Persimmon Dreams: Recent Episodes
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September and the spider lilies are one of my joys! I’ve written a novel, Spider Lilies Bleed, so of course, they hold a special place in my heart.
It’s fun taking pictures and seeing the different feelings you get depending on the background, the surrounding elements, the number of flowers in the photo, the width of the focus (how much you allow into the frame), and of course, the angle of the shot. And when I think about that, I think that writing fiction is not so different from taking photographs: there may be a central character (a central element) focused upon, but the angle of “the shot,” how much you decide to widen your lens, what characters (colors) you decide to surround the central one with, the “lightness” or “darkness” of the background, will make all the difference in how readers perceive that central character.
Anyway, enjoy the flowers below, as well as the snippets from Spider Lilies Bleed.
Do you get different feelings from the different shots?
In their little clumps, the spider lilies seem to stand guard. They’re unarmed soldiers. They watch over the voice. When I run Guru’s weak beam of light over them, they shimmer scarlet red. I sit down. It’s a good spot. I don’t see any reason to leave.
I’ve had one of those dreams that feel so real. I was in the middle of a giant field of yellowing rice, protected by a circle of spider lilies. The spider lilies were three times as tall as I was. Electric currents were racing around the curling petals that formed their red halos. The halos squealed with red light. The power generated flowed into the long red antennas and shot out into the dark sky.
“Everywhere you go,” she says, “people have different nicknames for them. Grave flowers. Funeral flowers. Snake flowers. Razor flowers. Ghost flowers. Dead man flowers. Hell flowers. Orphan flowers. . . .
“At the equinox, spirits become active. That’s why people visit gravesites this time of year. It’s the time of year when people need to feel close to the ones they’ve lost–and the spider lilies help them. . . .
“But most people don’t want to think about death more than they have to. That’s why they don’t want them in their gardens.”
Different color, different feeling?
She waves, then walks over into a little gravel area and guides our car in. She’s holding a pair of scissors and a single spider lily. She’s got one of the sweetest smiles I’ve ever seen.
A single flower under an azure sky, a patch of flowers among dark green weeds and shaded by trees. Same feeling?
Thanks for reading! When September rolls around again, enjoy the spider lilies–if they grow near you!
Tamami and I had been crazily busy, but we decided to take July 2, a Saturday, and drive up into Yamanashi Prefecture to the Nishizawa Gorge. From Shizuoka City it was a bit over two hours in the car. The round-trip up the river and back through the woods was a bit over three hours. … Continue reading Nishizawa Gorge →
I’m happy to announce the publication of Spider Lilies Bleed! Yeah! It’s a short novel, but required about two years of thinking/writing, and another year of editing. If you’d like to jump to a four-minute promotional video, just click here! In the U.S. you can order here, or in Japan, here. So what’s it about? Nozomi … Continue reading Pics and Quotes: Spider Lilies Bleed — the novel →
This year I followed the maples until the trees were bare, until every leaf had fallen. They always have my attention, but this year especially so, or so it seems, perhaps because this year the larger trees on the mountains (in particular, the magnificent beeches) went, in large part, from green to brown, with not … Continue reading Pics and Quotes 211224 — ‘Til the last maple leaf falls →
It’s August here in Shizuoka, which means that a hike up Ryuso Mountain can include a side jaunt out to see the Fox Razor Lilies. That expanse of orange mountainside is about 45 minutes from either Hozumi Shrine or the top of Ryuso. On August 5th, my hike went something like this: 45 minutes from … Continue reading Fox Razor Lilies →
April 7th. A hike up from the town of Umegashima to the Abe Pass, and then up Bara-no-dan. There was some talk of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. The simple scoop for anyone not familiar with the area: Take Route 29 up to Umegashima. At the end of 29, turn right onto the mountain road that goes … Continue reading Pics and Quotes — 210407 Hiking to the Abe Pass and Up Bara-no-dan →
Given it’s a pandemic holiday season, it seems reasonable to limit the pictures this time to places that I could get to by foot or bicycle—or see by looking out my window. All pictures from the last few weeks. And for better or worse, what’s in my mind right now is one of the books … Continue reading Pics and Quote 201224 — Christmas Eve in Shizuoka →
And Jackson had known—yes, over there in America—had known that today, October 29, the sky above the ridge would be a lovely azure, the maple leaves fiery orange and red, the beech leaves a dozen different yellows and golds, all of which became, when a breeze swept the ridge, a swirl of glowing embers—stars in … Continue reading Pics and quotes 201027 — The Big Shiny Mountain →
The autumnal equinox. In my neighborhood at least, the August haze has dissipated, and the bright blues have returned. The rice has yellowed up. In the midst of the yellow and blue, the higanbana (spider lilies) have risen. The primary colors are meant to be looked at. To be felt. It’s a time when some … Continue reading Pics and Quotes 200929 →
September, 2020. Cooler days here in Asahata (Shizuoka City, Japan). Sauntering, seeing, daydreaming. “The Mioyama sun,” he says. “The tangerines and kumquats. The persimmons. The vegetables. The soil. We have been so blessed, Kenta. And this rice. Especially this rice. Just look at this beautiful, beautiful rice.” Along the Same Street I have met with … Continue reading Pics and quotes 200917 →
The last day of May and I was back on the trail up Yambushi. The two or three days before, I’d been feeling worn down (legs tired), but somehow once I started the climb, I felt refreshed and did the whole walk at a brisker pace than normal, a little over four hours up and … Continue reading Review: why I hike →
Spring is bursting out everywhere and it is glorious . . . but it somehow seems at odds with the ways many of us are feeling in this coronavirus pandemic. Only spring isn’t at odds with anything. It is what it is . . . as is the coronavirus. The current moment reminds me of … Continue reading All he meant to me →
wild strawberry It was a few years back that I took my first walk along the Yatsuyama ridge (yama = mountain), here in Shizuoka City. I was in a pretty bad way, agonizing over a situation I felt obligated to make better, one in which I wanted to relieve the suffering of a person I loved very, very much, but I was in a position in which I could do nothing.
