They’re currently killing each other over the Yasukuni Shrine in the heart of Tokyo, where the spirits of the kamikaze are worshiped. The Isle of Wimin Movement tried to blow up the shrine twice in the last year. Four of the attacking wimin and three of the defending phallocrats died in these attempts.
Johnny Baker to Jeanette Baker, June 12, 2055:
Dear Mother,
Thank you, thank you, thank you for the rain suit and socks! It must have set you back a bundle. Rain suits (and socks) cost a fortune here. (Everything costs a fortune here!) I immediately rented a bike and gave my new outfit a try. It’s cut short in front so it doesn’t bunch up. The hood fits neatly under my helmet, though it obstructs my vision when I look over my shoulder. Still, there’s nothing like being warm and dry while riding off-road in a torrential downpour! Thanks again!
Four more days till I meet Plowman! Tomorrow Srimaanji’s taking me shopping on the Ginza for a Kabuki kimono, which is very fashionable this year.
Johnny Baker to Indira Rabindra, June 14, 2055:
I thought of you today, while visiting a manual book publisher in Edo Keep, near Tokyo, whose population lives and works in a picture-perfect copy of a 17th-century Japanese village, which was built without nails by Zen Manualists. The publisher, whose name is Akiko Yosano, prints books by hand on blocks of cherry wood, a process that takes months. Yosano believes that even old-fashioned movable type can’t capture the essence of flowing Japanese script and doesn’t make an artistic effect. A professional calligrapher copies the manuscript on sheets of handmade rice paper, which are then pasted on the wood blocks. The wood is carved away to preserve the handwritten script. The blocks are then printed in woodblock style and the pages printed. Illustrated books were a revelation to me. Each is what you say a book should be: a well-made artifact, not just an electronic replicator of words and images. I love feeling the texture of the rice paper! And what a wonderful smell the pages have: a mixture of fresh ink and glue! I’d give anything to own a Yosano masterpiece. She let me handle her prized reprint of the 17th-century classic novel The Great Mirror of Male Love, by Ihara Saikaku, which was illustrated by Shundo Hara. Maybe someday I’ll illustrate a book for Yosano. Anyway, like I said, I thought of you and your collection.
Best, Johnny
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, June 14, 2055:
Srimaanji and I are living under the weather in a small, leaky frame house in Kyoto near the Shinsen-en Sacred Spring Garden. Our host, and Srimaanji’s dear friend, is the head of the Japanese OnLine Church of Gaia, the Rev. Guru Sodo Yokoyama. He speaks perfect English. Today she took me by the arm and went, “A sheila (he pronounces it ‘sheira’) is like a good piece of wood, and a master guru is like a carpenter. Even good wood won’t show its fine grain unless worked on by a good carpenter. Even a warped piece of wood in the hands of a good carpenter shows the results of good craftsmanship. Whether you turn out to be a good piece of wood or a warped one, you’re in the hands of a master carpenter, your esteemed guru, Srimaanji Mookerjee. Obey him in all things, and you will gain Gaian Consciousness.”
Yokoyama-san teaches that you gain Gaian Consciousness by meditating on what he calls “Gaia’s face”—the natural world in any and all of its manifestations.
His new sheila, Jukishi Wakayama, aged 26, and I speak through autotranslators. Jukishi’s been trying to gain Gaian Consciousness for the last two years. He’s the eldest son of a rich pawnbroker who owns a shop in downtown Kyoto. Teddy, get this: she told me, “Three years ago, I quit my father’s business when I read in the Christian Bible, ‘For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’”
Jukishi’s old man is madder than hell because his eldest son and heir became a Gaian guru’s sheila—although he admits that having a she-he son whose yang and yin are in perfect balance has brought him good luck (i.e., lots of business).
Twice a day, Jukishi and I nurse at the same time in opposite corners of a tiny room. The patter of rain on the tile roof makes me sleepy. Jukishi spends three hours a day in the little overgrown backyard garden meditating on a tall, scraggly sakaki tree. The sakaki tree is a sacred evergreen whose shiny-topped leaves supposedly attract gods to light on its branches. Jukishi’s mantra is a Japanese translation of the poem “On Seeing Weather Beaten Trees,” by Adelaide Crapsey, a 20th-century American poet who influenced Clorene Welles:
Is it as plainly in our living shown,
By slant and twist, which way the wind hath
blown?32
Jukishi’s cute, and I know he feels the same about me, but it’s hands off for both of us! Man, am I horny!
