Ishimure Michiko, Lake of Heaven

Ishimure Michiko, Lake of Heaven

Translated by Bruce Allen

Lexington Books, 2008

At a time when whole ways of life are being lost, entire worlds, writers like Ishimure Michiko are doing what they can to secret those worlds away in books. This book, which hasn't garnered nearly the attention it merits, is a secret storehouse, hidden in plain sight at Amazon.com.

Lake of Heaven is a book-length account of a young man's vision when he carries his grandfather's ashes back to his grandfather's village, which lies now beneath a manmade lake. A terrific amount of information about Japan's indigenous spirituality is tucked away in these chapters, a wealth I've not found anywhere else.

The book is a demanding one, with its own peculiar rhythm, and it follows few of the conventional rules of modern fiction. The protagonist, Masahiko, is the target of a vision. He is the vehicle of that vision -- and he's not going to get a word in edgewise except to meekly agree. In this book Tokyo is all bad and the village all good. Tradition is all wise and modernity straightforwardly a curse.

Despite my arguments -- with a book that brooked no disagreement -- the best proof of its effectiveness and strange power is that, when the book describes a ritual, painstakingly, over many pages, it seems that the reader, too, takes part in it and returns also to a world that has been renewed and reconnected.

Ben Okri's The Famished Road is the only other novel I've read which attempts, like this one, to show, and speak from, the indivisibility of the visible and spirit worlds. To have the chance to share this kind of vision is thus a rare honor.

Ishimure Michiko, in the course of her long life, has written a great number of books, almost none of which are available in English. May this be the first of many to be brought forth!

Theories of Marriage

An extravagantly wealthy woman began to grow old and feared the loss of her charms. Her husband, who was somewhat younger, might soon begin to seek out other women.

(Men, she believed, did not become old. There was no transition, no 'becoming'. One day a man was old. Before that day a man was not old, no matter how many years had passed.)

And so, after doing all she could with creams, sit-ups, and delicate lighting, she went out into the city and found the very most beautiful young woman. The older woman thought, she looks as I did years ago -- or else I am just flattering myself.

She made arrangements with this young woman, who accepted the situation matter-of-factly, as if it were routine.

The older woman took the young woman to her husband and said, "Consider this woman, henceforth, to be myself and take her for your passion." The husband voiced objections. Admittedly they were only perfunctory. He loved his wife all the more. She had such a brilliant practical mind. And also such a lovely figure.

Although the old wife missed the urgency of passion, the feel of skin, she also felt light-hearted and relieved, like a dancer permitted at last to take off her too tight shoes. To take them off and throw them away!

For a long time the husband vigorously enjoyed his young and nubile wife, but eventually he found that he missed his wife's older body, its familiar and agreeable softness. He asked his wife's older body to come with him for awhile into his chamber.

She was horrified. "You have a lovely wife and still you can't keep yourself from going after some haggard slut! Faithless husband! Pervert!"

His wife did not speak to him for a month. In either of her bodies.

After that, the man did his best to be faithful. He admitted that fidelity did not make much sense to him, intellectually, but still he did his best to live within its confines.

Eventually the husband began to feel ashamed. His gnarled old arm beside his wife's smooth skin seemed horrible to him. Also, he was having significant problems with certain departments related to satisfaction and performance.

(Women, he believed, did not grow old. They did not grow old and stay that way, as men do. A woman could be old at 36 and young at 45, old at 50 and young at 64. It was a kind of spiral, which continued until death. He'd seen it so many times he was no longer surprised: an old man laid out in his casket, his wife standing alongside -- abruptly young again and fresh.)

And so, after he'd done what he could with weights and push-ups and potions involving the intimate regions of tigers and bison, he went out into the city, found the very best looking young buck and explained the situation to him.

The young man was a young man and eager to cooperate. He took the young man to his wife and said, "Consider him henceforth to be myself." His wife voiced objections, only perfunctory ones, and soon enough she was taking her pleasure from this fine young man who appeared to be nearly insatiable.

Although the old husband missed the hunger and the feel of skin, he also felt relieved and at ease, like a stage actor who is permitted at last to take off his mask, to take it off forever.

The young woman meanwhile was not so young anymore, although she had grown wealthy. And so she went out into the city . . .

Theories of Marriage

Each of the wives had her own particular theory of marriage and a husband on whom to test it out. The husbands were more or less inert.

One wife said the key to a successful marriage was simple. All you had to do was imagine, at all times, a sign above his head which read: He Doesn't Get It. Another wife believed in supplements. Her husband had run out of Vitamin D -- that was why he was such a sniveling, self-pitying, self-absorbed jerk. And that was nothing, compared to what happened, if he ran out of Coenzyme Q! Obviously, her husband was always out of something.

Another wife believed in different kind of supplement: she supplemented her husband with other men. She had one each for sex, humor, emotional support and hiking. She claimed to be very happy, though she never had any time of her own.

