Master Yoshi

The soft look turned into what looked like dawning admiration. "Are you okay? That sounded really painful." She bent down more, carefully adjusting her towel so she didn't reveal anything, but also concerned with me? I was confused. She was never that concerned with me.

For Tina, I was an irritation point, a thing to be avoided, a thing to be told what to do since I was obviously incapable of doing it right the first time.

Jane's long black hair was dripping on my bare chest. I felt the droplets. She'd pulled it over to one shoulder and it dripped plink-plink-plink on me.

Seeing I was okay, mostly, she stood back up and (holding onto her towel), extended a hand to help me up.

This was nearly unprecedented.

Jane was a rival, a person who had such a way of telling me what I was doing wrong at any given moment, and also a person who I heard crying at night. This mess of conflicted emotions about me, was helping me up.

We had a history, but being nice like this wasn't that frequent. When mom was around, we had a great time together, did stuff, played with the same toys, ran in the yard, invented stories, all the normal things young kids do.

Then, there was Brenda and Zeke, and strife and anger, and it became everyone for themselves, lying about stuff I'd supposedly done, all that.

But, since Brenda and Zeke had moved out about a year before, we'd settled down a lot and really had far fewer problems. Plus, then, I'd turned 18, she'd graduated high school and gotten a job (putting off college from not having money), and we started getting along better.

Still, It hadn't been THIS better in... forever.

Normally, Jane's pattern would have been derisive laughter, several comments about me not being worth as much as the sink, etc.

Instead, it was something very odd. She said, "Watch out, beloved brother!" The sounds she said, though, were, 'Kiwotsukete, saiai no kyōdai!'

My brain was doing odd things with this. For some reason, words just flowed out of my mouth. I said (in Japanese), "My pains are less, I am blessed by your kindness."

Her eyes knitted in confusion and she looked down at herself. Oddly, she didn't react fast, she just reached over and grabbed a second towel and said in a sort-of disjointed voice (in Japanese back to me), "Yes. You are. You are blessed by my forgiving kindness."

She used her other towel - there were always two - to dry her hair, rubbing it in a way I'd seen her do, back and forth like you'd two-hand roll clay snakes. Her long hair hung off her head to the side as she pulled it down and pressed the water out of it into the towel.

I didn't know what to say. She'd freaked me out. Maybe, I thought, it was talking in Japanese that triggered her to be nice again. If so, that'd be a great way to avoid further strife! I had a possible new safeguard!

Looking up at me (she was shorter, about 5' 3") with a very calm and even smiling face, she stuck to Japanese and said, "What made you decide on Japanese today?"

She'd set the pattern, so I stayed in Japanese, too. "Oh. I don't know. I don't even know how I'm remembering it this well. I think it's been a LONG time since we spoke to each other this way. Has it been?"

My question was intended to get her to think about something and not go back to the old mode of conflict. I so wanted us to be friends again.

As I looked at her drying her hair, I was allowed to look at her. She usually kicked me well out of the way, far away from her when she was in the bathroom since my door didn't close.

The other bathroom had the toilet that worked, and I think that had something to do with why the hallway doors to this bathroom and to her room were barricaded, and my pocket door not being fixed was less of a problem.

I admit, sometimes in previous years I did pee into the sink, while the water was running. She may have noticed but she hadn't mentioned it.

Looking at her, I saw her bicep had some muscles in it, and her legs stuck out from the bottom of the towel enough to let me see she still had a good athletic look from being on soccer.

She'd been considering my question about which language we'd used, and she replied with an odd phrase: 'Dumplings over flowers'.

The dumplings reference was a Japanese idiom Mom used sometimes, and it means that substance is much more important than style, and obviously Jane meant that talking in Japanese to her meant good things, but not trendy things.

By that, I supposed that she was also saying that Japanese things had deeper meaning and were far more permanent, useful, and emotionally centered than English did, apparently.

Pretty matter of factly, she added, "Beloved-brother is confused and hurting. I am not your childhood-friend, Kevin-kun. I am not your girlfriend-san. I am your honored sister. I am hoping you are not hurt by your fall, because my scream caused it. I am sorry."

