[this serves as the "afterword" for the short story collection, "Marsilani."]
“What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant .... The change which the writing wrought in me (and of which I did not write) was only a beginning- only to prepare me for the gods’ surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound.”
-C. S. Lewis, “Till We Have Faces”
One day, far into the future, an alien intelligence will land on Mars, drawn by curiosity. It will follow the landrovers Spirit and Freedom, still operating centuries, eons, after their mission was supposed to have ended. It will examine the computerized records of the rovers, pore over the countless digital images in their memory. And it will ask: Who made these rovers, and what were they looking for? Barren geological formations? Water and ice? Life perhaps?
This intelligence will wonder at the names, “Spirit,” “Freedom,” unable to read them, incapable of understanding. How could it know that the landrovers had a mission lifespan of roughly three years, but somehow outlasted their makers, now long since departed from their own barren world? How could it know that the unstated mission goal of the rovers was to discover the possibility of life on Mars, a persistent rumor of the now extinct Earthlings, generated once upon a time by the misperception of canals on its surface? How could it appreciate the irony, that now, the only traces of life in the solar system are the tracks of these very landrovers, scrawled like straight canals all across its barren landscape?
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Short Story: Sudoku
[this story was written as a sort of puzzle, as its name implies. What is the relationship between each part? And what does anything have to do with fathers (if that is indeed what this story is supposed to be "about")?]
[just to make it less confusing... At the time of this story, Dean (my older brother) and his wife Jani are about to have their first child. I have two children (Willow and Aiden), and my younger sister (absent from the actual story) has two children (Kathy and Marcus). My father babysits the kids much of the time. And my grandfather is steadily succumbing to Alzheimer's. It's supposed to be close to Father's Day.]
XIII. Sudoku
1. What does Dad want?
“So, what are you getting Dad for Father’s Day?”
Willow sits pretty in her carseat, but Aiden, her little one year old brother, isn’t happy. He wriggles like a little balding Houdini, trying to free himself from the strait jacket of safety harnesses. He whines and keens palpably sonic anger.
“Hold on,” I tell my brother over the cell. I reach my right arm behind the back of the front passenger seat, open the cooler that’s sitting there, and (by touch) find and grab one of Aiden’s bottles, all the while keeping one hand on the steering wheel, and an eye on the road ahead (not a picture of safety, this father, but perhaps an ad for a Cirque: the blindfolded bottle-juggling crash-test dummy). I hand Aiden the bottle, and (thank God) he receives it, the nipple silencing his frantic cries for the time being.
I return to the cell phone conversation. “What are YOU getting him?”
There’s a pause as my brother Dean chuckles. It’s the age old conundrum, reawakened three times a year in varying intensities (Christmas, Birthday, and Father’s Day): What does Dad want? “Well, I was thinking maybe some stamps, or some coins...”
He’s referring to my father’s closet collection hobbies. “Dude, that’s so old school,” I tell him with a laugh. “Don’t you know?”
“What?”
“Sudoku.”
“Pseudo- what?”
“No,” I correct. “Su - Do - Ku. It’s a Japanese puzzle. Sort of looks like a crossword puzzle, but with numbers.”
“Never heard of it,” my brother sighs.
“It’s in all the papers. Supposedly, it helps with the memory, you know, prevents dementia and Alzheimer’s and all that. That’s why he’s doing it.”
My brother’s a doctor, and while he is all for prevention of disease through proactive exercise (both mental and physical), he scoffs at the flurry of anecdotal health advice out there. “Yeah, whatever,” he says derisively. “But if that’s what he’s into.”
“Only,” I continue, “he has every book on Sudoku out there. He’s even getting into weird forms of Sudoku. Like, the normal puzzle is done on a nine by nine square. He’s doing it on a sixteen by sixteen, with numbers AND letters.”
There’s a pause. My brother obviously doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about. “So what you’re saying is, we can’t get him a- a Sudoku.”
“Yup.”
“So,” my brother repeats emphatically. “What are you getting Dad?”
“Well, I’m heading over to that Novel-T T-shirt store in Ward right now,” I tell him. “Lynn said there were some cute shirts, like one with this sumo wrestler scratching his butt that says, ‘Ichi Bun.’”
“Sounds- appropriate,” says my brother. “Pick one out for me while you’re there.”
I sigh loudly in frustration. “Dude, I have two kids with me. Two basically good-“ I cast a furtive glance into the rear view mirror “-but terribly restless kids. And you want me to do your shopping for you?”
“I’ll pay you back,” my brother says, as though that were any sort of defense. And before I can object further, he ends the call with a “Thanks!”
“You’re welcome!” I say with false cheer (I’m trying to teach the kids good manners, after all). Quietly, I append: “Your time’s a coming.”
Just then, I hear a hollow thud. Something was dropped (or thrown) in the back seat. I glance into the rear view mirror, and see that Aiden’s bottle is no longer in his mouth. Thus unplugged, it only takes moments for that volcano of dissatisfaction to erupt in a cry of fury, and his body to quake violently like a 7 on the Richter scale.
“Aiden has itchy buns,” Willow says with a giggle.
“Haha,” I mock laugh (secretly hoping that Willow never repeats that joke in front of Lynn). Then, I reach back with one arm and lay a placating hand on Aiden’s thigh. “Aiden, you don’t want your bottle? What do you want?” My voice is more plea than query.
He shoves my hand away, giving me a pained look.
I ask again, with insistence:
“What do you want?”
2. As If...
“What do you want me to say?”
The question comes out with more irritation and impatience than I intended, and hangs like a storm cloud in the air.
It’s a hot June night, and instead of sleeping in the bedroom, Lynn and I are lying on separate sofas in the upstairs family room (the cross draft is better here). The two sofas line the outer walls of the room, just beneath the open windows, such that we are lying perpendicular to each other, with our heads pointing to the intersecting corner.
We’ve just returned from yet another summer wedding, this one at the Hale Kulani for one of Lynn’s cousins. Tonight’s affair was particularly lengthy and expensive, with a slick slide show detailing the relationship from inception to fruition. Of course, the story depicted was incredibly romantic, filled with so many serendipitous coincidences that one could not doubt that the hand of destiny was involved.
And of course, having seen it, Lynn questioned our own relationship: “What if Jani hadn’t set us up, do you think we still would have met?”
I take a deep breath, curbing my edginess. Weddings in general tend to annoy me; big pricey weddings like tonight’s positively irritate me. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’ve already seen a fair share of divorces happen to people around me. Why pay big money for another Titanic? Might as well buy a canoe and paddle around the icebergs. But then, that’s just me. Cynical with a capital C. Also Cheap.
“What do you want me to say?” I repeat, this time with a bit more calm. “That even if Jani hadn’t set us up, we still somehow would have met? Honestly, I doubt it. I mean, I believe in the magic of love and all,” I lie, “but think about it. You were working for Gymboree, a children’s clothing store. When do I ever buy clothes, even for myself? Never! And since the only place I hung out at was at Borders or Barnes and Nobles, well, maybe one day you would have been in the Romance aisle, picking up your latest Laura Ashley, and I would’ve been searching for a graphic novel. Oops, I guess we probably wouldn’t have met there either. I mean, I don’t think the nerdling aisle is anywhere near the soft core porn-“
”It’s Laura Moore,” Lynn corrects. “Laura Ashley’s a fashion designer. And actually, those aisles are next to each other.”
“My point exactly,” I continue, unimpeded. “Nothing in common. We ran in completely different circles.”
The silence that follows is dangerous. I suddenly realize that Lynn may send me back to the “reverse doghouse” (the bedroom) if I continue on this track. On a humid night like this, that would be particularly tortuous. I’ve got to ameliorate things before they get out of control.
“Look, Lynn,” I say, as softly as I can muster. “I love you. We’ve got two beautiful kids. Isn’t that enough? Does it matter that it wasn’t inevitable? That maybe it was just plain- evitable?”
Lynn sighs. I can sense that she wants to concede, but she still has misgivings, as she always does post-wedding attendance. “Okay, and this is not just some ridiculous hypothetical,” she begins, prefacing what inevitably will be a ridiculous hypothetical, “but what if we never had the kids? Would you still love me? Would we still be together?”
I suppress a cry of impatience. “Of course.”
“Sometimes when I look at married couples with kids, I wonder. I mean, they devote their entire lives to raising them. Then once they’re gone, the couple discovers they have nothing in common, and end up getting a divorce. Is that going to be us?”
“Of course not,” I say, with tempered evenness. “I love you. I love YOU. YOU- and the kids... although, now that we have them, they will probably be the center of our lives forever, draining us dry and driving us insane. So even if we do survive raising them, there won’t be much left of either of us, mentally or otherwise, to love. We’ll be empty dried out husks.”
Lynn chuckles, and I begin to relax.
“Look,” I continue, “the point is, I married you, and that means I’m going down with the ship.” A Titanic reference, I note distantly. And, something close to the lyrics of a song, which (inappropriately) I start to sing with much feeling and little accuracy: “I will go down with this ship, and I won’t put my hands up and surrender-”
“SHH!” Lynn hisses, “You’re going to wake up the kids!” But her voice sounds happier, more at ease.
A few moments pass in silence, and I wonder whether Lynn has fallen asleep. I’m about to drift off myself when she interrupts the dead still air with yet another question. “Randy?” she says quietly. “I wonder... I mean, since I was your first and all... When you go to a wedding like that, don’t you ever have any regrets?”
“Why?” I ask sleepily. “Because of all the hot single chicks there? As if.”
“No, not because of that,” Lynn says curtly.
“Why, do you?”
“No,” Lynn replies instantly.
She’s had a checkered past, unlike myself, but believes that everything ultimately turned out for the best (meaning our marriage).
But then again, maybe she has to believe that.
“Do you?” she asks me again.
“Of course not,” I say, carefully quick.
But in the silent moments that follow, memories surface like monstrous icebergs. I think of all the near misses (or near hits) in my past, all the missed doorways to other perspectives, other lives, other worlds...
For some reason, Satsuki’s face surfaces relentlessly.
I shake my head to clear it. “As if,” I mutter bitterly.
“What?” Lynn asks.
I get off my sofa and creep under Lynn’s thin blanket. It’s very crowded, or as she likes to say, “cozy.” “I chose you,” I whisper. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
It is precisely at that moment that Aiden lets out a loud wail from his crib.
I smile wearily, roll my eyes.
“Hold that thought,” I say, as I get up to check on the little monkey...
3. Picture of Youth
“Hold on.”
“Un-ko Wady,” Aiden cries, as he hugs my shins and stares up at me.
“Hold on, Aiden,” I repeat softly. “And I’m not your Uncle Randy, I’m your Daddy.”
Aiden’s puppy dog stare is relentless, and despite myself, I’m compelled to lift him up so that he can lean his damp head against my chest. He smells sour, not like milk or piss, but like the sweat of a working man. Like my father. “Whoa, did you fall asleep on Grandpa today?”
It’s 6:00 pm Wednesday at my parents’ house. I’m standing beside my mother as she pulls out old photo albums from bursting cardboard boxes and riffles through their pages. On occasion, Kathy and Marcus, my sister’s kids, aged 6 and 4, jump up and down excitedly beside my legs with requests: “Uncle Randy, put me upside down!” “Uncle Randy, be a horse!” Although I’m touched by their excitement, I’m tired, and besides, I’m here on urgent business. “Sorry, can’t,” I mutter.
Marcus stops jumping, and pulls on my pants leg. “What are you doing?” he asks inquisitively, looking at my mother, and then me.
“Grandma is looking for a picture of grandpa,” I explain. “I want to draw a picture of him for Father’s Day.”
“Oh,” Marcus says, with a smile. Then he pulls my pants leg again. “Uncle Randy, Uncle Randy, did you know what we got for grandpa?”
I kneel down so that I can be at eye level with Marcus (and also so I can put Aiden back down on his feet; he casually saunters off, looking for Thomas the Train). “No, what did you get grandpa?”
He giggles. “We got him underwear.”
I smile, mussing up Marcus’s hair. “Something he definitely needs.” Marcus screams and leaps away before I can tickle him.
“Ah, found some!” my mother cries triumphantly. I stand up, and look over her shoulder at the open photo album page. You can tell that it’s old, not just because of the black and white photos, but because the wax lines that run across the page are stained yellow, and the cellophane appears dull and foggy, like the haze of a cataract.
“Where?” I ask, scanning the page.
“Right here!” my mother says, pointing.
“What? Is that Dad?” I squint, not believing my eyes.
The photo quality is somewhat poor and grainy, but it fails to mask the liveliness of the subject. My father (is it really him?) is dressed in the full length black uniform of a school boy in Japan, in front of some indistinct, faded field. He’s posing somewhat casually, with his hands deep in his pockets, and one leg crossed over the other, toe planted into the ground. His face is smooth and handsome, with distinctive and animated features. And his eyes. They are eyes I have never seen my father have, eyes that are both bright with youth and dark with playful mischief.
I exhale slowly. “He looks just like a Japanese James Dean,” I say finally.
My mother looks from the photo to me. “He looks like you, when he was your age.”
“Not,” I blurt, laughing sheepishly. Then, “Can I have it?”
“Sure,” my mother nods. She uses the dull blade of a letter opener to peel the photo off of the aged wax, and hands it to me. “What do you need it for again?”
I accept it gingerly, my eyes never leaving my father’s image. “I’m going to scan this into my computer, enlarge it, and reprint it. Then, I’m going to use a back light to trace the large forms, and shade and fill in the rest. Low effort art. And all I have to do is invest in a picture frame.”
My mother, who is thrifty to a fault, nods. “But didn’t you already buy him a T-shirt?”
“Yeah.”
“So why do all this?”
“I don’t know,” I mutter. “I just wanted to do something- different- for Dad this time. Not just the standard crapola.” I’m quiet for a moment as I assemble my thoughts. “Don’t you ever wonder about Dad? If he’s happy?”
My mother seems taken aback. “Of course he’s happy. He’s got four, pretty soon with Dean’s kid, five wonderful grandchildren. Why shouldn’t he be happy?”
I shake my head. “Mom, he stays home all day babysitting and doing sudoku. On rare occasions, like now, he gets to go out and fill in gas or buy groceries for Japan grandma. Whoopee. Don’t you ever wonder about him?” And then, softly, “Don’t you ever think he misses Japan?”
Mom is thoughtful for a few moments. Then, she explains, almost as though to herself: “A few months in when I was pregnant with Dean, I started to develop asthma. I didn’t have any insurance in Japan, only back home in Hawaii, and since Kazu had just started his own business, he didn’t have any health insurance either. So we didn’t have any choice. We had to come to Hawaii, for my health, and for Dean’s.”
“Mom, that was almost 40 years ago.”
“He’s been back,” my mother offers in defense. “And besides, this is as much his home now as anyplace else in the world.”
I glance down at the picture in my hand, so full of youth, so full of promise. “But Mom,” I protest. “Don’t you- I mean, do you ever wonder if he has any regrets? About not staying in Japan?”
My mom shakes her head impatiently. Clearly, this discussion makes her uncomfortable.
“Everyone has regrets,” she says, getting up slowly. “But not everyone dwells on them.” She wobbles on her bad knee towards the kitchen. “Now, I’ve got to cook dinner for these kids, so if you don’t mind.”
She pulls out a large ham from the fridge, and, from the pantry, a can of pineapples...
4. “Pai- Nap- Pu- Ru”
It all started at one of the countless morning services.
I was in Tenri City, in Japan, undergoing Shuyoka, a “Spiritual Development Course” for the Tenrikyo Religion. It was a three month ordeal, during which time I and about six hundred other “devotees” learned about Tenrikyo doctrine, practiced the Te-odori (or Hand Dance), played the various instruments of the service (like the fue or kotsuzumi), and performed hinokishin (“daily gratitude,” meaning free, unsolicited labor). And every morning, day in and day out, like sleepwalking zombies, we attended morning service at the Main Sanctuary.
It had been about two months since I started Shuyoka when it happened. The novelty of being in Japan had faded somewhat. Although the daily routine set up for us had become familiar and comfortable, a part of me was undeniably restless. It was showing in the kinds of clothes I was wearing. I was a slob by nature, but I was really starting to push the envelope. That morning, for instance, I wore, below the required standard black happi coat, a pair of super torn up jeans. I also wore a pair of white karate gi pants underneath, and thank god, because there were holes everywhere in the jeans; let’s just say that some of those holes would have made me look like the Artist Formerly Known As.
I sauntered up to sit in my position on the tatami, with at least two dozen rows of black heads between myself and the hinoki wood railing encircling the crater housing the performers of the morning service. My eyes felt swollen from lack of sleep. They wandered aimlessly across the dim and cavernous hall, taking in the tall hinoki pillars, the expansive grid of tatami mats, the black coated mounds of hundreds of seated worshippers...
And then I saw a girl standing in the middle of nowhere looking right at me.
Even half-closed, my eyes could tell that her glance was neither passing, nor accidental; in fact, technically, it couldn’t be called a glance. It was more a stare, one that held me, then passed into me, causing my breath to catch, and my heart to skip. She wasn’t quite smiling; her delicate mouth was slightly open, as though in the midst of a word whispered across the distance.
Before I could turn away to discount it as coincidence or dream, she walked over to me, eclipsing the distance, until she was right beside me. She took a seat, and, looking up, urged me to do the same.
I stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do.
Then, with a sound like thunder, everyone in the hall began to clap, signaling the start of the service. Shaken and embarrassed, I sank to the floor beside the girl.
During the minute-long period of silent prayer that followed, as everyone kneeled in quiet reflection, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the girl’s lips curl into a laughing smile. And I became aware of a subtle scent, lightly sweet, one which I would forever after associate with spring, and sunflowers...
That was how it all began.
Her name was Satsuki, and she was from Kyoto. She told me, as we walked back from service to our respective tsumeshos (dormitories) that she liked my pants. “Anna zubon wa Amerika de fuete run desuka?” she asked. “Are those kind of jeans popular in America?”
I struggled mentally to construct a reply out of the rudimentary Japanese that I had retained from elementary school days. All I could say was, “Eeh, Maa.” “Yeah, well.”
She was a cute girl, with thin bright eyes that never seemed to change shape regardless of feeling or situation, but sometimes seemed to burn with differing intensities. Her mouth was small and delicate, and when she smiled, she reminded me of a rabbit, or a mouse. Her hair, tied into a ponytail, exposed the smooth curve of her neck.
Yes, she was cute, but she was hardly innocent. At one point, her fingers brushed my thigh lightly through a hole in my jeans, through the karate gi, tracing invisible pathways deep within. It was hardly an accident; her look right afterwards told me as much.
I wanted to know more about her, and asked her as many questions as I could clumsily stutter. As we passed a flower shop on the Hon-dori, the main market street, I asked her: “Donna hana ga suki?” “Which flower do you like?”
“Himawari,” she answered instantly.
Unfortunately, there were no sunflowers in the shop, only roses and purple irises and chrysanthemums.
I dropped her off at her tsumesho, awkwardly telling her that I would see her tomorrow. “Jyaa, ashita mata.” “Tomorrow, again.”
That night, I tried to dream of Satsuki.
I assembled all the fragments of my brief experience of her on that day, her eyes, her smile, her voice, her touch, and most of all, her scent, and tried to unite them into a single sensation, one that would well up inside me, one that I could grasp and hold onto forever. Or at least that night.
But I couldn’t.
I kept thinking about the script that went along with the movie. What could I say to express my feelings for her, what could I say to move her? The only things I knew were “Suki da yo” (“I like you”) or “Aishiteru” (“I love you”) or even “Kimi no koto suki” (“Baby I love your way”). All clumsy, flat, cliche. Inadequate.
And what did I really know of her anyway? That she liked sunflowers, scentless?
Without words, without language, how could there ever be true connection, true relationship?
***
My last conversation with Satsuki occurred a couple of days later.
We were to the point of holding hands as we walked back to our tsumeshos, but I still knew nothing significant about her. I had asked her about what kind of music she liked, who her favorite actor or actress was, anything and everything that I could. And, either because she didn’t understand the question, or because I couldn’t understand her answer, there was always a deep disconnect.
The clincher came just as I reached her tsumesho. We had managed a tenuous thread of conversation about, of all things, lunch the day before. I mentioned that the thing I especially liked were the pineapples, which reminded me of home.
“Eh?” she asked, tilting her head. She hadn’t understood me.
“Pineapples,” I repeated.
She shook her head, again misunderstanding me.
Masking exasperation, I pronounced the word in Japanese: “Pai- Nap- Pu- Ru.”
Satsuki nodded, smiled, but in the meantime, had probably forgotten why I had mentioned pineapples in the first place.
I reached into my happi coat, pulled out a carefully folded piece of paper, and handed it to her gently.
“Eh, nani kore?” “What is this?”
I laid my hand on hers to prevent her from unfolding it. “Ato de mite kudasai.” “Look at it later.”
Then, I smiled softly at her, trying to memorize the shape of her eyes, and the unpredictable fire within them.
“Jya, mata ashita,” I lied, turning away.
After I rounded a corner, I began to run, and didn’t stop until I reached my dorm room, where the sunflower that I had painstakingly tried to draw the night before drooped and wilted silently...
5. Find Your Voice
“Pineapple,” I say, pointing to the fake plastic yellow toy. “This is a pineapple.”
Aiden turns away, uninterested, picks up his favorite toy, and holds it up. “Train,” he says, with utter seriousness. “Thomas.”
“Yes, that’s Thomas the Train,” I say, nodding. “And this-“ I again point to the object, “is a yellow pineapple.”
“Train!” Aiden cries. “Thomas!”
I smile in resignation. “Okay, okay.”
I rise up from my crouch, just before Marcus can scramble on my back.
My mother, sitting in the corner La-Z-Boy, has been watching my interaction with Aiden. She smiles fondly.
“Was I like that?” I ask her.
“Like what?” And before I can respond, she answers. “You were obsessed, too, but with cars. We could leave you alone for hours with them. You would sit on the kitchen floor, and just roll them backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, over and over.”
“What about talking?” I ask. “Was I able to talk at his age?”
