world of blues

This isn’t to signal any tragic mood swing. Not at all. I’ve been far too busy for that. Still, anyone who passed through this part of the country in the last 24 hours would have noted the deliciously blue sky that was ours for this day.

I had too much work to really give it much heed. But every time I went out, even if only for a few minutes, my camera would itch to focus on the healthy contrasts out there -- to take in that piercing bottomless blue.

Near the construction site...





...and, too, downtown. Though I have to say that this café (which some argue makes the best cup of espresso in town) has it all wrong. One outdoor table? Where’s the camaraderie in that? As for the gentleman sitting there – what can I say... if you need a scarf to keep warm, you probably should not be wearing flip flops.





One more blue observation: this next and last photo very much reminds me of a mother’s drooping shoulders as she carries the weight of her kid. No?

...and you're out

Shouldn’t you be out after two strikes? How many chances do you deserve in real life to show that you are not a loser? More than one? Really?

I am up early. Of course I am. Is there a day during the teaching week when this is not so? I look outside. Ohhhh... pretty! I throw on a bathrobe and go to the twelfth floor. The view from there is sublime. Madison at sunrise.





I have not tweaked the colors: they are authentic and true.

I watch and breathe deeply, somewhat in rhythm with a Grieg piece, honoring morning...

Only after a minute or so do I notice that there is someone behind me. Another condo person who rises early and eats his cereal up here on the terrace, watching the sun break through.





Sorry about my attire... I mumble.
No need to be sorry. 

We watch in silence.




It is late afternoon. My three classes are wrapped and tucked away. I am about to set out to meet with Sarah, the holder of the Saab keys.

I know. It’s Saab the sob: the car that not only knows how to fail, but also cannot get up on its feet again after a failure. (The story from one of the commenters here was frightening: six months to fix the damn thing??)

But Ed is somewhat intrigued by the Saab. I get the feeling that it’s not unlike the vintage BMW motorcycles that grabbed his attention some decades ago: here are these nearly defunct machines that could continue to serve if only someone could figure out how to keep their engines running. He tells me – if you want to give it a try, we can try to figure out what’ ailing this particular machine...

And so I tell Sarah the Saab seller that we’ll take another shot at it. She, of course, reassures us that the problem has been fixed. We don’t believe that for a minute, but we’re willing to give it another go.

But an hour before the scheduled meeting and transfer of ownership Sarah writes to tell me that the engine has died again.

Two strikes.
We should walk away for sure now, no? The sellers have lost all credibility: the car is completely unreliable!

Eh, so what. Life is an adventure. Figuring out how to make a beautiful chandelier give light makes sense to me. The Saab (oh, if you only could see it!) is beautiful. It should not be allowed to retire. We’ll give it another chance. Maybe.

I'll at least think about it.



(from my office window)

not until the fat lady sings

The saga of the car purchase continues even as today provides an intermission of sorts. The thread, like it or not, will be picked up again tomorrow.

Slowly, I have recalibrated my days, readjusted my sensors and I am very close to settling into that gentle sway of the academic calendar. It’s always the same. A Sunday evening preparation, picking up the pace on Monday, forging full speed ahead on Tuesday, panting for breath on Wednesday (that would be today!) and getting ready to collapse and exhale by Thursday evening. Friday has the burden of the administrative load that was sorely neglected on the other days.

I sleep better knowing that there is a pattern to all this.

I don’t worry about it being so clearly Fall. In May I may think -- God, it’s so cool not to be just heading into the dismal months, but now I am in a calendar sway as well. Heading is good. Standing still is tiresome.

Maybe I’m tired of photographing flowers.

Even as, in the blue skied days, you don’t need flowers to fill your fantasy world with brightness. (These shots are from my walk home, past the usual University Avenue stuff, and finally -- past the construction of the mega Target store, taking place just outside my condo building.)















More likely I’m responding well to the change of pace. Drifting with the wind feels right. Especially if it’s a gentle wind. None of the strong stuff of yesterday. I like gentle.

