The island of Shikoku, Japan, Sunday, the 3rd of June, 2001
Televisions are a fact of life in Japan. You can’t seem to have a meal without one being turned on, and even out walking, chances are you will hear one blaring away in a hothouse somewhere, or see many dead Sanyo’s in their roadside graveyard waiting for the vines to grow over them.
The other fact of life is tunnels and mountains. They seem to go together here, with numerous routes taking me along the old, out of service road made redundant by the modern tunnel, burrowing down and through the earth. Whenever I can, I opt for the scenic route, enjoying the bird song and ability to walk in the middle of the road because I can. It always makes me feel like a participant on the National Geographic channel, cruising through a new place with some dulcet tones doing the commentary. Sometimes going into a tunnel gives me a chance to practice a very limited karaoke repertoire. At other times it can be very disorienting without a strong visual cue. It makes me wonder what a piece of color must feel like traveling down a cathode tube the way it does to get into the television to be seen. It is such a different closed world from being outside, climbing with each step. I have often wondered how Alice in Wonderland felt when she fell through the Looking Glass.
She entered the tunnel, fierce in its roar of amplified engines pounding through the space. At more than a kilometer long, it was a serious commitment. Once inside there was nowhere else to go. She walked carefully, wanting to alert the drivers that she was there. She had to be seen. It was a game of trust. The pack on her back was uncomfortable, not able to find a place to rest its weight evenly but it was trivial compared to her urgency to get through to the end. And the trucks just kept coming, in both directions, convoy style, without a break. She saw the fleet of ‘Live Fish Express’ trucks go by and wondered if the fish go to sleep like the Bus Henro do when they start to travel. And just how well to fish travel alive anyhow!
The pathway was a water drain, with broken and rutted tops. She tried to match her step to fit in rhythm with the cracks. It didn’t work. The wire reinforcement was visible, making the blackness underneath even more so. Maybe it was her mind playing tricks but it felt like the spaces were narrowing, her margin diminishing. Seepage through the wall created slippery patches of dark moss on dark wet, not easily seen. She stumbled from nausea. Last night had not been good, with perpetual bad karaoke next door, and a continuing serious lack of sleep, followed by vomiting from contaminated food. It was all upsetting her sense of balance. Her imagination was being challenged. Were the spaces really becoming less? She turned sideways to measure with the length of her feet. “It’s OK “ she thought, knowing that the pack is wider than her form. There is still enough room. There is still enough space.
Still, she kept walking, like a metronome, clicking her stick to methodically move ahead. A truck veered over the barrier white line. She stopped dead, and looked into his lights, hoping to alert his conscience. She had nowhere else to go! He swerved at the last minute, giving her space. Her breathing returned. Trembling more than slightly she began to move again. Now there were cars with the trucks, seeming to go faster and creating clots in the flow. Every so often she would be at the same point as the open window and might catch a piece of thumping music. She started to talk, hoping that by finding a voice, it would bolster her courage. The spaces were diminishing – her measuring only confirmed the worst. So now she must turn sideways to not cross into the path of the oncoming traffic. How far has she gone – she has lost count of her steps and can’t see the promised End. Is it four hundred meters, or five? Or maybe it is only three. It feels like an eternity. Nothing is illuminated inside, except for the headlights of the traffic, blaring its way through, almost oblivious to her journey. She turns quickly again as a car comes too close.
Her sweat is running down inside of her T-shirt and soaking through to the outside. Panic is looming near and she is struggling to monitor its presence. “Talk out” she said. “Find that space deep inside”, so she begins, announcing that she is there.
“I am here – you stay there – just give me space” becomes her mantra. She doesn’t even want to waste energy blinking, and stares wildly into the oncoming lights.
Two trucks later the mantra is abbreviated to simply “Give me Space” as she starts to say it loudly with each vehicle. Turning up her volume to keep her energy flowing. Her mind is confused, and frightened, knowing full well where the danger lurks, and yet, relying on her mind to get her through to that comforting circle of light at the end. And yet it would be so easy to walk out into the middle of all of this velocity. So easy.
