Taipei Notes

December 2009

A train took us into Taipei. Unlike in Japan, no one was texting, though a few people had no qualms about talking on their cell phones in soft voices. More than a few phones had really stupid ringtones. We had a brief adventure in trying to exchange dollars, bills of a 1996 vintage being problematic for some reason. The height of this comedy was when we couldn't figure out how to cross the street to a bank in clear view. The drama was compounded in trying to figure out how to deal with the chips used as subway tokens.

We got off the MRT and had a Chinese Pizza and tea, a delicious and cheap lunch. The better part of the afternoon was spent at the National Museum, a place I'd long wanted to visit. We tried to see the exhibits chronologically, zigzagging from room to room as this place has no rhyme or reason in regard to layout. We started our tour slowly, amazed by jade possibly as old as 8000 years. But these and the pottery began to grow tedious after an hour. It was interesting to see their progression through time, and how styles had changed based on things like spiritual and political change, contact with foreign influences, etc. I was also comparing this with chronologically parallel art over in Japan. But I really wanted to see more statues, more paintings, and more spiritual art in general. (I got an inadvertent glimpse of the latter when a young woman stood staring at a blank space behind glass.) The ever-increasing crowds also began to grate, their numbers surprising on a weekday. Unlike the Japanese, who queue and file past, making it easy for me (at 6' 1") to see over their heads, the Chinese cluster like a rugby scrum. At one display, Miki and I found ourselves completely surrounded, and pressed to the glass. The most popular displays were those related to a specific personage, proving that the cult of personality is ever-pervading. I was also surprised by the number of video and interactive exhibits. A shame that people can't seem to relate to a simple static item anymore.

We'd expected to spend most of the day at the museum, but after a few hours, our brains were full. We did, however, save room for leftovers. The nearby aboriginal museum was intriguing, but had a sad lack of English explanation. I was impressed by the spirit poles, a pot with 2 intertwining serpents, and weapons used to subdue evil spirits.

We went back across town to the Chiang Kai Shek memorial. The large building was at the end of a huge open plaza, and his figure, seated in his chair atop a high flight of steps. was reminiscent of Mr. Lincoln. On the veranda of the equally massive National Theater, some students were practicing acrobatic routines. Out on the tiles, people queued up to have their photo taken with a dog. While observing all this, I loved this feeling of incongruity, that lack of understanding that I've long lost in Japan. It is always fun to hear of things mysterious to visitors to Japan, and today I could rekindle that sense of wonder. How easy to it to accept that which you don't understand.

In the Memorial itself, we caught the tail end of the odd performance known as the changing of the guard. Five men took turns high-stepping and suddenly freezing into strange poses, like an bizarre game of freeze-tag. I suppose they needed the exercise after standing still at attention for so long. I find these displays have an equal dose of the comic and the horrifying. I had a similar reaction to the propaganda downstairs, pictures of scenes from the generalissimo's life, his writing, his cars, and the mock-up of his office. There was a strong emphasis on his awards, international recognition, and photos with other heads of state. It was like the unpopular kid who tries so hard to be accepted by the big boys. I got into a conversation with an 80 year-old mainlander from Fukien, though unfortunately I didn't ask his opinion on all this. But I didn't need to ask the opinion of another man of similar age, who when entering the hall, removed his cap and bowed deeply to the bust of General Chiang.

It was growing dark as Miki and I walked the streets now crowded with traffic, past a couple of the old city gates. The phallic 101 building continually lurked over our shoulders, proving that the government's craving for international acceptance didn't end with ole' Chiang Kai Shek. We stumbled across an alley now renovated to look as it did before the occupying Japanese bypassed it with the broader avenue beside. The buildings flanking the alley were empty but for a few small displays amidst brick and beam. I can see cafes and restaurants here in a few years.

Nearby was Longshan temple, completely abustle. People of all ages were chanting, kneeling in prayer, or holding joss sticks at 45 degree angles from their foreheads. We eavesdropped on a Japanese tour in order to hear about the figures to whom the Taiwanese were bowing. Our timing was perfect as the guide quickly ran through the names, then said suddenly, "OK. Let's eat!" to the obvious relief of the tour. We had no idea if all the activity here was a festival, or simply an average night, but you'd think it was Christmas by all the numbers here. One young man in a dress shirt and tie was sitting full lotus and chanting, one hand raised vertically to his chest. An old woman came over, and with obvious displeasure, did some weird mojo in his direction.

We walked a couple of blocks over to Snake Alley, the only other place I knew about in Taipei. It was a let down. Rather than a market awash with rampant and dangerous serpents, there were only a couple of dismal and near-empty shops, though one of them did host a lovely albino python. Nearly as interesting were the few shops with sexual paraphernalia, plus a few pitiful hookers lurking down alleys. All the food on display around here stimulated a different desire in Miki, who bought a phallic cob of corn to eat on the way to the train station...

...our last morning in Taiwan was spent slowly, over tea. Got to Taipei around noon, dropped the bags, and went up to a couple of temples. The Confucian Temple was newly restored last year, a bright blue, with lovely walled gardens and ponds. The Taoist counterpart nearby was all red and brick, looking older, but vibrant. The Confucian Temple was more a museum, yet the gardens offered a quiet escape from the city. From atop the Taoist temple's 4th floor, we could see Yangmingshan to the north, the stacked up Chinese-take out boxes of the 101 building to the south. There were so many things here that we hadn't seen, post pilgrimage fatigue catching up with us, and a few quiet days were more fitting to our mood than rushing around a busy city. We'd be back.

The neighborhood around the temples was very intriguing, but we'd have to wait for that next visit. A nearby Rinzai Temple was a garish yellow against the hills. The soccer stadium next door was in the midst of being torn down, looking like a Roman ruin. With the Asian Games being held here next summer (2010), this whole area will have a different look the next time I'm here. At the airport, we checked into the mysterious Air Asia, a steal at a mere 50 dollar ticket from Taipei to Bangkok. They said nothing about my bag being 2 kg overweight. As we boarded our flight, I hoped that they wouldn't be as lax about things such as the number of bolts on the plane's fuselage...


On the turntable: Grateful Dead, "Santa Fe Downs, 10-17-82."

After the Quake...

March 1st, Miki and I moved from our mountain home in Tesuque to the extreme southern edge of Santa Fe, the desert mere steps off our back door. Then, a week and a half later, Japan was in turmoil. I was unable to write anything, or barely even think. I stayed in the realm of feeling for a while. Then the words returned. I had a piece ready to post here, but chose instead to publish it in #quakebook. I'll eventually post the original, but for now you can read it in a shorter, less acerbic form here:

http://www.quakebook.org/buy-quakebook/

I also wrote a piece for the Write for Tohoku project, available here:

http://fortohoku.org/

These two digital books cost $9.95 each, which will provide you to with a good read while simultaneously supporting the survivors in Tohoku.


