An impulse to do something I’ve been dreaming about for a long time: Central Coast Kayaks Cave Tour. It’s at Shell Beach, 20 minutes from my house. Four and a half hours, two guides for 6 people, snacks and pictures all for $70 per person. Our group aged 25 to 70. Before going I would have thought riding the currents so close to the rocks would be deadly. But with these sit-on-top kayaks and wetsuits and vests, you fall in and swirl around and come up and get back on. Wouldnt do it without the guides right there, but as is a great adventure.
This morning I finished the transfer and update and backup of files, erased all my data from Lubertson and turned him in to the College of Liberal Arts. Most likely he’ll be sent to China for recycling of parts. Now I sit in my armchair comfortably typing in front of an extremely bright glass covered screen with a good deal higher resolution than Lubertson’s. There’s no power cord to worry about, no throbbing furnace in my lap, no loudly whirring hard drive, no long waits between operations or need to shut down applications to move from one to another, no need for an external hard drive except for backup. My pose is a lot like that on the ubiquitous billboards for ipads in Los Angeles: relaxed, at leisure. This is all extremely nice: a huge upgrade in comfort and convenience in using the instrument I spend most of my waking hours with.
But what’s more amazing is the fact that this machine, nine years newer than Lubertson, has no functions, cant do anything, that he couldn’t do, simply does it all better. If one compares technological progress in the most recent interval to the progress of the previous nine years, 1992-2001, the slowing of innovation is what’s striking. Netscape was founded that year”the beginning of the world wide web. In 1992 Doug and I created the Multimedia Blake Hypercard stacks that within two more years were rendered obsolete by html. 1998 marked the advent of the Powerbook G3 laptop, allowing for portable computing. I carried the machine everywhere”to England for the Shakespeare conferences, to Lund, to Ketchum. Digital cameras and iphoto and itunes came online at the end of that span, in 2001, just before I got the Titanium. By then I had all my course materials generated in Dreamweaver, was working paperless and was taking the computer to every class and projecting onto the screen most of the time, for better and for worse.
The technological change of the preceding nine years was even more transformative. In 1983, computers were only for geeks. My high technology was a selectric IBM typewriter. We got the first Mac 512 in 1984, when Jan started law school. The power it conferred to delete, replace, find, cut, paste, outline, and save was as magical as the ability to flap my arms and fly in dreams. I still have it in the garage.
Yesterday morning I went to Dusty’s office for a consult on my blog and other computer matters and he looked at my old Titanium Mac and shook his head”how can you still be using that thing? I’ve been planning for a couple of years now to replace it and purchase my own computer instead of using a university issued one, as part of the large retirement strategy, and lately old Lubertson has been going slower and slower and louder and louder and behaving more erratically, and any day I was fearing it would crash. I went home, spent an hour researching different purchase options and then biked down to El Corral Bookstore and returned with this new Macbook Pro”cost $1099.
I’m calling it Independence, offspring of Lubertson2, the Titanium I wrested from the University as a prize for producing the Field Guide, offspring of Lubertson 1, the first laptop I inherited in 1998 from an unnamed colleague who never used it, offspring of LuLu, the office computer I worked on with Doug Smith, and Albert, my home computer.
I spent the night until Jan came back from City Council at 12:45 am migrating all my data and then loading my songs from Tucson, the portable hard drive, onto it, with much troubleshooting along the way. And this morning I started to transfer the 20 Gig Photolibrary which right now is still copying its 28 thousand pictures. That was going on while I meditated, after a short night’s sleep, and it felt as if my brain itself were undergoing some kind of transfer procedure like the one they show with androids in the movies. The new machine feels clean and powerful and ready for a lot of new beginnings. Acquiring and using it is part of my own cleansing and regeneration efforts.
This is a win for San Luis Obispo. Jan will serve effectively and humanely. She has the talent, the experience and the dedication to do an excellent job as mayor, leading and representing the City”which according to last month’s newspapers is both the most desirable place to live in America and is about to fall off a cliff. Either way, it will benefit from her leadership.