One wife was thoroughly impressed by her husband. She'd trained herself to be impressed by anything he did. She'd been impressed for years by his bowel movements. She aimed soon to be impressed with his breath.

The Stoic School of Marriage was, as ever, over-subscribed. The women assured each other that it was both natural and expected to do without sex, respect, money, conversation or companionship. They made a sort of competition out of it. The most highly regarded woman had a relationship which included none of the above. Her company was highly sought after by all the others.

The most energetic wife maintained that everything was perfect, which certainly is optimistic, though it necessitates gradually cutting off all human ties.

Another wife said it was enough her husband brought home money, that it was perfectly reasonable to think of marriage as a very special kind of job, which ruins your life.

Another wife said, It's better than being alone! (We never found out, actually, what it was she did to herself when she was alone. Certainly it must have been unspeakable.)

Each of the wives had her own theory of marriage. The husbands were more or less inert.

Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Farrar Staus and Giroux, 2009

733 pages is an awful lot of Lydia Davis. When this book arrived I thought, will I ever want to read Lydia Davis again, when I'm done with this book?

I was a student in one of those MFA Creative Writing programs no one can disparage enough. In the late 90s they were pretty much workshops for the creation of Lydia Davis imitations. A few of these, too, read like Lydia Davis imitations. Occasionally I feel like the victim of a confidence trick, like, would it all seem so profound, if the spine didn't say 'Farrar, Straus and Giroux'?

And yet -- I would read ten more volumes of Lydia Davis, each the size of this one. Her stories are a very special and quiet kind of music, which makes you listen to everything differently. The stories work because Lydia Davis somehow smuggles me into a slightly different consciousness, the one next door, the one I sense when I've had one strong cup of coffee too many, and feel the meaning of life is slowly being revealed to me, in the form of a code contained in the very most minor events of my life.

Lydia Davis inspires a very special kind of attention, like a day spent in silence. This book is a good chance to be entirely caught up in that familiar and strange light.

ROAD TRIP with SAM McGEE

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee

I was seven years old when my mother died and my father tried to make it up to me by taking me to Disney World. We drove three days to get there. On the way Dad passed time by reciting, over and over and over again, "The Cremation of Sam McGee". This gave me a chance to learn vocabulary relevant both to the poem and to my personal situation, such as "crematorium" and "corpse".

My father often drove in reverse on the freeway. Engrossed as he was in poetry, he tended to miss exits. We never went on and circled back. No. We backed right up to where we were supposed to be.

Now it seems that much of my childhood was spent suspended in this odd precarious feeling, like what I felt as my father drove steadily backward, peering past me through the rear window. Is this really such a good idea? I wondered. I never see other people doing this. If we do this all the time and don't die -- does that mean it's all right?

I liked to learn death's vocabulary. For example, I wanted to know all about embalming. I liked the flowers and the sympathy cards. I was seven years old and everything was interesting to me. I had thick bifocals, jug ears and a limp. I felt most at home with things that were strange. I liked the sense that something momentous had happened and no one quite knew what would happen next. I like the way death had of showing up and demanding holidays.

I wasn't sure about my father. I remember Mrs. Haig sitting me on the sofa and announcing that my mother had died. I remember thinking -- this means I only have him. This seemed to me a distinctly bad idea.

I think my father would have done really well in another line of work. For example, Abstract Impressionism. As it was, he had to make do with apple farming. This had mixed results. His perpetual distraction was dotted with sudden rages.

Now he'd lost his wife of twenty-two years and was in the car speeding on the way to Florida. Imagine his astonishment and consternation when he happened to notice, in the backseat, a jug-eared kid with bifocals, his nose stuck in a book.

I was no good at watching for exits. I didn't look up from my book unless physically compelled.
My mother's death taught me to read. Before that I was no good at reading -- me and Mike Buto nearly flunked first grade. I taught myself to read with books of Bible stories in the tiny waiting room at Derry Hospital because children were not allowed inside.

After my mother died I had horrendous nightmares. I believed that Bible stories had the power to protect me and so I read for hours in the middle of the night. I did not turn off my bedside lamp for years.

Our road trip took three weeks. Thus I missed learning cursive in second grade. I never learned. In fact, I viscerally disapproved of cursive. I printed perfectly, endlessly and obsessively, my mother's death embedded in every word I wrote.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror driven.
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true and it's up to you, to cremate those last remains."

Most of my nightmares were about zombies. I woke to find my bedroom walls luminous with gaping eyes. Unlike Sam McGee, my mother had been buried, not cremated. Somehow I'd gotten the idea that embalming meant that my mother's body would remain intact underground for seven years. I was very concerned about that.

The stories I was exposed to at the time -- "The Cremation of Sam McGee", the New Testament -- suggested that death was a reversible process. On some level I knew that wasn't exactly true. On some level I knew that was absolutely true. One thing was clear: resurrection was accomplished by reading. And so I read all I could.

