Small Miracles

The soft morning light glows gently through the shoji screens. It illuminates the porcelain electrical fittings on the dark wood ceiling above my futon in chiaroscuro. Birds twitter in the trees outside and frogs croak in the rice paddies beyond, but inside it is quiet, just the sound of my family breathing. I lay listening, watching the shadows slowly move across the ceiling, in no hurry to rise. The last few weeks have been hectic, I am trying to pace myself, but it is hard to find a rhythm. It will come. I just need to listen.




As these thoughts are passing through my mind, the town PA system rings the not quite Westminster chimes loudly down the valley, signalling “6:00 am, time to rise”, and ending in a signature click of static. I chuckle quietly to myself, as every-ones alarm clocks begin their daily chorus. Gradually the family begin to stir. I rise and Mika starts to get the children moving. Another day begins.


We all sit for breakfast together, sardines on saffron rice, a salad served in a bowl given me by Clive Bowen. We place our hands together in gratitude and chorus “Itadakimasu!” The kids chatter over breakfast, talking about their new friends, the upcoming tests, their sports clubs. They have settled in very well, their grades are good, I am very proud of them. I watch them head off for school, Sora and Canaan on their pushbikes, Rohan and Sean off to the bus stop, the sound of their dinosaur bells jangling into the distance.



It is about a year since Sora was diagnosed with fatigue fractures in her spinal column. It is caused by over training in sports, in Sora’s case basketball, and the specialist in Maebashi told us it would never heal. Our local doctor, however, had a corset made for her and gave her an exercise program anyway, with instructions to follow that program -not the program dictated by the basketball coach. After we had meetings with the school, she has been participating in the team on a restricted level, with regular checkups at the doctors. It has been a very difficult time for her, but she has been very brave. At last week’s check up, after x-rays and a thorough examination, the doctor gave her a clean bill of health! “The x-rays show the spine is straight and cleanly healed,” he said. “You don’t need to use the corset anymore, keep it as a souvenir.” It seems that the specialist was wrong, for which we thank god and the good advice of our local Doctor!



I return to the studio, which is becoming more functional with each working day. The light from the window reflects off the dark wooden decking, clean and waiting for me.




Now that it is summer we are not using the wood stoves for cooking so often. Instead, I often light a charcoal fire in the irori and cook over that. The pit is half full of ash now, and I level the ash off and rake it even each time I use it.





I have always felt that this is the true source of the stone gardens of Kyoto, though I have no proof to support that other than the beauty of these patterns that were once the heart and hearth of every home in Japan.





My work cycle begins with wedging the clay, blending two clays until they become a new homogenous body. The clay becomes marbled during the process, and like every part of the process it has an intrinsic beauty. I will wedge 300 kg or so today, in preparation for my “Hatsugama”, the first firing of exhibition work in the new kiln.





It takes time to get into a proper working cycle. In the last month I have managed to make and fire the first test firing, a rehearsal for the “hatsugama”. We need to know how the kiln will fire, with a balance of pots inside. Not work made for museums, vessels made for my family, simple and honest. We need coffee mugs, cups and saucers, green tea cups. It takes 400 pots to fill the kiln, so I make 100 of each. If they work out well, I’m sure that others will want them too.





The aesthetic of Mingei is based on the simple beauty of functional ware made for everyday use. So, too, is the art of tea, but in a much more specific way. For me, the making of pots is like a tree making leaves. I make them in order to grow; when they are finished they will nourish others, becoming a part of their lives. Each is an individual and unrepeatable expression of the beauty of nature given form through me, and the more beautiful and simple each part of the process is the more beautiful the results will be.





When I stood before the fire box, bathed in the light and heat of the wood flame, it was not by my effort alone. It was with the help and support of so many of you, and the grace of god, whatever you conceive that entity to be.





The kiln fired perfectly. It fired in ten minutes less than the estimated fourteen hours, with exactly 400kg of wood, to 1305C by the pyrometer and Seger cone 10. The reduction flame from the chimney blew red into the darkness like a phoenix rising into the night.





I opened the kiln on the morning of the third day after the firing, with Mika and the children there. It was perfect. The flame had blessed us with red and orange and gold, lustrous surfaces, Sumi-e like ash glazes and beautiful igusa straw markings. No two were the same, but each a precious crystallisation of all the elemental forces of nature that have helped form them. And yes, one of those forces is love.