It’s a win for her, because it provides the opportunity to fulfill not an ambition, but an ongoing mission of public service and leadership. When I first met her 44 years ago as a junior at Stanford, she organized a campaign to get women equal rights with men to live off campus at much cheaper rents than those in the dormitory. This involved facing down the President of the University who wasn’t eager to lose the revenue provided by the policy of protecting female purity.
When we lived in the wilds of British Columbia during the 1970’s, she helped found a satellite campus of a community college and became its first director. When we moved back to California, she got a job as Director of Graduate Student Housing at Stanford and devised a network of neighborhood coordinators”now called Community Associates–which still remains vital.
While attending Law School, she organized the mature returning students and then took a part-time job as a law clerk involving the preparation of a landmark Supreme Court case assuring equal opportunity for women in the workplace.
When we moved to San Luis Obispo 22 years ago, she immediately embarked on a course of public service that led to appointment to the County Parks and City Planning Commissions and to her election to City Council in 1998 and again 2008. All of her political and humanitarian work in this place has been volunteer or for minimal pay, for she’s been able to make her living as an attorney.
The mayor’s job will allow her to use and expand abilities cultivated over a lifetime.
It’s a win for me, not only for the reflected glory”imagine the pleasure I’ve taken in knocking on thousands of doors and telling whoever opens them about the virtues of the woman I love, and in posting hundreds of signs of tribute to her all over town. But also imagine what it would be like to live with someone this energetic and smart whose time was not occupied being in charge of a whole city.
So here’s to our new mayor, and to this fleeting moment of triumph, and to all of you who contributed in one way or another to make it happen.
A doleful awakening on a foggy Sunday morning, joints aching from the strain of lifting boxes of steel wires and forcing them into hard ground to hold Elect Jan Marx Mayor signs. Looking forward to meditation for escape from the nattering in my head, then impatient for it to be over. Not swimming enough because I wont use the Poly Rec Center in protest against that revolting expansion.
I wont let my alienation from the University–latest outrage disbanding the CSA– alienate me from Poly Land. I’ve been wondering about the red blanket of vegetation on Poly Mountain since June. Is it dried monkeyflower or buckwheat?
As soon as I slip into my West Coast Trail boots, my mood lightens and my legs urge me to get started, like the dog when he sees Jan lace her runners. I stride through the silent foggy streets, climb over the fence, and feel the spring of my footfalls through the grass. The sensation of freedom in the question, which way to go? Feet find a trail of cracked soil showing through trampled grass pointing straight uphill. Breathing muscles mobilized. The absence of the forty-pound pack makes the steepening ascent effortless, and the mixture of tarweed and horsemanure pleasures my nostrils. The trail continues beyond the fence. Two strands of barbed wire slack enough to allow me through. The sun is a faint disk penetrating the fog, recalling its appearance at Klanawa River.
Perhaps I’ll go to the tree house and sit there and write. I’ve done it before. The trail winds through the chapparal right to it. A new resident? Entering the secluded clearing under the great oak, I see a spade and a rake leaning against the twenty foot ladder that reaches the lowest branch. Ten feet above the tree house a large improvised hammock hangs atop another ladder. As I stare I hear a sleepy “hello?” Not wanting to trespass, I say “Hi, my name’s Steven. I come here every few months. Do you know E.C. the guy who built this house?” “Yes, met him once,” answers a voice whose origin seems to be a pile of blankets in the hammock. I ask if it’s OK to come up, and then mount the lower ladder. At the treehouse platform I see a mop of hair at the edge of the blankets above and try to build more trust. Yes they know M, they’re his students. I wrote in the guest ledger here on previous visits. I climb the next ladder into the bedroom. Two people snuggle under the blankets, K. and T. They work with the same environmental organization I do. I built a hammock like that forty years ago for kids on our farm in B.C.
After fifteen minutes chat I descend the ladders and continue up the mountain, serpentine boulders providing foot and handholds. The fog now just a ribbon draping Bishop Peak. The dark red scrub I’d been wondering about from the house and while approaching SLO on the freeway is neither monkeyflower nor buckwheat, but deerweed stalks, all the leaves and flowers gone. A huge exclusive patch, easy to walk through. Three years after the fire, it’s choked out all the poison oak.
Slow morning to enjoy the sunshine and instant coffee.
