Spirit in the House

February 12, 2010 | Journal | 7 Comments 

There re­ally are no words that can com­fort or ex­plain why when a loved one dies. The death comes as ex­pected or not, but in its wake we en­ter a room or a place that the de­parted called their own and find our­selves at a loss. A great, silent loss that no mat­ter how hard we try to re­build the blocks de­fies our com­pre­hen­sion. And so we turn to words to try to give it struc­ture and pro­vide a be­gin­ning and an end to what we shared. A story.

Geor­gio Casel­lato Lam­berti (or “Lan” for short) was a Shi Tzu dog, that my part­ner M. had be­friended 17 years ear­lier at a pet shop here in Tokyo. He had white, chest­nut brown, and black hair and a face that im­me­di­ately re­minded me of an Ewok, with great, liq­uid eyes and a black nose and lips that never smiled. I first met him nine years ago shortly af­ter M. and I be­came friends. He was a hu­mor­less dog, con­stantly snuf­fling and snort­ing and com­pletely with­out in­ter­est in other dogs dur­ing his walks. His in­ter­est in walks re­mained lim­ited, at least by the time I met him, to do­ing his bod­ily func­tions and that was it. As soon as the chore was done he yanked on the leash to go home. It was for this rea­son that, for a breed of dog that nor­mally weighs about 4 kg, Lan weighed about 7 kg and wad­dled more than walked. I only saw him run one time in all the time I knew him.

He never barked. Vi­o­lence and tem­per tantrums were alien to him. He was a lover and not a fighter, though even the al­lure of the fe­male per­sua­sion never seemed to cross his mind. One time when M. and I were shout­ing at one an­other he walked over to us, stood there look­ing up un­til we no­ticed him, and then reached out a paw to touch M.’s leg, silently plead­ing for us to make peace. M. and I broke down laugh­ing, partly out of love for him, partly out of sheer embarrassment.

As he grew older he took more and more to sleep­ing. He was plagued with ail­ments and pain, from a weak heart, bad skin al­ler­gies that left his skin con­stantly red and itch­ing (un­til I sug­gested us­ing baby sham­poo and the al­ler­gies went away), can­cer of the liver, ane­mia. Four years ago he started go­ing deaf and blind. When we moved here to this apart­ment last year his hind legs were giv­ing out and the new en­vi­ron­ment ter­ri­fied him. For three weeks he cried con­stantly while bump­ing around the un­fa­mil­iar cor­ners and walls. I’d never heard him wail be­fore and the worry about the land­lord find­ing out about hav­ing a dog in a place where no pets were al­lowed made that first month stress­ful and un­cer­tain. There were times when I got so fed up with his whin­ing and do­ing his mess all over the apart­ment floors that I wished he were dead.

Some­time around the mid­dle of July his legs got worse and he had a hard time stand­ing up. He was still alert and full of his doggy ap­petite, never get­ting enough to eat. With­out his eye­sight and hear­ing he took to scan­ning the room with his nose and every time we made din­ner the waft of cook­ing food would shake him from his stu­por and prompt him to find his way to his feet. When no food was forth­com­ing he’d let out a huge snort and plonk back down onto his pil­low and fall asleep. M. and I con­stantly teased him for his lack of con­tri­bu­tion to the house­hold upkeep.

When we re­turned from Canada at the end of Au­gust, af­ter leav­ing him at the vet for a week sud­denly Lan took a turn for the worse. His legs gave out com­pletely and he was no longer able to walk. He took to sleep­ing with his spine curled in to­ward the left and he’d strug­gle in pain or dizzi­ness when we turned him over onto his left side fac­ing right. The doc­tor didn’t know what it was. M. spent every spare mo­ment nurs­ing him, get­ting up at 4:00 in the morn­ing to qui­etly and pa­tiently hand feed him, wash him, talk to him. He lost weight, lots of it, so that the pudgy, wad­dling gen­tle­man of in­dif­fer­ence slowly wasted away to noth­ing but skin and bones. Even then he had the en­ergy to crawl across the liv­ing room floor and at­tempt to reach the potty spot at the end of the en­trance hall, even though he had long since been en­closed in his fenced-​​in pen. He’d hold in his bow­els un­til we got home late in the evening, un­will­ing to re­lin­quish that last source of dig­nity that had de­fined his world since he was a baby.

