Afternoon Musings
The commotion surrounding the Cherry Blossom bloom fades slowly, the crowds around the trees dissipate as the fallen petals scatter around. The boisterous parties, muted to a degree during the pandemic fade into silence and nature is left to itself, drawing an occasional longing glance from the passing itinerant.
The mid-spring rains wash away all that is left of the bloom, the petals washing into gutters or gathered in neat heaps on drier days, waiting to be stuffed into garbage bags.
When the rains pause and allow in an occasional sunny day, the world seems glorious. Bright sunny mornings with a whiff of a romantic haze, warm afternoons and cloudy sunsets transitioning slowly from the bare winter beauty.
It is a time for long walks, unhindered by the cold winter breeze the warm muggy summer evenings still distant. When I set out on a lazy afternoon, satiated from a heavy lunch and sit under a tree, a book in hand and try to make sense of the greatest question of all, what lies beyond.
The Shinsakongawa (新左近川）is a small stream that branches off the Arakawa river , the water flow controlled by a Sluice and metres away from the sea that merges into the Tokyo bay. There is a walking path skirting the stream with wooden seats set across the path at regular intervals
There are seats under the trees and on a bright spring afternoon the shade of the trees provides the right mix of protection from the sunlight and exposure to the cool breeze , making this bowered patch the ideal place for a quiet read.
The trees are a mixture of native varieties the flowering dogwood to the transplanted palm trees. A palm tree swaying in the cold winter breeze gives a surreal feel to the experience.
A content mind strives to find a deeper meaning to life, a discontent mind is too distracted for philosophical questions. A satiated stomach and a content mind on a warm early afternoon looks for answers that have been that looked for as long as a human has had the ability to think.
The mind that seeks to find answers to an afterlife is the same mind that struggles with existentialist ones.The deeper meanings are suited for the ones who have waded into the depths by finding answers to more current ones.
A book in hand, a content bower to contemplate are not the tools to force open new meanings, they are distractions to shallow minds which seek to step into depths they are unprepared for.
When the questions or the answers seem too overwhelming, standing up and walking to the edge of the stream and looking down into the water serves as a distraction to the overwhelmed mind.
The stretch of the stream facing my bowered patch is deprived of water today, the bed is wet and sludgy and there seems to be full of tiny pock marked craters across the stream bed. The bed has the appearance of the aftermath of a war fought by miniature creatures or another planet surface. A closer look at the tiny craters shows movement and numerous wriggling shapes seem to crawling across the craters.
The shapes reveal themselves to be crabs, thousands of them, the warm waters encouraging them to venture out. When the crabs swarm in and out at low tide from the small puddles that serve as the hiding places, disjointed in movement and yet cohesive in their spread across the stream bed, they bring about an an odd calm by watching their movements.
They wriggle towards each other, they wriggle away from each other and occasionally they wriggle over each other. One such movement caught my eye and excited at the prospect of witnessing some unique mating ritual I observed intently only to be disappointed at the larger crab content at walking over the smaller one. They emerge intact from the jumble, the forms masked by the mud and go their separate ways.
Research reveals that these are Dotillid crabs(チェゴガニ） that are spread across the Indo-Pacific region. The crabs emerge to feed, nutrients in the sand being their sole source of nourishment. The feed and go back into their burrows only to emerge again at low tide.
At low tide the crabs come out of their burrows, eat, dance and wave their tentacles and recede. The dance and waving of tentacles is a more vigorous activity for the male crabs as it is their way of attracting the female.
The crabs move in unison, a sudden burst of activity and an extended interval of stillness. They emerge from and recede into their burrows in sudden furtive movements, carry out occasional battles with their rival, the tentacles interlocking for a few seconds until the rivals retreat.
Walkers pass by on the path besides the stream, a few curious at the sight of someone watching intently into the stream bed. They stop by for a look and seem equally fascinated by the wriggly movements.
There is an odd tranquility in watching these small creatures in their efforts, feeding, dancing, receding only to repeat the cycle again. All that is created returns to its original form, the crab recedes into its bubble and waits out the tide.
The distraction is strong enough for the bookmark to go into the page I was reading, the larger questions of the afterlife are left for another day. The one that taxes the mind more is the one that can be answered instantly.
The questions about an afterlife might dwarf the spectacle unfolding on the stream bed, but the simple patterns, the iterations happening in the sludge seem so simple yet meaningful.
The cycle that is being repeated on the stream bed, day after day till the season lasts has all the answers that the unintelligible dialogue in philosophical texts doesn’t.
There is the need for nourishment , and when the tides moves in there is replenishment. There is no destruction, what was created was a form, the elements remain the same.
The crabs will come out at spring and when the sunlight turns warm and the day turn brighter and stay until fall. When the air turns colder the crabs will head back into deeper waters and wait.
Each season is a new life, similar to the one before but also different.
On that mid spring afternoon, the meaning to the most difficult of the questions seems so simple.
