Practice
Monday, November 1
All day, I seem to be wading through a tide of nonspecific memory, almost a nostalgia—I don’t know what brought this on. It’s a heavy, painful feeling, a burden that I can’t quite let go. One minute I am chatting with one of my eager, sweet students in the hallway—something having to do with the many moods of English verbs—and the next I’m looking out the window in my office, seeing a landscape that has nothing to do with the expanse of manicured lawn and trees and sky before me. I am in Alaska. There are flashes of my mother, and of my father, and of my stepfathers, and of all those boys and men who entered and left my life. There are quips of poisonous dialogue. Fred saying, I married your mother, not you. I don’t have to love YOU. And then a boyfriend who took too much, who took everything, and later told me, You are beautiful when you don’t smile. And then a man—once a boy I knew in high school—who said I probably deserved what I got. And then a jealous first husband who had a thing for other women and who lied to me so often that I did not know what was true and what was not. I see now the great connectedness of all of these things. How they repeat and repeat and repeat in a spiral that deepens with each turn. At the center could have been the absence of a father. Or something in my fragile nature. Or it could have been a handful of lessons with a piano teacher in Nome, when I was five or six—that first devastating loss of innocence turning what should have been natural in later years—a touch, the intimacy of a kiss—into a kind of grotesque. Sometimes I think it is not people who haunt us, but only moments of encounter.
After work, I pass through the gates of my university, still riding that terrible flood. I remember Koun slipping a strand of juzu prayer beads over my wrist outside the little Balinese import shop on Shimotori. The faint corkscrew grain on each bead and the scent of sandalwood. He told me the story of koi who do not know that they are really wise and powerful dragons, how the bright fish become their true selves as they pass through the river gate. That was my second year in Japan. And now . . . how long have I worn that famous Zen story? A protective talisman knotted at the wrist and heart.
Tuesday, November 2
In pottery class, I quickly produce two vases that are undeniably pleasing to the eye. Sensei, rising from the stool across from me, leans over the table and squints at my work, considering it from various angles. “Kihon,” she says finally. “You are still not doing the basics properly. You should go back to tea cups for a while.”
“Hai, Sensei.” I sigh. So this is the feeling of pure failure.
I clean my things early and then sit and watch as Baba-san manipulates a tall and impressive form gone wrong. She playfully—but with great concentration and seriousness—works the clay for a good thirty minutes. Various lovely objects reveal themselves before being folded back into nonbeing. At last, she settles on a shape—a tall, tapered vessel. I imagine it holding a few well-trimmed lengths of the season’s much-celebrated pampas grass. She slices her creation from the hump in one quick motion and maneuvers it to the table.
Sensei would never let me work with just one object for so long, the walls inevitably giving way beneath my fingers, an excess of water, and all those poorly reintegrated faults. When I look over at her, this question forming in my eyes, she says simply, “Baba-san can do that because she knows what she’s doing.”
When I return home from work, there is a letter from my ex-student Yamada-san. It has been a long time since I wrote to you last. I am so tired, so busy. Much of his letter recalls the day-to-day happenings of his business. The usual complaints. As always, there is a pragmatic sense to his writing—I can see that he is practicing his English, and I think I’ve already read a lot of what he’s written here in previous letters. How we always return again and again to our same familiar motifs.
But the second half of the letter, written some days later perhaps, is a little brighter . . . and different. He’s been feeding stray cats twice a day out behind his workplace. I’ve been doing this for a while. What would they do without me? More all the time. Such a nuisance. Feeding them will make me broke. I can imagine his exasperated sighs, but I know that he’s happy to be depended upon. A big sunburned man with rough hands stooping to pour chow into a bowl. The bodhisattva of skittish, shred-eared alley cats.
Saturday, November 6
A gift for Docho-roshi. A gift . . . a gift . . . I search all—ALL—of the stores in downtown Kumamoto after Japanese class this morning, looking for something to offer to the head priest of Zuioji who will be at Shogoji tomorrow for the lay ceremony. He is no doubt spending his day writing dharma names in elegant black strokes on the white silk backings of the rakusu we laypeople have spent so many weeks preparing. As for a gift, nothing seems quite right. Bring something nice, but not too nice, Koun had told me in a letter. It should just be a token of your gratitude. All of the standard local gift-giving rules apply. So knives and clocks are out, I guess, as both allude to death. Green tea may or may not be okay—but it’s definitely boring. Handmade items are not really acceptable, unless I am a master at my craft (I am not). The value should be appropriate to the occasion and to the status of both parties (I am in no way culturally suited to evaluate this). And then I remember something Koun mentioned during my last visit, a little anecdote about Docho-roshi’s assistant once sneaking off from the Shogoji kitchen with a second plate full of homemade chocolate chip cookies that I’d sent the monks. Docho-roshi has a sweet tooth and a certain appreciation for my Western-style baking.