On the turntable: Jefferson Airplane: "The Volunteers Sessions"

Chungli notes, Dec. 2009

It was our 4th day in Taiwan. Our new friend Olimpia had picked up up at the airport and brought us back to their spacious flat in Chungli. After a quick tea, we had Teppenyaki at a small Japanese place around the corner, mere hours after leaving Japan itself. Later, we took the dog to run around the beautiful banyan trees lining the roads. One in particular had a root system which pushed it a meter above the ground. Slawek finished work and we went out to the night market to look around. the stalls ran down both sides of the street, many converted to food shops, various smells intermingling. Snakes tangled together in cages were also considered potential edibles. The scent that stood out most was "stinky tofu," pungent and strong like Nuc Mam. Nearby, Slawek's Polish friend was doing the best business, selling his "Polish cakes." A group of about 20 people, mostly young, was completely surrounding his table. He spoke to us entirely in Polish, which according to Slawek is his wont. He started this business two years ago; after a party, he told a couple of friends to try to sell the cakes that remained at the end of the night. This they did in less than 20 minutes. Now, he makes more money in a night than Slawek does at the University in a month.

Next was dinner at a Hakka restaurant. Over a table with the obligatory lazy-susan at the center, we shared various things, including a complimentary cold, sliced duck, downed with a weak Taiwanese beer. The food was good, except for the shrimp, covered in vanilla icing and sprinkles.
Later red wine until late...

...coming back from Taipei the next night, Miki and I completely forgot about rush hour until we were crushed into the last train car. Chungli Station was equally manic, with an election truck howling away in full force, fireworks shooting horizontally in every direction, and a procession of at least 200 supporters waving and smiling inanely. For a full 10 minutes, they blocked the entrance to the station, preventing all traffic, buses, and taxis from coming in or out. The loudspeakers on Japanese election trucks may be annoying, but these clowns had brought the whole city to a stop. Unreal.

We took a bus to campus, had a uninspired dinner, and waited for Slawek to finish his soccer practice. We sat on the grass and talked with a couple exchange students. One, from Guatemala, absolutely loved it here, and planned to stay on longer once his program finished. The other had the opposite opinion, badly missing his wife and two daughters and was counting the days until graduation in May.

While waiting for Olimpia to pick us up, we sat on the campus' open lawn beneath a huge banyan tree. As dogs frolicked around us (dogs in Taiwan always seem to be merrily running somewhere), Slawek told us about a Canadian gone missing. A couple of friends went to visit a woman with certain spiritual gifts, who said that the Canadian was currently in a deep trance, essentially made the pet of a group of aborigines deep in the mountains of the south. On a follow up visit to the woman, she revealed that he had suddenly snapped out of the trance, so the villagers had been forced to killed him. We continued in this vein, talking of things unexplainable, until Olimpia came and rescued us from the encroaching darkness...

...the next day, we barely left the house except for a few hours in the afternoon. We'd finished our long 1600 km walks only a few weeks before, and welcomed the chance to lay low to recoup. Slawek had told us of a restaurant near the University which intrigued him, but had never visited. It was one of those places of classic Chinese design, with moon windows framed with lattice-work, and walkways zigzagging over ponds brimming with carp. We thought it a wonderful place to sit and linger with our books, but the prices scared us off, and we rushed out past an obviously angry waitress.

We found a cheaper, modern coffee joint back in the city proper, where we read until our massage. This was the fourth massage I'd had since finishing the Shikoku Henro, but was the only one that had wrenched those last bits of tension out. I paid a serious price in pain. Miki and I were both silent as we ate dinner, the beef noodle soup that I'd been seeking for days.

Slawek and Olympia were up in Taipei for a party, and we had the place to ourselves, in exchange for dogsitting Maya. We took her for a walk, her behaving well despite being off leash on these narrow, well-trafficked streets, obeying all the commands I issued in a bad Polish accent. But at one point, she suddenly stopped and turned back toward the house. I ran to catch her and carried her to the park, her shivering violently as we sat on a bench. We thought that it was the sound of one of those election trucks that set her off, and that we'd wait until it passed. But 20 minutes later, we gave up. When I set her down, she turned and literally sprinted all the way home, Miki and I trying to catch up, yet failing despite running on legs strengthened by 10 weeks of walking. The city polls had closed and they were apparently celebrating the election with a full-on fireworks display, well visible from the 11th-story flat. They continued for 2 hours, with Maya cowering on the sofa the entire time...


On the turntable: Frankie Goes to Hollywood, "Liverpool"
On the nighttable: Miyamoto Tsuneichi, "The Forgotten Japanese"

Shihtoushan, Dec. 2009, Pt. 2

...was awoken at 5 by a bell ringing from one of the temples on Shihtoushan. Slept again, but had to get up for 6:30 breakfast. We found ourselves the only ones there. It was a simple meal of congee and veggies, thankfully less oily than usual. There was also a triple-decker sandwich of peanut butter and tofu, as well as the obligatory steamed buns. We decided to save these for lunch, and as we walked toward the door to look for a baggie, the caretaker yelled at us for wasting food, until he figured it out. We relaxed and read in our room until 9:30 or so, then decided to go over the mountain. A long steep flight of stone steps led to the top. There was a woman about 30 meters above us. I heard her shriek, then yell something down to us. I thought she was talking about some stones that had fallen just beside her and were now rolling our way. Then I saw the snake, about two meters long, greenish yellow with black dots. It was racing downhill toward us, veering suddenly up the slope again when it got close. At the temple at the top of the hill, we again found the woman talking to a couple of old nuns, gesturing wildly to tell them that the snake had fallen from the cliffs above, landing at her feet and scaring the crap out of her. She laughed and pointed in our direction. In her broken English, I caught two words: "beautiful," and "poison." Much later, I came across a picture of this type of snake. A Russell's Viper, one of the most deadly in the world.

At the next temple, we met a friendly young nun who spoke good English. She spent the next half hour explaining all the figures here, to our relief, since they'd been puzzling us since yesterday. Our talk was occasionally broken by another visitor, who paid this nun great deference. It was apparent that she was someone of great respect and importance, but we never got her name. Further down the mountain was another temple, a cave temple like the others, but this one was an actual cavern rather than a ornate building erected across a gap in the cliff face. The entrance looked to have been re-carved, evidence of rebuilding after the 1999 earthquake. The monk we met there had a kind face but didn't speak. Miki commented that the women's temples seemed softer than those of the men. This point was proven at a small Confucian temple back up on the ridgetop. Three old men were sitting back in conversation, and seemed quite reluctant to let us enter. OK, fellas, keep your boys club...

We ate our lunch at a pavilion above Chiuanhua Hall , then dropped down a steep narrow trail through the jungle. Midway down were some Chinese characters carved into the rock wall, alongside some bizarre cuts that looked like the face of a gorilla. At the bottom of the steps was a rowhouse, abandoned but for a single residence in the middle. A man was sitting inside, watching a TV that blared its drivel into the jungle. As the bus stop was directly across the road, we in turn sat and watched him. Chinese homes are open like dollhouses, so we could his every move. When an exercise program came on, he sat astride his scooter which was close to the set, then followed the arm and neck stretches onscreen. This finished, he returned to his seat further back, yet could only remain seated for a few minutes at a time. He'd get up, go pull some weeds, then sit. get up, walk across the road, return, and sit. He repeated this for the 45 minutes we were there, though we don't know how it all turned out since the bus came by about then and took us away.

