オオカミと白い騎士 Wolves and White Knights

Major Update: This post was written in the winter of 2020. I have just passed through the winter of 2021/2022 almost entirely unscathed. Kept my stride the whole time. I wrote in this post that I would have to live with SAD my whole life. But I have this time around made an incredible discovery, and that is light therapy. By blasting 10000 lux of light into my eyes every morning this winter I was able to get the light that my body needs so desperately in the winter, artificially, and it made a huge difference. I used a product called Luminettes, and would highly recommend them to anyone struggling with SAD, or who just feels that they could use a boost to their energy levels, or struggles with waking up. They have been truly life-changing for me. If you are SAD, do not hesitate to bring light therapy into your life in some form!

For the one seeking redemption for their cursed soul, there is the church. For the one seeking water to cure their parched lips in the waterless desert, there is oasis. And for the one searching for life in the middle of a bleak and desolate winter, there is onsen.

I’ve been in a strange, tense state.
I blame it on the winter.

I’ve been unable to relax, unable to unwind, spending every minute striving, enduring, or otherwise holding myself hostage to a certain strictness, and for what purpose, simply because I can’t find it in myself to have any “wasted time”, since I’m not doing what I want to do, even though I haven’t the slightest idea what I want to do really is. I only have a vague, ceaseless, unyielding dissatisfaction, and my answer to it seems to be spending every ounce of my dissatisfied energy on anything that I could consider to be concretely productive, that I can feel justified about doing, and I’m starting to wonder if perhaps I’m getting some kind of masochistic satisfaction out of denying myself any pleasure, or perhaps I’m just angry that nothing seems to be bringing me pleasure, or satisfaction, or if it would, it’s for the wrong reasons. At any rate, although I haven’t had much fun this winter, I can say that my Japanese, as a consequence of this self-imposed period of monasticism, has improved tremendously.

Yesterday, I bought a book, titled “Wolves and Wild Dogs”, replete with full-page graphics of lean, menacing, sharp-toothed hunters, pulling down boars and bulls alike, and I think that what may have drawn me to this book was that there was something in those images, of the shocking, wet white fur of the Arctic wolf, artfully bounding an ice floe, of the matted white and grey, brown-tinged Eurasian wolves, with their piercing gazes, posing boldly out in the frigid tundras and snowscapes, something in them stirred up something in me, and maybe I felt that I too, was like these wolves; gaunt, hungry, hunting.

The alternative to this mindset, for me, may be depression, and that I won’t do.

Again, I blame this on the winter. I have no doubt that I am a fortunate benefactor of that aptly named illness, SAD, seasonal affective disorder. It’s something I’ll never escape, only something that I will learn to live with, considering most places bar the equator have seasons, and one of those seasons will be Winter, that cruel, grey mistress.

If it were possible to do so, I would wholeheartedly like to step into the ring with Winter, and take it down, dominate it, physically express my pent-up disgust and dislike of it, as relief for me, and punishment for it. But Winter I cannot dominate. And Winter I cannot escape. And so, I can only defy.

While Winter is crushing in its oppression, there is yet a place where she holds no power, and that place is the onsen. What everything Winter is, the onsen is her antithesis. It is the only place where one can go to escape the iron chains of chill, the smothering blanket of unyielding and endless grey, the savage spell of flesh-cracking aridity. It is sacred ground, the onsen, and from the minute you step into its domain, you are freed like a citizen of East Germany taking their first step across that dividing line. Winter, be damned! you’re free to declare, as you brazenly strip off your armor, and stride forth, naked, utterly exposed, something that is completely unthinkable, could not be tolerated by the cruel Mistress, but again, this is not her domain, and it must spite her to no end, knowing that all her hard work is being in an instant undone; for the moment one steps into that steaming, sacred bathhouse, one is restored, and the icy grip of Winter’s clawed hand, shattered and melted, dissolved and replaced with a vigorous, shrouded aura of vitality, of life.

It was not in the summer that I understood onsen’s power. For in the summer, one has an altogether different, much inferior enemy, the eternal and omnipotent humidity, and a steaming hot bathhouse doesn’t do much in that battle. But against Winter, onsen is an impregnable fortress, one that the enemy, try with all her might, cannot take, one that undoubtedly frustrates and infuriates her, as her foes, her oppressed subjects, return to it again and again, to be protected and restored, re-equipped and reinvigorated, given new life to continue the fight.

If only I had an onsen closer to me, that I could seek its splendid shelter every night! Were I a wolf, then the feeling that takes hold of me when I walk into that onsen must be akin the feeling a wolf has of securing a hard-won kill. For they are both a matter of freedom from oppressors. Freedom from that sharp, aching, gnawing oppressor, hunger, for the wolf, and freedom from that silent, looming desolation, Winter, for me.

There was one other place, one other time, when I have felt in full defiance, stood in absolute insolence of Winter. On top of a mountain, fully equipped for battle, with a slicing whirlwind whipping about me, blasting my eyes and howling my ears, with the monochrome palette of white earth, black rock, and grey void before me, I could then shout, Winter, you are nothing to me. And in that moment, it was absolute truth. I could look her right in the face and lay down a direct challenge, and take a resolute stand; I could fight, on my own terms, a direct fight. I could step into the ring with her, for once, or so I felt. But this was me, trying to dictate the terms of our engagement, and Winter smartly declined them. No, we fight on her terms, and it is not a fight that she will have decided by a single, all-forces-mustered mountaintop brawl; it is a fight to be won through endurance, through enduring a series of grinding skirmishes, attempts at gradually whittling, crushing down the main forces into nothingness, occurring over a period of hours, days, weeks, months. Or, like the garrison of a castle town, too strong or too costly to be overpowered, who has found themselves surrounded and under siege, by a vastly superior force, and who has no choice but to endure, to hold out, to send out the messengers and pray that reinforcements come. But unlike many of the answers to the prayers of the inhabitants in a besieged city, reinforcement from Winter is certain. There is no doubt that it will come; the unfailing Spring. Like a thousand glittering steel-clad knights, astride their gallant white horses, coming up over the hill and into full view of all, radiant in the shining sun, Spring will come to strike fear into the heart of the fiend Winter, and recognizing that her attempted conquest is at its end, she will draw off, and the siege will be broken, and the people, liberated.

The white knights are close. I can feel the warmth of their horses’ exhalations in these new, daring, spells of sunlight and warmth. I know their arrival must be soon, I can count it in the passing of the days. The people are ready for liberation! They hold the image, the soon-to-come sight of hooves trampling over the hill, high in their consciousness, lighting a fire in their souls, raising their clenched fists to the sky, crying out, Come, O’ Glorious Knights, Come!

(I am now reading Moby Dick. Clearly Herman is rubbing off on me. It’s a good book. At this moment I would rather be cooped up in the quarters of a whaling ship in the middle of the ocean than in an apartment in Ozu Town. Although as I type that now, I imagine that it’s at least warm and sunny out on the sea – but when Ishmael and his crew embark on their whaling adventure, it’s the middle of winter. Which is quite fitting, isn’t it.)

(This is entirely unrelated, but if you are as blind as I am, do not buy clear glasses. Can’t find them when you set them down.)

(Happy New Year to everyone, we will have a great 2021!)