Jananas

Gucci made it home late Friday night. He arrived at the airport here in Toronto at 730pm after almost 48 hours in his crate. It took us three hours to get his paperwork, get it checked by customs, and then finally pick him up from the cargo area. But he was safe and sound and happy to see me.

He’s settling in okay. He’s still quite nervous around new people and clingy with me, but that’s pretty normal for rescue dogs. On the plus side, he’s picked up on using his outdoor facilities (i.e. being housebroken) very, very well. He walks pretty well on leash and doesn’t stray from the sidewalk too often. It only took him a day to learn about stairs, even if he still isn’t fond of them. On the downside, he growls at and semi-chases the cats (nooooo!). He also seems to think that yarn or skeins of yarn are good playthings. He also has no training (so sit, stay, come, off, down, etc.). But we’re working on all of those things. And given that he’s only been here five days I think he’s doing pretty darn well!

Look at that awesome little face. Can you spot the missing ear?

Sleeping on the couch. Man this beats an outdoor dog run any day of the week!

Lastly, what do you mean there’s a rope toy on my snout? You mean I’m supposed to play with this thing? Its funny because you can tell that he wants to play, but he doesn’t really know how to or what’s appropriate.

I’ve blogged about this before, but sometime last year Mary contacted me through twitter after seeing a blog post about my very first pair of thrummed mittens. We arranged an exchange – she sent me some of her hand dyed rovings and I knit her up a pair of thrummed mittens (and a thrummed hat as well, since I had enough materials left over).

Yesterday I received the last part of the deal in the mail – three skeins of her handspun! Oh man, am I ever stoked. Not only are they gorgeous colours (the middle skein has such subtle shades of green and lavender and sky blue), but they are the exact weight of yarn that I love – lush and kind of bulky and the perfect tactile sensation when it runs through my fingers. If you’ve ever heard of a knitter talk about yarn porn, this is it (at least for me). I have no idea what I’ll make with these yet, other than every single scrap of it will be for me!

If you like her yarn, you can find more on her Etsy shop – marajane creations.

The only downside is that Gucci (our new doggo) has never really learned what constititutes an appropriate dog toy. He’s definitely tried to wrap his little canine teeth around my skeins of lucious-ness. A knitter’s worst nightmare – a dog who eats yarn!

I posted last week about the death of my friend and mentor Gerry Fujisawa. It is one thing to accept someone’s death and quite another to go through the process of grieving. Its left many of us reeling and unsure of what to do. How do we continue? Where do we go? Who will teach us and talk with us and provide advice?

I feel a little as if reading Julien’s blog this fall (it was one of the few I actually kept up with while traveling) has enabled me to keep some perspective. It may just be that he reiterates much of what Gerry taught us, thus making it a comforting read.

The end result is still the same. I think the most important thing right now can be summed up in two words: Keep Moving. That’s it, keeping doing what Gerry had us each working on and towards. So practice your martial arts. Stay dedicated. Eat well. Breathe. Move. Love. Laugh. Live.

When I’m feeling particularly upset, I know that knitting will make me feel better. We had had discussions about how knitting can be a form of moving meditation and can provide great clarity if I’m open to it. I first heard the news when I was in Dayton Ohio. I managed to find a local yarn store (Fiberworks). I picked up some circular knitting needles and some bright, rainbow coloured Mochi. Under the circumstances, knitting had to be two things. First, soothing – so a simple, repetitive pattern. Second, it had to be cheerful. I wanted something that reaffirmed life and cheered me up. The end result was a less than perfect striping cowl (that’s how the yarn was this time around), but that’s one of those zen things about knitting. In knitting, I don’t have to be perfect.

Sometimes the lessons we’ve working on in one part of our life manifest elsewhere.

The other amazing thing about that day was the Fiberworks has lots of spinning supplies, something that I’m interested in learning. I mentioned this to the saleslady and she offered to give me a lesson. Right then and there. In the loss of one teacher appeared someone else equally willing to help.

I know that I’m not always good at keeping moving on my own, so I’m trying to find ways to support myself in this endeavor. And part of this means just doing it. Not thinking about doing it or talking about doing it, but actually doing it. So I’ve been making phone calls and sending in registration forms. Because more than anything else, I want to honour Gerry’s memory by moving.

