Jetlag

I have experienced jetlag in the past, but never has it hit me so hard as it has this week, coming home from Japan. My husband is experiencing the same phenomenon. I spent most of the day Friday, thinking it was Saturday. We both wake up like clockwork around 2 a.m. every night, and we can’t fall back to sleep until 5 a.m. or so. Yesterday when we fell back to sleep, we slept to after 11 a.m. Today I forced the both of us to get up and out of bed at 8:30 a.m., and despite two cups of coffee, I am still in a zoned-out fog.

We experienced the same jetlag when we arrived in Japan, but the excitement and the adrenaline of seeing and experiencing new things kicked in, and waking up early had the added benefit of being the first ones in-line for breakfast. And after walking 22,000 steps a day, sleep was easier to come by (and to stay with) each night.

It doesn’t help that we both caught colds towards the end of our trip (packed cities of people and tourists made this almost inevitable). Colds are the perfect ingredient for making you feel out-of-sorts, cranky and sleepy. I haven’t felt this desirous to just be “back to normal” in a long, long time.

I always say that one of my favorite parts of travel is the appreciation that it gives to you for your own home, and for your own everyday life. I am also feeling an appreciation for my everyday lifestyle/sleep cycle, and I am panging for it to return.

“And if tonight my soul may find her peace in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.” – D.H. Lawrence

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Konnichiwa

I haven’t written a blog post in a minute, because I have been on a trip to Japan with my husband. It was my first visit to Japan and I loved every minute of it. I wanted to see something unique and more exotic than I have ever seen before, and Japan did not disappoint. Today, we were trying to get over our jet lag (there is a 13 hour time difference – so instead of Monday night, we actually watched the March Madness basketball final, in Japan, on Tuesday morning in a coffee shop and then, at the last few minutes, we went outside, only because loud and excitable is highly frowned upon in public places in Japan. After that, when we traveled back to the United States, we landed at home earlier than we had left Japan – experiencing true time travel!) Here are some of my “takes” from my trip:

+ I’ve never been around a culture more respectful of others than I have, when I was in Japan. We visited Tokyo and other majorly populated cities, and I can count on one hand the number of times in which I heard any “honking”. We were told that people in Japan only honk to help others in a dire situation. No one ever honks out of anger or frustration. This was so utterly refreshing (and peaceful). People treated everyone with kindness and dignity and lots of bows (as in nodding your head). One young man made a point of stopping to ask my husband and I if we needed help (we were trying to find a good restaurant in Osaka and we sat on a street corner, probably looking quite dazed and confused). This young man, donning a suit and tie, was just getting out of the train close to 7 pm (the Japanese work late hours) and yet, he (with the excuse that he was practicing his English) made a point of walking my husband and I, to a restaurant that he insisted that we would like, because he had taken his parents there (I guess he figured that we were around the age of his parents, sigh) and they had liked it. (It was a great restaurant!)

+ I’ve never visited a cleaner place than Japan. And ironically, they have very few public garbage cans anywhere in Japan. You are expected to take your garbage home (or to your hotel) with you and then dispose of it there. And this rule was fully respected. The taxis, trains, subways, and streets were honestly, practically spotless (which just added to the ambience of peace and quiet which was felt everywhere).

+ My husband insists that the highlight of the trip to Japan were the toilets. All of the toilet seats in Japan (even in public spots) are heated, have fancy bidet options, and offer soothing nature sounds to cover other sounds (ahem). It honestly has been sort of hard to come back to clammy, cold, plain ol’ boring, no frills toilet seats.

+ We decided (after some imbibing of sake) to enjoy the public baths from natural springs coming from the mountains. The public baths are segregated by sex in Japan, and thank goodness, because you are required to experience the baths entirely in the nude (unless you have tattoos – if you have tattoos, they have stickers to cover them up) I was admittedly nervous and apprehensive before the experience, but once settling into the baths, it turned out to be a beautiful, accepting, lovely experience. There were women of all ages there, from the elderly all the way down to a little girl. I honestly found the Japanese bath experience to be a beautiful celebration of womanhood and femininity in all forms. I truly felt connected to my inner goddess. As I eased into the hot, bubbling waters, I melted into self-acceptance and into love for myself and for others. It was an experience that I will never forget, and I was grateful that I mustered up the courage to do it.

+ The food is amazing in Japan. Especially surprising to me, was just how good the coffee (I thought that the Japanese would just be about tea, but their coffee was so good, I would put it up there with Italian coffee) and bread were, but also, one time we had a gourmet meal of shrimp heads, cherry blossoms, eel, sea urchin, and octopus, and that meal was as totally delectable and delicious as the Japanese coffee and bread. The sushi in Japan is enormous and incredibly fresh. (I will never eat grocery store sushi again.) The Japanese have an unbelievable dedication and attention to detail that I have honestly never seen replicated anywhere else.

