square white world

The typhoon passed. Through the night, like the Buddhist monks at the head of Robert Matta-Clark’s bed, at the moment he passed away, shouting into his ears, because hearing, of all the senses, is the last to leave us, ROBERT! ROBERT! YOU’RE DEAD! YOU’RE DEAD, ROBERT! … like them, was heard, through the night, a loudspeaker announcing the present calamity. Although we could not understand a word of what was actually being said. A theme-tune played. Every station has a theme tune, or refrain—ritornello—so why not a typhoon? (It had after all a name, which I do not recall.) THE TYPHOON! THE TYPHOON IS HERE! IT’S A TYPHOON! Is what we imagined.

Japanese breakfast: I write this after our final Japanese breakfast at Hanayashiki Ukinuneen, drinking coffee, overhearing the roar of water from the dam, interrupting itself as it does, with expostulations of even greater fervour, then relenting, overlooking the Ujugawa; I write this having had our last here and drinking coffee we brought, dirty black coffee brought to the land of clean green matcha tea, its homeplace, having indeed thought as I surveyed this morning’s Japanese breakfast that I would not want to continue day after day eating, morning upon morning, with a fish, pickle, seaweed, pickle, omelette, pickle, miso, seaweed, burdock, rice, starch dumpling, marrow, pickle, soya sauce, silky tofu, golden needle mushrooms, if that’s what they’re called, spinach leaves, tea… It’s not the unrelenting proteiny-ness of it all. Not the liquid quantities to wash it down with—it’s instead an overload of care paid to it, having to take first from this bowl, then from that, having to connect flavour and taste groups transversally, diagonally, umi to sour, to sweet to bitter, to savoury to sour again, or earlier, having to attend to the artful disposition of vessels and viands. It’s not the time it takes. It’s the strain on the senses of so much peace and … I am forgetting the ma—the void it is work to make. Ma does not break into the lavish laying-out of the Japanese breakfast so much as—does it? I’m not sure—relate across space, in a rule or as a condition of its distribution, its spread, its extension over bowls of lacquer, black, ceramic, imperfect, pale and striped, metal, to be heated by a burner below, lit by the serving staff, young man or woman, he in pants, she in simple kimono. Square vessels, oval lowdishes, lidded bowls, lidded with lacquered plastic or wood, lidded with a wooden bucket lid, like granny’s chook bucket—the metal cooking pot, on its support, above its flame.

We went to Arashiyama and saw gardens–Ōkōchi Sansō garden, “the former home and garden of the Japanese jidaigeki (period film) actor Denjirō Ōkōchi in Arashiyama” (the best and most beautiful) and Tenryū-ji Temple garden (when the rain came down, and we realised, looking at all the people taking refuge on the verandah we’d been excluded from the temple once more—a garden dating back to the 15th century, a temple rebuilt in the Meiji period, due to fires, fires, fires, 8 times rebuilt, perhaps the fire has a theme-tune and an announcer shouting, perhaps a monk, with a loud voice, proclaiming FIRE! THIS IS A FIRE! … IT’S A FIRE! YOU’RE ON FIRE!)—and saw monkeys, or more correctly macaques, and went in to an owl forest, next to a bengal cat café, where there were really owls. Real owls. We were given a little squirt of handsanitiser and shown to stroke the owls with backs of hand only, and not fronts of owls, or fronts of hands, as owls bite. About twenty owls, including snowy owls, which I did not snap—they were a little pathetic, under the weather, in the heat and humidity at @30C+, in their cage, two of them: at least in company. And some of the owls not to pat: ones with sign saying “just a beginner” and “taking a break”. That points to their having a kind of apprenticeship, a training period, inuring themselves to the light, sometimes, pressure of backs of hands on backs of owls. But still the feet tether is not light. But still, they are released—but where? The monkeys have a forest park, with deer also, and black bears, and, no doubt, racoons—at night: they are nocturnal animals. This is why they are so sleepy and docile to be patted.

I made a strong connection with a sad-eyed owl called Tie. And his picture ends the series of snaps of owls, because I turned back to say Ciao, Tie. YOU’RE AN OWL!

Overlooking the Ujigawa, the river in Uji, split by an artificial island, and fed from the nearby dam, with rapids below the island and above, we are finally in our room, and not only that but fresh out of the hotpools, the public baths as they have to be called—since to qualify as onsen the waters must arise naturally from the ground and possess minerals, a mineral quality; so that some onsen are coloured and some so hot when they bubble into the baths or pools there are attendants present to make sure bathers do not broil and cook.

From Waiheke to Uji:35 minutes by ferry; 25 minutes by Über; a checkin time two hours ahead of boarding time, which allows for seats together to be confirmed; 11.15 hours’ flight—with a supper, followed by 71 minutes of Dog Island; 5 hours sleep, on a partially full 777, since it had been cancelled because of the typhoon rolling in on Tokyo, was subsequently reinstated—adding to the likelihood of sleep being had, since more space to stretch out—however I could not get my body to fit the available empty space, the ma was all wrong, no matter how I curled and contorted to fill it—then breakfast, a gesture at Japanese style, with the rice handily deposited in a pleated cupcake paper; monorail from Haneda to Shinagawa 15 minutes; some circulation of bodies searching for the right line, the JR Nara line, to Uji—say 10 minutes—then, departing at 29 minutes past the hour, the local train, stopping at all the stations on the way, to Uji, 25 minutes later; walking, asking for directions, along the Ujigawa to our ryokan 20 minutes.

Time, Deleuze writes in his book on Kant, is not determined by movement, or change, and time itself does not move and change. Neither is time eternal. “It is the form of everything that changes and moves, but it is an immutable Form which does not change”—the unchanging, unmoving Form of what is impermanent, an impermanence that in the form of time is not eternal. In it, all things are impermanent. All things pass. That time passes without passing away is, Deleuze writes, a profound mystery.