(continued in comments)Thursday, June 12, 2008
Moth in a Lantern
The rough rocks of the pool seemed lost inside a building, unreal in their blatant naturalness. Surrounded only by walls, they might have been content, but the ceiling held them captive, removing all pretenses that they were anything more than the sixth face of a manufactured cube, a bubbling spring transformed into a bath, maintaining a resigned gray longing for the sky. Unknowably far below the reflective waterline, the slabs of stone rippled into a murky alien darkness.. .
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Feeling the sadness of the rocks, but not yet able to understand it, more than anything, I wanted to submerge into that cloudy water and disappear, but it was boiling hot and reeked of a thousand rotting eggs, and it was all I could do to keep my feet in up to my ankles. I swirled the water, staring at my bright red toes, hunched over with the uselessly tiny towel around my neck, choosing to attempt to cover the beginnings of breasts instead of the beginnings of pubic hair. I didn’t want Mom to again suggest that I start wearing a bra, and in the end, hair was just hair. I was glad that Grandma wasn’t there. With wrinkles and sags concealed by clothes, she was just Grandma, but naked, she was old.
Time was trapped in the hanging webs of steam, translucent white tinted sulfur yellow by my imagination. The red beamed temples and swan shaped boats of the day before had faded to faintest outline, temples now red by label, not by memory. I was becoming convinced that nothing truly existed outside of the walls of the bath, nothing in the world but the rocks and Mom and me. Mom was the empress of the universe, the mist, rocks, and stinky water her domain, and I was the unworthy empress-in-training, crouched down in hiding, not yet even ruling my own nakedness. After ten thousand years, I might have been ready to submerge myself in the boiling water and rise up cloaked in new red skin, ready to take my place as empress, but time never passed, so I never would. Mom asked if I was getting dizzy, and I pulled the little towel around myself and nodded.
I was endlessly relieved to be back in the hallway, fully clothed and padding and crinkling along the mats toward our rooms. The air was hardly cooler than in the bath room, but without the dense steam and sulfur, it was refreshing. We rounded a corner and nearly walked right into Grandma, who was hurrying from the opposite direction, lavender brimmed hat clasped in her hands. In a rushed tone, she said the priest had something special to show us and led me back the way she had come.
One twist of the hallway brought us to the inner courtyard garden and pond, shaded purple irises and flashing golden fish, the next turn onto the bare dark floorboards of the temple polished to a sheen by years of bare and slippered feet, then a door and downward slope, and I found myself in absolute darkness so thick it pulled against my movement.
In the damp and echoing darkness, the memory of the massive Buddha seated on the floor above us took on a sinister expression, a gleaming red lit grin against the coat of gold. I clung to Grandma’s hand, my other groping along the rough dampness of the passageway, bits of the surface rubbing off and sticking to my palm or catching under my nails. The smell was of dirt, a hint of mold, and not enough air. I was uncomfortably aware of my breathing, of how little each breath seemed to do. I stumbled over nonexistent obstructions that I expected to condense from the unseen floor. More than anything, the apparent lack of temperature bothered me, blood and air fusing and mixing until I was stumbling not through a tunnel in a temple, but through some secret passage within myself.
The priest’s voice resounded from all sides in succession as he explained to Grandma where we were going or related some anecdote of his personal history. I felt it had been years since I had heard a single word I understood, and in the echoes, even the tone of his voice was lost, morphed and molded into something as malicious as the glaring Buddha. Grandma chattered back to him, language and echoes depriving even her voice of familiarity.
I unsuccessfully tried to recall the size and shape of the hall above, to convince myself that we hadn’t slipped into another dimension in the dark. We couldn’t be under the temple any more, not even under the slant roofed inn. I had walked zigzag back and forth before the Buddha counting tatami mats and not walked a quarter of this distance. I had explored the entire inn from sulfur baths to carp pond and only walked half so far. But as soon as these thoughts arose, I began to doubt them. I tried counting my steps and lost track with every stumble. The tunnel constantly wound and curved, but never sharply, giving the impression of traveling in an impossible direction, a feeling of inwardness with reference to nothing.
Suddenly the wall under my free hand disappeared and I froze, tugging first Grandma and then the priest to a halt. I was nearly convinced that I had ceased to exist when I noticed my weight holding my feet to the floor. Finally realizing that I was scared, Grandma whispered not to worry; it was just a side passage and we were almost “there.” Reluctantly allowing myself to be pulled along, I held my hand at my side for ten steps, terrified of reaching out for the wall again and finding nothing, slightly less terrified by the damp air that gusted between my fingers with every step. When I couldn’t standing it any longer, when I could no longer feel my fingers, only the breeze blowing through me, I tentatively reached out toward the wall, my stomach lurching with every centimeter of emptiness I encountered. My fingers finally brushed against the crumbly surface just as I was losing the last of my hope to airless panic. The wall held, but no longer provided as much comfort, and I had to push harder against it to convince myself it was there, and by reflection, that I was there. Ten steps further, twenty steps and the tunnel continued to wind and I continued to exist.
Carvings, Grandma told me, a moment after my hand shot into a depression and briefly rested on something smooth and cold before I retracted it with a jump. Carvings of what I will never know, some deity or spirit slick, cold, and round as the moon. Then Grandma stopped, and I bumped against her and stood waiting in the blackness for the thereness of our destination to be explained or become self-explanatory.
A cold roughness closed around my wrist and I flinched, then allowed the priest to place my hand against a tangle of rope. He found my fingers and wrapped them around the thick cord, pulling my hand down until the rope tightened. I wondered what I was pulling against and why. A distant gong? The ceiling of rough-cut rock? The big toe of the giant shining Buddha? For luck, Grandma explained, again a bit after the fact.
