Values, laughter, insects, connoisseurship

As the long luxuriant hours of one of our interviews progresses, tea time often comes around, and the discussions with Atsuko and Gufu veer into dialectics about this or that kind of tea, the grade of the tea, the size of the cut, and the proper kind of tea cup to use when drinking this particular variety, or how the glaze on the cup does or doesn't fit this kind of tea. "Well, let's drink the first cup in the proper fashion… Huh? It's jammed up in the pot! … Oh, it's powdered tea! It's a good quality, but it's cheaper because it's powdered!"

I admit to loving this minutiae of connoisseurship, even as I know they are both half-parodying it, laughing at the rarified world of Tea in Japan which they, simultaneously, just happen to know a hell of a lot about.

Now Gufu is wincing as he drinks the tea. "Yaaa! It's too bitter!" Atsuko lets out another gale of laughter, then takes aim at me, "Hey that's like when Andy made the mulled apple cider, with too many spices in it! I remember, you just sucked it up and drank it down like it was supposed to have that much spice in it!"

Interview continued:

Andy:" But Atsuko, when did your life start to diverge from that of others?"

Atsuko: "Oh, OK, that was in 1976-before I went traveling. It was the time when everyone around me, the students, were starting to talk about getting jobs. It occurred to me that once I did find a job, and took it, and began working…most likely it would be hard to quit that kind of life later. For once I started making money, and living the moneyed life, it would be very difficult to shift back to a life without later on. At that time, I thought, if I get old and have no money, and end up poor, well, I'd be alright with that; it wouldn't matter"

As we talk--the bird sounds, their lyrical calls, and the crescendoing insects, who then fade back into the silence of the afternoon are always placing itself in my earshot, reminding me of the place Atsuko and Gufu have chosen to live. From outside, I can also feel the moisture of the air and the scents of the plants that live on the wealth and fertility of the soil, making me aware too of the permeability of the house itself--Japanese architecture not walling off the outside world--and each of these things keeps up its gentle reminder of what it is that is valuable to these people, and, I recognize, to me.

Interview with Atsuko: "Something out there..."

Here's the raw material for a chapter. This took about four hours to transcribe, translate, and then turn into proper English. The intermediate project:

In the late 70s Atsuko spent years traveling in India and Nepal.

Andy: What was changing inside of you during this time?

Atsuko: Hmmm…that was the period in which I started reading the Bible, and I started reading books on Buddhism that they had at Shantikuti (house of peace, run by Zen Abbot Takaoka in Katmandu.) Well, more than before, I got interested in Buddhism, somehow, there was something, indefinable, in there for me. I allowed Buddhism in. And along the way, I became a vegetarian.

Andy: You said last year that you weren't interested in traveling more, that you felt that you had "gotten" what traveling was. What did you mean by that?

Atsuko: As I was traveling--and I did a lot of kinds of traveling—I realized that if you just keep, keep traveling, you--at some point--aren't able to calm down, and feel at ease. You eventually start to feel that want to settle down. You board a train at night, and it's daaaaark out, and you can see little dottings of lights here and there. Then you think to yourself, 'I'll be in the train station soon, then when I get there, I have to go out and find a place to stay, to spend the night, to sleep.' Thinking about this, seeing the little lights, I got envious of the people in their houses. They have a proper place to sleep, and food to eat. Seems good! (Laughing) What I got was that, wherever you go, every single person, in order to eat, they have to work, even Buddhist monks. They need a place to sleep. No matter what, in the future, I won't be able to escape that.

But also, I could see in Nepal and India, the people's way of life--their lives are very poor--and inside of their houses, there isn't much of anything, almost nothing. And if they go shopping, they don't even put things in bags, sometimes. They just hold on to the vegetables with their hands, or put them in a basket. Whatever things a person has, you can really see it.

You can see their lives. They are very, very simple, but it all seemed incredibly beautiful to me. There don't have many things, and the things they have aren't hidden. If it's vegetables; it's just vegetables, it's not shrink-wrapped vegetable side dishes from the supermarket.

Even now I can remember looking down from the roof of the Shantikuthi lodge, in the early evening onto the street in front, and people were coming and going … going back to their houses. The sky had just a little bit of light, and the crows were crying 'Kaaa, kaaa!' and the street was full of trees, and cows were going through the street in both directions and –what was it?—people were carrying cauliflower--it was that season--and there was someone carrying it on bamboo poles over his shoulders, with two baskets hanging down from each end, and some man who was working in an office somewhere, was putting some cauliflower in his net bag.

I thought to myself, 'Ahh… I can see people are finishing their work, going back to their houses' So that kind of scene had very much the atmosphere and the feeling of a single day's ending. And now they were going home to their family and were beginning to make food--you could really see it.

So even though there was no way to run away from the need for getting food for yourself, and a place to sleep, but this can also be a really wonderful thing. And that is what I felt at that time.

Andy: Before that time, when you were younger, you didn't feel that?

Atsuko: No. Earlier on I had a stronger feeling of 'Maybe there is something else--isn't there?' So before I went traveling, the feeling I had of 'there's something out there, isn't there' was much more of frivolous feeling, you know like a ditzy young girl going 'heee hee!'—when you don't really have your feet on the ground, like in a dream. And I realized I had to change that in myself.