I was first introduced to Gerry the way that most things that you later find to be important tend to happen – by chance. He used to live in the same live/work space my friend Badur did in Liberty Village before it was condo town.

Gerry was a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine. But as in everything Gerry did he was far from traditional. Instead of specializing in one of the branches of TCM (acupuncture, tuina, herbs), Gerry used all of them so that he could tackle your health issue in as many different ways as possible. Gerry was Canadian, but of Japanese descent and moved to China to study TCM (to give you an idea of the cultural implications of what he did).

Becoming one of Gerry’s clients was a viral phenomenon. A friend would be a patient and you’d see the progress they’d make. If you were lucky you’d get a referal (and if you were a smart patient, you only gave them out to people who needed them and who’d respect him) and if you were even luckier Gerry would accept you as a client. I use the word lucky because of how life altering working with him could be.

My first meeting with Gerry had me in tears. Because it was the first time a doctor ever sat down and listened to what I had to say. And listened for an hour. A whole hour, of me talking and him asking questions. At the end of that even that hour, so much more was clear because a doctor took the time to listen to everything rather than trying to rush to a conclusion based on five minutes of what I ‘thought’ were my symptoms. In the beginning I was seeing him weekly. We spent a good portion of each session talking, with Gerry teaching me the basics about what he was trying to accomplish and why.

As I progressed with treatments, I started to see changes in my health, in my emotions, and in my happiness. If you were open to working with him and if you were willing to put in the effort to make changes as well (after all, your health can’t just be the doctor’s responsibility), then the best way that I can describe what happened is that you became more you. You refined and honed and opened and strengthened. And that core of who you are blossomed.

Eventually I progressed so far with my treatments that Gerry rendered himself obsolete. Instead, we moved into martial arts (qi gong and kung fu) as extensions of what the TCM treatments had been trying to achieve. He went even further and was providing me with a skill set so that I could maintain my own health. We met weekly and I eventually learned 10 patterns, although sadly due to a lack of practice I don’t remember all of them.

We didn’t learn in a traditional western martial arts style though. We didn’t start with basics or get belts or memorize names of moves. Instead we met outdoors once a week, year round, in all weather conditions, and we practiced forms. We added to them and refined them as I learned more. Sometimes it was frustrating because the style of learning was so different from what I was used to. And that was exactly why it was so good – Gerry pushed me out of my comfort zone. He made me learn. He made me grow. And he challenged me to not think about moving, but to just move. To do it. To just be. That the movement was what mattered. That it didn’t matter if I had it perfect or right. That those were notions that I was fixated on so much so that my brain got in the way of my body actually being able to do it.

Sometimes in those outdoor sessions we’d just stand and talk (admittedly sometimes a stalling technique on my part). Often it was about school. Gerry’s advice definitely kept me sane during my MBA. I definitely remember him telling me about priority A work, priority B work, and priority G work (with G standing for garbage and thus for everything that didn’t really matter and so didn’t have to get done). He was a great counterbalance to business school and kept the BS in perspective. He suggested books to give me an alternate view of things and encouraged me to question the system and what I was being told. He encouraged my pre-existing skepticism.

And one of the most amazing things about the entire experience was that I’d look up one day and think back and realize how much more I could deal with than a year before. Changes with Gerry weren’t overnight. They crept up gradually, but they were there all right. One week his homework for me was to observe. That was it. Observe. Its amazing advice. You’d be amazed how much you learn if you pay attention.

Gerry had his quirks. Often I’d ask a question and he’d just smile at me and laugh that laugh of his. The one that said ‘I asked my teacher that same question when I was your age and he gave me the same response and I was annoyed and not that I’m older and wiser I understand why my teacher laughed’. Often we’d get cryptic answers to questions, but as I spent more and more time working with Gerry I found that I became much more zen about dealing with it. My understanding will come in time. And probably only when my mind catches up with what my body already knows. And that he always, always, always asked if we had any questions which always left me feeling like I was deficient because I didn’t have any (or least not often).

He was terrible at spelling. The entire time I knew him, he never once spelt or pronounced Badur’s name right – it was always Bradur. It was just one of those things. It was Gerry. He got words wrong sometimes, but you still understood what he meant. Although substituting acme for acne never did cease to amuse us.