M. was be­gin­ning to reach her lim­its around the mid­dle of De­cem­ber. She was ex­hausted and emo­tion­ally just hang­ing on. Some­times it seemed as if Lan would hang by a thread for the rest of eter­nity, breath­ing and shit­ting and eat­ing and sleep­ing. He was a tough lit­tle mon­ster, and wasn’t go­ing to go out with­out a fight. Then around the mid­dle of Jan­u­ary he be­gan to fade. He stopped eat­ing for days then would wake up with a vo­ra­cious ap­petite, then stop eat­ing again. His breath­ing grew la­bored, raspy. When we reached into his triple layer of blan­kets and hot wa­ter bot­tle his feet felt cold and of­ten he made no re­ac­tion, giv­ing us a fright. M. had to take him to the vet sev­eral times to change his food since he re­fused to eat his usual fare and more and more would only take the best choices in ca­nine din­ing. I guess he in­tended to die a gour­mand, none of that fiber-​​filled, grainy ce­real that he’d been eat­ing day in and day out for so many years!

At the end of Jan­u­ary he started wheez­ing ter­ri­bly. We knew then it was the end. One night, af­ter two days of re­fus­ing to drink any­thing we took him to the vet in an emer­gency in or­der to re­hy­drate him. The doc­tor gave him an in­tra­venous saline in­jec­tion, but sug­gested that it might be time to let him go. His gums were a deathly white from ane­mia and he was so thin the doc­tor had a dif­fi­cult time find­ing a suit­able spot to in­sert the nee­dle. Lan vom­ited up nearly every­thing that he at­tempted to eat, but af­ter the saline shot he qui­eted down and slept all night with­out mak­ing a sound.

The next morn­ing M. had to get up early to go to work. I had work, too, but re­mained home un­til the very last minute just to make sure Lan was alone as lit­tle as pos­si­ble. He be­gan to wheeze badly again and vom­ited bile and blood. I sat with my hand on his side un­til it was time to go and he had man­aged to fall asleep again. I hur­ried through every­thing at work so as to make it back home in time, just in case Lan was ready to let go. The silly and in­nocu­ous ques­tions of a lot of the lazier and more im­ma­ture stu­dents un­pre­pared for up­com­ing tests made the wait­ing in­ter­minable. Their tak­ing time and their lives for granted made me want to shout at them to start liv­ing and not waste the pre­cious gift they had. Mean­while Lan was strug­gling to breathe back home.

When my last class ended I rushed home as fast as I could. It was about 1:00. I reached to door at about 2:00 and un­lock­ing the door and kick­ing off the shoes and drop­ping my coat and bag on the floor I ran to Lan’s side and kneeled down be­side him. I held my breath and peered hard at him, hop­ing I’d see the slow rise and fall of his shoul­der as he slept. It seemed like time stopped. There was no move­ment. I knew he was gone. I squat­ted down be­side the pen and placed my hand on his head. Still warm. He had died only a lit­tle while ear­lier, but had died alone. That was the last thing that M. had wanted. That he would die alone.

I went numb for a long while, not know­ing what to do or what to feel. All I knew was that I needed to let M. know what hap­pened, but that I didn’t want her to break down in the mid­dle of the street or at work. I con­tem­plated what had to be done about the body, and thought about go­ing to see the vet, but even though I was much less at­tached to Lan than M. was, I found that I couldn’t move and that I still didn’t want to see Lan’s body moved. So I went about clean­ing his pen and neatly fold­ing the blan­kets and sheet so that Lan looked clean and com­fort­able. Then I searched on­line for pet cre­ma­to­ri­ums and in­for­ma­tion on what needed to be done with dead pets in Japan. I got no where not be­ing able to read the level of Japan­ese nec­es­sary, so I gave up and just sat be­side Lan, stroking him.

At around five M. sent me an email ask­ing how I was and then how Lan was. I wrote back briefly, in Japan­ese, “You should come home.”

She replied, “Is Lan okay?”

I an­swered, “Just come home.”