This was pretty freaky to me, but I just said, "Yes-yes-yes. I want to be humble, I am not a grace-blossom. I am sorry also. I do not want your worry to grow, honored-sister." I was lacking some vocabulary words so I did what I could with odd phrasing.

In English, she said, "You getting in the shower?"

I came to my senses, "Uh... track meet, I'm gonna get sweaty, I usually just shower afterwards."

Hanging up her hair-towel again, she turned back to me and said in Japanese again, "Kevin-kun. I am sure you will do great things. Run very fast!"

With this - OMG - she stepped into me, stood on tiptoe, and kissed me on my cheek. Wow! Then, she just stepped towards her room like it was normal.

This had Never happened before.

As she'd pulled away, I realized her hand had been on my lower chest, the echo of the touch rang in me.

Jane was almost uniformly derisive and insulting, careless or deliberate with insults to ensure I didn't think I was in charge of anything, or competent at anything.

I was plenty competent, thank you.

I knew I was competent because I could survive and keep moving despite crying and feeling the Every Single Day Pain of losing my mother, a world-shaping ache and a hole where she had been.

I knew I was competent by 7th grade when I started running and winning.

I knew I was competent because I'd played piano in Jazz band and done hard solos.

I knew I was competent because I played piano in church and for people's weddings and funerals and they paid me money for it.

I knew I was competent because I was kind of a geek so I read and understood cool stuff that was happening in physics and engineering.

Inside my head, my being competent had stopped being derived from her opinion.

Still, her insults while growing up had hurt. Mostly the insults were from my 'cousins' (what we called them for short), and that was entirely aside from physically being shoved around.

Knowing better, knowing I had worth and talent, that had come from hard work, from dedication to a cause because I'd figured out early that if I liked doing something enough, other people's opinions didn't really matter.

For instance, I really liked my piano-time. It was contemplative, like time spent reading science fiction novels, or reading wikipedia, or whatever. Piano had a payback.

Literally, it paid back.

Our church's pianist got sick when I was in 8th grade, and he needed someone to help out at choir rehearsals since he was getting chemo on Thursday nights. I said, sure, it wasn't that far away, so I'd bike over and help out. It was fun - mostly the choir would do their own thing, and I only had to learn like 2 or 3 pieces a month, since they did hymns sometimes and that was simple.

Then, one day, the pianist was too sick for a service, so I took over for playing, since I knew the choir accompaniment. I filled in the introit with a hymn I knew, etc.

They paid me!

Sure, it was $10, not much, but they said that's what they'd paid the pianist, and it was fair money.

CASH! I loved it!

On the other hand, on the way home from church with family, or at other times, my cousins would chime in and tell me my playing was shit, or that I'd messed up something and they totally saw people looking around or holding their ears.

Or, I'd get bumped into or punched in the shoulder just slightly too hard so it really hurt, that kind of thing.

My home life wasn't so good.

Anyway, thinking about how Jane had acted differently, I knew I had some time to kill, so I got dressed in my track uniform and sweats, but sat down at my (electronic) keyboard and pulled on headphones, to play and kill a little time.

I was trying what the guitar players called 'licks', though technically they were runs. My project the past few months (since about Christmas and it was early March) was reading Oscar Peterson transcriptions and trying stuff he'd done.

He did some, uh... _wickedly_ complicated stuff!! I'd play it, it would sound horribly totally wrong, then I'd do the second part of the phrase, and the first part would make more sense, and then the third part would complete the thing and wow, that's what you were doing.

You had to _Trust_, with Peterson. The Trust depended on committing to the piece. You play and trust the oddball wrong thing you're playing would make sense, after playing the next, and the next phrase, because without them, the first bit was All Wrong Notes.

Commit to it, and you were Golden and brilliant. It took some bravery.

So, as I said, it was wickedly complicated, but I'd memorized a lot of it and found it the way he approached music theory had a logic to it, it 'sat on me', sort of.

There's no way to describe what jazz does, unless you're Making It.

Still, as fun as it was, I had to stop. Our track meet was at home - no travel - so I headed over about 8:15, biking it since I had no car. The meet went pretty well, though it was really cold and windy (being freakin' early March not-quite-winter weather).

