windthread

You may or may not be able to see it.  There has been a slate grey medium sized bird who seems to want to become friends with Nogal and Tenzen.  There is only One of this kind of bird which in itself is unusual.  But for some days now,  he is either in the close trees,  or actually walking around in their pen with them.   Here, in early morning he was high in the Dead Russian Olive…right at 12 oclock on the second highest branch.

 

last eve,  the aftermath of the meal i originally did not want to prepare.

finally,  all cleaned up, put away.  

time to sleep.  and yes.  i DO have a cold.  The virus kindly waiting until the meal was enjoyed before fully settling in.   Today a runny nose and itchy eyes,  foggy brain.  But not so much yesterday.  I am Thank Full.

So…now to the point of the title here.  My friend is above all else a Reader.  A Reader in the highest sense in that she reads to Know Things,  To Educate herself.  She reads constantly.  She reads slowly and Care~fully,  digesting and absorbing.   She SAVORS literature of all kinds.  She spends part of every day sipping good wine,  crunching on almonds and Reading.  Over the years every time she has come here,  she brings books and newspaper clippings,  all with notes in the margins in her precise miniscule handwriting.   Yesterday was no different.   She brought   A Different Kind of Luxury…Japanese lessons   in simple living and inner abundance  by Andy Couturier.   I had gotten this book a couple years ago and read some of it before sending it to my son for his birthday.  and beside the actual book she just wanted to show me,  the Friend brought 3 xeroxed pages as a gift, saying,  "I brought this for you because she's like you.  I thought you might like this".  and well…I do.  Yes.  I very much Do.

"….Jinko stopped painting  after college and moved to mostly working in fabrics.  Partially, she says, this had to do with having kids:  "it's hard to hold a brush to your canvas in the middle of a pile of toys."  But there were other forces pushing her away from pursuing a career in painting in Kyoto where she studied.

"The art world there is extremely old fashioned.  Even if you have a lot of talent, you must maintain a delicate balance of relationships with your teachers.  If they suddenly decide they don't like you, it's almost impossible to get into a show.  

One of my compatriots at school was studying with a master and his work was very beautiful.  There was an important exhibition coming up in which everyone naturally expected that he would show his work.  But the teacher said to him,  'Boy, you go get me one million yen ($10,000), and then you can be in this show.'  My friend was so naive, he was shocked, destroyed.  He was so damaged that in the end, he committed suicide.  So i knew what that painting world was all about.  I also knew that as a woman it would be especially difficult.  I just didn't see a place for me there".

Soon afterward, she set out to travel in India and Nepal with her college roommate, Atsuko.  She ended up staying abroad for several years.

"What made you decide to leave Japan?" I ask.

"Well, as for going to India, she says simply, there really was no incongruity in doing so, I was brought up in a temple ,  my father was a priest in an esoteric sect of Buddhism, so we had a lot of Indian people coming to the temple and staying.  I was quite used to it."

"But, i ask,  Why did you stay there for so long?  Most people travel for only a few weeks after they graduate"

"There was nothing to prevent me from leaving Japan in the first place, and i really didn't have anything to come back to.  When i left, I had basically discarded Japan, and I didn't want to return,  I had no idea what I would do if I came back.  I had thrown away everything when I left.  I had no job, and no place to live here, so I just stayed in India.  I had become discouraged painting pictures, and as I said the art world didn't seem like a place that I could survive in, especially as a woman.

Jinko answers in a similar vein when I ask why she chose to live in the mountains when she did eventually come back to Japan.  "My father worshipped a mountain diety, so again there was nothing unusual in my choosing mountain life".

I am surprised by her offhand and almost indifferent tone, as if she has simply been subject to the inexplicable movements of fate.  Then, when i ask her about her art, the way she speaks is also as though she herself were surprised by its presence in her life, as if it were only coming through her and not as a result of a concerted intentional act.  Everything simply seemed to happen that way, or "there wasn't any contradiction to it turning out the way it has".  To me, "no reason not to" is an unusual way to go through life; but when i see what she has created, either in this restaurant, in her work with fabrics, or in her paintings, I have the feeling that she understands something that I, as yet, do not.

Of the stories Jinko tells about her years in India and Nepal, certain scenes seem emblematic of her finding the inexplicable beyond what is visible on the surface of the real.  "One evening in Nepal, she says, I came upon a festival of lights, with hundreds of people holding candles in the night.  Amongst these candles I could feel a gathering of thousands of fairies.  It was one of those moments when I knew that this world is not only made from things that you can see."    She also tells me of climbing a mountain inhabited by wild green monkeys and owls hiding up in high branches, and about walking across rivers barefoot to get to a cave where the Buddha trained.  Then in response to my question asking what she felt she was looking for in Nepal, she uses a term that I have to look up, and I find that, in Japanese, the way sunlight appears when it shines through the leaves of trees is expressed with a single discrete word.  "There's a sparkling river", she says, that flows inside of that light and that was what I was trying to find in Nepal…and at the same time I was trying to see into the scenery that was inside of myself".

In Nepal she studied weaving and dyeing methods for fabric, and ways of preparing different kinds of curries.  "The way of using spices was different from tribe to tribe and place to place, and it was wonderful to be surrounded by mountains such as the Himalayas" she says.

Jinko tells me that her restaurant, Bontenya, is named after an incarnation of the Indian deity Brahma who appeared to Buddha to tell him to spread his learning and enlightenment to others, I thus imagine that she may do some spiritual practices.  But when i ask her, she surprises me again.

"I don't do anything in particular"

But, i ask sensing something about her that I cannot quite pinpoint,  how do you find ways to keep the sacred as part of your life when most of the world around you, and most people in it, seem to be completely occupied with mundane reality?

She corrects me right there, "I think it's a mistake to think that so called ordinary people are not on a spiritual path.  You have no idea what is happening inside them.  And then after a moment, she adds,  "The life that we live in this world is I think, about polishing, cleansing our beings, our inner spirit.  It's a world of meeting other humans, of coming into contact with the chaos of the world.  We meet so many completely different kinds of people in life.  There are those that we feel are wonderful, and others not so;  there are people you admire, and people you despise.  I don't want to use the word "level" for people, because that implies that the self is grandiose.  And how can we know what is higher and what is lower?  It implies some sort of ranking.   But maybe there's no other word.  The important thing for me is to intently observe how I react inside when meeting someone new.  When I direct my consciousness to the other person and examine how I feel and respond inside.  I…well, I can only say that I enjoy doing this, it's what I like to do.  Perhaps that's how I keep the sacred as a part of my life."

excerpt  from:  A Different Kind of Living….the portion about Jinko Kaneko  one of 11 interviewed for the book.

~~~

and the Gift to me is ….."her offhand and almost indifferent tone, as if she has simply been subject to the inexplicable movements of fate" ……….Everything simply  seemed to happen that way or "there wasn't any contradiction to it turning out the way it has. …… "no reason not to".

No reason not to.   I am looking very closely to those words.  And they tell me a great deal of how I experience myself and also my recent sense of ReView and  "lostness".

Jinko Kaneko

and worthy of a photograph,  this table which is in a rare state of Sans cloth.  Won't last through the day.