Aiming Towards the Sun

 Aiming towards the sun,

the hawk shows dedication.

Cultivating grace

in those who witness her flight.

She shows the path to follow.

Photo by Rachel McDermott on Unsplash

Song Choice: Learning to Fly by Tom Petty

Liner Notes for This Groove: This tanka was written in honor of a fellow student of Japanese tea ceremony. She recently got her tea name. What that means is that she has practiced tea for a long enough time at a high enough skill level that she earned a name that shows she is part of the Urasenke tea school lineage. My tea teacher told me that in older times tanka poetry was sometimes composed in honor of students who achieve a high level of proficiency. I decided to try my hand at it. She seemed quite pleasantly surprised at how well it turned out (she had no idea I wrote poetry at all).

I am years (and years) away from earning my tea name, but I do hope that if I do earn one, it will be as lovely a celebration as we had for her.

Peace in a Bowl

When you serve tea to your guests, you should simply serve tea from your heart, and think about nothing more.

-Poem 93 of Sen Rikyu

I’ve spent years learning

how to set aside my worries at the teahouse door,

and lose myself

in the sound of pouring water

and the scent of matcha rising from the bowl.

Some days that isn’t easy.

The world likes to devour souls by bits

and I can’t drink enough tea

to wash the bitter taste from my mouth.

It is then I remember

tea bowls were meant for sharing.

The art of tea cannot be measured

by the strokes of my whisk

or the thickness in the folds of my cloth.

But it can be fairly gauged

by the smile on my guest’s face.

The peace that eluded me

roots in them, multiplies,

and finally alights in me.

When we leave the teahouse

we both carry more than enough

peace to share, where before there was turmoil.

Song Choice: I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing by the Seekers. 

This poem is linked up to Poets United, Midweek Motif and dVerse, OLN 234.

Notes from the Real World (if you’re just here for the poetry, feel free to skip this part, though I expect MissWicked ought to read it, since she’s the one who challenged me to do it): This poem was inspired by one of three scrolls that were shared by my tea school last year. They were meant to inspire peace in the hearts of people who saw them. My fellow students and I were tasked with serving tea while visitors came to admire the scroll. I admit my mood was cynical before I walked in the door (because hey, 2017 gave people a lot to be cynical about), but as the day progressed, I found myself becoming more peaceful with each bowl of tea I made, and living up to the words on the scroll—providing a small seed of peace for everyone who walked through Shofuso’s doors, and seeing folks leave carrying a bit of that peaceful spirit that (hopefully) they could share with others.

Now of course, 2017 doesn’t hold a monopoly on my moods of cynicism and doubt. Although I’m just coming out of the experience of finishing and publishing a short story collection, a giant cloud with the words “What’s next?” seems to have followed me around from the moment I clicked the button to officially release the book out into the world. The good news is I have lots of ideas. The bad news is that they all are spinning around me like a cyclone of bright shiny things I can reach towards but can’t quite grab. I’m overwhelmed.

The idea of achieving world peace is exponentially more overwhelming, but in that afternoon at Shofuso, I know that I along with my fellow tea students created a haven where peace could quietly slip into someone’s heart, and that peace could spread to people they interacted with later. If such a simple act can do that, maybe it’s not too far-fetched of an idea to take a moment or two to give myself the gift of tea, savor it, and see what comes from that. It’s worth a shot.

The S Word

I pride myself on being a relatively intelligent person, but know I can be a stubborn one as well. For some some time now I've been thinking it might be best to go on a s-s- *cough* schedule. *shudders* (OK one of my friends has been strongly hinting it might be a help and I've finally decided to listen).

I don't know why the idea of a schedule (ugh!) makes me cringe so. It may be a tiny bit of defiance left over from my teen years where I insisted I was clever enough to get everything I needed to get done in time (usually at the last minute) and still get A's. My youthful arrogance got a hard smack of reality once I hit college. Oh I still did well, as long as I kept some sort of system to organize things.

So fast forward to today. I have so many things I want to learn and do in this lifetime and it has become sadly apparent I can't do them all. I need to prioritize (*pouts*) and organize (*cries*). I love writing, but I need to keep "office hours" that stay more or less steady and mesh with my other responsibilities (work, being a mom, being a wife). Organization sounds overly confining and limiting, especially when talking about artistic endeavors, but it also is a pretty good way to make sure I have time to enjoy doing what it is I like doing. 

I started feeling better about this whole organizing business when I put down my writing hours for both prose and poetry (as one of the newest Toads in the Imaginary Garden, I'm stoked to regularly participate there and over in Dash of Sunny as well). I scheduled in some review time for my other interests (shimmy drills, Japanese tea ceremony postures,and doodling all get their quick bursts of review time as a reward for other hard work). While a lot of my daily spiritual practices are reflexive at this point, I set aside some time for some extra development of knowledge bases I was interested in exploring. I even managed to formalize the way I do chores a bit better.

