Bigger on the Inside

The wind came early that afternoon. It slipped under shop signs, rattled bicycle bells, and pushed the clouds into long gray ribbons above the town. Carlos walked toward the dojo with his practice bag tucked under one arm and his umbrella held high in jis hand on the other side, fierce and proud as a little banner.

At first, Carlos liked the wind. It made him feel heroic, as if he were crossing a mountain pass instead of the street between the bakery and the bamboo grove. He straightened his back. He lifted his chin. He imagined the people in passing windows thinking, “There goes Carlos, standing tall like a great march leader.”

He passed the greengrocer, where crates of daikon and green onions stood under a striped awning. Mrs. Fujimoto was tying twine around a box of mandarins. Carlos tried to make his stride look calm and important as he went by. The harder he tried, the more his practice bag bounced against his ribs.

“Good afternoon, Carlos,” Mrs. Fujimoto called. Carlos turned his head without lowering his heroic chin. A gust pushed him sideways, and he had to hop twice to keep from stepping into a basket of cabbages.

“Good afternoon,” he answered, now much less like a mountain traveler and much more like a boy being shoved by his own umbrella.

Suddenly the wind changed its mind. It rushed around the corner, caught the umbrella, and turned it inside out with a loud pop. Carlos froze beneath the bent ribs, holding the handle above him like a startled puppy. His heroic face wiped and instantly replaced by pure shock.  He had never had the experience of an inside out umbrella.

A sparrow on the fence puffed once in the gust, leaned forward, and steadied itself. Nearby, the bamboo grove bowed deeply from the wind cascading across the top. The green bamboo stalks bent almost to the path, then rose again. They did not fight the wind. They did not collapse. They moved, remembered themselves, and stood tall.

The bamboo did not all move in exactly the same way. The tallest stalks swayed in long arcs. The younger shoots stood unimpressed close to the ground, confident and unaware of the shelter provided by the mature neighbors. Leaves flashed their pale undersides, then turned green again. Yet the grove stayed together, making one lasting whisper from many different movements through the grove.  The wind slashed direct and completely through; cutting nothing.

Carlos tried standing as the bamboo stood. He planted both shoes and stiffened everything—knees, elbows, even his eyebrows. The next gust nearly tipped him backward.  His rain coat almost turning him into a flying squirrel. A little afraid of that prospect.  Carlos quickly relaxed and folded himself over the broken umbrella, waiting on the gusts to pass. Neither way felt like had mastered the ‘grove waza’.

Carlos stared inro the grove as he lowered the umbrella. “You bent,” he whispered to the bamboo, “but you didn’t give up.”

Carlos proceeded to the dojo garden, Mr. Tanaka was tying a loose bamboo shoot to a thin support. He worked slowly, wrapping the cord without squeezing. Carlos watched the stalk move in the wind even after it had been tied.

“Shouldn’t it be tied tighter?” Carlos asked.

Mr. Tanaka smiled. “If I tie it too tightly, it cannot grow. If I leave it alone, it may fall. What kind of help lets something stand?”

Carlos looked at the bamboo. Its stem was straight, but not stiff. Its leaves trembled, but its stalk held. “Help that remembers the wind,” he said.

Mr. Tanaka pressed two fingers lightly against the support. The bamboo moved away, then returned. “A support is not a cage,” he said. “It reminds the stalk of its direction while the roots become stronger.”

Carlos held the broken umbrella beside the young bamboo. Both had thin ribs. Both had met the wind. But the umbrella had tried to stay one shape, while the bamboo had known how to move.

“Can people have supports?” Carlos asked.

Mr. Tanaka looked toward the dojo, where voices and the soft movement of tabi came through the open side door. “What do you think teachers, friends, floors, and practice are for?”

Carlos had never thought of a floor as support. Floors mostly waited for people to walk on them. But then he remembered the dojo floor had helped his feet find Ashibumi. Perhaps support did not always hold you up with hands. Sometimes it waited beneath you until you noticed.