Next time it will be fine ground beans. Hike is partway on beach, partway on forest trail facilitated by boardwalks, ladders, suspension bridge, steel bridge and cable trolleys. Views of water and rock and little coves below alternate with deep forest, ancient bogs and a beaver pond bypass.
Arrive at Nitinat Narrows ferry in time for another Indian Reserve restaurant lunch. We benefit from the assertion of First Nation rights.
A four year old girl, strong Indian features but with blond-brown hair cavorts around the dock. Her Daddy runs the little ferry and the family enterprise. He pulls a rope up to the dock and lifts out the crab ordered by Peter, tears it apart for cooking by his son and throws some scraps into the water where a large school of salmon fry clean them up.
I get salmon caught off Bonilla Point, which we walked by yesterday, Paul gets halibut.
At the next table two strapping women who passed us at intimidating speed are having lunch. We chat. They are carrying three bottles of booze and will finish the trail in four not our 8 days. One with a French accent is from Montreal, has just finished school and earlier in the summer cycled down the coast to San Francisco. Steve and she compare notes about the roads. He did it with his son 20 years ago.
The dock where we sit is anchored at the edge of Nitinat narrows, which drains and fills a huge saltwater lake (lake not inlet because it also has freshwater that flows into the ocean). The deep green water heads upstream at an astonishing rate, the surface curled by whirlpools. After lunch Daddy ferries us across to the trailhead.
Late in the afternoon we find a beach access. Paul and I search for water while Peter and Steve wait, refusing to go on further. A spring is found hidden in the brush at an unmarked spot south of Tsushiat point where we set up for the night.
Wind has shifted onshore and we see the fog approaching. Noone else in sight in all directions. I listen to the gravelly rumble of pebbles pushed and pulled by the waves rolling against one another .
After returning from Japan in early April and completing my account of the trip, I thought it might be time again to write to Ruth, who’d never returned my November’s email telling her about the recent Michael Pollan incident at Cal Poly. Before doing so I checked out her blog and discovered that she was offering a five-day “Writing and Meditation” workshop together with a Zen priest/poet at Hollyhock on Cortes Island in June. This striking combination appealed to two of my interests. Her postings about an address she gave to the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment and about grappling with internet overload dealt with subjects I cared about. And her dual residency on Cortes Island and in Manhattan mirrored my upbringing in New York and forty year association with Lund, B.C.
Even though it was expensive and too close to our recent international excursion and our upcoming family trips to Idaho and Canada, it was hard to resist such a perfectly taylored educational opportunity. Adding to the appeal was the workshop’s setting at Hollyhock, a legendary place I’d never visited that could be reached with a six hour kayak trip across the Georgia Straight from our place in Lund. Three years ago I’d considered making the trip in November, but concluded it was imprudent.
Ruth wrote a welcome email to the registrants, inviting us to bring our favorite writing instruments and any projects we were working on. My previous writing workshop experiences–NEH seminars at Berkeley in 1989 and Yale in 1993–took their enduring value from the clearly formulated topics and publication goals I’d come with, but this time I have no such motive in mind. “What,” I ask, as the plane finally gets airborne at LAX, “do I want to bring back from this quest?” Hints of answers coalesce and dissolve like cream on the surface of coffee. A poem or two, some experiments with forms I’ve never tried, a sense of future direction, a commitment, an adventure story?
Just as Jan and I woke up, You-ki returned home from driving the youngsters to the Shin Osaka station and started preparing us a breakfast of omelette and fresh greens. We shared a little sadness at their departure but also an afterglow in the quiet. The kitchen stereo played Tibetan monk chant. You-ki spoke of the value of a slow pace in early morning and of her regular meditation schedule, particularly important during her Noh training regimen. Conversation alternated comfortably with silence. There was a lot of eye contact. It was Easter. Tomorrow we would leave. She said she would miss us. Though we were sitting around a kitchen table drinking coffee, it felt like the way of tea.
Jan and I were to meet Stephen P. at Tennoji station for a day’s excursion to Nara, Japan’s earliest capital and the site of one of its most celebrated temple and garden preserves. When he called to say he’d be half an hour late, we roamed endless walkways above a busy surface traffic intersection and several underground levels of train and subway tracks.
