The Lady and the Monk
Book Notes Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 17:25 on 8 October 2017
Again (and again), when a dear friend offers you a book to read, you read it, especially when said friend says, "This book reminds me of us."
I, unfortunately, left this book in my reading pile too long, and Moazam bought himself another copy. Or maybe fortunately, because I now have my own copy.
The book is the tale of Iyer's adventure in Japan to learn about Zen Buddhism "from the inside" while living in a monastery, along with his meeting Sachiko and their subsequent friendship. It is also about seeing a world the way you wish it to be, innocent and unmarred by pain, instead of grounded in a perhaps ugly reality.
Iyer's writing evokes the mood of his surroundings, of his experience, of the world around him, in a way that pulls the reader in. One can almost smell the cherry blossoms, feel the weight of the air heavy with water before the rain, the sounds of the city sleeping but not quite, the silence of the monastery, the disquiet energy of his companions seeking quiet in a place it can't be found.
I enjoyed the book. It wasn't a book I would have chosen for myself, which makes it a good choice by Moazam.
Many of them, he said, had wearied of the worldly aspects of the monastic life - the politicking, the emphasis on sheer willpower, the need for subservience, the stress on hierarchy: all the quallities, in short, that could make temples seem just like any other affluent, rule-bound Japanese company.
Page 24
"I remember this one Zen teacher told me, soon after I arrived, that the appeal of Zen to many foreigners was like a mountain wrapped in mist. Much of what hte Westerners saw was ust the beautiful mist; but as soon as they began really doing Zen, they found that its essence was the mountain: hard rock."
Page 25
Jizō, he explained, was the patron saint of children and of travelers (very apt, I thought, since very child is a born adventurer and every traveler a born-again child).
So perhaps these magazines, with their secular cult of the virgin, served only to encourage sex in the head, catering to that famously sentimental Japanese Romanticism that perfers the idea of a thing, its memory or promise, to the thing itself.
The monk wrote about his frissons of pleasur when passing an unknown woman on a night of moon viewing, and the protocol of making love; how "lamplight makes a beautiful face seem even more beautiful," and "beautiful hair, of all things in a woman, is most likely to catch a man's eye." Most unexpected of all, at least to me, were the priest's anxious obsessiveness with appearances ("A man should be trained in such a way that no woman will ever laugh at him"), and his strongly worded snipes about lower-class men and other "insufferable" or "disagreeable" types ("It is unattractive when people get in a society which is not their habitual one").
Page 56
There was, I thought, a metaphor in this one: one could not plan epiphanies any more than one could plan surprise visits from one's friends.
Page 57
All festivals, of course, aer acts of collective myth-making, chances for a nation to advertise its idealized image of itself.
Besides, the pairing of Western men and EAstern women was as natural as the partnership of sun and moon. Everyone falls in love with what he cannot begin to understand. And the other man's heart is always greener.
The Japanese were famous, I knew, for their delight in lacrimae rerum and for finding beauty mostly in sadness; indeed it was often noted that their word for "love" and their word for "grief" are homonyms - and almost synonyms too - in a culture that seems to love grief, of the wistful kind, and to grieve for love.
Foreigners meant freedom in a land where freedom itself was largely foreign.
Making our way towards the port, we looked out at the ocean liners, black in the chromium light, and sitting down on a log, the wind blustering all about us, we fell into our usual patter, she telling me how America was the land of the free, I telling her how much of what I saw in America was loneliness.
Encouraging people to realize their potential was an especially dangerous occupation in a country that taught them to fulfill their duty instead.
The moon, I recalled, was the one possession that even monks did not renounce. When he lost his house in a fire, the Zen poet Masahide wrote, he found occasion for new hope: he now enjoyed a better view of the rising moon.
And I remembered how the demon Mara, when he was trying to tempt the Buddha, having failed to bring him down with discontent or desire, unleashed his strongest weapon: love.
Page 183
(When she asked her students to find three adjectives to describe themselves, a longtime foreign teacher told me, she had had to ban the use of "cheerful," or else every girl in class would use it.)
Besides, pretense could have its virtues. I thought back to the line in the Singer story "A Piece of Advice" I had read a few months before: "If you are not happy, act the happy man. Happiness will come later. If you are in despair, act as though you believe. Faith will come afterwards."
...
By the same token, a horse that imitates a champion thoroughbred may be classed as a thoroughbred, and the man who imitates Shun bleongs to Shun's company. A man who stuides wisdom, even insicncerly, should be called wise."
Page 185
Partly, perhaps, she could only apprehend a foreigner - and romance - through the imported images she'd consumed, just as I could see her only through the keyhole of ancient Japanese love poems. But partly, too, I could see, with a pang, how keen she was to remove our lives from the everyday world, to lift them to some timeless, fairy-tale realm, immutable, impersishable, and immune from unhappy realities. Realism was reserved for what she did at home ...; our time was "dream time."
Page near-the-end-of-the-book-past-page-185
Sums up the book nicely.
First Run Post-Sprain
Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 15:35 on 6 October 2017
I went for a run today. It was the first run I've done since I sprained my ankle, and was a test run to see how my rehab is going.
