My Year of Dirt and Water

by Tracy Franz

  These few new belongings will supplement all that he carried on his back and in his hands to the monastery:

  okesa (quilted toga-like vestment)

  kasa (bamboo hat used for anonymity when begging for alms)

  kyahan (white shin guards used for begging)

  teko (hand and forearm guards also used for begging)

  waraji (straw rope sandals)

  zafu (cushion for seated meditation)

  Shobogenzo (a book of teachings by Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen)

  ketchimyaku (lineage chart tracing back to the original Buddha)

  ryutenjiku (scroll for protection of the lineage)

  oryoki (lacquered, nested bowls)

  one pair of underwear (to be worn after the bath marking the end of the stay in tanga-ryo)

  razor (to be used after the end of the stay in tanga-ryo)

  toothbrush and toothpaste (to be used daily)

  small white towel (for bathing or protecting the head from the sun while working)

  bessu (white, woven socks with fasteners; to be used on special occasions)

  U.S. passport

  10,000 yen (approximately 100 dollars for funeral money in case of the monk’s death, so disposing of the body won’t be too much trouble)

  In addition to all of this gear is what Koun wore when he left home—the standard semi-formal monk’s costume, the layers of which reflect the movement of Buddhism across Asia:

  on top, the rakusu, a much smaller version of the okesa (origin: India)

  beneath that, the wing-sleeved, flowing robes of the jikitotsu (origin: China)

  beneath that, the more form-fitting kimono and jiban (origin: Japan)

  And thus, at any given moment, an American Zen monk undressing and dressing in a cold room pays homage to his lineage.

  Thursday, March 4

  While I wait for my number to be called at the post office, one of the women sitting next to me leans in close and tells a story as a way of practicing her English:

  “When I was child, my mother opened all window and door of our house. It is for spring cleaning. She told me pick up everything off a tatami and put outside. So I do it—even little brown songbird in cage. It sing so happy always, even when I put in driveway next to kotatsu and book and other stuffs. All day long we listen to happy song of bird and cleaned while the sun is moving across sky. A beautiful spring day. After a while, I remember so quiet and peaceful. No more singing. When I pick up stuffs and bring back inside, I saw snake had got inside cage and eating songbird. The green body of snake too fat for going outside the cage. After that we had pet snake. I very sorry for songbird.”

  Some time later, I sit in my office at work, puzzling over my courses for the new school year: Writing, Culture, Debate, Conversation, others. Each topic too big, too weighty to cram into two neat little semesters and once-a-week meetings. Plus I keep thinking about the songbird. Is this a tragedy or a tale of transformation? Is it nothing more than a testament to that Japanese preoccupation with the turning of the seasons? Can any one theme be neatly separated from another? And also: Why is this the third time I have heard this story, always from a different person?

  As if in answer, an explosion of sound erupts from the hallway outside my door: laughter, scuffling, a metallic clanging. Stepping out of my office, I see that the doors lining the hallway are open wide and the teachers are cleaning with near-violence. Arau-sensei, the French teacher who wears a fashionable streak of purple in her short black-and-gray hair, passes by with a broom in hand, greeting me respectively in French, Japanese, and English. And then in Japanese, she says, “You know what they say—clean for spring, and it will snow!”

  To test her theory, I set aside my syllabi, slide open the windows to chill air, and seek out the necessary equipment from the hall closet. How long has it been since I’ve really looked at the state of my office? Stacks of books, student papers, drafts of things unfinished. Dust, cobwebs. Brittle brown leaves beneath my overgrown plants. The carcasses of small, blue-winged insects.

  By the time I return home, I can’t stop cleaning, so I start in on the house. By 2 or 3 a.m., when I finally slip into bed with a dull and righteous ache in the body, I see snow falling behind my eyes and hear nothing. A few hours later, it is dawn and a bird begins to sing.

