Momiji-en

Late afternoon on a cloudy spring day. John and I stop to visit our friends Bill and Gwil in Corvallis, Oregon. They have invited us to view their garden, Momiji-en,  inspired by the Portland Japanese Garden back in the 1970's when it was being designed. Before I even enter the house, I'm drawn to the outside altar with statues of Kuan Yin, tiny bonsai, and bamboo lattice. This is going to be a real treat!

Bill and Gwil welcome us with green tea harvested from the tea plants in their garden. The taste is rich and deep, earthy and green, but not bitter. Complementing the tea, they serve thin ginger wafter and gelatinous sweets eaten with an elegant toothpick. We view the garden from the vantage point of royalty and poets seated on a pavilion, but this one is inside.

Refreshed, we enter the garden for a tour. Momiji-en means 'Place of Maples' and there are indeed several varieties of maples—at least a dozen.  Of particular elegance are those bordering the stream and waterfalls. Purple iris are just beginning to bloom by the stream, reminding me of a haiku I wrote in the Portland Japanese Garden:
                                  
remembering those gone
thankful to be here
pond of purple iris

We stroll the dewy path leading to the tea garden. Rounded irregularly shaped stones slow the guest down, inviting him to enjoy the sounds and smells and textures of the garden. Everything is perfect here—thirty years of designing and maintaining a garden that rewards them with beauty through every season. Bill and Gwil have spent most of the day candling pines, a meticulous task that leaves your fingers sticky with pine pitch. They give John and I pointers as we have several pines in the backyard of our new home. At one point on our garden tour, Gwil takes out his I-phone and begins punching buttons. He's much too polite to be checking his phone messages while we're there. Intrigued, I ask him what he's doing. "I'm regulating the flow and sound of the waterfall," he says. And, sure enough, as we stand there attentively, we can hear the variations.

all the sounds
of water
waterfalls

For photographs of this spectacular garden as well as others that Bill has designed, log on to www.owenwakefield.com

The Red Teapot

In late March, I traveled across the country to help my mother move into an assisted living facility. She had been living in a Victorian house which had been converted into independent living for elderly women but, for the last couple of years, she had difficulty navigating the stairs. On each visit home, we would sort through a drawer. Last year it was the "scarf drawer." All the scarves were arranged by color, nested in tissue paper, and scented with all the exotic soaps I had sent her. On another visit, we winnowed down her jewelry, a more daunting task.

winter afternoon
Mother and I sort through
her jewelry box—
accepting baubles
just for their stories

This time we had a deadline, April 1. I looked around her room, in her closet, on the sun porch. Yes, we could finish in four days. What I didn't realize was that each hanger in the closet held two blouses and the portable closet on the porch was packed full of clothes. "There may be some more up in the attic, too," Mother said quietly. There were.

She presided over the sorting while sitting in her recliner chair, directing me how to fold the clothes that were being given away, where to put the clothes she was taking with her, and keeping an eagle eye on me so I wouldn't sneak anything into the trash. I held each blouse up—about 300 of them, including a soiled dickey from the 1940's—for her scrutiny. We made three piles: take with her, give to her friend with a big family, and donate to the Survival Center. Several blouses had stains on them. "Oh, put them in the corner and I'll wash them later," she said. "Mother, we have to be out of here in three days. You don't have time to wash blouses."

My mother is ninety-four. She lived through the Depression. At the end of three days' work, about a hundred hangers surrounded us. She sorted through them, tied them all up by size, shape, and color and put them in the hallway with a sign: "Free Hangers." On the porch were bags and bags of bags: plastic, gift, and paper. Also a large collection of rags, neatly cut into squares and rectangles—all pressed and folded.

When Mother turned ninety, her hip began to bother her and she reluctantly gave up golf. My brother, also a golfer, carried her golf clubs down from the attic and placed them near her chair so she could enjoy them for a few days. Her matching short sets and golf shirts went to the Survival Center, where they would probably not be worn by golfers.