Even in the midst of this staggering urban infrastructure, the cherry blossoms claimed their space.
The train was packed this beautiful Sunday at the height of sakura. We were swept by the crowd up the long walk from the Nara station through an ugly downtown to the ancient city precincts. The steps to the Kokuru temple lifted us into another world of ringing bells, clouds of incense, and freely wandering deer.
But soon we felt swamped by the uncharacteristic noise”motorcycles and trucks roaring in traffic on thoroughfares inexplicably routed through the middle of the park, power tools clanking in buildings covered with scaffolding, people shouting while picnicking and playing Frisbee. Stephen mentioned that a friend had recommended going to Isuien gardens to escape the clamor. It was worth the long walk and hefty admission.
Coming through the gateway and around the teahouse a prospect opened like an unfolding screen.
I wanted to just stop and stare at this perfect static panorama of pond and shore, hillock and isle, creek and bridge, tree and shrub, mountain and sky, light and shade–guarded at its center by a discreetly positioned residence of gods. And yet I wanted even more to enter its openings, wander its pathways, mount its rises, descend into its hollows, hear its birds, smell its flowers, feel the flow of its moving waters.
We spent an exalted hour in what turned out to be a surprisingly small area, walled off in back from a busy boulevard that separated the garden from the temple in the view. Driven by hunger we returned to the packed streets and located the restaurant recommended by Ryoko as a place to eat kudzu, a sweet made from the vine which, in the southern U.S., is feared as an invasive pest. Over lunch Stephen told us of his impending plan to enroll in an online Master’s Program leading to a degree that would allow him to teach English in a University in Japan providing a good job for an indefinite stay.
Fortified we headed uphill to the most famous attraction of Nara, Todaiji Temple, the world’s largest wooden building, which houses Daibutsu, the world’s largest statue of Buddha, both originally built in the eighth century, but since then reconstructed several times after earthquake and fire. As we approached Jan reminded me of the story of our old friend and my former student at Columbia, Taigen Dan, whose life was changed by an experience in the presence of the statue that led to his remaining in Japan for years, training as a Zen monk, publishing several translations of Zen classic texts into English, and founding his own thriving Zendo in Chicago.
The crowd was thicker than ever approaching the Temple’s outer gate but neither loud nor unruly.
At a cascade nearby children frolicked in a scene reminding me of the creek in San Luis Obispo’s Mission Plaza.
The outer gate introduced the scale of construction of the temple itself.
Even at a great distance, the wide-angle lens of my camera could not contain the whole building, whose image required multiple stitches.
Though size seems to be the temple’s most prominent feature, its immense scale, like that of European cathedrals, is intended to produce the sensation of humility before the magnificence of the sublime in those who enter. Notwithstanding my own scholarly claims about the intimidating psychology of priestly power, I enjoyed giving myself over to the very human grandeur of this edifice.
As we headed down the long route toward the train station passing close to Isuien gardens, I looked back at Todaiji and suddenly realized that the discreet centerpiece of the garden’s serene prospect was its roof viewed from a half mile away.
Stephen joined us for dinner with You-ki, who for the last time treated us all for a fine meal at a simple Chinese restaurant not far from her house owned by another friend.
After saying goodbye to Stephen at the train station, we returned to You-ki’s home and she brought out gifts she’d purchased that day for us to take back: green tea, cups and a little pot, which I drink from now as I write. I staged a final picture with the camera on timer.
Jan gave her one of the boards that Kano had calligraphed for us:
Morning in Tomonoura greeted us with sunshine and a breakfast of fish, tempura and miso soup. A cup of coffee in the lobby cost five dollars extra. We wandered along the shore to the central harbor, watching some small fishboats return with the morning catch
and mingled with a group of Japanese tourists led by a guide through ancient shops offering artfully designed mysterious products. I asked a woman if the brazier over which she was boiling a pot held “ocha” (tea) and she laughed and pointed to a rack of medicinal saki bottles. After tasting a sample we bought one for Stephen to take to Kayoko.
A tiny alley led to a steep stairway mounting a promontory above the harbor upon which stood a temple overlooking the offshore islands of the Inland sea. Our guidebook said that the view from this spot was famously described by the sixteenth century Korean ambassador as the best in Japan.
