June firsts

People In The Know, know that, among many things, one of the things the Japanese do best are the seasons. Students will proudly confess, as if no one else in the world had ever experienced seasons, "We have four seasons in Japan." Truth be told, it is quite possible that outside of Japan, you probably have not experienced the particulars of each season with quite the attention and love in which they are celebrated  here.

My favourite name for the season we are in presently is Bai-u, the 'plum rain', and I had occasion to see, for the first time, in the Plum Grove in the garden a few days ago, the ground sprinkled with a good number of the small golden fruits fallen from the trees. Most of the green, unripe so-called 'blue plums' had already been harvested for the early summertime activity of making the delicious plum cordial called ume-shu. 

We have just emerged from 3 days of typhoon heavy rain into a beautiful cool morning, for which I am most grateful. I was out early for a walk and to take some snaps. I do love the adornment of raindrops on flowers, don't you? Yesterday, browsing through the Sasaki Sanmi's great manual on Chado: the Way of Tea, I was transported into reverie by this:

. . .  the sound of rain falling from the eaves and the singing of the kettle calm your mind. Isn't it fun to hear the occasional falling of ume (a plum) to the ground?

Just passing the time of day during the early summer rain is apt to lead to joy in the pleasure of tea and the way of tea . . .

Here are some of the gifts of June that have done my spirit good:

• For the nose: 
• the first good wafts of roadside gardenia and a promising pot plant with buds waiting to burst             
• on dry days, an evening coolness descending with the rising of the fragrances of the twilight
• strains of incense burnt to lift the spirits after the rain
• For the mouth:
•  the first cherries of the season
• the first (ever) ripened golden plum fallen from a tree in the Garden's orchard
• oka-hijiki
• For the eyes: 
• Hydrangeas all over the show, in every possible hue and variation, and a weekly bouquet from Mimi's garden
• Irises in best bloom
• Lush, voluptuous greenery
• For the ears:
• Whispering fans and softly roaring air-conditioning vents
• Singing and 'quacking' frogs and crickety bugs at night
• Rain slapping wetly down 
• For the heart:
• Rice sprouts are planted 
• Lotuses have begun to bloom
• Dashing and darting swallows after the rain & the sight of an osprey outside the window at breakfast this morning
• Clear/er skies for the solstice weekend supermoon 

Also, wonder-fully, I begin another year of life walking the earth, DG!

What are your June firsts?

From my Deep Pocket, this week

I have a wonderfully/woefully stuffed Pocket App, that gets fatter and fatter as weeks pass. What to do, what to do? A visit to the dentist last week and I was informed that Deep Pockets are 'undesirable,' contrary to what the dictionary tells me about deep pockets symbolising 'abundant financial resources'. Here is an effort to put my deep pocket/s (app) to work! (If it all gets a spot overwhelming: try some Mental Floss ;).

Here are the articles that I am going to attend to in the next week. If anything tickles your fancy, I'll be glad. I might even work up a post about one or two of them. Perhaps we could 'conversate' in the comments or on email?

It's commencement season in the U.S. and it's impossible not to notice the humanities picking up the gauntlet and facing the seductions of Technology or at least saying, 'hang on a minute'. To humanize is one of the most important functions of the Humanities. For that time is needed; thought is needed. Humans are needed! (Apply within! ha!)

Here are the 7 links:

• Physics's pangolin
• The Humanities in Transition
• Richard Kearney on Imagination and Catharsis & Evil, Ethics and the Imagination
• Donald Kagan on Liberal Education
• Another defense of the Humanities from TNR
• Listened to a rather disappointing interview of Tom Sheehan on Entitled Opinions (one of my favourite podcasts) about Heidegger and Technology a week or so ago. All was not lost, however, as my interest in Hannah Arendt was reignited by the great host of the show, Robert Harrison. Also, Jason Goroncy, one of my most visited Antipodean bloggers is excited for the film. (Might be a while until it gets over here, alas).
• James Gleick's review of Lee Smolin's latest, entitled Time Regained.

Enjoy your reading homework. 

True Recreation

This great description from A Thomas Merton Reader,* which speaks to that great exercise of unclenching the fist of the mind:

"It was wonderful, the silence, and peace, and happiness that pervaded this sunny room, where so many men were together without speaking. Far from there being any sense of restraint, of awkwardness, of strain, you felt flooded with a deep sense of ease and quiet and restful well-being. There was absolutely no kind of tension between those who sat together in silence: they were all absorbed in their books or their thoughts or their writing. And their very activities were marked by a kind of restful quality: they were not imprisoned by any fierce concentration, not driven before the face of some storm of hurry and anxiety. Their eyes rested on the page with a quiet, detached attention; or else they looked away from the book, in thought; or they entered into themselves, or wrote something down." (148)

To be so absorbed and effortlessly in the flow -- how beautiful!

* Edited by Thomas P. McDonnell

Platinum skies & The Grand Frogs' Chorus

It had only just been announced on the television set above the counter in the old sushi shop where we were celebrating the Master's 70th birthday, that the official start to the rainy season had begun, almost 2 weeks earlier than usual! The frogs, of course, felt it in their waters.

Walking home after dark

Along a garden path,

From an unseen amphibian amphitheater

The sweet, squelching song of summertime frogs

Squeaked and swelled.

Rainy season!

The scent of sandalwood blossoms.

It did not occur to me until I set down the words, that the noun for frog and the verb for 'homing' (coming or going) sound the same in Japanese - kaeru-  but looks different (frog = 蛙, and homing = 帰). I should get out my brushes in honor of their little ditty shared with me.