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, June 15, 2055:
I meet my father tomorrow morning at ten. How do I address him? I can’t call him Dad. I know that he doesn’t think of me as his son. I’m just one of three subjects in one of his famous genetic experiments. And yet, and yet … Teddy, help me!
Teddy Petrakis to Johnny Baker, June 15, 2055:
And yet, and yet you hope he’ll call you, “My boy, my son!” The same with me.
Why this longing in the humin soul for a father? Is there a gene for it, do you suppose? I like to think our Heavenly Father implanted the need in us so we’d turn to Him.
Sri Billy Lee Mookerjee
Johnny was so nervous that morning about meeting his father, he threw up his breakfast.
Jukishi Wakayama
I remember how sexy Johnny looked in his new red, white, and blue patchwork Kabuki-style robe. And his matching umbrella with the bone handle! I remember that well.
Wakinoya Yoshiharu
Fritz got drunk the night before his meeting with Johnny. It was a tough time for him. Remember that in the fall of ’53, Ishtar Teratol’s victory over Chess Maven had won Fritz and the Ozaki Institute a huge GE contract to design a genome that would enlarge the inferior parietal lobe of a humin brain, giving it the wherewithal to create a Theory Of Everything. Since then, he and his team had been working round the clock with not much luck on Operation TOE-Head.
Fritz was also under great pressure from the Board of Directors—sixteen rich, old Japanese men, all except two born in the last century. And every one a phallocratic tribalist. They wanted Fritz to enhance the genome of a Japanese male who would be the one to solve the riddle of the universe and make us masters of space and time. If you ask me, those big shots were jealous of him.
Poor Fritz! He felt alone and threatened. He was also pushing fifty; his youth was over. Sure, his Capablanca metamorph had been a great success. But the results weren’t in yet on Ozaki’s Project, the experiment he’d made in honor of his one true love. Make no mistake. Fritz is a romantic.
Where was I? Oh, yes. Nadia Kammerovska was dead, and Yukio Tanaka had long since stopped drawing, so he now pinned his hopes on this seventeen-year-old kid, who stopped making art to become the disciple of a Gaian religious nut.
Last but not least—and don’t laugh—Fritz was mourning the death of his twenty-year-old yellow-naped Amazon parrot, Sozoshii. The bird had been a gift to Fritz from Ozaki-san. Fritz and that bird were crazy about each other. Sozoshii had an English vocabulary of twenty or thirty words and simple phrases. Sometimes when I was out of her sight, she called out my name in Fritz’s voice. She only did it occasionally, so I always took the bait and answered “Yes?” She never answered, and I’d feel like a fool. Make no mistake. It’s infuriating to be humiliated by a bird.
Sozoshii was never sick a day in her life. Then, without warning one March night, she keeled over from a mutated form of mycobacteriosis—avian TB. She dropped dead off her perch before Fritz’s eyes. There were no last words.
Johnny Baker to Jeanette Baker, June 16, 2055:
Plowman insists I call him “Fritz.” He sends you his regards. So does his secretary—what’s his name—an aging pretty boy who uses too much makeup. Fritz told me to tell you his pet parrot died recently. He feels bad because, with all his scientific kno
w-how, he couldn’t protect her from a deadly new bacteria.
He asked why I want to gain Gaian Consciousness. I said, “To overcome my fear of death.” He said, “The fear of death is the beginning of wisdom,” and for the first time, we looked across his desk into each other’s eyes, which are the same shade of blue.
We talked about Nadia and her murder. He told me about Yukio Tanaka, the third arsogenic metamorph in Ozaki’s Project. You once met his mother. Fritz showed me a drawing Yukio made at the age of thirteen—twelve by the way we count. It’s the face of a storm demon called a Thunder God. Yukio also did the calligraphy.
I envy the way he integrated the words and the image. The Thunder God is the last drawing Yukio ever made. He quit art after his father died of a heart attack. Yukio won’t say why he gave it up. He lives with his mother in Tokyo. She’s a caregiver in an old age home. Yukio’s apprenticed to a portable shrine maker. I’d like to meet him. Fritz will try and arrange it.