On moving day, my brother and his son-in-law came and hauled all the clothes, books, and furniture to the assisted living center. When Mother and I arrived, the rooms were filled with boxes to be unpacked. We decided on the arrangement of the furniture quickly and where to hang the art work. Next we needed to go to Walmart to purchase some necessities: a shower stool, towel hanger, curtains, bins to store her clothes, a table cloth, and some yogurt and fruit drinks. The excursion would require a lot of walking—too much for Mother. But there, lined up at the Walmart entrance as promised, was a fleet of electric cars. "Whatever you do, don't get in front of her," the store clerk advised as Mother took a seat. At first she navigated the aisles in fits and starts, but once she got the hang of it, she took off—literally. I went up and down the aisles calling her name for about five minutes, then heard the back-up "Beep! Beep!" and there she was. Two hours later, we were in the check-out line. "I never could have done this without the electric cart. It's good to try something new!" she said proudly." We celebrated her success by going out to lunch.



Although Mother's new accommodations were beginning to look homey, the kitchenette still looked antiseptic and cold. I remembered what a friend said to me when John and I moved into our new home: "The first thing you should do is buy a tea kettle and sit down and have a nice cup of tea." So I went out and purchased a small red teakettle. It looks cheerful in her spick and span kitchen, a burst of color welcoming Mother to this new phase of her life.

Poetry and Lilacs

On Sunday, April 18, I gave a poetry reading at the Feast of Poets in Silverton Oregon at the Silver Falls Vineyard with Donna Prinzmetal, Colette Tennant, Mary Szybist, and her husband Jake.

After a stimulating two days at the Oregon State Poetry Association in Eugene, I welcomed the pastoral scenery as I drove deeper into the wine country. Sheep grazed on the hillsides, nanohana (rapeflowers) bloomed in profusion, and the sun shone on a perfect spring day. I arrived early and took advantage of the wine tasting, an Oregon pinot noir, to get in the spirit of the afternoon. I was the first reader and began my reading by sounding a Buddhist prayer bell to center the audience. Then I read spring haiku from my book Grinding my ink, followed by selections from my other five collections. Next to the podium was a vase three feet high, brimming over with lilacs. The scent was intoxicating—memories of Nana's lilac bush, teenage love, and summers that seemed timeless. One of the haiku I read was:

catalpa blossoms—
falling in love with
the girl I once was

I was tempted to change 'catalpa blossoms' to 'lilacs'.

At the end of the reading I asked the organizer if I could have one branch to bring home. "Oh, I trimmed off the tops of my tree. It was getting too big. You can have all of them," she said and bundled the lilacs  up and put them in my trunk. The two-hour ride to Portland was delicious.

When I arrived home I said to John, "Look, honey, I caught the bouquet!" I arranged the lilacs in six bouquets. They perfumed our house for a week.

Harmony: Poetry and a Bowl of Tea

Ichi go ichi e, one time, one meeting. Now is the only time that exists. No other tea ceremony will be like this one. The guests will change, the taste of the tea will be different, the light slanting through the shoji will be brighter or dimmer, the chabana will wilt and a new flower will replace it. Japanese poetry, too, offers this appreciation of the moment, both in our experience of nature and in the process of writing.

Murata Shukô (1422-1502), abbot of Daitoku-ji in Kyoto, turned away from the gaudy tea ceremonies of Japan's ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi and introduced a new aesthetic, soan-cha, or thatched hut tea. Soan-cha focuses on the relationship between host and guest, emphasizing the spirit and mind of the host rather than his technique.

Tea is naught but this:

First you heat the water,

Then you make the tea.

Then you drink it properly.

That is all you need to know              Sen no Rikyû (1522-1591)

This aesthetic is echoed by Matsuo Bashô, who sought the subtle, the refined, and the spiritual in everyday life. Your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have become one, when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there. In haiku, nature is our host and we are her guests. By attuning ourselves to our surroundings, we open our hearts and minds to what is. The four principles underlying the way of tea—harmony, respect, purity and tranquility—embody the spirit of Japanese poetry as well.

HARMONY (WA)

Gazing long to the shore / There are neither blossoms  / Nor crimson leaves / Only a rush hut at the sea's edge  / In the autumn dusk             Fujiwara Teika (1162-1241)

Takeno Jôô (1502-1555) took Murata's soan-cha one step further to include the spiritual ideal of wabi. Wabi, he states, is honesty, prudence and self-restraint, both emotional and material. Before coming to tea, Jôô studied linked verse, so it is not surprising that he turned to Fujiwara Teika's waka to illustrate wabi. Cherry blossoms and crimson leaves refer to the extravagant tea ceremonies sponsored by the wealthy in their gold-lined tearooms. Bashô, too, cautions against ostentation: A haiku is like a finger pointing at the moon. If the finger pointed at the moon is bejeweled, one no longer sees the moon.