The place was empty of people, a little run-down, but furnished with treasures everywhere the eye could rest.
In front of a little building beside the temple, a plaque in Japanese and English reported that this was the location of the juniper tree mentioned in a poem written by Otomo no Tabito in 731 and collected in the oldest existing anthology of Japanese poetry:
This juniper tree
Still stands at Tomo no ura
My wife is gone
Who once saw it too.
Heading inland through narrow alleys we found evidence of an older style of community: a hand pump for water on a corner
and a tiny hardware store, which Jan suggested might carry some of the small pruning tools I’d been looking for
Inside, the wizened old lady cramped behind a counter had no trouble understanding my sign language for saws and took me to a cabinet in the back holding a large selection at corner-store prices. For my son, I got an exact replica of the little springsteel foldup saw I’d bought in Vancouver’s Chinatown in 1973 that he’s always coveted. As I paid, her husband came out and gave us two tiny animals he’d carved out of bamboo, which we brought home for the grandsons.
Back toward the hills we entered the graveyard gardens of a temple and sat on the porch looking at its blossoming trees and listening to the chants coming from inside its locked doors.
We hiked a little further to a large Shinto shrine complex up the hill, drank coffee from a vending machine and noticed the boarded up but intact Noh theatre preserved on its grounds, wishing again that we could have a chance to watch You-ki perform.
By way of another temple complex and museum perched on a hillock in the middle of the village, we made our way back to the hotel and boarded the bus for Fukuyama and the return train to Osaka.
Back at Tennoji Station we were greeted by Ryoko, composed and serene in full kimono outfit, an island of wabi in the hubbub of commuters, shoppers and traffic.
She ushered us into a cab back to her mother’s house, where we would have some quiet time with her before meeting up with You-ki, Taylor and Marie who had gone together for the day to Kyoto, and with Emma and Travis, who had spent it shopping in Osaka.
We drank tea and told about our adventures in transportation and then learned something about Ryoko’s life. Much less extroverted than her mother, she shared many of her graces. She said she loved to dress in kimono whenever she could find an excuse. She’d been spending a good deal of time with her father traveling back and forth to Jeju Island, the ancestral home of both sides of the family, where he was tending the ancestors’ graves and preparing his own. If I understood correctly she said he was planning to retire from a career of working brutally long hours and to spend most of his time there.
Her husband too worked hard and long to support their family, which they hoped would soon be expanded.
Ryoko had learned Korean, both at home and while she lived in Korea studying at University and working at the Japanese consulate in Busan. Now she taught Korean several hours a week. She had also studied English, which was evident in her speaking and writing. Having seen the copy of my book translated into Japanese, she told me that she loved Shakespeare, especially A Midsummernight’s Dream, in which she had once taken a part. I told her about the Max Rheinhardt 1930’s film version of the play whose operatic splendor I thought would appeal to her.
Our conversation was ended by a call from You-ki who told Ryoko where to meet for dinner. She drove her mother’s car to the middle of downtown through rush hour traffic that moved smoothly on the tollways, and got off near the most impressive building I had seen in Osaka.
“What’s that,” I asked, and she said, “the Hilton,” and pulled into the garage. This was our rendezvous. The ostentatious luxury of the atrium was the kind of thing that would both offend my egalitarian sensibilities and make me feel unworthy, but as our entourage assembled under the 30-story hanging sculpture following You-ki’s confident lead, I felt as if I belonged.
After only a day or two separation we all seemed to share the excitement of reunion. The wine and beer flowed and the sushi kept coming until even the young men said enough. After dinner You-ki insisted on arranging for a cab to take her and Jan and me along with Ryoko and the others in her car for a lengthy ride to Osaka Castle, which I proudly recognized, because of recently watching Shogun, as the scene of the defeat of Lord Hideyoshi and the founding of the Tokugawa dynasty.
We got out briefly to admire the illuminated moat and then dropped Ryoko off at the station. There was no compunction about her taking the subway home across town dressed as she was.
