Why failing better?

>>>FROM 4. SEPTEMBER 2012

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
-Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

Hello everyone.
Perhaps this feels like a funny name for a blog about doing something so exotic as moving to Kyoto Japan and studying the Japanese way of tea for a year.
Here’s why: I have come to feel like a massive proportion of tea— the practice of the practice of tea is learning how to be wrong. I decided this long before I came here to Kyoto. Many of you will have heard me talk about it before. Doing Tea is all-encompassing and fluid. And it’s largely repertoire based— unlike many authoritative western institutions, it’s not about the archive and the written word— as Hamana-sensei told us in orientation, it’s not a high art, it’s an art of everyday life. In other words, it’s about performance. And one thing we often say about performance is that it’s protean, it’s contingent. And that’s nice, because it’s flexible, and that’s really hard because it sometimes feels there’s nothing solid to hold on to. Or so many solid things to juggle that we could never possibly get it all right.  It’s especially hard for us newbies (the kohai) right now, because every single little thing is new, and we are trying to learn every kata (form), every shikata (way of doing things) at once. But if 13 years of practice is any indication, it doesn’t stop being hard.  So this is about learning how to fail better than before, to fail with grace. And as Gary-sensei told us today in our first lecture class, to always make new mistakes and not old ones.


Now, on with the rest of it. Next come a bunch of my first few days’ thoughts.  It’s long, it ends abruptly because guess what, it’s really busy and it’s impossible to do everything justice!  Ah well. I am very happy to hear your thoughts. I’m working to figure out comments and how to enable conversation here.
~cheers
M.






[This was written at the end of my first full day here, August 30.]

The plane.

SFO was pretty simple. I made the airport with plenty of time— met a couple who were leaving for their honeymoon on the BART and talked over our respective trips once the crowds all got off in central SF. I evangelized Tea pretty effectively I guess. They asked if there was someplace in San Francisco that they could check it out, so I wrote down “Urasenke” for them to look up the center.  They even helped me to get my four bags into the international terminal upon arrival. I managed to check both bags on the cusp of 50 pounds (probably both were almost half a pound over. I had loaded one up with a bunch of the heavy stuff out of my carryon, but had to put it back in carryon.)
A wacky thing happened on the plane that’s never happened to me before, especially on a long flight— all of a sudden, after a couple movies, a terrible meal, a short sleep, there were only 2 hours left of the flight, and I had a sudden wish that there was more time left on the plane. I wished it wouldn’t touch down in Osaka. Obviously, being stuck in a tiny seat with two strangers between you and egress isn’t REALLY what I wanted to do longer, but the separateness of being in a little pillbox suspended over the ocean with really almost nothing to do but watch movies felt like a sort of wonderful reprieve between pressure filled weeks. Nevertheless, land we did, and I made it through immigration— everyone with visas ended up in a special line and I sort of panicked when I saw they were taking pictures of us and handing out our gaijin cards before we made it through— I pulled my hair down and tried to wipe my face and silently cursed the bureaucrats who thought it was okay to take our everyday id photos at the end of a transpacific flight.  Luckily, I realized when she handed me my card (mild surprise when she read that I was going to Urasenke as a student), they used the photos we sent with our visa applications, not the photos they take at the airport. 安心だった！！！
Cone met me at the airport (THANKS CONE!) and we headed back to K-to via Haruka express. Multiple phone calls assured the office that I was on my way, then we hopped in a cab with my stuff (lovely white-gloved cabbie as always, although he required me to help him heft each suitcase into the cab. No complaints here. I’m always intensely embarrassed when other people handle my stuff for me.

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Last night by the time I made it to bed at 10pm, the onslaught of information on top of the onslaught of a week of travel was rapidly eroding my ability to stay upright in the world, in a literal and emotional sense.

My dorm room is a miniaturized version of my apartment in Kawabe. A narrow room with a single bed and a chest of drawers, a tiny balcony, entered via a long skinny corridor with a tiny sink/single burner on one side and doors to a small shower/bath, closet, and a toilet on the other. I even have my own washing machine and a shoe cupboard! There are virtually no storage spaces or shelves anywhere. Three tiny wire shelves in the kitchen space, nothing in the bath, the top of the drawers and the low table. (Is it kotatsu? I’ll have to check.)