Yay, doodle time! 

So yes, I'm still a little leery about the whole schedule thing, but I've promised myself that I can be flexible and adjust things as time goes on. I also plan on giving myself goof off days once a month just to know there'll be one day I can bum around and do nothing if I want to. I'm cautiously optimistic this will all work out and that far from being rained upon, the passions in my life will march on in an orderly parade, rather than bang into each other like angry moshers. 

Song Choice: Don't Rain On My Parade

A Thing To Wear

Lately I've been trying to wear full kimono to tea ceremony classes as a way to improve my technique. Some may joke, "How hard can that be? It's just wearing a robe, isn't it?" And I might even laugh back - through decidedly gritted teeth.

There's an art to kimono wearing, and it's a whole lot fussier than it might seem at first glance. A multitude of rules govern the proper wearing of one; there are schools that specialize in teaching people all the smallest details that take months, even years to complete. And if you're woman, the details of proper kimono wearing increase exponentially. Sometimes I look at the guys in my tea ceremony class, wishing I knew the Japanese version of "lucky bastards" so I could mutter it under my breath. They pretty much can stick to the same navy/gray/ brown color scheme year round while I'm scrambling to make sure the motifs in my kimono or it's style don't clash with the theme of the current time of year and coordinate with my obi.

I'm always a little surprised when people can't tell the difference between men's and women's kimono, though then again I've had more exposure to the culture than others have had. When I wrote my first Yuuki story around 10 years ago I played around with the idea of Westerners being somewhat clueless regarding this. I also thought the story was done as it was, until a certain Instigator insisted there was a bigger story in there. I mulled over her input and a.) realized the Instigator was right (stop cackling you!) and b.) while the other characters in the original story could plausibly be ignorant about the differences in kimono, as I expanded out the world it made no sense that no one else knew. 

So I played around with his (yes his) back story a bit, researched some and discovered that while Yuuki generally identifies as male, he's fascinated with onagata of the Edo era, popular male actors skilled at impersonating females. To him, they are sort of kindred spirits, being able to change their appearance if not as easily as a kitsune might, still with a certain level of skill. This draws him to a more colorful and fem aesthetic. That tweaks things only a tiny bit from my original story (which I haven't published here or anywhere as of yet, and as the Instigator suggested might be more novella or even novel length rather than short story length - stop cackling already!) but I'm glad that I took the time to get to understand Yuuki better to give him the story he deserves. It also made me appreciate the prettiness of my kimono more, and I do feel pretty when I wear them. But I still feel exasperated when I have to fold them; there are rules for that too. 

Fan Print #2 (Uchiwa-e) by Toyohara Kunichika (an onigata with a lover)

Song Choice: I Feel Pretty

Update From the Real World

I think this might be my first blog post about real world happenings in a while. I've been really focused on living up to the promise I made to myself to get enough short stories written to have a real *gulp* book ready for publication. I have two stories that need a second run through, a Yuuki story that is ready for another pair of eyes besides mine, a Rina story started and notes/ outlines on a couple more stories, including a Cordelia one. I originally thought I'd have seven in this collection, but that might be too little. I'll have to see what all of them look like once they've been edited at least once before I decide.

In between writing, I've been working on tea and belly dance. I find I can write a bit better if I keep active in between writing sessions. I think I'm finally getting this new tea form, which means they'll be throwing another one at me soon. Also I had the chance to play with my veil fans again on Monday night lesson. I forgot how much I loved working with those props. It makes me want to dust off the routine I choreographed for them awhile back.

I'll be back with a new poem for the blog soon. In the meantime, let me know if you'd like to see more real world updates from me from time to time.

Tea sweets from a recent lesson. The classmate who made them is quite talented!

Song Choice: Here I Am by Sertab (this is the song I choreographed the veil fan routine to)

Starry Wanderer or Name That Bowl!

One of the steps in the tea ceremony ritual is to take time to admire the tools used. Called haiken, it's a chance for the guests to take a close look at the items and for the guest to explain a bit about them, how they were made, their history, etc. The last tea ceremony practice I went to I had a chance to bring in a bowl I bought. And it definitely had a story behind it.

I first fell in love with this bowl while browsing the net when my friend Oolong was over.

The picture is from the Etsy shop I bought it from, Art To Hold

 I have a weakness for things with a celestial or star motif and this bowl just called to me. Tea bowls are not exactly inexpensive things, and at the time, I thought I'd put off getting it. But when a few weeks later I was in need of retail therapy (this was about the time my family got the news a very close friend of the family was nearing the end of his battle with Lou Gherig's Disease) I remembered this bowl. My friend loved the night sky as much as I did but for very different reasons (mine more metaphysical and his very strictly scientific). So I bought it.

And I waited...and waited...and waited...

Somehow, for some reason still unknown to me, Etsy grabbed an old address to send it to, my parents' old home half a fair sized state away. Never mind that I had placed an order just a week before and it came to my home just fine, as had the all the other orders I had ever made through Etsy.