I went out to buy some din­ner for M. and me, then some flow­ers for Lan, and while I was wait­ing for the take out food to be fixed at the store I got an­other email from M. telling me she was near the sta­tion. I stopped by an­other store for some can­dles for Lan and met M. at the station.

We said noth­ing, just walked hand in hand back to­ward our apart­ment. While we walked M. silently be­gan to weep and I held her as close as I could.

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M. be­ing M. she was up at the crack of dawn the fol­low­ing morn­ing. She spoke lit­tle, but was full of en­ergy and pur­pose. When we had eaten break­fast she dis­cussed with me what we ought to do about Lan, so we looked up in­for­ma­tion about nearby cre­ma­to­ri­ums and found a tem­ple where there was a long tra­di­tion of cre­mat­ing and keep­ing the graves of pets. M. made a num­ber of phone calls and then we gen­tly pre­pared Lan, wrap­ping him in his fa­vorite blan­kets and plac­ing his body in a big Boston bag so we could carry it in the taxi to the temple.

Look­ing back now I’m sur­prised by how beau­ti­ful and cheer­ful that day, two weeks ago, was. M. and I man­aged to joke about Lan’s bad hu­mor and con­stant royal de­mands. Be­tween laugh­ter and fits of sob­bing we brought Lan’s body to the tem­ple and were ush­ered into a small re­cep­tion room where Lan’s body was placed in a basket.

The fu­neral di­rec­tor was a woman about our age dressed in fash­ion­able black slacks and jacket and speak­ing with a def­er­ent and quiet voice. She ex­plained what would take place and what we should do. We were led to the back of the tem­ple were a build­ing with a smoke stack stood among some huge gingko trees and asked if it was all right to burn the body with the blan­kets. Then we were led back to a tra­di­tional, tatami mat wait­ing room where we sat talk­ing and drink­ing green tea. An hour later the fu­neral di­rec­tor re­turned. “The bones are ready to be viewed,” she said.

I re­ally can’t ex­press what it felt like when we were taken back to the cre­ma­tory and we stood wait­ing as the door to the re­tort was opened. What slid out was a black tray of bleached bones and the shock of the tran­si­tion from Lan to those bones al­most made my knees buckle un­der me. M. broke down cry­ing. The cre­ma­tor was ob­vi­ously fa­mil­iar with such re­ac­tions and stepped for­ward to show us the sec­ond ver­te­bra of Lan’s spine, which in Japan­ese is called the “Nodobotoke” bone ‘Throat Bod­dhisatva”), be­cause it re­sem­bles a Bud­dha with his hands out. M. man­aged a smile as she peered closely at the bone. “Ah, that’s why the bone is called, ‘Nodobotoke’,” she said. The cre­ma­tor gen­tly placed the bone on the tray and handed us each a pair of bam­boo chop­sticks. My hands were shak­ing as I joined in the Japan­ese tra­di­tion of “Kot­suage”, plac­ing, with chop­sticks, the bones into the urn that we would bring home.

We then made our way to the pet tem­ple proper, where rows and rows of pet graves lined the hall. Many of the graves were open with small of­fer­ings of the pets’ fa­vorite foods lin­ing the boxes. I stood at the end of the hall watch­ing M. make her lonely way to the al­ter and re­gret­ted the anger I had shown dur­ing the last few months over her hang­ing on to Lan. Maybe for the first time in our re­la­tion­ship I clearly un­der­stood how de­voted M. was to Lan and, strangely, in those cir­cum­stances, to me. She beck­oned me to kneel be­side her and to­gether we lit a stick of in­cense and prayed for Lan.

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Two weeks later it snowed. I was sit­ting at my desk work­ing on test cor­rec­tion when I glanced out of the win­dow and saw snow drift­ing down in the dark. I called M. and to­gether we stood by the win­dow watch­ing it come down.

“Lan would hate this!” M. said.

“He def­i­nitely liked his com­forts,” I added.

“I’m sure right now he’s ly­ing some­where with his face pressed right up against an in­frared heater,” ob­served M.

“I al­ways won­dered how he did that with­out burn­ing his hair off or melt­ing his eye­balls,” I con­tin­ued. “Maybe he was made of asbestos.”

