My Year of Dirt and Water

by Tracy Franz

  When the drum sounds, we all rise and move to the Dharma Hall for a ceremony—the monks bowing, chanting, and offering incense—while the camera crew and I bear witness. Through it all, I am observing Koun in this new role, his seamless movement through what now must be becoming commonplace to him. I don’t know if he has changed in any dramatic way. But there is possibly a grace that I’ve never seen before. A new way of holding the body. As he moves among the other ten or twelve monks, I’m not sure that I would immediately distinguish him from the others, except that he is a full head or more taller.

  Later, during the break, I rest on the steps outside the kitchen watching from a distance as Koun is interviewed at length by the NHK reporter. They look, I think, so very far away.

  Tuesday, September 14

  It’s pottery Tuesday, and it feels like ages since I’ve touched clay. As I slide open the glass door of my teacher’s house, I am greeted by Sensei, Megumi-san, Yoko-san, and Baba-san, all unusually on time this evening. “Ohisashiburi!” they shout collectively. Sensei pours me a cup of tea and asks how my mother is, and when I say she is well, the other ladies proceed to ask about Alaska, the questions coming in rapid succession. When I take too much time to answer, Yoko-san translates.

  I sigh. “It’s not the questions that are difficult. I just can’t seem to catch the right words for what I want to say tonight. . . .”

  “Oh,” says Sensei in Japanese, “so you forgot all of your Japanese while you were away! Tsk!”

  We settle into making pots, and working at a steady and semi-confident rate, I manage four passable cups of nearly equal size. “Jozu,” says Sensei, as she leans into the table, inspecting my work.

  “Yes,” I say in fast English. “It was easier tonight for some reason. I mean, I just sat down and made tea cups. But shouldn’t I feel more artistic? More inspired or something?”

  “Wow, you really did forget Japanese!” replies Sensei.

  The other ladies laugh while Yoko-san translates her version of my lament.

  “They’re just cups,” says Sensei, looking at me quizzically.

  Friday, September 17

  A postcard in the mail today from Koun—I’ve been given permission by Jisen-san to stay at Shogoji over the long holiday weekend. This way, I’ll get a chance to better experience what the monks experience; plus I’ll be able to start making my rakusu for the upcoming lay ceremony.

  During the lunch hour, I peruse one of the tiny cloth shops that I’ve spotted a thousand times in passing but never once visited. I’m searching for Koun’s suggested first-time rakusu cloth: mid-weight dark blue or green cotton. An old woman, the proprietor of the shop, greets me and begins pulling out every kind of blue and green, some of it tucked beneath bolts of other fabrics. “What’s it for?” she asks.

  When I say “rakusu,” I see that I need to explain: “Bukkyo no mono desu.” (It’s a Buddhist thing.)

  “Aaaa . . .” she says knowingly, as if my explanation was adequate.

  Finally, with cloth in hand, I’m driving back to school when Koun calls from the Shogoji phone. He tells me that Jisen-san is now concerned about my visit because

  (1)I will distract the monks,

  (2)It will hurt Koun, and

  (3)It will be too challenging for me.

  So, I may only stay one night . . . or maybe not at all. She will decide after I arrive Saturday. “I guess this is a test-run,” says Koun.

  “What? Surely she recognizes that we’re adults? We know what we’ve gotten ourselves into. We’re not going to behave badly!”

  “I know, I know. I’m not sure what’s going on. Probably we don’t get to know.”

  Saturday, September 18

  I’m driving up the mountain to Shogoji after my morning Japanese class in the city, my mind grappling with the many challenges of a foreign grammar, when I must suddenly negotiate the one-car road and sheer cliff by backing down when a gray van approaches from above. I’m flustered by the time I actually reach the parking lot, but Koun’s smiling face is the first I see as I lift my eyes to the top of the stairway and it brings a sigh of relief. “You’re just in time for some weeding,” he says, taking my bag and handing me a pair of gardening gloves. “Check in with Aigo-san over there—he’ll tell you what to do.” And then a little quieter: “Probably shouldn’t work near each other because of—whatever it is.”