We followed the river back to the city. One stretch of hillside had been cleared of jungle in order to erect graves that were almost the size of some Japanese apartments. In Asian societies, the dead always get the best real estate. The temples that served them also made the occasional appearance, their ornate roofs always looking in need of a shave. On the train platform, we sipped our long awaited tapioca shake and nearby, a woman popped her son's pimples. We walked from Chung-li's station, past the youth culture monuments that flanked the station, moving back in time past shops that served the needs of their parents and grandparents. Later, after dark, my friend Slavek showed up with a couple of colleagues from the University, one French, the other Mongolian. We sat at a dark back table of a local drinking hole, eating wings and drinking beer. The design was of any similar establishment back in the States: long bar, funky art, pool table. A few of the local expat teaching crew were in attendance, served by a friendly Chinese girl with perfect English. Accent American, of course. I thought of all the other expat nights I've crashed -- Seoul, Nanjing, Miyake...


On the turntable: Talking Heads, "Stop Making Sense"

Shihtoushan, Dec. 2009

We were walking through the forest when I noticed the birdsong. It was different than that of the birds which had serenaded us in Shikoku and Kumano. The forest opened onto a large parking lot, revealing a pagoda atop one hill, and Chuanhua Monastery above it on another. Here we'd spend the night.

We'd left early from Zhungli. With time to kill until the train, we walked the narrow streets surrounding the station. It was a busy Sunday morning, and Miki commented that she felt that fashion here in Taiwan was a simpler, scaled down version of the fashion in Japan. We laughed at how Mr. Donuts says, "Japan's #1" where the ones in Japan tout America. Circular signs hang in front of 7-11, advertising coffee and mimicking the familiar Starbucks logo. Beauty salons have sexily-clad employees and I wonder if they're a front for prostitution. There are different faces on the streets, speaking in different rhythms, making me wonder if they are maids and if they are Filipinas.

The train we take is an exact replica of an express train in Japan. From it, we get our first glimpses of true countryside. It is landscape I'd been expecting, jungle and rice fields, none of this cold urban stuff of the last few days. A lone dirt house sits squat between these two extremes. In front, a man squats and soups the rims of a luxury car.

After 45 minutes, we are in a quieter town. Trying to find the bus, we head down a road lined with shops now becoming familiar. What surprises us is a bride and groom coming out of a comic shop and getting into a Lexus doled up for the occasion. Well-dressed young women stand nearby, taking photos and wearing wide smiles. We spy a foreign couple walking with a Chinese man. The latter helps us find our bus and after 10 minutes we're aboard. At the bus stop, a young couple expresses their affection. Behind them, a shop keeper rocks her toddler to sleep, despite Eminem blaring through the speakers above. There's a market going on at the center of town. The bus can't make a turn due to a couple of poor-looking peasant women who've set up shop at one corner, their goods overflowing into the street. The driver yells at them to move, and after a moment, we inch forward, unsnarling the traffic backed up in three directions.

The town drops away and the mountains loom up. Our eyes follow a river awhile, then taking a wild guess, we get off the bus in exactly the right place. There's just a hint of a village here, just outside the gate leading to the mountain temple complex. We enter a small restaurant and mime-order noodles and rice. A woman at the next table talks in a really loud voice, something I'd grown used to during travels in China, but hadn't yet seen in the more refined Taiwan. A boy sits in the kitchen doing his homework on a day so sunny it is shame to waste it indoors. A poster above him shows us a picture of Bigfoot on the moon, appearing from behind a rock in that familiar stride.

Next door is a small shop where we decide to stock up on snacks for the hike. The woman behind the counter is busy making betel. She is dressed much more conservatively than those binlang girls decades younger selling their wares in the glass booths in the cities, their skirts shorter than the odds of the KMT retaking the mainland. The woman seems determined that I try some of the betelnut, which she is spreading inside some sort of shell with a butterknife. I pop some in my mouth, spitting a massive blob of red out onto the road outside. The woman laughs. Miki asks for some, and the woman suddenly stops laughing, seemingly annoyed. We never find out why. Is it because Miki's a woman, and they don't do betel? Or is it because she's Japanese? The latter is doubtful, since most people think she's local, continuing to speak to her in Mandarin even after it's obvious she doesn't understand anything. On the final climb up the stone stairs to the temple, another betel seller on a landing chooses to speak with her in English, asking her how she can be so beautiful. Miki smiles, vindicated. Perhaps this man is the betel seller's husband?

We find our room at the temple, the key handed over by a woman happy to use her rusty English. It is a plush room, with a big bed and balcony. Not bad for 64 NT (1800 yen) a person. We do fell slightly disappointed at not being able to do "A Day in the Life" of the monks here. We'd expected bland common meals, tepid baths, austere sleeping quarters, crack of dawn chanting. Which is why we came. But the room pleases.

Time to explore. In the main hall, Buddha, Confucious, and Lao Tzu all sit together. Upstairs, they each have their own section, but down here, they intermingle. In front of them is Matsu, Goddess of the Sea. I know her better as Tien Hau from my time in Hong Kong. She mysteriously gets the place of honor in this, the Hall of Earth. The grounds have the usual Chinese 'look,' of lattice gates, three-legged iron incense pots, tea pavilions, phoenixes and dragons guarding every eave. A trail leads us away, where a man is playing a bamboo flute. It is similar to the shakuhachi, but with a differently carved mouthpiece. I pick one up and begin to play, and the man begins to instruct me in Japanese. We'd heard that many of the old timers can speak it, but he's the first we've come across. He plays a few songs--a couple classics, some Misora Hibari. As he plays, Miki sings along, as does a Chinese man strolling by. Later, when we meet this latter man again, we try to ask him how he knows these songs, but outside the lyrics, we don't share a common language.

The trail brings us to a Taoist temple. A nun clad in maroon is chanting, a trio kneeling behind her, their voices harmonizing beautifully. I step around back to look into the grotto itself, which contains a single statue of an immortal, its expression both soft and tough simultaneously. Coming back around again, I find that one of the chanters is now sobbing. I'm assuming that this is a memorial service of some kind. A man comes over and speaks to her kindly yet sternly, warning her perhaps that the crying may confuse the spirit, bringing it back to this world rather than allowing to pass into the next where it has already found immortality.

Further up the mountain is a temple dedicated to Kuan Yin. The statue outside looks similar to Kannon over in Japan, but with its long face and large hands it has the androgynous look of a drag queen Beside the temple is a small grotto with a small red-faced figure with bulging eyes and wild frizzy hair. His red face is that of a drunk. I wish there was an explanation somewhere, but I wouldn't be able to read it anyway. We follow the trail around, other figures looming up in the forest. One Kuan Yin sits in meditation before a high rock wall, a heart locket around her neck.

