Okunoin Lamps : Koyasan, Wakayama, Japan In Japan there’s a mountain named Koya-San with a temple keeping ten thousand oil lamps burning. Two of the lamps have been burning continuously for a thousand years, one lit by an emperor, the other by a poor woman who’s name has been lost, so they say. Ten years ago I stood outside that hall, staring at the ten thousand lamps, breathing them in, trying to store up the wonder inside my chest. The monks are tidying the hall, one young monk sweeping the floor with a straw broom, bowing and smiling every time he passes me. I’ve always loved fire. As a teenager me and my gang made bazookas out of deodorant cans and drain pipes. We blew up teddy bears, etch-a-sketched red hot light with burning branches at night. I still have rubber embedded in my body from jumping a bonfire when I was 21; I fell in and burned my hands and side. Whatever spirit might be, fire makes me feel it. The young monk sweeps past again, again smiling and nodding. I wonder if he has the patience to smile a hundred times at this scruffy gaijin making moon-eyes at his home. I sent matchboxes to a woman I loved. Filled the boxes with pebbles from places we’d been, tiny notes in golden ink. Decorated the outsides with cut-outs from mindfulness mandala colouring books. Posted them over the ocean to her. The monks are folding away the red altar cloths now, extinguishing the incense. My young friend bows and smiles again, and I rub my arms and stamp my feet, shivering in the winter cold. I don’t want to walk away. Fire night, a kind of wild hullaballoo at the Earthsong Camps with my Irish tribe {image Anna Ni Fhlionn} When I was seven, my step-father poured petrol over my mother and stood above her with a match in his hand. He told her “this is what will happen if you ever dare question me again.” I didn’t even know until many years later that my mother was alive by a single unstruck match. The day before catching the cable car up the flanks of Koya-San mountain, in another temple in Kyoto, I stood staring at a thousand and one life-sized, gold-flaked statues of the goddess of mercy, each one with thirty-three arms outstretched to protect us. Some of them a thousand years old. I tried to breathe them in too. America considered dropping the atom bomb on Kyoto. I could imagine it all too clearly; a frozen explosion hanging over the temple, a mushroom cloud unfolding with glacial slowness. Up on the mountain I’m getting so cold I have to dance on the spot. I don’t want to give up a minute of the light from these lamps. I want to belong there, make it part of me….something… With that love, after heart-wrenching months lost between committing and letting go, we finally knew. One last night together, then I flew home. I took the hundreds of matches left over from all the boxes I’d sent her, and stood in the dark striking them one by one, throwing them out the window into the night, saying thank you, I love you, I’m sorry, I let you go. I remembered my mother’s survival as I struck them, remembered the statues, lamps and cities of Japan. The after-images of flames filled the insides of my eyes. Six months later my ex-love told me she got pregnant that last night, and chose to have an abortion. She knew it was the right choice but it still broke her heart. She felt that tiny soul, her words, within her, even after the termination, all the way through the nine months. She gave the tiny soul a name; Phoenix. We lit candles together, put ashes on our feet. My mother’s kitchen overflows with boxes of matches, in the oddest spots. For lighting the stove and candles of course. My ex-love’s kitchen is surely full of knives, for making food. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are living cities. I’m not saying everything is ok. I’m just saying survival on any given day is always a kind of miracle, my favourite miracle. Standing breathing in the ten thousand lamps I remember hearing that fires had been lit from the embers in Hiroshima, and these fires had been kept burning and spread to sacred sites around the world. I don't know the truth. A man told me he’d juggled fire lit from Hiroshima flames. He said he ate the fire and fell to his knees and wept. The fire remembered he said. I suddenly wonder, what would it take to keep a lamp burning for a thousand years? And if fire does have a memory, what would such a flame remember? In the moment that the question arises, the young monk smiles and bows for the last time, and shuts the temple doors. Here's a candle to you and your loved ones. May you all be happy, healthy and safe. Would love to hear from you. What does this story speak to from your life, your heart?
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2 Comments
Dave Rock
2/5/2021 07:53:11 am
Hey Margo, that's a really touching, beautiful response. Thank you. Love to you and your journey, and all the magic moments you are breathing in.
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AuthorDave Rock is a prize-winning spoken word artist and storyteller, and a conscious writing, speaking and performing arts teacher. He's worked with thousands of people, including award-winning comedians, actors and inspirational figures. Archives
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