My Year of Dirt and Water

by Tracy Franz

  “I imagine the new ways are considerably safer.”

  “Yes,” says Satomi, tapping her middle. “My tummy is safe AND warm.”

  “So you are not cold at all now?”

  “No, I’m still cold. But I am less cold. If you want to be completely warm, you must go to an onsen.”

  Thirty minutes later, we are soaking in a massive outdoor tub filled with languid women, great clouds of steam rising around us. There is a deliciousness in that boundary between cold air and warm water, the pleasure almost spiritual.

  “Satomi, what is the meaning of this holiday anyway? I’ve never really understood my students’ explanations.”

  “Japanese Labor Thanksgiving Day. I think it used to be a way to celebrate the rice crop, to be thankful for the effort that went into growing it. Now, maybe it is for labor in general.”

  “So, no big turkey feasts.”

  “No.”

  “Well, I am thankful for national holidays.”

  “I’m thankful for onsen.”

  “I’m thankful for hot noodle soup.”

  “I’m thankful for long underwear.”

  “I’m thankful for the existence of central heating, but I wish it would hurry up and come to Kyushu.”

  “Yes,” says Satomi. “Oh yes. That would be good, wouldn’t it?”

  Wednesday, November 17

  Sensei spends the latter half of pottery class sorting through recently fired items from the kiln, locating our much-awaited wares. Each time she opens the studio’s sliding glass doors, there are initial squeals of delight over the goods that are delivered. Again and again, we pause in our work, wipe off our hands, and lift each piece—turning it to inspect the weight, shape, and design, before passing it to our neighbor. There is a certain reverence or ritual in this slow consideration, in the comments that are passed around the room with the ceramics:

  “Beautiful.”

  “Amazing.”

  “How did you make that? Please teach me.”

  Most of the exterior design work has been done by Sensei, each piece reflecting a subtle and traditional aesthetic, that wabi-sabi elegance I’ve been unable to capture the few times I played with slips and glazes.

  When I ask Sensei if she will teach me more about decoration, she replies, “Yes, I will teach you. First, kihon. This is most important. The other stuff is extra; it is just the surface.” She sets one of my cups in my hands. “Do you feel it? Better balance now, but still too heavy. Air bubbles in the walls can destroy it while it’s baking in the kiln. You must be more careful.”

  As we wrap the ceramics in newspaper, Sensei ducks out again and emerges with a tea tray filled with New Year’s rooster figurines for all of us, and these garner a round of “Kawaii!” (Cute!).

  The ladies begin talking animatedly among themselves, something having to do with the characteristics of their Chinese New Year animals. As usual, the discussion is too fast for me to track well, but I understand when there is much laughter about the animal characteristics of the ladies’ husbands.

  “Tracy-san, what is your animal?” asks Sensei as I’m rinsing off my things outside.

  “The ox.”

  “Ah. That is good for a potter.”

  “Why?”

  “Stubborn. The ox keeps trying even when it is hopeless to do so.”

  “That is a good thing?”

  “Yes. A good thing.”

  Sunday, November 21

  The annual Shokei School Festival is just beginning to get underway when I arrive on campus. I locate a couple of the office ladies, Katsue and Michie, standing off to the side of the main lawn, chatting and taking in the “girls’ fashion contest” currently in progress on stage. “Look at that,” I say, nudging Katsue. “The girls aren’t the only ones putting on a show.” Here and there, lone “visual boys” with carefully mussed-up locks and baggy-butted pants look sullenly over the crowd or stare into their cell phones. It is an unusual sight to see so many young men wandering about in this normally all-girls context. “Let me guess, are they looking for hot chicks?”

  “Oh yes, hot chicks . . . LIKE US!” says Katsue.

  “Nani? Nani? Hot-to chicken? Nani?” replies Michie, looking alarmed.

  Katsue explains, and Michie nods with an air of exaggerated understanding. “Hai. We are hot-to baby chicken!”

