My Year of Dirt and Water

by Tracy Franz

  Sensei doesn’t answer. Instead, she puts a palm-sized flat wooden kote, a shaping tool, in my hands, leans down, and pushes my foot down hard on the wheel pedal. The clay form whips around crazily. “Let’s make a vase,” she says again. And when I don’t do whatever it is she expects me to do, she nudges me aside in her usual way and takes my seat. The kote (now in her hands) disappears into my beautiful cup, stretching it wide. Then she sets the tool down and begins to pull the clay up and in—a hollow ball. Finally, she lifts the slender opening into a short neck, flaring out the top lip with her fingertips. “Okay, your turn,” she says, rising from my seat. “Begin with a cup.” And so I do—one perfect cup after another is destroyed by my belabored attempts to turn them into vases.

  In the last minutes of class, I lean back from my work to behold one particularly lopsided Dr. Seussian creation as it spins sadly on the wheel.

  “What are you doing?” scolds Sensei.

  “Waiting for Typhoon 22 to come and blow it away.”

  Thursday, October 7

  After the day’s classes, I am slow to leave work and so when I arrive home the shift to twilight has already begun. Still, I know I need to get out and walk tonight—a necessary purifying of the mind. Fifteen or twenty minutes into my journey, an ordinary and known landscape becomes alien as light drains away. I walk slower and slower, unsure of my path through a barely lit old neighborhood. Time, like my gait, lags and I grow accustomed to pixelated gray vision. I begin to see that the dark is populated. A slender figure drifts cautiously by on a creaky old bike, full plastic bags swinging slowly from each handlebar. A cat or some other creature races past my feet. Tiny bats—what else could they be at this hour?—tumble through the air.

  After a while, I realize that I am completely lost in a place I have been exploring every evening for two years. At the moment I recognize exactly where I am, a swirl of black cloth emerges from an iron gate to my right and then I sense-see a priest with his back to me as he shuts the door behind him. Having just emerged from light, he must be seeing even less than I do. I know I’ll startle him when he turns. And when he does—both of us jump. I bow and gassho, and he—a second or two after—mirrors the gesture before moving beyond my range of vision, black robes disappearing into black night.

  Which one of us, I wonder, was bowing to a ghost?

  Saturday, October 9

  I am staring out the window on the bus this morning, watching passively as both time and place slip by, when the bus slows for the light and I spot the inexplicable: maybe eighty high school kids in uniform poised over bicycles in the empty parking lot of a closed manga shop. They are all near-motionless and neatly spaced and pointed in the same direction—the effect is a kind of living sculpture of youth in repetition. As the bus starts to pull away, I scan the passengers around me, but none appears to have noticed the unusual scene. They are looking down politely, or they are sleeping. Sometimes I feel that no one sees anything here. Or, in contrast, they see everything that I do not see.

  When I return home in the afternoon, there is a message from Koun on my answering machine: Jisen-san would like me to drive him and Aigo-san to the ferry terminal, as both are being transferred to Shikoku after the ordination ceremony tomorrow. My heart rises and then sinks.

  Sunday, October 10

  As I prepare for going to Shogoji, I have a nagging sense that I’ve forgotten something important. Ah well, I think as I toss my things into the car, I’m sure it will come to me. And it does—just as I’m pulling out of my parking spot, I see that the gas gauge is hovering near empty and, unfortunately, nothing beyond the ubiquitous convenience stores are open at this hour on a Sunday.

  I repark the car, consider my options—take the risk, or wait a couple of hours for the gas stations to open. For Koun and I, today is our last chance to see each other in who knows how long. I think of him, up at dawn, certain that I’ll be there soon to greet him. I think of myself, sitting alone in my kitchen, sipping tea and waiting for time to pass. It’s mostly downhill into the valley, I tell myself as a kind of pep talk. It’s coasting, really.

  As I drive, my eyes flick from road to gauge and back again. I begin to imagine scenarios of being stranded in some lonely spot, a naive American girl with lousy local language skills. I start to work out stories—some of extreme inconvenience, others terrifying. I wonder if everyone has such a violent mind?

