Lost=Found Department

 

In order to find ourselves, we may first have to get lost. As I wrote in The Three “Only Things, “This is the cardinal navigational law of serendipity: You can only get to the magic kingdom by getting lost. You get there when you think you are going somewhere else and fall off the maps.”

Here’s a literary example.

David Mitchell relates that around Christmas in 1994, in Nagasaki, he got off at a wrong tram stop and stumbled upon “a greenish moat and cluster of warehouses from an earlier century.” This was his first encounter with Dejima, a trading factory of the Dutch East India Company built on a man-made island in Nagasaki harbor. For two and a half centuries, when Japan was closed to the outside world, this was the sole point of contact between Japan and the west.

Twelve years after alighting at the wrong tram stop, David Mitchell published his extraordinary historical novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which richly deserves its tremendous critical and commercial success. Mitchell succeeds in transporting us into the mental and physical worlds of two cultures at the close of the eighteenth century. He is a master of what he amusingly calls “Bygonese”, conveying how people thought and talked in an earlier time in a way that never seems labored or antiquarian. Among his memorable characters, Dejima itself becomes indelible. And he found it by getting lost.

Image: An imagined aerial view of Dejima from a 1780 woodblock print by Toshimaya Bunjiemon, published in Isaac Titsingh's Bijzonderheden over Japan (1825).

The Way will show the Way

            There is a practice in Ireland called vaguing, that Patricia Monaghan writes about beautifully in The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog. On a country walk, when you come to a fork in the road, you let your body choose which way to go. You will notice that a foot or a leg has a tendency to turn left instead of right, or the other way round, and off you go. Of course, this is practice for a day off, when you do not have anywhere in particular that you need to be a noontime, and you do not mind being off the maps.     
              Yet being ready to fall off the maps, and make an unexpected find when you do that, is practice for a kairomancer on any day, even when on a tight schedule. David Mitchell, the author of Cloud Atlas, found a new book was waiting to meet him when he got off a tram at the wrong stop. Mitchell relates that around Christmas in 1994, in Nagasaki, he got off at a wrong tram stop and stumbled upon “a greenish moat and cluster of warehouses from an earlier century.” This was his first encounter with Dejima, a trading factory of the Dutch East India Company built on a man-made island in Nagasaki harbor. For two and a half centuries, when Japan was closed to the outside world, this was the sole point of contact between Japan and the west.    
              Twelve years after alighting at the wrong tram stop, David Mitchell published his extraordinary historical novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which richly deserves its tremendous critical and commercial success. Mitchell succeeds in transporting us into the mental and physical worlds of two cultures at the close of the eighteenth century. He is a master of what he amusingly calls “Bygonese”, conveying how people thought and talked in an earlier time in a way that never seems labored or antiquarian. Among his memorable characters, Dejima itself becomes indelible. And he found it by getting lost.  
         Antonio Machado says it with poetic clarity:

Caminante, no hay camino,
el camino se hace por andar.

Wayfarer, there is no way,
you make the way by walking it.

     In my workshops, we often sing a song that came to one of my students, a writer from Minnesota, when I lead a journey for members of an Esalen retreat to seek power songs, the kind that entertain the spirits and provide wings for shamanic travel. Some of the members of that retreat brought back very old songs in the languages of their ancestors. One brought back “Yellow Submarine”. Some brought back original material. This is the liveliest of those songs, an anthem for kairomancers, imagineers and sidewalk Taoists:

Make it up as you go along
Make it up as you go along
Make it up
Make it up
The way will show the way.

     When you get the hang of it, you let the original text go hang. You pummel and pillow-fight with the words

             Make it up
             Shake it up
             Fake it up
             Bake it up

             The fox may know the way
             The star will light the way
             The dream will show the way
             The heart will find the way
             The way will show the way

Text adapted from Sidewalk Oracles by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.

Photo by RM

A novelist finds his island by getting lost

In order to find what we are really seeking, we may first have to get lost. As I wrote in The Three “Only" Things, this is the cardinal navigational law of serendipity: You can only get to the magic kingdom by getting lost. You get there when you think you are going somewhere else and fall off the maps. Here’s a current literary example.

David Mitchell relates that around Christmas in 1994, in Nagasaki, he got off at a wrong tram stop and stumbled upon “a greenish moat and cluster of warehouses from an earlier century.” This was his first encounter with Dejima, a trading factory of the Dutch East India Company built on a man-made island in Nagasaki harbor. For two and a half centuries, when Japan was closed to the outside world, this was the sole point of contact between Japan and the west.

Twelve years and much research after alighting at the wrong tram stop, Mitchell published his extraordinary historical novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, in which most of the action unfolds on or near to Dejima at the end of the 18th century. The novel  richly deserves its tremendous critical and commercial success. Mitchell succeeds in transporting us into the mental and physical worlds of two very different peoples in a very different time. He is a master of what he amusingly calls “Bygonese”, conveying how people thought and talked in an earlier time in a way that never seems labored or antiquarian. 

Mitchell's vividly realized characters will linger in the reader's memory.Some of their statements stir and sear the soul, as when Orito, the selfless Japanese midwife, says near the end of the story:

When pain is vivid, when decisions are keen-edged, we believe that we are the surgeons. But time passes, and one sees the whole more clearly, and now I perceive us as surgical instruments used by the world.

Dejima, the invented island, is indelible among Mitchell's huge cast.  And the author found it by getting lost.

Illustration: Dutch plan of Dejima c1825