A New Story Online: The Green Balloon

Here's an unusual style of story for me: a futuristic fable about a ritualized initiation into adulthood. (Click on the title for the link.) I wrote "The Green Balloon" in a workshop led by Ursula Le Guin who challenged us to write compelling stories without the traditional reliance on conflict (man vs. nature, man vs. man, man vs. himself). If you like it--or any of the stories in The Lorelei Signal--be sure to click the Facebook like button at the end. If you REALLY like it, click the donation button and give $1 (or more) to provide royalties for the authors and keep sites like The Lorelei Signal in business offering fantasy and sf fiction with interesting female characters.

By the way, I chose 20 as the age of initiation because Japan's legal age for adults is 20.

Gringo Tango

Here is another short story of mine, this one set on the coast of Costa Rica where I lived in 1979-1980. (Click on the title to link to The Pedestal Magazine where it was published for the April 2011 issue.) I had written a longer draft of this years ago, sent it around, and didn't get any takers. Teaching my short story class this semester, I became intrigued by man/woman dialogue stories such as Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" and Lessing's "Wine". I dialed back the point of view, cut it down to 1500 words, and used both past and present tense to tell a running backstory simultaneously with the current story. Let me know what you think!

Norton Island Residency

I am so honored--and lucky--to have been awarded a Norton Island Residency this coming July! Norton Island is a 150-acre wilderness preserve north of Bar Harbor, Maine. What a beautiful place and opportunity to focus only on my novel in progress.

Rice Harvest

Sorry for my absence between the new moon and the full moon, but I had to go back to Japan to help with the rice harvest. (I wish. Just kidding.) In the U. S., we picture farms as endless acres of crops. In Shizuoka, small rice fields grew between factories, houses, or schools. As Alex notices in American Fuji (p 170): "He passed a one-family house, a fabric store, a miniature rice field, a Mitsubishi plant, and an apartment complex. He wondered about Japanese zoning laws. Was it chaos or was he blind to whatever scheme prevailed? He thought of the measuring-instrument stores in Tokyo and Shizuoka. Japan organized itself differently. It wasn't like Europe, where a drugstore was a drugstore with a different word for it. You had to learn a whole new way of thinking. No wonder he felt so stupid here."

Here, you see sheaves of rice hung upside down to dry. If you look closely, you can see Mt. Fuji in the background tangled in the phone lines above my head.

Mt. Fuji/Moon Landing Anniversary

That's it for the Mt. Fuji/Moon Landing Extended Play special. The complete hike (through Alex's eyes) is described in Chapters 38 and 39 of American Fuji. A final note: a copy of the novel itself also made the hike to the summit! That particular book now resides with friends in Santa Cruz.

The Fool on the Hill

Mt. Fuji looks different after you've climbed it. Even better.

A Japanese saying--very roughly translated-- says you are a fool if you never climb Fuji once in your life, but more of a fool if you climb Fuji more than once. I wish, for my one ascent, I had not been so intent on following Japanese tradition. I missed a lot by climbing at night: too dark to see, too tired to observe. My advice would be to start early in the morning, arrive at the summit in the afternoon (when it is also far less crowded), and return well in advance of sunset so that the dark portion of the hike is the shallow, easy stretch at Level 5. Take plenty of your own water to see you through. But do bring a "tough, separate-type jacket" and postcards to mail at the top!

Daruma Chain Gang

The day after the night hike of Mt. Fuji my friends and I went to the beach at Miho (sandier than Shizuoka's gravel and tetrapot, although the sand was black) and soaked our sore muscles in warm ocean water. We even found a place that served soft ice cream. Eric was happy. That day, July 21, we called ourselves the Dharma Chain Gang.

My Back to the Future

The hike ended where it began, back at the trailhead at 10:00 AM on July 20th. I was exhausted to the point of hallucinating, but I had earned my bragging rights. And, in daylight, I could now read the sign.

This is the 13th post of the official Fuji Anniversary series, but post-hike posts continue with the antidote for altitude at ground zero.

Many thanks to Eric and Veronica for taking several of these photos and letting me use them in my blog. The hon is mine.

All Fall Down

I don't remember why Eric and I both brought our Grateful Dead t-shirts on this hike, but here's proof that we did. I was, at that point, grateful NOT to be dead. There was no fire on the mountain, the rain was not in a box, and of all the stations on Mt. Fuji I found no Terrapin Station. I was, however, a bit dizzy.

Picture a bright blue ball,
Just spinnin', spinnin' free.
Dizzy with the possibilities.
Ashes, ashes, all fall down.
(Ashes, ashes, all fall down.)

Throwing Stones -The Grateful Dead

Tough, Separate-Type Jacket

Here I am, wearing my "tough, separate type jacket" (as recommended in the brochure) pointing east. I am smiling because at last I can see a sliver of the ocean and a trace of pink in the sky.

On a Clear Day, You Can See Forever

. . . but on a cloudy day, you can't. This photo was taken near the top as we began to head down. If you look closely to the right on the ridge of the foreground, you can see the torii gate Alex passes through (ch. 38), inserting a 5-yen coin in a crack, following Japanese tradition. After the gate, the descent steepens. I think Eric resembles Peter Sellers in this photo. I expected to see an inflatable parrot on his shoulder.

Once a Volcano, Always a Volcano

Here is the Fuji Sancho post office box in which to mail postcards to friends. (sancho = mountain top) The post office was crowded; the only shelter at the top. (The white light is the reflection of the flash of my camera.)

To an American, Japan is full of juxtaposed contradictions. The portable toilets and vending machines at the stations and the post office at the peak led me to think Fuji somehow wasn't a real mountain or a tough hike. Yet the trail is still 6,000 feet of vertical hiking at high altitude, and the broad caldera at the top reminded me of the magnitude of this active volcano.

The Lunatic Rings the Bell

I reached the top about half an hour after dawn at 5:00 AM on July 20, 1991. It was raining, cold, and crowded. This is a photo of me ringing the bell at the top. You can't see anything? Well, neither could I. I was dehydrated and exhausted, my muscles shaking, and the rain was nearly snow. This was not "one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind," but the barren volcanic surface of Fuji was like the moon, and the experience was decidedly lunatic.

"I'm SO Tired . . ."

I have no photos from this part--the hardest part--of the climb. It was dark and we were all busy paying attention to feet and flashlights. The trail was easy at the bottom and grew steeper as I grew more tired. Once I was beyond the generators, the only sounds came from other hikers: no animals, no birds. Soon, there were no plants. I was glad I had brought water; the vending machines at the stations sold only soft drinks and beer, which astonished me. (Both that there were vending machines on a mountain, a sacred Shinto shrine, and that they didn't dispense water.)

From American Fuji, Ch. 38: "The path . . . became a 45 degree angle switchback. To the right, up, up, climbing rocks and pseudo-steps, then to the left, up, up, on a slippery gravel grade. Again, to the right. Some stretches of path had ropes on metal posts, but other sections had nothing to keep someone from sliding off a sheer cliff." "[Alex] saw only the bobbing light from his flashlight, his tennis shoes, pumice, granite, and, when he paused to look up, the sky. More clouds crowded out the stars."

The hike became more arduous, requiring me to find footholds in large rocks (in the dark at 2:00 AM). It got cold and started to drizzle and I began to slip here and there, dizzy from altitude and fatigue. I was only at Station 7. As Eguchi would say, it was "a long and winding road."