I didn’t always take his advice. Sometimes it wasn’t right and sometimes it wasn’t right for me. Sometimes he tried to push you in directions that were more of his choosing, but if you didn’t want to go down that path he didn’t hold it against you. Your parents raise you and contribute genes and likely continue to influence you, but Gerry tried to help you grow into you outside all of that. For me, he gave me the space to let me know that it was okay to not feel obligated to make my parents happy. I’m an adult and an individual and I can choose my own path. For that I’ll be forever grateful.

Gerry was my doctor and my friend, but most importantly he was my teacher. He talked often about how he still had teachers. That he always wanted to keep learning. That learning enabled him to go from being able to treat something using 10 needles as a student to only having to use 2 now, but that his teacher could do it with one. That he could always get better at things, but that he’d never be a ‘master’ because that implied that he wouldn’t have anything else left to learn.

He’s much to young to be gone. I’m sad that he won’t be able to help more people. I just always assumed that he’d be around for longer. That he’d be an awesome old Asian kung fu master guy with a long beard and crazy eyebrows.

I’m sad. I’m sad that I didn’t get to tell him all about my Asia trip. I’m sad that I didn’t get to give him the present I picked up for him – a hand crafted Buddhist monk’s bowl from Thailand. I’m sad that I finally had a list questions about things we saw in Asia that I wanted to talk about with him. I’m sad that there won’t be any more winter training sessions down by the lake or good conversations. I’m sad that I won’t get that knowing look and laugh when I make a witty remark and good observation about a situation.

He passed away last night while teaching a tai chi class at Badur’s. The only thing that I can be happy about is that he died doing something that he loved and believed in, in a room full of people who care about him.

Goodbye Gerry. You will be missed.  I’ll try my best to remember what you’ve taught me. To keep moving and to practice.

Update:  Friends may visit on Friday, December 18, 2009 from 1-2pm at the R.S. Kane Funeral Home (6150 Yonge Street, at Goulding, south of Steeles). A Celebration of Life will be held at 2:00pm followed by a reception, all at R.S Kane Funeral Home. For Vancouver family and friends, a second Celebration of Life will be held in Vancouver at a later date to be annouced.

Update: Gerry’s Obituary can be found here and is reproduced below.

“FUJISAWA, Gerald Bruce ‘Jie Rui’ – Died suddenly on December 11, 2009 at St. Joseph’s Health Centre at the age of 46. Predeceased by his father George, his mother Chiyeko and his brothers Allan and Robert and survived by his brothers Edward (Toronto) and Douglas (Vancouver), his nieces and nephew Anna, Amara and Robbie (Toronto), his sister-in-law Tracy (Toronto), his aunts and uncles Mary (Victoria), Margaret, John, Eugene, Kayoko, Marie, Geri, Kyomi, Ben and Margaret (Vancouver), Sus and Dorothy (Victoria) and Alice (Vancouver), cousins David, Kim, Natalie and Nicole, goddaughter Kate and many more relatives and friends. In lieu of flowers or koden, please make a donation to the Toronto School of Traditional Chinese Medicine or the International College of TCM of Vancouver or your favourite charity. And take comfort knowing that Gerry died doing what he loved, teaching us to take responsibility for our health and well being and that our life, emotionally, spiritually and physically, should be at peace and harmony. Friends may visit on Friday, December 18, 2009 from 1-2 p.m. at R.S. Kane Funeral Home (6150 Yonge Street, at Goulding, south of Steeles). A Celebration of Life will be held at 2 p.m. followed by a reception, all at R.S. Kane Funeral Home. For Vancouver family and friends, a second Celebration of Life will be held in Vancouver in the New Year with details to be follow. Condolences www.rskane.ca“

One of the things I love about visiting Jason is the States is his roommate’s cat Char (officially Chardunk teh Destroyer). I have a major man crush on this cat. I think he is awesome, especially his fake angry face.

I also really like his facial structure and his snub nose (which actually sort of reminds me of Mitzy’s).

I also like that he let me put this little coaster that Jason’s friend Molly crocheted up. Its the perfect cat hat!