  Finally, I enter the temple grounds on what, I can only imagine, are fumes. My heart thumps like I’ve just run the race of a lifetime. I’m breathless as I step out of the car.

  “What’s the matter?” asks Koun as I bow into the temple doorway.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “You’ve got wild eyes.”

  “This is stupid, but I’ve spent the whole drive being terrified that I’d run out of gas. I started cycling through all these possibilities in my mind. Now everything’s okay, and I can’t shake the feeling. I’m a wreck.”

  “I’m sorry—I know that’s a bad feeling, but I do think that tank is endless.” He leads me to the dim, shadow-filled kitchen, and points to a ceramic bowl filled with just-cooked sesame. “Here—grind this. That should take your mind off it.” The bowl is warm in my hands, the pestle awkward.

  “It’s a slow circular motion. Crush the shells against the ridges in the bowl to release the flavor.”

  Working the pestle over the sesame, I clutch at a lost metaphor. “Isn’t there some kind of Japanese proverb about this? Something about relationships?”

  “Yes—there’s a process involved. It takes hard work and attention.”

  “That’s lovely. Probably a lot of truth there, too.” I contemplate the grains of crushed sesame, now fine and delicate as sand, and the smell rising earthy and delicious from the bowl.

  Aigo-san slips in the door behind us, collecting things for tea. “Ah, you are ‘grinding goma’? I believe this phrase means ‘brown-noser’ or ‘ass-kisser’ in English, yes?” He exits as Koun and I stifle our laughter.

  “So much for beautiful Japanese proverbs,” says Koun.

  “Oh no, it’s great—two versions of the same thing. I think I must now dedicate my life to grinding goma.”

  “You would make a good monk.”

  After our collective meal, I join the fukudenkai while the monks leave us to prepare for today’s ordination ceremony. Everyone seems giddier than usual. Sakamoto-san is in particularly good form, offering a running deadpan commentary on our various failings as vestment makers. “Ah, Otani-sensei. Tracy’s holding the needle different from me . . . am I doing it wrong?” And this is always followed by a firm and detailed correction by Otani-sensei. Sakamoto-san circles around the room, getting everyone in trouble in this way. I sense that Otani-sensei is completely charmed by whatever it is Sakamoto-san is doing, even though her demeanor is serious, unsmiling.

  Shortly after sewing in the afternoon, the members of the fukudenkai gather in neat rows on either side of the big altar while monks flow like sunlit specters in their long dark robes, preparing for the ceremony. Jisen-san sits in a raised seat near the base of the altar, a tiny and severe feminine Buddha. When she begins to chant, the sound is as lovely as it is eerie. Kenpu-san enters in his white under-kimono and kneels over a bowl of clear water while two monks run razors over his scalp, saving one small clump of hair up top for Jisen-san to scrape away in one final symbolic motion. The monks then dress him in the black robes of a priest and he bows to formally receive the okesa he’s been so dutifully sewing in the back room. With this knotted over his robes, the transition is complete: Kenpu-san becomes “Senpo-san,” and he is now officially a Soto Zen monk.

  In the hallway afterward I catch him examining his new haircut in the glass reflection of some framed photos, his hands moving over bare scalp as the photographed participants of years past look on. Without the hair, he is all cheekbones and eyes. Deerlike, I think.

  “How does it feel?”

  “The same—but different
.”

  “It must be a little awkward to have your mother as your teacher.”

  “Yes. My therapist is going to kill me.”

  ~

  Koun, Aigo-san, and I begin our drive to Kokura in Kitakyushu to make the 10 p.m. ferry. It is the same ferry I delivered Koun to last March, when he left. From there, the two of them will journey on together to Zuioji, the main temple in Shikoku. Now is my big chance to be “alone” with Koun, “but with a chaperone,” as Aigo-san cheerfully points out.

