Naked Magnolia

 

The Magnolia bloomed in March.  I’d been anticipating the opening since noticing the downy buds in a neighborhood shrine on January 1.

 

Ancient, Kyoto is a new city for me.  It is not often that I move to a new city:  Santa Cruz, Tucson, New London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.    Most recently, I had been eight years in Yokohama. 

 

In Kyoto, I walked the forty minutes to the train station for months before the rainy season, not needing to understand the buses. A family-run fish store sells generous slabs of tuna.  The big street curves to the main post office.  Bicycle traffic converges near the station. 

 

Most surprising, the map of the city was etched in my brain as my cursor feet walked. 

 

After a year’s residence, with the flowering of the old tree, a sense of place is fulfilled in the stony Buddhist garden.

 

It is a naked magnolia, an alluring adjective I learned from my mother driving through Los Angeles.

 

The Kyoto sky is clear enough to see the Big Dipper.  Sleeping on the apartment roof in the elevated northern suburbs on a hill, I imagine the apparent turning of the constellation as a key turning in a lock.

 

 

Piano recital, version 2

Piano recital

The Steinway B in the recital hall is listed on the program. The rehearsal at 1230 goes smoothly, the grand piano living up to its name. But at 4 pm, two hours into the music, a kid in the front row Velcro’ing her shoe shreds my composure. I stop playing and glare in anger until the Velcro noise stops. The scratch of plastic bags also quiets. Even the babies in the room become silent. My fellow performers include many elementary and junior high school pianists and their parents and siblings.

Three days later, at my next lesson, the teacher greets me with effusive apology. She speaks Japanese, but I understand: “I told them to be quiet.”

I speak English; I think she understands: “They are kids; two hours is a long time; I should have been able to ignore the distraction; it was fun anyway.”

The short simple “For Elise” enters my repertory as the fifth memorized piece, to be played every day, worn and walked in.