  Aigo-san instructs me to pull delicate green shoots from around big stones. “But NOT the moss—moss is very precious.”

  “Why is it precious?”

  “It takes a very long time to grow.”

  How unfortunate to be fast-growing, I think. On the other end of the courtyard, across a sea of pebbles, a pair of monks kneel over their work. They wear their requisite uniforms—black work samu-e and thin white towels tied around their heads to halt sweat and sunburn.

  A little while later, Jisen-san emerges from the main building and instructs me to attend to the wilting flowers throughout the temple. Feeling like a wilting flower myself, I am grateful to get out of the sun. However, Jisen-san’s manner is especially stern and brusque today, and the seemingly very simple responsibility assigned makes me nervous: I am to collect the many vases in the monastery, discard the old flowers, arrange fresh flowers and greenery, and then return all of the newly filled vases to their exact original positions throughout the buildings. “You must take vases from one area at a time—so you remember,” says Jisen-san.

  “If the placement is important, why not take them one-by-one?”

  “No—too slow.”

  After my first attempt, Jisen-san is not pleased. On one altar, I’ve placed two pairs of vases in opposite positions. She reverses the vases, then beckons me to stand a few paces in front of the altar. “Tracy-san, look. Do you see? He is a face. You can’t move the parts. He will not be the same face. He will be a completely different man.”

  On the next attempt, I pause to really look at each altar and imagine the distinct features on its surface. The eyes, the nose, the mouth. When I put the vessels back, I am confident of the placement. Jisen-san finds me again while I am gathering more greenery outside. “Tracy-san, come.” I trail after her, this tiny and fierce bald woman in cheerful purple-pink samu-e, as we retrace my work. “Not like this—like this,” she says, moving each vase just slightly to the left or right. “You must remember the face exactly. It is important.”

  I sigh as she walks away. Is it possible that, in my carelessness, I have altered the character of a monastery?

  After informal dinner in the evening, I sit in my room, waiting. I haven’t seen much of Koun all day—not that that is too surprising, given Jisen-san’s expressed concern. I scribble in my notebook. Consider the kanji I’m supposed to be learning. Watch as a black spider the size of my hand slips through a crack in the fusuma. The wife of Koun’s teacher once told me not to worry about spiders in the house—“They look scary but really they are lucky; they kill bad things.” But still . . . I jump at a knock at the door. It is Koun, standing outside with a towel over his arm. “I heated the bath,” he says. “Ladies go first tonight.”

  As we walk along the open corridor in the twilight, mist moves over the mountains. “I can’t believe how beautiful it is here—like being in a painting or a dream or a scene from the past. It’s another world.”

  “It is another world. I’m happy you’re able to visit, even if it’s brief.”

  “How long can I stay? Did she tell you?”

  “One night. No more.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know.”

  “Lock the door to the bath. There’ll be trouble if one of the monks walks in on you.”

  “Okay.”

  After the bath, I return to my room to wait for the final zazen bell of the evening. It’s raining outside now, a soft patter against the roof. Some of the monks are engaged in shodo practice, and as I step out of my room into the open-air walkway, I see them far acr
oss the courtyard, beyond the wide-open doors of the generator-lit informal eating area, leaning over ink and paper. All else is pure, disorienting blackness. Frogs and insects sing from the darkness.

  “T.” I startle at Koun’s whisper behind me. I turn and see nothing. There is just the gentle tug and the brief, wordless kiss. “Okay,” he says, stepping back so that I wonder if this small transgression was only in my mind. The bell rings. I flick on my flashlight, and we make our cautious way to the sodo to join the others for evening zazen.

  Sunday, September 19

  2:55 a.m. I rise just before the patter of a monk’s feet running the length of the hallway outside, a high-pitched bell rattling in his hands. And the low, heartbeat-like taiko drum felt before it is heard. Last night, I was in and out of sleep as heavy rain fell. There was also the sound—and sting—of mosquitoes taking cover in my room. Where was that lucky spider when I needed him?