Then we set off again, in silence this time, with the priest’s rough hand engulfing mine and Grandma following behind me. I didn’t stumble anymore, either because I was stretched and enclosed by two adults or because that was the luck granted by the rope. After no more than twenty steps through the lucky darkness, the tunnel slanted up and emerged behind the Buddha, which glowed a slightly different, slightly later shade of gold. We had walked for eons and light-years just to travel from one side of the temple to the other.
Maybe that was the magic of the rope, distorting time and space. On the crinkling mats below the Buddha’s seat, the priest bowed us goodbye and Grandma led me back through the painfully bright hallways past carp that glowed like scaly suns and glassy mirror-bright pools to our rooms. Lantern paper, neatly-made soft futons, low polished table and crunchy rice-husk pillow. Bright and sparse without emptiness.
I picked up a neatly folded yukata from atop one of the futons and unfurled it against myself, bold navy blue and white print twice my height draped across the floor. Through the sliding door I could hear the gentle rustling of Grandma rummaging through her suitcase. I looked up and saw her shadow slipping on a shadow yukata, probably printed with bold blue shadow flowers.
I stuffed my arms deep into the sleeves of the yukata and spun crackly circles on the mats. Shadows splashed against the wall, shadows with a slight scent of sulfur and the potential to grow up into the bath house empress, a faint tame darkness, a warm rice paper darkness gliding above the lightless tunnel I still felt against my feet. My flitting dancing darkness seeping through the tatami mats to join the endless dark below.
I will definitely read this once I get the chance but for now I make mention that your pics are missing.
not sure what the pic problem is, seems fine from this computer. I'll check on it when I get home. blah work...
pic works for me now. probably had to do with my cafe internet connection.
I got a chance to read through your excerpt. Very interesting. Is it a commentary on your relationship with your femininity? It may not have anything to do with that....but I'm sure you can see how the imagery of a naked female in a pool, a little uncertain, not comfortable with taking her mother's position and yet following her old grandmother through a dark tunnel with a priest only to have walked a circle lends itself to may questions as to what it means to be part of a chain of women...an experience I will never know BUT know that relationship between grandmother-mother-daughter lends itself to many lessons. I've seen it play out with all the females around me, there's a sort of dynamic between the generations, a bond, one that I never shared with my grandfather from a male perspective...
I like it, there are places where I feel specific word choices subtract from the tone being presented but that may be 100% intentional.
good work~!
This is actually 100% true, and my strongest memory of Japan and my grandma. Your interpretation of it is also true in a way, although I think what had me going in circles was more Japan and my own ancestry than finding my place as a female in my family.
I'd like to know what specific parts you thought didn't fit with the tone, because I posted this with very little revision and without even sending it through Ron first, so odds are, it's not intentional, I just couldn't come up with a better way of wording things yet.
Yeah I usually catch some of her word usage that doesn't flow and isn't intentional, but as she said, I din't filter it, hehe. Beautiful and rich imagery as always. =)
I love this piece. Its very cool and reminds me of many many other stories that I have heard, both fictional and non-fictional. You know the whole scared kid in the dark with benevolent religious symbols being scary and malicious. The stories I heard where usually about Christ but its very much the same idea, the dark and the imposing figure being so much larger than the child makes the whole scene seem at times sinister, but in the end its really just ordinary. Awesome. As for tone I think its solid all the way through but the "stinky water"/"thousand rotten eggs" word choice doesnt sync up with the rest, not because it doesnt work, but because most of this piece seems serious and adult. even though its a reflection of an adolescent experience I feel for most of the piece we get it through your eyes as an adult, its serious and beautiful and reflective and the adjectives seen else where seem to have an air of sophistication that "stinky" doesnt carry. That part would be the kid perspective, right? And for that reason alone its awesome and it works, but if were discussing word choice and tone, to me, it just doesnt sync up with the rest. Again it goes back to my perception that the piece is written through the language of an adult and not a child. Ive read memoirs of both styles and Ive seen writers use a combination of the two so I feel I have a bit of an idea about what Im talking about when I say most authors tend to stick to one style of reflection whether it be through the eyes of the child, or through the minds memories of the childhood, but in the end perhaps Im misreading the overall tone.
oh ya and
"When I couldn’t standing it any longer" seems like it could be a typo.
Overall I love this piece though Keep on writing you are awesome. An inspiration for me and I really mean that.
One thing I forgot to mention was how this piece made my imagine. That takes a lot. I started seeing the bath scene and for a while the entire Universe was just a small place of hot smelly water and this gigantic Queen (who by the way looked like a figure from H.R. Giger in my mind) and this tiny princess/Queen in training watching and waiting for her turn to rule the Universe of rocks, water, and steam. I totally saw it, ok not "it", but I saw a vision akin to what I think you were trying to convey, sure I put my own characters and visual setting but in the end isnt the scene about the same? In other words mission accomplished ms. writer. It didnt end there. I saw the halls, or lack there of, Ive walked in storm drains and sewer tunnels many times as a child in pitch black with nothing but dead animals, rats, and feces surrounding me so I think I can relate to scary dark places that dont have walls. Just be glad that you actually had adults near you! But the point is I saw the scene in my mind, I walked the hallway with you and your Grandma and the priest. I felt the rope and it scared me. I didnt know what to expect from pulling it. I was relived to find luck. I tried to imagine scary Buddha but my bias made it hard for me, I just saw a child looking at an ordinary looking Buddha but being terrified of it because of shadows. I saw lots in this story and thats all owed to the amount of little details that you chose to include. Well done.
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