I contacted the seller, who was super sweet about the whole thing (really I can't plug his store, Art To Hold enough - if anyone out there is in the market for a Japanese chawan or tea bowl, do check his shop out). He helped me track down phone numbers for the post office to try to sort things out. I got a hold of an actual human being at the post office near my folks old place and she found the package and pulled it so it could be sent to the correct address, no additional charge to me or the Etsy seller.

And then I waited...and waited...and waited...

Somehow, for reasons slightly less obscure but no less frustrating, my bowl got caught up in some strange sorting process based on the bar codes on it and kept pinging back and forth between a few different post offices. It got as close as Philadelphia before it got bounced back to somewhere else it wasn't supposed to go. I got to be quite friendly with the postal employee I has contacted initially. We apparently were both big tea lovers. She collected tea pots and one of her most cherished pieces had come from Japan. I actually talked to her the day my friend died and her kindness then, as well as throughout the whole thing, is something that will stay with me.

Finally - on my son's birthday which happened to coincide with a full moon no less - the bowl arrived in one piece at my home. The first person to drink from it? My friend's daughter, who loves Japan the way I and her mother do and loves the stars the way her father did.

My cha-do set, with it's snazzy new bowl.

So I related this whole story to my tea class and finished with "It really needs a name after all it's been through." (It's pretty common for distinctive tea tools to be given names). I asked the Japanese speakers how they might translate "Starry Wanderer" in Japanese - and got blank looks. Some concepts are hard to translate, but I may play with it it until I find a good translation. In the meanwhile, although it doesn't have a Japanese name, it does have a song.

Song Choice: The Wanderer by Dion

Frothing maddness

Its not quite yet 90 degrees on this sticky Philadelphia morning. A slight breeze relieves my skin every now and again, but its more of a tease. It comes and then goes quickly leaving me to the not so tender mercies of summer. I squirm slightly; I still lack the discipline to be able to sit seiza for a full ceremony, even a beginner one like the one we are practicing. Sighing, I focus on the anticipation of receiving the bowl of emerald goodness being prepared for me now. 

My love affair with Japan has been going on for quite some time now. Like most Gen-Xers, I can probably trace the roots back to some piece of offbeat bit of animation that distinguished itself from everything else on American TV at the time. Battle of the Planets, Voltron, Star Blazers, Speed Racer, might be the most common titles you hear. My favorite was the genre defining Ribon No Kishi with it's daring sword-wielding and cross dressing princess. But of course, not every Gen-Xer takes it as far as I do.

O-shoban itashimasu (Thank you for letting me join you.)

At some point, I got drawn in by Japan's legends and mythology. I got to appreciating it's ancient stories as well as it's modern ones. Had I been in college when this happened, I likely would have studied the Japanese language formally. But I satisfied myself by buying textbooks, flash cards and learning games to work with on my own. I became interested in Japan's native religion, Shintoism, reading all I could find about it. While that was great, it couldn't give me the full understanding I desired - I felt that would require a teacher (it's one of the reasons that though I like and admire what I've read on Shinto very much, I could not honestly consider myself a Shintoist). The Philadelphia area doesn't have any Shinto temples but it does have a vibrant Japanese cultural society. I had read that formal Japanese tea ceremony lessons were a good way to learn not just a small aspect  of Japanese culture, but also that is was a good way to get a bit of insight into the philosophies and mindset that permeate Japan's religious thought. That attracted me. Well that, and the fact I really like tea.

O-temae chodai itashimasu (Thank you very much for preparing the tea.)

It was a little daunting, learning all the motions at first. There seem to be so many of them, but after a while I came to understand that each of the movements has a purpose; the ceremony was designed to be as efficient as possible. It certainly doesn't feel that way at the start! Aside from the hand and arm motions, it takes quite a bit of getting used to sitting in the proper position and then rising gracefully, so as not to shower your fellow students in warm rinse water as you exit. Also, it's not always easy getting up extra early on a Saturday morning to drive an hour into the city. My mother, who has teasingly called me "Bruce Leroy" after the character in Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon, shakes her head at this latest passion of mine. (Hey mom, Bruce Leroy was technically all into Chinese culture, not Japanese 'kay?).

Yes, it is weird getting up early, driving a good distance to consume a boiling hot beverage on days when even my dog would rather be inside. It isn't logical. But then again, what great passions in our lives really are?  I almost think for it to really be a true passion, there must be just a touch of madness.


Finally it is my turn to get my bowl. I turn it the way I have been instructed after saying the proper polite lines. The tea looks and smells perfect with it's bit of froth floating on top. I raise my bowl, and although this isn't officially part of the ceremony I always mentally say, itadekimasu (literally, I receive). 

This posting is part of the fabulous Mad Tea Party 2013 blog party. Follow the link and take a peek at some of the other amazingly fun postings going on today