Looking Through the Hole in the Floor

Street view of the Panama Hotel cafe sign.

Today I made a pilgrimage on foot through downtown Seattle to the International District in search of The Panama Hotel to see the hole in the floor. Many wrong turns later and after asking directions of and chatting with the engaging proprietor of the boutique Momo, I arrived at the Panama's front door, amused at how long it had taken to find it and uneasy about seeing the hole in the floor.

Perched on the hill at Main and 6th Street, the Panama was built in 1910 by a well known architect of the region, Sabro Ozasa. A gathering place for a once thriving Japanese American community, it survived the internment of the Japanese community (7,628 from Washington State; 120,000 from the West Coast) in "relocation camps" surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers across the United States during World War II. In 1942, President FDR signed Executive Order 9066, ordering all persons of Japanese ancestry to dispose of their belongings and property in several days and to pack one suitcase and report to Union Station for mass evacuation.

Takashi Hori and Jan Johnson.

In 1985, aging owners Takashi and Lily Hori sold the Panama Hotel, not to the highest bidder, but to the person with the most empathy for its history, Jan Johnson. The Horis had tried for many years to find the owners of the belongings in the basement, but without success. They offered to dispose of them for the new owner. "No," she replied, "Leave it." And she cut a hole in the cafe floor, covered it with a sturdy glass panel that allows one to peer down into the basement.

I ordered a matcha latte, the strong powdered Japanese green tea of the tea ceremony, and sat at a table next to the hole in the floor.  And there, deep down in the basement sixty-nine years later, are the unclaimed, hastily packed belongings of so many Japanese families, bearing witness to the once thriving life of a unique community and to the gross governmental misconduct against them.

The hole in the floor.

I seek solace in the bracing warmth of the matcha latte, in its verdant life-giving color because, I tell you, it was disquieting to sit next to the hole in the floor and peer down at a tiny section of belongings: the abandoned coat with the fur collar, books, men's socks and what have you. And peering down, I hear the searing wail of shikataganai ("it can't be helped") and gaman ("endure the unbearable with dignity") arising through the walls of silence, shame, and injustice. These deeply ingrained values of Japanese culture, shikataganai and gaman, shaped the response of the Japanese community not only during the war, but also wrapped its voice and self-image in barbed wire for so many years following.

View through the hole.

This silence finds a voice through the hole in the floor, just as Jan Johnson intended.

I look forward to touring the basement on my next visit.

"I Survived the Killing Fields."

With Sam, who is wearing a tee shirt with photos of his family.
He says his tee shirt was printed in Cambodia.

Last weekend I met Sam, Seng Kok Ung, in person having read about him in the Northwest Asian Weekly while sipping a chai tea latte at Tully's coffee house. We exchanged smiles and hellos, he with sparkling eyes and a beautiful smile. "I want to read your book, " I greeted Sam, the book being "I Survived the Killing Fields: The True Life Story of a Cambodian Refugee."

Nothing, not the steady dose of news stories or imaginings, can ever prepare one for violence, or the heinous depths to which a human being can descend, or the mind-blowing resourcefulness and strength of human beings to survive the madness of The Killing Fields. And meeting Sam, having dinner at his delightful Phnom Penh Noodle House, and seeing his exquisite decorative edible fruit art, it is difficult to grasp the suffering, starvation, torture, and terror that he and his family and so many others experienced for four long years at the depraved hands of the Khmer Rouge and the Thai army and the hellish aftermath of the Khmer Rouge collapse.

Sam's edible fruit art: birds frolicking in flowers.

"Please let me know what you think of my book," Sam said. "I thought writing it would free me, but actually it has really stirred up all the memories. It's hard." Until the book came out, his three adult children were unaware of what he had lived through: the unrelenting diligence it took to stay alive; the unrelenting diligence it has taken to start life anew in Seattle and become part of the American success story. It is one thing to bear witness to the skulls stacked from floor to ceiling in Cambodian temples; quite another to meet a smiling and humble man who endured that hell; and still another to bear witness by reading his life story, the telling of which emerged through a long-lasting friendship.

Serene apple swans by Sam, a Garde Manger Chef.

