“What’s the matter with you!” Sensei boomed at a
student stretching before class—silencing what little noise there’d been.
Shocked,
the hakama-wearing student jumped from his pose and asked what he’d done wrong.
“You
should know!”
Years
later, I’d still not figured out just what the student’s mistake had been. Perhaps he’d had his back to the
kamiza. Or to Sensei. Or maybe he’d left his shoes at the
door facing in the wrong direction.
Whatever it was, for me, the incident came to represent the dojo’s
atmosphere: one of an almost palpable tenseness, a heightened reality in which
constant awareness was demanded.
And tested.
And then one day, “I’d like you to
clean my office for a while,” said Sensei. “I’d be honored,” I said, but, Oh fiddlesticks, I thought.
That
winter night, lying in my bed unable to sleep, aching from a particularly
brutal Aikido class (a pre-emptive “thank you” for my services?), my ego
outlined for me just what my new commitment was to require: more
subservience; unpaid work; a boss whose eye for detail was unparalleled; and, of course, responsibility over his
personal stuff! What if I broke
something? Was this actually—like
the rest of the dojo—just one big test?
Excuses for backing out of my new job rolled from my tired brain faster
than—forgive me—anticipating ukemi.
I’d write him that very second!
Tell him I was too busy, too overburdened already, concerned with wage
laws, needed some time, money, vacation days, respect… I fell asleep.
My
first time cleaning the office, I was assisted by the student whose role I was
assuming. She seemed giddy.
“Are
you excited?” she asked.
“Not
really,” I said.
And
then that voice again, roaring from somewhere down the hall: “What are you guys
doing in there? Cleaning or having
a coffee?”
This
won’t do, I thought.
We
finished soon afterwards. And the
next week, cleaning by myself this time, my companion’s parting words lingered:
“Wow—this goes by so much faster when you have two people!” How true! Alone in that room—an elegant office kept so pristine it
looked as though it had been sanitized that very morning—a polished, hand-crafted
desk made of a single piece of wood, a collection of antique swords, a rock
garden, stunning pictures of picture-perfect Aikido—I was suddenly overwhelmed
by just how many objects
there were to clean. Books,
kamiza, desk, computer, floor, many knives, many swords, teapot and cups,
windows, an array of precarious glass picture-frames, calligraphy materials, more books, carpet, incense holders, medical
supplies, curiously positioned stones, a whicker, undustable basket, decorative
boxes, functional boxes, yes, more
books, briefcases, zafu and zabuton, whiskey bottles, and objects so foreign I
couldn’t even guess their purpose.
An hour passed and I was only half way done. I missed my partner.
“You can take a break,” said Sensei,
and I finished after class.
I
went home both happy to be done and frustrated I’d have to do it again. For the next six months. Or maybe a year. Or maybe forever: I hadn’t been given
an end date. And waiting for me in
my email, a note from Sensei’s wife, whose eye was apparently just as keen,
just as fiendish: “The office looks pretty good, but here’s a tip from an old
pro: Use one book to line up the spines of the rest of the books.” Line up the spines? I
didn’t even know that was a thing. I looked at my own overcrowded
bookshelf. This was either a test
or some cruel joke.
The
following weeks, I was determined to do better—to be more efficient! Attempting to banish thoughts of free
labor, I decided I was being
tested. Every speck of dust, every
misplaced object had been left or moved on purpose to see just how aware I
was. When a month into my weekly
cleaning routine I realized I’d never taken a match box out of its wooden
container to look underneath, I did just that to discover a miniscule ball of
lint—Aha! I thought. This must be the test! I passed! But more weeks went by. No mention of the lint or the little white fleck I’d found
underneath an extension cord.
Months. A new season. One week I was told not to over clean.
Another week to clean areas within the span of a single breath. Another, after asking whether to return
a relocated marker to its original place—the place I’d been carefully laying it
since I’d started—I was told: Use
your brain. On another occasion,
after Sensei had been abroad and I’d been cleaning in his absence, he asked
whether I’d cleaned the office that week.
Cleaned it? I’d done more than clean it: I’d loved it!
I’d treated each item with a delicate, nurturing respect. Had cleaned nooks accessible only to
the smallest of children’s fingers.
But it was true: The office
was so consistently clean, that some days, it was hard to tell whether I’d been in there at
all. What kind of test was this?
Summer.
Some weeks I tried to work
quickly. Others more
thoroughly. Sometimes I focused on
my breathing, others on my sense of hearing, touch, or that most important of
all body parts in Aikido: my gut.
And still others my mind wandered: to my own chores, my own
responsibilities, to anywhere but where I was. And as the weeks passed—as I came to know that meticulously
organized office better than my own home—I grew more confident. My goal became speed. Then one day, with a confidence
bordering on cockiness (perhaps already tipped over that line), I’d just
finished wiping the picture frames when timed with a loud yell from Sensei’s
misogi down the hall, a framed quote fell and shattered across his office
floor. I cleaned, vacuumed, and
brought the remains to Sensei.
“I
broke this,” I said, handing him the now glassless Arabic quote.
WHOOSH!
He stopped a punch a half inch from my face. “This is the most important thing in
the dojo,” he said. “It says: In
the name of God. Fix it.”
I
trembled. But of course, it was
not the most important thing. It
was no more or less important than any of the objects that, through their
grouping and individualized care, comprised that rarified space we call dojo.
Had I broken a picture of his sensei, that too would have been the most
important. A sword? The same. No, I
thought, this is finally the test. I fixed the frame, replaced it so that
it looked like nothing had happened, like I’d never set foot in his office—left
it, in fact, better secured
than it had been—but I was no longer sure if my job was a trial. Maybe I was just cleaning for the sake
of cleaning, training for the sake of training. When a month later he said he’d be assigning the task to
someone else, I was surprisingly disappointed. I had grown accustomed to my chore, had developed a liking
for it even.
My
last week, he told me to see him when I was finished. I had to meet him before class started, and so I cleaned
faster and yet more thoroughly—with greater efficiency and awareness—than any
of the days before. If it was a
sort of test, I didn’t know, but I don’t know that I really cared either. I would miss the four-stoned rock
garden, the finely sharpened swords, the philosophers’ quotes and books that
every week reminded me of how much there was to know, to ponder. On my way upstairs to meet with him, I
noticed a single flower petal on one of the steps. I picked it up and went to sit with him.
“Ah
good,” he said, “you got the flower.”
-A. Cruciani
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