...all things bright

It was the most beautiful car I had ever seen... Sunroof! Yes! The seats turn warm, the seats turn cool, Ed says – hey, they not only go back and forth, they go up and down!

It had been a battle to be first in line to view it. The ad went up, twenty million people called (or some such number). A scheduling snafu meant that no one could see it until today. I pushed using all available logic to be first in line.

A golden moment: I am there (with mechanically inclined Ed), the car is glistening in the evening sunlight, I touch it ever so gently, I sit behind the wheel, turn the key, put it in first and off we go!

A dreamy ride! The gears shift from one to two to three ever so smoothly... Lights flicker telling me to do this, to do that... I know I want this car.

Best part – the little old Saab has an asking price of only twice my upper limit. They want $2300.

I tell Ed to do the final check: anything that I may have omitted. He moves behind the wheel, I take out my wad of $100 bills, making sure I have them neatly in place.

We're coming round the last bend. I feel a lurch.

Then silence. The engine stalls. All is quiet.

Ed tries all the tricks known to him – nothing.

I call Sarah, the owner’s daughter-in-law (she brought the car down to Madison for the sale) and I explain the predicament. We are in a dead space somewhere on the far east side of town and the car wants to go no further.

Ed and I get out and push and eventually we get this shiny sparkling heap of metal to the point of departure.

Sarah's day is ruined. She says as much. Who can blame her. Not her car, not her fortune. Or misfortune.

I like her feisty pissed countenance. The woman is spunky and witty. Her tattoos protrude seductively, her cigarette remains suspended in places where it can offend no one. Ed and I try to make this deal work even as the car simply wont... well, run.

It’s no good. We leave her to her sorry predicament and head back. I stop at Ed’s farmette and borrow his ’93 Geo Metro to get me through a couple of errands in the next day or so. The sun is dazzling, the fields are in a brilliant hue of gold, but I don’t have a photo for you: my camera is casting a sympathy vote with those who choose not to work today. Its battery dies, it can do nothing more.

Life is full of unnecessary changes and unwanted improvements.

In the evening my daughters and I sit over a plate of sushi and they are liking the food and I am remembering raw fish in Japan...

The camera needs a recharge.

And so do I.

the currency of humanity

Ed tells me -- it's the poetry of being alive!

Buying and selling cars in America. He tells my daughters --  I guarantee that before it's all over, you, along with nearly every person in this country will have had a car.

So, no leaks? -- I ask, watching something drip from the exhaust pipe. Water, Ed whispers. That’s just water. He is concentrating on the front end. Why doesn’t the hood fit?
The young owner explains -- Well, when the wild turkey landed on the hood...

Earlier, on another call about another car:

I bought this car because my favorite one wasn’t working. So, until I could fix it, I needed something to drive. But now it’s fixed, so I’m selling this one.

We drive out to see one such story – the one that once sported turkeys on its hood. A kid, really just a kid in Lodi (twenty miles north of here), jumping around junk yards looking for spare parts. And now he's done with it all. Moving on. Wants the cash. Ed mutters – you didn’t mention the broken windshield and the loose headlight.

Do you like it? Ed asks this as we take it out for a spin.

The thing is, I don’t. It feels like a car that has hit many animals in its short twenty year life and is being held together with rubber bands.

In the last five years I’ve hardly needed a car. Bikes, buses, closeby markets – they freed me from the madness of constant driving. But, life puts you in different palces at different times and now I anticipate that I will have to occasionally drive. Especially once I sell the condo and move away from the bus routes.

Car shopping has been, as I have already said, hugely depressing. Most people are slobbish inside their cars – even more so than inside their homes. And the rust... and the spills, and dents...

It feels, sometimes, as if it’s impossible these days to buy a decent car for under $1000.

But I keep trying.






We speed this way and that, across the countryside and beyond, with the eternal hope of the perfect little nothing. For under $1000.

quiet time

There are periods like these: Sunday? Monday? Does it matter?