We took a walk in the snow and laughed at the stray snow bombs that the tele­phone wires dumped on us. The streets were empty and silent as most peo­ple slept, obliv­i­ous to the silent change the city was go­ing through. M. and I snapped pho­tos of one an­other, both of us smiling.

Each time we re­turn home Lan is wait­ing there in his cor­ner. M. lights a can­dle and a stick of in­cense and cheer­fully waves good morn­ing. Some­times it all hits home and she breaks down weep­ing, but she al­ways looks up and smiles. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m just happy that Lan lived a life in which he was loved.”

Puppets In The Rain– First Meeting– Milo

January 23, 2010 | Puppets In the Rain, Tales | 3 Comments 

I’ve been want­ing to post my fic­tion for quite a while now, but never got around to fix­ing up the blog to sep­a­rate the ma­te­r­ial. WIth this new set up fi­nally the whole nav­i­gat­ing is­sue has been sim­pli­fied and be­come more ac­ces­si­ble. I will post a num­ber of sto­ries, some of them, like this one, in a se­ries of in­stall­ments. I’ve also in­cluded pod­cast read­ings for some of them; just click on the au­dio file link be­low the narrative.

This story, “Pup­pets In The Rain”, was writ­ten for a read­ing and lis­ten­ing course I teach at my uni­ver­sity. It caters some­what to young Japan­ese women who tend to like “cute” love sto­ries. The oral read­ing, too, has been sim­pli­fied so that stu­dents might hear the vo­cab­u­lary and phrases bet­ter. Please for­give the slower read­ing and un­nat­u­rally long pauses be­tween words.

En­joy!

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1– First Meet­ing– Milo

It was rain­ing. Milo Caf­fin stood next to the store win­dow and pulled his base­ball cap lower over his eyes. The wind blew across the street with a loud hiss and made Milo shiver in his thin, jeans jacket. He rubbed his hands to­gether and blew on them to warm them up. He glanced at his watch. His friend was late.

“Come on, Jerry, where are you?” he said be­tween his teeth.

Milo pushed his hands into his pock­ets and jumped up and down, try­ing to stay warm. He turned away from the street and looked into the store win­dow, see­ing, for the first time, the faces look­ing back at him. He froze, think­ing they had seen him stand­ing there, wait­ing for Jerry. But when he looked closer, he re­al­ized that the faces weren’t real. They were pup­pets, all dif­fer­ent kinds, sit­ting on shelves in the store win­dow. Some of the faces were carved from wood and looked al­most life­like with their hu­man eyes and hair. Other pup­pets looked like an­i­mals or mon­sters. One looked like a huge lady with bright lip­stick and many frilly laces. An­other looked like a tall grasshop­per wear­ing a tuxedo and a top hat. Most of the pup­pets sat in dif­fer­ent po­si­tions on the shelves, with their strings loose and cloth­ing folded be­neath their skinny legs. Milo peered be­hind the win­dow shelf at the old store in­side. More shelves cov­ered the walls, with pup­pets placed on all them. A cur­tain hung from one wall in one cor­ner, cov­er­ing some card­board boxes. At the op­po­site side of the room stood a check­out counter made of dark wood. An old, iron cash reg­is­ter sat at one side of the check­out counter. Next to the cash reg­is­ter flick­ered a can­dle. The flame waved in the dim light, cast­ing shad­ows of two pup­pets onto the walls.

Just then there was a move­ment be­hind the counter and a fig­ure stood up and came to view in the can­dle light. Milo pressed his face against the win­dow pane and tried to make out who it was. The fig­ure seemed to be hold­ing some­thing and us­ing it on the check out counter. Ah, a duster. The fig­ure was dust­ing the fur­ni­ture. The fig­ure moved di­rectly into the can­d­light so that its face was lit by the can­d­light. A woman. A young woman. Milo held his breath. She was beautiful.

While he was star­ing at her she looked up and saw him stand­ing in the win­dow. Milo jumped back, into the street. Into the rain.

A hand touched his shoul­der and Milo gasped.