I lined the pots up on boards and took them to the studio. The vessels stretched across the dark decking in elegant rows. There are no words to describe the feeling of seeing this, to have come full circle.





This has been a long journey; I thank you for sharing it. Now I stand at the beginning of a new journey; or perhaps a continuation, I cannot tell. Every step is always the first. Shimaoka sensei said to me once, “I have no secrets, but if you don’t ask, I won’t tell you.” I have no secrets, but I have learnt a great deal on this journey. I will continue to share what I have learnt with you as I can, perhaps a little more regularly as we settle down into our new lives. I am blessed. I owe a debt of gratitude to so many, for all of these small miracles.

Thank you.

Home for Christmas

We are home. The snow has covered the world in a white blanket, the wind wuthers around the eaves, but we are home at last, warm and safe. The children sleep soundly in the washitsu, and Mika wraps presents at the kitchen table, as I write while I wait for the christmas pudding to steam on the wood stove.
This last month has been a whirlwind, and I am eternally grateful to all my friends who rallied together to get us into this house before winter. The first task was to clean the house free of dust and mold, remove the piles of accumulated trash and give ourselves a clean and healthy start. My friends travelled from all points and gathered for a working bee, working at fever pitch. Steve, who organised the event, made a video which is here on youtube. The upstairs floor was a single layer of boards with gaps between, warped with age a loosened by rusty nails. Any dust from upstairs would sift down to the rooms below, and any attempt at heating would leak up through the gaps and vanish into the rafters. Gennevieve, Debbie, Julie, Bill; Thank You.

Separating into four main groups, we tackled each challenge. One group was dedicated to the continuing clean up operation, cutting up the scrap timber from upstairs and stacking it around the old shed for winter. It is their efforts that are warming the house now. Giichi, Laura, Heather; Thank you.

Another group cleaned the mold, dust and soot from the downstairs walls and ceilings, and the children sleep soundly in that room right now. Jane, Jo; Thank you.

A third group tackled the kitchen, ripping up the old floor, laying damp proof sheeting, relaying the floor, putting in new studs and insulation, then laying a new floor on top of that. This evening the children helped me mix the christmas pudding, each making a wish as they stirred. We sat at the kitchen table for dinner and laughed and joked...Thank you.

The fourth group screwed down the ricketty floor/ceiling boards upstairs, layed new studs and insulation, then a new floor on top of that. With funds from donations from friends around the world we managed to buy enough materials to repair and insulate three rooms downstairs and the studio work space. With the cieling insulated and sealed, I can now keep the living and working space warm...Steve, Brendan, Takashi, Aja; Thank you.

We shared the work, and went where the help was needed. At breaks we would drink starbucks coffee essence (Thank you Startbucks!) while Bill played his guitar and sang...the children all helped, I gave them each a hammer, and in years to come they will be able to point and say,"That is where we fixed the floor" or " This is where I bent a nail...". This is their home, they have helped to make it real, it belongs to them.

Since then our young friend Raku has been helping, finishing the floor, filling gaps, sticking bubble wrap to windows...As I walked home from seeing the children off the school the other morning, the sound of his cello hummed across the snow, and as I entered the house it's music thrummed through the new floor, the whole house becoming a sound board.

I have made a door above the stairwell from an old sliding door, and it keeps the warm air downstairs where we need it. I hope that the upstairs will become a gallery in the future, but not this winter. It will take a lot more work to achieve that goal, this year I have more important things to do...

We moved in on the 15th of December, nine months to the day since we evacuated from Ichikai. A good time to start a new life. I bought a small fir tree that day, and this morning we set it in one of my large bowls in the washitsu and decorated it. The christmas tree from Ichikai I planted in the garden there when I returned to pack our bellongings, it belongs there. This is our new christmas tree, and I hope that it will grow along with the children. We sang carols as we strung the tinsil on the tree, hung baubles on the boughs and as I set the star on the top most point of the tree. Our home is already full of love and music and laughter, friends become family, a house becomes a home.

The work is far from finished, but that's OK. Tomorrow is christmas eve, and we will move the last of our belongings here in the morning. Because of you, who have sent us help when we needed it, we are home. Now we are truly safe, and I have what I have wished for...a home for christmas. Thank you.

God Bless, and Merry Christmas to you all.

Close to home

The typhoons of last month seem to have washed the colour from the mountains, revealing the sepia study beneath. The first snow has streaked the tip of Tanigawa Dake with white, three weeks earlier than usual. Summer has gone, Autumn has come and Winter is close upon her heels.