As I’m folding chocolate chips into buttery batter, Sakamoto-san calls. There is some confusion about when all of us are supposed to arrive at the monastery for the ceremony tomorrow, and—in typical fashion—no one can get through to the Shogoji phone. “I assumed 9 a.m.,” I say. “Isn’t that what we were told? Did I miss something? Was that code for some earlier or later time?”
“I don’t know. You’re the monk’s wife. Don’t you know exactly?”
“Be there at 9. Then we can be too late or too early together.”
“I will go at 8:30.”
“Fine. 8:30 it is. Oh—what did you get Docho-roshi?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The gift?”
“There is no need for a gift. Jaa . . . shitsureishimasu.”
I hang up the phone with a sigh and return to my necessary or unnecessary project.
Sunday, November 7
I arrive at Shogoji just before 8:30 a.m. A great number of cars have completely filled the main parking lot, and I have to squeeze into a non-space near the entrance to the grounds. It is a good thing I have a small vehicle. Ahead of me, an older couple dressed in crisp black business-style suits slowly work their way up the long stairway, and I regret my choice of simple zazen clothing—dark blue cotton samu-e. It hadn’t occurred to me that I would be expected to wear something other than what I usually wear at the temple. This, of course, is “common sense” in Japan. Formal events require Western business suits. I should have known.
A monk greets me as soon as I reach the upper grounds, bowing deeply and gracefully in his long black robes and okesa. It is certainly a different atmosphere at the monastery today. I trail after the monk to the entrance to sign in, where he takes my gift of cookies—then leads me past a seated group of temple supporters to an altar in the back room where the others, the fukudenkai members, have gathered. Clearly they have all been waiting for me to join them in the initial chanting and bowing.
Sakamoto-san, wearing a neatly-pressed black suit, is among those present. “You wore the wrong clothes,” he says.
“Um, yeah. Thanks for noticing. I thought we had decided on 8:30.”
“Yes,” he replies, with no further explanation.
Collectively, we are led into the Dharma Hall to practice the ceremony. It would be poor form, I suppose, to get it wrong in front of Docho-roshi. Sakamoto-san sits on his knees next to me, and then each of us takes turns practicing walking up to the altar seat to bow and then receive the rakusu. “I’m nervous,” he says as we return to our spots. “Maybe I will trip. Or—maybe you will trip.”
“Or maybe I will trip you,” I offer.
At last, the guests are ushered in, and the actual ceremony begins. We chant, promise to abide by the layperson’s rules, bow repeatedly, and nobody trips as each of us moves forward to officially accept our rakusu. Docho-roshi, looking ancient and regal in his maroon robes, swirls each quilted cloth over a bowl of smoking incense, blessing it, before delivering it into our hands. The ceremony is over in a matter of minutes. Such formality and fanfare to frame this brief moment.
Afterward, we gather to have lunch, picnic style, beneath the color-changing leaves on the Shogoji grounds. The weather is unusually warm and sunny—a lucky last good-bye, perhaps, to a season. As we eat and drink, each of us passes around our rakusu, and the Buddhist names we’ve been given are discussed at great length. My new lay name, in particular, gives everyone pause. “What does it mean?” I ask, again and again.
The answers are vague: “Well, it’s very profound. . . .” and “It’s a little difficult to explain, but it’s a very good name. . . .” and the common and wise-sounding, “Ahhh . . .”
I find Sakamoto-san and ask him to explain. “I don’t know what it means,” he says. “You should ask someone.”
Monday, November 8
While walking the university hallway during one of my breaks, I discover a huge praying mantis tucked into a corner, legs bound in a mess of dust and fibers. I put down my stack of paper and books, and squat on hands and knees for a better look. Its heart-shaped head moves side to side as I peer at it—like a quizzical dog. It’s among the largest insects I have ever seen.
“Tracy-sensei, what are you doing?” Yukari appears next to me, and then drops to her knees when she sees the insect. “So BIG!”
“Yes . . . and I think it has a problem.”
“Oh!” she says, and then, “Just a moment please!” She leaps up, runs down the hallway to the ESS room, and then returns a few minutes later with two sets of convenience-store chopsticks.
