My Year of Dirt and Water by Tracy Franz

My Year of Dirt and Water by Tracy Franz

Married to a Zen monk in training, an American woman in Japan chronicles her own year of growth and discovery 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 Wateris a record of that journey. Allowed only occasional and formal visits to see her cloistered husband, Tracy teaches English, studies Japanese, and devotes herself to making pottery. Her teacher instructs her to turn cup after cup-creating one failure after another.Past and present, East and West intertwine as Tracy is twice compelled to return home to Alaska to confront her mother's newly diagnosed cancer and the ghosts of a devastating childhood. Revolving through the days,My Year of Dirt and Watercircles hard questions: What is love? What is art? What is practice? What do we do with the burden of suffering? The answers are formed and then unformed-a ceramic bowl born on the wheel and then returned again and again to dirt and water.

Originally from Alaska,Tracy Franzlived in Japan for ten years. She now resides in Nova Scotia with her husband-Soto Zen priest Koun Franz-and their two children. Her essays have most recently appeared inLotus Petals in the Snow: Voices of Canadian Buddhist Women(Sumeru, 2016),Lion's Roar,andTricycleMagazine.Find her at tracyfranz.com

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781611720426
ISBN 10	1611720427
Title	My Year of Dirt and Water
Author	Tracy Franz
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Stone Bridge Press
Year published	2018-07-10
Number of pages	308
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.