  As I make my rounds, one of the ESS girls, Naoko, spots me and hands me a huge bowl of curry rice from their club stand. “Tracy-sensei, don’t worry, we took out meat.” It is very thoughtful that they remembered this detail about my diet. I don’t have the heart to explain that the sauce is made of beef and that, yes, this counts as meat. “Try! Try!” I take a huge bite and proclaim it “delicious.”

  “Thank you, Sensei. I will tell ESS!”

  She slips back into the crowd, and I enter my building with the aim of discreetly disposing of the remaining curry when I see that the festival is not confined to the outdoors only. One of the classrooms has become a tea ceremony room, complete with portable tatami flooring and beautiful kimono-clad ladies. Another room displays student-created pop-culture manga juxtaposing fantastical images of cuteness, sex, violence. The cafeteria has become an elegant shodo calligraphy studio, and it is here that I spend a long time gazing over the black-and-white displays of ancient wisdom/art that only a few can readily read.

  “Can you understand?” asks one of the shodo sensei in Japanese. “It is a very famous koan written by a monk,” he explains. “But I think you can tell the true meaning just by looking at the way it is written.” He moves away, then, not explaining the words.

  As I exit the hall, another teacher approaches me. “Did you like the exhibition?” he asks in careful English. “It is both teachers and students. But maybe you cannot yet tell the difference between their work.”

  “That’s true,” I say. “What is the difference?”

  “The teacher is a master.”

  “And the student?”

  “The student is practicing to become a master.”

  “Does the teacher still practice?”

  “Of course.”

  “So the teacher and the student both practice. . . . What is the difference between them, between their work?”

  “The teacher is a master.”

  “Oh, I don’t understand.” I laugh.

  “My English is so bad. I am very sorry.”

  “Your English is perfectly clear, my friend.” I bid him good-day with a smile and an awkward bow.

  And with this, I leave with the intention to rest in the much-needed solitude of my office. But my hope is short-lived. As soon as I enter, I look through my wall of windows and see (and hear) that a karaoke contest is about to get underway on the stage outside. The overamplified sound begins to rattle the glass at heartbeat-like intervals. A group of girls begin to sing, “We will we will ROCK YOU, ROCK YOU!” I turn, sit at my desk, rub my forehead, and try very, very hard not to see the bleachers of my high school.

  When I look up again, a young woman in full kimono glides past my open doorway. The past and the present exist in the same moment.

  Tuesday, November 23

  It is teacups again in pottery class. “To remember the kihon,” as Sensei puts it. Working through each step very deliberately, I produce a near-identical set of four cups. As I rise to begin cleaning up, I see it for the first time: I have somehow managed to NOT smear wet clay all over everything in my vicinity. The mess stays in a neat little circle on the surface of the spinning wheel. “Huh, that’s good,” says Sensei when I point it out to her.

  There is a postcard from Koun when I get home. He writes, I’m being sent back to Shogoji. I’m not sure for how long.

  And: Your dharma name is “Myoren”—“exquisite lotus.”

  And: If you ever spill a large quantity of black ink on tatami, be sure to cover it in salt immediately.

  Wednesday, November 24

  This evening, after I trim my first cup in class, Sensei uses
it as a sample for Mikiko-san, who’s trying to make a nice tea set. This is the first time that anything I’ve made has been used as a model.

  “I feel that I’m moving very quickly, today. It is automatic.”

  “That is a sign of improvement,” says Sensei.

  “My cutting is fast and deep. I don’t feel worried.”

  “That is a sign of improvement,” she repeats.

  Thursday, November 25

  There is an opaque mist dragging across campus and big pink flowers blooming on some of the trees—a kind of camellia, that autumn beauty. I keep returning to a vague e-mail I received from Tozen this morning. The text was short, perfunctory: I’m going to a confidential location, so I may not be able to write for a while. Another cloistered monk. Another solitary. And then later, when I return home after work, there is a package—also from Tozen. Inside, a German film, Enlightenment Guaranteed. No note accompanies the package—there is just the film itself arriving in a little nondescript box from Anchorage, Alaska.

