calligraphy class

I was obscenely late for calligraphy class.

I was under the impression it started at 7.30, but of course I was wrong and dashed out of the house the moment it started at 6.30. It was pitch black outside. I couldn't tell one street from another. Panicking, I drove in circles around a block of houses which all looked exactly the same. So great was my panic that I phoned Mrs T and she tried to explain in hesitant English where the house was - but her English only confused me more and so I put the phone down. But I managed to find it in the end, turning up 20 mins before the scheduled end of the lesson.

Calligraphy class - or Shodo class (書道) - takes place in a large but innocuous bungalow in Niseko. At the front is an attempted Japanese garden, full of bonsai trees and mini-red maples and awkwardly-placed rocks, which I nearly tripped over in the dark.

Inside there was a huge traditional living room with low table or 食卓 where six people were sitting gathered, sitting in seiza-position, laughing and chatting over their ink-splattered pages. The teacher's wife and grown-up daughter prepared sweets and green tea in the kitchen. A Shinto shrine or 'Kamidana' 神棚 - an object recalling an elaborate wooden doll's house - hung in the right-hand corner of the ceiling. The walls were plastered with calligraphy from different artists, styles, time-periods.

I hurriedly sat and took out my borrowed utensils, which impressed everyone (of course, not mine) and so I felt a fraud when I began my attempt at 紅葉 (leaves turning red and yellow in Autumn) - each Kanji looking like a child's attempt to write for the first time.

Failing to sit in seiza (a sustained injury to my knee... kind of. Or just pure laziness) and being watched by a room of experienced calligraphers, I felt more than a little self-conscious. More so when it became apparent that everyone was talking about me, but not to me, because they did not know how much Japanese I could speak. The teacher's daughter sat next to me and repeated again and again the word 'daughter' in English while pointing at herself, which was rather unnerving.

Still, the other students - the majority middle-aged men who I'd seen volunteering at the library - spent their lesson fashioning a name for me out of Kanji. My first name (in Katakana - エリーネ）had already been chosen by my host-family:

The first syllable or 'E' sound is 恵 meaning 'Blessing'.
The second syllable or 'LI/RI' sound is 利 meaning 'Profit'.
The third syllable or 'NE' sound is 音 meaning 'Sound'.

Eluned = 恵利音

But what about my surname? The one I rashly transformed into グラミチ or 'Gu-ra-mi-tchy' before coming to Japan last year.

The Shodo Class decided on:

The first syllable or 'GU' sound is 具 meaning 'Both'.
The second syllable or 'RA' sound is 良 meaning 'Good'.
The third syllable or 'MI' sound is 美 meaning 'Beauty'.
The fourth syllable or 'CHI' sound is 知 meaning 'Wisdom'.

So 'Both Beauty and Wisdom are Good' or something of that sort. Gramich =　具良美知

It was terribly nice of them, really, and was worth the amazing level of self-consciousness and general anxiety of the lesson, my coming late and so on and so on.

My attempts at calligraphy were pretty shoddy. Calligraphy ought to be an extension of one's state of mind: a fusion of personal will and spontaneous, natural expression, dictated by the ink and the brush as much as a person's movements - so I suppose my rushing around didn't exactly induce a Zen meditative state... That's my excuse anyway.

Still, until next Thursday night. What Kanji will I attempt then...?