My mother shakes her head no. “Aiden is fast, for a boy,” she says. “I think he’s going to be really bright. You, on the other hand.”
“What?”
She sighs. “Didn’t I ever tell you? For a little while, I was worried that there was something wrong with you. That you were retarded.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” my mother nods. “You were such a quiet boy. And at two years old, when most kids were saying short sentences, you rarely even said single words.”
“Really.”
My mother smiles sarcastically. “Actually, not much has changed.”
I match her smile. “So, what did you do?”
“Do?”
“Yeah, how did you get me to talk?”
My mother looks down thoughtfully. “I didn’t do anything,” she says softly. “But Dad, well, one day, he took you out for a drive, just he and you, for about an hour. When you guys returned, Dad said, ‘He’s okay. He can talk just fine.’ And you could. In fact, we discovered that you could talk in full, complete sentences, that you were actually quite articulate.”
I smile faintly.
“Yeah,” my mother nods, deep in recollection. “Dad found your voice for you. Funny, huh? He’s so quiet himself. But he was the only one that could get you to talk. Maybe it’s because he was the only one that could reach you, the two of you are so alike.”
My mother rocks the La-Z-Boy.
I crouch down, picking up the fake plastic pineapple, and stroking Aiden’s thin, sweaty hair.
I try to remember that drive. I seem to have dim memories of it, of being driven around Mililani, of seeing green fields of weedelia roll past, of riding beside my father. I can’t remember what he said, what magic words he used to unlock my tongue.
But I almost recall, like a distant and long forgotten dream, a vague feeling, a feeling of communication, of acknowledgment, of being heard and understood...
And I remember that it felt good.
6. Absence: Father and Father Away
“Dad, can you teach me some moves?”
I’m back from my freshman year at college, where I’ve been learning Isshinryu Karate. I’ve learned rudimentary throws from my sensei, like a sweeping takedown and a hip throw, but I want to learn more. Perhaps if I do, when I return to Massachusetts in the Fall, I’ll have improved enough to get revenge on some of the higher ranking students.
I also want to bond with my dad. I’ve never been into sports, so I could never participate in conversations about football or basketball with him, like my brother could. But since he was a black belt in judo once, I thought that finally I might have something slightly in common, something I could practice with him.
We’ve just finished washing the car, and my father is winding up the garden hose. I lift the damp bottoms of my sweat pants up over my shins so they look more like karate pants, and throw some clumsy side blade kicks into the air.
My father just smiles, shaking his head. He walks around the side of the garage to put the hose away. I follow him.
“Here,” I say, as soon as he drops the hose and his hands are free. I hold his shoulder, shifting his body so that he faces me squarely. “Check this out.” And I go through the sequence of moves for a sweeping takedown, calling them out as I perform them: “Pull down, push, step, bring the foot around, and sweep.” I don’t follow through, but even so, at the end of the movement, I feel as though I am more off balance than my father. My initial pushes and pulls never even budged him, and with my right foot snaked behind his right heel, I feel like I’m leaning backwards.
My father takes a small step forward, and confirms my instability. I wobble for a moment, then save myself from falling by skittering my feet around unsteadily.
“Hetakuso na,” my father sighs. He starts to walk to the front door of the house.
“Come on, Dad,” I cry. “Can’t you show me something?” I follow him as he walks past the little Japanese garden in our yard, the one with the mondo grass hill and the stone lantern. I try to lay a hand on his shoulder, to catch his attention.
But my father is suddenly not there.
Before I know it, the world spins, and my stomach turns end over end. The next thing I know, I’m staring up at the evening sky, coughing. Mondo grass is all around me, and the stone lantern looks close enough to fall on me.
I clumsily sit up on my own. My father is already at the front door, taking off his slippers.
“Cool,” I cough. “How did you do that? What did you do?”
The front door shuts behind him.
I sit in the darkening twilight, alone.
I stay in that position for many minutes, crushing mondo grass and half hearing the growing sound of crickets around me. I think about the distance between fathers and sons, and how that distance is maintained through silence, and sometimes, in my case, physical throwing. The distance has something to do with respect, I surmise, but at times, it seems to involve something far more fundamental. It is kin with the repulsion of like-poled magnets, or the irreducible gap between parallel lines.
Its inevitability makes me want to hurl.
“When I’m a father,” I whisper out loud, “I’m going to be different. I’m going to be close, and involved, and teach them everything I know, and give them everything I have to give... whether they like it or not!”
Venus and the first and brightest stars pop into being in the darkening sky, oblivious and unchanging, as they have since the beginning of time...
7. “Presents”
Dean stops by to pick up the father’s day present I bought for him to give to my dad.
Willow gets to the metal screen door first, yelling a friendly “Hi!”
“Hi Willow,” Dean calls through the tiny holes.
I open the door, holding Aiden in my arms. He’s tired and fussy, and instead of offering any sort of greeting to my brother, buries his face into my chest.
“Hi Aiden,” Dean says.
Aiden digs his face deep into the hollow near my armpit, shaking his head no.
“He’s tired,” I explain. “Come in.”
I lead Dean into the living room (Willow traipsing along close behind), carefully weaving a path around fragmented Lego Quattro structures and mismatched diecast and wood versions of Thomas the Train characters, to the island where I put the shopping bags.
“So, how’s Jani?” I ask, as I shuffle through the contents of a bag with one hand.
“She’s good,” Dean says. “Tired and anxious, but good. Only two more weeks.”
I smile wearily. “Get ready, dude, ‘cause you’re not going to get a good night’s sleep for a while once the baby comes.” I pull out a large black shirt. “Here it is,” I say, unfolding it and laying it on the island.
It is plain, except for large white letters on its front: “Old F.A.R.T. / Fathers Against Radical Teenagers.”
“Rand,” Dean complains. “We’re not teenagers any more.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, shifting Aiden slightly. “That’s why I bought a cloth pen. It’s in the other bag. You can cross out the Teenagers part, and write in Thirty-somethings. Or-” the idea suddenly hits me- “Toddlers.”
Dean half-smiles, appreciating my ideas, but reluctant to make the modifications himself. “Well,” he says, “it DOES match him. Remember when we were young? He used to fart in his hand, open up his fist right in front of our noses, and call it a ‘present.’ Remember that?”
I crack up despite myself, shaking Aiden. He whines a complaint. “Man, don’t remind me. He used to make the most foul-smelling farts ever. They were so thick, they were almost liquid. I could almost taste them.”
Dean laughs, shaking his head.
Willow, jumping up and down at our feet, squeals and pretends to be in on the joke.
“You know,” I continue, “it’s ironic, but that was the only time he really shared of himself.”
Dean chuckles. “If that’s sharing, I wish he didn’t. Sometimes he was a bit too, shall we say, generous.”
“But that’s dad, huh?” I say thoughtfully. “I mean, really, he was, in some ways, just like his farts. Silent but violent. I mean, inwardly I guess.”
“A quiet riot,” Dean retorts. Suddenly, we’re playing some kind of game.
“Soundless but boundless,” I shoot back.
“Unstated and deflated,” Dean blurts, after a pause.
Aiden is now squirming and shrieking in irritation. Willow, meanwhile, is jogging around in circles around my brother and I, screaming and crying out “That’s funny” over and over again.
Suddenly, Dean grows quiet, wrinkling his nose. “Must be having flashbacks,” he says, “cause something around here stinks.”
I lift Aiden’s wriggling angry diaper-clad butt up to my nose. My sudden shuddering causes Dean and Willow to burst out in laughter together. “Ai- den,” I complain wearily. I hold him away from myself, offering him to Dean. “Here, wanna practice, dad-to-be?”
Dean just shakes his head.
“No way. Forget it.”
8. Remember Dad on Father’s Day
“I heard memory is strongly tied to smell.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” says Dean, addressing my mom’s comment. He straightens up in his seat to assume the doctor’s role. “The olfactory region of the brain is located close to the hippocampus, so when you smell, you stimulate the seat of memory.” Nobody’s really listening after that point, but Dean continues. “It was an adaptive mechanism. Animals needed to remember smells in order to survive. This was the smell of a predator, that was the smell of prey.”
Dean, my mom, my grandpa and I are all sitting around the dining table at my grandma’s house in Ewa Beach. It’s late in the afternoon, we’ve all finished eating an early dinner (shrimp tempura, shoyu chicken, gobo kimpira, namasu and rice), and the fathers have all opened their respective presents. My grandpa got some chocolates, a “Nostalgic Hawaii” T-Shirt depicting Arakawa’s in Waipahu, and some orchids. I received a large black and white happi coat depicting a Chinese dragon on the back to wear at the summer Obon festivals (so that my clumsy, unschooled dancing can truly stand out). My dad received pairs of socks and underwear, a bunch of sudoku books, a kakuro book, a couple of shirts (Dean’s revised “Old F.A.R.T.”), and the picture that I drew. He seemed to pause upon receiving the picture, holding it at arm’s length and squinting at it, as if he couldn’t recognize who or what it depicted. After my mom cried “That’s you!” he smiled briefly in recognition, and nodded to me in acknowledgment.
Now that the gathering is winding down, the family has broken into enclaves, killing time in more or less individual ways. The kids (Kathy, Marcus, Willow and Aiden) alternate between chasing each other in circles and chasing my grandparents’ not entirely tame chihuahua Coco. Jani and Lynn are sitting on a sofa, talking about the trials and tribulations of pregnancy and parenthood. My uncle Masao and my grandmother are playing hanafuda. My aunty Kiyomi and uncle Elmer are sitting together, watching “The Usual Suspects” on the large television in the living room. My father is sitting at the round table in the living room, trying to figure out yet another puzzle. And the rest of us (my grandfather, my mom, my brother and me) are in the dining room, talking.
My grandfather reclines in his chair, silent and for the most part oblivious to the conversation. The pupils in his eyes seem to be dissolving into the moist off-white conjunctiva around them. In my mind, they represent his mental state.
My grandfather is suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.
Occasionally, he comments about the heat, or asks after my grandmother, or breaks into some old Japanese song. Sometimes he looks one of us in the eye, making a friendly comment, like “How are you?” or “Did you eat?”, but he never refers to any one of us by name, not even my mother.
We are all simply strange and temporary guests in his home.
So, like vultures circling around still living prey, or (perhaps more ironically apt) like people ignoring the elephant sitting in the middle of the living room, we talk around my grandfather’s problem. Deep down, we all know that there is no cure for Alzheimer’s, that my grandfather will gradually decline into oblivion, like an image that steadily blurs out of focus. We can say and do nothing to change this. But rather than sit in helpless silence, we choose to do the next best thing: talk about memory in the abstract.
“You know,” I begin, “in Chinese Medicine, memory is linked with the Heart and Kidneys. They say that the Kidneys are associated with Short Term Memory, while the Heart is associated with Long Term Memory. Well, actually, sometimes they say it in reverse. Anyway, as people get older, their Kidneys get weaker and weaker, and they begin to lose their Short Term Memory. At the same time, they start to reexperience older, long term memories stored in their Hearts.”
“Interesting,” my mother comments.
“That’s a bunch of bullshit,” my brother scoffs. “Memories aren’t stored in organs.”
“Oh yeah?” I cry. “Haven’t you ever heard of the phenomenon of post-heart transplant memories? About how heart transplant recipients experience foreign memories, memories once owned by the donor?”
“That’s all anecdotal nonsense.”
“Anecdotal,” I spit, “That’s what Western Medicine always says with regards to things they can’t understand. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies try to isolate chemicals from traditional herbal remedies, and doctors call acupuncturists quacks AND YET claim they can do something called ‘medical acupuncture’ after watching a few hours of videotape-“
”Enough!” my grandfather suddenly calls out. “Jesus Christ!” For a moment, grandpa’s eyes seem ablaze with irritation. But then the moment passes, and he reclines in his seat, closing his eyes as though trying to recall the words of a long-forgotten melody.
“Sorry grandpa,” I say.
Dean apologizes too. “Sorry.”
In the silence that ensues, I try to think of a more neutral topic. “Hey, did you hear? At Stanford, they’ve developed a crystal, I think it was called a photonic crystal, that can basically trap light long enough to slow it.”
“What are you talking about?” Dean mutters, perhaps still irritated from the previous argument.
“It’s a crystal that slows light,” I reply calmly. “It only slows it by an infinitesimal fraction of time, but it is at least a measurable delay.”
“So what?”
“Well, that’s what I thought too,” I say. “So what? But it turns out that they may be able to use light to retain information in the future, instead of electrical circuits. And they said that light would be far more efficient, that it could store a lot more information, than within the microprocessors of today’s computers. And they said that the use of crystals to bend or delay light would be essential to that development.”
“Wow,” my mother murmurs. “You know, it’s amazing what they can do nowadays. Crystals holding light. Technology is so- fast.”
“Tell me about it,” Dean mutters. “Computers are obsolete as soon as you take them home from the store.”
I continue with my line of thought. “It makes you wonder, though. What is a memory? Is it really a time and a place and a person? Or is it just, I don’t know, something folded up a jillion times? Like origami, or a paper airplane?” I sigh. “Someday, maybe the human brain and human memories will become obsolete. Everything, everything will switch from analog to digital. And maybe then, we won’t even need to remember anything.”
“Someday obsolete?” my brother laughs. “Look at you.”
“Haha,” I bark sarcastically.
My grandfather suddenly breaks into a song. It sounds like a Japanese version of “Auld Lang Syne.”[1]
We all look away, uncomfortable, pretending not to hear, as his dull eyes search the invisible distance for an audience.
My eyes happen upon my father sitting silently in the living room, pencil in hand, tackling yet another sudoku. His concentration makes him appear peaceful and distant- isolated- in a world without time or trouble...
9. Sudoku
Fathers are like Sudoku puzzles.
A few of the squares are given to you.
The rest, you’ve got to figure out yourself, through inference and imagination.
Fathers, after all, never express themselves directly.
I know and remember a lot of things about my father: that one of his favorite movies is “Bridge over the River Kwai,” evidenced by his ability to whistle its signature tune; that he can sing a soulful Elvis in “Only Fools Rush In”; that his yellow Datsun B210 had an air conditioning vent that looked like the eye of the Death Star, and it uselessly recirculated his second hand cigarette smoke; that his feet would smell of old cheese beneath his desk (where my sister and I hid, barely containing giggles), as he recorded the Japanese news broadcast for KOHO radio in a voice as smooth as silk; that he once beat three marines single-handedly in a Judo tournament in Iwakuni, Japan; that he kept my humerus from breaking when I tried to chase a softball as it fell into the top of a tall hollow tile wall...
Yet, there are a lot of missing pieces as well, preventing me from ever getting a complete picture of who he is. I’m stuck with fragments, like confetti out of a paper shredder, trying to piece everything together to steal an identity. Who is my father? Does he love me? Does he respect me? Is he happy with his life? If he had the chance, would he do it all over again exactly the same way, or would he have chosen a different path, a different life?
***
One day, my father will offer to teach me how to do it. And, although I think I already know how, I will let him, absorbing his voice, and reading truth within his imprecise English.
“Easy,” he will say.
“Just fill in. Only rule is you cannot repeat, cannot have two of anything, this way, that way, or in a square. If you repeat, then you made a mistake, you have to start over.”
“If you stuck, just look. You will see something. You will see one answer.”
“If you still stuck, sometimes, but only sometimes, you gotta guess.”
“You got it? Understand?”
“Now you try.”
----------------
[1] “In Japan, the Japanese song ‘Hotaru no Hikari’ (‘Glow of a Firefly’) uses the Auld Lang Syne tune. This song is sung as a song of the separation in the graduation ceremony etc. Most Japanese know this song. This song was created during the Meiji period as part of an effort to create a body of songs for children to learn in school. An American educator was brought in as part of this effort, and various Scottish tunes were used, but applied to completely different Japanese lyrics/poems. In the case of ‘Hotaru no Hikari,’ the words are a series of images of hardships that the industrious student endures in his relentless quest for knowledge, starting with the firefly’s light, which the student uses to keep studying when he has no other light sources.”
-from the Wikipedia entry on “Auld Lang Syne,” as of July 27th, 2006
[just to make it less confusing... At the time of this story, Dean (my older brother) and his wife Jani are about to have their first child. I have two children (Willow and Aiden), and my younger sister (absent from the actual story) has two children (Kathy and Marcus). My father babysits the kids much of the time. And my grandfather is steadily succumbing to Alzheimer's. It's supposed to be close to Father's Day.]
XIII. Sudoku
1. What does Dad want?
“So, what are you getting Dad for Father’s Day?”
Willow sits pretty in her carseat, but Aiden, her little one year old brother, isn’t happy. He wriggles like a little balding Houdini, trying to free himself from the strait jacket of safety harnesses. He whines and keens palpably sonic anger.
“Hold on,” I tell my brother over the cell. I reach my right arm behind the back of the front passenger seat, open the cooler that’s sitting there, and (by touch) find and grab one of Aiden’s bottles, all the while keeping one hand on the steering wheel, and an eye on the road ahead (not a picture of safety, this father, but perhaps an ad for a Cirque: the blindfolded bottle-juggling crash-test dummy). I hand Aiden the bottle, and (thank God) he receives it, the nipple silencing his frantic cries for the time being.
I return to the cell phone conversation. “What are YOU getting him?”
There’s a pause as my brother Dean chuckles. It’s the age old conundrum, reawakened three times a year in varying intensities (Christmas, Birthday, and Father’s Day): What does Dad want? “Well, I was thinking maybe some stamps, or some coins...”
He’s referring to my father’s closet collection hobbies. “Dude, that’s so old school,” I tell him with a laugh. “Don’t you know?”
“What?”
“Sudoku.”
“Pseudo- what?”
“No,” I correct. “Su - Do - Ku. It’s a Japanese puzzle. Sort of looks like a crossword puzzle, but with numbers.”
“Never heard of it,” my brother sighs.
“It’s in all the papers. Supposedly, it helps with the memory, you know, prevents dementia and Alzheimer’s and all that. That’s why he’s doing it.”
My brother’s a doctor, and while he is all for prevention of disease through proactive exercise (both mental and physical), he scoffs at the flurry of anecdotal health advice out there. “Yeah, whatever,” he says derisively. “But if that’s what he’s into.”
“Only,” I continue, “he has every book on Sudoku out there. He’s even getting into weird forms of Sudoku. Like, the normal puzzle is done on a nine by nine square. He’s doing it on a sixteen by sixteen, with numbers AND letters.”
There’s a pause. My brother obviously doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about. “So what you’re saying is, we can’t get him a- a Sudoku.”
“Yup.”
“So,” my brother repeats emphatically. “What are you getting Dad?”
“Well, I’m heading over to that Novel-T T-shirt store in Ward right now,” I tell him. “Lynn said there were some cute shirts, like one with this sumo wrestler scratching his butt that says, ‘Ichi Bun.’”
“Sounds- appropriate,” says my brother. “Pick one out for me while you’re there.”
I sigh loudly in frustration. “Dude, I have two kids with me. Two basically good-“ I cast a furtive glance into the rear view mirror “-but terribly restless kids. And you want me to do your shopping for you?”
“I’ll pay you back,” my brother says, as though that were any sort of defense. And before I can object further, he ends the call with a “Thanks!”
“You’re welcome!” I say with false cheer (I’m trying to teach the kids good manners, after all). Quietly, I append: “Your time’s a coming.”
Just then, I hear a hollow thud. Something was dropped (or thrown) in the back seat. I glance into the rear view mirror, and see that Aiden’s bottle is no longer in his mouth. Thus unplugged, it only takes moments for that volcano of dissatisfaction to erupt in a cry of fury, and his body to quake violently like a 7 on the Richter scale.
“Aiden has itchy buns,” Willow says with a giggle.
“Haha,” I mock laugh (secretly hoping that Willow never repeats that joke in front of Lynn). Then, I reach back with one arm and lay a placating hand on Aiden’s thigh. “Aiden, you don’t want your bottle? What do you want?” My voice is more plea than query.
He shoves my hand away, giving me a pained look.
I ask again, with insistence:
“What do you want?”
2. As If...
“What do you want me to say?”
The question comes out with more irritation and impatience than I intended, and hangs like a storm cloud in the air.
It’s a hot June night, and instead of sleeping in the bedroom, Lynn and I are lying on separate sofas in the upstairs family room (the cross draft is better here). The two sofas line the outer walls of the room, just beneath the open windows, such that we are lying perpendicular to each other, with our heads pointing to the intersecting corner.
We’ve just returned from yet another summer wedding, this one at the Hale Kulani for one of Lynn’s cousins. Tonight’s affair was particularly lengthy and expensive, with a slick slide show detailing the relationship from inception to fruition. Of course, the story depicted was incredibly romantic, filled with so many serendipitous coincidences that one could not doubt that the hand of destiny was involved.
And of course, having seen it, Lynn questioned our own relationship: “What if Jani hadn’t set us up, do you think we still would have met?”
I take a deep breath, curbing my edginess. Weddings in general tend to annoy me; big pricey weddings like tonight’s positively irritate me. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’ve already seen a fair share of divorces happen to people around me. Why pay big money for another Titanic? Might as well buy a canoe and paddle around the icebergs. But then, that’s just me. Cynical with a capital C. Also Cheap.
“What do you want me to say?” I repeat, this time with a bit more calm. “That even if Jani hadn’t set us up, we still somehow would have met? Honestly, I doubt it. I mean, I believe in the magic of love and all,” I lie, “but think about it. You were working for Gymboree, a children’s clothing store. When do I ever buy clothes, even for myself? Never! And since the only place I hung out at was at Borders or Barnes and Nobles, well, maybe one day you would have been in the Romance aisle, picking up your latest Laura Ashley, and I would’ve been searching for a graphic novel. Oops, I guess we probably wouldn’t have met there either. I mean, I don’t think the nerdling aisle is anywhere near the soft core porn-“
”It’s Laura Moore,” Lynn corrects. “Laura Ashley’s a fashion designer. And actually, those aisles are next to each other.”
“My point exactly,” I continue, unimpeded. “Nothing in common. We ran in completely different circles.”