You never run a race in sweats.

There was a wind-chill, but you had to Look Beyond the Cold.

Coach Diane said crap like that all the time. It was kind of funny, but I didn't fault her for it. She was doing what she could to help us understand how the Right Way to do things was.

She repeated her start-of-meet phrases. These were things like, 'Find your center! Run smart! Always be faster than your comfort zone!' I knew I was in for a challenge - she had me running the 3200, the 300 low hurdles, the 1600, and then the 1600 relay (in that order).

We didn't have a big team, we all had to fill in where we could.

Running the 3200 (2 miles), at the start of the race, I started out mostly in a normal mode, running fast, race pace (duh). Usually, I tried to concentrate on keeping my form, my body position, efficient and relaxed in the right ways. Some of that was easier than others; some parts of good form feel right, and others you have to settle into despite being initially uncomfortable.

Trust the brain-knowledge, and the body-feelings will settle into the good habit of 'race now'.

As background and in case it isn't obvious, the muscle power factors aren't the determining thing in a race. The thing that wins races is Pain Management. That's capitalized because Oh My God the whole point of the race is managing your pain better than the people you're running against. In practice and in races, it pays to keep the pain level just right so you don't wear out too early or give up time in exchange for comfort.

Generally, it's an all-over pain - lungs not having enough air and burning, or from lactic acid in muscles from burning too much sugar (fat burning is slower but not as painful).

Still, during the race, I had a DIFFERENT kind of pain. Believe me, when your goal is managing that pain to succeed, you pay attention to anything that feels different.

The pain I felt reminded me of something...

The pain reminded me of the bathroom that morning, with some clarity.

So, thinking of that phrase again, I was barely 200 meters into the 3200, and my mind went to this meditative state, sort of. It all flashed in front of me, an epiphany, as Pastor Jergins says, a realization that clobbers your mind, a divine inspiration, a gift from God.

I felt those words, I heard those words, I knew suddenly where those words in my dream had come from. They had come from the Shinto shrine we'd visited with my mother, on the day before she died. There had been a priest there, who had been talking with my mother, when we went to find her after the resting place was too boring.

I had gotten near to her then, and overheard him talking to her in Japanese.

He had said those words to her - in Japanese? I didn't know exactly what he meant, which is why I remembered them: Master Yoshi.

Those words seemed to resonate with me, like it was an important thing to say, and it stuck.

He went on. He said: "Life-Joy and ultimate suffering are twisted vines. Every plant bends with the telling, even seedlings. Unintended consequences, across generations."

How was I remembering that RIGHT in that moment? Why did I know that now, I wondered. The best thing I could figure was, I'd broken the ice, I'd repeated the magic words in my sister's hearing - Master Yoshi.

I thought about that as I ran. It was all becoming Very Clear.

In my dreams, the shape of that phrase didn't quite match between my awake-state and dreamstate. I had to hear the echo in _Japanese_.

Saying the words to myself in the middle of this race, and maybe only seconds after this epiphany dawned, I intoned the phrase, copying the priest: "Anata no kurushimi wa anata no yorokobi ni hitoshi, Master Yoshi."

With my saying this, even whispering it between hard breathing, something happened with my body, with the speed I was running. I felt a surge of power, but also of very strong pain. The pain was non-specific, but mostly like normal running pain. I could handle it, but even so, I felt my speed increase. I felt empowered!

Normally I was as good a runner as anybody on my team, though one guy was usually better, Jim Davis. Jim was ahead of me about 50 meters at that point; I was in the middle of the pack since it was really windy. The smart way to race in wind is to stick with a pack and try to time when you start your end-of-race sprint so you 'die' (tie up with horrid overdue pain) right as you finish.

Running in the wind has lots of tactics like this. Being out in front means more wind pressure and that adds up to the difference between 92 percent subjective pain and 95 percent, which is enough to suck the energy out from any attempt at a final sprint.

My power level had increased, and though that pain was significant, I could live with it, so I started pushing just a little harder with my toes to get a slightly longer stride length.

I passed Jim. I passed the others. I won the 3200!

Now, for context, I had won before, it wasn't unheard-of. Usually, though, it had been later in the season.