  I dress quickly in the thin beam of a flashlight, step outside to wash my face, and then proceed to my cushion to sit. There is a lot of rustling-cloth movement behind me—I keep raising my hands in gassho because I think maybe it is Jisen-san doing morning greeting, but of course I can’t turn around to check. At the completion of the session, we move together to the Dharma Hall. Koun is the doan for the ceremony. I know by the sound of his voice—loud, full, clear. He sits somewhere in the shadows, hitting the wooden block in time with the chanting. The Heart Sutra. The lineage. Layers of sound filling a room. The black-robed monks all in semi-darkness, the few lamps failing to illuminate much of anything, and then morning light begins to trickle in. At last, the ceremony ends in a flourish of taiko drumming. I feel that we all have just now woken up.

  During breakfast, I recall Koun’s reminder that I’m expected to finish everything that I take, and to eat very quickly. Unfortunately, I put too many ume in my bowl because I can’t identify much in the poor lighting of this room. I swiftly swallow my salty-sour meal of rice and pickled plums and am then led to my first chore for samu, the work periods that fill out a monk’s day. My task is to clean the wood floor of a long hallway. Koun provides me with a white towel and shows me how it is done. “You get the cloth a little damp like this. Fold it, place it on the floor, put both hands on it, stick your butt in the air, and run.” He scoots a few feet down the wood floor to demonstrate. “The trick is to balance your weight between your hands and your feet—too much pressure either way and you’ll lose your balance.” And then he’s off to attend to his own chores, leaving me to contemplate the hallway that seems to be getting longer and longer as I stutter-slide along it.

  When the bell rings the cleaning period ends, and I see the first few arrivals for the sewing group—the fukudenkai—walking up toward the main building. Among them is Otani-sensei, a priest and our soon-to-be sewing teacher. I remember her well from the international ango last year. She was not ordained under the Soto sect, and her teacher has forbidden her from attending Soto events. Still, she comes to Shogoji on the sly to teach people how to sew the traditional Buddha robes—rakusu and okesa.

  Under Otani-sensei’s guidance, we slide open closet doors and produce long, low tables, zabuton, zafu, and well-stocked plastic sewing boxes. Together, we quickly turn one of the monastery’s back rooms into a suitable space for the work ahead of us.

  Suddenly Sakamoto-san, the sometimes-attendee of the Tatsuda zazenkai and one of the lay regulars of Shogoji, arrives, sweaty and defeated-looking. Otani-sensei chides him for his lateness. “I biked here,” he explained. “I didn’t realize how far away it is.”

  “You biked—from Kumamoto City?” she asks. “Famiri-boi, are you crazy?”

  “Did she call him . . . Family-boy?” I whisper at Koun across a table we are adjusting.

  “He works at Family Bank,” he explains with a smile.

  After a brief pre-sewing ceremony, Otani-sensei and Koun move around the room, helping everyone measure out the pieces of cloth to cut and sew for the mini Buddha robes.

  Koun shows me the length of cloth he’s been sewing as an example. Each stitch is perfectly spaced. “You have to angle the needle just so. The stitches are said to resemble bits of rice.”

  “Wow—that seems very . . . precise.”

  “As Jisen-san says, this practice will make you straighten pictures on walls.”

  “It makes you have OCD?”

  He laughs. “Well I don’t know, but it does make you pay attention.”

  Before I leave for the day, Sakamoto-san brings his pack to my room. I give him my bug spray, spare flashlight, Kayumi Baibai (Itch-Be-Gone), and extra purified water. I also warn him about the fierce mosquitoes.

  “What do you do?”

  Smack! I kill one on my arm in reply.

  “We’re in a temple!—You can’t do that!”

  “Oh—right. Sorry about that.”

  Sakamoto-san laughs, but I notice too that he just gently waves the annoying insects away instead of harming them. I am, as always, a terrible Buddhist.