“For take away the dirt,” she explains, handing me a set. Careful as surgeons, we pluck bits of fluff from the insect with the chopsticks.
“Tracy-sensei, what is the name in English?”
“It’s a ‘praying mantis.’ It is similar to obosan with hands held together in gassho.”
“It is ‘kamakiri’ in Japanese—cutting the grass with big knife, like a farmer.”
“Sensei—”
“Yes?”
“Can I take a paper?” She points to the notebook paper stacked on the floor next to me.
“Of course. Why?”
“For little obosan.”
Yukari, my kind and fearless student, scoops up our farmer/monk friend with a sheet of paper and releases him into the grass outside. True compassion is no hesitation.
After pottery this evening, I cannot sleep. Instead of preparing for bed, I brew a pot of tea and sit curled up on tatami in front of the television, watching a videotape made by Senpo-san—Jisen-san’s son and now disciple. He shot the film using the little video camera I lent him some months ago. A box—with the camera and video inside—arrived from him this afternoon, with a simple note: Thank you, Tracy-san. I hope you enjoy. If it’s not too much trouble, can you make a copy for me?
So far, the tape is a collection of moments at Shogoji, all gathered during Senpo-san’s many months at the monastery. The observing eye rests a long time on each scene, just taking it in:
a breeze working its way through tall rice fields
monks laughing at tea time
takuhatsu through some unknown town
chanting rising out of the darkness—an invisible night ceremony
a sunlit pond
an impossibly miniature frog balanced on the tip of a large leaf
monks meditating in flickering lamplight
Koun sewing alone in a room
I watch almost the entire tape—nearly three hours of footage—when the scene cuts to what must be one of the Latin dance studios in downtown Kumamoto. Loud salsa music echoes from the speakers as Japanese and Latino men and women writhe to the beat. A conga line forms, and the camera shakes as it is passed to another cameraman. Senpo-san appears then—for the first time in the video. He grins and waves from the tail of the conga line. Thick hair still on his head, civilian clothes—a snapshot of a previous life.
This morning I meet the karate boys, Mimaki-san and Tsuda-san, at the Budokan. The room is cold, and, like my body, my karate-gi feels stiff and inflexible. Only movement and sweat soften it.
As usual, we begin our practice without much small talk. Tsuda-san leads us in warm-up stretches, and then we work through the kata together, pausing after each set to critique each other’s form. Several times we find ourselves puzzling over the “correct” way to do something, our flawed memories leading us astray.
“That does not look right,” says Mimaki-san.
“But the other way does not feel right,” I reply.
“Practicing without a teacher is too difficult. Maybe we are learning many mistakes.”
“Bah, it’s okay,” says Tsuda-san, swiping away our conversation with his hand. “Our bad form will give Koun-sensei something to do when he returns!”
Tuesday, November 16
No work today—it’s a national holiday. Still, I take no pleasure in this thought as I dig through the closet in my bedroom with a chill in my bones that won’t go away. On go the long underwear, the layers of shirts and sweaters, the thick socks. The ancient air-con heater in my bedroom wheezing out barely enough warm air to dress by. Downstairs is an icebox, and I’ve run out of propane for the portable heaters there. Breakfast, then, is taken upstairs, directly beneath that frail but endless outbreath.
A short while later, I collect Satomi in my K-van.
“So cold today!” she says.
“How do those school girls manage in their short skirts all winter long?”
“Haramaki,” explains Satomi. “It is a secret warm cloth that wraps around your middle. And also heating adhesive patches. These can be hidden beneath clothes as well.” This, she tells me, is a throwback to the days when monks carried hot stones beneath their robes as personal heaters.
“I imagine the new ways are considerably safer.”
“Yes,” says Satomi, tapping her middle. “My tummy is safe AND warm.”
“So you are not cold at all now?”
“No, I’m still cold. But I am less cold. If you want to be completely warm, you must go to an onsen.”
Thirty minutes later, we are soaking in a massive outdoor tub filled with languid women, great clouds of steam rising around us. There is a deliciousness in that boundary between cold air and warm water, the pleasure almost spiritual.
“Satomi, what is the meaning of this holiday anyway? I’ve never really understood my students’ explanations.”
“Japanese Labor Thanksgiving Day. I think it used to be a way to celebrate the rice crop, to be thankful for the effort that went into growing it. Now, maybe it is for labor in general.”
“So, no big turkey feasts.”
“No.”
“Well, I am thankful for national holidays.”
“I’m thankful for onsen.”