“Give Me Space!” is yelled, angrily, as she presses herself into the wall, feeling the mirrors of the truck come too close for comfort.
“Give Me Space Now!!”
And her mind starts to wander, not coordinating her steps. She stumbles, and almost stops a fall. Her knee jars into the wall on a crevice. She screams out, writhing in agony and can feel the blood running down her shin into her sock. The pack is moving, as a strap has come off. She struggles to stand and walk before another vehicle fills the space, but can only manage a limp. The knee is aching and throbbing fiercely. She is walking like a pendulum unsure of her step, where her body is in the space, or her sight, or even where she is. The disorientation is claustrophobic as exhaust fumes crowd the ceiling. She can taste the gasoline in the air.
How far is it now – Eight hundred meters? She tries to look at her watch to gauge her progress, to only have to throw herself face first into the wall again to avoid her worst nightmare. The gradient is going down, the tunnel becoming deeper. She can feel it in each step. The margins are gone – her feet touch the white line, no matter which way she is facing. So she turns to face the traffic and holds her stick in the left hand, and not her usual right, while walking very slowly. Her mantra is an angry and demanding shout — GIVE ME SPACE — it keeps her in motion, as her mind races back to yet another very disorienting time when she loved someone who took from her everything that he could. “Give me Space” blurred the lines between then and now. “Give me MY Space NOW” — as yet another vehicle swerved away just in time, towards the middle. She could hear her breathing.
Finally, a glimmer of light could be seen. It has to be the end, but she has no way of judging just how far it is. The volume of vehicles has slowed so she tries to move faster, hoping to cover ground more quickly. The broken strap, the hurting knee, and the loose drain covers work in unison to hobble her gait. She tries to walk quickly, but the damaged concrete seems to reach up and grab the stick midway of its length, forcing her to slow down even further. Still her mind races ahead.
“He wouldn’t give me space — he took every idea I had and made them his own…why did I stay with him?”
“Why did I let him use me?”
She screamed out desperately “GIVE ME SPACE” as another cluster of cars roared through. She turned, faced the wall and tried to push herself through. Amazed that she had survived, she turned and kept walking.
“Why didn’t I see what he was doing to me — telling me how dumb I was to insure his own ego? Always putting me down. So consistently and in such an unthreatening and saccharin way.”
“Why did I let him take advantage of my life experiences? He was only calculating what he could get from it all, making a new life for himself, creating his own itinerary, and not even having the balls to tell me I was not part of his plan.
Instead, he waited for me to figure it out by default, while still using my body for sex and offering shallow feeble wasted words of ‘I love you’. He didn’t even have the guts to tell me face to face that it was over. No guts and no balls. I can’t tell who I hate more. Him for what he did, or me for not seeing it at all”
So I did. And left him to his benignly abusive and miserably cheap ways.
Flesh pressed hard against the side of the tunnel. There can’t be much farther to go now surely. She deliberately leaves a look of fear on her face as she looks into the lights.
Finally, the exit. She can taste the fresh air. Careful not to increase her pace, and still looking every driver directly in the eye, she made her way over those last agonizing fifty meters. There was more danger at the mouth as drivers had to adjust their sight and turn on their lights before entering this other world. She walks very slowly. Listening for gaps between cars to then move forward.
Sunlight made her blink and cry with relief, as she stumbled again, falling softly to her knees, forgetting the injury that was so raw. She couldn’t stop the vomit from stress and exhaustion and the remnants of last night’s dinner. It was as if the tunnel had convulsed and was spitting her out. A most undignified moment for sure, but who cares at that point. She had made it through, as much mentally as physically.
Walking further along there was a bus stop with seats where she could put her pack down, and just sit for a while. Do nothing. Just recover. And sit there. Somehow stop shaking. That was when she saw the soot covering her skin and clothing, the ripped trousers, and felt the trickles of sweat running down from her scalp. The black stains had gone through to her skin, carried by adrenalin and panic. Her mind was clear though. It had to happen. The exorcism of that love was over. He was gone. She didn’t care. She was glad. The veracity of those thoughts had caught her off guard. So she sat there, panting a little as her body struggled to find more to go on with. There was still another twenty kilometers before she could lay down comfortably, and be clean. But he was gone. Finally. The love had finally died.