  In the evening, Koun calls. He needs my measurements for something having to do with a sewing project. Also, Shindo-san, a tall and elegant monk, seems to be randomly chanting sutras while pacing the halls of Shogoji. The other monks think he’s losing his mind.

  Saturday, November 27

  This morning I meet the students from my Japanese Culture class at the bus stop in front of the university. Our plan is to visit Kikuchi—specifically Kikuchi Shrine and Shogoji. This will round out our unit on local religion. The students have prepared brief explanations on aspects of Shintoism and Japanese Buddhism, to be delivered at predetermined spots on our itinerary. Previous years’ field trips have been to the “typical” famous sights of downtown Kumamoto, but my class voted unanimously for this unique option. “We always go to those places. We want to go to a new place. We want to meet real monks!”

  Koun, it turns out, will be our personal guide at the monastery today. He has often been required to serve as the host for events like this, for schools and groups of businessmen, many of them coming to try zazen for perhaps the first and last time in their lives. His foreignness, I imagine, adding that extra bit of exotic flair.

  Given the distance and rural location of our destination, our group travel plans are somewhat complex, requiring multiple bus changes, taxis, walking, and a little bit of luck to make it all gel with the monastery’s strict schedule. I have to admit that I’m nervous, maybe about a number of things beyond getting the timing wrong. There’s seeing Koun after more than a month. And the possibility of annoying Jisen-san so much that my husband is sent away to Shikoku again, reigniting that nagging question and worry: Am I the reason he was transferred last time? Will my bringing a group of beautiful young women to the monastery precipitate a worse punishment yet?

  My students, meanwhile, just seem happy to be on an adventure together.

  “Is everybody ready? You didn’t forget anything? Do you remember the rules?

  They reply collectively; we’ve gone over it all before: “Stay together! Have good manners! No sexy clothes!”

  Naoko, standing next to me, points at her outfit—dark jeans, a T-shirt, a jacket. “Look, Tracy-sensei. No sexy!” And this brings on a playful scrutinizing of each other. “Maybe Arisa is too sexy!” Arisa, dressed in tight black jeans, tall cowboy boots and a slightly off-the shoulder shirt, waves away the accusation. Her normal wear is undeniably skimpy. This is her version of conservative. If that bare shoulder and bit of leg is all it takes to break a monk . . . ah well. To be sure, it might be enough to annoy Jisen-san, but I hope not.

  After the bus collects and then delivers us to Kikuchi Shrine, we pose for photos in front of the great stone torii gate. Brightly colored autumn leaves fall around us in the breeze, and it’s sunny but chilly. I’m glad for my wool sweater. As I step through the torii—moving from the ordinary world to the sacred—Sanae takes my arm, tells me in a hushed tone that I should not walk through the middle of “the gods’ road.” We must walk on the side of the path to the shrine, to show our humble nature.

  Together we climb stone stairs to the top of the hill. Yukari and Sanae protectively flank Fumiko, who, with her slight limp, has some trouble navigating the uneven surface. That unflinching kindness.

  After rinsing our hands beneath cold water at the purification fountain, we enter the shrine grounds. A few parents and children in formal kimono move around us, the parents taking photo after photo. These must be the stragglers who didn’t make last weekend’s 7-5-3 event, that yearly Shinto celebration of children’s birthday milestones. My students take turns delivering their mini-presentations on various aspects of the shrine, and then preemptively on Buddhism, for the temple visit. I ask questions, playing the role of uninformed American tourist. I do not, however, ask the hard question that Westerners would be most compelled to ask: How is it that you can belong to two religions at once—one that worships many gods, and the other that has no gods at all?

  We return to Kikuchi proper to have lunch at a family restaurant, and then we hail a couple taxis to take us the last few miles up the mountain to the monastery. Koun is waiting for us in the Shogoji parking lot as we arrive. He looks, I think, even thinner than before. “You made it!” he says, and then more quietly, “Jisen-san is not here today.”