“Hey, Milo! Sorry I’m late. My scooter broke down and I had to walk…”

Milo looked back into the store win­dow, but she was gone…
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Somewhere Underground

January 17, 2010 | Journal | 9 Comments 

There have been only a hand­ful of peo­ple in my life whose words and ex­am­ples made such an im­pres­sion that my in­ner and outer life changed course in a way I could not have seen, let alone un­der­stood, un­til I was al­ready well along the path in the new di­rec­tion. I was, per­haps, very lucky to have been blessed with par­ents who were aware, dif­fer­ent, and coura­geous enough to step out of the bound­aries of their com­mu­ni­ties and go see the world, and so, ever since I can re­call, new ideas, new peo­ple, a cav­al­cade of cul­tures, re­li­gions, senses of hu­mor, lan­guages, art, lit­er­a­ture, even food, all swept through my life like a river, invit­ing me to take a breath and dive in. Peo­ple with ideas flow­ered around me like a gar­den and learn­ing was fun and sus­tain­ing. I was ripe for men­tors.¹

This my par­ents pre­pared me for, en­thu­si­as­ti­cally, al­most push­ing me along. And cer­tain peo­ple, peo­ple I read or met or heard from oth­ers speak­ing about, caught on like burrs and wouldn’t let go. Peo­ple like Miss Pa­tri­cia Burke, my high school Eng­lish teacher, who nur­tured a love of writ­ing when my painfully shy per­son­al­ity held me back from re­leas­ing any­thing I wrote into pub­lic. Or Pro­fes­sor Don Tay­lor of the Uni­ver­sity of Oregon’s Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram, who took me un­der his wing and en­cour­aged me with my sto­ries in spite of my lack of con­fi­dence. Or Pro­fes­sor Ken O’Connell of the U of O Art De­part­ment, who lis­tened to my plead­ing with him to let me into his an­i­ma­tion pro­gram and let me be­come his ap­pren­tice for the next two years. Or writ­ers like Barry Lopez and Gre­tel Ehrlich and Ed­ward Abbey whose books rad­i­cally changed the way I saw the po­ten­tial of weav­ing the ex­cit­ing amal­ga­ma­tion of na­ture and sci­ence into a new kind of spir­i­tual di­a­logue with the Earth, one both prac­ti­cal and mean­ing­ful. Or poet Mary Oliver who was the voice of na­ture it­self, de­scrib­ing in spare, un­pre­ten­tious vo­cab­u­lary what we all feel and long for as liv­ing things. Or Tove Jans­son, the au­thor of the Moom­introll se­ries of children’s books, whose magic con­tin­ues to en­thrall me 39 years later, some­thing that few other writ­ers have done.

And then there was Mal­colm Wells, the “Fa­ther of Un­der­ground Ar­chi­tec­ture”. Dur­ing my ar­chi­tec­tural stud­ies I dis­cov­ered his work while brows­ing, in the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon Ar­chi­tec­ture Department’s li­brary, a copy of the mag­a­zine Pro­gres­sive Ar­chi­tec­ture. A pho­to­graph of a build­ing barely vis­i­ble un­der a car­pet of grasses and wild­flow­ers caught my eye. His build­ings lived un­der­ground, in the soil, like moles and Hob­bits. Af­ter the in­un­da­tion of all the ster­ile mod­ern de­signs, the overly heavy and nar­cis­sis­tic clas­sic 19^th cen­tury fare that peo­ple trav­eled thou­sands of miles to see, and the com­plete shun­ning of Asian ar­chi­tec­tural de­sign, with this new form of ar­chi­tec­ture, which at­tempted to erase its pres­ence and bow to the ex­u­ber­ance of liv­ing things, I felt I had fi­nally found my niche in ar­chi­tec­ture and could sally forth with a re­newed sense of the ap­pro­pri­ate­ness of this pro­fes­sion which, un­til then, seemed to me to do so much to scar the very world I revered so much.

I read every­thing I could find on Wells, search­ing the archives for ar­ti­cles on his de­signs, seek­ing any­thing he had writ­ten and said. I dis­cov­ered an out­spo­ken, but gentle-​​hearted man, whose love for the nat­ural world out­weighed his love for ar­chi­tec­ture and who spent his life try­ing to con­vince the world that the way we were go­ing about build­ing our homes and towns and cities was both de­struc­tive and deeply dis­re­spect­ful of the planet we were shar­ing with other liv­ing things, if not down­right stu­pid. His writ­ing re­minded me in a way of a good-​​natured nay-​​sayer who didn’t mind brush­ing the fur the wrong way at a din­ner party, propos­ing pre­pos­ter­ous ideas that most at the party would roll their eyes at, with­out prop­erly stop­ping to con­sider just how wise and ef­fec­tual the ideas were. Wells seemed to me an Ed­ward Abbey of the ar­chi­tec­ture world, and when I first saw his photo I re­al­ized I wasn’t far wrong; he even looked like Abbey.