Back at the room, we read for a few hours on the balcony, eating ice cream, drinking coffee. It is peaceful here, and we decide to stay another day, rather than rush north to Wulai. Below us, someone is playing er hu, singing boisterously. Around five o'clock, the day trippers go, the shutters of the shops shut. The mountains beyond disappear into the mist and fading light, the pagoda before us blending into the trees.

In the dining hall, we have a simple dinner of tofu disguised as meat. There are no monks here. Due to the absence of these fingers, we go look at the moon. The halls are empty and we have the gold statues to ourselves. A caretaker comes up and despite our making it obvious that we don't speak Chinese, proceed to explain. We listen but don't understand. Except for the words Kung Si, Lao Si, Ami Tamo.
Confucious, Lao Tzu, Buddha...


On the turntable: Rodney Crowell, "Sex and Gasoline"

'Round Shikoku Day 36

This will be the last post of the Shikoku series. The fuller, more fleshed out tale of the journey will hopefully be available in book form sometime in the future. Stay tuned...

I had probably the worst sleep of the entire pilgrimage. The stoically hard zen futon gave little comfort, and my aching knees and shoulders kept me awake. We rose with the bell calling the residents to zazen. To have taken part would've prevented us from leaving until well after 7. Too late for us. So we'd agreed beforehand that we'd go before the 5:15 sitting. It was stil full dark as we made our way up the road. The moon was full and bright enough to guide us without any other lighting. But I didn't think it was safe yet to enter the forest. After 30 minutes we came to a small coffee shop I'd noticed the previous day. Here we sat, with our meager breakfast, watching a cat play and waiting for light. Finally, the sun came up, once again bringing definition to the world.

We entered the trail, and minutes later, heard something very large move through the forest above us. Unmistakably, a bear. We moved quickly now, making an incredible racket, whistling and hitting our staffs on rocks and trees. Past the Taishi statue at the trail confluence, we began our descent toward Temple 80, the trail getting steeper and steeper. This would've been a rough climb, and I knew we'd chosen our route well. Before I could congratulate myself too much, I was startled by the sound of another animal, a boar this time, moving through the grass just off trail. We rushed even faster toward the valley floor. Beneath us, the low mountains of Kagawa were like gumdrops.

Midway down, we began to pass henro. Weeks ago, Monoshiri had told us that in doing this pilgrimage counterclockwise, you encounter far more people, and it was true. We passed about 8 people in less than 20 minutes. They'd all stayed in minshuku at the bottom, and this being early morning, were still clustered up in parade formation. We'd been keeping pace with our own group of a half dozen or so, and these folks were now a day behind. Some nodded hello, others stopped to ask conditions ahead, or to ask what day we were on. This latter question had begun to appear around Temple 66. We were all nearing the end, and rather than a feeling of competition, it was more like we were brothers-in-arms, encouraging one another while sharing something profound, something with obvious, yet still undetermined repercussions. Miki and I often did this amongst ourselves, wondering how far a certain henro had gotten, or noting that someone semed to be having a particularly hard time today.

Unsure of the trail, we weaved around irrigation ponds and olive groves to Temple 80. Another Kokubunji, and like the others (besides the one in Ehime), didn't have dramatice scenery or dazzling structures, but had something undefinable that resonates longer and deeper anyway. Amidst the trees and subtle beauty, we met a foreign henro couple, the first for us. She'd started from the beginning, with her boyfriend later coming over to Japan to join her. We didn't talk long, as the four of us felt that nagging internal voice that said, "Get going."

As we still moving out of the traditional order, the path was poorly marked. The actual path down from 82 dropped down the other side of the mountain. We instead moved along its foot, through the outskirts of Takamatsu, a city we'd seen begin to awake earlier from our pre-dawn aerie.

At temple 83, we ran into Confused Henro again. We dubbed him this since every time we'd seen him, he was off the path and looking around frantically for it. A man in his 70s, he'd intended to do it by bicycle. However, his bike had broken down, so he was finishing it on foot. While most walkers had been at this for a month by this point, he was still in the early learning stages of walking, which explained the pained and bewildered look on his face most of the time. He gave us a bag of 8 mikan as settai, which I believe was less a gift than a means of reducing weight carried. As this was settai, we felt obliged to accept, eating most of them on the spot in order to reduce our own burden.

From here, we followed a canal diagonally across the entire face of Takamatsu. I'm sure the city has spots of beauty, but they weren't revealed to us. The canal fed the sea, and above it all rose Yashima. It is a famous battle site of the Gempei War, and a place I'd long wanted to see, though I hadn't known of the connection with the Henro until that moment.

All day we'd been looking forward to a dirt trail, but the path up was concrete switchback all the way. The feet said, "Groan!" At the top was a large grassy park with the temple at the center. As a tourist site, they'd used the museum's proceeds to concrete absolutely everything. But again, temple's with the ugliest faces often contain the nicest personalities within. The man in the nokyo-jo chatted with us about the history. He gave us cakes as settai as we left.

The park surrounding the temple had been our intended camp spot for the night. But our early start left us with more daylight for walking, so we decided to carry on an extra hour to the base of the mountain upon which Temple 85 sat. But we had to get off this particular mountain first. The trail down was the steepest of the whole pilgrimage, and with my heavy pack, made for some rather tough going. With every step, I felt like someone was pushing me from behind.

Along the final stretch were plenty of jizo. I felt especially bad for those who died after coming so far. Most pitiful of all were those who'd died at the many stones marking significant places in the Yashima battle. The majority were for warriors who'd fallen there. I could picture a henro reclining in the shade of one of these for a little rest, then never getting up, joined eternally with history.

We pitched our tent at dusk, in a bicycle shed next to the cable car station. It was a good spot, offering good protection against the cold, and near the toilets. From this height, we could see the river below, with Yashima looking like Diamond Head on the other side, all backlit by the lights of Takamatsu. After setting up, we walked back down aways to an Udon restaurant. To Miki's chagrin, it was a chain shop rather than the mom and pop Sanuki place that she'd longed for. We stayed here for a couple of hours, keeping warm and trying to catch up on our journals, which seemed to be perpetually 4 days behind. Back at camp to settle into what would become a good solid sleep, on this, our last night spent in the tent.


On the turntable: Tomita, "Music for Living Sound"

'Round Shikoku Day 34

We'd wanted to stay in a shukubō once during the Henro but preferably one on a mountain. Last night we discovered that most have closed, and the rest only offer rooms to groups. This final piece of information clinches it for me: this whole thing has deteriorated to the pursuit of money. My experiences here have led me to see a pattern in the way religion is going in this country--priced and packaged for tourist consumption. But maybe I'm simply a skeptic about religion in general.

Yet Temple 71 was the type of place to renew my faith. These mountain temples built in and around forbidding rock formations and cliffs. The stairs alone were enought to drive away those without strong intent; it is nice to see the car henro work for a change. One of them was a 91 year old pilgrim who had made it to the top on rickety legs and a cane. He stubbornly refused help from anyone. That for me defines true shugyo.