“I’m thankful for hot noodle soup.”
“I’m thankful for long underwear.”
“I’m thankful for the existence of central heating, but I wish it would hurry up and come to Kyushu.”
“Yes,” says Satomi. “Oh yes. That would be good, wouldn’t it?”
Wednesday, November 17
Sensei spends the latter half of pottery class sorting through recently fired items from the kiln, locating our much-awaited wares. Each time she opens the studio’s sliding glass doors, there are initial squeals of delight over the goods that are delivered. Again and again, we pause in our work, wipe off our hands, and lift each piece—turning it to inspect the weight, shape, and design, before passing it to our neighbor. There is a certain reverence or ritual in this slow consideration, in the comments that are passed around the room with the ceramics:
“Beautiful.”
“Amazing.”
“How did you make that? Please teach me.”
Most of the exterior design work has been done by Sensei, each piece reflecting a subtle and traditional aesthetic, that wabi-sabi elegance I’ve been unable to capture the few times I played with slips and glazes.
When I ask Sensei if she will teach me more about decoration, she replies, “Yes, I will teach you. First, kihon. This is most important. The other stuff is extra; it is just the surface.” She sets one of my cups in my hands. “Do you feel it? Better balance now, but still too heavy. Air bubbles in the walls can destroy it while it’s baking in the kiln. You must be more careful.”
As we wrap the ceramics in newspaper, Sensei ducks out again and emerges with a tea tray filled with New Year’s rooster figurines for all of us, and these garner a round of “Kawaii!” (Cute!).
The ladies begin talking animatedly among themselves, something having to do with the characteristics of their Chinese New Year animals. As usual, the discussion is too fast for me to track well, but I understand when there is much laughter about the animal characteristics of the ladies’ husbands.
“Tracy-san, what is your animal?” asks Sensei as I’m rinsing off my things outside.
“The ox.”
“Ah. That is good for a potter.”
“Why?”
“Stubborn. The ox keeps trying even when it is hopeless to do so.”
“That is a good thing?”
“Yes. A good thing.”
The annual Shokei School Festival is just beginning to get underway when I arrive on campus. I locate a couple of the office ladies, Katsue and Michie, standing off to the side of the main lawn, chatting and taking in the “girls’ fashion contest” currently in progress on stage. “Look at that,” I say, nudging Katsue. “The girls aren’t the only ones putting on a show.” Here and there, lone “visual boys” with carefully mussed-up locks and baggy-butted pants look sullenly over the crowd or stare into their cell phones. It is an unusual sight to see so many young men wandering about in this normally all-girls context. “Let me guess, are they looking for hot chicks?”
“Oh yes, hot chicks . . . LIKE US!” says Katsue.
“Nani? Nani? Hot-to chicken? Nani?” replies Michie, looking alarmed.
Katsue explains, and Michie nods with an air of exaggerated understanding. “Hai. We are hot-to baby chicken!”
As I make my rounds, one of the ESS girls, Naoko, spots me and hands me a huge bowl of curry rice from their club stand. “Tracy-sensei, don’t worry, we took out meat.” It is very thoughtful that they remembered this detail about my diet. I don’t have the heart to explain that the sauce is made of beef and that, yes, this counts as meat. “Try! Try!” I take a huge bite and proclaim it “delicious.”
“Thank you, Sensei. I will tell ESS!”
She slips back into the crowd, and I enter my building with the aim of discreetly disposing of the remaining curry when I see that the festival is not confined to the outdoors only. One of the classrooms has become a tea ceremony room, complete with portable tatami flooring and beautiful kimono-clad ladies. Another room displays student-created pop-culture manga juxtaposing fantastical images of cuteness, sex, violence. The cafeteria has become an elegant shodo calligraphy studio, and it is here that I spend a long time gazing over the black-and-white displays of ancient wisdom/art that only a few can readily read.
“Can you understand?” asks one of the shodo sensei in Japanese. “It is a very famous koan written by a monk,” he explains. “But I think you can tell the true meaning just by looking at the way it is written.” He moves away, then, not explaining the words.
As I exit the hall, another teacher approaches me. “Did you like the exhibition?” he asks in careful English. “It is both teachers and students. But maybe you cannot yet tell the difference between their work.”
“That’s true,” I say. “What is the difference?”
“The teacher is a master.”
“And the student?”
“The student is practicing to become a master.”
“Does the teacher still practice?”
“Of course.”
“So the teacher and the student both practice. . . . What is the difference between them, between their work?”
“The teacher is a master.”