Fortunately, I’ve never been prone to self-destructive behavior, so in order to cope, I did not take to heavy drinking, nor to any other desperate means. But I needed to do something. Something that would keep me from going completely crazy and growing completely despondent.
So I climbed Yatsuyama. Once, twice, many times. And then I realized that Ryuso Mountain was not far away and I could climb it, too. And then I realized—they’d always been there to be seen—that I could also climb around in all those mountains an hour’s drive away in the Umegashima area.
Ryuso Mountain, cherry blossoms, from the Yatsuyama “summit” But I climbed Yatsuyama first.
Some people would say that Yatsuyama is not really a mountain. After all it rises a mere 108 meters above sea level. But it is a mountain. Because you can climb it. Because you begin to breathe harder going up. Because you can feel so very much alive with the breathing required. Because, as you go up, your view of the horizon broadens.
Yatsuyama “summit” When you begin to breathe deeply, you begin to feel the air of the mountain circulating through your lungs, and it’s a very nice feeling—you feel part of an infinite system. If you feel this very strongly, you might feel that with each breath you’re actually taking the whole mountain — the trees, the birds, the dandelions, the wild strawberries, the bamboo, everything into yourself.
And then you’re likely to feel that you and the mountain are one. You’re not alone. You’re NOT SEPARATED from anything. You’re a significant part of the universe!
You might also realize that you’re a significant, but small part of the universe, that human beings and human society are a small part of the universe. This might make your troubles seem less overwhelming.
No, feeling the universe does not make your social problems go away. And yes, your human relationships and your position in human society are important. Of course, they are. But the mountain, the walk through the woods, can put it all in perspective.
broken bowl I found a piece of a broken bowl. I don’t know why you sometimes find fragments of bowls along the trails (what are people doing?), but you do find fragments. Back when I was having so much trouble, I began the habit of picking up these pieces of broken bowl and putting them in my pocket. Soon, I had a pile of them on my dining table.
And I liked having them there. Whenever I looked at them, my emotional pain would ease.
Because I’d realize that pain was just a natural part of things, a natural part of human life. Sometimes there are “broken” things in life that you can repair. Sometimes, though, you can’t repair them. But you can live with them. You have to live with them.
Suruga Elegant oranges and cherry blossoms About that time, I started writing a novel, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May, and I decided to have my narrator write a song about broken bowls. Here’s what he wrote.
Have you heard of the temple of the broken bowl?
A place where we can pray?
Is there really a temple of the broken bowl?
Is there anyone who can say?
We fend off all the blows
We mend so many holes
Pretend we surely know
And we build with a broken bowl.
Yes, we build with a broken bowl.
Yes, we build with broken bowls.
The bowls sometimes break, but the mountain brings joy.
Sometimes when I’d walk the ridge of Yatsuyama, I’d feel this joy so strongly.
But then I’d wonder how I might ever communicate this feeling of joy to someone else, someone who’d yet to “climb the mountain,” but I never could figure out how to put it into words . . . not words that someone in a very difficult and painful situation would understand.
Harujion As I worked on my novel, I decided that I’d let my narrator decide if he could figure out how to explain this joy. He especially took pleasure in the leaves and flowers of the yashio (in Umegashima) and deep in the woods, the komorebi, the sunlight filtering down through the leaves of the trees, but he never became confident that he could explain it to anyone else.
grasshopper But one day, when he was walking with a lady he’d come to care about very much, he asked her if she had the words to explain why the yashio and the komorebi brought so much joy.
cherry blossoms And here’s what she said — what she said with the palm of her hand on his breast.
“If you focus, if you concentrate on your heart center, you can feel the energy inside yourself—and that is life, that is all life. I think you know this. . . . This energy, here, in your heart center, is calm and peaceful and infinite. You may forget about it sometimes, but it is always here. Always. And your energy here connects to all the energy in this world. . . .
lovely dandelion face “The energy I feel inside my own heart is also in your heart. . . . We humans are blessed with powerful brains, capable of extraordinary thought. But sometimes our thoughts can control us, and that’s when we forget the energy, forget how to feel the energy—the energy here. And when we forget this energy here, we can no longer connect to all the energy around us. . . .
Ryuso Mountain, cherry trees (from the Yatsuyama “summit”) “When you look up at the komorebi, or look up at these yashio leaves, the energy you can sense has extraordinary power. The light is energy and the green is energy, and you see it all with such clarity. It is a stimulus that no heart can shield itself from. . . .
log, cherry petals, ivy “So if you have lost touch with the energy here, inside your heart center, you will suddenly feel it’s intensity. In either case, you will feel so strongly how much you belong—and you will feel love.”
wild strawberry (from Persimmon Dreams: When you’ve got a spare moment, check out our music/nature videos on our “Persimmon Dreams” YouTube channel, or Steve’s books, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May and Along the Same Street, available on Amazon, or directly from us. And if you enjoyed this post, consider sharing with others. Thank you!)
For pictures of yashio, click here, or here.