The only living things that ignore me in this country are the cats. God bless them and their stereotypical kitty style.
The hardest thing about living where I live is the complete and total lack of privacy. I watched "The Big Chill" yesterday and couldn't help but laugh at the line, "I feel like I'm never alone. Didn't they do a study on lab rats who went crazy from lack of privacy?" Yeah, I know why. (And no, I'm not alone when I type most of these blog entries!)
On to the real reason I'm writing:
Nothing in Japan makes me feel instantly transported to my childhood like the baby-pink snapdragons I pass on my walk to work. I see snapdragons and immediately feel 5 years old, and suspect that a cat is hiding in the shrubs somewhere for me to drag out and carry around, and that my brother is behind me in the yard riding a small vehicle with an odd number of wheels. Never have I felt safer in my life...an unexpected illusion in a foreign country. And the owner of the snapdragons doesn't even know that I exist.
Yesterday I walked home through light rain and mist because I wanted to feel refreshed. The smell of greens welcoming the rain almost knocked me out it was so thick. (I love that smell.) And then I realized walking home that day would look totally different to me because of the scents that would reach me through the water in the air. Yesterday the air was a totally different canvas and the paint seemed completely new.
So I was walking along inhaling hard with every breath. I wondered if these Japanese smells would be good combined in perfume. If Angel included chocolate, and tons of perfume contained ambergris, I'm convinced that I could turn natto and mirin and maybe even sticky rice into something attractive.
I was mainly focused on my nose, until I came across a still-life in motion -- frozen but moving, more so a part of nature than the houses and sidewalks surrounding it, yet so isolated and seemingly cut off from the reality in which I was standing. The scene was like a fantasy turned virtual reality and I was on the edge of the fantasy looking in. Everything with this surreal quality that made me think if I tried to touch it, my hand would sweep through trees and plants as if they were holographic projections.
So, instead of pushing my luck, I stood on the edge of the sidewalk, and peered in. For at least 15 minutes I stood motionless, just staring at something so beautiful I felt it was only created for the hope that someone would stop and notice it.
It was a small square park lined with cherry trees still in bloom. The petals, saturated by mist, appeared pinker than usual. I saw no birds, people, or other moving things in the park; only the plants, so the rather large, old cherry trees took over with this frozen, regal quality, so proudly but so quietly displaying their blossoms.
That in itself was not so unusual; I'd been accustomed to the lovely cherry trees for at least a week. What caught my eye this time was the only movement in the whole park: it was snowing.
But not snowing everywhere. Onto me fell only small taps of rain. There was a very distinct line between where it was snowing and where it was not, and this is probably what made me feel like I was looking into a picture instead of living in the reality of it.
It was the snow of big, fat, beautiful flakes, that fell so slowly they seemed to defy gravity, so silently they seemed to defy anything mortal. They fell and decorated the plants like confetti, stuck in place by the dampness of the rain.
These delicate chips of whitish-pink silk kissed the sidewalk and the street pavement and just stuck without melting. Then I looked up past knarled tree trunks, past branches spread widely, asymmetrical but balanced, past the browns and greens into the pink and white clouds of that little sky. The cherry trees were snowing their flowers. That's why nonoe of the flakes dissolved on contact. It wasn't snowing frosted ice; it was raining flower petals in that little fantasy world beneath the trees. I couldn't believe how slowly yet how steadily the petals fell. My sense of time and seasons became confused. It was the 2nd time in my life I'd seen it snow in spring, but the first time I'd seen snow without feeling cold.
Of course the cherry trees would have been the cherry trees, regardless of my presence or lack thereof. But I stood there like I was watching a performance, a celebration that was put on just for me. I felt like the trees weren't mourning the loss of their blossoms, but instead celebrating the spring...and like the whole display had been silently orchestrated for me -- modest, but at the same time desperate for someone to stop and notice.
I know I've gone on and on...but it was truly one of the most amazingly beautiful and natural things I've ever seen. I felt like the tree was talking to me. And I'm not even a hippie.
People who think you have to camp to truly appreciate nature, who think you have to pitch tents and iodize your water and stay dirty to really know what nature is...those people are only seeing one color in the prism. I don't think people should be expected to dig holes with trowels before others will believe that they love things about the outside.
This morning after walking to work over sakura-lined sidewalks, I had to scrape cakes of cherry blossom petals from my shoes. It's a miracle I didn't slip on all that silk.
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