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My Year of Dirt and Water: Journal of a Zen Monk's Wife in Japan
by
In February 2004, when her American husband, a recently ordained Zen monk, leaves home to train for a year at a centuries-old Buddhist monastery, Tracy Franz embarks on her own year of Zen. An Alaskan alone—and lonely—in Japan, she begins to pay attention.
My Year of Dirt and Water is a record of that journey. Allowed only occasional and formal visits to see her cloistered ...more
My Year of Dirt and Water is a record of that journey. Allowed only occasional and formal visits to see her cloistered ...more
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Start your review of My Year of Dirt and Water: Journal of a Zen Monk's Wife in Japan
Dec 22, 2018
Cherise Wolas
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2018-reading-challenge,
memoir
Beautiful, soulful, and wonderfully observed.
3.5 stars. An almost too thoughtful and melancholy meditation on being a foreigner in Japan while a spouse is on a yearlong journey in Zen Buddhism.
To be frank, all I wanted was for the author to experience joy — any joy— living in Japan during this most unusual year in her life. But, it wasn’t mean to be. Thus, this memoir felt like perpetual winter to me.
To be frank, all I wanted was for the author to experience joy — any joy— living in Japan during this most unusual year in her life. But, it wasn’t mean to be. Thus, this memoir felt like perpetual winter to me.
Very interesting journal. For me, being not part of Zen culture was very informative what she and her husband went thru for the sake of his quest to become a priest. Loved her eye into Japanese life.
I am interested in Japanese culture and this memoir relates the author's experiences in an honest and beautifully written manner. Her husband is becoming a Buddhist monk and is spending a year mostly away from her going through the process. This is one of the best books I read this year.
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A beautiful and deeply genuine and soulful story. What a gift to the world. Thank you.
I loved this book so much and I connected with it deeply. I also lived in Japan for many years and this was the very first book written by a foreigner who lived in Japan that I was actually able to connect with. So often books like this come out as too teachy/ know it all or just too unbelievable. This was perfect. I loved the tone, the way it was written, and it just felt so real. Tracy's interactions with Japanese people were so true to life and I found myself nodding along so many times. Her
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While her husband leaves home to train for a year at a centuries-old Buddhist monastery in Japan, Tracy Franz, embarks on her own year-long journey of self-discovery. Franz’ desire to address her feelings of otherness and geographical displacement resonate in this collection. The journal entries are organized by month and day. Within this overarching frame, the thematic sub-structure is a bit haphazard – thematically, it covers a wide-berth, but the multiple threads and transitions aren’t always
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This book had identity issues. It's obvious that it isn't a true memoir, but rather pieced together post experience. It couldn't decide if it was about Zen, the author's personal issues, or something else entirely. There were moments of poetic writing, but mostly the reader gets the feeling that the author needed to be treated for depression. It is interesting to read about the experience of her husband, but that's his story and her experience--other than her depression and pottery as a metaphor
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This is a really lovely and beautifully written book describing the author's year in Japan while her husband was undertaking formal Zen training. However, I am sure that many people will note that her own life at that time was also a deep dive into the heart of Zen and Japan.
Woven through it is her life with the Japanese students she teachers, interactions with her pottery sensei and other potters, brief forays into Zen monasteries, and visits home to Alaska where she finds bits of Japan waiting ...more
Woven through it is her life with the Japanese students she teachers, interactions with her pottery sensei and other potters, brief forays into Zen monasteries, and visits home to Alaska where she finds bits of Japan waiting ...more
I am interested in Japan and pottery, but after reading this book, I am decidedly not interested in Zen. After the 20th observation that “x is y, but not y, I don’t know,” I did know I wanted to call it quits. I finished it out of respect for the author’s story, the occasional interesting observations, and the hope that the author would reach some kind of conclusion other than that she was lost and confused (vain hope).
The think someone with an interest in zen would enjoy this book much more.
The think someone with an interest in zen would enjoy this book much more.
I loved this wonderful and intimate book.
She candidly and eloquently shares her thoughts, feelings, and experiences without drama. More than successfully took me with her on a captivating and enriching journey.
DISCLAIMER: I am somewhat familiar and fascinated with Japanese culture and Zen practice, which, . I am sure, colored and influenced my opinion and enjoyment of this book. She frequently uses Zen buddhist terms without translation or an index.
She candidly and eloquently shares her thoughts, feelings, and experiences without drama. More than successfully took me with her on a captivating and enriching journey.
DISCLAIMER: I am somewhat familiar and fascinated with Japanese culture and Zen practice, which, . I am sure, colored and influenced my opinion and enjoyment of this book. She frequently uses Zen buddhist terms without translation or an index.
This is a moving book of Tracy Franz's year spent in reflection in Kumamoto Japan while her husband trains to be a Zen Monk - already an usual occupation in modern Japan but all the more so considering he is not Japanese but American. Her writing is clear and uncluttered much as the Zen she practices with mixed results - for those of us who make our home in Japan much of what she describes rings true - a thoughtful and moving account of life - not only in Japan but of memory and hope.
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Was only able to finish 3/4s of it because I had to return it to the library. Sometimes, diary/journal-type narratives don't always appeal to me, but I very much enjoyed Franz's literary descriptions of Japan and her insights into Buddhism.
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I loved the spareness of Tracy Franz's description of the year in Japan she lived alone while her husband lived in a monastery becoming a Bhuddhist monk. Her lonliness, in the presence of so many solitary, serious Japanese/Buddhist practices was powerful and has left me contemplative.
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Very plodding.
3.5
Such a beautiful, simple diary. I would recommend to everyone. The wonder, contradictions and interconnectedness of all things.
Gassho 🙏 🙏 🙏
Gassho 🙏 🙏 🙏
Not sure I’m the right audience for this, but I do appreciate the hard work of writing a story arc for every day in a year.
An interesting account of expat life in Japan from a unique perspective, but it needed some editing.
I enjoyed having Tracy's experiences accompany me during our first weeks of living in Japan.
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Breath
Breathing in, breathing out, the breath animates this day to day memoir of feeling love and liberation. A moving meditation.
Breathing in, breathing out, the breath animates this day to day memoir of feeling love and liberation. A moving meditation.
This one reads like a collection of vignettes for a year in waiting ('waiting for what?' being the question that eventually arrives and departs, within the author and the text itself).
It serves as an intimate look of the author's thoughts, the wife of a monk-in-training away for a year. Into her daily routines as a foreigner in Japan, and into some very specific aspects of Japan itself. At times nostalgic and profound, to-the-point and meandering, banal and zen.
It has had a strange effect in t ...more
It serves as an intimate look of the author's thoughts, the wife of a monk-in-training away for a year. Into her daily routines as a foreigner in Japan, and into some very specific aspects of Japan itself. At times nostalgic and profound, to-the-point and meandering, banal and zen.
It has had a strange effect in t ...more
The idea of a young American couple going off to live in Japan for a year while the man enters a Zen monastery to study to become a monk, and the woman will live separately, immersing herself in the culture, seemed an interesting setup. The plot was simple enough, and the tension lay in whether two young people who barely knew each other were going to make it through the culture shock and the loneliness of separate lives there for one year. The narrator is the woman, Tracy, and she tells of livi
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