on writing poems with a Buddhist priestess

Yesterday was one of those days that unfolds nicely, naturally—giving you a real glimpse at what life is supposed to be like, if we don’t push it too much or try too hard or work too zealously to have it come out “right.” I like those days. They give me a look into the way the universe is interconnected—what physics professors call “string theory” and Buddhists call “enlightenment.”

I went to work early yesterday because it was a holiday and many NOVA clients were off work, and, I guess, clamoring for some English. So, I get myself in at 10 and begin the day with a cute tall drink of water that my roomate is in love with. His name is Kouhei (Koe-hey), but our code name for him is “sugar” so the front desk girls won’t know who we are talking about. Kouhei’s birthday was yesterday. He turned 24, and he and I had a lovely time discussing perfect presents. (He was a little impressed, I think, that I thought the most perfect present would be a hot pink Harley Davidson with gray flames. Of course, given our language barrier, that took a while and a lot of sketching to get across, but he is a bike enthusiast. So, we didn’t really get very far in “the lesson” that hour.)

It seems the closer I get to leaving, the less of the actual “lesson” I do. Yesterday, I also spent one lesson swapping “folk tales” with one of our “salary man” clients. Of course, he never actually WANTS to do a lesson. He loves to just talk, and a few weeks ago he actually had me teach him phrases in Spanish for when a client comes in next month. But, it was fun. He told me about some baby birthed from bamboo that saved a local village from maurading demons, and I creaked back into my childhood memory and told him about Paul Bunyon and Pecos Bill (raised on rattlesnake venom, he was—that was fascinating to our salary man).

Later in the day, I had two lessons of voice. I didn’t expect a soul to show up, as the topic was poetry, but Madoka did. She is a Buddhist priestess from a local temple, and I just adore her. She must be about my age, but she seems so young and sheltered and innocent—most likely because her family runs the temple and she is a priestess, having never really been out in the world. She carries this cordoroy hippo pencil case that her mother handmade for her and that I envy. I like her. She tells me as much in her silences as she does in her words, and that is a rare quality. Jen says Madoka “looks back into the corners of her brain” before answering, and that is absolutely true. You can watch her eyes move up and to the side when she thinks hard. Plus, I have learned a lot about Buddhism in Japan from her—how it is often passed down in the family like blue eyes or dark skin—Buddhism by genetics. She is a priestess because her family runs the temple, and that is quite normal here. No special calling. Just a family business. I rather like that.

So, me and Madoka, alone for two hours, wrote poems together based on pictures from Western magazines. And, we had a fabulous time. I promise to post them soon. (I forgot them today, and it is a long walk back to the house). I would prompt her about the pictures, and she got really good at imagining things and coming up with incredibly unique lines for the poems—because her grasp of the language is new and not hindered by what is “correct.” My favorite was one we wrote about a picture with stairs. I asked her where the stairs go. She said, “They go . . . .to the lucky place.”

Nice. I want to go to the lucky place, too.

After work, Jen had made a yummy spaghetti dinner. We ate. We talked. We had some Pop Tarts of mine for dessert. And then, while watching some TV, we heard a bit of drumming in the distance. We knew what it was—kagura—but we didn’t know where it was coming from exactly.

Kagura is a series of local folk dances based on ancient stories—one specifically involving dragons and a princess that they have made into a charming mechanical clock at the bus station. (The clock is a small pagoda that, once an hour, rises up into three tiers, Disneyland style, and tells the story through small animatronic puppets.) Kagura dances are performed twice a month at various locales around town, usually a Shinto shrine, but, being as I am always at work, I had never really seen one yet.

So, we put on flip-flops and followed the sound of the flute. Literally. The Pied Piper of Kagura had us enthralled. Eventually, after a series of twists and turns, losing the sound, finding it again, I began to recognize the neighborhood as being near the Buddhist temple we had visited a few times. I knew there there was a local Shinto shrine at the top of the mountain behind the temple and, sure enough, we saw the place lit up like a American truck stop when we got to the bottom of the stairs. Ah, the stairs. Old, stone, crumbling. No handrails. It wound up the mountain for about a quarter of a mile. I don’t know how many stairs. It took us forever to climb them. But, at the top, we finally found the Kagura. Men in elaborate costumes danced in a mimic of sword fights and battles. At times, they set the ends of their swords alight in small fireworks. It was quite interesting.

Before we came back down the mountain, we walked back through the series of red gates symbolic of the Shinto religion and gazed into a shrine beautifully lit on the inside in that unique way that warm light and cold dark meet. That perfect balance that makes you incredibly aware of both, like putting color opposites next to each other makes each color pop: red and green, blue and yellow. You know, the way Thomas Kinkade tries so damn hard to capture and fails so miserably at. Really that balance of light was only captured well by the likes of Norman Rockwell and Andrew Wyeth. (Rockwell if you favored the balance tipping a little to the warm, Wyeth if you favor it tipping a little to the cool, like I do.) It is not overwhelming and fuzzy and all the focus, as Kinkade makes it. No, instead it flows underneath, highlights everything else, difuses like subtext. I will carry that picture in my head forever, and no camera really could have captured it as perfectly as it was. Truly one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen. I am thankful to the Buddha, to the people of Hamada, to Jen and I’s “African jungle tracker” ears to have seen it.

It was a good day, yesterday. One of the days that makes me so happy to be on this adventure, although I also admit I am getting very excited about coming home and being not so incredibly illiterate all the damn time. (wink)