Much has happened since last we spoke, and plans never quite work out the way we expect. The time spent at Laura's pottery in Nagano was very productive, and I am eternally grateful to her and Giichi for their support. It did, however put a great deal of pressure on Mika and the children, fending for themselves in this new environment. My role, first and foremost, is to protect my family, and it became increasingly clear that I could not do so from a distance. We have come through so much this year, but there are other dangers much closer to home. I need to be here, with my family.

After seeing the children off to school I set off on foot up the hill towards Takumi no Sato. Our plans to build a new studio on the edge of the craft village there were put on hold while I was away. It seems that fate had a hand in this as well, for in mid Summer one of Mika's distant relatives came to offer us another option. The house and land where Mika's grandmother was born was vacant and derelict, and the inheritor who lives an hour away had no interest in it, would we like to buy it? By instalments of course, no hurry, we're family....


And so we went to see this house. It stands 3.6 kilometers from Mika's parents house, in the west precincts of Takumi no Sato. I approach it now, walking past the mulberry orchard and onto the cobbled driveway. The mulberry leaves were used to feed silk worms back in the days when the family bred them commercially, and the upper floor of the farmhouse was dedicated to the business of raising the caterpillars till they spun cocoons, then trading them to the silk mills in other parts of Gunma. Here, it seems, was the start of the silk road.

To the left of the driveway is a stone walled channel, and beside it a rice paddy farmed by another relative. To the right, behind the mulberries, are vegetable patches, untended and overgrown, and a persimmon tree laden with fruit and bare of leaves. The drive breaks through the hedge, bracketted by cedar trees, and there is the house. Built in the fifth year of the Meiji era, 1873, the year Japan adopted the gregorian calendar, it is a traditional farmhouse of pillar and post construction, with plastered wattle and daub on a bamboo framework for the walls. In many ways it reminds me of Tudor architecture, strange how different cultures find common solutions.

The cats come running towards me from the old shed to the left in the front yard, mewling for attention and, more importantly, food. Stomach love. I ruffle their heads and give them a feed in their new home. In the shed are old barrels and, yes, even a saddle. We brought our four cats from Mashiko after the earthquake, and now we have seven....life is a precious thing.

Around the house are logs and beams and miscellaneous odds and sods. The old man who lived here last, Mika's great uncle, had been a bit of a hoarder. Not a bad thing in moderation. He had also paved around the house with concrete slabs and rocks and old roof tiles and roofing iron and...as a result the drainage around the house wasn't all that good.

Entering the "Genkan" entry hall there is the fragrance of damp earth. I call out "Tadaima!" to the empty house, the customary Japanese "I'm home!", and slide the door closed behind me. To the right is the wood furnace for the bath, then the bathroom and pit toilet beyond. To the left is the kitchen and living space. In front of me is the new studio, half earth floor, half wooden deck. This was the work space for the farm. In the back corner are the old stables, partly filled with rotting firewood. Shimaoka sensei's studio smelt like this, a musty aroma, the fragrance of a freshly opened bag of clay. This room smells like a pottery. A dirt floor maintains an even humidity, allowing pots to dry evenly, and prevents dust from gathering thus averting the danger of silicosis. It is also easier to stand on for long working periods than a concrete floor.

The wooden deck was rotten, as were the floors throughout the rest of the house. But I could see the potential. I also needed to make pots, to make a living for my family. At first I repaired a bare minimum, I needed a wedging table and a throwing space. In one of the old stables I built a wedging table, using stone from the ruins of our old house and wood from repairs to the floor of this house. It seems to fit.

One corner of the decking was badly broken, so I rebuilt that first, making room for two wheels. I had brought my old electric wheel from Mashiko, but I also had Hamada sensei's wheel to restore. The bearings were rusty and the wood dry and cracking from thirty years of dissuse. With the help of the local garage we removed the bearings and derusted them. So many people told me to just get new bearings....blasphemy! We restored it with the original bearings and nails, oiled the wood and it shone like new.

With this basic work space I was able to get the order of cups finished, fired in Nagano and delivered to Utsunomiya by the skin of my teeth.

The rest of the house, however is still unlivable...yet. Debi and Julie came up to help me rip up the studio floor and restump the foundations. Since then I have reframed it and built a raised throwing bench to accomodate the Hamada wheel. I suppose my legs must be longer than his were, it will take some adjustment!