Sen no Rikyû (1522-1591) sought unity with humanity and nature through tea. The thought of the host shall be that of the guest. The thought of the guest shall be that of the host. Bashô reiterates this unity when he says: Learn of the pine tree from the pine tree and of the bamboo from the bamboo. Wa embodies a quiet simplicity, a feeling of oneness with nature and people. Like his teacher Jô, Rikyû quoted poetry to convey his views on wabi.

To one who awaits / Only the cherry's blossoming  / I would show  / Spring in the mountain village  / Its young grasses among snow.     Fujiwara Teika (1162-1241)

Fujiwara's waka tells those living a luxurious life in the capital that he has come to appreciate the beauty of restraint and understatement. The pathos of young grasses among snow evokes the feeling of sabi, the spiritual depth of loneliness and tranquility. In The Way of Tea, Rand Castile says that wabi spirit prepares for the guest known to come. Sabi spirit prepares with no thought whatever for a guest. Sabi spirit is necessary when writing poetry—inspiration comes to us when we keep our minds open, without goals or expectations.

Perhaps the best illustration of wa in tea ceremony and poetry is to compare a chaji (formal tea ceremony) with a renga (session to write linked verse). Each of these is highly structured with rules and procedures. When a clear etiquette of procedure is established between the host and guests through constant repetition, kata (forms) appear for each kind of action. Observance of these kata leads to harmony between host and guest, guest and guest, and mood and season.

Like the chaji, renga were traditionally held in the serenity of a Japanese tatami room. Each gathering has a master as host. The order of guests is fixed in advance; the most honored guest is seated nearest the tokonoma (alcove). The main guest in a renga opens the session by composing a hokku (first verse), which flatters the host. The shokyaku, first guest in a chaji, receives the first bowl of tea. He is also responsible for leading the others in the etiquette of entering and exiting the tearoom, as well as directing the conversation.

The progression of these two occasions corresponds to the unfolding of a Noh play with its jo (overture), ha (intensification) and kyu (finale). The mood of the first six verses of a 36-verse kasen renga is similar to attending a party—honoring the host, making poetic overtures and relaxing with each other. A chaji also begins informally with a meal and sake being served as guests relax and socialize.

The highlight of a chaji is the solemn koicha, thick tea ceremony. Guests quiet their minds as they observe the master preparing tea. Each drinks his/her bowl of tea, after first acknowledging the guests yet to be served, and then compliments the host. The middle/development section of a renga (ha) moves into an outré spirit as participants link and shift in unconventional ways. The goal is to keep the flow lively and entertaining. To signal the end of the chaji, guests are served usucha, thin tea, and perhaps some hot water to purity their palettes. A renga winds down in the last 6-8 verses. The penultimate verse involves cherry blossoms (the crowning piece of the sequence), and the closing verse ends on a light tone, generating an atmosphere of peace and warmth.

One meeting, one time. On both of these occasions, participants are not the same as when they began. The za has enjoyed many pleasant hours together creating a renga. Host and guests of the chaji leave the tearoom refreshed and tranquil.

RESPECT (KEI)

Upon entering the tearoom, all discrimination between self and other vanishes, a spirit of gentleness prevails, and peace may be attained… Murata Shukô

Three kinds of respect are observed in a chaji and a renga: respect for the host and other guests, respect for materials, and respect for the seasons. Days before the chaji, the tea master makes meticulous preparations for the comfort of his guests. In winter the fire is laid before the food is served in order to warm the guests. In summer, the hearth is farther away and the fire is laid after serving food. The host walks down the pathway, which he has swept and watered, to greet his guests, who enter the tearoom on their hands and knees through the nijiriguchi. This 'crawling in entry' eliminates all distinctions of rank or class. Guests honor one another through ceremonial responses. For example, before drinking a bowl of tea, a guest bows to the one sitting next to him and says Excuse me while I go first. Similarly, in a renga, each poet reflects on and appreciates the previous poet's verse before composing his own. Participants also pay tribute to poets of the past by addressing them directly or by alluding to their poems.