  Saturday, March 6

  I am walking down the hill from my home in the early morning to catch the bus into town for my first language lesson since winter break, a 5-foot-3-inch pale, sleepy foreigner bundled thickly in sweaters and scarf, hat, and mittens. A group of farmers—each half a head or more shorter than I—greet me with wide-open grins and “Ohayo gozaimasu!” There are three men and four women, all of them surely well into their seventies or older. Their skin is deep brown and wrinkled and they carry their tools across their arched backs and fallen shoulders, the women in wide-brimmed straw hats and mismatched flower prints layered against the chill, the men in baseball caps and old blue and brown samu-e and quilted vests. They wear rubber boots that pat out a slow rhythm as they work their way up the narrow street to the vegetable and rice plots tucked around the university grounds.

  I wish I could chat with them, but their dialect is too far removed from the clean, polite Tokyo Japanese I am learning. I grin and nod and they grin and nod every Saturday morning, and this small offering of human connection is enough to make me profoundly joyful for the ten minutes or so it takes for the bus to come. And when it does come today, I take my ticket and choose a seat next to the window so I can try to name the objects I spot as quickly as they pass beyond the glass: ki (tree), kumo (cloud), otera (temple). But the language is too fast for me, and it slips by before I can ever hope to capture it.

  I remember, some years ago, walking the streets of Kumamoto City on the night of a lunar eclipse, the women coming out of their apartments and teaching me the word for “moon.” This was when I was new to Japan, when I had almost no words to call my own. And me wanting to say the new word, tsuki, afterward so often because it was the one fragment of language I felt I had earned. It was authentic. Now, some words are eclipsing others in my speech and thinking and even in my dreams, what the linguists call “interlanguage.”

  When I enter the YMCA this morning, my teacher from the previous semester asks about Koun, and I tell her: “Yes, my otto is now in otera. Chotto sabishii, but I have my yakimono lessons, my shigoto. Time will pass hayaku, hayaku. I only hope he is not too samui, that he is not too hungry. Shinpai, yes. . . But probably daijobu desu ne.”

  Monday, March 8

  This evening, Stephen, owner of a local language school and my first boss in Japan, picks me up and we drive together to the Tatsuda Center to engage in seated meditation with our unlikely sangha: Kyoko, office worker and avid student of Japanese tea ceremony; Richard, English professor, musician, haiku expert, and one-time member of the ceremonial guard of the Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa; Sakamoto-san, bank clerk and freakishly acrobatic yoga practitioner (this once demonstrated to us all when he twisted himself into a series of impossible shapes as a way to stretch after zazen); and whoever else finds their way to our little weekly zazenkai. Six months or so ago, we chose the Center because it is near enough to all of us that we can more or less manage to get there by 8 p.m. on Monday evenings, and also because it has proven surprisingly difficult to find a temple nearby that offers zazen regularly.

  “Hopefully we’ll get a good crowd tonight,” Stephen says as we drive. His ever-present cowboy hat rests between us and he wears the requisite well-worn jeans. That long hair and beard of a 70’s-era hippie. For as long as I have known him, he has looked like a man out of time. “Has Koun finished with tanga-ryo yet?” he asks.

  “Yes—that is, if all has gone well.” He should officially be unsui now—“clouds and water,” the designation given novice monks. He is expected to be supple enough to flow.

  The parking lot is full when we arrive, and we know the zazen will be interesting. Already commuter trai
ns pass within fifty feet of the building at precisely 8:27 and 8:48 p.m., vibrating its thin walls during our sessions. I remember the terrible jolt of it the first few times we sat together here, the rush of flight-or-fight adrenaline yanking me from my meditative aim. There was an instinctual sense of indignation: How dare this beast of a train intrude! But later, an appreciation of sorts arose, and I embraced that common advice: Do not resent the world moving around one as bothersome distraction; it is simply that which arises naturally, like the internal noise of thought, of memory, of narrative. Acknowledge it and let it go.

  Sometimes we are given opportunities to practice this concept in unexpected ways. The ever-changing night guard occasionally flicks on the room’s lights with the exterior switch, thinking perhaps that we’re unaware of their availability. One of us will get up quietly, slide open the fusuma, and turn them off again. And more recently, some well-meaning soul has acquired the habit of passing by our room and, thinking no one inside, switching off the heat we have paid for with 100-yen coins.