All day long, the goal is to get the job finished. (For me: summer work graded and put to rest, fall work organized and ready to deliver.)



pausing for coffee at Sundance, down the hill from the condo


In weeks like these, a good moment comes from looking up and seeing the sunflower in a cup with a bird on it (hello, Ayami in Kyoto)...





...and even more,  being among your fellow travelers in life, not only of the occasional sort.





Though let’s not make light of having the occasional sort around as well. A crowded room is a happy room.

Saturday morning

By 10 in the morning I had visited two farmers’ markets (one to go still) and test driven an ancient car on the other side of town.

The latter activity only highlighted what I already know: buying a cheap and rarely to be used car is depressing, especially if you like the small and sassy cars that whiz through cities on the other side of the ocean. Big clunkers with cracked windshields, rusted body parts and what are dismissively referred to as “small dings” --- look awful. Barely holding it together. Sort of what I expect to see in a person who is at the point in life where every breath might be their last.

Still, life is about choices and if I want to keep chasing rainbows on various sides of the ocean, I must make do with the ugly vehicle that will, after all, remain mostly in the garage.

I could not get myself to plunk down the $900 on this one. We leave.


The markets are a more cheerful venture, even as I wish I would go back to waking up at 6 rather than at 4 in each of the mornings. My current schedule makes me feel by noon like I should be winding down for the day. Just when the rest of my household begins to really buzz.

But I do think that the real bounteous markets of August are no more. Some of the truck farmers are bringing in a good assortment still, but many vendors are limiting it to beans, a few herbs ad daikon radish.  (Daikon radish! Japan!)


 


Onions are getting smaller rather than larger. Tomatoes are now a big seller, but otherwise, the rich colors out there are mainly in the the flowers. Okay, and the peppers.











End the markets with a good coffee. You must. Here:





Then go home and catch up on sleep. Or read work papers. Or a little of both.

moving boxes

Too early! I’m up and running too early! How am I to catch up on missing days of sleep?

Outside, the air has turned autumnal. There is a stunning sunrise, even as I see it only in the play of morning light on the building across the lot from me.




So many moves! My own, and even more frequently -- my daughters,’ into college dorm rooms, then apartments, and the more apartments. Now, in post school years, there isn’t the lifting, carting, U-Hauling. There are trucks with able bodied men who move boxes in half the time it would take to free-up my joints... I just peel off tape, ask “where does this go?” and break down the cardboard.

And I'm the one who says -- let's break for the day...

from Madison

To make me feel like there is continuity in my life, the weather offers up some pretty steamy moments today. To remind me that this is short lived, transitional – it offers up some gusty rains, too.

When I go down Bascom Hill for my “welcome home” espresso (thanks, Ed!) I hope to capture it all and perhaps throw in a rainbow as well. But I am in a hurry, so all you get is the usual.





Why in a hurry? It is undeniable that a week packed full of things that would test the endurance of the hardiest of us eventually gets to you. Jet lagged, with too little sleep for too long a stretch now, I jump into teaching classes right the next day. On top, I have one daughter waiting for movers (tomorrow) and hoping for a good motherly meal (tonight) and moral support (whenever: it’s yours for the asking) through her transition to life back in Madison, and another daughter flitting in and out of town as well.

Then there’s Ed.

My occasional traveling companion is around too for all the pokes he gets from me on Ocean, and I will say this – he is a man who is not riled much. Even in these chaotic times. (Thanks, Ed.)

My eyes are propped open by the dryness that comes from too little sleep, but I can truthfully say that I am very happy to be home.

from Paris: love, in the interpretation of a teen

It is really quite remarkable that a plane can taxi to its gate by 5 p.m. and I should be able to go through passport control, pick up a suitcase, go to the train station and be on a train heading for Paris proper by 5:18. I am determined to have some minutes in the city before it closes its commercial heart (it varies, but it’ll be between 7 and 8) and focuses on the wining and the dining for the remaining (many) hours of the evening.