I woke up for good about 4:15 (I think. I guessed on the time last night when I set my alarm clock—my very first cell phone from living in Japan 11 years ago and still the best alarm clock I’ve ever had.) I thought it was almost 5, so I decided to get up and start being awake, and starting putting things away and organizing. Then I checked the phone again, and it was only about 4:30, so I’d misread some numbers somewhere.

The clothing is of course an issue. I’m going to wear my wool suit skirt and a cream plain button down.  But then I suddenly realized tights or stockings. Ugh. It’s 90 plus degrees out here. The humidity is hovering at 100%, and wool PLUS stockings?  And anyway, I didn’t bring any hyper-conservative beige ones.  I can tell it’s half a battle because I don’t know and don’t own the right things, but a good half of it is my own reluctance (near refusal) to capitulate to standard modes of dress.  Is this my first zen test of self-denial, and what is the right course? Is it actually desirable or right to attempt a complete and utter transformation into a costume of conformity, or is it fair to try to find a middle ground in which I feel a little like myself? 
…on the other hand, Sarah (fellow newbie) told me I looked like an old school teacher in my blouse and ’70s suit skirt, so maybe that’s kind of awesome by itself. Maybe I can’t help but look like me.

Most careful on day one, from there maybe I can feel it out.



Day 1:

Rule number one: 10 minutes early is 5 minutes late. We are observing this rule by meeting with our sempai to be led to our appointments 45 minutes before they begin.  This is still easy because the jet lag has me up at about 4am.  On the first day of orientation, all the girls met in the lobby of the building— we have little nameplates that we turn for “in” or “out” in the genkan, and notebooks for signing out when we go anywhere but school. Oh, and that 10pm curfew. Oh yes. I’m telling myself to think of it not as a ridiculous constraint on my fundamental adult (I AM OVER 30. SHEESH.) freedoms, but rather a chance to have a year of plenty of sleep, plenty of reflection time, plenty of self care. A freedom from obligations rather than a curtailment.
Later, Hamana sensei says all this is really more because of the gakuensei— the Japanese professional college students.  Some of them aren’t even 18 yet, and this IS Japan, so we are sort of caught in the rules for much younger students.

So, that extra 45 minutes: we meet in the lobby, we head out, and because we have 45 minutes to walk across the street, the sempai (the elder students) take the kohai (younger— US) around to all the key buildings. We’re eight people, and we drift slowly here and there like seaweed in the current or clouds in the sky, talking and getting things pointed out. We walk past the Urasenke headquarters to the gravel walkway through the temple (unrelated to Urasenke) to Ogawa-dori— the public street that still counts as “inside” Urasenke. Once we’re on this path, we have to stop and bow to everyone we see and greet them.  Across Ogawa-dori from the temple is Kabuto-mon, the entrance to Konnichian, the house where the Sen family lives. We bow toward the gate (there’s a statue of Rikyu somewhere in there, invisible) every time we pass it. We bow and greet security guards, everyone who passes, and every car, since we don’t know who might be inside. We don’t have to speak to the cars though, just bow.
We four kohai newbies have to follow our sempai everywhere like ducklings; they lead us to the Gakuen—the school rooms with tea rooms on the ground floor, classrooms on the second floor, and a huge open tatami hiroma on the top floor— we will be cleaning this huge room every day. Across the street from Gakuen is the Shokudo—the cafeteria.
At lunch time this circuit to get to the shokudo is side-scrolling videogame worthy— how to navigate Ogawa-dori carrying our stuff, stopping short to bow and greet every person who comes along.  On this first day, when we break from orientation and getting our papers in order we are instructed to meet the sempai in the shokudo. But there are so many rules, and we’ve never seen the inside of shokudo yet, we don’t know if we’re supposed to go inside, or wait for them outside. Paivi is sending text messages asking if we can go inside at noon, but noon is also when virtually all the office workers throughout the complex come to lunch so we’re stuck just at the door like a confused greeting committee bobbing up and down and up and down and up and down konnichiwa, konnichiwa, konnichiwakonnichiwakonnichiwakonnichiwakonnichiwakonnichiwakonnichiwa while we wait. Then, rereading the original summons, we decide we CAN go inside, and there they are, waiting for us relaxed at a table, out of the line of bowing-greeting fire.

Obviously, even in the three days since things have gotten a lot more comfortable. Still, everything is still brand new. In fact, lessons, which might seem like the most stressful part, are really the easiest part.  I guess that’s the part we were all already familiar with.  And seriously, if there’s one thing I’ve been practicing assiduously for the last 30 years, it’s school.