Respect is extended not only to people but also to the utensils used. Each utensil in a chaji is selected with the intention of creating a harmonious atmosphere. Rather than antiquated art objects, they are like a mirror upon which the host's mind is reflected. Bowls, tea scoop, and whisk are handled with care. Every motion has its own rhythm. For example, the tea master picks up the tea scoop or container a little faster than he puts it down, similar to the enthusiasm of greeting a friend and the reluctance of saying good-bye. After tea has been consumed, the first guest inquires about the artist who made his tea bowl, the whisk, and the tea container as well as the meaning of the poem inscribed on the scroll or the flower in the alcove. Items are passed around with reverence for the guests to appreciate their beauty.

When I lift my eyes

To the quarter of the sky

Where the cuckoo cried,

There is nothing to be seen

But the early morning moon.

(Translation of a hanging scroll in Toyotomi Hidetsugu's tearoom)

The materials used in a renga are words. Its success depends on skillful linking through allusion, resonance, symbolism, association and then shifting by means of juxtaposed images. Great pleasure and enjoyment come from appreciating and responding to each other's cleverness and wit. Creative use of language allows for a diversity of subject matter and tone, which are essential to the spirit of renga.

Seasons play an essential role in both a chaji and in composing waka and haiku. Indeed, haiku is defined as a poem recording the essence of a moment keenly perceived, in which nature is linking to human nature. In Traces of Dreams, Haruo Shirane emphasizes that in a renga the seasonal landscape became the fabric out of which the sequence was woven. While making preparations for a chaji, the host reveals the essence of a season through his choice of utensils and foods, flowers, the kimono he wears, the scroll and even the method of preparing tea. Rikyû's fourth rule, In summer suggest coolness; in winter, warmth corresponds to Shirane's statement: If a haikai occurred in summer, the hokku had to avoid the word ‘hot', and in winter he could not use the word ‘cold'.

PURITY (SEI)

Though I sweep and sweep

Everywhere my garden path,

Through invisible

On the slim pine needles still

Specks of dirt may be found.              Sen no Rikyû

Sei embodies cleanliness and orderliness in both the physical and spiritual senses. In chanoyu (tea ceremony), purity begins with the physical surroundings. The garden has been weeded, swept and watered before the guests arrive. The tearoom and utensils are spotless, yet the host wipes them again in front of the guests to cleanse his mind. Guests too perform gestures of purity, such as rinsing their hands and mouths at the water basin and removing their shoes, swords and jewelry before entering the tearoom.

To fully enjoy chanoyu or renga, participants must cleanse their minds as well. The ideal of furyu, from the words ‘wind' and ‘to flow,' suggests that our spirit should flow through life like the wind that flows through nature. Furyu embraces the imperfect and incomplete—in chanoyu, the partially opened flower in the tokonoma; in haiku and waka, images rather than concrete words, what Shirane defines as the poetics of lightness. Soshitsu Sen XV of the Urasenke tea school states: Haiku cast a stone in the water with the brevity of seventeen syllables, but the ripples extend endlessly into the reader's heart and mind.

Another aspect of furyu is lack of symmetry. Japanese haiku and waka contain uneven numbers: three or five lines of seventeen or thirty-one syllables. Everything in the tea room appears asymmetrical—the architecture, the number of tatami, the imperfect shape of the utensils and even the flowers, which are not arranged as in ikebana but placed in a vase as they grow in the field. The vase, too, is always placed off center in the tokonoma.

Both chanoyu and Japanese poetry also exemplify the aesthetic of karumi: lightness, simplicity, leanness, avoidance of abstraction, relaxed artless expression, understatement. A tea ceremony is held in a four-and-a-half-mat tatami room using implements made of natural materials, such as bamboo and gourd vases and the imperfect teabowls. The overall impression is one of refined poverty rather than ostentation.

Just a simple shelf

Hanging from the corner wall

By a plain bamboo.

All we need in such a world

Are these artless simple things.          Sen no Rikyû

Haiku and waka poets too aim for this simplicity in their use of everyday language, subtle and evocative images, and restraint. Emotions are conveyed through suggestion and, like a scroll painting, space is left for the reader to fill in with his/her own experience.