Fritz asked if I was doing any drawing myself nowadays.
I said, “Not at the moment” and he said, “That’s a pity.”
He asked to see an example of my work.
I can’t get Yukio’s drawing outta my mind.
Sri Billy Lee Mookerjee
I arranged to send Plowman a copy of Johnny’s drawing of me in the style of a child. He called to thank me.
He said, “Johnny draws like Jean Dubuffet,” and I said, “His talent stands in the way of his gaining Gaian Consciousness. He must choose between them.”
Plowman said, “Between us, you mean! Johnny must choose between you and me!”
“So it seems.”
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, June 28, 2055:
Momma hanged herself thirty-three years ago today.
Who was it who once said, “A suicide is a timid murderer?” Momma murdered my childhood.
Gov. Ezra Koyle of Utah, the Seer Prophet & Revelator of the Mormon Church, has declared himself a candidate for the Christian Republican presidential nomination next year. This is the man who flaunts Federal law by keeping fourteen wives ranging in age from 15 to 43.
Yukio Tanaka, Thunder God, 2049, paper cutout, brush and ink, on paper. Collection Mariko Tanaka
I couldn’t care less about Koyle or the mutilated Sister Lopez. All I care about is Johnny. He’s breaking my heart.
Johnny Baker to Jeanette Baker, July 3, 2055:
Happy birthday, Mother! Many happy returns of the day.
Jeanette Baker to Johnny Baker, July 3, 2055:
Come home and become an artist.
Johnny Baker to Jeanette Baker, July 3, 2055:
I can’t. Srimaanji says that exercising my talent prevents me from seeing the whole world as an infinite series of creative acts.
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, July 16, 2055:
Gaians say you suddenly “fall into Gaian Consciousness.” Well, Srimaanji “fell” into it again last night in the backyard garden. The episode lasted three hours and twenty minutes. A little before nine o’clock, he and I were strolling down the sand path that winds among the tall grass and the reeds and mossy stones. We were hoping to hear a nightingale. The scraggly sakaki tree was still. I noticed the moonlight shining on some dewdrops stuck on a spiderweb that was strung between two reeds.
All of a sudden, Srimaanji goes, “I feel woozy,” and her eyes roll back in his head, and she sags to the ground, with a scary grin on his face.
She lay on his stomach in the tall, wet grass to my right, and when I knelt beside her, he groaned like she was in terrible pain. I yelled for my pal Jukishi (the other sheila), who came charging out of the house and down the sand path and at every step he took—maybe four all told—Srimaanji screamed in agony.
Yokoyama-san called out to us from the doorway, “Sit down, both of you, but very gently, then don’t move! Stay where you are!”
The three of us watched over Srimaanji for the next three hours. He didn’t move a muscle. It was a hot, sticky night. I heard a screech-owl screech. Along about eleven, I happened to glance at the sakaki tree, some twenty feet away. The top branches, which are maybe twenty feet high, swayed in a breeze and Srimaanji, who you remember was lying face down on the grass, went, “Ah! Ah! Ahhhhh!” like she was having a pleasant dream. Then the breeze stopped, the branches just hung there, and he breathed quietly again.
By this time my backside was asleep, so I stood up very carefully, but was off balance, and to steady myself put my right foot down, with all my weight behind it, on the grass. Srimaanji screamed.
I burst out crying. At last I understand. Srimaanji is Gaia in humin form.
Johnny Baker to Teddy Petrakis, July 18, 2055:
For supper tonight, instead of bean curd, arum root noodles, and bamboo sprouts dressed with sweet sauce, I nursed from the breasts of the Motherworld himself.
Then we fucked.
Johnny Baker to Jeanette Baker, July 23, 2055, cc Teddy Petrakis:
Mother dear, I irrevocably renounce the gifts you bought me in order to concentrate all my energies on my spiritual development as Srimaanji’s sheila. I believe that gaining Gaian Consciousness is now within my grasp because of the great spiritual progress I’ve made since coming with him to Japan.
I know my decision will cause you great pain, and that makes me feel guilty and sad. But I must live my own life. You want me to create art, but I’ve discovered that what I want is to experience—in Srimaanji’s words—“our Motherworld creating herself.”
