A Day of Rest

It amazes me how comfortable I can feel with family.  Surely there must be little pockets within us, each carved out by the people that we've known in our lives.  Some, over time, have a deeper space, some opened a space quite large very quickly.  What is the nature of these spaces that only a certain person can fill?  Keys and locks, fingerprints that become more and more defined.  Each with a unique shape, an individual texture, molded by time and impression.  Who is creating a space within me right now, carving out a new pocket of which I'm not even aware, because they currently fill it?  And then gone and then to breathe into it once again.  This act of inhale and exhale that connects one life and one place to another as we fill ourselves with one another, openings and closings, finding and losing and finding again, returning home and venturing out to make a new ones.

Nara with David and Eun Jung

It's amazing how much having visitors can open my eyes again.  Today we went to Nara, a place I last visited with thousands of others on New Year's.  The sky was clear, the deer were hungry, and we walked among the trees.

political campaigning 

Feed the deer.....

aggressively hungry

Todaiji

Nigatsudo Hall

Hand washing

live green leaves as water spouts

behind Nigatsudo 

just hangin' out, bein' a deer, sellin' some omiyagis

Kasuga Temple

Under the vines at Kasuga Temple

emptying the pray money

bowing for a cracker

with Nara's mascot, Sento-kun

Mother's Day

I woke up this morning and greeted my brother and his girlfriend who were preparing to leave for their day in Kyoto.  We ate breakfast together and chatted, making plans for the evening.  After they left I tidied up the table, cleaned the dishes, put some brown rice on the stove and started a new pot of azuki beans to simmer for an hour.  I caught up on some finances and started to study Japanese while the beans and rice cooked in their individual pots, checking in with them every so often.

I started to reflect on the pleasure of taking care of my home, of having time to cook something, to clean, to sort things.  And to take care of other people, to make sure that they know how to manage the day ahead, to enjoy their company, to allow them to go off on their own to explore the world.

Today is Mother's Day.  My mother, having gotten a rare evening of paid time off, took advantage of it to make an even rarer impromptu call to my phone; I think hoping to catch both me and my brother for a Skype chat.  It alarmed me at first–was something wrong?–and then it felt tinged with Lynch-like irony.  My mother calling me from a day behind on my mother's day.  Something was backwards.

And wonderful.  We talked for an hour, just the two of us.  I feel so lucky to have my mother.  As far away from home and from her as I am, as I grow older and learn more of myself in the world, I feel closer and closer to her all the time.  There is something of her that grows in me as I grow.  It is very comforting.

And now it is my turn to give her a call with my brother, on the real Mother's Day.  Happy Mother's to all.

New Japan (MG's Birthday)

My younger brother and his girlfriend arrived yesterday evening and they bring with them the novel wonder of seeing Japan anew.  After visiting her family in Korea, they see this country contrasted not only with America, but also with another Asian culture that I have yet to experience.  Listening to them, seeing the surroundings through their eyes, explaining to them things like the garbage system, the bus and different foods, I start to see Japan again in a new way.  I live in Japan–how cool is that?

After parting ways with them this morning, I got on the train for Nishinomiya and HPAC.  I started to practice my vocabulary as I usually do when I take public transportation, but I became distracted by the scene outside the windows, the houses, the river, the tops of the buildings, and especially all the people that boarded the train along the way.  By the time I got to Nishinomiya, it was packed with Japanese people and I was newly amazed at seeing them.   In any culture, I sometimes become so amazed at the living people around me, and today, while I was impressed by how similar everyone was, I was even more impressed by how different.  Some life energy in each person that truly is unique, that shapes the face and the body of the person that wears it.

This evening after we finished our concert, the rain had stopped and I was able to ride my bike home.  The river was misty, slowly opening its eyes, the bark of the trees was still dark within the young light-green leaves.  I rode through a grove of sweet smelling trees, their flowers hanging low with the weight of the water and the mist.  There's no way to hold on.  There's so little time to be born in the instant.

Ki o tsukete

To get from the river to the streets on my way to HPAC, I have to bike up a small hill, wait for traffic, quickly cross, and then quickly check for additional merging traffic as I swoop down another hill wrapping to the left around a small playground.  I avoid temptation and keep my eyes on the road; cute children are the Sirens of Japan.

Today, a crew of workers was right at that tricky intersection, right at the point of merging traffic as I head down the hill.  I got a clearing and crossed as I looked ahead for oncoming cars I might need to avoid.  It was clear.  But as I started down the hill, one of the workers had me pause as he looked out for traffic on my behalf.  I waited for him to make sure it was safe for me, his face full of responsibility and concern, not a trace of a smile.

I think this happens other places, too, but for some reason being in Japan I noticed and appreciated it.  This caring redundancy–that safety not be left to one person's perceptions, that the thoroughness of a job depends on the attention of many.  At almost every establishment's parking lot there is a worker with a wand, ensuring that pedestrians and bikers pass on the sidewalk safely as cars enter and exit.

I appreciate that he so dutifully looked out for me, that he assumed it as his job as a worker.  With no exchange of a smile, he seemed to require no personal appreciation or gratitude from me for his care.  But I am grateful, even if I already knew it was safe.  That gesture of care is worth the 10 second wait; more than worth the time to acknowledge it, just for its own sake.

Preparing for Strauss

We have been rehearsing for a large program this week, one which will be recorded.  The repertoire is Hummel's Trumpet Concerto, Kerschek's Trumpet Dances (a Japan Premiere) and Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra.  Our conductor this week has taken advantage of the full rehearsal time to clean up places that usually get swept under the rug of live performance: here one minute, gone the next.  A recording, however, lasts forever.

It isn't the same as actually undertaking a recording project where an engineer sits with the score and has the orchestra play 5 second chunks over and over again.  But in its own way, this is a rewarding practice.  We have benefitted from playing things over several times, in different ways, of coordinating timing and rhythm, balance, and intonation.  And as the pieces become more comfortable I'm curious to see if something else will start grow from them.  Will it become more possible to hear the meaning and purpose of these compositions as the technicality of them wanes from the forefront of concern?  Or will we have become so practiced in this focus, that we will be unable to give our attention to any other aspect of the music?

Today in rehearsal, we reached a major climax in the Strauss after which there is a long pause.  It is both dramatic and practical as the conductor must wait for the trombones to put in their mutes as stealthily as possible before the next dramatic downbeat.  And as they fumbled today in rehearsal, he smiled and chuckled despite the enormity of the music. The gravity of Strauss and the humor of the humanity performing it.  Our hands become the magician, and our eyes marvel at his works.

Mistakes

Sometimes people make mistakes and that is ok.  Sometimes we do something that we didn't realize was wrong.  Sometimes this thing is done to us.  And then we have to ask ourselves to forgive.  It doesn't mean that what happened was right or ok.  But it means that we don't hold it against the one who made the mistake.

Somebody once said this to me, and I am still trying to learn it.  Being in Japan, I often experience the space between cultures and languages where mistakes seem to flourish.  I have opportunity to be a part of them and to receive them and to observe them.  I have the opportunity to practicing forgiving them.  I think it is one of the many lessons I am able to practice here.