Those willing to make the effort were rewarded with statues and altars built into the caves, lit with candles, which caused their features to flicker from fierce to loving. This, like Muroto, was the place where the dead return to linger amongst the living. And my own dead returned to me in a powerful way. After we dropped back down between lakes and bamboo groves, we stopped for a break. I held a mikan in my hand and started to think about how few fruits and veggies I ate prior to coming to Japan. This led me to think about my vegetarian days, and I couldn't remember when I had started to eat everything again. Was it during those days after Ken's death? I suddenly had powerful memories of evenings in my dark kitchen, cooking for two people instead of three, as I always had. The sobs suddenly came, and I found myself crying in a way that I hadn't in years. I kept it up for a good 20 minutes, walking down the road, with tears coming down.

Temple 72, a quiet spot of peace, helped calm me. Temple 73 had the opposite effect. A famous site on the pilgrimage, its small confines were packed with about 200 people. There was also a photo exhibition in one of the halls, including a picture of the Dancer Henro we'd met a month ago at Temple 18. We moved away, back down to Temple 72 where we'd left our bags. We searched the shaded grounds for the famous pine but found that it, like most of the other trees associated with the pilgrimage, had died a number of years ago. As we left, a woman sat on a bench wiggling her achy feet. Just beyond the gate, a couple in a car kindly slowed to let us pass on the narrow path, but a moment later, a priest came roaring past in his luxury car without a care.

At Temple 74 we had a surprise in Miki's brother and his wife. As today was a national holiday, they decided to spend the day walking with us. This particular temple wasn't much to speak of, the grounds hardly distinguishable from the parking lot that surrounded it. The hill that backed it, where the child Taishi had spent so much of his time, was being carried away piecemeal by those who put profit before prophet. Nearby, we found a grassy spot beside a school and had lunch. Miki sister-in-law made rice balls and baked yam. The latter were wrapped in newspaper, and unwrapping one, I was surprised to see that Patrick Swayze had died.

Near temple 75 was an old shop selling katapan, something I'd never heard of before. It was as if, 200 years ago, somebody had accidentally overcooked a batch, and decided to market it. The lines out front attested to its popularity. Also popular was the temple itself. This, the childhood home of Taishi, was probably the most important temple on the whole pilgrimage, its structures and grounds reflecting this. But we hadn't known that this was the day of their annual festival. I first thought this auspicious, but quickly changed my mind due to the crowd and to the circus atmosphere. While it was interesting to see people other than henro at a temple, the hundreds of people here was s bit much. Plus the flea market took it even further, and the karaoke competition pushed it over the edge. The caterwauling from behind us caused Miki and I to have a tough time keeping our chanting in sync. (I think that this was a message from Taishi that I use my aforementioned gift of cynicism to write on how ridiculously commercial it has all become.) We put on a game face for the sake of Miki's brother and his wife, but they sensed our discomfort and encouraged us to move on. Before doing so, we said goodbye to a couple of henro who'd been keeping pace with, one we called the No no no Henro, for what he'd said when I accidentally started to walk off with his staff at Temple 66. The other we called Smoking Henro, for obvious reasons.

We said our goodbyes to Miki's brother at Temple 76, beneath the temple's old and unusual bell tower. Miki and I moved away as a couple again to Temple 77, through rice fields and past a couple of lovely shrines.
Shorinji Hombu was on a hillside to my left, a familiar icon from previous visits back when I'd studied the art. Temple 77 itself was much more modest. Rice covered the walkways. The woman in the nokyo office let us camp in a shed behind the Taishi-do, plus gave us a bag of bread for breakfast. As always, when we are most jaded by the pilgrimage, someone does something to restore our faith. Out of courtesy, we waited for the nokyo-jo to close before putting up the tent. The sunset was turning the buildings a darker brown, stretching the shadows of some girls playing catch between them.

We escaped the cold in a nearby Joyfull, remembering that the Fleet Foot Henro had spent the night in one, to be told off by a waitress for sleeping. Back at the temple, I was overcome by the silhouettes of the buildings in the dark, by their dignity. Later too, stepping out of the tent for a midnight pee, they, backlit by the full moon above, made me linger a long while...


On the turntable: Miles Davis, "The Complete Miles Davis at Montreaux"
On the nighttable: Joe Ambrose, "Chelsea Hotel Manhattan"

Poetry Ed Ted

Recently, I applied for the position of poetry editor for the famed Mountain Gazette, a position that, alas, I didn't get. The application called for a creatively written essay stating why you were suited for the position. Here is mine, hyperbole intact...

When I saw the guidelines for applying for the Poetry Editor position, my first reaction was that it is set up in a similar way to the “Cool Things I Have Done” series that continues to play out in the letters section every issue. We Americans, especially those of us in the West sure love our bragging and boasting. How then to approach it the context of a job app?

My first instinct is to follow the example of the samurai from my adopted home of 15 years, yelling out his breeding and heroic exploits to his enemy before galloping headlong to engage them. This approach only goes so far, and is a sure to get an arrow in the chest from those lesser cultured Mongolian hordes.

A more American approach perhaps? Taking a cue from the hip-hip generation and simultaneously dissing my rivals while boasting of the skills of my Samuel Johnson, all done in rhyme? This is a little closer to the spirit of poetry I guess, but isn’t quite me.

Why not step away from poetry entirely for a moment, and simply let the narrative flow, as if told to friends over beers?

Let it start in New Mexico, where I grew up, in a small town south of Albuquerque. We weren’t a mountain town per se, but the mountains weren’t too far off, with the La Drones out west and the Manzanos just to the east. We’d often do the short drive to the latter, though more often it was not so much for the wild we’d find but for the wild we’d create.

The mountains would intersect with writing for the first time in Tucson, where I did a degree in Creative Writing. On weekdays we’d craft the words inspired by our weekend muse of Mt. Lemmon, Sabino Canyon, or those other nameless desert washes lined with crosses marking those who’d been swept away by the flash floods of summer. During my senior year the outdoors trumped the indoors entirely, me being less taken with Dead European males and more with the writing of Lopez and Abbey, McCarthy and McGuane, Kerouac and Snyder.

In fact it was The Beats who informed my next phase, as an aspiring young poet who most found inspiration in actual physical landscapes bearing strong resemblance to those literary ones in which he’d spent so much time getting lost. Long afternoons spent up at Sandia Crest, and later in the Santa Ynez above Santa Barbara, always with a book in a pocket and dreams in my head.

By then, The Beats had really marked the path. Heavily inspired by Snyder and Nanao Sakaki, Japan became the obvious next step. My final American summer was spent in the company of urban poets at Naropa. When not discussing the work of Kerouac, I was talking about the man himself over pizza lunches with Ginsberg, or out searching for his muse in the Flatirons of Boulder.

The next twelve years were spent in the shadow of Mt Daisen, the highest peak in western Japan. It was here that I first encountered “Mountain Gazette,” in the form of “Go Higher.” The words contained within were a pleasant return to Western landscapes vastly different from the low Asian hills that I climbed and skied on weekends. Rural Japan was a pleasant place to live, within biking distance of the beach and a half hour drive to the lifts. The small community there was similarly nourishing. We few foreigners were close and well traveled, the drudgery of our teaching jobs funding frequent trips into Asia. My own boots bear the dust of the Bhutanese Himalaya, the Taoist Peaks of China, the Shamanistic Mountains of Korea; their soles caked with the mud of jungles that stretch from Okinawa to Sri Lanka.

