We love Nebuta!

Nebuta et al.

Hmmm...what to write? So much has happened during this last month in Tokyo. Reflecting upon some of the highlights, I think about singing with my sister, Erika in Inokashira park one Saturday night. We had a single fan consistently within earshot - a self-proclaimed "alien" who was amicable and missing a few front teeth. A fireworks display in Koremasa was outrageously incredible and indelible. Music blasted through towering speakers in the jam-packed stadium, accompanying a rainbow of zipping swivels, booming bursts and crackling pops. Then, Damien, an Irish friend visited last week. We took the Shinkansen - bullet train - north to Aomori, and by chance found ourselves in front of cameras filming a commercial for the Nebuta festival. I'm sure we won't become famous, but our faces will flash across all television screens around Aomori at least.

Nobody knows exactly when Nebuta first started (I've been given a wide range of guesses, between 60-150 years ago), but everybody knows exactly how it should be celebrated. The festival always falls on the first full week in August, and is just behind Aomori apples in terms of its national and international recognition and popularity. There is day-time fanfare, but everyone knows the hoopla really begins with parades down Shinmachi dori each night. The taiko drums and piping flautists with fast fingers lead throngs of dancers dressed in yukatas shouting "Ra-se-ra ra-se-ra" through the city. The gigantic illuminated floats weigh up to four ton - about 8,000 pounds! - are (wo)man powered, built with wooden frames and lit up with thousands of light bulbs. Makeshift risers stacked three high flank the parade route, and to get a good spot it is best to show up at least two hours early.

I've had the chance to haneru - literally, "jump" - in the Nebuta parade three times before, but had to miss out this year. Damien and I were in Aomori on the eve of the festival, and got to check out all of the glowing floats on exhibition just beside Aomori bay. My ceramics sensei, Kamata san, is a good friend of Nebuta's top designer; hence, that night we soon found ourselves in his company sitting seiza style, sipping sake and eating edamame. He invited me to help out with next year's float. I told him I was honored to receive an invitation, but because the project would start in February and finish in August, I really didn't believe I'd be able to give the time. Mais, c'est la vie - life is an array of options, and I'm really starting to think about what directions our decisions take us...

I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.

There is this game I learned and love called art-o-mancy. A good friend, Annie, introduced me to it while we were in San Francisco at the Asian Art Museum in May of 2008. It's quite possible she made it up, and it's also entirely reasonable that this same game and similar versions are played all around the world. Perhaps I only just discovered it at twenty-seven. Anyway, it entails precisely this - a map of a museum, and someone to serve as your personal escort (preferably an open, creative and curious mind to enhance the experience). One first begins with eyes closed tightly, moving an index finger over a map of whatever museum he or she finds him- or herself in, eventually placing that pointer down upon a particular room. Some may say it is divinely guided there, others might say that it is totally random. It does not matter, really; the results are equally interesting regardless of the belief one holds. Still with eyelids shut, your guide leads your trusting shuffling steps to that room you chose, and then asks whether you'd like to move left, right, or stay straight until you finally find yourself in front of a single piece. When you are ready, you open your eyes and simply look at where you are, and what is in your presence. You engage your body, heart, mind and spirit with the piece in front of you - reacting, responding and reflecting indiscriminately. You allow all thoughts, ideas and observations to surface and be legitimate. And if you extend an invitation to your cohort for input, he or she may surprise you with their take on expressed and unexpressed thoughts and feelings in that given moment.

I'm quite sure I've already blogged this story in some way, shape or form, so I won't delve into descriptive detail once more, but I wanted to re-visit art-o-mancy because I think it relates to the John O'Donohue excerpt above. Both involve a conscious decision to let go of the self-orchestrated organizational patterns of movement and perception we so often fall into, in order to yield to an unraveling presence of being. It is not about aimless or thoughtless living, rather, we are consciously present to life - to our questions and held intentions - and attentive to what the universe brings forward - to what avenues open up, where we find ourselves, in who's company and how it might be meaningful.

Within my own experiences, this has been easier to do outside of a structured habitual routine - i.e. while traveling. Somehow, plopping myself down upon a new latitude and longitude crossing gives greater sensitivity to what I'm seeing, listening to, smelling, touching and tasting. Additionally, closing and opening a subsequent chapter in life naturally pulls us towards presence. Knowing that we are on the doorstep of change, we savor a place and all that it conjures up inside of us, or a serendipitous relationship and the world as we know it to be. In doing this, we prepare ourselves to turn the page.

I'm in Aomori, Japan this time, knowing that my good friend Melanie will all too soon be leaving for Australia. Melanie has always been here, from when I arrived in August of 2003 to teach at Toyama High School with the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Program, throughout my three years living in this land known for its apples, Nebuta festival and local dialect - Tsugaru-ben, and during the past three summers when I've come back to visit. We've laughed and cried together - taken scooter trips across Hokkaido, and airplane trips to Vietnam and Australia. We've sang Alanis Morisette's Thank You sweetly and at the top of our lungs countless times in karaoke boxes, eaten who knows how many plates of sushi side-by-side with hashi - chopsticks - in hand, and had our fair share of blue bird skiing and snowboarding days in great Hakkoda powder. It's difficult to imagine Aomori without Melanie, yet, a week from today this is what will happen.

