ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS

32. MR. MIYAZAKI

❤︎ Leonard ❤︎

While looking at Milky Way that night, I reflect on what I experienced today, seeing a happy Jamal decide to move on with his new girlfriend, and soon after, encountering a seventy-year-old easy rider still stuck in his past. I feel as if my life is asking me which way I prefer to go.

Either choice is a possibility. I definitely want to choose the life Jamal chose. Maybe, it is time for me to put Beth's death behind me. My thoughts become unclear, and I slowly drift off under the millions of stars and the sound of the ocean waves below. Bianco is already in a deep sleep right next to me.

After spending a night at Big Sur, I wake up to a beautiful morning breeze. The sun rises from the hill behind me, and its rays make me smile with joy. I stretch both of my hands in the air and yawn with my mouth wide open. My stomach growls loud. When I feel my hunger, I drive off to the nearest town for breakfast.

I arrive at the town of Carmel, surprised by the existence of this small town. I park the truck along the main road and walk around town to find something to eat. I realize many small huts look like they came out of a fable. The houses almost make me feel as if Munchkins are about to walk out of doors. I am curious to investigate this town a little more, so I decide to stay here for an entire day.

After picking up a coffee and a cream-cheese bagel at a market, I walk to a park nearby. I sit down on a bench and take in the beautiful scenery of the garden. I am not a gardener, and the only garden that I know is the Chandor garden where Beth and I played back in Weatherford. Still, I can clearly see that this garden is cared for with love and affection. It is filled with tranquility and orderliness. I feel that everything has its own place, and everything is in harmony.

I look at an aged man climbing up on a ladder, slowly yet precisely cutting a branch of a pine tree. He comes down the ladder and looks at the tree where he cut the branch. Then he goes up again and cuts another branch. Then he goes back down and looks at it again. He repeats the same process over and over for more than half an hour.

I am sipping my coffee and munching my bagel while watching his monotonous movements. It almost makes me feel like I am watching a religious ritual. He finally seems he is satisfied with the result and nods. He comes toward me and sits down right next to me on the wooden bench. He is an Asian dressed in a dark blue cotton kimono and offers me a teacup from his thermos.

"Would you like a cup of green tea? I just made it this morning."

I thank him and take a plastic cup, then I ask him.

"Do you take care of this garden?"

He keeps looking at the tree he just cut and tells me.

"This is a public garden, so the town takes care of it. I just come here occasionally for a few hours and take good care of the trees. The trees need to have their hair cut to look decent. They know it too. When I do a good job, they get happy."

I look at him and ask another question.

"Do you feel the trees?"

He looks at me as if I am asking him such an obvious question.

"I talk to them every time I cut their branches. They tell me what they feel and how they want me to cut. They even thank me for my work if I do a good job. I also thank them in return."

"The trees are the same as humans. If you appreciate someone, that person will give you back his or her appreciation."

I begin to feel as if I am listening to a spiritual guru. Somehow, his simple words penetrate my heart easily and naturally. He looks at one tree and tells me.

"Well, I have to get back because that tree is asking me to give it a haircut! Can you help by holding the ladder? The ground is uneven under the tree."

I have nothing else to do and want to listen to what he is going to say next. So I take his wooden ladder and start to help him. This is how I became his assistant.

I find out that he is quite busy with his clients. All the rich families want him to take care of their gardens, as they know he is the best gardener in this area.

I also start to figure out who he is while working closely with him. Our relationship becomes more like a teacher and a pupil. He is more than just taking good care of the gardens. His approach to gardening is the same as a Zen Buddhist.

When he sweeps, no thought appears in his mind—as if he is sitting in the lotus position. When he cuts, he isn't trying to make the prettiest shapes. He is one with the tree, and he knows precisely where to cut as if the tree is telling him.

This is how he takes care of the garden as if he is the garden itself. So we work in complete silence, and this stillness brings comfort to my soul. I don't think. I just feel and become one with nature.

I end up staying at his home because he has some empty rooms. In fact, he is living by himself. His house appears to be a typical Japanese house from the movies, a wooden structure with tatami mats covering the entire floor.

He cooks a delicious Japanese dinner, and his favorite thing is to drink sake with meals. When he becomes slightly tipsy, he starts to talk about his past.

"Leo-san, my parents came from Nagasaki in Japan, and I was born in an American concentration camp in Manzanar, California."

I know I wasn't good in history class, but I didn't know that a concentration camp existed in California. Discreetly, I pull up Wikipedia on my phone, search "Manzanar," and skim the article.

"Manzanar is most widely known as the site of one of ten American concentration camps where over 110,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated during World War II from December 1942 to 1945. Located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California's Owens Valley between the towns of Lone Pine to the south and Independence to the north, it is approximately 230 miles (370 km) north of Los Angeles."

He continues.

"It is seven hours to the east by car from here. That's my birthplace. I don't remember life at the camp as I was too small to remember. My parents told me that we were one of the last families to leave in 1945."

"Growing up as a second-generation Japanese-American was quite difficult right after the war. Everyone discriminated against us brutally, and my father always told me, 'You know how it feels to be discriminated against. Now you feel the pain of injustice. Your life is teaching you never to discriminate against others.' They said their farm and house were taken away and sold while they were in the camp. So they had to start all over again with only a trunk full of clothing."

"I was always helping my father at the farm where he was employed seasonally. We lived in a tiny wooden hut, but I never thought of us being poor because I never experienced what was rich. He always told me to gamanshiro, which means perseverance in Japanese. That's what we did. We persevered through anything that came into our lives. When I think about it, it was the best thing I learned as a Zen Buddhist."

Then he laughs out loud and tells me.

"Leo-san, life is always a double-edged sword. There is something good in the midst of something terrible."