The loft is full of "stuff", timber, bamboo, old silk worm equipment. There were also frames from old "Kotatsu" tables which made perfect frames for the wheel wells. The covers from the storage boxes, number coded with kanji calligraphy made ideal covers, and the one to cover Hamada's wheel even says "六ろ" (Roku Ro or "6R"), a phonetic pun for the japanese word for potters wheel, "Rokuro". It is as if it was waiting for me. Or perhaps my whole life has been preparing me for this...

It has, however, become imperative that we move out of our temporary residence and into this house as soon as can be. Mika and ,more importantly, the children need a safe and stable environment. My task now is to get this house livable, just the minimum will do, before the winter comes. I have put a temporary wood stove into the living room, replaced the sink in the kitchen, got the bath furnace in working order. There is a room which we can use for sleeping, but we must clean out the loft and relay the floor/ceiling so that ancient dust and mold doesn't filter through the gaps in the single layer of boards onto the sleeping children. We need to insulate and stop up gaps to keep out the bitter cold of the mountain winter. We need to heat the studio and living space.

My task today to finish the deck so that it is safe to climb the stairs, and to lay the stones into the "irori" charcoal brazier to maintain the studio temperature. I have saved as many of the original flooring boards as I can, jigsawing them together to keep the spirit of the original architecture. The stones for the irori are from the shed in Ichikai, the one that was supposed to be the studio there, which burnt down the day the lease became valid in December 1999. They are Ashinuma stone, from which Mashiko "Kaki" glaze is made. I carefully chisel them into shape and fit them into the frame I have left in the floor.

It is time to go and get the children. Sean from the preschool, Rohan and Canaan have walked back to Mika's brothers house from primary school. I go to get Sora from basketball practice. She is allowed to practice again now, though the crack in her spinal column will never mend, a constant reminder of how I failed to protect her from an over zealous basketball coach. If only I had been here, if only I my request for more off days had been listened to...fatigue fracture it's called, apparently, but hard to diagnose and once the bone has started to set it cannot be cured. The muscle and sinew supports it now, so she must maintain her muscle tone for the rest of her life. She smiles at me cheerfully as she gets in the car. I drive back to our farmhouse, and the children do their homework as I cook curry on the wood stove.

Mika brings "Bachan" (Grandma) to have dinner with us here. Tomorrow "Jichan" "Grand dad" returns from hospital after his stroke. That will be a celebration! We enjoy our meal in the warmth of the wood stove, and then I light the bath fire and also the charcoal in the irori for the first time. Bachan sits beside the fire and tells a few stories about the family history of this house.

The boys and I have a bath, but then we must return to Mikas brothers house to sleep. Soon we will not be living patchwork lives. My friends are gathering over thanksgiving for one last push before the snow, and we hope to be in the house by then. I hope to have the kiln built by Christmas and I have great hope for the new year. We could not have come this far save for the help and support of all our friends throughout the world, all of you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. We are are not quite there yet, but we are getting very close to home.

If you are coming our way, you are welcome. Our new address is;

121 Higashimine, Minakami-machi,
Tone-gun, Gunma-ken,
Japan 379-1418

T/F 0278-25-3982

Impasse

　
I have been living out of a suitcase for nearly four months now. So much luckier than the twelve thousand evacuees still living in cardboard cubicles in gymnasiums and public halls in the north east, but stressful nonetheless. I recently heard stress described as "responsibility without control". The only solution seems to be to live in the moment, and so I do, seeking to find the beauty, the joy, the fulfillment of each moment, each and very day.

May 29th:

The "Tombi" is a bird of prey (a kite, or so I am told) which is rare in the air above Mashiko, but thrives here in Minakami. I watch it circle in the grey sky above the rice fields as I drive to Ichikai on Saturday morning, the sound of it's shuddering cry just audible above the roar and clatter of the light "kei" truck. It pauses in mid air, then swoops lower and glides level with the car window as I rise onto the freeway ramp at Tsukiyono. There is a busy weekend ahead...