  Tonight we slip off our shoes and enter the eight-mat tatami room while the jovial laughter of drunken partygoers one room over vibrates the paper fusuma that separates us. Across the hall, a karate lesson is in full swing, each fierce kiai shout echoing around us. I cover the low table with a cloth and light two candles, then set out the bell and ringer and travel clock. It’s our first night without Koun, and though I’m to take his place as bell-ringer, I can’t remember how many times to strike it. I settle on three slow taps to begin, one to signal kinhin (walking meditation), three to start zazen again, one to finish.

  The neighboring party ends abruptly while we are still sitting, and the fusuma dividing our rooms slides open to the width of a doorway. We hear something about “cleaning up” and the partygoers begin stumbling through the gap with their cushions and folded-up tables. And then there is an audible sucking in of breath as they realize that the darkness is filled with silent, unmoving people. The rapid-fire “Sumimasen! Sumimasen!” begins as they back out, followed by apparent confusion when we don’t answer. This happens four more times before I hear one partygoer explaining loudly to the others that there appears to be a group of mostly foreign people doing zazen in the adjacent room.

  “Bikkuri shimashita!” (It surprised me!), says one woman, giggling loudly.

  The train roars past, letting us know that we’ve got twelve minutes to go.

  Tuesday, March 9

  In pottery class, two semi-dry bowls from last week sit beneath a damp cloth, waiting to be trimmed and smoothed into the shape that will be fired and made solid in the kiln. I settle into my seat and unveil the first. Sensei gestures at the hard metal wheel, reminding me to spill a few droplets of water over it and lay down a circle of protective green rubber—this will serve as cushioning for the delicate top edge of the bowls. I follow her instructions and then lift the first bowl with two hands, turn it upside down, and lower it onto the green rubber. The first challenge is to center the bowl on the wheel—no easy feat, but it is necessary for trimming the walls to equal thickness. I switch on the power and press my foot cautiously against the pedal. Running a fingertip along one side of the clay as it wobbles and spins, I squint and try to gauge where contact is lost. Again and again, I quickly stop the wheel and ease the bowl into the place where I sensed the gap. But my perception is skewed by the wheel’s spin and by my slow reflexes. This process always takes me too long.

  Nishida-sensei sighs, reaches across the table, and slaps the hard clay twice as it whirls, sending it into position. The wobble from before is gone.

  I stop the wheel and look at her in disbelief. “Arigato.”

  Sensei waves away my thanks, and I begin to affix fresh bits of rolled clay along the edges of the bowl to keep it in place when I begin to cut away the excess with a potter’s trimming tool—a loop of sharpened iron embedded in a slender length of wood.

  I feel Sensei’s disapproving eyes on me as I work. “Cut more!” she says. “More, more, more, more!” Against the instinct of caution, I carve away thick swaths. When I finally lift the bowl off the wheel it is light enough. Sensei plucks it from my fingers, satisfied.

  With the second bowl I am not so lucky. Again, I am brave in my cutting but fail, in the last moment, by slicing clean through the bottom. I spend a good portion of the rest of the class making repairs with wet new clay—a knotted scar against smooth curves.

  I finish with a little time to spare and Sensei, perhaps feeling sorry for me, gives me a brush and some off-white slip to apply as decoration. I try for the beautiful wabi-sabi “elegant imperfection” of Japanese design, and instead create something that looks as if it has been spit upon.

  “Eh??” says Sensei. “Did you do that on purpose?”

  Wednesday, March 10

  At last, it is beginning to smell like spring outside—earthy and organic. I open the screen doors and windows of the townhouse to take in the scent, and from the field beyond the line of trees out back comes the joyously amplified sounds of a chorus of singing chipmunks. It is the annual kindergarten happyokai performance practice. In the gaps between leaves, I can just make out little bodies in coordinated primary colors being led in a series of dance steps the children have been perfecting for months—their faces, if I could see them, no doubt restrained in this rare moment of deep concentration.