The silence that follows is dangerous. I suddenly realize that Lynn may send me back to the “reverse doghouse” (the bedroom) if I continue on this track. On a humid night like this, that would be particularly tortuous. I’ve got to ameliorate things before they get out of control.
“Look, Lynn,” I say, as softly as I can muster. “I love you. We’ve got two beautiful kids. Isn’t that enough? Does it matter that it wasn’t inevitable? That maybe it was just plain- evitable?”
Lynn sighs. I can sense that she wants to concede, but she still has misgivings, as she always does post-wedding attendance. “Okay, and this is not just some ridiculous hypothetical,” she begins, prefacing what inevitably will be a ridiculous hypothetical, “but what if we never had the kids? Would you still love me? Would we still be together?”
I suppress a cry of impatience. “Of course.”
“Sometimes when I look at married couples with kids, I wonder. I mean, they devote their entire lives to raising them. Then once they’re gone, the couple discovers they have nothing in common, and end up getting a divorce. Is that going to be us?”
“Of course not,” I say, with tempered evenness. “I love you. I love YOU. YOU- and the kids... although, now that we have them, they will probably be the center of our lives forever, draining us dry and driving us insane. So even if we do survive raising them, there won’t be much left of either of us, mentally or otherwise, to love. We’ll be empty dried out husks.”
Lynn chuckles, and I begin to relax.
“Look,” I continue, “the point is, I married you, and that means I’m going down with the ship.” A Titanic reference, I note distantly. And, something close to the lyrics of a song, which (inappropriately) I start to sing with much feeling and little accuracy: “I will go down with this ship, and I won’t put my hands up and surrender-”
“SHH!” Lynn hisses, “You’re going to wake up the kids!” But her voice sounds happier, more at ease.
A few moments pass in silence, and I wonder whether Lynn has fallen asleep. I’m about to drift off myself when she interrupts the dead still air with yet another question. “Randy?” she says quietly. “I wonder... I mean, since I was your first and all... When you go to a wedding like that, don’t you ever have any regrets?”
“Why?” I ask sleepily. “Because of all the hot single chicks there? As if.”
“No, not because of that,” Lynn says curtly.
“Why, do you?”
“No,” Lynn replies instantly.
She’s had a checkered past, unlike myself, but believes that everything ultimately turned out for the best (meaning our marriage).
But then again, maybe she has to believe that.
“Do you?” she asks me again.
“Of course not,” I say, carefully quick.
But in the silent moments that follow, memories surface like monstrous icebergs. I think of all the near misses (or near hits) in my past, all the missed doorways to other perspectives, other lives, other worlds...
For some reason, Satsuki’s face surfaces relentlessly.
I shake my head to clear it. “As if,” I mutter bitterly.
“What?” Lynn asks.
I get off my sofa and creep under Lynn’s thin blanket. It’s very crowded, or as she likes to say, “cozy.” “I chose you,” I whisper. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
It is precisely at that moment that Aiden lets out a loud wail from his crib.
I smile wearily, roll my eyes.
“Hold that thought,” I say, as I get up to check on the little monkey...
3. Picture of Youth
“Hold on.”
“Un-ko Wady,” Aiden cries, as he hugs my shins and stares up at me.
“Hold on, Aiden,” I repeat softly. “And I’m not your Uncle Randy, I’m your Daddy.”
Aiden’s puppy dog stare is relentless, and despite myself, I’m compelled to lift him up so that he can lean his damp head against my chest. He smells sour, not like milk or piss, but like the sweat of a working man. Like my father. “Whoa, did you fall asleep on Grandpa today?”
It’s 6:00 pm Wednesday at my parents’ house. I’m standing beside my mother as she pulls out old photo albums from bursting cardboard boxes and riffles through their pages. On occasion, Kathy and Marcus, my sister’s kids, aged 6 and 4, jump up and down excitedly beside my legs with requests: “Uncle Randy, put me upside down!” “Uncle Randy, be a horse!” Although I’m touched by their excitement, I’m tired, and besides, I’m here on urgent business. “Sorry, can’t,” I mutter.
Marcus stops jumping, and pulls on my pants leg. “What are you doing?” he asks inquisitively, looking at my mother, and then me.
“Grandma is looking for a picture of grandpa,” I explain. “I want to draw a picture of him for Father’s Day.”
“Oh,” Marcus says, with a smile. Then he pulls my pants leg again. “Uncle Randy, Uncle Randy, did you know what we got for grandpa?”
I kneel down so that I can be at eye level with Marcus (and also so I can put Aiden back down on his feet; he casually saunters off, looking for Thomas the Train). “No, what did you get grandpa?”
He giggles. “We got him underwear.”
I smile, mussing up Marcus’s hair. “Something he definitely needs.” Marcus screams and leaps away before I can tickle him.
“Ah, found some!” my mother cries triumphantly. I stand up, and look over her shoulder at the open photo album page. You can tell that it’s old, not just because of the black and white photos, but because the wax lines that run across the page are stained yellow, and the cellophane appears dull and foggy, like the haze of a cataract.
“Where?” I ask, scanning the page.
“Right here!” my mother says, pointing.
“What? Is that Dad?” I squint, not believing my eyes.
The photo quality is somewhat poor and grainy, but it fails to mask the liveliness of the subject. My father (is it really him?) is dressed in the full length black uniform of a school boy in Japan, in front of some indistinct, faded field. He’s posing somewhat casually, with his hands deep in his pockets, and one leg crossed over the other, toe planted into the ground. His face is smooth and handsome, with distinctive and animated features. And his eyes. They are eyes I have never seen my father have, eyes that are both bright with youth and dark with playful mischief.
I exhale slowly. “He looks just like a Japanese James Dean,” I say finally.
My mother looks from the photo to me. “He looks like you, when he was your age.”
“Not,” I blurt, laughing sheepishly. Then, “Can I have it?”
“Sure,” my mother nods. She uses the dull blade of a letter opener to peel the photo off of the aged wax, and hands it to me. “What do you need it for again?”
I accept it gingerly, my eyes never leaving my father’s image. “I’m going to scan this into my computer, enlarge it, and reprint it. Then, I’m going to use a back light to trace the large forms, and shade and fill in the rest. Low effort art. And all I have to do is invest in a picture frame.”
My mother, who is thrifty to a fault, nods. “But didn’t you already buy him a T-shirt?”
“Yeah.”
“So why do all this?”
“I don’t know,” I mutter. “I just wanted to do something- different- for Dad this time. Not just the standard crapola.” I’m quiet for a moment as I assemble my thoughts. “Don’t you ever wonder about Dad? If he’s happy?”
My mother seems taken aback. “Of course he’s happy. He’s got four, pretty soon with Dean’s kid, five wonderful grandchildren. Why shouldn’t he be happy?”
I shake my head. “Mom, he stays home all day babysitting and doing sudoku. On rare occasions, like now, he gets to go out and fill in gas or buy groceries for Japan grandma. Whoopee. Don’t you ever wonder about him?” And then, softly, “Don’t you ever think he misses Japan?”
Mom is thoughtful for a few moments. Then, she explains, almost as though to herself: “A few months in when I was pregnant with Dean, I started to develop asthma. I didn’t have any insurance in Japan, only back home in Hawaii, and since Kazu had just started his own business, he didn’t have any health insurance either. So we didn’t have any choice. We had to come to Hawaii, for my health, and for Dean’s.”
“Mom, that was almost 40 years ago.”
“He’s been back,” my mother offers in defense. “And besides, this is as much his home now as anyplace else in the world.”
I glance down at the picture in my hand, so full of youth, so full of promise. “But Mom,” I protest. “Don’t you- I mean, do you ever wonder if he has any regrets? About not staying in Japan?”
My mom shakes her head impatiently. Clearly, this discussion makes her uncomfortable.
“Everyone has regrets,” she says, getting up slowly. “But not everyone dwells on them.” She wobbles on her bad knee towards the kitchen. “Now, I’ve got to cook dinner for these kids, so if you don’t mind.”
She pulls out a large ham from the fridge, and, from the pantry, a can of pineapples...
4. “Pai- Nap- Pu- Ru”
It all started at one of the countless morning services.
I was in Tenri City, in Japan, undergoing Shuyoka, a “Spiritual Development Course” for the Tenrikyo Religion. It was a three month ordeal, during which time I and about six hundred other “devotees” learned about Tenrikyo doctrine, practiced the Te-odori (or Hand Dance), played the various instruments of the service (like the fue or kotsuzumi), and performed hinokishin (“daily gratitude,” meaning free, unsolicited labor). And every morning, day in and day out, like sleepwalking zombies, we attended morning service at the Main Sanctuary.
It had been about two months since I started Shuyoka when it happened. The novelty of being in Japan had faded somewhat. Although the daily routine set up for us had become familiar and comfortable, a part of me was undeniably restless. It was showing in the kinds of clothes I was wearing. I was a slob by nature, but I was really starting to push the envelope. That morning, for instance, I wore, below the required standard black happi coat, a pair of super torn up jeans. I also wore a pair of white karate gi pants underneath, and thank god, because there were holes everywhere in the jeans; let’s just say that some of those holes would have made me look like the Artist Formerly Known As.
I sauntered up to sit in my position on the tatami, with at least two dozen rows of black heads between myself and the hinoki wood railing encircling the crater housing the performers of the morning service. My eyes felt swollen from lack of sleep. They wandered aimlessly across the dim and cavernous hall, taking in the tall hinoki pillars, the expansive grid of tatami mats, the black coated mounds of hundreds of seated worshippers...
And then I saw a girl standing in the middle of nowhere looking right at me.
Even half-closed, my eyes could tell that her glance was neither passing, nor accidental; in fact, technically, it couldn’t be called a glance. It was more a stare, one that held me, then passed into me, causing my breath to catch, and my heart to skip. She wasn’t quite smiling; her delicate mouth was slightly open, as though in the midst of a word whispered across the distance.
Before I could turn away to discount it as coincidence or dream, she walked over to me, eclipsing the distance, until she was right beside me. She took a seat, and, looking up, urged me to do the same.
I stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do.
Then, with a sound like thunder, everyone in the hall began to clap, signaling the start of the service. Shaken and embarrassed, I sank to the floor beside the girl.
During the minute-long period of silent prayer that followed, as everyone kneeled in quiet reflection, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the girl’s lips curl into a laughing smile. And I became aware of a subtle scent, lightly sweet, one which I would forever after associate with spring, and sunflowers...
That was how it all began.
Her name was Satsuki, and she was from Kyoto. She told me, as we walked back from service to our respective tsumeshos (dormitories) that she liked my pants. “Anna zubon wa Amerika de fuete run desuka?” she asked. “Are those kind of jeans popular in America?”
I struggled mentally to construct a reply out of the rudimentary Japanese that I had retained from elementary school days. All I could say was, “Eeh, Maa.” “Yeah, well.”
She was a cute girl, with thin bright eyes that never seemed to change shape regardless of feeling or situation, but sometimes seemed to burn with differing intensities. Her mouth was small and delicate, and when she smiled, she reminded me of a rabbit, or a mouse. Her hair, tied into a ponytail, exposed the smooth curve of her neck.
Yes, she was cute, but she was hardly innocent. At one point, her fingers brushed my thigh lightly through a hole in my jeans, through the karate gi, tracing invisible pathways deep within. It was hardly an accident; her look right afterwards told me as much.
I wanted to know more about her, and asked her as many questions as I could clumsily stutter. As we passed a flower shop on the Hon-dori, the main market street, I asked her: “Donna hana ga suki?” “Which flower do you like?”
“Himawari,” she answered instantly.
Unfortunately, there were no sunflowers in the shop, only roses and purple irises and chrysanthemums.
I dropped her off at her tsumesho, awkwardly telling her that I would see her tomorrow. “Jyaa, ashita mata.” “Tomorrow, again.”
That night, I tried to dream of Satsuki.
I assembled all the fragments of my brief experience of her on that day, her eyes, her smile, her voice, her touch, and most of all, her scent, and tried to unite them into a single sensation, one that would well up inside me, one that I could grasp and hold onto forever. Or at least that night.
But I couldn’t.
I kept thinking about the script that went along with the movie. What could I say to express my feelings for her, what could I say to move her? The only things I knew were “Suki da yo” (“I like you”) or “Aishiteru” (“I love you”) or even “Kimi no koto suki” (“Baby I love your way”). All clumsy, flat, cliche. Inadequate.
And what did I really know of her anyway? That she liked sunflowers, scentless?
Without words, without language, how could there ever be true connection, true relationship?
***
My last conversation with Satsuki occurred a couple of days later.
We were to the point of holding hands as we walked back to our tsumeshos, but I still knew nothing significant about her. I had asked her about what kind of music she liked, who her favorite actor or actress was, anything and everything that I could. And, either because she didn’t understand the question, or because I couldn’t understand her answer, there was always a deep disconnect.
The clincher came just as I reached her tsumesho. We had managed a tenuous thread of conversation about, of all things, lunch the day before. I mentioned that the thing I especially liked were the pineapples, which reminded me of home.
“Eh?” she asked, tilting her head. She hadn’t understood me.
“Pineapples,” I repeated.
She shook her head, again misunderstanding me.
Masking exasperation, I pronounced the word in Japanese: “Pai- Nap- Pu- Ru.”
Satsuki nodded, smiled, but in the meantime, had probably forgotten why I had mentioned pineapples in the first place.
I reached into my happi coat, pulled out a carefully folded piece of paper, and handed it to her gently.
“Eh, nani kore?” “What is this?”
I laid my hand on hers to prevent her from unfolding it. “Ato de mite kudasai.” “Look at it later.”
Then, I smiled softly at her, trying to memorize the shape of her eyes, and the unpredictable fire within them.
“Jya, mata ashita,” I lied, turning away.
After I rounded a corner, I began to run, and didn’t stop until I reached my dorm room, where the sunflower that I had painstakingly tried to draw the night before drooped and wilted silently...
5. Find Your Voice
“Pineapple,” I say, pointing to the fake plastic yellow toy. “This is a pineapple.”
Aiden turns away, uninterested, picks up his favorite toy, and holds it up. “Train,” he says, with utter seriousness. “Thomas.”
“Yes, that’s Thomas the Train,” I say, nodding. “And this-“ I again point to the object, “is a yellow pineapple.”
“Train!” Aiden cries. “Thomas!”
I smile in resignation. “Okay, okay.”
I rise up from my crouch, just before Marcus can scramble on my back.
My mother, sitting in the corner La-Z-Boy, has been watching my interaction with Aiden. She smiles fondly.
“Was I like that?” I ask her.
“Like what?” And before I can respond, she answers. “You were obsessed, too, but with cars. We could leave you alone for hours with them. You would sit on the kitchen floor, and just roll them backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, over and over.”
“What about talking?” I ask. “Was I able to talk at his age?”
My mother shakes her head no. “Aiden is fast, for a boy,” she says. “I think he’s going to be really bright. You, on the other hand.”
“What?”
She sighs. “Didn’t I ever tell you? For a little while, I was worried that there was something wrong with you. That you were retarded.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” my mother nods. “You were such a quiet boy. And at two years old, when most kids were saying short sentences, you rarely even said single words.”
“Really.”
My mother smiles sarcastically. “Actually, not much has changed.”
I match her smile. “So, what did you do?”
“Do?”
“Yeah, how did you get me to talk?”
My mother looks down thoughtfully. “I didn’t do anything,” she says softly. “But Dad, well, one day, he took you out for a drive, just he and you, for about an hour. When you guys returned, Dad said, ‘He’s okay. He can talk just fine.’ And you could. In fact, we discovered that you could talk in full, complete sentences, that you were actually quite articulate.”
I smile faintly.
“Yeah,” my mother nods, deep in recollection. “Dad found your voice for you. Funny, huh? He’s so quiet himself. But he was the only one that could get you to talk. Maybe it’s because he was the only one that could reach you, the two of you are so alike.”
My mother rocks the La-Z-Boy.
I crouch down, picking up the fake plastic pineapple, and stroking Aiden’s thin, sweaty hair.
I try to remember that drive. I seem to have dim memories of it, of being driven around Mililani, of seeing green fields of weedelia roll past, of riding beside my father. I can’t remember what he said, what magic words he used to unlock my tongue.
But I almost recall, like a distant and long forgotten dream, a vague feeling, a feeling of communication, of acknowledgment, of being heard and understood...
And I remember that it felt good.
6. Absence: Father and Father Away
“Dad, can you teach me some moves?”
I’m back from my freshman year at college, where I’ve been learning Isshinryu Karate. I’ve learned rudimentary throws from my sensei, like a sweeping takedown and a hip throw, but I want to learn more. Perhaps if I do, when I return to Massachusetts in the Fall, I’ll have improved enough to get revenge on some of the higher ranking students.
I also want to bond with my dad. I’ve never been into sports, so I could never participate in conversations about football or basketball with him, like my brother could. But since he was a black belt in judo once, I thought that finally I might have something slightly in common, something I could practice with him.
We’ve just finished washing the car, and my father is winding up the garden hose. I lift the damp bottoms of my sweat pants up over my shins so they look more like karate pants, and throw some clumsy side blade kicks into the air.
My father just smiles, shaking his head. He walks around the side of the garage to put the hose away. I follow him.
“Here,” I say, as soon as he drops the hose and his hands are free. I hold his shoulder, shifting his body so that he faces me squarely. “Check this out.” And I go through the sequence of moves for a sweeping takedown, calling them out as I perform them: “Pull down, push, step, bring the foot around, and sweep.” I don’t follow through, but even so, at the end of the movement, I feel as though I am more off balance than my father. My initial pushes and pulls never even budged him, and with my right foot snaked behind his right heel, I feel like I’m leaning backwards.
My father takes a small step forward, and confirms my instability. I wobble for a moment, then save myself from falling by skittering my feet around unsteadily.
“Hetakuso na,” my father sighs. He starts to walk to the front door of the house.
“Come on, Dad,” I cry. “Can’t you show me something?” I follow him as he walks past the little Japanese garden in our yard, the one with the mondo grass hill and the stone lantern. I try to lay a hand on his shoulder, to catch his attention.
But my father is suddenly not there.
Before I know it, the world spins, and my stomach turns end over end. The next thing I know, I’m staring up at the evening sky, coughing. Mondo grass is all around me, and the stone lantern looks close enough to fall on me.
I clumsily sit up on my own. My father is already at the front door, taking off his slippers.
“Cool,” I cough. “How did you do that? What did you do?”
The front door shuts behind him.
I sit in the darkening twilight, alone.
I stay in that position for many minutes, crushing mondo grass and half hearing the growing sound of crickets around me. I think about the distance between fathers and sons, and how that distance is maintained through silence, and sometimes, in my case, physical throwing. The distance has something to do with respect, I surmise, but at times, it seems to involve something far more fundamental. It is kin with the repulsion of like-poled magnets, or the irreducible gap between parallel lines.
Its inevitability makes me want to hurl.
“When I’m a father,” I whisper out loud, “I’m going to be different. I’m going to be close, and involved, and teach them everything I know, and give them everything I have to give... whether they like it or not!”
Venus and the first and brightest stars pop into being in the darkening sky, oblivious and unchanging, as they have since the beginning of time...
7. “Presents”
Dean stops by to pick up the father’s day present I bought for him to give to my dad.
Willow gets to the metal screen door first, yelling a friendly “Hi!”
“Hi Willow,” Dean calls through the tiny holes.
I open the door, holding Aiden in my arms. He’s tired and fussy, and instead of offering any sort of greeting to my brother, buries his face into my chest.
“Hi Aiden,” Dean says.
Aiden digs his face deep into the hollow near my armpit, shaking his head no.
“He’s tired,” I explain. “Come in.”
I lead Dean into the living room (Willow traipsing along close behind), carefully weaving a path around fragmented Lego Quattro structures and mismatched diecast and wood versions of Thomas the Train characters, to the island where I put the shopping bags.
“So, how’s Jani?” I ask, as I shuffle through the contents of a bag with one hand.
“She’s good,” Dean says. “Tired and anxious, but good. Only two more weeks.”
I smile wearily. “Get ready, dude, ‘cause you’re not going to get a good night’s sleep for a while once the baby comes.” I pull out a large black shirt. “Here it is,” I say, unfolding it and laying it on the island.
It is plain, except for large white letters on its front: “Old F.A.R.T. / Fathers Against Radical Teenagers.”
“Rand,” Dean complains. “We’re not teenagers any more.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, shifting Aiden slightly. “That’s why I bought a cloth pen. It’s in the other bag. You can cross out the Teenagers part, and write in Thirty-somethings. Or-” the idea suddenly hits me- “Toddlers.”
Dean half-smiles, appreciating my ideas, but reluctant to make the modifications himself. “Well,” he says, “it DOES match him. Remember when we were young? He used to fart in his hand, open up his fist right in front of our noses, and call it a ‘present.’ Remember that?”
I crack up despite myself, shaking Aiden. He whines a complaint. “Man, don’t remind me. He used to make the most foul-smelling farts ever. They were so thick, they were almost liquid. I could almost taste them.”
Dean laughs, shaking his head.
Willow, jumping up and down at our feet, squeals and pretends to be in on the joke.
“You know,” I continue, “it’s ironic, but that was the only time he really shared of himself.”
Dean chuckles. “If that’s sharing, I wish he didn’t. Sometimes he was a bit too, shall we say, generous.”
“But that’s dad, huh?” I say thoughtfully. “I mean, really, he was, in some ways, just like his farts. Silent but violent. I mean, inwardly I guess.”
“A quiet riot,” Dean retorts. Suddenly, we’re playing some kind of game.
“Soundless but boundless,” I shoot back.
“Unstated and deflated,” Dean blurts, after a pause.
Aiden is now squirming and shrieking in irritation. Willow, meanwhile, is jogging around in circles around my brother and I, screaming and crying out “That’s funny” over and over again.
Suddenly, Dean grows quiet, wrinkling his nose. “Must be having flashbacks,” he says, “cause something around here stinks.”
I lift Aiden’s wriggling angry diaper-clad butt up to my nose. My sudden shuddering causes Dean and Willow to burst out in laughter together. “Ai- den,” I complain wearily. I hold him away from myself, offering him to Dean. “Here, wanna practice, dad-to-be?”