The next day brought balance with a fifteen-kilometer climb of almost nine hundred meters to an unnumbered Bangai temple. It was pure bliss; with pine needles so thick she couldn’t hear her footsteps, and a pack so light, she stopped twice to check that she really did have it on. The legwork was hard, and the grade unrelenting, but there was something else now too. The load was gone. She couldn’t even make fun of him in her head anymore. It was such a waste of energy that she would rather spend being creative again. More importantly, he couldn’t hurt her at all. He was a non-entity. Person Non Gratis. And that fact was being celebrated for real, through this deliciously awaited detour.
Just as she was arriving, a small seismic wave shivered through the complex. The temple helper knew whom she was, showing her to a room where there was tea and sweets waiting. There was Tatami, with a bedding roll in the corner, a low table and no TV. For the first time, a meal with no TV and a room with no TV. Finally, after more than seven hundred kilometers, it has happened. She is in a TV free zone! The site is beautiful, resting easily amongst ancient firs and cypress, with old wooden dormitories bleached by weather, and still, very successfully resisting the urge to be made modern. It was like stepping back in time with wood made shiny from decades of slippered feet skidding along, shuttered in with acres of white paper lined screens. It was all lightness and breeze and tranquility. A hot bath was drawn, and she soaked and indulged as if the only guest. There was nothing else that needed to be done, except enjoy the simple meal then curl up under the covers for a good nights sleep.
The prayers the next morning were Koyasan, of the Orthodox Kogi Shingon School of Buddhism, which includes fire and the burning of the wish sticks. It is the only sect that provokes images of Tibetan temples in her mind, filled with soot and grease and earthy ceremony. But this time, unlike before, there was no fighting with the fire. It was as if the fire was white and light and passive in its role. Maybe it was because the son of the Head Priest was apprenticed into the dominant role. He is unmarried. It is as if that life force has yet to be woken up, unleashed. There was nothing there. Bland but still a boy. L.A is a great big Freeway. Put a hundred down and buy a car. In a week you’ll be a TV star…
So she came down the mountain, and journeyed on, traversing more craggy ranges and avoiding tunnels at every chance. The Land of Enlightenment was proving to be harder physically than she had expected or interpreted from the maps. At another unnumbered Bangai, she prayed at the bridge where Kobo Daishi arrived at one winter’s night. He had asked around for lodging in the village but nobody would help, so he could only take shelter under the bridge, trying to sleep and composing the verse that translated as “They will not help a traveler in trouble – this one night seems like ten.” She made doubly certain that she didn’t tap her stick on that bridge – that was not the place to be guilty of waking him up! Given her own lack of sleep, she felt a lot of compassion!! Her resting place would be a farmer’s shed, with a river for a bathroom. After another hard day of travel, and yet another shed, she climbed over the last mountain range on her way to Iwayaji temple, the Temple of Rocky Cave.
From the peak, the climb down was through old cedar forests and rocky ranges, huge bluffs and conglomerate gorges. It is a Nansho temple, both dangerous and powerful, and according to legend, a mysterious female hermit donated the location to Kobo Daishi. This is a place were recluses and other mountain wanderers once took ascetic disciplines, and is an area dotted with caves and dark pathways, and inaccessible hollows high up on wind-swept ridges. There is sex in the geography, and a sense of auspiciousness in the air.