About three years ago, Sam and his neighbor Tom McElroy began a journey to give voice to Sam's story. Sam had always wanted to tell this life story so that present and future generations would know what happened to him and fellow Cambodians, the events of which were largely overshadowed by the Vietnam War. Sam worked incredibly hard, long 20-hour days, to provide for his family. He worked not only to survive, but also because work kept the memories at bay. But the dreams of that mad time kept surfacing, and he asked Tom to help him write his life story with the wish that his history would change Tom's life. For years, they met every Wednesday, Sam's only day off from the noodle house; Sam crying and giving voice to a Cambodian community still terrorized by The Killing Fields; Tom giving space for this unfolding and being altered with each telling.

Sam's offering.

Bearing witness is being open, and all solid sense of who "I" am is emptied and altered. I like to say, "Go to the altar and be altered." Sam's voice is a living altar on which appears over 3.5 million lives lost, the mad world in which this happened, and the need to express what so many others, living and dead, cannot do. In an interview by Northwest Asian Weekly, Sam says, "A lot of people believe that since these events are in the past, it doesn't need to be brought up again. It has passed, but it stays inside." When our tortured dreams are allowed to come forth and be given new life by taking a new form that informs others, what alters? When we can receive these life stories of so-called others, what alters? When we can cry together, what alters?

When Sam's first daughter was born, his heart opened with love at the first sight of her. He knew then that he had to let go of the defenses that he had built around his heart to survive The Killing Fields. When I read this, I reflected that "to let go of the defenses around one's heart and mind" is the best definition I have heard of Not-Knowing. It strengthened my resolve to live life in this way.

This coming weekend, Sam will be signing his book at The Wing Luke Museum. He has already signed my copy, but I am looking forward to seeing him again.

From Where Comes the Laughter?

New heart arising!

In January I accompanied Eberhard to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, in the dead of winter, where he underwent an extraordinary heart surgery, a septal myectomy for left ventricular hypertrophy. It took awhile to get all these terms straight, but now it is fun to let them roll off my tongue.

It's a genetic condition in which the heart muscle expands over time and needs to be cut back to normal size by an exceptionally skilled surgeon. We were indeed blessed to have the A-team. As happens when such circumstances are being lived through, I was in a continual state of heightened awareness, no doubt in part due to the uncertainty of the situation.

The days were unrelenting; so much to learn and keep abreast of.  I hardly recognized myself when I looked into the mirror one morning. Who was that exhausted person with the dark circles under her eyes? On day six towards evening, the nurse was explaining a complication that we were facing. Eberhard was incredulous about the situation and, as I sat there taking it all in, focused on the details and simultaneously looking on from a great distance, laughter suddenly bubbled forth from somewhere within me. I succumbed to a laughing jag, moment after moment of unrestrained laughing much to the patient's annoyance. The staff kept their composure; I'm sure they have seen it all.

Sign on restroom door at Mayo

This outpouring of laughter was beyond any attempts of suppression, so I chose to call it a day and return to the hotel. I took my leave, still laughing as I made my way out of the cardiac ward. At the elevators, I ran into five kids who were visiting their grandpa (most likely, they had been sent out of grandpa's room), who were doubled over with laughter about whatever had happened there. They could barely imitate the words that had set them off, sprawled out laughing on the floor as they were. It was truly a wondrous moment, those kids and me.

That night I awoke in the wee hours, tossing and turning. I wanted to talk to Moshe, aka Mr. YooWho, my friend the levity master, clown-without- borders extraordinaire, who for years has offered his remarkable gift at the Zen Center.  From time to time, Moshe and I would notice each other on skype, connect, and laugh. And now my whole being needed to skype with him, but thoughts about the hour and heaviness of limbs kept me in bed. I soon settled into a lucid dream in which Moshe and I skyped and laughed up a storm. We laughed and laughed through the early dawn, when I finally fell into a deep sleep and then got up in time to head off to the hospital once again.

YooWho and me: why isn't he laughing?

I wrote later to Moshe to thank him for the laughter. And I told him that, although the Mayo Clinic has expert doctors, grand pianos in the foyer, stunning art, an exceptionally competent and kind staff, and a lived "needs of the patient comes first" mission, it, alas, has no medical clowning. Happily, he wrote a letter to them, and I hope it will produce results.

