Ladies who launch
Springing to life on the Ise-ji
“And then, from there, it was possible, unavoidable really, to listen to the storm going around and around, and I knew it was an old one that had come back—it seemed to know exactly where it was and there was such intimacy in its movement and in the sound it made as it went along and around and around. Yes, I thought, you know these mountains and the mountains are familiar with you also.” — Claire-Louise Bennett, Pond
Welcome to the fourth new moon of the year. Sun and earth and moon might be doing something funky, depending on where you are on the planet.
Last month I was with Ma and El on the Ise-ji, one of the routes of the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trail, a 1,000-year-old network of paths that spreads across the Kii Peninsula. Two years ago I hiked the kohechi route with B, we prayed to Aizen Myō-ō for deliverance from our inexhaustible desires, before facing grueling ascents of rain, hail, and wind, before we got to frozen-over summits, before the trail gave way to the bush warblers warbling in pale sakura, a signal that spring had come.
Ise-ji is less intense, less traveled, and runs along both the rail line and the coast line.
Hurry, stop, hurry, stop. My phone is disconnected, my brain the opposite. There is, despite the performance of rushing, nowhere else, no one else, to be. There are many moments where I don’t think about art, power, or influence; desire, family, or femininity; lighting, soundproofing, or vacuuming. I focus on putting my feet in the appropriate position so that I remain walking upright. I try, anyway; I tell a story about heartbreak; I fall to my ass. It’s snowing now.
We start on the first day of spring. On day three of the five-day trip, we are having what has quickly become a typical morning: We finish our tasks speedily to get an early start, determined to keep faffing to a minimum and walk the full 25 kilometers as planned to the onsen town where we will sleep that night. But before we make it out the door one of us had edits to respond to, another of us needs to poop, we want to drink our coffees leisurely and take photos of our beds in the morning shoji light. We huddle under our blankets and talk about what college didn’t teach us, the sun rising higher.
Once we finally do start up the mountain, things start getting brisk again, we are moving at 160% of the average pace as given on the hiking app, sure steps and no stops — wait hold on some cute moss — stop a rainbow — then we get to the summit. The weather is the kind that instantly leaves a memory.
Ma lays down on the rock facade and gives it a big hug; El asks some nice sweat-banded ojisan to take our photo and has to remind them how to use a film camera; I drop my gloves somewhere and go ducking around looking for them. We put our heads back and sunglasses on and lay still like happy lizards. Before we realize it we’ve lost at least an hour, maybe two, who’s to say.
Later, power walking again, we are stopped in our tracks. The moon, a few days from full, has risen over the beach, and we’re in a gazebo. There’s no choice. We take off our backpacks and stretch our hamstrings. Ma puts on someone’s lost glasses. We discuss our names, the syllables from English, French, Italian, Vietnamese that we try to stuff into, contort around, the unbendable boxes of katakana. It’s warm and the spring dusk is so sweet.
The next morning is a wet one. We put on rain pants, take lots of pictures in the storm, I misplace my gloves for a second time, we lose track of El at some point, we see a koi out of water, it’s moving on the rock below, even from this distance it’s obviously very unhappy. The shower gets worse and we eat sandwiches in a cafe so cute it’d have the Kinfolks creaming.
Ma calls us merenderos, people who venture outdoors just to justify and indulge in snacking. Run down the mountain only to decide later we’d rather catch the bus for the next stretch. Eat an ice cream outside the conbini while we wait. Rushing to chill. Ambitiously losing time. Motifs of this Tokyo life.
In June it’ll be ten years since the first time I came to Japan. I didn’t sleep for a lot of that trip: I had been unexpectedly dumped the night before my flight. I was sharing a room with my parents, who have Richter-charting snores. I broke away from the tour of Vietnamese retirees to go to Naoshima. In 2014 I only knew two or three other people who had heard of it. On Teshima I looked at art and cried. I missed my boat.
After that I started going to remote art places in the US and then a lot more once I moved to Japan. I think I’ve traveled something like 10,000 miles and a lot of sleepless nights in pursuit of this hard to access beauty. Ten years ago it didn’t seem possible that someday I’d be a working critic in Tokyo. Chance has its absolute logic. After a decade it was time to write about all that inconvenient art.