Dean just shakes his head.
“No way. Forget it.”
8. Remember Dad on Father’s Day
“I heard memory is strongly tied to smell.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” says Dean, addressing my mom’s comment. He straightens up in his seat to assume the doctor’s role. “The olfactory region of the brain is located close to the hippocampus, so when you smell, you stimulate the seat of memory.” Nobody’s really listening after that point, but Dean continues. “It was an adaptive mechanism. Animals needed to remember smells in order to survive. This was the smell of a predator, that was the smell of prey.”
Dean, my mom, my grandpa and I are all sitting around the dining table at my grandma’s house in Ewa Beach. It’s late in the afternoon, we’ve all finished eating an early dinner (shrimp tempura, shoyu chicken, gobo kimpira, namasu and rice), and the fathers have all opened their respective presents. My grandpa got some chocolates, a “Nostalgic Hawaii” T-Shirt depicting Arakawa’s in Waipahu, and some orchids. I received a large black and white happi coat depicting a Chinese dragon on the back to wear at the summer Obon festivals (so that my clumsy, unschooled dancing can truly stand out). My dad received pairs of socks and underwear, a bunch of sudoku books, a kakuro book, a couple of shirts (Dean’s revised “Old F.A.R.T.”), and the picture that I drew. He seemed to pause upon receiving the picture, holding it at arm’s length and squinting at it, as if he couldn’t recognize who or what it depicted. After my mom cried “That’s you!” he smiled briefly in recognition, and nodded to me in acknowledgment.
Now that the gathering is winding down, the family has broken into enclaves, killing time in more or less individual ways. The kids (Kathy, Marcus, Willow and Aiden) alternate between chasing each other in circles and chasing my grandparents’ not entirely tame chihuahua Coco. Jani and Lynn are sitting on a sofa, talking about the trials and tribulations of pregnancy and parenthood. My uncle Masao and my grandmother are playing hanafuda. My aunty Kiyomi and uncle Elmer are sitting together, watching “The Usual Suspects” on the large television in the living room. My father is sitting at the round table in the living room, trying to figure out yet another puzzle. And the rest of us (my grandfather, my mom, my brother and me) are in the dining room, talking.
My grandfather reclines in his chair, silent and for the most part oblivious to the conversation. The pupils in his eyes seem to be dissolving into the moist off-white conjunctiva around them. In my mind, they represent his mental state.
My grandfather is suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.
Occasionally, he comments about the heat, or asks after my grandmother, or breaks into some old Japanese song. Sometimes he looks one of us in the eye, making a friendly comment, like “How are you?” or “Did you eat?”, but he never refers to any one of us by name, not even my mother.
We are all simply strange and temporary guests in his home.
So, like vultures circling around still living prey, or (perhaps more ironically apt) like people ignoring the elephant sitting in the middle of the living room, we talk around my grandfather’s problem. Deep down, we all know that there is no cure for Alzheimer’s, that my grandfather will gradually decline into oblivion, like an image that steadily blurs out of focus. We can say and do nothing to change this. But rather than sit in helpless silence, we choose to do the next best thing: talk about memory in the abstract.
“You know,” I begin, “in Chinese Medicine, memory is linked with the Heart and Kidneys. They say that the Kidneys are associated with Short Term Memory, while the Heart is associated with Long Term Memory. Well, actually, sometimes they say it in reverse. Anyway, as people get older, their Kidneys get weaker and weaker, and they begin to lose their Short Term Memory. At the same time, they start to reexperience older, long term memories stored in their Hearts.”
“Interesting,” my mother comments.
“That’s a bunch of bullshit,” my brother scoffs. “Memories aren’t stored in organs.”
“Oh yeah?” I cry. “Haven’t you ever heard of the phenomenon of post-heart transplant memories? About how heart transplant recipients experience foreign memories, memories once owned by the donor?”
“That’s all anecdotal nonsense.”
“Anecdotal,” I spit, “That’s what Western Medicine always says with regards to things they can’t understand. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies try to isolate chemicals from traditional herbal remedies, and doctors call acupuncturists quacks AND YET claim they can do something called ‘medical acupuncture’ after watching a few hours of videotape-“
”Enough!” my grandfather suddenly calls out. “Jesus Christ!” For a moment, grandpa’s eyes seem ablaze with irritation. But then the moment passes, and he reclines in his seat, closing his eyes as though trying to recall the words of a long-forgotten melody.
“Sorry grandpa,” I say.
Dean apologizes too. “Sorry.”
In the silence that ensues, I try to think of a more neutral topic. “Hey, did you hear? At Stanford, they’ve developed a crystal, I think it was called a photonic crystal, that can basically trap light long enough to slow it.”
“What are you talking about?” Dean mutters, perhaps still irritated from the previous argument.
“It’s a crystal that slows light,” I reply calmly. “It only slows it by an infinitesimal fraction of time, but it is at least a measurable delay.”
“So what?”
“Well, that’s what I thought too,” I say. “So what? But it turns out that they may be able to use light to retain information in the future, instead of electrical circuits. And they said that light would be far more efficient, that it could store a lot more information, than within the microprocessors of today’s computers. And they said that the use of crystals to bend or delay light would be essential to that development.”
“Wow,” my mother murmurs. “You know, it’s amazing what they can do nowadays. Crystals holding light. Technology is so- fast.”
“Tell me about it,” Dean mutters. “Computers are obsolete as soon as you take them home from the store.”
I continue with my line of thought. “It makes you wonder, though. What is a memory? Is it really a time and a place and a person? Or is it just, I don’t know, something folded up a jillion times? Like origami, or a paper airplane?” I sigh. “Someday, maybe the human brain and human memories will become obsolete. Everything, everything will switch from analog to digital. And maybe then, we won’t even need to remember anything.”
“Someday obsolete?” my brother laughs. “Look at you.”
“Haha,” I bark sarcastically.
My grandfather suddenly breaks into a song. It sounds like a Japanese version of “Auld Lang Syne.”[1]
We all look away, uncomfortable, pretending not to hear, as his dull eyes search the invisible distance for an audience.
My eyes happen upon my father sitting silently in the living room, pencil in hand, tackling yet another sudoku. His concentration makes him appear peaceful and distant- isolated- in a world without time or trouble...
9. Sudoku
Fathers are like Sudoku puzzles.
A few of the squares are given to you.
The rest, you’ve got to figure out yourself, through inference and imagination.
Fathers, after all, never express themselves directly.
I know and remember a lot of things about my father: that one of his favorite movies is “Bridge over the River Kwai,” evidenced by his ability to whistle its signature tune; that he can sing a soulful Elvis in “Only Fools Rush In”; that his yellow Datsun B210 had an air conditioning vent that looked like the eye of the Death Star, and it uselessly recirculated his second hand cigarette smoke; that his feet would smell of old cheese beneath his desk (where my sister and I hid, barely containing giggles), as he recorded the Japanese news broadcast for KOHO radio in a voice as smooth as silk; that he once beat three marines single-handedly in a Judo tournament in Iwakuni, Japan; that he kept my humerus from breaking when I tried to chase a softball as it fell into the top of a tall hollow tile wall...
Yet, there are a lot of missing pieces as well, preventing me from ever getting a complete picture of who he is. I’m stuck with fragments, like confetti out of a paper shredder, trying to piece everything together to steal an identity. Who is my father? Does he love me? Does he respect me? Is he happy with his life? If he had the chance, would he do it all over again exactly the same way, or would he have chosen a different path, a different life?
***
One day, my father will offer to teach me how to do it. And, although I think I already know how, I will let him, absorbing his voice, and reading truth within his imprecise English.
“Easy,” he will say.
“Just fill in. Only rule is you cannot repeat, cannot have two of anything, this way, that way, or in a square. If you repeat, then you made a mistake, you have to start over.”
“If you stuck, just look. You will see something. You will see one answer.”
“If you still stuck, sometimes, but only sometimes, you gotta guess.”
“You got it? Understand?”
“Now you try.”
----------------
[1] “In Japan, the Japanese song ‘Hotaru no Hikari’ (‘Glow of a Firefly’) uses the Auld Lang Syne tune. This song is sung as a song of the separation in the graduation ceremony etc. Most Japanese know this song. This song was created during the Meiji period as part of an effort to create a body of songs for children to learn in school. An American educator was brought in as part of this effort, and various Scottish tunes were used, but applied to completely different Japanese lyrics/poems. In the case of ‘Hotaru no Hikari,’ the words are a series of images of hardships that the industrious student endures in his relentless quest for knowledge, starting with the firefly’s light, which the student uses to keep studying when he has no other light sources.”
-from the Wikipedia entry on “Auld Lang Syne,” as of July 27th, 2006
Poem: Ignus Fatuus
Lead me to the dead men
let me hang with them laughing
beneath the willow tree
We’ll reminisce of things
long gone,
proven false by time:
the hope while still distant
the memory while still near
God’s mysterious ways.
We’ll light bonfires
like homeless bums before
glowing garbage cans,
generating light but no heat,
searching in vain for
what we’ve never seen before
in the dim and darkening world.
Someone once said:
“That which is of most value
is the most insubstantial.”
I never understood or believed it.
But enough ashen yesterdays
have left me with nothing that won’t crumble
with a touch or a breath,
nothing at all
in this heavenbound,
hellbound world.
Now all I have left are those words,
which we babble over and over drunk,
ad nauseum, ad infinitum,
(whichever comes first)
breath burning under the smoke-ceilinged sky.
A prayer for air to taste,
somehow,
for once,
and once again,
not stale.
let me hang with them laughing
beneath the willow tree
We’ll reminisce of things
long gone,
proven false by time:
the hope while still distant
the memory while still near
God’s mysterious ways.
We’ll light bonfires
like homeless bums before
glowing garbage cans,
generating light but no heat,
searching in vain for
what we’ve never seen before
in the dim and darkening world.
Someone once said:
“That which is of most value
is the most insubstantial.”
I never understood or believed it.
But enough ashen yesterdays
have left me with nothing that won’t crumble
with a touch or a breath,
nothing at all
in this heavenbound,
hellbound world.
Now all I have left are those words,
which we babble over and over drunk,
ad nauseum, ad infinitum,
(whichever comes first)
breath burning under the smoke-ceilinged sky.
A prayer for air to taste,
somehow,
for once,
and once again,
not stale.
Short Story: Willow Weep for Me, Side B: Sleepwalker
[this story also won honorable mention in Honolulu Magazine's short fiction contest, but for the year previous to Side A. Consider it as an alternate play on Willow's name.]
XII. “Willow Weep for Me” (SIDE B): Sleep Walker
“Sleepwalker, don't be shy
Now don't open your eyes tonight
You'll be the one that defends my life
While I'm dead asleep dreamin'...
Now, sleepwalker, what's my line
It's only a matter of time
Until I learn to open up my eyes
When I'm dead asleep dreamin'”
-The Wallflowers, “Sleepwalker”
The gibbous moon reigns unchallenged overhead, painting the world in sharp contrasts, like high noon in a black-and-white movie. I return to myself, my awareness a helium balloon gently pulled back by its tether, and find that I am carrying Willow, my six month old daughter, in the hammock-like pouch of a Sling-E-Zee. Before me lies my small, enclosed backyard, the compost a healthy black, the spreading stolons of Seashore Paspalum a hesitant grey. A lone tree in one corner of the yard hesitantly reaches its thin trunk towards the moon.
I’m here because I got into an argument with my wife. I wouldn’t say that I lost because technically, the argument wasn’t over when Willow started to cry. But I’m here, demonstrating who had the final say, who always gets the final say. As I left the bedroom, I heard my wife call out, “You don’t appreciate us!”
That stung.
I do appreciate and love my wife and daughter; in fact, I hold them to be dearer than life itself.
Appreciation, however, wasn’t the issue. It was something else. Maybe I was having a mid-life crisis (wasn’t that what they called any vague dissatisfactions experienced after the 20's?). I was feeling like I was floating, stuck, in "mid-error." I had tried to express this feeling, tried to tell my wife how I had begun to feel dead inside, as though an essential part of myself had been left behind and buried in the past. I had tried to explain by recalling how I’d been in my last years of high school, a rebellious loner with dreams bigger than all the ‘burbs of Mililani.
Where was that kid now?
Willow shifts about impatiently, as if on cue. “Okay, I know,” I murmur wearily. “You want a walk and a story, right?” Willow gazes up at me expectantly, her eyes twin stars in a vast constellation. “Let’s see, what story should I tell?” Perhaps it’s the moon or the recent argument, but my eyes wander north, to a place I haven’t been to in over a decade, a place I’m not certain still exists. And before I know it, my feet are walking and my mouth is talking.
“Someday, you’re going to ask me why we chose to name you Willow,” I begin, circling the house, and descending the front driveway. Suddenly, the sublime moonlit sky is obscured by the glaring orange of streetlamps. I follow the sidewalk north, passing the homes of sleeping neighbors. “There were a lot of objections to it, you know. Like your uncle Dean, he kept saying there was a movie with the same name, and the main character was a midget. Or your grandpa, he kept saying that you were going to be a crybaby, a ‘weeping willow.’”
I take a deep breath. “Well, we named you Willow at first because it sounded graceful in the book. We didn’t know anyone bad with that name; in fact, the only person I knew who had anything close was your great great grandmother. Her name was Riyu, which is Japanese for willow tree. And she was a wonderful lady.”
I pause at this point, perhaps for dramatic effect, or perhaps so I can place more distance between myself and my wife. In that brief period, I hear my words and footsteps return to me in distorted echoes. “But the truth is that I did have someone else in mind when I named you. Your mom doesn’t know this, but there was someone I sort of came across in high school. Her name was Riyu too. I called her Rue.”
The sidewalk passes from relative darkness to an unearthly orange glow in a slow metronome-like rhythm as I continue my walk. At this ungodly time of night, I find it’s easy for me to pass from narrating the story to actually reliving it in my mind. In fact, I can’t be sure whether parts of the tale actually pass through my lips, or remain hidden within me. It doesn’t really matter, of course, since Willow cannot understand me. All that really matters is that the drone of my words, combined with the rocking of my footsteps, lulls Willow to sleep.
The intrinsic significance of the story is mine alone.
***
On afternoons and weekends during my sophomore year, after my best friend Cliff moved away, I took to hiking to distract me from my feelings of isolation. I would pack a book and some food and a drink, and just wander off, trying to get myself lost. I went on increasingly far-ranging hikes that took me outside the borders of Mililani Town, into the pineapple fields and beyond. It was as though I were trying to get away from civilization, and the impossible task of fitting into it.
One afternoon, I walked north along Meheula Parkway, across the bridge that spanned the H-2, to where the asphalt ended in a culdesac, and a rusty gate beckoned. I crossed the gate without hesitation, and followed the red dirt pathway on its course towards the Koolau Mountains. There was a near undetectable slope to the path, and after walking about a mile or so in, I was able to turn around and see the entirety of Mililani stretch out below me. It looked small from this distance; I could cover it up with one single outstretched hand.
As I proceeded further, the path curved gently to the right. The endless rows of spiky-leaved pineapples grew less regimented, and California grass popped up within chinks in the ranks. After a while, the California grass was all that I could see on either side, their tall stalks and hairy bladed leaves obscuring my vision.
Without warning, I came upon a couple of squat cylindrical water tanks, surrounded by a chain link fence. The path ahead was choked off by California grass, so the only way to proceed was to follow the clearing that edged the fence. When I had passed nearly halfway around the periphery of the fence, I glimpsed something beyond a stand of California grass that gave me a start. I thought I saw the silhouette of a tombstone!
I tried to cross the grass quietly, leaning on stalks and leaves to bend them down into a manageable slope. As soon as I committed my weight upon it, however, I fell with a rustling crash. I rose clumsily, trying to reestablish my footing on the treacherous grass.
The sight before me stilled my movements, and my heart.
I stood about 20 feet from the edge of Kipapa Gulch. A near impenetrable wall of California grass blocked the view of the gulch to my left and right, but directly in front of me, I could glimpse it, like the glinting of an emerald sea.
The view was framed by the trunk and branches of a lone acacia koa tree. It had smooth grey bark, like elephant skin, with gnarled branches that grew wild in all directions. Crescent shaped leaves flowered in bunches on the branches, providing mottled, shifting shade. Tucked between a couple of arthritic roots was a torn out carseat (the “tombstone”).
I entered the shade of the tree to get a better view of the gulch. The ground fell away sharply just beyond the roots of the tree, in a dangerous, crumbling path of orange chalk-rock. To the side of the path, in a small chasm, was an old rusted van, face down, rear exposed to the sky. Kipapa Gulch opened ahead and to either side like a gaping wound.
I absently stroked the bark of the tree, as though trying to confirm its reality. My hand flinched as it discovered patterns in the texture. Graffiti tattooed and populated the bark in interspersed patches. Some were neatly done in straight lines like cuneiform, while others were wild and clumsy hacks into the bark. Marks for the sake of posterity: secret loves, secret hates, secret violence, secret perversions, secrets.
As I gingerly sat in the carseat, I discovered a near hidden section of graffiti done in the space between two knuckled roots. Unlike the others, it was done in minute, patient cuts, with edges that had been smoothed over by sandpaper. It read:
Weeping Willow tree, weep in sympathy,
Bend your branches down along the ground and cover me,
When the shadows fall, bend oh willow,
Bend oh willow and weep for me.
-Riyu
I knew where the words had come from. They were part of a song called “Willow Weep For Me” that I’d heard on the Oldies station (yes, at the time, I was rebelling against glam rock and pop music, and somehow along the way, discovered the appeal of “Old School”). I also happened to know that “Riyu” could mean “Willow Tree” in Japanese, because my great grandmother, Obaban, had that name.
I was instantly intrigued by this particular bit of graffiti. I wondered who Riyu was, and what had inspired her to patiently and painstakingly carve out those words. Had she lost a loved one, and come to this tree longing for solace? Did she eventually find it, or did she come here to end her life? I couldn’t help but think about her over and over in my head.
In fact, me being lonely myself, I sat back and imagined myself somehow returning to the past, to catch her sitting in this very chair, crying in a moment of vulnerability and grief. I imagined myself approaching her, consoling her, somehow getting her to stop crying, to smile even.
But as is the case with all daydreams and vague little hopes, I left the devil with the details, unable to think of what I’d actually, specifically, say.
***
I pause the story.
The only landmarks remaining from my high school days are the cylindrical water tanks. I am standing before them now. They look smaller somehow, divorced from the context that I once associated them with. Now, they sit on the edge of a wide, two-lane street. Behind the tanks, I see signs of construction: a black tarp fence, and beyond it, through holes cut for the wind, I catch glimpses of metal and wood. They are building a new section of Mililani Mauka there, I suppose.
If memory serves me correctly, that’s where we have to go. I follow the street bordering the tanks as far as I can, and then cross through a hole in the black tarp. Suddenly, I am in what one day will be someone’s backyard. A wood and aluminum frame of a house looms before me like a fleshless skeleton. Without walls, I think idly, the moonlight, the wind, and even Willow and I can pass straight through the house unchallenged. I could leave my footprints in the dust, or scrawl my name in some forgotten corner. There’s a feeling of omnipotence in that fact.
Of course, by the time the house is built and ready for new owners, any and all trace of our passing will have been erased or covered up.
It will have been as though we never were.
Willow stirs impatiently.
I continue my story.
***
Time passed, and I had less of it to spend on hiking up to the tree. My days were filled instead with “busy-ness”: studying to prepare for college, or working in the hardware department at Gems to earn some cash.
I don’t know what motivated me to go to the tree the final time. Perhaps I needed a breather from all the studying. Maybe I was just curious to see if it was still there. After all, I’d heard that they were going to begin construction of an entirely new section north of the H-2. It was going to be called Mililani Mauka.
I parked my car, the Blue Bomber (an old blue Mazda GLC), in the culdesac, and walked through the open gates. There was a bulldozer and a grader parked a little ways in. An omen, I thought silently.
The red dirt of the path seemed more packed than I had remembered, as though there had been a great deal of traffic of late. The pineapples, meanwhile, seemed neglected and forgotten. There was no regularity in their ranks. Weeds and California grass broke their lines like a barbarian horde.
The grass wall that guarded the tree was higher than usual, but I managed to cross it without too much effort. Before I realized it, I was there.
The tree was the same as it had ever been. I stroked a hand across its tattooed bark to be sure. I felt a strange sense of relief in its presence, as though it confirmed something within my past, and within my self.
I sat in the carseat, and propped my legs on one of the gnarled roots. I suppose I must have been tired, because it seemed as though I fell into a dream. I say ‘seemed’ because I couldn’t quite tell when the dream began.
But dream or no, it felt so real that I remember it even to this day.
In my dream, I was still sitting in the carseat. Across me, on a branch that dipped dangerously out over the steep crumbling path, sat Riyu. I don’t know how I knew it was her, but I did. It seemed as though I had known her for a long time, because I was in the midst of an easy conversation with her.
“Have you ever heard of a Will o’ the Wisp?” she asked.
I told her that I thought the trees at the Sumida Farm near Pearlridge were willows.
“No, no,” she corrected. “Not a willow tree. A Will o’ the Wisp. Also known as ‘Ignus Fatuus,’ or ‘Jask of the Lamp.’”
I shook my head no.
“The story was that there was some guy named Will. One day, the Devil climbed up a tree, to perch himself in wait for souls to catch. Unfortunately, like a cat, he found himself unable to come down again. So when Will came walking under the tree, the Devil begged him to help him out. Will agreed, but on one condition, that when he died, the Devil would not take his soul into Hell. The Devil reluctantly agreed.” Riyu smiled a strange smile.
“So what happened then?” I asked finally.
“Well, Will, imagining he had a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card, basically lived it up, sinning in every way possible. And when he finally died, he was so wicked that Heaven shut its gates in his face. He descended into the earth and tried to make his way into Hell, but per agreement, the Devil refused to take him in. So Will was condemned to wander the earth, a restless, doubly damned soul, barred from both Heaven and Hell. And sad and alone, he lit a wisp, a bundle of straw, to light his way.”