I moved next to an urban setting, at a million-five the biggest I’d ever lived in, yet one still ringed by hills. I moved into a small house ‘in the hills back of Northern-White-Water' ala “Dharma Bums.” This Kyoto was a tough fit, and in hindsight I realize that I spent most of my time in the mountains outside the city. A new partner shared my joy of walking the old roads that connect the villages and temples out there. Over my three years in Kyoto, I figure I walked the majority of the remaining sections of these lines stamped into being by pilgrims, merchants, and samurai. (One road in particular inspired the creation of the first English guide to tramping its western portion: http://tokaishizenhodo.blogspot.com/)

Kyoto is the place that I cut my teeth as a writer. The ramblings of feet and mind were documented in “Notes From the ‘Nog,” (http://notesfromthenog.blogspot.com/), and by the time I left the city in the summer of 2009, I’d begun to make a decent living as a translator and writer whose work appeared frequently in ‘Kansai Time Out,’ ‘Deep Kyoto,’ ‘Hailstones Haiku,’ and most of all in ‘Kyoto Journal’ for whom I’d also served as PR director and am currently a Contributing Editor.

Before leaving Japan, a couple big walks remained. Over 10 weeks, my wife and I walked the entire Kumano Kodo and Shikoku 88 temple pilgrimages, sleeping out on most nights. I watched the passing of winter from Southeast Asia, before returning to my native New Mexico after 20 years away.

I landed in a small Zen center in Santa Fe, finding it the perfect halfway house, blending Japanese and New Mexican culture and design. After being released again into the wild, I found a small casita north of town, living not so much off the grid as beside it. From the window behind my desk, I can see the peaks of the Jemez. Here I continue to shape words, when not selling backpacks at the REI over in town. (A disclaimer: despite working for a big chain [though one with excellent business and environmental practices] I choose to spend my paycheck locally.)

On those walks during my latter years in Japan, I gradually became a student of wild culture, tempered somewhat by the deep-ecology of Snyder (obviously) but more so by the human culture that arises from its mythology, ala Joseph Campbell. It was an obvious next step, what with my being so at home both alone in the wild, as well as in beer and music-fuelled comraderie. I love it that Mountain Gazette covers both.

As summer moved into autumn, I read nearly every book on New Mexico that the library has, trying to better acquaint myself with my new/old home. I pored over writing that, while interesting, is as dry as the land itself. Which brought the thought: “I need more poetry in my life.” It was exactly then that I saw that you’re looking for an editor of poetry.

You’re up to speed now, and it looks like my round. Over the next beer, I hope to hear your story.

As for mine, references are of course available on request.

On the nighttable: Suzuki Bokushi, "Snow Country Tales"
On the nighttable: They Might Be Giants, "Lincoln"

'Round Shikoku Day 29

I awoke in a pissy mood for some reason. This wasn’t helped when, stepping down from ringing Temple 57’s bell, I was nearly run down by a car henro who insisted on pulling right up to the nokyo-jo, rather than park in the designated lot just below.

The climb up to Temple 58 helped to improve my mood, walking through the trees on a clear morning. We found a small gazebo beside a pond where we could stash our bags, grateful not to have to lug them the last 500m up a narrow flight of stairs. It was quite atmospheric, with a few old buildings around a shady courtyard. The Hondo itself was gorgeous, with a curved multi-level roof. Beside it, just out of view, was a massive box that looked like a 70’s film conception of a futuristic house, all right angles with obligatory glassed-in room hanging over into space. There was a sign nearby with a picture of the same structure, along with some pithy expression about living the spiritual life. I agreed with them all, but still found it a justification for spending temple donations on someone’s personal folly. The monk in the nokyo-jo was friendly, and addressed me in English. Beside him was a poster announcing temple events—children’s karate classes, Buddhist symposiums. This place seems closely connected to its danka and looks like it has an eye on the future indeed.

I was looking forward to the next temple, Kokubunji, since the previous two had been among my favorites. I was let down by the squat concrete structure in the treeless gravel yard. When I made a joke to the nokyo woman, she looked as if I just slapped her. The bus henro arriving at that point chose to ignore my greeting, and my mood slid downhill yet again. Not even the sight of a shop selling a puzzling combo of bagels and handmade guitars could resuscitate it.

The rest of the afternoon was through a landscape of blurry features, the same scenes of narrow streets with cars driving too fast. Schoolkids biking home greeted me not with the usual, “Harro!,” that foreigners are so accustomed to, but with the puzzling, “Goodbye!” as if they wanted me the hell out of town. The Henro path followed the expressway over a series of hills that served no apparent purpose but to get that extra little bit of concrete onto the ground.

The scenery at sunset did inspire, of high mountains fading away for the day. One of these was the mysterious Ishizuchi, and another hid the next temple, #60. We arrived at Ikiki Jizo, which supposedly had Tsuyado. I got there first and rang the bell. I asked the priest about it, and he merely crossed his arms and said ‘No!” in English. I followed up with a couple of questions about alternatives, but he continued with the crossed arm gesture, continued with the ‘No.” I finally said, “Look, I’m talking to you in Japanese, please speak Japanese.” And he did, saying nothing more than “Nai,” without any trace of explanations or politeness. I finally lost my temper, shooting him an incredibly angry look and a “Thanks for your indelible kindness.” Miki came up just then, trying in her usual calm, mild way. Though his language softened, his stubborn resolve didn’t. I went away furious. The animosity and hostility I’d sensed in the locals had been put directly out there by this man, a priest in charge of one of the temples associated with the pilgrimage. For weeks I’d been chewing on the idea of the Henro being dead, and this man had blood on his hands.

It turned out to be for the best. Well after dark, we eventually found lodging between Temple 63 and 63, to which we’d hitch. They’d mind our bags as we went over the mountain to temple 60, which we’d then pick up the next day. The universe certainly is interesting in the way it spins. It took only a few minutes to get a lift with a man who raced motorcycles for a living. In courting death, he’d gotten an association with it. Before races, he claimed he could tell which rider would die by the look on his face. He also told a story about his trip up Ishizuchi. He’d met three figures in white, and assuming they were henro, took a photo with them. Later, the only thing he saw in the photo besides himself was three glowing orbs. A shaman later told him that it was the god of the mountain.