Out of my hun­dreds of books one of my great­est trea­sures is Wells’, “Gen­tle Ar­chi­tec­ture”, a book I have read dozens of times and still gar­ner wis­dom from. Not only does it pro­pose new ways of build­ing and in­hab­it­ing cities,… that thirty years later would prob­a­bly still seem rad­i­cal to most peo­ple to­day… it sug­gests a com­pletely dif­fer­ent way of look­ing at na­ture and what our build­ings are sup­posed to mean to us and the land. He of­fers a way for us to re­gain our spir­i­tu­al­ity in the very act of build­ing our set­tle­ments and dwellings, one that reveres all life and the very rea­son for our births into the world. Here is the list of goals he pro­posed should be the build­ing blocks for cre­at­ing places to live:

²

1) Cre­ates pure air.
2) Crea­tures pure wa­ter.
3) Stores rain­wa­ter.
4) Pro­duces its own food.
5) Cre­ates rich soil.
6) Uses so­lar en­ergy.
7) Stores so­lar en­ergy.
8) Cre­ates si­lence.
9) Con­sumes its own waste.
10) Main­tains it­self.
11) Matches nature’s pace.
12) Pro­vides wildlife habi­tat.
13) Pro­vides hu­man habi­tat.
14) Mod­er­ates cli­mate and weather.
15) …and is beau­ti­ful.³

When I moved to Boston to try to work as an ar­chi­tect I con­tacted him to talk about his de­sign the­o­ries and ask if he might know of any leads. We cor­re­sponded, talk­ing a few times on the phone and more of­ten through hand­writ­ten let­ters. He apol­o­gized to me for not be­ing able to hire me, but ex­pressed a wish to fol­low my ca­reer. He en­cour­aged me to get my ar­chi­tec­tural li­cense, in spite of the ob­jec­tion­able method­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy it rep­re­sented, telling me, “If you want to be taken se­ri­ously and make a dif­fer­ence it is im­por­tant to go through the hur­dles that the pro­fes­sion re­quires.” He asked me not to give up in spite of the ob­sta­cles. “It is worth it if you love the Earth,” he said.

That was 19 years ago. My life took a long curve out of the way. I ini­tially re­turned to Japan to find work as a green ar­chi­tect, but with Japan’s bub­ble burst­ing just as I ar­rived, no firms were hir­ing non-​​Japanese ar­chi­tects. Need­ing to sur­vive I even­tu­ally gave up and took work as an Eng­lish teacher. With al­most no ex­po­sure to the kind of ar­chi­tec­ture my heart was in my pas­sion waned. I lost touch with Wells and with what was hap­pen­ing in the ar­chi­tec­tural world. But I never for­got his words and his warm encouragement.

Three days ago I learned that Wells had died last No­vem­ber, a day af­ter my 49^th birth­day. The world seemed to drop away as I read the words, as if a huge chunk of my own his­tory had sud­denly sunken into the waves. It was one of those track switch­ing mo­ments in your life when every­thing seems to shunt for­ward and what you had at­tempted to hide away in the clos­ets comes tum­bling out, stark and naked. I fell back in my chair and wept, for the pass­ing of a man who pos­sessed one of those bright souls that had seen the won­der of the world, loved it with all his heart, and wanted noth­ing but to pro­tect it, and for my­self, for hav­ing let him down and for my own lack of courage. I re­al­ized how much he had meant to me and what a big in­flu­ence he had had on my life and soul.⁴

But Wells was not a mor­bid man (his self-​​written obit­u­ary) and such mop­ing would surely not have gone over well with him. Even though his ideas never caught on, he never gave up, per­haps be­cause of his faith in the slow process of na­ture it­self. If noth­ing else, he changed at least one per­son in the world. Think how dif­fi­cult that is to do.

Please read more about him HERE.

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