Spring is bursting out everywhere and it is glorious . . . but it somehow seems at odds with the ways many of us are feeling in this coronavirus pandemic.

Only spring isn’t at odds with anything. It is what it is . . . as is the coronavirus.

The current moment reminds me of a spring a few years back. I have a lot of Facebook friends who are people I went to high school with. Some of them I remember very well, some not so well.

There was one guy, though, who I hadn’t known all that well back then, but became interested in reading about on Facebook.

When we’d been in high school, he’d lived just up the street from me, maybe a quarter a while away, but he’d been a couple of years younger than me, and I just hadn’t know him very well.

On Facebook, though, I saw that he was an artist, a painter—perhaps he’d been one all his life, I didn’t really know—but his paintings intrigued me. I felt I could see something inside him when I looked at them, and the something I could see inside him seemed a lot like a something I could see inside me.

I felt a connection, that’s for sure.

And then he passed away. Apparently, he’d been in poor health for a while, maybe for a long time. He must have been in his mid- to late-fifties.

It tore me up inside. I really grieved. . . . And I didn’t even know who he was, not really—just knew what he could paint.

It was May. The azaleas were in full bloom all over Shizuoka City–far, far away from the United States of America, and I wanted to cry, and I think I did cry, actually—a little, anyway, and I picked up my ukulele, started strumming Em and Dm . . . and wrote this song. I’m not sure why I changed the “he” to “she,” but I did.

My best friend . . . she passed away

All the while . . . the azaleas stayed ablaze

Unlike me . . . they stood unfazed

Oh, those colors . . . how they did amaze

Then I . . . could see . . . all . . . that she meant to me

Yes, I . . . could see . . . all . . . that she meant to me

You can watch the YouTube music video here.

(from Persimmon Dreams: When you’ve got a spare moment, check out our music/nature videos on our “Persimmon Dreams” YouTube channel, or Steve’s books, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May and Along the Same Street, available on Amazon, or directly from us. And if you enjoyed this post, consider sharing with others. Thank you!)

It was a few years back that I took my first walk along the Yatsuyama ridge (yama = mountain), here in Shizuoka City. I was in a pretty bad way, agonizing over a situation I felt obligated to make better, one in which I wanted to relieve the suffering of a person I loved very, very much, but I was in a position in which I could do nothing.

Fortunately, I’ve never been prone to self-destructive behavior, so in order to cope, I did not take to heavy drinking, nor to any other desperate means. But I needed to do something. Something that would keep me from going completely crazy and growing completely despondent.

So I climbed Yatsuyama. Once, twice, many times. And then I realized that Ryuso Mountain was not far away and I could climb it, too. And then I realized—they’d always been there to be seen—that I could also climb around in all those mountains an hour’s drive away in the Umegashima area.

But I climbed Yatsuyama first.

Some people would say that Yatsuyama is not really a mountain. After all it rises a mere 108 meters above sea level. But it is a mountain. Because you can climb it. Because you begin to breathe harder going up. Because you can feel so very much alive with the breathing required. Because, as you go up, your view of the horizon broadens.

When you begin to breathe deeply, you begin to feel the air of the mountain circulating through your lungs, and it’s a very nice feeling—you feel part of an infinite system. If you feel this very strongly, you might feel that with each breath you’re actually taking the whole mountain — the trees, the birds, the dandelions, the wild strawberries, the bamboo, everything into yourself.

And then you’re likely to feel that you and the mountain are one. You’re not alone. You’re NOT SEPARATED from anything. You’re a significant part of the universe!

You might also realize that you’re a significant, but small part of the universe, that human beings and human society are a small part of the universe. This might make your troubles seem less overwhelming.

No, feeling the universe does not make your social problems go away. And yes, your human relationships and your position in human society are important. Of course, they are. But the mountain, the walk through the woods, can put it all in perspective.

I found a piece of a broken bowl. I don’t know why you sometimes find fragments of bowls along the trails (what are people doing?), but you do find fragments. Back when I was having so much trouble, I began the habit of picking up these pieces of broken bowl and putting them in my pocket. Soon, I had a pile of them on my dining table.

And I liked having them there. Whenever I looked at them, my emotional pain would ease.

Because I’d realize that pain was just a natural part of things, a natural part of human life. Sometimes there are “broken” things in life that you can repair. Sometimes, though, you can’t repair them. But you can live with them. You have to live with them.

About that time, I started writing a novel, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May, and I decided to have my narrator write a song about broken bowls. Here’s what he wrote.

Have you heard of the temple of the broken bowl?

A place where we can pray?

Is there really a temple of the broken bowl?

Is there anyone who can say?

We fend off all the blows

We mend so many holes

Pretend we surely know

And we build with a broken bowl.

Yes, we build with a broken bowl.

Yes, we build with broken bowls.

The bowls sometimes break, but the mountain brings joy.

Sometimes when I’d walk the ridge of Yatsuyama, I’d feel this joy so strongly.

But then I’d wonder how I might ever communicate this feeling of joy to someone else, someone who’d yet to “climb the mountain,” but I never could figure out how to put it into words . . . not words that someone in a very difficult and painful situation would understand.

As I worked on my novel, I decided that I’d let my narrator decide if he could figure out how to explain this joy. He especially took pleasure in the leaves and flowers of the yashio (in Umegashima) and deep in the woods, the komorebi, the sunlight filtering down through the leaves of the trees, but he never became confident that he could explain it to anyone else.

But one day, when he was walking with a lady he’d come to care about very much, he asked her if she had the words to explain why the yashio and the komorebi brought so much joy.

And here’s what she said — what she said with the palm of her hand on his breast.

“If you focus, if you concentrate on your heart center, you can feel the energy inside yourself—and that is life, that is all life. I think you know this. . . . This energy, here, in your heart center, is calm and peaceful and infinite. You may forget about it sometimes, but it is always here. Always. And your energy here connects to all the energy in this world. . . .

“The energy I feel inside my own heart is also in your heart. . . . We humans are blessed with powerful brains, capable of extraordinary thought. But sometimes our thoughts can control us, and that’s when we forget the energy, forget how to feel the energy—the energy here. And when we forget this energy here, we can no longer connect to all the energy around us. . . .

“When you look up at the komorebi, or look up at these yashio leaves, the energy you can sense has extraordinary power. The light is energy and the green is energy, and you see it all with such clarity. It is a stimulus that no heart can shield itself from. . . .

“So if you have lost touch with the energy here, inside your heart center, you will suddenly feel it’s intensity. In either case, you will feel so strongly how much you belong—and you will feel love.”

(from Persimmon Dreams: When you’ve got a spare moment, check out our music/nature videos on our “Persimmon Dreams” YouTube channel, or Steve’s books, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May and Along the Same Street, available on Amazon, or directly from us. And if you enjoyed this post, consider sharing with others. Thank you!)

For pictures of yashio, click here, or here.