A Patch of Sunlight

I am lying in bed. A cat meows outside the sliding doors of my room. It is already warm midday.
A cat must be lying on the porch again. Trying to surprise it, I quietly open the door because I also want to find out where it is. I want to startle it ﾐ but I also want to find out where it is, so I quietly open the door.
"Oh, it's not here"
There is no sign of movement.

Feeling bolder, I step out onto the porch.
There is no sound of the cat running away.

"Hmm, where is it?"
I go out further.

There it is. It's lying on the grass, in a warm patch of sunlight, as if it is in its own natural place.
"Well, I've been spotted. I guess I'll have to move" might be what it is thinking.
Whose house is this, anyway?

Without being chased, it moves to another sunny spot, as if to say "OK, I'll move if you like".

I am feeling cornered, pressured by all the concerts and practice. My sister says, "Don't act as if you are the busiest person in the world". She is perfectly right, but I don't have unlimited talent, and cannot reach a state of mind where I can overcome all these worries.

I really envy cats.

A long time ago, I was on my way to my debut concert at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, one of the most precious concert halls in the world.
It was 3 hours by train from Brussels. I had mixed feelings of fear and nervousness about the big hall in which I had not yet played, and resignation that things would develop as they naturally would. I looked out the window, and saw cows grazing in the fields.
Holland's endless tracts of rich green land, almost like prairies, conceal canals and support countless lives.
Nobody can understand how cows feel.
However, I wondered at the time who was happier, me hurtling along in the train or the cows grazing unhurriedly in the pasture.

My family always had a dog. Since dogs have shorter life spans than humans, I have encountered their deaths several times. Once was when my father passed away, and another time was when I had gone overseas for the first time and was eliminated from the preliminary round of a competition.
"Ron", our Dachshund, died suddenly, 10 days before my father passed away.

Ann, Ron's offspring, died on the day when I was playing in the depths of despair at a recital in Munich, one of the stormy concerts I gave after I won the competition in 1980. On that same day, my sister was also having a trying time, playing concertos with the Camerata Academia Salzburg. Our stouthearted mother did not tell us about Ann's death at the time, and we were dumfounded by the coincidence when she told us the story afterwards.

I gave birth to my son at home in November 1996.
We had a dog called "Don". He sat on the porch the whole morning, and went straight away to his dog house when he knew that my son had been born.
This dog had been intensely jealous when I first brought my newborn daughter home. Though he did not harm anyone directly, he showed open hostility by chewing up diapers or growling. But after the birth of my son, he played with the children, and was very patient with them.
Even when they pulled his whiskers, he did not object. When the children went out to the garden, he kept them company, trotting to and fro as they toddled around.
In the evening, he curled up and slept right in the middle of the dying embers of the fire, where it was still warm.
We called him Hai-Don (Ash-Don). Now he is gone, too.

The feeling of a patch of sunlight is the dappled light and shadow filtering through the leaves of a tree. The image of Snoopy sleeping with his tummy puffed out.

I saw an article in today's Asahi Shinbun about Tanikawa Shuntaro's translation of Charlie Brown. He translates "Good Grief" as "Yare yare".
"Life is like ice cream. You need to learn how to 'nameru' (=lick / don't take it too seriously)."

Mr. Tanikawa is going to write a poem next year for Messiaen's "Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps". He is going to recite it.
Messiaen wrote this piece in a prisoner of war camp in Europe during World War II. Although it conveys the tragedy of war, it also conveys light, the sound of birdsongs and the warmth of a patch of sunlight. Hope might actually exist in these places.

I can almost hear the voices of Messiaen and his fellow captives, saying, "Such is life".

The concert will be held on 1st July next year in the small hall of Tokyo Bunka Kaikan. I am looking forward to it.