When she arrived, a large group of elderly Bus Henro had just climbed up from the highway below. They were all women; all dressed in white and most no taller than her waist. They looked as if their lives had been spent, with dull hair dye jobs, leaking lipstick on heavily powdered complexions and a missing light of luster in their eyes. She tagged along behind them as they went into the deepest cave, lit by small candles used in the offerings and prayers. Eyes took time to adjust, and even though wearing white, the person in front could not be seen. It was difficult to get a sense of scale and space. They held each other’s jacket tails, forming a human chain, moving higher up into the cavern, one crimped step, feet together, then another, at a time. She held her spare hand above her head, hoping to find the low ceiling before it found her. A trembling arthritic hand held up another candle and somewhere from behind, another in tremulous soprano started chanting. Within seconds, the chain was in unison, using their voice to hold them-selves together as they ascended deeper into the unknown. Shuffling their feet, using them as eyes to see ahead when other senses couldn’t help. Their voices echoed back to them, verging on the edge of fear. Their worlds were suddenly reduced to what they thought was in front of them, what they were trusting in, what they thought they knew. Someone stumbled. The chain stretched, but held together. Palms pushed hard into the cave walls, everyone was at less than an arms length apart, linked by more than flesh.
Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo
They followed the one in front. A little tremor of panic rippled through the group. Someone else lit another candle, then another, but it wasn’t enough to create comfort. Instead, the watery light only succeeded in turning the solid forms of people into ghost like apparitions. Their jacketed forms seemed to be erased into oblique unrelated shapes. Their world was getting smaller with the intensity of the darkness. It reminded her of the images of the Widows of Varanasi in India. The Widows wear white sarees and chant in unison, giving their remaining days in devotion to one of the many gods in the Hindu Pantheon, forgotten by families, waiting to die, barely keeping loneliness away, it seems.
You could taste the dankness. It was as if the damp was crawling over you with its spindly, spidery claws. Again, the power of the flame seemed ineffective, benign, unconsummated. And still they chanted, building in crescendo.
Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo
Finally, the one in front stopped. The image of their adoration was there, on a stone bench in a large niche. Other candles were spluttering from earlier visitors, and incense struggled to find air to stay alive. They rummage for their small coins, while still holding on to the one in front. Temple bells were tingling but muffled, held captive in bags. She broke away and tried to light other pieces of candles, trying to bring light into the dark. Teasing the incense to come back to life to conquer the smell of black mystery. Finally, the ceremony was done, and the chanting became faster. They turned and could see the mouth of light where they had entered. The End of the tunnel was in sight. Their steps hastened, gaining momentum as they pattered downwards, racing towards the beckoning light. They gushed out of the opening, bouncing into each other like ping-pong balls from a lottery machine.
Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo
Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo
She slowed her step, wanting to take her time. She needed to let the mystery know it didn’t frighten her at all. She wanted to understand where it came from. She wanted to be part of it. When she emerged there was no inglorious moment. Just clean fresh air, and a huge sense of relief unspoken but stated strongly by fellow Henro’s, a sense of relief to be out in the sun where they could see again and know their world. Where everything is obvious. They all made clucking noises over her taped knee and ripped and dirty outfit, offering medicines and candy. She looked so battered and war weary compared to how they were, all clean and well laundered, fresh from the hotel. She had to bear their gifts, hoping that the act of acceptance helped them in some way. Like changing the channel with the remote control when the viewing gets too close. She never did see who the one in front was.
She still had a long climb ahead of her, following the Daishi’s walking trail along the back ridges, but as she left, the geography started to speak. There is power in this place, in its sensual formations and the sheer lust of Nature. The essence of Mother Nature was strong. One part could only be accessed through a locked gate, inching sideways up through a split in the rock that created a crevice that led to a hooded peak, which gave a view over the thighs of her domain. Another curve in the climb needed the help of a rope railing to pull against to reach that spectacular point in the panorama. The silkiness of the ferns belied the complexity of the learning that was needed to understand what lay underfoot. A fierce red Guardian effigy stood sentry at an entrance to a slim cave underneath. What was the power exercised by the hermit and Nature, over Kobo Daishi, she wondered. Her sweat was hard earned, and stale. Hunger was guiding her mind, and tiredness was weighing done her legs. Another four hours and she will be at the halfway point. Temple 44. Maybe there she will sleep. Close her eyes and enjoy the dark. Somehow find a way to tune out the reality of the world for some time; to turn off the TV of life, at least for overnight. She needed an email fix from friends to keep moving on.
Zen