If I Cut Through These Woods
If I cut through these woods
The path will lead me back to that water wheel
The birds are crying dazzlingly
They may be a flock of migrating thrushes
With the southern edge of the Milky Way exploding
Radiant white throughout the night
With the fireflies streaming as never before
And, on top of that, the wind ceaselessly rocking the trees
The birds, agitated, unable to sleep
Are naturally making an awful racket
Yet
All I did was take a step into the woods
When the cries became more furious
Sharper, like a sudden downpour
What bizarre funny fellows they are!
This is a large cypress forest
With slivers of sky quivering various ways
Breathing here and there
Between each and every pitch black branch
Messengers, so to speak, of a catalogue of light
From every possible
era that is or ever was
...I
stand in a daze, aimless
in the
birds' clamour...
The path flows dimly white to the opposite end
And Mars, muddy red, rises
From a hollow in a clump of trees
Two birds somehow slipped in unobserved
Then flew away cheerfully squeaking
Ah, the wind is blowing, carrying warmth and silver
molecules
And the touch of every possible tetrahedron
When the fireflies fly in ever greater chaos
The birds' cries become denser
I hear the voice of my dead little sister
Coming from the edge of the woods
...even
if it isn't so
there's
no need to rethink this
for
there's no difference between any of us...
The sultry fume of grass and the scent of cypress
The birds' now-deafening racket
What are they clamouring about with such fervour?
The people drawing water to their paddies
May cautiously walk the woods' borders
The stars in the southern sky may stream steadily down
Yet there is no particular danger here
It's all right to sleep your quiet sleep.
-
Kenji Miyazawa
Better
late than never (possibly), I begin my blog chronicling this year in
Japan. Hunting for an appropriate title,
and reluctant to compete with the thousand iterations of “My Year in Japan,” I
decided to use a line from my favorite Japanese poet, Kenji Miyazawa. The trouble was that his most
blog-title-esque lines were either incredibly pompous (“The Phenomenon Called
I”) or came from really depressing poems about death and despair (“Departure on
a Different Road,” and don't think I wasn't tempted). I settled on “A Catalogue of Light” because it's
from my favorite poem of Miyazawa's – actually, one of my all-time favorites – and because
this blog will inevitably fill with pictures once I get a working internet
connection. I'm a lazy writer.
I don't
feel worthy to tear into the poem itself, considering the small but fiercely
educated audience I'm writing for, so I'll just say that I love it and
recommend reading more of the poet's work, if you ever have the time. He regards the natural world through densely interleaved
lenses of lyricism and science, peering up through the microscope as well as
down, feeling his own place in the ecosystem while he dissects it, creating
vivid landscapes that bleed into and out of his own consciousness. The poems are electric with atomic forces,
myosis, beating flagella, and, well, electricity, as well as emotion, and
remind me of Blake and Whitman. Anyone need a
publication?
So, I'm
in Japan, because of poetry and language and creeping inadequacy. I've already had to answer the question, “so,
why did you decide to come to Japan?” a few dozen times, and I've fallen back
on a pat but incomplete answer: I came because I like studying Japanese, and
because I enjoyed teaching in graduate school, so this was a great
**opportunity** (what a bullshit word) to combine two of my interests
[!!!insert appropriate number of exclamation points, depending on
audience!!!]. What I really mean, more
or less, is this. I was so miserable in
graduate school, increasingly so after the first two years, and studying
Japanese was one of the few things that kept me afloat. It was challenging, nuanced, satisfied my
need to learn, and felt like nothing else in my life. It also gave structure to my days, which
otherwise would have consisted mostly of dreary lab work and, worse, the guilty, terrified avoidance of
same.
Teaching
came at the very end of my higher education, after it had become clear that I
would never finish a degree and while I was scrambling to put off reality for
just one more year. I'd always filed
teaching away in the “Never Ever Ever” column, between rocket science and
professional golf, but I adored it right from the start. I loved to see the faces, learn the names,
know that each name and face held a mind, and try to find some way, any way, to
jolt that mind into action. Maybe that
sounds reductive, or dismissive of my students, but it isn't meant to. It was thrilling. I had to be confident, be in charge, be
interesting. But I couldn't carry on
teaching without more training, which I just couldn't face.
So, then
the chef gig, which made a welcome change, although I soon became bored. I snapped more and more often into “zombie
state;” maybe you've met it? Maybe you
do it. Maybe everyone does. Going weeks, months, in a twilight
equidistant from happiness and depression (though there was plenty of that
too), feeling myself diminishing, growing plodding and dense. I can't remember much from the past three
years.
I'm
trying to start again, and so far it really, truly sucks, which is making it
difficult to write. Or at least, to
write with any prayer of holding your interest.
EMOOOO!!! I can feel the
bangs crawling into my eyes. Soon I will
break out in gauges, and we can't have that.
So tune in next week for lots of amusing pictures of cats, funny
Engrish, and a free guided tour of The Hell of Wood Paneling! I love and miss you all. Yes you, even if we haven't seen each other
in years. Please comment if you don't
believe me; I'd be glad to list your awesome qualities at length. Ja, mata ne! (translation: Later,
gators. Gatren? Gatorii.
It doesn't matter. Nothing
rhymes.)