A silence fell between us.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“No reason,” she said, smiling suddenly. And she continued the conversation on a completely different vein. “You know, your visits have made me happy here. Do you know why? It’s because you listen to me sing.”
I smiled in embarrassment.
“No, no, it’s true,” she said. “With you around, I feel my voice is stronger, clearer. I have more confidence.” She paused thoughtfully. “Confidence,” she repeated slowly. “Have you ever wondered about that word? How it means, on the one hand, something akin to courage, but on the other, it means to share a secret?” She smiled warmly at me. “I think that’s why I’m more confident, and why you are too. We share a secret, here in this secret place.”
A breeze cut through the gulch suddenly, rocking Riyu’s branch. She squealed, clinging to it with her knees and her hands. Then as fast as it had come, the breeze was gone. The branch steadied itself with an ominous creaking. Catching her breath, Riyu looked me straight in the eye. “One day, you’ll go away to distant places, trying to do important things. And when you return, you’ll find that everything has changed. You’ll try to come back home, back to this tree, but it won’t be here any longer. And you’ll wonder whether you’ve lost something irreplaceable.” Riyu’s seat wobbled slightly, and she cleared her throat. “Help me down, would you?”
I did so. Her hand, when I held it, was that of a shadow, cool and subtle.
Riyu stood beside me, nodded her thanks, smiled sadly. “The bad news is that yes, you will have lost something. But the good news is that when you accept that loss, you will understand my secret, the secret of confidence. And you’ll be able to sing with me.”
Riyu’s voice was unearthly, disembodied, genderless:
Weeping willow tree, weep in sympathy,
Bend your branches down along the ground and cover me,
When the shadows fall, bend oh willow,
Bend oh willow and weep for me.
When I woke, sitting in that same tombstone chair, I realized that the voice, weak and whispery, was my own.
***
Willow is sleeping. Her even snores and the odd angle of her head tell me so. I carefully adjust Willow’s head so that it curls up snugly within the confines of the Sling-E-Zee.
The tree is still here, but it won’t be much longer. It has been tagged for eventual removal by the landscapers. The carseat was probably hauled away a long time ago, along with the ruins of the abandoned van. The steep path below will likely be bulldozed to make the slope gentler and safer. Then, they’ll plant weedelia or goldencoin on it to hold everything in place.
This will probably be the last time I can take Willow here. Soon, walls will be put up, and people will be living in the lots I crossed to get here.
I stroke the bark of the tree, searching between the knuckled roots. Her graffiti is gone. The bark there is scorched gray, and there are abandoned crack pipes nearby.
I smile sadly, then carry Willow home.
XII. “Willow Weep for Me” (SIDE B): Sleep Walker
“Sleepwalker, don't be shy
Now don't open your eyes tonight
You'll be the one that defends my life
While I'm dead asleep dreamin'...
Now, sleepwalker, what's my line
It's only a matter of time
Until I learn to open up my eyes
When I'm dead asleep dreamin'”
-The Wallflowers, “Sleepwalker”
The gibbous moon reigns unchallenged overhead, painting the world in sharp contrasts, like high noon in a black-and-white movie. I return to myself, my awareness a helium balloon gently pulled back by its tether, and find that I am carrying Willow, my six month old daughter, in the hammock-like pouch of a Sling-E-Zee. Before me lies my small, enclosed backyard, the compost a healthy black, the spreading stolons of Seashore Paspalum a hesitant grey. A lone tree in one corner of the yard hesitantly reaches its thin trunk towards the moon.
I’m here because I got into an argument with my wife. I wouldn’t say that I lost because technically, the argument wasn’t over when Willow started to cry. But I’m here, demonstrating who had the final say, who always gets the final say. As I left the bedroom, I heard my wife call out, “You don’t appreciate us!”
That stung.
I do appreciate and love my wife and daughter; in fact, I hold them to be dearer than life itself.
Appreciation, however, wasn’t the issue. It was something else. Maybe I was having a mid-life crisis (wasn’t that what they called any vague dissatisfactions experienced after the 20's?). I was feeling like I was floating, stuck, in "mid-error." I had tried to express this feeling, tried to tell my wife how I had begun to feel dead inside, as though an essential part of myself had been left behind and buried in the past. I had tried to explain by recalling how I’d been in my last years of high school, a rebellious loner with dreams bigger than all the ‘burbs of Mililani.
Where was that kid now?
Willow shifts about impatiently, as if on cue. “Okay, I know,” I murmur wearily. “You want a walk and a story, right?” Willow gazes up at me expectantly, her eyes twin stars in a vast constellation. “Let’s see, what story should I tell?” Perhaps it’s the moon or the recent argument, but my eyes wander north, to a place I haven’t been to in over a decade, a place I’m not certain still exists. And before I know it, my feet are walking and my mouth is talking.
“Someday, you’re going to ask me why we chose to name you Willow,” I begin, circling the house, and descending the front driveway. Suddenly, the sublime moonlit sky is obscured by the glaring orange of streetlamps. I follow the sidewalk north, passing the homes of sleeping neighbors. “There were a lot of objections to it, you know. Like your uncle Dean, he kept saying there was a movie with the same name, and the main character was a midget. Or your grandpa, he kept saying that you were going to be a crybaby, a ‘weeping willow.’”
I take a deep breath. “Well, we named you Willow at first because it sounded graceful in the book. We didn’t know anyone bad with that name; in fact, the only person I knew who had anything close was your great great grandmother. Her name was Riyu, which is Japanese for willow tree. And she was a wonderful lady.”
I pause at this point, perhaps for dramatic effect, or perhaps so I can place more distance between myself and my wife. In that brief period, I hear my words and footsteps return to me in distorted echoes. “But the truth is that I did have someone else in mind when I named you. Your mom doesn’t know this, but there was someone I sort of came across in high school. Her name was Riyu too. I called her Rue.”
The sidewalk passes from relative darkness to an unearthly orange glow in a slow metronome-like rhythm as I continue my walk. At this ungodly time of night, I find it’s easy for me to pass from narrating the story to actually reliving it in my mind. In fact, I can’t be sure whether parts of the tale actually pass through my lips, or remain hidden within me. It doesn’t really matter, of course, since Willow cannot understand me. All that really matters is that the drone of my words, combined with the rocking of my footsteps, lulls Willow to sleep.
The intrinsic significance of the story is mine alone.
***
On afternoons and weekends during my sophomore year, after my best friend Cliff moved away, I took to hiking to distract me from my feelings of isolation. I would pack a book and some food and a drink, and just wander off, trying to get myself lost. I went on increasingly far-ranging hikes that took me outside the borders of Mililani Town, into the pineapple fields and beyond. It was as though I were trying to get away from civilization, and the impossible task of fitting into it.
One afternoon, I walked north along Meheula Parkway, across the bridge that spanned the H-2, to where the asphalt ended in a culdesac, and a rusty gate beckoned. I crossed the gate without hesitation, and followed the red dirt pathway on its course towards the Koolau Mountains. There was a near undetectable slope to the path, and after walking about a mile or so in, I was able to turn around and see the entirety of Mililani stretch out below me. It looked small from this distance; I could cover it up with one single outstretched hand.
As I proceeded further, the path curved gently to the right. The endless rows of spiky-leaved pineapples grew less regimented, and California grass popped up within chinks in the ranks. After a while, the California grass was all that I could see on either side, their tall stalks and hairy bladed leaves obscuring my vision.
Without warning, I came upon a couple of squat cylindrical water tanks, surrounded by a chain link fence. The path ahead was choked off by California grass, so the only way to proceed was to follow the clearing that edged the fence. When I had passed nearly halfway around the periphery of the fence, I glimpsed something beyond a stand of California grass that gave me a start. I thought I saw the silhouette of a tombstone!
I tried to cross the grass quietly, leaning on stalks and leaves to bend them down into a manageable slope. As soon as I committed my weight upon it, however, I fell with a rustling crash. I rose clumsily, trying to reestablish my footing on the treacherous grass.
The sight before me stilled my movements, and my heart.
I stood about 20 feet from the edge of Kipapa Gulch. A near impenetrable wall of California grass blocked the view of the gulch to my left and right, but directly in front of me, I could glimpse it, like the glinting of an emerald sea.
The view was framed by the trunk and branches of a lone acacia koa tree. It had smooth grey bark, like elephant skin, with gnarled branches that grew wild in all directions. Crescent shaped leaves flowered in bunches on the branches, providing mottled, shifting shade. Tucked between a couple of arthritic roots was a torn out carseat (the “tombstone”).
I entered the shade of the tree to get a better view of the gulch. The ground fell away sharply just beyond the roots of the tree, in a dangerous, crumbling path of orange chalk-rock. To the side of the path, in a small chasm, was an old rusted van, face down, rear exposed to the sky. Kipapa Gulch opened ahead and to either side like a gaping wound.
I absently stroked the bark of the tree, as though trying to confirm its reality. My hand flinched as it discovered patterns in the texture. Graffiti tattooed and populated the bark in interspersed patches. Some were neatly done in straight lines like cuneiform, while others were wild and clumsy hacks into the bark. Marks for the sake of posterity: secret loves, secret hates, secret violence, secret perversions, secrets.
As I gingerly sat in the carseat, I discovered a near hidden section of graffiti done in the space between two knuckled roots. Unlike the others, it was done in minute, patient cuts, with edges that had been smoothed over by sandpaper. It read:
Weeping Willow tree, weep in sympathy,
Bend your branches down along the ground and cover me,
When the shadows fall, bend oh willow,
Bend oh willow and weep for me.
-Riyu
I knew where the words had come from. They were part of a song called “Willow Weep For Me” that I’d heard on the Oldies station (yes, at the time, I was rebelling against glam rock and pop music, and somehow along the way, discovered the appeal of “Old School”). I also happened to know that “Riyu” could mean “Willow Tree” in Japanese, because my great grandmother, Obaban, had that name.
I was instantly intrigued by this particular bit of graffiti. I wondered who Riyu was, and what had inspired her to patiently and painstakingly carve out those words. Had she lost a loved one, and come to this tree longing for solace? Did she eventually find it, or did she come here to end her life? I couldn’t help but think about her over and over in my head.
In fact, me being lonely myself, I sat back and imagined myself somehow returning to the past, to catch her sitting in this very chair, crying in a moment of vulnerability and grief. I imagined myself approaching her, consoling her, somehow getting her to stop crying, to smile even.
But as is the case with all daydreams and vague little hopes, I left the devil with the details, unable to think of what I’d actually, specifically, say.
***
I pause the story.
The only landmarks remaining from my high school days are the cylindrical water tanks. I am standing before them now. They look smaller somehow, divorced from the context that I once associated them with. Now, they sit on the edge of a wide, two-lane street. Behind the tanks, I see signs of construction: a black tarp fence, and beyond it, through holes cut for the wind, I catch glimpses of metal and wood. They are building a new section of Mililani Mauka there, I suppose.
If memory serves me correctly, that’s where we have to go. I follow the street bordering the tanks as far as I can, and then cross through a hole in the black tarp. Suddenly, I am in what one day will be someone’s backyard. A wood and aluminum frame of a house looms before me like a fleshless skeleton. Without walls, I think idly, the moonlight, the wind, and even Willow and I can pass straight through the house unchallenged. I could leave my footprints in the dust, or scrawl my name in some forgotten corner. There’s a feeling of omnipotence in that fact.
Of course, by the time the house is built and ready for new owners, any and all trace of our passing will have been erased or covered up.
It will have been as though we never were.
Willow stirs impatiently.
I continue my story.
***
Time passed, and I had less of it to spend on hiking up to the tree. My days were filled instead with “busy-ness”: studying to prepare for college, or working in the hardware department at Gems to earn some cash.
I don’t know what motivated me to go to the tree the final time. Perhaps I needed a breather from all the studying. Maybe I was just curious to see if it was still there. After all, I’d heard that they were going to begin construction of an entirely new section north of the H-2. It was going to be called Mililani Mauka.
I parked my car, the Blue Bomber (an old blue Mazda GLC), in the culdesac, and walked through the open gates. There was a bulldozer and a grader parked a little ways in. An omen, I thought silently.
The red dirt of the path seemed more packed than I had remembered, as though there had been a great deal of traffic of late. The pineapples, meanwhile, seemed neglected and forgotten. There was no regularity in their ranks. Weeds and California grass broke their lines like a barbarian horde.
The grass wall that guarded the tree was higher than usual, but I managed to cross it without too much effort. Before I realized it, I was there.
The tree was the same as it had ever been. I stroked a hand across its tattooed bark to be sure. I felt a strange sense of relief in its presence, as though it confirmed something within my past, and within my self.
I sat in the carseat, and propped my legs on one of the gnarled roots. I suppose I must have been tired, because it seemed as though I fell into a dream. I say ‘seemed’ because I couldn’t quite tell when the dream began.
But dream or no, it felt so real that I remember it even to this day.
In my dream, I was still sitting in the carseat. Across me, on a branch that dipped dangerously out over the steep crumbling path, sat Riyu. I don’t know how I knew it was her, but I did. It seemed as though I had known her for a long time, because I was in the midst of an easy conversation with her.
“Have you ever heard of a Will o’ the Wisp?” she asked.
I told her that I thought the trees at the Sumida Farm near Pearlridge were willows.
“No, no,” she corrected. “Not a willow tree. A Will o’ the Wisp. Also known as ‘Ignus Fatuus,’ or ‘Jask of the Lamp.’”
I shook my head no.
“The story was that there was some guy named Will. One day, the Devil climbed up a tree, to perch himself in wait for souls to catch. Unfortunately, like a cat, he found himself unable to come down again. So when Will came walking under the tree, the Devil begged him to help him out. Will agreed, but on one condition, that when he died, the Devil would not take his soul into Hell. The Devil reluctantly agreed.” Riyu smiled a strange smile.
“So what happened then?” I asked finally.
“Well, Will, imagining he had a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card, basically lived it up, sinning in every way possible. And when he finally died, he was so wicked that Heaven shut its gates in his face. He descended into the earth and tried to make his way into Hell, but per agreement, the Devil refused to take him in. So Will was condemned to wander the earth, a restless, doubly damned soul, barred from both Heaven and Hell. And sad and alone, he lit a wisp, a bundle of straw, to light his way.”
A silence fell between us.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“No reason,” she said, smiling suddenly. And she continued the conversation on a completely different vein. “You know, your visits have made me happy here. Do you know why? It’s because you listen to me sing.”
I smiled in embarrassment.
“No, no, it’s true,” she said. “With you around, I feel my voice is stronger, clearer. I have more confidence.” She paused thoughtfully. “Confidence,” she repeated slowly. “Have you ever wondered about that word? How it means, on the one hand, something akin to courage, but on the other, it means to share a secret?” She smiled warmly at me. “I think that’s why I’m more confident, and why you are too. We share a secret, here in this secret place.”
A breeze cut through the gulch suddenly, rocking Riyu’s branch. She squealed, clinging to it with her knees and her hands. Then as fast as it had come, the breeze was gone. The branch steadied itself with an ominous creaking. Catching her breath, Riyu looked me straight in the eye. “One day, you’ll go away to distant places, trying to do important things. And when you return, you’ll find that everything has changed. You’ll try to come back home, back to this tree, but it won’t be here any longer. And you’ll wonder whether you’ve lost something irreplaceable.” Riyu’s seat wobbled slightly, and she cleared her throat. “Help me down, would you?”
I did so. Her hand, when I held it, was that of a shadow, cool and subtle.
Riyu stood beside me, nodded her thanks, smiled sadly. “The bad news is that yes, you will have lost something. But the good news is that when you accept that loss, you will understand my secret, the secret of confidence. And you’ll be able to sing with me.”
Riyu’s voice was unearthly, disembodied, genderless:
Weeping willow tree, weep in sympathy,
Bend your branches down along the ground and cover me,
When the shadows fall, bend oh willow,
Bend oh willow and weep for me.
When I woke, sitting in that same tombstone chair, I realized that the voice, weak and whispery, was my own.
***
Willow is sleeping. Her even snores and the odd angle of her head tell me so. I carefully adjust Willow’s head so that it curls up snugly within the confines of the Sling-E-Zee.
The tree is still here, but it won’t be much longer. It has been tagged for eventual removal by the landscapers. The carseat was probably hauled away a long time ago, along with the ruins of the abandoned van. The steep path below will likely be bulldozed to make the slope gentler and safer. Then, they’ll plant weedelia or goldencoin on it to hold everything in place.
This will probably be the last time I can take Willow here. Soon, walls will be put up, and people will be living in the lots I crossed to get here.
I stroke the bark of the tree, searching between the knuckled roots. Her graffiti is gone. The bark there is scorched gray, and there are abandoned crack pipes nearby.
I smile sadly, then carry Willow home.
Short Story: Willow Weep for Me, Side A: Transplant/Transparent
[this story won honorable mention in Honolulu Magazine's short fiction contest. Then, it was entitled, "Arigato: How I Transplanted the Family Tree"...]
XI. “Willow Weep for Me” (SIDE A): Transplant/Transparent
Grandpa is upset.
It’s rare that he gets worked up, not only because he is in general a mellow sort of guy, but because he suffers from a mild case of dementia, and rarely remembers an issue long enough to get angry over it. But if you touch his plants, then you’ve molested his heart.
“Who did that!” he barks, to everyone and to no one in particular. He points to the weeping willow tree in the center of the backyard. It is old, perhaps 25 years. Its grey, rough-barked trunk is about 3 feet in diameter at its base. From about ten feet up, branches spread out in near perfect symmetry, then seem to bend under the weight of their own growth to form a canopy of drooping leaves.
Although it is growing in the unlikeliest of places, namely Ewa Beach, it is thriving. In fact, it has grown too well for its own good. Its aggressive roots have snaked beneath the foundations, buckling the tile sidewalks, and breaking the sewer lines. For this reason, the tree is scheduled to be removed a week from today, something which grandma has purposely neglected to tell grandpa.
That isn’t what grandpa is upset about. The trajectory of his finger points to where a branch should be, but isn’t. In its place is a white oval, remnant of a clean cut. It is hard for the untrained eye to tell that anything should be there, especially since the tree is overabundant in foliage. But to grandpa, who cares for the garden several hours a day, it is as plain as day.
“I tell you, if I find da thief!” He leaves the business end of his threat unexpressed.
Grandma smirks. She’s used to grandpa’s bluster, even if it’s infrequent. But then, she touches my arm, looks me in the eye. “I know it was you,” she whispers. And she pulls me inside the house, leaving grandpa to fume alone.
We sit at the dining table. “Don’t tink I’m stupid,” she barks. “You tol' me you wanna name your daughter Willow, den you ask what we going do wit da willow tree. You cut da branch and planted it at yo' house in Mililani. Who else!”
My head hangs down. There’s no need to admit anything; with my grandma, the truth is always already out.
A moment of unbearable silence.
Then, changing her tone completely, grandma asks, “By the way, how Lynn stay?”
“More than ready to pop,” I murmur.
“Good,” grandma says, nodding. “And she like da nishime?”
“Yeah,” I lie, after a pause. “She really liked it.”
“Das good,” grandma says. “Nishime good when she pregnant.”
And then, without warning, her congeniality vanishes. Back to business. “I know you wanted da tree. But I tol’ you! Dat tree not suppose grow in one dry place like Ewa Beach, but it did! Now look at da sidewalks, da sewer line! Jus’ tink what dat tree would do in Mililani, wit all da rain!”
I nod. Yes, I’d heard these arguments before.
“And dea’s anada reason too,” grandma adds, her voice suddenly quiet. “Obaban was one good lady, she wen’ raise your grandpa and his tree sisters on her own. But even good people get regrets. And if you disrespect da ancestors, den dose regrets come alive, dey get jealous.”
My grandma’s lost me completely. “What does Obaban have to do with the tree?”
Grandma sighs. “Everyting. I tol’ you, right? Obaban’s name was Riyu, Japanese for Willow Tree.”
“Yeah, that was one reason why we decided to name her Willow.” Second choice was my wife’s pick, “Elsa,” the lion from “Born Free.” I didn’t want our child to sound like a Swedish nurse.
Grandma nods. “After Obaban died in ‘80, one of da first tings grandpa did to honor her was plant dis willow tree, and fertilize it wit Obaban’s ashes. I told him it was stupid.” She laughs dryly. “Nice, in his own way, but stupid. But das Masaru. Now, next week, dey going cut down da tree! What an insult to Obaban, to cut da tree dat holds her ashes!”
I feel a chill run up my spine. I had heard of people casting their ashes into the ocean, even blasting them off into outer space. But fertilizing a tree with your own mother’s ashes? It was just too weird. And not a little creepy, too.
And then, suddenly, I realize the situation my grandma is in. “What’s grandpa going to think?” I ask. If he got that pissed off when a branch was missing, what would he think when they took a chainsaw to the trunk?
Grandma says nothing for a moment. It’s clear that this very concern has been weighing heavily upon her. “As it is, grandpa recognize less every day. Da yard, da tree, dat’s all he care about. If dat tree gone-” Her voice trails off.
It worries me to see grandma troubled; it makes me feels like the very earth beneath my feet is shifting. “Do you have to cut the tree down?” I ask hopefully.
“What,” grandma barks, suddenly regaining her edge. “And stop shitting? I tol' you, da tree broke da sewer line!” She shakes her head, sighs loud and long, smiles soft. “No worry about us. Das our burden. But if you plant dat branch in yo' yard, den das yo' burden.”
I bow my head, the only acknowledgment I can give her. “Alright, I’ll think about it.” Not even attempting a subtle segue, I take the cell phone out of my pocket to check the time. “Lynn’s probably waiting.” I rise from the dining room table.
Instantly, grandma is all roses, as though we’d never had this talk. “Ganbatte,” she calls. “Oh, don’t forget! Dea’s one mo' container of nishime in da refrigerator. Get it on your way out, yeah?”
***
The nishime never makes it into Lynn’s mouth. It remains sealed up in its tupperware coffin, next to all of its elders on a refrigerator shelf.
Tonight, Lynn wanted vegetarian pizza, without the cheese. So, right now, we’re sitting in bed, with the open cardboard box between us. There’s a pile of discarded tidbits in the center of the box, composed partly of the cheese I skinned off her slices, and partly of the broccoli I picked off mine.