  As I drive, Aigo-san and Koun talk animatedly about the day-to-day politics of temple life. I understand very little, but am happy to be immersed in their company. I am transported, for these brief hours, to the many road trips taken with Koun and Bryan—usually between Seattle and Montana, to visit their parents. Two brothers revisiting a family landscape that only they can understand.

  In Kokura, in the remaining time before the ferry will leave port, we search for a restaurant. As we walk the streets, I am flanked on either side by the two foreign monks. “I’m beginning to feel very important,” I say. “It must look as though you two are my bodyguards!” Indeed, passersby are staring more at me than at the monks.

  At last we spot a trusty favorite Indian food chain restaurant, Nanaak. We order several spicy curries, garlic naan the size of elephant ears, thick mango lassi. “These flavors must be outside of temple regulations,” I chide.

  “In Japan, a thing that is not seen is a thing that did not happen,” says Aigo-san.

  When the food arrives, they devour it at the speed to which they’ve grown accustomed. Two monks who’ve become thin as bamboo poles. I lean back into the booth and sip my lassi as the food disappears.

  “The Hindu traditionally said mantra when preparing meals,” says Aigo-san, now sated. “It is made with God’s love.” Before we rise to leave, the turbaned chef comes out and bows to us and thanks us in Indian-accented Japanese, a kind of punctuation to Aigo-san’s comment.

  At last, I must say farewell to Koun at the ferry parking lot in the dark and the rain. Aigo-san stands some paces away, allowing us this space. “I feel that I’m always saying good-bye to you.”

  “I know, T. I’m sorry.”

  As I am driving home, I wonder if what Jisen-san said a little while ago was right. Seeing each other is too hard. Maybe today was a lesson for us.

  Tuesday, October 12

  It is a drowsy busy and not-busy day—finals are scheduled for the entire school, and I am slated to co-proctor additional exams for professors with particularly large classes. Overall, there seems to be a collective sense of discomfort. Between sessions, both teachers and students complain of testing fatigue and many are sick with minor respiratory ailments, perhaps due to the recent dramatic change in weather. After a couple periods, my eyes grow lazy and inevitably settle on one student, who then feels my gaze, looks up, and we both startle and look away. It is after one of these moments, while assisting with the final class of the day, that I look up above students’ heads to a faint line of English printed on the wall clock there: The stream of silent silky time makes you feel graceful. The text is set beneath the image of a fluffy bunny in a field of pink-and-green flowers. A surreal and unexpected cuteness. And then, as if in response to this observation, the grandmotherly professor for whom I am proctoring begins pacing around the room, patting each young woman on the head affectionately—each pat a slow tick on the clock.

  In the evening, there is a lot of sympathy from the pottery ladies about Koun having to go up to Shikoku. “It’s harder when he’s farther away, isn’t it.”

  Wednesday, October 13

  In pottery class, I sit down before my lump of fresh clay, take three deep breaths, and decide to get it right. An hour and a half later, Sensei scolds me as the walls of my lovely and delicate vase fold inward, collapsing. “Abunai! Too much water! Too slow! You need to work carefully AND quickly!”

  I cut away the failed form, and Sensei stands over me as I begin the second, barking out orders for each stage: “Not so tall to start! Push down! Pull to the side to form the bottom! Pull the sides up! Thinner! No—thinner! Use the kote to make a round shape! Now, make a waist! Make a lip!” After ten minutes of this, I complete a passable little vase. I also feel as if I’ve finished a race.

  “Good,” she says. “Do it like that every time.”

  Thursday, October 14

  It’s actually cold this morning—I can feel it in my bones, and it’s more difficult than usual to leave the warmth that has gathered in my nest of bedding during sleep. I ascend cold stairs, enter a cold kitchen, flick on the portable heater. There is the whoosh of the pilot light and the smell of kerosene. Already, I can feel the grumble in my belly, the approach of what the Japanese call “the winter appetite.” I know my breakfast of miso soup and rice will taste unusually rich and delicious.