  “Oh, good. I was a little worried that this would somehow be a bad idea.”

  “No, no, everything should be fine.”

  After a tour and a brief demonstration of zazen, we gather in one of the tatami rooms with the others for formal tea. With the women on one side, and the men on the other, we sit in a circle. One of the newest monks serves everyone—his hands shaking as he offers cups to each guest and host.

  “Do you have any questions for us?” asks Koun.

  “Yes,” says Naoko. “This seems like such a difficult life. Why did you all decide to become monks?”

  No one speaks, so Koun volunteers his own answer, in English: “This kind of practice strips away everything and reveals the mind very clearly.” The other monks look down intently, perhaps struggling with the English, perhaps desperately avoiding having to answer. The Japanese monks look so young yet, I think. Like teenagers. Koun repeats the question in Japanese, and then stares at the monk across from him until he speaks.

  “A-ahum. I don’t know. It just seemed like a good idea, and now I’m here.”

  He stops speaking and we sit, looking at each other or down at the tatami for a few moments, before the monk next to him begins, “My father, he owns a temple. . . .” But then he loses his train of thought, trailing off, breathless and flustered. So that there is nothing but silence and a strand of dark hair resting against the revelation of a bare shoulder.

  Tuesday, November 30

  I only have a few cups ready to trim in pottery class and I finish my work quickly. Instead of throwing a new set, I begin clean-up early, stepping outside to wash and then returning to the studio again and again to gather items that others have finished using. In this way I catch snippets of discussion about the upcoming bonenkai, our end-of-year party and farewell until February. Outside, the water is icy cold as I rinse and scrub the tools beneath the spigot, and my hands turn pink and numb. I think of the common ritual in Japan—standing in gassho beneath a winter waterfall to show gaman, that spirit of enduring through the misery.

  “Hey,” snaps Sensei as I return again for another load of dirty items. “It’s too cold outside—stay inside and stop washing others’ things. You’ll make yourself sick.”

  “I’m young and strong and from cold Alaska. It is no problem for me.” I realize that I’m sulking a little. I do not want to take a months-long break from pottery class.

  When it is time to go, Sensei hands me bits of ceramic wrapped in newspaper. “I forgot to give you these last time—rooster chopstick rests to celebrate the New Year. Oh, one more thing . . .” She disappears into her house and minutes later returns with yet another bag brimming with sweet mikan.
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br />   “Please wait a moment. My husband is putting one of my old electric pottery wheels in his truck. It is too heavy for you to carry.”

  “What?”

  “So you can continue to practice. He will drop off the wheel at your house.”

  “Thank you, Sensei. But how will I fire the pots?”

  “That is not important. Improve your technique.”

  “Hai, Sensei.” It seems my long holiday will be spent in the spare company of my constant failure. A winter solitude.

  Winter

  DECEMBER

  Impermanence

  Wednesday, December 1

  Fog, that harbinger of winter, drifts across the broad field that I walk every morning on my way to work. I hesitate at the gap in the fence that marks the entrance to the university grounds, contemplating clouds that touch earth. Next to me, the neighbor’s cat appears and leans into my ankle, her tail curling up to my calf, and then she leaps away, disappearing into fog to chase real or imagined prey. I step in after the beast and find profound pleasure in walking through air that obscures but is not obscured. Maybe every place becomes transformed when viewed in a different light. Maybe every person becomes transformed when in a different place. A lion in the skin of a house cat, or vice versa.

  Moving through these unlikely clouds, I follow a memory. The final weeks of graduate school. Garrett and I standing, as close as lovers, in the arboretum near my then-home. On the ground around us, fallen blood-red blossoms of tsubaki, “Camellia japonica”—I knew the name because I stopped to read the descriptions every time I walked among the trees. Picking up one of the flowers, I felt that fleshy waxiness of the petals between my fingers.

  “I can’t follow you to Japan and watch you date other women. I can’t be that kind of friend for you. I’m not going to be that kind of friend for you.”