In Egermeier's Bible Story Book I read, and the angels stirred David's heart with courage, and I imagined the heart was a cast iron soup pot (my mother's had a hole in it) and the angels could come and stir in any necessary ingredient. I read about the angels stirring and my body shivered with sensual excitement: I could become strong.

The angels would come, riding on Tony the Tiger. Or a gypsy would give me a potion. And I would become a strong, heavy-muscled hulk, instead of a gimp-legged kid with a plastic leg brace and elevated shoe who went alone to Remedial Phys. Ed. every Friday afternoon.

I was obsessed with ugliness. I thought about my mother's body decomposing in the grave for seven years, as many years as I was old. I refused to comb my hair because it required a mirror. I remembered the shame I felt when I was fitted with bifocals because of a lazy eye. Now I'm really ugly, I thought. My father tells me I was fitted for glasses shortly before I turned 4.

In my dreams a zombie bogeyman chased me, his greasy gray hair flying out behind. If he caught me he would tickle me. If he tickled me I'd be as ugly as him. This was my most common nightmare. I was forever fleeing ugly.

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Everything was interesting to me. It was on this trip that Granma Betty introduced me to the ocean, this space which was both infinite and accessible by car, where it was possible to walk in the same place every day and find something entirely different. The ocean was another book of stories -- the tide turned the page.

About Disney World all I remember is that I vetoed the purchase of a coonskin cap. I was not Davey Crockett. The raccoons and I wished to be left alone.

Two weeks after my mother died, my father brought home a girlfriend. Very interesting. She was a Jewish Vegetarian. She made Spinach Lasagna. My father could cook two things. I was always allowed to choose between them. I could have an omelet with green pepper and onion. Or I could have an omelet with mushrooms.

I was immediately aware that this woman had no interest in me whatsoever, but I didn't mind because 'Jewish Vegetarian' was drastically better than 'omelet'.

Shortly before Christmas (I was allowed to have my own small tree in my room!) my father gave me the last present my mother had bought for me -- and announced that he was getting married.

I was very happy. I had learned it was far better for me if my father was kept busy elsewhere. Periods of neglect were much better suited to life than periods of attention. (There was a secretary and a housekeeper I could ask for food. Also, I made spectacular creations of my own using corn flakes, Worcestershire sauce and Parmesan cheese.) As far as I was concerned I needed no supervision. I knew exactly what I was doing. I had books to read.

I think my father's relationship with the Jewish Vegetarian was already on the rocks by the time we took our road trip. Always only tangentially connected to reality, my father was now in far over his head. Asked for a story, he explained that the bulbous white towers appearing here and there along the highway were actually the eggs of spiders. Sooner or later they would hatch and billions of spiders would pour forth from the towers.

At one point he had me write the word LUNCH on a piece of paper and hold it out the window. The pretty lady in the car behind had lunch with us.

I understood that death was both permanent and reversible. I was a crippled boy and I knew where I was going. In the meantime, I was in the car with my father. We'd passed our exit a mile before. My father was turned, looking past me, through the rear window to the highway. He was backing up the car.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Brenda Aims to Go Mad

Brenda longed to go raving mad, off the rails, AWOL, gone beyond, beyond gone, gone. And she aimed to do so in a single afternoon, with just two diet beers. Because obviously she was past mending. And because no one else was going to pay the rent. Or run round to her mother's place to climb a ladder when the bathroom fixture started making that sound again.

Other people must make plans to go mad months, if not years, in advance.

No, people in Scandinavia probably went mad any time they felt like it, and were supported by the government.

Some people didn’t need to save money at all. They were well-connected or well-loved. Brenda had only her old mother; her old mother had only her. Her mother would rather have hired a nurse, if only she could have afforded it. Someone brawny. Or a fresh young girl who was always smiling.

No, Brenda could not afford to go mad.

Brenda was forever overshooting the mark. Although she aimed to go mad in a single afternoon with two diet beers, she wound up going mad with two diet beers, a fifth of gin, a frozen lasagna, two drunken phone calls and an altercation with – well, most recently a parking lot attendant. Which was pretty bad. Considering she didn’t drive.

Anyway, a man who criticized a woman’s bottom was always wrong. Brenda was 43 years old. She had a right to wear whatever pants she wanted.

It didn’t occur to Brenda to give up being mad entirely. Any more than it occurred to her to give up urinating. It couldn’t all just build up in there indefinitely –

She would explode.

Really it was extremely complicated, going insane. It was difficult to let go of everything. Especially if you wanted it all to stay in place.

Was this what personal assistants were for, Brenda wondered?

Brenda was only temp staff. And so she had to take care of everything herself. Which was unfortunate.

If she could let go of something, she could afford to go mad.

If she could let go of something, she wouldn’t need to.