“Feel better?” I ask cautiously.
My question stirs her memory, and her eyes begin to tear.
“Damn,” I bark, then quickly follow it with an “I’m sorry.”
We’ve just finished watching ER. In tonight’s particularly upsetting episode, Carter and his girlfriend (played by Thandie Newton) lost their baby because the umbilical cord was wrapped around the neck of the fetus.
“Don’t worry,” I murmur, stroking Lynn’s rounded belly. “That’s not going to happen to us.” As if to confirm my statement, there is a fluttering beneath my palm. “You see? There’s our little trout now.” Lynn had come up with the trout nickname when she said that the baby’s gentle quick movements felt like Mozart’s Trout Concerto.
Lynn puts her hand on mine, feeling the baby through herself, through me. It seems to reassure her a bit. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, brushing at her eyes. “It’s just- don’t you ever feel scared?”
“All the time,” I answer immediately. “But not about what happened on ER. I worry about what happens after that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t worry about the hard part,” Lynn says, laughing shakily.
I try to sound as reassuring as I can. “Look, I’m certain everything’s going to be fine. There’s no reason it wouldn’t. You’re healthy, she’s healthy, every check up has been normal.”
“They thought everything was fine on the show,” Lynn counters.
“Yeah, but that’s just a show!” I smile for Lynn, but inside, I’m bitterly cursing the writers of ER.
“So what are you afraid of, then?” Lynn asks.
I sigh before answering. “Being a father.”
Lynn chuckles.
“I’m serious!” When she sees my expression, she suppresses her look of amusement. “For you, there’s no choice. You carry the baby inside of you, you’re intimate with her in a way I can never be. Motherhood’s so physical, it can’t help but feel real. But me? I feel useless, like a satellite. What have I got to give?”
Lynn is quiet for a moment. “I’m sure you’ll make a great father.”
“Well that makes one of us.”
There’s another pause as Lynn comes to a realization. “Is that why you’ve been trying so hard to transplant that willow tree from your grandparents’ yard?”
My eyes stare at the pile of soon-to-be discarded food in the pizza box. “I figure that if the tree takes, if it grows, then I’ll have something I can point to, and say, ‘There, I planted that for you.’”
Lynn smiles softly. “That’s silly. Silly, but nice.” She wraps her hand around mine. “That’s why I love you, freak,” she says warmly. “And that’s why you’ll make a great father.”
***
Lynn is asleep.
I find myself creeping out into the cool midnight air of Mililani, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, until I stand in the black of my freshly composted yard, before the branch that I stole from grandpa’s willow tree.
I am disappointed. The few remaining leaves on the branch are beginning to curl and blacken, presaging their eventual fall next to their siblings. The branch itself seems to have lost its verve. It sags and droops, as though imitating its mother tree, but as a mockery. Its arc towards the soil is premature, more a cave-in than a canopy.
I gingerly try to prop the branch up, but each touch only seems to make its angle more precipitous. With a sigh, I give up.
I am in my own world when I creep back into bed next to my wife. Oblivious to her deep and even breathing, I am for some strange reason consumed by my grandma’s words: “If you plant dat branch in yo' yard, den das yo' burden.”
Her words pursue me into a dream.
***
I am 8 years old again. It is 1980, the year Obaban turns 101.
8 and 101. Neither are ideal ages for any sort of meeting of the minds: I am too young, with flickering concerns, and she is too opaque, her tongue and ear exclusively Japanese, and her expressionless face, a Kabuki mask. I hear stories from my grandmother about how benevolent she is, and for that I give her as much respect as an 8 year old could. But I still feel myself stiffen whenever I have to hug her, whenever I search for eyes in those sinking hollows, and a smile in that denture-less grimace.
She dies in the fall of that year.
At her funeral, held at Mililani Memorial, I guiltlessly run around outside with my sister, away from the intolerable solemnity and wailing of the Shinto music within. It is an October evening, and the moon is brilliant, painting the cemetery in ethereal light. There is a statue of a man in the distance, perhaps a memorial to some important figure. I make up some story about that statue being a ghost, and tell it to my sister. Both of us try really hard to catch it making a move. I almost do.
In the last segment of the dream, the piece that surfaces with me, I see a tree root snake beneath the ground of the cemetery, thirsty for life. And then, in the strange but utterly natural way of dreams, the ground turns into a womb, and the root becomes an umbilical cord, swiftly drawing a knot around a fluttering fish.
A trout.
I wake with a vague feeling of unease.
***
The next day finds me again at my grandparents’ house in Ewa Beach.
“Where’s grandpa?” I ask my grandma, as she sits at the dining table, rolling sushi.
Instead of answering, she points to the seat across from her. I reluctantly sink into it. She looks like she is in the mood for a sermon.
She peers into my eyes. “Who's a parent?” she asks.
At first, I’m not sure what she’s asking. “Apparent?”
“Yes,” grandma says impatiently, “A parent. Who?”
I realize what her question is. “Uh, I guess someone who raises kids.” It seems like an obvious answer.
Grandma shakes her head. “No,” she murmurs, almost in disgust. “I tol' you! Who is da child?”
My brow furrows. Where is she going with this? “Willow?”
Grandma sighs in frustration. “Your child is your ancestor,” she exclaims. “You don't remember?”
I nod slowly. It’s a Tenrikyo concept, kind of a hybrid between Buddhist notions of karma, and Confucian ideals of ancestor worship. In Tenrikyo, people never really disappear upon death; they come back some indeterminate time later, reincarnated within the family line. A grandparent can come back as a grandchild, for instance. When I think about it, it really is a fascinating idea, with a kind of elegant logic to it. If a parent treats their child well, then they are, at one and the same time, paying back their debt to an ancestor (perhaps their own parent), and “paying things forward,” insuring that, when they come back after their death, they will be well-taken care of.
Grandma’s eyes lock on mine again. “So, who is a parent?” she asks once more.
“Uh... The child?”
Grandma nods, to my relief. “Good,” she says. “The parent da child, da child is da parent.”
I’m a bit impatient, and want to talk to grandpa, so I try to jump start the moral of the sermon. “So, you’re saying, I have to treat Willow with as much respect as I would Obaban, right? Because she’s a reincarnation of Obaban?”
Grandma shakes her head no. “Das not all. YOU da child. Willow will teach you. But da most important thing: God wants you to live through. Understand?”
My expression says no.
“Everyone has innen,” she says. “So everyone has to live through. Make everything clear again. Understand?”
I still don’t really understand, but this time I nod yes.
There are so many questions I could ask grandma right now. Like, if Willow was the reincarnation of Obaban, what is their relationship? Are they both the same soul, or does one take over the other? It is a bunch of crazy, irrational stuff, things I can’t even articulate into questions she would understand. So I give up.
At this point, there is only one thing I feel I can work on, anyway. And I need grandpa’s help, not grandma’s, for that. I rise suddenly. “Thanks grandma,” I say, somewhat dismissively. “But I wanted to see grandpa. Is he around?”
Grandma glances towards the glass-louvered window. “He is where he always is,” she mutters. And then, quietly, almost secretively, she adds, “Tomorrow. They’re coming tomorrow. And he still don’t know.”
“Thanks grandma,” I say again, this time, in a hushed tone. And then, I exit the back door beyond the kitchen, to search for grandpa.
Whenever I try to seek out grandpa, most of the time to call him in for lunch, he’s hidden. He lurks somewhere among the orchids, junipers, and other plants, doing whatever secret tasks he does in his private green world. It is often a challenge to find his diminishing figure, silent and crouched and camouflaged by foliage.
Today, though, it’s easy to find him, because he’s singing some old Japanese ballad in a swaggering voice drunk with memories. Besides, he’s right at the willow tree in the center of the backyard, applying a tar-like material on the wound that I’d made. He sees me, and raises a hand in greeting.
“Hey grandpa,” I reply, walking up to him and patting him on the back.
Grandpa nods. I can tell that he wants to greet me specifically, but he can’t quite remember my name. Characteristically, there isn’t a trace of bewilderment or fear at this inability; he simply takes it in stride that I am to be a familiar, though nameless, presence.
“You doing okay?” he asks. Before I can reply, he says, “Good, good,” nodding his head, and returning to the task at hand. Grandpa is never one for conversation.
“Grandpa,” I call out hesitantly. “I want to ask you something.”
He turns back, a hint of impatience furrowing his brow.
“How would you transplant a tree?”
The beginning of a smile curls the edge of grandpa’s usually hard-set lips. When it comes to horticulture, he’s a veritable encyclopedia bursting at the bindings. “Depends on da tree.”
I know I’m entering dangerous territory, but I’ve got grandpa’s dementia and passivity to protect me. “Oh, I don’t know,” I murmur. I lay a hand gently upon the bark of the willow. “Maybe something like this?”
“Weeping willow?” he asks, his voice rising. “Salix Babylonica?”
“Yeah,” I reply, perhaps too quickly. “I think that’s what it was called.”
Grandpa seems disappointed at the ease of the answer. “Nothing to it. Dis tree, all you do is make a cutting and plant it. Before you know it, the roots take. You gotta be one idiot to kill this tree!”
“Huh,” I utter flatly. “What would you do if roots don’t grow?”
Grandpa shrugs. “Maybe it’s da soil,” he says. His eyes grow distant as he passes from thinking to remembering. “When I planted this tree, the soil here was poor, white coral. So I did da same thing we did when we lived in Waipahu. I used my own shit.”
“What!?” There’s something shocking, scandalous even, about hearing my grandpa swear.
Grandpa looks me in the eye. “Das right, I used my shit. Nating bettah. Back in Waipahu, we nevah had money fo’ buy chicken manure. And we nevah had toilets, jus' chamber pots. So when we had to grow something, we killed two birds with one stone. We emptied da chamber pots into da soil. Dat way, whatever we grew was made of us.” He grins, apparently proud of himself.
It takes a moment for me to come to a realization. “But grandma said you fertilized the tree with Obaban’s ashes!”
“Yeah, dat too,” grandpa replies matter-of-factly. He apparently doesn’t see the problem I do, of mixing the sacred with the profane.[1] But the mention of Obaban seems to summon deeper memories in grandpa. His voice softens as though it were an echo of another time. “Obaban was strong. When I was eight, Obaban gave birth to one baby, but it died coming out. Next day, she was out working the cane fields. No crying, nothing.” He touches the bark of the tree. “Das why I planted her ashes in da tree. All her life, she suffered. She always dreamed of dis tree that she was named after, dis tree that she nevah saw. So I gave her what she never had in life. It was my way of saying ‘Arigato.’"[2]
Grandpa fades away, oblivious to my presence. He turns to the willow tree and his memories, breaking out into song once again: “Ringo no hanabira ga kaze ni chitta yo na.”
“The petals of the apple blossoms have fallen in the wind.”
After a thoughtful silence, I give him an unseen wave goodbye.
***
I don’t follow through on my grandpa’s “suggestion” when I return home after work late that night. Resigned, I don’t even check on the branch. I lie beside Lynn, thinking about Obaban. And before I know it, I sink into a dream.
I see a young Obaban, sternly beautiful, lying on the blood-soaked hay of a horse stable. A midwife beside her swaddles an unmoving form. She is crying, but Obaban is not. Obaban’s face is pale, her skin damp. Perhaps it is delirium, but she thinks she hears the sound of children running outside. She longs to follow them, away from this unbearable sorrow...
Then I see Obaban standing before a humble plantation home with an eight year old boy playing beside her. Her eyes are transfixed by a figure she thinks she sees beyond windswept dirt. It seems still, almost a statue. Then the haze clears, and a young man, someone on the horizon of recognition, approaches her. He seems to want to say much, but the only thing that comes out of his lips is a soft “Arigato.”
Then, everything fades away, like a ghost, or a dream, or a memory.
***
Lynn nudges me awake. “I should be thanking you,” she whispers calmly, sarcastically.
Through the fog of sleep, I notice that the mattress feels damp. I jerk upright.
“Babe,” Lynn says. “It’s time.”
***
Willow is born the next day. She’s a healthy 6 pounds, with the voice of an opera singer.
We stay at Queen’s for five days, swiftly accustoming ourselves to our little “fish out of water.”
My grandparents visit us the day we return home from the hospital. My grandpa looks disheveled, confused. Grandma tells me that the willow tree was cut a few days ago, and he hasn’t been the same since.
Instead of greeting us at the front door, he wanders into our near-empty yard, which I haven’t even seen yet, I’ve been so busy. Carrying a swaddled Willow, I follow him, curious. I find him standing before the transplanted branch. He strokes it thoughtfully, smiling as he notices, with me, fresh buds down low.
“Me, I like willows,” he says, turning towards me.
I draw Willow close so I can feel her tiny breath on my cheek. “Me too.”
-------------------
[1] This is what is commonly referred to as “night soil,” because the “offerings” were collected from the chamber pots of residences late in the night. It was and is still a popular practice in regions with both infertile soil and poor sewage systems. There are, of course, several problems with night soil, not the least of which is the smell. It is, for example, inadvisable to use night soil on edible crops, because of the possibility of spreading bacteria like E. Coli. My grandfather, by the way, never did this. However, I still include this “shit” in the story, because it expresses an essential idea: what we (inadvertently? inevitably?) do to our ancestors...
[2] Although you probably already know the conventional meaning of “Arigato” (Thank you), it is illuminating to take a closer look at where the expression comes from. “Arigato” is a polite form of the adjectival “Arigatashii,” which literally means “difficult to exist,” or “rare.” While it refers to the (inanimate) “rarity” of the debt for which one is expressing thanks, I think it may also imply the (animate) “difficult existence” suffered by the person whom one is thanking.
XI. “Willow Weep for Me” (SIDE A): Transplant/Transparent
Grandpa is upset.
It’s rare that he gets worked up, not only because he is in general a mellow sort of guy, but because he suffers from a mild case of dementia, and rarely remembers an issue long enough to get angry over it. But if you touch his plants, then you’ve molested his heart.
“Who did that!” he barks, to everyone and to no one in particular. He points to the weeping willow tree in the center of the backyard. It is old, perhaps 25 years. Its grey, rough-barked trunk is about 3 feet in diameter at its base. From about ten feet up, branches spread out in near perfect symmetry, then seem to bend under the weight of their own growth to form a canopy of drooping leaves.
Although it is growing in the unlikeliest of places, namely Ewa Beach, it is thriving. In fact, it has grown too well for its own good. Its aggressive roots have snaked beneath the foundations, buckling the tile sidewalks, and breaking the sewer lines. For this reason, the tree is scheduled to be removed a week from today, something which grandma has purposely neglected to tell grandpa.
That isn’t what grandpa is upset about. The trajectory of his finger points to where a branch should be, but isn’t. In its place is a white oval, remnant of a clean cut. It is hard for the untrained eye to tell that anything should be there, especially since the tree is overabundant in foliage. But to grandpa, who cares for the garden several hours a day, it is as plain as day.
“I tell you, if I find da thief!” He leaves the business end of his threat unexpressed.
Grandma smirks. She’s used to grandpa’s bluster, even if it’s infrequent. But then, she touches my arm, looks me in the eye. “I know it was you,” she whispers. And she pulls me inside the house, leaving grandpa to fume alone.
We sit at the dining table. “Don’t tink I’m stupid,” she barks. “You tol' me you wanna name your daughter Willow, den you ask what we going do wit da willow tree. You cut da branch and planted it at yo' house in Mililani. Who else!”
My head hangs down. There’s no need to admit anything; with my grandma, the truth is always already out.
A moment of unbearable silence.
Then, changing her tone completely, grandma asks, “By the way, how Lynn stay?”
“More than ready to pop,” I murmur.
“Good,” grandma says, nodding. “And she like da nishime?”
“Yeah,” I lie, after a pause. “She really liked it.”
“Das good,” grandma says. “Nishime good when she pregnant.”
And then, without warning, her congeniality vanishes. Back to business. “I know you wanted da tree. But I tol’ you! Dat tree not suppose grow in one dry place like Ewa Beach, but it did! Now look at da sidewalks, da sewer line! Jus’ tink what dat tree would do in Mililani, wit all da rain!”
I nod. Yes, I’d heard these arguments before.
“And dea’s anada reason too,” grandma adds, her voice suddenly quiet. “Obaban was one good lady, she wen’ raise your grandpa and his tree sisters on her own. But even good people get regrets. And if you disrespect da ancestors, den dose regrets come alive, dey get jealous.”
My grandma’s lost me completely. “What does Obaban have to do with the tree?”
Grandma sighs. “Everyting. I tol’ you, right? Obaban’s name was Riyu, Japanese for Willow Tree.”
“Yeah, that was one reason why we decided to name her Willow.” Second choice was my wife’s pick, “Elsa,” the lion from “Born Free.” I didn’t want our child to sound like a Swedish nurse.
Grandma nods. “After Obaban died in ‘80, one of da first tings grandpa did to honor her was plant dis willow tree, and fertilize it wit Obaban’s ashes. I told him it was stupid.” She laughs dryly. “Nice, in his own way, but stupid. But das Masaru. Now, next week, dey going cut down da tree! What an insult to Obaban, to cut da tree dat holds her ashes!”
I feel a chill run up my spine. I had heard of people casting their ashes into the ocean, even blasting them off into outer space. But fertilizing a tree with your own mother’s ashes? It was just too weird. And not a little creepy, too.
And then, suddenly, I realize the situation my grandma is in. “What’s grandpa going to think?” I ask. If he got that pissed off when a branch was missing, what would he think when they took a chainsaw to the trunk?
Grandma says nothing for a moment. It’s clear that this very concern has been weighing heavily upon her. “As it is, grandpa recognize less every day. Da yard, da tree, dat’s all he care about. If dat tree gone-” Her voice trails off.
It worries me to see grandma troubled; it makes me feels like the very earth beneath my feet is shifting. “Do you have to cut the tree down?” I ask hopefully.
“What,” grandma barks, suddenly regaining her edge. “And stop shitting? I tol' you, da tree broke da sewer line!” She shakes her head, sighs loud and long, smiles soft. “No worry about us. Das our burden. But if you plant dat branch in yo' yard, den das yo' burden.”
I bow my head, the only acknowledgment I can give her. “Alright, I’ll think about it.” Not even attempting a subtle segue, I take the cell phone out of my pocket to check the time. “Lynn’s probably waiting.” I rise from the dining room table.
Instantly, grandma is all roses, as though we’d never had this talk. “Ganbatte,” she calls. “Oh, don’t forget! Dea’s one mo' container of nishime in da refrigerator. Get it on your way out, yeah?”
***
The nishime never makes it into Lynn’s mouth. It remains sealed up in its tupperware coffin, next to all of its elders on a refrigerator shelf.
Tonight, Lynn wanted vegetarian pizza, without the cheese. So, right now, we’re sitting in bed, with the open cardboard box between us. There’s a pile of discarded tidbits in the center of the box, composed partly of the cheese I skinned off her slices, and partly of the broccoli I picked off mine.
“Feel better?” I ask cautiously.
My question stirs her memory, and her eyes begin to tear.
“Damn,” I bark, then quickly follow it with an “I’m sorry.”
We’ve just finished watching ER. In tonight’s particularly upsetting episode, Carter and his girlfriend (played by Thandie Newton) lost their baby because the umbilical cord was wrapped around the neck of the fetus.
“Don’t worry,” I murmur, stroking Lynn’s rounded belly. “That’s not going to happen to us.” As if to confirm my statement, there is a fluttering beneath my palm. “You see? There’s our little trout now.” Lynn had come up with the trout nickname when she said that the baby’s gentle quick movements felt like Mozart’s Trout Concerto.
Lynn puts her hand on mine, feeling the baby through herself, through me. It seems to reassure her a bit. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, brushing at her eyes. “It’s just- don’t you ever feel scared?”
“All the time,” I answer immediately. “But not about what happened on ER. I worry about what happens after that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t worry about the hard part,” Lynn says, laughing shakily.
I try to sound as reassuring as I can. “Look, I’m certain everything’s going to be fine. There’s no reason it wouldn’t. You’re healthy, she’s healthy, every check up has been normal.”
“They thought everything was fine on the show,” Lynn counters.
“Yeah, but that’s just a show!” I smile for Lynn, but inside, I’m bitterly cursing the writers of ER.
“So what are you afraid of, then?” Lynn asks.
I sigh before answering. “Being a father.”
Lynn chuckles.
“I’m serious!” When she sees my expression, she suppresses her look of amusement. “For you, there’s no choice. You carry the baby inside of you, you’re intimate with her in a way I can never be. Motherhood’s so physical, it can’t help but feel real. But me? I feel useless, like a satellite. What have I got to give?”
Lynn is quiet for a moment. “I’m sure you’ll make a great father.”
“Well that makes one of us.”
There’s another pause as Lynn comes to a realization. “Is that why you’ve been trying so hard to transplant that willow tree from your grandparents’ yard?”
My eyes stare at the pile of soon-to-be discarded food in the pizza box. “I figure that if the tree takes, if it grows, then I’ll have something I can point to, and say, ‘There, I planted that for you.’”
Lynn smiles softly. “That’s silly. Silly, but nice.” She wraps her hand around mine. “That’s why I love you, freak,” she says warmly. “And that’s why you’ll make a great father.”
***
Lynn is asleep.
I find myself creeping out into the cool midnight air of Mililani, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, until I stand in the black of my freshly composted yard, before the branch that I stole from grandpa’s willow tree.
I am disappointed. The few remaining leaves on the branch are beginning to curl and blacken, presaging their eventual fall next to their siblings. The branch itself seems to have lost its verve. It sags and droops, as though imitating its mother tree, but as a mockery. Its arc towards the soil is premature, more a cave-in than a canopy.
I gingerly try to prop the branch up, but each touch only seems to make its angle more precipitous. With a sigh, I give up.
I am in my own world when I creep back into bed next to my wife. Oblivious to her deep and even breathing, I am for some strange reason consumed by my grandma’s words: “If you plant dat branch in yo' yard, den das yo' burden.”
Her words pursue me into a dream.