This restraint is illustrated in the story of Rikyû and his patron Hideyoshi. In the fourteenth century, morning glories were difficult to grow, but Rikyû's grew in profusion. Hideyoshi asked Rikyû to hold a tea ceremony in the morning so he could view them. Rikyû agreed. But when Hideyoshi walked down the stone pathway in the outer garden, no morning glories could be seen. Not along the path, nor floating in the stone water basin. When he stooped to enter the tearoom, however, he was astonished to see a single morning glory hanging from a vase in the tokonoma.

It is an especially Japanese sensibility towards beauty to cut away and cut away, abbreviating to the point where nothing more can be removed and thereby creating a thing of great beauty.

Soshitsu Sen XV

If you have one pot / And can make your tea in it / That will do quite well. / How much does he lack himself  / Who must have a lot of things?          Sen no Rikyû

TRANQUILITY (JAKU)

… to live with a refined attention to detail…not because these things will enlarge the self, but because they bring our lives into harmony with that which transcends the self.                        Kakuzo Okakura

Jaku is a Buddhist term that is often translated as the sublime state of nirvana. Indeed, tea master Sen Sotan, grandson of Sen no Rikyû, said that the taste of tea and Zen are one and the same.

Chanoyu, the Way of Tea, offers a setting and a ritual for finding tranquility through the constant practice of harmony, respect and purity in everyday life. Poetry too enhances our lives as we experience the rhythms and essence of the natural world or the camaraderie of fellow poets. Both chanoyu and poetry offer a path of discipline and practice through contemplation and reverence for life, an opportunity as Soshitsu Sen XV says to transcend our false images of ourselves.

When you hear the splash  / Of the water drops that fall / Into the stone bowl / You will feel that all the dust / Of your mind is washed away.                                    Sen no Rikyû

Published in Hermitage, A Haiku Journal, Rumania, Volume III, Nos. 1 & 2, 2006.

This Moment, a book of tea ceremony haiku by Margaret Chula, can be viewed at http://www.margaretchula.com

SETSUBUN

FEBRUARY 2010

Setsubun means ‘seasonal division’ and is celebrated in Japan on February 3 to welcome the first day of spring in the lunar calendar.

When I was a child Groundhog’s Day was one of my favorite holidays. On February 2nd, I’d wake up hoping to see a groundhog pop up out of the snow. I hoped that it would be a sunny day, so he’d see his shadow and go back down his hole for a longer winter. Now I pray for clouds, for the groundhog to emerge from his burrow, for the light to return, and the nubs of flowers to poke through the hard earth.

I wonder why seeing his shadow terrifies the groundhog. He happily slumbers in the darkness all winter. Does he think the shadow is a predator? Or is it the brilliance of the sun that threatens him, the abrupt change from darkness to light? Perhaps, like many of us in the winter, we want to hibernate a bit longer before springing forward into the vernal energy.

When John and I lived in our little wooden hut in Kyoto on the ‘street of pines,’ I celebrated Setsubun in the Japanese way (with a few variations, of course.) The ritual is to throw soybeans around the house while shouting

Oni wa soto!

Fuku wa uchi!

‘Devils out. Happiness in.’ I loved the sound of the chant and usually got carried away, tossing handfuls of beans out into the snow. Why throw the beans in the house when you’re trying to expel the devil? The second part of the ritual is to eat the number of beans corresponding to your age. I didn’t like the taste of soybeans so I left them in the snow for birds or animals or for the groundhog of my childhood.

Shortly after returning to the U.S., I was invited to teach my nephew’s fourth-grade class in California. It was Japan Week, early February, and I gave a lesson on haiku and the observance of Setsubun. The kids were eager and open to anything Japanese. For the language lesson we practiced ‘Oni wa soto. Fuku wa uchi! which I’d written on small strips for each of them. We then sewed small pouches out of Japanese fabrics and placed soybeans inside. ‘When you get home,’ I told them ‘toss the beans outside while chanting ‘Oni wa soto. Fuku wa uchi!’

I found out later from their teacher (who sewed her own bag and filled it with an undisclosed number of beans) that one mother had complained to the school that they were teaching her child voodoo rituals! So much for cultural exchange.