I was interested in hearing more, but we soon arrived at our inn. They were full, but we were given a small apartment over a butcher’s shop just around the corner. Certainly ironic, considering the traditional Henro prohibition against meat. I went to bed still smarting over my encounter with the priest. It was a shame to both start and end a day in a foul mood. Besides which, this was probably the most exhausted I’d felt on any given day. Sleep came easily…

On the turntable: Dead Can Dance, Memento"
On the nighttable: Gary Snyder and Tom Killion, "The High Sierra of California"

Apres-Ski

Could it really have been 8 years since I've last skied? The last time I remember is up at Daisen, on a crowded Saturday where I achieved legendary status in coercing homebound skiers to give their lift tickets to myself and 7 friends. The following winter was spent traveling around the States, and the one that followed I spent in Europe. My last winter living under the shadow of Daisen, I was newly enamored with someone, and so focused more on indoor activities. Living later in Kyoto, my skis went into storage under my house, until pulled out dusty, and given to a snowboarder friend when I left the country.

My current employment situation offers me a chance at some cheap, yet high quality gear, as well as a nice break on lift tickets. So it was that I headed up to Pajarito last Friday as a sort of gear test. This ski area, at the edge of the Jemez and above Los Alamos, is only open three days a week. Choosing a Friday made the best sense, and I doubt that I saw twenty other people on the mountain. I also didn't see my new boots, which I'd left in the back of my truck down in Santa Fe. Rentals would have to do. I didn't want to make my friend Derek wait for me, so we made plans to meet in an hour, after I'd had a chance to break in my new skis down on the bunny slopes. A few minutes after he left, keys in pocket, I realized I'd left my goggles in his car.

Not that I needed them. The day wasn't too bright, despite the sun being warm and strong. Many people are bemoaning the lack of snow in northern New Mexico this year, but these 40 degree days offer a pleasant day. Besides my goggles, I didn't need a hat either, and after a few runs, I regretted the sweater. The snow itself wasn't much, long tracks of icy snow with grass and rocks poking through. These offered some fun obstacles to slalom, but the ice and a poor boot fit made right turns difficult. There was a lot of play in my right heel, and I often had to lift my leg from the hip to make a turn. The first hour on these beginner slopes was accompanied by an avant-garde soundtrack, like an LP at the edge of its grooves, as my new boards scraped over ice. And it was tough going at first, the missing gear made it more of a body test than anything. Legs, shoulders, and hips took some time in finding their old rhythm.

I eventually met up with Derek and we took the lift to the top of the mountain. The view from the lift was of all the northern part of the state, with perhaps a bit of Colorado thrown in. The foreboding peaks of Truchas looked less so with their jagged tops covered in white. Everything below was all brown, but for Black Mesa squatting proud in the center of it all. The view mesmerized me with each ride, one time so much so that I forgot to get off the lift, finally jumping off from about three feet up, narrowly missing an orange cone enema. My pride took a hit, but it was my only fall of the day. Conditions were better up here, and finally I could get a decent ride. With each subsequent descent, my muscle memory began to kick in more and more. For the final few runs, I felt in control. There was a bit of powder, a borealis of snow visible from the corner of the eye. But the rocks up here were bigger and less avoidable as I clack-clacked out a morse-code all the way down. Derek was a delight to watch on his telemark skis, the lift of heel and bend of knee like some graceful crane with its weight balanced atop a narrow support. I'd like to graduate to telemarks in a few years.

As we neared the end of the day, a soft white glow appeared just over the top of the ridge. The shadows maintained their timeshare control of the hill, and the hat finally came out. Though we'd skied less than three hours, Derek and I were both happy. Not only had the body remembered its chops, but my soul was reminded of how I love this sport. It won't be long before I return to the top of the mountain, if these springlike days of January allow it.


On the turntable: Mark Knoplfer and Emmylou Harris, "All the Roadrunning"
On the nighttable: Gary Snyder and Tom Killion, "Tamalpais Walking"

'Round Shikoku Day 24

In the morning, I saw my breath for the first time this autumn. We moved along a road paralleling Rte 56. A handicapped man in a yellow cap was leading a group of kids to school, like a biped schoolbus. We met up with an older henro who matched our pace awhile. He was a nice guy, and we made small talk until Miki and I stopped for coffee. From here, we went up and over a small pass, then moved through farmland until arriving at Uchiko. There was an old kabuki-jo here, big and strutting its muscles against the smaller buildings in town. These too were impressive, a couple parallel streets of old shops and trad ambiance. Just outside town was a farmers market in the woods beside a fast river. We took a long rest here, eating bread straight from the oven, warming our bellies as we headed into higher altitudes.

We followed a lovely river for the rest of the day. The road out of town must be well traveled by school kids on bikes, for there were signs placed at random intervals, explaining the finer points of a safe commute. Burma Shave for the shortpants set. Each village had stands selling the persimmons that grew everywhere. At midday we came to a small village beside the river that had many henro amenities, with plentiful toilets and rest huts. Miki stretched out in one and pulled out her bento that she’d bought down in Uchiko. I hadn’t been too satisfied by the selection there, so set off to try my luck here. Entering a small sake shop, a woman told me she’d make me some coffee and asked me to sit. When she returned a few minutes later, she was carrying a tray with an entire lunch laid out. Settai. As I ate, we talked about the pilgrimage. She’d done it by bus years ago, and thought that walkers were ‘erai,’ (A word often applied to walkers and loosely translated as ‘remarkable’). She told me that the character of the Henro had changed, and not for the better. Most young henro did it for sport. She said that in the old days there had been more settai given, but that it is fast disappearing. As a result, the pilgrimage was dying. I told that the most amazing walkers were those folks in their retirement years. All the boundless energy that was responsible for the period of tremendous economic growth between the Olympics and the Bubble Years has to be channeled somehow, and many were channeling it through their feet. She also asked me what I thought of Ehime people. I tried to be diplomatic, and said that I noticed a bigger difference from village to village, some friendly, others cold. I didn’t want to tell her that I found Ehime people less than sparkly, but Ehime’s henro path had taken me closer to the center of big cities than in Tokushima or Kochi, and that could be a factor.

In the afternoon, the valley narrowed, as did the road we walked. Had this been a forest path, clinging to the river, it could’ve been beautiful. Paved, it was tough going, choking on exhaust from the trucks that passed frighteningly close. Even the weather was conspiratory. After all these lovely autumn afternoons, the humidity was up and we were suddenly returned to August. As we knew that today would be a short day, plus that we only had two more days walking before our break, there was a certain lack of inspiration today, senioritis.

Along the way we were overtaken by an old henro on a bicycle who was unmistakably homeless. It turned out that he’d be staying in the same Taishi-do as us. We’d heard from HayaAshi Henro that a homeless guy was living there and thought we’d take our chances. We walked with heavy hearts, worried about our stuff and worried about a loss of privacy on a day when we’d deliberately finish early and wanted to simply chill out. For the next hour, the social stigma against homeless was at work in me, and I wasn’t very comfortable with it.

In the next village we met another funky character. A crooked little man was leaning against a bridge railing beside his wheelchair, fishing. He yelled to me something and held up two fingers, the digits turned toward me in a way that would provoke most Brits. It turned out he was telling me that there were two paths toward the mountains and to Temples 44 and 45. We took the right fork and a minute later, yet another character turned up, stopping beside me in his car. He said something in a difficult dialect, something about ‘fast’ and pointed to his left. I thought at first that he was telling me the other way was quicker (despite the higher pass), but it turned out he was offering a ride up to #44, saying he’d get us there in an hour, and to #45 a half hour after that. Miki and I talked it over briefly, then she gently refused the settai, saying that his offer resonated in her heart, but that we needed to walk. He looked a little sad as he drove off, which brought our spirits even lower. Minutes later I got my first look at the peaks we’d be going over the following day, and my back began to ache in anticipation.