Inside the dojo, Carlos began where he had begun before: at the line. His feet remembered Ashibumi better than they had the first day. Left foot. Right foot. A place for the bow to begin.

He repeated the first lesson carefully. His left foot opened. His right foot followed. The familiar polished wood felt steady beneath him. Rain began to tick softly against the roof, and the bamboo grove answered with its low green rustle.

Kenji-senpai approached and asked Carlos to build his body, Carlos hurriedly built himself tall. His shoulders climbed toward his ears. His chin lifted toward the rafters. His chest puffed out like the sparrow on the fence.

He tried to correct himself before anyone could speak. He pulled his stomach in, squeezed his knees straight, and made his back so rigid that even blinking felt like it might spoil the pose.

Across the floor, another beginner shifted one foot and began again. An older archer lowered her bow to rest, calm and unashamed. No one looked like a statue. Everyone was moving inside the form, even when their bodies seemed quiet.

“I am standing tall,” Carlos announced, though his voice sounded squeezed.

Kenji-senpai walked around him once. “If the wind came now,” he asked, “would you bend or break?”

Carlos imagined himself as the umbrella, popping inside out. He let his shoulders drop. Then he dropped them too much and became like a noodle.

Aiko-senpai covered her smile with one sleeve. “Not a soldier,” she said gently. “Not a noodle. Something alive.”

She stood beside him without touching him. “Feel the top of your head reaching upwardas if your crown was suspended by a string,” she said, “and your weight settling downward. Both at once. Relaxing from your crown to your toes.”

Carlos tried to send his head up and his feet down. At first he made such a serious face that Aiko-senpai asked whether his eyebrows and pursed lips were part of Dozukuri.

Carlos let his eyebrows rest. A small laugh moved through him, and with it went some of the tightness in his neck and cheeks.

Carlos thought of the bamboo. He felt his feet holding the floor. He let his knees unlock. He let his back rise without pushing. His chest had room. His shoulders became quiet. His head rested atop him as if it had finally found a new elevation.

Kenji-senpai asked him to hold the posture for three easy breaths. On the first breath, Carlos worried that his shoulders were rising. On the second, he noticed the rain. On the third, he noticed that he was no longer thinking about how tall he looked.

“There,” Kenji-senpai said. “Dozukuri.”

The word did not feel like a command. It felt like a little house being built inside him: floor, walls, roof, open windows. Carlos stood in it and breathed.

He imagined the piers of the house reaching through his feet and the roof floating above his head. The open windows were his ribs, making room for breath. Nothing had to be nailed shut for a monsoon.

When he held the bow, he did not try to show off for it. He gave it a body that could receive it. The bow seemed to magically rest closer to Carlos in his hand, not lifted yet, only included. Carlos felt taller, but not bigger than anyone else. He felt more like himself.

Carlos felt like the bow’s length change the room around him. If he leaned, the bow seemed to lean with him. If he stiffened, it seemed heavier. When he returned to the middle—feet settled, back awake, shoulders quiet—the bow became easier to include.

For several turns, Carlos practiced without raising it. He stepped, stood, breathed, and lowered his hands. Each beginning showed him something new. Once his knee locked. Once his chin lifted. Once he found the balance so naturally that he noticed it only after it was gone.

“Did I lose it?” Carlos asked.

“You noticed it,” Kenji-senpai said. “That is how you find it again.”

After practice, the wind still moved through the garden. The umbrella was still broken. The sparrow still hopped sharply along the fence. But Carlos walked past the bamboo with his shoulders soft and his back awake.

Mr. Tanaka looked up from coiling rope. Feeling Carlos had grown since Mr. Tanaka last noticed the asked, “How tall are you these days, Carlos?”

Carlos warmed inside. He was still shorter than Kenji-senpai. Shorter than Aiko-senpai. Shorter than the long bow resting by the dojo wall.

“Tall enough to bend,” he said.

Mr. Tanaka gazed at Carlos passing between him and the bamboo grove that swayed gently. A little puzzled for a moment Mr. Tanaka replied, “That is a good height,” he said.

And Carlos  felt taller than standing stiff against the wind ever had.