“Oh, I don’t understand.” I laugh.
“My English is so bad. I am very sorry.”
“Your English is perfectly clear, my friend.” I bid him good-day with a smile and an awkward bow.
And with this, I leave with the intention to rest in the much-needed solitude of my office. But my hope is short-lived. As soon as I enter, I look through my wall of windows and see (and hear) that a karaoke contest is about to get underway on the stage outside. The overamplified sound begins to rattle the glass at heartbeat-like intervals. A group of girls begin to sing, “We will we will ROCK YOU, ROCK YOU!” I turn, sit at my desk, rub my forehead, and try very, very hard not to see the bleachers of my high school.
When I look up again, a young woman in full kimono glides past my open doorway. The past and the present exist in the same moment.
Tuesday, November 23
It is teacups again in pottery class. “To remember the kihon,” as Sensei puts it. Working through each step very deliberately, I produce a near-identical set of four cups. As I rise to begin cleaning up, I see it for the first time: I have somehow managed to NOT smear wet clay all over everything in my vicinity. The mess stays in a neat little circle on the surface of the spinning wheel. “Huh, that’s good,” says Sensei when I point it out to her.
There is a postcard from Koun when I get home. He writes, I’m being sent back to Shogoji. I’m not sure for how long.
And: Your dharma name is “Myoren”—“exquisite lotus.”
And: If you ever spill a large quantity of black ink on tatami, be sure to cover it in salt immediately.
Wednesday, November 24
This evening, after I trim my first cup in class, Sensei uses it as a sample for Mikiko-san, who’s trying to make a nice tea set. This is the first time that anything I’ve made has been used as a model.
“I feel that I’m moving very quickly, today. It is automatic.”
“That is a sign of improvement,” says Sensei.
“My cutting is fast and deep. I don’t feel worried.”
“That is a sign of improvement,” she repeats.
Thursday, November 25
There is an opaque mist dragging across campus and big pink flowers blooming on some of the trees—a kind of camellia, that autumn beauty. I keep returning to a vague e-mail I received from Tozen this morning. The text was short, perfunctory: I’m going to a confidential location, so I may not be able to write for a while. Another cloistered monk. Another solitary. And then later, when I return home after work, there is a package—also from Tozen. Inside, a German film, Enlightenment Guaranteed. No note accompanies the package—there is just the film itself arriving in a little nondescript box from Anchorage, Alaska.
In the evening, Koun calls. He needs my measurements for something having to do with a sewing project. Also, Shindo-san, a tall and elegant monk, seems to be randomly chanting sutras while pacing the halls of Shogoji. The other monks think he’s losing his mind.
Saturday, November 27
This morning I meet the students from my Japanese Culture class at the bus stop in front of the university. Our plan is to visit Kikuchi—specifically Kikuchi Shrine and Shogoji. This will round out our unit on local religion. The students have prepared brief explanations on aspects of Shintoism and Japanese Buddhism, to be delivered at predetermined spots on our itinerary. Previous years’ field trips have been to the “typical” famous sights of downtown Kumamoto, but my class voted unanimously for this unique option. “We always go to those places. We want to go to a new place. We want to meet real monks!”
Koun, it turns out, will be our personal guide at the monastery today. He has often been required to serve as the host for events like this, for schools and groups of businessmen, many of them coming to try zazen for perhaps the first and last time in their lives. His foreignness, I imagine, adding that extra bit of exotic flair.
Given the distance and rural location of our destination, our group travel plans are somewhat complex, requiring multiple bus changes, taxis, walking, and a little bit of luck to make it all gel with the monastery’s strict schedule. I have to admit that I’m nervous, maybe about a number of things beyond getting the timing wrong. There’s seeing Koun after more than a month. And the possibility of annoying Jisen-san so much that my husband is sent away to Shikoku again, reigniting that nagging question and worry: Am I the reason he was transferred last time? Will my bringing a group of beautiful young women to the monastery precipitate a worse punishment yet?
My students, meanwhile, just seem happy to be on an adventure together.
“Is everybody ready? You didn’t forget anything? Do you remember the rules?
They reply collectively; we’ve gone over it all before: “Stay together! Have good manners! No sexy clothes!”
Naoko, standing next to me, points at her outfit—dark jeans, a T-shirt, a jacket. “Look, Tracy-sensei. No sexy!” And this brings on a playful scrutinizing of each other. “Maybe Arisa is too sexy!” Arisa, dressed in tight black jeans, tall cowboy boots and a slightly off-the shoulder shirt, waves away the accusation. Her normal wear is undeniably skimpy. This is her version of conservative. If that bare shoulder and bit of leg is all it takes to break a monk . . . ah well. To be sure, it might be enough to annoy Jisen-san, but I hope not.