  Monday, September 20

  It’s a holiday today, and the neighbors have been arguing all morning—the volume of their voices, if not clarity in meaning, is carried through the paper-thin walls of the townhouse and through open windows. I, meanwhile, am standing at my kitchen table, working a knot of stubborn clay. Outside, a bright line of laundry flutters beneath a darkening sky. When the rain comes, the shouting pauses, and I expect a frantic Jennifer or her husband to come tumbling out in plastic house slippers to gather the bright flags of cloth. But there is only a rising drumroll as water falls and falls and falls to earth.

  This evening, we all forgo zazen at Tatsuda Center. Only Stephen and I can meet—Richard is too busy—and it is beginning to seem excessive to make a trip out for only two people. Instead, I sit in the evening by myself at home and then watch the moon light up the trees. Around 11 p.m. Satomi calls: “I’m so sorry, but . . . can you pick me up at the bus stop? I got off work late and my mother can’t collect me.”

  “I’ll be right there!” My voice is just a little too loud. I wonder if she noticed the eagerness? Such a lonely day. And the neighbors’ wet laundry still shifting along a line in the darkness.

  Tuesday, September 21

  Sensei canceled pottery this week for a family trip. I feel restless after work. I want my routines.

  There’s a call from Tatsuda Center—the woman very angry and incoherent, and I’m having a terrible time understanding why. All I understand is “you didn’t come” and “money.”

  “Okay, okay, I can come now and pay you the 500 yen.” This, apparently is the wrong answer, as she gets angrier and more incoherent.

  I call Richard and he sorts it out for me: “It seems that the watchman stayed at the Center the other night just for us—when none of us went.”

  “But there are always other groups in the building when we’re sitting. And don’t they have open hours during that time?”

  “Yes, well maybe nobody was there this one time, or there is some other reason. . . . We don’t get to know.”

  “I’m never going to win, am I?”

  “No. There is no winning here.”

  Wednesday, September 22

  During after-school seminar, one of the girls in the Art program, my homeroom student, gives me a beautiful shodo gift—my name written out in elegant katakana on rice paper. “Don’t tell my teacher or I’ll be in trouble.”

  “It’s beautiful—why will you be in trouble?”

  “I’m still a student. I’m only allowed to practice.”

  Perfect for me, I think as I tack this unsigned art to my office wall—a gift from one student to another.

  Thursday, September 23

  Today is another holiday, and Satomi and I are driving into the city on a mission to locate okesa-worthy dark blue cloth for Koun. My previous sewing lesson has given me a better idea of what is needed for the project. The difficulty is that the cloth must be of a natural fiber, not too heavy or thin,
nothing too flashy. Ideally, it should have a broken weave. I explain the desired aesthetic to Satomi: “Back in the day, monks made okesa using only found cloth—rags from the garbage, or the cloth from corpses. They’d dye it all one color and then sew it together.”

  “So we’re trying to find something that looks like it’s been roughed up a bit? Or . . . died in?”

  “Yes, that’s the idea.”

  Satomi proceeds to explain in detail my peculiar request to a clerk at one of the better cloth stores downtown. A few moments later, the clerk produces a possibility: a super-soft broken-weave linen in indigo.

  “Hmm. Satomi, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know if a corpse would wear it, but maybe it will work for Koun’s purposes.”

  Satomi and I part ways, and I drive solo out to Kikuchi. Brilliant red spider lilies, the higanbana—known to old Japanese women as the “flowers of death,” according to Satomi—trace along the edges of green rice fields.

  The monks are attending to their daily chores when I arrive, so I only get to see Koun for a moment (he loves the cloth!) before I am led to the back “sewing room” where Kenpu-san, Jisen-san’s son, is working diligently on an okesa.

  “Does this mean you are planning to be ordained?” I ask him.

  He shrugs. “I’m not planning on it, but I’m here. Maybe it is simply the thing that will happen.”

  Saturday, September 25

  “You’re always rushing off to somewhere after class. I think you must have a secret life.” This from Chris, one of my American classmates from the YMCA. “You sure you don’t want to come to lunch with us?”