The Blackberry Walk

Working life is exhausting. Upon his banishment from Eden, the Lord cursed Adam to break his back as he worked the land for his sustenance. And since then, little has changed, the curse has remained in full effect. We may not till the soil as Adam did, but the working week, having you juggle activities and tasks, can leave you knackered. This Friday I was particularly worn and beat down, and I decided to take a hot bath. As I dipped my toes in, it was so hot I recoiled. Scalding. I added some cold to the bath, and swished about the water, mixing hot with cold so as to bring the temperature down a tad. I entered gingerly. Something about a hot bath releases everything, your muscles, your mind, your heart. Your breathing slows, your thoughts slow, and you begin to enter a more dream-like state. Each moment, each tick of the second hand, lingers a little longer than before, as you sink into a hot bath, and wonder. Bad thoughts, gnawing thoughts, those arguments endlessly rehearsed in your head, all wash away into the bath water as your heart and mind are brought back into equilibrium. And as a week of work stresses washed away like soot off a miner's body, my wondering mind began to dream of the last time I had had such a hot bath. My trip to Japan last year was truly magical, and most magical of those experiences was our trip to an onsen. The water, thick with minerals, was so hot it almost boiled you as you entered. But like a bath or swimming pool, your body adapts fast to the temperature, as it reaches a new homeostasis. A new baseline. At this new baseline, your body enters a kind of repair mode, soothing you. The worries and stresses in our heads, and the pain in our legs from a week's marching around Tokyo, we shed into the heavy water which stewed us. I reckon in an age gone by when the Japanese truly believed in Yokai, they could faintly see a black spiritual malaise leave their body to be soaked up by the onsen water. I reached for the speaker sitting beside the bath, and fumbled on my phone with wet paws, and put on Pagodes by Debussy. At times tempestuous, and at times quiescent, Pagodes encapsulates for me in some ineffable sense the feeling of Japan, particularly that night spent at the onsen. That day we visited the onsen, we had the tempest, the rain poured down, beating down on the roof of the onsen as we bathed. We were pierced by the cold air as the hot water rested us; and when we got out the bath leaving its warmth, and then leaving the roof's shelter, those cold drops of rain on the June evening hit like cold tears. Like that sky, I too cried in the bath. The memory was so strong of Japan and our time. I feel almost there, almost, almost... it's so close. So close, I could almost feel it, but there was no form. What I inhabited was a memory. I was living in the timeless moment. But the timeless moment of a memory is never real, never present. I look back to the onsen, and the experience I had in the moment wasn't as magical, as awe-inspiring, and tear-jerking. I was awkward. I felt out of place, nervous about breaking etiquette, at least the first time we went. It was a good and restful experience, a beautiful experience, but the magic.. the magic rests in the memory. All anxieties and frustrations dissolved with time, leaving a pearl in it's place. Just like the onsen washes away our anxieties and pains, so too does time. Time is the great onsen, putting to rest every grievance and anger. The elderly know this. The elderly, those who are wise and kind, understand this. They care not for the grievances of life; they've seen enough life to know they matter not. The wise know that time heals every wound. The cut closes, and the memory sweetens, as all the sourness and bitterness fall away. The pains of the work week sail into the distance upon the water, and are forgotten. This sense of nostalgia and memory is shown best in my favourite Japanese export, slice of life anime. Rewatching a favourite the other day, Yuyushiki, reminded me of the joy the genre brings, and its portrayal of simple life. Simple is not dull. Simple is without strife and hardship, without anger and hardness of heart, without arguments arising, and friendships strained: this is moe. Moe is an easy love without the difficulties a closeness of heart can bring. Like the onsen is for our body and soul, and like time is for our memories, moe anime is the expression of that tension and strife dissolved into the depths leaving a pearl left behind, that unbridled joy of life's springtime memories. Indeed, moe is a memory. Yuyushiki is not the story of three girls enjoying their school years, but rather of three girls reminiscing upon those school years decades later. All the tension and angst part-and-parcel with adolescence is sanded away, like tidal water smoothing a cave. To this sense of nostalgia, I recommend Debussy's Reverie and Arabesque No. 1. Both pieces enchant, dropping you into a mellow yearning for something more. These yearnings, Romantic yearnings, can't be fulfilled in this life. They stretch to the firmament like trees, but stop short once they can no longer keep reaching. "The eye is not satisfied with seeing / Nor the ear filled with hearing." - Ecclesiastes 1:8. The passions of the heart, that yearning, knows no limit. We will continue to yearn and yearn until the next life when our yearnings will be fulfilled. As Chesterton puts it, we live on the messy rear-side of the tapestry, awaiting to see the beautiful pattern of the front. That waiting is for the eschaton. Will the next life be like the onsen, where the pain, hardship, and anxieties dissolve away into a Noachian flood? Perhaps. The far future may feel like the far past. As memories sweeten as they become further away, so too may future memories just as far in the other direction. And as we shed the passions of the flesh, being raised as spiritual bodies, we too will be ridden of all our angst and hurt. The next life will be one without suffering nor strife, one where we live in the timeless moment, the moment beyond time, where all that healing time performs in this life will be experienced in the present. That nostalgia for the past will be made present, and we will live in beautiful memories in the now. What I mean to say, dear reader, in a roundabout way, is that the next life may well be quite like a slice of life anime.