***
I am 8 years old again. It is 1980, the year Obaban turns 101.
8 and 101. Neither are ideal ages for any sort of meeting of the minds: I am too young, with flickering concerns, and she is too opaque, her tongue and ear exclusively Japanese, and her expressionless face, a Kabuki mask. I hear stories from my grandmother about how benevolent she is, and for that I give her as much respect as an 8 year old could. But I still feel myself stiffen whenever I have to hug her, whenever I search for eyes in those sinking hollows, and a smile in that denture-less grimace.
She dies in the fall of that year.
At her funeral, held at Mililani Memorial, I guiltlessly run around outside with my sister, away from the intolerable solemnity and wailing of the Shinto music within. It is an October evening, and the moon is brilliant, painting the cemetery in ethereal light. There is a statue of a man in the distance, perhaps a memorial to some important figure. I make up some story about that statue being a ghost, and tell it to my sister. Both of us try really hard to catch it making a move. I almost do.
In the last segment of the dream, the piece that surfaces with me, I see a tree root snake beneath the ground of the cemetery, thirsty for life. And then, in the strange but utterly natural way of dreams, the ground turns into a womb, and the root becomes an umbilical cord, swiftly drawing a knot around a fluttering fish.
A trout.
I wake with a vague feeling of unease.
***
The next day finds me again at my grandparents’ house in Ewa Beach.
“Where’s grandpa?” I ask my grandma, as she sits at the dining table, rolling sushi.
Instead of answering, she points to the seat across from her. I reluctantly sink into it. She looks like she is in the mood for a sermon.
She peers into my eyes. “Who's a parent?” she asks.
At first, I’m not sure what she’s asking. “Apparent?”
“Yes,” grandma says impatiently, “A parent. Who?”
I realize what her question is. “Uh, I guess someone who raises kids.” It seems like an obvious answer.
Grandma shakes her head. “No,” she murmurs, almost in disgust. “I tol' you! Who is da child?”
My brow furrows. Where is she going with this? “Willow?”
Grandma sighs in frustration. “Your child is your ancestor,” she exclaims. “You don't remember?”
I nod slowly. It’s a Tenrikyo concept, kind of a hybrid between Buddhist notions of karma, and Confucian ideals of ancestor worship. In Tenrikyo, people never really disappear upon death; they come back some indeterminate time later, reincarnated within the family line. A grandparent can come back as a grandchild, for instance. When I think about it, it really is a fascinating idea, with a kind of elegant logic to it. If a parent treats their child well, then they are, at one and the same time, paying back their debt to an ancestor (perhaps their own parent), and “paying things forward,” insuring that, when they come back after their death, they will be well-taken care of.
Grandma’s eyes lock on mine again. “So, who is a parent?” she asks once more.
“Uh... The child?”
Grandma nods, to my relief. “Good,” she says. “The parent da child, da child is da parent.”
I’m a bit impatient, and want to talk to grandpa, so I try to jump start the moral of the sermon. “So, you’re saying, I have to treat Willow with as much respect as I would Obaban, right? Because she’s a reincarnation of Obaban?”
Grandma shakes her head no. “Das not all. YOU da child. Willow will teach you. But da most important thing: God wants you to live through. Understand?”
My expression says no.
“Everyone has innen,” she says. “So everyone has to live through. Make everything clear again. Understand?”
I still don’t really understand, but this time I nod yes.
There are so many questions I could ask grandma right now. Like, if Willow was the reincarnation of Obaban, what is their relationship? Are they both the same soul, or does one take over the other? It is a bunch of crazy, irrational stuff, things I can’t even articulate into questions she would understand. So I give up.
At this point, there is only one thing I feel I can work on, anyway. And I need grandpa’s help, not grandma’s, for that. I rise suddenly. “Thanks grandma,” I say, somewhat dismissively. “But I wanted to see grandpa. Is he around?”
Grandma glances towards the glass-louvered window. “He is where he always is,” she mutters. And then, quietly, almost secretively, she adds, “Tomorrow. They’re coming tomorrow. And he still don’t know.”
“Thanks grandma,” I say again, this time, in a hushed tone. And then, I exit the back door beyond the kitchen, to search for grandpa.
Whenever I try to seek out grandpa, most of the time to call him in for lunch, he’s hidden. He lurks somewhere among the orchids, junipers, and other plants, doing whatever secret tasks he does in his private green world. It is often a challenge to find his diminishing figure, silent and crouched and camouflaged by foliage.
Today, though, it’s easy to find him, because he’s singing some old Japanese ballad in a swaggering voice drunk with memories. Besides, he’s right at the willow tree in the center of the backyard, applying a tar-like material on the wound that I’d made. He sees me, and raises a hand in greeting.
“Hey grandpa,” I reply, walking up to him and patting him on the back.
Grandpa nods. I can tell that he wants to greet me specifically, but he can’t quite remember my name. Characteristically, there isn’t a trace of bewilderment or fear at this inability; he simply takes it in stride that I am to be a familiar, though nameless, presence.
“You doing okay?” he asks. Before I can reply, he says, “Good, good,” nodding his head, and returning to the task at hand. Grandpa is never one for conversation.
“Grandpa,” I call out hesitantly. “I want to ask you something.”
He turns back, a hint of impatience furrowing his brow.
“How would you transplant a tree?”
The beginning of a smile curls the edge of grandpa’s usually hard-set lips. When it comes to horticulture, he’s a veritable encyclopedia bursting at the bindings. “Depends on da tree.”
I know I’m entering dangerous territory, but I’ve got grandpa’s dementia and passivity to protect me. “Oh, I don’t know,” I murmur. I lay a hand gently upon the bark of the willow. “Maybe something like this?”
“Weeping willow?” he asks, his voice rising. “Salix Babylonica?”
“Yeah,” I reply, perhaps too quickly. “I think that’s what it was called.”
Grandpa seems disappointed at the ease of the answer. “Nothing to it. Dis tree, all you do is make a cutting and plant it. Before you know it, the roots take. You gotta be one idiot to kill this tree!”
“Huh,” I utter flatly. “What would you do if roots don’t grow?”
Grandpa shrugs. “Maybe it’s da soil,” he says. His eyes grow distant as he passes from thinking to remembering. “When I planted this tree, the soil here was poor, white coral. So I did da same thing we did when we lived in Waipahu. I used my own shit.”
“What!?” There’s something shocking, scandalous even, about hearing my grandpa swear.
Grandpa looks me in the eye. “Das right, I used my shit. Nating bettah. Back in Waipahu, we nevah had money fo’ buy chicken manure. And we nevah had toilets, jus' chamber pots. So when we had to grow something, we killed two birds with one stone. We emptied da chamber pots into da soil. Dat way, whatever we grew was made of us.” He grins, apparently proud of himself.
It takes a moment for me to come to a realization. “But grandma said you fertilized the tree with Obaban’s ashes!”
“Yeah, dat too,” grandpa replies matter-of-factly. He apparently doesn’t see the problem I do, of mixing the sacred with the profane.[1] But the mention of Obaban seems to summon deeper memories in grandpa. His voice softens as though it were an echo of another time. “Obaban was strong. When I was eight, Obaban gave birth to one baby, but it died coming out. Next day, she was out working the cane fields. No crying, nothing.” He touches the bark of the tree. “Das why I planted her ashes in da tree. All her life, she suffered. She always dreamed of dis tree that she was named after, dis tree that she nevah saw. So I gave her what she never had in life. It was my way of saying ‘Arigato.’"[2]
Grandpa fades away, oblivious to my presence. He turns to the willow tree and his memories, breaking out into song once again: “Ringo no hanabira ga kaze ni chitta yo na.”
“The petals of the apple blossoms have fallen in the wind.”
After a thoughtful silence, I give him an unseen wave goodbye.
***
I don’t follow through on my grandpa’s “suggestion” when I return home after work late that night. Resigned, I don’t even check on the branch. I lie beside Lynn, thinking about Obaban. And before I know it, I sink into a dream.
I see a young Obaban, sternly beautiful, lying on the blood-soaked hay of a horse stable. A midwife beside her swaddles an unmoving form. She is crying, but Obaban is not. Obaban’s face is pale, her skin damp. Perhaps it is delirium, but she thinks she hears the sound of children running outside. She longs to follow them, away from this unbearable sorrow...
Then I see Obaban standing before a humble plantation home with an eight year old boy playing beside her. Her eyes are transfixed by a figure she thinks she sees beyond windswept dirt. It seems still, almost a statue. Then the haze clears, and a young man, someone on the horizon of recognition, approaches her. He seems to want to say much, but the only thing that comes out of his lips is a soft “Arigato.”
Then, everything fades away, like a ghost, or a dream, or a memory.
***
Lynn nudges me awake. “I should be thanking you,” she whispers calmly, sarcastically.
Through the fog of sleep, I notice that the mattress feels damp. I jerk upright.
“Babe,” Lynn says. “It’s time.”
***
Willow is born the next day. She’s a healthy 6 pounds, with the voice of an opera singer.
We stay at Queen’s for five days, swiftly accustoming ourselves to our little “fish out of water.”
My grandparents visit us the day we return home from the hospital. My grandpa looks disheveled, confused. Grandma tells me that the willow tree was cut a few days ago, and he hasn’t been the same since.
Instead of greeting us at the front door, he wanders into our near-empty yard, which I haven’t even seen yet, I’ve been so busy. Carrying a swaddled Willow, I follow him, curious. I find him standing before the transplanted branch. He strokes it thoughtfully, smiling as he notices, with me, fresh buds down low.
“Me, I like willows,” he says, turning towards me.
I draw Willow close so I can feel her tiny breath on my cheek. “Me too.”
-------------------
[1] This is what is commonly referred to as “night soil,” because the “offerings” were collected from the chamber pots of residences late in the night. It was and is still a popular practice in regions with both infertile soil and poor sewage systems. There are, of course, several problems with night soil, not the least of which is the smell. It is, for example, inadvisable to use night soil on edible crops, because of the possibility of spreading bacteria like E. Coli. My grandfather, by the way, never did this. However, I still include this “shit” in the story, because it expresses an essential idea: what we (inadvertently? inevitably?) do to our ancestors...
[2] Although you probably already know the conventional meaning of “Arigato” (Thank you), it is illuminating to take a closer look at where the expression comes from. “Arigato” is a polite form of the adjectival “Arigatashii,” which literally means “difficult to exist,” or “rare.” While it refers to the (inanimate) “rarity” of the debt for which one is expressing thanks, I think it may also imply the (animate) “difficult existence” suffered by the person whom one is thanking.
Great Wisdom Sutra (my translation)
[Makahanyaharamita Shingyo was what we chanted every morning, and for every service, over at Kannonji. We also chanted something called the Daihienmon, which, upon reflection, probably is the Diamond Sutra...]
A Translation of Makahanyaharamita Shingyo (Great Wisdom Sutra)
“When Kannon practiced the discipline of enlightenment by relying on the deep wisdom, he saw clearly that the five aggregates are all empty, and he practiced the means by which one can be saved from all suffering.
“To my foremost disciples, I say that form and emptiness do not differ. Nor does emptiness differ from form. Form is another name for emptiness, and emptiness is another name for form. It is the same with the other four aggregates (reception, discrimination, volition, and consciousness).
“To my foremost disciples, I say that the accepted order of the world is but an empty appearance, and that there is neither birth nor death, neither filth nor purity. Nor is there either increase or decrease.
“Therefore, in the middle of emptiness, there are no four aggregates (reception, discrimination, volition, and consciousness). There are no six senses, there is neither form, sound, smell, taste, nor touch. There is neither consciousness nor unconsciousness. There is neither a root of ignorance and delusion, nor is there escape from the root of ignorance and delusion. Furthermore, there is neither old age and death, nor escape from old age and death.
“There is no means to attain enlightenment, nor is there wisdom, nor is there the obtaining of anything. By means of nonobtainment, one relies upon the bodhisattva’s great wisdom, and by relying upon this wisdom, one has no cares or worries. Because one has no cares or worries, one has nothing to fear. By removing oneself from faraway dreams and fantasies, one reaches Nirvana, which is always right where one is.
“Because the Absolute Buddha of the three worlds relied upon this great wisdom, he obtained enlightenment wihout greater. In order to make you aware of this great wisdom, I approve of this sutra of the great gods, this sutra of great brightness, this sutra without a greater, this sutra without compare, which is able to expel suffering, which is the truth without lie, and explain it to you.”
A Translation of Makahanyaharamita Shingyo (Great Wisdom Sutra)
“When Kannon practiced the discipline of enlightenment by relying on the deep wisdom, he saw clearly that the five aggregates are all empty, and he practiced the means by which one can be saved from all suffering.
“To my foremost disciples, I say that form and emptiness do not differ. Nor does emptiness differ from form. Form is another name for emptiness, and emptiness is another name for form. It is the same with the other four aggregates (reception, discrimination, volition, and consciousness).
“To my foremost disciples, I say that the accepted order of the world is but an empty appearance, and that there is neither birth nor death, neither filth nor purity. Nor is there either increase or decrease.
“Therefore, in the middle of emptiness, there are no four aggregates (reception, discrimination, volition, and consciousness). There are no six senses, there is neither form, sound, smell, taste, nor touch. There is neither consciousness nor unconsciousness. There is neither a root of ignorance and delusion, nor is there escape from the root of ignorance and delusion. Furthermore, there is neither old age and death, nor escape from old age and death.
“There is no means to attain enlightenment, nor is there wisdom, nor is there the obtaining of anything. By means of nonobtainment, one relies upon the bodhisattva’s great wisdom, and by relying upon this wisdom, one has no cares or worries. Because one has no cares or worries, one has nothing to fear. By removing oneself from faraway dreams and fantasies, one reaches Nirvana, which is always right where one is.
“Because the Absolute Buddha of the three worlds relied upon this great wisdom, he obtained enlightenment wihout greater. In order to make you aware of this great wisdom, I approve of this sutra of the great gods, this sutra of great brightness, this sutra without a greater, this sutra without compare, which is able to expel suffering, which is the truth without lie, and explain it to you.”
Introductory Comments for Part Three (or maybe Four): Retrograde Motion
Part Three- Retrograde Motion
“The planets [like Mars] generally move from west to east in the sky. Occasionally, one of the planets seems to slow down, stop, and loop backwards, moving from east to west for a short time. After a short time, all the reverse happens and all is back to normal. The planet did NOT stop or move backwards in its orbit; for a while, the Earth was moving faster than the planet, overtaking the planet for a short time, making it seem to lag.”
-from the website, “www.enchantedlearning.com”, Sep 18. 2006
Memory is a loop in time, a lasso or a noose.
It holds everything near and dear and feared close to us, sometimes so loose that we can’t keep ourselves together, sometimes so tight that we can hardly breathe.
But what a fictitious thread it is! It is a story that will unwind when we do, a tale that will vanish when the author is no longer able to tell it firsthand. How essential memory is to us, and yet, how like a dream or a nightmare, how ephemeral!
So we hold it close, even as we try to escape it.
And we try to forget that memory is only a “matter” of perspective.
And a “matter” of time.
“The planets [like Mars] generally move from west to east in the sky. Occasionally, one of the planets seems to slow down, stop, and loop backwards, moving from east to west for a short time. After a short time, all the reverse happens and all is back to normal. The planet did NOT stop or move backwards in its orbit; for a while, the Earth was moving faster than the planet, overtaking the planet for a short time, making it seem to lag.”
-from the website, “www.enchantedlearning.com”, Sep 18. 2006
Memory is a loop in time, a lasso or a noose.
It holds everything near and dear and feared close to us, sometimes so loose that we can’t keep ourselves together, sometimes so tight that we can hardly breathe.
But what a fictitious thread it is! It is a story that will unwind when we do, a tale that will vanish when the author is no longer able to tell it firsthand. How essential memory is to us, and yet, how like a dream or a nightmare, how ephemeral!
So we hold it close, even as we try to escape it.
And we try to forget that memory is only a “matter” of perspective.
And a “matter” of time.
Short Story (Beginning Fragment): Letters from the Village of Cranes
IX. Letters from the Village of the Cranes
“Tsuru mo boshi kabutterun desune.”
“They’re wearing a hat too.”
This is both my attempt to demonstrate my fluency in Japanese, and to break the ice. I fail in both regards. Shodo Kawabe, the head priest of the Rinzai Zen temple I’m to stay at, doesn’t even smile. Is it the Japanese, or the pathetic excuse of a joke? As with all Zen masters, he has the answer, but I’m left struggling with the questions.
We are standing beside a wooden cattle fence, staring into a snow-covered field. About two dozen or so Japanese cranes dance about in the field, hopping one footed on their wiry legs, spreading their wings like parting clouds, bobbing their red-capped pates. Shodo, dressed smartly in a brown overcoat and matching beret, looks on, his breath a thin streaming ribbon of vapor in the winter cold. His clean shaven head shines blue below the edges of the beret, and beneath the edges of his overcoat are his black and white monk’s robes.
He’d just picked me up from the Kushiro train station, and had driven through the frozen marshlands of eastern Hokkaido in relative silence, only to stop at this field at the side of the road. “This is Tsuruimura,” he had explained in broken English, smiling briefly.
Tsuruimura, village of the cranes. This was where Kannonji, Shodo’s temple, was.
It was bitterly cold outside, and I wondered, not for the first time, or the last, what on earth I was doing here. The vow I’d made, to attain enlightenment before returning home, seems pathetic and laughable now. I could be in Hawaii, celebrating Christmas and New Year’s, pretending I envied the snowier parts of the globe. Ah yes, Hawaii: blue skies, cyan waters, bikini clad women, and- Shari.
Yes, what on earth was I doing here?
The cranes seem oblivious to the cold and my thoughts, trumpeting and dancing joy...
“Tsuru mo boshi kabutterun desune.”
“They’re wearing a hat too.”
This is both my attempt to demonstrate my fluency in Japanese, and to break the ice. I fail in both regards. Shodo Kawabe, the head priest of the Rinzai Zen temple I’m to stay at, doesn’t even smile. Is it the Japanese, or the pathetic excuse of a joke? As with all Zen masters, he has the answer, but I’m left struggling with the questions.
We are standing beside a wooden cattle fence, staring into a snow-covered field. About two dozen or so Japanese cranes dance about in the field, hopping one footed on their wiry legs, spreading their wings like parting clouds, bobbing their red-capped pates. Shodo, dressed smartly in a brown overcoat and matching beret, looks on, his breath a thin streaming ribbon of vapor in the winter cold. His clean shaven head shines blue below the edges of the beret, and beneath the edges of his overcoat are his black and white monk’s robes.
He’d just picked me up from the Kushiro train station, and had driven through the frozen marshlands of eastern Hokkaido in relative silence, only to stop at this field at the side of the road. “This is Tsuruimura,” he had explained in broken English, smiling briefly.
Tsuruimura, village of the cranes. This was where Kannonji, Shodo’s temple, was.
It was bitterly cold outside, and I wondered, not for the first time, or the last, what on earth I was doing here. The vow I’d made, to attain enlightenment before returning home, seems pathetic and laughable now. I could be in Hawaii, celebrating Christmas and New Year’s, pretending I envied the snowier parts of the globe. Ah yes, Hawaii: blue skies, cyan waters, bikini clad women, and- Shari.
Yes, what on earth was I doing here?
The cranes seem oblivious to the cold and my thoughts, trumpeting and dancing joy...
Short Story (VERY IMPERFECT): Moth-Eaten
VIII. Moth-Eaten[1]
“Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” said Alice; “but when you have to turn into a chrysalis - you will some day you know - and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”
“Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar.
“Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,” said Alice: “all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.”
“You!” said the Caterpillar contemptuously. “Who are you?”
-from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” by Lewis Carroll
Tenri City, Nara Prefecture. June.
The night air is hot and almost syrupy with humidity. I sneak out of my dormitory through a back alley, restless, to wander the near-empty Tenri streets. Just a block away is the train station, fronted by hundreds, perhaps a thousand, abandoned bicycles. It is a dead and shadowed place this time of night, steel tracks dull below the moonless sky. The only light in the place is the pale glare of vending machines selling Fanta Orange Soda and Green Tea and Lemon Water. I walk around the train station, hear a traffic signal at a nearby intersection cuckoo for the ears of blind pedestrians.
Behind the station is a small park, a cramped affair with claustrophobic pine trees growing on landscape folded like a wrinkled, crumpled napkin. Somewhere in the shadows of the park, very close to the path that winds through it, maybe on beds of pine needles between gnarled roots, or in narrow crow’s feet gullies, teenage kids make love, filling the air with rustles, and inarticulate cries like bubbled dreams bursting.
The sounds set me alight and away, to the far side of the park.
There, near the entrance to the Hondori, the main market lane, a lone halogen streetlight high above attracts and repels its own cloud of moths, scaled wings tracing singed arcs.
I think of Satsuki.
And a bell rings.
Kannonji Temple, Tsuruimura Village. Hokkaido. February.
“Who are you?”
Shodo asks the question into the cold winter air, his breath like silky smoke. It is the same question he has asked me every morning for the past three months. And, much as I would like to after today’s morning meditation (a session wasted on a vivid daydream of two seasons past), I cannot offer him anything. I kneel before him, my palms up and empty above my bowed head, as though to show him my understanding, as though to beg him for the truth.
“You are a fool.” Shodo raises the ornately shaped bell to his left and rings it. It is a sign of disapproval and dismissal.
I rise from prostration and prepare to leave the alcove, as I have every day since coming here.
“Wait,” Shodo says, laying the bell down carefully beside him.
I pause, uncertain as to how to proceed. There is a ritual for everything, including leaving the presence of your master. I had been about to perform it, I had been about to bow precisely so, to step back precisely so, chillblained feet on cold wood, when his voice cut through the silence.
“Come here,” Shodo says, pointing to the tatami immediately in front of him. “Sit.”
I obey, cautiously folding the ends of my moth-eaten koromo as I kneel in seiza.
Shodo slides a hand into his inner magenta robe. When it emerges again, it holds an off-white envelope, scrawled over with small script, and sealed with a circle of stamped red wax. He hands the envelope to me.
