A short one this week, as I write to you from the road. A little over 24 hours ago I was pressed by the weight of Tokyo rainy season. I haven’t had more than one good night of sleep in a week, partly stress, partly the stress of the weather. The humidity seems to be inside my brain, like a hangover, a thickness through which I can’t hear or communicate properly. And it’s in my bed, pockets of heat building inside the duvet until the body jerks awake, sticks a limb out to search for a cool angle on the covers.
I was sweating on the train. In a daze, and also in a rush, I was looking for an old episode of Krista Tippett’s podcast and randomly clicked on an interview with John O’Donohue, an Irish poet whose work I’ll admit I know nothing about as I write this. It took a minute to get used to his accent, but then I listened to him talk about being born in a “bare limestone landscape,” in the Burren region of western Ireland.
“It makes a huge difference, when you wake in the morning and come out of your house, whether you believe you’re walking into dead geographical location, which is used to get to a destination,” he said, “Or whether you’re emerging out into a landscape that is just as much if not more alive as you.”
I pictured coming out of my house, the pavement of my neighborhood, the dense and stacked shops, the slack telephone lines, the narrow concrete alleys, the intersection I cross to get to the railroad tracks I cross to get to the train station I take to cross the city I live in. My home is a location that is used to get to a destination.
Texts were coming in rapidly just then from J and Mo. I was meeting them to take a bus to an airport to fly to take another bus to get to a rental car to drive for hours to a ropeway, which would turn out to be closed because there was too much rain and wind at the mountain that we flew to in order to escape rainy season in the location we normally live in.
“That was one of the recognitions of the Celtic imagination—that landscape wasn’t just matter, but that it was actually alive,” O’Donohue went onto say. “Landscape recalls you into a mindful mode of stillness, solitude, and silence, where you can truly receive time.” I looked up from my phone and saw that I needed to leave the train I was on to take a new train. I stopped the interview there and strode on.
I am a creature of the big city. I like the lights and clash of aesthetics; I find the terrifying crush of mega big train stations a fun puzzle; I like the chaos and the freaks and the movement and the energy suck and drain and pulse. But last night, we fell asleep in our tatami room with the window open. The rush of wind through millions of leaves and the rain hitting millions of blades of grass was like a roaring river (also I think there is a river), not still and silent at all, but quite loud, dynamic, saying, Pay attention to me, receive time with me, let me reveal my secrets to you this night.
(Of course this meant I didn’t sleep, one ear to the rush, one to the boys snoring.)
The next morning, detoured by strong winds, we found a path up the mountain through this very rush. Battered by wind and rain, we crossed rivers shin high, fought the compacted ice and snow, twisted against our inadequate gear, and came out at the base of the mountain we wouldn’t climb.
The clouds were moving fast against Asahidake, Hokkaido’s tallest mountain and an active volcano. A few times I was lifted by the wind and moved a few feet, once while I was in the middle of shouting above the din, pressing J and Mo to agree to go forward, go farther. I felt the wind laughing at me in this clear power move. Plumes of gas curled from the mountain’s fumaroles, its façade looking like used espresso grounds slashed with old sugar. Knowing it was pulsing with actual heat beneath its surface, I had no trouble seeing that the landscape wasn’t just matter; it was very alive, certainly more alive than me, just an ant with two hands and a computer.