Your loving son, Johnny
The Rev. Theodore Petrakis
Johnny called me with the news. God forgive me, I was secretly pleased that he gave up drawing. I was surprised to realize how jealous I was of his gift. Lord knows, I wish I were more creative!
Jeanette Baker to Johnny Baker, July 24, 2055:
What’s happened isn’t your fault; it’s mine. I now see quite clearly that my inadequate mothering of you is to blame for your infatuation with the fantasy of a Motherworld. I’ve gotten what I deserve.
Polly Baker
Paco and I were in New York on vacation the last two weeks in July. It was hot and crowded. We were glad to get home. The first words out of Jeanette’s mouth to me were, “Oh, Polly, I’m so unhappy!”
Johnny Baker to Frederick Rust Plowman, August 1, 2055:
I’ve given up art to gain Gaian Consciousness. I must know why Yukio quit drawing. Was it religion? Please arrange a meeting between us.
Wakinoya Yoshiharu
Fritz was dumbfounded by Johnny’s decision. Like many physical scientists, he lacked an appreciation of modern depth psychology. He had underestimated the influence of their unconscious minds in the development of his two remaining arsogenic metamorphs. Neither Yukio nor his mother had revealed the reason for the boy’s renunciation of his gift. All Fritz knew was that it was connected with the sudden death of Yukio’s father. Now Johnny had renounced his gift for a crackpot cult.
For the first time, Fritz saw Yukio and Johnny as complex, mysterious beings, not just the subjects of a scientific experiment. Fritz became curious about their inner lives. He asked me to set up a meeting between the two boys on condition that Johnny share with him what transpired between them. Johnny agreed.
Polly Baker
Jeanette decided to go to Johnny when he returned to the States and plead with him to resume his career as a manual artist. I agreed to help her.
So three times a week for the rest of August, Jeanette practiced leaving the keep on my arm. We walked in the evenings, when it was a little cooler.
Johnny Baker to Jeanette Baker, August 8, 2055:
Dear Mother,
Last night, I finally met Yukio Tanaka, who shares a two-room, un-air-conditioned apartment with his mother in a poor part of northeastern Tokyo called Akebane.
They had me and Fritz’s secretary to supper (greasy deep-fried manna with gummy noodles and salty seaweed). Yukio put away four or five cups of chrysanthemum-scented Amae and got very r
ed in the face.
I told Yukio I gave up drawing for my religion. He has a great esteem for Gaianism, which the Japanese call “the way of the Earth.” He himself follows “the way of Japan,” called Shinto. He worships many kami—divine beings, including “the glorious war dead,” men who died fighting for the “sacred land of Japan” and became gods. I said that on principle I’m against all wars, which are in essence phallocratic tribal conflicts. He went, “Ah, so!” and poured us green tea that tasted like an old sock.
His mother kowtowed to me all night. Yukio explained that as a devout Buddhist, she considers me a living personification (keshin) of Jizu, a Buddhist god of compassion, who was a womin in his previous life.
Yukio is straight. What a pity! Like many Japanese men, he has short arms and legs in proportion to his yummy muscular torso. Shining black, slanted eyes, high cheekbones and beautiful white teeth. His teeth turn me on.
Yukio invited me to visit him alone at work tomorrow afternoon.
Oh, mother, don’t blame yourself for what’s happened. Be happy for me!
Wakinoya Yoshiharu
Yukio thanked me for introducing him to Johnny. He said he was honored to meet the esteemed young Gaian on’yoshi, an archaic Japanese phrase meaning a “Master of Yang and Yin,” which he used rather than the common word for a she-he, ryosei, literally “both sexes.”
Johnny Baker to Jeanette Baker, August 9, 2055:
Dear Mother,
Spent an hour this afternoon with Yukio in his workshop near Kishibojin Temple, just east of Ueno Park. He showed me around his workshop, where everything’s handmade with chisels, planes, saws, brushes, etc. A strong, sweet smell from the wood shavings all over the floor. Yukio’s an apprentice lacquerer, one of eight different kinds of apprentices who make very expensive portable wooden shrines out of Japanese cypress for neighborhoods, wedding halls, offices, and homes.
We confessed to each other that we miss drawing. Yukio wouldn’t say why he quit. But he wants to tell me. We’re becoming friends. Tell you the truth, I have a crush on him.
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, August 11, 2055:
The Song of the Earth Page 15