Back at her house, You-ki brought out more wine, though never wetting her lips with alcohol, and suggested that we contine the party with a three part musical “collaboration.” This was even more out of my league than sushi in the Hilton. I gulped down my drink and for fifteen minutes felt like an undeserving soul awakening in paradise.
Afterwards You-ki sang us some of the unearthly songs she performed in her various Noh roles.
She brought out her own masks, which appeared as striking and precious as those we’d seen in the museum.
She gave Jan instruction on holding the Noh drum.
By 12:30 I was ready to turn in, but Travis and Emma spent another hour packing their bags for their next day’s voyage to visit her grandmother in Hokkaido.
I woke up in time to watch sunrise paint the distant mainland pastel pink and the beach just below fluorescent orange.
While meditating, I felt a serenity that recalled moments by the stove in the morning before our young children started stirring for the day. When I opened my eyes, I noticed that the wind had come up and a small boat was coming ashore.
Four men walked down a little gangplank, two dressed in the white flowing robes and black headdresses of Shinto priests. They stuck cut saplings into the sand, but only through the telescopic viewfinder on my little camera could I see what else they were up to: making an offering of small dishes, bowing and praying.
Then, leaving one man behind at the boat, the others walked off down the beach and disappeared behind a row of trees.
I felt as if the ritual had been carried out just for my benefit, an invitation to the great Itsukushima shrine we were about to visit. After fifteen minutes back they marched, climbed into the boat and headed out into the waves.
The ryokan hotel ushered the six of us out punctually at 10:00 A.M. We checked bags at the ferry terminal and mingled with the crowds browsing the dense cluster of shops and restaurants that by now was an expected adjunct of every large temple.
We made no effort to resist taking portraits framed by familiar features of the floating shrine.
Promenading along its winding wooden arcades suspended above the high tide reminded me of the dreamlike sensation of wandering in Venice. Here too there were arched bridges, tree-lined canals, and plazas that opened on an unending succession of towers and altars.
The shrine’s identifying artifact was a rice paddle, supposedly invented here. As I took a photo of Jan buying several of these wooden gifts packed in beautiful boxes for only two dollars each from a pretty young monk, one of her colleagues exclaimed “no pictures please,” and I felt ashamed but triumphant.
The three couples went separate ways and kept reassembling with wondrous exclamations: Look at that¦and that¦and that¦
However we had a schedule to follow. We stopped for a lunch of the local specialty”a kind of cabbage omelet.
Marie gave Jan a lesson in reading kanji instead of paying attention to the hour, so back in Hiroshima we missed the Shinkasen that would take the two of us to Fukuyama in time to catch the hotel shuttle heading for our anniversary hideaway in Tomonoura. Emma phoned and told them we’d catch the next train forty minutes later, they said OK, but when Jan and I got there, no shuttle was to be found. Instead, Stephen’s friend Kayoko, who’d made the reservation, phoned us extremely upset to say the hotel phoned her to say they wouldnt wait. We assured her we could find the way ourselves. This was the only time during the trip we’d been left to our own devices, and I enjoyed trying with sign language to get five people on the bus to interpret between us and the driver, who couldn’t understand that we simply wanted to get off at the last stop.
Our destination, which we’d selected from the guidebook a couple of months earlier, was Tomo no ura, a small village on the coast. We learned from an internet site that this last well-preserved ancient port had been slated for large-scale demolition by a government plan to run a highway and bridge project through its center and was recently rescued by efforts of local activists.
Fish fresh from the incoming boats were displayed on the sidewalks skewered through the eyes, eagles fluttered above the docks, small wooded islands just offshore paraded in front of one another as we walked along the embankment, and little temples and gardens perched on rock outcrops thrusting above the street.
The hotel, along with several others built in the 1960’s, was out of scale, and its jagged rectangular profile disrupted the rest of the village’s waterfront views, but our room’s was unimpeded. Dinner was specialties of the region”at least eight varieties of fish: raw, smoked, dried, barbequed, spiced, pickled and sweetened. We found the rubbery-slimey texture of baby squid beyond our tolerance, but we ate everything else including julienned and sauteed jellyfish, which tasted a bit like grilled onions. Bathing in the hotspring tubs on the top floor deck brought our festive day to luxurious conclusion.