All of this, coupled with the uncertainty of where my footsteps will lead me this fall, has brought me to a place of presence. It seems, never have mornings been so magnificent. I woke up today listening to pitter-pat raindrops on the window pane beside my futon. And never have nights been more incredible. We were in Kizukuri Saturday for a farewell fiesta that ended just before sunrise. I wish I would have been able to stop the clock to make it all last a bit longer. Tomorrow I'll djembe drum with Kiyono, and on Wednesday surf with Mako. On Thursday I hop on the Shinkansen bullet train for Tokyo, and truthfully, I don't know exactly when I'll be back in Aomori again. And so today, tomorrow and the next, I'm relishing all things soon to become so natsukashii...

More from Holden...

I woke up this morning like I always do at Holden, listening to moving water in the creek just outside my window. I'm a "2" in the kitchen today, which means I won't put an apron on until 11:00, and so I lackadaisically linger, pondering what passing events will take me through this Wednesday. I imagine a djembe and a guitar will be part of the equation. For bus arrivals and departures most people in the village gather in front of Koinonia fireside to greet or wave goodbye. Allison - from the pool hall - and I have been toting drums outside to add to these joyful and bittersweet moments, and to our delight we've had people's hips join in, jiving along to Trinidadian rhythms. Tonight will be yet another opportunity for open mic in The Lift. All kinds of talent and non-talent take the stage, and I'll most likely be somewhere in between the two while singing Jason Mraz's I'm Yours.

I leave the village a week from yesterday, and of course it seems like my time here has been all too swift. Mais, c'est la vie - but, such is life; so why lament it? Rather than fixating on the finite finish to my follies here at Holden, I've decided to hold the intention of lending myself to presence - in conversations with people, and to all that is happening around me. I hiked to 10 Mile Falls today, stopped by no particular tree with a woodpecker tapping its beak against the bark and wondered to myself, why exactly do woodpeckers do this? Other questions I've been pondering are, why don't adults push their noses up against window panes? Is it because we become too self-conscious, or, that we're thinking about the consequential smudges we would have to clean up? And, is there a way a to differentiate between glaciers and compact snow? All insights from any of my avid readers are valued and much appreciated. And with this, I bid adieu...

Alas, I write once again, this time from Holden Village, Washington. It's been nearly four months since my last entry, and I've been meaning to blog ever since I've arrived - just one week and two days ago - but have been waylaid with hikes to Holden Lake and Copper Basin, climbing around avalanche chutes on all fours, keeping up with culinary responsibilities (as a volunteer in the kitchen), playing technical Forest Gump-like ping-pong matches, and making musical melodies with all kinds of proper and impromptu instruments. Last night Sybil, Kate and I sang the Dixie Chick's "Travlin' Soldier" at open mic; and we continued the hoopla today with a rhythm jam session on four gallon buckets turned upside down.

I wanted to share a bit of personal insight from a book I'm reading, Eternal Echoes by John O'Donohue. In it, he explores our yearning to belong to someone, something or somewhere - a family or community, church group, an institution, city or country for example - in relationship with other deeply set desires we may simultaneously hold within our hearts. At times our greatest longings coalesce, and at other times we are swayed in completely opposite and even head-on clashing directions. We grapple with who or what or where we are meant to belong to, and in my case, I struggle with a logic of reason and stability which is equally if not greater met by a free and spontaneous spirit of wanderlust. I feel as though O'Donohue is speaking directly about a part of me while reading:

"The wanderer is one who gives priority to the duties of longing over belonging. No abode is fixed. No one place is allowed finally to corner or claim the wanderer. A new horizon always calls. The wanderer is committed to the adventure of seeing new places and discovering new things. New possibilities are more attractive and intoxicating than the given situation. Freedom is prized highly. The wanderer experiences time and space in a different way than the native or the neighbor who remain faithful to a place. Time is short, and there is so much yet to be experienced. While each place has its own beauty, no particular place can claim to settle the longing in the wanderer's soul. Space and distance are never a barrier. Travel is the adventure. The purpose is never directed towards a specific destination. The journey itself is the ever-changing destination."

And yet, I also feel strongly pulled to enmesh and invest myself into a continuity of time and space - to become an integral and more long-term part of something bigger than these ever-evolving whimsical fairy tales. This has been a sticking point that I've been trying to reflect upon in recent days, for I'm searching out the next step in my journey of life to begin sometime in September. The question mark dangles and looms, which both amuses and frightens me. I'm trying to stay present and trust a process of discernment, but I do get carried away with distractions, dreaming up an endless plethora of possibilities. At this moment there seem to be three potential eyelets of opportunity - one in South Korea, another in Japan, and finally, a long-term staff position here at dear Holden. Time will tell; and in the meanwhile, please stay tuned in for more village stories to come...