I had worked for most of the Osaka – Paris flight, all twelve hours of flying along where Russia meets the Arctic Ocean and I feel in need of a break.

But if you really must know, I am also a little tired. So much so, that I dash out onto the street to take a photo of a café scene and suddenly I feel something smooth touching my thigh. Oops – the fender of a city bus that just misses running me down. Mea culpa.

So I will myself to be more careful. And really, I put the camera away. For the hour that I have, I don’t want to focus on preserving the images that flash quickly before me.

Well, let me at least put up a small handful.

...of a man tossing back his tie and taking a break in the Jardin du Luxembourg (this from the usual walk by the gardens from the train to the hotel):





...of a couple in a lovely resting moment, shoulder to shoulder. Near one of the university buildings (one block down from my hotel):





...of that wonderful vibrant café scene where all conversation (aided by rosé by the glass) flies with passion; or not at all – to be replaced by a snuggle against a warm body:





...of the blue sky, and the last day of August leaves:





...what the hell: we each have our culinary loves: of snails...





Dinner... I didn’t want anything complicated. I went to a place that I would never recommend because it is too simple for anyone passing through and wanting something more than just steak with fries and a salad. Me, I wanted a steak and great fries and a salad. This then signals my final break with Japanese food and really, Japan, too. Here, in this little neighborhood place across the street from my hotel.





I am not the only solo diner. One or two try to engage me in the friendly conversation you have with someone who wont mind companionship. The person closest to me takes on politics (once he learsn that I am American) and he talks so rapidly that I start off understanding only 75% and by the end, only 25% of what he is saying. I beg him to slow down. But he is so in love with telling me about his views of Obama and Sarkozy, and somehow, leading from this -- his views on his older daughters educational attainments (or lack thereof -- I could not tell) that I just let it go, doing my best to respond when I could make educated guesses as to where we are in terms of our back and forth.

And now I am really exhausted. But on what clock? It’s 10 p.m. in Paris, near dawn in Japan, not yet evening in Madison. I sleep briefly, too briefly and wake up to a dark world.

Outside my hotel window shutters are closed, the Odeon Theater looks like it had a rough night and needs the quiet of the night. As do I...





It’s 5:30. I pick up my heavy cases (next time I will limit the rosé purchase; there is no escalator down to the bowels of the train station at Luxembourg: schlepping things up and down flights of stairs was a lot easier twenty years ago..) and make my way to the train.


Goodbye Luxembourg Gardens... I see France is getting ready for a Lelouch film release.





Ahh, it’s as if I were still the young girl in Warsaw who watched her first Lelouch on the big screen (A Man and a Woman) and thought, in the way 16 year old girls think – damn, that is a great statement about love. I can still hear the line “L'amour est bien plus fort que nous...” (Love is stronger than us...)

Goodbye Paris.

from Kyoto, no – Osaka, no, not that either...

I did not want to fly the long way back, but if you want to keep costs down and you fly across one ocean, you have to fly back the same way. (Round the world tickets – touted by some as such a deal, are in fact quite complicated to purchase. I did it once and it was a major headache. You need time and flexibility. Typically I have neither.) And this time, my layover in Paris is so short that I have barely time for an evening glass of rosé and a morning espresso.

Ah well, I’m not even there yet. I am in Osaka – or at least the airport here, looking out over water and mountains and modernization – so much of what is my image of Japan.

Even as on Monday, I’m happy to shun all modernity and still lose myself in history. A history, that I have to add, is somewhat harsh. But harsh history will produce (or at least preserve) great art and Kyoto has great art.

In the morning, I have an exam to give and after that, currency to exchange. I mention this because I am so determined afterward not to waste time, that I choose to carry my computer, my documents, all exchanged cash (including travel reimbursements and what’s left of my honorarium) with me all day long. It was the day to rob me silly on the streets of Kyoto, but predictably, no one did.