After the bus collects and then delivers us to Kikuchi Shrine, we pose for photos in front of the great stone torii gate. Brightly colored autumn leaves fall around us in the breeze, and it’s sunny but chilly. I’m glad for my wool sweater. As I step through the torii—moving from the ordinary world to the sacred—Sanae takes my arm, tells me in a hushed tone that I should not walk through the middle of “the gods’ road.” We must walk on the side of the path to the shrine, to show our humble nature.
Together we climb stone stairs to the top of the hill. Yukari and Sanae protectively flank Fumiko, who, with her slight limp, has some trouble navigating the uneven surface. That unflinching kindness.
After rinsing our hands beneath cold water at the purification fountain, we enter the shrine grounds. A few parents and children in formal kimono move around us, the parents taking photo after photo. These must be the stragglers who didn’t make last weekend’s 7-5-3 event, that yearly Shinto celebration of children’s birthday milestones. My students take turns delivering their mini-presentations on various aspects of the shrine, and then preemptively on Buddhism, for the temple visit. I ask questions, playing the role of uninformed American tourist. I do not, however, ask the hard question that Westerners would be most compelled to ask: How is it that you can belong to two religions at once—one that worships many gods, and the other that has no gods at all?
We return to Kikuchi proper to have lunch at a family restaurant, and then we hail a couple taxis to take us the last few miles up the mountain to the monastery. Koun is waiting for us in the Shogoji parking lot as we arrive. He looks, I think, even thinner than before. “You made it!” he says, and then more quietly, “Jisen-san is not here today.”
“Oh, good. I was a little worried that this would somehow be a bad idea.”
“No, no, everything should be fine.”
After a tour and a brief demonstration of zazen, we gather in one of the tatami rooms with the others for formal tea. With the women on one side, and the men on the other, we sit in a circle. One of the newest monks serves everyone—his hands shaking as he offers cups to each guest and host.
“Do you have any questions for us?” asks Koun.
“Yes,” says Naoko. “This seems like such a difficult life. Why did you all decide to become monks?”
No one speaks, so Koun volunteers his own answer, in English: “This kind of practice strips away everything and reveals the mind very clearly.” The other monks look down intently, perhaps struggling with the English, perhaps desperately avoiding having to answer. The Japanese monks look so young yet, I think. Like teenagers. Koun repeats the question in Japanese, and then stares at the monk across from him until he speaks.
“A-ahum. I don’t know. It just seemed like a good idea, and now I’m here.”
He stops speaking and we sit, looking at each other or down at the tatami for a few moments, before the monk next to him begins, “My father, he owns a temple. . . .” But then he loses his train of thought, trailing off, breathless and flustered. So that there is nothing but silence and a strand of dark hair resting against the revelation of a bare shoulder.
Tuesday, November 30
I only have a few cups ready to trim in pottery class and I finish my work quickly. Instead of throwing a new set, I begin clean-up early, stepping outside to wash and then returning to the studio again and again to gather items that others have finished using. In this way I catch snippets of discussion about the upcoming bonenkai, our end-of-year party and farewell until February. Outside, the water is icy cold as I rinse and scrub the tools beneath the spigot, and my hands turn pink and numb. I think of the common ritual in Japan—standing in gassho beneath a winter waterfall to show gaman, that spirit of enduring through the misery.
“Hey,” snaps Sensei as I return again for another load of dirty items. “It’s too cold outside—stay inside and stop washing others’ things. You’ll make yourself sick.”
“I’m young and strong and from cold Alaska. It is no problem for me.” I realize that I’m sulking a little. I do not want to take a months-long break from pottery class.
When it is time to go, Sensei hands me bits of ceramic wrapped in newspaper. “I forgot to give you these last time—rooster chopstick rests to celebrate the New Year. Oh, one more thing . . .” She disappears into her house and minutes later returns with yet another bag brimming with sweet mikan.
“Please wait a moment. My husband is putting one of my old electric pottery wheels in his truck. It is too heavy for you to carry.”
“What?”
“So you can continue to practice. He will drop off the wheel at your house.”
“Thank you, Sensei. But how will I fire the pots?”
“That is not important. Improve your technique.”
“Hai, Sensei.” It seems my long holiday will be spent in the spare company of my constant failure. A winter solitude.