Those moments of laughter were critical to my healing. The laughter was, as Milton Berle once said, "an instant vacation" for me in the midst of the cardiac ward. When we finally did return home, Eberhard and I watched something funny every day. Our motto was: eat, rest, laugh.

Have you had your laugh today?

P.S. Moshe is teaching at ZCLA this weekend. Go laugh! And yes, Eberhard is doing quite well.

Pondering Andrew

Buddha and shadow.

There is this line in Alan Paton's Too Late the Phalarope that causes me to reflect upon Andrew and the strange intersection of our lives: To punish and not to restore is the greatest of all offenses. 


Andrew stalked the Zen Center for a very long year, breaking into buildings in the wee night hours, climbing with cat-like stealth up walls to reach windows and rooftops, and terrifying residents. He threw rocks into the windows, big smooth L.A. river rocks like the ones later found in a bag in his car. One night, police dogs found him hiding under the Founder's Altar. His obsession was the daughter of our founder, but unable to locate her, we became the next best thing. His behavior confounded our community.

We surmised that Andrew suffered from a form of mental illness and possibly an alcohol addiction. We learned the dismal assertion that the best one can hope for was that the stalker finds another target. We took to heart the warning of the district attorney's lawyer that we take this situation very seriously. "I worked with about ten people this year," she said, "and I will tell you that in each case you would never have thought the person capable of murder." But could Andrew possibly be such a person?

It took a challenging and stress-filled year of securing restraining orders and working with local agencies, anti-stalking experts, and finally the district attorney's office to stop Andrew. At sentencing, unkempt and clad in an inmate's orange jumpsuit, Andrew was led before the judge. In a firm voice, he assured the court that he understood clearly the terms of his three-year felony probation. He was later released into his brother's custody.

I don't recall when we placed Andrew's name on our daily Prayer List. Soon after Andrew was released to his brother, we heard that he was back on the streets, disheveled and in the grip of his tenuous condition. His situation was heart-wrenching not only because help seemed out of his reach, but also because it was an unsettling reminder of the fragility within oneself that can so easily unravel and descend.

A tree poem for Andrew.

On the first-year anniversary of the felony probation, someone threw a heavy rock through our picture window, sending shards of glass throughout the  room. On the second-year anniversary, nothing seemed amiss. On the third-year anniversary, nothing. Nothing, that is, until we learned several months later that shortly before the third anniversary, Andrew killed himself by jumping in front of a train.

I am pondering what it might have taken for Andrew to restore himself. I am pondering what our community and I could have done to create conditions for his restoration.

Further on in Paton's book, these words: There's a hard law ... that when a deep injury is done ... we never recover until we forgive. In spite of all that we endured with Andrew, no one held any lasting grudge against him. Perhaps he forgave us for not knowing how to help him.

Thanks to the Zen Center for offering a memorial service for Andrew this week. Andrew, may your next life be beautiful.

Everything is going to be all right

How do you feel about this sentiment?

In "Everything Is Going To Be All Right," Derek Mahon has written a life-affirming poem that has flown from the hand unbidden. The title of my blog is buried in the line ... the hidden source is the watchful heart.

The poem's title recalls for me a time in 1995 when my Zen teacher Maezumi Roshi gathered some of us at Green Gulch Farm for a joint meeting with the Japanese Soto Sect. A main point of contention was that the schedule devised by the Japanese did not allow for open dialogue, and we felt strongly that open communication needed to begin now!  A few of us were talking about this when Tetsugen (now Bernie) said, "You know, it'll be kekko desu again" -- the Japanese expression for "everything is fine" (especially when it isn't).

As we shared past incidents of kekko desu, Maezumi Roshi appeared, having just returned from a meeting with the Soto representatives. He walked over to us with his hands extended palms facing downward gesturing as though holding down the lid, and said, "Everything is fine, everything is fine." We all burst out laughing, Roshi too. Tetsugen said, "No, Roshi, everything is not fine." The open discussions began that morning. In the afternoon, Tetsugen said to me, "After thirty years of saying kekko desu, I no longer feel like I have to say it anymore."

For the Irish poet Mahon to say everything is going to be all right is an amazing declaration in the midst of the cold facts of life: there will be dying, there will be dying, but there is no need to go into that. 

I myself prefer "everything is as it is" and the all-rightness of it is entirely up to me.