We finally got to Oda. Just outside town, we passed a man wearing a wetsuit for some reason. There seemed to insects everywhere. Praying mantises strolled the road with a certain poise, and if by contrast, the frenzied grasshoppers smacked their heads against something with every leap. Some farmers were finishing the rice harvest in this, the middle of October.

We arrived at the Taishi-do and saw a familiar bicycle leaning against the front. Entering, we saw that besides the usual small tatamied area before the altar, there was a second room behind. Here we found the bicycle henro and another, even older man who looked like he hadn’t moved in years. They were barely visible through all the cigarette smoke. I said that since we didn’t smoke we’d sleep in the front room and grabbed a handful of grubby looking futons. Despite our earlier trepidation, they were both very nice men, and completely respectful of our privacy. The only thing that made me nervous was when they asked our dinner plans. I had visions of them rifling through our bags while we were gone. But later, we had another clue. Beside the altar was a hand-written sign asking anyone who stayed to leave some food as settai. This sign MAY have been made by the resident henro here, as a means of soliciting food. Their question may simply have been a fishing for us to bring something back for them. We quickly said goodbye, leaving the two of them to watch TV and smoke cigarettes, much like a good percentage of residents of this country.

As we had futons, plus lodging booked for the next two nights, we decided to mail our camp gear to Miki’s Mom, in order to lighten the load for the mountains. Later, I stopped in a shop to buy a snack, and ended up getting it for settai, my second of the day. I passed the rest of the day reading on the front steeps of the temple, until the cold at this high altitude drove me inside. Udon at a nearby restaurant helped with the chill, but it didn’t last. Thin futons laid beside torn shoji made for a very cold night. At least there was no wind. I can’t imagine being in a typhoon here.

On the turntable: "Echo and the Bunnymen, "Echo and the Bunnymen"
On the nighttable: Chungliang Al Huang, Quantum Soup"

Coming Home in Winter

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

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

I begin to whistle as I ascend the steps.

On the turntable: The Byrds, "Untitled"

'Round Shikoku Day 20

At dawn, I walked down to the old-timey kissaten where I’d eaten yesterday. It was just after 6, with a few surfers eyeing the water, and a young henro heading north. The waves were much calmer, and the water under the bridge where we got caught is a meter lower. It looked to be a fine day.

Back in Shimonokae, we pick up our bags at Anshuku. Next door at the combini, we found the son behind the counter. He was in employee-robot mode and pretended not to know us.

We spent the entire day following the Shimonokae River up and over the mountains. It was a narrow track, wide enough for a single car. The trees overhung the trail. It had grown overcast by now and the shade was chilly. But it was the first time since beginning the walk, (well over than a month now) that I hadn’t been wet, either with sweat or rain. We ran into the old couple we met on the runny mountainside path down the peninsula. They are on day 45 of their 7^th walking henro. (Amazed they are still together considering how often Miki and I have bickered on this, our first.) They have also done it another 60 times by car. They were very friendly and spiritually driven, talking a lot about Taishi. And they were quick. Miki and I stopped an hour later to have a snack before a shrine when they came strolling up.

Faster still was a young girl who passed us. We stayed the same pace awhile and chat, but she seemed to prefer her own company and moves on. Her speed was the greatest I’d seen in any henro, moving deliberately like she’s late for a meeting. We caught up with her again in Mihara Village, where we all ate on the grass before a shrine. Off her feet, she was friendly and warm, but didn’t offer much about herself. She eventually moved on and we don’t see her again.

Mihara is a cute town with friendly people and a few funky cafes and inns. It, like a lot of Kochi, is a place I’d like to linger, but not on this trip. Despite the rain, this had become one of my favorite prefectures. The people have long been thought to be hard and cold, but overall I found them friendly and open. For example, as we were heading out of Mihara, an old man drove up and handed me a ‘settai bag’ of various fruit and snacks, a bag that he’d obviously prepared at home. I can imagine him leaving a few of these bags in his car daily, handing them over every time he spots a figure in white. After handing me mine, he drove up and handed one to Miki. Then he drove on to hand yet another to a third henro walking a couple hundred meters ahead of her. I wonder how often this kind old farmer does this, handing out his goodies like Halloween.

The road out of town led to a park built in the shadow of a great dam. Along the way, we passed still another henro, lying prone in the dirt behind a truck painted up like BJ McCabe’s. Half the time you see a henro at rest, he’ll be sprawled across whatever it is that’s supporting his tired body. After the dam was a long tunnel. Midway through I felt a strange shift in balance, and when exiting the opposite end, noticed that I was on a decline of nearly 45 degrees.. This odd loss of equilibrium is something I’d never have noticed in a car. This steep descent continued for a good half hour until leveling out on the valley floor. We’d apparently been climbing all day onto the high plateau of Mihara, though I hadn’t been aware of it, until looking at a topo map later.

We stopped at a supermarket for our dinner. When we came out, the other two henro had caught up, and we all moved on in yet another henro parade, under the watchful eyes of cows, and beneath the vines of wild squash dangling themselves over porous concrete embankments. The parade continued right up to the gates of Temple 39. For the last couple hundred meters or so, we’d all chosen to take different paths through the rice fields, following directions known only to us. It was like a game show, with the winner being the exhausted henro last seen lying behind the truck.

There was supposed to be a tsuyado here but it was closed due to some event. As we were asking for a place to put up our tent, Tired Henro overheard and said he’d ask at his inn. The owner was a friendly guy who offered us a room without food for 1000 yen. We of course accepted. After a long hot bath, the two of us lounged in our room, which could’ve slept 20. A karaoke machine stood in one corner., untouched by us Instead, I went in search of beer for both myself and Tired Henro. In the dining room I found him eating with Gentleman Henro, who insisted Miki and I join them. It was interesting evening, the talk being about the pilgrimage of course, a conversation that alternated between heavy and light. Tired Henro was a pretty philosophical guy, whose inner process was going through a pretty tough workout. Gentleman Henro was adept at keeping the talk from growing too serious, but he did allow himself to talk about his walk down the peninsula during the typhoon. He found himself thinking about the kanji for the Heart Sutra, chock full of “mu’s’ and” ku’s.” “Ku” can mean both emptiness as well as sky, and Kukai supposedly took his name while meditating in the Murodo cave, his seat giving view to sea and sky. But during the typhoon, the horizon line had disappeared, the sea and the sky growing indistinct, without separation. Life too is like this, differences being created only by human judgment. A profound experience he had and I felt myself a little envious by it…

On the turntable: "Buddha Bar Krishna Beats"
On the nighttable: Christopher Robbins, "Air America"

Feliz Akemashite!

Wishing a prosperous and rewarding New Year to friends East,



And West.