ELABORATE CHAIRS

All this endlessly ongoing royalty folderol in England about kings, queens, princes and princesses, ascendancy, legitimacy, dukes, dutchesses, consorts and people in waiting - all a holdover from way back in the days when one could become king by virtue of having a horse, some luck and a good change of clothing - I wonder why they don't simply do away with it all. Though in a way it's better than soap opera if you have an empty afternoon, metaphorically speaking.

Here in Japan the people enjoy a much more staid version of aristocracy, with imperial deities whispering diatribes at each other in antique syllables and the nation carefully weighing the earthshaking issue of whether or not it would be possible perhaps to allow a female to inherit the right to sit on an elaborate chair.

It's sobering to realize that so many people have nothing better to do with their afternoons, let alone their thoughts and fealties. The nature of leadership can be much worse, though, as it currently is in the States, where aristocracy is purchased pretty much at auction, though multilevel incompetence can last for no more than 8 years at a time, quite long enough to do considerable damage, yet giving the people extended pause to thank their various deities for term limits.

As an American in Japan, I have no king but Elvis.

KING OF THE VICINITY

This afternoon, while taking a break from my daily gymnastics of painting under the back eaves of the house, where for some sections I have to be eight feet tall and other sections two feet tall, I took the time to enjoy my natural height by gussying up the happenstance hedge that borders the road (some of the plants (kinmokusei, azalea, tsubaki) were put there by the land's previous owner, some I added (blueberry, biwa, natsume) where something was needed, some are opportunistic (sansho, nanten)), and found that since my last check a horde of vines had infiltrated from the wild and were climbing up the sunny slopes of my hedge, casting its sun-hungry leaves in shadow!

I immediately took appropriate gardener's umbrage and began pulling the usurpers down, clipping them here and there to do so, and in the midst of the broad tangle discovered a very nice growth of young akebi vine (superior for alternative medicaments, baskets, natural rope and other crafty items), so began to take more care with what I was doing, clipping every couple of meters, and as I went along I began to resemble a fluffy pile of bright leaves with a head sticking out, so I discarded the nefarious vines (my call, admittedly based largely on what I do NOT know) and separated out the 3-meter lengths of akebi.

Rather than just leave them piled somewhere where I'd forget them, or coil them up and maybe spoil their utility by 'setting' the curve, I draped the akebi vines over my shoulders (so I could later hang them at full length under the eaves) and continued with my task, adding more and more akebi as I cleared up the hedge.

Thus it happened that I trailed a long train of imperially verdant robes when, as Monarch of the Immediate Vicinity, I concluded my visit and regally ascended the stone stairway into the royal garden, through which I passed in stately procession to a breezy fanfare and a largesse of leaves, with oak and cherry, peach and chestnut in careful attendance; thence I retired to tea in the palace, after carefully hanging my long emerald robes under the eaves, freshly painted not moments ago by the king himself.