+ Everything is adorable in Japan. Everything. The food, the people, their voices, their clothes, their dogs etc. etc. Even things that are meant to be scary, are cute and funny. We were on a hike and the Japanese bear warning signs looked like something closer to beware of Yogi Bear or the Care Bears. I almost hoped that we would run into one (and I thought that if we did run into a Japanese bear, it just might be pink with a heart on its tummy). I bought so much “cute” stuff in Japan that we bought another suitcase, and of course, the Japanese storekeepers carefully wrapped and adorned each little item. We haven’t opened the sweet, carefully wrapped little packages yet, but it is going to be like Christmas when we do – a complete celebration of darling delights!

+ Speaking of adorable, in one restaurant we met a charming, older couple who turned out to be relatively famous in Japan. The husband was a renowned Japanese photographer and the wife (cute as a button) turned out to be the first Japanese Playboy Bunny ever. (She is now 75). They were both so welcoming, kind, cute and funny and I couldn’t help but feel that it was kind of ironic that the wife always covered her mouth when she giggled. (I guess that she felt it was more important to be humble and modest by covering her mouth, than by covering any of her other parts. I just don’t know. Regardless, she was a living doll.)

+ We were lucky enough to visit Japan during their cherry blossom season which only lasts one week, out of any year, at the height of its season. The cherry blossoms were beautiful and the wind made it look like it was snowing. Apparently, the Japanese government planted thousands of cherry blossom trees to give hope to their people after WWII, and it was entirely apparent just how much the Japanese revere these trees, and rightfully so. The cherry blossoms are breathtakingly beautiful, and maybe moreso, due to their fleeting beauty.

+ I don’t think I have ever experienced a culture that so perfectly blends its reverence for tradition, with its desire for expansion and technology than I have in Japan. It is so utterly fashionable to be able to appreciate the “old with the new” and to be able to blend it all together in a way that works, so interestingly and seamlessly. I have never witnessed this better done, than in Japan. I guess that I would call it “Ultra-modern vintage” or maybe just simply “perfection.”

+ But a word about “perfection” – we were reminded at a temple, that Asian cultures typically are sure to purposely add at least one “mistake” to their art, or to their rugs, or to their food, or to any of their creations, as a reminder that we can always do better. If we say that something is “perfect”, than there is only one way to go from there, and that is downhill, and this is not good. It is always best to leave at least a little room for “the best that is yet to come.”

+ When touring one of many intriguing temples (there are thousands of these Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in Japan. When in Europe, you tour old churches, and in the far East, you tour ancient temples and shrines. Which to me, is just a humbling reminder that there are many, many intriguing, gorgeous paths to God.), we met a young, newly married couple from Oregon who were farmers. On their off-season, they travel the world and they often “wing it.” When I expressed my amazement and awe with this “wing it” approach to global travel, the young woman said to me, “Well, in worst case scenarios, you can always rely on the “mothers.” No matter where you are in the world, the mothers are everywhere and they want to help you.” And at that moment, I swelled with pride. It made me feel marvelously happy to be part of the sacred tribe of international “mothers” – the safety net for us all.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Aperture

Last night my husband and I went to an art gallery to watch the performance of a Japanese painter. The painter calls herself an “ink performer” and she has performed her art in many countries all over the world. The painter had already painted an intricate, fearsome looking dragon, in black ink, on rice paper, mounted on a silk tapestry. Her performance was devoted to accenting this dragon, by dramatically painting it with dips and dabs and sometimes sword-like thrusts of bright metallic gold ink, while doing a traditional Japanese dance involving bells, drums, and all of the while wearing a large, lengthy, enveloping kimono (she was teeny), which she had also previously hand painted. This experience was fascinating and interesting and so completely out of my own frame of reference. The artist could not speak any English, and she had just arrived from Japan the day before. I imagine that while looking out into the gallery at a small sea of gaping Americans, that we, too, seemed completely out of her own frame of reference. And yet it was magical experience for all of us.

I learned the term “frame of reference” when I was in high school and I took a World Cultures class from a wholly devoted and passionate teacher. When learning about a country, my teacher would transform his entire classroom into the country that we were learning about, as best that he could. I distinctly remember when we studied Japan that he wore a kimono, bowed to us as we entered the classroom, performed tea ceremonies and he insisted that instead of Mr. Sloan, we were to call him Sloan-san. He would always emphasize that we were to remove judgment from our lives’ experiences as much as possible. He would remind us that it was just by happenstance (for instance my soul ended up in Caucasian female body, born in America, in 1970), that we entered into our own particular circumstances, and that is the same for everyone else in this world. What is normal and pedestrian for someone, is unusual and exotic to someone else, and this is mostly because we are each looking at life, through the lens of our own frames of reference.

Today’s world is more global and connected than ever. More people travel the world over than ever before. Computers have made it easy to access global websites and products and programs at the click of a button. But “frame of reference” isn’t just about other countries and their traditions. Travel around the United States, and you get all sorts of different “takes” on food, BBQ, music, dance styles, celebrations, etc. Go from your own city, just twenty miles out into the countryside and you will experience a whole different way of life, without even having to refill your gas tank.