“It is an invitation,” he says simply.
“An invitation?” I ask. I examine it briefly. The writing on the envelope is a set of instructions. The very first instruction says that no one, not even the recipient, is to break the wax seal and open the envelope until he or she is in Kyoto. Before reading the rest, I ask, “What is this?”
“An invitation to return.”
“Return?”
“You come from a world of stories,” he continues softly. “Perhaps it is time for you to return to it.”
I struggle to find words. Is he ousting me from the temple? “But Shodo, I-“
”You are at an impasse,” Shodo cleanly interrupts. “There is nothing more I can do for you here.”
I sigh in exasperation. “But given time, I may be-“
”Time is an excuse!” Shodo shouts suddenly, his eyes flashing. “There is no such thing as time!” He closes his eyes, his face returning to cold placidity. “Accept the invitation,” he urges, commands.
I realize there is nothing more to say. I bow low, and carefully exit the room...
I catch a red-eye ANA jet plane to Kyoto, the source of the invitation.
As I settle in for the brief flight, carry-ons stowed, pillows adjusted, seat belts buckled, I recall the events that have brought me to this very moment. It is a habit I have, just before any plane flight, whether long or short. After all, when you’re about to go somewhere, it helps to reflect on where you’ve been.
I came to Japan in early spring of 1995, not long after Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas into the Tokyo subway system, and religion became not so much an unseen and unquestioned presence in Japanese society, as a hidden reflection of some of its most gangrenous aspects. I was an aspiring author, and had come to Japan, ironically, to find material in the study and practice of the two religious traditions in my family, Tenrikyo and Zen Buddhism. I intended to spend the first half of the year in Tenri City, and the second half in a small Rinzai Zen temple in Hokkaido. It was to be a perfectly symmetrical year.
What I never planned on was meeting Satsuki.
She was a small, diminutive girl from Kyoto, whose effortless and simple charm partially masked deep and fiery passions. I met her one day before morning service at the Main Sanctuary in Tenri City. Although my Japanese at the time was still an infant’s crawl, and her English was stillborn, there was no doubt about what her eyes communicated. We stumbled through conversations for a few days, held hands, exchanged a single strawberry flavored kiss.
But then, suddenly, things got complicated.
It wasn’t anything she did.
It wasn’t anything I did.
An old question, one that had pursued me my whole life, had finally crossed the vast sea and several time zones into the tomorrow of Japan to find me. And, like the Osaka earthquake, it seized me in the dead of night, in the unconscious faith of sleep, felled the walls around me, trenched and tilted the ground beneath me, until nothing was the same again.
Nothing was the same. Again.
On that awful night, I wandered the Tenri streets, trying to feel, trying to escape Satsuki. Suddenly, through the relentless attraction contained within her very being, she asked a question I couldn’t answer. A question that burned me to touch.
It is not hard to disappear when you don’t want to be found. And even in those moments when we passed each other on the Tenri streets, it is easy to pretend not to see, to pretend not to hear. To pretend not to feel. After all, there was no way for me to explain. I couldn’t explain it well in English, much less in Japanese. It was fundamentally inexplicable.
When winter came, I was allowed to stay and practice under Shodo-san, a Rinzai Zen priest. By strange coincidence, the koan that he assigned me to meditate on was the very question I had struggled so long to escape, that most insoluble of questions:
“Who are you?”
“Silk is the fabric of stories,” comes a voice, from somewhere behind me.
The plane has taken off long enough ago for the Seat Belt sign to turn off. Most people, me included, have just settled in for the kind of sleep that floats on the constant roar of jet engines, thousands of feet above the ground.
The voice speaks in the middle distance of eavesdropping, far enough to be anonymous, but close enough to distinguish words. It stands out because it speaks in English, clear and carefully enunciated, as though it wants to be heard, wants to be recognized as interesting, educated. It is the voice of a man; but then again, it could be the voice of an older woman who smokes.
“What do you mean?”
Behind closed eyes, I imagine the second voice to belong to a large, childlike figure.
The first voice elaborates. “Spit of worms, fashioned into coccoons, unwound to become the most precious thread. Do you not remember Daedalus?”
“You mean Icarus’s father?”
“Yes,” chuckles the first voice. “Everyone remembers Icarus. All hail that spectacular high dive from the stratosphere! It was he what gave a moral to the myth, something to do with moderation or humility. Or maybe it was simply a lesson in the effects of heat on wax, or lack of oxygen on a young brain.” A sigh. “But few look at Daedalus, few understand him.”
“And you do?”
“Let me refresh your memory,” the first voice says. “Daedalus was hired by King Minos to construct the Labyrinth, a vast maze. And, just when he completed it, King Minos imprisoned him within it, setting loose the Minotaur to guard him. Imagine that! A man trapped within a prison of his own making. He is the anthropomorphization of the silkworm, which also fashions its own prison, of sorts. A cocoon.”
A pause. “Is that all?” the second voice asks. “The connection, I mean? Cocoons?”
“Let me continue,” the first voice says. “Within the heart of the Labyrinth, Daedalus sat and waited. He gathered feathers fallen from the wings of the birds that flew overhead. He hoarded the candles that Minos had allowed him to burn, that he might draw futile plans late into the night. And when he had enough of both, he began his slow, secret construction. Imagine that. Fallen feathers sealed with wax. A formula for freedom, both for himself, and his son. And it was a formula that worked. Only, there was an inadvertent cost.”
“So,” sighs the second voice, with not a little impatience, “Daedalus is a silkworm and a moth. And silk is the fabric of stories because?”
The first voice chuckles, then clucks disapprovingly. “Patience is only a virtue if it endures. But to answer. All stories are about the imprisonment of existence. And all stories posit the existence of a freedom from that prison, and the cost of that freedom. Whether it is realized or not determines the tone of the story. So. The reason Daedalus is especially significant is because he authored the terms of his own conditions. It was he who built the maze that imprisoned himself, and it was he who fashioned the wings that killed his son. It is he who is ultimately responsible. And just as Daedalus is the author of his own tragic tale, so too is silk, the product of the silkworm, the fabric of stories. Silk is built from a cocoon, a self-made imprisonment. It is made from the spit of the lowliest of worms, denatured and spun into something priceless, a thread which links the exotic distance and the skin-close intimate. Silk, like a story, is a recreation of a prison. A prison of recreation.”
“I see,” mutters the second voice, clearly confused and disappointed.
The first voice continues, as though “on a roll.” “Few understand Daedalus. He was such a clever man. And yet, such a fool. What was he trying to accomplish? And who was he?”
I struggle to follow the thread of this strange conversation, but it quickly grows fine and soft, and slips from my grasp. As I lose touch, and fall headlong into a dream, I hear, as from a great distance, a repetition of the last question: “Who was he?”
“Who are you?”
I look up from my position of prostration. The voice is familiar, but it speaks in perfect English.
Satsuki sits before me, dressed in a kimono, bright red silk covered with a pattern of silver moths. She is as beautiful as ever, her expression inscrutable.
“Satsuki-“ I breathe softly.
“Who are you?” she repeats.
I rise up, lean forwards, “Satsuki, it’s me-“
Satsuki looks away, like Jacob’s Ladders suddenly eclipsed by winter clouds. “You? You are a fool,” she says.
I shake my head no. I tell her what I should have told her seasons ago. “Satsuki, I couldn’t say the words earlier, but I love you-“
She looks back at me, her eyes suddenly fierce and brilliant. “Love?” she spits. “What is love? A hollow, fictitious thing.”
I feel stung to the core, unable to say another word.
“You come from a world of stories,” she continues, softly, cruelly. “You spit words from your gut like a desperate thread, seeking to touch and spellbind the world with it. But you touch only yourself, over and over, always repeating the same tale, find yourself, lose yourself, find yourself again. What is love to someone like you? Who are you, anyway?”
She sighs, and for a moment, her voice transforms, becoming soft, warm, like the aura around a candle flame. “There was once a time when we could have shared something akin to love. A secret darkness, a touching of the blinding heat of each other’s presence. But that is long gone. Now, there is only time left for you to return.”
Then Satsuki turns around and rises suddenly. The kimono falls from her bare shoulders like the veil of a dream, and the world becomes scarlet sky, and silver moths fluttering...
A bell rings.
I wake.
A crisp female voice chimes over the speakers, announcing the plane’s descent, and requesting seat belts be fastened.
I rub my bleary eyes, and lean to look out the window.
The silver wing of the plane cuts through the stratosphere. Heading southwest, the sun rises behind us. Dawn is temporarily slowed, frozen even, as it pursues us across the sky.
I look down at the city of Kyoto, an urban constellation slowly fading into day, a vast pattern of frost melting.
And, as if to confirm reality, I reach for the envelope in my coat pocket.
I feel the texture of the strange wax seal, still unbroken.
The envelope containing a secret.
A cocoon wrapped around a question:
“Who are you?”
[1] “Moth-Eaten” was one of my first formal short stories (if it can be considered such). I wrote it during a limbo period in my life, after I had returned from Japan (failing to secure enlightenment, or love), and before I formally started classes in acupuncture. It was actually written as a contribution to an internet news group for science fiction writers. The exercise which this was ostensibly supposed to be a part involved different writers contributing chapters to an ongoing, linked story. The “interactive storyline,” up to this point, dealt with a mysterious invitation, sent to various, apparently unrelated individuals. I continued upon this thread by mentioning this same invitation within my chapter.
The chapter (and the storyline which it was supposed to participate in) was lost, by the way. I have not been able to find an original record of it. Therefore, this story has been reconstructed from (imperfect) memory.
The story hearkens back to my stay at Kannonji temple in Tsuruimura, Hokkaido, a period which is also addressed (to a different woman) in the next story “Letters from the Village of the Cranes.” Satsuki, the woman in this story, perhaps the representative of the cute Japanese girl, is the same figure who briefly appears in the story, “Sudoku.”
“Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” said Alice; “but when you have to turn into a chrysalis - you will some day you know - and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”
“Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar.
“Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,” said Alice: “all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.”
“You!” said the Caterpillar contemptuously. “Who are you?”
-from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” by Lewis Carroll
Tenri City, Nara Prefecture. June.
The night air is hot and almost syrupy with humidity. I sneak out of my dormitory through a back alley, restless, to wander the near-empty Tenri streets. Just a block away is the train station, fronted by hundreds, perhaps a thousand, abandoned bicycles. It is a dead and shadowed place this time of night, steel tracks dull below the moonless sky. The only light in the place is the pale glare of vending machines selling Fanta Orange Soda and Green Tea and Lemon Water. I walk around the train station, hear a traffic signal at a nearby intersection cuckoo for the ears of blind pedestrians.
Behind the station is a small park, a cramped affair with claustrophobic pine trees growing on landscape folded like a wrinkled, crumpled napkin. Somewhere in the shadows of the park, very close to the path that winds through it, maybe on beds of pine needles between gnarled roots, or in narrow crow’s feet gullies, teenage kids make love, filling the air with rustles, and inarticulate cries like bubbled dreams bursting.
The sounds set me alight and away, to the far side of the park.
There, near the entrance to the Hondori, the main market lane, a lone halogen streetlight high above attracts and repels its own cloud of moths, scaled wings tracing singed arcs.
I think of Satsuki.
And a bell rings.
Kannonji Temple, Tsuruimura Village. Hokkaido. February.
“Who are you?”
Shodo asks the question into the cold winter air, his breath like silky smoke. It is the same question he has asked me every morning for the past three months. And, much as I would like to after today’s morning meditation (a session wasted on a vivid daydream of two seasons past), I cannot offer him anything. I kneel before him, my palms up and empty above my bowed head, as though to show him my understanding, as though to beg him for the truth.
“You are a fool.” Shodo raises the ornately shaped bell to his left and rings it. It is a sign of disapproval and dismissal.
I rise from prostration and prepare to leave the alcove, as I have every day since coming here.
“Wait,” Shodo says, laying the bell down carefully beside him.
I pause, uncertain as to how to proceed. There is a ritual for everything, including leaving the presence of your master. I had been about to perform it, I had been about to bow precisely so, to step back precisely so, chillblained feet on cold wood, when his voice cut through the silence.
“Come here,” Shodo says, pointing to the tatami immediately in front of him. “Sit.”
I obey, cautiously folding the ends of my moth-eaten koromo as I kneel in seiza.
Shodo slides a hand into his inner magenta robe. When it emerges again, it holds an off-white envelope, scrawled over with small script, and sealed with a circle of stamped red wax. He hands the envelope to me.
“It is an invitation,” he says simply.
“An invitation?” I ask. I examine it briefly. The writing on the envelope is a set of instructions. The very first instruction says that no one, not even the recipient, is to break the wax seal and open the envelope until he or she is in Kyoto. Before reading the rest, I ask, “What is this?”
“An invitation to return.”
“Return?”
“You come from a world of stories,” he continues softly. “Perhaps it is time for you to return to it.”
I struggle to find words. Is he ousting me from the temple? “But Shodo, I-“
”You are at an impasse,” Shodo cleanly interrupts. “There is nothing more I can do for you here.”
I sigh in exasperation. “But given time, I may be-“
”Time is an excuse!” Shodo shouts suddenly, his eyes flashing. “There is no such thing as time!” He closes his eyes, his face returning to cold placidity. “Accept the invitation,” he urges, commands.
I realize there is nothing more to say. I bow low, and carefully exit the room...
I catch a red-eye ANA jet plane to Kyoto, the source of the invitation.
As I settle in for the brief flight, carry-ons stowed, pillows adjusted, seat belts buckled, I recall the events that have brought me to this very moment. It is a habit I have, just before any plane flight, whether long or short. After all, when you’re about to go somewhere, it helps to reflect on where you’ve been.
I came to Japan in early spring of 1995, not long after Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas into the Tokyo subway system, and religion became not so much an unseen and unquestioned presence in Japanese society, as a hidden reflection of some of its most gangrenous aspects. I was an aspiring author, and had come to Japan, ironically, to find material in the study and practice of the two religious traditions in my family, Tenrikyo and Zen Buddhism. I intended to spend the first half of the year in Tenri City, and the second half in a small Rinzai Zen temple in Hokkaido. It was to be a perfectly symmetrical year.
What I never planned on was meeting Satsuki.
She was a small, diminutive girl from Kyoto, whose effortless and simple charm partially masked deep and fiery passions. I met her one day before morning service at the Main Sanctuary in Tenri City. Although my Japanese at the time was still an infant’s crawl, and her English was stillborn, there was no doubt about what her eyes communicated. We stumbled through conversations for a few days, held hands, exchanged a single strawberry flavored kiss.
But then, suddenly, things got complicated.
It wasn’t anything she did.
It wasn’t anything I did.
An old question, one that had pursued me my whole life, had finally crossed the vast sea and several time zones into the tomorrow of Japan to find me. And, like the Osaka earthquake, it seized me in the dead of night, in the unconscious faith of sleep, felled the walls around me, trenched and tilted the ground beneath me, until nothing was the same again.
Nothing was the same. Again.
On that awful night, I wandered the Tenri streets, trying to feel, trying to escape Satsuki. Suddenly, through the relentless attraction contained within her very being, she asked a question I couldn’t answer. A question that burned me to touch.
It is not hard to disappear when you don’t want to be found. And even in those moments when we passed each other on the Tenri streets, it is easy to pretend not to see, to pretend not to hear. To pretend not to feel. After all, there was no way for me to explain. I couldn’t explain it well in English, much less in Japanese. It was fundamentally inexplicable.
When winter came, I was allowed to stay and practice under Shodo-san, a Rinzai Zen priest. By strange coincidence, the koan that he assigned me to meditate on was the very question I had struggled so long to escape, that most insoluble of questions:
“Who are you?”
“Silk is the fabric of stories,” comes a voice, from somewhere behind me.
The plane has taken off long enough ago for the Seat Belt sign to turn off. Most people, me included, have just settled in for the kind of sleep that floats on the constant roar of jet engines, thousands of feet above the ground.
The voice speaks in the middle distance of eavesdropping, far enough to be anonymous, but close enough to distinguish words. It stands out because it speaks in English, clear and carefully enunciated, as though it wants to be heard, wants to be recognized as interesting, educated. It is the voice of a man; but then again, it could be the voice of an older woman who smokes.
“What do you mean?”
Behind closed eyes, I imagine the second voice to belong to a large, childlike figure.
The first voice elaborates. “Spit of worms, fashioned into coccoons, unwound to become the most precious thread. Do you not remember Daedalus?”
“You mean Icarus’s father?”
“Yes,” chuckles the first voice. “Everyone remembers Icarus. All hail that spectacular high dive from the stratosphere! It was he what gave a moral to the myth, something to do with moderation or humility. Or maybe it was simply a lesson in the effects of heat on wax, or lack of oxygen on a young brain.” A sigh. “But few look at Daedalus, few understand him.”
“And you do?”
“Let me refresh your memory,” the first voice says. “Daedalus was hired by King Minos to construct the Labyrinth, a vast maze. And, just when he completed it, King Minos imprisoned him within it, setting loose the Minotaur to guard him. Imagine that! A man trapped within a prison of his own making. He is the anthropomorphization of the silkworm, which also fashions its own prison, of sorts. A cocoon.”
A pause. “Is that all?” the second voice asks. “The connection, I mean? Cocoons?”
“Let me continue,” the first voice says. “Within the heart of the Labyrinth, Daedalus sat and waited. He gathered feathers fallen from the wings of the birds that flew overhead. He hoarded the candles that Minos had allowed him to burn, that he might draw futile plans late into the night. And when he had enough of both, he began his slow, secret construction. Imagine that. Fallen feathers sealed with wax. A formula for freedom, both for himself, and his son. And it was a formula that worked. Only, there was an inadvertent cost.”
“So,” sighs the second voice, with not a little impatience, “Daedalus is a silkworm and a moth. And silk is the fabric of stories because?”
The first voice chuckles, then clucks disapprovingly. “Patience is only a virtue if it endures. But to answer. All stories are about the imprisonment of existence. And all stories posit the existence of a freedom from that prison, and the cost of that freedom. Whether it is realized or not determines the tone of the story. So. The reason Daedalus is especially significant is because he authored the terms of his own conditions. It was he who built the maze that imprisoned himself, and it was he who fashioned the wings that killed his son. It is he who is ultimately responsible. And just as Daedalus is the author of his own tragic tale, so too is silk, the product of the silkworm, the fabric of stories. Silk is built from a cocoon, a self-made imprisonment. It is made from the spit of the lowliest of worms, denatured and spun into something priceless, a thread which links the exotic distance and the skin-close intimate. Silk, like a story, is a recreation of a prison. A prison of recreation.”
“I see,” mutters the second voice, clearly confused and disappointed.
The first voice continues, as though “on a roll.” “Few understand Daedalus. He was such a clever man. And yet, such a fool. What was he trying to accomplish? And who was he?”
I struggle to follow the thread of this strange conversation, but it quickly grows fine and soft, and slips from my grasp. As I lose touch, and fall headlong into a dream, I hear, as from a great distance, a repetition of the last question: “Who was he?”
“Who are you?”
I look up from my position of prostration. The voice is familiar, but it speaks in perfect English.
Satsuki sits before me, dressed in a kimono, bright red silk covered with a pattern of silver moths. She is as beautiful as ever, her expression inscrutable.
“Satsuki-“ I breathe softly.
“Who are you?” she repeats.
I rise up, lean forwards, “Satsuki, it’s me-“
Satsuki looks away, like Jacob’s Ladders suddenly eclipsed by winter clouds. “You? You are a fool,” she says.
I shake my head no. I tell her what I should have told her seasons ago. “Satsuki, I couldn’t say the words earlier, but I love you-“
She looks back at me, her eyes suddenly fierce and brilliant. “Love?” she spits. “What is love? A hollow, fictitious thing.”
I feel stung to the core, unable to say another word.
“You come from a world of stories,” she continues, softly, cruelly. “You spit words from your gut like a desperate thread, seeking to touch and spellbind the world with it. But you touch only yourself, over and over, always repeating the same tale, find yourself, lose yourself, find yourself again. What is love to someone like you? Who are you, anyway?”
She sighs, and for a moment, her voice transforms, becoming soft, warm, like the aura around a candle flame. “There was once a time when we could have shared something akin to love. A secret darkness, a touching of the blinding heat of each other’s presence. But that is long gone. Now, there is only time left for you to return.”
Then Satsuki turns around and rises suddenly. The kimono falls from her bare shoulders like the veil of a dream, and the world becomes scarlet sky, and silver moths fluttering...
A bell rings.
I wake.
A crisp female voice chimes over the speakers, announcing the plane’s descent, and requesting seat belts be fastened.
I rub my bleary eyes, and lean to look out the window.
The silver wing of the plane cuts through the stratosphere. Heading southwest, the sun rises behind us. Dawn is temporarily slowed, frozen even, as it pursues us across the sky.
I look down at the city of Kyoto, an urban constellation slowly fading into day, a vast pattern of frost melting.
And, as if to confirm reality, I reach for the envelope in my coat pocket.
I feel the texture of the strange wax seal, still unbroken.
The envelope containing a secret.
A cocoon wrapped around a question:
“Who are you?”
[1] “Moth-Eaten” was one of my first formal short stories (if it can be considered such). I wrote it during a limbo period in my life, after I had returned from Japan (failing to secure enlightenment, or love), and before I formally started classes in acupuncture. It was actually written as a contribution to an internet news group for science fiction writers. The exercise which this was ostensibly supposed to be a part involved different writers contributing chapters to an ongoing, linked story. The “interactive storyline,” up to this point, dealt with a mysterious invitation, sent to various, apparently unrelated individuals. I continued upon this thread by mentioning this same invitation within my chapter.
The chapter (and the storyline which it was supposed to participate in) was lost, by the way. I have not been able to find an original record of it. Therefore, this story has been reconstructed from (imperfect) memory.
The story hearkens back to my stay at Kannonji temple in Tsuruimura, Hokkaido, a period which is also addressed (to a different woman) in the next story “Letters from the Village of the Cranes.” Satsuki, the woman in this story, perhaps the representative of the cute Japanese girl, is the same figure who briefly appears in the story, “Sudoku.”
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