  Before leaving for work, I rummage through closets to find thick winter blankets and then hang them on the laundry pole outside to freshen in the air and sun. The day will grow considerably warmer, but I’ll appreciate the extra weight of this bedding in the cooling nights ahead. There will be no extra body in this room this winter, no human furnace flaming beside me. I think of the bare feet and hands and heads of the monks at the monastery—that required exposure. I think of how they sleep at night, nothing more than a single futon folded over them.

  I must remember to send Koun more underlayers soon.

  Saturday, October 16

  When I meet Mimaki-san and Tsuda-san at the Budokan for karate practice, we spend the entire session trying to re-create a complex kata that we all had begun to learn just before Koun left for the monastery.

  “We watched the DVD of Chinen-sensei, Koun’s teacher, over and over. But it’s just too fast,” Mimaki says. “I can’t catch the last bit—even when I watch it in slow-motion. Maybe like this?” He begins the kata, hesitating before moving his body into each new stance.

  “It’s close—but something’s not right,” I note. “I remember seeing the full version so many times, but I didn’t learn it myself. Hmmm. Maybe it’s more like this?” I demonstrate my version, failing miserably.

  We simply do not have the right feel, that body-memory. We haven’t earned it yet. If we were better students, we would practice what we already know instead of moving ahead of ourselves, thirsting for exciting newness.

  Sunday, October 17

  I am late this morning to the sewing group at Shogoji, somehow getting it in my head that I need to arrive at 9 a.m. and not 8:30. Unfortunately, this seemingly insignificant error means that I must do the sewing sutra by myself, and not follow (mumble) along with the fukudenkai members as I usually do. While others begin their work around me, I kneel before the small altar with sutra book in hand and begin stumbling over syllables.

  Sakamoto-san walks up to me and considers my reverent posture. “Tracy-san, what are you doing?”

  “Um, the sewing sutra.”

  “You sound terrible.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “You Japanese really need to learn about American sarcasm.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I was being culturally insensitive.”

  I expect a joke from him in return (surely he is always joking?), but instead he sits down next to me and begins to chant in a loud, clear voice. I follow along, mumbling in my usual way, and am grateful for his help. We return to the main room together, my face red with shame, no doubt. I feel as if I’ve just copied someone’s homework.

  I settle into my sewing, then, but immediately see that something is not quite right. Otani-sensei confirms that I’ve mismeasured many sections of my rakusu, sewing each piece neatly together a precise quarter inch out of alignment. “You’ll have to start over. There’s no other way,” she says. And so I spend my afternoon pulling out the threads before re-measuring and beginning again. When it’s time to pack up for lunch, I’m more behind than when I started some da
ys ago.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “Come to my house next weekend, with Famiri-boi. I will help you both.”

  During the noon meal, there are many unknown faces at the table—new monks from Zuioji. They fill the seats left behind by Koun and Aigo-san as if it has always been this way.

  As we walk to the sewing room afterward, the big temple bell begins to ring outside. The monks, usually so careful in their movements, startle around us, looking to each other in confusion. A peek through the window reveals a couple and two young boys playing with the big bell in the courtyard.

  Sakamoto-san steps next to me and explains, “In a temple, all of the bells have a special meaning.”

  “What do these bells mean?”

  “Tourists are here.”

  Tuesday, October 19

  The rain is a low rumble on the roof of the pottery studio as I struggle again and again to right the little upended vase that refuses to stay fixed in the mouth of the slice of PVC spinning on the wheel before me. How am I supposed to trim this awkward thing? For a second or two, I think I’ve got it all under control, and then it rolls around like a ball bearing in that socket of plastic, despite the thumbprints of scaffolding I’ve applied where plastic meets pot. Each time this happens, I stop the wheel, right the vase, and recheck it with the level. I can feel Sensei’s constant disapproving eye on me as I do this, which probably—absolutely—contributes to my incompetence. She lets out a little sigh. “Spin the wheel and carve a dent for your finger in the center of the base—like this.” Her rough, powerful hand over mine as she pushes the sharp tool into clay. Puppet and master, I think. “Now,” she says, “put your finger there and push very hard but not too hard.” I do as I’m told, and it’s better—there is, finally, something like a centered stability.