I was really happy with this, for sure!

After some congrats from teammates, I ran a quick warm down, then warmed up again for the 300 low hurdles (comedic but a middle-place finish), and then again for the mile.

The 1600 (about a mile) generated some pain in my legs, fatigue, which I normally could ignore but did matter some. Still, I pushed through and again beat Jim AND got a personal record ("PR"), at 4:48.

This is a pretty good time, and I'd beaten my previous PR by 7 seconds!

That fun but I was aching after the race, and I had very little time to relax. The mile relay, the last event, immediately followed the mile that I'd just run.

Our team came in second (there were two other varsity teams), though they started the freshman, sophomores, and varsity at the same time, six runners at any given time wasn't bad. We did almost lap the freshmen, though. My split was a 58, which was about as good as I could expect at any time.

My legs were jelly.

Coach Diane congratulated me on the good results and I felt a wave of both happiness from her and caring-worry as well, for some reason. I don't even know if that was what she was feeling, but that's what it seemed like.

Right then, kind of distracted, I literally bumped into a girl from track, Carrie Aster.

It wasn't an easy bump, either. She fell down. I didn't, probably because I out-weighed her, but I didn't know how it had happened.

Carrie got up. She was usually looking at me through narrowed eyes, most days, but something was up with her, like she had become hyperaware.

Carrie's family went to our church, though they were some of the more odd ones in that her family was two moms and a grandfather. I didn't know her story, though. She was just really distant most of the time, always wore long-sleeve t-shirts to run, and seemed like being religious was the Most Important thing ever.

After I apologized to Carrie for bumping her, she turned to me and about bit my head off with what sounded like malice, "Watch where you're going, you fuckin' idiot asshole."

There were two other girls standing near her, and they looked at us. One was her tattletale sister, Joanie. Joanie was pretty enough, for sure, they were both knockouts from a face and body perspective both, but they were quiet most of the time and pretty cold-tempered. I never knew where I stood.

Watching her walk away, I felt some pity for her since she seemed to be really having a hard day if she was talking like that. Because it was fun to think in Japanese again, I thought carefully and walked quietly on, saying the words in Japanese in my head, and then whispering them just barely to myself as I watched her, really Joanie, too: "I hope her suffering equals her joy, too, but... in a good way. I hope her joy can at least break-even. I'd love to help that happen. I'd love to love her, all... her... parts... Just look at that butt."

My whisper was isolated, I wasn't near anyone, but I still felt guilty saying it out loud.

As sometimes happens when I feel guilty or weirded out, I got a case of the willies and a slight bit of vertigo, again. I thought, 'At least I didn't get a concussion this time!'

Really, with more consideration, I was thinking with my dick. I knew that. Granted, though, she did have a rockin' body, and I wasn't the only one who noticed, generally, I'd seen the other guys looking at her, too.

Since it was a home meet, there wasn't a bus, so I just had to ride my bike directly home and grimace through it all since my legs weren't very happy with me after 4 races.

Riding home, I was thinking about whether my suffering was equaling my joy, and the way my legs felt, well, I had some suffering, for sure. Sill, winning made for some joy, and that balanced things out.

I didn't really get joy from running. I got fulfillment, which is different. Yes, there was a lot of pain, but I could feel myself getting better and better, over time, and it felt Good, a joyful thing, thinking about how the hard work was paying off over the course of a season and a high school career.

It was just after noon by the time I got home, so I threw together and gobbled a sandwich and a pickle, then built another sandwich and washed the first part of it down with some leftover coffee Jane hadn't finished.

I was flagging and I needed to write a paper for class later.

Just about then, my phone rang, so I had to fish it out of my backpack/gym bag. I didn't recognize the number, but it was local.

"Hello?"

"Kevin? Cooper?"

"Yeah?"

"It's... Carrie Aster. From track."

To say I was surprised would be underselling it. "Yeah, Carrie. Good to hear from you."

I honestly did feel good, talking with her, though I didn't know why. She had just been super mean to me, but instead, I just decided to drop it. Saying 'good to hear from you' was a stock phrase of mine for phone calls, but I did mean it.