I struggle to come up with a good game plan for the afternoon – my last free hours in Japan. Walking: there has to be a lot of that. A new temple maybe? A subway ride? Something that will leave a gentle imprint on my soul?

Yes, subway ride for sure. This morning, I encounter many kids heading for school. Here’s an unusual sight: it appears that both parents are professionals (I’m guessing). Maybe taking their daughter to school for her first day of classes? Maybe.





Oh, school girls. Navy and white. And did I mention pink? Such a pink world they move in!






Here they are, roaming in small groups down paths probably well known to them...





I am on my way to Sanjusangen-do – a temple in the southeast corner of the city. To the best of my recollection, I had never been there. It’s a place of many statues (1001 actually) of Kannon – a Buddhist deity. All carved out of the Japanese cypress. All lined in this building.






Beautiful, in a dusty sort of way. (Sorry, no photos allowed.)

But it’s a place I’m relieved to exit, too. It’s unsettling to be outnumbered so significantly by these ancient (12th and 13th century) figures.

Outside, it’s hot again. There isn’t the haze I had the first weeks here, but it is unquestionably humid. And the garden at this temple is small. It cannot be the last garden I visit. It’s pleasant enough in a microscopic sort of way...





...but it wont do.


Now is the time to take the hike to the temple at Tofuku-ji.

I walk through urban blocks – many of them – and I think how cities always have sections that are forgotten. Unimportant, indifferent to the tourist. Places where the ordinary person lives, shops, works. Kyoto has plenty of such places.

It is easy in Kyoto to get away from the endless sea of ordinary humanity (you know, like where you or I live), but you have to know how to proceed. And you have to be lucky.


I’ll never understand why the ever popular Tofuku-ji chose to be empty on this day, but I thank whatever spirits had a say in it for the incredible luxury – of walking through the gardens of this isolated temple (two sets of exquisite Zen landscapes, lost in a grove of Japanese maple) in solitude.





Funny how good silence can be.





Here, I do take the time to sit. Not for long, but long enough to feel satiated.











...because there is no hurry when you’re on your last day. The clock has won, you’re leaving soon, you may as well linger and watch the sunlight fade.





I suppose the only downside to going to Tofuku-ji is the walk there and back. To get to my subway stop, I must pass the urban, the bleak sections of this city. No matter. If you strive for accuracy, you must walk through all neighborhoods.

Besides, you can be sure of one thing: wherever you walk, there will always be a school child passing through that will make you smile.










It’s nearly evening and I am back in downtown Kyoto.





...and at the market. – it was, after all, the place I came first when I arrived three weeks ago.





So familiar now. And I notice how unoriginal I am in my points of initial surprise. I watch visitors stop by the little octopus display and take pictures – just as I had. We say too few things that at all original when we fly through a place ever so quickly. Maybe our best words are about the things we know back home....



Still, it is a very pleasant market stroll. I haven’t eaten yet today (if there is to be time for gardens, there cannot also be time for food) and so I pick up shrimp and leek on a stick.





And some of the most delicious candied fruit in the world – to take back home.





It is only now that I notice that I have underestimated coins needed for this day. Gardens and temples are expensive. As are candied fruits. Having exchanged my Yen back to dollars at the bank, I have very little Japanese money left for dinner.

No matter. I’ve eaten all exciting things that I had wanted to eat. I pick a lonely little place now – a mostly organic café that serves a few dishes. Let’s support the efforts at good agricultural practices!


I sit at a counter and watch the market outside the window. My food is good – some local salads, a small piece of fish, excellent miso soup and the nicest rice with pepper ever. All for 1000 yen (slightly more than $10).





The stand in front of me is closing. The vendor is packing up mystery foods, the last customer is deciding between the green and the black whatever.

It’s time to leave.





Good night mountain.





And, ever so early in the morning, when no one else is up... Oh! Not true! Make no generalizations and you shall not be wrong: an older man is up and out, trimming the bushes in the cooler hours of the dawn.

Hello, man, good morning mountain.





Goodbye Japan.