Life is so much fuller and more interesting when you stop trying to live up to an image. Life is so much fuller and more intriguing when you let your curiosity and imagination move you past your rote habits and comfort zones. When you live up to an image of who you think you should be, or what you want people to think of you (hint: people don’t think about you much at all, except maybe occasionally, when they may be questioning what you are thinking about them), you start limiting your choices of where you go, and what you do, and what you experience, and who you have these experiences with, throughout your days. If “these people/places/experiences” don’t fit your image, you don’t try them out, and then your life starts to get extremely limited to singular views, and uniform, biased experiences. Your frame of reference gets really tight, like a camera’s aperture becoming almost closed, to the size of a pinhole. And when a lot of people start walking around with pinhole apertures, the world becomes a dangerous place. We live in a more globally mobile world than ever. We can’t limit our frames of reference. It could become our downfall.

Today, do something to broaden your own aperture. Order or make a food that you’ve never tried before. Go to a different neighborhood and check out their eclectic little shops. Instead of force-feeding your own strong opinions about politics or religion, earnestly question and listen to someone who sees things differently than you do, with the goal of trying to understand their point of view. Watch a foreign film. You get the gist. Do more of this type of thing in your life on a regular basis, and the world becomes a less scary and more fascinating place than you ever could have imagined. You start to fully appreciate that we are all just souls/life force made of the same stuff, which just happened to land in different bodies, in different families, in different neighborhoods, in different cultures and in different countries. When you really broaden your aperture, your frame of reference starts to open so wide-angled that you see the picture as all-in-one. You begin to see and to fully understand that we are all just tiny little specks of the One Big Thing.

“Your frame of reference is everything. It will determine the quality of your entire life. Nothing escapes its influence.” – Tom Bilyeu

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Treats! It’s Friday

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

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Happy Friday!! Happy Earth Day!! Happy Day to let your hair down and to relax and to take life a little less seriously! On Fridays, I discuss the frivolous. On Fridays, I try to list a few material things, songs, TV shows, books etc. that have enhanced my life in fun ways, and I encourage you to add your favorites to my Comments section. Friends, after writing this daily blog for going on almost four years, I have to admit that it is hard to come up with three favorites a week. I have shared a lot of favorites over the years, and as much as I love my things and my frivolities, I am going to have to subtract an “s” from my “Favorite Things Friday” posts. From now on, I will be doing “Favorite Thing Friday” and I will list only one favorite a week, versus three favorite things. This is not bad. In many cases, “less is more.” So without further adieu, here is today’s favorite:

“Old Enough” Netflix series – I thought that I would hate this Netflix series. Its premise sounded ridiculous to me. “Old Enough” is a Japanese show that has been aired for decades in Japan, in which Japanese children, ages 2-4, are sent on long, detailed errands (sometimes even involving public transit) for their parents. Before I watched it, the show sounded absolutely dangerous and preposterous! But of course, I was coming at the show with an American frame of reference. The TV show clips are relatively short. They are amusing, entertaining, and honestly, enlightening. Kids are capable of so much more than we realize, and seeing these young children being empowered to be independent was kind of awakening to me. It also makes me a little sad, that in comparison, our American society seems to be a lot more dangerous for our children, than it is in Japan. If you like to understand other cultures, and to learn about other countries’ customs, you will be surprisingly amused and entertained by this show.

That’s it! That’s today’s favorite!

I look forward to Fridays because I know I have spent the week offering encouragement, solace, assistance, and good-will to everyone I have met through my journey.” – Byron Pulsifer

Be Byron. Let’s all be Byron in the weeks to come!

Soul Sunday

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Good morning. What I love about most of my weekends these days, (now that my children are mostly grown and independent) is that I can live these weekend days through my most spontaneous nature. I feel free to live moment-by-moment, following my whims and my fancies and my curiosities more than I have been able to do (or more honestly, allowed myself to do), for most of my adult life. So much of today can be unstudied and unplanned. I can let my most inner impulses and inclinations lead the way. This is why Sunday is devoted to poetry on my blog. Poetry is a more spontaneous form of writing than other forms of communication. Poetry reminds me of those mystery grab bags you buy for a set amount of money with “???” written all over them. The delight in these bags is the excited, anticipation of what may be inside. There is no expectation of what could be in the bags, so curiosity and a sense of fun are the main emotions of the experience. In Japan, many stores offer these mystery bags at the beginning of each year. These “lucky bags” are called fukubukuro. Poetry is the fukubukuro (even this word rhymes!) of our written communication! Indulge in poetry today. Delight in the ways that you discover yourself more fully, by seeing what comes out of your heart, in written form! Here’s my poem for today:

This day is your painting,

your poem,

your living NFT.

It is uniquely yours.

The emotions, the observations, the experiences, the prayers, the meditations, the creations, the relations, the rest, the activity, the obsessions, the possessions, the delicacies, the piquancies, and the frequencies that you tune into today, are all of yours.

This day is your poem.

Your living, breathing poem.

What does it say?

What does it mean?

What will it bring to tomorrow’s on-going poetry in motion?