The Solstice has passed, but the days are still long. The sun greets me merrily as I rise and pack my bag once more. I leave for Komoro again today, and will not return till the weekend. I wake the older three children from their bunk beds and call them down for breakfast. I rebuilt their bunks here in their uncles house a few weeks ago, it gives them a sense of stability, continuity, home. I cook them omelettes for breakfast, and make coffee for Mika and me. Mika's sister, Emi, sent us some nice Italian roast from Tokyo. Sean would normally help me grind it, but we are leaving him to sleep today. He has had some chest infections recently, but seems to be OK now. Rest is best. I grind the coffee, standing at my stone work bench, so out of place in this borrowed kitchen, and watch as the children prepare for school. Folding a filter paper into one of my coffee drippers, I fill it with the freshly ground coffee and pour hot water into it in a spiral. We sit down together, "Itadakimasu", and chat as we enjoy the morning.

The boys are first to leave, and they pull on their "Landsell" leather school ruck sacks, jangling as they go. There have been bears around recently, so all the children have "Bear Bells" strung from their bags.

"How are those dinosaur bells working?" I ask them.

They look at me askance, "There are no dinosaurs around here, Daddy." says Rohan matter of factly.

"Gee," I say, "they must be working then!"

"No, Dad," says Sora, in exasperation, "Dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years!"

"WOW!" I say, "They really DO work!"

Canaan starts laughing first, and we all join in. I kiss them and hug them goodbye, and tell them to look after their mother for me till I get home. I watch them out of the garden, hear them greet their new friends on the road, and listen to their dinosaur bells jangling into the distance.


...The two and a half hour drive to Mashiko has become familiar now, and, between whistling and singing because the radio doesn't work, it gives me a great deal of time to think. After weeks of spinning my wheels in every way but the pottery sense, I am finally able to take some positive action. I list in my head the vessels I will make for the first firing, the materials and tools that I will need, doing sums in my head of the weight of clay, the minimum tools, the maximum load that the truck can carry. By the time I get to Mashiko I have already packed the truck in my head. Some time in the past two months since we evacuated, a large tree, weakend by the earthquake, has come down in a storm and smashed across the rooves of the tool shed and kiln shed. It hangs suspended horizontally between the two buildings. The grass and weeds are reaching up towards it now. How quickly nature asserts itself. Reversing up to the studio door I begin to load the ware boards first across the bed of the truck. On top of this I load the quarter tonne of clay I will need for the first kiln load, then remove eighty kilos and place it in the passenger seat. Wheel, glazes, sieve, basic throwing and trimming tools...within half an hour the truck is loaded. I strap the tarp down and tie it with truckies knots like Uncle Laurie showed me back on the farm in Redesdale thirty years ago. The truck wallows low on it's springs as I drive away. The next stage of the trip will be slower...


Mika and I clean up the kitchen. I take my bag out to the car, then come back inside and climb upstairs. I kiss Sean gently as he sleeps. Back downstairs, I kiss my farewell to Mika. It is difficult driving away. The blessing when the earthquake struck was that I could reach the children on foot. Now I drive off to a studio hundreds of kilometers and hours away, and leave them to fend for themselves. Responsibility without control. I drive on.


...Back on the freeway, heading west again, a misty rain starts to grease the roads. The rainy season has begun. I know that there is a typhoon coming tomorrow as well. Oh, what fun. I drive on through the drizzle, the poor little truck labouring under the load. I take the turn to Nagano and climb into the mountains. As the peaks become more dramatic, mist and rain turn the scenery into a sumie painting, with dark turrets of rock thrusting upwards against the pale ashen paper of the sky. I peer myopically into the mist ahead, my left hand groping with the knot in the saffron coloured cloth that Mika has wrapped around my lunch of rice balls. Through the nine tunnels and finally the off ramp to Komoro. I stop at a convenience store to phone my friend Giichi, to let him know I'm almost there. It has been a three hour drive from Ichikai...

I am afraid to add up the hours of driving I have done this past month or so. Our friends Debi and Julie came up with two trucks from Kamakura last week and we did three round trips to move the seven tonnes of bricks for the kiln to Minakami, fifteen hours driving in two days. With loading and unloading, it was a marathon effort. Our friends Lee and Jean sent me a Warren Mackenzie yunomi to replace the ones we lost in the earthquake. I don't know how we can ever repay every ones kindness. We are not alone in this world, and we must support each other, from those according to their ability, to those according to their need.


...We unload the truck, putting the wheel and the clay as close to the studio as we can. The ware boards and tools are stored under the eaves, I will sort the studio out on Tuesday. Laura, Giichi's wife, is in the UK with her daughters, she will be a grandmother again on Tuesday, Tuesday is turning out to be a big day. The truck is unloaded, we sit down and have a cup of tea and a biscuit. He gives me the spare key, shows me the futons and pantry, and we shake hands before I leave. I met him at Seth Cardews in the UK back in September 2001. I was in St Ives doing a workshop and exhibition when the planes hit the towers in New York, and, in the few weeks that followed, travelled around the potteries with my good mates Michael and David till the planes were flying again. Giichi and Laura visited me in Ichikai the following summer, and we have been close friends since...


