HARAMAKI

The word for today is HARAMAKI. It is the first word I have written about that is not, as far as I know, in an English dictionary.

Until a few weeks ago I did not know that HARAMAKI already existed. I was very excited because I thought I had invented something. I thought I had invented what I would have called a tummy scarf.

You see I live in Chicago and I am a dog walker. I am also a middle-aged woman who is determined not to look frumpy, which means I wear relatively low cut jeans and jackets that come to my hips. Oh a cold draft can creep in that small gap between my jeans and my jacket. (Especially at the small of my back.) One day I took a fleece scarf, wrapped it around my waist, secured it like a bath towel, and then zipped up my jacket--it worked great! I felt so warm, so secure. Why hasn't anyone created this I thought. Well....

Thanks to Google I discovered that tummy warmers were first created in the Samurai period in Japan. It turns out that now they are a "fashion" item in Japan, and hip Americans have imported them. And, though they come in many designs for tweens, teens and twentysomethings, some HARAMAKI are simply solid-colored fleece, for oldsters like me, who just want to keep warm. (I'd like to give a plug to www.haramakilove.com.)

Growing up in the Northeast I learned to wear a hat and gloves, warm socks and boots, and a scarf around my neck. When I lived in Maine, I learned to love long underwear from L.L. Beans. My friends and I joked about old men who didn't take off their long underwear from October through May, though behind the joking I really understood why.

During my time in Maine I learned a lot about macrobiotics, acupuncture and Eastern medicine. I learned that the kidneys are vital to my life's essence and energy. I learned that the dark circles I have always had under my eyes could be due to kidney deficiency (or my heritage as an Ashkenazi Jew).

Here is a rather beautiful excerpt that I just found about the kidneys.

From Zhuang Yuanchen, Shujuzi: Inner Chapters (Shujuzi Neipian), Ming Dynasty:http://www.itmonline.org/5organs/kidney.htm

The kidney is the ocean of the human body. Since oceans are situated on a lower level than the earth's streams and rivers, they draw every one of them to form one large body of water. Oceans may appear vast and inexhaustible, yet they still drain off some of their seemingly unlimited supply. One way of drainage is called 'going to ruins,' meaning the water drains down into the earth from where it will not return. The other way of drainage is called 'dwelling with the stars,' meaning the water steams toward the sky and later rains down to earth again, where it dissipates into rivers and streams and eventually returns to the ocean. This is the water that circulates between heaven and earth, always striving to keep an equilibrium between the extreme states of drought and flooding.

Though I no longer live near the ocean, I do live near Lake Michigan. On cold January mornings, when the air temperature is in the single digits, I see the water steaming towards the sky. I did not know, until I read the passage above, that this is part of the EQUILIBRIUM that I search for between my extreme states of despair and euphoria. When I walk the dogs by the lake each morning my EQUILIBRIUM is rignt in front of me. I have a sense that the animals know this. I am grateful that they bring me closer to the connection between the earth, the water and the sky. It would be so much harder to find the connection, to find EQUILIBRIUM, without them.