My New Japanese Boyfriend

It is amazing the things you discover when you read books.

I always shudder a little bit when people proudly announce "I don't read." Not out of snobbery. I don't really care what you read, it needn't be all high brow and incomprehensible. But reading is just one of those fundamental elements of life. Through reading we learn facts, we see those facts disputed, we learn stories, perspectives. We have windows into lives we would otherwise never witness. Reading develops the part of our brains that ingests and analyzes information. We learn the nutritional information on the backs of cereal boxes, we discover what's on sale at the grocery store, what albums are due for release this month, and what somebody's cute baby said today. We are enveloped in wild romances, other planets, other times, other places. We also find our long lost 13th century Japanese soul mates.

It goes a little something like this: A few weeks ago, we were at some friends' house for lunch. No wait. Back up. Last November, some friends of ours came over to our house. The library copy of Oblivion with which I was in a steel caged grudge match was lying on the end table in our living room. (By end table, I mean steamer trunk, but let's not discuss my decorating tastes here.) Our friend completely surprised the pants off me (not literally. What kind of people do you think we are?!) by picking up the book and saying simply "Consider the lobster." This friend of ours is a very straightforward kind of fellow. An engineer, a little bit shy, logical and straight laced. I didn't doubt that he read books, I just was surprised that his choices would be similar to mine. So we commenced commiserating about David Foster Wallace and then we went out to dinner (wherein my darling jBird announced my various gastric distresses to the table and pretty much all else was forgotten.) We all ended the day seeing each other in a little bit different light. I had this other piece of to the puzzle of my quiet friend, an area of commonality, something new we could talk about when conversation got awkward. And he... well, I don't know what he came away with. Probably some excessively disturbing mental images.

So, a few weeks back, we were at this friend's house and I was pawing through his bookshelf because that is my version of peeking in someone's medicine cabinet. You find out interesting things about your hosts, and generally the things you find out have nothing to do with frightening rashes. After a few minutes of pawing, I had to borrow a sheet of the Hooligan's coloring book and a crayon to scribble down some titles. Don't you just love friends like that? One of the titles I scribbled down was The Art of the Personal Essay and immediately went home and reserved it at the library (along with Eminem's latest album, but I digress.)

To my delight, this weighty tome has come available for me to peruse and probably not finish and then have to consider buying for a reference book because it is so awesome and then copying huge parts of it down in case I can't find it at the used book store and wishing I could highlight a library book and then wondering what good that would do me since I have to return it and then wondering if I should just commit the cardinal library sin and keep it and how bad would it be to have to move to a new city?

In a very heavy paper nutshell, this book is a collection of personal essays from since the beginning of time. It is my own personal version of Disneyland. It is also my Graceland and my Great Smoky Mountains and my Niagara Falls. Last night after the monkeys were in bed and the fire was lit, the Chief Lou and I sat down to read and listen to music and occasionally chat. [This is a large and important aside: When I was 18, a friend of mine was trying to convince me to date him and possibly marry him. I explained that while I loved him dearly, I didn't think we had enough of the right things in common for us to really be compatible. "Like what?" he asked me. "Well, like I like to read and you don't. I like to write poetry and you mock it. Like I don't like professional sports or Republicans." (or something like that.)  He was dismissive of this and said "What is more important to you? That you be with someone who make enough money to support you (my other option at the time was a penniless college student) or that you be with someone who will sit by the fire and read with you and talk about fancy things?" When I chose the latter, he was incredulous and assured me that would never happen and I was being hopelessly romantic. Much to my delight, he was wrong. No hard feelings, though. We remain friends to this day.]

What was I talking about? Oh yes. I was reading with my love when I found my long lost Japanese boyfriend. Kenko lived in thirteenth century Japan. Little is known about him except that he was someone or other in the Imperial court and that he was a bit of a poet. Then he became a Buddhist monk. The best details of his life are learned from his writing, however. He wrote in the style called zuihitzu - which directly translated means "follow the brush". Donald Keene, the translator of Kenko's work, notes:

"This form - or lack of form - was most congenial to Japanese writers, who turned to it perhaps because it was less 'dishonest' than creating fiction. The formlessness ... did not impede enjoyment by readers; indeed, they took pleasure not only moving from one to another of the great variety of subjects but in tracing subtle links joining the successive episodes."

How sweet is that?! I have, at long last, found a name for the kind of writing I do. It's in an anthology. It's medieval. It's valid. So, if I should happen to blurt out to my real estate agent that I write and she should happen to look surprised and ask me what, exactly, do I write, I could happen to respond: zuihitzu. It is a much less ridiculous response than: I don't know. Stuff?


The icing on my merry little Japanese cake of discovery -  the wasabi on my peas, the ikura on my sushi - is this opening written by Kenko himself, to his Essays in Idleness:

What a strange, demented feeling it gives me when I realize I have spent whole days before this inkstone, with nothing better to do, jotting down at random whatever nonsensical thoughts have entered my head.

One of my favorite quotes from the movie Shadowlands is when C.S. Lewis's recalcitrant student tells Lewis: "I read to know I am not alone." Of all the wonderful things we learn from reading, finding that you are not alone is among the most valuable.

To your inkstones, friends!