Gallery Ciel in Utsunomiya has rescheduled my exhibition to the 25th of August...I have seven weeks. I arrive in Komoro, and Laura makes tea while I sort out the work from the week before last. After moving the kiln I was occupied with several other ongoing projects. Potters from Mashiko are donating pots to be sent to the northern prefecture disaster areas. The pots will be distributed to the evacuees so that they can enjoy their meals on real vessels, instead of paper plates and plastic cups, and help restore some quality to their lives. In a nation where hand crafted pottery is an integral part of the food culture, months of emergency food becomes a strain. I have given them rice bowls, yunomi and mugs to begin with, and will send more in weeks to come. There is also a project to create a new Internet site (working title "Mashiko Dori") to create a virtual Mashiko, so that visitors from around he globe can virtually partake in Mashiko's reconstruction, the pottery community and the tradition and art work of Mashiko. We plan to integrate a 4G system into Mashiko, with web cams and interactive sites, to take Mashiko to the world. We hope that this will help to sustain Mashiko despite the difficulties faced within Japan. It will take some time.


It is difficult working in a borrowed space, travelling large distances, and I have not been able to control the drying very well. I have had many losses, but I have learnt a great deal. I recycle and remake the pots that are cracked, and begin the next run of vessels for the exhibition. I have some which were prepared before the earthquake and survived, but the main body of the exhibition is still to be made. Laura sits at her wheel beside mine, and I offer her advice and, I suppose, mentorship in return for her studio space. She is very kind.

As we sit and enjoy a lunch of fresh baked bread and cheese, served on plates made by friends and potters we respect, a "Tanuki" (raccoon) walks through the garden just beyond the windows, foraging through the herbs. "Not the sage!" says Laura under her breath, "Please, not the sage!" It moves on, snuffling around the Shiso and Italian Parsley, then vanishes into the underbrush beneath the pines.


Laura and Giichi have been working on a project to provide a reprieve for Mothers with small children from the radiation affected areas in Fukushima and neighbouring prefectures, and have organised home stays in Komoro over the summer. These mothers are struggling to protect their children in an environment with uncertain levels of radiation, the long term effects of which cannot be measured, and yet they are responsible for the health and welfare of their children and have no control over their environment nor the information needed to make good decisions. I sympathise with the stress they are suffering, it is something which all residents of Japan must deal with for many years to come.


...The truck is lighter now, and I struggle up the steep gravel driveway. The rain is heavier as I head for home. Now that the clay is delivered and the studio awaits I am eager to get back to the wheel. But first there is one more task; tomorrows broadcast. Now, as I drive through the rising wind, my mind turns over the questions they might ask, things I might say, the things I wish to share. The director heard my broadcast on TBS radio last year and had contacted me before the earthquake about doing a live broadcast for NHK "Chikyu" radio. He came to Minakami last week to do some background research, the rough draft of the interview questions should be waiting on my email when I get home. The truck is harder to control, with out a load, in the blustering wind, and I find myself leaning forward tensely as I drive. The wind shield wipers are working overtime through the driving rain, and the storm seems to take a breath as I drive through the tunnels, only to renew the onslaught with greater fervour on the other side. It is two and a half hours to Minakami. That makes...eight hours driving today. Mika is putting dinner on the table as I walk in the door. Sora tells me about her basketball games today, the boys have finished their homework, everyone is excited about going to Tokyo tomorrow. After dinner I have a bath and I am asleep as my head hits the pillow...


I have brought my copy of Omar Khayyam to Komoro, and after dinner Laura sits in the drawing room and reads it while I work at the computer. I have been struggling for weeks, trying to move forward, but I find myself overwhelmed sometimes. So I must trust that my family is safe, amid these uncertain times; I must help those I can, though I feel helpless myself; I must gratefully accept the help of others, though I know not how I can repay them; and I must strive to live each day the best I can, grateful for the blessings I have, in hope of a bright tomorrow. If I do not write so often these days, it is because I am striving to fulfill my responsibilities, sometimes in circumstances over which I have no control. I thank you all for your help and support, and have faith that all will be well.