I wanted to run from my place up to the gardens then back, but I knew that would definitely be too much. So, I chose a run uphill to the "bottom" of the gardens hill (read: where the buildings end and the forests begin), and back. I figured the run would take me about fifteen minutes including stops, be uphill out and downhill back. I was pretty good about the time estimate.
After the run, I did my normal rehab: alphabets, presses, balancing.
My ankle HURTS now. By a lot. I worry I might be pushing the ankle, too much too soon. The brace protects it from further damage, and I moved slowly. I might need to spend more time on the elliptical, but I dislike that machine so much. We'll see. The half marathon in November isn't happening, that's for sure.
Sometimes You Get The Bear
Daily Photo Instead of being asleep at 17:57 on 5 October 2017, kitt created this:
Craving Safety, It Doesn't Exist
Blog Instead of being asleep at 12:23 on 2 October 2017, kitt created this:I recently signed up to run a half marathon. I actually signed up to run two. The second meant a good four months to train, to go from walking maybe ten kilometers a day to running twenty kilometers.
The first meant cramming for the run, and we all know you can't cram for fitness. I planned to try anyway. I figured in the worst case, I would walk the half marathon. In the best case, I would run-walk the distance in under three hours. The course time limit for the first half marathon is four hours, which is sufficient to walk quickly, so I would be set for the event.
Two good (read: hard, frustrating) weeks of training later, and I managed to roll my ankle and sprain it by walking into a pothole. Yay grade two sprain. And by "Yay" I mean "Fuck."
Hey, I can still walk the thing, right? Walk-jog-walk-jog, one can do that for 20 kilometers on a bum ankle if needed. I got this.
And then the massacre at Las Vegas happened. You can't call it anything less than a massacre.
I signed up to run my first half marathon in Las Vegas. The race route goes past the stage location where the massacre happened.
The organizers sent out an email to everyone signed up for the event which read:
Statement on the Tragic Events in Las Vegas
It is with shock and great sadness to learn of the tragedy that took place in Las Vegas on Sunday night. Our hearts and thoughts are with the victims, their families, and all of those affected. Out of respect for those impacted, including all our local partners at the City of Las Vegas, Clark County, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, and other first responder personnel, we will be waiting to provide any additional comment as it relates to our upcoming marathon. At the appropriate time, we will re-engage in a critical dialog with government agencies and law enforcement officials in Las Vegas to ensure that we are able to deliver a safe experience for our participants.
Here's the thing. No one is ever safe. At any point. We live in a world where, for the most part, violence on the scale of the Las Vegas Shootings of October 2017 (I'm going to give it a full title because 1. I don't know there won't be another shooting in Las Vegas that also gets the title of "Las Vegas Shootings" and 2. I don't know that there won't be any more shootings in this year. I'm taking a chance there won't be another grand people shooting spree of Las Vegas in October of this year.) doesn't happen very often.
In this country at least.
-ish
There have been 273 days in this year so far, and 271 days with a mass shooting, as defined as 4 people or more. So, yeah, we do live in a country where this happens, but we don't experience it in horrific detail every day. Some countries, people do. We're fortunate enough that, for the most part, we don't.
But we could. And that's the thing. We could. Any level of safety in this world is an illusion. Any level of security in this world is also somewhat of an illusion. "You could leave life right now," by your own hand, by someone else's hand, by design, by chance, by nature. We don't know when, and that uncertainty makes life both amazing and terrifying.
We crave safety. We crave security. Neither exist.
Related, hoo boy, been watching the Walking Dead. Talk about no safety, that fictional world.
Who Pays the Bill?
Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 20:59 on 27 September 2017A condo owner decides to have work done on his bathroom. This is a generally normal thing to happen in a metropolitan area.
Said condo owner contacts the home owners' association, obtains all the various permissions and okays and licenses and permits, and has the work done.
In the process of this work, a plumber comes out to work on the condo's bathroom's pipes. To do said work, said plumber needs to turn off water to said condo.
Turns out, water to said condo is connected with water to another dozen or so units in the building. This isn't a difficulty. All the owners and occupants of said dozen condos are informed water will be turned off for their condos during a specified amount of time, with the expectation that water will be restored afterward.
All good so far.
The plumber who comes out is a new plumber. To facilitate and ease the water disruption, a member of the home owners' association board of directors meets with said plumber, and instructs him which valves are the correct ones to manipulate.
For reasons known only to said plumber, but speculated by all who hear this tale, said plumber disregards the information he has received from the member of the board of directors, who, incidentally, had been living in the condo for many, many years, and knows the building far better than said new plumber, and turns off an incorrect valve in addition to the correct valve. Upon finishing the work in the condo, said plumber does not turn on the incorrect valve he turned off. He does turn on the correct valve he had previously turned off.
Progress to the next morning, when the home owners' association property management company is accepting phone calls. In particular, phone calls from condo occupants who lack water, as the plumber has, recall, not turned on the incorrect valve he turned off.
The property management company does the correct action, and sends out a plumber, in this case one who is experienced with the building, who turns on the valve that had been off. This new, experienced plumber charges $300 to turn on the valve.
Now, who pays that $300 bill?
Go ahead, answer in the comments.