Teeny the Mouse [道のねずみ]

Teeny the Mouse (aka Way of the Mouse)

Normally, most days are pretty uneventful, and today didn’t seem likely to break the mold. I was in downtown Portland, standing under the shade of some trees on the busy corner of Market and 4th , resigning myself to a long wait for the bus. To kill the time, I had been conversing with an oddly talkative and opinionated elderly woman, when suddenly I saw a subtle movement over by the landscaping near the parking garage.

At first I thought I was imagining things, but then I saw it again--a tiny little gray mouse skittered from one clump of ornamental grasses to another. How curious. Living in a clump of ornamental bamboo right by the bus stop was a tiny little grey mouse. Teeny, the mouse was no bigger than the blade of a bamboo leaf and could easily be mistaken for a small grey stone. Only the subtlest twitch of his nose gave him away as he was stealthily creeping around in the leaves, just out of sight of the people walking by.

I told the woman that I had just seen a mouse and she became rather curious and began looking around for it. At first I thought she was afraid, as people often are, but she was not fearful, but eager. Delighted by my discovery of the mouse, she begged me to show her where it was. Having decided that she wasn’t likely to harm it, I pointed out where it was hiding, and she quickly began hunting in her handbag, and with triumph, whipped out a package of sunflower seeds and tossed a few towards the bamboo where the mouse was hiding just out of sight.


To her absolute delight and my amusement, Teeny came out and picked up the sunflower seeds, bringing them back to the safety of the knee-high bamboo forest. I could see him in the shadows, peering out of the protective embrace of the bamboo leaves. When the coast was clear, he would scurry out and pick up another one, running back each time another pedestrian passed by. We stood there for several minutes captivated by Teeny’s antics. As my companion left to get on another bus, it struck me how much she had in common with the mouse.

I stood and watched the mouse for several more minutes until finally my bus came. With a sense of regret, I pulled myself back into the world of human concerns, and got onboard. While watching Teeny the mouse scurrying around in his tiny microcosm, always within sight of the tiny clump of bamboo no higher than my knee, I realized that I had been watching a living example of Kichom’s “edges”.

The world of Teeny the mouse was a world of edges: There was the protective edge of the bamboo, where he hid from the moving legs of the giants who went by on the sidewalk. The function of this edge is obviously protection and safety [安全 Anzen]. Then there were other the edges (around and between some rocks, and other ornamental grass clumps) which were paths [道 Do], as Teeny came out of his bamboo home, he hugged the edges of the landscape features, as he rustled around in and around fallen leaves, looking for food. These edges functioned as roads/pathways (which loosely translates into Japanese as [道Do], and can have all of the following meanings: one’s way, street/road/path, vocation/calling, direction, focus, manner of, habit, orientation, etc.

In the end, I realized I had been watching, not just Teeny the mouse, but ultimately had observed “The Way of the Mouse.” 道のねずみ


P.S.

I was intrigued to discovered that the word edge, translates into Japanese as 縁 which has a host of meanings including: Fuchi 縁 【ふち】 (surrounding) edge, Heri 縁 【へり】 edge, tip, margin; Yukari 縁 【ゆかり】 related to a place; an affinity or connection; Yosuga 縁 【よすが】 means, e.g., of living, Ateji 縁; 江に(ateji) 【えん(縁); えにし(縁); えに(縁; 江に); え(縁)】 (1) fate; destiny (a mysterious force that binds two people together); (2) relationship (e.g., between two people); bond; link; connection; (3) family ties; affinity; (4) (えん only) opportunity; chance (to meet someone and start a relationship)