For me there were some ups and downs, not just because parting is a very bittersweet occasion but because I discovered during the nakadachi (the break between laying charcoal and eating sweets and the tea making and drinking part) that I had angered one of the fellow guests with a silly joke that I had made just as we were walking to Hamana-sensei's house. I don't think it was a big deal over all, and I was hugely taken aback since the joke was one that I could never ever have imagined anyone to be offended by (and probably could never have been taken as serious within an American context) but here we are very international, we have misunderstandings, and (I think) we are also made hypersensitive by the kinds of training and the rules and culture of Urasenke gakuen. After I was shocked that anyone could possibly have misunderstood me, I was really sad that I was misunderstood and felt strange about going through the koicha (thick tea) there with the person I had inadvertently upset.
Koicha is shared from a single bowl and passed hand to hand amongst us all and it's considered the most serious part of a chaji/tea gathering. Some historians speculate that the form of koicha was inspired by the Christian Communion ritual in the way everyone is symbolically unified through sharing a bowl and drinking together.
So, this is a tricky thing when you're not feeling the unity after a small and unfortunate misunderstanding. More than that particular little snag, the juxtaposition of the misunderstanding and the spirit of koicha put me in mind of the challenge of finding unity amongst a group of people who, no matter how well they mean to be kind to each other, will make mistakes, will get tired or frustrated with each other, or will simply be unable to understand each other. And some people don't even seem to mean well at all--at least from one's own perspective, some people haven't seemed to want to be nice or understanding or to care at all, although of course I can't know how they felt. I'm sure people, probably the ones I'm right now suggesting didn't have good intentions, have thought the same of me. And of course, we've all failed to live up to our good intentions at times in this year.
So, thinking of the impossibility of understanding, the impossibility of maintaining flawlessly good relations amongst people, maybe especially stressed out people, maybe especially people from all over the world -- well those people seemed like the most important ones to me to share a bowl of koicha with and to try to be unified even without understanding each other. To care for each other and agree to be near each other and respect each other even when we can't understand. I haven't succeeded at thinking the best of every person I've shared tea with, but today I did that, and I wanted to try harder (or fail better) at doing that in the future.
All of which thoughts, in addition to the fact that this tea was about the fact that we are all departing soon to be scattered over the world, put me very close to tears in the tea room.
For awhile. And time passed, and things were really beautiful and chosen with care and skill, and there is this other interesting fact about the human psyche, or at least mine: you can also have two emotions inside at the same time, two or more concerns and attitudes. I remember finding this truly astounding as a teenager, that you could be really sad and hung up on some thing, but then simultaneously have space in your brain and heart left over to find some joke funny, or to feel hungry, or whatever. Even now it remains kind of funny, or somehow faintly disturbing, how capacious one is for encompassing a wealth of emotions at the same time--mixed emotions-- how one feeling of sadness fades away and is replaced by laughter, or how they jostle each other right behind my eyes. How someone in a deep dark funk can light up for a momentary joke, then fade back away. I think our shared collective culture on personality hasn't necessarily done a good job cultivating appreciation for or understanding of the complicated multiplicity of how it actually feels to be a person. I did consider just letting go and crying in the tea room. It would not be the first time someone had cried in one of Hamana sensei's farewell chaji, and it would have been understandable (although misunderstood, since people would think I was crying about leaving and not about the poignancy of the impossibility of human understanding... which might be kinda exactly right...). But I decided not to. And that is a strange sort of related thing-- to some extent we can just decide consciously how to embody our emotions. Not always of course, and not completely, but there are a few ways we regulate and consciously perform or not how we're feeling.
Anyway, the chaji was also about Hamana-sensei's generosity in hosting us, and his skill in bringing together absolutely lovely and fascinating objects; he sees two groups come and go every single year, and yet finds the energy and kindness to treat every one of us with so much consideration. I hope we offer enough support and consideration for him in return.
Toriawase notes:
In the machiai there was a scroll made from the new year's fan of a cow-year with Daisosho's writing of "Nanzan kotobuki" (Southern mountain, longevity) and an itomaki (silk spool), referencing the lovers of tanabata festival, a weaver princess and a cowherd man,
At temaeza, there was a Toyama gama by Miyazaki Kanchi (our favorite since we met him in Kanazawa in March) on a mentori doanburo with excellent haigata. The sumidogu included a Seifu (pure wind) kago, Tantansai konomi, with an eagle feather haboki--Linda said it looked like an American plains Indian basket with an eagle feather. The haiki was bright green. So was the sweet-- called "Ama no kawa" (the river of heaven) after the Milky Way where the two lovers can only meet once a year when they can cross the river by means of a magpie bridge. The sweet was from Toraya with little white sesame stars and a white an bridge/milky way. We managed to pull 13 okashi out of a poor overloaded 5 layer fuchidaka.
The omojawan for koicha was a black Ohi Chozaemon (previous, 11th, generation), totally beautiful with long black drips creating texture all around the bowl like a draping curtain. There were two more koicha bowls, both pale and rough. The second one was hagi, served with a gold kobukusa with constellations and rabbits--Sarah has the same one in blue, perfect for tanabata. The third was Izumo yaki and he served it with the white agnus dei kobukusa Glenn sensei gave him.
In usucha, a whole bunch of fabulous bowls and delicious sweets from Kameya Iori came out--tanzaku shaped sembei and itomaki shaped rakugan on a glass plate that looked to me like the ita-warabi that we served in the aemono at Toinseki last week. The bowls were nanban sometsuke, really rough and faded blue and white-- completely awesome; a Thai bowl with a pattern of dots around the rim; a Japanese copy of a non-round Chinese sometsuke bowl that I drink from first; a kutsu-gata oval shaped bowl in ame-yu (like Ohi) made by a woman potter; a white bowl with blue-green washes of color around the base from Hawaii; and a tiny green Persian bowl with fish painted on it.
It was a good way to start a Saturday. It was kind of emotional, and not in a strictly expected way. Things have always been pretty emotional around here and it's only going to get more so in these last (it's so few I can't even say "few") weeks. And here's to trying to understand each other, to caring for each other even when we don't understand each other, and here's to many more gatherings to practice that in the future.
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