  In some ways it will be like this for the unsui in the monastery: awkward at first, each movement scripted, contrived. Eventually, the body will learn the motion, will become the motion so effortlessly that actor and action cease to be separate, a living dance from waking until sleep. And the many monks becoming, in essence, a single body in motion.

  I can almost hear Koun now: “All of this formality. I want to be a samu-e and rakusu monk, not a jikitotsu and kesa monk. Bowing at the right time is not the point. Zazen is the point.”

  What kind of monk would I be? Formal? Casual? Would I embrace both versions of self—or neither?

  Sunday, March 14

  Sunday morning in Japan is early Saturday evening in Alaska, the previous day. A phone call, then, is a kind of travel through both space and time. I am thinking this while swiveling in my chair in my tiny bedroom-cum-office, trying to find a way into writing, when my mother calls, happy because she has had an epiphany about painting: “I just stopped worrying and started painting. I stopped being so attached to it coming out right.”

  She describes her still life: a small orange pumpkin, a potted ivy, two cloth-bound mystery books from her childhood, a glass block from a thrift shop in Anchorage, and an old bronze Buddha that used to sit on top of her Baptist mother’s bookshelf and then, later, the family TV set. Behind this unlikely altar and to the side, the blue-tinged palette of winter in Alaska captured within big picture windows, the sky meeting the mountains and ocean as if all were frozen together into one great sheet of ice. (And, yes, my mother there, too—with features that are mine but also not mine—looking out over it all.) I am seeing/feeling this spacious landscape, even though I am also seeing/feeling a not-yet-put-away Japanese futon on a woven straw floor, delicate paper walls, the yellow palette of a wintry Japan outside, the condensed scale of rooms and houses and people and rice paddies and stores in the neighborhood around me.

  While we talk, a huge blue-black crow swoops past my window screaming, “Kaugh-kaugh! Kaugh-kaugh!” Both my mother and I suck in our breath at the same time.

  “My God,” says my mother, “was that a bird?”

  Thursday, March 18

  This evening, I meet up at a restaurant with Jennifer, my Canadian coworker (who also happens to be my neighbor and the only other non-Japanese at the university), and two of the Shokei office ladies, Yuki and Tomomi, for a private going-away party. The two young Shokei graduates have greatly helped us in navigating our daily struggles at the school and beyond. Unfortunately, their three-year term is nearly finished, and they will have to take on new jobs elsewhere. This is the typical cycle for many
workers in Japan.

  “So,” says Jennifer, after we have taken the customary photographs of the food on our table, “tell us all the stuff you couldn’t tell us before but can now that you’re leaving.”

  What follows is a rundown of various curious characters on campus. Neither I nor Jennifer is sure who is who, but what we do learn is this:

  (1)At least one teacher and one staff member can’t keep their mouths shut if you tell them something—anything (sometimes handy, sometimes not).

  (2)Someone in the library will gleefully slice your car’s tires if your vehicle registration has not been properly put on file in the office.

  (3)Fifteen years or so ago, a then-young teacher married one of his students, and nobody talks about it openly even though everybody still holds it in the back of their minds as being a noteworthy scandal.

  (4)One of the men in the office has a problem keeping his hands to himself but nobody can do much about it, because that’s just how things are.

  We also learn that

  (1)Everybody hates the teacher we most like.

  (2)Everybody adores the teacher who we think is kind of odd.

  Sunday, March 21

  I spend most of today driving around to various stores with Satomi, my long-time friend (and current Japanese teacher at the YMCA). As we drive, Satomi tells me that one of her British friends with whom she roomed in graduate school in England and, later, Australia, came upon some cheap tickets at the last minute and plans to tour Japan over the next couple of weeks.

  “She’ll stay with me for a few days. But what should I show her? She says she’s up for anything.”

  “It’s such a shame that all of the usual places are so clichéd,” I lament. What would capture the “real” Japan for a visitor? What captures it for me?