. As was their laziness and surly nature. Official policy was little better. Attempting to sell books, I was most frustrated at Hastings buy back policy. I'm referring to their 'If an item won't scan, we won't buy it policy.' Literally judging books by their covers. Strange irony in that this was exactly what I too had been doing in my first few months in the States, writing off an entire society in frustration at a single example of bad behavior. Hmm, didn't I do this too in Japan? Ever the amateur anthropologist...


On the turntable: Jimi Hendrix, "Voodoo Soup"
On the nighttable: David Abram, "The Spell of the Sensuous"

Sunday Papers: Rumi

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?"

On the turntable: Neil Young, “A Perfect Echo”

On the nighttable, “Christopher Robbins, “Air America”

Feliz Akemashite!

Wishing a prosperous and rewarding New Year to friends East,



And West

Gurglings

Yesterday I discussed briefly the spirituality of my childhood. For the last eight years or so, the arrow of my moral compass has pointed toward India (though recently it was begun to shift back toward Japan, where it had been for at least a decade prior.) My yoga teaching has been largely inspired by my teacher Tias Little, and one of the reasons I chose Santa Fe as my point of re-entry was in order to study with him. In 2010 I took three, one-week yoga teacher trainings, two as a participant and one as his assistant. During my times on the mat with Tias, I learn far more than I can hope to pass on. And more important, I follow verbal breadcrumbs that lead me exactly to where I am.
(The following entries are things that profoundly resonated with me at the time of training and are basically nothing more than a self-indulgent recording of that. Be forewarned.)

How interesting that as infants we engage the world strictly orally. Later, we create the world through another oral process, through words.

Reality as film: the illusion of the continuation of image. The stills are the aggregates. The light of our being serving as the light that animates.

Regarding the Chakras (ala the Anatomy of the Chakras training I was in), I'm currently stuck in the Vishuddha, as a writer, and as one who has recently returned to the land of my mother tongue.

Humor in the US of the put-down variety, a competition like everything else here. Japanese humor more of the pratfall variety, a social release valve.

Time spent near water increases prana. Relates to my own philosophy that the World's most beautiful cities are those that utilize their waterfronts well.

Incense is time literally passing before our eyes.

I'm an introvert with extrovert tendencies. I consistently play out my internal dramas and process in conversation. (Sorry!)

In Japanese, 'perception' is chikaku. Chi=knowledge. Kaku=Comprehension, satori, awakening.

Disillusionment with American life is a sign that I'm once again emotionally invested.

Buddhist eight-fold path related to Chakras, as stages toward liberation. (As are the 7 cities of Cibola, according to the incredible writing of Frank Waters).

I wanted to be a star in the land of conformity (Japan). I want to be conformist in a land where everyone wants to be a superstar. (US)

In this New Mexico of dramatic outer landscapes, I pass most of my time in inner landscapes. I need to return to external landscapes, including those citified.


On the turntable: Stiff Little Fingers, "B's, Live, Unplugged, and Demos"

Church is a Verb

While at Upaya Zen center, we had the opportunity hear Father John Deer speak passionately about Gandhian non-violent social action. We joined him for a demonstration at Los Alamos, and afterward, joined in a private discussion with some of that event's organizers. One of them was a Catholic priest with whom we eventually struck up a friendship. My return to New Mexico was confusing in many ways, but none more confusing than my feeling a pull toward the religion of my youth, which I quite deliberately left behind over two decades ago.

So it was to my surprise that I found myself attending a mass said by our new friend, Father Earl. The church was progressive in the same way that Santa Fe itself is, down to the art hung in the lobby. Rather than the long, narrow, and aged mission style churches found throughout New Mexico, this was a circular structure, all white and well lit. We were seated in the first row, made to feel welcome by the smiling faces around us. I've attended a few masses over the years with my mother down at her 300 year old church in Tome, but the mass said was world's apart from any I'd experienced before. The song were new, and our voices were led by a pair of altar girls, no less. There was a strong emphasis on study, rather than on mere worship and faith, an emphasis that knowing God takes some hard work. And being offered communion wine was something I hadn't seen since my childhood in the '70s. Most of all, was the sense of inclusiveness. Many of the pews up front were led to by ramps for wheelchairs. And the statues around the church showed faces beyond the usual long-haired, bearded hippie types; here was an African, there a Native American.

It would take a huge ideological shift in Rome to bring me back to the flock. But for one afternoon, I saw a glimpse of how wonderful Catholicism can be, if it were to listen to the tenets of love on which it was founded.


On the turntable: Dinosaur, Jr., "Where You Been"